Sisters

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being yourself, change, dreams coming true, express feelings, forgiveness, friends, friendship, inspire, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, joy, love, play, relationship, security, trust

 

To all my acquired sisters (and brothers) out there: I love you and appreciate all that you bring to my life!

But my background is unusual, and a little fraught, and so the idea of having carried a sister with me from that difficult past into today, to help interpret what was and what is now, would be terribly sweet.

A scene like this picture above always makes me take pause. It is two sisters. Before the pandemic, I used to see them often and just like this, eagerly engaging in whatever it is they have to share, obviously friends. They report, lest I be confused, that as sisters things are not categorically smooth all the time.

I do love romanticizing the idea of two women who have know each other their whole lives. Partners in life who have seen it all. A trusted friend who knows what others do not and can engage in the lifted eyebrow communication reserved for so few in our lives.

My own sisters and I took different paths, primarily characterized by flight. One ran away physically, and the other, although she did move a thousand miles from home, fled by engaging with everyone through that effective distancer, anger. I haven’t gone as far away on the map, but my world is profoundly different than the one I shared once with them.

I’ve always thought it would be fun to have a sister. But it’s kind of too late now. One is gone at the hands of breast cancer and the other has herself hidden far away. There was so much threat in our lives we learned not to trust anyone, even each other. Real communication, like sharing our feelings about anything as it seems these two sisters above have been doing for a lifetime, that’s off the table.

Too bad, too. I was always up for it.

I’m always on the lookout for signs that people care

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being yourself, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, joy

As a Quaker and as a human being, I’m not a big lover of guns. But this weekend, a group of us from the Quaker Meeting went to the home of a deserving gentleman where I was encouraged to develop my skills with a nail gun. I personally installed those brackets inside his shed, and that was after using a battering ram to remove the old roof and install a new one. I even learned to hammer in roofing nails to shingles fitted and lapped into place. Others worked in the main house, and all in an effort to make the home safer, warmer and dryer, the mission of Goodworks, the organization supporting our work.

But then care comes in many forms.

Yesterday afternoon, a friend treated me to a group demonstration of how to make a Christmas centerpiece. It was a gift from her to me. At the end, though, the leaders encouraged everyone to make a second floral arrangement and to give it away to a friend or neighbor who would benefit from the cheer. On the spot I was able to pass on the gift as the two of us stopped by two homes in our neighborood where medical issues darken their lives.

Care comes in whatever way you want to package it. The common denominator may be the joy we take in caring for one another how ever we do it.

Under My Own Personal Sky – Faith

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higher power, Jane Butler, Presbyterian Church, Quaker

Because I wanted to I stood on a stage and told a story of faith to a gathered audience of folks contributing to a local charity. There were ten stories told that night and you can learn about them at the Center Stage link at http://www.wcstoryslam.com. Mine was about allowing myself as many churches as I want, but holding in highest regard the one I find under my own personal sky. The video the producer took that night failed by the time my story came up (I was the closer), so I told the story once more to a group of gathered women in a private home and tried to videotape that. It’s a bit rough due to ringing telephones but it is a video. The text of my talk is as follows:

Under My Own Personal Sky

My faith hasn’t wavered much over the years. I’ve had the same sense of what I believe in since I stood under my own personal sky, alone and isolated, on the vast private estate of my childhood. I grew up in a place so big it had three lakes. There were 70,000 acres of trees out my back door. And it had a sky under which it seemed God himself heard me speak, answering with strong winds, teeming clouds and raindrops that pelted my skin.

I was raised Presbyterian, locking up the church with my folks every Sunday since Dad was head of the Session and Mom, the church secretary. I helped wash communion glassware and put folded tablecloths away after each fundraiser. Once we had a family of our own, my husband and I did the same with our children, teaching Sunday School and serving on committees.

Twelve years into raising our family Presbyterian I spotted an odd note on a congregational meeting vote card indicating the funds we were approving were being used in health insurance benefits that allowed abortions. And it bothered me that someone had highlighted this detail. There were other rumblings that led me to discuss with the minister just who we are. Turns out there are different factions of Presbyterians and some don’t like homosexuals, and some don’t like abortion, and some don’t like women to have certain roles. I was disappointed in myself for blindly following a faith that I possibly didn’t even agree with. Since when had my religion become so political?

I reluctantly decided that allying myself with folks who draw such lines didn’t feel right, and we started more often to attend the Quaker Meeting two blocks away to sit in silence, because after all, for me, checking in with yourself is the way to find your faith. To welcome silence, to stop each week and remember your spirituality, to be reminded of your own truths, is what makes sense to me.

About seven years after starting at the Quaker Meeting, I got a letter in the mail indicating I needed to come in to the Presbyterian church as a member in good standing to cast my vote. Apparently ideas like the one I’d seen on a congregational vote card had grown, camps had set up, and folks couldn’t tolerate one another anymore. I’d been gone so long I’d missed the big fat ugly fight that was culminating in a showdown next Sunday at 10:00am. Please be in attendance.

This letter urged me to make my voice heard in an attempt to salvage a community in crisis. Only when I got there it was like third grade… microphones set up for those ‘in favor’ of a break over here and those ‘against’ over there. Official proctors manned timers to make sure no one spoke longer than two minutes, red and green flags were held up to let speakers know when their turn could begin and end. I stood and said that I wasn’t too up on the specifics of the furor, but I was sure we should not let our differences divide us. That we had come together for a common purpose in the first place, and deciding that some of us were more right in our praise of God, or in our interpretation of the words we share in our effort to find God, could not be right. And between these imploring words, as I watched a divorce unfold, even though it had been me who left in the first place, I heard my own heartbreak.

Two days later I got a call asking me to be a deacon in the newly formed Presbyterian church. I assured them I was Quaker. They wanted pastoral people who cared, I was told. So, I said yes because I love the church, whichever one you want to talk about. Whichever one has us coming together to share the struggles of being human. I worked hard on behalf of my Presbyterian colleagues helping us get established again given that the minister, most of the support staff and nearly half the congregation had left to set up their own church elsewhere where they could more freely exclude whomever they wanted. I served eighteen months as a Presbyterian deacon even while attending the Quaker Meeting.

A few months later I was emotional as I spoke at the Meeting House. There is great respect for sharing honest thoughts there, and even I felt a reverence for the truth in my words. I said that in attending any church I appreciate seeing the faces of people who have known me for years. I don’t have much of an extended family so it matters to me that there are people from my past still with me in my life. People who have known me a long time and haven’t walked away. People who want to connect.

So I have my foot in two churches it seems, the Presbyterian and the Quaker…but I have my foot in a third church as well, one that straddles both, really… and that is the church under my own personal sky. It’s the one that tells me people are human no matter what religion they practice.

And so I am allowed two churches. I am allowed ten churches. Because sometimes I walk the beach on a frosty winter morning, alone except for the sunrise and I tell God my life. I tell of my struggles to do what is in my heart. I tell of my fears and my wishes and my heartaches. I tell God that I want more than anything to connect with the people around me and to feel them loving me and me loving them back, whatever religion that makes any of us. However many kinds of churches that takes.

And for that… I have perfect faith.

For every kid who wants a sibling – wish I had a sister

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express feelings, Jane Butler, parents, relationship, sister

It was all I could do to wait my turn to say my thoughts today at the Quaker Meeting. All that was on my mind as I sat in silence was the phone call I had with my sister yesterday. Here’s roughly what I said.

I want to tell the story of my sister. It is a short story. She is a few years older than I am so I was about sixteen and she was about eighteen when she ran away from home. She stuck out her thumb and hiked across the country. She headed for Alaska and eventually ended up at the very end of the island chain. She moved to Oregon after that and has been there for the past forty years. She doesn’t want to know me anymore. Once a year I call her on her birthday and sometimes she calls me on my birthday. So we talk twice a year sometimes. Last time I saw her was five years ago when we both went to our father’s funeral, but I haven’t seen her much in all the forty years she’s been gone. Yesterday she called me back after I waited a week to hear from her. I’d left her birthday messages on her answering machine at home, at her work and on her personal cell phone two times, so I’d left six messages. After we talked a little bit and it was time to go I had one more thing to say. I told her I’d been worried she wouldn’t call me back since it had taken her so long to return the calls. I told her that between that and the fact that whenever I ask if she’d like to get together she always says ‘no’, I was starting to get the idea that she just didn’t want to see me anymore. I asked her, ‘Do you even want to see me again?’ Her answer was, ‘Not really’.

That’s when I told her I was pretty sure I hadn’t done anything to deserve her shunning me. That I’d been a nice sister and that her not wanting to see me was probably more about our past than anything else. I said I thought it had to do with our parents being difficult, and our childhoods being difficult, and that the fact that she’d run from them didn’t really have to do with me. I told her all that.

My parents were not terrible people. They were good folks but they unwittingly fostered a distrust among their children that lives on today. I’m telling this story because I am always in favor of happy childhoods and for people realizing the power they have as parents to make good childhoods for their kids. I am here to say that it’s best to know what you’re doing when you raise kids because if you get it wrong there can be some pretty painful long-lasting results.

Forgiveness despite the failures between us

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forgiveness, relationship

Yesterday at the Quaker Meeting when the messages centered on forgiveness I found myself standing to say this.

The experience I have had with forgiveness has been so satisfying. I have been able to look past the pain and actually come to appreciate the people who hurt me. I was able to see them for what they could bring to my life rather than what they took from it despite the failure between us. The people I am talking about are my parents. They really made some profound mistakes. I have a sister who ran away and a brother who joined a cult.

Despite this I know that the life my parents provided for us was significantly better than the lives they had themselves. My mother was an orphan. She didn’t have a lot of anything in life yet she provided for her family much more than she ever had.

I have talked about psychotherapy in here before so you know that I have found in it, success, especially using the Socratic method of asking questions to find insight. I understand that what happened between us is over, and from that I was able to create a new way of being with my parents. A new life. It was a greatly reduced one, but it was possible to relate to them in a new way that included understanding what they were able to contribute and that I could enjoy them. It was much less than I wanted, but it was a happy success to be able to forgive my mother and father and to make new experiences that included appreciating them despite the failures between us.

I feel lucky to have had this experience since ironically my mother taught me to hold grudges and to categorize those people that hurt us as bad. It is not like that. We all are the same, all capable of making serious mistakes in life, and all capable of doing great good. It was not quick or easy to come to this forgiveness, but in the long run it was profound in changing the quality of my life.

Let me out of my life

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being yourself, change, dreams coming true, express feelings, fear, Goodworks, higher power, inspire, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, joy, Quaker Meeting, security, teacher, trust, words, writing

Yesterday, Sunday, I wrote this.

I have no desire to run into myself today, in fact, I am actively trying to run away, hide, be somewhere where I won’t know what’s on my mind. Others drink, I hide. So at the Quaker Meeting, (and really I didn’t even want to be here because I know that just like when I was a kid, alone in Arden, there is nowhere to go to get away from myself), I sit on the back bench in the corner, eyes wide open hoping to stay present and aware of today, and not fall backwards into memories of what once was. Typically, like most everyone else my eyes are closed, but not today.

Working on my memoir, rewriting it, re-reading it, reliving all the old stories, and tough ones too, is tricky. Reading in detail scenes of me as a young adult afraid my father would stalk and kill me, or remembering finding people for the first time I felt I could trust, and remembering the isolation of a whole childhood, immersing myself in all that so I can tell it to you clearly and accurately, so you can feel the story, too, is dangerous. It’s hard not to relive a little of it and forget that it is all history and no longer really my life. Oh, I wish I could say I don’t suffer from any of that anymore but I do. I do all the time, just not so acutely.

So I am sitting in a back corner of the Meeting House now as I scratch this out on a shred of paper, trying to put myself back together after another early morning session of working on my manuscript. It’s okay, I tell myself, things are different now. I am able to relate, able to feel, able to be, so much better. Yesterday at Goodworks, where we make houses safer, dryer and warmer, I eagerly volunteered to go under a deck in the mud on my belly, with Ed my new friend, to jack it up and put in a new 4×4 support at a joist to lift the sagging boards. I loved it. Thank you, God, I loved doing that. I loved it because of getting dirty, and accomplishing a task with a team, of helping, of it raining and me getting to be among the elements, of comraderie and discipline and patience, and hardly any of that was for the homeowner whose home we were improving.

Earlier this week I told the ten-minute version of my life story to a gentleman I am trying to help through my church, who otherwise would have no way of knowing who I am. I tried to explain why I am so passionate about the things I chose to do. How I feel alone and want to connect. Oh, he felt my passion to help he said, the first time we met weeks earlier, but now he understands it better. I opened my 1983 personal bookkeeping records and walked him through my finances for that year. All I did is read each line, $65 for gas this month, $385 for rent, etc. to show how to make a budget using actual people’s real numbers. Then we moved on to 1990 where I had assets beyond my engagement and wedding rings, and the record was typed and not handwritten. By 1996, it was computer generated and I had Certificates of Deposit. I spent twenty minutes discussing everything I know about how CD’s work before our time was up. The gentleman wondered if we could do this again, and next time maybe discuss money market accounts. I have no special financial training but it seems my past isolation has led me to keep careful records, always aware I am on my own with no one out there to catch me if I fall. But I love life in the moments that I am sharing what I know.

I do these kinds of things to feel like I am part of the human race. To be one of the people who helps and not a lonely person at home disconnected and confused even though that is the default world I sometimes live in when I read my own book too much. Because that is how it used to be.

At the Meeting House I would crawl into the corner behind me and exit my life if I thought I could, because working on my book is hard. But I am determined to finish this year and get it off to publishers and be done with this phase of telling my story. I’ve got my eyes open at Meeting today because I just don’t want to look back.

God was friendly today as usual

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being yourself, change, control, dog, dreams coming true, express feelings, fear, friends, friendship, goals, God, higher power, inspire, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, joy, listening, love, pup, security, teacher, trust, words

I grew up isolated and in the woods so I am always looking to nature for signs of communication. You know, a breeze or a thunderbolt or a special crash of a wave in answer to my question, whether posed aloud or in my heart. And so today is no different, as I have found my whole life, it is good to discuss my problems with the earth. I do not know why, but no one else as far as I can see up and down the beach, wanted to walk along the sand at seven in the morning in February except my pup, who heartily agreed when I asked her. So there I was again, under my own personal sky. I looked out to God and said, “I have stood on these shores countless times in my life, and I have looked out at your grandeur and your beauty over and over. You are always here no matter how many years go by. No matter how many times I look to you to show me the way, no matter how many times I look to you to hear me and see me and know me, and no matter what, you are still out there being solid and present and beautiful. Nothing much seems to change with you, gorgeous sunrise above the earth, but boy, my world sure has changed.”

That’s when I saw the sun, shrouded by gray stormy clouds, peaking out a bit in answer. Oh, yes, I thought to myself, that is how it is, my earth always responds. I can always trust that. Well what about all the troubles I feel, the pains about getting out of my isolation, and trusting that the world can take the frightened person that hides in me? How perfect is it that I feel ready to share myself more, at last, and not let fears rule my life? How perfect is it that you have been standing ready for me to say these words, because you have been sharing yourself and your perfect glory for eons already, so you know what it is. I walked along some more feeding treats to my pup every time she came back from a dig at a crab hole to let me know she is still my friend for life. The clouds shifted and a few tears flew into the wind. I stopped, and as is common for me, I addressed the world directly, after all I could not feel safer than when entirely completely all alone, and I said thank you. Thank you for still being out there for me even though so many people and ideas and hopes and dreams have come and gone. I know I can do this. I know I can carry on and be myself out in the world despite the confusion I feel.

That’s when the sun glided bright suddenly forcing clouds aside to say directly to me in a broad and winning smile, “Yes.”

And that’s when I laughed out loud, because I am sure that one footstep washed away by the sand at a time, I am getting to precisely where I have always been going.

Today at the Quaker Meeting

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being yourself, express feelings, friendship, inspire, joy, mother, parents, Quaker Meeting

I occasionally say something at the Quaker Meeting when I go, but rarely. Today I felt like standing up and offering my thoughts.

I was very emotional when I said these words and I had to stop a few times to compose myself and to steady my voice because what I said felt hard to admit. It’s nothing new, I say this stuff all the time, but in the setting of the meeting house where there is great respect for sharing honest thoughts from the heart I felt a reverence for the truth in my words, and I cared about the fact that everyone hears that when you speak.

I want to tell you what’s on my mind this morning so I hope you’ll bear with me while I try to tell it. I was one of the people who came in late to Meeting this morning, so I just want to say thank you to everyone for being here, but especially to those who came in late because I appreciate that you decided to come at all. I got up this morning and felt strongly compelled to be here today and I think that is because of a phone call I got last night. It was my mother’s dear friend, a lifelong friend really, who wants to stay in touch with me even though my parents are long gone. She appreciates our family and staying in touch with me helps her keep a connection with my parents whom she loved. I don’t have family anymore because my mother died six years ago and my father four, and my sisters and brothers are gone because our parents fostered a distrust amongst us so we are all on our own now. My mom was an orphan so a whole side of the family is missing, and my dad had two sisters, but one is gone and the other ran away. I really don’t have much family at this point, besides my husband’s family (who are wonderful). So it matters to me a lot that Shay, my mother’s friends called last night. It reminded me of the strength of the bonds that are formed in our spiritual communities since she is a friend made through the church that I attended growing up. I went to my other church this morning as well, the Presbyterian church, where we’ve had a big ugly fight and half the congregation left to make their own church elsewhere. Things are much better now. When I went there, and in coming here, I look around and see the faces of people I have known and who have known me for many years. Since I don’t have the extended family it matters to me that there are people from my past still with me. I look to my spiritual communities for this kind of connection. So I appreciate all the people that are here today because you are the witness to what I want to say, and because you bothered to be here for me. I wrote a book about my life, about the path I’ve been on so far, which is my way of telling people what is on my mind. That’s what I’m doing this morning as well, just saying what’s on my mind.

The message that followed mine was about what it means to be silent in meeting and how we support one another through the simple act of our presence, and another was about offering hugs as a means of support. Lots of people gave me hugs after meeting for worship today.

Running away from my past

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being yourself, change, control, dreams coming true, express feelings, fear, goals, higher power, inspire, joy, Quaker Meeting, security, sit in silence, trust

I reached adulthood pretty confused and sad and emotionally unprepared to be there. All of this leads me to feel it would be nice if we offered clarity to our children as they grow, and not uncertainty and fears. This is what drives me to go out and speak to the mothers and fathers of children, to alert them to the powerful role they play in their children’s lives. In case they didn’t realize. Because not everyone does.

A few weeks ago I sat at the Quaker Meeting on the back bench. I went there knowing I had a lot on my mind, and when you sit in silence you frequently run into yourself with nowhere to go. That’s what happened. I couldn’t stop the ideas in my head that had me running, dashing really, away from my family of origin and all the ideas that have held me back in life. Even though it is scary I saw myself, finally, accepting the outstretched hands of people who want to help me, and who are happy to have me be me. It’s not easy to do this. It’s taken forever for me to think I can turn my back on people and ideas that aren’t good for me, because forever that is where I have placed my trust, and trust in the future as I see it.

It was a long silence for me and I couldn’t wait to get out of there.

My embarrassing Presbyterian showdown

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being yourself, change, control, differences, express feelings, fear, forgiveness, higher power, inspire, Presbyterian Church, Quaker Meeting, shun, words

It feels as if I will be saying goodbye to my dear old friend, my church, today. Literally my religion is going somewhere else. While I have been spending the greater number of Sundays attending the Quaker Meeting in town, my still frequently-important-to-me but former Presbyterian church in town, is having a crisis. Today we vote on whether we should break from our roots and become aligned with the evangelists sect or not. If the vote is to become more evangelical, then many people, myself included, will move on. Our local society of friends, the Presbyterians of years collected, will disband in part because we disagree on how to best praise God, and who is allowed to do what in our midst.

Now across the street at the Quaker Meeting this would never happen. Quakers allow change, we are tolerant of differences, and we expect us all to share critical similarities simply because we are all humans engaged in the struggle of life the best we can. Our dissimilarities are appreciated for how they bring new awareness to one another, and ironically, the Quakers no longer shun those who are different.

So, I will step into the Presbyterian showdown this morning and cast my vote that we not disband because we disagree, but my expectations are low that any of this matters. To praise God, to love life, we have to accept what God has given us, and that is people who are different but fundamentally quite the same.