I woke up to April!

I never understood why anyone discussed the weather at length but when it's as bizarre as ours, I think it needs to be discussed. It's been like this since I moved to Anchorage in 1980-- but every year I am shocked. Our weather is cold for a bit, then freezing our tails off cold for a bit longer, then it warms up and rains, then snows, then nosedives into cold weather again. It's just not fun. We have green grass sprouting right now, mud puddles in the yard, and it's no fun. You can't send the kids out to play in it because it's not snow boot weather-- snow boots get caked with mud, but rubber boots are too slick. (I'm not discussing, I'm complaining!)

My brain is shorting out on me. Forgive my sentence fragments. I'm doing school work with Calamity Jane singing and trying to play Honkey Tonk Angels on her guitar (she's not good yet) and Mudd banging on a drum and singing Twinkle Twinkle. Calamity is funny because she knows nothing small. No Home on the Range for this kid, she goes for imitating Dolly Parton and k.d. lang and the finest. . . oddly this is what her mother listens to! Starshine likes to clap to the music, and she actually keeps time pretty well. Mudd? He deliberately gets out of sync. He's funny, too.

Peaches is gone. She can't handle high school. She signed herself out the other day-- she is 18 and can do this. She has all the credits that she needs to graduate. My husband wants her to stick around, but she is being obnoxious and texting me at midnight saying that she won't be home. I don't know what she has here now. She wanted to take me out for coffee, but I am afraid I will say something hurtful. After she accused me of only wanting her around for her dad's money, I don't know what boundaries she has or what consideration she feels up to showing. Don't get mad-- just love them. I dealt with worse on internships.

Now we are in the next phase of parenting. Cloud is going into her high school soon, and Guy is entering middle school. The next 5 years will be about getting the younger set up and ready to launch as well as getting the tiny babies into reading and being active. We have an insane sporting season coming up and I am tying up my classes.

I am at a loss on what to do sans child support, but my husband says we'll make it. I can't work-- they get sick and need someone home with them. Child support is an issue, but it wasn't why I wanted my daughter home. She says she wants to make her own mistakes-- on that one, you just back off. "Ok, make'm."

At my Facebook, I have encountered the kids who lived on my street who I grew up with. They were my brother's friends, but they'd come home and I'd already be there and I'd be baking cookies or brownies. They are very, very successful and I felt silly telling them about what I am up to, but they razzed me and are more interested in my work with a volunteer radio station. They remember me stuttering and getting into speech and debate.

I was apparently in indirect Cupid for a marriage! It was funny as my parents were selling their house and at this point I was 21 or so and back home post divorce. A very articulate woman called and asked about the house and we connected over the phone—I really liked her and she liked me, too. Right before she came over, a smarmy guy called and asked if we’d be willing to sell to “Japs.” I was ticked because of his term and asked if he was trying to get me into legal trouble because it was illegal to discriminate, then I started talking really fast at him, using my words like stones and hopefully maimed him for a week! He was calling from some place in Vegas and was just smarmy. She showed up right after that and I was still FUMING. I told her why. She happened to be Black and I was like, “You are human! If the money is green, you qualify.”

She kissed my cheek and said, “This is the house I want to buy. Bring me the papers.” I told her that she had to see the flaws by law and besides, my dad would kill me if I let her sign without knowing so she followed me around and signed a promise to buy right there. She was looking at the paperwork while I canceled other appointments for that afternoon.

I called a friend who said, “Her husband is White. She’s faced discrimination.” I told my friend she was full of it (she was White and married to a Black man and EVERYTHING was a racial issue to her) and she said, “You were set up by the phone call—she wanted to see if you were friendly and you passed the test with an A+.”

Sure enough, that night she signed the actual papers and said, “I want you to see my family!” and showed us a photograph. I started laughing and told her what my friend had said. Well, she had faced discrimination. My ‘hood was all white, upper class, and they are upper class—but neighbors would make some snide remarks to my father later. Well, their daughter married my brother's best friend who lived next door! She is beautiful-- and this guy is so laid back and nice.

One of the other friends who contacted me was into economics and now teaches. His brother is a lawyer, another friend lives nearby and instead of balking when I teased him that I'd dump my kids at his place, he said he'd coach them! These are people who I used to ride bikes with late into the night and watch them play basketball (my eye-hand coordination is nonexistent due to my vision) and they played sports with my baby brother. The brothers gave me a clock for my first wedding. The clock is long gone but I have replaced it and it is still "the clock that ___ and ___ gave me." I have thought of them all often in the past 15 years, but that clock made me think of those two in particular a lot.

The other day I received a note from a prof whose class I'd highlighted in my paper. She'd prayed for 10 students-- she got 18 signed up for her class, thanks to my help. She is a really wonderful person and she is very gifted-- I'm very happy that so many took the class!

I went with my church to the prison this past week. I'd been thinking of one of our ladies from Kairos and a lady knew her and let me know that she is in The Hole-- solitary confinement. They are put into a room alone with just a Bible.How the Hell does anyone read a Bible? Without understanding it is impossible and just words. She deserves to be there, but how they do the solitary confinement doesn't help the person out. Who decides how long they be there? They don't have any set guidelines as far as anyone knows-- it creates a psychological mess for the person.

I feel like a catalyst-- I don't know how long I will stay with my church group. Too many of us makes us too eager to talk to offenders. At the same time, if I am on a rotation I can't commit because I have other things to do. Still, I get with things, connect situations like getting my church into the prison, and then seem to need to move on.

A Ghost, a Speech, a Horse, Annoying Religious Women, and Prosfora

On Saturday I went with my ministry to the prison to do a follow up on the Kairos weekend. I had to give a talk on God's Love. I was supposed to talk about someone who has been hard to love. I had it all figured out and then I was starting to talk and I heard my dad's voice telling me, "Gosh al-Friday, they can't relate to that! You are a suburban housewife! Tell them about ___ _______!" It was like he was standing right there next to me like it was normal for him to do that. Not being one to argue with ghosts and especially my dad's ghost, :) I told them about my dad's prize horse who everyone thought was mean (she came up here with a sick filly and she was MAD) but who he fought for and loved and who produced great babies who are now breed standards. They related to her former abuse, her anger, and fear and my father's love. I told them how my dad was being charged and how he dropped to his knees while he was charged by her and how she reared up on him, bit, kicked and snorted and took the whip and lunge lines out of his hands and stomped on them, all the while my dad not changing his voice or method. (I also got bit and kicked. She was not exclusive!) It was the perfect analogy of God's love for imperfect people! Several of the ladies asked how I came up with the idea of appealing to their inner 12 year olds. . . if a woman was never gaga over horses, she can still relate to the abused and beaten horse, the daughter of two of the greatest American Saddlebreads who ever lived and over-educated people telling my dad that she was untrainable and should be put down.

For several years I have been terrified of prison for no reason. It came to me in waking up in cold sweats, just scared. My husband said to not run from it and to start to pray about it, which I did. Training with Kairos initially helped alleviate the fear. Yesterday I listened to several ladies talk about marriages ending because of what has happened to the women, or continuing in spite of their situations. Last night I woke up Darrin and talked to him for a few minutes about not leaving me, and I barely remember it. Here was that dear man this morning telling me, "I think you need to write about how marriages last when people are behind bars. Don't run from this fear." We also lit a candle for several people I know who are married and behind bars. Why can't I get a fear about eating truffles in France? Or of drowning in olive oil in Greece? Can't I be called to something fun? Surely there is a fun gig in those things!

The offenders are wonderful. I go to these for them, but I really don't like the prison. My former lawyer told me that as much as I appreciate them as people to think of them out of prison and on various substances-- most weren't put there because they were upholding laws. I have a few religious people that I work with on the Kairos team who remind me why I avoided church when I was Protestant. When I found out that my grandmother had died, I was blue but still went and they were all like, "Smile!" They got ugly with me for saying that it was a bad time and to back off. My priest says that it's because of a writer in the 1960's-70's movement telling people that the fruit of the spirit is joy and Christians turned into Stepford people. He knew a guy who he was trying to get to go to seminary who went to check it out and he returned, spooked. "They are all smiling all the time!" He said it was eerie. One lady yesterday was obnoxious again when I was talking to someone and she giggled, "You are so serious!" Then said, "Just joking." She's 70 years old, the same one who decided to tickle me last weekend with the same comment that I was "so serious." How do I tell someone that age that they are making me hate going? I was serious to an appropriately serious situation and I was listening to someone's story in a flipping prison! I wanted to scream at her, "You are so f'ing spastic!"

I made Prosfora last night. That is Blessed Bread. One of the loaves turns into The Lamb, which is mixed with Communion Wine, the combination with which we make Communion. Lots of praying goes into it, and I use some Holy Water. While I made it I held the big ball in my hands and started pulling off pieces and saying the names of the women at the retreat, "Pilgrims" and my teammates; I wasn't making a conscious thought of it, just praying for them and that is what happened. The seal on the bread (I use a wooden seal with symbols on it) came out perfect when the loaves were through baking, but the loaves were a funny, oblong shape. My priest asked after this and I apologized and explained and he just laughed. I should have perhaps kneaded it more? He said no, they were as they were supposed to be.

EDITED: I wrote an email to one of the authors of a book I have read on prison ministries and asked him to please advise people involved in this to uplift one another instead of hen pecking. He liked this idea and says that he will indeed write a chapter on this!

Everything Else that I Do Will be Secondary in Importance

I just spent the weekend with a prison ministry. I wrote a report on it before I left and said that I hated it and that I would never go back, saved it and left for the church to meet with the rabid Evangelical Care Bears who I'd be serving with. Mid-way there I told my husband that I was sick and didn't want to go. Yes, I have the mentality of a 9 year old when I panic. He finally said, "I will take you home if you want me to, but I think that you have to be there. There are Native Orthodox who I don't think are being ministered to and I think you will find them. You have a responsibility to your Orthodox sisters."

I went and as I got to meet the ladies in a big circle we all told the group where we went to church. I said that I was Orthodox and sure enough, a couple of the offenders told me of women in different houses that were Orthodox who'd not come to the retreat because it wasn't Orthodox. I knew why-- I'd not expected to get my priest's approval and yet he had promised to come and was thrilled that I was reaching out. I met a couple who were there and told them to come meet him when he came. I was furious because my husband was right as there are no Orthodox Christian outreach at least in this prison. Actually-- the Orthodox Church of America (OCA) is supposed to be serving the prison but it doesn't. The priest is a young looking Alaskan Native-- he's older, but he looks young. I wonder if the girls flirted with him or something and he doesn't feel right going. Or he may be too spread out as it is and prison is easy to cut; it is for politicians.

God was amazing. One of the Orthodox "girls" and I met and I called her "sister." She started to cry. Well, she is my sister in Christ and she is Orthodox! She'd been praying for just one Orthodox woman and God sent her me and another team member, then my priest came! He's going to go to a training this coming week and go and minister to them. To think that my church's big sister church is practically next door to this prison and it was me who got The Call to be the link to the priest going there humbles me.

Kairos is about the basics of Christianity. We brought in food, and this symbolism wasn't lost on them. God feeds us. We sang, "Oh when the saints go marching in" when they walked in in the mornings. One said to me that it reminded her of Heaven, that when she dies that she will be greeted by the smiling faces of family members that she both knows and doesn't know.

I don't know how I feel about Jesus still, but if Jesus isn't real, G-d will forgive those who believe in Him. We were trained to discuss forgiveness, repentance, Opening the Door to Jesus (my talk) and many others. I broke bread with women convicted of embezzling, drug abuse, murder, and worse. (Oh yeah, there is worse. Much worse.) We served them & never let them serve themselves as we were servants of God, sent to talk to them about Christ's love. Would a murders' or child abusers' victim want their abuser to get good treatment for a few days? Most likely not, but would they want them to change? This was their chance to get the love they missed out on. Ninety per cent are getting out, which ones do you want being your neighbor-- the ones who've not been through this ministry or the ones who have been? I saw women who are very tough and very mean break down and cry.

This past weekend I heard some of the most heart breaking stories that any one has heard. I heard them from survivors. A woman was hugging me and said she had never felt joy or happiness before. I never understood how anyone could survive the indignity that prison is rumored to be, but I met women who said there is no dignity but manage to survive with a sense of humor and inner strength.

My husband said, "Next to raising children, nothing that you do will ever be as important as leading people to God." We will train them to start a weekly session within the prison. The hope is that they will stay with studying and keep a sisterhood alive. Corrections officers across the country have said that the effects last about 4 months, then they kind of whither. It's OK-- we (from the Outside) try to get back every six months, as well as monthly. I've committed to the monthly meetings for the following year.

I will see if there is more need. It is enough that I have brought my gentle priest over to meet the chaplain and find a slot. I hope that I can continue to serve.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


On the other side, living with a group of other females (we'd leave at night and stay at a church) is not my thing. I can stand it for three days before I begin to fray! When I think, my face isn't smiling and about half decided to comment on this. "Tea! You look like you are angry." WTF is that about? I am embarrassed to tell someone that she has something on her teeth and they felt obligated to comment on my facial expression? One woman acted like I had some nerve for explaining that I had some muscle damage. I told her that I'd had a stroke, but no, she'd not be fooled! She knew I'd not had one! I was trying to tell her to shut the f--- up. You don't tell anyone what to do with their faces. "Smile! You look angry!"

"Go stand on your head! You still won't look attractive."

I cannot make myself smile when people do that and I want to slap them.

Another woman kept jabbering at me in the morning and TOUCHED MY BACK and said, "Are you not a morning person?" I was ticked-- if you have to ask, back off! I wanted to say, "No, but it's not that. I just don't like talking to you." I am comfortable with silence. This woman just doesn't say a lot of smart things.

They were as bad as dental assistants, if not worse.

The third and most irritating thing, an older lady brilliantly decided to come up from behind me and tickle me. I almost choked on my Ny-Quil pills that I was swallowing and she giggled to the room of 20 women getting ready for bed, "You look so serious!" I said I was swallowing pills. Everyone laughed some more. I am scared around this group-- had I choked and tried to cough them up, they'd have been banging on my back forcing them the other direction. They seemed to react to things to get attention. It bothered me.

I go to do the work of God. So what if I am not smiling? My grandmother died, I was missing her funeral, I was hearing deep stories and I did not go there to explain my face, affirm some dimwitted woman's need for affirmation on stupid comments on the weather and to watch to see if she was talking to me, and I sure as hell didn't need to have someone tickle me. (I almost slapped her when she did that.) I felt like those women were cultish in how they acted, "You must be what I want you to be." I don't mind training with them, and i don't mind breaking bread with them, but there is a line. Had I, the odd duck of the group placed my hand on someone's back to say anything, the response would not have been comfortable. Had I tickled anyone, it would have just been strange and I'd have probably been smacked. I can't even imagine ordering anyone to smile. That is so beyond the pale.

The Sky is Not Falling

This past weekend I went to more training. Fortunately Rick Rockhill made a comment that made me wonder why I was doing this. I've been stressed out. Anything that causes the grey hairs that I am sporting isn't worth it. Screw it. I'm doing the prison ministry for God, so to hell with what anyone says to me (in the training, not Rick who was right on target!) that hurts my delicate feelings.

I did a training at the prison and I broke out in hives afterward. Smoke glass does that to me and I didn't even see it--I just knew it was there. What was I thinking? My heart was bigger than my brain. I don't feel worthy to be with the group of dedicated women who are teaching the retreat. I know so little about Christianity and it's not my denomination, it's just that I feel as shallow as a bird bath.

Friends from church, once I announced what I was doing through our priest, have offered to help me with cookies. This is pretty cool. No, it's incredible. Twenty five dozen cookies are being made by friends on my behalf for the prison. In any church you need to ask for help from the priest or pastor before anyone helps you and that's normal.

The other thing that happened. . . because the TD was in the shop, I needed my husband to cancel his and the kids' plans and get me to the next city so I was without a car. I called him the next day when I found out that I needed to go to the prison to meet with the pastors for a training. I told him several times where I was, told him that his sister was near by, maybe see her or to wait in the parking lot for me and bring something to read.

The leader who drove me to the destination is hard to describe. Are tsunamis obnoxious or do they just have a lot of energy? Well, she was in a hurry to leave after the prison training and basically I couldn't get my stuff out of her car fast enough and I didn't want to be around her when she went into, "I don't have 12 seconds to spare. hurry-hurry"mode. When I called my husband he said he would wait for me in the parking lot, then right before I went out I called him and he said that he was up the road. He told me to just unload my stuff on the steps (I'd been out over night) and I stood with a suitcase, an art supply bag and a crock pot. After ten minutes, I started to worry and realized that my car phone was in the leader's car. After 30 minutes, I was in tears because people coming out of the prison walked right past me and didn't look at me when I asked to borrow their cell phones. I started to wonder if I was invisible.

The pastors came out and they did recognize me only after I asked if they could see me. . . you know, I really started to doubt my existence. I would not have been shocked if an ambulance had arrived and taken my body out of the facility. The only other time I have been avoided like that was when I was a mime. ;)

The pastors helped me reach my husband and the leader, my husband was an hour away. It was funny when I saw my phone and he had been texting me, "Answer your phone." "Answer your damned phone! Where are you?" "Do you have your phone?" "Did you say you were at the prison?"

After a half hour of coordinating, the pastors had to be someplace. They dropped me off at a restaurant and before I called Darrin, one pastor said to me that I had every reason to be angry with him, but that it was good for me to see what released offenders go through. I felt like an idiot on the curb being ignored, but I am not the first person to feel like that and I ultimately had a place to go. Had my husband been unable to get me, I had friends able to help get me home. (This is why you memorize several friends' phone numbers.) I cannot fathom being from a village being released in Anchorage and having to stay there because there are probation officers but no friends. The pastors said that sometimes inmates get released only to not have spouses pick them up (as planned) because they are living with someone else and have been for a long time.

It bothers me that I knew how I looked standing on that curb while I was standing on it, but didn't want people to think that I had been "one of them" and was then a released inmate. The pastors confirmed what I suspected that people were thinking. Why did I not want people to think that? Who cares? For several years I have wondered over the situation of people who have not even voting rights and how disenfranchised they are and I have mentioned it to lawmakers, but they never paid much attention to me on it. I have tried to present them in a good light, but I still felt furious at my husband for leaving me stranded. I am not better than they are, yet I was thinking pretty damned well of myself.

I worked what happened in to the speech I am giving about opening the door to God and letting God take His time. I have even painted a picture of myself standing at that curb in gouache to illustrate Matt. 6:26 "Look at the birds in the sky. They don't plant or harvest or gather food into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. You are more valuable than they are, aren't you?"

I am weird about Christianity. I doubt it constantly. I don't "know" it like CS Lewis seemed to know it. I do "know" that there is a God who created us and loves us, and I "know" this because Descartes said that just being able to imagine a being who created us is proof. I have a picture here of me and a few of my kids lighting candles. That night I must have lit 7 or 8 for different people and things. I like lighting candles because the represent so much-- the candle wax is us melting to God's will which is the heat from the flame, and the wick is our passion burning.

Yesterday I signed up for a drawing class. I only got a C in it last spring and I think that having no other classes I can put more in to it. I'd like to be able to speak through my art without needing to explain it. I would like for any one to look at my work and say the same things.

I got a message that my radio show is going to happen. The two interviews that I did are going on the air in several weeks. I of course have ten shows that I want to do next. I thought that my supervisor-mentor-friend just didn't like my voice, but instead he really was waiting. So exciting!

I will be off until possibly Sunday night,probably Monday. I have much to do.

The Prison Retreat is Coming Up

I have a training this weekend for the prison retreat.

I am bummed. I need to take 20 dozen cookies to it and my baker, a restaurant owner just had two employees quit. I am busy with school and everything and this happened! Argh.

I needed to get donations which didn't happen in spite of me asking my church friends. I also told them that if they couldn't donate but cared to please make some posters for me to take which are needed and no one would do them. Why? My Eastern Orthodox friends basically told me, "We are Orthodox and you are serving with a Protestant group." I don't enjoy how they Protestants worship because it's not my style, but the people in my group are so genuine! The mission is extremely worthy and a lot of people need that chumminess with God so they can relate to Him. Some move on to more liturgical churches, some stay in the way we teach, and some fall away and come back later. Maybe some move on to other faiths-- but they learn to appreciate. I do not think that Orthodox have a monopoly on Salvation and when you are reaching out to prisoners, the simplest approach is best: Love God, be nice to your enemies, forgive, etc. Everything else is gravy. I love Eastern Orthodoxy as I find it meditative and I enjoy practicing aspects of the faith that reinforce it in our minds, but the elitism sickens me. If anyone there asked me to help out with something, I'd be happy to in whatever way I could.

I asked my husband's family-- they are great Protestants, wonderful people, but they ignored my request. Why? Probably because we're Eastern Orthodox. (I think they think we are going to Hell.) I'm not mad, but for God's sake, we are on the same side!

Should I even be doing this? Most women do things in pairs. I go off, "Hmm. This looks like it should be interesting." People in pairs have support.

What a stupid, stupid thing for me to have even tried doing. I'm going to think about this overnight, but I may just drop it.

I need support with this from my church and I am afraid that if I drop this, I will also drop the faith that I agreed to raise my children in because I don't like the people in how they act.