Fuel for the Climb

I am focusing on these nuggets of good small things while I am trying to keep the little internal engine burning.

Being on vacation sure gives me a lot more time to write, and of course, doing fun stuff helps to have things to write about.  While I wouldn’t call having my stitches  out fun exactly, it was a relief and a milestone towards complete healing.

I have found a wonderful prayer website that is the home of Northumbria Abbey and also a good twitter feed called TheUrbanAbbey which does celtic worship via twitter. I really love it. Follow them!

Last night I watched an old movie on TCM called Manahattan Melodrama with Clark Gable, which turned out to be the movie John Dillinger saw just before he was finally stopped/killed. So tonight when I went to see Public Enemies about John Dillinger and they featured scenes from the movie it made it all the more poignant. I thought the performances by Johnny Depp and Marianne Cotilliard were fantastic. Dillinger was definitely a criminal, but in many ways a simple, honorable man. Hard not to like him.

Today I also saw Fever Pitch on On Demand about Drew Barrymore falling for a fanatical Boston Red Sox fan. It sure made me miss Boston and my friend Danielle. Of course the Red Sox could be doing a little better right now, but Papelbon is still holding strong.

Mom also made her famous fried chicken tonight, a rare indulgence. Tomorrow we are going to the races at Colonial Downs. She reserved us an umbrella table in something called the blast zone where after the races there will be a big fireworks display. I am really looking forward to a day of horseracing. It’s thrilling, exciting and a game at the same time.

Then there is the harder stuff. This is the stuff that can make the climb up the tracks a little harder for the little engine that could.

First off, my daughter is back in the hospital as of Tuesday. She is having a very difficult pregnancy and  had been on home bedrest for weeks. Now they are saying that she may have to stay in the hospital until the baby is born. She is not due until late September/Early October but no one is talking like she will make it to full term. They are talking like she is almost sure to deliver prematurely. So I think maybe I should go do some preemie shopping. Maybe that will make me feel better. I don’t know what else to do, I feel so helpless. This is another talking to God a lot thing. I trust him so that helps.

Then there is the getting over the break up thing. Day by day I am feeling more at peace with Josh’s decision. Though I initially reacted with grief, anger, feelings of immense loss and even bargaining…I’ve come to see things more clearly. As my emotions have cooled and the shock has worn off, calm has come over me. I have weighed the actions he took to break communications very seriously. I have never done that to someone, feeling it to be cruel. It is probably that which was the most personally hurtful thing he could have done to me. It denies my voice, my existence, our past, it erases me. In his defence, when he is in pain, he retreats and withdraws, so it makes sense that the last thing he would want to do is communicate.

But it also requires me to do the same. To deny his voice, his existence, our past and erase him. Because it is at his request that I not contact him, I am unable to offer the hand of friendship even when enough time had passed. Since he has also  chosen to break all communication with me, I must assume, his desire for that future friendship will also never come. So the absolute permanence of never seeing him again, never speaking to him again, never even corresponding with him again has to somehow become something I accept as a matter of course. This has been the most difficult aspect of the last 4 days. But I am actually doing ok. A lot better than I thought I would. I’ve always been very independent so it doesn’t surprise me that I am snapping back somewhat. I did my best, I loved my all and that was all I could do.

I expect that it will take some time, but I am strong, I am durable and though I accept there will never again be anything between us, I still love him and will honor his request. What else can I do? You can’t make someone love you if they don’t…

So, as difficult as it may be, I just can’t worry about him anymore. I have my own life to live and he has chosen not to be a part of it.

As Scarlett O’ Hara famously said and I have quoted before:

“After all, tomorrow is another day.”

As for the little engine that could, well…tomorrow the races, the fireworks and who knows what the 4th of July will hold?! But small or large, it will see me through. God will be with me and that will be enough to make up the difference.

Acceptance and moving on

It’s only two more days until the stitches come out of my mouth. Yay! I have been on antibiotics since the 25th so I have spent most of my time resting and fighting off the infection from the abscess. I am finally starting to feel better and am not having to take so much pain medication. The last week has been a bit blurry what with fever and pain meds but I have woken up long enough to walk Tucker a few times, have a few swims, go to church and watch some movies while bundled up on the couch. Mom has been taking good care of me. Tucker has been spoiled rotten too, getting lots of attention from my nephew and my mom.

I am still in Richmond and plan on coming home to Roanoke on Sunday in time for the Gathering. I get to read the prayers and chalice. My nephew is also going to camp near Roanoke so I will drop him off before church.

My last full discernment meeting is on the 13th, I get to lead Children’s Church on the 12th and I have a lot to do in the next few weeks before school starts for the fall.

I am feeling a lot better about the end of my relationship with Josh. While he is always welcome to contact me in the future and I hope we can regain a friendship one day, I can no longer contact him. He is the past. I must face forward. There is much in my life to look forward to. I have been working toward my senior year for so long and I plan to enjoy every minute of it. I have dreamed of a commencement ceremony since I was a teenager and it is finally within my grasp. There are trips to take to visit seminaries, holidays to celebrate, a visit to Tampa when my grandchild is born… and so much to learn. I am going to find a new place to live and get a part time job.

While Josh never agreed with me about this point, I do believe everything happens for a reason.  I learned many lessons from our relationship and its demise. I was not his, he was not mine. I only wish I could have chosen a better way to say goodbye, that my last memory of his face would be a friendly or loving one, not a sad or cold one. But it was not in the cards, so I will just remember the good times, and let bygones be bygones.

I think I’ll even have time to get back into fencing this semester since I have passed the baton of the SRLA presidency on to a younger student. I have many friends at Hollins and I know I will make even more this year. The world abounds with opportunity. The key to true happiness is to accept your pain and grief, to feel it as badly as it hurts, and then to let it go. Accept what you cannot change and put it out of your mind. Only then can you see the new possibilities that lie before you. God never closes one door without opening a window…

Around here the hot topic is what to do for the 4th of July. We could go the concert on the Mall, which would be really cool, in DC. Or we could could find something smaller. King’s Dominion, Colonial Downs or maybe something more local on the James River.Whatever we do, it is sure to be memorable. There is nothing better than sharing special moments with those you love and who love you.

I am lucky, I have many people I love and who love me. God not least among the them.
I am grateful that I am His, and He is mine.
That is what truly matters.

Miserable but surviving

The last thing I want to do is update my blog. Or write, or talk. But it is the best thing I can do right now. There has been too much silence in my life for the past two months. Two many swallowed words and long silences. But all that is over now. There are many wonderful things in life. God has made the world a beautiful place. But there is also heart break and sorrow. Grief and loss. No matter how hard we try to protect ourselves, we will get hurt. It is the nature of loving and being loved. I am typing this and sounding all philosophical about it, but truthfully it doesn’t touch my actual feelings. For years and years I have struggled with the right amount of vulnerability to expose when initiating a romantic relationship. I have always chosen to err on the side of caution to avoid the catastrophic pain that comes when you lose someone you have loved completely. In my experience loss is inevitable. Whether it is through betrayal, loss of interest, a realization that you are incompatible, death or some other reason, loss happens. But as I have gotten older I have seen this caution as cowardice. This unwillingness to take the risk, a kind of immaturity.

So the last two people I have dated I have not held back. In the first case, after a pretty short courtship, things ended primarily because of my serious religious convictions. He didn’t hold it against me, he just found it hard to think of me as a woman once he thought of me as a possible priest.

Of course, most recently I had been dating Josh. I fell deeply in love with him. I held nothing back. We had a wonderful 9 and a half months together, but as things started to get more serious, Josh tells me he realized that he was not a person who would ever want to stay in a committed long term relationship…i.e. a domestic partnership or marriage one day. This is not something he knew at the beginning of our relationship since he had a different opinion at that time. He also considers himself a high introvert and is comfortable going for longer periods of time without seeing me than I am. While we hadn’t really had any serious conflicts yet, there was no doubt in his mind that in the future we would. After all, eventually I would leave the Roanoke area and a choice would have to be made. After a week of deliberation during which he kept communication to a minimum, Josh decided that his choice would be to stay on his own. He felt it would be better to go ahead and cut off things now, rather than continue something that would only end later anyway. Since I refused to break up with him and disagreed with his conclusions that we couldn’t compromise or work things out, he took my opinion out of the equation.

He sent me an email explaining his decision and that was that. I spoke to him on the phone after and we agreed to remain friends. I prefer to maintain friendship where possible. Now I have a big Josh sized hole in my life. What is worse is that I had met his family, I grew to love them. Especially his mother. I imagined a future with him. I began to adapt my life with him as a part of it. He influenced me, and changed me. I learned things from him and seeing the world through his eyes. He became one of the most important people in my life. Now, abrubtly, he is gone. As if he had suddenly died.

I also had some major dental work done yesterday and so am sitting here with stiches in my mouth in a lot of pain. So I am hurt in two ways: physical and emotional. Yuck.

So here is what I am going to do. Pray. A lot. One of the things that presented the greatest challenge in my relationship with Josh was his lack of belief in a personal God. In many ways it was a potential deal breaker for me in our relationship anyway, because how could he ever really understand me as a person if he himself had no personal relationship with God? He also wouldn’t go to my hometown. No one who loved me could ever really understand me without seeing my hometown and understanding it.

Facing things like this alone also isn’t that different from when we were together, we never achieved the kind of union in our relationship that allowed us to instinctively reach out to each other for support. I doubt that Josh has ever had that in a relationship so he probably doesn’t know that it exists, but having had that in most of my previous relationships, I noticed the lack.

I will find a job working in the evenings hopefully, find a new apartment because the one I have now is unbearable. It reeks of cigarette smoke from the neighbors no matter how much air freshener I use. It’s senior year, I’m staying at Hollins and I have a thesis to write. It will be about communion. I got great grades last semester despite being sick so many times. I have to save for a class ring. I have my God, my church, my dog and my family. I am going to be a grandmother soon and hope to get to go see my new grandchild after he (supposedly according to ultrasound) is born in late September/Early October.

Like the friends I still love but can no longer share my life with, Josh will take his place amongst those I lost in my past. No longer allowed access to my life, no longer allowed access to me except through the occasional phone call or visit.

I will grieve, because that is what you do when you lose someone you love. Life will go on. I will go on.

My daughter is also having a difficult pregnancy so I am worried about her. My prayers are with her and I hope that she will make it to full term. The doctor’s think it is unlikely but every week that she makes it, is a victory.

I am having a brief vacation with my mother in Richmond. I plan on buying my commencement robe next week. My thesis proposals are in development and I am enjoying the primary benefit of summer: reading as much as I want. I’m also splurging on movies and catching up on shows I had Tivo’d. The best part of Richmond so far has been getting to go swimming everyday and visiting a gourmet cupcake bakery called TooSweet. Since I want to open my own bakery when I retire, I love to try new ones. Cupcake bakeries are a special treat since I have a weakness for them.

The cupcakes at TooSweet are the perfect ratio of cake to frosting and they aren’t too sweet, which is ironic considering the name of the place. I tried the VANILLA CHOCOLATE: sweet vanilla cake with a milk chocolate cream center, topped with milk chocolate fudge icing and chocolate sprinkles

Yummy.

I have 3 other cupcakes of various flavors waiting in a box to sample. I hope to cut them up and share them with my mom and nephew.

During my last visit to Greensboro to see Josh, I got a cupcake from a place called Maxie B’s, I just had a plain yellow cupcake with buttercream frosting with a rolled fondant flower. It was dissapointing, the cake was light and too sugary, with too little cake and too much frosting.

I am still in a place of unreality regarding my break up. I just find it so hard to believe that a person who expressed such devotion and love could so easily walk away from all we talked about. How all of those moments we shared are suddenly made false and meaningless.
I know the rawness of the agony will fade in time. That the betrayal of my trust and faith will eventually lead to indifference instead of this horrible despair. I just have to take it one day at a time and let go of every feeling I have for him. Let go of every hope, every thought that arises. He is my past and that is all he will ever be. The sooner I believe that, the sooner this pain will end.

And just for the record and completely off topic, enough with Michael Jackson dying coverage already, can we go back to covering Iran? I am much more interested in what is happening there.

My current summer movie picks: Up! ( I really need to have the stuffed talking Dog from that movie, his name is Dug)

The Hangover: it’s the funniest movie I’ve seen in a long, long time

The Proposal: Very cute and sweet. I love Sandra Bullock

Avoid: Year One

Movies I am most looking forward to: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince and Twilight New Moon

That’s all from the trenches today. Wish me luck on the road to recovery.

A little spiritual reflection

It’s a strange feeling, flying blind. After the last three years of relentless pushing from the almost ceaseless press of God’s breath at my back, it is still. I asked for this. I prayed for this. I begged for it. I couldn’t imagine going through the process of Discernment as it was before. Meeting monthly and getting to know such wonderful people in my church, getting to know them deeply with the goal of truly listening to them as they heard God’s voice, with the overwhelming presence of his direction to me drowning out everything around me.

I am not quite alone, I feel his presence with me, as my shadow now, silent and still, but he is present. Just not a nimbus pressing upon me with light and will, urging me to action.

I cannot describe how desolate I feel as the loss. I did not expect it. Some part of me is turned inward always searching, searching, trying to find him again. Even though I know without a doubt that I won’t, not now. Not until he wills it so. I feel like a compass spinning without a true north. A soldier in winter slogging through half thawed mud, one step at a time, miles and miles to go…not sure how many because the landscape is blank with snow as far as the eye can see. Dogged determination. I will do this, I will listen. I will not act. I will wait.

I believe so strongly that his will WILL be done. That he will open and close the doors he wishes to open and close before me. That I will be the truest me I can be, and that this will lead me directly to him.

What do I mean when I say the truest me? I guess I mean that best  part of ourselves that I believe lives within us that enables God to move us in the world. That part of us that is moved to help others, to comfort the sick or helpless. To seek justice, to improve the lives of our brothers and sisters in the world, even at cost to ourselves. It’s the part that acts as God’s hands, that feels pain when people suffer and acts to alleviate it so that we do the work of God in the world. That is the truest part of me, the truest part of us all. Every time we follow it’s call we build our soul and every time we resist its urging we tear it down a little. We move closer to God or farther from him.

I remember reading about Mother Theresa and how she had felt God’s call so strongly when she was young, but then, it had absented itself from her for most of her life. She lost that direction and certainty that  once had flushed her full of divine purpose. Yet she persisted, throughout her life, she persisted.

Of course, God may never come back to me the way he did before. He may have put me on the path he wished and now it may be up to me. What if I never feel that again? That blissful union? What if I have to wait until death to return to it? Will I be able to stay the course?

How could I do anything but stay the course? I live for the possibility of being in his presence again in any way. Nothing interests me more than studying and teaching about the nature of God and how to reach for him listen for him calling for you. I love hearing and reading stories from every religion that talk about this because there are stories in all of them of this experience. Of people reaching for God and finding him, and of God reaching for people and them hearing and knowing him.

It’s my favorite love story.

And oh the power of that love and what a world we can make with it.

Winter is over

It’s been a while since I have felt well. A nasty infection kicked off the ugly trifecta of colitis, fibromyalgia and migraine to leave me battered, behind and annoyed at the limits of the body. I kept things going, by a hair… courtesy of Cipro, health services and Toradol, but not without a lot of agony. Note that I am getting all of my complaining done right up front. 

But now I am feeling back to normal. In fact I feel great. Full of energy and vigor. Back to normal and ready to get back to the path. I must confess that January really threw me for a loop. Does anyone like hearing they are a judgemental, closed minded, know nothing? Because that’s what I found out about myself. Sigh. I know I don’t MEAN to be, but the sad truth is that after my daughter decided to convert to Islam and I stopped running away from God, I wanted to only hear the nice Episcopal voices that made me comfortable and safe. God is merciful and gentle, for a while, he let me get away with that. January and Lafayette Square showed me exactly how small my box had become.

I suppose it’s ok to like doing things your own way, to want to have the liturgy just so, to take it uber seriously, to be in a smaller community based church that has robust children’s programs and retains an ability to be pastoral to  nursing home and homebound parishioners. BUT, I couldn’t believe the amount of discomfort I felt in being in a church that had a completely different flavor. Rather than finding joy in what was there, an urban based mission church, with a prophetic voice at the altar, and programs aimed at more diverse constituiences, I spent a lot of time feeling panic at the lack of what I was used to. I’ve given this a lot of thought of course. Importantly I don’t think St.John’s Lafayette Square was in error in any way, though probably a key learning for me is that I need to serve in a smaller, more community building parish versus a large city church. But maybe another lesson is that it is time for me to stop clinging to the comfort of “my way”. A priest of  a church as broad as ours has no business crouching down and holding on so tightly to one right way of doing things. You can’t be a parishioner and a priest at the same time.

Seriously, what am I so afraid of? As unpleasant as the experience of being so out of my element was, it was one of the most valuable I’ve had. I am still thinking if how fascinating God is. How clever. How else could he have gotten me to so utterly understand my incompetence in this arena? If  there is one thing I feel he wants to impress upon me, it’s my utter lack of knowledge and expertise at this moment. Not to humiliate me, but to shake me out of talk mode and into listening mode. Hard habit to break when you’ve been leading others for years. But that’s not what he needs me to do right now. Just to underscore this, on every interaction I have had at church lately, from leading the prayers to serving at the altar, I am bound to miss a key piece of information, be a moment late, misunderstand, be slow on the uptake, and basically make some kind of spectacular mistake to make me feel utterly small and useless. It would be infintely worse if I didn’t feel the laughing presence of God at my side, as if to say, “what did I tell you about being a blank slate now!? You=Beginner!”

I can only swallow my embarrasment and grin. If God’s laughing, even at you, it’s impossible not to go along.

So, things are good, as weird as it may sound. Even as I sense I am being put back in Basic Training after some kind of respite, it feels like progress.

I am exploring some interesting alternatives in light of what has happened with a scheduling snafu at Hollins. I kind of fell through the cracks and am expected to bear the brunt of that by shouldering an extra semester. This seems unjust and hurtful condsidering the amount of effort I have put into the Religious Studies program here so I am looking at a possible transfer to Guilford which has a more robust program, is closer to Josh and would allow me to finish this year.

They also have evening and weekend classes so it’s more likely I could have an income from a part time job. My nephew has moved to live with my mom this week up in Richmond from Alabama and I am concerned with the financial drain I have become to her. She’ll need more cash for him. The job I had here at the country club has dried up due to the economy, but I think it would be easier to get something in retail (like Anthropologie!) or at a grocery store in Greensboro. At the very least even if I stay at Hollins, I have to find some kind of summer employment. I know there couldn’t be a worse time.

But I believe that God will provide so I will put myself in his hands. After all, Winter is over, Spring is here, Easter is coming and the world stirs. I believe.

The sky is cloudy and so am I

Valentine’s Day was sweet. I gave Josh a Bigfoot action figure,and an a ipod shuffle. Josh made me an entire bouquet of origami flowers. It must have taken him hours and hours. There is no better gift than one that expresses such devotion and love. He also gave me the gift of a dinner out at a fancy restaurant. So we enjoyed a fantastic meal at Tony Pope’s. They truly have the best food in the city. It appears that he has made a concerted effort to improve the service as well, because it was well above average this time. Considering the fact that the restaurant was full and taxed to the max, quite a feat. We had a prix fixe menu, which included lobster bisque with a lobster cake, a bbq quail, a filet of beef and a warm brownie studded with sour cherries and ice cream. It was heavenly. Wine pairings came with each course, including dessert which featured a fine port. Josh wasn’t quite filled up but I was stuffed. It was a perfect meal for me, innovative, exquisitely prepared with a range of flavors and complementary elements in each wine. We stopped and got Josh donuts on the way home.

The following weekend I left for Mobile and a wonderful visit home to see my family. It’s been seen three years since I’ve been there and I’ve missed it so much. Some things were smaller and shabbier than I remembered, but most were even better, richer and more beautiful than my recollection. That was pretty hard. I got to spend a good amount of time with my niece Jaimie. She’s 9 and we have a nice little kindred spirit relationship. I love her a lot and miss getting to be more a part of her life. My nephew Ethan is shy and stuck to my brother like glue, though I could tell he was curious about me. He’s the kind of kid you can’t chase after though, you have to let him come to you. Unfortunately, not enough time to let that happen. I got a few pictures of him though. Good to see my little brother and give him a hug. He was in the process of moving and fixing up his new place. They were painting the walls before they move in. Today is actually moving day for him. I saw the Reverend John Riggin, the priest who I shared my call dream with and who counseled me to follow it. He was happy to see me and hear of my progress and adventures. As I sat in the little church at St. Paul’s I felt a sense of one circle completed and the beginning of the next stage of my path beginning.

We stayed at my sister’s house and I got to see her kids as well, my nephew Josh and niece Amy. He’s in high school and she’s at Auburn studying engineering. She was only home for the parades for the weekend. Speaking of parades, we got to see lots of them, including the Mystics of Time and Infant Mystics, two of the best. They don’t throw a lot but they have great floats and bands. The society’s that throw a lot are earlier and I couldn’t get home for those. We still got a ton of stuff. I have so many necklaces, moonpies, beads and toys they fill a large gunny sack. I even took a couple of videos of the parades and have one of me catching a handful of beads as I am filming. Good timing. One of the best days was Lundi Gras, the Monday before Mardi Gras.  Mom, Jaimie, my nephew Josh and I went down for a daytime parade and then to the DewDrop Inn where I had the world’s best cheeseburger. Nothing tastes so much like home as the DewDrop. Afterwards Jaimie and I went to Washington Square, a sweet little park I love in the historic Oakleigh district and walked Tucker. I showed her Oakleigh, which is a historic home museum and told her about some of the old family stories she hadn’t heard. We went to a couple of art galleries and looked at some local artists work. Jaimie also loves to draw and paint and has a natural gift for it. I love to paint and don’t do it well, but have a passion for great art so it was a nice way to spend the afternoon. I picked up a couple of prints to have in my apartment and took a few snapshots of a few I’d like to purchase in the future. Kind of like bookmarking them. I used my new iPhone.

Yes, at last I got an iPhone. Heaven knows I’ve been afflicted with technolust for it since the day I heard it existed, which was long before it went on sale, so when I got the opportunity to get a refurbished one on upgrade through my plan, I was all over it.

I have been very sad since I got home. Very, overwhelmingly sad. I don’t like that I can’t live in Mobile. My chest aches when I think of all that I have lost there. I don’t like that I can’t see Josh when I want to or hardly at all. It feels like a piece of me is missing when he leaves. I’m tired of missing my daughter so much and knowing it’s going to go on and on. I love her more than anything in the world and I want her to grow up enough to be interested in her mom again. It seems like many of the people and places I love are far away and unreachable. The only true remedy…I want God to be with me and remind me that this is all for a reason. Because right now its not very fun. Right now, it’s hard. At least on Wednesday, during Communion, I felt his presence so strongly… drowning me with love. Oh it was wonderful. Perhaps he knew I would be feeling this way and he wanted me to have a reserve to draw upon. Even thinking about it now makes me feel better. Brings me peace and certainty. That’s better actually, that helps.

Josh is supposed to come to visit later tonight and stay until Monday morning. He suddenly has to work Saturdays now. I am still so glad he is coming. Better some time then none. I wish he would tell me what he was thinking and feeling about this new wrinkle. Does it bother him that we will see each other less, or is it no big deal?  I imagine all kinds of things and if I know anything it’s that I’m usually wrong when I speculate.

I am sure my next note will be sunnier, I am never cloudy for long.

Longing

Copious amounts of reading and writing for school leave me little time to write for pleasure, though I have so much I want to get down here. Most importantly, my discernment meeting helped me to ask myself the question, what is a priest? What do you expect of one?

Of course, I think I’ve spent the last 2 years thinking about what other people would expect and also applying my crazily high expectations of priests onto that role myself and asking myself…huh? what? Me?

But it’s strange. All that worry and fear went away the very moment I surrendered completely to the insistent pushing from God. I say pushing, but the instant you surrender it isn’t pushing any more, it’s pulling, a wonderful, warm, embracing drawing you closer to where you were made to be.  Caught up in the “fishing net of God”, waiting to be drawn up into his boat. Then you scratch your head and wonder what the heck you were struggling so hard for. Once, while in prayer and while still questioning the whole idea, I got the clearest little montage of a horse in a burning barn in panic, and a calm figure soothing the horse, covering it’s eyes, and leading it out. How much that seems to apply. For we walk by faith and not by sight…

Somehow I feel sure that God wouldn’t lead me somewhere I shouldn’t go, as long as I follow him and not any selfish desire of my own heart. If I do that, I shouldn’t need to fear being up to the task, because he will make me up to it, educate me, form me, shape me to his desire and task.

One other thing, I am reading the Hindu mystical holy writing, The Bhagavad Gita and reading it gives me the same sensation as the first long pull off of a cold bottle of water after a hike on a hot day. It sinks into me as if I were drought stricken crop lands and it was the rain…

It’s beautiful and I am grateful beyond words for the class that features it and look forward to every other tiny piece of theology that comes my way. Nothing interests me more than exploring the nature of God and the paths to him.

Hypertext Revisited

I know I am behind in updating but I’m back in school and loving every minute of it. My trip back and brief stayover with Josh was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. It’s fantastic to be home and have my little dog Tucker home with me again. Today I even won two tickets to Ladysmith Black Mambazo for tomorrow night!

I am taking a lot of amazing classes. Death and dying, which is turning into the odds on favorite so far. World Religions II, which initially I was excited about because we are studying Eastern Religions, then anxious about, because it’s a new teacher and I heard she’s hard and now am in love with, because by hard, they meant she’s GOOD. Then there is Philosophy of Religion, a very small class with just the four of us, it feels like pure entertainment so far. Chaplaincy Studies, where we have a whole bunch of new Chaplains to help grow the community here on campus and add even more energy to SRLA.

Then finally there is the hardest class so far: Literature and New Media. It’s my Big Q class, in other words it fulfills my Quantitative Reasoning requirement and helps me avoid any math. Yay! I say that it is is hard, but that is all relative of course. I mean that it’s hard because it’s an area of expertise and yet it’s from a literary perspective, a cul-de-sac of the medium. I am intrigued and sometimes aghast. Here’s an example. The word Hypertext in my world is used to mean any word in a document that links in a networked way whether locally or remotely to another location in the same or another document. There is a different definition in the literary world. Immediately I could feel my internal head shaking no-no-no.

In the literary world, Hypertext means: ” Text which does not form a single sequence and which may be read in various orders; specially text and graphics … which are interconnected in such a way that a reader of the material (as displayed at a computer terminal, etc.) can discontinue reading one document at certain points in order to consult other related matter.”

Similar but not the same. An example of this literary Hypertext can be seen in one of the stories we read called “The Jews Daughter”.

It’s a single page that has a couple of highlighted words. When you rollover the selected word, paragraphs on the page change, also changing elements of the story while you remain on the page. It is an interesting experience. You can come to know a lot about yourself as a reader by attempting the story. How do you interact with it? I found myself trying to read the story elements straight through at first because I love story so much, but when that proved difficult, I fell back on my second love, language and just let myself enjoy the poetry of the writing and the flow of the text across the page.

On the Electronic Literature Organization’s Website, they have this to say about the piece, ” The Jew’s Daughter is a work that renegotiates the concept of the hypertext to present a reconfigurative narrative. As the reader moves the mouse over links, segments of a page replace one another fluidly, giving the reader the sensation of watching a single page evolve step by step into another kind of textual instrument with its own sense of narrative rhythm.”

This form of writing and using technology to create an experience while gently reminding the reader that they are in fact using a medium to access story is called Metafiction. Wikipedia describes it as a type of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction. It is the literary term describing fictional writing that self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in posing questions about the relationship between fiction and reality, usually using irony and self-reflection. It can be compared to presentational theatre, which does not let the audience forget it is viewing a play; metafiction does not let the reader forget he or she is reading a fictional work. An online version of this can be seen in “The Garden of Forking Paths” which is a story which is labyrinth-like in it’s unfolding plot and is constructed online into a labyrinth-like experience.

Interesting. Lots of mind squishing classes in general, between the nature of reality in World Religions II, the nature of God in Philosophy of Religion, loss, life after death and grief in Death and Dying and the notion of media, authorship and technology in this class. Altogether intoxicating.

It’s shaping up to be an interesting semester and I haven’t even talked about the stuff outside the academic realm!

The Homily at St.John’s Lafayette Square

So today was the big day. In front of a small group of worshipers who forgoe lunch to celebrate the Eucharist I gave a Homily about the conversion of St.Paul. The Reverend Lisa Saunders also had me assist with the Prayers of the People, read the Epistle lesson, select which Eucharistic prayer we used. (I chose C, which is about the glory of God’s creation.)

So without further ado, here it is:

The Conversion of Paul
Galatians 1:11-24

Today we listened to part of the letter that Paul wrote to the Galatians. The part where he justifies his ministry by recounting what happened to somehow make him go from being a passionate persecutor of Christians to it’s most active missionary.

Why was Paul so defensive?  There was a little bit of conflict going on back then in the church, a little bit of a difference of opinion. Why does that sound familiar?

Back then the early Jewish Christians, who were alive at the time Jesus was crucified, were planting churches and telling people that they had to follow the roughly 613 Jewish laws as well as being baptized to earn eternal life.

Paul didn’t believe Gentiles who became Christians were required to follow the Old Covenant laws. After his road to Damascus conversion, where he was blinded by a bright light and then saw and spoke with Jesus, he became convinced that the Gentiles were his special mission and that it made no sense that the old laws should apply.

But why should the Galatians listen to him? He wasn’t one of the original disciples, and the missionaries who were stopping by in Galatia telling them not to eat pork and to be circumcised knew the Apostle Peter or James, the brother of Jesus…they were a little closer to the original source. In other words, Paul had a bit of a credibility problem.

But Paul also had something else. He had experienced a profound change that day on the road, a life altering experience that gave him a certainty and drive that he could not ignore. If he had been a zealous persecutor of Christians before, now he was utterly and completely dedicated to spreading the Good News.

Paul wants the Galatians to understand that this powerful call from Jesus was meant to be delivered to them, Gentiles, not by Jewish Christians who would always see them as other, and not quite good enough, but by Paul, who has no ties to that community and no agenda other than sharing the news of Jesus as directed by Jesus himself in a vision. 

 
Paul himself had been a devout Jew, persecuting those very Jewish Christians and a strict follower of all of the Jewish laws before his encounter with Jesus and he would follow them throughout his life whenever he was in the presence of other Jews. But he had no interest in promoting Judaism Light to Gentiles. He believed wholeheartedly and without reservation that Jesus’s coming had signified a completely new way of interacting with God, a new covenant and a new way to live a life of faith and that he Paul, had a special kind of authority, a special kind of vision because he had had his own foundational world view shaken on that dusty road to Damascus. So much so that he had given up every aspect of his old life.

 

All of us are here in church together at a time of day when most Americans are not. In our own way we are hearing something calling us to this time and place. It may not be a blaze of light that blinds us for three days or a voice from the heavens, but we feel something, hear something, sense something calling us closer to God.

 

I think about Paul and what he did after this experience he had. I try to imagine what I would do in his place. He had choices, he could have dismissed the experience as a hallucination brought on by wine and heat, or some kind of illness. He could have just refused to believe it and stuck his fingers in his ears and said na-na-na-na-na-na, but of course, he didn’t do those things.

 

 What he did do was travel all over starting churches and write lots of letters exhorting everyone he could about this idea of a new covenant, a new relationship with God, based on faith and love and not on rigid observations of man made rules. He poured his whole life into this effort. The fact that we are sitting here in a church at all is a testament to his success. All because he decided to listen to that call. Just as we all have when we came here today. Whether we came to seek solace, or to find comfort or to ask for forgiveness or to pray for help, we came in answer to something inside us that aches for God. Perhaps we simply long for his presence or want to offer him our worship and devotion or we have questions about how best we can serve his will. We all felt something that drew us here. Today I ask that you will take some time to reflect on that feeling you had that brought you here. Ask yourself if this is your road to Damascus moment writ small. If Paul could build a church on one roadside intervention, what can you build on the knowledge that God is moving in you today?

Words are killing frost

Sometimes a person can rip your heart out. They can hold it in their hand and show you all the old dreams sewn through it you thought you’d let go of,  infecting it like a disease. They make you realize how pointless holding on to anything really is. All pain is relative and true grief can be cathartic. When a dream dies it never goes quietly, even if it is only the remnant of one of the dearest, it has claws and teeth. When it withers away, it does so thrashing and screaming, keening and wailing and leaving despair and blood weeping in its wake. I lie awake and feel my stomach churn with the agony of it. Swallowing sorrow and loss is a recipe for dwindling. And so I shall.

What does it mean when we lose? Lose faith in a person, lose trust that their hand will meet yours, lose hope that mind and heart can ever be rejoined.

Is there no option but retreat?

Will I ever be able to speak again?

Or has the fire that swept through me in a maelstrom of emotion burned my tongue, breath, my heart? Has it hollowed out all my softness and filled it with snow and ice, and left me bereft in this killing frost…paralyzed and as trapped as Snow White after biting the bitter sweetness of the Poisioned Apple…seeking oblivion and forgetfullness for now and always.

The Entertainment Report

The problem with delayed updates is that there is way too much to say!

There have been movies! There have been books! There has been music!

Not to mention the Inauguration, two trips, one to Roanoke and one to Richmond and the anticipation of starting Spring term on the 4th!

Let’s start with the movies. I saw SlumdogMillionaire right before it won a bunch of Golden Globes so I was right there with them when they celebrated their unexpected win. It’s a gorgeous film, full of the tragic bittersweet comedy of life, set in India and somehow illuminates the paradox of savage beauty that exists there… the poverty and caste systems that grind people up and spit them out and the joyful triumph of overcoming it.

I also checked out StepBrothers on DVD and thought it was quirky and sweet if forgettable. I felt like the director watched the movie several times and purposefully added gross out humor in to the slow spots to juice it up for the primo demographic for that film…young adult males. While visiting my mom in Richmond during the Inauguration we also watched Appaloosa, a western featuring Scott Glen, Viggo Mortensen and Renee Zelwegger. It was entertaining and had flashes of humor. Zelwegger irritates the spit out of me a good half of the times I see her in films. Don’t know what it is. However, she looks really cute in an upcoming film called New in Town.

Now on to Books: Peace Like a River by Leif Enger is a fantastic read. It is so well written and engrossing that everything I’ve read since suffers in comparison. Better reviewers than I have described this novel which wrapped around my heart the way Huckleberry Finn did when I was a child, still my all time favorite.

Dead for 10 minutes before his father orders him to breathe in the name of the living God, Reuben Land is living proof that the world is full of miracles. But it’s the impassioned honesty of his quiet, measured narrative voice that gives weight and truth to the fantastic elements of this engrossing tale. From the vantage point of adulthood, Reuben tells how his father rescued his brother Davy’s girlfriend from two attackers, how that led to Davy being jailed for murder and how, once Davy escapes and heads south for the Badlands of North Dakota, 12-year-old Reuben, his younger sister Swede and their janitor father light out after him. But the FBI is following Davy as well, and Reuben has a part to play in the finale of that chase, just as he had a part to play in his brother’s trial. It’s the kind of story that used to be material for ballads, and Enger twines in numerous references to the Old West, chiefly through the rhymed poetry Swede writes about a hero called Sunny Sundown. That the story is set in the early ’60s in Minnesota gives it an archetypal feel, evoking a time when the possibility of getting lost in the country still existed. Enger has created a world of signs, where dead crows fall in a snowstorm and vagrants lie curled up in fields, in which everything is significant, everything has weight and comprehension is always fleeting. This is a stunning debut novel, one that sneaks up on you like a whisper and warms you like a quilt in a NorthDakota winter, a novel about faith, miracles and family that is, ultimately, miraculous.Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

I’ve also been meandering through The New Kings of Nonfiction edited by Ira Glass
It’s a collection of the best new non fiction writers stories. Magazine and newspaper articles written with emotional engagement and cleverness, wit and more than a touch of humor. It’s great on the metro on my way to church.

There’s also been some interesting music. I watched Oprah quite by accident on the 19th and saw the premier of America’s song. It was incredibly inspiring. Sung by will.i.am, Faith Hill, Seal, Mary J. Blige and Bono it somehow reminded me that America isn’t hampered because of it’s differences and divisions but strengthened by them. Check it out!

Then there was a trip to Roanoke the weekend before the Inauguration. Josh was able to meet me on Friday and we spent a blissful 24 hours together. We had dinner at Grace’s Place pizza which turned out to be very tasty and inexpensive and then went and had hot beverages to keep us warm at Mill Mountain coffee downtown. I love their English Breakfast tea which they serve in a little pot. Tastes so much better than bags or even sachets. Then we went home and had a glass of wine and caught up on some TV before snuggling up together and sleeping all tangled up, safe and secure and utterly at peace for the first time in weeks.

The next morning we had warm bagels and watched the news and vegged out until 3 in the afternoon when we went out to meet my friends Christina and Jennifer and her adorable girls. Josh was my hero and tolerated me volunteering him for knight duty and bought the bambinas hot chocolates with lots of whipped cream and then played shoot the straw wrapper with them. They love him…kind of hard not to. Afterwards we went to the good ol’ Fork in the Alley for an early dinner/late lunch before I had to head home. They have killer hot dawgs. Almost as good as the Dew Drop…almost. I can’t wait to eat there next month! That’s the first place I am eating when I go home for Mardi Gras. I am gonna’ have a chili cheese burger, fries and fried okra! Mmmm. Too bad my daughter won’t be with me, she always got the onion rings and I usually swiped one. I could never eat more than that, but I liked having one. We went home where we lingered for a while before loading up both cars and then saying our goodbyes. It was a wonderful tonic though to see me through until the 30th.

After I came back and worked most of the day Sunday at the 9:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. services Sunday, I was so overwhelmed by the crowds on the metro on my way back home that I decided to go to Richmond for the rest of the Inaugural. There must have been several thousand people crammed into the train I squeezed on to. It was only 2 stops before they exited at the stop closest to the Lincoln Memorial where they were going to attend the free concert there, but the station was crammed with people too, and the people who exited had very little room on the platform to get off the train onto. Phew. Once they were off though it was OK until I got off at the last station. When I parked there in the morning it was practically empty. Now they had barricades up and lines had formed. They were checking every person before they went through the turnstiles. It was scary. All the more reason to hit the road.

I went home, did some laundry, packed my car and bailed. I couldn’t reach my mom on the phone so she was a little surprised when I woke her up banging on the door, but happy to see me none the less. She was off for a bit so we got to spend some quality time together. We went to dinner at Carrabas, got a couple of videos and then ran some errands together the next day. I played with my puppy dog the whole time and he slept with me too. I miss him a bunch and get to pick him up to take home on the 29th.

My current schedule is on the 29th after working at the Youth Group here, depart from Ellen’s for Richmond. Spend the night at mom’s and pick up Tucker. Drive to Roanoke and pay some bills etc. before going to Greensboro that night. I’ll attend church in there, get my hair done ther and spend time with Josh. Come back to Roanoke on Tuesday to buy my books in prep for starting school on Wednesday. If I am able to buy my books on Friday instead I could come back later on Tuesday. I’m taking Philosophy of Religion, Chaplaincy Studies IV, Death and Dying, English and New Media, Tai Chi and World Religions: Eastern Religions.

In the meantime, there is Ice Skating at the sculpture garden at the National Gallery of Art on Friday, I give my 3rd sermon in the big church at the 12:10 on Monday (!) and it’s on Paul’s conversion no less. I have Saturday off to do something fun and I am giving a presentation on using technology to grow your church on Tuesday to the Church Growth committee. So lots of stuff to look forward to.

I have one solitary ache in my heart but I am counting on God to assuage it. I trust that he will. He is all that I ever need.

The color of grouch

Blue is the color of sadness and also of cold, so I think it’s accurate to say that I’m a little blue. I am not sure why I am feeling so gloomy, but I am. It might have something to do with me missing my friends, beloved, church, mom and Tucker. I am not getting any exercise here either so that can’t help.

Last Sunday I worked at two services at the altar. At the 7:45 a.m. service I was a chalicist, and at the 9:00 a.m. I was a chalicist and reader. While serving at the altar I ended up being on the side where President and Laura Bush were receiving the Eucharist so I actually made eye contact with both of them. They intinct, or dip the wafer in the wine.
Whatever my own political beliefs, in church we are all the same before God. We are there because it is so easy to sin or drift away from God, and we all seek a closer relationship with him. So for that moment they aren’t the President and First Lady, but two parishioners seeking what we all do in communion, union with the holy.

At the 9:00 a.m. service I read the Epistle and chaliced as well as giving the dismissal. Pretty cool. That was something I’d never done and it was a tingly experience. Sunday I also burned my fingers on a kettle on the stove at my hostess’s house. This would be the same kettle she cautioned me to check to make sure it had water before turning on the heat since another houseguest burned up the last one. Before I left in the morning for church I put water in it and not really thinking I just turned the kettle on when I came in since I was freezing. In the interim, Ellen had used all the water in the pot I’d left. So her very nice, very expensive enamel kettle burnt up and damaged not only the kettle but the burner on which it rested. In my haste to remove it from the stove I ended up getting a couple of surface burns that blistered up on top of two of the fingers of my left hand. Ouch. It hurt so bad and for so long I went up and got some Neosporin pain relief and “aqua pad” burn dressing to cover them. I also had to report to Ellen what I’d done, since she was visiting her mother in D.C. when it happened. It was hard to make that call, but she has been so understanding about it. I felt like such an idiot and was all jangled up for hours.

I’d also heard that my 16 year old nephew was car jacked in Mobile and had a couple of men put guns to his head before he was able to flee on foot. He got glass in his feet because he’d just been wearing flip flops and he lost them in his haste to get away. The only car he and my sister had was taken and the Police said they expect it to be ditched and set on fire. He also lost all his money and his cell phone. They used his VISA debit card to buy gas at 5 different places in a nearby town called Pritchard. Hopefully he will get that back since they were fraudulent charges.

I’ve decided to take a quick trip back to Roanoke this weekend to get some things I left behind and see Josh. I think it will be restorative. I’ll leave Thursday night and come back Saturday night. I am at the altar this Sunday at the 9:00, the 11:00 and am supposed to shadow a Lay Eucharistic Minister here. The woman I will be going with is really cool though. I met her last night at a training session for community organizers that I attended with the Reverend Saunders. She and I talked for most of the dinner portion about how weird it is to us that everyone intincts in the state of Virginia and even here in the DC area. We both spent most of our lives in churches where most people shared the common cup and to do otherwise was perceived as Eucharistically incorrect. We had a good old Episcopalian gabfest. It was awesome.

I also had a nice noontime Eucharist today with a visiting minister who I talked about my “call” with. She said she also got a very strong call and that she used to feel weird about it in seminary where people were saying things like , it just seems like a good career. In the long run though she said it’s been a tremendous blessing because she has never felt lost in her sense of mission. I can identify with that. I also identified with being surrounded by a group of people who were more focused on the the material, social and external world reasons for church work than any sense of the holy and awesome presence of God. This never happened at St.John’s in Roanoke, but I am guessing it is a common thing in the church.

This goes back to my philosophy of church being a place to worship God, not to make ourselves feel better. What I experienced during my near death experience was enough to inspire lifelong awe, amazement and a sense of how we can be both so incredibly small before the greatness that is God, and so dearly loved at the same time. My worship comes from that place and when I work in a service it is to that moment that I turn to meditate before it begins.

Thursday I will also work with the Hispanic Youth Group and I really look forward to it. I had a great time with them last Thursday when we went bowling. They are full of energy and life. I’ll try and get some pics I took there printed to take to them.

I will write a Lent meditation for the churches in-house Lenten publication by Friday and am ruminating on a Homily I am to give at the weekday service on Monday the 26th.

Tonight I am on my own for dinner etc. so I am thinking of driving out to the Leesburg Outlet Mall, I think I might find a good deal on a kettle there to replace the one I burned up and with tomorrow’s temps and all my warmest stuff at the cleaners I am thinking a quick dash through the bargains might be in order.

Perhaps that will de-grouchify me.

High Highlights of Arriving in DC

I arrived in Fairfax, VA on Saturday at my alumnae sponsor Ellen’s townhouse in time for a late dinner. She was kind enough to hold it for me when I got caught in a little traffic jam and we enjoyed some chicken, rice and salad along with some nice white wine while we discussed the following morning’s commuting plans. Since St.John’s Lafayette Square is located across the street from the White House, it’s also located across the street from the Hay-Adams where the Obama’s are staying so the entire block is closed off. Luckily the church has valet parking for the 11:00 am service so we planned on getting there for that a little early with her mom.

My room is beautiful with a cozy daybed and pink walls, plenty of closet space, a dresser and my own private bathroom. There’s even a pull out trundle bed if I have a guest visit. I quickly unpacked, put out my pictures of my daughter, Josh and Tucker along with my new Tinkerbell snowglobe and my Tow Mater plush toy. There’s wireless internet access and a comfy basement living room with TV and couches. Ellen is great company and such an interesting person. It makes it easier to come to a new city when you have a welcoming face and such a wonderful hostess.

On Sunday I attended my first service at the church, and it REALLY IS right across from the White House. I mean, I think I was imagining it a little farther away. But it’s pretty darn close. It’s overcast today, but I will post pictures on Wednesday or Thursday when it’s sunny. I want to get some pics of the stained glass in the church then too. The entire block is locked down, the area crawling with cameras, secret service, police and dogs. I was in the bathroom and looked out the window to see men on the roof of nearby buildings. I was worried they could see me but I think they probably aren’t interested. The service Sunday was celebrating the Epiphany and the liturgy allowed a little procession of people dressed as the three kings to approach the altar with offerings at the presentation. They even broke out the incense which delighted me of course. One of my favorite smells. I heard the Reverend Lisa Saunders give a wonderful sermon. It was about the journey to Epiphany and it had many access points for people to find meaning for themselves. I found my own meaning in the journey of the kings leaving all they knew and loved behind to follow the will of God in my current life. I took communion from The Reverend Luis Leon and met him after the service. I will likely spend more time with him tomorrow.

I then visited the National Cathedral and took some pictures with my fabulous new camera. Check it out:

Following that I was invited to join Ellen and her mother at her home in the Georgetown area for dinner. We enjoyed a hearty veal stew, a delicious Beaujolais and some fresh strawberries for dessert. Her mother shared some of the history of the church with me and talked about being on the search committee to call the current rector and what it was like to attend some of the previous inaugural events with the Reagan and Bush families. She was the head of the altar guild the year the church dedicated the George H.W. Bush kneeler so she showed me the picture of that moment. Pretty neat.

Today I met with Lisa and we talked about me immediately helping with a print piece for the Young Adult fellowship group they have here for 20’s and 30’s called the Latrobe Fellowship, named for the architect of the church and the White House. I also assisted at the 12:10 Eucharist. This consisted of the Old Testament reading which today was Joshua 1:1-9 and collecting the offering, as well as chalicing. How awesome is it to be where I can take Eucharist/worship daily while at work? This is what kept going through my mind as I was preparing for the service. How wonderful my life is at this moment that as part of my job that I am getting to worship God. I can’t express how joyful that is. I try to live my life as if it is a prayer anyway, but to get to take specific time to worship in this way is very meaningful. The Eucharist is especially resonant for me. The Gospel reading today was from John 15:1-11 and was about the metaphor of the vine. Not too long ago, while praying over a troubling issue, God simply gave me a kind of word sense…it was “abide, abide in me”. That was all. So I just kept repeating that to myself as things got harder or upsetting and it helped. I found myself reciting the first verse of the song of Isaiah:

Surely it is God who saves me;

I will trust in him and not be afraid.

For the Lord is my stronghold and my sure defense,

And he will be my Savior.

So it was interesting to hear that verse today. Reminded me of that moment.

Just back from having a spot of tea down the street at a place called Teaism. I only had a ginger scone and some tea but it was very filling and the music was soothing and reflective. It’s eerie walking down H street past the police cars littering the park and all the barricades. There are so few people on the street that you feel like there is a target on your back. I feel like putting my hands up saying…just an intern at the church! Studying to be a priest…nothing to see here! It’s pretty cold too so it makes you hunch over when you walk and shrink down into your jacket, walking fast, letting your scarf ride up to cover your nose in a feeble effort to block the wind. It’s a surreal moment. I see people hanging about out in front of the church, cameras stationed there, presumably from news outlets. Reverend Saunders said that the Reverend Leon might want me to help at the early service on Sunday, which is too exciting. The more opportunities to be at the altar the better of course. But especially in a different setting, learning from someone new and feeling the energy of God here.

Plus I found out that the new Associate Rector for St.John’s in Roanoke is in DC so I can probably meet her in advance! Not only that but my friend Jennifer from Roanoke is gonna’ be here tomorrow and the next day so we can probably catch a meal together. What a strange and wonderful life.

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride

Well my Holiday more than lived up to expectations, and how often can you say that? My housewarming party was warm indeed with my superlative friends bringing some Christmas cheer along to my new apartment and helping to decorate my tree. Josh was there for the event and even played with my dear friend Jennifer’s adorable kids. One of my friends from church even brought me a lovely hand thrown pottery dish in a golden brown color.

Here’s a picture of the tree once it was all decorated.

The Christmas Tree

We decorated, enjoyed some spirits of the bottled variety and totally consumed a round of brie that  had been baked with turbinado sugar and pecans. Yum.

Finals and papers were all turned in on time. Thank the Lord.
Mom and Josh arrived on Christmas Eve in time for a hearty meal of my homemade chili before we headed over to church for the Midnight Mass. I was crucifer and chalicist and was a little nervous since we were doing some new things this service. At the very beginning I had to stand 2 rows in while the choir sang the most beautiful song behind me. While it was unnerving standing there alone, it helped me empty myself. The music was there to show me the way. Then I led the way to the altar and stopped at the front row of pews for the first two verses of the opening hymn and candle lighting for Silent Night. My back was to the entire congregation and for a while there was just silence and rustling while they lit candles and then started singing. I got the go ahead from the verger with a tap on my shoulder and was able to put away the cross and take my place at the altar. I couldn’t see Josh and Mom from where I was but I knew they were there. There is a special holiness to Christmas Eve and Barkley’s sermon was a path to that place of reflection that connects to God. I was feeling all lit up when I went to chalice, as light as a feather and vibrating with the wonderful presence of my father. When we got home we watched the rest of It’s a Wonderful Life, a holiday tradition for me before going to sleep. I always get choked up during a Capra film.

The next morning I woke up and snuck out, careful not to wake anyone to attend the 10:00 am service. It was my last chance to see The Reverend Lisa Graves preach and I always love going on Christmas morning. Number one, I think you should go to church on Christmas Day, and number two, it’s usually so lightly attended it’s a very contemplative service. Lisa’s sermon was all about how the Shepherds must have felt when the angels appeared. I smiled since we had just had a big discussion of this in Sunday School, but she quoted a great poem by Max Lucado about why God chose Shepherds. I found a similar quote by him:

“Off to one side sits a group of shepherds. They sit silently on the floor, perhaps perplexed, perhaps in awe, no doubt in amazement. Their night watch had been interrupted by an explosion of light from heaven and a symphony of angels. God goes to those who have time to hear him– and so on this cloudless night he went to simple shepherds.”  Max Lucado

Lisa pointed out that the important people would have been too busy to hear, their calendars too full. I couldn’t help but look around the church at that moment. Of course that wasn’t what she meant, but people have gotten the idea in their heads that church is for them, for people, and not for God. Well, it is, but isn’t that secondary? Isn’t church primarily for worshiping God? I know he must love the sound of choirs singing, imagine hearing many voices from all over the world singing praises as exactly the same moment so that God hears a swell of human voice raised in worship. Or imagine that there is someone singing a hymn or praise of some kind every moment of every day. I don’t know if that happens, but it should.

I digress.

Christmas day was fantastic. Josh blew me away with a gorgeous pearl necklace and new 10 megapixel digital camera! He also got me a stuffed Tow Mater from Disney’s Cars and a Tinker Bell snow globe. His mom gave me some beautiful things as well. My favorite is this little lip balm that comes in a ball. Yummy. Mom gave me a windchime that say Faith: For we walk by faith, not by sight. Just too perfect for words. She also got me some new ornaments for my tree, ironically buying me a church ornament, a Roanoke star ornament and a crystal cross. Boy are we on the same wavelength or what? I racked up in other words.

I gave Josh a handmade mala bead bracelet, a mock turtleneck and mock turtle sweater, a subscription to Men’s health magazine, an Our First Christmas ornament from Wedgewood and a secret gift I can’t say here.

Here’s the ornament though:

Wedgewood 2008 Our First Christmas Ornament

After our feast of presents we spent the day preparing food. First I made pancakes and sausage for breakfast and then most of the afternoon and evening was spent cooking Turkey, stuffing, both traditional and cornbread and potato casserole as well as my homebaked rolls. We ended up eating late and then headed to bed to sleep in.

Next up? Mom headed back to Richmond and Josh and I headed to West Virginia to see his father’s final service as an Episcopal priest. I was able to meet his older brother, his youngest nephew and his uncle and some other relatives this time which was a lot of fun.

Unfortunately I picked up a cold so I was a little bit puny toward the end of this adventure. Josh was very solicitous and didn’t even make fun of me when I fell asleep in the car on the way back. Well, he didn’t make fun of me much. I kind of asked for it by saying I just needed to eat dinner and that would perk me up. After dinner, approximately 15 minutes or so after dinner I was zonked. Pretty funny actually.

The next few days were me being sick, Josh being very nurturing. Nice. I also got to spend some time at the shop Josh’s parents own taking pictures so I can build them a nice little website, my Christmas present to them.

We headed back to Roanoke the day before New Year’s eve and debated what to do for it. Ultimately we went out to dinner at 202 Kitchen and then zipped home to watch Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin ring it in on CNN together on the couch. I couldn’t have been happier to be honest. The last few days were so hard for both of us since all we could both think of was that I was about to be gone for the entire month of January and might not see him for any of it.

There was some crying on my part. Don’t get me wrong, I am totally psyched about this internship and certain that it’s where I am supposed to be, but that doesn’t mean my heart doesn’t ache at being away from someone who has become so incredibly dear to me.

Here’s us on New Year’s Eve. We look happy, and we were, but what I remember most about the last few days was wanting to cry and hold on to him with all my might. I really suck at transitions.

St.Jon and Josh New Year's Eve 2008

Now I am sitting here in a Starbucks in DC. My first day is behind me, and it was great. I went to a service this morning and I’ll officially start tomorrow. The church is exciting, beautiful and literally across from the White House on one door and across from the Obama’s hotel out the other. Talk about the center of everything. It’ll be interesting getting to work in the mornings if nothing else.

Still, just wish he was here. Just wish he was with me while I did this.

The Ornament 2008

It’ s such a brave new world for me right now. This entire year has been about transformation. Christmas has me reflecting on the past 12 months because of the tradition in my family of picking an ornament for the tree each year to symbolize your year. Last year’s was easy. For despite the rather tumultuous nature of it, the fact that it involved me deciding to fully commit to this path I am on and the massive changes that it required in my ways of thinking and living, one thing was constant. Starbucks! Yep, I went to Starbucks every day that year and had the same drink. It was pretty much the only thing I could control in my life. So I got myself a little Starbucks cup ornament and had a Barista Sharpie in my regular order, a tall nonfat no water extra foam chai. Luckily I went there so regularly I stopped having to say it out loud pretty quickly, because after all, who wants to sound so incredibly high maintenance, even if you are?

This year was very different. I stopped resisting, even a little bit, my “call” and embraced it. Instead of obeying with grumbles and anxiety, I strode forward with joy, eyes up and soul singing. What a difference acceptance, true acceptance can make. Things happened this year. Big things. Last Christmas I had such an epiphany on Christmas Eve at the Midnight Mass, I felt the ripples for months after. I had an internship at St.John’s over the summer and knew, understood and felt the blinders fall from my eyes about the definition of vocation. I met with the Bishop, and was oficially made an Aspirant. Just last week I had my first Discernment meeting. I feel like I went from being dragged along a path fearfully to running straight toward God with arms wide open.

Then of course there is the matter of my heart. It was a little tarnished a little over a year ago. I can’t say broken, because we weren’t that close. Dumped for being too HOLY! Is that like the worst break up line ever or what?  Then right before Christmas last year I started corresponding with Josh. Our letters were full of poetry and big questions. On New Years Eve, just after midnight he called me for the very first time to say Happy New Year. Not long after that we met and had a weekend date, eating out, watching Superbad and having him visit my church. When he dashed off at the end of The Gathering I was pretty sure he wasn’t interested after meeting me in real life. Maybe I was “too holy” for him too. I heard from him a few times after that. He sent me an amazing Birthday gift. A beautiful silk scarf from the National Cathedral that was a print of one of the stained glass windows and a Starbucks giftcard. Wow, he really listened to my rambling monologues on those dates. But, since I’d already decided he wasn’t interested I just filed it under he was being nice. The months went by, school, internship, and before I knew it Fall semester was about to start and I had found myself a part time job at Hunting Hills. Josh had sent me the occasional Facebook message but we hadn’t really stayed in touch.  So I was a little surprised when he called and asked if he could see me again. Before school started and we both got too busy. Though confused, since I was pretty sure he wasn’t interested, I’d liked him, so I said yes.

The night he came was also one of my first nights at the new job. When I got off I dashed home, showered and dressed up so that we meet to go to Metro for a drink. I had a Stoli Cosmo and he tried one too. When one of my favorite songs by Coldplay came on, Viva La Vida, he pulled me onto the dancefloor. We danced for a while, and during the dance as I looked into his eyes, I felt him drop his guard and could suddenly see that he liked me after all. Pow! It was like an electric wire went through me. What a shock. The rest of the room kind of faded away after that. We spent the whole evening dancing and talking, laughing about the misunderstanding that had kept us apart for so long. Turns out he thought I wasn’t interested because I didn’t hit on him. I guess women usually did! Did I mention that I am very old fashioned? Truthfully, Josh is undeniably attractive, he’s kind of like a built version of Brad Pitt. Very built. So maybe it’s understandable that women have thrown themselves at him. But I just don’t roll that way. After a few weekends Josh asked me to date him exclusively and I realized I wanted that more than anything. Like most things with Josh, it snuck up on me. He’s stealthy that way. The term steal your heart totally applies. I found this person, this amazing, gentle, compassionate, strong, creative, talented, brilliant person…and I wasn’t even looking.

What a year. How do I encapsulate all these things in one ornament?

The only one that I have seen that appeals to me so far is this beautiful one from Hallmark.

Hallmark Keepsake Ornament

It appeals to me because St.John’s has been the center of my life this year. Every Sunday and all Summer, beginning last Christmas and even now, I just breathe better when I am there. Josh has joined me there and held my hand during The Gathering and my internship allowed school and worship to meet. It is the intersection through which my entire life flowed this year. All the most important people in my life were with me there. So I think it fits pretty well.

There has been change this year as well. Lisa and Chip leaving. Mom moving to Richmond. Learning that I will have to stay an extra semester here at Hollins to complete my degree due to a scheduling glitch. Stepping off into the space of love, trusting another with my heart after years of holding it close. Learning to let go of being perfect. Accepting that the cost of learning means that sometimes I’ll get a B. Really accepting that failure is how we learn. I ought to believe it, how many times have I coached employees that this is true? How many times has this truth and understanding of it born fruit? Loss of a home, in exchange for a new one. Watching my daughter take a husband and stand before me, a woman grown, feeling the simultaneous ache of pride and loss.

I haven’t done badly by my New Year’s resolution, though I think I can do better. (Not to cuss.)

I should decide whether to keep that one or try a new one this year.

There is a Christmas party at my work  this Sunday. There will be dinner and cocktails and dancing. Saturday will be my last night at work until after my internship. We still haven’t decided what to do for New Years’s eve. Josh and Mom will be here for Christmas Eve. I am so excited for the service. I am Crucifer and Chalicist. Mom has to drive back to Richmond on Christmas Day and work which is a total bummer. But  we will open presents around the tree and I will make pancakes and sausage for us all and an omelette for me and mom with spinach, goat cheese and baby tomatoes for breakfast. I will slip out for the 10 am service. Maybe they will join me. Then we’ll either spend the day lollygagging, movie going or visiting Josh’s family. If one of the first two, I will make a home cooked Christmas dinner with some of my favorites. Mmm, maybe roast beast, mashed potatoes and gravy or turkey and cornbread/sausage stuffing, of course my Aunt Nancy’s potato casserole, candied yams, homemade rolls, pecan pie…yummmmm. A little wine, some scratch eggnog with spiced rum.  Maybe even some bananas foster…

I bet there are people I could invite to join us.

I need to go check out the thrift stores for a bigger dinner table and some chairs, not to mention a dresser since I had to throw mine away when it broke before the move.

Christmas shopping is barreling along. I hoped to get a little list from Josh, but at this rate I will have bought everything before I get it.

Ah well, I hope he likes what I chose.

Strive to be found at peace. Regard patience as salvation itself.

I was looking at the Lily Summer Discernment Institute website and reviewing internship opportunities today because last month God was needling me about it and I don’t like to ignore him.

I found a neat one in North Carolina, less than 2 hours from Josh no less and it’s a cluster congregation. I’d like to learn more about those and it sounds like an amazing experience. You get to visit with a lot of home bound parishioners and work on liturgy and worship as well as spend a week at a retirement community.

Further down the page, another one caught my eye, one that I would usually go right past. It’s in Albuquerque and I can’t imagine going there. I just have never thought of it. I think it’s supposed to be very dry. The thing is, the website of the church and the mission and the description of the internship itself calls to something deep within me. It stirs a longing.

My life has been harder than usual for the last week. I was plagued by migraines all week and horrible, devastating news that Tucker had been lost. On Wednesday night the new pet walker went to walk him and he ran out and away from her. They weren’t able to catch him and I thought I was going to die. My mom called to tell me and I just couldn’t stop crying. I also found out that I have to stay an extra semester to take one last class in order to graduate. It seems like so much loss. A lack of control over all that I need. Just an ongoing conversation between me and my maker.

But the weekend brought sunnier news. Tucker was found and restored to my mother’s home in Richmond. Well, if a hungry little beastie. During prayer I have found acceptance for the moment of what ever is to come. My love for Josh grows and deepens daily. I think that is the biggest surprise of all. How unawares it has taken me, this love. How wonderful a gift it is, and how precious.

This is a sermon from the website of the church in New Mexico, it spoke to my heart in light of all the turmoil I have faced in the last few weeks. I hope you enjoy it and find the comfort and inspiration in it that I did.

The Second Sunday of Advent
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

Listen to audio version of this sermon.

My stepfather, Bill Taylor, was a mining engineer. He had a career of selling equipment for the construction of highways, dams, and other projects around the western states. He would take me out occasionally on road trips, and we’d visit these sites. It was like magic to a young boy: all these big, efficient machines slowly but surely carving out sections of mountains, filling in low spots, laying down fresh, smooth asphalt. Man mastering nature!

And so naturally, when I hear both Isaiah and the story of John the Baptist every Advent, I think of those trips with Bill.

Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low.
Prepare the way of the Lord;
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

As I’m reminded of road construction, however, I have come to realize that maybe I’m missing the point. I’ve realized that these texts are not really about patiently preparing the ground of the soul, engineering a better self, gradually tweaking our behavior so that we’ll have a nice highway that God can use to ride on into town.

This biblical metaphor really suggests something much more far-reaching, something genuinely transformational: a wild upheaval of the earth like the one that happened in prehistoric times: volcanic peaks blowing their tops off, molten lava filling whole valleys, earthquakes splitting open the plains and opening a deep chasm where new rivers gush through. Every mountain shall be made low and every valley lifted up.

John the Baptist saw the same vision. Crowds of people were coming to him and probably confessing garden-variety sins – “Father, forgive me, I’ve sworn 3 times and lied to my boss about being sick.” His rude response to these earnest seekers of self-improvement was You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath that is to come?

John wanted a deeper repentance than what they intended. And he predicted that his cousin Jesus would ask not just for simple confession, but for transformation: I baptize with water, he said, but Jesus will baptize with fire and the Holy Spirit.

This is also the vision that St. Peter, Jesus’ closest disciple, had in our second reading today: the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire…[and so] we wait for new heavens and a new earth.

In the normal, everyday course of events, God does call us to sort of engineer our lives, to make small adjustments here and there in our behavior, our thoughts, our attitudes, to make a smoother road for our journey into the kingdom of God. That’s what a daily self-examination is for. Most of the time that’s what the spiritual life consists of.

But there are also times that come upon us, kind of like a personal apocalypse, when this isn’t enough. A crisis comes unexpectedly, we become sick of ourselves the way we are, or our usual coping mechanisms just stop working, and God enters our life and says now the time has come for you to be born again, to die to yourself, to become like a child.

It’s like the story of the Desert Father in 3rd century Egypt who was approached by a monk who asked “Father, I fast, I pray, I keep my little rule of life; what more must I do?” And the elder held up ten flaming fingers and said “Why not be completely changed into fire?” Or when the rich young man came to Jesus and asked what more, besides keeping the basic commandments, he needed to do to attain eternal life. Jesus said “Sell everything you own and give it to the poor.” There are times when tinkering with ourselves isn’t enough. We must be crucified and resurrected.

Some 17 years ago, I woke up one day and my whole religious identity and sense of vocation and meaning were suddenly gone. It had been sneaking up on me for years, of course, but when I finally admitted it, the earth opened up before me. The mountains that I had so carefully built up came tumbling down.

Who or what was God? What did I really believe about Christ? Did anything really happen when I prayed? Did I really think things would work out if I had faith? Faith in what? What was I doing as a priest, anyway? Was I a fraud? It was terrifying, especially since I had to go on in this work. I was being baptized with fire, and the elements within dissolved. Slowly, over some time, the low places were filled, the crooked paths straightened out, and a way was made within so that God could come to me and make me new.

Perhaps you have been through a similar time when the rug was pulled out from beneath you, when you had to lose yourself before you could be found. Perhaps you’re in one of those times right now. It may feel like loss, it may feel like chaos, but with God, it is a time of tremendous opportunity. For genuine transformation only becomes possible when mountains are leveled and whole valleys filled in. For that’s when we are empty enough, perhaps desperate enough, to finally change.

I think we’re in one of those transformative times in history now, as a people. Crazed zealots rush into crowds, mowing down hundreds of innocent people with guns and grenades, just to create chaos. The old, stable systems of economy, industry, health care, and international diplomacy seem to be melting away before our very eyes. We are being forced to think completely differently about all these things. We are being baptized by fire.

We can’t engineer our own way through these times. For, as Albert Einstein said, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” It won’t work. Something has to come to us from without. We have to be open to something beyond that might break in and make us new. It takes grace.

Our spiritual work in these apocalyptic times is therefore to be patient and watchful – not passive, but actively, attentively ready to respond to the in-breaking of grace. This is the message of Advent: keep awake, for you do not know the hour when the Lord will come. Knowing that we are in a time of upheaval, all we can do is stay alert and responsive. Clues will emerge. Our God-given intuition will guide us. It may take us into regions we’ve never been before, and we may have to risk a lot, feeling our way in the dark, being willing to see ourselves completely differently than we have before. But God will guide us. As St. Peter said in the second reading today:

In accordance with [God’s] promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home. Therefore, beloved, while you are waiting for these things, strive to be found by him at peace… and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation.

Strive to be found at peace. Regard patience as salvation itself. For when we are patiently attentive, hopeful, watching for God’s coming, it is our salvation. It saves us because it frees us from having to engineer our own improvement. It saves us because we place ourselves in God’s hands and wait expectantly, innocently, in hope.

We are told by our holy scriptures that the heaven and earth shall pass away, that we humans are like the grass, like the flowers of the field. We will wither up and be no more. The elements of our identity may dissolve, and this world might blow up. But God is eternal. Our life in God is eternal, and we shall be transformed. This knowledge helps us weather our apocalypses. This is the hope of the gospel: not that we might tinker around and make ourselves a little better, but that we will be baptized by fire and made new people.

Strive to be found at peace. Regard your patience as salvation itself. Watch for a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness will be at home.

Taking my medicine

Sunday is my favorite day and not just because I get to go to church.

Today was an especially good Sunday. Here’s why. I was a little overbooked as usual, but somehow I love that. It makes me feel alive and so connected to God to be breathing and living in so many different parts of his church. I forgot to get the Munchkins I like to bring the kids so I set the alarm extra early to go get them. I hit Starbucks on the way in for good measure to have one of their divine Signature Hot Chocolates. They are my new addiction and I have been more or less subsisting on a diet of them until tonight.

Munchkins and chocolate in hand I rolled in to church in plenty of time to peruse the church library and grab an illustrated kid’s Bible to use in my sermon for Children’s church…score!

Today’s reading is one of my favorites anyway, Matthew 25: 31-46, the one where Jesus says “…for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, `Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, `Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

I had fun ad libbing a sermon using the pictures and talking about how people would ask Jesus, “what do you mean Jesus? I didn’t see you needing clothes, I never ordered you a pizza”. When my little sermon was over and we sang the last of the songs, one of which is called Butterfly… the kids just go crazy for it, we went to the small chapel to wait to be called in. In the chapel there is a beautiful stained glass window with many symbols. The kids get to pick a symbol and one of the adults usually tells a story about it why we wait. Today the symbol chosen was fire, and one of the music leaders who is a biblical scholar told this story from the Old Testament about King Nebuchadnezzar trying to burn up a few of Daniel’s friends in a furnace and how they walk out unscathed. Pretty neat.

Next up was Sunday school and the story was about the Census and Jesus birth, but it took a long time to get the kids to follow directions, which also seemed to be overly complicated. Thank goodness for my helper. I had to dash out early to get vested for Chalice and reading the Prayers of the People for the 11:00 a.m. service. I almost jumped the gun and was a breath away from running right over the Nicene creed and going right into the prayers. Lucky for me, the Reverend Chip Graves started it fast and then the Reverend Lisa Graves caught my eye in the audience. Honestly I think I was still a little dazed from the wonderful sermon I’d just heard from the Reverend Barkley Thompson.

I admit my cares are weighing heavy on me. Specifically the fact that in a week I could potentially have no home in Roanoke. A simple request for my address from my alumnae sponsor in DC creates anxiety.  But the sermon today helped me put all of that out of my mind and focus on God, on my mission and on as Barkley put it, what Jesus looks for in us. As in the Gospel story today when he decides who inherits the rewards of the Kingdom and who is cast into the “flames”, not belief, but mercy. He divides the sheep from the goats based on their actions to the least of us. Not by being saved, not by professing anything, but by showing mercy.

I really needed to hear that today. When my heart was so filled with pain and hurt from the shabby way the woman I almost moved in with has treated me. I was so angry and dismayed, felt stung and betrayed, and robbed. I felt that she duped me. That she basically won my trust, only to change the rules at the last minute and then keep my money illegally, leaving me in an untenable situation.

After I wrapped up my duties at the 11, I got to have some one on one time with the Reverend Lisa Graves. I think I could talk to her an hour every day and never run out of stuff to talk about. I am going to miss her so much. We talked about my discernment committee and she reminded me that I am now actually officially an Aspirant. Wow. That is amazing isn’t it? She encouraged me to register for the open house at Virginia Theological Seminary in February. So I think I will. My next 2 semesters will be almost all religion courses. I really want to do my honors thesis around Communion. I have several approaches I have suggested and now I am waiting for approval from the department heads to find out which way to proceed. I have to begin the reading in J-term. I hope to hit some of the libraries in DC while I am there. Like VTS’s.

Tonight I went to the Gathering service and during Communion I was praying about my whole situation, the no place to live and the hurt I was feeling about the loss of basically all my moving money to secure a new place. I felt God was directing me not to fear at all, like I was like a little bird held in his hand, and surrounded by those that care about me. Instantly I felt better. About the money and my feelings of anger, he just showed me the woman, and how she dealt with me and that she expected me to come after her for the money and to confirm for her some negative opinion she has of people. That this just justifies her theft.

I suppose he was reminding me of the verses from the Sermon on the Mount, “But if any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also; and if any one would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well; and if any one forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to him who begs from you, and do not refuse him who would borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” (Matthew 5:38:45 RSV)

No one in my family would agree with me, I know that, but after praying on it, I really feel that I should not “let it go”, but write to her, telling her how I felt and that I forgive her and that if she needs the money enough to take it in this way, I gift it to her.

Tonight was also the season finale of TrueBlood. It was pretty satisfying and I have to confess I didn’t see it coming. No spoilers here, I hate to ruin it for people. A little bummed about a couple of potential plot twists but am so happy about the big finish. I am really looking forward to next season, which it appears will start in Summer. I love Summer. So much time to read fiction and watch movies. I am dying to read the second Twilight book now that I’ve seen the movie version. I think the book was better, but the movie was still fun. I wonder what I should do for Summer. I know I need to take Spanish I and II, maybe at Virginia Western or even online but other than that, I don’t have anything scheduled. Lisa asked me if I would spend it in Greensboro. Interesting question.

I am trying not to dwell on what’s going to be determined in the next couple of days. I’ll either have all my stuff in storage and have no home of my own after all or I’ll have experienced some kind of miracle.

We’ll see.

True Love

I’m feeling better today. The only worry that lingers with me is that of my boyfriend. Somehow I have hurt him, my anxiety over losing him has made him doubt the depth of my feeling for him perhaps. In fact the opposite is true. For me at least, it is what I fear losing the most that has the greatest power over me.

But I have decided that I will not let that fear move me one iota. In fact that fear and my observation of it has made me come to a startling revelation.

I know what I feel when I look into his eyes, hold his hand and when we inspire each other. I know what I discover each time he steals my breath with the rich complexity of his intelligence and insight is a pure delight. That he teaches me things and finds things in me to learn from as well. I know a feeling of absolute connection when our hands meet. That all is right with the world. Every time I see him, his beauty steals my breath. Not just his form, which is sculpted, both hard and silken, but his eyes, windows into a soul as fathomless and questioning as mine.

Last night I worried he was ephemeral, too tenuous for me to grasp and hold onto. But today I have realized that he is woven all through me and will never be unbound. Even if he withdraws and ceases to speak to me, if he runs or decides he no longer wishes to know me. He, like my faith, is connected to me in a way no other has been and no one can break that connection. It is more permanent and real than any on earth alone. So he can take all the time in the world, for I am his in a way that is not open to discussion. Unconditionally. Though he betray me, reject me or do all those things people do to each other. My very inner self knows who he is and loves him. So I can stop worrying about all the rest.

It is in the essence of trust and true love that I will give my heart into his care in these conditions.

And I do.

Abide

Lately I have been musing on loss. When I started on this road I knew there would be some. In fact my journey began with loss. In order to follow a call you have to relinquish your identity as a member of the world we live in today. A world which tells you that success is what you achieve, own and accumulate. A world which defines you by what you do. When I fervently prayed to God to use me according to his will, I meant it with all of my heart and soul and mind. My faith has ever been as present as my pulse, as a part of me as my blood and breath.

I understood that my daughter was ready to move on to her adult life and that this freed me somewhat to be fully God’s. To take up my cross, so to speak. Along the way I have had support from unexpected places and from the ones who have always been there for me. But now, I feel that God is stripping all of those supports away. I feel him pulling me toward complete dependence on him and it is terrifying. Oh I thought I was close to there. I had stopped trying to hold on to so many worldly things. I gave up my career and my identity as a powerful person in control. But in reality, I still clung to the idea of holding onto people and places to give me strength and comfort instead of God.
I told myself I sought his face and voice in them, and I believe that is true. But part of what I sought was simply common comfort and humanity. Understanding and a feeling that I was not alone among humans.
Now as people and safe places are stripped from me, in what seems a purposeful way, my own naked need and desire to control my surroundings and relationships is exposed to me.
And I am ashamed.
Sometimes I feel like God is kneecapping me to remind me to fall to them.
Sometimes I think I need it.

I spend a lot of time praying, not so much arguing or begging or pleading as just waiting in silence with these thoughts and trying to see or hear. I can almost make out the shape of what I am supposed to understand.

I dwell on a meditation that spoke to me recently. “Abide in Me”

If I can rest in him, and let all this sound and fury fall away, let all the fear and uncertaintly dispel, I will know that peace that comes with his voice.

So this is my mission and my only guide as I navigate this challenging time.

My roommate fell through and I may lose the money that I gave the person in good faith. I need a place by the end of the month and nothing seems to be coming despite my searching. My spiritual advisor is leaving in January to move to another state. I will in many ways be alone in Roanoke.
My boyfriend seems distant and like a dream. Ephemeral and passing, perhaps not real enough to last. He lives in another state, as does all of my family except my mother and she lives in another city. My daughter is so very far away. It feels like all my connections are being stretched or cut.
I am beginning to feel as if I will break from it.

All of these things and these people are so important and I am so helpless to do anything about most of them.

The agony of that is quite unnerving. I am SUCH a doer and yet that is not what I am called to be at this moment. I am simply called to BE.

To wait.

To have faith and be patient and believe.
And though it grieve me, pain me, torture me, that is what I will do.
As I will do all that he asks of me.
Ever.

Fall Formal

I had such a wonderful weekend. It was romantic. My outfit was perfect. Josh danced divinely and my friends were fantastic company. We ate dinner at Abuelos before the dance and I enjoyed a couple of Cosmos. They didn’t have Stoli, so I tried Smirnoff. Not bad at all.

Hab, (The Hollins Activity Board) the group that sponsored the event were all there and we had our picture taken together in the photo booth and just at the entrance. Check it out:

HAB at Marigold Dreams Fall Formal Hollins University

I’m in black with turquoise in the center. The girl to the right in the pink is Christine Han and she organized the event. It was fantastic. A beautifully themed production. She has a career in it for sure if she wants it. I wonder if she might do wedding planning one day. Hmmm.

I should get my mind off of weddings. I confess its hard when you are in love and happy. I am moving this week to my new place and I will get back my King sized bed. Now that I have a down allergy and no longer have the hundreds of dollars worth of comforters and featherbeds that went with it, I was concerned I wouldn’t be as warm as I might wish. Luck was with me though. I visited the outlet store Domestications today, which is where the returns for “The Company Store” get sent and picked up an Extra Warm PrimaLoft Down Alternative Comforter for an incredibly low price! Simply because it was monogrammed (and with only one letter, “M”!) they had reduced the price to only $15.99! They normally sell for almost $200! What a deal. God is watching out for me. I will be as warm as toast in my new little burrow.

The week is sure to be busy, with Mom coming home tomorrow to begin packing for her move, the movers coming on Thursday and me working on Thursday, Friday and all day Saturday as well as having to squeeze my own move in somewhere and also attend classes. Sunday I teach Sunday School, am a Lay Eucharistic Visitor, am supposed to have a housewarming party/jewelry party and also Chalice at the Gathering. I think I might have to postpone my party though. Logistically it’s looking challenging.

We’ll see.

Josh left yesterday morning to go back to Greensboro and when I got home from school I found little notes all over the place, in my medicine bottle, taped to the back of the remote control, on the faucette in the bathroom, on my humidifier with sweet messages like: I love you, I miss you, I need you.

He really knows how to sweep a girl off her feet. I kind of like the feeling of being weightless.

We also got our picture taken in the photo booth they had set up. It took four little snapshots, two of which he is kissing me in. It was fun and made me laugh and just feel very happy and beloved.
Innocent and young. Delighted.
Life is sweet today.