On Earth As It Is In Heaven

I canned ten quarts of peaches today. Not because I am or want to be Martha Stewart. Not because I have anything against the peaches you buy in cans at the local Stuff*Mart (actually, The Baby declared that she likes those better, though she has yet to taste the home-canned goods). Not because I grew my own peaches, because I didn't--my peach tree died last year after finally producing a heavy crop of almost-ripe fruit which calcified before it was time to harvest, just before all of the leaves turned a crisp peach-tree-death brown and fell to the ground.

I canned ten quarts of peaches today because I like the way they look, floating around in that fragile yet sturdy transparent jar, fleshy and buoyant and preserved. I like the way they look, and I like that I like the way they look. Some people like beer. Some people like cigarettes. Some people like hunting. I like canning peaches, okay?

Yesterday, while I was picking up a few canning supplies at my local necessary evil Stuff*Mart, I dropped my hodgepodge of shopping bags onto the conveyor. The young man at the counter, always up for a bit of controversial yet lighthearted conversation, grabbed the bags with mock begrudgery and sneered, "Thanks for ruining my day."

"Ruining your day? Oh...because one of my bags is torn?"
"No," he huffed, "for using them at all."
"Well, just look at it this way; I'm helping you in the long run."
"Ha! If you really think you're powerful enough to save the planet by not using a few plastic bags..."
"A little corner of it, yes..."
"...then, Al Gore certainly has brainwashed you."
"I've never even spoken to Al Gore."

A further conversation ensued about Al Gore's electricity usage and the size of his carbon footprint.

But that's not what I was thinking about.

I was thinking about my shopping bags. I was thinking that I like them. Not because I'm an Al Gore fanatic. Not because I'm trying to save the entire world. Just because I like them. I like how useful they are. I like that my daughter used them to move to her college dorm. I like how I can throw them in the washing machine and they come out nice and clean. I like the red ones and the green ones that are stamped with the words, "Speak Softly and Carry a Bag of Books" that I bought at the Better World Books store in Goshen, Indiana, a business that collects and sells books to fund literacy initiatives worldwide, with more than two million new and used titles in stock, operating as a self-sustaining company that creates social, economic and environmental value for all our stakeholders. Better World offers free shipping to any location within the United States or 3.97 worldwide, and every order is shipped carbon neutral with offsets from Carbonfund.org. And while I like my shopping bags, I also like that I'm not contributing to the consumption of 500,000,000,000 (yes, that's BILLION) plastic bags per year. I don't like to see them floating around in the trees. You don't either. Even Wal*Mart doesn't like it. That's why they stopped producing those trademark blue smiley-face bags that could be easily identified on roadsides and dangling from trees everywhere and went with the more generic white bags, added trash cans to their parking lots, and introduced their own line of reusable shopping bags. Watching a sea turtle choke on that blue plastic smiley face is a PR nightmare.

I was thinking about how I stopped buying paper towels about a year ago, and how I pick up cloth napkins and hand towels from my favorite thrift store, and how the money I spend there goes to help provide basic human needs internationally while the store also does their part to help people recycle things that they might otherwise have thrown away. I was thinking about the fact that I love that thrift store so much that I drag my sorry butt out of bed three Friday mornings per month to volunteer at the cash register.

I was also thinking about the furniture in my house, how almost all of it, with some very minor exceptions, came from that thrift store, or from Freecycle, or from dumpster diving.

And I was thinking about the local farmers I support, buying produce and deliciously smoky maple syrup and vases of gladiolas from that wonderful little stand called Blessing Acres run by a hard-working Amish woman whose husband died of cancer two years ago.

I might even have had time to squeeze in a few thoughts about the lack of chemicals on my lawn, how I bend down to pop a dandelion or broadleaf plantain out of my lawn and either eat it or toss it to the sheep, or how I let the milkweed, thistle and blackberries grow to provide food for the monarchs, goldfinches and other birds. How I didn't till my garden this year, but instead heaped it with all kinds of manure, both animal and green, and spent a few more hours this summer hunched over yanking bits of purslane out of the soil and popping them into my mouth, just so I wouldn't chop up the worms I've been trying so hard to encourage to live in my garden.

Because you can have a lot of thoughts in those few seconds after someone says, "Thanks for ruining my day."

I guess I just figure that God gave me this amazing planet and all of the absolutely incredible creatures that inhabit it (yes, humans included) to enjoy and be a good steward of. The way I look at it, in relation to heaven, this big ball of dirt must be pretty small, and if I'm faithful with it, I might get something bigger some day. That'd be cool.

So, now, I probably won't save the whole planet with my canned peaches, or my cloth shopping bags, or my thrift store napkins, or the redworms in my garden. But really. What's it gonna hurt?

And besides, I *like* them.

::: this one's for you, wherever you are :::

Life is too doggone short, you know?

This week, two of my friends have lost parents to complications from cancer. This evening, I attended the memorial service of one. I hadn't known my friend's dad very well at all, but listening to the people who spoke about his life, I was so sorry that I hadn't known him better. As a matter of fact, the longer I sat there, the more sorry I became that there are a lot of people I don't know as well as I should, and I was saddened by how unfamiliar everything was to me. Yeah, I was in a familiar church. Sure, I knew a lot of faces. Yes, I count some of those people as friends. But do I really know them? Do they really know me?

I remember when my uncle Paul died of a brain tumor about 12 years ago. I slinked into the funeral parlor sheepishly, not really wanting to make conversation with anyone. Though I spent a lot of time as a child at my aunt and uncle's house, I never felt like part of that family. I never felt like they knew me or loved me. For some reason, I always got the distinct feeling that I was the troublemaker, the black sheep. Even now, when my dad talks to his sister, I know that the bulk of their conversation is centered around me, my mistakes, my bad choices, my failures. So I didn't feel welcomed in that family, and I didn't feel welcomed at that funeral.

But when people began to talk about my uncle and the choices he made as a man with a brain tumor, the faith choices, I began to see him in a different light, and I wondered why I hadn't spent more time getting to know him. The people who shared what they knew about my uncle were strangers to me, and the man they talked about was just as much of a stranger. I hadn't known him as a man of faith. I had known him as a tough, strong, condescending kind of man. I remembered him as the big, scary person who would make fun of me--not tease me, mind you, but make fun of me--for having knots in my hair or stains on my pants or dumb-looking dolls. I always felt small and insignificant and stupid around him. Who was this great man all of these people were talking about at this funeral? Why hadn't I met *that* man? Why hadn't *he* been my uncle? What had I done wrong to lose out on *that* relationship?

I'm not saying it was all his fault, either. I don't have such a great track record with carrying on deep, meaningful relationships. I think my expectations of myself are too high. If I can't be a perfect friend, a best friend, then there's no point in trying to be a friend at all, you know?

And I'm pretty hard on friends, too, to be fair. Not as hard as I am on myself, but pretty darn hard. I expect a lot of a friendship, though I may not say that aloud. So if you're not going to be a true blue friend, don't even make the effort. Harsh, huh? I guess the older I get, the more of a misanthrope I become.

Because I've put myself out there quite a few times, taken the risk, exposed my soft (and it really is soft) underbelly. And I've been hurt so many times because of that vulnerability, torn apart by people who claim to know me but have never really taken the time to do anything other than judge me and look for my faults and then tell me, in no uncertain terms, how badly I've screwed up, that it gets harder and harder to put my real feelings out here on this blog for fear of being misunderstood, misjudged, and truly attacked.

Yet here I am again. And why? Because one person told me tonight that they miss my blog entries. That they enjoy my writing.

My son told me recently that it's been proven that it takes seven positive things to cancel out one negative thing. In other words, if one person in my life tells me that I'm a screw-up, that I've failed, that I really let them down, it takes seven people saying great things about me to neutralize that negative thing. I think that's a bit conservative, actually. I'd venture to say that it takes ten positives. Maybe even twenty. And I'm not sure that those harsh, hateful words ever disappear. I think they just sit there, haunting every word I type, sometimes just lying about benignly, but only until someone even hints at one of my weaknesses, and then all of those negative things come back to the surface, sniffing for wounds and ripping open a major artery like the 1916 shark attacks along the Jersey Shore.

So maybe you were number seven, Brenda. Or maybe your sincerity was enough to be numbers five, six and seven altogether.

Or maybe it was you, Mel, when you asked me if I feel that blogging is a valid way of recording family history (and for those of you who are wondering, my answer was yes), listened to my less-than-expert ramblings with patience, and made me realize that, if I believe that these writings are valid, accurate records of a life, I should probably keep at it, even in the face of the nasty trolls, both real and imagined, who try to convince me of my worthlessness. Because, as I've said before, this blog is not for them. It's for me. It's for my family. It's for Kim and Paul and Catherine and Nicholas. It's for Brenda and Mel. It's for Jill and MamaGeph and Michael and Kris. It's for Tammy and Hope and Kathie and Gina. It's for Donna and Diane and True and Lil Sis, Raymond and I.M and Patrick and Dean, Peaceful Lady and Marie and MamaNutt and Linda and Gail and Analisa and TulipGirl. It's for you who come here to cry with me, and laugh with me and empathize and nod and cheer, to comment or not to comment, but to read. To think. To be changed. To muddle through with me.

And it's for God. It's what I promised him when I handed over this mess of a life, this brief, fleeting moment, this comic tragedy. It's his to do with what he wants, to use how he sees fit.

I thank God for Benny, even though I only knew him for a fraction of a second. His life and death gave opportunity for all of us with our own fleeting moments to gather in one room for long enough to get yet another glimpse into each other's lives.

Can we get together more often? And not just at weddings and funerals over coffee and lemon bars? Can we enmesh ourselves in each other's lives, cook with each other, sing with each other, worship together, watch movies together, get angry together, and still accept each other with the same unconditional love with which Christ accepts us?

I want to get to know you deeply, truly, so that we don't sit at each other's funerals and say, "Gosh. I wish I would have known her."

Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin'...

It's been a month, I know, and I find it harder and harder to make time for this blog, as well as making motivation. I hope to sit down and give explanation eventually, but, for now, just know that life is sailing right along here, that things are happening, and things are not. Some big things are changing, some are staying the same. Hearts are being searched, minds are being stretched and time is at a premium, as always.