mama:monk

It’s Thankful Tuesday! Sometimes on Thankful Tuesday I list everything I’m grateful for. Sometimes I spend the entire post bemoaning some semi-depressing situation in my life and then at the end turn it into a surprisingly thankful statement (which gets me off the hook for all that complaining). Sometimes I have some vague spiritual thought that ends up grandly (or not so grandly) pointing to thankfulness.

Today I seem to have none of those in me. I have some books I’m going to discuss tomorrow. I have some thoughts on prayer that I’m working through. Maybe I’ll give you a vague list of ramblings. Like, I’m thankful for:

• Jeanne Murray Walker’s “metal sky.” As difficult as “Staying Power” is to memorize (are you all finding it hard?), I have some images that stay with me. “Questioning the metal sky” is one of them. How many times has prayer felt that way to me? Closed and hard and defensive. The result of following my doubts numbly instead of having it out with them. It continues to be the truth of the images that I can’t get over in this poem. “Pick up any language by the scruff of its neck / wipe its face, set it down on the lawn / and I bet it will toddle right into the godfire.” Who comes up with a picture like that? Language as a dog that always veers godward? And I’m prone to agree. Could it be possible that everything we long to communicate to each other is actually pointing toward the reality of God? Those moments I stare at my son or husband and think: There aren’t words. That language I’m longing to find is ineffable because the beauty of our Creator was ineffable first…I’m thankful.

• What August is teaching me about play. For instance, if the walk home from the park gets boring, you should squat and wait for your mom to shout: “On your mark! Get set! Go!” and then run one of those wobbly toddler runs for the next twenty feet until you stop and squat again. Or, if your mom is doing laundry in the dingy apartment storage/laundry room/basement, find your favorite broom and get to work sticking it in dangerous holes. I’m thankful that there’s no point in his life when he isn’t playing, except for when he’s crying…which tends to be fairly often lately.

• For this city. What?! you say. I know I know. I’m such a complainer. And my being thankful doesn’t undo the fact that San Francisco has stolen summer from my life. But I’m on the flip side of a wonderful long weekend with my guys. I spent the 4^th tossing a frisbee and eating chips and dip and blueberry crumb cake and burgers…all afternoon and evening, without getting a tummy ache. I spent yesterday afternoon hanging out with my husband and son while one taught the other how to hit a tennis ball (and the other kept screaming “Myself!” and falling on the pavement…you can guess which was which). We ate dinner with a friend at a cozy little Italian place two blocks from our house. It was a weekend that reminded me that as much as I complain about living here, it’s good, and I have a lot to be grateful for, even if the weather isn’t one of them.

• My son just woke up and I brought him into my bed where Ezra the cat is snuggled under the covers with his head sticking out like a regular human. August spooned right up to him and turned to me: “Isn’t he cute, mommy?” Yes. He’s cute.

What can you ramble about on this Thankful Tuesday? You don’t have to list a lot. You can just ramble once. But I want to hear from you.