Seeking Authentic Voice

I've been reading Terry Tempest Williams' latest book, "When Women Were Birds" - a memoir of her mother. This is one reason memories of my mother surface within. Also. Friday, September 21, 2012 was the eighth anniversary of my mother's death. My memories of her are fading. Jergen's lotion reminds me of her hands. Someone will laugh, and I think of the tone of my mother’s laugh, tossing her natural red hair, green eyes shining bright. She claimed an Irish heritage but in reality she was of Scottish descent. Arscot is the family name on her mother’s side.   Holding only a high school diploma, she had a brilliant mind and a lifelong fascination with science and space. She might have been a novelist - gifted with an penchant for detail and a natural talent for storytelling. Her ability to spin reality into her own particular version, one she could live with , was convincing albeit confusing to me. Sadly her reality change, known in psychologi...

This week will be consumed with funerals and sorrow. One of our beloved saints of the parish, a woman 88 years old has died of a fast growing cancer. She made the decision to go in peace, exclaiming to me, and all who spoke to her, that she had lived a good life, and was ready. For a short time she thought she had six months, but it's only been one. Also our parish administrator has left town for the week. She has two family funerals, her sister-in-law died Sunday, and then her nephew (son of the sister-in-law) died sudden, in his sleep, the next day. I'll be extra busy. I always am when the parish admin is gone - she does so much for us! I hope her week is filled with grace, although it will also be a very difficult one. A week of grief and loss, a week of sorrow. A week of celebrating the gift and the fragility of life. I'll get back to reading and reflecting on "Called to Question" sometime soon - but not today.... Love Sorrow Love sorrow. ...

(The view from my mother's final resting place, along with my grandparents and an aunt, Salt Lake City, Utah) On September 21, 2004 I received a phone call about 11am. I was in the office at small church. The caller was my mother's roommate, a long time friend. My mother had a massive heart attack in the middle of the night and died. I left work and drove to her home, spending time with her body before she was taken away. My relationship with my mother was complicated. She was a lovely, charming, delightful, funny, woman. She was also profoundly damaged. She was 65. In her memory, a Mary Oliver poem. Complicated with a mix of delight, joy, and sorrow, including a child who has worked to find her own voice. Mary Oliver - Flare 1. Welcome to the silly, comforting poem. It is not the sunrise, which is a red rinse, which is flaring all over the eastern sky; it is not the rain falling out of the purse of God; it is not the blue helmet of the sky afterward, ...

The winter sun in Arizona crosses the sky, from horizon to horizon, at a sharp angle. No longer directly overhead, blistering hot, the winter sun is nonetheless intense. Blinding rays blast relentlessly into car and house windows for hours as it crosses the southern sky, east to west. Visors are not made for this angle of blaring light. Closing curtains and blinds is mandatory to tolerate being in the house and avoid fading furniture and artwork. The Sonoran Desert offers some 340 days of sun. Sand is another constant in the desert. Sand comprises most of the soil content, the ground is harsh to any but the most tolerant and hardy of growth. Cacti, shrub trees, some amazing flowering bushes. Sand is the color of the earth and homes. Sand refuses to absorb water, which runs off in dangerous currents until it finds some places to stop, or evaporate in the dry air. And when the wind blows, which it does every time the weather is changing - storms blowing in, change in temp. whatever, the ...