Hanging The Antlers

Today is the fourth Sunday in Advent, ushering in the theme of Love, which, as it turns out, can show up in the most unlikely places.

Last summer my brother Peter gave me a fabulous set of elk antlers from one of his annual hunting trips to Montana. I’ve wanted a set for the cabin for years, and now that I had them, I knew exactly where I wanted to hang them. There was no other place for them to go but up above our fireplace, over the mantle in the middle of the rock covered chimney. It was a placement that would make Ralph Lauren and Joanna Gaines swoon.

I asked Tom if he would be able to hang them there, and he said that he thought he could.

Perfect.

I began to imagine those long desired antlers in their new home, with a fire blazing and candles glowing on the mantle.

A couple of months passed and the antlers hung out in our laundry room. I knew my husband had a lot on his plate, so wasn’t worried that they wouldn’t eventually find their way onto the rock. It never occurred to me that Tom might have a different opinion. Until one Sunday morning over coffee when I asked him if he thought he could get them up that day. After a long pause, he finally told me he didn’t like the spot I had chosen, and he didn’t want to hang them there. What? He’d never shared that with me in all the conversations we’d had about the antlers. I was frustrated and mad, especially since I’d spent so much time imagining them up there, and I wasn’t going to give up the fight easily. Neither however, was he. He suggested some of the areas he’d thought of, none of which (of course) were acceptable to me. We were at loggerheads, and the antlers were still in the laundry room.

Somewhere along the way I remembered a therapist we’d worked with, and here’s what she would have had to say. I don’t care about the antlers or where you hang them. Hang them anywhere you want. Upside down in the bathroom, over your bed, on the rock fireplace, or inside your closet. What I do care about, is once those antlers are up, are you two better as a couple or not? Do you understand and respect one another more, or not. Are you closer and more intimately connected, or not?

It’s not about the antlers.

As much as I didn’t want to admit it, our relationship was more important than those silly antlers. Once we each let go of having to have it our way, we found an even better (of course) spot for the antlers. Tom hung them today, and I love them right where they are. We both do.

When it comes to love, it’s not about the antlers.

A Season of Waiting

“No man reaches where the moon touches a woman.
Even the moon leaves her when she opens 
Deeper into the ripple in her womb
That encircles dark, to become flesh and bone.

Someone is coming ashore inside her,
A face deciphers itself from water,
And she curves around the gathering wave,
Opening to offer the life it craves.

In a corner stall of pilgrim strangers,
She falls and heaves, holding a tide of tears.
A red wire of pain feeds through every vein,
Until night unweaves and the child reaches dawn.

Outside each other now, she sees him first,
Flesh of her flesh, her dreamt son safe on earth.”

The Nativity by John O’Donahue

Tomorrow is the first Sunday in Advent, a time which in my tradition is a season of waiting, expectancy, and anticipation. In our church, on each of the four Sundays leading up to Christmas, we will light a candle to symbolize one of the themes specific to Advent:

Hope.

Peace.

Joy.

Love.

Every year before the first Sunday in Advent a nativity display appears in front of the Glenwood General Store in our little rural town. This year, however, the display moved a few feet west of the store, landing the holy family in front of the Burger Shed. A gas station in days gone by, which one can imagine in ancient times might have been about the size of a small stable in which to take shelter. But not all the holy family is visible. The mother and father, on either side of a small empty manger, await the arrival of a new life on the way. These are their days of waiting, expectancy, and anticipation, as they are ours.

Come Christmas morning, anyone driving by the Burger Shed will find the babe in the manger, a symbol of hope, peace, joy, and love. No matter our beliefs, religious or not, each of those is a fundamental longing of the human heart, And as the days grow shorter, and the darkness arrives earlier, it seems a season primed for us to eagerly wait for hope, peace, joy, and love to rise up. But let’s not just to wait for them, let’s watch for them.

Let’s claim them wherever we find them.

Let’s proclaim them whenever we see them.

Let’s call them forth.

Let’s carry them forward.

Let’s offer them up.

Let’s embody them.

Let’s embrace them.

Let’s give birth to them.

What Love Does

“That’s because love is never stationary. In the end, love doesn’t just keep thinking about it or keep planning for it. Simply put: love does.” 

~ Bob Goff Author of Love Does, and Everybody Always

A friend and I spent one weekend in front of the fire reading, crying, and laughing our way through Love Does by Bob Goff.

When it comes to love, his book title says it all…

Love Does.

Based just on what I’ve seen today, here are a few of the things love does:

Love picks up the phone and asks for help.

Love answers the phone and listens.

Love calls to see how you are doing.

Love checks the oil in your car.

Love comes to your home to grieve, and to heal.

Love opens the door to someone in need.

Love helps you mail a package at the post office.

Love sends you a text.

Love gives you room to roam.

Love yells “Shotgun!” when you try and run away.

Love stays home with the babies so you can prepare for your next lecture.

Love does what it takes to keep a sacred monthly phone date.

Love laughs with you at the most inopportune times.

Love lets you push its hands off your shoulders because that feels too claustrophobic, but continues to stand behind you in quiet support.

Love kisses you in the middle of the day.

Love asks “How’s your heart today?”

Love encourages you in your writing.

Love stands behind you.

Love stands beside you.

Love goes before you.

Love

Does

What did you see love do today?

Good Grief

“It becomes hard to trust yourself.
All you can depend on now is that
Sorrow will remain faithful to itself.
More than you, it knows its way
And will find the right time
To pull and pull the rope of grief
Until that coiled hill of tears
Has reduced to its last drop.”

~ John O’Donohue (Excerpt from For Grief )

Love and loss walk hand-in-hand.

Whenever we open the door to love, we open it to grief as well.

Whenever we say yes to love, we say yes to pain as well.

Whenever we open our hearts to love, our hearts will eventually be broken open by loss as well.

Right now there are people near and dear to me who, having opened their hearts to love, are now having them broken open by loss. While their losses differ, are all deeply felt, and whether it is the loss of a friend, a relationship, a career, a pet, or a dream, they are in the midst of mourning, which my friend, the poet Ann Staley, calls “that ancient form of love”.

When my mom died almost 20 years ago, the church where we held her service was overflowing. My dad had chosen to have hers be an open casket, with time for any who wanted, to pass by and wish her well. Her grandchildren were all there, and my siblings and I had talked to them about what to expect should they visit her open casket. The choice was theirs to walk up and peek in on her or not. As of the beginning of the service they hadn’t yet decided. At the end of the service, all of these young cousins gathered together in the aisle, standing close, heads together, arms around one another, tears flowing freely. Then, as one, they walked up to the coffin, and surrounded the grandmother they loved. Each one, unknown to the others, had brought something to tuck into her coffin. A tiny ceramic squirrel, in honor of those pesky creatures that robbed the bird feeders outside my parents window. Small shells collected during an annual beach trip. Small individual mementos, of the small individual moments, that had shaped the loving memory, in which they collectively held her.

No one can really teach us how to grieve, but we can learn how to do it together.

There is a cleansing that takes place when we grieve with our whole hearts. By moving through it, rather than hiding from it, we come out the other side made more whole by our willingness to be broken. It is a good grief.

And so, we mourn. That ancient form of love.

Image and Small Vases by Kristine Van Raden

Happy Anniversary

"The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark. ”
- Michelangelo

One night in 1993 I was making a fire. It was a Friday, which in our house meant pizza and a movie in front of a fire. Crumpling up some pages from the Willamette Week, the hip, professional paper in Portland, Oregon, two words in bold print caught my eye: Romantic Scientist. Now there's an oxymoron for you. Pre e-harmony, Tinder, and It's Just Lunch, the paper was known for its personals ads. The truth was, I wan't looking for love. I was just building a fire. Five years out of a destructive marriage, I was 40 years old with two young daughters, a good job, and a nice little home in a lovely neighborhood with good schools. Life. Was. Good. But there was something about that ad that intrigued me. Whoever wrote it sounded like someone I'd like to meet. I took a deep breath and what felt like a big risk, and answered the ad. Wrote a letter, stuck it in an envelope along with a photo of the three of us, and drove it to the post office so as not to talk myself out of it in the morning. A few weeks later we had our first date, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Today marks the 24th year of being married to my romantic scientist, and I offer this post in gratitude for every one of those years. For the love we share, and for the magical partnership we've created in our years together. I have to say, it honestly feels like a match made in heaven, even though we've had to work harder than hell to get here.

We couldn't be more different. I'm an introvert. He's not. He's good at math. I'm not. I care about form. He's all about function. I'm an external processor. He's not. He loves world travel. Nothing makes me happier than being at home. He's a peacemaker. I'm a disturber of the peace. His love languages are touch and quality time together, which means he loves it when I hang out with him, and reach out and touch...his hands, his face, his arm, his... well, you get the picture.  Mine are words of affirmation, and space and autonomy, which means please tell me I'm beautiful, and then just go away. I'm messy. He's a bit more buttoned up. I talk about myself too much. He should speak up for himself more. He struggles to find words for his feelings. I have more than enough for both of us.

Our first marriages taught us what we didn't want, and when we got together we tried our best to learn what we did. While we both understood that it would require us to "show up  and do the work", we had no idea what that meant. Early on I came up with what I thought was a great analogy. It would be like the two of us going to the doctor's office for an exam. We would both need to strip naked, get up on the exam table under those god-awful lights, and be willing to examine every lump, bump, spot, and imperfection. We'd be willing to bare it all. He nodded in that peacemaking way that makes me think he's totally onboard, when really he's just trying not to rock the boat.

Early on, so many differences didn't  make for smooth sailing. Somewhere about year eight, an especially big storm hit, and we were heading for some rocks. While neither of us wanted another boat, we needed to learn how to steer the one we were in. Sitting over coffee I told him that the marriage we had wasn't the one I wanted, and tried my best to explain what I meant by that and why. There were tears (mine), a boatload of emotions (mine), and a lot of silence (his). Reaching the end of my explanation rope I said, "I feel like I'm up on the exam table, naked as a jaybird, and you are sitting in the chair with all your clothes on, taking notes on a clip board. Get naked and get up here with me. Now!!" And he did.

24 years later, here is what I know about navigating our marriage waters: It's taken lots of hours in a therapist's office, and putting into practice what we learned there. We've discovered how to tend to the pain sooner rather than later, allowing our wounds to heal into scars. And in that knitting back together, that which connects us is stronger than before. Because our love is fierce, we fight for it mightily. Because we've had to learn that it is fragile, we tend to it gently. We've learned that the truth is what sets us free, and that living together means giving each other room to roam. We've learned to wire together our differences so that the lines of communication stay open. With endless opportunities to practice, we continue to master the art of forgiveness, both the asking for and the extending of. We work to be long on grace and short on judgment. We've come to have faith in one another's strengths when faced with our own weaknesses. He has taught me to "love by listening", and I've helped him learn to find words for his feelings. 

We still have to get naked under those god-awful lights and climb up on the exam table. But I know I'll never find myself up there alone.

Happy Anniversary.

ATG Photography