snapshots

I'm wimping out on the writing tonight, partly because we are springing forward and I'm already feeling sleep deprived. But here instead, for your enjoyment, are some random photos from the last few days.

From our Wednesday visit to the university, in which I attempt to not have a heart attack as my only son walks to the top of what at the end seems like an entirely too high, one-foot wide wall/art thing.

The creepy bunnies are getting lined up for their big day. I'm really not sure who let the stick-on dresses pass here.

Helloooo allergy season! You can't see it in this picture but this tree was buzzing with bees of all sizes, pretty cool.

What's funny about this one is that Migros is the biggest grocery store chain in Switzerland, but like *everybody* buys cakes there instead of baking at home when "baking a cake" is required, and apparently they are playing along by selling cakes with a "homemade" appearance?? That or the sprinkles just got out of control today.

Maybe you already knew that one can buy teething toys shaped like trendy vegetables? I didn't. Caroline and I went into this super adorable hipster baby store today, and even though there are definitely no more babies in our house, did not make it out without buying something (it wasn't Kendall the Kale, though I was strangely tempted by his friend Ana Banana).

This is my favorite view of Zürich, from the university looking out across all the church towers. It was a beautiful day today, as you can see.

And finally, a public service announcement: don't dump bottles of wine down the toilet. Wait...why is there a sign for this?

the dangers of being a cyborg

To get to the psychiatrist's office I need to take a tram to the stop "Museum für Gestaltung." I have a choice of public transport routes to get there, and to make things easier I usually just ask Google what to do.

My appointment is at 8:30. I aim to leave the house at 7:50, to be safe, but even though I'm nearly always late out the door, I've never arrived more than one or two minutes late to the appointment. So yesterday I left the house at 8 am sharp, walked down one flight of stairs, realized I didn't have my phone, walked back up the stairs and into the apartment, grabbed my phone, and quickly checked Google, which told me that I could walk to the number 4 tram and still arrive at my appointment more or less on time. So, I did: walked to the train station, briefly considered taking a train, decided the tram was more straightforward, waited for the tram, got on the tram, got off the tram, and trotted off to the psychiatrist's office.

Where the clock said 8:44.

Ooooooops.

I was really baffled. I look at my phone *constantly* - how did I manage to miss the fact that 8:30 had long come and gone? Not to mention that there are clocks at the train station, in the tram...this is Switzerland! There are clocks everywhere! Not to mention church bells! It is nearly impossible not to know what time it is! Did I take too long to walk to the station and miss a tram without knowing it? But I walked at my normal pace, which is usually faster than Google's estimates...so why did my phone tell me that I could get there on time with no worries?

So. It turns out that when I'd hurriedly typed "museum für g...." into my phone, I hadn't waited for it to show the tram stop as an option, and I'd just clicked on the name of the museum itself, which for all of last year was *not* actually located at the tram stop "Museum für Gestaltung" but at another building about ten stops further up the tram line. So my phone had told me I could be there by 8:30; in fact I would never have been on time to my appointment, though if I'd hurried my butt up a little I could probably have taken another tram and been five minutes late instead of 15.

The psychiatrist was super nice about it (have I mentioned this guy is a saint?) and said that running drastically late without noticing it was a sign that I was having a relaxed morning. And I guess that's true: if I *had* known that I was going to be late, I would have been stressed the whole way; but as it was, I had a very pleasant journey. Still, I'm not sure this represents real progress towards a new, less anxious me: lack of sleep and over-dependence on technology were definitely also involved. Next week, I'm leaving the house at 7:50, definitely. I'll set a reminder on my phone... 😂

work

As I was walking my dearest Christopher from school to his dentist appointment today, he turned to me out of the blue and said, "Mommy, why don't you have a real job?" Thanks for noticing, kid...

I explained that no, I don't have a normal job, but instead a bunch of smaller jobs - I work at church, and I take my classes, and I stay home so I can do things like walk him to his dentist appointment in the middle of the day. And also, we're extremely lucky that Daddy gets paid very well for what he does and I don't have to work to make money for the family.

He thought about this briefly and said, "Ok. Actually, I'm glad that you don't have a real job, because then I'd have to go to Hort [after-school care] every day."

So. That makes one of us happy with the current state of affairs. Two, if you count Caroline, who detests going to Hort, but next year will be off to secondary school so it won't matter. I...want to believe this story? But deep down I don't. This and all my other explanations about why I'm not working (and I've tried out a good number!) feel like just so many excuses. The real reason seems to be buried somewhere in my subconscious, and I can only hope that one of these days it will reveal itself so that I can either embrace it (and say honestly and with confidence why I'm on the path of low economic output), or beat it into submission with airtight logical arguments.

Speaking of which, bonus conversation with Christopher:

Yesterday Caroline went to a lecture for elementary school kids at the university, about chemistry and the periodic table. (Presumably this lecture series is meant to show kids how totally awesome it is to sit in a lecture hall and listen to someone talk for an hour.) Christopher and I accompanied her over there and then had to waste an hour wandering around the campus.

Ch: What's the periodic table?
me: Well, it's a way of showing all the different elements - that's the different kinds of atoms that all matter is made from.
Ch: What's matter?
me: It's, like, all the stuff in the universe. Solid stuff, like this bench, but also liquid stuff like water and gases like the air we breathe. The only place you don't find matter is in the darkness of space.
Ch: I know something else that isn't made of matter.
me: Um...ok...what's that?
Ch, dramatically: Matter itself.
me: ......Christopher, I think you should be a philosopher.
Ch: What's a philosopher?

This child is amazing, and also, exhausting.

Meanwhile, Caroline was immersing herself in the college experience by taking notes, which look totally legit to me 💕💕💕

five things I like about me

My weight loss app told me to write down five things I like about myself, so I'm taking that as my writing prompt for tonight. Twenty things I don't like about myself seems like it would be easier! But here goes.

The day before my wedding my mom booked facials for me and my maid of honor. I had never had a facial before and I haven't had once since. The beautician was, accordingly, not impressed - clearly I didn't have a proper daily skin care routine, my eyebrows had never been shaped, and on top of that I was a complete wimp and kept saying "ow!" as she poked and prodded me. At the end of the process I did not feel more beautiful; I felt like my face was red and tender I was worried that I'd have to get married looking like a swollen berry (I didn't). The employee at the cash register asked if I'd like to purchase any skin care products, and even before I could say "no, thanks" the beautician rolled her eyes and said witheringly, "I sincerely doubt it - she's low maintenance." 

1. I like that I'm low maintenance.

I once had a job working for a complete jerk. My initial assignment was, literally, to sit in a dark room and invent a medical device that would make him millions of dollars. Without speaking to any other employees. It became clear relatively quickly that this wasn't going to happen, so I decamped to the R&D group and tried to make myself useful. Whether I did or not is maybe a matter of debate, but I certainly accomplished a lot more there than I had in the dark room. Some months later, I was pregnant and working 60% time so that I could drive home early, before the morning-that-in-this-case-was-evening sickness set in. From my perspective this was only honest - I could have stayed at work until 5, but I would have spent the last two hours feeling nauseous and getting nothing done, so better to save the company some money. One day out of the blue I got a furious email from the aforementioned jerk, accusing me of being negative and lazy (turns out, anyone who worked less than 100% was "lazy") and of mooching off of the other employees, and telling me to shape up or ship out. I wrote a rebuttal to the email, decided the job wasn't worth fighting for, and quit the next day. Saying goodbye to my best friend in the office, I said that I was frustrated, but that I could see his perspective - he'd hired me to invent something, I'd failed to do that, anything else I had or hadn't accomplished since then was beside the point. She looked at me and said something to the effect of, "Susannah, seriously, only you could get canned but still see things from the boss's point of view."

2. I like that I can always imagine things from multiple points of view.

One of the weight loss app's goals is to get people to move more, so they set an initial step goal of like 2,500 steps and then increase the goal a little each day until you get to 10,000. This seemed silly. I walk 9,000 steps on an average day without even trying.

3. I like that I'm a good walker and can live without a car.

Today we got a new vegetable box. I'm a huge vegetable box fan, because although eating more vegetables sounds healthy and virtuous, you are never going to catch me buying celery root or chard at the supermarket. (Or, god help me, a farmer's market. That would require talking to someone.) But if these veggies show up at my door, I'll cook something with them. And most of the time, it will even be edible.

4. I like that I can work creatively with what I'm given.

5. I like that can capture things succinctly in writing. 

So there. Whew. 😅

a puzzle

Yesterday morning I was positively giddy with happiness. I'd dropped Caroline off at her class, then walked to the mall, then installed myself at the food court seating area with a coffee to catch up on various texts and then read my theology book. I know...I should have been doing this at some hip and atmospheric coffee shop, but I have a hangup about stepping into restaurants - very much including hip, atmospheric coffee shops - alone. In my defense, the food court was empty and the mall was pretty quiet and my table had lots of natural light and it was a nice place to hang out. In any case, I was happy. Grinning for no reason happy. Over the moon.

As you can imagine, there was nowhere to go from there but down. And sure enough, by yesterday evening - as the handful of you who are actually reading this (thank you!!) probably noticed - I was all tied up in knots again. And THAT feeling continued all the way through today.

The trouble is, I don't really know why. Why I was so happy or why I got so frustrated. Kids? Diet? PMS? Just the normal ups and downs?

There was a weird episode at lunchtime yesterday in which the neighbor kids couldn't find their mom so they came to our house, and I tried to call her, but she didn't answer, and her husband didn't know where she was either, so I fed them lunch, and then she showed up and it turned out that she'd been talking to a teacher at school the whole time, and her kids should have known this but somehow they failed to communicate this to me, or I failed to understand...ugh...it all came out ok I guess but definitely triggered a hefty dump of mom shame, of which I have plenty, and language shame, of which I also have plenty...

There was something about class last night too, even beyond the general stress of trying to keep up with the rapid-fire name dropping...this feeling that in my brain somewhere there's an idea of church/theology that I'm chasing but can't ever grab hold of. The paradox of my life right now is that I do lead a charmed existence, what with the sitting in food courts and getting to pursue my own interests and all, but on the other hand I so long for a companion on this strange journey.

Aaaand it's bedtime again. Here's hoping for calm dreams and a midweek mid-mood!!

council

Tonight in theology class the instructor talked about the radical change of direction in Catholic theology represented by Vatican II. Let me just state for the record, again, that I'm completely baffled by Vatican II. How exactly did 2,400 bishops, all of whom had signed the Oath Against Modernism multiple times in their careers, vote by large majorities to approve documents whose stated purpose was aggiornamento, bringing the Church up to date? How did the logistics of discussing the documents among all those bishops even work? Was there really any discussion, or were the documents more or less written by a few at the top? Did anyone actually think that the Church could be radically changed, in short order, from the top down? And, can answer to the Church's problems today really be found in these documents, if we only learn to read them the right way (which seems to be the message, or at least the hope, of these classes)?

I'm mostly overwhelmed by how little I know.

In my internet wanderings after class I learned about the Pact of the Catacombs (full text here), which is a clear counterpoint to the ambiguous language of the council documents (however radical they may have been). I don't have a lot of hope for the Church hierarchy reforming itself, but it is comforting to know that the man currently at the top comes out of this tradition.

where I'm from (2)

When I was little (we were in Japan, so 4, maybe?), I had an imaginary friend, Mary Ellen. Mary Ellen was a little girl like me. Mary Ellen had a father, Mr. Mary Ellen. Yeah ok, that part is confusing, but I was 4. Mr. Mary Ellen was in the Navy (like my dad) and he flew planes (like my dad) but his planes could also fly under water (cool!). And when Mr. Mary Ellen wanted to stay home with Mary Ellen, he could temporarily take a desk job, stuffing envelopes.

I was totally the kind of 4-year-old whose vocabulary included "stuffing envelopes." I must have been exhausting.

Of course I don't remember any of this - it's my mother's story, accompanied by a heavy dose of guilt that her beloved daughter was forced to imagine friends and a father who could stay home. But I don't think Mary Ellen was a sign of deprivation so much as a creative solution - she and her, um, "father" were as real as I needed them to be. Had I been more of an extrovert, I think life as a Navy brat could have been far more traumatic, but as it was I was pretty oblivious and mostly content.

But still, as an adult, "where am I from?" is a question I've struggled with quite a bit, not least because I have my own parental guilt around not being able to give my own children a "home" when I'm not sure where my own is. But I had something of an epiphany about this the other day.

It started in my GCL group when someone read a poem about "home." My first thought was oh, home, that's a difficult concept... Then I thought, well, what would home look like? And what came to mind was an apartment in New York (I think I had New York on the brain because I read Umbrella to the kids at church last week...SUCH a great book) with high ceilings and shelves of books and comfy chairs, everything well-loved and tidy. Not my apartment, but one I have a key to, where I can show up, any time. A man lives there, a good friend, a father figure but not my father. He's older and wiser and he has a beard and also some kind of interesting career, but whatever that is he can put it on hold when I come. He's happy to see me and makes me a cup of tea and I curl up in a big chair in front of a warm fire and fall asleep. And when I wake up he's there with something yummy to eat, and we talk for a long time, and maybe eventually leave the apartment and go explore the city. I don't have any responsibilities other than to rest and enjoy myself. Eventually, I'll say goodbye and go back to real life the kids and the to-do list and the f-ing laundry. But Mr. Mary Ellen (I think we can safely call him that?) will always be there...

None of this exists, of course, but I got such a lovely warm feeling just from imagining it! And then I realized that the same lovely warm feeling is something I absolutely have in my life, just...not all in one place. I have it when I see my brother or my college friends and we get to talk late into the night. I had it when we were at my parents' house and the kids were occupied I had time to sit down and read a whole book(!). Actually I also have it pretty much any time I get to stay overnight by myself in a hotel room. You might well note that these are all situations in which I get to drop the fraught (for me, anyway) title of "mommy," but I even have it here in Zurich sometimes, in our sweet light-filled apartment, particularly in our new bed, recently upgraded from the old full-sized mattress to a euro-style two-single-mattresses affair big enough for the whole family to cuddle in.

Somehow all that, taken together, is home. It doesn't lend itself to an easy answer to the question of where I'm from, but still, it's very comforting to know that it's here somewhere.

an outing

Today I was here:

The Swiss parliament building in Bern, viewed from a nearby park. It was so beautiful and sunny today!

 and also here:

Dreifaltigkeitskirche, Bern - isn't this stunning?

...but mostly in a meeting room near the church with 30 or so people I mostly don't know, attending the general meeting of the GCL/CVX, or in English CLC, "Christian Life Community." (Isn't it annoying when your acronym doesn't work across languages? see: SBB CFF FFS). The CLC is a mostly-Catholic organization of small groups who meet regularly to practice Ignatian spirituality. I have to admit I'm still fuzzy on what exactly that means (ask me in a year or so?), but I've been attending meetings of a group in Zürich and I was curious to see what the members in the rest of Switzerland looked like. (Answer: largely, around 60 and female.)

The meeting was...a meeting. In two languages. With far better singing than at most meetings, and a Mass afterwards. It struck me that even though the prayers we say at church are theoretically the same in every language, the language definitely gives them a particular character. God seems so beautiful and transcendent in French!

I met a lovely and fascinating American woman who has lived in the French part of Switzerland for 20 years. She teaches English, does missionary work with her husband, and makes beautiful furniture with stained-glass inlays. Someday I'd love to do a writing project on the life stories of the well-integrated American-Swiss...maybe ask me about that in a year or so too... 

veni, vidi, vici

Tonight we got the news that my dearest and most intelligent daughter passed the exam to get into to 6-year gymnasium. Yay Caroline! The default, no-exam alternative would be to go to something more like middle school for 7th and 8th grade, with the possibility of 4-year gymnasium (roughly the equivalent of college-track high school) after that. The big difference between middle school and the first two years of 6-year gymnasium is...that the kids get to take latin. I am unreasonably excited about this. Which is ironic given that my best friend and I actually had a latin tutor in eighth grade (I'm not even sure how this happened - our parents thought it was a good idea?) and we only ever attempted the homework half an hour before the lesson every week and consequently learned...not much at all. Maybe vicarious latin learning will somehow work out better?

some cookie observations

1. I just made a double batch of cookie dough without eating a single speck of sugar, dough, or chocolate chips. This is a major achievement.

2. The cookie dough is for a bake sale at church this weekend, for which the young mothers of the parish are supposed to bake because the retired ladies are...too busy?? That is the story, anyway. I'm hoping to shamelessly exploit my employee status to temporarily hijack the new professional convection oven at church because it can surely bake four or five dozen cookies at once - a huge improvement over our oven at home, which does not even fit a full-size American cookie sheet. If this works, it will be quite the cookie coup.

3. We ordered seven bags of chocolate chips last week because Caroline wanted me to bake cookies for her class so they could sell them at recess (once a week for five weeks) to raise money for their class trip. Note that homemade baked goods are fine here, and no one has ever heard of food allergies...because as I believe I've mentioned we live 40 years in the past. But anyway - the poor kids made the mistake of having their first recess-snack-sale on parent's day, and predictably some parents complained, so now they aren't allowed to sell sugary snacks. Undaunted, they are going to sell popcorn and fruit kebabs next week. And I have a healthy stock of chocolate chips left over...

4. Why oh WHY does one have to import chocolate chips into Switzerland? They make the best chocolate in the world here, surely one of the chocolate manufacturers could afford one measly chocolate-chip-making machine?

5. Because home baking is a totally different venture here...I find this fascinating. The goal of cookie baking is to make your cookies exactly the same as everyone else's cookies. A Mailänderli, for example, is a sugar cookie (presumably with some connection to Milan? I can't be bothered to look this up right now) cut out with one or two small cookie cutters (ideally heart- and star-shaped) and glazed lightly for a shiny top. Looks are absolutely important, taste is somewhat secondary. You do not get creative with the recipe because if you change the ingredients it's not a Mailänderli any more. The American way - whipping up a batch of cookie dough and adding nuts or raisins or oatmeal or whatever you have handy, then plopping it down by teaspoonfuls onto a cookie sheet so they come out looking like cow pies...what IS that? don't you people have any RULES?

6. Seriously. I've learned to chill my cookie dough first and roll it into balls so the cookies come out round and uniform and do not look so embarrassing next to the precision-engineered creations of my friends and colleagues. (For the curious, here are some more Swiss cookie creations from Betty Bossi, the Swiss answer to Betty Crocker.)

7. But it has to be said - even when I don't go to the extra effort, my cookies disappear. Because chocolate chip cookies speak a universal language.

not really a post

I have no deep thoughts tonight. I blame the laundry. As conscientious Swiss people, we use the shared laundry room in the basement, so laundry is something that has to be done all at once - within specified washing hours of course - and not just as a load here and there and at midnight if you want because what a crazy chaotic system that would be! Every week it surprises me how much work it is, and every week I wildly rack my brain for some way to get out of it. But eventually it's done and we all have clean clothes and I get a break until laundry day rolls around again next week. The End. Good night!

Orthodox

Today in my kind of unusual life, a tour of three orthodox churches in Zurich:

Russian!

I love pictures of Christ walking on the water. It's my Navy upbringing.

Greek! 

There was a picture of Christ walking on the water here, too, but irritatingly, it was behind a coat rack, so I took a picture of Jesus's baptism instead. Fun fact: the Greek Orthodox church is the only purpose-built Orthodox church building in Zurich.

and Serbian!

Baptism again. In this church, they also had two big icons of John the Baptist, which I didn't take a picture of but I love because he's got crazy hair and a camel-hair coat.

Not pictured: the amazing Serbian appetizer spread, served with a delicious warm and quite powerful alcoholic beverage.

We learned that there are 12 different Orthodox congregations in Zurich, but until recently they had very little contact with each other because they are all congregations of immigrants from specific countries or ethnic groups. They've formed an umbrella organization for the purposes of trying to get recognized by the government as "a church," but from the religious side they each fall under a completely different hierarchy.

At this event I met a lovely British expat and long-time Swiss resident. She invited me to St. Andrew's, the Anglican church in Zürich, and I kind of stupidly (blame the delicious warm alcoholic beverage) said I'd tried going there but it was really too British for me - at which point she apologized profusely and said she was so sorry I'd had that experience and they have people from all over the world in that congregation and it really shouldn't be that way. But why shouldn't it be that way? All three of our church hosts were very gracious and inviting, but I'm not sure it would have occurred to any of them to present their churches as appealing to a broad audience outside of the immigrant communities they came from. Not that they wouldn't be welcoming, but you wouldn't find the Russians apologising for being too Russian...even though the guy who talked to us at the Russian church was a Swiss convert? I'm not sure exactly what to make of this observation, but there it is.

a criterion

Practical Theology class quote of the day, from liberation theologian Jon Sobrino (who ran afoul of the Vatican for crazy ideas like this):

"...die Vermittlung der Theodizee die Anthropodizee: wie kann man den Menschen in einer Welt der Ungerechtigkeit rechtfertigen? Schliesslich ergibt sich die Lösung der Theodizee für den epistemologischen Bruch nicht darin, dass Gott 'gedacht' wird in einer Weise, durch die Gott und das Elend miteinander versöhnt werden, sondern in der Aufgabe, eine Welt zu gestalten, die Gott entspricht. ... Die Frage der Theodizee stellt sich als eine wesentlich praktische: im selben Mass, wie der Glaube an den Gott Jesu dazu führt, das Elend in der Welt wirklich zu überwinden, ist Gott gerechtfertigt, auch wenn man es niemals theoretisch erreicht, Gott und das Elend miteinander zu versöhnen"

my translation, no guarantee of accuracy:
"...the transition from theodicy to anthropodicy: how do we justify injustice to people living in unjust conditions? In the end the solution to this problem is not found in 'thinking of' God in such a way that God and suffering are reconciled, but instead in the task of creating a world that lives up to God. ... The question of theodicy reveals itself to be, in essence, a practical one: our belief in the God of Jesus is justified exactly in as much as that belief leads to a real reduction of suffering in the world - even if we never manage to reconcile God and suffering theoretically."

And when our belief has created suffering? Led to physical and spiritual violence? Acted in concert with unjust systems? We are called to great humility, much more in line with

He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
    and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
    and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8)

than

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19)

! ?

Sort of related: Let the Work That I've Done Speak for Me, performed by Joe Carter

my church

I cannot tell you how I got the name for this blog. It came to me, and seemed to fit. I think I'd recently read Susan Cain's Quiet, and the idea of the untapped resources of introverts appealed to me...for obvious reasons. How many thousands of meetings have I attended where the instruction was to "just jump in if you have something to say," and I could not manage to jump in? I always thought this was my personal failure, a total lack of interpersonal skills - and it is - so the notion that there might be a name for this handicap, and accommodations available for it (wait, we could just go around the table in order?) was something of a revelation.

And I wanted to write about my theology classes, so that's where the "church" part came from.

I did, for the record, think twice about effectively calling myself "holy." But in as much as I believe God lives in every human being, we're all holy. Also I figured no one was going to read this anyway, so what the heck.

But this is all to say, the Church of the Holy Introvert seems to be slowly becoming less of a joke. I still haven't found my spiritual home, which isn't to say it's not out there, but if I don't find it soonish, I think I might have to roll up my sleeves and start building.

lofty goals

aaand it's late again, because (1) we spent most of the day and part of the night adding a loft bed* to Caroline's room and (2) after that I watched SNL with Daniel because I've been neglecting him in the evenings in favor of this writing project. But halfway through the show he fell asleep.** So now I'm alone after all, and I'd like to write something deep and meaningful about the Christchurch shooting and fear and risk, but that seems both hard and likely to go wrong.

So instead I will direct my thoughts and prayers to my Higher Power and give you my hot internet tip for the year - the DailyOM class "A Year To Clear" by Stephanie Bennett Vogt. If you can KonMari, great, good luck and go for it - but I needed a gentler method, and this one is working. Step by tiny step, the apartment is becoming a place I'm happy to be rather than a 1000-square-foot to-do list staring me in the face all the time. And that in turn has made a real difference in my mental health...between random New Age online courses and the psychiatrist I expect I'll be normal any day now!***

*a generous hand-me-down from our next-door neighbors and Lego buddies

**possibly because he doesn't get enough coffee on weekends? or...because spending the day at home dealing with the house and kids is totally exhausting??

***or not. Insert eye-roll emoji here.

the labyrinth

Lent is the season of repentance and Friday is the evening of feeling very sleepy, so it's time for a hopefully-short Deep Thought on the topic of repentance.

One thing I think about a lot, church-wise, is the Christian/Catholic understanding of sin and whether it is possible to evolve beyond the "balance sheet" idea of sin and forgiveness without veering into the dark forest of (cue scary music) "moral relativism." Repent! cried John. Repent! said Jesus. "Repentance means turning around; going in a completely different direction," said the priest we had in college - repeatedly, because to save time for other intellectual pursuits he always gave the same sermon.

I always had the uncomfortable feeling that this was too much of a cycle - if you're turning completely around all the time, aren't you just constantly treading back and forth across the same worn paths? Yo-yo Christianity...like yo-yo dieting...start every week with good intentions, fall into your old habits by Wednesday or so, repent on Saturday, get forgiven on Sunday, repeat... Or as Chumbawamba so elegantly put it, "I get knocked down / but I get up again / you're never gonna keep me down!" It has a certain appeal, right? But I don't think it moves us forward.

Then, when I was walking the labyrinth next to the retreat center in Morschach last year, I had this revelation: in the labyrinth, I'm constantly turning around; constantly going in a completely different direction. But I'm not retracing my steps, I'm moving towards my goal. It's just not a straight path. The constant call to repentance doesn't have to be the voice in my head that reminds me that (news flash!) I'm still not perfect - it can be the voice in my head that reminds me to pay attention to the path, to discern the next right thing, to notice that even the times I've gone in the wrong direction have been gifts that have brought me closer to the person I'm becoming.

I've landed in the dark forest of moral relativism after all, haven't I? I'll take it, I'm happier here.

(ps - thenounproject.com is sooo coool)

where I'm from

It's a well-worn joke that third-culture kids (military brats like me, but also children of expats, missionary kids, and the ever-increasing number of children who don't grow up in the same country their parents did) have a hard time answering the question, "where are you from?" This question takes on extra weight here, where being from somewhere is a mark of identity so strong that when you become a naturalized Swiss citizen you are not just a citizen of the country, but a citizen of one particular Swiss town. Someone is "really Swiss" if they are a citizen of the town they live in and that's the town their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents also came from. Which...happens more than you might think it would in 2019? (I've probably mentioned my theory about living in Switzerland being like living 40 years in the past?)

A fun benefit to living abroad, though, is that I don't actually have much trouble with the "where are you from?" question here. I say "Seattle." It doesn't matter that I didn't grow up there, or that very soon I'll have spent more time here in Zurich than I did in my two stints there - I'm American; Seattle is a place in America; most people I talk to have never been there; the conversation can move on.

But dodging the question doesn't get me out of answering it for myself. Where am I from?

I can't give you a good answer tonight but just in case you hadn't noticed: it is absolutely insane what you can find on the Internet.

Exhibit A: here is a house we lived in briefly when I was a baby, then again when I was in kindergarten and first grade.
https://www.redfin.com/WA/Oak-Harbor/1235-Cashmere-Pl-98277/home/16698502
See that big tree behind the back porch? I think my parents planted it the year I was born.

And check this out: these pictures were taken a year (maybe less?) after we lived in this military housing area in Japan. I was in fifth grade.
https://www.photoclip.net/wp-content/uploads/nagai_heights_1985/juicebox/
It looked just like this. Peeling paint and boarded-up windows and strangely-engineered swing set and super nasty pool and all.

So there are two places I'm from! Crazy huh?

the psychiatrist

The day I had a breakdown in the meeting room at church I had really only meant to ask Claudia about theology classes. And I was only considering taking a theology class because it was a class in German - but, critically, not a German class - that sounded interesting and was offered at a convenient time. As it turned out, she'd never heard of the class and couldn't tell me anything about it. Probably just to make conversation she asked me if I was interested in theology and whether I'd like to work in the church someday, and suddenly I couldn't stop crying. Because yes I'd love to work in the church, but no that's completely impossible. See: German, and also let's be honest, I've never been able to make conversation with anyone in English either. And being able to make conversation seems like a pretty basic requirement for any sort of job in ministry, no? Claudia tried to make me feel better - no no, making conversation isn't so hard, it just requires practice, you have to be brave, etc. - but that only made me feel worse, because on top of being mortified that I was crying in the first place, if it isn't hard then what's wrong with me??

After that I figured it was probably time to make an appointment with a therapist. I picked one based on the solid criteria that I'd met her once when she'd had an open house at her practice the same day the kids were taking English classes next door. She asked me what my problem was and I told her about the embarrassing crying episode and said that I felt like I'd hit a wall in German and in life, and this wall was related to the fact that as soon as I am any sort of nervous, the connection between my brain and my mouth breaks and I lose the ability to speak coherently and I want to run away and hide. The therapist said don't worry, making conversation isn't so hard, it just requires practice, you have to be brave... She offered to help me act out scenarios in which I would practice being confident and assertive in social situations. ("GRÜEZI, FRAU HÄFELI!") Mostly that just made me cry again, and she thought that maybe some anti-anxiety drugs wouldn't be a bad idea. 

So that's how I met the psychiatrist. 

The first thought I had about the psychiatrist was, wow, this guy might actually be more shy than I am. I told him the whole story and he said he wasn't sure I needed drugs, that we should try some psychotherapy first - and since I wasn't that excited about continuing to fail at acting practice, I said okay. And I started seeing him every week, and the therapy goes like this: he sits there, and I talk. Sometimes he asks a question; occasionally I hit a nerve and I get to hear what he thinks about some topic, usually parenting-related; mostly he just listens to me babble on about whatever is on my mind. Somehow he manages to do this for a full hour every week, and never once has he fallen asleep or even looked bored. The man is a saint. And...it's helped. I don't think I needed a safe place to practice being a better person, so much as a safe place to practice being the person I am.

Which, and clearly I'm projecting here, but shouldn't that be a thing that church does?

my philosophical Deep Thought

During my philosophy class when we were discussing...all the philosopher dudes (seriously, Hannah Arendt was the lone woman in three pages out of a three hundred page book, and we skipped that chapter so that we could discuss Marx and the Frankfurter Schule 😠)...and I got to feeling very feminist about the whole thing. So much of the philosophy we looked at just seemed SO MALE. Like the whole idea of mind/body dualism. The basis experience of being a woman is the experience of being fucked around by your hormones on a monthly basis, so we know instinctively that mind and body are not two separate things. Men are fucked around by their hormones too, of course, but since they don't experience hormonal cycles the same way, they have the luxury of being able to convince themselves that THE MIND IS IN CONTROL AT ALL TIMES. Ha.

(Im-?)practical Theology

The Monday night class after philosophy is practical theology, which I was looking forward to because...well I guess for the same reason that applied science is interesting: the theoretical stuff is all well and good but what do we actually do with it? And so far the answer is looking like, BURN IT TO THE GROUND!!!

No seriously. The instructor is a retired priest and child of the 60s. He wrote his doctoral dissertation about the liberation theologian Dom Hélder Câmara, was on Swiss TV in the 80s, and has written several books on practical theology. He talks fast ("like a machine gun" said one of my table-mates) and name-drops like crazy and seems to expect that we will all know who he's talking about. Famous French Jesuit theologians of the last 100 years? Anyone? I'm chronically lost in these classes, but this time I'm sure I'm not the only one.

His thesis is that the Church took a very wrong turn during the Constantinian Shift between 300 and 400 AD, when the movement based on Jesus's teaching was, paradoxically, adopted by the very empire that put him to death. The Christianization of the Roman Empire was accompanied by the imperialization of Christianity...and things went downhill from there.

So this should be fun?

Remember, man, that you are dust...

At the weekend theology courses we always have a Sunday service, but interestingly for a Catholic group, we never celebrate the Eucharist. This seems to be gentle but firm rejection of the idea that you have to have an ordained priest around to get anything properly religious done, which...seems very sensible given the shaky ground the Church is on, around here anyway.

So anyway, no Mass today, but instead a service with the gospel reading for the first Sunday of Lent, which is about the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness before he begins his ministry. This one has always made me kind of squirmy, what with the devil and all, but today I guess I was in a different mood.

Ever since my dearest brother sent me to the BBC Sea of Faith series, I've been taken by Albert Schweitzer's idea that Jesus was not in fact a god, or god-made-flesh, but instead a man convinced that he was the Messiah. Someone had to preach repentance and ultimately die to precipitate the end times and save the Jewish people, and he thought that person would have to be him. The time in the wilderness, in that light, is Jesus's own description of his struggle with this calling he felt so strongly, and yet quite understandably also wanted to avoid. What struck me today was that I can so easily draw parallels to my own journey through motherhood and depression, aka whatever I have been doing for the last eight years...

The passage is Luke 4:1-13 and I'm cut-and-pasting the New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition from biblegateway.com.

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’”

Susannah, full of naive ideas and not possessed of any good root system in the world, decided it would be a super idea to pack up the family and move to a foreign country. She spent many, many mind-numbing hours with her small children, mostly just trying to keep it together. The voices said to her, "You have clearly been called to become a stay-at-home mom. You have two healthy kids and live in a lovely apartment in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Why aren't you more grateful?" And her heart said, "I'm doing the best I can here, but I'm miserable. And somehow I know that there is more to me than this."

Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’”

And the voices said, "well if you're so damn unhappy, why don't you get a job? You could easily do academic editing, or probably even technical writing, or take a class in data science or programming. It would get you out of the house and you could earn some money!" And her heart said, "but that's just it, I'm responsible for these kids and we don't need money. I do want to get out of the house, but I have the opportunity and therefore also the responsibility not just to participate in this whole consumerist mess we're in, but to make some real positive contribution to the world. Maybe. I think?"

Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.

This is the one that really got me today. Is this not, in religious language, the experience of wondering whether you should just jump and get the whole thing over with? There were so, so many days when I just wanted to slit my wrists. Not that I was in any real danger of committing suicide, exactly; these were those times when every minute at the park seemed like an hour, when I had tried to be social but it only ended in stress and shame, when I hated how messy the house was and hated the thought of cleaning in equal measure, when a kid had some simple need for attention and all I wanted to do was lock myself in my room. When the one thought on repeat in my head was get. me. out. of. here. PLEASE. And the only way out was through - one endless minute at a time, one foot in front of the other, knowing that even if I was making a hash of things, there wasn't an easy way out.

But now, there's light at the end of the tunnel. I still don't have a real job, I still don't know what I should be doing, but now I have whole days when I plug along pretty contentedly. And I look back and what seemed like such a disaster...by the grace of God somehow wasn't. The kids are okay. Cool, even, in their own special ways. And the fog of (situational) depression is lifting. Though it will probably be back, at an opportune time.

Love!

So far this morning I have received:

1. Cuddles from the whole family.
2. My very favorite breakfast of bagels with cream cheese and strawberries. And coffee.
3. From my dear children, a knife and fork with red handles. Love Besteck, we're calling them. The fact that they went to Migros together to get me a present and managed to compromise on anything at all worth a celebration all on its own.
4. A big bottle of clear shower gel with tiny red hearts from my friend and work partner.

So much love, and I'm not even out of bed yet. Yay for birthdays!

Happy Birthday to me!

Tomorrow I'm turning 45. I was raised on the idea that it is unseemly for adults to celebrate their birthdays - you should be, I don't even know, too modest to ask for presents? ashamed because you've wasted your life? overcome with sorrow that you're one year nearer death? Screw all that, I say. Maybe I'll feel differently one of these years, but for now, I'll take all the excuses to celebrate that I can get.

My birthday present to myself is a week-long break from the calorie-counting and dieting I've been doing since mid-January. Surprise, I do not enjoy dieting. And eating like a bird for a few weeks, although it takes willpower, is not the same thing as changing my (our) diet permanently for the better. I still have a lot of work to do on that front. But still...I've lost 10 pounds and in trying to get in my 10,000 steps ever day I've gotten to enjoy some lovely spring weather, so, win!

Also - tomorrow at noon I'll be on the train to lovely Morschach for a weekend of theology ("New Testament I"), which means three meals of no cooking and a night in a hotel room yay!! And, ahem, listening to lectures, of course. And some sneaking out out to enjoy the stunning proto-Swiss views. It's supposed to be raining this time, but still. Here are some photos from previous visits so you can see why I'm excited.

Since we last talked...

My last blog post was in September 2017 and now it's January 2019, so I feel like I owe everyone an update. Trouble is...I'm not sure myself what the big news items are. So here's just a quick overview of My Life Today.

About half my waking hours are still spent doing some sort of child care, housework, or household project management (sooo many school vacations here), but as the kids get older I have more and more non-housewife time yipeeeeeeee!

I liked my theology class so much that I signed up for a whole new series of 16(!) of them - 2 classes per semester for 4 years. So far I've passed 5 of the 16 classes, including (recently, and I'm very proud of this) philosophy. Ok, it's still adult education and not a real university class or anything, and yes it was only 10 minutes long and they aren't out to fail anyone, but still. I PASSED AN ORAL EXAM ON PHILOSOPHY IN GERMAN. All y'all who did a semester abroad in high school and still speak the language fluently can just keep your mouths shut, I've worked really hard on this second-language thing and I am having a moment here.

To finance my theology habit I've kept the job running the playgroup at church on Friday mornings, so I've been gainfully employed doing that at 25% time for what seems like an impossible two years now. Every Thursday night I dread Friday morning, but it comes anyway, and I go shopping and make coffee and cut up some fruit and some number of parents and kids show up, and we play and eat and sing and light candles in the church and so far no one has been seriously injured and on Friday afternoon I am exhausted. Repeat. I also spend Tuesday mornings working in the office, where I'm mostly good for making posters and having too many crazy ideas.

Next to my to big projects I have a bunch of smaller ones: gospel choir, periodic Art of Hosting meetings (when I grow up I want to be a facilitator), seeing the psychiatrist (more on that soon I hope), trying to maintain the precious few friendships I have here, this or that little editing job...

Aaand Daniel is yawning dramatically, which means it's time for bed. Hitting publish!

Lent 2019

Okay so. For Lent this year I want to get back into the habit of writing. My grand plan is to post once a day to this lovely blog of mine. Goal: write something and hit publish. Sooo...well it's 11pm on Ash Wednesday and you can see how far I've gotten with this scheme; I think it's safe to say I'm not ready to announce it to the world yet. So if you are reading this because you've set up an RSS feed or something (I'm looking at you, Dan), just...maybe ignore me for a little bit, ok? Thanks. Back very soon with something more substantial, I hope.