This Town

July 26, 2013 — 3 Comments

“It will never be this good again” is a lie we should stop telling ourselves. That’s what Todd Henry says in this article, whose content I first heard on his Accidental Creative podcast.

I’ve been facing down that particular lie with extra determination over the past year, as my husband Nathan and I made plans to move out of our Minnesota prairie hometown, across the country to the foothills of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains.

Nathan was born and raised in our hometown. I was born there, moved away at age nine months, moved back at age ten years, moved away at age twenty-two, moved back with my husband and children at age thirty. I joked that this town was like a bad penny that just kept turning up in my life. During the twelve years I spent growing up in this town, like many of my peers I dreamed of leaving it, not always appreciating the goodness and beauty all around me.

I married Nathan and then moved to the big city up the road, got a job, bought a house, birthed a child, conceived another – and then began to dream of moving back to the prairie town, where my parents lived, where I could walk the same park trails I walked as a teenager with my dog, eat at the hometown restaurants I knew so well, relive childhood memories and make new ones with my own children.

And that’s what we did – for seven storybook-perfect years. While I have always enjoyed traveling and even moving (in those years between nine months and ten years old, I moved with my family through four states and about a dozen homes, always excited to pack up and drive to the next place), now that we had two young children and all of their grandparents right in the same town, now that we had a (mortgage-free, rent-free) house and even perfectly scheduled part-time jobs so that neither of us took on the full load of domestic work or a full-time day job – it became difficult to see “it will never be this good again” as a lie. It felt like the inarguable truth.

We had always enjoyed visiting the mountains. Nathan took at least one trip to Colorado every year to do some adventuring. But whenever we had discussed possibly moving there, the call of the mountains was never quite strong enough to overcome the comfort and security of the prairie town.

Until last summer, when our little family was all there together, and for the first time, together, we felt the mountains moving us.

Our prairie town has no glaring deficiencies. Most people will tell you “it’s a great place to raise kids.” It is filled with beautiful parks and a sparkling river, kind people, small-town charm. It is the quintessential Shire, a happy idyllic space of farm fields, fragrant woods, and chatty neighbors. For seven years, our family lived well there, and many families have lived well for generations in this same town.

This song and account of my family’s move is not really about towns and mountains, you know. It’s about knowing when it’s time to step out, time to leave that comfortable thing you’ve always known for that strange and beautiful adventure that is undeniably calling to you. It’s about recognizing when your perfect situation is beginning to choke the life out of you, to smother you with security and lull you to complacency with its comforts.

It’s about embracing the unknown and holding out hope that unprecedented goodness lies ahead, not in the mountains or the prairie town or the shining city to which you are venturing, but in the journey itself.

Speaking of the Shire, I’ll call on J.R.R. Tolkien to close out this post. Here are three fitting quotes from The Fellowship of the Ring.

“The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say”

“Not all those who wander are lost.”

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

You – Stone or Story?

July 10, 2013 — Leave a comment

Intelligent design and evolution are not only conflicting ideas about the science of biological origins. They are answers to a basic question about the nature of life: Is the truth about something a fixed form, or is it an unfolding story?

I’m interested in this as it relates to our concept of self. These days we talk about “finding myself,” and “being myself,” as if my self is a fixed form, something from which I must strip away all pretense and assorted baggage, in order to find the real, true me.

In the framework of the “unfolding story” theory, I am becoming myself instead of finding myself. Instead of a set-in-stone, pre-designed form, I am an evolving, deepening story. Instead of digging down towards a base layer, I push out into the future, into unexplored territory.

But maybe these aren’t ultimately competing theories. Becoming often feels something like finding, in my experience. As if I am unfolding in a fashion consistent with itself (though not at all predictable), rather than careening forward in chaos.

Some sculptors say that the sculpture is always there, in the stone, and their job is simply to remove everything that doesn’t belong. Some writers say that the story or the song is already out there, in the air, and their job is simply to take hold of it, to let the work of art draw the artist forward into the reality of its being. It would appear that time and space lose at least some of their relevance wherever creation is involved.

Daydreaming and Dirty Dishes

May 28, 2013 — 2 Comments

Faith and doubt are two sides of the same coin, two legs of the same body. I can hop around on one or the other, but to really make forward progress, I need to use both, equally and in rhythm.

(I am broadly defining “faith” and “doubt” here. Faith – a sense of the transcendent/spiritual. Doubt – questioning/deconstructing.)

As with the rest of life, it’s easy to rely too much on one leg or the other. For much of my life, I hopped on my faith leg, jumped up on emotional worship songs and connect-the-dots life applications for Bible verses. For the past few years, I’ve been hopping on my doubt leg, cynical, skeptical, defining myself by what I do not believe.

Faith without doubt gets stuck. Faith’s transcendent visions, pursued without the push and pull of doubt’s probing questions, harden to ideological certainties, trading sails on ships on the sea for flags on poles in cement. Dreams and imagination and a hunger for the infinite are replaced with creeds, convictions, and a compulsion to hold tight to the “faith of our fathers.”

Doubt without faith can become equally inflexible, moving from honest engagement and open questioning to meeting every newborn idea with a certain cynicism. Doubt can become an intellectual and emotional posture of “no” that forgets how to play, imagine, daydream.

When I find I would much rather wash the dishes than play make-believe with my children (even if there are no dirty dishes to wash), then I start to wonder how well I’m using both of my legs.

More Thoughts on Stories A and B

May 1, 2013 — 2 Comments

Thinking more about the contents of my last post  and the thoughtful comments that were made on it, I remembered this poem I had written a few years ago, a little meditation on my tussles with Stories A and B in my own life:

In the springtime of your life

When people make pronouncements

About the heights to which you’ll rise

Someone has a prophecy

Someone says you’re chosen

Don’t tuck it away for later

No, hold that sign up high

Wave that banner with all you’ve got

And go, girl, go

Because a well-preserved ticket

Is useless after the show

And no one cares to hear

About your might-have-beens.

(On the other hand,

An awakening 34-year-old

Is a powerhouse of presence.)

As I mentioned in conversation with Jodi’s comment on the previous post, I think that when I recognize my Story B, it won’t feel like I am “settling” for second-best, although it may look exactly like that to an outside observer.

In my case, I started chasing Story A as a twenty-something singer/songwriter recording my first album in a professional studio in a skyscraper in downtown Minneapolis, financed by two benefactors who saw big things in my future.

Looking back on that over ten years later when I wrote this poem, I mused about how I didn’t work hard enough to actualize Story A. But you can see the seeds of Story B beginning to sprout in the last sentence.

And far from feeling like I’m settling, I feel more deeply alive.

I’ve still not fully elaborated my Story B to my satisfaction, but I feel like I am getting closer. Letting go of other people’s storylines for me, and picking up the threads that are actually there, the real living story of me that can actually be woven into something true and substantial. It may not be big and flashy, but it will be utterly valuable.

So there you go, a little case study for you, my own working out this life-story thing. To paraphrase Stephen Colbert, “I am a Story B (and so can you!)”