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!