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A while ago a good friend of mine heard about something horrible person A had done to person B and my friend was so outraged, he declared that person A did not love person B. When I made some uncertain noises, my friend said that person A might have warm feelings for person B, but they did not love them because “love is what you do.”

This is an idea I’ve heard a bunch, including the classic DC Talk rap-music song “Love is Verb.” It’s kind of a thing. Yet that declaration of my dear friend made me feel uncertain and uncomfortable. After much thought, I concluded that it made me feel uncomfortable because, in my experience, people do all kinds of super creepy horrible stuff to each other, thinking that they’re doing it out of love. Sometimes even really truly meaning to do it out of love. That made me sad to realize, but it does kind of complicate the issue.

To complicate it even further, I don’t know how I feel about people doing nice actions for me without feeling nice things about me. I would appreciate the nice actions a lot, but it would make me really, really sad if I found out that the people doing the nice actions didn’t have any warm feelings for me. And when people who do have warm feelings for me are unable to do nice actions for me, I still really appreciate the feelings.

What do you think? Can love be defined in terms of action only, or does it require something else? Do warm feelings constitute love, or is that something else?

I was reading a book the other day, and this book made an off-hand comment about how silly it is for couples to expect that they’ll always feel in love. It struck me as odd. First, because the comment was made so casually, one clause in the middle of a sentence in the middle of a paragraph. As if the author was so sure that all readers would think, “Oh yeah, that’s so silly.” Second, because it reminded me that before I coupled up with my husband, I’d heard that thought quite often. The message was that the wonderful feelings of love fade once a couple has been together for a certain amount of time, and good, strong people stay with the relationship anyway. Flighty, silly, inconsistent people expect to feel in love all the time, and they end up very unhappy because none of their relationships last.

Back when my husband and I were first dating and I was glorying in the wonderful wash of euphoria, I remember thinking that I should not expect this feeling to last. At that moment, I decided that it was okay to enjoy the feelings, even if they weren’t permanent. I think I might have even written in my journal something like, “just because summer is coming doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t enjoy spring.” And that was the last time I thought about that until I read this book the other day.

Certainly my relationship with my husband has changed since we were first married. It would be rather odd if it hadn’t since we’ve been married for nearly seven years. We are kinder and wiser people than we used to be. We’re nicer to each other. We work more effectively together, we’ve got our housework peaceably divided, and we have better sex. I would not say that our love has “faded.” To fade is to become dull, less colorful. That does not describe us at all.

My friend Kim, who is wise in many ways, told me that she thinks the strong emotional bond between a couple, even between friends, is the time they’ve spent together. In relationship with people, you learn to communicate with them more effectively, you develop a rich library of memories together, you have more and more common experiences. It gets better. I wonder if that initial hormonal surge of euphoria is meant to be a bridge between the beginning of the relationship and a time when you have developed a true and rich love for each other.

One of my larger non-fiction tasks is to write up some children’s curriculum about social justice for the Midwest Mercy and Justice Team. I’ve only had this task on my list for about 14 months, so it’d be great to get it finished. I have already outlined a four week program with Bible verses from each of the four gospels wherein we learn that Jesus sees people who are different from him, listens to people who are different than him, touches people who are different than him, and loves people who are different than him. I would like there to be a craft and game for each story. So I’ve been doing some research online, looking for games and crafts for bible stories.

Of course, I wouldn’t have volunteered to write the kids curriculum in the first place if I hadn’t worked in Sunday schools for many years and been unsatisfied with the curriculum we used there. Kids curriculum, in my limited experience, tends to be very rules focused, black-and-white, or completely inane. There’s lots to be said about kids needing structure and boundaries. But I’m more interested in what a compass has to do with Zacchaeus.

Because that is what I have found. The craft to go with Zacchaeus in his sycamore tree is anything from a coloring sheet of a tree, to a word scramble with words like “tree” “taxes” and “money”, to a 40 piece puzzle of a compass. I don’t know a lot, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t have glass compasses back in Zacchaeus’s time. But honestly, I’m no more annoyed or offended by that than I am by the word scramble. I don’t understand the point of a kids activity like that. What are we reinforcing? Basic knowledge of the facts of the bible story? That’s the most positive aspect of the practice I can think of. On the not-so-positive side, I see “keeping kids busy while the grown-ups are in church.”

I have written about that before, so I won’t go into it again. But I am really disappointed at how much of what I find are cute little games that are vaguely related to some idea or object in a bible story, and aren’t at all about the meaning of the story, much less the character of the God involved.

Last night at Celebrate Recovery a remarkable thing happened. I met a woman, we’ll call her Nancy, who was just off a relapse, and whose life was in all possible ways, falling apart. I’ve been working at CR for some time now, and I still get a little scared when I meet someone like that. Not because they are scary, but because I start sensing my own inadequacies while they’re still talking. I know that I cannot keep that person safe, I can’t make sure they don’t use again, and because I’m already sponsoring a few people, I can’t even give them my number and tell them to call me anytime like I used to do. My “call me anytime” list is a little full at the moment. So I waffle, and I offer to pray for them if they’re the praying kind, and I feel like a failure before anything’s happened.

But last night, while I was just starting to feel like that, someone else spoke up. A woman spoke up that I love, but honestly, I had not seen a lot of leadership potential in. We’ll call her Mary. Mary asked Nancy a few simple questions. Where do you live? When do you work? She quickly confirmed that she lived nearby and worked the same kind of hours. Mary gave out her phone number, said to call anytime, and offered to go get Nancy if she found herself in a bad spot. “Do you smoke?” Mary asked. Nancy nodded, looking at her shoes. “Me too!” Mary said. “We’ll have a cigarette together.”

This morning at Breaking Free, I had a very similar experience. I had a girl I just could not make contact with, who yelled at me and refused to participate or get off her cell phone. While I was at a loss, one of the other women broke in and told her, “This isn’t our regular teacher. Our regular teacher isn’t going to ask you a bunch of times to put your phone away. She’s just going to expect you to turn it off.” She also asked some very simple questions. How long have you been here? How old are you? She found out where that girl was from, that she was brand new to the program and hadn’t learned the rules or consequences yet, that she was still a little peeved to lose some of what she felt was freedom. All the women chimed in to let her know that she was in a much better place than she’d left, even if it didn’t feel like it right now. And they offered her their phone numbers, and told her to call anytime.

It is beautiful to me that being just a few years, even months, along in a recovery process means that you’re totally able to help someone who’s just starting. Which is great for me, because I can let go of the silly assumption that I can or should do it all myself.

I’ve spent the last two weeks or so redecorating our extra bedroom. It was an overwhelming Noah’s Ark motif. Now it’s a small art gallery. It’s a lot better now. There is a lot of creativity involved in interior decorating, and I’m always interested in exploring new art forms.

The shopping is circular, inefficient, and frustrating, although the results have been very satisfying. I’ve outfitted the room completely and stayed inside a modest budget. I really love all the things that have found their way to this room. My red leather chair, my ergonomic laptop desk, the indigo curtains, the sculpted metal curtain holdback, the painted ceramic switch plate, even the luggage rack I purchased for guests has a certain elegance to it.

The work itself can be pretty grueling. I tried to get it all accomplished during the week I had off my nanny job, so I worked on it from morning to evening five days in a row. The fumes, repetitive stress, and just the weirdness of the postures and muscles I was using all made me sore, swollen, and exhausted. After consulting with a nurse friend of mine, I also determined that I might be allergic to the brand of wall paint I was using. The results are fantastic, though. Mint green paint and cartoon animals have been replaced with a gorgeous white called dove wing, and all the fantastic visual art that’s been waiting for a home in our house. And this is officially the only room in the house where the trim and baseboards are not covered in chipped, off-white paint. No, in here they are a luscious dark brown.

Through this whole experience, I’ve found that I can really envy visual artists. It is such a wholly satisfying experience to watch physical things change because of my work. All the questions of whether it’s working or not can be answered by an inner intuition that lies in my eye. It’s beautiful, it has real color, and you can see that it’s different when you’re done. In contrast to how I interact with a novel, there is something powerful about being able to look at a whole piece, just look at it. Maybe I’m just frustrated with the particular piece I’m working on (or not working on, as is too often the case), but it’s hard for me to return to my black words plodding down the electric white screen.

I’ve had a very rough week, and my stress level has reached an achingly dull apex. My dear friend Malika suggested that I put together a “stress plan” for this day. I asked her what her stress plan was, and she told me that she essentially lies in bed and watches tv until conditions improve. I would like nothing more than to watch tv all day, but I know two things about that. First, I will feel like a fake artist, a lazy person, and a squanderer of the sacrifices my husband has made for my non-lucrative career. Second, the collective guilt of the first thing will make me feel like total crap by 4pm. Quite frankly, I already feel awfully close to crap, so I don’t want to add to it. I asked Malika if she feels that kind of guilt when she employs her stress plan. She smiled her deliciously wicked smile and declared, “Yes, sometimes I hear that voice in my head. I tell it to fuck off.”

I have written some. I take a gritty pride in getting a modicum of work done under the worst of conditions. On all of the worst days of my life, some words have been written. I often motivate myself to continue this trend by saying that Frida Kahlo would be painting in my circumstance. I have this great visual from Selma Hayak’s beautiful portrayal of Frida’s life. A woman crippled with pain, curled in bed, but curled around a small canvas where her one free hand is still painting. This time around I have pressed into that motivation and discovered something new. Frida would be painting, but she would not be painting in spite of her pain. She would be painting directly from her pain. She visualized her life and her struggles in these haunting surreal images, and that is what she left behind her.

Lately, with my stress ever rising as the days drag on, I have been trying to focus on being totally in each moment that passes. Right now, in this moment, I am in this painfully stretched waiting. This moment may be forever eclipsed by the news I do or do not get tomorrow (or the day after that, sadly), but this is the moment I’m in now. This is my only opportunity to experience this day, my only hours to document what this feels like. I do not visualize my life in surreal images. I conceptualize it in playful, curling words. That’s what I’ll be writing today.

Today I’m nannying and reading the great poet Rilke. Rilke keeps assuring me that everything that is real is difficult, that everything that is life is difficult, that difficulties are beauties waiting to be loved.

A tiny child is digging her tiny fists into my soft skin, wanting for the hundred and eighth time today to be in my lap. Not so she can sit and enjoy my willing embrace. But so she can stand on my thighs while she pounds her limbs into mine, like the only possible happiness is for our bodies to be metaphysically conjoined. It was sweet, affectionate the first hundred and seven times, but now my unique identity is getting bruised.

Because of Rilke, I at least consider pressing into the difficulty and trying to love it. So I think about clinging to God’s shins, grasping and pounding and clinging to get closer, closer still. Unlike my clunky, rigid identity, I know that God can take me entirely into himself, can take me ever closer, and that he desires such an end much more than I. Then I think about all of humanity, millions upon millions of discrete beings, clamoring to get in, to be part of this all loving, all accepting whole.

I think about the enormity of a God who can do this too. I think about what it means to be truly omnipresent. I take that difficulty, and I love it just a little.

After my house was robbed, one of the girls I nanny asked me why someone took my things.  My explanation involved cycles of addiction, poverty, and prejudice, and lasted far too long.  It would be a lot easier to say that the robbers were bad guys, and a three-year-old would understand that.

I discourage “bad guy” theory.  I think identifying people, any people, as “bad guys” (male and female alike) sets the foundation for losing compassion for whole groups.  Despite their possession of beating hearts, those guys in the black masks, those guys with mustaches, those guys in turbans, aren’t real people.  They’re bad guys.  We can injure, imprison, or even kill them without thinking about it because they’ve been identified as inherently bad.

On the other hand, binaries are often touted as useful for rearing children.  We want to teach kids the difference between right and wrong.  Telling a child, “those are bad guys; they are taking things that aren’t theirs” can instill a sense of justice.  Not to mention, discourage toy grabbing during playtime.

What do you think?  Do you find “bad guy” theory useful?  Dangerous?  Something else?

So I have noticed lately that wives in books, movies, and television shows are often portrayed as a little bit nuts.  They’re over-structured, anal, or irrational.  I thought this was sexism until I noticed that husbands in the same media are portrayed as inherently stupid, unreasonable, and inadequate.  I don’t think it is sexist, I think it’s anti-marriage.

We hear a lot of negative things about marriage.  Marriage is boring, marriage is limiting, marriage is doomed to failure.  As far as sex goes, it seems that once the vows are taken, women don’t want it, men can’t get it, and no one enjoys it.

Despite these cultural messages, if you decide to remain single into your 30’s and 40’s, it’s assumed that there’s something wrong with you.  I’ve heard this complaint from singles both male and female, combined with a wracking self-doubt.  I hear this even from some of the greatest people I’ve ever met.  People, I would posit, who are a lot more balanced and less damaged than, say, me.

So let’s review.  Marriage sucks, but you’re somehow damaged if you don’t get married.  What is up with that?

I really want to take my writing time more seriously.  I am aware that I periodically re-commit to taking my writing time seriously, and I’m okay with that.  It’s hard to stay focused with zero accountability, and so I have to knuckle down once in a while when I realize it’s gotten out of hand.  In an effort to do that, I’ve made some changes to my routine (also a repeating occurrence).  I’ve decided to write in the guest room instead of the living room.  I almost never go in the guest room, because it’s used mostly for storage and I try to keep it nice for unexpected guests, so it just kind of sits there.  I like the idea of doing my work somewhere different than where I do housework or where I take my days off.  Thus reinforcing the notion that this is a work day, not a vacation.

I make it a habit of doing little tasks right when I think of them, assuring that they actually get done.  This becomes a time suck on a writing day when my mind wanders and I just happen to think of a million little tasks that I then do right away.  So a second change I’ve made is to keep a list of little tasks that I think of while I’m writing, and then do them during my breaks.  I take 2-3 20 minute breaks during the day to eat, and that’s when I do the little things.  If I have any time left over, I work on my very ambitious reading goals.

This being the first day I’ve tried these changes, it seems to be going pretty well.  I’ve done about three times as much writing as I have in a typical day in months past, I’ve still sent several important e-mails, and I even took my dog to the vet.  I worked out this morning, I’ve done morning and midday prayers from the Celtic Daily Prayer book, I’ve read my allotted bible reading for the day, I’ve read about 25 pages of a novel, and I’ve eaten five small meals.  Later I hope to do evening prayers, do three hours of housework, and eat three more small meals before I go to bed.

This is all great.  And yet, even at 4:30 on the very first day, I’m a little concerned about how sustainable this level activity will be.  Sometimes I think this is why I have whole weeks that go by without a lot being done, because I’ve overloaded on efficiency and my brain needs a break.  Or maybe not, I don’t know.  Is it always a struggle to see how much more you can accomplish in a day?  Or is there some optimal range for production that we should be shooting for?  What’s your practice?