I can’t say how I live the life I’ve been given.

In my last blog, I said that the stories I’d been reading were about living the lives we’ve been given in great Love. In William Stafford’s last poem, written the day he died , I think he knows, too, our lives are a gift that we receive and also give.

In reviewing my day, a couple of nights ago, I went back through chance encounters and second chances I was given when I wasn’t quite ready for what God was sending my way. 

On Monday, I left my house for the bus stop on my way to an eye appointment. At the stop, I was immediately greeted by a lady in her wheel chair.  We chatted about the day, she told me where she lived and I told her the general area where I lived, just a couple of blocks from her apartment.  For some reason, I told her about the Barred owl couple that I listen to every day. 

Our bus arrived and she found her accessible seat and I settled a few rows away. I didn’t really notice my new friend, until I was almost at my stop. There were fewer people on the bus when she motioned for me to come over to the seat next to her and I did. She simply said, “I want to come over and see the owls. Are they in your front yard?”  I was surprised.

“No, they are in the back but I have a long driveway that goes to the back.”  

“I’m Leigh, she said.”  I told her my name.  “Are you sure I can get there?”  I assumed she meant to my house or down my driveway using her wheel chair.  So I told her yes and pulled the cord for my stop.

“What’s your address?” she asked as I was getting up to start toward the door.  I told her, she repeated it, and I walked toward the front door of the bus when I should have exited the back.  I suppose I was more distracted by our conversation than I realized.

My stop is at the corner of Quadra and Pandora where tents and carts filled with their owner’s belongings line the sidewalks and grassy median on Pandora Avenue. It is a heartbreaking area and also home to a family of people who struggle and celebrate with each other like a family. I wasn’t surprised but not quite ready for what came next. 

I was remembering that I’d turned right instead of left last time I came to this intersection and I had to turn around and retrace my wrong steps. The traffic light had changed and I was just standing still when I should have started across the busy intersection. An angry voice behind me yelled, “What walk light are you waiting for?”  

I apologized to the air in front of me and started across the street.  I immediately wish I’d at least smiled at this person or something to change my own startled reaction. The man who had yelled at me was struggling to walk across the street and was too far behind me to hear my words. I turned left to drop off my glasses and continued walking around town until I picked them up again an hour or so later.

At the intersection of Broughton and Fort Streets, I heard someone yell my name. I turned to see Doug, a man from our church, coming toward me on his electric skateboard.  He smiled and said it was so good to see me out.  We chatted about recent changes in his life and how he was doing.  Doug has some challenges, well we all do, yet his are a little more visible. He boldly shares his fears and his hopes for his life and specifically his relationship with God. I asked how he learned to maneuver his electric skateboard.  He compared his approach to “dancing with the board,” closing his eyes and getting the feel for it.  What a beautiful way to describe what I imagined to be a difficult balancing act, especially on busy downtown streets.

After picking up my glasses, I made my way to my bus stop. A week before at this stop, I noticed a man filling his backpack with some groceries. He came toward me holding an unopened box of cookies and asked if I’d like to try one—they were really good. I said no thanks and he went back to his belongings on the bench. I felt ashamed I hadn’t accepted his kindness.  So I mentioned I hadn’t seen that particular kind of cookies or something like that.  

He opened the end of the box and held out the wrapped tray inside.  “They are really good, try one!”  I reached to open the end of the package as he carefully held his side.  He pushed the tray forward and I took the top cookie.  “No, take the whole row, you can’t just eat one!”   I took all three in the stack and thanked him.  He turned back to continue filling his backpack. I ate one, it was tasty, chocolate and raspberry. I put the other two in my coat pocket.  My bus passed by because I wasn’t standing at the curb. The kind man’s bus came next. I waited 30 minutes longer for my bus and was glad I’d honoured his kindness.  

Could I have so quickly forgotten what I’d learned that day?  This week at the same bus stop, I saw a younger gentleman who clearly had some physical challenges that kept him from meeting anyone eye to eye.  He laboured to walk with his cane and large backpack that rested on his back parallel to the ground.  He stopped and leaned on the trash can for support. I was standing a few away behind him waiting for my  #2 bus that was due in just a few minutes. 

When #28 bus stopped, a lady got off slowly with her walker and looked directly at me and smiled.  She went straight to the gentleman leaning against the trash can and bent over to look him straight in the eye, “Are you alright?” He nodded.  She smiled and went on her way living her life with great love.

You can’t tell when things with meaning will happen. We are ever connected in this wondrous luminous web.

A Body Prayer    (view here)

Here I am, As I am

W(holy) Human

Here I am, On this earth

Sacred Profane

Ever connected in this wondrous luminous web

Ever abiding

In the heart of God. 

December 12, 2018

Johanna grinned.  “The natural thing would be to worry, fret over him, try to make things easy… So I have to choose to let him walk the path he wants to walk.  Choose to be confident that I raised him with the principles that will save him.  Choose to believe in him.  And ultimately choose to not worry— the ultimate unnatural act for a mother.”

“Faith,”  Claire said.

“Courage,” Johanna said.  “Faith is what we earn when we have enough courage to face what is in front of us.”

From Dream Wheels by Richard Wagamese


I remember somewhere I heard, “even though it didn’t really happen it is true.”  It’s probably in Dennis Sumara's book, Why Reading Literature Still Matters. Richard Wagamese’s books do matte

This is true: Faith is what we earn when we have enough courage to face what is in front of us.  It is like the words to the Taize chant, La Tenebre:  
Our darkness is never darkness in your sight
The deepest night is clear as the daylight.

What does it mean to have courage?  So much of what causes me to get stuck, to react, to not act, and ultimately to have a less than abundant life is the result of being afraid.  My son asked me what I was afraid of —I said I didn’t know and then I confessed that I did.  

I am afraid of the what if’s—- predicated by the worst case scenario more often than not.  I am afraid of perception and judgement, other people’s but mostly my own.  My own view of what constitutes a good? life that is skewed by the world of achievements, of relatively short lived trouble.  The bottom line, maybe, is the illusion of control, being able to effectively manage a life.

There are lots of reasons to be afraid— but none of them are true. 

Courage is choosing: choosing to let be, choosing to trust others to make choices as they see their lives unfolding, choosing to believe in each other without fear. 

As I’ve been with my adult children, I realize so painfully how my fear did try to protect and rescue, how my fears limited possibility and my acceptance of the person.  That is not quite an accurate reading of the world or even what is before me.

In the novel Dream Wheels, (and in my own life), the mothers Johanna and Claire see the immense challenges that a life altering accident and life altering moral choices that have given them every reason to worry, to fret over their children, to coddle and protect.  Having the courage to let another walk the path he wants to walk, to believe in the possibility.

There is another world view— where what seems weak, unreasonable, inexplicable that we can pay attention to is filled with holiness. God is with us.  That is the truth.

December 8, 2018

Advent Silent Retreat at University of Victoria Multi-faith Center

(this is what I heard)
Lectio Divina  Reading: Mary’s visit from the Angel
Asked to do what never done before, in favour with God
But___, How can that be?  I’m ____
Nothing is impossible with God
Here I am Lord - Let it be done to me according to your design

(this is what I wrote in the quiet time)
Here, I am being called to something else, something I’ve never done before.  
I said that when I knew I wouldn’t be staying in my job at the University, throughout November, December, January, February, and March.  Then, I got bogged down in the uncertainties when Spring came and I knew we might be moving to Victoria. How crazy is that— to have that awareness when you didn’t know where we would be, but then to lose that sense when things became clearer for Mitch’s new job possibility.  

We’d taken a trip to St. Louis and I was disoriented, I did’t know what to do with myself.  The semester had just ended.  I went through both the pain and great hope of graduation season and was thankful for Tom Long’s Baccalaureate speech.  I decided to do what I knew was right, even at the last minute, to have the insight and courage to go to graduation when I said I would not go.  I was in that quiet place but my heart was not quiet.

Mitch and I revisited Victoria in anticipation of our move that led to the agony of planning our physical move— the brace with which I entered and stayed until it was finished.  Giving things away and I’m still living with the uncertainty of those decisions, still second guessing and not letting go.  I’m still somewhat unwilling or unable to claim this place as our own, my own, my dwelling place for this time.  The trips to family have actually made the separation of things and place even more acute—the unsettledness.  Even with new sure friendships and all those here who have evidenced their care.  I don’t know if I’ve given in, let my guard down so to speak, keeping myself apart, unconnected and unsure.

And now I come to this day, to the few things I have done.  I come to this day of connection with other contemplatives.  How quickly I was welcomed by giving me responsibilities to set up the space, to offer food, and even to welcome others when I was the new one.  To know that I do have gifts to offer.  I thought I would go to the spiritual eldering thing but that hasn’t actually materialized, the times and distance did not work out.  So is this contemplative space where I might find a place to be?  The chimes are calling us back to the group— I’ll keep listening.

my post in January 2019 expanding this notebook entry: https://lindacoggin.com/2019/01/01/advent-listening-for-a-new-year/

I have to confess that when I had the idea to blog excerpts from my old notebook I kept 5 years ago, it seemed like a good one. Then, today, the idea didn’t seem as engaging when my doubts surfaced. I’m going to stick with it, though, because I have learned that fear robs me of joy even when I’m not exactly sure what I’m afraid of.

My notebooks over the years are a respository of my interaction with what I am reading. From scripture to the latest novel, other peoples’ words teach, encourage, challenge, and surprise me and I record these conversations in my daily writing. It is difficult and generative for me to not edit those conversations and let them be. So here is…

Monday, December 3, 2018 (part 2)

The title of today's Advent reading (Celebrating Abundance by Walter Brueggemmann) was "Outrageous God."  The scripture, Isaiah 65:17-19

What I will learn to trust.

The first verse began, "I was ready to be sought out by those who did not ask, to be found by those who did not seek me."

I want that for XXXX-- to find God's spirit amid the recovery of self.  And for me, too.  All of us "walk in a way that is not good, following our own devices."  

These verses seem to be words of judgement and consequences that are difficult to hear.  I want the fairy tale.  Yet, God is always present in our lives whether we ask or know or not.

The first verses of Isaiah 65 are our rebellious lives and the consequences but then there is a turn.  In verse 16-- blessing and faithfulness-- where "former troubles are forgotten and hidden from sight."

My re-writing as I let the poetry of verses 17-19 seep into my bones and heart and vision.

For I am about to create
   new reality for you
The former things you fear will
   not be in the forefront or
   come to mind
Be glad and rejoice forever 
   in what I am creating
   for I am about to create
   your life as a joy
   and its people as a delight
I will rejoice in the new
   reality and delight in my family
No more shall fear be the 
   basis for my relationships
No more will fear be my
   dwelling place.

The poem in Isaiah is outrageous, Walter B. says, and mine is too.  And I'm learning from the stories of Advent I am not the one who decides or orchestrates what is possible.

What I hear in Walter Brueggemmann's words is that in Advent we receive the power of God that lies beyond us-- the gospel's resolution to our spent "self- sufficiency," when we are at the edge of our coping. 

It is good news that counters our cynicism that imagines no new things can enter our world.

Another snippet from my notebook I started closest to 5 years ago. As I said in the last post, this was a year of great change. Mitch and I moved from the southeastern United States to Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. Both of our adult children also experienced significant changes in their lives that year.

The notebooks I’ve kept over the years are sometimes journal like and also are records of all kinds of reading and pondering. Just so you know, I’ve practiced my own version of the Ignatian spiritual practice of The Daily Examine and I write that in my notebook, too, and that’s what I did a bit on this day.

December 3, 2018

So what can I be grateful for in the past 24 hours?  Mitch-- who steadily calls me back from worry, from ignoring my own life, the part of his sermon on Sunday when he said, "We are not in charge or even know what is possible."

Mitch asked a question in his sermon, "How do we prepare ourselves to again birth the impossible into our lives and into our world?" Sometimes I feel like it is my job to provide God, myself, and my family a reality check.  Me thus deciding what is possible or not--actually I don't even go to fairy tales anymore.  

I am grateful for a renewed sense of living my own life in Christ, even in the pain of now.  I am thankful for learning my way around this community and for this home.

When I was in my teens, I made decisions framed with this question: “How will this matter in 5 years?”  As the eldest of three girls in a broken apart family, I became my own guardian angel. I imagine that five years must have seemed both a lifetime and, perhaps, foreseeable. The question levelled rocky terrain.

I’ve been stuck lately between too many ideas that seem too grand for me. So I decided to blog snippets from the notebooks I’ve faithfully kept for almost 20 years. Holding true to my five year frame, I will begin with the notebook that I started closest to 5 years ago and also happened to be a year of great change.  My hope is to return to my intention when I began this blog— to unselfconsciously listen to my life—in public.

Katherine Paterson, whose novels touch a deep place in me, said in an interview about her novel, The Great Gilly Hopkins:

I wrote it as a confession. These stories don’t work unless you find yourself in them…that the deeper you go inside yourself, the deeper the reader is going to go.  I was writing about my own fears and questions… Writers are very private people who run around naked in public.

Even though my blogs are publicly available, I don’t often share that I am a writer because it seems too private and even seems like a selfish thing.  As I share raw footage from my old notebooks, I will listen again to go deeper inside and yes, run around naked in this little bit of public. I hope you will find yourself here, too.

Note: I was reading Walter Brueggeman Advent devotional, Celebrating Abundance.

December 2, 2018 

Today I read that Advent is preparation for the demands of newness that will break the tired patterns of fear in our lives.  That is what I so desperately need to break out of the straight jacket of darkness, as Buechner calls it, that keeps me reactive and meeting challenge with brace rather than surrender and openness that allows for God to be present.  

The prayer is for me.

God, visit me so that I might get carried away 
to do obedient things that I haven’t done before
— kingdom things that I didn’t think I had in me.

Break the fear and inwardness that keeps me bound.  May I be ready to enter the place you have already prepared.

But whoever is joined with all the living has hope… Ecclesiastes 9:4a

We shall all, in the end, 

be led to where we belong.

We shall all, in the end,

find our way home.    

From The Beatryce Prophecy by Kate DiCamillo

Telling stories is integral to listening to our lives. We make sense of some aspect of living in other peoples’ stories we read.  Months ago in the little library on Sea Ridge Drive —those side of the road libraries are another thing to love about Victoria– I discovered The Perfection of the Morning. Subtitled “An Apprenticeship in Nature,” Sharon Butala’s memoir is the story of how she “felt as if [her] soul had found a home” in a place she didn’t seem to belong.  

Early in the book, Sharon mentions that books just seemed to come to her.  Maybe that is true for her book and me.  Five years ago at an unlikely time in our lives, we moved to Victoria, British Columbia, from the Southeastern United States. Moving from the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains to this island in the Pacific Northwest made possible a tangible new view of the world. 

A world away from my view from Vancouver Island, Sharon ButaIa lived in the Western Canadian Province of Saskatchewan. She considered herself a city girl from Saskatoon, the largest city in the Province, population around 300,000. In her 30’s she married a second time and moved to the isolated ranch-land in southwestern Saskatchewan, a place she never even knew existed. 

In awe of that extreme landscape and the loneliness to find social footing among the rural society, she came to realize how her life was informed and shaped by Nature in ways she couldn’t have consciously imagined. Sharon explained to a reporter that her husband, a true rural man, “understood the world in terms of wild things.” People and place form complex relationships.

So what would I say about my relationships of belonging in the world?   I asked my husband Mitch for his perspective and I immediately sensed our answers would be in parallel universes.  We read the same newspaper, sometimes the same books, walk down the same streets, live in the same house and neighbourhood; but how we see, how we feel, and what we remember are not always the same.  

Perhaps, the gift of The Perfection of the Morning is that I looked back at how place has shaped and informed my life in ways I hadn’t exactly noticed.  I have a sensory memory of walking with my Grandma Hollis along tree-lined River Road where she lived. I feel the majestic trees and mischievous squirrels and, yet, have no memory of the Wabash River that flowed alongside where we walked.  I remember the biggest snowman, snow angels, snow forts, and my mom’s insistence that we play outside in every kind of weather. I was awestruck by cornfields of fireflies and suspicious of Bishop’s Wood’s briars and dark shadows.  And as I grew older, there have always been trees: almost perfect oak trees, tall pines, a lone thorny locust, and friendlier hardwood forests.  

The places I live are more than a mere background to my life.  For me, it has not been one place that is part of me and I am part of it— all the places I’ve been have taught me and become part of the geography of me.

My reading of Sharon’s memoir became a prayer of gratitude for the landscape of the Pacific Northwest where I, too, came unknowingly.  I have discovered a relationship, as Butala writes, “in a place where words stop” alongside the Salish Sea, Arbutus and Garry Oaks, and massive rock full of life. Finding The Perfection of The Morning opened a door to view how place shapes and sustains me.  

Sharon Butala reflects on the turn in her relationship with the prairies,

Now when I looked out over the rolling hills and grassy plains I began to see, in place of emptiness, presence; I began to see not only the visible landscape but the invisible one; a landscape in which history, unrecorded and unremembered as it is, had transmuted itself into an always present spiritual dimension.

Is it possible that my longing to belong— the settledness that has eluded me over my life— has gradually been found in the landscapes that have sheltered me along the way? These relationships transcend whatever place I am physically part of and also weld me to the natural home of the created, the dwelling place that is larger than one city or region or country.  How is it possible to belong not only to the visible landscape but to belong to the places of awe and wonder and humility where words stop?

Perhaps, as Sharon Butala reflects, “I’d been missing something from my understanding of the world and this new understanding involved more than other people and more than my intellect, but was also physical, somatic, an intermingling place and person.”  I have experienced a shift that comes by living into imperceptible insight.  Perhaps, instead of searching to belong, I live in the present, paying attention to what is— that can be seen and unseen— and leave room for what I cannot explain. 

In his book of meditations, Places Along the Way, Martin Marty reflects on the story in Genesis 46-47 of Joseph’s brothers move to Egypt.  The land of Goshen, “the best part of the land” was a place that promised hospitality to Jacob and his sons who considered themselves aliens in the new land. Marty writes that Goshen is still here for us: a place of refuge in beautiful surroundings.  He warns that we would do well not to get attached to any place connected with human promise. We are to enjoy our surroundings without thinking of them as lasting.

Perhaps, Victoria is a “Goshen” for me: a beautiful place where we have more than been provided for, another respite along the way?  

That is what I cannot know.  I do know that this place of welcome, of challenge, of lessons, of fresh breath keeps us as we experience the invisible landscape that is beyond words.

Arbutus Trees in Saxe Point Park