Silliness online

You should try this: http://www.weeworld.com/default.aspx !

What do you think?

love and level

I live in a 1920s home that has been renovated into 4 flats, 2 up, 2 down. Having lived here for a year and a half, I have become inured to the idiosyncracies of the place: the sloping floors, the poorly hung doors, the leaky plumbing. The space is safe; it's mine, and I am happy here, and that's all that matters to me for the most part.

My roommate's brother visited recently, and the first thing out of his mouth after crossing the threshold of the apartment was a comment about having forgotten to bring his level with him. He thought it might have been of some use to whoever had done the flat conversion job. Of course, his comment elicited any number of stories about the floors and doors and our landlord and more laughter. His eye is a trained one in such things. As someone who works on building projects daily, namely a 100 year-old boat, he is keen. He knows by the results -- the angles, the quality of materials, the placement of the nails, the skill of the tradesman. He can spot a hack within seconds.

I have pondered his comment for weeks. How, I wonder, does God, when he looks on us, respond? For many years, I figured his reaction regarding myself would be that of my roommate's brother. Let's blow out a few walls, tear up the floors and get out the drills, saw, and level. Time to renovate to renovare: to make new again. Certainly God is skilled and able, capable of the hardest job. But is this how he approaches us, is this how he decides to rectify -- to make straight -- the bent, the twisted, the untoward? After all, he can, as Jeffrey did, spot a fraud in a split-second.

I was often taught by zealous, fat, sweating preachers to believe this was God's day job, tearing down the house --inducing trauma in my life -- (see last post), in order to rebuild it, "The Right Way." At night, he would go about ordering world affairs while I slept off my pain from being the day's construction zone, and then, come morning, the jackhammer and pounding would start all over again. Sanctification was where it was at, Baby! Yes, you're justified and washed in the Blood, but you are screwed and Jesus has got to fix you! It's his only concern, his only 'problem' with you. Once you're all tidied up and righted, you'll be ready for regular attendance at your favourite pew. And may even be worthy of service in the Kingdom. God just might make something of you, yet!

Ouch, ouch, ouch.

I had to get off that Glory Train, and quick! This wasn't the Jesus of my knowing. The Jesus I met basically just moved in with me, into the place of my creaking floors and unsealed windows. He felt the drafts coming in under the doors and knew that my neighbours were exotic dancers and bouncers. He loved me, said he felt welcome in my ramshackle place, and said he would stay forever if I would have him. He liked me, even in my frailty and brokenness. Eventually, I realised that he had a special perspective on life, one that I could respect, admire, and ultimately defer to: because I wanted to, not because he was about to swing a hammer aimed at my head, saying it was for my own good.

I know God is holy with a capital H. The real deal. I know in the depths of my being he's crazy to involve himself with fickle, sinful me. But I also know that his eye can be on this sparrow, and love -- not the level -- will be his first response.

light sabre, please!

In the Hero's Journey, the 'destruction of the status quo' at the beginning of the story is deemed the Call to Adventure. That's when all the good stuff starts to happen. Well, usually, that is after all the bad stuff has happened. Think of Luke Skywalker when he returns to his home after visiting with Ben Kenobi. The Evil Empire has marched through in his absence, leaving a wake of destruction and a dead aunt and uncle. He receives his 'Call' and he is engaged in an epic struggle -- good vs evil. His world view had to be toppled in order to get him to find himself and discover his destiny and true identity.

I've heard this described as trauma: the dismantling of one's accepted frame of reference, status quo, dearly held beliefs and values. And it is traumatic to have your world up-ended. It's fascinating actually, unless, of course, it's happening to you.

How I wish that it were all as straightforward as the epic call, when it's straight black or white, and you can't mess around in the middle. Reality though tells me that most of our 'call to adventure' begins in the muck and grime of everyday living and something or someone steps into the picture long enough to blow the house of cards down. The cards go down, and we must begin either to reconstruct the same house or to build a new one, maybe even throwing the cards into the fire and starting fresh with brick and mortar.

The beginning of the new year has met me with it's fist in my face. Come on, I dare ya! Taunting me, goading me, pulling at my heart strings and pulling annoyingly at my hair. What are you, a sissy?! I'm not really appreciating the call to adventure on this scale, and yet, the fact that it's coming to me fills me with hope mixed with a heavy side of anxiety. What the hell is going on, I wonder? How will I respond?

the shoreless watery wild

What could matter enough to write about tonight that hasn't already been written about? Bombings in Baghdad, terrorists being tried in Britain, Prince William's got a girl, dolphins being saved. I've got some stiff competition. I write ostensibly for myself, right? For my own creative process. For my own benefit. To set down landmarks on my journey. So what that everything under the sun has already been discussed, dissected, hailed, slammed, and adored? Art for art's sake, right Matthew.

But I don't really believe that. I don't want to be 'in the sea of life enisled' like the good ole Victorians thought...

"Yes! in the sea of life enisled,
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.
The islands feel the enclasping flow,
And then their endless bounds they know."

I want to know that my island is connected to your island, even if only by means of a blog. And your liking of my blog. ( I think CS Lewis meant to say, "We blog to know we're not alone." Everyone gets that one so wrong!)

I want to know that what I think, feel, post, matters to you, reader. I worry that if you don't think it does, maybe I am not so 'okay' -- maybe my little world is just that, little, and enisled. Isolated from the thriving, the well-off, the Together of the world. I don't like that thought. I confess, your opinion matters to me overly much. That's what I've been discovering lately. Your opinion and that of others has mattered too much to me for too long.

I went skiing recently with a friend and her brother and his wife. The brother/wife combo - they are down right great skiers. I was nervous about skiing with them. My inner E grew resistant, came up with excuses for staying in the lodge, riding a different lift, going on different runs. All to avoid the feeling of having to perform, to prove myself. For to attempt to prove oneself and fail means being disconnected and relegated to the whimp pile.

I started skiing when I was 4 or 5 and did a lot of it until I had to start paying for the hobby myself at 18. I haven't skied a lot since I was 18, but I can still ride, baby, and these friends, when they saw me ski, said as much. So why all the anxiety and pain about skiing with these people? Why am I still, after all these years and all that I know about pop psychology, still so prone to these ridiculous fears?

Partly, that is why it's tough for me to frequent this place. The blog. I could fail here. And you could witness it. And what then? Will I be shut off by "The unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea"? Cut off from your collective good opinion?

I know the answers to these questions, up here (I'm pointing to my head now), but I want to find a resonant, 1000-fathom-deep place of solace in a Greater Acceptance and in my own approval, my own good opinion of the stuff I create -- down in here (pointing to my heart and belly).

This is my prayer.

to the threshold

I am being pushed, and I don't like it. My cosmic parent is pushing me toward the door saying, "It's a beautiful day outside. Why don't you go out and play." He knows I'll go out, unfurl, and catch the wind around me. I'll play, move, live, and breathe. It will be 'good for me'. Indeed.

But I feel insecure and unsure of what I'll do when I get out there, and partly, I just feel lazy. I don't want to go to the trouble of finding all that fun and adventure anymore. Can't I just stay inside and watch tv? Can't you just make life happen for me inside here, where it's all a bit more safe and easy? Bring me dinner, while I lie on the couch and wait for life to happen.

I want someone else to do all this, not me. I just want the benefits. Discipline is fun until you run out of energy for it. Then it sucks. Never did I realise that I would ever feel the way I feel now and would need a swift kick to get back Outside, to risk, to try.

I'm tired, and what will be the remedy for it? More 'folding of the hands to rest'? Perhaps not, but I've run out of my own ideas...

I hear the squeak of the backdoor and the screen shutting behind me.

new year

New Year. Old questions. And new ones. Do I have anything fresh to answer them with? Maybe. Just maybe.

This year I want to respect my creative self a bit more. Give it more air time. Let it breathe and stretch. Help it grow by giving it some sunshine and also pushing it off the front porch when it's time to go to work everyday. I wonder how I do this?

Julia Cameron says it's all about 'recovery'. As in 12 steps and facing your demons and believing enough to start dreaming again. How did she get this audacious I also wonder -- to believe that the Universe will answer if you start throwing those attempts out like fishing line into a deep, dark pool? The Universe will fill your net and you'll bring in the haul. Whatever the haul might look like -- I think it's different for each person.

Her Universe. My God. I think he'll answer. It's just his answers I am scared of.

Another thing: avoidance.

How much avoidant behaviour is bad? To avoid crossing the street when cars are whizzing past is a good thing. To avoid hard situations and crap you just don't want to with other people or with yourself can be okay in the short term, but what do you do in the long term when you feel you don't have answers for the questions that prompted the avoidance in the first place?

I'll leave you with that for the day.

i wonder

I wonder what would happen if I just started writing a post every day or something absurd like that? How long would it take people to realize that I had come out of my dormant mode and had started to blog again?

what a beauty!!!!

The Zodiak on a windy day in Puget Sound!

life questions

I have a few life questions:

Why can we put satellites in outer space, have cell phones, create nuclear power, and we STILL cannot invent a lotion bottle that gets ALL the lotion out of it, even as it gets empty?

Why does cheese in great quantities have to make you fat? It's my favourite protein, hands down. Middle age and cheese, can I reconcile the two? Deep sigh.......

Why do we grow hair, to shave it off? I'm not advocating extreme hairiness, which would be disturbing I am sure, but I do wonder at the point of it all.

Is there ever any point at which one has enough chapstick?

Why do people drive in the left lane when they want to go the speed limit or under? Do they not SEE the long line of cars behind them? I'd like to be a member of the Voluntary Left-Lane Patrol. I'd be good, damn good, at my job.

Should we believe in the pre-hensile tail? All the doctors say we have one.

Do we really need directions on a bottle of salad dressing?

Why does the width of the brim of a hat corollate to age? As age increases, so the width of the brim. Is the sun MORE dangerous as you get older or does the sun just give people another reason to be cantankerous, and they must therefore have more sun protection? I'd suggest then, also, that there is an inverse relationship to hipness -- as the width of the brim expands, so the fashion of the wearee diminishes.

Why do people say they love the natural world, but then go to the mountains in a ready made home on wheels, so that they can have all the 'comforts of home'?

Why does Citibank tell you to use credit responsibly and then send you a notice that says, Guess what? We've increased your credit line by 5,000 bucks?

What did they do before dental floss?

As you can see my mind is just brimming with any number of significant ponderings. Put me out of my misery and write to me: please answer my questions if you can.

By the way, Autumn is HERE!!!! The sky is blue, the trees are turning and the air is crisp. Yahoo! I've been loving my rides lately as I fly through the leaves and listen to them rustling. Snowshoeing, winter camping, and skiing are right around the corner, but biking is now. On that note, I think I'll head out for a ride!

Get out and enjoy the blessed creation -- ain't it amazin'?

land rock

Apparently I have what's called Land Rock. It's been two days now since coming off Cynthia's brother's boat, and I can't quite shake it: the terra firma ain't feeling so firma. The computer screen sways in front of me as I write this.

I had a blast -- see pictures. Sea, sky, autumn air, orcas and salmon and river otters and osprey. My heart, in many ways, is replete. Being on a boat causes one to focus on the moment. There are no distractions (when you're not the captain or the engineer or the chef!), only the journey. Not surprisingly, I slept -- a lot. The motion, the enforced silencing of mundane activities, and the cessation of all things normal was a lullaby and nighty night.

In my more wakeful times, my soul was trailing its fingers in the water as I kayaked and explored the bays we anchored in. Salmon leapt around us everywhere one night, desperately flinging themselves toward the spawn -- the stream where they themselves were hatched. Am I doing that, too? Desperately trying to find, not the metaphor for where my life is headed, but the actual life of which I have come? Out of the heart of God borne, am I finding my way back?

Attraction and response -- the salmon climb the ladders not out of want or preference, they do this because they must. They are attracted -- by what, no one really knows -- to return at whatever their internally appointed time is (when they reach a certain state of maturity in their life cycle) and when that time is now, they respond and go. Upstream. For weeks. They don't eat or linger. They swim and jump and flail until they have returned. And somehow also, they know when they have come back to that place of genesis.

With my soul-fingers in the water, I am listening: what am I incorrigibly attracted to and respond to?

I have a few days at home to let this sit, not so much in my head, but in my belly. I know I can't reason out the answer, can't call upon the Great Magician (i.e. the Analyst) to bail me out this time. I have to stay with the motion of my soul as it rocks upon the waters, even though I am back on hard ground.

darkroom

Cynthia made a deal with me: she would do the dishes if I wrote a blog. Hmmmm. Conundrum. Either avoid a creative activity or do the nightly cleanup. Okay, so you know which one I opted for! But, perhaps surprisingly, the choice was a hard one.

Creative acts still scare me. They seem too risky. Too fraught. To likely to cause tangles. And I am not much for tangles. Tedious. Tiresome. Making me, Testy.

When I was 12, I used to ride my bike to the creative arts center, based out of an old, beautiful home, circa 1920, in my home town for a photography class and for the occasional tye-dying workshop. In the photography class, I learned how to develop film, how to alter negatives for different effects, how to play with light and the side of photography which is often forgotten -- processing. Alot happens in that hermetic, basement environment. Things grow in the dark. Images, colours, light. Too much or too little of one or the other and it changes everything.

The red light is glowing in my little darkroom, and I am fiddling with the canister of film, rolling precious celloid exposed to secret slants of light round and round. In preparation. The images embedded, out-of-sight, will be called out and defined, for others to see and perceive. I wonder, in the obscurity of this imposed night, of what will emerge when the lights of daytime and industry are switched back on. What will they see?

Kickin'

Some of you have been wondering if I am still alive and kicking....well, here's the proof!

It's been a summer of fun days on the rock, as well as hiking, backpacking, fishing, riding, birdwatching, whatever it takes it get outdoors. I figured I would try out the new photo feature on the website and throw up a pic from one of this summer's climbs. That's Cynthia at the bottom belaying me. I wish I could look more stylish and cool like they do in all the climbing mags, but I happen to like my brain a whole lot and prefer to keep it intact with the bucket on my head (just in case you didn't recognise me!)

Climbing is such a focused activity for me, allowing absolutely no other thought besides -- where's my next hold and, deeper down, that intuitive sense of -- thrill. I have been wondering lately if I have kept myself too busy this summer with activity as a means of distancing myself from things I don't want to ponder. As I've circled around that question any number of times, the consistent answer I seem to be getting from my insides is that NO, the activity hasn't been an escapist activity, but a functional one. Let me explain.

One of America's greatest female mountaineers says that because of the prolonged periods of focus she experiences on her climbs, she is more able and more creative as a scientist. Her greatest scientific insights, she says, have always come shortly after returning from one of her expeditions, during which, there is precious little time to think about anything beyond the immediate task. My theory is that when the mind is forced to cut out all static -- particularly when your physical survival is dependent upon this -- the soul-bear stirs and stretches and smells the air. Hibernation, in its season, has almost passed, and it is time to awake from a winter of necessary rest into a summer of eating and reproducing. (Sounds like a good time to me!)

So that's what my soul has been doing -- eating and reproducing ;-) It has been in a state of expansion and growth. Imperceptible movements to those who look on, but I know, that within me there is some serious frolicking going on. That bear is about to break down the house! And when she's done, there will be some provocative reorganisation that will have happened.

Thus, returning to the question I posed to myself above about activity's role in either avoidance or growth, I am casting my vote for the Yea side. I've ranted about how too many people glorify over-activity in our culture (I still believe that), but when there is a beckoning to the Spirit of God to be present in the midst of what is not avoidance, but focused occupation, the Soul can live, rattle around, and remember what the smell of blueberries is like, and grow -- something that I really do think pleases God to no end.

for john

I know it's been since April. I know. I know. But sometimes the deep don't wanna creep out to the pages of a public place and show its face. I've had a lot on my mind.

Tonight I just want to remember. To remember a dear childhood friend of mine who died this past week. I can't believe that at 43 he has flown away and is gone.

John was the older brother of a friend of mine from church. She was 3 years older than I, and we met when I was 5 and she 8. That made John, the older brother, really old. All of about 9. He was the spark behind many a scheme, dirt clod fight, fort, and army game. In the housing development where my friends lived when I first met them, we played in the dug-out earth of all the houses going up around them, leaping into the foundation pits and clawing our way out again. John was always the one with the most daring-do, the bravado, and on many occasion taunted his sister for her caution, which either produced angry action or tears on her part.

When my friends decided to move house at some point, they moved into my neighbourhood. A mere 5 blocks away. Glory. Sleepovers ensued and Legos and torturing their pet cats, and once we got older, nighttime adventures.

Catching a few hours of sleep in a blanket fort we had thrown together in John's room, we three would awake to the sound of the alarm which we had set for a 3am-ish time. A very cool time to be awake when you are 10. The commander had a plan and his minions waited in the wings for their orders.

-TP house of schoolmate X, Y, Z
-Run across main street only wearing underwear
-Climb into rich neighbour's yard. Spell his name out in clothes pins on his backyard walk.
-Continue on to -- of course -- Winchells. Buy donuts.
-Stop at 7-11. Buy milk.
-Walk home, eating donuts, celebrating a successful evening.

Who else, I now wonder, could have gotten me to run across 14th Avenue, in the middle of the night, in my underwear? The things my parents never knew!

Adventures were followed by duties and because John had a paper route 7 days a week, his sister and I were also commandeered into helping with that. Our nighttime glory was shortlived as we would have to return home, fold a 150 Tribunes, pack up the bikes and set out for morning delivery.

I was the little tagalong. Appropriately named Radar by John's parents. I just wanted to be on the action, and John had that magnetic, charismatic personality that drew me in nodding 'yes' to whatever he might suggest. Where he led, I would follow.

When we got to be teenagers, we would all board Ski Bus together at 6am in our hometown and set out for a day on the slopes. Little sister and Radar followed Big Bro along, hoping only that we weren't being led to our deaths. He was an incredible daredevil. So much so, that his parents wouldn't let him get his driving license until he was 17 or 18, which nearly killed him for wanting. When he did finally manage to convince his parents he was ready for the adult world of driving, I saw him, more than once, driving their gorgeous, apricot-coloured 57 Chevy like he was prepping for Indy. Speed, risk, flight, adventure. They all seemed to speak to him.

It was no surprise then that when it came time to choose a career path, he decided to be an engineer. Of rockets. Harnessing all that brain power that whirred in his busy head, he built the object of his fascination, something which so characterized how I saw him when I was that tripping-along-behind little kid: a force blasting beyond the ordinary.

As such, I find it odd that he should die, on an ordinary day, after a game of softball, his heart bursting in such a way that he had probably died by the time he even fell to the ground. Right there on a field, in a parking lot, on his way home...somewhere common....returning to his routine, his evening, his wife. I hate thinking of it.

Rather, I like remembering him, seated next to his dad in the small Cessna that they took out to practice their flying, each of them with a headset on, and John's dad telling him to take over the rudder. From my backseat perspective, all I remember was the roller coaster, the air pockets, the fun he seemed to have being the pilot of an acrobatic aircraft, and that Oreos was not a good choice of food to eat before flying in a small plane. Messy. Very messy.

Right now, I am thankful for these moments which reflected, looking back on things now as an adult, essence-- the true self in motion. I am grateful to have beheld you, John, and will grieve the day you took up wings of a dove and flew away to be at rest.

ni idea

Sitting here at my desk, after a long day, nursing a Heineken (my fave summer beer since it seems to be nearly summer already -- until the next snow storm, that is). My dinner is eaten, groceries put away -- dishes not done, however, -- and wishing. Wishing that life were sometimes easier. Pollyannas step aside, sometimes life just sucks. Purely sucks.

I hate sin. I hate mental illness. I hate disease. I hate having to work through crap. I hate having weaknesses. I hate sore feet. I admit it. I feel overwhelmed in the crapness of it all. I want to bury my head in a cryogenic freezer and not surface for another 100 or more years until a time when it's "all better."

Of course, I know this panacea doesn't ever materialize. I got it right there in the Book. Don't get any better. Not till you make it all the way up to St Teresa de Avila's or San Juan's place. (They have a sign out front, you can't miss it.) Now there, there, all is well (guess I gotta include St Julian of Norwich, too in that case). For now I get to kill time drinking beer, making myself a salmon dinner, writing a blaaahg out into lah lah land hoping a few friends will hear me, and dreaming about doing the Colorado Trail this summer. Is there anything in between the sublime and the, well, I am not going to call eating salmon or drinking beer ridiculous or banal, but, you know what I mean....? Bliss or ....? I don't know how to fill that in.

I am tired of things being a slog, hard. I am tired of seeing people I love suffer things like MS and mental illness. I am heartbroken that my nephews have no father who can show them how to be good men in this world....that they have to go it on their own. I am tired of being single. Tired of men who are well past the age of oughting to know who can't get their shit together and make a decision about how to take a wife. (I guess I better start referring them to Shakespeare for life direction: see Taming of the Shrew. Decide to marry. Then, do so. -- of course there was a bit of coercion that had to go take place in this particular example :-) ) But hey, this is MY blog, so I can say whatever I want!

Okay, so you get the punto. I am struggling. I need to see a way through all this -- somehow.

Got any ideas?

as it happens

Do you like chaos theory? If so, watch Happenstance (with Audrey Tautou of Amelie -- in French with English subtitles). If you don't like intuitive, non-action packed films that don't explain themselves entirely, don't watch it. If you like things that are abstract, that ask the viewer to make possible connections in the film's plotline, minimal but meaningful dialogue -- go for it. I found myself laughing through most of the film (which is a comedy) and was practically rolling around, gripping my sides in one scene where the main character gets locked out of her apartment and her Tarot card reading neighbour offers to have her in for a cup of tea while she waits for her roomate to arrive with the key.

I haven't blogged much lately. You may have noticed. I find it hard to get here more often, especially when life feels like a slog. And it does lately. I am tired. I took three days off (in a row! lovely miracle!) and all I want to do is what I describe to my roomate as "draw in"...for weeks. Months.

Quiet is something I crave. Not just an external quiet, but the inner one, where voices die out and I can hear my own heartbeat, where I can hear God breathing, present with me. How do I find this in my circumstance as it is just now? I must find out or even my own heartbeat and its sound will die out -- or be drowned out by the violence of Noise and Busyness -- two things we seem to enshrine here in the US.

Maybe that's what happens when I don't get to this space more often: the sound of my inner life is distant and rings dull, and I feel it hasn't any meaning for anyone else....why put it into a public forum, I ask? But I know this is not true. I read the thoughts and experiences of others I know who write frequently on their blogs, and I love sharing in their lives. Mind you, I tend to read blogs where others are looking for insight, attempting the "examined life" via their everyday experience.

Am not certain what I am trying to say except: I want to find a way to reclaim creativity in times of duress, so that I do not "go fah fah away" from my Me-self that needs the creative process on a daily basis. Pain and doubt tend to paralyse and yet I think they are given as a means to something greater....something to tap into, that if held tenderly, can lead me to insight and joy and meaning.

Guess I don't know what else to say besides that today. I showed up today because I still have hope that I am one of the chief agents in this reclamation project....and that my words are perhaps the toes in the water to get me there.

ya basta...ENOUGH already!

Some of you have encouraged me to try blogging more often, getting stuff out there in a more shoot-from-the-hip style. Some of you that I read do that yourselves, and I am always amazed at what that spiritual discipline yields: profound insights, witty observations, wry, sideways looks at what's going on around you. In amongst the quotidian and mundane, of course.

I could really use an order of that banal stuff right now. I am sick of DEEP MEANING. (At least for the next hour or so.) I continue the waiting game with jobs. FYI for those of you waiting along with me about that one job I felt I was possibly going to get: after six weeks of deliberating, their "committee" decided on someone else. Fine. Glad I don't have to work with that kind of indecision on a daily basis, but way to drag it out, guys! Have they forgotten the torture of being on the other side, of being the one waiting for the decision?

I have noticed that the trigger of a lot of the DEEP MEANING that I seem flooded with at this time in my life is waiting. Have I mentioned how much I hate, despise, am fed up with, scream, shout and spit at WAITING? Well, I have reached the colmo ..... the apex....the height of it, and it's making me want to do strange things like chew my fingers off or pull out my eyelashes.

Job, relationship (yes, of the male/female variety), future, church....(fill in a litany of stress/anxiety causing items)....I feel I am in waiting hell. Do any of these parts of life go in a straightforward manner for anyone? Honestly, I don't want to compare, but sometimes I hear the cheery stories of friends who did things like apply for jobs that they then GOT, and relationships that got started because one person liked the other and vice versa and they then DATED, and well.... you get the picture.

My wits' end is that I have waited A LOT and I want STRAIGHTFORWARD. Give me something boring, God, today, like a timely call on a resume, or a phonecall from a guy I have been seeing (even an email would be just fine, Lord), or....blahdy, blah. My rant could go on.

So here I am today, shooting from the mouth instead of the hip because, though I am not powerless in these circumstances, there are just some things you CANNOT CONTROL. Perhaps, deep down, I do not like this fact. Perhaps, I have issues.

Ponder....

Ponder...

Perhaps, I have circled back to the top of the loop where, Enter Stage Right, here comes DEEP MEANING again.

Jesus in a dish drainer

I don’t know how many times I have started this blog in my head…lots of ideas floating around…different things I have been mulling over. Tonight, I write because I MUST! I’ve realized that having a housemate for the last few months (who happens to be in the midst of a personal crisis) has been a distraction that usually is good and a blessing, but sometimes keeps me from my inner work….the place where I really live life out of. I have realized that for me to live, I must dwell in a creative “space”. God, who is the author of creativity, is with me there, speaks to my heart via my intuition, feelings, impressions, and through the natural beauty around me. Every time I see a bird of prey perched alongside the road on my way to work, I feel as if it is God telling me He is with me. He hasn’t forgotten. He hears my prayers. He knows my struggle for being in a harried, hassled world. My most alive me evolves out of the creative space that I am meant to occupy. “A place prepared for me,” if you will.

How do I get there when the needs around me are great? When friends are in distress, when life’s demands shout me out of bed? My heart suffers when I cannot find a place to dwell. I get angry and frustrated, blocked. In my writing, I am travelling a newly trodden path that takes me back there: to the place I can dwell. That is why I am here. In the doing of this – writing – I am journeying to being. A place where I am at peace with myself and others, where I have had my say and I have been heard by God and people alike, and it is good.

Down the block from where I live, I passed a crèche scene that was still up in someone’s yard, well after Christmas. Kitschy figurines of the nativity company are huddled around the centerpiece of the scene: Baby Jesus.

Little Baby Jesus.

In a plastic dish drainer.

Sometimes I ponder the utter humanity of Christ, how he so humbly arrived into this world of demands, pain, misunderstanding, beauty, and joy, and I wonder, “How did he do it?” God Incarnate, the Living Word, enters the human milieu on the rungs of a white, plastic dish drainer. How did he maintain the place inside where he dwelt? The place where glory abides? We offered him little but grief, and yet he was so alive, and creative, and so intent on becoming the fullness, in human flesh, of what he was meant to be.

I wanna be like that and find that place where glory dwells, and I behold it, and I live in it. And it lives in me.

How about you?

en pleno centro

When I’ve been away for an extended period of time (from the blog, that is), I tend to feel I must come up with something weighty to write about. As time increases away from writing, the pressure grows ever greater to produce or perform. To kill that nasty beast, I decide to get back to this, tonight, when I seem to have way too many things on my mind to be able to string together something coherent.

My espresso pot hisses, and it’s time to serve myself a demitasse of my favourite hot drink (good British tea running in a tie for first, however). A spoon of demerara but then I notice: the milk’s gone off. I’ve got some creamer on hand, and of course, for tonight, that’ll do. So much of my life seems like this right now: I’ve gone and made the coffee, but I can’t seem to bring all the ingredients of a cortado together, all at once. Right ingredients matched with good timing.

My hopes raised for a job I pray to get. My heart lingering on thoughts of a certain someone I’ve met. The wave rises in hope, in anticipation, and then, waiting for that movement forward, a rush of sea foam and turbulence and joy, and, then, just then, blinking, I am met with silence. No word from the employer, many days overdue, no assurance that mutualities exist, no returns. I’ve sent my hopes out, and now will they return on the wind, answered, embraced?

Jesus told the disciples when he met them out on a midnight stroll on the Sea of Galilee, “Courage! It’s me. Don’t be afraid.” Those guys, they just couldn’t quite put it all together. Their screams and shouts told the real story. The meal for five thousand, the miracles of healing, the wise words, the authority, it just hadn’t gelled yet. Their brains and hearts were freaking out at what they had seen, heard, felt. And so would I have been. And so I do now.

I’ve seen, heard, felt things that cause wonderment, curiosity, awe, fear, and confusion, and I, just like the Boys, am, “straining at rowing, for the wind was against them.” I am straining at my oars, trying to put cause and effect together, trying to make sense of all this business which is my days. I keep feeling like I’ve got the right ingredients for abundance and bounty and pleasure – that robust, creamy, sweet espresso -- but something’s amiss. I am still waiting for it to come together. I am still waiting to taste it. The disciples may have witnessed all those things Jesus did up until that time, but they still hadn’t accepted how badly this would shake up their worlds if what they saw, they believed.

And then with what feels to me like compassion, Jesus tells them to not fear, even in their incomprehension. He sees them straining, “the boat now in the middle of the sea, tossed by waves, for the wind was contrary,” and “in the fourth watch of the night, he went to them, walking on the sea.”

He came to them, in his own way, on his own time. They didn’t understand still, and somehow, that was okay. I guess, it’s okay for me too, to keep on with all this WAITING (that I just completely HATE), not getting it, not knowing where I went wrong OR right, everything good seemingly poised to miraculously rain down on me….or not. I am calling from the boat, “Can’t you see how damn hard I am paddling this thing?”

And then….He comes to me.

on unpacking dishes and a return to friendship

I saw a friend last night that I haven't seen in a year and a half. This was a purposeful year and a half that I had not seen her. We hit a crisis point in our friendship shortly after I returned to the States, and I stepped back for some serious evaluating. And I dug deeply into my cave of introverted, intuitive processing, and I did not see sunlight break on this particular issue for quite a while. I had a dream a few months before things reached the breaking point; I felt it was a warning not to allow small or petty things to become a point of contention, upon which something fragile might break.

This is my dearest friend from my university days and we have a decade and a half of true friendship together; it was not something I would throw away lightly, nor without regret. Jamie and I were both Spanish majors in college and we shared similar enthusiasm for the outdoors, languages, cultures, and literature, and travel. We worked together at our university bookstore for several years, and saw each other nearly every day during each semester. We made meals for one another at our respective apartments, did the occasional ski trip, studied Latin American poems together, and celebrated our small victories in our classes with bottles of nice beer or a bottle of French wine.

Jamie went to France and to Cote d'Ivoire; I went to Latin America and the UK. She married a wonderful man she met biking up Mount Evans and moved to the Colorado mountains. I stayed in Scotland and eventually made my passage back to Colorado, where I am now home for a while. Letters, post cards, small gifts and treasures have coursed between us for years. Coffee from Central America, a beautiful cafe bowl from France, Alfonsina Storni poems, our dreams, written out in longhand. Jamie is an organizer...definitely a J on the MBTI, and what she doesn't use or want, she throws away. My letters are some of the only things she has kept over the years. I saw them bound up in small packets in a large chest she kept, one time when she was moving, and I mused that my letters had made the final cut. And I have done the same with her correspondence. Certainly not in so organised a fashion, but her thoughts and expressions of friendship, all kept, because they are dear to me.

When I moved to my current flat, I had brought along boxes from my parents' home that had not been opened in over 7 years. Kitchen stuff, utensils, cutlery. As I went about this mundane task of pulling out these necessity items from a box marked Fragile, I unwrapped the newspaper from a small, porcelain bowl that bore the words, Pillivuyt, France on it's simple foot. Jamie's bowl. I held the bowl and felt it's smooth lines and thought how elegant yet uncomplicated it was. I wished for this in our relationship, now fraught with what I don't even know, just fraught, and unresolved. Perhaps it was time to be in contact again?

And so, I decided to return to her bearing "a plate of cookies" as she likes to say; a way back, a place to meet and reconvene, and begin afresh. We had dinner in Golden and went to a presentation by one of America's foremost mountaineers, Arlene Blum. She had written a book that inspired me in my late teens and early 20s called Annapurna. It documented the story of the first all-female team to climb one of the world's 8,000 meter peaks. It brought us back to what brought us together at the beginning of our friendship, our love of mountains and challenges, and our desire to live lives of passion.

I think this was a good place to start.

Bienvenida, Jamie.

Saturday leaves Sunday

Tomorrow's Sunday, and with Sunday comes The Decision. To church or not to church? I grew up going every Sunday with my parents. Well, until I became a Christian at 16, and decided it was too "establishment" for me, so I refused to go.

Every week for years I have agonised about going to church. I hate it (usually). It's boring. The sermons are long-winded and like store bought bread just leave you wanting for the real thing.
Fresh bread, made by people's hands -- not pushed through some lifeless machine --, moving and pushing and kneading the dough, changing the proofing time and baking time, based on the conditions of that particular morning. There is nothing quite so sustaining or yummy.

Hmmmm. The Rules say: Good Christians go to church every Sunday (or most Sundays!). But when I go, you can always know, I forced myself to be there. I never go because I want to. When I lived in the UK and the village church bell rang at 10:55am to 11:00am to remind everyone it was time to go to church, I would cringe. My flatmate and I called them the Bells of Guilt as we stayed at home and read the paper.

Sometimes when I go to my homegroup, I feel that is more like church for me. We worship, pray, talk, laugh, cry, eat, and discuss hard stuff together. And I certainly felt like the group of people I worked with in the UK...with them, I had my deepest experience of a living, breathing, moving church. Mess, pain, and difficulty it was definitely fraught with, but it moved me, changed me profoundly, drew my attention to Jesus and what he has to say about life and how we treat one another. I could only wish this experience for everyone. Though, I do know that some, even if offered it would not want it. It is not polished or perfect, it can be threatening, harrowing, and downright hard. But it is worth it.

I miss that, and long for church to be that. But I don't ever think it will be. I grew up in a liturgical tradition, and when I feel the need to worship, I most often am pulled back to the kneeler in the pew, to the Eucharist, to Cross hanging above the altar. I read in someone else's blog today that "liturgy is not preaching", it is pared down of extraneous unnecessaries -- those things that preachers, pastors, teachers like to add on to embellish, but really only seem to diminish. I think this is what I want. I am tired of the perpetual footrace to make church "appealing" or relevant as if it were a show to be staged each week. Putting on a good face. It's so incredibly boring because it is a reflection of mere human personality. It is not a place open to the many voices of Us, We, that is Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and The Bride -- together --empowered to reveal the Risen Christ, the Glorious Lamb of God. I am tired of the one-man band that heaves on its harmonica, pounds it drum, and crashes its cymbals together each week.

Bread and wine, Jesus, forgiveness, mercy, goodness, a hand to hold. Here I am at home.