A relatively new friend of mine recently discovered my blog. Yes, this one. The one that is swiftly approaching the 6-month mark on radio silence. Eek.
A postless poseur, that’s what I am lately. A writer without a pen, a philosopher without an idea. A blogger without a post. Ack.
Anyway, getting back to the new friend and his shameless blog-stalking… He clicked in because we just became ‘Facebook friends’ 🤮, and my singular presence there is my cross-posting habit from Instagram, almost exclusively ‘new blog post’ announcements from not-so-recent history.
So naturally, he hopped over to see what I was writing about.
So naturally, I retraced his steps, followed his clicky little footprints, to see what he now sees, know what he now knows. Just makin’ sure he’s got a clear picture, ya’ know? God, what if he read some of the old stuff and believes me to still be an aspiring novelist? Horrors.
No, it’s not creepy. He was just following my shameless self-promotional advertising.
And I was just noticing the things that had new little hearts by them.
God, life online is weird.
Anyway, he reached out, and we had some lovely exchanges, including his sharing of some deeply personal essays, I imagine in response to all that blogging that I haven’t been doing. And now my new friend has become an old friend. Would you look at that.
(I realize now that you could read that last bit as my giving that new friendship a swift kick in the rear after learning things I could never unlearn. Funny. But not what I was going for.)
Anyway, all that reading over of my own blog posts to make sure my new buddy didn’t get the wrong idea and think I was in cahoots with the regime got me to thinking, and thinking, and thinking, and now I’m here writing, and writing, and writing. As can be my wont. As I used to be wont. As I once wonted.
First of all, holy hell, what kind of a ride have we been on for the past 6 months? Just when you think the country can’t be drug any further underwater, the sodden pair of jeans we’re wearing for a president just keeps on finding new ways to drown and distract. Good lord. I don’t think I need to reiterate it for you; you’re living it too.
But, just because it has to be said, have you seen how our Nobel-nominated neighbors have been giving us a master class in how to neighbor? The good people of Minneapolis have single-handedly renewed my faith in humanity. What an honor to be Minneapolis-adjacent these days. There is hope, and it lives just next door. Sigh.
Secondly, I’ve been really noticing in awe of the power of vulnerability lately. I’ve been doing some things with some people, and it just feels like so many shields are down right now. In so many ways we’re all caught up in fight or flight, and we’re just swatting blindly into the air to protect ourselves, but at the same time, vulnerability. So much vulnerability.
I’m sure this is partially a product of exhaustion. I know for myself I’m just too damned tired to keep myself safe in any more ways than the necessary ones. (You are too, aren’t you? Yeah, I can see it. It’s OK.) But also? I think this is a necessary shift for the survival of our great nation. I think we instinctively know that until the shells dissolve and we learn what community really means, we don’t have a prayer at overcoming the nastiness that’s attempting hostile takeover. We’ve been on an unpleasant isolation trajectory with the ingress of more technology than we can handle, and it may be that the threat of being the next nation to fall to dictatorship could have some silver linings. Who knew?
“… We see both our clarity and our confusion. We are learning firsthand what everyone who has ever set out on this path has learned: we are all a paradoxical bundle of rich potential that consists of both neurosis and wisdom.”
~ Pema Chodron
I never thought I had such a hard shell to begin with, never thought I kept y’all at arms length too viciously, but boy, what the powers of retrospect can show you. Somewhere along the line I rolled over and offered up my squishy underbelly, kind of unreservedly. Weird. How did that happen?
Menopause? Oh, definitely. Middle-aged maturity? Sure, though that seems like a stretch. But I think mostly… maybe… it’s also just one small individual step forward in the collective fight for humanity.
I’m not alone though. It’s not my OWN vulnerability that’s been taking my breath away. It’s yours. You, and you. Yeah, you, the guy in the hat. I have been just floored by people’s willingness to be scared and real and open and hopeful all at once. Careful and Care-full. Loving in new and surrendered ways. Vulnerable.
“GOD is a verb more than a noun. God is love, which means relationship itself.” ~ Richard Rohr
My new and nameless friend is a good example, but he is far from alone. I could anonymously call out whole swaths of amazing humans who have stuck their tender necks out in my general vicinity, in inspirational and beautiful ways. Maybe it’s in the water. The water of rising authoritarianism anyway. We’re all in need of connection, of real relationships unburdened by armor and pretense, in need of community that can hold us up, that we can hold up, in trying times. What a gift, to have vulnerable people being vulnerable, all of us teaching one another how to be just a little bit more open. There is hope for us yet, folks.
“Help the world by leaving a trail of who you are.”
~ Mark Nepo
“My love is just a reminder: find your center.”
~ Trevor Hall
Sixth, and lastly, there have been an awful lot of great Aurora Borealis showings in the past 6 months. Man, have you seen these? The view from our trampoline has never been better.
So where have I been, you ask? Not here, that’s where.
Since our last meeting, life has just taken me in some different directions, that’s all.
My mother-in-law’s health took a hard turn right after that last post and required every ounce of our energy for a time. Then she passed, and was one amongst many funerals… more funerals than I care to count. (How is it that funerals always come in flocks?) Planning funerals, and all that comes along with deaths, can be a bit all-consuming, and I had time for little else for quite a while. It was time well-spent, and it wasn’t here.
Gifts.
“Maybe death / isn’t darkness, after all / but so much light / wrapping itself around us – / as soft as feathers -”
~ Mary Oliver
By the time the bulk of that storm had passed over, the holidays were upon us and the train was chugging along in all the other ways… just not this one. I suppose a few other things filled in the blogging void.
When the world was crashing down around us and we were struggling to breathe for all the death in the air, I re-took up chess. I guess I needed something to disappear into here and there, to engage my brain in something not of death. Whatever it was, it worked, and I latched on hard. It is possible that it’s becoming an obsession, but I’m OK with that. Helps keep the brain lubed up and has brought all sorts of gifts. I’ll take ‘em.
Also, when you plan multiple funerals, you wind up with many plants. It’s a thing now to send live plants rather than flowers; didja know that? I love that trend, don’t get me wrong, but each one of those little baskets has like 10 plants in it. I think I potted out more than 3 dozen little baby plants one weekend. Together with the many plants I rescued from my mother-in-law’s when she passed, and the many more plants I’m fostering for MY mom because her cat is the devil, and the already burgeoning plant problem I had all on my own, I’ve been overrun by houseplants. Most of my time is now spent watering plants.
I’m still working on ASL, though at a much more slower and measured pace. I think the learning is speeding up as I’m slowing down, so that’s pretty cool. Also, the chess tactics and all that plant watering are cutting into the ASL lesson time. Don’t tell the bestie.
“Each of us spins repeatedly from blindness to radiance, from dividedness to wholeness, and it is our impulse to stay in touch with all that is alive that keeps us from staying lost. It is the impulse to be intimate… To live with things and not in front of them, to no longer watch, but to realize that we are part of everything we see–this is the love that keep moving us back into wholeness when divided. To love by admitting our connection to everything is how we stay well. Allowing the current of another’s inwardness to connect with our own is the beginning of both intimacy and enlightenment.”
~ Mark Nepo
Honest to God, as I was transcribing that one, inwardness came out the first time as inwardmess. I almost didn’t change it.
Most excitingly, a few of my greatest friends and I decided to jump in with All the Feet to start up a Singing Resistance in our nearest little big town. Have you heard of Singing Resistance? You really should have heard of Singing Resistance by now.
No? Oh, my.
Well, just another feather in the cap of the great folks of Minneapolis: When Trump’s private ICE army declared war on that fine city in recent months, a small group of people who liked to meet every week to sing songs and bolster each other’s spirits, took their singing to the streets (one of my kiddos just might have been a part of that group… *fangirl squeal*). The warm and fuzzy little singing group started showing up in neighborhoods hit by ICE, singing songs of love and solace to the communities there, grieving alongside them. They started showing up outside federal buildings turned detention centers, singing songs of solidarity to those violently detained. They started showing up outside the hotels where the ICE agents slept, singing defection songs, asking them to lay down their weapons and come join them in song. Singing Resistance was born. Powerful stuff. Amazing stuff. Important stuff.
And somewhere in the midst of their little group of singers growing into the thousands and becoming an organizing force in the resistance, they took the time to put together a toolkit and songbook and trainings for others around the nation and the world wanting to form Singing Resistance groups in their communities. Because they didn’t already have their hands full.
“Forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn’t know before you learned it.”
~ Maya Angelou
“If you want to know where your heart is, look to where your mind goes when it wanders.”
~ Walt Whitman
I read through the toolkit the day it was released. Said to myself, “Self, we should do something about that. But first we should give it a good think. Three or four months of thinking should do. Let’s start the thinking.” The next morning, one of my innocent and anonymous vulnerability peeps emailed me. Let’s call him Eustace. I opened my email to to seven words:
“Krista,
We need to do this.
-Eustace.”
Hell, yeah, Eustace. Get Up On It. Two days later, All the Feet were in the air and Singing Resistance Menomonie was officially a thing. Thank God for those who think with their feet.
If you’re in the neighborhood, you should come sing with us. I guarantee it’ll take your blood pressure down a few notches.
Time to build the world we want now.
Time to Love Louder.
Tucked happily into the gorgeous hills and woods of Wisconsin, I write about life, faith, and the humor that both require. 
Tales From the Nexus 
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