miracle suit for the soul

today i spoke with two women preparing for trips to sun drenched localles.  one, nearing forty, two children, thin, going to be with her husband who's traveling for business.  one, thirty something, fuller figured, a lover of people, hoping to stay inside as much as possible during an extended holiday with her husband and young children.  both are at-home mothers.  both are active in their children’s lives.  both are going at their husband’s request.  both are also mortified about having their skin exposed.

if your eyes were closed and you didn’t know either of these women you would perceive few differences.  the smaller woman is on bathing suit number 5, finding none that cover her “bumpy, lumpy” hips and thighs.  in her mind there is no miracle suit that is miracle enough.  the curvier woman is terrified of other’s perceptions...fearing they’ll judge her for not “keeping herself up.”  in many ways both are equally paralyzed and driven by their hyper-vigilance about their self-diagnosed flaws.

why is it that we hate, do battle with, compare, and place unrealistic expectations upon our physical appearance?  why have we bought into the message that the elasticity of our skin or the lack of dimples on our thighs is what matters?  many make the good and obvious point that the media feeds us images of what is beautiful and we eat them...spitting out what we have swallowed as impossible expectations and desires of ourselves and others.  i think, however, the issue lies deeper than this.  it lies at the center of our souls...at our core...where we find the seat of our desire to be known and to belong.  to belong, we think, we must be certain things, ascribe to certain ways of being, we must “look good,” inside and out.
 

am i saying that my two friends value only superficial beauty or fleeting youth?  no...i am saying that we all struggle with how we are perceived, with what we ourselves and others think of us and how we are held in their minds.  these are the bigger, the heavier, the messier realities of our existence.  the lighter, more external struggles seem “cleaner,” more accessible, and more familiar.  so we chose to worry about and attend to our external, bodily homes in deference to doing internal housekeeping.  it’s easier, in our current relational economy, to shop for the perfect miracle suit than to spend that energy working at confronting our internal cellulite...the lumpy, “unsightly” imperfections we hope to hide.  what this means, however, is that the connections that we do forge are, in our minds, based upon the image we project rather than on the reality of who we are.  as spray tans, highly supportive bathing suits, and dim lighting allow us to put our best physical selves forward; selective disclosure, denial, and over-control allow us to appear connected when in reality we are alone, unknown, and afraid.

if relationship is to happen, if community is to deepen we must create an environment in which we prudently invite ourselves and others to care more about the feeling of the water and sun on our skin than about who’s thinking what (including what we ourselves are thinking) about the condition of our thighs, or stomaches, or beliefs, or struggles, or realities.  would not the world be beautiful if we greeted each other with exuberance about the insides, looking past the crummy bathing suit to the soul?  to the soul.  to the soul...

1/2002

the sound of you

Once, when my son was very young and very sick, I wriggled into bed with him to sing to him. Well into my second verse Connor’s fevered eyes opened and stared at me. I stopped singing because his look was so intent. After several seconds of gazing he said, “I don’t want the sound of you Mommy, I just want you.” Enough said. I got quiet.

How often I forget these words when things are hard, when my insides are stirred, or when others need comfort. How rarely are my responses to self and other born out of a still silence, a quiet readiness.

Quiet is hard to come by these days. No longer do we plough the field that sits miles from our neighbor, grind the wheat in our isolated single room home, or go to bed when it gets dark. Instead we pop in our earbuds, instantly chat while doing our homework, surf while watching Oprah, and light up our nights with screens of all kinds. While we are filling up our moments we are neglecting our souls.

We are a lonely people, I believe. Some of us are lonely for others, some for roles and responsibilities we no longer fill, some for our pasts, some for places. I believe that all of us share, however, a deep and growing loneliness regarding our inner most beings. As the external demands and opportunities for distraction have grown, our discipline regarding quiet, stillness, spiritual reflection, and solitude (in its truest and healthiest forms) has shrunk. Silence is squeezed out of our day to day existence and we are lonely for our selves. 

I am often shocked by how out of touch with my deepest core I can become in an instant. I am distracted in prayer, my mind wanders when I meditate, I can’t finish a task without thoughts of seven others breaking through. In these moments it could be easy to convince myself to pop in my ipod and listen to a lecture, use a guided prayer or meditation podcast, or work to perfect the art of multi-tasking. If I resort to these things, however, I am training myself to be still only to the sound of the voice of another or the calling of my culture. While neither of these things are terrible they do nothing to acquaint me with my biggest detractor (and possible helper)...myself.

Quiet stillness isn’t always easy for me. I “use it” as a space within which to beat myself up, to indulge in fantasies of grandeur, and to plan days that are so insanely packed that I can’t keep up with myself. Even still, however, when I do not practice sitting still or giving my mind room to roam it is obvious. I am out of step with myself, my God, and my deepest values.  On the flip side, when I do practice the discipline of quiet attending it makes all the difference in the world.

Wherever you are, grab a snack. Gobble down a mouthful of it. Now, take a moment to take a breath, quiet yourself, then take another bite and attend to that which you are eating. Really pay attention. What does it feel like? Taste like? How does it linger? What does your mouth feel like when you are done? Now do this with your soul, your self, your inner most being. Take a moment. Be still. Pay attention. What do you hear? What do you see? What do you feel? Notice. Attend. Keep trying.

Sometimes the sound of us is the last thing we need. Ranking at the bottom of the list are also the sounds of culture, of status quo, and of the habitual speed at which we move. Perhaps today, right now, in this very moment you can find a way to want just you...not the sound...just you.

the adoptive auntie: helping extended families understand bonding and attachment

It is never easy to become a parent.  It is wonderful, it is miraculous, it is fulfilling.  It is not, however, easy.  Being an adoptive parent takes that lack of ease and multiplies it by 200 (or more).  Nothing is known and you’re jumping into a game you haven’t been present for at the end of the first quarter.  It’s hard.

Being an adopted child isn’t easy either.  It is wonderful, it is miraculous, and it is fulfilling.  It is not, however, easy.  You’ve likely had multiple care givers, possibly insecure attachments, and, many times, too little stimulation.  It’s hard.

Being the extended family of this parent/child mix also lacks ease.  You’ve spent months (sometimes years) praying for, thinking about, helping prepare for, and anticipating becoming an auntie, uncle, grandma, grandpa, cousin, etc to this precious new little one and now all that is expected of you is restraint.  It’s hard.

I know this by experience.  One of the roles I have looked most forward to in life was that of “Auntie.”  When my nephew Ethan came home at seven months from a Russian orphanage, the self control required of me was immense.  I was helped, however, by the knowledge of his needs that my doctoral training had provided.  It strikes me that others don’t have that benefit, so I offer these thoughts to help extended family members think about their roles in their nieces’, nephews’, granchildrens’, and cousins’ lives within the broader context of the adoptive nuclear family.

When most of us encounter new families our first impulse is to want to help.  We want to hold baby so mom can take a shower.  We want to change baby to give mom and dad a break from the frequently required task.  We bring meals.  We take pictures.  And, we can’t wait to be wanted.  We live for the moment that our new little one reaches out to us.  It will mean that they know us, love us, and want us.

For an adopted child and her parents these kinds of helps provide special challenges.  When such a child (especially one who has been in an orphanage...facing an initial primary loss and then a secondary loss in being removed from the orphanage care givers) reaches out to people, they are looking for indiscriminate care.  What they need, instead, is intimate bonding with their parents.  They need ALL of their primary care-giving responses to come from the two people who are “theirs.”  While this is painful in the short term to all of us who are used to feeling loved and important in the life of a newborn by getting to care and cuddle and comfort them, it provides the basis for a life time of loving, securely attached relationships in the child’s future.

Without these initial months of mostly watching the bonding (and supporting the new parents by cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, listening to them, and enthusiastically supporting their very difficult job of being only-care-givers) your precious niece will never be able to develop the relational circuitry in the brain that is required for secure attachment.  Your son or daughter, brother or sister is not trying to be withholding when they request that you not change, feed, or hold your newest family member...they are doing the painfully difficult task of re-wiring their child’s mind and soul to know that it is o.k. to rely on them, that they will not fail them, that they are reliable sources of comfort and basic needs, and that they are their mommy and daddy.

Due to advances in brain imaging, a belief that many of us have held for years is now “provable.”  Secure attachment during the early years of development is crucial for most of the executive functions of the brain to develop.  This means that a persons’ ability to have self control, healthy relationships, attuned communication, and a cohesive sense of self is directly related to the security and consistency of early relationships.  This means that a child needs to be held and have their basic needs met within the context of trusting relationships in order to wire the brain to be able to have those same kinds of relationships later in life.  As you are supporting this kind of attachment for your extended family it can be helpful to remember that there are many ways of feeding, holding, and responding to a child.  While your arms may not carry her, your mind can hold her firmly in your attention.  You can hold her in your prayers and thoughts.  You can feed her with words of affirmation and by nourishing her parents with support as they engage in this exhausting process of bonding.  While these are not the first forms of holding and feeding you may think of, they are real and they are powerful.

It is easy for extended family members to slip up in this period and swoop up a crying baby, to feel as though they are walking on egg shells with parents who are holding firm boundaries, and/or to be hurt when mom and dad don’t involve them in baby care tasks.  It is imperative, however, that we, as this childs’ extended family, work to re-define our important roles.  Mom and dad need all the emotional and physical support we can give them and our best way of loving baby is to point her back to mom and dad at every turn.  In developing a strong love for them she is building the basis that will allow her to love us well later.  Teasing mom and dad about their rigidity and/or “begging for just one hold” does not help here.  Neither does telling them about all the other adopted kids you know who are just fine.  This is the time in life to welcome the opportunity to learn the discipline of waiting.  Your future relationship with this sweet child will be nothing but deeper because of your patience.

It is also important to know that most adoptive families experience a honeymoon period where the attachment and bonding seem to be going so smoothly that none of you remember why in the world there are all these seemingly rigid boundaries around your precious ones’ care.  It is tempting to sneak in boundary violations at this point and it is even tempting for the parents to bend the boundaries, leading to confusion about further interaction guidelines.

It is imperative during these times to be watchful and mindful of why the boundaries were established in the first place.  Your wee one is highly developed in directing himself and his attention to whomever meets his need, he has also learned flexibility in responding to whoever cares for him and to keep his needs quiet.  He is likely relieved and enjoying what may feel to him like a vacation from the monotony and want of the orphanage.  It is likely, however, that he is not done getting all he needs in the way of specific and targeted secure attachment to his primary relational objects...his parents.  Exactly because the boundaries are in place is why he seems to be doing so well.  Don’t make any changes in them until you have done careful considering and soul searching without the pressure of a deadline or audience.  If you feel tempted to ask to provide a basic need (extended family) or to do away with a care guideline you’ve previously set (parent), give it a day or two, lots of discussion, and use discernment over time.

During the months that mom and dad are doing all the responding to baby’s most basic and primary needs (especially feeding, changing, soothing to sleep and waking, and comforting) your role is both large and small.  Large in the ways you never thought and small in the ways you imagined.  Be patient...all too soon your precious new love will be running into your arms and this time of waiting will be but a brief and distant memory. A memory of a time when your new love was wiring his brain to love you well.  Then it will be your turn to love him back...well...

technology half chewed (published in geez magazine)

On a winter day long ago I decided to treat my kids to a pan of hot, bubbly homemade macaroni and cheese. It took forever to grate the cheeses and make the cream sauce. I bought expensive pasta and used real butter on the breadcrumbs that graced the top. Thrilled with my hearty offering I placed it in front of my wee ones who, with wrinkled noses and dumbfounded expressions, declared, “I thought we were having macaroni and cheese.” Much to my dismay, without a blue box and skinny bright orange noodles they had lost their culinary bearings. I find the same is true with technology and relatedness. Texts have replaced conversing and communities are formed in cyberspaces. Kids grow up with screens as siblings of sorts and we carry computers in our pockets to entertain, inform, and direct us. It all feels very “blue box” to me when up against the heartiness of relationship and self knowledge.

Technology is neither a gift nor a curse. It cannot be fairly demonized or praised. It simply is. It empowers its users to harness the masses for relief efforts in Haiti while at the same time reducing the running of the Race for the Cure to mere manipulation of a Second Life avitar. It offers up preschool toys that vibrate, light up, and make sounds. Adolescents plug in to it to keep in touch with their wide spread “friend” community, to explore the world, to “play,” and to try on alternate identities that real life doesn’t allow (oh how easy it is now to take digital photos until just the right one is captured...or created).  Adults get their news from screens, their entertainment from screens, and work on them as well.

Two years ago the Kaiser Family Foundation discovered that the average American was spending 8.5-9 hours a day plugged in to some kind of technology. Today that number has jumped to nearly 11 hours per day, controlling for engagement with more than one technology at a time (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2010). Literature reviews suggest that both family talk time and social practice decrease as technology and screen involvement increase. These realities do not come without consequences to our selves and our relationships. With these ever present distractions we are not developing the kind of sturdy selves that can delay gratification, self soothe, or even self stimulate/initiate effectively. In relational realms we are substituting quantity for quality as our connections move increasingly out of the realm of the physical and into the world of the digital. Everything comes from the outside in in a way that has never before been possible and it is compromising us.

Technology, however, is only a part of the equation. We, the “consumers” (oh how I hate that all too true title) of it, play our role in the havoc that technology can wreak. We are good at many things. Moderation is not one of them. Just as 1950’s families became dependent upon the ease of post war convenience foods only to find themselves struggling with obesity, hypertension, and high cholesterol in the 60’s, so too have we made technology a main dish instead of a side. We swallow it whole not noticing that the number of friends attached to our Facebook profiles rarely equate with a sense of deep relational resource when one is in need. We snack on the camaraderie found in massive multi player games while our intimate, real life relationships suffer from a lack of time and attention. We gobble up the idea that constant digitized connection and stimulation can substitute for meaningful relationships, active imaginations, and an ability to be still. We pretend we can soothe ourselves by surfing the web when, in reality, we are only distracting ourselves from the here and now by going far and wide in our cyber lives.  

By becoming intentional and mindful of the ways in which we engage both technology and our real, touchable lives we can establish norms which will allow us to thrive in both spaces. This requires a realistic and honest assessment of our current technology use, an understanding of what drives that use, and a willingness to break bad habits. Are we spending too much time in cyber worlds or is our real issue the content we are interacting with? Do we push ourselves to maintain our face to face communication skills or are we losing our conversational muscles? Can we sit still? Be quiet? Tolerate boredom? Wait?

I somehow want to make space for balance. I am striving for a sturdy sense of self and an ability to take relational risks, to talk with people as comfortably as I can text them, to have an iPod and be able to sit in silence. I’ve decided that there’s room for blue box and homemade on the same table...sometimes even on the same plate.

mining for simplicity

It’s becoming increasingly true everyday that history is happening on television. It has been for awhile. My mom can describe, in full detail, the day in 1953 when her school friends and extended family huddled around her television (the only one in the neighborhood) to watch the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Ten years later she and my father watched the funeral of John F Kennedy whose assassination had also been caught on film. Thirty years later my family stayed up all night to watch Princess Diana and Prince Charles’ wedding. At other points in time I’ve awoken at ungodly hours to witness space launches on screen and to drag myself to local Irish pubs to watch World Cup games not yet available for home viewing. This week, however, an entirely new form of history happened on screen and it enthralled me.

Sixty eight days after a cave-in trapped 33 Chilean miners a half mile underground, cameras quietly rolled to bring the world images of the efforts to extricate them. Having followed the story since the miners had been discovered alive (14 days after the collapse), I was anxious to watch these resourceful and determined men be literally lifted out of their three month ordeal. I never expected, however, to become transfixed by the screen.

A bit of background becomes necessary here. I am not a screen person. It’s difficult for me to sit through a 30 minute sitcom and nearly impossible for me to enjoy a movie at home with my family. Being required to watch YouTube videos or to spend more than a cursory 5 minutes on Facebook might send me over the edge. When the 9/11 tragedy occurred I was so filled with sadness and concern that I chose to avoid all photographic images of the event. My imagination was impeding both my waking and my sleep as it was and I knew that further embodiment/clarification of the visions of torment would overwhelm me. I also felt angered by the constant chatter and speculating that turned the story from the victims toward the perpetrators. To this day I have not seen video footage and have only had occasional glances of still images of that terrible event. Since then I have become aware of how much sensationalism and commentary happens around the delivery of information these days. Apparently it is no longer enough to simply present data or images to recipients who can then do with it/them as they wish. Instead, so-called specialists, producers, directors, news anchors, and celebrities all have commentary to add, opinions to share, and hype to convey. 

It seems to me that the result of this pontificating is the loss of the stories themselves. We don’t look into the face of the individual who has just lost her family to a tsunami wave. We don’t notice the pain in the eyes of the teenager in Louisiana whose entire community has lived in tents since Katrina. As the first local rain becomes “Storm Watch 2010” and the latest celebrity arrest becomes breaking news we become gradually inoculated to what truly warrants our immediate attention and we stop attending. Our eyes are busy reading the scrolling newsreels on the bottom of the screen, our ears are bombarded with words, words, words, and just when we might actually look beyond the sights and sounds to the people it’s time for a commercial break. It’s sad.

For me the Chilean mine rescue was different. When the effort commenced I couldn’t find a single television channel that was broadcasting live footage without commentary. Online, however, purity revealed itself in CNN’s live feed. A single camera above ground and, later, one below, showed long, lingering shots of the activity. There was no blaring introductory music to announce the end of commercial break because there were no commercial breaks. There were no translators. There were only the sights and sounds of squeaking cables against metal pulleys and hushed comments between focused workers sent digitally to the world, allowing us all to be there, as it truly was. For the next 24 hours I kept the small video image up on my computer screen. I watched it non-stop for a long time late into the still and silent night. One by one the miners were lifted, brought up in a metal cylinder barely big enough to hold some of them. At first the family members and rescue staff were somber and quiet. They almost seemed to be holding their breath as they waited to see of the top of the shaft. By the time the next afternoon had arrived, however, rescue personnel were hollering down to the miners when they were most of the way up and the gathered crowd was cheering and singing as the vessel emerged from its tiny tunnel.

What was so beautiful to me was not only the amazing rescue itself but also the stunning quietness of it all. It felt so respectful. No reporters with microphones waxing wise from their cordoned-off location nearby. No “Bad News Bettys” reporting on the difficult relationships some of these men were returning to. No “experts” telling us what life “must” have been like for those trapped below. Just reality as it was happening. A bunch of men and women above ground working like everything to carry their tasks off without a hitch and 33 miners and 6 rescue workers below ground helping to achieve their own attainment of freedom.

A few days before the retrievals began I heard a reporter hypothesizing that the reason so many of the miners were “vying” for the position of last out of the mine was because they each wanted to hold the record for longest time underground. “This,” I thought, “could only be said by someone who spent the last 68 days above ground, sleeping in a comfortable bed, eating whatever he likes, kissing his kids, and breathing fresh air.” There are others, however, who, in hearing this and not having thought for themselves about the incident, might believe it and even repeat it to their friends and neighbors. I could imagine the interchange, “Did you hear that those crazy miners are all trying to break each other’s records by staying in the longest?”

What I saw in the 24-plus hours of footage told such a different story. Here were men who had found ways of exercising, working in a three shift a day model, and of keeping each other alive in harsh conditions. Here were husbands, fathers, sons, brothers, cousins, and uncles thrown together by their vocation and a geological accident. Submarine and small spacecraft dwellers go through special selection processes and months of rigorous training to learn to handle living in tight quarters with others. These men had no such training and no special supplies. They had themselves and each other. That was it. That was all.

There is so much for us to learn from them and their ordeal. Who in our own daily lives would rise to the role of provision-rationer? Physician? Encourager? How would we respond to a life and death need to share? Would we make it with no privacy and the stench of 33 hot bodies bathrooming, eating, playing, working, and emoting in our shared space? How might we interact with our possessions after living so sparingly? How would we approach our partners, parents, friends if we’d spent the last two months thinking we may never see them again? Would our definition of persistence be the same after fully depending on that trait in those working diligently to devise our rescue plan? How might we be changed if we look into the faces of the people in this story? How might we be changed if we sit in silence and observe and notice and care?

Silence is no longer normal here in the West. It seems, in fact, that we avoid it at all costs. We observe in our voyeuristic and overly-broadcasted world and yet I feel as though we rarely notice. Seeing is different from noticing.

Artist Paul Gauguin once said, “I close my eyes in order to see.” I wish this were true of me more often. It may not always be my eyes that need closing, sometimes it is my ears or my hands or my over-evaluating mind. Sometimes I need just one thing at a time to truly allow me to pay attention. To simply notice. To simply care. To simply see.