Mystical Murmurs: My Interfaith Life

We've recently had, at our house, a rerun of that old series I like to call Family Drama.  It's not my favorite.  The characters are all grown up now, not that you'd always know it.  The "situations" are no longer cute, nor are they easily resolved.  They can be frustrating, anger-evoking, and heartbreaking. Whenever we have an episode of Family Drama, I have two strong impulses. One is retail therapy, at which I have become very skilled! With a potential job change in the household, however, retail therapy would be unwise. The other impulse is withdrawal, or as my mom used to call it, "going to ground"  -- perfect for me as an Enneagram type 9. If I can't make peace, solve the conflict, find the solution, or even get anyone to listen, I want to get the hell out of the way. Dive deep and let the wave break way, way over my head, so to speak. This is the cowardly way, and sometimes, I think, also the only sane response. With the Serenity Praye

Let's see. In the last week, the U.S. has experienced: an early-season tropical storm with severe flooding; raging wildfires; a crippling heat wave; and a lethal wave of thunderstorms accompanied by highly destructive winds. "Well, it's summer," you say. OK. But we had basically a non-winter last year on the east coast, and now we have the summer from hell. Hmmm ... My husband recently attended his college reunion, in Middlebury, Vermont. While he was there , he passed up a talk by Bill McKibben, Middlebury College's writer in residence, who has done more than any other single individual (I think) to get out the word about global warming. J. doesn't often do things that make me squawk, but this did. "You can't be serious!" I squawked. "You passed up Bill McKibben to play tennis ?" I was flabbergasted. " Who does that ?" Let me explain. I used to write a book review for the newsletter in a former parish. In this capa

Earlier in the month I attended the Order of Julian's Affiliates' Retreat and JulianFest, held this year at the Redemptorist Retreat Center on Lake Oconomoc in Wisconsin. We had nearly three retreat days of silence, followed by two days of festivity. I love the silence: I read, meditated, sat in the sun, took a few photos, perched on my favorite swing by the lake (at left), and played peekaboo with a woodchuck, who popped his head out of his hole and regarded me solemnly, trying to determine if I represented a threat or an opportunity. Best of all, in shared silence all social pressure is off, and I find that a great relief. Retreat addresses received in silence, meals taken together in comfortable silence, always provide me a womblike security and peace. Community develops in silence -- I used to find this counterintuitive. Now it seems natural and organic to be in shared silence, sensing the loving presence of friends. I'm part of several communities: among them a par

I finally made it into a book! the whole book, in fact, is about me. I am the star of every page! I'm reading Quiet: the power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking , by Susan Cain. If you're an introvert, know an introvert, live with an introvert, can't figure out introverts, or are driven crazy by introverts, read this book! If you're part of the working world that promotes extroversion as the ideal, read this book! I already knew I'm an INFP and an Enneagram type 9 (peacemaker; conflict avoidant). But Cain's book highlights many everyday ways in which I express my basic introversion.  I can read forever, losing all track of time; I feel I best express myself when I write; I like to work alone, and I hate having to supervise anyone else; and I don't do my best work on teams. And there's the vacation thing, a constant source of stress in my house. I could write a whole book about this myself. Vacation for my husband means sightsee

Last Friday, J. went to settlement on his parents' home. Actually, he didn't go -- he signed all the papers ahead of time, and then busied himself with all the small tasks required to completely empty a house: loading the car with anything left to be brought home, hauling away the last-minute trash, locking the property securely. Then he headed back to New Jersey.  Taking care of the house has been a big burden that I'm glad he's done with (as well as that 10-hour round-trip drive to central New York State).  And yet ... Now we've both been through the process of disposing of the family home, with all the attendant sorrow.  His family home was special to me, too. The house itself was an average 1950s-era "raised ranch" (I never knew that term until we listed the house for sale), but the location was magic. His mom and dad built the house in 1959, on a hillside outside their small college town.  In the 1970s, they also bought the wooded uphill lot next