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alterwomanwrites

alterwomanwrites

http://alterwomanwrites.wordpress.com/

for my new blog on wordpress with stories for the writer and poet inside all of us.

alterwomanwrites

alterwomanwrites

WordPress.com — Your Blogging Home

WordPress.com — Your Blogging Home

I have discontinued this blog and am now using WordPress (the above link will take you there).  Thanks for all your support, my dedicated followers.  You kept me in the game!

See you on WordPress.com

An Excerpt from Choosing to Love the World: On Contemplation by Thomas Merton, edited by Jonathan Montaldo

Jonathan Montaldo has edited this top-drawer collection of meditations by Thomas Merton on contemplation, silence, solitude, prayer, and action in the world. Here is an excerpt on grace.
"All life tends to grow like this, in mystery inscaped with paradox and contradiction, yet centered, in its very heart, on the divine mercy. Such is my philosophy, and it is more than a philosophy — because it consists not in statements about a truth that cannot adequately be stated, but in grace, mercy, and the realization of the 'new life' that is in us who believe, by the gift of the Holy Spirit. Without this gift we would have no philosophy, for we could never experience such simplicity in the midst of contradiction. Without the grace of God there could be no unity, no simplicity in our lives: only contradiction. We can overlay the contradiction with statements and explanations, we can produce an illusory coherence, we can impose on life our intellectual systems, and we can enforce upon our minds a certain strained and artificial peace. But this is not peace."

Skiing Whistler like writing a book

December 15, 2010

Writing is a lot like skiing down a huge mountain in Canada, especially if you didn’t start until you were middle-aged.  You’re form is rotten so it hurts like hell. Yep, that says it in a nutshell.

And another thing while I’m making metaphors, AT MY AGE you can’t help but try to squeeze yourself into a smaller size than you should be wearing.  Thus skiing, like writing, in which you try to ski with style.  Danger.

My most hated rule is this:  show, don’t tell.  Of course if you have read any of what’s his name’s  books, that Indian dude, you know that all he does is tell, tell, tell.  So why can’t I?

Of course it would be terrible writing  and no one would read it or that’s what I suspect.  Anyway, this story about skiing Whister.  It was like giving birth, though I’ve never done that.  Maybe this was some kind of an attempt at substitution.  It was sooooo unbelievably painful but I kept thinking of  stupid Jane what’s her name’s (second name lost in the memory files in only two paragraphs) “no pain, no gain.”

It hurt like hell but it could make a damn good story.  You might ask, why’d you do it, Mary.  I have only one answer:  insanity.

Yes, I am approaching sixty and have gone completely insane.  I am desperate to keep my weight down, yet still live for pastries.  Solution:  burn, baby, burn.  And here’s the thing, regular exercise, while a wise and safe option, also requires a ridiculous concept: discipline.  Hence I ride gondola’s to the tops of mountains whence there is only one way to get back to the bottom, in those ridiculously long sticks attached to my feet for which I have paid enough to cover at least one year of retirement.

But I must digress because I have already told my first lie.  You actually can get to the bottom of the mountain on someone else’s fire-power and the first day, I opted for the easy way down.  After  innumerable tumbles into the fluffy white and feeling the fear of death looming over my shoulder, I had my ever-faithful dial for help on his cell and I got to ride down on a toboggan, probably the funnest thing I did the whole blankety-blank vacation. That was Monday, day one. 

I took Tuesday off.

Then Wednesday I took a lesson with a group of old geezers like me and the teacher was an old guy too. We skied down that mountain so slow you could have fried an egg on us.  No, that metaphor doesn’t quite work.  Let’s see, we skied down that mountain so slow, my legs ached from having the brakes on the whole time.  Wait, that’s not a metaphor. 

One more time.  We skied down that mountain so slow, the mountain itself started to fall asleep. 

Oh, whatever.  We skied really, really slow.  The teacher said we never had to ski any faster than we were comfortable with.  And since I am mainly comfortable with NOT MOVING AT ALL, you can imagine how slow I went. 

He said whenever my husbands and sons tried to get me to ski any faster than I was comfortable with, I should know it was just something called “testosterone poison” working in their brains. 

The next day, armed with my new-found wisdom, I went skiing once again (already a big, big mistake), and I went with my totally testosterone poisoned crew, husband and two sons.  Well, at first it wasn’t too bad.  We followed the two young ‘uns over to the terrain park where they performed various gravity-defying feats such as jumps and spins (for them, skiing down the steepest side of a mountain through a forest of pines is BORING…unbelievable… so they have to attempt flight).  My spouse and I mostly observed and then followed down a very smooth and well-groomed terrain to the next, neck-breaking jump or rail. 

All was going fine.  I thought, “This sport is really o.k.  I can do this.” 

Sad.

Next lift up TO THE TOP my brainy husband suggested we do it.  I must say, he did wait politely for a response from me so damn, I can’t blame him.  However, he did pay a price for taking me up there. 

We went to the top, where people had warned us, was a blinding blizzard.  Nothing scarier than the instability of skis combined with the inability to see where the mountain dropped off. 

My husband went over the top.  Yes, he skied too close to the edge and that’s the last we’ve heard from him.  A mile long drop is a hard thing to survive and well, fortunately his insurance policy is generous.

Oh, I’m just kidding.  He lived.

It did take him a good twenty minutes to crawl back up from the fifteen to twenty foot butt slide over the side.  I saw his skis before I saw or heard from him.  Shortly thereafter, I heard from him and he said he was o.k. so I just sat and waited. 

Should I have done more?  Should I have called for help?  Should I have crawled to the edge and offered to help pull him up?  Those questions will plague me for the rest of my life.  Well, actually, since he did survive, maybe they won’t plague me.

We did make it to the bottom that day in time for a cup of hot chocolate, followed by an entire bottle of wine (for me, silly.  My husband doesn’t imbibe).

And to make a long story shorter (and this is hard to believe but remember the reason I gave earlier, insanity) we skied again the next day, our fourth and last day which threatened to be the last day of skiing ever.  That was the day that felt like childbirth though I don’t know what childbirth feels like.  Childbirth could possibly feel better.  At least you have a child at the end of the ordeal. 

Am I ever going skiing again?  Well, interestingly enough, my eldest son, the ski instructor, recommended that I join the ski team at Buckhill next year to improve my form. 

Let’s take a vote.  Respond to this email, yea or nay.  (Then I will be able to tell who my real friends are).  By the way, if you vote yea, you are required to join us on our next wonderful ski trip to the mountains of North America!  Hurrah!  Let the good times roll.