Cara Gilger's Blog, page 9

To Find a Steady Center: Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

-Wendell Berry Peace of Wild Things from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry

I saw a meme the other day about quarantine that said “I now understand why the people in Jane Austen novels were always taking long strolls in the woods.” Not only is walking a way to connect body and mind together in a way that nurtures the spirit or simply a way to pass the time, but walking in the woods or walking in general is a way to simply be alive in the world. The natural world, for which many of us are profoundly disconnected on a daily basis holds insight into the impermanence of things, the stillness of creation, the ease at which life can unfold and even the struggle of living a life alive in the world. 

For me, this classic Berry poem reminds me that there are places in the world and touchstones in my faith that can give rest from the worry and peace from the anxiousness. That there is grace, not the soppy, weak grace that comes from the cult of positivity and claims “all will be alright in the end” and “there will be a blessing in all this” as much will not be alright. Instead I am reminded of the rich and sturdy grace that reminds me that there is stillness and mystery and a steadiness to God’s presence in my life. That the long thin cord of God’s presence in my life, that stretches back to my ancestors who came before me and that will stretch into the future holds me steady. That presence of a steady presence is grace. 

So this week I will take long walks and be reminded of the steady presence of God.

Be Kind,

Cara 

To Find a Steady Center is a daily poem and meditation to offer a short, good word to those who are anxious, fearful or lonely and who might need a gentle word of hope, encouragement or perspective during social distancing. 

To Find a Steady Center: David Whyte

I awoke

this morning

in the gold light

turning this way

and that

thinking for

a moment

it was one

day

like any other.

But

the veil had gone

from my

darkened heart

and

I thought

it must have been the quiet

candlelight

that filled my room,

it must have been

the first

easy rhythm

with which I breathed

myself to sleep,

it must have been

the prayer I said

speaking to the otherness

of the night.

And

I thought

this is the good day

you could

meet your love,

this is the black day

someone close

to you could die.

This is the day

you realize

how easily the thread

is broken

between this world

and the next

and I found myself

sitting up

in the quiet pathway

of light,

the tawny

close-grained cedar

burning round

me like fire

and all the angels of this housely

heaven ascending

through the first

roof of light

the sun has made.

This is the bright home

in which I live,

this is where

I ask

my friends

to come,

this is where I want

to love all the things

it has taken me so long

to learn to love.

This is the temple

of my adult aloneness

and I belong

to that aloneness

as I belong to my life.

There is no house

like the house of belonging.

-The House of Belonging by David Whyte from River Flow: New and Selected Poems 

There is an obvious joke in this poem when thinking about these times with Covid and social distancing–there is no house like the house of belonging, because we all belong at home right now. Setting all my nerdy jokes aside, this poem is one of my favorites of Whyte’s because of the way he seeks revelation and self-discovery not by going out into the world for grand adventure and notable accomplishments but in grounding in the self-revelation that comes from digging into our aloneness and building a life that is centered in love. 

Loneliness is part of the human experience. We can feel alone in a marriage as easily as single, we can feel alone as parents despite the din of tiny humans. Loneliness is not something to be avoided or prevented, rather it functions as a teacher. In our loneliness we learn what makes us vulnerable. That self-knowledge can teach us how to nurture ourselves well so that we can be in healthier relationship with others. Loneliness is an experience that teaches us about who we are, what we love and what brings us discomfort. From that we can learn how to healthily and thoughtfully connect with others and our labor in the world. 

Be Kind,

Cara

PS If you are curious about the poet David Whyte and want to hear him read the poem himself during quarantine you can find his live reading HERE. I also really love David Whyte’s interview with Krista Tippett if you are looking for calming and thoughtful podcast to keep you company. 

To Find a Steady Center is a daily poem and meditation to offer a short, good word to those who are anxious, fearful or lonely and who might need a gentle word of hope, encouragement or perspective during social distancing. 

To Find a Steady Center: Adam Zagajewski

Try to praise the mutilated world.

Remember June’s long days,

and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine.

The nettles that methodically overgrow

the abandoned homesteads of exiles.

You must praise the mutilated world.

You watched the stylish yachts and ships;

one of them had a long trip ahead of it,

while salty oblivion awaited others.

You’ve seen the refugees going nowhere,

you’ve heard the executioners sing joyfully.

You should praise the mutilated world.

Remember the moments when we were together

in a white room and the curtain fluttered.

Return in thought to the concert where music flared.

You gathered acorns in the park in autumn

and leaves eddied over the earth’s scars.

Praise the mutilated world

and the gray feather a thrush lost,

and the gentle light that strays and vanishes

and returns.

-To Try to Praise the Mutilated World by Adam Zagajewski 

from Without End: New and Selected Poems

The world is a mess and in this moment all of that mess we could pretend did not exist is drawn sharply into our field of vision. We can not ignore the mutilated world with its scars of corporate and personal greed, with its broken systems of support.  It is mutilated with our tolerance of poverty, allowing people to hang on the edge of survival. It is mutilated with a cultural commitment to individualism rather than the community. 

And yet, and yet, there are strawberries and acorns in the autumn park, there are feathered birds and drops of rose. There are moments where we are connected, draw together across what is broken in you and me. Today take a minute to in the midst of worry about what is mutilated, to list a few of the small beautiful promise that show us who we can be and what really matters. 

Be Kind,

Cara

To Find a Steady Center is a daily poem and meditation to offer a short, good word to those who are anxious, fearful or lonely and who might need a gentle word of hope, encouragement or perspective during social distancing. 

To Find a Steady Center: Padraig O Tuama

That you were born

and you will die.

That you will sometimes love enough

and sometimes not.

That you will lie

if only to yourself.

That you will get tired.

That you will learn most from the situations

you did not choose.

That there will be some things that move you

more than you can say.

That you will live

that you must be loved.

That you will avoid questions most urgently in need of

your attention.

That you began as the fusion of a sperm and an egg

of two people who once were strangers

and may well still be.

That life isn’t fair.

That life is sometimes good

and sometimes better than good.

That life is often not so good.

That life is real

and if you can survive it, well,

survive it well

with love

and art

and meaning given

where meaning’s scarce.

That you will learn to live with regret.

That you will learn to live with respect.

That the structures that constrict you

may not be permanently constraining.

That you will probably be okay.

That you must accept change

before you die

but you will die anyway.

So you might as well live

and you might as well love.

You might as well love.

You might as well love.

-The Fact of Life by Padraig O Tuama from Sorry for Your Troubles

Life seems to be turning over more questions right now than answers. Who are we when we sit still with ourselves? What is it we consider essential to our living and flourishing? What is it that is broken in me, in you and in us as a culture? It is a time to wrestle with questions we would rather not ask and make meaning we were not necessarily seeking. 

As O Tuama reminds us so little of our lives are permanent, life is full of sudden changes, often out of our control. In the midst of the unpredictable and chaotic moment we are in, we can not control much but we can control how we respond. That we can survive well, despite its unfairness, that we can love and make art and meaning and connection in the midst of what is unfair and scary is a gift. 

Today I am going to make a list of what I can control and throw out the list of what I can’t control. And maybe make a little art and call a friend and find the beauty in the chaos. 

Be Kind,

Cara 

To Find a Steady Center is a daily poem and meditation to offer a short, good word to those who are anxious, fearful or lonely and who might need a gentle word of hope, encouragement or perspective during social distancing. 

Tips & Tricks for Working from Home with Kids

Two years ago I launched Cara Gilger Ministries from home with a preschooler at home three days a week and a first grader who both required my time and attention. Over the past two years I have grown a consulting and writing ministry that is (nearly) full time while still juggling kids after school and during summers. My spouse also works from home so we have been figuring out how to run two businesses from home with small children for a while. With schools either being cancelled or moved to online learning from home due to COVID-19 and employers being encouraged to move employees to remote work arrangements I thought I would share some of the more unconventional tips and tricks to working from how with small (demanding) humans. 

There are already plenty of tips telling you to get dressed everyday and drink water and take breaks–so I am skipping all that. Instead here are a few of the nitty gritty tips on how we get it done in a day (or don’t) and how we make peace with the juggling act. 

Re-evaluate Your Time 

You are likely used to working set office hours during the day. From sometime in the morning to sometime late afternoon to early evening you have time at work to get everything you need done. I love days like those, but working from home I have had to adopt a different mindset to my time. I look at my time in two ways: total number of hours invested in work and fringe blocks. 

I keep track of what hours are used for work and what are used for tending to the needs of small people. Yes, you may have to stop returning email to fetch a snack but if the 30 minute increment went mostly to work, it’s work time. Over the course of my 16 waking hours I try to log 6-7 hours of work. 

Which brings me to fringe blocks. When I was first starting to build this ministry my kids were little and demanding and had stopped taking naps. If I wanted to get focused, uninterrupted work done I had to consider non-work hour blocks of time. In the summer I wake up every morning at 5am and work until the kids get up around 6:45am, in fact, I wrote a third of my manuscript this way. Did I like getting up that early? Sometimes, but often it was not fun. But I did it and the work got done. I started my day feeling ahead by breakfast time rather than behind. 

I also use one hour increments in the evening. A couple of nights a week my spouse and I agree that we need to work–the first hour after the kids go to bed we sit down and bust out a ton of work. After that we put aside our lap tops and have a hour or so to relax, hang out or enjoy one another’s company. Again, is this my ideal time to work? Not always, but I love my work and want to see it grow. While this tip may seem silly, but over the course of a work week that one hour power hour to wrap things up adds up to 20% of a full time schedule. Of course there are times during the day where you have to take calls and meetings and I will talk about those later, but these are ways I have found to get some concentrated and focused work done. 

Set Up Specific Space 

Several of my friends who are working from home have expressed how hard it is to 1) get the kids to understand you are working and not on Spring Break and 2) stop working and not work non-stop. For me space has played a really important role in addressing both of these issues. I try to have a designated space to work. Not only does it get me in the right mindset sitting down in the same spot each day, but it is a visual communication tool that tells my kids “I am working so whatever you need should be important.” You do not have to have a designated home office space for this to work, you can make this work in almost any size or configured house. We have a home office with doors that my spouse uses because 90% of their day is spent on conference calls. My home office either at my desk that is located in a small nook by the back door or an armchair in the corner of our room. Now that my kids are at home and need to be supervised as they home school my office is the end chair at our dining room table on that days it is my turn to home school. 

At the beginning of the day I get out my stuff–laptop, calendar, to do list and glass of water–and set it up in my designated space. Likewise, at the end of the day I pack it all up (usually in my laptop bag). This unpacking and repacking signals the start and end of my day not only to myself but to my family. It is a visual communication cue that says “I am present with you” or “you are only getting half my attention right now.” 

Be Flexible and Organized

Sometimes the rigidness of a set space needs to be more flexible when you have kids at home. I have been known to write from the patio table so I can see the kids running around the yard or standing at the kitchen counter while they build legos on the living room floor so I can quickly insert myself to break up fights or grab a snack while keeping my work flow going. Flexibility of mindset is your friend. Just because your work is not between 8am-5pm at a desk doesn’t mean you aren’t working. 

However, when your work looks agile, moving between work tasks and childcare it can feel like you aren’t as productive. This is where I find lists to track my work not only valuable for keeping track of to-do’s but giving myself an overview of how my work flow is really going. It can tell me if I need to quit at 3pm to give the kids focused time and plan a post-bedtime power hour of work. Or it can tell me to give myself some credit because despite stopping to help small humans every few minutes. 

Keeping a solid list also helps me slot in tasks for certain times–during the morning hours when people are freshly rested and more prone to play well together I schedule my deeper, focused heavy tasks. During the hours of 3-5pm when it seems like my kids are ramping up for the witching hours I schedule my low focus tasks and projects I can pop in and out of with a few minutes of attention at a time. 

Expectation Having Them…and Not 

Don’t have any. Just kidding, just kidding. But set reasonable ones for yourself and for these tiny humans who are in the midst of experiencing something new too. Now is not the time to win the Pinterest mom awards or start cooking your way through The Joy of Cooking. Be gentle on yourself while at the same time, establish some boundaries. 

I have expectations for my kids around how they are to support my work (it after all benefits the whole household, including them) and I communicate those expectations clearly and regularly. This includes having a rough schedule we adhere to each day. It includes the expectation that they get their own snacks at snack time (and that the pantry is not an open buffet for their entertainment). And most importantly it includes finding their own creativity. If you are bored or want to fight with a sibling, I will give you a chore. This standard has made my kids excellent at keeping themselves occupied with the crush of toys they have at their disposal as American kids. 

Strategic Screen Time 

All of this brings me to screen time. I have seen lots of people saying “don’t feel bad if your kids have tons of screen time.” I don’t think you should feel bad, but I don’t think you should give them tons of screen time either and here’s why. I don’t let my kids have very much screen time in a day. It tends to make them short fused, grumpy, irritable and disrespectful monsters at an increasing trajectory based on how much screen time they have had that day. Instead my kids get barely any and here’s the trick–when they don’t get it ever they treat it special when they do get it.

Screen time should be used strategically to get video and conference calls done. If they are used to the TV being on they are more likely to break into chaos right when it’s your turn to speak. If they never get it then they will treat it like the crowned jewel of distraction that it is and you can impress everyone on your call with your parenting and working from home skills. Or just be present to your meeting. 

Focused Attention

Because cell phones exist with their incenanst dinging and pinging with emails and whatnot, we create a buffer zone at the end of the day. If we pack up our work space at 5pm there is a 30 minute or hour grace buffer where we may answer calls. After that we set it aside if we can.

My kids can feel like I have left them to go a little feral for the day. Two ways I assure them that I have not is sitting down with them to have lunch and setting aside 30 minutes after work is done to give them my focused attention–to say “I see you and you are important. Thank you for your cooperation and help in making the family run well.” Sometimes we play a family game or sit and read or just share dinner together with no devices and play would you rather. 

All of this is to say, be structured yet flexible. What worked before won’t work now and that’s ok. Figure out what works for you now and do that. No one has a rule book for how to do this–but you can write the book for what works best for you and your family. Try something, make mistakes, be curious, try again. You’ve got this.

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To Find a Steady Center: Marie Howe

We saw something at once. And then it was over.

Time started up again as if it had never stopped.

We saw someone, and it was a soul.

and that soul was us, or I, or everyone.

We felt we had been waiting only after it had occurred.

And once it had happened we were homesick before

and after–both. Then we stirred. We found we could move

what would have been our limbs. 

Volition was the word we might have thought

if we had been able to talk. (Talking makes thought possible,

someone told us later.) Without it one wanders 

onto a bridge to nowhere which, now that I think of it,

might have been where we were–where I was

before whoever it was entered–then there was a door. 

And beyond it–where we were apparently going. 

-Limbo by Marie Howe (from The Kingdom of Ordinary Time) 

We were homesick before and after–that line of Howe’s reminds me of a friend that says “the older I get I think homesickness is our spiritual condition.”  I miss so many small things about practicing social distancing–lattes at my favorite coffeeshop, boot camp workouts in person, lunch with friends and Target as stupid as that sounds–and I can’t wait to return to them. We are in limbo, no longer what we were before, but uncertain of what we will become in the future. 

It is hard to live in so much unknown. Each day awaking to new information to process, the old plan and expectations to be tweek or adjusted or thrown out. It inspires a certain kind of homesickness for the familiar. But homesickness as a spiritual condition is an invitation to look at the house we have built, to evaluate what matters and to think about the home we will build for ourselves. 

Stability serves a purpose but so does change, activity serves a purpose but so does stillness. And limbo is an invitation to see and hear what God might be inviting us to next. 

Be Kind,

Cara

To Find a Steady Center is a daily poem and meditation to offer a short, good word to those who are anxious, fearful or lonely and who might need a gentle word of hope, encouragement or perspective during social distancing. 

To Find a Steady Center: Mary Oliver

It doesn’t have to be

the blue iris, it could be

weeds in a vacant lot, or a few

small stones; just

pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try

to make them elaborate, this isn’t

a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which

another voice may speak.

–Praying by Mary Oliver from Thirst

I sent the kids into the backyard and said “don’t come back until you can tell me three new things you’ve noticed that are different from yesterday.” They moaned and groaned despite the fact that spring is bursting forth and changing so much the assignment seemed too easy. Then they donned sweatshirts and mud caked tennis shoes and ran out the door. 

My neighbors who would arrive home tired from work and consuming and busy would pull into the garage and go inside each evening. Now they walk the sidewalks safely distanced smiling and waving as they have never done before. 

The most quoted and misused line of Oliver’s poetry is the line that goes “tell me what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” But we often forget that what Oliver herself chose to do was to walk around in the woods with a notebook and notice things. This planetary slow down is devastating in so many ways and to so many people but we cannot control it. What we can do is be alive in the world, notice things and pay attention. As Oliver reminds us, this way of living alive in the world and noticing not just the fantastic but the ordinary is a form of prayer.

Be Kind,

Cara

To Find a Steady Center is a daily poem and meditation to offer a short, good word to those who are anxious, fearful or lonely and who might need a gentle word of hope, encouragement or perspective during social distancing. 

To Find a Steady Center: Rabindranath Tagore

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high 

Where knowledge is free

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments

By narrow domestic walls

Where words come out from the depth of truth 

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way

Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit

Where the mind is led forward by thee

Into ever-widening thought and action

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

-Where the Mind is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore from How Lovely the Ruins

The first thing crisis does is reveal what was already broken–in our systems of community care, in our economic structure but also in our relationships. These “narrow domestic walls” we have built to give us a sense that we are separate, that our fates are somehow not interconnected has left us exhausted in our striving and stretching “towards perfection.” 

Today is a good day to think about our connection. And practice a wild sense of hope and give something to support a neighbor in need. Our walls are not so thin and we are very much connected. If you have a little to give, there are many local food pantries to send a gift to, there are utility relief funds for neighbors strained to pay their bills without income. 

Be Kind,

Cara

To Find a Steady Center is a daily poem and meditation to offer a short, good word to those who are anxious, fearful or lonely and who might need a gentle word of hope, encouragement or perspective during social distancing. 

To Find a Steady Center: 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 to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

It is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend.

        –Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye from Words Under the Words

We have been a people devoid of empathy for quite some time. We think the small digital windows in which we glance into one another’s lives tells a full story or that the stereotypes we’ve been fed can be a full meal of knowledge. A crisis of empathy is a crisis of moral imagination. When we fail to imagine what it might be like to live with another person’s struggles, we fail to imagine how God might be showing up in all of creation–everywhere, to everyone. 

We are in the midst of a shift of imagination. Yes, there is hoarding and fear. But there is also an ability to imagine what this crisis might be like for the poor, for service industry workers, for the elderly and the young parent, for workers and caretakers, for those who could be carriers and those who are immunocompromised. 

As Nye poem reminds me, kindness comes from the ability to empathize, “to see how this could be you.” From the deep sorrow of imagining not our own suffering but another’s suffering we can cultivate kindness. Let your holy imagination run wild with the possibility of caring for one another, let it run wild with the capacity for kindness. 

Be kind,

Cara

To Find a Steady Center is a daily poem and meditation to offer a short, good word to those who are anxious, fearful or lonely and who might need a gentle word of hope, encouragement or perspective during social distancing. 

To Find a Steady Center: David Whyte

Sometimes 

if you move carefully 

through the forest,

breathing 

like the ones 

in the old stories, 

who could cross 

a shimmering bed of leaves 

without a sound, 

you come 

to a place 

whose only task 

is to trouble you 

with tiny 

but frightened requests, 

conceived out of nowhere 

but in this place 

beginning to lead everywhere.

Requests to stop what 

you are doing right now, 

and 

to stop what you 

are becoming 

while you do it, 

Questions

that can make or unmake 

a life, 

questions 

that have patiently 

waited for you, 

questions 

that have no right 

to go away.

-Sometimes by David Whyte from River Flow: New and Selected Poems

As I mentioned in my introduction to this project, I am infinitely curious. I find this curiosity about people and ideas a sacred part of my faith. To be curious is to be alive in the world and open to wonder. It is fundamentally a settling into the discomfort of questions rather than the ease of answers. 

People are already talking about this moment in history as one that will shift how we live, just like 911 did. I am curious about what this will mean. I have a dear clergy colleague who does amazing activism work with the migrant communities–on 911 they were working in the financial district of Manhattan. The questions that shape and drive our lives, “questions that can make or unmake a life” are present and it’s in these moments that we are given the time and space to listen to them, to consider their weight and what they might say. 

In this time of social distancing, I am curious about the questions that nudge at me. That have been patiently waiting for my attention, to help me think about my work and relationships. 

Be kind,

Cara

To Find a Steady Center is a daily poem and meditation to offer a short, good word to those who are anxious, fearful or lonely and who might need a gentle word of hope, encouragement or perspective during social distancing.