in memoriam: seamus heaney (1939-2013)

today, i am sad. i used to imagine meeting him someday. it's strange, because i haven't read much of his work. but what i did read (mid term break, singing school, gifts of rain), i adored. he wrote lines that stuck in my ears for days.

so i wrote him a poem, as the overly invested fans are wont to do. a double-acrostic, even, because i needed a wall to push against.
here it is.

--

elegy

“The main thing is to write for the joy of it.”

-Seamus Heaney

and so, these things remain - but no cascade of light//

no gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear//in the porch//

dark blobs burned/like a plate of eyes. inter alia.

the world is tending towards stillness, my love. towards quiet.

heat death, they call it, the whole universe one mass of low

energy. you know. your words carry the weight. momento mori.

jesus christ, son of god, have mercy. have mercy, spirit, my will

often weak; my spirit crying out in this thin time, in this thin place. will

you remind me, a chuisle, a chroí; what is poetry for?

once, he said that there is holy force to art. and the words were

full of power. yes, they were. I believed him.

I am not a scholar of the written word, nor a

teacher, nor author. I am only a writer, and I

am also only learning. even so, I knew right from when

lines jumped from page to ear to pulse, warm

like wine hitting my blood, letting me dance, setting my

yearning loose; I knew, sitting strangely in that stranger

evening, crowded around desks on a tuesday night, the              

sweat cold on my palms, classmates reading poems where burqa                 

enters walmart, horses run under the sky, husbands          

vow to love their wives, oh, I knew I would read more, two

easy poems not enough. I knew he knew things. my throat feels tight. in

no living world, now, will I meet this man, whose picture I saw       

staring out at me, it seemed. it isn’t fair. sláinte. good health.

oblige me. lift the glass. now tilt your mouth up, smile just a little wry.

it's the little things...

yesterday The Housemate said to me, "tomorrow evening looks like rain. let's make good food."

so far i've done most of the grocery shopping & cleaning, and she's done most of the cooking, and we've ended up with:

tomatillo salsa
spicy chicken tofu soup
pesto
peanut butter chocolate banana smoothies
banana pudding pie

I think I should make note of this; rainy day = food prep time.
mmm. now it's time to tackle the dishes. ;)

(it's sooo good. try it! try it! I even left you the recipe!)

EDIT:// apparently it's true that cooking can bring good conversation into the kitchen; i was just telling the story of when i learned to make a chocolate angel food cake with my nana last year. and then i asked The Housemate if she had ever heard of the dessert graham cracker fluff (also called wooflepoof, i told her, to which she said what? wifflepuff? and then i said never mind) and when i did a google search for the dessert to try to explain it, this is the first thing that came up. oh, what a small, small Mennonite world.

on not going back to school

I realized today while I was eating lunch that this is the first time in 18 years that I'm not 'going back to school.'

I'm still trying to figure out how to define myself outside of the system that for years, for all of my conscious life has fed me gold stars in exchange for high test scores and a raised hand in class.

My current internal monologue is something like well then, kiddo, what does it actually mean to be successful, huh?

And, actually, I don't know, because my measuring stick is gone; because the measuring stick of the world I'm working in seems kind of strange, kind of warped; because I am still learning, even if I'm not in school.

Today I think success looks like remembering to write a postcard blessing for a friend's new apartment, like having the dishes done by 7:30, like having homemade granola for dessert. I'm not sure, yet, what I'll think success looks like tomorrow, but...one day at a time.

a few scattered thoughts on following christ in the midst of power

When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth. Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” 

When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?” 

Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

Matthew 19:22-26

I've been doing a lot of thinking recently, and the thoughts that have been circling through my head feel important but also fragmented and hard to articulate. 

1.) When I was down in Harrisonburg a few weeks ago, I was talking with a friend who had just completed a two year term with MCC in the country of Colombia. She brought a Colombian friend with her, a woman who spoke only Spanish. During our conversation, she asked, is it okay if I translate while we talk? I nodded, not thinking much of it, and later she said thanks - I know it probably doesn't mean much to you, but it's important. She doesn't mind observing what's going on, but then it's just sort of watching a bunch of rich kids hanging out; it means so much more for her to be able to be part of it, you know?

I felt startled. What do you  mean, a bunch of rich kids? I'm used to seeing myself as pretty solidly average, like: sure, I have a car and a college degree and I grew up going on vacations and going to summer camp and going boating on the Susquehanna, but - I went to public school! I buy dried beans in bulk! The litany in my head is something like there's never enough there's never enough there's never enough.

So odd, that shift in perspective. A Colombian woman sees me, my average self, and thinks: rich kid. 

2.) I told Thia, that weekend, that I thought maybe Early Church had ruined me for normal life. I was thinking of my home group, of Brian and Rachel, a couple who are married with a year-old kid. They live in a tiny apartment and don't own a car; they don't seem to want much of anything. I don't think I'm any happier than they are, I told Thia. There I was, a week into my new 40+ hour a week job, living on my own in Bethesda, one of the most expensive places to live in the U.S., starting to realize for real that money doesn't equal happiness.

3.) It's strange, I told Meg. It's strange to live and work in a place that hums along just fine without paying any attention to spirit, to soul, to sacredness. I'm not sure what to make of it.

4.) I went to church in Maryland for the first time this weekend. A woman from NIH who graduated from Goshen contacted me and told me about a Mennonite church near D.C. So I checked it out and I like it; everyone was friendly, they invited me to the potluck after the service. It felt familiar, like a blend between CMCL and something from EMU. I felt cheerful on the way home; fond, almost, and I didn't even mind the few miles on the Beltway. It was strange, because usually I hate driving in this area.

What to pull from these scattered threads...I've been thinking, I guess, that the Christian life ought to be seen not as rules, but as a path towards thriving. It is very hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven, and I am learning this new each day. I don't think that God means don't have money, but - it makes sense to me, to be wary of it. I think that Brian and Rachel are more free than I am, although they have less. The words of the gospel make sense in their context in a way that they don't in Bethesda. I feel that very clearly. The lives that my friends live in that little community in Harrisonburg don't make much sense in context of wealth and power, in context of this wealthy suburb of Washington D.C. 

[I told Thia, that weekend, that the people I rub elbows with every day might look at people from Early Church and pity them, but I can imagine Brian and Rachel showing up to visit me and pitying the people living in the huge houses around me, thinking they don't understand what life is about. (I am afraid, maybe, of growing into one of those people, of becoming someone, someday, that my friends from Early Church would pity). And so there God is, leveling the playing field, raising the weak to challenge the strong. And yet: how impossible it would be to explain this to anyone I work with!]

How to live with integrity, I've been asking myself. What does that mean? 

In regards to attending church, I guess it's easy to feel like it's an obligation, like it's a rule. Christian? Go to church. But the feeling I had coming home today makes me think, again, that the Christian life is just a path towards thriving. It is not good for (wo)man to be alone. It is good to be connected, to be loved... I was happy to be at church today, and happy on the way home. I will go back, I suspect, because I want to be thriving, because I want my spirit to feel whole.

Who then can be saved? I wonder, looking around at the power and money flowing through the streets of the D.C. area. Me? Can I? Can I be saved?

With man this is impossible, Jesus is saying to me, but with God, all things are possible.

let everything happen

Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final.

-rilke

---

the email in my inbox asked: 

was it okay? good? not what you expected?



my response:

All of the above. I feel like I'm taking my first deep breath in about 72 hours. Yikes, the real world is hard! But exciting. 

My mentor-figure in the lab is a Chinese woman who is just returning to work after maternity leave. In my little computer-cubicle area are the two of us and a woman from India who is about 6 months into her post-doc. In my line of vision from my desk is an Australian man; tomorrow I'm meeting the guy who's going to teach me things about patch clamping - he's an Israeli scientist. This morning my mentor (her name is Mufeng) started talking to Andres about visas and the length of various flights, and I'm not sure where he's from, exactly, but he sounds European, like maybe German or French is his first language. 

I feel like I'm on the set of a movie or something; everything and everyone so extravagantly interesting. There's a room in the lab that's the "cold room," always at 4 degrees C. A dark room; a room used solely to transfect bacteria with DNA; a room with the equipment for patch-clamping. And the various patch-clamp "rigs" are inside of Faraday cages, and when I first saw them I imagined myself tucked inside like a hermit crab. 

So far I have learned a bit about transfecting DNA in HEK cells, fire-polishing micropipettes, and the beginning steps of DNA cloning. By next week I will be starting to practice patch clamping. Yesterday Mufeng said, "Maybe in 3 weeks you will be self-sufficient," and Kenton (the big boss of my lab) grinned a bit and said "That's ambitious," but she didn't sound like she was joking. 

AHHH. It is very much to take in; and also there is Bethesda itself, the three lanes of traffic headed each direction around NIH campus, the mad crush of people at rush hour, the shock of being two days removed from a place where I knew even the cracks in the roads.

But mostly I am happy, glad to be here, excited to keep learning. I'll be happy to sleep tonight, though.

well, here i am...

i've arrived in bethesda, i've (basically) unpacked my stuff, i've explored a few major roads with my parents (found the target and giant before they left, yay). my dad helpfully asked siri, 'where's the nearest mennonite church?' (the answer: 7 miles away).

i'm worried about tomorrow. i don't know where, exactly, i'm going (building 35? i think?); i don't know where i'm supposed to park my car, what the security will be like, if my coworkers will like me, if i'll understand anything that i'm supposed to be doing, where i'll eat lunch, if my parotid gland will have swelled any more ...

which, newsflash, happens sometimes, to very unlucky people. i was diagnosed today with parotitis, to which i say: seriously? meaning why do terrible things always happen to me when i travel? 


but the point of this, actually, wasn't to highlight all the things i'm worried about. it was to say that my litany of 'things that may go wrong' started to remind me of that passage in matthew: ...what you will drink, or what you will wear... 


who of you by worrying can add even a single hour to your life? 

so i'm heading to sleep, now, and i'm hopeful that by this time tomorrow i'll be feeling excitement, not dread.

endings & beginnings

by my rough calculation, I've spent 12% of my life in Harrisonburg. today's my last full day in the shenandoah valley for the forseeable future, and I'm finding it fitting that it's sort of grey and dreary outside. it's hard to leave things behind, places and people; my internal landscape is tending towards grey, today. and yet some of my favorite people in the world have already begun to scatter from this small town. and some are remaining here, staying in Harrisonburg, to see what else can be gleaned from this place outside of the university doors. and I am heading home to lancaster, and then on to the NIH.

my facebook news feed has been full, recently, with friends and acquaintances three years younger than me. they're coming to the end of their first year of college, and are talking online about all of the things they'll do over the summer, the people they're excited to see back home, the friends they're leaving for the long summer break. see you soon, they say, and they can say it to either group of people and it will be true.

I feel ages older then my first-year college self. it all feels much harder, now. much more real. much scarier.

* * *

beginnings: also appropriate for a damp and clouded day.

"But faith is not necessarily, or not soon, a resting place. Faith puts you out on a wide river in a little boat, in the fog, in the dark."

I don't know where I'm going, I wrote in a book earlier in the semester. It would be nice to have a map. I still think that, some days. but I am also starting to feel eager - to do, to try, to see if I can make it in the real world that is out there, outside the safe bounds of my childhood, out past the walls of EMU. Jayber was right: it isn't a resting place, exactly. I am not calm or still when I think about the next year of my life. I feel a bit like I've been thrown onto a river in a little boat, in the fog, in the dark. but I also feel the truth of this other thing he said, which is that I have been led. I feel the truth of that down in my bones, which I guess is the faith that is causing me to stay on the raft (in the fog, in the dark), paddling with the certain thought that it will be alright.

“If you could do it, I suppose, it would be a good idea to live your life in a straight line...But that is not the way I have done it, so far. I am a pilgrim, but my pilgrimage has been wandering and unmarked. Often what has looked like a straight line to me has been a circling or a doubling back. I have been in the Dark Wood of Error any number of times. I have known something of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, but not always in that order. The names of many snares and dangers have been made known to me, but I have seen them only in looking back. Often I have not known where I was going until I was already there. I have had my share of desires and goals, but my life has come to me or I have gone to it mainly by way of mistakes and surprises. Often I have received better than I deserved. Often my fairest hopes have rested on bad mistakes. I am an ignorant pilgrim, crossing a dark valley. And yet for a long time, looking back, I have been unable to shake off the feeling that I have been led - make of that what you will.” 

* * *

12% of my life in this place, though. Harrisonburg, a second home; the site of so many mistakes, so much growth.  Ah - I will miss you. The ugly grain elevator, even. 

May the Lord bless you & keep you, dear small city; dear, lovely EMU community. Until we meet again - because, Insh'allah, we will.