Big News

And the third book selection of the Hermit Crab Book Club is….

The Help, by Kathryn Stockett.

Monkees, look. You gotta read this book. It’s the best book I have ever read about what keeps women locked up and what sets us free. The Help is a REVOLUTION.

I can’t remember if it was Jesus or Dr. Phil who said “the heart rejoices when it hears the truth,” but my heart rejoiced the entire time I read The Help. The Help is the Truth. It will pick you up where you are and drop you off a little further down the road. Trust me on this one.

We’re going to discuss it in three weeks. Mid May. So please go get it. Pretty please. I think the more people who read The Help, the better for the world.

Love, G

P.S. If you’ve already read it and loved it, tell, tell! But not too much.

The Great Kindness

Sister,

I read a poem the other night that I know is True.

When you were going through the divorce, I spent so many nights furious at God. I quit Him lots of times, Sister. While you were crying yourself to sleep and repeating,“Not my will, but Yours,” I was in bed fiercely whispering, “You can’t help us. You are not helping us. I’m done with you. How could you let this happen to someone so Golden?”

And it just never stopped with all the money, and the waiting, and the constant hurting. It was like suffocating. Every time I looked at your beautiful face and saw how strong and faithful you were trying to be, I was silently cursing. I decided lots of times: You’re not real. Obviously, you’re not real. I must be a damn idiot.

But I think I still believed He was real. Otherwise…who was I talking to?

I just wanted to hurt Him, because He was allowing you to hurt. I felt like He didn't deserve your devotion. And I wanted Him to understand that while I loved Him, I didn't love Him more than I love you. If asked to take sides, I wanted Him to know who I'd stand behind. Not that it mattered anymore. What good was my faith if it didn't protect my Sister, for Christ's sake?

Please, resist pointing out how ridiculous and wrong the preceding paragraphs are. God, Sister, and I, we understand. We forgive me.

Also, Sister, Him isn't right. Is there a word that means Him and Her? God is a Him and a Her. I need a word for that.

So I read this poem last week, Sister. And I know it’s True. I’ve read it maybe thirty times more to make sure it’s True. It is. I keep crying about it, so I know it’s True.

Here it is, Sister. This poem is for you. It was all a gift, Sister.

Even now, your life in Africa. It’s a gift from Him to you, not from you to them. God loves us, Sister.

He knows, He always knew, how Golden you are.

KINDNESS

By Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak it till your voice

catches the thread of sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes any sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd to say

It is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend.

You Can Take the Tish Out of the Mall, But You Can't Take the Mall Out of The Tish

If you get hungry for anything other than ice cream in my new town, you’re gonna have to drive for a while. The nearest grocery store is miles and miles and then more miles away. I thought this would be a drawback of living here, but so far it hasn’t been. When everything's inconvenient, a girl's To Do list shortens itself dramatically. Mine looks like this these days:

1.Feed children.

2.Be kind.

3.Write something down.

4. Grow out bangs.

I'm sure that over time, other things will try to sneak themselves back on to my list. But I’m going to interview those things very, very thoroughly before I give them permission to come aboard.

The grocery store is about twenty miles and three stop lights away, and in between here and there are farms. Wide open green space after wide open green space. The fields are like water with their calming effect. They remind me that space and emptiness are needed to grow something new. And that all we really have to do in this life is plant some seeds and keep them watered, and God will take care of the rest.

The first time we drove by the farms, Tish looked out the window and said, “Mommy, the soccer fields here are HUGE!” Usually, I’d let that go, because I have a lot of kids and learned a long time ago that I can’t explain everything. You know how important energy conservation is to me. But I was having a good day so I said, “Actually, Tish, those are the fields where the farmers grow our crops.”

I felt proud of myself. I decided that was probably quite enough homeschooling for one day.

A few days later, as we were driving by the farms again, Tish said proudly, “Amma. Look at those fields. That's where the farmers grow our Crocs!”

Close enough, I thought.

What The Inside of My Heart Looks Like These Days

Have a beautiful weekend, Sweet Monkees. Didn't this week fly by?

Same time, same place Monday.

Love, G

A Guest Post, From Our Kelley

Seeking His Face, Seeing His Shoes

Hi, Monkees. As a bit of intro, this post is heavy on the G-man references, without (I hope) being heavy-handed. Also, I want you to know that I completely understand two things: 1. That there are some Monkees who just don’t get amped about posts about God, and 2. that even for the Monkees who do get amped about such posts, I could never write them as well as G. That said, I love you all and hope you’ll stick with me. Onward we go …

We’ve been talking a lot about God lately at our house, because my 4-year-old son AJ is old enough now to kinda grasp what I kinda know about Him. To be honest, his blind childlike faith probably means AJ understands God a lot better than I do.

Anyway, part of our bedtime ritual each night is reading a book from the library and a story from the Bible. His favorites so far are about how Adam and Eve lived in the garden of Eden, because he likes the idea of living outside with animals and not wearing clothes, and when Jesus walks on water – because, really, who wouldn’t want to do that?!

As we read each night, AJ listens very intently, alternately looking awed, interested, excited, confused. I read away, praying that he’s getting it, that I’m not scarring him for life, that he won’t ask me any hard questions. Sometimes he does, but usually he just says, “I really like the Bible, Mom. What story can we read tomorrow?” And then I exhale with relief, kiss him goodnight and say, “I’m glad you like it sweetheart. We can read whatever story you want tomorrow.” And we do it all again the next day.

We also have been praying together. It’s incredibly sweet to listen to AJ’s tiny voice mix in prayers for Mommy, Daddy and Mia with “thank you God for juice, my racecars and books.” Usually, it’s my favorite moment of the day (apologies to my husband).

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been talking with AJ about trying to see God in everything – trees, animals, people … and juice and racecars, too, I guess – so we can keep Him in our hearts. “It’s called ‘seeking His face,’” I told him.

My sweet AJ considered this for a moment and then said, “That’s really hard, Mom. God lives all the way in the clouds. Maybe we could just see His shoes.”

I chuckled, but I keep thinking back to it. Maybe my little man is onto something. Lately, I’ve been feeling like the woman in the Bible who was sick and believed that if she could just touch Jesus’ clothes it would be enough to heal her.

I wish I could be the kind of Christian that could have my perspectacles “lasiked” on permanently, so I could see God’s good work in everyone and everything. But, more often, I’m the kind that just catches glimpses in between commuting, carpooling and cooking. In reality, I just grab Jesus’ shirt tail for a few moments each day, squeeze hard and hope it’s enough.

I don’t want to be a hypocrite ever, least of all in front of my kids. But one of my favorite things about Jesus is that he always just met people where they were – whether they were homeless, blind, prostitute, murderer – and worked with what He had. This is my public prayer that He’ll keep walking with me where I am, until I can truly

“Seek the Lord and his strength, seek his face continually.” –1 Chronicles 16:11

Meantime, the view of His shoes ain’t half bad.

St. Francis and the Sow

With the obvious exceptions of everything that Chimmy and Diane write, this is my favorite poem.

Saint Francis and the Sow

By Galway Kinnell

The bud

stands for all things,

even for those things that don’t flower,

for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;

though sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness,

to put a hand on the brow

of the flower

and retell it in words and in touch

it is lovely

until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;

as Saint Francis

put his hand on the creased forehead

of the sow, and told her in words and in touch

blessings of the earth on the sow, and the sow

began remembering all down her thick length,

from the earthen snout all the way

through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,

from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine

down through the great broken heart

to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering

from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking

and blowing beneath them:

the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

Excerpts from Roger Housden’s review of Saint Francis and the Sow

“If you have the genuine feeling that everyone, yourself as well as your lover, your child, your parents, even your enemies-everyone in your life- is already flowering from within, then the person you are with may feel that too and begin to remember for themselves their own truth and beauty. You cannot “re-teach a thing its loveliness” if your motive is to change another person. This would suggest that how they are is not good enough, and you can do something about it. It is not in your power to enlighten another, make them better, or even bless them. All you can do is remind them, by your presence, of the flowering that they already are. Love is an environment more than a set of principles. An environment that, simply by existing, draws out another into his or her own fullness….However good your principles and intentions may be, they won’t reach far unless it is love that places your hand upon their brow.”

“Like many of us, she (the sow) has a great broken heart. Broken, perhaps, by the weight of the curses heaped upon her since time began, by the lowliness that others have foisted upon her, by the feelings of ugliness and self loathing that cling to her like second skin. Some of us know how the sow feels. She comes, despite all of this, and through the blessing of St. Francis and the earth to remember

The long, perfect loveliness of sow.

She remembers, not just in the sense of memory recall, but “all down her thick length” - in all the cells of her body- that she is perfect exactly as she is, slops and all. Not that she is better than anyone else, or that she measures up to some external measure of perfection, but that her very existence is enough in itself to validate fully her being here.

This poem itself is a hand on our brow."

Glass Swans

For M, Who is Starting Down a New Road...

As you know, I had a rough go at life for a while. I spent a couple of decades lying and cheating and fighting and scowling and hiding and chugging and eating unbelievably huge amounts of food and then throwing it up.

These things might be hard for you to read, but they’re not hard for me to write. I think that’s because while I’m a different girl these days, I don’t judge the girl I used to be. I don’t think it makes much sense to judge other people or my past self with the ideas I have about life today.

Addiction is a funny thing. You seem to find yourself living one big lie, and nobody can, or should, trust a word you say. But that’s not how it starts. There’s something about addiction’s beginning that’s about truth telling. When my bulimia, which eventually morphed into alcoholism began, I sometimes had this feeling that there was something very wrong with the world, and that wrong thing was hurting my feelings and scaring me and making me feel like crawling out of my own skin forever. I had to tell the truth about how I felt somehow, so the truth came out like puke and booze. I may have been acting out, but at least when I was binging or purging or drinking, I wasn’t acting. I was saying…something’s wrong.

I know that addiction always ends badly, with lots of innocent and semi-involved bystanders getting hurt. That’s how mine ended. But that’s not how it started. It didn’t start with the intention to hurt anyone else. It started with a little girl who hadn’t found her words yet. A girl who didn’t yet have the courage to say, or write out loud, “Something’s wrong with me. Or maybe with everybody, actually.” So she just said those things by herself, secretly. But at least she said it. A girl has to tell the truth somewhere, if she’s going to keep a tender soul. If she’s going to be able to keep thinking and feeling and trying to understand things.

Now that I’ve found my words, things are better. When I feel like crumbling, or numbing myself because the world is so mean, I come here and use my words. Not to write about how mean the world is, but to write about how beautiful it is too, because that’s also true. Now when I feel like crawling out of my skin in the world I’m in, I come and create my own world in my writing, where things are better and more beautiful and often make sense. And it’s still an escape, but it’s a less lonely and scary escape than all those bathrooms and bottles of wine. Still, here in this world, I’m sure I’ll accidentally hurt people, too. Telling the truth seems to do that occasionally. But it’s healthy for me. And that’s what’s most important to me these days.

I understand what the girl I used to be did and why she did it. I love her . . . I’m proud of her, even. And the woman I am today is grateful to her. Because she walked that lonely road, I learned to forgive myself and be forgiven. And to be gentle, always, because everyone is just as fragile as those little hand- blown glass swans. Actually people are more fragile than those.

Most importantly, she taught me that a girl can be an ugly, scary mess, and still be doing her best, and still be capable of and worthy of saving. She taught me that nobody is so far gone into the darkness that love can’t sneak in and shed a little light.

So really, I think that little girl taught me everything I need to know, ever. I think she was sort of brilliant, to tell you the God’s honest truth. If I could take her for a walk I would tell her, Hang in there, little one. You will find your words.

Love is as Love Does

I woke up this morning thinking about Tricia, who is in surgery right now to determine if her lump is cancerous. I've never met Tricia, but the weird thing about this Momastery place is that if you hang around long enough, you end up caring a whole lot about the other Monkees. A whole lot. Consider yourself warned. So for a good twenty minutes I laid in bed and worried about Tricia and her husband and her two little boys and her baby girl who always wears these big beautiful bows on her teeny little head. Each of the big bows sings "My mommy loves me thiiiiiiiiiisss much." Anyway, I just laid there and wondered what to do about all that.

I want us to take care of each other here. In fifty years I want 60 Minutes to do a show about us Monkees. We will be old and hunched over and gray and gorgeous and we will have hot pink canes, tattoos, and God willing, better bangs by then. The reporter will describe us as a group of little old ladies who met on the internet, encouraged one other each day, and laughed and cried their way through life together. A group of ladies who made a difference for each other, and for the world. The reporter will end our segment by announcing that the Monkees agreed with whoever it was who said, “What are we here for, if not to lighten each other’s loads?”

I read a post of Tricia’s the other day about how people are always saying they’re praying for her and her lump, but sometimes she gets suspicious. I understood what she meant. Sometimes you’re in my prayers just feels like something we say, doesn’t it? Well, I want to be sure of my prayers today. I want to pray big for Tricia, and I want her to know it.

So today, I'm going to hitch my prayers to actions. Specifically, I'm going to do some Random Acts of Kindness, some loving things I wouldn’t normally take the time to do, and I'm going to dedicate them to Tricia. In short: God’s gonna give me some nice things to do today, and I’m gonna do them, and then I’m gonna say:

Kay, God. That was my prayer for Tricia. Signed, Sealed, Delivered. Help her, please.

I think all the love we offer makes its way to our intended, even if it's initially given to a stranger. Sometimes when the kids and I are sitting out on the dock with our feet in the water, we see a boat way off in the distance. And a long time later, just when we've forgotten all about that boat, these little teeny waves lick our toes. I think maybe prayers and kindness work like that. Like little waves.

If you are a Monkee in need of your own RAK day, please let me know. We’ll dedicate a whole day to you. We’ll pay for a stranger’s coffee, smile at a frowny lady, offer somebody the benefit of the doubt, or maybe even be kinder to ourselves than necessary, all on your behalf.

And God will look down at us and say:“WELL, WELL, WELL. WHO is responsible for all of this extra love today?”

And we will point at you and say: “SHE is. Help her, please.”

And He will. HE WILL. He'll make sure our waves find their way to your toes.

I love you Monkees. Especially you today, Tricia. I’m gonna love hard for you, sister.

You and Me, Together

Our family lives in a small town on the bay now. So far, it feels exactly liked I dreamed it would.

We go on picnics, swing on the front porch, drive around town in Bubba and Tisha’s golf cart, play with the neighbor’s elderly lab, wave to passers by, and sit on the dock dangling our toes in the bay. It took me two weeks, but I think I have stopped rushing. Why rush when there’s nothing next?

We get dressed up and walk to church on Sunday mornings. Amma pushes her baby stroller and leaves it on the front lawn of the church during service. Tish carries her hot pink purse and trips over her silver glittery slippers the whole way there. Fancy purses and shoes are Tish’s favorite part of God.

On Easter Sunday we sat beside a teeny old lady who looked like she’d been getting ready for service since Good Friday. I admired her sculpted white curls, her tailored suit, her pale pink fingernails and her delicate hands, which were wrapped around a snazzy pink plaid clutch. She wore a pearl necklace with matching earrings and perfectly applied cotton candy lipstick. During the service I looked down at her teeny little ankles and noticed a tattoo of a blue crab peeking through her nude hose. She saw me looking down at her ankle and she winked at me. I was thrilled. Monkees can recognize their own. I’ve decided that dainty tattooed elderly ladies in church pews are my favorite kind of people ever. I can’t wait to be one.

My favorite thing about our new town is the church bells. The first bells chime at nine, and then every three hours for the rest of the day. We can hear them from the front yard, from the dock, from the living room. From anywhere we are. I love them because they’re beautiful, and because they remind me all day to wake up and say thank you. Hearing the church bells makes me feel like God’s got His eye on our little town. Or at the very least, our town’s got its little eye on Him. It feels cozy, like we're all in this together.

There is a glass door at the back of our house that frames the bay inside of it, and during the past two weeks, I’ve watched each person in my family stop at that door, look out at the water and sigh. Even Tish sighs a bit at that door. It’s like our bodies are designed to stop, relax and appreciate the water. At least my family’s bodies are. So there’s a lot of sighing going on here lately. Tish lays on the dock and when she feels the breeze on her face she says “Ahhh…This is my YIFE.” We think she means “This is the life.” But of course, we don’t correct her.

Sometimes, after I finish writing in the early morning, if the kids haven’t woken yet, I sneak out to the back porch with my coffee and C.S. Lewis and listen to the bay wake up. I never get much reading done, because I find myself silently repeating “thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.” I have no idea what it is about the water that helps me be grateful. It helps me whether it’s in a glass with ice, a tub, or the bay. And today, I'm just grateful to have found a place where I can breathe easy for now. That’s all we can do, right? Try to find that place, and those people. For now.

Speaking of those people...this guy:

He’s loving it here. His wife is less agitated. His Corona matches his afternoon. He gets scruffier and saltier and in my opinion, more gorgeous with each passing day in this fishing town. I love him a little more, somehow, than I did before we left. One night several months ago, Craig and I were standing in the kitchen, listening to this song and dreaming about moving to the water. And now we’re here. We did it. That’s the best part. That he and I wanted something a little different and we did it. I am starting to wonder dangerous things, like Maybe There’s Nothing He And I Can’t Do Together.

Truly, the only lesson I’ve really learned during these past three weeks, and God willing, plan to keep learning for the rest of my life. . . is that it doesn’t matter a lick where this family lives. Where he is, where they are, is Home.

You have a beautiful weekend, Monkees. Thanks for helping a Sister breathe easy.