Climbing Out of the Panoply

The humidity of Costa Rica isn’t subtle; it doesn’t creep upon you, doesn’t belly up to the bar beside you as you sit. It hits; it has fists that punch the moment one steps outside. It is as subtle as a stripper.  I walked out of the San Jose airport towing my bright orange backpack and was forced to stop a moment to collect my breath, the air thick with city and heat and sweat and noise. My prearranged taxi driver mumbled to me in broken English how to get to his beat-up Mitsubishi and I blindly followed.

20 minutes later my driver dropped me at the inner-city bus station, where I was to meet my charter out to the coast. He told me that the brightly-painted castle next to the station used to be a prison. It’s now a children’s museum. He said this like this shift was symbolic of the whole country. 

I ordered a lunch at the bus station mostly through pointing and nodding; it was carne and rice but I’ve no details apart from that. My Spanish was slow to come back to me after sitting dusty since high school. I felt dumb; I’m no good at staying mute. To use the restroom at the bus station cost 50 coloń, or about ten cents. The bored looking woman at the table took my coin and handed me a few small squares of single-ply. I was traveling alone and the floor of the bathroom was slick, and so I found myself squatting over a dirty toilet, wearing my 30lb backpack and trying not to laugh out loud while my thighs shook.

The bus wasn’t air conditioned. It was half-full and I took my pre-assigned seat by an open window, my sweaty back made hotter by the rough fabric of the seat. We climbed out of the panoply of the city without a word passing between any of us. The roads narrowed and traffic shifted without signs or signals. Buses blindly passed each other. Banana farms and endless jungle lined the two-lane road and everything was verdant and hummed of wings and lust and sweat and arrogant fertility. I didn’t know where I was and my heartbeat thumped loudly in my head.

I caught my first glimpse of a road sign three hours later, after I’d resigned myself to the possibility that I’d missed my stop and my future included being murdered in the jungle near Panama, and after my fellow travelers had departed and been replaced by new strangers, one carrying a live chicken. The lone road sign was bent and dirty and hard to see but provided the modicum of comfort that I needed. It was such a relief to know I wasn’t lost, I just wasn’t there yet. 

Intermodal

I’m back in the season of traveling for work, distilling my life to what can fit in my suitcase/the overhead bin or the under the seat in front of me. Everything is on wheels; everything is modal. Everything is reimbursable, as if it never actually happened. I wake in a room that looks essentially the same as the last and look out at a cityscape eerily similar to the one the week before. The skies and walls and floors and counters are unoffending shades of brown or gray. I drink a lot of bottled water. The water needs to be uniform and modal too. I speak in short, direct sentences with immigrants from countries I can’t spell about trivial things, like table placements or just how many cookies need to be displayed. I don’t get to laugh much. I long for depth, for familiarity, for home cooking, for sinks that aren’t sensor activated.  Then I get home and I’m simply tired. 

Most of the time, I like the travel. It’s harder now having a dog (all you moms out there just rolled your eyes, but it really is. The dog is my kid and I unhealthily project all of my hormonal neediness onto her) but I need the feeling of movement, of some little microburst of new beginning.  I sleep better on planes than I do in some beds, the newest issue of Vanity Fair cuddled against my chest, my head resting on the window shade covering Ohio or Nebraska or Colorado or Alberta 30,000 feet below. 

In the midst of my travel I got news that a person who was in my immediate family has cancer. The news always looks bad at the onset. With the prognosis flared the latent emotions that family brings. Pain. Guilt. Anger. Love. Fear. There the bests and the worsts crashing together, two cymbals resonating in that relational crescendo again and again and again, narrating that flip book of stills from 15+ years. 

I have another ridiculous month of movement before July brings the summer quiet. I will want the quiet then.

Hold These Truths

I can’t fully express how genuinely sad I am that Amendment One passed. I knew it would; it wasn’t a surprise and yet my heart aches and I can’t stop thinking about it.  I love Jesus. I don’t think that is a surprise to anyone who reads this. I love Jesus passionately and I like to believe this love translates over all the areas of my life, whether it is immediately evident or not (I’m looking at you, cursing problem). My relationship with Jesus is the most important personal relationship I have. 

And so it is physically painful to see the God I know to be unceasing in love and grace and mercy affixed to a battering ram of hate and judgment and condemnation. The truth gets high jacked and comes back a funhouse mirror version of itself. I think of all those who are turned away from the love that I so personally need and I want to weep. I wouldn’t want to know a God who acts like that. 

And so I speak these truths, to anyone who is listening:

•  You are so dearly loved, exactly where you are.
• You are beautifully and wonderfully made.  You were knit together in love and you matter.
• Mercy casts out judgment.
• Nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Not the past or the present, not the right or the left, not your orientation or your family, not your highest highs or your lowest lows, not popularity contests, not shame, not Facebook statuses, not Christians, not your best day or your worst night, not your secrets, not addictions, not failure; not fear. Nothing can separate you from the love of God.

Love.
Joy.
Peace.
Patience.
Kindness.
Goodness.
Gentleness.
 Faithfulness.
Self-control.

The writer of Galatians calls these the fruits of the Spirit. These are the traits of someone with in whom God resides, because they are the traits of God. Hold fast to this truth. Please.

I've written about this before here and here and probably elsewhere I just don't have time to look it up.

Be Thou My Vision

I woke with Ecclesiastes 3:11 in my head this morning.

“God makes everything beautiful in his time,” my brain hummed as I boiled the water for my coffee.
“God makes everything beautiful in his time,” my heart sang as I padded around in my bathrobe, my hair still wet from the shower.

“God makes everything beautiful in his time,” my heart hoped as I tied my shoes and grabbed the leash.

It's a big day in NC. The state is voting on Amendment One, a proposed addition to our Constitution that would give a very rigid definition of marriage and the benefits associated with it. Not to get too detailed, but the amendment would harm the medical and end of life rights of both straight and gay unmarried couples and their children, along with several other benefits we currently hold as self-evident. It's a shameful bit of legislation, and most polls show it passing.

And so it's a sad day too.

A clear sense of right and wrong is in the midst of the issue, but just as it is clear—obvious—it's clear—transparent. I'm learning that issues of right and wrong aren't what we see, they are what we see through, saying as much about us as they do about the topic at hand. They are lenses. Lenses change our vision. Lenses can bring clarity or they can make us blind. It's our choice.

“Without vision, the people perish,” Proverbs 29:18 says.

And so I pray to keep my vision. I keep looking, lift my eyes to the hills with the confident expectation that my own lenses will change, but that my vision will remain.

Today, I believe my vote is right. Right in the context of history, right in the context of scripture, right in the context of who I know God to be, right for the people of North Carolina.

And I believe, no matter the outcome, that all things will be made beautiful in God's time. 

Unfriending

A Facebook 'friend' (I always use that term loosely, for I have several people on Facebook that I've only met once or twice in real life) posted this article the other day, and since then I haven't stopped thinking about it.

Female Friendship: Ack, My Friend Dumped Me

It's about being dumped by a friend, something I think most people have experienced at least once in their life. I know I've been dumped before, and I've done the dumping. 

I don't suppose it's ever easy, fun or clear cut. I don't think I've had a friendship break up over a specific fight, or one that ended with a conversation about why it should end. It's been the quiet distancing that does it. The unreturned calls or emails, the invitations that go unanswered, the life that gets in the way of a friendship. Resentments that start as itches and become deep wounds. 

And sometimes I wish there was an exit interview for friendships, a way to find out what I did wrong so I won't do it again, or I can work to repair it. But there never is an exit interview, is there? Things just end. 

In the age of social media, we have the 'unfriending' process, as if disconnecting with someone online is the same as it happening in real life, like those bonds don't still continue even if we no longer care to acknowledge them. What a strange idea, to unfriend. It makes the process of disconnection sound so clear cut. It rarely is.