Writing Reflections Day 1

Dear Heather—

 

I did it.   I started.  I sat today from 2-6 in a café and tracked how much I wrote and what I wrote about.  I am including most of it in this email.  I wonder how I should be storing these sessions.  Have you heard of the software Scrinver?  I found that I can write for 50 minutes and then I need a break.  While my breaks will ideally be 10 minutes.  One was 25 and another was 40.  This meant that I had to put in another writing session when I got home after Santi went to bed to hit my goal, which as four 50 minute sessions for today.  I realize that is not four hours, but it is where I am starting at.  Do you accept this?

 

I found that I wrote about my daily life, my addiction to sugar, Betty, Tara, Third Street and Santi—oh and a lot about writing itself.  Sometimes I wrote in letter form, sometimes I wrote in what feels like the blog voice.  I am not sure how to do this, but I can proudly say I seriously started today.

 

Tomorrow is my day off as I have no childcare.  You will hear from me on Sunday when I put in another four 50 minute sessions.

 

With love,

 

Amy Lovejoy

 _____

184.5 (38.5/45)

 

Friday, August 30^th, Jenn's birthday, at 2:00 PM I desactivated wifi and started writing.  Today I begin, with these key strokes, to write my memoir—or as I have been calling it lately, my collection of personal essays.  I am so happy to have begun.  I don't have a clear plan for what I will write today, or if I will really be able to write for four hours as planned.  But none of that matters.  Here I am, in Diletto Café in Bogota, Colombia writing.  I win. 

 

Heather Donnell is my writing coach.  My assignment for today is not to worry about what I write, or the outline of my future book, it is just to write, write, write.  She suggested I write about something, maybe the most important things, I would want my lover to know about me.  She is also the one who came up with the schedule—write your maximum every day, no matter what, six days a week.  I trust her completely.  She is the one who taught me to write daily, ten minutes a day, no matter what.  I need to go back and see exactly how many days I wrote during this phase of our writing tutorial.  This last run alone, before I missed a day was about 560 days.  My guess, Is that I wrote 930 out of the last 950 days.  It is nice to think that after 1000 days, I will have an idea, and maybe even an outline, or well, at least a theme for my book.  50 days from now is the end of October—just before I will start trying to impregnate myself again. 

 

This morning I bought a refrigerator.  I hate shopping.  I hate shopping for clothes, because I don't like my body—especially in this post baby, post brownie, bloated state.   At the start of this book, I weigh 184.5 (38.5/45).  By the time I finish I hope to weight 149.5, my dream weight.  If I weighed that, I would be running up the mountain, instead of huffing and puffing my way through each step as I scrambled up the rocks; I would be doing 20 real push ups with Diana in the neighborhood dog park, instead of 10 female cheaters—I barely bent my elbows.  I would wear my skinny jeans, I would empty my closet of the pregnancy jeans that still hang on the upper shelf, which I keep in case the Gap 14/16s that Kari forced me to buy just after I had Santi somehow get small.  Yes, this is all possible—I will write a book and I will shed this weight. 

 

I sure hope my memoir isn't going to be about my lifelong struggle with the extra 20 now 30 pounds that I carry and how nothing—not trainers, not the zone, not Fitbit or Loseit, or having a personal chef, not Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, not weighing in in groups, not even Tara's teaching has helped.  I can't possibly write a book about the futility of trying to lose weight, my addition to sugar, and the bag of chocolate I ate yesterday. 

 

If I had to name the one thing that keeps me overweight, the culprit, the devil, the enemy is…no doubt sugar.  If you are still asking yourself why I bought a refrigerator this afternoon for 660.000 pesos in the downtown ghetto of Calle 13 con Carrera 13, this is because I moved here Tuesday night, to Bogota, to write this book in the next twelve momths—with my eight-month-old son and 24-year-old nanny.  Santiago and Kelly are my family and we are the Lovejoys.

 

I rented a low-end apartment and landed without furniture, toilet paper, soap, or plants.  I quickly missed the Hilton, Neebish island cabin rentals, even our soft sided glamper from Northern California where things were put together, where you have the essentials like lamps, like the mat to stand on when you get out of the shower, like a washing machine.  We spent our first day receiving the 50 boxes and four shopping carts of goods, or really of odds and ends, of crap that I had paid to stor here while we vacationed like the Kardashians—such as my second bike helmet, the ashram's 14 yoga blankets and blocks, and a crate of CDs. It is sickening that I paid to store this stuff, paid to transport it to my new low-end, furniture-free apartment, paid to have it hauled up five flights of stairs, and am still paying someone to organize and dust it.  There is something seriously wrong with this picture.  After a day of ascending and descending the stairs six times (89 steps in total), I tried to go to bed in my wi-fi free apartment glorifying my lack of distraction, my ability to read a book, my focus on Santi that is free from that itch and pull to go look and see if Betty has sent me a message.  I read for a while.  I am reading memoir to write memoir.  After fingering through a few more chapters (that sounds gross).  After swiping a few more chapters, I decided that I urgently needed chocolate covered biscuits to dip into my tea while reading.  Despite being on the fifth floor, 89 steps away from Tienda Alf, my local provider, I threw a brown fleece jacket over the white, long-sleeve, t-shirt that barely veiled my braless breast feeding chest, slipped on my maroon slippers, pulled my white wool cap down to my ears, and set out to—inhale, exhale, CHECK Email, and eat something sweet.  I knew it as 9:59 and Alf's could close at any minute.  I hustled.  After I struggled to unlock death's door (more on that later, I mean more on that never—what a bore to read about, let alone write about) I quickly looked up and saw that the light was off at Alf's.  Uggh, where to next.  I shuffled down the street, looking very homeless to Comedor—an upscale Italian restaurant at the bottom of my street with valet parking.  I nestled into a bar stool, ordered the 1000 calorie molten chocolate cake and a chomomille tea and read the blog.  It felt so good, I imagine this is how cocaine might feel.  The relief, the build up, the urge.  I slept like a baby, with Santi on my boob all Wednesday night and figured my diet would begin Thursday.

 

But then on Thursday, roaming the narrow aisles of Alf, I began to wonder, and preemptively think that I should by the cookies now, in case I got another 9:59 urge.  I bought a pack of 12 chocolate biscuits—upscale from Oreos, the brand was named Tosh, and attempts to be healthy.  Who are they kidding, they were 100 calories a pack, and yes, I ate all six packs last night, while swishing pages on the Kindle.  Kelly tried to stop me.  She is my rock and my salvation.  This whole book could be about her.  She saw me sitting on the tall stools at the island in our new low end apartment.  She heard me tear open the package.  "Senora Amy, tu dieta. Esto es muy mal." She exhorted, unsure what she could or should do.  I secretly wished she would rip the cookie out of my mouth, wiping my mouth free of any of its dark brown remains, just like she does when Santi has a little bit of Watermelon or pear left in his mouth after he has finished eating.  With Santi, we found ourselves trying to sweep his mouth, around his four teeth (two on top, two on bottom) when he is done eating, needs to breast feed and is still chewing.  He can't tell the difference and bites, with the force of a mother fucker, my nipple.  That boy and my nipple—that could be a chapter.  Kelly is often going in for the sweep of fruit to save the dark pink tip of my breast from Santi's sharp dientes.  Why didn't she just do that with that chocolate biscuit.  She walked past me, still in uniform, disappointed and went to bed.  I took all six packets to bed and even found myself hiding one of the wrappers in my bed side drawer because I was a little embarrassed. 

 

I told her, as I have been telling her for days.  The diet starts tomorrow.  Well, at least the writing has started tomorrow.  The diet will have to wait as I just ate two brownies.  One mini brownie, trying to affirm my commitment to losing weight, only to follow it with the full size brownie.  So yes, starting tomorrow, no sugar at all.  I am a crack addict and this has to be broken.  What is hurting my life more, sugar or wifi?

 

It is 2:41, and this feels like a natural resting place to check email. To take a break, but I will power through, currently against Heather's advice, which is such a mistake and wait until 2:50, take a ten minute break and get back on the wagon at 3:00 on the dot.

 

Today, I bought a refrigerator.  How could I possibly need to do this?  What kind of country rents apartment without providing the basics—washer, dryer, and fridge?  Apparently, Colombia.  I don't have the patience to figure out how to rent one, or to start sleeping with one of my old, unattractive, yet sweet, bachelor neighbors just to use their refrigerator.   Bottom line, we have to have one.  I am not going to figure out how poor people buy used refrigerators, I am not going to spend time culling through my network for someone with a spare refrigerator, what on God's green earth am I going to do with this refrigerator when I leave in December, or in June.  I guess it all goes to my rock and my salvation.

 

Is this really what I would be telling a lover about, the details of my day, the inside of Alfredo and Mauricio's apartments?  Wouldn't I be explaining the complex relationship between my sexuality and spirituality and how all of that played out last week in DC? I live on the fifth floor of a low-end apartment in an upscale neighborhood of Bogota.  I live above a corner shop that devotes most of its shelf space to alcohol, bottles of over-priced, imported Whiskey, whole shelves of aguardiente and endless bottles of beer.  I guess Colombian's like to drink.  The Alf shop is run by Alfredo and his brother.  I used to buy mineral water there when I lived down the street on my way to the mountain, and now I live above the shop.  Kelly and I have both programed Alf's number into our cell phone as he delivers to the fifth floor.  We have vowed to buy everything possible from Alfs, to reduce the load of what we carry to fifth floor.  We are just stocking the apartment so yesterday's loot included a lot of cleaning supplies.  Kelly was so happy to return to Colombian reliable stain removers like "Vanish."  She found the US replicas unimpressive and no match for the damage Santi can do to a onesie.  She needed three bars of hand soap that apparently she uses to wash clothes by hand.  I didn't understand the difference between the pink bar and the blue bar.  We left a bottle of Santi's freshingly hand-pumped breast milk with Alf because yesterday, we didn't have a refrigerator. 

 

Later in the evening, after Kelly made a delish mix of chicken, vegetables and rice noodles for dinner, we knocked on Mauricio's door and asked if we could store the leftovers in his refrigerator.  Given that he had already allowed us to barge in and do our laundry in his enviable two part washer and dryer, adding a bowl of stir fry to the stash in his fridge was no inconvenience.  We went to bed last night feeling like new people, clothes washed at Mauricios, milk stored at Alfs, and even, yes, even, our own internet hookup from Alfredo, who lives before us.  I went down to invite him to share the stir fry, as he loaned us a broom and mop when we moved in.  He declined the dinner invation, but graciously gave us the key to his wifi.  We may not have had a fridge, but things were coming together.  Proudly, we reviewed highs and lows at dinner, when Kelly and I, with Santi asleep, and our neighbors in their own pads, ate dinner alone at the island.

 

2:53

 

3:08  My break was 15 minutes long, and I didn't even use the bathroom.  I think Heather would say, I missed my chance and I have to wait another hour before I go.  Hmmm…Can I really follow all of Heather's rules perfectly on the first day.  Of course not.  It took me four or five tries to finally become someone who writes, easily and joyfully every day.  Can I expand the break to 20 minutes?

 

3:21 I just turned off, disactivated my wifi.  It is the only way to write.  So wow, that was nearly a 25 minute break.  You know what Heather would say, you have written for 50 minutes today, not 81.

 

There are few things more painful than listening to a gringo speak Spanish with an American accent.  It makes me want to roll my rrrs and get back to classes.  Hmmmm…too bad my wifi is off, I would have shot an email to a teacher.

 

So the assignment remains, what would I want to tell a lover.  And while what I think I would want to tell her is about the intersection of what it means to live my spirituality and sexuality, I think I am turning towards writing about Santi.

 

Can I try out the writing style of writing TO Santi?  (HD, is this allowed?)

 

August 30^th, 2013

 

Dear Santi—

 

Today I pulled out the placard that reads "9 Months," and placed it next to you as you struggled to crawl around the skanky floor of our new apartment.  There is something about this floor, this is the floor you will learn to crawl on, I have no doubt, and this is such a gross floor.  I wonder if you see the banana stubs you have dropped the day before that have rolled under the kitchen island as you squirm around on your stomach.  It seems irrelevant how many times Kelly mops or sweeps this floor--it is always dirty.  Maybe we should make this a shoe-free home.  I pulled out the nine-month placard to take video of you as Diana showed us how to help you move into crawling in the next few weeks.  While you are only eight months and three-weeks-old, when you are 40, watching this video with your kids, that one-week won't matter. 

 

You are strong, thick, happy boy.  You are also well-traveled and extroverted.  As long as you are in the arms of Kelly or me as you meet the world, you remain very content.  You do sometimes get overwhelmed if I take you to a party of 30 people you don't know, like Peter Riley's going away party, but this just as likely could have been that you needed your diaper changed and I didn't notice.

 

I am loving being your mother.  I am loving catching each month of your life on film and video.  I can't wait to make a stellar baby book and first year video to celebrate the year you changed my life, the year you were snatched out of my uterus with foreceps, attached to my nipple, and became my partner in life.  Today, I bought us a refrigerator.  We need it, if for nothing else, to store your milk.  Our breast-feeding partnership is going great.  It has gown swimmingly since the first latch—which yes, is documented on film, and mounted on the wall of our new home—the low end apartment with the skanky floors. 

 

Am I writing about your immanent crawl or our successful feeding partnership? 

 

First the crawl.  Vas a gatear.  I wonder, I really wonder what language we will speak, you and I.  I feel more comfortable talking to you in Spanish; I feel sweeter, more baby friendly, more Santi-centered.  This doesn't concern me, I am just curious.  Just like it doesn't concern me that you aren't crawling yet.  You are laughing a lot, sleeping well, and eating solid food with your own man hands.  What more could we ask for?  Grandma Karin knew what we should be doing with you when we visited Neebish.  I will have to include that photo in your baby book.  Every day we shared with her at the cabin in the seventh month of your life, she would throw down a sheet on the floor; careful to insure that the same side was always face up, and try to help you crawl.  This is no different than what Diana showed us to do with you today.  You sit like champ.  Sitting gives you so much visibility, we see you, you see us, and you do have an adorable little sit-shuffle and sit-jump and sit-fall going on.  I don't remember exactly when you sat up.  I would say it only became real, and stable on this trip.  At Neebish it was shakey, at Colorado, where you feel off the counter at Uncle Brent's it was really shakey, but now, like your whole little man body—it is rock solid. 

 

You have strong arms, we can swing you by them and they don't get sore.  Diana showed us how to hold your body up for you, and let you crawl, just with your arms, step by step.  Our homework is to do this three times a day.  We are on it!  She also showed us how to tie a towel around your core and let that take the weight off as you practice crawling.  Both Diana and mom have talked about how important crawling is for brain development.  They want you to crawl as long as possible before you walk.  This is your time, this will be your floor, and I will be here, on Sabbatical paying attention when it happens.

 

Today, we laid three yoga mats on the floor, covered them with a Mexican blanket and let you crawl around.  You can do 360s in place, as though you were a Jewish top that we spin.  You hold your head up, you look around, you somehow move toward your favorite toes that we put at the edge of your mat: your orange and yellow truck from cousin Mack, the blue and yellow chewing rattle Susan gave you, your favorite chewing toy from Aunt Dena—Sofi La Giraffe.  Man, I need to put all three of those things in your time capsule.  I am so glad we are back in Bogota with time to pay attention to you, your needs, your development and your immanent crawl.

 

The story of our year though, is probably going to be around breastfeeding and sleeping.  I may be doing this all wrong.  In the long run it won't matter.  I don't believe, I can't believe, I won't believe that one can spoil a baby too much.  A demanding, whining toddler, sure, an eight-month, three-week-old baby boy, no chance.  We hold you all the time, we play with you all the time, and we put you to bed.  We don't even leave you to put yourself to sleep.  Given that we spent the bulk of the last six months traveling what has this meant for your development.  Well, you don't sleep uninterrupted.  I have stopped counting long ago, how many times we wake up or for how long you sleep, we both feel rested, I think. 

 

I have also ignored the advice to not let my breast become your pacifier.  I never gave you a pacifier, I couldn't stand the thought of stuffing plastic in your mouth to quiet your moans, but for some reason, being your human pacifier has seemed ok.  Aunt Kari, who will become your mother if I die suddenly, warned me to not let you keep sucking after you finish eating, but maybe I valued both of our rest over any level of sleep training.  Our nights are a shimmy of attaching you to my breast, letting you eat, slowly slipping into a sleep state together, and waking up when you want more, usually from the other side.  I crawl over you, turn you onto your other side and in no time, you grab my inflated breast with both hands and direct my nipple into your mouth.  You know what you are doing.  It is working now.  We will see what comes next.  I have tried a few times to put you into the co-sleeper but you hate it, and I hate you hating things.  So we are back in the California King, snuggled together like a mama and baby bear, for the time being. 

 

My favorite moment all day is our first moment of the day.  I wake first, always.  I no longer worry, like I did in month three and four that the blankets would smother you, or that I would roll onto you, you are a log, a rock, a thick man, with the cutest little boy butt who we finally put back in cloth diapers today.  When I wake, you are still in a sleep state, on your side, searching for me.  You like to be in touch.  You like to know I am there, it calms you.  If you aren't latched, you like to have your little man hand resting on my breast, or your cheek against my skin, you can tell the second I move away, and boom, you are up, your eyes open.  A lot of times it works to just keep my knees bent so that your feet can feel them.  How or why would I give these days up?  Kelly thinks at about a year, you will outgrow it.  Without needing to go to work, and without either of us suffering from the multiple wake ups, I think we are sticking with this rhythm for a while.

 

I do wonder if being in the same place for three months might help you sleep better.

 

The last month has been a watershed month in your eating solid food.  Thankfully, Aunt Sara gave us the book recommendation for Baby-led weaning, a true must read for all parents.  The bottom line is we did no purees, no spoon-fed whatever, and just started giving you lettuce, broccoli and watermelon from a bit before your six-month-birthday.  What a joy it is has been to watch you master the hand-to-hand switch.  To watch you master picking up food, I remember when you ate your first blueberry at Julie's in Colorado.  Dear Jesus, did I video that?  You are totally adorable when you sit on a table in a restaurant and chomp on a foot long peace of lettuce.  You and I were both born to eat with our hands, on the floor.  Our best meals this last trip were at the ashram, you had so much fun, sitting with the big kids at the picnic table.  Maybe we will move back to the ashram in January.  Something feels right about that. 

 

I love you Santi.  I love this season.  I treasure every moment, the hazy mornings, were I start my day staring at you as you wake from a calm, deep, connected sleep.   The afternoons where we all get down on the floor and crawl.  It is good for me and it is good for you.  As for me being your human pacifier, we will sort that out.  We will sort all of this out. 

 

Tara teaches that we belong to what we pay attention to.  I want to belong to you. 

 

Love,

 

Your Mother (and your Father).

 

4:05  (Break).  PS.  I love that letter.  My boobs are totally full.  Must remember to bring pump to write.

 

4:43  Wonder Twin Powers, De activate, form of a non wified computer.  Wow that was a long break.  Nearly 40 mintues, for real?  I didn't even go to the bathroom.  Hmmm…Let me do the math.  I wrote for 50 min, rested for 25, then I wrote for 45 and rested for 40.

 

50 on

25 off

45 on

40 off.

45 on

 

I guess the story here is to either shorten my breaks, or not take one.  I have written for 90 minutes today, over 165 minutes.  Dios Mio.

 

Hmmm, I caught up on my daily life, I wrote about Santi, now what would I want to tell a lover about my life?  Should I order another drink.  I had a hot chocolate, a decaf cappuccino and a tea.  My breast is bursting.  And yes, the new refrigerator has been delivered and is full of the food Kelly will leave me to feed off of for the next ten days while she is in Cali.

 

Hmmm, I suppose that essay, or attempt to unpack my sexuality and spirituality can wait a little longer as I wrote about my high and low with Kelly and maybe write about the violence in Colombia and Syria.  Should I order an Amaretto.  Writing here at Diletto is nice because of the fresh air, the good music and the proximity to my house.  But, I will gain weight if I keep drinking all my calories.  Water please!

 

Maye I am hungry.  I am going home at 5:30.  I will have put 45 min more in.  Maybe I should push to 55, to have had a 50, 45, and 50 minute session.  I think 50 min sessions are reasonable.

 

I am finding that writing without an audience or a clear purpose is really hard.  I have written the blogs to heather and the bloggers for 950 days because they are listening.  I work hard on my annual essay bc someone is listening, but this blah blah blah into space, four hours a shot, arguably 20 pages a day, might kill me.  Holy shit, what if I really do this for six days a week.  Of course I can.  If I can write ten minutes a day, or four hours a day.  WHY CAN'T I say no to sweets.

 

Ok, this is me diving into the theme I claim I would unpack with my lover. 

 

Today I bought a refrigerator.  No, just kidding.

 

Dear Tara,

 

I am sorry I didn't write you back sooner.  My week in DC was rich and full.  I had a killer cold which lowered my normally high energy levels.  I wanted to write and see if you had time to schedule a Skype call in the next few weeks.  I am free all the time, as I am officially on Sabbatical and back in Colombia.

 

You had asked if getting into the retreats was harder because I am mothering or for some other reason.  Given Santi's easy going personality and Kelly's every present every helpful nanny-ing, coming to the retreats as a mother is simple, wonderful, and accessible.  The issue, as I am sure you  know, is that they fill up faster and faster.  This makes them harder and harder to attend.  I am on the wait list for October, which is fine, it is probably best that I buckle down here and unpack my new name (Amy Lovejoy became my legal name this month).  But for the New Year's retreat, there were a few glitches, things your managers can work out and probably aren't worth your time.  For instance, it wasn't clear from the website what TIME the registration actually opened.  It said, "opening of business." But that means a lot of different things to a lot of people.  I hovered around the website from 8 to 9:15 and wasn't able to register until later in the morning. Just a small annoyance. But my best guess is that by today, August 30^th and 4:56 PM, that retreat is full.  So while it didn't end up mattering to me.   I am sure it mattered to whoever ended up on the wait list.

 

No worries. 

 

Now to the real topic of this email and our pending conversation.

 

How and why did I decide to dedicate Santiago Brach Lovejoy at the Third Street Church of God on Sunday August 25^th?

 

As I listened to myself explain the decision to friends, I heard myself saying that this decision had to do with a) imagining a broad spiritual framework to raise Santi in and B) wanting to, and feeling ready to, well almost ready, to err on the side of relationship and love--over anger and estrangement with my church family.

 

Yikes, those are both such huge themes.  How do I want to raise Santi spiritually?  Arguably, I can't give him anything I don't have myself.  And today, what I have that is active, meaningful, alive, and real is a daily yoga and meditation practice that grows out of the Sivananda/Ashtanga yoga traditions and your meditation teachings.   Santi has laid by my side, every morning since he was born, on his own mat doing his own version of baby yoga, and he has sat in my lap while I meditated.  I practice a non-dualistic, vedenta based spirituality. I teach it, I believe it, I live it.  He is absorbing it every morning.  We live now and will always live in an ashram, in a shared spiritual community; it is one of my greatest joys.  So he will have this.  He has already attended a few silent retreats, both yours, and mine and he has been to his first Ashram.  But is this enough? 

 

What relationship to Christianity do I want him to have?  I suppose this begs the question, what do I really believe, or at least believe today about God and Christ and a relational loving force.  I am not sure, but I am assuming that whatever I believe today will change, as it has changed so much over the past twenty years.  The Third Street Community, and two or three genuine, brilliant, practicing Christians who are still rooted firmly in their Christian faith, live a kind of intentional; Christ-inspired Love, that I want him to know in one form or another.  It is hard to describe this.  But as much as I totally adore and believe in and practice what the Sivananda ashram's and the IMCW offer on some level it doesn't replace fully what church, and intellectual Christian mentoring has offered me over the past two decades.  I wonder how these can be complementary paths.  There is no need for one to exist in isolation of the other.

 

I am drawn to Third Street because I love church and I love this church.  I love the van ministry that picks up the "sick and shut in," on Sundays, I love the way the pastor prays to a God she completely believes in to intervene in the pressing issues of the day, I love the focus on social justice, acted out in the daily feeding of the poor that is rooted in a larger theological framework, I love the gospel choir.  I don't believe today, "that Christ is the way the truth and the life," but it has always felt like such a loss to let it all go.  And yet, I haven't searched for Unitarian or Methodist churches that are more liberal.  Third Street, with all of its quirks, has been my home for 17 years, and I am reluctant to replace it, beyond the replacing I already did with the IMCW community and pod casts.    The other aspect of Christianity, and relationships with Christians that I am reluctant to let go of completely (beyond the community that believes in and practices social justice and worships joyfully together) is the unparalleled thoughtfulness in how and why we live a deeply loving, fair, and considerate life.  My mentors and few respectable practicing Christian friends call me, challenge me, and invite me to live a bigger life, a more meaningful life—this is done in relationship, in love, and over a lifetime. 

 

Is that available outside of Christianity?  I haven't seen it, I don't have Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, or even Agnostic friends who have had this kind of shared intentional, kindred spirit journeying over decades.  Of course for my friends, it is still very rooted in Christ's teaching, that is their motivation, it is less so mine now.  But the symbols and the ritual of going to church and dedicating Santi into this world seemed like a good fit.  I want him to know and be loved by a range of people who practice the faith that inspires their life.  My roots are deepest in Buddhism, Yoga, and Christianity right now, although with the ten years I spent in Muslim countries, I could easily add Islam to the list.

 

So I am living the question, how will I raise Santi spiritually, what education will I give him? And part of my answer is both to live the contemplative life with him daily as well as to introduce him to practicing believers in a range of traditions and allow him to be loved into these communities and see where he and the spirit take his life.

 

The second reason is trickier still.  I am still hurt and still angry that Dr. Sanders kicked me out of the Choir for my bisexuality.  I am still hurt and still angry that this beloved community of mine believes that homosexuality is a sin.  I am still hurt and angry at the double standard it applies by knocking me, the bisexual woman out of the choir but allowing divorced members and members who are clearly gluttonous to keep on singing.  I took a break from the church for about two years.  In those two years, I was challenged by my x-girlfriend, and counseled by wise people to be especially cautious about putting my yet formed, still raw and vulnerable, evolving identity in a community that reinforces my shame.  I am not free of that shame.  I am more free of it than I was in October 2010, which I think was the last time I went to Third Street after the Fall IMCW retreat, when I came out to a few choir friends there and shared my pain with them.  I have stayed away because I didn't feel strong enough in my own identity to go back and be out and bold and integrated and be a presence of love from within.  I still felt too vulnerable to getting hurt and staying stuck in my own shame.  That hasn't shifted enough yet for me to consider going back and being an active, yet disactived, non-singing member.  But for some unknown reason, I wanted to err on the side of love and relationships with these folks.  This remains a central issue for me.  But for a moment, I could see that we have more in common than not.  While I disagree with them on what they think about homosexuality, I agree with how they intend to live their daily lives, and with the spirit of unparalleled love, gratitude, kindness, justice, and reconciliation that marks their community.

 

I suppose I also care about raising Santi in a racially mixed world.  I like that I have a community of African American kindred spirits.  I have appreciate watching how you try to grow diversity at IMCW, I appreciate the way you weave teaching about white privilege into your dharma talks, and I know of no better way than for him to have real relationships with all ages of black friends to save him from a naively white, privileged, male perspective. 

 

So, this is how I came to the decision.  I feel really good about how the day went.  I like that this is his church as well, with all of its warts.  I feel good that I introduced him to them.  I think this will matter over the long haul.  And it is a privilege to have kindred spirits in another race.  Those pieces fit well.  But, the piece that is still an unresolved mess, is my orientation, my shame, and how that is reinforced by entering a community that says I am wrong, bad, a sinner and flawed for the way that I love, or have been loving for nearly a decade.

 

Long answer, thanx for listening.  I look forward to catching up as your schedule allows.

 

Love,

Amy Lovejoy

 

5:34

 

I need to write for six more minutes to him y 44 minute mark.  It looks like 50 minutes is my sweet spot.  But, I can and will pump out five more minutes.  The tock clicks.

 

I have had so many rich spiritual relationships in  my life.  This is bound to be a theme in my book.  Will it be the main theme, I am not sure.  Bart is a renewed kindred spirit.  He in now way thinks that what I believe and practice is outside of a genuine connection with Christ.  Christ is the name he gives to what he calls the spirit that moves in and around and within the universe.  I would call it awareness or presence today.  He is very open to the possibility that we are using different words to describe the same thing.  He is preaching this fall on three phrases:

 

Come to me, You must die to self, and a third.  They all feel cross-walkable to me.  I suppose I am interested in finding the right language to name the lilly pad of my current resting place.  If I am dedicated to growing and embodying love and joy, what else matters, this is what matters most to me, and I am sure that presence is essential to live these qualities, regardless of what you name the source of all love and all joy. 

 

So is this what I would want a lover to know?  I suppose to know me, to really know me, to understand what moves me at the deepest level is to know these currents of practice, where they intersect and where they collide.  I won't worry about how I am going to include this theme, or if it is just one chapter, I will attempt to write Mullen and Sanders about the dedication tomorrow, or in the coming days, to unpack how writing different people changes what I say.

 

5:40.  The bell rings, time to go home.  I owe you at least another 50 minutes tonight.  Dear Jesus.  The breaks are too long.

 

7:35

 

I think I need to write for 50 more minutes.  The topic.  Encountering Betty's past.

 

8:15