Unstable Ground

It's been a quiet evening.

Finally.

I've needed one all week.

I've been exhausted and I was starting to see the strain show up physically again.

So I declared tonight to be a night about resting. And restoration.

I took a bath, and watched a dvd in the tub. I pampered myself with a blue corn face mask, and coconut body scrub (both from The Body Shop).

I putzed around on the computer for awhile, playing a game, doing the facebook thing, avoiding what I really needed to do.

What I really needed to do was spend some time with my journal. It's been a full week, and there's lots to process, but there was one specific thing on my mind that I needed to write out.

I finally quit avoiding and wrote it out, and as usual, when I've been avoiding something, the direction it ended up taking me was surprising.

I ended up back at unstable ground.

It's kind of been a theme for the last year and a bit.

It stems from a deeply personal moment in a field on another continent. A story that doesn't fit here just yet. A share over tea or in an email or phone call with a friend kind of story. A dreams coming alive sort of moment.

And it's repeated ever since, in the oddest of moments.

There is something about standing on unstable ground.

Literally and figuratively.

And learning to trust amidst the instability.

Being able to open my hands, or willing to kneel - to let myself fall to my knees.

To say, "even this on which I depend, I offer back to You and choose to trust You with."

I'm not very good at it. But I'm learning. Through repetition. And lots of falling and failing.

But maybe, sometimes, that's the best way to learn. And falling seems to come with the territory when you're dealing with unstable ground.

And so, even in this, I choose to trust.

Henri on writing

I'm sure I've probably posted these before at some point, but I love these thoughts from Henri Nouwen on the value of writing, and thought I'd share them again.

Writing to Save the Day

Writing can be a true spiritual discipline. Writing can help us to concentrate, to get in touch with the deeper stirrings of our hearts, to clarify our minds, to process confusing emotions, to reflect on our experiences, to give artistic expression to what we are living, and to store significant events in our memories. Writing can also be good for others who might read what we write.

Quite often a difficult, painful, or frustrating day can be "redeemed" by writing about it. By writing we can claim what we have lived and thus integrate it more fully into our journeys. Then writing can become lifesaving for us and sometimes for others too.

Writing, Opening a Deep Well

Writing is not just jotting down ideas. Often we say: "I don't know what to write. I have no thoughts worth writing down." But much good writing emerges from the process of writing itself. As we simply sit down in front of a sheet of paper and start to express in words what is on our minds or in our hearts, new ideas emerge, ideas that can surprise us and lead us to inner places we hardly knew were there.

One of the most satisfying aspects of writing is that it can open in us deep wells of hidden treasures that are beautiful for us as well as for others to see.

Making Our Lives Available to Others

One of the arguments we often use for not writing is this: "I have nothing original to say. Whatever I might say, someone else has already said it, and better than I will ever be able to." This, however, is not a good argument for not writing. Each human person is unique and original, and nobody has lived what we have lived. Furthermore, what we have lived, we have lived not just for ourselves but for others as well. Writing can be a very creative and invigorating way to make our lives available to ourselves and to others.

We have to trust that our stories deserve to be told. We may discover that the better we tell our stories the better we will want to live them.