I’m up late. Early? Yes, early. I took my daughter to yet another evening of volunteer work for a horror show. Yes, a horror show. I picked her up at 12:45a.m. And I’m exhausted. But I can’t sleep.
We are so not off the grid here. And it’s hilarious because my heart is off the grid and down the winding lane and into the woods and dancing naked in the river. My mind rebels vigorously and daily the systems with which I dance. With which? With whom? But I do stick to the grammatical rules as I drive eagerly over the double yellow line above the speed limit to fetch my child.
A horror show. I never went trick-or-treating as a child. It was wrong. Evil. My family was fanatical and overly religious, to put it mildly. I reclaimed me as I held my daughter’s hand for her first outing in Halloween wonder and then my two sons and it became this blur of most unique salvation. I found the “kingdom” when I refused the fear of my beginnings in Christ-dimming “salvation.” And Jesus grinned.
Christmas was Jesus’ birthday and Halloween was wicked or, at least, dumb. I never believed in Santa. I missed out on some things. I gained some things.
I sometimes look in my rearview mirror as I go over and past the double or dotted yellow line and (on pitiful days) pray the scene behind me was only a dream…a dream? No. It wasn’t. And every inch of time spent taking my child to volunteer for helping with the make-up artists she admires (Damn! They put make-up on Johnny Depp! SWOON!) is an inch of emancipation and territory whose claiming is more precious than she’ll ever fully realize. So, basic. So seemingly inane and yet powerful for me, for a generation or two or four. That, in and of itself, is a wonder supreme.
I bag these goodies as I ring the doorbell of every new opportunity and I insist on treats and no one knows what they’re doing. No one knows the neighborhood whispers of something beyond zombie invasions and hints just a bit too subtly of bringing me to life. I skip away with my chocolate and laugh.
And drive over the double yellow line. I pass in the no-pass zone. But there are no cars. It’s a fast-forward around the obstacles in my soul while these three children I conceived in a life of confusion are clarifying every stitch of me.
And keeping me up well past the witching hour, feasting my soul on a seemingly blasphemous redemption. But no, it’s sacred.
And finding music, calling me to listen: “Mom!! You have to hear this!! OMG!!!” Their depths blow me out of my tunnel of deepest frustration. They blast me into newer lands of courage as I go chasing the windmills with their big pointy spokes turning and burning. Some of those windmills turn out to be pretty nasty systematic monsters spinning the wheels of “justice” round and round, sending projectile missiles into the heart of wildness. I like to watch those destructive windmills explode when I’m finished snarling down their mission. But now I sound silly.
I won a battle this week for the best interest of my youngest in a system so far gone it’s tragic. A big effort with huge happy results. The rewards are enormously satisfying even when you’re up past 1am bringing out the zombies for their sweetest redemptive work and finding Jesus in the mean streets, right there past the corner grocer selling a bill of manufactured goods and the “sanity” of gridlock. You stop and stare at all the pretty lies while dynamic truth resonates louder, calling you to a deeper work and a hilariously metaphor-rich world…
Sometimes the sweetest stuff drags you out of the bed you made and down the road past all your notions of sensible concepts and into a dance of soul. And…
it’s all good.
J. Ruth Kelly 
Spooky – or what!
That was written like a dance – full of rhythm and cavorting. I’ve not seen its like before. I could almost hear the flute playing.
Tooty
it’s a bit jaunty, i think. odd, even (hehe!). but i love your mention of a flute…good synchronicity for me today…was telling a friend before class that i really must find my flute like a good scottish lass and learn to play properly.