celebrating Advent as myself

Today is Annunciation Sunday, the first Sunday in Advent. Yesterday the girls and their cousins went treasure-hunting for leaves and flowers to use as the backdrop for our nativity scene. I found the closest thing I could to a purple or blue piece of fabric, laid it over the top of the writing desk that sits in our dining room, and then created a backdrop for the figures that will be added as the weeks go by. It's looking lovely and simple now, but it won't stay that way for ever. By the time Christmas comes it will most likely have plenty more greenery, plus a full menagerie of animals and figures from our nativity set. This will all lead up to the arrival of baby Jesus on Christmas Eve, who will be very comfy and warm on that manger Isobella created over a cut stone.

Today at church our Pastor spoke about the Annunciation. The moment right at the beginning of the Christmas Story where the angel Gabriel visits Mary and tells her she is going to give birth to Jesus. This story has always been meaningful to me. I am in awe of Mary's willingness. Her initial incredulity at the angel's words melts into obedience. Be it unto me according to your word, she says. There is no passivity here, her vow must have come from a steely resolve she somehow found within her. I want that. A selection of paintings of the Annunciation were shown, and some of them were beautiful. But none of them moved me like this one I found tonight in this post about preparing for Advent.

The Annunciation by Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1859-1937

Here there is no hiding from the reality; Mary was so young and vulnerable. There she is, having been woken from sleep, disheveled, unsure, amazed. It's easy to read the story without really considering what this moment must have been like for her. Was she afraid? At first, yes. In shock? Probably. Completely taken by surprise? Absolutely. And yet something within her must have understood. Something within her must have been ready to be willing. Just a girl. Yet so ready.

Last year I bumbled my way through Advent, thrilled to have found an antidote to the commercialism of Christmas, but a complete novice. This year I'm still making it up as I go along, but I feel like I'm being re-united with an old friend, one who I liked the instant we met, and who I'm chuffed to be seeing again. I'm having fun discovering and creating traditions that are uniquely "us." The girls are so excited about Advent. We lit our first candle tonight, read the story of the Annunciation from Luke, and wrote some prayers together. It took us to way past a reasonable bedtime, which meant that it was growing dark. I walked into the dining room after tucking the girls in and the glow of one small candle changed everything.

But I've found myself not just thinking of our family traditions, but myself, and what I want to get out of this season. Karen Edmisten, in the post I linked to above, writes, As Advent unfolds, you're savouring the liturgical season, you're teaching your children about watching, waiting, and preparing for the Lord. But what are you doing for yourself? Her words challenged me to ask myself the same question. What do I want to ponder on as I wait? How will I contemplate what is to come? What will my priorities be in this potentially crazy season?

I don't think this kind of reflection is only for the religiously-minded. Anyone that wants to avoid a Christmas that's filled with stress and exhaustion would do well to pause and consider what lies ahead. Or else, as my pastor said today, you end up with another "Groundhog Christmas." I've had enough of those.

I've been writing nearly every morning since I told you I was doing NaNoWriMo and trying to write 50,000 words. I've been getting up at 5am, or as close to that as I can manage, and I've never been more content. I feel like I'm finally doing what I was made to do. I've been working on the novel that's been hanging around for almost forever, and I'm making writing a feature of my day. I feel like I've found the life I searched for desperately, knowing it was out there, but never quite found. I won't get to 50,000 words by Tuesday, but I've written 9,000. That's 9,000 more than zero.

What I'm trying to say is that I feel like myself. I'm living my life, not a version of it. Writing, in the active sense, influences my decisions, my priorities, and how I spend my time. It's the thing that makes me me. This all causes me wonder what shape Advent and Christmas will take now that I'm writing. I have a feeling that if I can keep this living-as-myself thing up, everything else will fall into place.

New Zealand: what future?

Yesterday I went to a special assembly at the girls' school. There was a powhiri (welcome ceremony) for all new students and their families. We who were the manuhiri (visitors) met in a classroom to practise a waiata and to have the protocol explained to us, and then we walked around to the school hall and gathered at the door. Inside the entire school was lined up facing us, with the Kapa Haka group in full costume at the front. One of the eldest girls called us, "karanga mai, karanga mai, karanga mai" and then the whole school welcomed us in with a haka.

Isobella has been in the Kapa Haka group since the first week she started at this school. I went along as parent help last week when the group performed at a multi-cultural concert in West Auckland. The kids were beside themselves with excitement. We negotiated crowds, ate lunch, got ready and had a quick practice, and in the end we were left with only a few minutes to get all thirty-something of the kids down through the hall and onto the stage. They did really well, considering there was no adult in the background to coach them. It's a pretty white group, and they didn't have the same volume or feistiness as some of the other groups, but they did their very best, and you could tell they loved every minute of it.

One of the other schools performing that day was one of the local schools in our old neighbourhood. This was a small school, one of those schools that some how along the way becomes the second-choice school for families who have the resources to choose something other than their local school. The roll at this school is tiny compared to the school up the road with the "excellent reputation", and has a high percentage of Maori and Pasifika kids. Is this the cause or the effect of the "white flight" that has gone on around it, who can say, but the result is undeniable. Still, it's a big-hearted school doing its best with limited resources and support. And the school's presence at the festival was hard to miss. They had just about the whole school involved, the kids were brimming with pride, and very happy.

We were able to watch this school performing on stage just before we went off to get our kids ready. It was their Kapa Haka group, a big group of kids in full costume, with piupiu skirts and the girls with moko face- painted on. They looked fantastic, they were loud and proficient. Then just behind me a man who seemed to be one of the dads of the group stood up and started a haka of his own from the audience. He was loud and passionate too. By standing and doing this he was offering the highest honour he could give the kids in that moment, and giving them his sincere and tangible support. I looked at the man, a wild looking Maori guy with a woolly grey beard and tats down his arms, and I could see that he was bursting with pride for those kids up on stage. In a moment I realised how incredible it was for him to see his child up on stage, belonging and succeeding at school by celebrating being Maori. I cried. I couldn't stop the tears rolling down.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, Maori kids got the strap for speaking Maori in class. Not so long ago, Maori children were likely to grow up ashamed of their Maoriness.  Whole generations have passed without having seen their culture and traditions valued. Who is crying for that now?

I was down at mum's last week when she was watching a TV programme that follows families with missing members and helps them find them. An elderly Maori had discovered he had fathered a son without his knowledge, and that son had been adopted. The programme tracked the son down in Australia and I watched the father and son's emotional reunion. It was a grey day, and the family had set up a welcome party underneath the carport at the end of the driveway. I watched as the family welcomed the son, assembled together just as the girls' school had been at our assembly yesterday. The wife of his father, his soon to be step-mother, led the call. "Karanga mai, karanga mai, karanga mai" she called, tears rolling down her face. The son walked towards them, his tears welling up too. The father met him, they shared a hongi, and then held each other in the tightest embrace, sobbing. The father whispered in Maori in his son's ear, over and over. I couldn't understand the words, and neither could the son, but they were like a soft song that washed over him. In that moment, no other language would do.

It's election day next Saturday. Politics was kept back stage while the Rugby World Cup was on, so it's felt like a very short lead-up. I've been more unsure about who I'll vote for than I have been for any election previously. I'm a left-leaning kind of girl, but I wouldn't call myself "left". I have some very "right" tendencies, but I'm definitely not "right", and even "centrist" doesn't describe me either. If I could dial up my ideal government it would be like an icecream cone with several scoops, each made of different flavours. I'd choose a policy from here, a policy from there, an ideology from one end, and another from the other end. Meanwhile, in the real world, a bleak financial outlook combined with some very desparate needs mean that I'm basically stumped. I can't see any one party that has the big picture covered.

I've been reading some sobering facts about our nation. The UN recently released a paper on child welfare entitled "Doing better for Children" and New Zealand doesn't fare too well. We have some of the worst statistics for children's health and well being in the OECD. Overall, our child mortality is higher than the OECD average. Twenty percent of our children are living in poverty. Maori children under 15 are six times as likely to be living in an overcrowded household, and Pasifika children are twelve times more likely. This has led directly to high rates of diseases that have completely disappeared from most developed countries. Margo White in the Listener notes that rheumatic fever is taking its toll amongst some of our children. This disease, which shouldn't exist, can leave children needing immediate heart-valve replacement surgery, and then monthly penicillin injections. Dr Norman Sharpe, the medical director of the NZ Heart Foundation, says that there are a thousand children on the Auckland register having monthly penicillin injections to prevent rheumatic fever re-occurring. Lance O'Sullivan, a Northland-based GP, regularly sees children who are "walking around with the heart of an eighty year old." His stark indictment;  "this is a disease of poverty, and brown kids... this is a race-based problem."

There's been plenty of political rhetoric thrown around recently about race-based policy. There are a few politicians who use it to fear-monger and to get attention. They want us to believe that race-based policy is morally repugnant, that it's a form of racism itself, and that it benefits some, only to leave the rest out in the cold. It's an easy position to hold when your culture is in the majority wherever you look, and when you live in a warm, dry, and comfortable house, and don't need to know where your nearest food bank is. But to believe it you have to be in some measure of denial about the reality of life for those on the other side.

At the end of the welcoming ceremony at the girls' assembly, the group of us who were being welcomed filed across the hall and greeted the front row of adults and children on the other side. Some of us shook hands, but most of us shared a hongi. That beautiful pressing of noses symbolises the oneness of shared breath. For a moment, the visitor and the host are one. Once the greeting was over, we the visitors were given new seats, right next to our hosts. I looked back over to the other side of the hall where the visitors began the ceremony, and the seats were empty. The meaning was clear. There were no more visitors, everyone now belongs.

That oneness is exactly what we need. We could all do with more opportunities to walk in each other's shoes. It's too easy see people as either "them" or "us." But what sort of future is that?

how it is in November

 

We've been here nearly five months. Looking back now I think we were in shock for the first two or three of them. It rained endlessly, and it was cold. It took about four months for us to finish playing musical bedrooms.  The transition from homeschool to school was a big one, and we still haven't quite got our routines sorted yet. But the sun is out. I took that photo this morning when I suddenly realised I could see something new; bright light.

If you look closely you can see a peak of blue between the deck railings. The tide is in and the water is glistening. That's new too. Having spent so much of my childhood by the sea in Raglan, the sparkle of sunlight on water always stirs my heart.  The way the drops of light flicker and dance is magical, and it brings all the hope and emotions associated with summer flooding back. I'm ready for this.

That doesn't mean it's suddenly easy though. Greer's asthma has got so bad that she's been sleeping in Mum's spare room for nearly two weeks. She's allergic to mould, and I'm pretty sure that the bits of mould in places on the ceilings and walls are the culprit. The other two girls are now showing signs of mild asthma too, and that makes me grumpy. We have plenty of work to do.

But I'm happy. My early mornings have become so normal I can't imagine life without them. I'm adjusting to life with only one child in the house, and she's adjusting to being on her own. Right now I'm writing on my laptop which is up on the kitchen servery, and Abigail is behind me feeding playdough to her doll. Just before we came in here we hung a load of washing out on the line, in full sun, and Abi played with the pegs and walked around my feet singing.

spring

I think it's finally spring. These flowers were the sight that greeted me during the weeks when we were all sick. A friend of Mum's had given them to her, and she shared them with me. They gave me hope and something beautiful to look at when the house was in disarray. They made me happy.

Something else is making me happy at the moment, and it's very good news. But there's a story to tell first, of course. Last Friday after I wrote the previous post Paddy and I went to see our therapist/counsellor who we'd managed to get an appointment with at short notice. I went out in a short-sleeved t-shirt for the first time, and the sun on my arms was warm. We've been seeing this woman on and off for about five years, and she's extremely smart. She works us out (or even better, gets us to work ourselves out) in an hour, every time. That's good value!

I told her a version of what I told you last week, how I'd realised that I'd had this sub-conscious victim thing going on, and that I could see now where my communication had been laced with resentment. The words I was using in our communication that week may have been innocent, but the tone was not. I apologised to Paddy, I told him I would have got on my knees if I needed to, I was that sorry. There's something safe about feeling sorry, when I'm really sorry I know I've got to the end of myself, I've uncovered everything that can be uncovered, gone where I need to go. Something is finished.

Our counselor then pulled out a set of cards with words on them, representing a range of human needs. She gave us a pile each, and asked us to choose three. "What were your needs at that time?" she asked us. "At the time of the conflict, what did you really need?" We each went through our set of cards and pulled out the words that resonated. There were plenty of words and phrases I liked, but only a handful that I knew were right for that moment.
Authenticity, consideration, mutuality.
Paddy chose his three easily, and I understood them straight away.
Respect, appreciation, acknowledgement. 
It's not rocket science really, is it?

We got to buy a set of cards and bring them home, and this is where the story gets good. I had a great time the next morning writing in my journal and reading through the cards. I laid the cards out around my laptop, up at our big dining table where I'm sitting now. They were breathtaking in their sheer number, and in the kaleidoscope they represented. I was looking at words that stood for almost every possible need an adult could have. I found myself asking some really good questions, and answering them with the cards.

The first question I asked myself was this. "What needs am I meeting when I write?" This is what I came up with;
meaning and purpose, clarity, creativity, time alone. 
Then I asked myself the opposite question. "What needs am I meeting when I choose to do other things, rather than write?" (By other things I mean the things I would normally choose to do in the evenings rather than write, like clean up the kitchen, tidy and clean the house, or do washing.) And I came up with;
order, beauty and aesthetics, efficiency, time alone. 


In effect, the needs I meet by writing are very similar to the needs I meet when choose not to write. If that sounds Irish, bear with me. I'm talking about the time I have most control over, which is the evenings, after the girls are in bed. That's the time I'm most likely to write. But usually once the kids are in bed you'll find me pottering around, re-ordering after the day's activity. I'll be tired, but usually happy enough, and certainly satisfied once I'm finished. I will have met some of the same needs that I could have met by writing. Time alone, order, beauty and aesthetics, creativity. And usually if I've been pottering around in my own space I will have been thinking away and created some sort of clarity in my head as well. Unfortunately though, I'll usually still want to write, here or in my journal, or at least do emails and read a few blogs. Which is how I end up going to bed way too late, and getting way too tired.

But isn't it a funny thought. Who would have thought I could meet some of my deepest needs by folding washing?!

Now here's the good news. I'm participating in National Novel Writing Month, affectionately known as Nanowrimo. It's never really grabbed me before, but somehow, mysteriously, this time I just wanted to do it. My friend Marita is doing it too, so we are keeping each other honest. I've written 3053 words since Tuesday. I'm way behind on the Nanowrimo target of 50,000 words by the end of November, but I'm way ahead of any hopes I ever had of actually writing this thing before the kids leave home. Let me put it this way, this idea, which I've mentioned a few times here, has been on the back burner for seven years. As of the 1st of November, it is officially on the front burner! That, my friends, doesn't just make my day, or my week, or my month, it basically makes my whole life! This is an astounding, near-miraculous thing! Worthy of many exclamation marks!!!

So this is what I asked myself last weekend as I sat right here with that pile of cards. I asked myself "what are my needs for this month, being the month I will be attempting to write 50,000 words?" And this is what I came up with.
 - time alone
 - order
 - efficiency
 - power in my world.

Is that surprising? It was to me. I would have thought I'd come up with some of the other words from the pack, like creativity, peace, and beauty. But no. To give myself a good shot at writing 50,000 words this month I need power, order, and efficiency. Who would have guessed.

Here is the really good news of it all. I've been setting my alarm and getting up at 5:30am every morning to write. To do this I've set my alarm (on my phone) to go to bed by 9:30pm every night. I've had to leave the dishes in the sink, ignore baskets full of washing and toys strewn across the floor. I have to walk past the TV, past emails and the internet, past long chats late at night. It's made me grab efficiency by the scruff of the neck and make it mine so that I can get the bare minimum done. It's made me leave jobs for Paddy to do the next day (when he's working  nights) even though I'd rather do it then, and do it my way. The result has been a messier house, three thousand words, and a happy me. There are some details I'll still have to thrash out. I do still want to spend time with that husband of mine, that goes without saying. And I know that when there's sickness in the family there will be days when I have to give up on the early mornings. But I think I've more or less found the way I want to spend the rest of my life.

If you've read this far, thank-you. That tells me that you are interested, and that you might even care. You might be my sister, or a treasured friend, or an old friend, or a new friend, or someone I haven't met yet, but if you read this far  then you've put yourself on my team. If I ever complain about tiredness or busyness or feeling lost in life, please remind me of the words I've written today. You are my witness!