Shellfish

It might be more appropriate to title a blog post on Easter Sunday something having to do with new life, or resurrection, or something equally Eastery. And crustaceans do not apply. But shrimp are not really what's on my mind.

I have frequently referred to, and thought of, myself as selfish. I crave solitude. I love silence. I like solo activities like writing, walking, reading, gardening. I don’t volunteer. I don’t join clubs or book groups. I don’t hesitate to say “no” to invitations, even from friends, when it intrudes on my plans with myself. (I am trying to get better on that last--I need and love my friends.) I feel bad about my selfishness. Both of my sisters and my mother are generous women; what, I wonder, happened to that gene in me? My mother has always put others ahead of herself and her needs. I daresay she has never even honestly asked herself if that is what she needs.

Then, yesterday, I read Julia Cameron’s thoughts on the topic (Walking in this World). "We get our lives wrong because we get our questions wrong. We get our questions wrong because we have been raised in a culture that is punishing to the forms of freedom necessary for artists to flourish. These freedoms are the ones that allow us to be a little less nice so that we can be a little more genuine... It is my considered opinion that most creative people are actually too selfless... 'Selfish enough' gives us the self for self-expression... For an artist, being too virtuous is no virtue at all. It is destructive and counterproductive."

Wow. I have a hard time thinking of myself as an artist or a writer. I do consider myself creative, however. And I know when I don't have time to create, I am out-of-sorts. I can't squeeze it in between life and life's activities. It is life to me. (And maybe someday I can call myself an artist or writer. For now I am grateful to others who name it for me.)

I am so glad there are people in this world whose passions revolve around improving quality of life for other people. They are the heroes of the earth. Can I let it be okay that I am not that selfless? And could I start by not referring to myself with a word I consider a "bad person" word? Not selfish, in touch with my inner self. Sharing myself in a way tuned in to that inner me.

On Maundy Thursday,  at Pullen's evening service, I read the Matthew text about Jesus in the garden at Gethsemane, as I have for several years now. I know that people who have a need to categorize people have figured out what Jesus' Myers Briggs Inventory letters are. It doesn't really matter to me. If he was an introvert, he had highly evolved extrovert skills. If he was an extrovert, he was in tune with his need for solitude. I love this text, Jesus is so human in it. He is angry. He is afraid. He wants his life to go in another way, and he asks that it be so. And he accepts who he is. He asks his friends for "me time." In that moment, he is not there for them, he is taking care of his own needs. Did that make him selfish?

The MT service at Pullen includes foot-washing. Maundy meaning mandate, and Jesus mandating the importance of the symbolic act of foot-washing. I was honored to wash the feet of someone who had until this week, held back from this ritual. He told me later that he was prepared for the gift of washing my feet--the humble servant part--but he was surprised by the pleasure of receiving. I think many of us think it's selfish to enjoy receiving gifts. Begone with that idea, I say. I have suggested to my mother that if she can't bring herself to ask for what she needs, think of the people she is depriving of the opportunity to give. Better, though, to just sit back and allow oneself to be ministered to. And that includes ministering to oneself.

Lent is my season. I recognized that several years ago. I relish the quiet and introspection that the spiritual season asks of us. And I love being in the garden in the cold, when everything in the natural world is happening out of sight. And then slowly and quietly life sneaks back in. If we are dancing about the garden, we miss it. It is when we are quietly watching and waiting that we begin to notice a sprout here, a bud there. A bird song piercing the quiet, and the answering call from a distant roost.

New life happens for me at the end of Lent, again and again. It is, at first glance, coincidental and uncanny. But really it is not. It is my season. It is synchronicity. It is my self in touch with my world.

And now it is Easter. New life. Time to go back out. I wept through a singing of "In the Garden" this morning. Then went out and bought the garden a gift. A calla lily. As it turns out, a calla lily is neither a calla nor a lily. And I am not a shellfish. I am off to the garden. Alleluia!

I come to the garden alone
While the dew is still on the roses
And the voice I hear falling on my ear
The Son of God discloses.

And he walks with me and he talks with me

And he tells me I am his own

And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.