Reminders

When I was eight, we went to visit my grandmother for the last time at her beautiful old rickety farmhouse in the Shenandoah valley before she moved to a retirement "cottage", whatever that means. I fell off her exercise bike and cut my knee open, and when I saw the cut I hoped it would scar so I would have some reminder of my last day in those thistle-covered hills between the mountains. It wasn't a bad cut, but it scarred just like I wanted it to.

The burn where I hit my finger on the heating element of Dorte's oven while taking out a sheet of gingerbread people is fading, but I hope it won't vanish entirely. I'd rather like to have a memento of that evening with Ricky and his cousin in the living room watching "Jul i Valhal", the December night kept at bay by a pot of tea on the table and the Christmas lights hung from the curtainrod, and the smell of gingerbread.

Take my life and let me be

My father says that when he was a child, he had this goal of making his life a constant prayer. He laughs at the idea now, partly because he's an atheist but mostly at the idea that anyone ever could.

In my Quakerism class today we talked about the beliefs of the original Quakers, one of which is that life should focus on continuous and active worship. They believed that God is always present and might send revelations to anyone at any time, so we should always be listening. To do that you're supposed to clear out all the noise from your life and your thinking – thus the emphasis on simplicity. You're supposed to look to the Gospels for guidance on living the nonreligious parts of your life, but the real goal is to fuse your life so there are no nonreligious parts.

And the way you spend your time, the work you do, is to be examined for its implications. So if you go to Meeting every week but the work you do supports the military, that's wrong. But if you work writing railway schedules, you write them to the glory of God, because you're serving your fellow humans by letting them know what time their train leaves. And doing the work God calls you to do, they believed, leads to inner peace. It reminds me of Kahlil Gibran:

And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.
And what is it to work with love?
It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.
It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.
It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.

I don't know anyone who's fused all the parts of their life, who can make every moment intentional or prayerful or whatever you want to call it. But I'm not going to laugh at the idea.

Of course, I can't very well spend my life in worship since I can't bring myself to believe there's anything out there to worship. What am I listening for, since I don't believe there's anyone out there speaking? I know there are agnostic and atheist Quakers out there, but I don't know how they reconcile all this. Perhaps "reverential" is a better word?

Sometimes our voices give out, but not our ages and our phone numbers

I've discovered the greatest advantage to living in a rather unwired room: when someone asks me for my number I can answer with perfect truth that I don't have one. As I was leaving the lunch after Quaker meeting this fact was vital in escaping the extremely strange Abercrombie-shirted (honestly! at a Quaker meeting?) fellow sitting next to me spilling soup on himself and asking me, at completely random intervals when I was clearly listening to a different conversation, what kind of music I listen to and had I seen any movies lately and do I play any sports. Never have I been so grateful not to have a working telephone.

Altruism

Tonight as I was rifling through the house's free box, Kaity joined me and found a purple yoga mat. I was delighted on her behalf, but when she realized I would have loved it too she offered to put it in the spare room where probably neither of us will use it. I love living here.

In a nutshell

I've just read the perfect description of my religious identity (or lack thereof). One of the readings for my class on the history of Quakerism mentions a gathering with "great numbers of Presbyterians and several Jews . . . with divers others that neither themselves nor anyone else can tell what sect they follow or imitate." I picture them looking really confused and kind of shrugging when asked.

A room of one's own

Just before heading back to school I was listening to Cowboy Take Me Away a lot and rereading Anne LaBastille's Woodswoman and generally wanting to go live in the wilderness someplace and get up early and drink cold water and spend a lot of time not talking. That hasn't exactly come true, but I'm now moved into my sunny little hardwood-floored room in Bryn Mawr's vegan co-op. It looks over the woods and the creek, now dusted with snow.

When I was dating Simon, I felt like every anecdote from my past life involved Bridget in some way. Being around Ricky, it seemed that every story involved Simon. Before I left Richmond, I was telling some story to Simon and thinking, "Oh, but he was probably there for this" but then realized that it had happened before I knew him. It felt good to suddenly be reminded that I have a life as just Julia, not in the context of a relationship with someone else.

The night before I left I was searching in the attic for something and found a vagabond doll I had made when I was ten. I was very into vagabonds for some reason, particularly with the idea of carrying all one's belongings in sledges or packs. My doll was made of an old pair of white tights and had strapped to her back a pack containing a shirt, pants, a skirt to wear alone or over the pants in cold weather, a cooking pot made of masking tape, a waterproof ground cloth, and a tent. (I think originally she had a cardboard dog and a snare for catching rabbits as well. Unfortunately I forgot to give her a knife or way of making fire, so I hate to think how she would have dealt with any rabbits she caught.) I was delighted to see this miniature Anne LaBastille I had made up half a lifetime ago, a model of independence.

My goal for this semester is to learn how to live without anybody particularly important in my life, but to stay connected to people - alone but not lonely.