Yesterday we were on the beach for sunset. We made a beautiful rangoli with holes for candles and we sat around it singing worship songs. Little kids came and joined in sculpting the rangoli, and many people gathered to sing and listen, and it was beautiful.

And then Solo hid under the fishing nets in one of the fishing boats nearby, and I couldn't find him for twenty minutes or so. I started looking with ease, because he never goes far, and I knew he was really interested in the boats, but after calling near them three times and looking all over, I started to run. And the minutes between starting to run and the moment when I saw Chinua walking toward me with Solo holding his hand, those minutes when I was running along the beach diving in and out of the huge drum circle, praying and gasping, looking wildly at every small child around, those minutes were the most terrifying kind of love.

You are on a cliff of love and if you fall off you could break on the rocks.

But then, there were Chinua and a small Solo with him. Angels in the sand, standing right next to where all the South Americans sell the beautiful macrame jewelry.

I was hiding, he said.

Hiding under the nets in a fisherman's boat. For ages.

I've never been so glad for anything as simple as a sandy face beside mine before.

This is love.

*

I have a habit of proposing to my husband. I do it all the time. I see him standing at our shelf, pulling some article of clothing out and holding it up to see if he wants to wear it, and my heart gets a little bigger. "Can I marry you?" I ask. "Yes." "Today?" "Let's do it!" he says.

Or, we sit next to each other on the couch. I hug his arm. (He has very huggable arms.)

"Can I live with you forever?" "Can we spend our lives together?" "I would really like to marry you." There are many ways that I ask. His answer is always the same. Yes. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. I'd love to. YES.

I'm goofy, I know, but this is what faithfulness is really about isn't it? Saying "I will marry you," over and over and over and over. Even if you're the husband and cute girls are always making eyes at you, or you're the wife and you can tell that guy at the café finds you attractive, which is flattering because you feel like an old mom who is always picking toys out of the cracks in the furniture.

You turn away from them and say, "I want to marry you," right to your husband or wife. You say it again and again and again with your presence. Marriage is a greenhouse for love. The greenhouse is wild and deep and grows remarkable things that can't be grown over night. Some flowers take ten years to grow. Some, sixty.

The greenhouse is interesting and funny and witty and wild.

This is love.

*

A couple of days ago we went to the beach. It's ironic that I live so close to the sea but have to schedule it in, because I get stuck in my house, my garden, homeschool, meditation center. All right here, breathing in my ear while I sleep. So Sunday became family beach day. And this Sunday the boys weren't so into swimming. They were into scooping sand into piles.

But YaYa was into swimming, and I took a little convincing because it felt cold when I went in (how quickly I have fallen from my hardcore Canadian roots) but I became very into swimming too. We went out where YaYa likes to go, where she is almost unable to touch the bottom so she can practice treading water, but I am still touching so she can grab onto me if she gets tired. We sang. We danced little dances and said nonsense vowels. We told each other we loved each other at least a hundred times. We heaped adoration onto each other.

Do I ever make her sound perfect? I don't mean to. She is lovely but not perfect. She can be hard to teach. She can be very resistant to me. Her voice has been a bit shrill lately. So it's beautiful when we leave everything else behind and just play together. Chinua eventually took the boys home and we stayed. We got out a couple times to warm up in the sun. I lay with my eyes closed and if I opened them she would be there with her head propped on her hand, watching me. Every once in a while she would put her hand on my back or my stomach, just to touch me. For that time, we had nothing to do but be together. Then we'd run back into the water and float around, jumping over waves or ducking under them.

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

This is love.

*

Have you ever loved a country? Especially one besides your own?

When you love one as unwieldy and kaleidoscopic as India, it's love that wavers and bleeds into all other kinds of emotions. The need to belong. The acceptance of not belonging. Sorrow for the ways things don't work properly sometimes, for the man on the hot road carrying one heavy brick for hours, the workers with the tar pourer, breathing in the stench.

But the love. Families, old women in a row in jewel bright saris, flowers in their hair. Women touching my hair, smiles, stares. Mustard seeds in hot oil. Red flowers on high bare branches. Rivers and the sea. Peacocks and monkeys. Cheeky kids calling from the schoolyard. People everywhere, full of life. Horns in the background, when you're talking to someone on the phone. Red dust. I love it here. It's not mine, but I love it still.

This is love.

*

Two of the women in our community have been friends for many years. When you are around them you can feel it. It is a sigh of comfort that is tangible in the air. People who move around each other with ease. Ease does not come easily. There are years behind every pair of friends like this, years of misunderstanding each other to figure one another out.

I always have trouble with this part. I'll introduce myself, palms out. I will disappoint you. I will let you down. Do you still want to be friends?

Getting through the part where you are hurt and the other person is hurt and maybe there are even black streaks under your eyes. It's hard. But the ease is on the other side. Forgiveness, the love that covers a multitude of mistakes and glitches, these things are fertilizer. Friendship thrives in a place where forgiveness is practiced. It bursts into bloom, because love is larger than offense.

This is love.

*

And there is God, weaving through it like a ribbon, or digging right into the garden with his hands. The author of love. Smoothing the path toward love. Bringing things deeper suddenly, when we're least prepared. Taking all the tiny gifts of love we offer, holding them close to his heart, small though they are. Giving us everything in exchange for our nothings.

This is love.

*

I gave my husband a flower for Valentine's Day. I found it in the garden. He held it and said, "This is a perfect flower." And it was. That plant had never bloomed before-- a hibiscus of deep orange with a pink center. I said, "Happy Valentine's Day," and handed it to him. And I almost had to laugh, because in other years, when I was younger, I've been annoyed about not doing something for Valentine's Day. I've wished that I would be wined and dined, I've felt poor or grumpy.

Now I know that if I hadn't found the flower I could have sketched one for him, or written a poem about a hibiscus flower, or I could have done a little flowery dance.

Or I could have done nothing at all, because there's nothing you can really do to contain it, is there? It's all cheap and cute, next to real love. Nice, but not the real thing.

Real love flows and flows and flows. Real love bleeds and hurts and forgives, takes a break to swim for awhile. Real love grows.

Dear Leafy,

 A few days ago, you turned six. It's the oldest question in the world, but WHA? When did I blink and suddenly you're a man? Please. Slow down a bit for your poor mother. If my grandmother were here she'd say she was going to put a brick on your head.

But. There are many benefits to you getting older! One is that I am always safe. Because you're super strong. A few weeks ago you were telling me about how strong you are, and you offered me a bit of proof, your eyes wide and earnest. (You are very earnest.)

"Once, I defeated a whole BASE of Tickle Worms." Tickle worms are part of a game that you play with your Daddy. They are coming for you! (They look a lot like Daddy's fingers.) You must beat them back. You are very good at the game, apparently.

So, when I am in the garden, weeding or cutting grass, and you ask me if I would like you to guard me, my answer is OF COURSE. You stand nearby, sword in hand, ready to beat off my various enemies who may approach from the coconut grove. You do this for an hour at a time, taking practice swings to warn anyone who may be watching.

You told me that when you grow up you are going to become a Cyborg. I'm sure I'll be even more protected then, but I hope that when make your change to cyborg, you keep the human parts that are snuggly, at least.

Another amazing part of you getting older is that we get to know more and more of the workings of the Leafy mind. There are two kinds of people in our circles of friends. Those who say, "Leafy doesn't really talk, does he. He's really quiet" Then I take my eyes out of my head and lay them on the table and stare at them like that for a while until they are sufficiently creeped out and chastened. Because the other kind of people are those who respond, "Leafy? He never. stops. talking."

You have a spigot on your stream of words and you can turn it on or off. When people get closer they see it on, and they start to see the depths of the Leafy well of words. It goes on and on. It has no bottom. You like to pace and live out your entire battle strategy for Anakin and Obi Wan OUT LOUD. And sometimes, when the rest of us are exhausted by the flow, I have to let you know that you seem to be having inside thoughts on the outside, rather than actually conversing with anybody, and to please bring it back inside.

But you also love to make these grand pronouncements with your peculiar and genius logic. As I was writing this post, you looked up and said,

"Blood is like an ARMY. There are lots of little blood molecules like a HUMONGOUS blood army."

And then you said, "If our feet were made of skin, and we were so small that our feet were only made of one skin molecule, and then you cut them in half, (motion of cutting your foot in half) they wouldn't be made of skin anymore."

Tis true, son, tis true.

Also, the way to your heart is through your stomach. If I make something you love, you throw your arms around me and tell me you LOVE me. If I make something you dislike, you sometimes say something to the effect of, "You don't want us to have anything we like to eat EVER?"

You are a tad dramatic. And always very interesting.

You were all playing a game the other day, and I heard you say, "I'm the guy who saves the princess."  This is you. Saving the princess. You are very concerned with justice, for yourself and for other people. You frequently tell me that when you grow up you will make a lot of money and give it all to poor people. You get very upset when you feel that YOU are being unfairly treated.

Dear one, but I believe there is something very special about you. People feel it. They're drawn to you. I feel it too, and it makes me protective of you. Then I remember the base of tickle worms and I have to back off, because clearly, you are getting older, and now you can defend yourself.

I love you with a wild, ridiculous love, son. Happy birthday.

Love, Mama

This is what our house looked like on the day we moved in.

This is jumping forward a bit, to the second year we were in the house. This is looking out at the yard from the porch. I can tell it's the second year by the length of Leafy's dreadlocks and the small fence in the front of the yard. When we moved in there were no fences, but gradually, every year when we returned there were more fences, until the seven food stone and concrete fence that keeps us in now.

It started to feel ridiculous to have a fenced in piece of dirt, especially at a meditation center. Back when it was just a piece of the village it was one thing, but now that it was our "yard," well. Well.

So last year I came up with a big garden plan. It included grass. That meant that all the top soil needed to be removed and new soil put in. I drew a plan for a path and some spirals around coconut trees.

These lovely ladies from Karnataka worked on sifting the new soil and mixing it to fill it in. In their off time (a lot of off time, work in India requires a supervisor to encourage everyone to keep working, and I'm not so good at that) they played with YaYa's hair. She would run in and have her hair all up or braided.

They also helped her find tiny shells for her collection.

And this year, when we returned, we found this bit of loveliness.

This is looking out from the front porch. I love this little corner. And unwanted fences are certainly better with climbing flowers on them.

Don't let me forget about the beauty of brown stone and climbers.

Those palms are some of the greenest and easiest things to grow. The bougainvillea, also. Oh I love that color. I want a scarf in exactly that color.

The last plumeria flower until the next time it blooms. I need to get some cow urine to fight the fungus that wants to take this plant over.

No matter where I live, I want growing things around me. Here we fight fungus and ants as well as strange moths that burrow into the ground. (If fighting means occasionally putting neem onto the grass and sighing as I pull away at the grass they've eaten. I've given in a bit. Other than putting DEADLY CHEMICALS into the ground, it seems that my only option is to try a few natural things and then live with them. Jungle garden.)

And there's this guy. He likes to run into the spray of the hose while I'm watering. He's a general pest. An adorable one.

In the vegetable garden, the Bok Choy was really easy to grow. A lot of my vegetables disappeared when the ants carried the seeds away. But we got a lovely giant community salad out of it.

I will rewrite the parable of the seeds and include "some seeds fell in the jungle, and ants carried them away..."

I love that I'm making mistakes and learning. Plants are such beautiful object for meditation. The garden of the soul. It heals me, sitting and working with plants that are eaten or need water or trimming. All these lovely things that need a little help, some care and hydration and guidance.

Every. Single. Day. Just like me.

You could graph my life in a series of waves. Doing well, not doing so well. My mind working with me for a while, then turning against me. The tightening in my gut when I'm asked a series of simple questions. "Do you have any plans today? What should we make for lunch? Can you buy some oil and potatoes?" Each question a lance, probing the fight or flight response that is so woefully out of context.

Let's say that I'm not doing so well, lately. I know enough to know I will rise on the next wave.

*

Here are some things that trigger fight or flight, even panic, when I'm not doing so well.

The internet. All forms of connection over the internet. Emails I need to return.

Phone calls.

Money.

Groceries.

To do lists.

Making decisions of any kind.

You'll recall that I have four children, that I help to run a meditation center. That I homeschool. These triggers, therefore, cannot be avoided. Nor would I want to avoid them.

It's sad to me, sometimes, the ways that this sickness can paralyze me. I love to write to people and be written to. I love to pick the ripe tomatoes from the pile. I love to speak into the empty space of the phone and hear something in response. But these are dangerous things in a difficult time.

Can you describe what you're feeling in these moments?

A sense of failure and impending failure so complete that it cannot be moved. It makes me afraid, the sound of people's voices, the thought of opening the computer. Better to walk in circles, go to sleep, sleep myself to oblivion. All the things I did not accomplish, all that I did but didn't do well. The gust of wind that carries them swirls up inside of me. This is anxiety. Anxiety is not "being worried." It is being sat upon by a large elephant.

It is sickness.

*

The other night I decided to sit in the garden and clip the grass for a while. At night, yes, that's what I said. I stopped eventually because I could not see what I was cutting. But it was nice to sit there, in the dark, in the prickly/soft grass listening to the rustle of the palm trees, the whine of mosquitos. The Russian children getting settled for bed in the guest house next door. The moon was there. And the stars.

I was reaching for something helpful, something peaceful, something inspiring as I went to sleep that night. And as I was drifting off, I had a half waking thought journey, snippets of a story or poem or something. They made perfect sense to me as I traveled through them, but in the morning, all I could remember is one line. "Sky, stay sky."

Sky, stay sky?

There are other, cloudier images of what I was thinking. The young story, never realized. Something with walking under the sheen and cloud of many stars, of finding the moon in the swirl, of lying on my back and watching. Sky, stay sky. Don't change, be the same, sky. Stay.

*

My kids made the most amazing To Do lists the other day. I have always loved YaYa's lists, because they are so rewarding. "Wake up," her list says. "Eat breakfast." "Play." She gleefully checks off each point.

Leafy made some as well, for the first time. He listed his in illustrations, because he's not so confident with his writing yet. He had separate lists for me and for Chinua. In the morning he came to me.

"These are the things that I want to do with you today," he said.

1. Snuggle.

2. Draw together.

3. Do something beautiful with flowers."

Who can argue with goals like those?

We snuggled first. That one was easy. Then I needed to sew some things, so Leafy was content to sit with me and draw while I stitched away. We were both doing creative things and sitting together while we did them, so it was enough. Leafy's lists are both wise and flexible.

Later, I needed to prepare for our weekly Devotion Circle. For our Devotion Circle we sing, someone shares a story or message, we pray, we show devotion. We always decorate in some way or another, usually with flowers. It was my turn to prepare the space. As I was heading for the rooftop, I remembered Leafy's list.

"Why don't you come and help me?" I asked him. In the end, he and YaYa and Solo all came. We sat and made a circle of flowers and candles together. They helped me, we created something beautiful, we sat and were together. It was lovely.

It's not always like that. Often I'm running. I'm buying things in the market, I'm watering the garden, I'm giving the kids a snack during homeschool so I can run out to the market to get the day's vegetables. Even now, as I write this, I'm thinking about after, when I need to run out to the vegetable stand to get today's okra and potatoes and lentils, for dinner after devotion circle tonight.

It is the unending nature of details that gets to me. Today's shopping doesn't even mean a day's respite, in my life. I will be back out tomorrow. I cleaned and decluttered two shelves in the kids' room yesterday, but they will be dusty again by the end of the week. Things break, people get sick, this is life. Is there room for thought in such a life? For creativity? For dreaming?

*

Sky, stay sky.

I'm learning, in my thirties, that I will not ever be the sort of consistent person who churns out posts and articles without fail. It is not my nature. I am not an unflinching woman. I set my face like flint, but then it begins to wobble and melt in the rain. I will possibly never even have the strong stem that I desire, the strong rose stem covered in thorns. Protected. Safe. I will always be bendable. A daisy. Accepting it helps.

*

1. Snuggle

2. Draw together

3. Make something beautiful with flowers.

It's a list that describes a pretty good day, actually. And I can do these things, well or unwell, usually. I may not be able to listen to rambling and plan the week's meals without stress, but I can snuggle at any moment. I can't keep my kids in clothes that aren't falling apart or get their bikes fixed in a timely fashion, but I can always stop to make something beautiful with flowers.

*

Sky, stay sky.

I am changeable and inconsistent. This is my nature, all of ours, to some extent. But God is with us, unchangable.

God, unchangeable, unshakeable, immovable, unruffled, not panicking. Jesus, never unloving, not moody, not shaking, not afraid. God moves into me and lives within me. But the distinction never changes, God is God and I am I. I don't become Him, I don't change him. So unchangeable God burns within changeable me. Whether I feel it or not, whether I remember or not, there He is, perfect and good and always the same. Never untrue.

I can rest in it. After all, I occupy my own little restless universe, but the real world, the universe with planets and systems beyond my knowledge continues on despite me.

Sky, stay sky. I'll lie on my back in the grass. Dreaming, just watching. The heavy blue, the haze. Planets glowing, stars in the distance. I'll wait for the wave to smooth itself into ripples, rest in the shallows, wait for the next wave.

Making palm frond stars with Miriam.

This was very soothing to me. I may have to make about a thousand palm frond stars.

Jaya helped me make salad for our feast.

We decorate our live tree. I love this tree. It was a little Charlie Brown Christmas tree when we first got it, three years ago. Our landlord planted it and now it's a huge wonderful tree, perfect for lighting up.

We also decorated our daughter. Actually, our friend Rebekah decorated her. She doesn't look impressed.

Lights and a big circle on Christmas Eve.

Feast!

The tree, seen from above.

Light circle. Everyone shared their names, where they were from, and something that was a light to them in the last year.

 It was a beautiful Christmas. Sweet and lovely and soft.