Community is hard, but I will grudgingly say worth it. Right now is one of the hard times, but it is a different kind of hard than when there is disagreement or conflict. Right now is when we are all suffering because two of us are suffering. As a community we can be there for them in a way that neighbors or even a church family cannot: We are right here, sharing a backyard and kitchens, steps away if they need to talk. I am happy for that. But when I heard their bad news, it hurt me in a way that a neighbor’s news would not, that the news of most church-family members would not. The worth it part of community is that we can be there for them, and that they and others have been here for me when I needed it. The bad part is the pain. And the disagreement and conflict, and personality conflicts, etc. There is a good part to that, too. But that is another story.

I have not updated you on the sunset times lately, but I am trusting my (mostly imaginary) readers to have noticed that it is getting later and later. Here in Boston the sun set tonight at 7:37 p.m. The muscles in my shoulders that were tensed all winter to cope with the long dark evenings have relaxed.

News about my literary career: I wrote a haiku last month. Let’s see if that little poem can snowball into a productive year for 2011. By which I mean it would be nice to write a story or two again.

But my big news is that I have started running and, more significantly, continued running. It has been 13 years since I have run more than a mile, but I now regularly run 1.5, 2, or 2.5 on the treadmill. I want to transition to outdoor running, but it’s harder for me: It’s so much easier to stop running when all you have to do is, well, stop, than when the treadmill is moving steadily under you and to stop you have to a) make the decision to stop, b) press the down arrow about ten times to get to a walking pace, and c) stop running. Just that little extra effort gives me the time to decide that I am, after all, going to keep running, whereas if I’m outside I will stop before I think about it. Does that make any sense?

Anyway, I have been running for over two months now, and according to MapMyRun I have logged 50 miles! Yay me! I am posting this under Wrestling the Tigers because this is a great victory against the migraines, both in that exercise is good long-term for them (against them) and that I often am running with some kind of migraine or other, or get one after running, but I persevere. Take that, tigers!

And here is something that I miss.

I had a wonderful three years living in community with Joel, Daniela and their four kids, and I’m a little shaky on my feet at having to do it without them.  I love them all, but I feel a special bond with the youngest, T, whose accidental bathtub birth I missed by ten minutes.  It happened like this.  Another housemate, B, posted on facebook that Daniela was having the baby that night, and I called her, but she said she was just in early labor and that it could be days.  Still, I had a feeling that I should be there, and was planning on heading over after I finished a couple of emails.  Twenty minutes later,another housemate, M, called me to say the baby had just been born while Daniela was taking a bath.  Apparently she had something like three contractions, and Joel couldn’t finish dialing the number of the midwife before T was out.  M, a doctor but by no means an obstetrician, “caught” T, the oldest son cut the umbilical cord (which they clipped with a bag-clip from the kitchen) and B, who is studying to be an Anglican priest, said a blessing over her.  Voila, instant baby, no need to hire outside help.  Definitely one of the high points of living in community.

Cutest bathtub baby ever

For those of you who know the Roth-Naters, they are keeping a blog of their journey.  http://roth-nater.blogspot.com/

Posted in Community Tagged: bathtub baby, RV, Shasta ]]> http://tenthousandplaces.org/2009/08/15/this-land-is-your-land-this-land-is-my-land/feed/ 0 tenthousandplaces Photo_051509_001 http://tenthousandplaces.org/2009/07/21/when-i-awoke-today-suddenly-nothing-happened-2/ http://tenthousandplaces.org/2009/07/21/when-i-awoke-today-suddenly-nothing-happened-2/#comments Tue, 21 Jul 2009 20:05:43 +0000 tenthousandplaces http://tenthousandplaces.org/?p=580 ]]> I love the rain.  I know, I know, everyone else is complaining about it, but to me it’s worth a hundred scented candles, a Zen garden, water fountain and plinky-plonky music all combined.  So peaceful.  Especially when it’s around 65 degrees and there’s a gentle breeze coming through my window.  Add Coldplay’s Prospekt March and the anticipation of a home-cooked meal with some of my favorite people, and the day seems perfect.  Well, maybe if I were right in the middle of a really good book…

Plug of the day:  My friend Sarah — incidentally my brother’s best friend’s wife, just to confuse you — is an amazing mural painter.  Look:

Sarah’s on the Northshore (is that one word or two?) and is, I believe, accepting commissions.  Leave a note if you’re interested and I’ll let her know.

Click on Maggie to read about their adventures.

Freshly Damian-free, one of my newest favorite singers, Lisa Hannigan, is also a very clever video-maker.  Here are two, Lille and I Don’t Know.  They won’t let me embed them, so you have to click the link, but do!  It’s worth it.

Lille

I Don’t Know

And another fun one, thanks to Daniela. Sarah Blasko, No Turning Back

Zygotic djalaba.

“It is true, of course, that what is an unspeakable gift of God for the lonely individual is easily disregarded and trodden under foot by those who have the gift every day. It is easily forgotten that the fellowship of Christian brethren is a gift of grace, a gift of the Kingdom of God that any day may be taken from us, that the time that still separates us from utter loneliness may be brief indeed. Therefore let him who until now has had the privilege of living a common Christian life with other Christians praise God’s grace from the bottom of his heart. Let him thank God on his knees and declare: It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brethren.

“The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be, and to try to realize it. But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely we must be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves. By sheer grace God will not permit us to live even for a moment in a dream world. He does not abandon us to those rapturous experiences and lofty moods that come over us like a dream. God is not a God of the emotions, but a God of truth.  Only that fellowship which faces such disappointment with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it.  The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and a community, the better for both…  He who loves his dream of community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.”

~From Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

Brilliant, the drawing and the photography. The question is, how is Picasso not blurry from movement? Joel had almost the right answer; the full story can be found here.