I read this quote on a facebook status for an organization I support a little while ago, and it kind of made me angry. It read, "At the center of your being, you have the answer; you know who you are and what you want." (Lao Tzu)
If the center of my being has the answers, it sure isn't sharing them with me!
Mostly, it's a reaction stemming from early morning angst. Early mornings, before conversations begin, and the day starts in earnest, are hard. Those hours of willing my unwilling body back to sleep, of laying for hours in that place somewhere between waking and dreaming. Those are the moments when peace is most elusive, when oppression can feel the strongest, and when fear talks loudly.
Lately even the usual "tricks" to hang on to peace and rest aren't working so well.
And so I read a quote like this and it ticks me off. It makes me mad. Because if I'm supposed to have the answers, I'm in big trouble.
Trust has never been my gift, though it's one that God is teaching me. But at least if I trust I don't have to have the answers within me - that there is something so much larger than me that can be in charge of having answers - then I can ward off the fear, the anxiety, the weirdness of life just a little. Even in these early morning hours.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Daily 5 - Year 2 Day 35
Today's Daily 5:
- 2 years and 35 days of making these lists
- filling in the gaps from years of blog stories and emails
- putting faces to names
- early morning prayer and processing with my friend Karla's lovely music in the background
- "after I feel the sun on my face, my soul it will sprout again"
- Moroccan mint tea
- seeing beautiful artwork
- laughing over our complete inability to use a corkscrew and open the icewine we'd planned to share last night
- surviving "game night" with L's grandma
- seeing California's version of mountains
Past the mid-way point
I'm laying in bed in the home of my friend in California and pondering.
For the last hour, my friend Karla's "Chair and Microphone" album has been playing softly through my headphones. Her music is the stuff I often turn to first in the moments when I need to think and pray and process life a bit. My heart hears Jesus when she sings.
Sometime last night, or in the wee hours of this morning, drifting in and out of semi-restless sleep and dreams, I hit the realization that comes for me with every trip - the realization of being past the half-way point of this escape. That the days remaining are growing fewer. The realization that a return to the harder realities of day to day existence are coming, and soon. That what comes next - the healing to come, the things to deal with, the waiting on school acceptance, the looking for a job, seem exhausting and overwhelming and sometimes even terrifying.
And really, I want to cocoon forever in the escape place (wherever it is, whichever vacation it is), full of laughter and hugs and friends who know all the messy stuff and want to hug on me and love me anyhow. I think about the community around me at home and long for that place of openness to come. I grow impatient with the reminder that there isn't history there yet, and that day to day life doesn't tend to hold room for the hours and hours of intense conversation that escapes have.
And so, I pause to consider the coming day, with Karla singing quietly in the background. To ready my heart for the things it holds, but also to bask in it, to draw sweet memories and moments to hold to when the end of the escape comes and reality returns. To have things to remind me of hope in the harder moments that are bound to come. Because that was the point of escaping anyway - to get away from reality for a few days and rest and prepare for the coming of new realities.
For the last hour, my friend Karla's "Chair and Microphone" album has been playing softly through my headphones. Her music is the stuff I often turn to first in the moments when I need to think and pray and process life a bit. My heart hears Jesus when she sings.
Sometime last night, or in the wee hours of this morning, drifting in and out of semi-restless sleep and dreams, I hit the realization that comes for me with every trip - the realization of being past the half-way point of this escape. That the days remaining are growing fewer. The realization that a return to the harder realities of day to day existence are coming, and soon. That what comes next - the healing to come, the things to deal with, the waiting on school acceptance, the looking for a job, seem exhausting and overwhelming and sometimes even terrifying.
And really, I want to cocoon forever in the escape place (wherever it is, whichever vacation it is), full of laughter and hugs and friends who know all the messy stuff and want to hug on me and love me anyhow. I think about the community around me at home and long for that place of openness to come. I grow impatient with the reminder that there isn't history there yet, and that day to day life doesn't tend to hold room for the hours and hours of intense conversation that escapes have.
And so, I pause to consider the coming day, with Karla singing quietly in the background. To ready my heart for the things it holds, but also to bask in it, to draw sweet memories and moments to hold to when the end of the escape comes and reality returns. To have things to remind me of hope in the harder moments that are bound to come. Because that was the point of escaping anyway - to get away from reality for a few days and rest and prepare for the coming of new realities.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Daily 5 - Year 2, Day 34
Today's Daily 5:
- Discussing "if" questions from a book until late hours last night
- driving up the california coastline
- cheesecake and icewine
- bought a pretty new scarf in the LA garment district
- getting an inside view of my friend's crazy world
- laughter
- laughing over differences in accents (how do you pronounce the words "process" and "against"?)
Gospel Sound
Will you forgive me if I admit that every once in a while I enjoy the Gaithers? That I kind of like the feeling of down home southern gospel music? A friend of mine posted this video to facebook early in the week, and it made me smile, so I decided to share.
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