Grounding, Flying

I. Grounding

I thought about deleting that emotional post I wrote a week ago, last Wednesday, "Refiner's fire", because it was unfair of me to express anger at people who aren't at fault, people who maybe aren't helping, but who sure aren't the designers of the cruel policies at play in my city, state, country, (... and our world).

But I decided to leave it. 
It's not harmful (I hope), and it's a record of how easily a person (I!) can get knocked off center---a few weeks, days, even mere hours of stress, and I'm lashing out.  
I'm HARDLY alone in this--it's pretty typical. 

It's one of the central challenges of hard times:
How to stay grounded in love, not flying off in annoyance?

By "love", I mean something like,
A state wherein your are able to take a deep breath and then smile gently at someone. 

I was thinking this morning as I was tying sticks together, in prep for making God's eyes in public tomorrow–– (Marz is coming down to join me!)––I was thinking that I keep coming back to making little things from yarn as an example of a policy I want to live by
--the opposite of the policy of cruelty--the policy to...

Find what you can do from your center:
and to choose to do that which doesn't knock you off balance.

Or, that helps you bop back upright if you are knocked off center. Because you will be.

Be the Weeble.
Remember those plastic toys with rounded, weighted bottoms?
 Like clown bop bags,
 Weebles wobble, but they don't fall down.

(Rounded, weighted bottoms? Heh. Check.)

So, the question I want to ask myself isn't,
"Is this enough?" [As in, Is this too paltry?]
 but rather,
 "Is this something I can do to try to help, and still smile?"

Because apathy and despair and hatefulness--perfectly understandable responses though they are!---aren't helpful, 
and it'd be helpful to find some other responses.

So, even if the thing is a little thing, if I can stay grounded in love doing it, if I can keep returning to center (thank you, rounded bottom), then that's what I should pursue.

And if I find myself yelling at people who aren't to blame, then I want to return to center and try again.

And even if I find myself yelling at people who ARE to blame... well, I don't want to do that either.
Not because they don't 'deserve' that;
 but because it's just returning like for like. 
I don't want to be like they are being.
_______________________

II. Flying

Last month I had an email conversation with a longtime friend from the old Blogger days, Deanna. A dozen years ago, we'd spent one afternoon together when I was in Oregon, but otherwise we've stayed in touch on email, especially once she stopped blogging regularly.

Deanna had converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity years ago, and I loved talking to her about theology. We held an ongoing conversation that we would drop for months, or even years, and then pick up again. 

We didn't see eye to eye on many things, but she was never defensive. (Unlike prickly me.)  We could keep talking because of that open-heartedness of hers.

Just last month, I wrote to her that I thought I'd finally understood something she had been trying to say:
IF you believe that God IS Love, and only and always Love... then you read all the stories about God through that lens. 
And you will see those stories differently.
Was that it?

Deanna wrote back and said, Yes, that's it. That's how I see God.

This morning, Deanna's daughter posted on her Caring Bridge that Deanna died early this morning, about a year after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

I am very sad. She had a good life, loving family and friends and deep faith. It seems she had what Catholics call a Good Death.
But I feel more personal loss in her passing than I'd expected, knowing this was coming.

bink replied to me just now, when I texted her that I'm surprised how sad I am,
"Don't downplay the love and loss 
because of the distance between you".

She's right.
There's something precious and true in the connection between people who become friends through blogging. We meet in our words, and maybe... I don't know? Is it the case that some of the crud of our personalities is burned off in the process of writing? 
And some core shines forth?
Maybe not with everyone, but I certainly felt I showed Deanna my best self, and I expect her best self also also shone forth in her words.

I wrote to her daughter,

Tears are running down my face, reading of the passing of my dear old friend... your beloved mother.

I was thinking yesterday of a passage of writing she'd shared with me from her memoir, about a time when she was a little girl playing outside in the firefly-lit dusk, and her mother came to the door, backlit by the kitchen light, to call her home.
And I pictured that happening for her again at this time.
___________________

Then I thought, Oh, I should paint a picture of fireflies to send the family. I'll do it later, and do it right.

And then I thought, No! Don't do it 'right'.
Do it NOW.
So I got out my colored pencils, and I drew firelies fly home.

God speed, Deanna.

 When I am next thrown far off center by the cruelty of the world, I'm going to think of you, and maybe that will give me a little push to center myself again in love.
It would take only the mere brush of your firefly wings.