Diving Board

I lost my job this morning.
I wasn't expecting it consciously, though I think somewhere in my mind I suspected a change was coming.

I was a novice grant writer, hired to find funds based only on my gumption, my charisma and my writing skills. I successfully got grants but they need someone with more experience and I simply can't provide that. If it were a bigger office and I could be mentored, this wouldn't be a conversation, but unfortunately, they are small. I don't blame them for the termination; I'd do the same thing. I'll miss them all terribly. I love—and I mean LOVE—my coworkers. I love my bosses, love the board, love the members. My office was a truly fun place to work; they are friends and they matter to me. I haven't a single bad thing to say about them, and I'm assured that feeling is mutual. I leave with great recommendations and the knowledge that I'd be an enthusiastic rehire if they could find a place for me. All of that is good.

Here's a secret: when people ask me what my dream job is, the answer has always been a writer, but I've felt like it was insensible to say so. I love to write; I love words. I love forming thoughts and arguments onto paper. Writing breathes life into me and I want to believe it does the same for my readers. I don't know if it is my gift, but given the choice I'd like it to be.
And so, I finally admit it: what I want to be when I grow up isn't a grants manager for a conservation nonprofit (though that was great), it's to be a writer. A real one. A published one. But what to write? I haven't a clue. I want to speak truth. In a quiet way, I am relieved to be let go.

Maybe this is it, the kick off the diving board toward doing what I so dearly love to do. I'm terrified. Right now the lake looks cold, I'm unsure of my swimming skills and that water's surface is coming fast.

Bird in a Storm

It's a rainy Saturday, which means any motivation that would normally come to the surface is staying underground. It's good to have a rainy September 11th. The weather distances itself from the gorgeous sunniness of that day nine years ago.

The rain has been steady all morning, and I looked out the window to see half a dozen robins hopping around the front yard. It gave me pause; I'm not used to seeing birds voluntarily getting soaked like that. At first it was odd, but then I realized why. When there is a steady rain, the water seeps into the ground and floods the tunnels that worms live in, causing them to come to the surface for air (which is why you see so many worms on the surface after rainstorms). Robins, being worm eaters, have prime opportunity to find easy food before their long flights to warmer climes.

I don't know why it struck me today as so beautiful--that sense of provision, of God being in the rain, of delicate and specific care—I don't think it has to do with the date. Maybe it does.
But in that moment I said a little prayer to ask that I learn to see the worms in the rainstorms.

May the Mind

May the mind of Christ, my Savior,
Live in me from day to day,
By His love and power controlling
All I do and say.

Natalie’s memorial service was lovely. Michelle and Dave did a great job organizing it, and, in deference to Natalie’s ever-present faith, the service was God-filled. No one there was surprised that it was a service about her faith. The second song sung was a hymn I didn’t know, but its words captured so well the life and prayer of such a dear woman.

May the Word of God dwell richly
In my heart from hour to hour,
So that all may see I triumph
Only through His power.

The words spoken about her were true and imperfect, stories of cancer and remission and cancer again. There had to be 300 people there on a mild and bright Saturday afternoon. I sat between Erin and Megan, two friends who have loved me wisely and well throughout the years. I know Erin because of Natalie; I was so thankful for their hands and hearts. We all needed to touch each other, to keep moored. Grief was pounding.

May the peace of God my Father
Rule my life in everything,
That I may be calm to comfort
Sick and sorrowing.

I was the last to speak. I didn’t know what I wanted to say except that she taught me irrational and unconditional love, that she was my hero and mentor, and that I am who I am because of what she gave. Her investment in me is my daily breath. I don’t remember what I said. I hope that my thoughts came out. Words can't capture the biggest gratitudes.

May the love of Jesus fill me
As the waters fill the sea;
Him exalting, self abasing,
This is victory.

I cried. Lord did I cry. I haven’t stopped crying. I have no strength or energy to care about much else. I want so badly to be a good representation of who she was, to honor her, but thinking of her is suffocating. I am bone tired from carrying weight. She would tell me that I was loved far beyond her own capacity to love, and that that love endures. Her steadfast reminders I will miss.

May His beauty rest upon me,
As I seek the lost to win,
And may they forget the channel,
Seeing only Him.

Own Tales to Tell

I've had the same email address since 1998, and have saved a file of the email correspondence I shared with Natalie over these 12 years. I started going through them today.

This is an email Natalie sent me in January, 2001. We had gone out for her birthday the night before, and I had sent her an email essentially telling her I was lying about who I was: I was pretending to be the same person I was in high school when I was home but in college I wasn’t like that at all. I was afraid to tell her, because I thought she’d reject me, or tell me I’d let her down, or judge me. Instead, this is the email I got.

Sarah,

As I said earlier, your friendship is a privilege and I am so grateful that you trusted me enough to send that e-mail. You were right, it didn't shock me...I've sensed a lot of what you said but it doesn't change how I feel about you. There are some advantages to "old age", one being that I REALLY know that we are people in process and sometimes the process ain't pretty. I have my own tales to tell--truly. And I trust you enough to share them with you sometime. From where I stand today I am at peace with the knowledge that nothing I've done has shocked God or made Him stop loving or forgiving me, ever. As for you, what matters to me is that you know I love you and will always be here for you. Much of what you are thinking, feeling, living is SO normal for folks your age--Christian or not. Believe me, I was part of the Christian college environment but I think our stories would parallel one another.

You and I have so much in common despite our places in time...I lived for many years trying to reconcile my emotional needs with how I wanted but was unable to live consistently. I don't wish the pain and isolation I experienced on anyone yet God has redeemed those years as only He can. That is just one of my stories.

We deceive ourselves in thinking that we are closer to God than we really are...it is He who stays close to us. You are His child and always will be--with or without your anger, questions and self-doubt.

I treasure your friendship Sarah...I don't know why I've been so blessed but I will never take this gift for granted. Anyone who crosses paths with you is privileged. It is such a joy for me to be part of your life, your adventures, your heartaches...whatever.

I really hope that picture we took at the restaurant turns out well...last night will remain amidst my very special memories.

I'll talk to you soon,
love always,
Nat

There Came A Whisper

Friday night I retreated to my own mountain with three friends. We got to the summit of Max Patch just as the sun was setting and we sat in the grass and watched as the sunset took on the hues that only come from done days. It was quiet.
As the light faded we lay on our backs; the stars appeared when they were ready.

The mountain breeze blew sweetly across the summit and we bundled together in the elevated chill. I felt God on my face.

There is a lovely passage in 1 Kings where Elijah is running from the law; he’s a hunted man and it seems everyone wants to kill him. He flees, hides in a cave in a mountain and gives up on life, asking God to kill him and put him out of his misery. God seems to ignore him and says, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by."
So Elijah does. He’s not doing anything else except waiting to die. A great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart around him and shattered rocks. But, it says, the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind came an earthquake; the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake there came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire there came a gentle whisper.

That was God.

I’ve joked previously that sometimes when I pray I feel like I’m talking to God while he’s snacking, and he doesn’t hear certain things because maybe he’s eating loud Fritos or something.

But in this season where grief is surrounding me, I thirst so mightily for that whisper. There is this closeness, an intimacy and a little bit of secrecy to a whisper—it is a conversation between me and God, for no one else but us. He is the breeze that kisses my face. I feel in those moments that I am heard, I am loved, and I am held.

Fitting

I went to church by myself yesterday.
I am enjoying my new church; it is a strange feeling as I can’t remember a time when I liked church as much as I am right now.
But it was the holiday, and I was there alone. I don’t think I’ve ever gone to church on Easter alone before; in college my church was full of friends and in the years since I’ve either not attended church on Easter or I’ve gone with friends. This was a first.

As I was getting ready to go, my roommate came home. She’d just met her boyfriend’s parents and she walked in with tears in her eyes. My immediate response was to find out who I needed to kill/shun/threaten. She smiled and said, “No one. I just really, really miss my family today.”

I realized that I did too.

It was with this thought that I went to church and took a pew toward the back. Two pews in front of me sat a family: a daughter about my age and her parents. Half-way through the service she smiled at her father and put her arm around her mother to hold his shoulder. He smiled and did the same and they sat there, the three of them together, arms holding each other into this family. It was sincere and shockingly intimate. I couldn’t stop looking at them and could feel this sadness simmering inside me, bringing tears to my eyes. I snuck a photo of them because I knew I’d want to write about it later.

Easter is about redemption, about defeat over darkness, about good news fulfilled. In the midst of a suffocating sense of loss there came hope and life, in the midst of seeming abandonment lay love never before seen. It is fitting it is celebrated in spring; life lives again personified.

I left church with the intense belief that I am loved beyond reason but the sincere desire to share in it with someone. I went home to an empty house, sat on my deck and spent my day in virtual silence, save for the birds. I could hear life as it kept on living.

Laughing

I woke up with this Regina Spektor song in my head. It is one of those songs that is convicting without browbeating. I've been thinking a lot lately about my personal relationship with God--exactly what that looks like, how it manifests itself in my interpersonal relationships--how it changes and what I really do want from it.
I don't know.

Of Light and Color

Last year I changed my religious views on Facebook to say “kaleidoscopic”. I’ve only been asked about this twice and thought I’d explain it, because as I’ve let it sit and simmer, it’s made more sense.

Sir David Brewster, the inventor of the kaleidoscope, called it “the observer of beautiful forms”. The word kaleidoscope comes from the Greek kalos, meaning “beautiful” and eidos, meaning “shapes”. A kaleidoscope is made up of three essential parts: a tube, a few mirrors and small colored beads or objects.

These three things, when left alone, aren’t much. And put together they aren’t much, until light is presented. Then the whole becomes beautiful.

I think of my heart, in terms of spiritual/relational views, like this. God is my light. Without him, the pieces are boring, lifeless and useless. Love is the mirrors. The mirrors turn an arbitrary and banal strewing of pieces into a beautifully symmetric wonderment. They turn what is a mess into loving art. No matter how those pieces fall and swirl and change, those mirrors keep them beautiful, that light keeps it worth anything. It is only when I see my life with the mirrors of love and an eye toward God that I see beauty in my pieces. I don’t see my changes and falls as setbacks but as changes in my understanding of God, of light. I am my pieces, but with God I am new every morning, every moment.

Those patterns of light and color take me to a place of reverence. I think of stained glass and church walls; seeing the falling of dust through the cascade of colors that stream through the windows. When I had the opportunity to sit in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, I was blown away how that place rendered my heart. The north window contains a rosette that is as if one is looking at the world through a kaleidoscope. It was then I knew.

(I do not own the above image)

Holy Day

Easters have gotten less important with time, like birthdays. It has little to do with baskets full of shredded green plastic grass or cheap chocolate molded into fertility demigods; it is the meaning that has faded, not just the trinkets. I haven’t had an Easter basket since I was 10 or 12. Maybe younger. My childhood was spent with more browbeating about meanings than presents and it stuck. Every Christmas and Easter I go through this mental obstacle course, trying to remember to focus on the meanings of the holidays rather than the accoutrement that dress them. And every holiday I fail. I forget, or I remember but feel nothing. I tend to want to spend those days alone; cloister myself into meaning. To be completely honest, I get more emotional about Independence Day than I do about Easter. The brilliant bursts of light in the sky, the hand over the heart, singing Francis Scott Key: this is a holy day to me. This I understand. There is life and bright color and hope and joy.
As my faith has faded to more muted tones so has my guilt about my lack of holy on holidays. I appreciate the day, I get why it is important. I just don’t feel anything about it but a vague sense of gratitude and an even fainter sense of loss.

Every Morning

“See the Beauty, Not the Blemish.”

Two years ago I lived in a basement apartment with two girls with whom I had absolutely nothing in common except that we were picked for the year-long internship at WG. We learned to love each other and love each other well, something I don't think I really knew until it was over. We had this tear-away calendar in our kitchen that gave little nuggets of “wisdom” or fuzzy sorts of thoughts for the day and most of the time I mocked it. But one day this sentence came up and it struck me as so constantly applicable that I saved it and taped it to our bathroom mirror.

Two years and a few moves later it is still on my bathroom mirror.

And I still need to be reminded about it.

My faith has faded from relevancy as of late, the way that friendships do when they are based more on proximity than personality. I don't have a specific reason why, it has slowly and seamlessly occurred. It isn't that I love less or more, rather it is that my faith simply ceased to be the main defining characteristic in my view of myself. However I have held fast to the promise of a single phrase from Lamentations: “They are new every morning.”

I love that. Hopes are new every morning; truths are as well. With waking comes newness. Each morning, as I stare at my puffy eyes and gawdawful bedhead I am reminded to see that beauty as new that day, rather than see the blemishes of the nevers, the maybes and the not quites. I am reminded that I am new.

And that is something for which I thank God.

Expectation

I'm always stuck when I come up disappointed and short, when I let the volatile mixture of imagination and expectation plan out events whose simple existence is a stretch. And so I beg. I plead, I haggle, I bargain to try to get what I want, when I want, how I want, in my terms, to satisfy that expectation that really is just an outlet of my deep seeded fears. I treat God like he runs a marketplace and I'm both a petulant child and a savvy businesswoman. I'm needing to curb the loftiness of my expectations. Cling to hope and not live each day in a perpetual letdown. Because it has been a constant tripping over letdowns these past few months and I can't handle it. I need to lower my expectations to something realistic instead of the stratosphere fiction sells as fact and I believe.

Dis is Me

I'm thinking about disparity. That's it, that's the whole blog. Catch that pearl while it falls from my lips, kids. I write insight in fortune cookie sizes now. Ok, sarcasm aside. I remember years ago coming to the realization that there is vast difference between believing in one's ability to do things and the belief in who one is at their core. That it is possible to have great faith in what I can do, but very little value in who I am. Does that distinction make sense? I don't think I struggle with this today to the severity I have in previous years, but it is still a disparity I wish I didn't have. I'm frankly amazed how many women are afflicted with this—the ability to be extremely successful and seemingly brave and yet so fragile and frightened, with an insatiable need for affirmation or attention to give value to who they are. Some people put their whole worth into what they do and yet some do so much but don't realize they have value to place (and then there are the hypothetical healthy ones, who place worth in who they are and what they do is simply a reflection of a worth rooted elsewhere. We call these people “liars”). I think this whole month and a half job search thing has me doubting my ability to do anything; I don't know what I would do if I could do anything, how can I even have an inkling now? Any idea I have is vague and amorphous, a world seen without definition or reason. Without confidence in what I can do my worth bounces like it's in its own game of Breakout: from Christ, to friendships, to future, to faith, to crisis. I was tired of bouncing two weeks ago. But with each bounce the disparity between what is concrete and what is sand becomes clearer and for that I am thankful.

Not a Mite Would I Withhold

So I got robbed last night. That's fun.

My little car was broken into through a cracked window while it was parked on Coxe Ave while I was at Quizzo. Took my 60G video iPod, my portable CD player, a $20 cigar and about $80 in spare change that I kept in a piggy bank for parking meters—all in all a little less than $500 (interestingly enough left my $120 Petzel climbing harness and my $400 Moonstone jacket as well as my bible, my EZ Pass and my “Lookin' Good For Jesus Lip Balm.” apparently not outdoorsy or into the Jesus...or drive the Thruway much). It's probably the last thing in the world I needed right now. I feel like I'm barely holding on anyway, this just made it a bit harder, like someone stepping on my fingers while I'm dangling from the ledge. That iPod has been my best friend since the day I got it (anyone who worked with me at Windy Gap knows this—it's the only reason I kept my sanity all those hours working alone) and now it sort of feels like my situation is being mocked—a “if you think that was bad, wait for THIS,” game the heavens seem to be playing these past few months. My heart and my confidence are completely shot. There is a lesson in all of this; something I am supposed to come to know. I truly believe God loves me and wants the best for me—deeply I believe this. It aches how much I believe this, even as nothing in my present situation testifies so. It is in my core that this is a Truth. There are blessings in store for me because I am loved. I have to keep telling myself that over and over, keep telling myself He will be faithful to supply all of my needs when my needs keep getting bigger by the day, get more complex and personal, get more savage and carnal. If ever there was a time for God's loving blessing to be poured it would be now. I'm ready to leave all this wreckage behind me.

“How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and everyday have sorrow in my heart?....
Look on me and answer, O Lord my God.
Give light to my eyes or I will sleep in death...
But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation,
I will sing to the Lord
for he has been good to me.” --Psalm 13

(the title of this post is taken from the hymn “Take My Life and Let it Be”...the line is 'take my silver and my gold/not a mite would I withhold/take my intellect and use/every power as you choose.' Ouch.)

The Things the Mean the Most Not to Mean the Things I Miss

There are times when the hand of God rests so vividly on me that I feel myself lead as if in a dance. And then there are moments when I cry out to feel a touch and silence shouts back. My love does not diminish; unfortunately my understanding does. Strange how confusion and anger bely my simple need to feel led.

Current Listens: “Girl in the War”--Josh Ritter. Great acoustic song--impressed with this guy on a regular basis. “A Sentence of Sorts in Kongsvinger”--Of Montreal (“I spent the winter on the verge of a total breakdown while living in Norway...”). “The Brotherhood of Man”--Innocence Mission. And, randomly, two 1994 albums: Indigo Girls' “Swamp Ophiela” and REM's “Monster” album. I still don't know what the frequency is, Kenneth.

The Beauty of Matter

I just pulled up to the grocery store on Friday afternoon when NPR did a little report on the death of Madeline L'Engle, most notably the author of A Wrinkle in Time. I did my shopping, got back in my car and cried a little bit. I confess I never read Wrinkle, but what I have read, and read yearly, is Glimpses of Grace, a daily devotional composed of L'Engle's writings, and through it she became very dear to me. I'm taking this tiny bit of virtual real estate and letting it be a memorial for such a prolific and passionate writer. Some of my favorite quotes:

“It is an extraordinary and beautiful thing that God, in creation, uses precisely the same tools and rules as the artist; he works with the beauty of matter; the reality of things; the discoveries of the senses, all five of them; so that we, in turn, may hear the grass growing; see a face springing to life in love and laughter; feel another human hand or the velvet of a puppy's ear; taste food prepared and offered in love; smell—oh, so many things: food, sewers, each other, flowers, books new-mown grass, dirt...
Here, in the offerings of creation, the oblations of story and song, are our glimpses of truth.”

“If we look at the makeup of the word disaster, dis-aster, we see dis, which means separation, and aster, which means star. So dis-aster is separation from the stars. Such separation is disaster indeed. When we are separated from the stars, the sea, each other, we are in danger of being separated from God...The house of God is not a safe place. It is a cross where time and eternity meet, and where we are—or should be—challenged to live more vulnerably, more interdependently. Where, even with light streaming in rainbow colours through the windows, we can listen to the stars.”

“When we deny our wholeness, when we repress part of ourselves, when we are afraid of our own darkness, then the dark turns against us, turns on us, becomes evil. Just as the intellect when it is not informed by the heart becomes vicious, so the intuition, the subconscious, when it is forcibly held below the surface, becomes wild, and until we look at it and call it by name, our own name, it can devour us.”

“We were bought with a price, and what has cost God so much cannot be cheap for us.”

“In a world where we're brainwashed by the media into thinking that life should be easy and painless and reasonable, it is not easy or painless or reasonable to be a Christian—that is, to be one who actually dares to believe that the power that created all the galaxies, all the stars in their courses, limited that power to the powerlessness of an ordinary human baby.
That's not reasonable.
It is equally unreasonable to believe that this ordinary baby grew into a man who was totally human and simultaneously totally divine. Who was, as the Athanasian Creed affirms, totally incomprehensible.”

“I wouldn't mind if to be a Christian were accepted as being the dangerous thing which it is; I wouldn't mind if, when a group of Christians meet for bread and wine, we might well be interrupted and jailed for subversive activities; I wouldn't mind if, once again, we were being thrown to the lions. I do mind, desperately, that the world “Christian” means for so many people smugness, and piosity, and holier-than-thouness. Who, today, can recognize a Christian because of “how those Christians love one another”?”

“Oh I am in awe of the maker of galaxies and geese, stars and starfish, mercury and men (male and female). Sometimes it is rapturous awe; sometimes it is the numinous dread Jacob felt. Sometimes it is the humble awe of knowing that ultimately I belong to God, to the Maker whose thumb print is on each one of us. And that is blessing.”

“The glorious message of Scripture is that we do not have to be perfect for our Maker to love us. All through the great stories, heavenly love is lavished on visibly imperfect people. Scripture asks us to look at Jacob as he really is, to look at ourselves as we really are, and then realize that this is who God loves.”

“Cardinal Suhard says, “To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda, nor even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery. It means to live in such a way that one's life would not make sense if God did not exist.”

“And then there is a time in which to be, simply to be, that time in which God quietly tells us who we are and who he wants us to be. It is then that God can take our emptiness and fill it up with what he wants, and drain away the business with which we inevitably get involved in the dailiness of human living.”

“It is a good thing to have all the props pulled out from under us occasionally. It gives us some sense of what is rock under our feet and what is sand. It stops us from taking anything for granted.”

Hands down the best devotional I've ever done. I love to learn though living and not scripture alone. L'Engle had a deep, intimate, profoundly personal and real relationship with God; I hope the same for myself.

Sweetness

I feel like there is a lot going on that I don't feel like blogging about, and thus my blog scuttles around talking about everything else. It's keeping itself busy, much the same as me. My biggest prayer recently has been for wisdom--not the kind to spread pearls to others, but the wisdom to know the right choices to make and the guts to do them. The wisdom to know trust and worth in Christ, no matter the circumstances. That's been the biggest thing this summer: living in that assurance and experiencing the peace there. Hard to explain but it is sweet. Life is sweet, isn't it? No matter what is going on or how hard it can be, there really is a sweetness to it all. I don't know what is up with all the life metaphors lately and for that I apologize, but there is much to pick through and the skills to do it are being developed on the fly.

Work in Progress

This afternoon I checked my email to find I had a new myspace comment from an old friend from college. He'd posted it at close to 3am, so I'm assuming (hoping?) he was drunk when he wrote it. The jist of the comment was, "Christian!? Not when you..." and it went on to list, in salacious detail, some of those things in my life that I am least proud of.
Things that also occurred, oh, 8 years ago.
I'm reeling, honestly. I kind of want to cry. I can't believe how much that has stung.
This is someone who I was close to the first two years of college, then we grew apart as our habits and circles of friends changed. We are myspace friends by approximation; it's not as if we've communicated in any detail in the past 6 years so this comment was not only unsolicited, it was out of left field.
I can't figure out where his anger comes from, to leave a comment like that. I don't know why my statement of Christianity was so offensive to him, he's normally a pretty chill guy. It's not like my myspace page has a large picture of Blond Swedish Jesus on it, with my hobbies being "the stations of the cross" and "judging sinners". It simply says, at the bottom, "Religion: Christian-other". Doesn't sound too holier-than-thou to me, Church Lady.

Here is the thing: I know what I've done; I don't have to be reminded. I haven't forgotten, and frankly I don't hide it or gloss over it, as most who've met me in the years since can attest. I am disconnected from it, however, because it was long ago and I've been changed out of that. I am different; that is not who I am. I am not the worst of me, just as I am not my greatest successes. This knowledge has cemented me today.

Needless to say I immediately deleted his comment; my little sister checks my page and that isn't something for anyone to read. I sent him a response that simply said, "What can I say? People change. Especially after 8 years have passed." Part of me wants to see healing in that friendship, as some is obviously needed but part of me says to leave it be. Some people cannot let others be anyone but who they were at a specific point in time.

After all this I did add something to my page:
"It is by the grace of God that I am a work in progress and my mistakes don't define me. Simple as that."

I have never been more thankful that such a statement is true.