Evolving as individuals with edges touching

We celebrated Charles Darwin's 200th birthday at my Unitarian Universalist church this week, complete with painting a papier mache tortoise named Chuck, a panel discussion about the inevitable debate of religion vs. science, and a sermon focused specifically on Darwin the Man himself.

As my daughter will tell you, I LOVE Darwin. And I'm not entirely sure why. Something about the random interconnection of life and its results as the evolutionary force of nature. It is why the novel I am slowly evolving myself is titled EVOLVE, and why my bedroom is filled with books about Darwin's theories.

At church, I admired again the words of our gifted writer/speaker Rev. Kate, as she pulled together disparate bits about how Evolution Rocks (look up the song lyrics), how the Church of England has published an apology for its treatment of Darwin's theory in his day, and how the Unfinished Business of life is the continuous pursuit of becoming who we are at our core.

"Evolution is," she said. We're never just done.

Life builds from our "successful mistakes," which is not the oxymoron we might otherwise believe it to be.

When I look at my children, I want them to have perfection. I want to tell them everything they need to know. I don't want them to fall down. I don't want them to get hurt. But, of course, they will.

Last weekend, my 10-year-old daughter did what I thought was not possible. She let a solicitor, a stranger, into the house while I was upstairs. Actually opened the door and let him in, because she didn't want to "not be nice" and make him stand in the cold.

She knew that this was a mistake. Thankfully, it was a mistake that was not tragic -- I kicked him out and she and I had an involved, emotional talk. But it freaked me out tremendously. How could she not KNOW this? Haven't I talked to her well enough? And for heaven's sake, how do I convince her that being "nice" is not always the best policy?

She had made a mistake. We talked about it. We learned from it. Hopefully we evolved from the experience. And perhaps that random encounter with a solicitor might actually help her avoid someone more harmful someday.

Rev. Kate also pointed out one of my favorite mantras: that we are formed from that which is both predictable, and unexpected.

We all need structure to keep us afloat. But it is in the unexpected paths -- such as Choice Motherhood, such as a child's questions -- where we discover who we really are.

The recent Facebook phenomenon of writing down 25 Random Things about ourselves is an indulgent little exercise. But it also reminds me of something interesting that I learned in a UU workshop a few years ago, when the simplest question from Rev. Frank led to profound moments of discovery for many of us in the room. He asked us simply to talk about the moments that piqued our spiritual journeys -- and I found myself remembering something from my childhood that I'd forgotten. About the time my parents took in a few members of a traveling musical group from Chicago that came to our small town, and our neighbors across the street had a fit because they were black.

In our very white town, this kind of bigotry was something I'd never experienced before. And it had a profound impact on my values today. I have an extremely short fuse for intolerance. For that unexpected moment in time, I am grateful for what it taught me.

Rev. Kate also pointed out that on our individual paths to perfection, we still argue about what evolution means.

I see this, sometimes good-naturedly, sometimes mean-spiritedly, in our own discussions -- from outsiders, as well as from within -- about Choice Motherhood.

The California single woman who now has 14 children, after delivering eight at once, churns up a tremendous amount of viewpoints about what is right and wrong. Are we right to make choices for ourselves, but then not allow others to make choices they believe are right to make? Who judges who is fit, and who is not? Is a large family worse off than a small family? Is a single-parent family worse off than a two-parent family? Can one woman really love and care for that many healthy and potentially unhealthy children? And if not, who bears responsibility for them? Do we get angry because we care, or because we think we're better than she is?

Most of these good questions. Without answers. But the discussion itself is good to have.

Again, I believe that we discover our own values in having conversation about what is important to us -- and don't need to always impose our own values onto others. What is important is that we learn what we need in order to become closer to the person we are at our core.

We evolve. As individuals, Rev. Kate said, whose edges are blurred and touching.

The church service also included a perfect example of evolution in action. One of the pillars of our church has been dispatched to Iraq for a year as a member of the National Guard. His family was encircled by the congregation; his daughter (my daughter's age) was encircled by her classmates. We used ritual, and words, and comfort shawls, and tears, to send him off. An individual, doing what he needs to do, whose edges have very much touched those of hundreds of people in his community -- and will continue to do so, in yet another community he finds himself connected to.

It is our own aspiration as Choice Moms. Individuals, in a community we have built ourselves, with edges touching.

for more about the community we could be building in our Choice Mom quest, see the ChoiceMoms.org website package this month about "finding partners"

Owning the holidays

I have a major bugaboo about Thanksgiving. It's never been a particularly friendly holiday for me, ironically. Started when my childhood home was damaged by fire, and water hose, and smoke, the day before Thanksgiving and caused long-lasting emotional turmoil in our family for some time thereafter.

Then there was the annual bout of strep throat that typically left me unable to eat in subsequent years (psychosomatic or not) for the Big Dinner.

The many years feeling out of place at other family's dinners when I was transplanted to the East Coast and could afford only to come home at Christmas.

The dinner with friends when we didn't understand that defrosting would require days in the refrigerator, not a bacteria-brewing day on the countertop.

My own skewed perceptions that Thanksgiving is for giant cuddly family time with extended relatives arriving and filling up the house. My actual family always consisted of two parents (still together, which is an amazing blessing), one brother, one grandparent. My dad had one sister and step-family we never saw. My mom has one brother.

Last year the kids and I visited my grandmother in the nursing home. Not quite warm and fuzzy, but important. It was my last major holiday with her before she died.

The next day I marched into an Apple store to replace my three-month-old computer because of a hot chocolate spill. I was feeling highly stressed about that and other personal matters that could not be fixed....and within moments was sobbing uncontrollably in front of the Apple sales guy.

Many of us have our own stories of unhappy holidays that didn't fulfill our expectations. Sometimes we dread the holidays because it forces us to interact with family members who don't understand us, or our choices. Or we watch nieces and nephews joyous and exuberant and cute, feeling a bit invisible because we don't yet have children of our own to celebrate with them. Or it becomes the occasion for younger sister to announce her engagement to Perfect Man. Or it simply becomes an exhausting time of shopping, wrapping and traveling with our little ones, putting Bah Humbug into our already stressful life.

Of course, some of us embrace the holidays as an opportunity to do service in the community, to show our older children about what it means to give.

And many of us LOVE the holidays, as a time to celebrate rituals with loved ones.

I'm writing today to tell you how, this year, I OWNED my Thanksgiving.

The kids and I had a few invitations to dinners. I considered hosting. My Mom -- warm and toasty with Dad and friends in Arizona -- had that "sorry" sound in her voice when she heard that we intended to stay home alone.

But what the kids and I did with our Thanksgiving is create our own ritual. We stayed in our pajamas all day. We each picked four things we wanted to do.

The list was not the usual TO DO list that usually takes over. It consisted of: craft (flying paper turkeys on a hanger), puzzle (Transformers), cooking (chicken with beer can up its butt, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, fancy bread), manicures and massage (yes, my son is still sporting his pink nails proudly), Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium (all three of us cuddled together on couch with hot chocolate and popcorn), disco party (to Hedwig!), and more.

We had a three-member-family extravaganza. And it was deliriously brilliant.

And there's more: that Apple sales guy? He was part of this year's ritual as well. The kids and I made a gift basket to celebrate my store breakdown. Because since then, his cousin has been responsible for helping me get the Choice Chat podcast running smoothly, and for producing my first CD for Choice Moms, about answering the "Do I Have a Dad?" question. His brother has become my tech consultant and resident handyman. And the sales guy himself has recently become my webcast developer, currently working with me on a Choice Moms DVD about "building your support network."

OWN your rituals. Take the REINS. DO what you can. LET GO of what you can't. BUILD your network.

There is much to give thanks for, when we keep moving forward to create our own meaningful short-term and long-term communities.