Says Who?

I've been reading a lot of theology and religious history lately. Here's something I couldn't help sharing:

"Love to man is the earthward manifestation of the love of God. It was to implant this love, to make us children of one family, that the King of glory became one of us. And when His parting words are fulfilled. 'Love one another, as I have loved you' (John 15:12); when we love the world as He has loved it, then for us His mission is accomplished. We are fitted for heaven; for we have heaven in our hearts."

Name that author...

Voice

Wait and work before you dream
Until the turrets turn and twirl as they crumble

And the Israelites shout into Sabbath silence

Can a voice bring down a city?
Can a heart withstand rejection more sweetly
than rejecting itself into
nothingness and wonder?

Wonder at what matters and masters itself and everything else

And the choir sings into gothic arches and the echoes come back from God's ears

    Does He hear
   (Does She hear)

How our hearts misunderstand the songs of our fathers and mothers?

Skipping Stones That Never Sink

The world whirls and breaks like a heart 

into floating splinters with water from the depths filling the cracks and canyons and on the surface 

no one knows what makes friends friends except the common colors and dimensions 

that make us wait for love 

no don’t 

run for it 

lavish it 

until the world breaks again 

from more love than can be held in the valleys and basins of a mother’s arms

overflowing flooding extinguishing distinguishing

the hatred of enemies for what it is and then it is gone for it should not exceed the love for children

but it does but it does

still, still, still

and carries the weight of the world into greater heaviness crushing the babies’ heads 

the sisters and little brothers scream until they have no strength and 

there is darkness and tears and gnashing of teeth and 

the earth heaves and wretches at the wretchedness 

that makes houses shake and fountains flow and wash away the trash and leave trash and 

nothing matters except cash except that’s false and there is hope that is not false because love

always wins always

play that game with your spot of earth and the humans and creatures upon it 

welcome the stranger as a friend 

welcome the one welcome the two or three and dine with angels 

dine with the familiar and the strange 

until it all joins in your heart and we are all new because of you and

that love that love that love 

that love

that changes like skipping stones that never sink 

and there is courage and there is mercy and there is beauty 

even amidst the hungry stupor the gladiator games 

the big screens the sharp knives and tattered lives with

courage courage courage

comfort comes to

let there be light

let there be light let there be light 

let there be light

and the darkness will not last because it cannot last where there is light that shines 

and the darkness does not understand but gives way 

makes way for your God

What up?

How Many Lives Can You Live?

"I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one."
- Henry David Thoreau
__________________________________________________
I am not a woman with a plan; I am a woman with 10 plans... 

I wrote an essay this week that started just like that, and then I paid someone I've never met $200 to read it. If they like it, maybe I'll pay them a lot more money to teach me something about the world and myself. Then again, maybe I won't. Such is life and the graduate school admissions process.

Choices. Choices. Choices.

What do you want to be when you grow up? asks the teacher, preacher, mailman, best friend you met on a neighbor's trampoline...

"A princess, ballerina, astronaut..."

What do I want to be when I grow up? I ask...

Myself. 

Poetically.

Unapologetically.  

Sometimes full of adverbs. 

Sometimes full of crap.

I send myself e-mails all the time, full of prayers, ideas, stories, lists, plans, articles, poetry...and the occasional TEDTalk that I want to listen to someday. I sent myself an e-mail with a link to Sarah Kay's TEDTalk--How Many Lives Can You Live--back on December 6. I finally got back to it last night. Sometimes good ideas have to wait...and the timing doesn't matter. Other times, the waiting makes everything better.

http://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_kay_how_many_lives_can_you_live.html

When and how? You choose. So will I.

Practice Resurrection

Some days I get very excited about data and formulas, following that real fiction called Money around the hamster wheel, buying vowels and solving puzzles, hoping it matters to someone in greater need than the bureaucrats.

But, every day I like this...this poem...not necessarily because I agree with all it declares, but because I agree with all the questions it incites.

May we do more than we are told.
For it is said that Fortune favors the bold.

For the Anthony Handals, Brad Eliots, and Justin Joneses in my life and for lazy summer afternoons in the Merced with copies of Wendell Berry's essays on the riverbank.

"Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion--put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection."

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front by Wendell Berry

In the Stillness...

It's dusk. The mountains are peering through the smog just in time to take a bow for the curtain to close the day. A covey of quail is foraging on the back patio, and their other feathered friends are cavorting around the feeders that Jess and Felicia hung last week outside the picture window in the kitchen. They've refilled the things three times, and I'm almost positive birdseed levels have dropped a quarter since I was home for lunch. Andrea thinks we may have an epidemic of avian obesity on our hands any day. All I know is they've pooped all over my hammock. Good thing they're cute.

I'm catching my breath, letting the events of the day settle while I wait for the dryer to quit tumbling.
I'm remembering days before days and marveling at the sum of them.

A year ago, Renee and I were camped in a pasture falling asleep in the nicest part of the 23rd psalm. The sheep were bleating on the hillside. The ground was soft and dewy beneath my tent. (I can't believe I took a tent to Europe...and brought it back.) Renee pulled out her headlamp and Bible and read a few other psalms we couldn't recite by heart.

Be still my soul...there are miles to go before I sleep, but the frenzy is over until tomorrow.

Not enough time for all the words today has given me.

Sweat and Tears

I had two really beautiful moments today.

One of them was the beginning of a run with paradise playing in my ears and a view of the mountains. Overall, the run was slow and short, but just the act of trying again brought back these amazing memories of all the places and times my heart and feet have beat faster along with this belief that even though my right knee is a liability now, I'm vibrant, alive, and full of feeling and better for all those miles of sweat and pain.

The second beautiful moment happened while I was chatting with Natalia, my Argentine kindred spirit. Months have gone by since we last talked, but we pick it up like we're still roommates living in hogar nuevo, pieza 35.

The last time I saw Naty, we were in Florence. (I feel weird that I can actually say that. Just the name Florence sounds really pretentious in my head, but that's where we were.) Five years had passed since we had seen each other in Argentina, and she had a ring on a very important finger that I hadn't expected to see. Leo proposed to her in Rome. They were planning to get married in a year once she moved back to Argentina and they both had jobs. She told me all about it as we walked the stone streets until my feet ached.

The night was this mysterious mixture of the new and the familiar. I remember a musician with a guitar and amplifier was singing Coldplay and James Taylor covers near Palazzo Vecchio. The stars were yellow, and hearing Sweet Baby James made me miss my dad and think of the Taylor album on cassette tape that he left in the console of my truck when I drove off to college. I still have it, the tape and the memories, but Naty doesn't have the ring anymore.

That night we walked along the River Arno and stopped beside a railing made of two posts and a long length of chain. I couldn't tell it was a chain at first because it was loaded with padlocks intertwined and engraved with the names of lovers who had fastened them to the railing before throwing the key away in the river. Naty showed me the one she and Leo had left there with their names. Her eyes were shining when she told me. It wasn't until the next day in the sunlight that I noticed two words painted in yellow letters on the top of one post: "FUCK LOVE."

Sorry, that's what it said.

I started writing all of this to share something beautiful, but it doesn't seem possible to taste the sweet without the bitter. I haven't had to drink deep bitterness that way. The way Naty did when Leo's mother kicked her out of their house as he stood by silently. I've had more than my share of male attention, welcomed and unsought, with all the redundant frustration and disappointed hopes that come with it. I've said no, and I've heard it, too. I've been lied to, and I've lied to myself for brief periods of time. But, my heart hasn't gone so far, tender and resilient as it is. The Lord knows it wants to. Patience?

It amazes me how we imbue inanimate objects with deep meaning. A ring. A padlock. Then reality turns that meaning on its head. I wonder about those padlocks on the riverside and those keys on the river bottom. And the warning in yellow paint that will chip off long before the locks rust away. I guess I can't help hope that love will win and outlast the cynics even though they're right sometimes.

Six months after the ring and padlock changed their meaning, Naty is still dealing with the bitterness. She was honest about it tonight as we shared about our lives, families, friends, and prayers. In the midst of the news and the honest heartaches, I felt tears of pure joy flow down my face just for being able to talk with her and hear her wisdom, faith, and hope. I really love and admire my friend. It may not be the kind of love we make movies about, but it's still beautiful and real and it seems much more likely to last forever. When I told her about my questions and uncertainties, she pointed me back to God. The sign of a true friend.

"Te regalo estos 2 versículos," she said. Here they are.

"I am the LORD your God, who teaches you what is best for you, who directs you in the way you should go." Isaiah 48:17

And...

"Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun." Psalm 37:5

My life is going to change a lot in the next few months. For all my innate sense of strategy, I can't predict what it will look like, but I mostly know who will be a part of it.

But, I'm not gonna lie...it would be nice to not run alone.