Just so you'll know, I took this photo in front of a winery in Cafayate, province of Salta, last winter when Richard and I were visiting Katie. We were lucky enough to spend several days in that beautiful part of northwestern Argentina. The photo by "About Me" on the blog site is another one I took as we drove through a breath-taking arroyo to get to the Cafayate area. (Sorry about losing your photo, Eric - at the time I was playing around in that area I thought we would each be able to have a profile segment.)
I'm delighted by the activity on our family blog site ('though I also agree with Bill that I hope for more activity as I make my daily blog-check.) I want to echo Bill's thanks to Eric for setting this whole thing up. I'm also really grateful to Suzanne for putting the links on. It's been fun to peruse the various websites and see what various people are up to. (The videos on Lucas Linder's website are pretty funny - check out the August post "Me, Myself, and I")
I've been thinking about what to post; I've wanted to come up with something thoughtful, maybe reminiscent of the past, like Eric's wonderful post, "Olfactory Flashbacks!" Or I thought about putting together a posting about our need to view the future from the point of view of the newest members in our family. I realized there was no way I could do that without becoming political which then raised the issue of what kind of guidelines we would have for our family blog. Do we stay with safe subjects that won't raise any hackles? Do we say what's really on our hearts and minds, acknowledge the fears we have (my greatest fears these days revolve around global climate change and an increasingly insurmountable national debt.) Might we even examine our beliefs and how they inform the functioning of our lives?
One of the things I love about Richard is his willingness to talk about anything. In fact, he's fascinated by what motivates people to do the things they do, say the things they say. He is willing to examine his own assumptions and belief systems and to ask the question: does this serve me well? His openness, emotional availability, and willingness for self-examination are part of why our relationship has endured. These are qualities I not only admire, I seem to require them for any kind of in-depth relationship. A turning point in our relationship was when we both spent time with the question: What are three beliefs you've held in your life and have they served you well? It was the point at which I knew I could live with this man, not because of what his beliefs were, but because he was willing to thoughtfully examine his life and identify some of his core beliefs and, more importantly, because he then went on, over the next several months, to seriously consider whether those beliefs were serving him well at the stage of his life that he found himself.
I started this whole thing with an email in which I expressed my longing for reconciliation. That hasn't changed. But I know that I also long to be known and that the only way for that to happen is for me to get past my fears and speak honestly about those things that really matter to me. Transparency matters. Emotional honesty matters. It was what I loved about Suzanne's post "On Broken Bikes," her honest acknowledgment of the hard choices she sometimes faces in her marriage. So I guess that's what I hope for here - and with that I recognize that it's a scary process. But I also believe it's how we come to really know one another and how we find acceptance of each other. Because we may disagree on topics like how the nation should be run or what the role of the church is in contemporary culture, but we all share common struggles and we hold in common the hope that our children's lives will be better then our own. Maya Angelou's poem says it well: "We are more alike than unalike, my friend."
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