leeks and onions

perhaps--no--most certainly, the things i will miss most about texas are my friends. those dear souls who understand. camping this weekend with people i barely know made me realize how awkward i am in a group. if i'm "on" it's not so bad. i can play the jester at times. but when i'm sidelined by life, when my plate overfloweth, as they say, i lose the ability to bullshit.

there was no quiet place for me to be apart. i had to be among. perhaps not physically, but certainly acoustically. why camp lodges aren't built with the leader who needs a moment's peace in mind i don't know.

camping two weeks (or so) ago, the kitchen was a relatively soundproof place. we leaders joked as we shut the door and huddled inside, that we'd be fighting over kitchen duty (you know, if you've read me before, i'm no fan of kitchen duty. but i was that weekend). we shut the door to be apart from the squeals of little girls (i think they are louder than boys, or it seemed that way as the sounds echoed through my brain all weekend). It is what we are there for, to let them have some fun--but i'm infinitely "more" fun when i can get a moment's peace and quiet.

i'm not a people person, am i?

i asked my husband.

no, you never have been. (that would have been a good, helpful place to stop. but he didn't) only to your family,

he said.

i've long stopped looking for the comforting answer from him. he deals more in honesty. stark raving honesty, like me.

when i apologized to a fellow camper today, she replied,

you have a lot on your mind.

people make excuses for me and while i appreciate the graciousness of these gestures--they bring me no closer to the standard i want to live. i think it was st. john who said,

seek not to be understood, seek to understand.

i sat before a pane of windows to meditate. then found a zen moment sweeping. but none of the things that still my deepest trembling involve people.

i do what i want and need to in order to nurture my sometimes fragile inner self. it may appear i'm being aloof, but sometimes it is all i can do to keep from collapsing. this weekend, it was to spend my time focusing on merton.

my parting gift from camp was a migraine. i still feel the dull pang of it in my right temple.

i came so close to the point of collapse this weekend that it made me wonder if it is not the seeming infinite details of our pending move.

i cannot do it all. and when it's done and the camels are loaded, our exodus begun, i'll remember the leeks and onions. those dear friends who temper my harsh flavours with their subtle sweetness. i do not want their memory to be only remorse, so i will make myself think them gold.

the gold bands upon the arms and wrists of fleeing israel.

take these and go!

the gold travels with us. the gold becomes part of the inheritance. the gold becomes the plating of the ark.

this is the most fitting rememberance of my dear friends. for truly they have housed the presence of God for me.