sometimes you are wrong

The words "I'm sorry" have been typed on paper in a typewriter

Or, more to the point, recently I was wrong.

I was talking with some friends and I said something that stereotyped a group of people, and one friend called me on it. Did I handle it well? Not in that moment. The hot flush of shame rose up my neck and I defended myself. Because I knew my intentions, and I knew my love and respect for the people I’d stereotyped. My words hadn’t been mean-spirited. So I justified my behavior. And the friend and I parted for the evening.

It took all of 10 minutes for me to realize that I’d been wrong.

I immediately sent her an apology for bungling what I’d been trying to say, but by the time I saw her the next day, I was grateful to her for calling me on my words. It would’ve been so easy to just get mad and leave the conversation and then express her frustration to other people. But she didn’t, and because of that, I was given the opportunity to hear my words from another’s point of view: I couldn’t hear the stereotyping until she revealed it to me. I asked for her forgiveness, she gave it, and our friendship deepened.

So why am I sharing this story that doesn’t put me in the best light?

I am concerned about my Christian brothers and sisters, both as individuals and as institutions: we are too concerned with justifying ourselves, our words, our actions. When other people point out how wrong, how hurtful, how against our own principles our words or actions are, we don’t get past the initial flush of shame and self-defense. We do not take the prayerful time to see whether God might be telling us something through the critic, something we need to pay attention to. We seem to have lost the inclination and ability to ask for forgiveness from people we’ve hurt and wronged. And seeing that we’ve been wrong and asking forgiveness is basic to our faith.

There is biblical precedence for God using someone else to tell us what we need to hear. There is the famous story of the prophet Nathan getting David to see the wrongness of his behavior with Bathsheba and Uriah, causing David to confess his sin (2 Samuel 12:1-13). There’s another interesting story about David. After he’d been king of Israel for some time, he chose to flee Jerusalem when his son Absalom staged a coup. This happened when they were on the run (2 Samuel 16:5-13):

As King David came to Bahurim, a man came out of the village cursing them. It was Shimei son of Gera, from the same clan as Saul’s family. He threw stones at the king and the king’s officers and all the mighty warriors who surrounded him. “Get out of here, you murderer, you scoundrel!” he shouted at David. “The Lord is paying you back for all the bloodshed in Saul’s clan. You stole his throne, and now the Lord has given it to your son Absalom. At last you will taste some of your own medicine, for you are a murderer!”

“Why should this dead dog curse my lord the king?” Abishai son of Zeruiah demanded. “Let me go over and cut off his head!”

“No!” the king said. “Who asked your opinion, you sons of Zeruiah! If the Lord has told him to curse me, who are you to stop him?”

Then David said to Abishai and to all his servants, “My own son is trying to kill me. Doesn’t this relative of Saul have even more reason to do so? Leave him alone and let him curse, for the Lord has told him to do it. And perhaps the Lord will see that I am being wronged and will bless me because of these curses today.” So David and his men continued down the road, and Shimei kept pace with them on a nearby hillside, cursing and throwing stones and dirt at David.

It would certainly have been within the culture of kingship to give his nephew, Abishai, the nod to cut off Shimei’s head–the man was insulting and lobbing weapons at him. It might even have satisfied a frustrated urge to lash out, since David was choosing not to fight against his son. But David didn’t choose that. He was a man after God’s own heart, and he recognized that God’s way is not always the comfortable way, that sometimes God is in the person telling you that you did wrong things. Now, David didn’t repent of taking over the kingship of Israel, but he did accept it when God told him that he wouldn’t be the one to build the Temple because he had shed much blood (1 Chronicles 28:3). Perhaps Shimei’s actions prepared him to hear that message.

And then there’s the story about David’s first attempt to bring the recovered Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem. The Ark was carried on an oxen-drawn cart amid a grand parade of soldiers and people, with singing and playing of musical instruments.

But when they arrived at the threshing floor of Nacon, the oxen stumbled, and Uzzah reached out his hand and steadied the Ark of God. Then the Lord’s anger was aroused against Uzzah, and God struck him dead because of this. So Uzzah died right there beside the Ark of God. (2 Samuel 6:6-7)

I don’t really get this story. I don’t like it. Uzzah was just trying to make sure the Ark didn’t wind up in the dirt. Surely that was a good thing to do. But God’s earlier directions to the Israelites were clear: only certain people could carry the Ark, but even they could not touch it, and the penalty for doing so was death (Numbers 4:15).

The only way I can approach this story is to hear this message in it: our good intentions do not excuse the action. If our actions or words are wrong, that is more important to God than our intentions being right.

Our belief in our good intentions keeps us from being open to the idea that we may have said or done something wrong, something sinful. It keeps us from moving beyond the hot flush of shame and self-defense. It blocks us from the blessing of forgiveness.

It’s my prayer that we lovers of Jesus grow ever more able to move past our good intentions and towards the ability to not only see when we’ve been wrong, but also to admit it, and even to ask forgiveness for it. It would be a glorious witness.

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes you have to toss the curriculum

a little boy is stretched out on his stomach, reading a big Bible

This past Sunday was one of those days. Instead of talking about the Apostle Paul, I taught my Sunday school class (4-year-olds through 5th-graders) about lament and then we wrote our own.

Here’s what I said:

Normally in Children’s Worship and Sunday school we tell stories about great things God has done and great things people have done because they had faith in God, but there are other parts of the Bible. In some parts of the Bible people are really angry, and really sad, and they’re even angry and sad at God. And they wrote about it. There are a bunch of what we call Psalms of Lament, where people tell all their strong feelings to God.

Now, I may have made a tactical error in the psalms I read. The kids (6 boys, 1 girl) were a little too enamored with Psalm 3:7:

Arise, O Lord!
Rescue me, my God!
Slap all my enemies in the face!
Shatter the teeth of the wicked!

Not to mention Psalm 58:

Justice–do you rulers know the meaning of the word?
Do you judge the people fairly?
No, all your dealings are crooked;
you hand out violence instead of justice…
They spit poison like deadly snakes;
they are like cobras that refuse to listen…
Break off their fangs, O God!
Smash the jaws of these lions, O Lord!

I apologize to any parents who were wondering where their kids got those images from. I did attempt to point out that the writers were asking God to do these things, not giving them license to, but one never knows how much that sinks in compared to the high drama of slapping faces and breaking off fangs.

After I read a few Psalms, I unrolled a big piece of paper and told them that we’d write our own Psalm of Lament about what was going on in their lives. There is a general structure among many laments:

This is what’s going on in the world and in my life
It makes me feel
AND YET, I know this is true about you, God
BECAUSE OF THAT, I will
O God, please

We followed that structure, and amid silliness and kid squirminess, they were vulnerable and wise and dear, even those who sat quietly, watching with wide eyes. When they were answering what they would do, they got on a roll talking about what they’d eat (strawberries and sandwiches featured heavily), so I interpreted that as taking care of themselves–since we often forget to do that when we’re mad and sad. And the teacher in me couldn’t stop from contributing the last line.

Here’s what was on these kids’ minds and hearts this weekend:

PSALM OF LAMENT

This is what’s going on in the world and in my life
Donald Trump became President
Somebody got in a car accident
Cancer
My friends get me in trouble
Diseases–they are strong
Blustery winds that made trees fall down
Hurricanes
Ungrateful people

It makes me feel
mad
sad
angry
angry at people
sick
scared
like moving to Canada
not happy

AND YET, I know this is true
God be helpful
God is caring
God loves other people
God carries you
God can help people become better people
God helps people get through hard things
God has helped me learn
God has a son named Jesus

BECAUSE OF THAT, I will
Help stop cancer
Help people get through what they’re going through even though I’m going through something bad, too
Keep taking care of myself
Get out and vote
Tell my friends to stop busting me for no reason

O God, please
help stop hurricanes
convince people to go out and vote
help us to love each other better

From troubles with friends to health issues to natural disasters to troubles in our country, kids have a lot going on. It was a privilege to help them put it into words and express it to God and to each other.

Tomochichi Mico and the Georgia Trustees

 

Painting by William Verelst of Chief Tomochichi and a delegation of Native Americans with James Oglethorpe and the Georgia Trustees, London, 1734.
Painting by William Verelst of Chief Tomochichi and a delegation of Native Americans with James Oglethorpe and the Georgia Trustees, London, 1734.

[This is a story I wrote for the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction competition. I had to write 1,000 words of historical fiction that took place at a book signing and involved a pumpkin. I don’t think it’s a great story, but I learned some interesting stuff about American history that I didn’t know before, so I’m sharing it and the painting that inspired the story.]

***

“Oh, they call me Tomochichi Mico, or Chief, but like they are humoring a child who has declared himself to be a rabbit for the day. There is a different tone than when they say My Lord or Your Grace to each other.”

“But you are not theirs and they are not yours.” Scenawki smoothed the ends of the deerskin cord against my chest.

As usual, my wife was right.

Her eyes crinkled with affection. “Was it only a few moons ago that Toonahowi insisted on being called Sir Hare?”

I snorted. “And now look at him, in his white stockings and blue silk coat, prancing like an English horse.”

“It’s fun to put on another’s skin.” She swished her skirts so they sounded like dry leaves.

“What do they call that color?”

“Orange.”

“It suits you. But I miss seeing your beautiful brown legs.”

She laughed. “Ever the diplomat, Tomo. Ever the diplomat.”

“Better than constant war.”

“With me or with the English?”

But I couldn’t answer her teasing, because it was time to pose for the painting. The men of the Georgia Trustees were in place, most of them on the stairs, higher than us by several heads. Oglethorpe was in the center, of course, holding my nephew’s hand, putting Toonahowi in a position of greater honor than his chief. They would never have treated their King George that way, and he would never have allowed it, but for the sake of my people, I bore it with dignity.

And a little one-upmanship.

I could see them cutting glances at our bare shoulders and legs. Jealous. Their bodies were like puffball mushrooms. It was laughable how they tried to show off their legs or square their padded coats at us. I had seen at least ninety summers, and I could’ve run them all into the ground.

Was it petty to make sure my right leg was visible up to the top of my thigh? To reach out my arm so the muscles were in relief? Yes. But I do not apologize for it. Neither do I apologize for Lamochattee, who turned his back to the painter and looked over his massive shoulder. Or Yaholo, who fanned out his eagle feather stick and turned his leg so his knee tassel showed.

None of that would derail my diplomacy. Still, Scenawki looked in the opposite direction. Whether she disapproved or was trying not to giggle, I don’t know.

I could wait in perfect stillness from sunup to sundown while hunting, but posing for the painting almost did me in. And after that, making my mark on all those books. But tonight’s event was why we came. I would suffer through anything to hold up the seedling of my dreams for my people and for theirs, and see whether it would get watered or get scorched.

**

My clothes were those the English would like: garments that covered my skin and were, themselves, covered in tassels, shell embroidery, and bone inlays. I wore sprays of feathers and quills in my hair. I was ready.

Oglethorpe brought me to the front of the room. “Esteemed Georgia Trustees, and friends of exploration and trade, thank you for coming to meet my friend, Tomochichi Mico. We have worked well together in the year since we settled southern Georgia in February of 1733, and unlike some other areas, we have peace. It is our hope that we always do. The Chief gave this speech in his language to our colleague Mary Musgrove, who translated it and taught it to him in English. I trust that you will find him as eloquent and as compelling as I do.”

“Friends of General Oglethorpe, and, I hope, friends of the Yamacraw, thank you. We are not so different, you and I.”

Oglethorpe looked back and forth between us, and the people laughed.

“I was born in the Isti nation, who you call the Creek, but I gathered together some Creek and some Yamasee and settled new land as a new people, the Yamacraw. So I understand the impulse of your people to settle new lands. We are pleased to share our mutual new home, but I do not want my people and your people to merely survive. I want us to grow in strength—together.

“We left to come here in the time you call June, and my people were planting a food that has gotten us through many a hard winter: the Pumpkin.”

My family moved through the crowd, offering them strips of roasted and dried pumpkin, and Toonahowi tossed me a whole, dried one—a deep clay colored beauty with dark green streaks. I rattled the seeds in a circle dance rhythm until I felt like myself again.

“After all your hospitality, please accept this gift. But it is more than a gift for now. I know that you have received reports of struggling crops from your settlers. Accept our offer to share the seeds and the knowledge of local growing conditions that have sustained my people for generations. In return, may I confess my deepest desire? It is for my people to learn your language and to learn to read. We can do so much more trade in goods, in knowledge, and in sustained peace when we know the same tongue. Will you help us, friends?”

Then it was Oglethorpe’s turn to convince the Trustees to buy a signed chapbook of the speech I just gave, to support what he called an Indian school.

So many wrong names they gave us, but to keep their favor I bit my tongue.

Again.

I lifted a book above my head. “It is too late for this old warrior to learn to read these chicken scratches you call words, but it is not too late for my nephew. You have grown to love him during these days. Please love his future, as well.”

**

Two summers later, we had our school. And the Yamacraw had a chance at fair trade.

 

 

#DedicateYourNoTrumpVote

The United States is my father’s fourth country. He was born in the Netherlands at the beginning of World War II. His first memory is of playing outside while an air ride siren blared and his terrified mother screamed at him from the house to come in; he was two, so he ignored her. They had to move in with two other families during the Hunger Winter. The relative who owned the house also owned a soup factory, so they had food stores, but the Nazis had commandeered all the good stuff that went into the soups. They were left with fish heads and skeletons, which they ground into a paste and mixed with whatever rotten vegetables they managed to hide. My dad ate it happily because he was so young, but the older kids and adults ate separately so the little ones wouldn’t see them gag. At least one Jewish person was hidden in plain sight in this household, and my father’s aunt would feed any itinerant person who knocked at the gate. His father was in the Resistance, so he was often gone, but if the Nazis got wind that he might be home, they’d come calling. One evening, he was there, but an aunt put him in a nightgown and a lace cap and plunked a baby in his arms. She then took the soldiers on a tour of the house: “Women and babies. Women and babies. That’s all who’s here.” They bought it (which may be as much a commentary on the hairiness of Dutch women, but I digress).

On October 23, 1953, when my dad was ten, they immigrated to Canada and he became a Canadian citizen. He came to the U.S. for college, married an American woman and brought her back to Toronto with him. We lived in Australia for three years in the mid-70s, and then in the early 90s, they moved to California, and have lived in the U.S. since then. Like all immigrants, he worked hard. Like many immigrants, he started his own companies and employed others, both in Canada and here in the States. Truly, he is one of the hardest working and most hopeful people I know. But he hasn’t become an American citizen. Even though he is oh so anti-Trump, he can’t vote.

Here's my dad driving in a small-town Memorial Day parade.
Here’s my dad driving in a small-town Memorial Day parade.

So I dedicate my No-Trump vote to my dad, Peter Hart, who grew up in a time when a politician whipped up hatred and distrust against certain segments of society; and who knows how important it is to Resist those calls to hate, to fear, to blame people who others say are “not us.” It is a family legacy I fully embrace.

***

DedicateYourNoTrumpVote is a website started by author Julianna Baggott. You can submit your own dedication there or write your own and use the hashtag #DedicateYourNoTrumpVote. Many, many authors have dedications posted there; it’s a great read.

***

My mother is also totally awesome, but since she can cast her vote in this election, she misses out on the dedication 😉

Spiritual math is weird

a math equation, written by a doctor of physics, that I cannot understand

Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30 NLT)

Read the passage again.

Did you notice Jesus saying that all we who are weary would get to put down our heavy burdens and carry his light one instead?

I didn’t either.

Which makes this an odd passage, but also right. Because his listeners had many burdens they couldn’t put down:

  • scraping out a subsistence living
  • paying ever-increasing taxes
  • being subjects of Rome
  • if a slave or a woman, being unable to make choices to determine your fate
  • miscarriage and infertility
  • social stigma
  • illness
  • injury
  • physical disability.

As do we:

  • poverty and job insecurity
  • paying ever-increasing taxes
  • many people live in dangerous and violent situations
  • racism
  • slaves (aka victims of human trafficking) unable to make choices to determine their fate
  • miscarriage and infertility
  • social stigma
  • addiction
  • mental illness
  • although we’ve made astonishing advances in medicine, people must still live with chronic illnesses, and with the side-affects of surgeries and medicines.

Although there were and are miraculous healings, and people being cured of addictions and illnesses, and injuries disappearing, and relationships being restored, and wombs opening — not everyone who asks gets healed; justice does not always come.

And Jesus tells us to add his yoke to the burdens we already carry.

our burdens + Jesus’s yoke = rest for our souls

That’s some weird spiritual math (weirder than the actual equation in the post image). But it’s true.

Somehow, the love and comfort and strength of God makes a difference. Our burdens may still be heavy, but we can bear them, or we can bear them differently, because we can share them with Jesus and with others who also love Jesus. We can experience deep rest during prayer, or worship, or communing with God in whatever way he reaches us. And somehow we can go on, and even thrive, with our burdens.

I cannot explain it, but I’ve found it to be true. I’ve had a year of horrible and crushing burdens that I never imagined carrying and didn’t have the choice to put down, but the love of God and of those who also love God sustained me. And those burdens lightened. They are still there, but a year later, they don’t weigh me down like they did.

Happily, we don’t need to explain this weird spiritual math to trust that it’s true, and to keep choosing to add Jesus’s yoke to our burdens and thereby find rest for our souls.* 

 

 

* This passage is often interpreted as being about the heavy burdens of religious rigamarole, but Jesus usually spoke on a number of levels, so I think this works, too.

 

Dear Natalie of one year ago:

At around 2:40, on August 26, 2015, your life will utterly and irrevocably change. It will be hideous and heart-rending and be both a total shock and not a surprise.

Likewise, nothing I can tell you now can prepare you for it, yet you’ve been preparing for it for many years. I say that not only because you’ve always known something was hollow and hurtful in your marriage, but also because many things you’ve done and the ways you’ve grown have laid the groundwork for how you will get through the next year:
* your years of prayer and intimacy with God
* your years of (trying to) be there for others when they needed you
* your tendency to be open about your struggles
* your truthfulness with your kids
* your dealing with your depression and anxiety.

All these things will serve you well in the year to come. It will be worse than you have ever imagined, and that’s saying something. You will cry so hard and so much that you will not have to pee when you wake up in the morning. You will stop eating and drinking; I’d tell you to remember to drink water, but your anxiety over this upcoming one-year anniversary has gotten you not drinking enough again.

Here’s what I want to tell you, Natalie of one year ago: It will be horrible but you’ll get through it. People will help you, both practically and spiritually. You will get this message from many different directions: you are God’s beloved. Soak it up whenever you can. You will struggle to learn to rest in God’s presence, but it is a consistent refrain over the next year: trust it. Your friendships will deepen. Your relationship with your kids will get even closer. Work will find you, which is good, because your ability to get out and hustle will be impaired, but God and your friends will place work in front of you. It will be good work that uses your writing gifts. Your dream of being published will happen — As Real As It Gets, the project you officially announced with such hope just yesterday, will make its Kickstarter and the book will come out in the Spring and it will be beautiful. At the end of the year, you will even find a counselor who asks you questions you don’t have an immediate answer to, questions that really get you thinking.

It will be the worst year of your life. You will be called upon to make tough decisions, to say things to people you’d never imagined you’d have to say, to draw uncomfortable boundaries, to fill out so much paperwork, to ask for help. You will be so hurt and so angry. And also relieved. You will have compassion for your current self, but you’ll learn, right at the end of the year, that you don’t have compassion for the girl who tried so hard to make her marriage work. There is much work to do in the realm of forgiveness, both of yourself and of your ex, but don’t you dare think about that now, one-year-ago Natalie.

It will take all of the strength of your war- and poverty-surviving immigrant ancestors, all of the strength and vulnerability God will give you, to make it through the next year.

But you will make it.

love, Natalie of 8/26/16

[I’m taking a course called Making Blogging Fun Again, and “write a letter to yourself of a year ago” was one of the prompts.]

Today we will finish…

…the garage.

I’ve enjoyed my pretty-much-every-Tuesday posts, so I’m going to keep it going although this is mostly to say that I won’t have much of a post today: we’re painting my garage.

my partially painted garage and tools

Yesterday was a fun work with, my mother, my kids and I all working together.

my mother and daughter at work on the garage

my son scraping the garage

Today, it’ll be just my mother and I, and because my garage is tiny, we should finish today.

In the build-up for my mother coming and staying here two days, I cleaned the living daylights out of my house so she wouldn’t even have the impulse to take a break from painting the garage by mopping my floor. (It should be noted that she would do this with no sense of recrimination or guilt-inducing for me for having a floor that needed mopping [which she’d do on her hands and knees, of course], but just an, “Oh, I just did it quick a minute.” I hope I can be the same for my children.) But there are things one cannot control. When my daughter cleaned her room, she revealed a constellation of spots on her carpet that nobody had seen before, because of the three inches of clothes and detritus that had covered the floor for months. So my mother is upstairs right now, treating those spots with rubbing alcohol.

In the sweetest, most patient way possible, my mother will not be denied her opportunity to do a cleaning job, just quick a minute, for her children.

So here’s to summer work crews — I salute you!

me in my painting gear
It should be noted that, clearly, the most flattering angle for a photo of oneself is to position the phone at one’s stomach and aim it down, that way, one’s hips are guaranteed to be wider than the photo.

May we all get done what we need to get done!!
What nagging jobs are you tackling this summer?

The Laundromat Battalion

[This is a story I wrote for the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction competition. I had to write a 1,000-word science fiction story that took place at a laundromat and involved a tongue ring. I had a lot of fun with it.]

The photo that, along with interesting facts about the tongue, inspired the story.
The photo that, along with interesting facts about the tongue, inspired the story.

Five days after a Yopra scuttled up to me on the street and whispered, “Go to Laundromat. They take care of hardware in you mouth,” I was walking out of my tenth Laundromat, drowning in desperation and confusion. I had no method other than going into every Laundromat and speaking, revealing the ring, and exposing myself for what I really was. So far, nobody had offered to do anything helpful.

A van drove by with huge letters L, A, U, N, D, but a truck blocked the rest of it. Before I’d registered the impulse, I chased it. In the perpetual rush hour of Deimos, I pulled even with it in a half a block: a blindingly clean white van declaring, LAUNDRY.

I zig-zagged across two lanes of traffic and banged on the passenger door. “Hep me!”

The driver rolled down the window.

“Cang you hep me?”

He must’ve understood, despite how the ring made me talk, because he jerked his head in the universal sign for get in. The road erupted in honks and yells, so I stepped up on the running board, hooked my left arm through the open window, and banged to let him know he could go. We drove like this for three blocks until there was a red light and I could hop in.

“Ank you.”

“What can I do for you?” His voice was so nice. Or, rather, he was being nice, so it sounded like a serenade.

“A Yopra say Aunroma hep.”

He laid on his horn before I was finished. “You’ll have to put these on.”

The sunglasses looked ordinary enough, but when I put them on, they blackened my entire range of vision, even the transmundane aspect. So I was blind as a Lucifungus, headed to an unknown location with an unknown Tut to see an unknown being for an unknown purpose on the advice of a strange Yopra. This was everything they’d warned us girls about back home, but it was my only hope.

We were silent while we drove, so I could hear water sloshing and a motor running in the back. Did they have working washers in the van? Finally we stopped and sliding doors scraped shut behind us. I went to take the sunglasses off, but was told to keep them on and stay here. One of my hearts sped up and the other slowed down: one preparing to fight, the other for flight.

Everyone had warned me not to move to Deimos, but I just couldn’t believe an entire society could hate me because of my tongue.

The door opened; somebeing took my elbow and guided me out of the van. It felt like we were indoors. After fifty-three steps, and three turns, I was maneuvered into a chair.

A door closed, and then opened and closed again. Something else was breathing in the room.

“Open your mouth for me, hon.”

I did, but I could only push my tongue level with my lower lip, and even that hurt like the Dybbuck.

“Ach.” The woman had the voice of someone who’d worked in a diner back when everyone could still smoke MeO in them. “The new bind ring. We’ve been hearing they were going to start using these. I’m going to have to call a few people in.” She opened the door and bellowed some stuff before sitting back down in front of me, our knees touching. “We’ll get you taken care of.”

“Who are you?”

“The Laundromat Battalion.”

That didn’t explain anything, but other beings came into the room and she made me open my mouth again.

“See this?” she said. “There are two piercings on either side of the central vein, and this figure-eight metal bar between them, going across the tip of her tongue twice. I’m just going to lift you up.”

That last bit was said to me before she revealed the underside of my tongue. Even though she was gentle, I whimpered.

“Sorry, hon. Almost done. The bastards clipped her webbing. How long ago did they do this?”

“Oo weeks.” I held up two fingers.

She patted my shoulder. “Close up.” She addressed the others. “Her muscular hydrostat is completely shackled.” There was a noise like metal instruments on a tray. “This’ll be my first time removing one of these, but the closure system looks the same as the previous tongue rings.”

I slapped my hands over my mouth. “Ay cash me.”

“They won’t catch you. Don’t you know what we do?”

“Ngo.”

“We’ve figured out how to trick the sensors so you can get this off and keep it off without ever alerting the tracking system. I surround your tongue with a warm, sopping wet towel—I hope you don’t gag easily. Then I clamp the tips with a torsion tool of my invention, shimmy you free, and immediately throw the whole thing in a perpetually running washing machine set at 97 Farenheit. Moisture, motion, and temperature sensors remain satisfied. We even drive the machines around the city so they’re not always in the same place.”

“Pay you?”

“Nope. We’re a real mobile laundry company. It’s the perfect front. You ready to get rid of this thing?”

I smiled for the first time in two weeks.

“When I’m done, stretch out once, and then not again until the swelling has gone down. The holes should be closed within two days.”

She used the same bracket to keep my mouth open that the police had; although she was helping me, it still made me tremble. Water from the towel dripped down the back of my throat, but that was nothing compared to the vibrations of her machine. I was howling and punching my leg and panting, then all of a sudden, I was free.

I unfurled my tongue to half its full length, down to my chest, and let each muscle untwist, until all eight were waving like seaweed.

I over-enunciated because I finally could: “Thank you.”

A story I’m telling myself about myself

Although I decided to practice self-compassion when it came to my work on my David and Saul novels, and I have managed to make some progress, it’s time to get working a little more seriously again.

I considered this method.

me next to a statue of a person with a book tied to his or her head

But I’m not certain that tying the manuscript(s) to my head would do anything other than satisfy my latent need to punish myself for not working as much as I could have.

Perhaps merely being in the presence of those building blocks of language — words — would help.

me in front of an airy metal statue of a person that is made up of letters

No, it will require actual effort to get back into the stories, finding both their roots and tracing their repercussions.

bright metal sculpture of a ball with roots growing out of it all around

So no more giving myself an irritated pouty face.

a statue of a girl pouting

No more wallowing.

me imitating a sculpture of a person tired and despairing

Time to reach towards the light, towards the life-giving water, hand upraised, ready to receive.

my hand, reaching through a crack in a rock towards a waterfall

***

I love going somewhere and finding a story. This story courtesy of a recent trip to Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park. Photos were all taken by me on a superhot sunny day, except #5, which was taken by Hannah Van Houten. Unfortunately, I didn’t do due diligence, and I don’t have the details of one of the works; I apologize.

  1. Bill Woodrow, Listening to History (thank you, Ken Verhulst!)
  2. Jaume Plensa. I, you, she or he…, 2006
  3. Roxy Paine. Neuron, 2010
  4. Tom Otterness. Mad Mom, 2001
  5. Hanneke Beaumont. Number 26 and Number 25
  6. Indoors in what we always called “The Jungle” when the kids were little.

But I’ve never been there

a dog sniffs the air with its head out the car windowPlease pronounce the been in the title with verve and so it rhymes with seen. This is so it will take part in an event that I didn’t witness, but have heard about enough times that I might as well have. A Canadian friend was in a play at his U.S. college in which he had to utter the line, “Canada! I’ve never been to Canada.” He apparently said that been in as Canadian a way as possible, to the high amusement of all his friends–so much amusement that they still tell the story some 30 years later.

Given that this post is about writing a book (series) set in a place I’ve never been, it’s a fitting anecdote to start with.

Also, that isn’t quite true. I went to Israel when I was nine. I remember being shocked at the soldiers walking around with automatic weapons, being weirded out that they searched my kid luggage at the airport. I lost a ring a friend had given me as a goodbye gift. It was very hot and very dry and there was one really straight road that felt like it was out in the middle of nowhere.

These are not observations to build a fully-fleshed world out of.

And that’s what I have to do in The Giant Slayer (and subsequent books): recreate the world of 1,000BCE in Israel. Youtube is a glorious friend; all I have to do is search for people hiking in any part of Israel and someone out there filmed it and put it online, so I can get sights and sounds. I can read a lot of books that contain snippets I can use about flora and fauna, camping in the wilderness, what it’s like inside a cave, what a shepherd’s life is like in countries where the kids still take the flocks out. But there’s one sense none of these help me get at: smell.

What does it smell like in the morning during the dry season? During the rainy season?

How do their different bushes and trees perfume the air?

What does their honey taste like?

What is the difference in smell when you go from a dry area to where a spring is? How close to the spring can you smell the difference?

How does the ground smell up close?

What do the rock outcrops smell like after they’ve been baking in the sun all day?

Those are all tiny details that I don’t have access to that I’m desperate for. I can make it up, of course, and I do, but how much better it would be to have something to use as a springboard for my imagination. If you have been to Israel and have any memories of the smells you experienced, let me know in the comments. Seriously. I’ll thank you in the acknowledgments.

***

Today, a friend posted a poem by Billy Collins about “trying to manufacture the sensation” of being in a place you’ve never been and doing a thing you’ve never done. I think it’s lovely and evocative.

Fishing on the Susquehanna in July
BY BILLY COLLINS

I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna
or on any river for that matter
to be perfectly honest.

Not in July or any month
have I had the pleasure—if it is a pleasure—
of fishing on the Susquehanna.

I am more likely to be found
in a quiet room like this one—
a painting of a woman on the wall,

a bowl of tangerines on the table—
trying to manufacture the sensation
of fishing on the Susquehanna.

There is little doubt
that others have been fishing
on the Susquehanna,

rowing upstream in a wooden boat,
sliding the oars under the water
then raising them to drip in the light.

But the nearest I have ever come to
fishing on the Susquehanna
was one afternoon in a museum in Philadelphia

when I balanced a little egg of time
in front of a painting
in which that river curled around a bend

under a blue cloud-ruffled sky,
dense trees along the banks,
and a fellow with a red bandanna

sitting in a small, green
flat-bottom boat
holding the thin whip of a pole.

That is something I am unlikely
ever to do, I remember
saying to myself and the person next to me.

Then I blinked and moved on
to other American scenes
of haystacks, water whitening over rocks,

even one of a brown hare
who seemed so wired with alertness
I imagined him springing right out of the frame.