You may notice that I’ve rebranded this entire situation three times now. Maybe more by the time you open this. No one can stop me!

I like Substack! The concept is great! It’s easy to use! It feels like old blogging that I loved and miss! AND I really want my writing to be on my own site! So I’ve been spending way too much time figuring out how to be here and there and actually nowhere because I have no time these days (!!!) for anything like this at all! And yet, I keep coming back!

I used to write about parenting. I posted pictures of my kids online. While I don’t regret what I’ve done, I no longer would do it again with the internet being what it is now. So I’m messing around with how I’m online, I think lots of us are. I’m locked down more now than usual — private accounts, closed public pages — that kind of thing. I’m figuring it out. Then changing my mind. Then figuring it out again.

I just keep coming back to reading and writing. I like to write online. I don’t care if anyone reads it. Truly. And yes, I could just keep it all to myself, but there’s something about thinking through something, working it out in words (not just in spinning head), then hitting publish and walking away that I just can’t quit.

And, I love reading and sharing what I’ve read.

So for now, welcome to Reading and Writing — with me! Here’s what I’ve been reading and writing this week.

READING

On Marathon Monday, all Boston accents increase by 48%, and enthusiasm for Boston increases by 136%. This is factual information. The Boston Globe knows this and DELIGHTED US with: How a dog was blamed for ruining the 1961 Boston Marathon.

A BLACK LAB RAN IN THE BOSTON MARATHON. FOR TEN MILES. THEN RAN INTO ONE OF THE LEAD RUNNERS AND HE FELL DOWN. I AM OBSESSED WITH THIS STORY.

Unrelated: Luna, my black lab, has never run for ten miles in her entire life. But she gives really good hugs.

ARTICLES I CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT (OTHER THAN THAT “FLOPPY-EARED” DOG THAT RUINED THE ‘61 MARATHON)

Have we been thinking about ADHD all wrong? NYT gift article that is WAY too long to be about ADHD lol. And is super interesting and made me (finally) buy a digital NYT subscription.

What we knew about without knowing, The New Yorker - When I heard that Didion’s therapy notes would be published, I was like WELL I WON’T READ THEM! THAT IS WRONG! YOU ARE BAD GUYS! Until this piece showed up in my New Yorker and well, I guess I’m the bad guy now. She’s chain smoking in heaven (??) with an ice cold Coke laughing at me. Hi Joan! Sorry!

Go and tell no one, Maya C. Popa on substack (that is not the title). Go and tell no one is precisely what I needed to read this week while writing and publishing and telling no one. I didn’t link out. I didn’t post on social. I didn’t even tell my wife until yesterday. And it felt GOOD.

WRITING:
THINGS I WROTE ON THE INTERNET THIS WEEK

Outside
I keep a little notebook

CURRENTLY READING

The New Yorker (It’s so good! Why didn’t anyone tell me?)
Parable of the Sower (having a slow start on this one)
Dear Writer (just finished!)

Until next time! Or never again! We’ll see!

During the season of Lent, the church we go to hosts dinner church on Thursday nights - allowing for additional reflection and community. I call it Soup Church because we have soup. And church. A few weeks ago, I signed up to share the reflection for a night. The theme was “Finding ourselves and God in the in-between, a reflection on Lent and the Good Samaritan” (the reading for the week). Here is what I shared, updated a bit for this space.

As United Parish celebrates Lent, we are finding ourselves – and God – in the in-between.

In between birth and death, death and resurrection, in between a shared meal and a betrayal, love and loss, and like in the Good Samaritan story — we hear about the stranger and the neighbor, the good and the bad.

It very quickly turns into do this, don’t do that.

Early in my own faith, I was drawn to this structure. Tell me what to do. Give me a list. I followed all the rules. I traveled the world for Jesus with a team of young missionaries. I went to bible college. I was all in for the laying on of hands, the speaking in tongues, the full experience.

When I came to terms with my queer identity, my church identity wasn’t compatible. They kicked me out.

At 21, with my formative years invested in the church and this community, I was devastated, but now, as I look back, I see how fragile this identity had been - even before coming out. Long before we came to a crossroads.

I didn’t have a relationship with God, I had a relationship with the church. I had a relationship with the law, the rules, the structure. A relationship that could be broken. I’ve since learned that a relationship with God is a lot more flexible.

In the in-between, the star of the Good Samaritan story isn’t the characters or the behavior, it's the road itself. The path that carries all of us, all mixed up, however we are.

We are priests. We are robbers. We are the broken. We are the healers.

My path has included Big Church - the church of my youth, and has also carried me on some kind of lenten desert quest. I’ve thrown myself into atheism and dabbled in Buddhism.

I’ve learned that the path isn’t some kind of straight line with opposites at each end. The path is where we find a way to keep going. We have an opportunity to let things happen as they happen and see things as they are. The darkness shows up, and we’re challenged to meet it with curiosity, not run only for the light. The light will come soon, too, I promise. I’m pretty good about this in my regular life, trusting that something will happen, that we will be okay, but in my faith? That has been a lot more challenging.

Along my path, after the dabbles and deep dives, the only thing left was to experience God — not through striving, not through a set of rules, or right theology whatever that is – but in surrender. Like something for lent, I gave up.

I gave up and no longer experience faith as a productivity contest - something to game and win in some way. I don’t have to question everything. I don’t have to know everything. In fact, I don’t have to know anything.

We come to God as we are. That’s how this works.

I gave up and learned how to pray, settling into a stabilizing prayer practice I’ve kept up with for years now. And in that, I also gave up trying to figure out the right way to do it - as my practice is deeply rooted in praying the catholic rosary daily, the rosary I learned how to pray in Catholic school in 5th grade. I’m not Catholic. Don’t ask me about Mary. I truly don’t know. But I do know that millions of folks around the world pray this way every day. I love to connect with humanity in shared ritual. That feels so good to me.

I’ve given up begging God to fix *all of this* –

When there was a lockdown at my teenager’s high school. When our baby was born a month early. When my mom got sick. When protections for trans folks were removed by the current administration. In war. In genocide.

Instead, I thank God for doing *all of this* with us. I don’t want to do this alone anymore.

I give up. I surrender.

I no longer experience God only in times of great joy or great desperation, but instead have come to know God in the in-between, in this experience of being human. This path is long and winding. I accept my past, my faults, my mistakes, the darkness, and the light. Here, we are in-between life and death, death and resurrection, community and betrayal, despair and hope, love and loss. We hold all of it in the in-between.

Life happens in the in-between. God is with us right here in all of it.

This is the poem I didn’t write because I’ve been thinking about rice cookers. I read reviews, skimmed commissioned articles, and wondered if this would be the one that solved all our problems. Our problems are not rice problems.

This is the poem I didn’t write because every morning, the train driver says, “ladies and gentleman, good morning…” And every time I think he’s going to say something else. He doesn’t. That’s it. Good morning.

This is the poem I didn’t write because we rush and our friends are sad and the breaking news won’t stop breaking (us). We aren’t sure if we should fight, flee, or freeze. We scroll.

This is the poem I didn’t write because the toddler learned how to climb onto the couch. I didn’t write because I had to catch her. And catch her again. I didn’t write because she took my notebook and ran away. If I catch her, she laughs. If I take my notebook back, she cries.

This is the poem I didn’t write. I was thinking again about some kind of writing process. One that includes rules that keep changing. Like if I plan enough I will write enough. But I forget that writing enough is a reach you can never grab. The more I write, the more I write. Planning and little notebooks and any words on any kind of page are the poem I didn’t write.

The Poem I Didn’t Write, Raymond Carver
Here is the poem I was going to write
earlier, but didn’t
because I heard you stirring.
I was thinking again
about that first morning in Zurich….

Laundry. After weeks of falling behind, catching up, falling behind again, I was finally going to stay on top of laundry for the week. Intentions are supposed to keep you focused, give you a plan.

It was a mistake.

I still fell behind on laundry and this time felt worse about it. Because I thought I could do better. Because I had planned to do better. The reason we always fall behind on laundry is that we have this incredible family with two busy kids and we’re washing clothes and towels all the time because we’re splashing in the bath at night or washing hair before picture day or going to jobs we love and out with friends and shoveling snow we’re delighted by.

I have a friend who regularly posts photos of her overflowing dishwasher that used to overwhelm her and now she sees as a sign of abundance - her dishwasher is full because their lives are so full.

Just the same, our laundry baskets are full because our lives are full. And I’m not going to prioritize clean laundry over doing everything else.

Instead, my intentions (after the failed laundry plan) are to do better — until I do worse. And what are better and worse anyway? Who cares!

This week, I’ll be right on time and sometimes I’ll rush a little bit. I might even be late. This week, I’ll try to remember that no matter how much laundry I do, there will always be more laundry to be done, and I’ll wash and dry and fold and wash and dry and fold again. This week, I’ll want to write more than I have time for. And I’ll write anyway. Bits and bobs. Any is enough. None at all is fine too!

This week, I’ll not get carried away in Breaking News everywhere I turn. I’ll read the newspaper instead. I’ll put my phone down. I’ll pick it back up again. I’ll get caught up in Breaking News. I’ll take it easy. I’ll take it slow. I’ll do the crossword and I won’t finish it but I’ll carry it around for a few days like I’m going to get around to it. I won’t get around to it. Who cares!

I’ll listen to the radio. I’ll look for the good news. I’ll get caught up in the bad news, too. I’ll listen to records, teaching the baby to listen for the music. Clapping with her as it goes round and round.

This week, I’ll be overwhelmed, delighted, tired, blissed out, and all the in-betweens. I’ll get it right, I’ll get it wrong. And it doesn’t really matter anyway. There’s a whole life to live and I’m psyched about it.

Should I stay, or should I go now?
Should I stay, or should I go now?
If I go, there will be trouble
And if I stay, it will be double
- The Clash

We have a complicated relationship with social media right now. We talk lots about screen time rules for kids, how they’re on their phones too much, how kids shouldn’t* have phones in school. We read Anxious Generation in book club. We, as adults, can’t get off our phones. And we hate it. As the parent to a toddler and a teenager, it’s all about screens. From the pediatrician’s office to the high school’s newsletter. We talk a lot about screens and habits and not nearly enough about how parents just can’t put our phones down.

None of us can. We are working from home, from the playground, from the train. Checking email, jumping from one social platform to another. My mom likes to post on this one! My friends post close friends over here! I use this one to zone out after a long day! I’m researching (googling) ailments! This thread could change my life! I need to order new pants and dishwasher tabs!

I think we hate it. I think we don’t want to be this connected. I think we want to break free a little. And fleeing, making it his fault (or his!) makes that a little easier. It’s certainly a lot easier than figuring out how to have a healthy relationship with our little pocket computers. We hate how much we rely on it. And we hate that other people (men!) have power over the whole thing. We’re tired of this cycle. And we’re terrified of what’s to come. Rebecca Woolf pointed out on Instagram this week — we are in fight or flight.

I don’t think fleeing will fix any of this. I think we should stay. I think we should fight.

We should fight for the community space to share what we love. Fight for what is good, what is right. Fight even for the space to have hard conversations with folks (or family members!) we don’t agree with.

Fight to live our lives with joy. Trans joy. Black joy. Fight for it.

I don’t mean fight in the comment section and Rebecca didn’t mean that either. She talked about standing up, looking them in the eye and saying no.

No, you can’t take this from me.

No, you can’t stop me from sharing my life, my joys, my struggles, my ideas with my community.

It is a radical act to be an out trans parent. To be me, beautifully, wonderfully, chaotically me. It is a radical act to read my baby a book on the subway, knowing that someone could clock my voice as too high to be cis. It is a radical act to be called Apa, to break social rules, to use different pronouns, to even use a public bathroom.

It is a radical act to share all of it. To let people see me. To let people judge me. To let people hate me. To let people love me. And I know we’re tired. I am too. But I think we should keep going.

It’s radical to stay and fight. Not with our words and carefully crafted comments. But to fight with our right to exist. To stay when we aren’t welcome, protected, or even tolerated. To do it anyway. Because we deserve these spaces. We deserve the communities we worked so hard to build. They don’t get to take that from us. They can’t have this as theirs, because this is ours. We’re here together. We’re all in this together.

It’s hard and will likely get harder. And still, I’m going to stay. And will continue working on my phone habits.

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• I reminded Boston residents to shovel their sidewalks (I work for the City).

• Read some of a book - currently reading The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans 

• Shoveled our sidewalks and cleared out our car

• Skimmed the newspaper (I get two papers delivered every day still - started it in the covid lockdown and never stopped)

• Washed dishes 300 times - my wife cooked and baked her way through the day

• Snuggled the baby down for a nap

• Edited and published a blog post I’ve been working on for a few days

• Posted on our neighborhood’s facebook group to ask if anyone had a baby sled we could have or borrow, then walked over to a neighbor’s house to pick up said sled, then took the baby sledding!

• Worked on today’s crossword. The teenager tried to help, but gave up after seeing how chaotically I started it.

• Made lunch plans with a friend for this week.

• Listened to records (Noah Kahan’s first album! Justin Bieber! Leon Bridges!)

• Gave the baby a bath. We splashed! We laughed! We quacked like ducks!

• Watched Grey’s Anatomy (we’ve been working our way through it all since Episode 1 with the teenager for a while now, one episode at a time).

• Did some writing

• Went to bed (and the baby is having a sleep regression so that wasn’t as restful as I wanted, but we held hands through the prison bars of her crib while she struggled to sleep)

For today, I don’t need to know. And this is no head in the sand, this is head up high, loving my family, loving my city, so grateful to be here.