Waking Up Earley

Thoughts, Ideas and Inspiration by Melissa Earley

Category: Uncategorized (Page 6 of 6)

The Courtesy Wave is Dead

October 13, 2015 / / 4 Comments

I waved my arms like I was trying to attract the attention of a rescue plane and yelled at the car in front me, “YOU’RE WELCOME!” I had just let someone merge in front of me on a crowded interstate and I didn’t get the courtesy wave.

Do you remember the courtesy wave? Do you remember how back in the olden days when you let someone merge ahead of you in traffic and they gave you the little wave? Just a simple lift of the hand that acknowledged you? It said, “Thank you. I see you. I know you’re there and that you just did me a small favor. We are in this traffic together. You’re on your way somewhere too. I know it’s not all about me.”

It seems that the courtesy wave is dead. And not just on the interstate. By installing software that allowed their cars to emit more pollutants than allowed, Volkswagen gave us the finger instead of the courtesy wave. The effect is more than simple rudeness. The New York Times estimates that Volkswagen cars spewed more than 46,000 tons of pollutants into the air since 2008, causing 106 deaths in the United States alone. (Here’s a link to that New York Times article).

Don’t the Volkswagen executives, software designers, and engineers who perpetrated this fraud understand that they breathe the same air? Do they have some secret exit that rest of us don’t know about? Do they have their own special supply of oxygen? Do they not realize that we all live on the same island? It’s called Earth. And like Gilligan and his friends we’re stuck here. NASA may have found water on Mars but I don’t think we’ll be building subdivisions there anytime soon.

Because we’re all in this together, I’ll continue to give the courtesy wave. And because I see you, I’m going to ride my bike to work today.

Wisdom to Know the Difference

September 22, 2015 / / 4 Comments

pen and paper

The complaints of what was wrong with my life had begun as lament, a holy practice of prayer and honest soul-baring speech before God. I worried my grievances like prayer beads. But now the protest had turned into whining. Even I was sick of listening to myself.

I needed a makeover of the Self. I needed to repent – turn and go a new direction. I was desperate for conversion. That day’s journal entry reads: I am ready to recreate my life.

Hubris, really, to think I would recreate my life. That’s the work of God, I had always been taught. But God seemed to have fallen asleep at the switch so I was taking control. I did what I learned from my mother. I made a list.

Three lists actually:

What I am happy with
What I have to accept
What I want to change

I was full of the self-loathing that comes from failure and rejection. It was divine gift that made me start where I did. My list of what I was happy with wasn’t a complete accounting of those things for which I am grateful, simply a list of the parts of my life and personality that helped me be someone I liked being around:

flexibility and creativity of my job
living close to where I work
my friendships
that I like my family
that I read novels
my sense of humor
Mandy [my dog]
How I am when I travel – curious

I had overheard myself enough to know that some of my complaints were about things I could not change:

I am 46
I am divorced
My job won’t make me wealthy

No amount of railing would change the fact that my body is no longer 25 years old. I have shaped my life by decisions that cannot be undecided. I do not get a do-over. I will never again be who I was. It was not resignation I felt. It was grace. If I couldn’t do anything about the items on this list, maybe I could stop clutching it so tightly, checking it so often. There wasn’t something important written there I would forget to do. I could put it down.

My present is shaped by my past but not bound by it. There are things I can change.

the amount of stuff I own
my disorganization and messiness
amount of time I spend in front of screens
procrastination
be in better shape
be less concerned with what others thing of me
more open to others and new friendships – less “boundaried”

Like most lists of resolutions, many of these have gone largely unaddressed but that doesn’t bother me too much. The final three are reshaping the contours of my life. I am particularly tickled by the last one. I had forgotten it was on the list. It is becoming the most important.

 

 

 

 

 

Shopping for Love

September 15, 2015 / / 13 Comments

shopping list  “Smart, sexy, sweet,” is what he said he was looking for. I was chatting online with a man from Match.com. My carefully curated profile and his carefully curated profile had liked each other so we had taken it to the next step – the online chat. “What are you looking for in a man?” Suddenly I am at a car dealership having to negotiate with an aggressive salesman. “Well something reliable, and without too many miles. It’d be great for it to have some zoom. I really want a BMW but I’ll probably settle for a used Honda.” Instead, squirming, I wrote, “smart, fit, funny.”

Writing a profile for a dating site takes a gymnastic ability with words and the truth. You have to sound clever (but not trying too hard), fun (but not shallow), deep (but not too deep), and like you smell good. You lie about not having any baggage and being open to love but not too desperate.

I skip profiles of men that are looking for someone “sweet” or who care too much about what kind of shoes I wear.

I don’t like to buy clothes from a catalog. Being the item on the page is even more uncomfortable.

I tell myself that there is nothing wrong with “shopping for love.” Lot’s of people have found mates online. It’s really about creating the opportunity to meet someone. But it’s hard to get past the blatant assessment. Where’s the subtlety? The shared glance. Laughing at the same thing that no one else notices. The spark of surprise at instant connection.

I’ve been in love three times. Two of those times I fell for someone who was “not recommended.” Wrong age, wrong faith, too much baggage. And the one who checked all the right boxes ended up being totally wrong. Each time love took me by surprise, sneaking up next to me and not looking me in the eyes. It didn’t want to spook me.

Online dating is taking love by the shoulders, looking it square in the eyes, and saying firmly, “I want you.” It would be easier to jump out of an airplane.

Waking Up

September 8, 2015 / / 0 Comments

alarm clock

Waking up early
Helps me find myself again
Growing in wholeness
by David Aslesen

It’s called paresthesia – that tingling, pins and needles feeling you get when your leg starts to wake from being “asleep.” I am waking up and have paresthesia of the soul and heart.

I suppose it’s part of what happens in midlife. We’ve become who we are, we get restless, and wonder what’s next? The shock and grief of my divorce is behind me, and I am coming back to myself. But there is something more stirring in me, I think. And it is painful and awkward and wonderful all the same time.

It’s what gave birth to this blog – a need to stretch and risk and try something new. A desire to practice writing, and the audacious idea that maybe someone somewhere would want to read it.

Naming my blog involved sending friends text and Facebook messages with random words like dust, behold and wonder. Friends made helpful (and not so helpful suggestions): Dust in the Wind (I had an ear worm for a week), Scratchings in Dust (sounded like someone was buried alive) and (my personal favorite) Melissa Mouths Off. And then, the morning the blog went live, I woke up with the title Waking Up Earley.


I wake up early.

Morning is my favorite time of day. I prefer sunrise to sunset. I like to pretend I am the first person awake in the world. I linger over coffee, reading the news or a book or just staring out the window. I take my dog for a walk. I now try to do some writing.


I wake up an Earley

“Wherever you go, there you are,” a friend of mine from college would often quote, which is both blessing and curse. We cannot escape ourselves. When I wake up, there I am.


Earley is Waking Up

I am waking up to a holy unsettledness. I long for new practices and a new language with which to encounter the holy. I am homesick for mountains and sunshine. I desire relationship and deep connection; I want to be knocked on my ass in love. And this writing thing feels like a call. It’s scary to say that out loud.

I teeter on the edge of some new thing.

Bitch Wings

August 10, 2015 / / 20 Comments

(Liz gave me permission to write about “Bitch Wings.”  She read this post and approved of it going public.  I am so grateful to her and her family for sharing this part of their life with me. )

I learned about “bitch wings” from Liz. We were standing in a hospital waiting room after Liz’s husband had died. The representatives of the organization that would harvest Frederic’s organs had given Liz a lovely quilted keepsake box as a memento. Her cousin said, “That was a bitch wings moment.”

“Bitch wings” are what women get when we put our hands on our hips, push back our shoulders, take a strong stance and are ready to take on the world. I learned from Liz that bitch wings come in handy when interrogating teenagers about what was happening in the basement. Her young adult children laughed about how their mom stared down their friends, hands on hips, eyes locked.

Bitch wings can say, don’t mess with me. And, I’ll carry you on my back for a mile. For 100 miles. Through mud. In the hail.

The previous days had been excruciating. The paramedics had rushed Frederic to the hospital after Liz found him. What followed was intubation, neurological tests, moments of hope that were dashed with the words “reflexive movement, not intentional movement.” There was the family conference with the neurologists who advised more time and more tests. Liz sat up in her chair and the wings came out. Would more time on the ventilator help Frederic’s brain recover? Would it help him speak again, or help him know them? She didn’t flinch when the answers came. So if more time will not help him heal we know what he would have wanted. He wouldn’t want to be like this. Not even for one more day.

Bitch wings make a woman fierce and brave and vulnerable and strong.

It was bitch wings that drove Liz to lift Frederic’s body when she saw it hanging from the rope in their basement and it was her wings that let her let him go.

Those wings gave Liz the courage to say out loud that Frederic had died by suicide, to confront him as he lay in his hospital bed with the pain he had caused her and their children. And those same wings stroked his cheek with a lover’s touch and whispered to him about the goodness of their life together.

On bitch wings Liz flew into the face of God, “You abandoned him. You abandoned me.” And she wrapped those wings around herself and her beloved as she gave him into the care of the Holy. With those wings she pulls her children and her friends close in a tight embrace.

Liz is moving soon to California to try on a new life. She isn’t done grieving, but she is willing to try flying in new directions.

Anyone can have bitch wings if she is willing to be strong instead of sweet. Though they make her terrifying, they are not armor. They send her into fire for those she loves.

 

By Mara, Liz's daughter "I find so much emotion in the pose, yet I know she will stand up proud and strong again. You can see that glorious strength in her." -Liz

By Mara, Liz’s daughter
“I find so much emotion in the pose, yet I know she will stand up proud and strong again. You can see that glorious strength in her.”
-Liz

 

Death and the Day Off

August 3, 2015 / / 18 Comments

My day off always makes me think about death. Not death in general – my death.

The day usually starts out well. I get up early and luxuriate in the morning. There is no rush to get to the gym before I head into the church or to a meeting. I can sit around in my bathrobe drinking coffee and reading the newspaper or a novel.

Do I take on a project that will give me a sense of accomplishment? Do I spend the day at a museum or kayaking or exploring a Chicago neighborhood? Do I curl up with a book? What about the laundry that needs to be done, the refrigerator that needs to be filled and the dog hair in the corners that needs to be swept? There’s always the task at work I successfully avoided all week that I could knock out in an hour or two at home.

Can I really head to the forest preserve even if I didn’t tick through every item on my to-do list? Do I get a day off when the stairs need to be vacuumed? Maybe if I just worked a little harder my sermon for Sunday would be done and the laundry would be folded.

My day off chastises me – yes, I confess, I am inadequate.

I imagine people I know doing meaningful things on their days off. Surely people with children are on family outings connecting deeply with one another. I probably know someone who is writing a book or building a tiny house in their back yard. I’m trying not to make eye contact with my dog who wants another walk.

I assess my life. I have no significant other but many close friends and a fabulous dog. I am housekeeping challenged. I have a job I feel called to and mostly enjoy. Some days I battle loneliness and melancholy. I’ve made decisions I regret and have been wondrously blessed.

My Rabbi friend tells me Sabbath is supposed to be a celebration of life. For me it’s a moment to accept the limits of my life. I will die. I will die without skiing in the Olympics, giving birth or being as neat as my mother.

And I will die. Folding all the laundry, vacuuming the couch cushions, and preparing a sermon is not going to change that. Maybe it’s okay to catch a movie.

Oh, You Again

July 27, 2015 / / 16 Comments

It was so great to not have to write about Jesus for a whole week. Or even think about him much. Such freedom to write about grief, sex, longing, and my dog, and not have to think about what Jesus would say, or do, or feel, or even if he existed in the same ways that he is remembered. What a gift to not have to put my words through the sieve of “do I really believe this?” and “what will my congregation think?”

I loved being at Kenyon College with my tribe for the Kenyon Writers Institute Beyond Walls. The people at the Institute were other clergy and crazy religious types so I didn’t have to explain to them what I do or what it’s like. I didn’t have to wade through their preconceptions of a pastor and then redefine my role for them. Yes, women in my tradition can be ordained. Yes I can get married. Yes my work is meaningful – and sometimes boring and frustrating. No, I don’t just sit and think important thoughts and counsel people. I also call the exterminator when the ants are back, worry about a balanced budget, and negotiate with the Boy Scouts their use of our building. And I didn’t have to deal with the constant barrage of how the church is dying or get overwhelmed by ways to make worship zing. What a relief.

And I didn’t have to talk about Jesus. I have nothing against Jesus. I know some people talk about him as a confidant, a bosom buddy. They sing “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” and really mean it. For me, Jesus is a more troublesome companion. He at once demands everything and claims that his yoke is easy.

When I got back to the church, the most important thing I did was visit a woman who was dying and her family. We didn’t talk about Jesus at all. We talked about who she had been, about their family, her progressive illness, their experience in these final days. I read scripture. We prayed.

We didn’t talk about Jesus at all.

 

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