Spirit

Fear has taken me to some amazing places. It rode shotgun as I drove from Mississippi to Tennessee after graduate school, to take a job in a city where I knew no one. We made friends, advanced our career, and learned how to kayak.

Ask about someone’s neighborhood, and they may offer the formal name assigned by the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhoods — Richland Park, Lockeland Springs, or Bordeaux Neighbors. Others view their neighborhood as a collection of homes within walking distance with people who feed their cats when they are on vacation. Neighborhoods are often distinguished by large, dividing boulevards, important landmarks, and socio-economic differences.

Neighbors and neighborhoods are harder to define in spiritual terms.

I thought I would never forget the details of the day my mother’s first cancer diagnosis came, back in the late 1980s. But today, right now, if you ask me where I was when I heard, or what I was wearing, or what I ate for dinner that very evening, I would draw a blank. What I do remember are long, teary phone calls with my two sisters; appeals to God for grace, understanding, and (dare I ask?) healing; frantic searching of medical literature; a gazillion questions, many of which had no answers; and the resolute circling of a family’s wagons around its very life source.

Someone I have known for many years will not answer my emails or return my phone calls. Even my heartfelt, hand-written note on Crane stationery did not draw a reaction. Being my friend on Facebook? Forget about it. I offended her, unintentionally, and I suspect she has decided I do not deserve a response. I can only “suspect” at this point because she’s not speaking to me.

We measure physical health with lots of numbers —blood pressure, body fat percentage, cholesterol readings. Spiritual health doesn’t lend itself to numeric assessment. We can’t quantify spiritual wellness, but we can point to some of the characteristics of spiritual health.

Before I got married, I was a list-making sort of gal when it came to love. I could whip up a “pros” and “cons” index quicker than you could say, “How was your dinner?” After I’d come home from a date, I’d cuddle up with the legal pad and the colored markers. (No wonder I spent so many nights alone, right?) It would not be overstating the situation to accuse me of leading with my head instead of my heart.

And then there was Henry.

On a recent afternoon, while waiting in a doctor’s office for the nurse to call my name, I had about 20 minutes on my hands. Instead of worrying about lab test results, I decided I would try to use my time more wisely, a big deal for someone like me, someone who could letter in fretting if there were ever such a sport. Instead of worrying, I attempted to clear my mind to see what might bubble up in the stillness.

Her Nashville is celebrating its first anniversary. One year of publishing — congratulations! We all celebrate milestones, but sometimes milestones, especially when we equate success with numbers, can distract us from more important things and even hurt those around us.

Although I like to think of myself as a quick study, I must confess that I know very little about men. I can talk for hours about books, calorie counts and theology, and I can even fake my way through an occasional discussion of Southern politics. Yet I have little to contribute to conversations surrounding the male psyche.

Words matter to me. I marvel at how you can arrange letters and punctuation in such as way as to evoke a feeling, describe the landscape or send your regards. If I hear a word I’m not familiar with, I look it up ASAP so I might file it away until the time is just right for curach or sobriquet. Although I consider some words cruder than others, in general I say “anything goes” with regard to free speech. (I have a degree in journalism, so I guess that’s no surprise!) But currently one word is catching in my throat, and I’m having trouble spitting it out.