mulling

Recently I have been mulling over a choice that I have been presented with. I can't say that the choice is completely coming to me out of the blue, that I haven't had the opportunity to respond before, nor that I haven't been thinking of a response to it for years. But this time, I am finding the decision not so clear cut, which has me a bit confused. 

I am a person who has to think about things before I commit to them. I mean, really think. I am sure this has both hindered and helped me in some ways throughout my life, but in this one instance, I think it has left me at almost a stand still. Neither decision seems particularly right. The day this decision was presented to me once again, I went home that night to read the day's entry from "A Year with Rumi: Daily Readings" by Coleman Barks. This is what it said:

A Small Green Island

There is a small green island

where one white cow lives alone, a meadow of an island.

The cow grazes till nightfall, full and fat,

but during the night she panics

and grows thin as a single hair.

What shall I eat tomorrow? There is nothing left.

By dawn the grass has grown up again, waist high. 

The cow starts eating and by dark

the meadow is clipped short.

She is full of strength and energy, but she panics

in the dark as before and grows abnormally thin overnight.

The cow does this over and over,

and this is all she does.

She never thinks, This meadow has never failed

to grow back. Why should I be afraid every night

that it won't. The cow is the bodily soul.

The island field is this world where that grows

lean with fear and fat with blessing, lean and fat.

White cow, don't make yourself miserable

with what's to come, or not to come. 

Maybe I would do better to be a bit less like the white cow, and a bit more willing to step into the night with faithfulness that the morning will come.

on death and life

In my world religions seminary class that wrapped up last week, one of the discussion threads left to the things we do for people when they die....meaning, what we humans do in various cultures that honor the dead. The discussion ran the gamut from traditional Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) celebrations as found in Mexico to rather mainstream American observances, such as visiting graves of loved ones on Memorial Day. The discussion revolved around where the 'line' is (if there is a line!) between commemoration of the dead and ancestral worship.

I've thought a lot about what significance there is to visiting the dead, and what relationships are built between the living and the memory of their dearly departed. My response to the thread follows below:
 

When I was a kid, I have vivid memories of going to the cemetery with my mother to plant flowers and tend to my sister's grave. Carmel, my parent first daughter, died when she was almost two, seven years before I was born. I remember playing the grass near the headstone which had my parents names engraved with my sisters in between the two of them, where she is buried. That burial plot is right next to my Grandparents headstone, my great grandmothers and a great aunt's. (They all bought plots together when Carmel died) So, literally as I child, I spent much time at and tending the grave of my sister and the future graves of most all of the (influential in my life) elders in my family. There are many things that have effected my life from these experiences, most of which we won't get into here. But I will say I still return there to talk to the sister I never knew. When I am broken, or tired, or frustrated, I find myself driving to sit on the grass leaning against the headstone in the only place where I have ever know her. I never really thought of it as a worshiping of my ancestor (although, she isn't really an ancestor, is she) and I'm not sure this will continue when my parents pass along. As I think of that day, it seems to difficult to imagine.

I recognize that this relationship is mostly what I make up in my head, as I never knew her and she never knew me. Yet, there is some solace in visiting her there, the only sibling I'll ever have. Death and the way it affects each of us is fascinating, even if the death occurs years before our existence.

 When I was a student at Graceland while getting my undergraduate degree, I often found myself taking a drive out the the cemetery just on the edge of town to sit on a bench or wander through the headstones, always using it as time to think. Somehow connecting myself to the dead grounds me in a way that I had previously not recognized. This connection to the souls that have passed before, who have lived, and worked, and played, and worshiped in the towns where I have lived give me a sense of history and purpose that I rarely find anywhere else.

leaving lamoni

i have been writing this blog in my head for months now, and i am really not sure even where to begin anymore. i've never been a journal keeper, so most of my experiences only resonate in my memory and as i get older, i find that they aren't sticking around for too long. so here i hope to capture some thoughts on what it means to be me, a colorado girl living displaced, yet happy, in rural southern iowa. 

i started thinking about leaving lamoni, the title of this little blog, just about a year ago when i found out i would be returning here to work in campus ministries. really, i may have left lamoni years ago, but lamoni never left me. there are impressions of this small town, life on the hill and welcoming community that have stuck with me since my first stint in iowa. lamoni (and graceland) have left an indelible impression on my soul...and maybe i can capture small glances into this beauty here.