Cocooning

I was tooling towards Como Zoo with all three kids in the backseat when suddenly I realized I was heading south instead of north on 35W. Road construction was terrible. With all the lanes veering this way and that, somehow I ended up in an exit lane going the wrong direction. No big deal, I thought. Just get off at the next exit ramp and turn around.

But with all the detour signs and closed entrance ramps, what should have been a 40-minute trip ended up taking 1 1/2 hours. When I realized how far off course we'd actually gone, I felt like a tiny mouse in an impossible maze. I almost gave up. "Kids, we're so off the mark, I don't even know if I have enough gas to get all the way to St. Paul and back."

They were disappointed. I was mad, and talking to myself: Life is full of detours, Cheri, learn to embrace them. Maybe life IS a detour, and you're so angry about having to abandon your own map and plans that you're missing it! Stick with this. Enjoy the journey. Be an example to your kids.

But I think my higher-self was stuck in the trunk. My steering wheel will attest to the frustration and anger it --and everyone else in the car-- endured. I turned into the Wicked Witch of the West (only difference is I was going south). We made it to the Zoo, fueled only by my spite for the god of detours--the one who makes any human effort to arrive at a mapped destination seem insignificant and small.

And if you doubt there is such a god, can you please explain how we got lost on the way home, too?

It took me 2 days to de-compress. Because the Zoo-fiasco is simply magnifying how I feel about life in general. Two job opportunities that had me flying high with expectation and a new vision for my future crash-landed. My sister's fight with cancer, and watching the toll it is taking on her kids and husband (and also my mom and dad who are live-in help), is terribly sad. And my waitressing job (its scheduling issues, poor tipping from guests, etc) continues to thwart dedicated efforts to make ends meet.

Detour. Detour. Detour. I feel like I walk around with a permanent lump in my throat.

And yet God continues to speak through caterpillar (now in chrysallis) hanging from milkweed in my kitchen window. The road from caterpillar to butterfly includes a detour. We "watchers" expect the chrysallis phase, and even welcome it, because we know it's part of God's design. But does the caterpillar know the bigger picture? Does he think he's dying when he's hanging in that upside down J? Does he know he will emerge, in time, with wings?

Lord, help me to trust that I will get there (wherever "there" is) in your time and way. And help me to live in a state of grace, cherishing EVERY phase of the journey.

(Detour sign from FreePhoto.com)

After all these years, the thrill of watching a caterpillar transform is not lost to me.

The caterpillars are harder to find this year, so the Monarch population must be down. But after days and days of scouring milkweed at a nearby pond, I finally found one. The amazing thing is that 3 days after bringing it home and setting the leafy milkweed in a jar, the caterpillar formed its chrysallis. And yesterday our new butterfly was born!

We share a path
of cattails and milkweed
nests of new goslings
birch trees shedding paper
thin skin

Your sleeves long are rolled
to the wrist, cuffed
like navy-man's cap over brow of
phantom fingers, once strong hand
surrendered, given

to war?
defective birth?
angry machine?

You see me see you, and
delicate as a butterfly's wing
slip that arm behind
your back, protective (Of me? Of you? Should pain be polite?)
the loss an untold story,
a link where we connect

I am marching bolder now, or so it seems,
my own hand thrust before me, bearing
traditional summer torch:
pond treasure, milk-bleeding, with
cocoon-ready caterpillar clinging
to bobbing, leafy stalk

Our paths pass.
"Is that heron back there blue?" you ask
before tripping, embarrassed, on a grass-covered root

I hold my torch higher
so we can bear witness, both
to Monarch's promise

I know you fellow pond-walker
wound-wearing friend of
light-winged dragons
able-legged frogs
and willows weeping

"Oh look at these! Let's try sugar baby watermelon!"
"How about canteloupe?"

We stand at the market with seeds--sunflower
green bean, cucumber, peas--packets
fanned between our fingers like cards
in a winning hand of poker

With fertile imaginations
we introduce our fingers to soil
imitating the back-aching posture
of earth's first farmers

Then, we watch and wait
from windows of a borrowed home
anticipating a picnic feast of fresh--
From windows of a borrowed home we watch
and wait
still in farmer's prayerful pose
Is earth's economy broken, too?

winning hand for this year
folded


by Cheri Mueller



The day after I wrote this poem, I was sent an article via email: 31 ways to Jump Start the Local Economy. I was most intrigued by the section with suggestions for friends--things we can do TOGETHER!

TOGETHER WITH FRIENDS


Form a dinner club and hold a weekly potluck, or trade off cooking and hosting.


Dip your toe in the barter economy. Check out Craigslist’s “barter” category, and learn what WTT means (Willing To Trade). Even better, ask the guy at work who makes microbrews to trade a sixpack for a dozen of your chickens’ eggs.


Get together with coworkers and start a list of things you can do at work. For example, buy fair trade coffee, change to energy-efficient lighting, or carpool.


Start a Common Security Club in your faith community or neighborhood to help folks cope in the crisis and act together to create the new economy (www.commonsecurityclub.org).


Exchange care of children and elders. Better yet, bring the generations together and support each in offering love and care to the others.


Pool funds with a group of friends for home repairs, greening projects, or emergencies.


Do home work parties. Each month, go to a different household to do major home greening, a garden upgrade, or some deferred maintenance.


Keep more people from becoming homeless by challenging evictions and occupying vacant homes.


Create a space at a farmers market to exchange or sell used clothes, electronics, games, CDs, plants, seeds, compost, and books. Encourage people to swap services, too, like haircuts, photography, or prepared dinners.


Reach out to groups that are organizing people on the frontlines of the crisis, like Jobs with Justice (www.jwj.org) and Right to the City (www.righttothecity.org).


Did any of these ideas intrigue YOU?? My mind is spinning with possibilities that I'd like to explore. Maybe this broken economy will help heal our ability to reach out and relate to each other. Maybe through our difficulties we can find ways to create circles of genuine, interdependent community! To read the entire article, click here: http://www.dailygood.org/more.php?n=3741

When I came home from work late Saturday night (Mother's Day Eve), Rich had flowers waiting for me and a small gift: a framed silhouette of an angel and the words,

"BELIEVE in the promise of this day."

Rich is good at living in the moment, and savoring life's small things. And so I don't think he was intentionally referencing my sister's battle with cancer when he made this particular Mother's Day purchase. But, I couldn't help but think about my sister when I placed the gift on my living room bookcase.

The plaque is a wonderful reminder to live each day fully, and to cherish every person God puts in my life. Sue faces her life-threatening illness with courage, grace, and most importantly God-given HOPE. But I think it's her willingness to face mortality straight on (instead of deny it) that helps her to live in the moment, and at the same time believe in her Creator to sustain and heal her. . .to supply ALL her needs. Sue's journey and her willingness to talk about it is helping me to do the same. To trust God with every little detail of my life.

Thinking about how much it would help everyone to face their mortality, I went on a search for the bible verse that says something about our days being numbered, and surprisingly a verse from Isaiah found me instead. It's a verse I underlined last year, on Mother's Day when I was involved in a biblestudy on the feminine images of God:

"Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See I have engraved you on the palms of my hands." (Isaiah 49: 15-16)

Amazing! Engraved on the palms of God's hands with a promise that we'll NEVER be forgotten. Nurtured and cherished forever by our life-sustaining Spiritual Mother. She is hushing our fearful cries with a lullaby of LOVE. Can you imagine it? YOUR name carved into the hands of the very arms that embrace you?

And so on this Mother's Day, my kids and I did nothing out of the ordinary, but to me it was extra-ordinary: playing kickball as a family, laughing with the neighborhood kids, sitting around our kitchen table sharing Gina Maria's pizza, running to Target with Jennifer for weed-killer (or maybe I should learn to love the dandelions too? Ha!) browsing books at the library, chatting with my mom on the phone, and losing my breath all over again at the beauty of the flowers in our garden.

May we learn to trust our Heavenly Mother with the problems of tomorrow, and BELIEVE in the promise of this day!

There's so much to worry about these days. Making ends meet from month to month, my sister's battle with cancer (with these two things the list is long enough), my youngest son's progress at school, finding a new job. And most recently the viability of our current rental situation has come into question. Needless to say, there's been a lot on my heart and mind, and quite honestly I've been feeling the weight of it all.

This morning a little cup of wildflowers were sitting in my kitchen window. Jennifer must have picked them and placed them there yesterday. They turned my thoughts towards Matthew 6. Moments later, I read my sister's blog about learning to give up control (and the anxiety that comes with it http://www.whatitmeanstobeheld.blogspot.com/). Both were fresh reminders that God is laboring, spinning, growing, and blooming HIS plan for me.

It inspired me to take Sean outside with the camera to capture some of the surprising spring miracles in our very own yard:

The crabtree Sean is climbing will soon be in full bloom! What a miracle in the making! My Great Gardener shall supply ALL my needs. . .

Matthew 6:25-34 "Why do you worry? See how the lillies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these!"

Therefore I tell you, "Do not worry about your life!"