easter sunday

Easter Sunday by Cicely Andree Conway

(720 words)

Where is the church for those of us seeking spirituality without religion? Where do we go to find community, compassion, spiritual guidance, inspiration, holiness? Where do we take our families for this experience?

It is Easter Sunday today. My heart aches for my father. Easter was a special time for my family growing up. My father died on a Good Friday, and my mother carried that memory and tradition of Easter through our childhoods.

My memories of Easter are 

baskets, candy, treats

and church.

Photo by Laura Lowery

In Georgia, we went to church and then visited my father’s grave on Easter. I remember being dressed up one year in my favorite dress that had a popsicle pin buttoned onto it that I liked very much. 

His grave was on a hillside, I think. I remember it smelled of pine. Sunlight. And fresh grass. We would bring him flowers and letters and my mom would sit while my brother and I ran around. How her heart must have ached.

I woke up feeling the grief of that loss today. I watched my daughter play with her toys on the ground in front of me, and I felt so deeply sad that my father is not here to witness her. The loss feels big right now, a big hole of yearning. I let some tears shed as I watched my daughter. Watching her move is simply remarkable; watching her feels like a million little miracles in each moment. I think my dad would have felt the same way watching her.

And so here is my question. Where is my church? I have always loved all forms of churches. The air of holy spaces feels different, dense with devotion, quiet, heart, spirit. 

I was raised going to weekly Sunday mass in a Catholic church. It was a haven for my mother who was raised that way; the community there rooted her, I think. As a child it felt cold, large, heavy with scent of incense, dark, disconnected for me. I didn't enjoy it very much.

I have found my church in other places as I have grown into my womanhood. Yoga, the outdoors, meditation, conversations.

Now that I am a mother, I realize these places of holy are individualized. They are not really community based. They can be, definitely, but they are not the same as church. Why? Because I go there alone. 

Photo by Laura Lowery

Growing up, we would go to mass as a family. Then, at some point in the mass, the children would be taken to Sunday school and the parents would have their alone time during the mass. The children would return for the end of the ceremony and then the mass would end. There would be doughnuts and coffee after, always my favorite part. 

Each week I would select a plain doughnut with chocolate icing and devour it as my mother milled and spoke with different community members. 

Now that I am a parent, I crave that at times. I crave a space where I can go with my family that is focused on spiritual growth; to know that everyone is there for the same thing must feel sweet at times. And in that spiritual place there is built-in community, for parents, for children, for the self. 

Most days I’m happy and relieved that I don't have another weekly obligation, that I don’t have to drag my family out of bed and get them to something by 10am. Most days I’m happy I’ve been able to invent my own religion and that I will let my daughter invent hers. But today, this Easter day, I yearn for it. 

I yearn for a space to take my family, unshowered, fumbly dressed, craving Sunday morning cartoons and doughnuts instead of a “talk” in a building that is quiet and very “unfun”. I crave it because I want to feel held, I want to feel like I'm in the presence of others seeking Light and Spirit and Peace, I want to feel connected to my mother and to my father, I want not to feel so alone. I want to feel like I can look up at the way the light shines through the stained glass and see my father. 

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Cicely Andree Conway is a licensed acupuncturist, massage therapist, yoga practitioner and teacher. She enjoys time with her husband, being in nature and exploring life through the eyes of her daughter. 

stef

Stef by Sally Bryson

Twice a week I take horseback riding lessons. I pull my car up the steep driveway to the horse barn, sending a cloud of dust behind me. I am in a charged state of mind from trying to understand whatever crises the morning brought to my home. I climb up onto my horse, and suddenly I don’t understand anything at all about what I’m supposed to be doing.

Let me tell you about the horse. First, he isn’t actually my horse, I just like to pretend that he is. His name is Stefano, Stef we call him. He is reddish brown, like cherry wood. His mane is thick and black and strong. I grip that mane when I’m sliding off. He is some kind of German breed I should probably know the name of and he weighs maybe a thousand pounds.

Stef’s gaze contains patience. His gait contains dignity. His feet are huge like dinner plates and contain stability. His legs are long and knobby. They have all the power, like writing pencils. When he comes to a trot, it feels like riding in a boat that is hydroplaning out of the water. One of us in that moment is graceful and free.

I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m a beginner. Stef knows it. No point in posturing as anything else. I’ve never been very flexible, and this sport is murder on my inner thighs. “Ten minutes a day of yoga is all you need,” the horse trainer Emma tells me. “I’m not really a yoga person,” I say, clenching my jaw. My teeth are gritted because I so want to get this right. There is so much to remember: my seat, my balance through the core, weight in the lower leg, heels down, shoulders back, hands in front, hands low, lower, reins taut… it goes on.

Photo by Julie Patton

I’m concentrating. My jaw is clenched again, and Emma notices. “You’re not seeing the bigger picture,” Emma calls. She points out that I’m trying so hard to get the nuts and bolts right that I’m forgetting to sit back and yes, enjoy the ride.

Is this how I do my life? Turn every relationship into a project?

“Look around you,” Emma says. I’m ten feet off the ground. Stef is holding me up. The sky is pale blue, the late summer air, dusty. A kettle of vultures soars in slow motion in the shape of a crown that tops the morning. The horse barn sleeps lazily against a hillside that leans away from me covered in ten thousand pines huddled in green forest silence. Save for the wind. It moves against the branches whispering secrets. And I’m simply a woman on a horse.

I have taken horseback riding lessons twice before as an adult. Both times I quit. Quitting had something to do with being overwhelmed by how much there is to know. Riding seemed like a project I could never master within the allotted timeline I had unconsciously set for myself. So what was the point?

But there came a moment when I had exhausted my old commentary. I became weary of the stories I told myself. And in any case, I love being on a horse. I tried a different way.

With Stef I don’t run out and buy fancy riding breeches and boots. I don’t read ten thousand how-to books. In fact, I don’t even think much about riding between lessons. I stop pinning so much on riding, which means that when I go to see Stef, I don’t bring an agenda, I bring only myself.

I plunk down off Stef at the end of the riding lesson. My knees are wobbly as I lead him back to the pasture. Sometimes the lesson has been tough, frustrating. Stef leans forward over the fence to be stroked. I reach up to feel his neck and pet his soft nose. I stand back and look at him and think, really? I rode him? He is a giant and a mystery and I rode him? I am in awe, of him and of me.  

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Sally Bryson is a freelance writer who specializes in writing short films for non-profits. She lives on Bainbridge Island, WA with her husband and two boys. Connect with Sally at 299hudson@earthlink.net

Photograph by Julie Patton. Visit her at juliepattonphotography.com and on Instagram @juliepatton

in the lighthouse

In the Lighthouse by Edith Hope Bishop

A weathered sandwich board announced Free Tours and the peeling white paint of the building spoke of long seasons near the sea. My friend and I approached the door of the lighthouse looking for the others in our writing group.  We were all supposed to be enjoying a quick writing break to walk on the beach, but we'd somehow lost them while parking the car. 

“Maybe they’re inside?” I asked my friend.

Before she could answer, the keeper, an older woman in a khaki uniform, popped into existence, shooed us inside, announced us the last tour of the day, and locked the door.

Our friends weren’t inside. We were trapped in a lighthouse with an aggressive tour guide.

Photo by Edith Hope Bishop

We followed her up the iron spiral staircase to the lamp room where an elderly man in a captain’s suit explained the history of the wide, Parisian lens. Its unlit body somehow still glowed before us like a massive crystal ball, reflecting and bending our bodies and the seascape beyond.

I made eye contact with my friend and smiled, knowing she was thinking my thoughts.

“This is story stuff. We’re gonna write the hell out of this someday.”

When I first became a writer, I feared the solitude that might encompass such a life. I’d been a teacher and a student, an administrator and an assistant. All of my work had been relational in nature and, perhaps as a result, I fancied myself a people person. While I was excited to start a new life, and one more in line with my deepest passions, I worried that writing would prove an isolating pursuit.

Photo by Edith Hope Bishop

I wasn’t entirely wrong. When I write, I usually sit alone in a coffee shop or at my dining room table. I mumble to myself or to the characters who present themselves. I get up, on occasion, for more tea. I might compliment the barista on her earrings, or have a quick chat about an internet password with a stranger, but mostly, I go for long stretches of time without a full conversation with another living being.

But here’s the thing: as soon as I became a writer, and found the confidence to say “yes, I’m a writer” out loud (perhaps a story for another time), I found I had a bounty of friends and connections who were ready to talk about writing, share writing, offer advice and criticism, and bounce ideas around. The only problem was how and when to connect. Social media generally proves a limiting platform (for me), and email, while helpful, doesn’t offer an easy and rapid flow of ideas. Many of my writer friends are busy mothers, many work full time jobs. In this digital age, several of my closest writerly friends live hundreds, even thousands of miles away.

While I don’t get to see every member of my new community as often as I’d like, one solution that works for me is semi-regular informal writing retreats. Once a season or so, I plan a short weekend getaway with fellow writer friends. We rent a cabin, or find an inn, preferably in a place close to nature. Once there, we generally write during the day and play at night. We consume a lot of chocolate and coffee and okay, whiskey. When someone is sick of working, she grabs someone who hasn’t quite admitted they’re sick of working, and they go for a hike, or shop for baubles in the cute little town, or, during one recent retreat, feed the pigs.

Photo by Edith Hope Bishop

At night, we watch a whacky movie, or we stay up until the wee hours reading aloud from our latest work. The glorious thing about these retreats is that for three or four days all of us are writers in the full sense. We aren’t moms first or employees first. We are writers among writers and we live and breathe and reflect on what needs to happen when we go back to our daily lives to make our work better and brighter. Sometimes we call bullshit on each other’s insecurities, or we gently (or not so gently) encourage each other to do the hard thing.

During one retreat this past year, a particularly brazen writer friend brought us gifts of polyester kaftans in a rainbow of colors she’d carefully chosen to reflect each of our personalities. It sounds absurd, because it was. Gloriously absurd. We happened to be staying in an on old Victorian house with a spiral staircase, and the roof of the attic room we’d rented was painted with coiling ivy. The moon was full. We donned our kaftans and cackled and howled at the freedom of the moment. It had been a long day and some of us were battling broken plots and sticky points of view. All of us were glad to kick back from book and burden. I felt an overwhelming gratitude for these women who inspire and support me.

Writing isn’t nearly as lonely as I’d imagined. I don’t work with my community every day, but when we find a way to retreat together, our time is a beacon.

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Edith Hope Bishop is a writer, volunteer, and mother. She taught for several years in a high needs public high school in Seattle, WA. She is most at home near, on, or in any body of salt water.