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A Signature Faith

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 6 Comments

Faith and I have hit a rough patch lately. It’s only the five zillionth time or so that I’ve found myself alternately doubting God and storming against him; my inner teenager is determined to become a proper heathen, I think. In these times when my thoughts about religion smolder and char, the Bible reacts like gasoline, every word going up in an angry blaze. (I’m a joy to have at church, can you tell?) And anyway, I’ve never bought into Sola Scriptura for the same reason that I don’t believe Fox News when it claims to be the only unbiased channel—conflict of interest and all. I just cannot bring myself to blindly trust a source alleging to be the only truth.

So I sift through experience and impressions, listen to my instincts, taste the air for clues. I don’t have God’s character figured out, but I have to trust at least this: that he left his imprint on creation, that some remote corner of me bears his signature. And when I tune out theology altogether, I can almost start to make it out.

The first belief I find inked onto my heart is heaven. Doctrinally, the subject has always made me feel homesick and even miserable—hard golden streets and individual mansions in the sky for God’s groupies. No, no, no, my soul whispers. You were made for trees, whole unscarred forests of trees, and waterfalls and snowcapped mountains at sunrise. You were made to climb inside of symphonies and breathe art. And the puzzle pieces lock together in my mind: the moments I find myself on the cusp of pure creative energy… the healing, cleansing effects of beauty… this drive for more, always more out of life… the profound sensation that this world is broken… These compel me more than decades of sermons could that we were meant for eternity.

The other thing I can’t help believing, no matter how I feel about God, is Jesus. Maybe this makes no sense considering the Bible and I aren’t on speaking terms, but everything he said and did resonates so strongly with me and has so little to do odious churchy representations of him that I feel I must have always known him. I believe in him, not because I was told to (which only makes me want to go vandalize something), but because he wasn’t repulsed by doubt or greed or prostitution or shame or immaturity or nakedness or insanity. Because his commitment to world peace and soul-honesty would have offended many of the uppity religious personas today who profess to follow him. Because he drew people’s perspectives away from materialism and perfectionism toward extravagant generosity and fierce acceptance. Because he was radically different from anyone’s expectations and had love strong enough to forgive the people who butchered him.

The idea of heaven is counterintuitive to our five senses, and a kick-ass Jesus is counterintuitive to our religious traditions, and somehow, this helps convince me that they are true. And if these two things are the shape of God’s signature, then this helps convince me that faith is worth every minute of struggle.

12Sep

Soaring

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 7 Comments

“It’s that time of year,
Leave all our hopelessnesses aside,
If just for a little while;
Tears stop right here.”
~ Imogen Heap

My grandma passed away this morning in her sleep, just a few months shy of her 90th birthday. I nodded and mm hmmed matter-of-factly during the phone call like I had been expecting it, but in reality, I just didn’t know how else to react. I feel oddly disconnected here, as if grief politely stays on its own continent.

My memories of her flit in and out like animated Polaroids, grainy and mauve-tinted. We weren’t particularly close for many years—Granddad was the one with the root beer floats and sense of adventure while Grandma hovered nearby with a feather duster —but I knew she loved me. Beyond loving me, she approved of me in her gentle, pale pink way. My soul could flow free-form around her, a rare and deeply precious gift to my girlhood.

She gave me the best Christmas gift a ten-year-old girl could fathom: three colors of pastel eye shadow, a dark teal eyeliner, and the first glimmer of hope that my heart was worthy of a little glamor. She let me raid her closet and dress up as the socialite in my daydreams. She let me grow up at my own pace and didn’t question when I poured myself a coffee at age 15; she simply poured herself a matching mug and sat down with me to chat. She trusted me with family taboos and hurts, she asked me when she needed help, and she always cared. She cried the last time she hugged me goodbye.

Her soul was a bird, I think—fragile-boned and forever swooping between the vast weight of our atmosphere and heaven. As delicate as my grandma was, all vintage crystal and mist inside her skin, life couldn’t break her. Not that it didn’t try, but hardships were no match for that determined, devoted heart. In a childhood journal, I once wrote that I would be devastated if she died. Then, it was true. But now… I just want to cheer her on; gravity has lost its grip on my precious grandma, and she can finally soar.

9Sep

Optimism at its Stabbiest

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 1 Comment

Sometime last week, I tripped into a pothole—a deceptively deep one, maybe a rabbit hole in disguise—and it’s still too murky to see which direction is out. I’ve spent nearly every afternoon opening a blank document on my computer, staring at it, closing it, opening it again, cranking up Muse on my headphones, and thinking stabby thoughts. I’m hoping this is a sign of impending genius rather than just a depressingly generic slump. The one positive aspect of my creative mojo being replaced by a violent slug is that I can finally recognize this as temporary.

There was a day earlier this year so mindwrenchingly awful that I still can’t bring myself to write about it. It was the culmination of a jagged-edged winter colored with a sense of abandoment so vivid I couldn’t see anything else, and I lost my capacity to understand temporary. That was the line across which dying seemed less painful than living. Once deep became bottomless… well, it was hard to see the point in treading anymore.

So right now, despite an afternoon [unsuccessfully] stalking my creative energy with a garlic press and thinking in ferocious guitar riffs, I know it’s only a phase. This is what we here in Brain of Bethany call an accomplishment a miracle.

2Sep

When Life Hands You Sorrento Lemons…

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 5 Comments

I promised you a post about limoncello, oh, four months ago? And while I fully intended to write it the next day, my brain had other plans—not writing it, for example. My brain has since repented and would like to extend its sincerest apologies for making you wait so long. Without further ado, I give you…

How to make limoncello, crema di limoncello, and multiple weeks’ worth of messes in 11 easy steps!

~~~

Act I

Step 1: Make an impromptu getaway to the Amalfi Coast just when their luscious football-sized lemons are in season. Buy sixteen. Take immature pictures with them and try very hard not to think about whose college fund you just spent on a bag of fruit.

31Aug

Colors Blend

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 3 Comments

“I hold everything that is—
sand, time, the tree of the rain,
everything is alive so that I can be alive:
without moving I can see it all…”
~ Pablo Neruda

I imagine myself creating collages from wisps of words and these late-summer colors that will flutter away too soon.

I imagine myself writing at the desk in my corner nook with the autumn-tinted curtains and the window overlooking the fig tree, maybe wearing glasses, certainly with a mug of something inspiring.

I imagine myself flowing with the energy that produces firm abdominals and freshly baked cinnamon rolls, open eyes before the first alarm and no snoozing.

I imagine myself hanging my personality on the line and letting the breeze smooth away the wrinkles.

I imagine myself dissolving the judgment I feel (or conjure) at church in a jar of full-strength understanding until the colors blend together and I realize nothing is going to explode.

I imagine myself floating away on a Nickel Creek song into the dragonfly blue with a cloud bank pillow and the sun playing grace notes on my eyelids.

I imagine myself drinking in the love around me with thirsty pores and watching the too-tired, upset-stomach, bad-mother days blossom into life more abundant.

29Aug

Libidinous Angels

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 5 Comments

Growing up, I was never particularly fond of my freckles, by which I mean I hated them with the fire of a thousand suns. On the best days, I looked like a baby, and on the worst—for instance, after a morning of the Texas sun spreading rash-like across my skin—I looked like a lobster with fleas. Of this I was sure. “How cute!” middle-aged women at church would croon. “Angel kisses!” Yeah, an assault by the heavenly hosts, I would think. Probably the same angels that watch me pee. (Religious dysfunction, anyone?)

I stopped caring so much in high school, probably about the time I delved into makeup and black underwear and figured out that I was not entirely repulsive to the opposite gender. I started seeing my face rather than a splatter of unfortunate pigmentation in the mirror. Even now, living in a country of olive-skinned goddesses, I’m content to adorn my angel kisses in SPF 700 and look like my pale luminous self.

That being said, I didn’t realize how much tension would unwind in my heart when we entered the United Kingdom the first week of our vacation. All around us were quilt-blocked pastures dotted with sheep, paths meandering around a gentle sea, and freckles. Nearly everyone at our campground had a sprinkling of soft brown flecks, which launched my self-esteem into a musical number with dancing candlesticks and a chorus of syncopated bluebirds. I felt like I belonged. Even more, I finally saw what those middle-aged women had been crooning about. Because libidinous angels or not, freckles are kind of cute. Possibly even on me.

26Aug

Exclusive Access

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 6 Comments

Car Lingus – Part 2 (Part 1 here)

My husband’s boss works consistent 90-hour weeks and sees vacation as a time to cram in even more hours. He will fly to the United States for a meeting and then fly back in a single day, and if he’s running late to a social event, he just might rent a helicopter. He also likes to pull over rude motorists using his fake police light. The man’s interpretation of rational is on a different planet than ours… but even he thought we were crazy for attempting a drive to Ireland and back with two small children and a trunkful of camping gear in tow.

(He wasn’t even factoring in the rain that awaited in every single country, every single DAY of our trip.)

I’ll admit it was disconcerting that a man who drinks fourteen espressos a day thought our vacation plan was madness, but many of our best family memories are a result of our spontaneous (and possibly deranged) travels. Day 13 of this trip was no exception.

We had a tentative outline of a plan for the day:
1)      Take ferry from Dublin
2)      See sun for the first time in a week
3)      Revel, tan toes on dashboard, etc.
4)      All fall asleep except Dan, who would
5)      Drive us to Cardiff, at which point, we would
6)      Try to find obscure campsite we looked up online
7)      Eat, sleep, continue homeward

We made it to point 3 ½ before the Welsh landscape outside the car started punching our eyes out with its otherworldly beauty. It was like Tolkein’s imagination come to life or God’s favorite mystery novel, or maybe the moon. We passed short stone walls holding up craggy green mountains dotted with sheep and shale alike. We glimpsed rock formations plunging into rivers and secret clefts lined with dusky purple heather… and then we spotted the waterfalls. Did we really have any choice but to pull over, wake the girls up, and go mountain climbing? (No.)

Natalie may be young, but I hope that afternoon will sparkle as much in her memory when she’s 86 as it does now. It didn’t matter that we were wearing completely the wrong shoes or that the wind whipped our thin jackets into batter; we were having an adventure together in some of the most enchanting landscapes on earth. We were mountain goats. We were cavemen. We were Sacagawea, Yeats, and Aragorn all at once. Dan picked bouquets of heather for us, then went off to scale a cliff while the girls and I sang “Old MacDonald Had a Waterfall” into the blustery sky until we were dizzy. It was perfect.

In keeping with the impulsive theme, we blew off our original plan and followed a campground sign near the adorable town of Betws-y-Coed. Can I give a shout-out to spontaneity right now? Because that is how we ended up pitching our tent in the sloping green of a Welsh sheep farm with Snowdon Mountain sneaking peeks at us through the clouds. It was far beyond what I had imagined when I added camping in a national park to Ye Olde Life List, far more breathtaking, epic. I’m starting to think of spontaneity as a members-only club that has exclusive access to all the magic in life. (You may not think sheep are anything magical, but don’t tell that to your toddler.)

The next day, after breaking camp in the sunshine and driving off in a thunderstorm, we made our way to a place with a different kind of enchantment, one whispering of human effort and mystery. Stonehenge was smaller than I expected at first… but it grew in my mind as we followed the giant ring in the earth, learning about its mythology. My spine has a special thrill reserved for secrets of the universe—impossible ancient architecture, symphony notes in space, the concept of eternity—and this cluster of tall blue stones reverberated with the magic of un-knowing.

We wandered into the surrounding countryside, having conversations with mistrustful cows and swinging on barrow gates. Time evaporated there under the rolling English skies; we could easily have drifted through the wild grass until we turned into barrow wights. Of course, then we would have missed our train across the Channel, an unspeakable horror to the tune of €120. We turned toward home, making the 1500 kilometer drive without incident and then holding a joyful (if not exactly conscious) reunion with our pillowtop mattress. However, I think a part of me stayed behind to haunt the island—clambering up Welsh outcroppings, holding trysts in Celtic forests, and tip-toeing around the mysteries of my British ancestors.

I guess this simply means I’ll have to go back again. Preferably soon.

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