I was thinking about how much I love Pema Chodron, David Whyte, Buddhadarma magazine, anything India or Hindu or yoga related, my energy healing school… why don’t I just join a religious order someday?

I can’t speak for someday. I may hit a yoga retreat or an ashram or visit a Christian religious order just to clean up or get new clarity. I want to visit (almost) every place of worship with every loved one who will invite me, from the Hindu temple with Vidya for puja back to Christchurch in Rugby or Epiphany with my mom. Maybe I’ll take the Art of Living course for my birthday.Maybe I’ll go back to work for some difficult, bureaucratic, profitless agency that lets me help people and stresses me with the hardships of our clientele and staff.

But I could not just walk away permanently. I realized that I love this world, and that is why the answer is no. Spiritual practice must not be something that just sits off to the side waiting for an acceptable time. It is where the rubber hits the road– when someone pisses me off, when I am afraid, when I am celebrating, when there is injustice, mendacity, thoughtlessness, hurt, waste, pain, violence whether in words between family or warfare between nations– that tests what I believe and what I am growing to be.

My Tassajara would be a bed and breakfast where travelers can find family meals from my own garden and welcome and comfort. My 29 Palms is the beach at my Mom and Dad and Grammy’s house, Kim’s back patio looking out over the little lake, or Station Camp in Big South Fork, until such time as we can afford that second home in West Virginia near Granny’s house. I find so much to be grateful for each day, I just have to remember to see it and be grateful.

I don’t need a retreat. I need to be mindful. I can find a walking meditation counting flowers as cars roar by on the smelly city street that is the way to and from my child’s school. I know wine shrinks your brain but ‘this is the blood shed for thee’, and I love to taste it and cook with it. I can find a meditative joy in cooking mindfully, trying to nourish my family with healthy food, swimming upstream against the food industry. I can find a meditation in cleaning and organizing and FitTV. There is so much music to enjoy on YouTube or alternative radio or someday when we have a babysitter again in clubs.

I have about ten vocations… for one of them I might learn Buddhist counseling methods– just read a wonderful article about that in Buddhadarma magazine. I’d love to do that with a fat helping of Jungian study in San Francisco and Kabbalah from the School of Healing Arts in Nashville. I don’t have answers any more than anyone else does… and the answers are right within us, within our values and hopes and need and dreams. And this is our life, our kingdom come.

I love this world. Some parts of it hurt– people do nasty crappy things here in LA, as I know they do everywhere (though maybe not quite so often or willingly!). I think about losses and griefs. I screw up, judge, feel anxious, get irritated. I struggle with giving up unhealthy behaviors– all legal, but not healthy. Travel has forced me over and over again to reframe in a way that has been hard but good for me. How I handle these is constant opportunity for meditation without abandoning daily life. Spirituality can be a retreat, an abandonment of real life… I will never retreat. Meet me right here.

In that spirit, with my usual dedication to reverence and irreverence, here’s one of my theme songs. Stop right here if you don’t like ugly words.

The Bill O’Reilly Dance Remix used to give me a much needed laugh and relief from tension when I was working at the library. Okay, we don’t live in Darfur or anything, but outside of that… simple daily things were so hard I cannot describe it. F* it! I can’t do it! What a joy to have Bill express how I felt so eloquently every single day. I laughed my head off no matter how many times I watched it.

Now the video still gives me great joy– Kim R. just posted it on her fb page this morning and I’ve watched it about five times already and will probably watch it five more. But now the line that speaks to me is F* it! We’ll do it live!

Doing it live…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5j2YDq6FkVE

on cartalk.com to donate my ol’ rodeo… snif… I am going to sit down and cry when it goes. What an idiot I am, with so many bigger fish to fry! From the Car Talk Donation web form:

“Missing parts, damage, recent repairs, custom accessories, or mechanical problems:

Problems: has been sitting under a carport. not started in a  year or more. was running when we parked it. Needs water pump and radiator– we just could not afford the time energy and money to get this done. Driver’s power window will not shut. very dusty. dirt inside because we used it to pull out and haul azalea bushes when it was on its last legs. Cracked passenger side headlight. 200K miles. Needs general tuneup/cleanup.

General: With occasional repair to electrical system, this has been an absolute beauty of a car for me for 9 years 125K miles (bought in 1999 with 74K miles on it). I am going to shed some tears when it goes.

Was flooded about 4 feet deep in Houston in 2001; after that entire electrical wiring etc. was re-done and I believe this re-do contributed to the car lasting so long.

The two wheel drive Santa Fe I drive now is but a pale imitation.

Custom accessories: v6 4wd. 6 cd disc changer. sunroof. brush guard. trailer hitch. leather interior (kind of cracked and dirty now).

LORD I hate to let this thing go. It is a real work truck– get it dirty. go ahead, hit it, you think I care? you think you’re the first? it will damage your car worse than it will damage mine. trust me. Rearended in 2005 hooked the poor girl’s car and busted her radiator with the trailer hitch. Got hit on the beltway in DC– who cares? Feel lucky?

Goodbye old thing.

We’re moving (at some point). Not sure when or exactly where, but we are definitely in new life mode– that is, sowing the seeds for a new ‘field’ or future.

My mom’s priest emails his homilies out most weeks. They are almost always just precious. They’re short– ah, the beauty of a really awesome Episcopalian priest’s homily! True thoughtful meaning,  no time wasted!

He’s an undiscovered jewel of humility, study, kindness put straight into serious good works large and small, and comfort with human fears and pettiness– including making fun of his own (this attitude is kind of typical of the few priests I’ve known and may explain my willingness to be so, er, human, so publicly).

And he doesn’t hold back his sweet words–  he sends ‘em out ahead of time to whoever wants ‘em instead of trying to entice folks to actually show up to hear what he’s going to say this time. He doesn’t play games– and has the small but devoted attendance and impoverished church pocketbook to show for it I guess. But it’s important to be a straight shooter.

Today he sent out the Anglican history of Rogation Day. I really liked it.

I had a yard sale yesterday, spent HOURS on it and it wasn’t even enough time, and of course after paying for ads in the paper I about broke even and made about ten cents an hour.

And that is *not* counting the money I had to give my child to convince her to get rid of a few token extra toys– some for a friend whose house flooded, and a very few just to put in the trash (where a lot more of them really need to go!!!).

Yesterday was a day of people doing sweet things for me. One BFF came over and watched the stuff for me while I ran upstairs and pulled from the attic a bunch of clothes I’ve been hoarding, some for 20 years, out to go through in hopes I could bring myself to weed those too. We went through the grownup clothes, and, well, I found about six things I can definitively say I am glad to throw away.

My other clothes from the 80’s and 90’s? No way. Keeping. Can’t let go. Heck, we’re going to a place where we’ll actually need wool sweaters. And the baby clothes? I think I opened one rubbermaid tub– couldn’t even reach in and look at the stuff!– before I turned away. I can’t do this!

I have the stuff on mothballs and lots off ‘em for which I take serious ribbing from the BFFs. But here’s the point of those mothballs. I am in it for the long haul, I tell you. If someone needs a sweater, if a baby needs clothes 40 years from now, I got ‘em!

Last night as I brought in the yardsale clothes and put them in the ‘yard sale closet’ I thought, what am I *even* (as Napoleon Dynamite would say) doing? Why am I bringing these back in the house? Why aren’t they going straight to the Mission Thrift down the road from my workplace– a huge symbolic gesture to accompany my last 8 days at my current job?

What is the best use of my time? Spending hours making a few bucks here and there, organizing and storing this crap, a breeding ground for bugs, dustmites, and psychological burden? Getting my house completely cleared out to the essentials (and the spiritual fortitude it takes to actually let go)?

Some things I do that take more time have payoffs that make them worth it. When I cook a vegan meal or make pancakes or muffins or bake a cake, the appetizing (usually!) food, the removal of additives and other yuckies that will aggravate autoimmune disorders or cancer genes or heart disease down the road, and the nutrition are their own reward. With vegan cooking we also get a side of saving the earth– meat agriculture is harder on our environment than our cars.

When I hang clothes on the line (convert your clothes dryer to solar power for two bucks!) we save about 50 cents and the sun bleaches out stains. We also get another side of saving the earth, since reducing consumption is one of the keys to moving away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy.

So. Rogation Day (Welcome to workingmommykimworld, where a million things are always going on at the same time).

I think Father Richard’s sermon is  my answer. I proceed to shorten and bastardize it greatly for the sake of my point.

Rogation Day like most Christian holidays was imposed upon a pagan/druid sacred day and ritual.  Joseph of Arimathea was no fool– he didn’t reinvent the wheel. When in Rome, that is Glastonbury…

Wealthy ‘counselor’ and Jew, maternal uncle Joseph of Arimathaea, supposedly a disciple in secret, requests Christ’s body after the crucifixion so that it may be honorably buried in accordance with Jewish custom. Then he has to hightail it so he hits the friendly godless shores of the British Isles (has much changed?) where they don’t like to write stuff down (no paper trail) but preferred to tell stories to keep the spirit alive.

H’m. As a librarian and student of indigenous culture and given my belief in the importance of human connection, this in many contexts sounds good to me. Though now that the written word is so fluid… it has a spirit of its own, it’s not such a threat as it must have been then.

But anyhoo.

The pagan feast of Rogation involved cleansing the fields of demons with switches, or praying for protection from mold, or walking the boundaries of the parish, depending on where and when you were.

In Britain they ‘beat the bounds’ with switches and then burned the switches (with their demons, presumably). The practice was outlawed in 1547 but in a strange twist Queen Elizabeth I re instituted it but ordered that the boundaries of the parish be walked. What was she thinking? That’s a sincere question.

Father Richard invites the congregation to a symbolic beating of the bounds, including burning the switches in a cookout (ya gots to have food if you’re Episcopalian) after the service.  He says, in part– why are we doing this?  Because it’s fun, because it’s history, because it’s our history, and because it is important to bless our church yard. The church yard is consecrated ground, and a precious part of our ministry. People rest and read in the church yard. Children play in it. It holds the ashes of our beloved dead.
Our homes and yards are a precious part of our daily ministry, even if we don’t call it that or subscribe to a codified system of beliefs from an organized religion or other source — Flylady.net for example. Flylady says to simply bless the world with your stuff, don’t hold on to it and don’t yard sale it, have courage to let it go and make room for more blessings to come back your way.

And home staging wisdom is that you must get rid of all your clutter to show your home.

We all make our houses and yards as comfortable as we can for our families, in accordance with our values, schedules, abilities, aesthetics, budgets, and our families’ needs.

When I was growing up my family’s homes were sometimes almost formal and sometimes clean but centered not around neatness but around people and activities– grandchildren. Visitors. Cocktails. Work space for woodworking or sewing or home office or home business. The almost too big supper table right in the middle of the kitchen.

No matter who or where they were, my grownups were diligent in making their homes presentable and comfortable, and tended their yards and gardens– whether a small suburban lawn or a long acre in West Virginia– with passion and devotion.

Now, my grandmas stayed home, my mother in law stayed home, my sister in law Kim seems to be able to keep her house lovely even though she works– she doesn’t have any little ones yet, but I suspect that if as a working lady she can find time for her arts and her home, she’ll still manage it as a parent. That’s just who she is.

My parents had slave labor (myself and my brother) to help. I haven’t got to those points yet– not staying home, not slave labor– and maybe never will, so while I and my husband don’t lack passion for or devotion to home and garden, I don’t know when or if we’ll ever get to their level of home.

But I take the thought processes and ministry and blessing of everyday housework, home hearth and garden, seriously as often as I can given how freaking tired I usually am after a day or week of work. Cooking and cleaning and yardwork are three of my favorite things, and I love to do them for my family and I love to invite people over. This is the first time I’ve had a house worth inviting folks to in many years, and my first own house ever.
So… back to my original question. Where should all those  yard sale clothes go? And what’s the best use of my time? What do I do? I know I need to dump the stuff. Holding on to it is indicative of a mindset  holding me, holding us, back, spiritually and financially and geographically.  But can I really do it?

Like Father Richard I’m not much worried about demons. At least not literally. But extra crap creates an inviting place for dust, molds and bugs to live and grow. It makes it harder to keep the house neat, adds a huge psychological burden, makes the house less attractive, both in terms of how it looks and how it feels at a gut or energy level, to potential renters or buyers. It makes us a lot less nimble when it’s time to move into what I am almost sure will be a *much* smaller house –but it will be in a place close to heavenly in many ways, which is why we’re willing to make the leap.

And I hear tell it’s not legal to set fires within these here city limits.  So setting fire to it, while it would be a gorgeous spiritual gesture (and I still have BFF’s flamethrower! forgot to give it back!), probably isn’t an option.

So. Absent processions and switches and fires, what do I do?

Rogation day. Cleansing the fields. Walking the borders of my little parish ministry. Praying for protection from mold (which loves to accumulate in extra stuff!).

Every time I make and offer my child my AWESOME fudgy delixous bananna muffins my little girl says you mean *pumpkin* muffins?

Is she trying to tell me something?

My husband bought me a gigantic can of pumpkin, far exceeding expectations. Alas, I haven’t been able to grow a single pumpkin in my gardens, EVER.

Vegan with a Vengeance has a to die for pumpkin muffin.

Vegan with A Vengeance by Isa Chandra Moskowitz

Vegan Cupcakes take Over the World has a pumpkin chocolate chip cupcake recipe I haven’t had a chance to try yet.

Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero

So baby and I are off to see the pumpkin wizard. If I– okay if we– make ‘em she better damn well eat ‘em.

Tuesday May 5 at 4pm, The Governor’s Square Library Kids’ Club will embark upon their exploration of the fine artworks of the Picturing America series.

Kids 5-12 are invited every Tuesday at 4pm, and parents are asked to donate their time, healthy individually wrapped nonperishable snacks, water, or juice boxes.

Discussion questions will help kids reflect on and remember the women– mothers, grandmothers, relatives, older sisters, teachers, church friends and others– who nurture them, create a positive environment for living, learning and growing, and help to build our community.

Our stepping off point will be Dorothea Lange’s poignant portrait Migrant Mother.

Learn more about this important work of American history and art at the Library of Congress website: http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/128_migm.html

Please bring a child aged 5-12 Tuesday May 5 at 4 pm for snacks, thought provoking discussion and as always a little bit of fun.

See you Tuesday!

if you want your wife [significant other] to wish [him-]herself home again, unfettered by matrimonial [cohabiting, relationship] claims, you just stay in bed and let her [him] get up in a cold room, go through several cold rooms to a cold kitchen: find no wood or kindling , and have to go to the back yard and bring it in all soaking wet, and try to cook…

Page 26, “1902-1911: Rafters of the Home/ Woman’s [Partner's] Work” in Times Down Home: 75 Years with Progressive Farmer edited by Mary Elizabeth Johnson, published 1978 by Oxmoor House in Birmingham.

What a treasure! I can’t resist it. I’m a nut for stuff like this. This is a wonderful Book.

I had to insert words like “significant other” and “him” and “partner” in brackets because families are changing, stressed by pressures that are different and yet the same. They need to be supported, from within and from without, in totally new ways we (okay I) haven’t quite gotten right yet.

And these days, the imbalance of care and interest in one’s mate’s day and work can definitely go both ways– can even be hurtful and isolating for one spouse or partner in some areas and hurtful and isolating for the other partner or spouse in others.

MEJ (now MEJ Huff) will be at my library on Saturday 9th May along with many other wonderful local authors. She has done some amazing, beautiful more recent books documenting quilts as well– quilts by ordinary folk, like the Gee’s Bend ladies, not MOMA or RISD textile artists.

I can’t wait! The job part of my job is sometimes absolutely AWESOME.

As we were leaving DC last week we were listening to the testimony of Edward Liddy, who came out of retirement to try to get AIG back on track– manage all that bailout money– for no pay. He sounded like a decent guy to me. Here are the three thoughts that occurred to me  as he talked about those bonuses.

1. they were an infinitesimal percentage of the total bailout package– getting them back isn’t even a drop in the bucket.

2. Legacy knowledge is an all important form of capital. you lose productivity big time when you lose the folks who saw it go down before the shit hit the fan. you lose productivity big time when you lose folks ever. retaining staff is so important to the wellbeing of any company. provided they are honest and have true honest professional intent. Only a very very small group amongst AIG’s vast divisions is responsible for this mess. The many honest people who were there before are the best ones to pick up the pieces and bring the company back.

3. We, the American people, are a bunch of sheep. Know what a derivative is? That’s what caused this mess. If we– the working or middle class with decent careers, decent homes, our health or at least health insurance, and decent opportunities for education– whether in school or through self education and lifelong learning–  willfully choose ignorance about how our economy works, we deserve what we get.

Come on. This is f-ing ridiculous. All this mess comes from our acquiescence to the huge pyramid scheme that is our economy. As long as we are scraping by okay, screw the rest, right?

We don’t teach our children about debt and compound interest rates (whether in our favor or racking up on our credit card debt). Every child should know how our economy works and how personal finance works.

I have a dear little colleague, a very sincere financial advisor. She is urging folks to attend the latest Dave Ramsey Financial Peace University. My husband and I used Dave to crawl out of I don’t want to tell you how much debt, accrued through years of near constant life change and increasing salaries.

But here’s the thing. I love Dave. LOVE HIM. But if we all adhered to his principles, paid cash and lived within our means our economy would collapse! I said as much to my friend and she said yeah… yeah that’s true.

It is in banks’ and lenders’ best interest that we little people should live outside our means, not understand the consequences, and fail– or at least fail just enough that they can levy insane finance charges and ruin our lives.

That whole ‘derivatives’ thing… I heard it explained and defined on Marketplace on NPR, though i cant quite tell you now what the lady said. See what I mean?

So we go on. we fail to pay our bills or invest poorly– we pick up the pieces, if we are lucky enough to have pieces. We can’t get a car loan. Financial giants like Enron or AIG make it look so easy — and when they screw up–no worries! The government will bail us out! Oops, sorry about all those retirement investments that weren’t even there.

But the bottom line is, our economy is at any and all times a bubble ready to burst. This has got to stop. Corporations,  lenders and elected officials have us all by the short hairs. We are too scared to say no, afraid to rock the boat– and refuse to give up the giant houses (like mine) with the insane heat and cooling costs. And we refuse to educate ourselves about what, personally, locally and nationally, would provide us personal and national security. We let our finances, our food, shelter, health, happen to us.

STOP it! Get educated– the economy, local agriculture, local energy, renewable energy, walkable and sustainable communities. Think about how it affects your family, your community– yes, I am asking you to look at the big picture, at what would be good for human beings and families across town and around the globe– and our national security– or you get what you get.

I wholeheartedly agree, and this is serious business! I am so happy to see that someone, anyone, can offer support in something I’ve always believed!– Kim

The “battle of the sexes” was an issue back in the 1800’s and we’re still talking about it today.  Clearly, there is a difference between men and women.  But maybe we’ve come to the point where we can understand that our similarities far outweigh our differences.  Rather than look at what divides us, let’s look at what binds us.  We aren’t Martians and Venusians, we’re here together on the same planet.
 -Lissa Coffey

Kim Wilson Owen at 10:49am March 23 I’m also reading Note to Self: 30 Women on Heartbreak, Humiliation, and Overcoming it All http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/1416948767/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link and Victorian Fairy Tales the Revolt of the Elves and Fairies. I have Anne Tyler’s Back When We Were Grownups and Sarah Ferguson Duchess of York’s What I Know Now Simple Lessons Learned the Hard Way… Read More http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0743246128/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link on tap; have to re-read Save Me the Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald for the library’s book club and we’re doing Who Moved My Cheese in my ladies’ book club (The First Rule of Book Club, heh!) this month and The Ten Year Nap for April… I’d like to read Inkspell…

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