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Loved and Wearing Red Lipstick

The best time to wear red lipstick is when you have absolutely no real reason to. 

Some people put on lipstick for special occasions. I do that sometimes, too. But you never know when an occasion is going to become special, or when it might end up not being special at all. 

The best time to wear red lipstick is when it is totally unnecessary, just because you feel like it. Not to get anyone to look at you. Not because anyone is going to look at you. Just for you. 

So I like to sweep on a velvety layer of my favorite 'British Red' with its familiar, elegant, subtle scent and its ensconcing metallic tube. This seems so insignificant and blithe, but to me it's something almost sacred. I have to be in the right mood. It's like sweeping on a little bit of polished confidence. 

Today I woke up feeling fragile, fatigued, unmotivated, and very much not like a morning person, or not much of a person at all. So I put on red lipstick to write, because no one was going to see me. I was -- am -- just wearing it for me. 

--

Someone I greatly admire recently asked (perhaps more rhetorically, than anything), if contemporary American culture encouraged families and institutions to tell young people that they are "special" or "great." Maybe, he reflected, it would be both more Christian and more helpful to tell them that they are loved? 

I think of an exchange between superhero mother and son in The Incredibles: 
- "But Dad always said...our powers made us special."
- "Everyone's special, Dash."
- "...Which is another way of saying no one is..."

Maybe we wouldn't wrestle with so much self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy and failure if we were told more often that there will always be people who will do what you think you do best better than you do it. Chances are, they might even be better at an awful lot of other things, too. But you might be the only individual that can love that impossible person so well. You might be the only person who can contribute so profoundly to that cause. You might be the only soul who can connect with that misunderstood and despairing person who is desperate to be pointed towards some light. 

And so in some way, you are totally unique, and have something exceptional to bring to the proverbial table.

But the truth is, there are some really remarkable people out there. Some people carry greatness on their shoulders. Others don't. Some people have that sparkle in their eyes that gushes to the world, "I'm someone special." Other's don't. 

We're not all gifted with glossy Rolls-Royce charisma or destined for 'successful' superstardom. We're not always going to feel great, or special, but we can always know that we are loved, because God whispers it to us -- breathes it into every fiber of our beings and lives -- when we're really listening. 

I love Anne Lamott's words on Mother Teresa: "...remember that most mornings she was out there on the streets of Calcutta cleaning some person's butt the day before he died, without telling anyone about it?"

I'm pretty sure Mother Teresa didn't preen herself with the concept of being 'special' or 'great' before she served and mentored others. I'm guessing what gave her compassion and fortitude was the knowledge that she was loved, and that the person she was serving was loved. Depressed, crippled, broken, happy, healed, we're all loved.

Maybe if we heard less of, "You're special," we might get over our sense of entitlement and extravagant expectations for ourselves. We're called to serve faithfully wherever we are, and nothing is more effectual than a good attitude.

I'm not advocating that we degenerate into soggy noodles; I'm all for aiming high, reaching extraordinary potential, working hard, and changing the world for the better by carefully and intelligently challenging the injustices and low expectations we witness. But are we forgetting, in the midst of all this, that we're loved? That we're human beings, not human doings, and that even if we're "failing", we're still covered by grace of incalculable worth and love of unchanging value? 

What comes as an incredible, grace-filled relief to me is that all human life is equally valued by God. God's love is equally distributed. Not only should this give us a grasp of how we are to treat one another, this should also spur us into beautifully radical thought and action. 

The message of 'self esteem' is overrated. But when I hear from anyone -- parent, sister, boyfriend, but most especially God -- "I love you"...that's what transforms the way I see myself. That's what challenges me to be better, to keep trying, to achieve, to be strong. That's what reminds me that when I feel fragile, fatigued, or unmotivated -- or when I'm guilty of just being an irritable, selfish jerk -- that I am still accepted and cherished by those people and by God. That's what gives me confidence to contribute, listen, connect, share, and change. 

everything was made of words

In my dream
There were no quotation marks
The words were my own
They doused and tumbled and shook and whispered and caressed and tinged 
In my dream the creatures of the depths 
visited the shore
They kissed the foamy mouth of earth 
And then slipped back into best-kept-secrets
In my dream the barnacle pebbles 
didn't roll my ankles
And the colors were expressions
In my dream the stones stayed oven-warm when the air grew cool 
In my dream
Men cut the glass water with noise
In my dream 
God's elbows rested
in the mountain crevices
Because He'd left His heaven throne
To come visit man 
In my dream 
I was awake 

Deadheading

This is the time of year to deadhead the rhododendrons.

If you are confused by this pronouncement, I will explain. I was equally confused when, several years ago, my grandma notified me that the rhododendrons planted outside our house had finished flowering and that we needed to neatly lop off the shriveled-up blooms to make way for those of the following rhododendron season...clearing away the old to make room for the new, so to speak, so that the rhododendron bush could put all of its prolific plant energy into forming new buds instead of expending effort in shedding the old blooms.

Deadheading a rhododendron is surprisingly therapeutic, and has become one of my favorite, compulsive outdoor chores. When the extravagantly bright red and hot pink blooms of our rhododendron bushes fade away, I go out and gently snap off all of the top stalks. In my hand they look slightly skeletal, like large green daddy-long-legs.

Recently, as I deadheaded the bushes, I savored the solitary nature of my task, and reflected on its analogical significance.

There come times in our lives when we must clear away those withered parts of our soul that hinder new growth...there come times to clear away ugly attitudes and habits to allow for  fresh buds of thought and practice to expand and eventually blossom in brilliant color. 

Being careful not to break off the fragile new growth underneath -- the promise of future flowers -- we all must undergo, at different points in our lives, an internal deadheading. We do live, after all, in God's garden...

Reads

The older I get, the more I begin to feel that weekends and summers are just illusions of rest, like mirages of water on a long stretch of hot asphalt freeway. But in reality, weekends and summers disappear in a frenzy of drive-by time. Every summer, I make grand plans to devour stacks of books in the high hopes of fortifying my mind with a banquet of spiritual and academic enrichment and a large measure of literary nutrients. Regrettably, most people don't enjoy the luxury of actually doing what they would like to be doing all day long. But both the utilization of one's actual innate gifts and life passions as well as the development of forbearing virtues and gracious attitudes, I'm sure, have their value.

If going into a bookshop sends you into the same conflicted state (a combination of profound euphoria, creative inspiration, heady anxiety, and panicked insecurity) as it sends me, then I am sorry. Once, to ease my perturbation during a semester heavy-loaded with what seemed an impossible amount of academic reading, someone told me to always look at a stack of books -- metaphorical or real -- from the top down, focusing on the topmost book or task first without giving a thought to how tall, thick, or heavy the stack actually was. I realized that allowing my to-do or to-read list pile up in my mind's eye only filled me with the fear that the tower would tumble down to crush me and my mental faculties altogether.

Whether or not I actually get through my summer booklist, I have a carefully curated, promising-looking stack by my bed that I fully intend to read in the next aggravatingly fleeting couple of months. There are so many others on my list, but lest I overwhelm myself just thinking about it, I'll begin with my bedside stack.

I thought I'd share a portion of that stack with you -- their titles, at least -- just in case you're looking for an interesting summer read and something catches your eye. 

• Anatomy of the Soul: Surprising Connections between Neuroscience and Spiritual Practices that Can Transform Your Life and Relationships by Curt Thompson, M.D. 

I've started in, and thus far it seems that Thompson (who I once heard speak at one of our college chapel services) accessibly integrates Christian spiritual life and science to offer practical and restorative exercises for rewiring your mind and its connections to others and God. The hope of finding a very pragmatic approach to transforming my spiritual and relational life is simultaneously comforting and rousing. 

• Nurtured by Love: The Classic Approach to Talent Education by Shinichi Suzuki 

Yes, I have to read this in preparation for my Suzuki method harp teacher training course this summer, but it's a quick, fascinating, and edifying read for anyone interested in teaching children or just learning in general. Suzuki's holistic approach to music, practicing, memory, personal character, and beauty is totally inspiring. 

• Cross and Crescent: Responding to the Challenge of Islam by Colin Chapman 

This was highly recommended to me by one of my favorite history professors, who lived in Egypt and taught at the University of Cairo. She seemed to think Chapman's work was comprehensive, tasteful, and full of significant theological questions for Christians. When she'd mentioned a couple of Chapman's books in our History of the Modern Middle East class, I wrote them down right away. 

• Snow by Orhan Pamuk

A well-admired yet often controversial Turkish novelist, Pamuk crafts his novel (I'm almost finished!) with an insightful political relevance. Tinged with beautiful melancholy and humanness, Snow successfully weaves often sardonic, gritty observations about life in rural Turkey with alternately fresh and gritty descriptions redolent of my own experience living abroad. Pamuk delves into themes of darkness, violence, lust, loneliness, quiet, religion, and artistic expression. Snow is seeped in the subtleties of poetry and Turkish political intrigue, which I've found makes it an actually worthwhile poolside novel.

• Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life by Richard Rohr 

My mentor highly recommended this one to me. He said it teaches us to go beyond a search for identity to realize that our failures, discomfort, and anxieties actually help us to grow spiritually. In other words, when we think we're falling down, we might actually be 'falling upward.' Richard Rohr founded the Center for Action and Contemplation, and I get the sense that his book is highly illuminating and explorative for Christians facing new problems and new directions.

• Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers by Anne Lamott

Judging by the way my history professor quoted Anne Lamott and even read a portion of this book at the beginning of one class, she was evidently deeply influenced by Lamott's writing. I for one could definitely use A LOT of help with my prayer life... 

• Pensées by Blaise Pascal

Of all the philosophical writings I've explored in my philosophy classes, I think that Pascal's has affected me the most. I love the way his Pensées are often jumbled jottings, because you never know when you'll stumble upon a gem of theological or existential thought that will challenge the way you see the human predicament. Even if Pascal's writing sometimes exhibits discontinuities, I feel that it better reflects the way we actually wrestle with the soul-wracking ruminations that lead us to a better understanding of God, ourselves, and our relationship to all of mankind. I've been waiting all year to delve back into his thoughts! 

• Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I've been waiting a long time to read this classic, first published in the mid 1860s, and when I found an old copy in a used bookstore for four dollars I knew it was time to sink my teeth into some more Russian lit. 

The Learning

In high school, before I was ever in a serious relationship, I read a lot of relationship books. Books with titles like 5 Paths to the Love of Your Life and For Young Women Only: What You Need to Know About How Guys Think and Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity. (And no, I never read I Kissed Dating Goodbye, because of my aversion to what my family deemed the detrimentally fundamentalist Christian courtship model. And did you know that Relient K wrote a book about girls? It's called The Complex Infrastructure Known as the Female Mind, and yes, it's on my bookshelf). 

Books on marriage, sex, divorce, and childrearing were often laying around our house -- a product of my Dad's profession as a psychologist. And I would read them, or portions of them, with the utmost fascination. What were they telling my parents about teenagers? How could I understand myself? Did romance disappear as soon as you got married? Would dating a number of different people make me feel empty and depleted? I needed to know. 

And since I didn't have a boyfriend, I took the safer but less empirical approach to relationships and just spent time reading about them instead. 

Then, eventually, I dated and got my heart broken and broke people's hearts. Sometimes I ignored wise people and I ignored God, but when I listened, beautiful things happened to my heart.

I grew up a bit and matured, with a lot of blips along the way. I stopped compromising and justifying. 

And now I'm in a very blessed relationship with a man who happens to defy pretty much every category into which I could have put him and every definable relational trend that I thought those books prepared me to tackle.

So really, I've ended up feeling just as unequipped as your next 20-something to handle arguments, desires, insecurities, anger, naiveté, inadequacy, my own immaturity and selfishness, and a whole slough of other issues that no one really likes to talk about in any regular conversation.

I'm learning that every couple is different. Every relationship witnesses both universal struggles and unique ones. Only in wading through all this together can you really learn how to love in the real way, the lasting way. And no one can really tell you how to do this, because they can't.

I read somewhere once that you should always hold hands with each other when you argue. Well, you can't do that when you're on the phone and you're in a long-distance relationship.

My 'complex infrastructure' hates to mess up. I do my best to work towards healthy and joy-filled relationships, but I screw things up a lot more than I would like. But I can hope to keep learning how to forgive and be forgiven.

Because loving is one of the most difficult, soul-wrenching, fulfilling, and rewarding undertakings we can ever attempt as fallible and fallen human beings. 

Sommer

And the long-anticipated moment has come. 

The moment where I run barefoot to the backyard, stretch out on a brightly-colored beach towel, turn back the cover of a fresh novel, and feel the kiss of sun-warmth on my back.

And all the summer moments that follow.

When I woke up I didn't touch the curly little wisps escaping from my ponytail. 

I didn't set an alarm. 

I didn't worry about anything.

The youthful faces of jubilant sunflowers on my windowsill greeted me.  

Mail -- three perfect little notes -- lay on my desk awaiting my fingertips. "I hope you've found some moments to let your mind wander, to create and celebrate life in all its beauty, and to feel the peace and presence of God," wrote a dear friend. "Use this time to think, Em," wrote my best friend.


My favorite rosebush, with its tiny, fragrant, delicately purple blooms, is done flowering. I collected three eggs from our chickens -- each was a slightly different hue of brown, a slightly different ovoid size. The blueberry bushes are laden with promising, pale little blushes of unripe berries.

I listened to my mom practicing Debussy's Clair de Lune.

I stirred a thickening roux over the stove as I reacquainted myself with my family's laughter. 

There's a red-and-white china teacup, a bird's nest with broken robin's eggs nestled inside, an antique electric fan, my Grandpa's toy car, a deteriorating old copy of Jane Eyre in French on my shelf.

Oh yes, I am remembering... I found that '50s clock in an Istanbul pawn shop and carried it home in my suitcase. I picked up that postcard at the Anne Frank museum in Amsterdam. I bought that art print from a booth in Pike Place Market. And there are the photos. Dancing, rolling with laughter, embracing, growing up, lapping up ice cream... I remember travels and lessons and who I am and who has loved me. 

I sit in the redolent haze of affable memories. 

And I remember other summers, the feel of speeding bicycle tires and sandpaper-rough diving boards and heat-radiating sidewalks, the taste of melting fruit popsicles and late-night dinners outside, the sound of lawns being mowed, the scent of dry pine trees and wild sagebrush. 

Kisses of indefatigable summer, 

of blessed solitude, 

of buoyant activity. 

Home is familiar and yet I rediscover it every time after a long absence. And I begin to know its impermanence and see its transitions. And so I grow all the more thankful for this long-awaited time at home.

'Loveliness,' says the top of the old tin chocolate box that rests upon the stack of coffee-table books.