January 1, 2008

I went to the park today. The park where I often go to think and pray. A sort of pilgrimage site for me. I couldn't stay very long - it was too cold to spend more than 15 or 20 minutes outside at a stretch this morning. It was short, but so needed. Hardly anyone else was in the park, so when I'd stop moving, there was a perfect silence. So peaceful and deep and filled with the presence of God.
I built a tiny altar near the river one day early this fall. A monument to some time spent praying and listening. Today I added these three stones - symbolizing nothing and so many things. Three stones as I let my heart wander and talked with Jesus.

After the park I ended up driving around the city. A weird pilgrimage of sorts. To a number of places I've gone over the years to pray. Along routes that were some of the first places where I began to hear the voice of the Father, where it became more than a one-sided conversation. Places I drove and screamed at God while I was depressed. Places I drove and prayed in wonderment those first few months after I was healed. Places where I drove with desperately broken people in my passenger seat, talking and praying. Places and routes full of memories and nostalgia. And as I drove, I let the memories float back, and I prayed for the future. It was such a special time, a great way to start a new year!

This is a picture of my baby brother, T. and I. We had a movie date tonight. (We saw quite possibly the worst movie on the planet, "Enchanted" on the recommendation of one of T's friends. Instead of mutually enjoying a movie, we ended up bonding over rolled eyes, glances at our watches and groans of almost physical pain at the ridiculously bad nature of the movie.) We're hoping to have dinner together on Monday night, but if we can't, well, then tonight was the last time we'll see each other until I get back from Malta.

There is joy in T's smile again these last few days that has been missing for quite a while. I'm still praying that his wrist will be healed - whether supernaturally or with another surgery. I'd love it if you would pray with me for that. That he'll fully get his music back one day. But it made me happy to see the joy in his eyes again.

I asked him to pray for me before we separated for the evening. My church is commissioning me for my trip to Malta on Sunday, but T. will be out of town. I really wanted to hear him pray for me, as the sibling and family member who is most able to hear and accept my heart, and my differences from the family and religious structure I grew up in. He agreed and prayed blessing and other beautiful things over my life, my trip, my relationships. Such a special moment, sitting there in the car, parked in front of my parent's house in the dark, and hearing my baby brother talk to Jesus about me.

This was a good way to start a new year.

Headlines to start the new year

I'll write something of my own later. I'm still mulling, waiting for the words to begin to form and spill out of my head and onto paper or a screen.

For the moment, though, I've been spending the last half-hour or so reading international news headlines from the various regions of the world that have begun to be on my radar as my heart is broadened to the world. It would seem that it hasn't been a particularly peaceful start to the new year. Here are some of the headlines that caught my eye and my heart today:

Kenyans Burned to Death in Church

US Diplomat Dies in Sudan Attack

Pakistan Early Poll 'Impossible'

Leading Sri Lanka Tamil MP Killed

Praying for the world tonight before heading out for a while with my baby brother...

One Last Post for 2007

I've been trying all day to figure out what to write, how to end this year off on my blog.

I don't really know what to say. Tomorrow I'll reflect backwards, and then turn and look forwards, but tonight, there aren't quite words.

I'm sitting here in the semi-dark. In a few minutes I'll go back to the episode of Grey's Anatomy I'm watching on dvd. But for a few minutes I paused the dvd, and crept up into my stairwell.

My upstairs neighbors are African - Christians we're quite sure, though we've never met them except to smile and greet in passing on our way to and from our respective apartments. I sat in my stairwell in the dark, on my side of the door and wall that separates my home from theirs, and listened. They are singing and praying and worshipping in the New Year. Such beautiful harmonies, accompanied only by a tambourine, and such passionate prayer, though all in a language I'll never understand. I crept up the stairs to listen, to sit in the dark and let their prayers flow over me because I recognized the tune, if not the language, to one of the songs they were singing. "Oh How I Love Jesus." So beautiful.

I'm glad, I think, that the people who live above me bathe their home in worship and prayer. Tonight it makes me feel safe, and cozy as I stay alone this week while my roommate is out of town. I live in a building that (at least half of it anyhow) is regularly bathed in prayer. Beautiful.

Happy New Year!

The Long Way Around

I was thinking today about how the path I'm choosing in life right now isn't really all that traditional. How most of the people I went to high school with are all in graduate school becoming academics, or pursuing high paying careers in various fields. How I have a degree, but I'm working as a a receptionist in an unrelated industry, and dreaming of travel and coffee shops, and praying with friends all over the country and the world. How a new year is coming and my dreams are becoming stronger, rather than fading with a sense of growing responsibility and settledness. How in eleven days I'm leaving Canada for a month to start pursuing those dreams.

I was driving around earlier, doing errands, and listening to the country station on the radio (and singing loudly - since I believe that one should always sing loudly along with the radio while driving alone), and the song "The Long Way Around" by the Dixie Chicks came on. I can never actually decide what I think of the Dixie Chicks and their in-your-face political statements, but I do love a few of their songs, and this is one of them. Today, a few of the lyrics grabbed my attention, spoke of my journey, and gave me hope.

Well, I fought with a stranger and I met myself
I opened my mouth and I heard myself
It can get pretty lonely when you show yourself
Guess I could have made it easier on myself

But I, I could never follow
No I, I could never follow

Well, I never seem to do it like anybody else
Maybe someday, someday I'm gonna settle down
If you ever want to find me I can still be found

Taking the long way
Taking the long way around
Taking the long way
Taking the long way around


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Now playing: Dixie Chicks - The Long Way Around
via FoxyTunes

Why I Make Smile Lists

I had a moment this morning, standing in the shower and talking with Jesus that reminded me again of the reason I've cultivated the habit of making mental (and sometimes written) lists of the things I'm thankful for - the things that make me smile.

I was standing in the shower and talking with Jesus. Working off residual crankiness from the past few days. I was complaining once again about having to go to church, and teach Sunday school, which I was feeling particularly unmotivated to do this morning. (I have quite a lot of Sunday morning conversations in the shower with Jesus, that mostly involve me informing him that since he hasn't given me permission to leave this church, he'd better help me out with the motivation and attitude to get me through the morning.)

And, as I was griping, a list began forming in my mind. A list of the reasons I actually end up enjoying teaching these girls most weeks. A list that included:

• that I love being a voice a little different from what they hear other places
• they make me laugh
• they remind me, just a little, each time I teach of that awkward and pivotal time in life that happens as you begin high school, and your world is suddenly growing, and you are beginning to figure out your place in the world
• that three individual personalities come together in that room as we sit on the carpet as they seek to understand more about Jesus
• that in spite of being raised in the church that also raised me, these girls are looking for glimpses of Jesus in a personal way, not just out of a sense of religious obligation
• that they challenge my way of thinking and engaging
• that when we do "best thing/worst thing" (highlight and lowpoint of our week) they are always thoughtful and willing to celebrate the good, and that the good is almost always more defining than the bad

I cultivated the habit of making smile lists because in the moments when I most need a change of attitude, an ability to be grateful in the midst of something that feels miserable, the lists begin forming in my head in spite of myself. And that makes me smile, too.