I Am Wanting, Should I Be Wanting?

I think I feel things a little too much. And then I don't really feel at all, because I try to shut it down. I don't click on articles of Husband Takes Last Photo Shoot With Dying Wife. Or This Is What Refugee Children Look Like. How can I look at that without breaking into a million pieces? I can't look. I listen. But you can't see me and I can't see you and I think it's better this way. Better for me, which is quite selfish. I wish I got angry and righteous and indignant, but instead I get quiet and panicked and weepy. You can't do much with weepy. Weepy doesn't get things done.

I'm back after three years because there are so many softsweetterriblebeautifulugly words bubbling in my muscles and bones, and I need to get them out. My skin is thin as a grape's and it is about to split, words gushing from my fingertips and eyeballs and strands of hair, just words coming and coming, like a gentle, sweet scream of relief. I used to be so careful with my writing, editing and reediting and rewriting and deleting, and blogging took too long, and I started hating it. I wasn't writing for myself, there was no truth there, it was only a cover. I wrote and wrote but I barely wrote what I really thought and felt. I rarely say what I really think and feel. I listen, I speak, but I don't really say anything.

I think I sound a little dramatic.

The Beating Heart

Three months ago, I unintentionally put this blog away. My veins felt empty, bled dry of words and images, and I didn't have the heart or the energy to get the blood flowing again. I folded up this space and tucked it into a drawer, waiting for a perfect writing day that seemed to never come. Since then, it has been a heart beating beneath the floorboards, a Siren call I can no longer ignore. So I'm sitting down to it, setting that heart at ease.

Wisconsin is currently an icebox, a monochromatic landscape of white and brown farm fields dotted with blips of red barns. The sun makes shadow patterns, giving the snow a blue sheen. I drive through it almost every day to and from work, escorted by Cormoran Strike, a private detective in a rainy London. I finished The Cuckoo's Calling and didn't wait long before I moved on to The Silkworm. Noir is getting me through the winter. Thanks, J.K. Rowling.

Nate and I wandered through Farm & Fleet last week, picking out Rubbermaid tubs and Plano shelves, so excited for our new apartment that we actually considered the afternoon a date. There is nothing so romantic as having your spouse pick out a tub for your canning jars. If you think I'm being sarcastic, then you don't know me very well. We have such hopes for this new place. It has a garden in the back and a river in the front. It has two bedrooms and a large kitchen. I almost wept at the counter space. I plan to embrace it as a grand adventure.

This has been the hardest semester yet, mostly because I'm ready to get that degree. I have a list of things I can't wait to do when time is my own again. Playing my tin whistle. Gardening. Baking bread. Reading stacks and stacks of books into the deepest hours of the night. Bike riding.

Sometimes I worry that I'm only living in the future, counting away the precious minutes of the present waiting for someday. Is that normal? Is that healthy? Am I being hard on myself? I never know the answer.

October Thoughts

I drive every day past shorn fields and golden foliage, serenaded by October. I read somewhere that October is like an older woman who has accepted her flaws and gets on with living, even at the end of her life. I love that imagery for this season and this month of wonder. I am awed by how we still instinctively "batten down the hatches" in our own 21st-century way: buying warmer clothes, filling our Crock-Pots with hot batches of soup, setting the tea kettle on the stove to warm. We still respond to the season's rhythm, even though we may be more separated from it than ever before. But October asks us to pause, watch, see it before it's gone. I think that's a good way to live life. Even though we know the end will come eventually, we squeeze every last opportunity from the golden days we have, not in mourning but in celebration. Autumn is full of lessons and perhaps this is one of them.
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I read this yesterday, printed in a local newspaper in 1901 and it stopped my breath.

"I tell you at about this time of day, when the dark begins to come and I am here alone with all these records and reports which might be called the index of lives which have passed out, and the life work of men who have crossed over the dark river, and when everything is quiet and I am here alone; at such times when I hear the papers in these cases rustle and sometimes what seems to be the scratch of pens traveling over rough paper, and muffled sounds come from the dark corners of the room, it seems as if men who are gone come back and again go over the old records and examine the old files."
I know how that feels.
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Driving south on a blustery afternoon, a family of birds suddenly appeared in the blue sky-meadow above me, dancing in the wind, and I immediately thought, "They can fly because they are light as air." Hollow bones. Feather coats. And I knew I too could fly high if I just empty myself of all heaviness, letting go of worry and judgement and doubt and fear. It sounds cliche to write it out now but in that moment, there was no greater truth.

Tape and Glue

Sometimes we just need to say it out loud or hear our beloveds say it to us instead: I am perfect in my imperfections. Or: I am not my body. Or: I am more than how I define myself or how the world defines me. I don't fit inside a box and that is ok.

We struggle. We carry baggage and scars, our souls and hearts riddled with holes we patch with tape and daub with glue. It's hard work to grow up and bumps and bruises are part of the package. Me? I struggle with forgiveness. There is one thing I fear I will never forgive- because maybe I don't want to. The anger about it feels so good sometimes, a drug I can't bring myself to quit though I know it's killing me inside. I'm quietly, slowly, learning to let it go but there are days when I wonder if I can.

I struggle with fears of being left. There are days in my past I wish I couldn't remember- and things said and done that I bitterly regret. There's a particular feeling in my stomach I used to get that only comes every once-in-a-while, but when it does, it sends me reeling backwards to being 9 years old and feeling like I didn't have a home and that I was being split into too many pieces. I lay low. I let it pass.

I struggle with trying to please others too much. Last year, I got so tired of it that I turned my back on it and reacted in a way I never could have imagined. I stopped accepting and started asserting. It was hard and scary and made me cry. But it was liberating. I felt so free and in control, in a way I never had before. I had a voice and I had the right- finally- to use it. That may have been the moment when I decided that I liked who I was, despite my flaws. Despite the tape and the glue and the never-going-to-have-it-completely-figured-out. That I was going to accept her and help her, instead of tamping her down. I am going to let that soul glow out through the scars and the taped-up parts, shine through the holes and onto others.

I'm still struggling. We all are. But I can help carry someone's baggage as I dab on some glue and press down the Band-Aid. We heal each other. We heal ourselves.

Summer Waning

Water bubbles. I drop ears of yellow corn, fresh from the roadside, into my waiting pot. They boil for only a minute before they are dunked in cold water. We won't eat them yet- instead, they will be added to soups and casseroles throughout the winter. Bags of eggplant and squash, containers of jam and pesto and broth, wait expectantly in the freezer for when they are needed, making room for the bags of yellow corn that join them.

Rain drips on my shoulders as I lean over, reaching for a plump tomato. A splash of red among green stalks. My mother and I chat companionably as we move up and down the rows, picking the first round of bounty. We share stories and memories, we vent our troubles as we bend and stretch and our bags get heavier. We are keepers of a tradition, she and I- mothers and daughters bringing in the harvest.

Later that week, I arrive early at my friend's house, greeted with warm banana bread, a mug of coffee, and a cozy kitchen. We start to work, boiling water and rinsing jars. It is our first experiment with canning and we only feel confident because we are working together.

After a few hours, tomato juice shimmers in pools on the counter, bowls and jars are scattered on every surface, and tomatoes are slipped into their new glass homes. Amidst all of this, we talk and laugh, bonding over our delight in our work and in the starting of new traditions. The jars of tomatoes glisten and steam.... and seal with a sweet pop.

It is true that the swan song of summer is upon us, in the form of earlier nights and full gardens. Autumn creeps ever closer but I remain in my season of joy, calming my soul in the ritual of cut-dice-stir, finding pleasure in working with my hands. Alone in the kitchen in the dark of night, my thoughts run wild and smooth as I pull more colorful jars from their hot-water bath and wipe the counter for the last time.

Time ticks on, summer waning. All things come, all things pass. My task right now is merely to mark it.... and to preserve it.

[All photos by my beautiful friend, Joanna].

Spontaneous Prayer

I started the month of August nose-deep in a memoir (Found by Micha Boyett) on learning how to pray amid the busy, the chaos, the to-do lists. A birthday present from my husband who understands my seeker soul. I found myself nodding my head with the writer as she learned to shed the guilt that has mixed in with her faith, embracing the idea that we don't choose Jesus and we certainly don't earn Him. I grasped onto her insights of the Benedictine Rule, which fascinates and excites me. And I smiled in recognition as she learned to weave prayer into her everyday moments of running errands and showering and cleaning up the kitchen.

Prayer has only ever worked for me this way. I've tried to regiment it, getting up before dawn to recite Psalms or setting a goal to read certain passages on certain mornings but it has never worked well. Prayer is too spontaneous to be molded into a to-do list. I don't schedule conversations with my husband so I've stopped trying to force myself to do so with God. The notion that prayer is not a performance but an earnest, truthful talk with God and the idea that our everyday work is a form of prayer is something that speaks to every fiber of my being. Sometimes I pray without words, instead communicating my needs or awe with my eyes, my hands, or my breathing. God is outside the language of human beings. I only ever think I hear him when I am outside anyway.

I am encouraged when I remember that faith is not guilt. It is not the opposite of doubts and questions. It is not a single life-affirming moment of conversion but a gathering-home that takes place every new day. And so is prayer. Prayer is one spoken word that can hold a dictionary of meanings. It is listening as well as speaking. It is in the work we do and in our relationships with others. It is the inhale and the exhale.

Contradictions

What to write?

I want to write about our trip, which was another chance to spend a few days with one of the few people in this world who really understands me. We spent the days filling our lungs with dry mountain air, driving around town, laughing loudly at outdoor cafes as we won and lost board games, sharing a bowl of ice cream. It was satisfaction and exhilaration and comfort all rolled into one- vulnerability over a walk and a drink paired with sweet silence while munching cereal and watching 30 Rock.

I want to write about contradictions. That I can hike a glorious mountain path while bombs go off in the mid-East or that I can savor a blueberry lavender cider in one of my best dresses before walking past homeless men on the street are tragic mysteries. I still can't figure life out and it breaks my bones with the weight of it all.

And I want to write about how love and friendship are both beautiful and terrifying- a true contradiction. They are a risk and a gamble that I have lost in the past. Underneath the trust and confidence, I am afraid to lose what I love most. I fear that I won't be enough or that I will somehow break it. Hell, I fear that I'm just plain boring.

But mostly I want to write about how trust wins in the end. Every day I rediscover that what I thought was fragile as gossamer is actually stronger than stone. I trust her.

Raw Beans

I have vivid memories of growing up with two gardens in our backyard. Memories of walking down the rows with my Opa or watering with my Mom or washing produce at the spigot with Oma- memories that are sometimes forgotten, only to be resurrected when I bite into a pea pod or smell wet earth or pull a raspberry off the bush. Back then, I didn't notice the magic of a garden's yield or food straight from the ground, streaked with dirt. It was just part of my life. I relished the taste without recognizing the beauty of it. But that has changed. These days, the sight of a garden row fills me with soul-aching pleasure and snapping beans off the vine is as satisfying as eating them. I may not have a garden of my own yet, but I take what I can get, and this summer that means getting food and picking food from a farm near my home.

Photo by my talented friend!

Yesterday, I walked down long rows lined with beans on one side and sage on the other, bags in hand to gather dinner. My best friend and her kids were with me and ahead of me, picking beans and then finding the pea patch. One of her little ones, a blond two-year-old boy with a sharp eye and a vocabulary to match, held my bag of beans, watching me select the biggest ones and twist them free. He wanted to help and I showed him how to grip the bean and pull, scootching his hand closer to the top of it, lifting the leaves for him. He dropped a few of the beans he picked in my bag. I plucked another bean and took a bite, the crunch reverberating through my teeth. Raw beans are a weakness of mine. Watching me, he asked for a bite too. I handed him my piece and watched him chew it. "I can't believe he likes that," my friend said as he took another bite. While we picked, I selected a few to eat, sharing with my picking buddy, smiling at his new-found love of raw beans.

As I worked, I thought about my childhood and the moment that had just passed. I don't know who first gave me raw beans from the bean patch, but the love for the taste has stayed with me into my adulthood. My need to walk barefoot on hard dirt, my appreciation of the feel and smell of dirt on my hands are all remnants of the childhood I had and the lessons I was taught by my parents and grandparents. My knowledge of gardening is still rudimentary but my appreciation for the power of soil, sun, and water and the resulting bounty that grows from the earth is something I learned early and learned well.

There was a tightness in my chest as I realized how much I want to pass those experiences on to my children. How desperately I want a child to pass experiences on to. Kneeling in the bean rows, I was overcome with an ache for them, these unknown people that I already love. In my bones, I can feel how much I am ready to meet them- to give them the world and for them to change mine. Yesterday was the day I discovered that all I want in the world, it seems, is to give my children the taste of a raw string bean.

Cloud-Watching

When was the last time I took a minute to watch a cloud move? I ask myself as I watch a white shadow scoot across its wide ocean of sky. A few years ago, even a few months ago, this thought would have spiraled into some fierce self-condemnation, into frustration and anger at myself for not noticing the clouds every day, as I added one more thing to a vast list of everything I'm supposed to remember and accomplish that filled my head. I realize now how much has changed as I watch this cloud, just glad I took 20 seconds to notice it as I moved through my day.

For most of my adult life, I have found it easier to notice and fixate on what I am not, rather than what I am. Keeping track of what I don't do, rather than what I do. It's truly exhausting- mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. And it has worn me ragged like an old dishcloth, left me crying on the bed in the middle of the afternoon, spent and empty. But in the last months, I have found myself slowly revolting against this inclination of mine, tired of being my own worst critic. Little by little, I have forced myself to see me as my loved ones see me, as God sees me. I have forced myself to accept that I am loved, not because of anything I have done, but because of who I am, as I am. It's a hard lesson to learn.

And self-love can be hard for one who is not very used to it. I take it easy, noticing little victories. Like being on a diet, I make great progress only to relapse and gorge myself on self-loathing. But I rebound more quickly now, stronger than before, more accepting and less harsh than I would have been before. For years, it felt like my inner peace was dried up like a lake, barren and empty, full of creatures of my own making. But lately, the water has started to flow again, for real this time, like a baptism, cleansing and pure, washing away my guilt and self-criticism, making things grow so that I can in turn water the soil of those around me. Things are changing. Water will do that- the holiest of the elements. I am no more perfect than I was two years ago but I love myself more. I see God in clouds and I feel him in that lake of inner peace. Finally, finally, I relax into who I am, not worried anymore about who I'm supposed to be.

Summer Glory

From my balcony right now, I find myself surrounded by growth and life, from the buzz of a fly to the cheep of a blackbird across the fields. Summer is here in all of her fullness, swollen with heat and rain, bursting with plants, food, and life. My cat keeps me company out here, stretched out on a chair in the semi-humid breeze of a July afternoon. I do my homework, sporadically looking up to watch the leaves of thousands of corn stalks sway and flutter, like a vast undulating sea of green water, never still, always moving. It's July already.

I think on the summer so far, of watching fireworks from this balcony with Nathan, huddled under a shawl against the unnaturally cool July evening. It has been days of satisfying work and getting through school, punctuated with memory-making, sweet as a ripe peach. Exploring the Art Institute with a dear friend while baring our souls on a train. Looking out on the swollen Mississippi with two of my best friends. Meeting my mom for ice cream. Watching a best friend walk up the aisle to her new husband. Spending days at a living history museum with my sister and family, pretending we've gone back in time. Reading more Barbara Kingsolver. Picking up fresh vegetables from a local farm, my arms laden with greens and beets and summer squash galore. Dancing with Nathan. Baking my birthday cake with my friend's sweet little girl.

I find myself giving thanks much more during the warm months, when the world is luscious and generous. Today, I'm thankful for fresh food on my plate and warm breezes through the screen door. I'm grateful for support systems, for the friends and family I don't deserve who care for me in big ways and in small. I'm thankful for morning sunshine, little adventures, driving through farm country, zucchini muffins. I breathe in the world around me and exhale my thanks, wrapping myself in summer's glory, in all of the possibility she offers.

June Light

June sunsets are one of my favorite parts of the month. Long days, hours of twilight, culminating in peaceful evenings full of lightning bugs in the ditches and fields, blinking on and off like synchronized swimmers as I drive past. After the sun has gone down, the light hugs the horizon, brilliant horizontal bars of the fiercest oranges and reds, like bright bolts of fabric on a shelf of sky. This time of year, I fall in love with the world all over again every time I step outside my door.

So far, our June has had it all- hot sunny days, wet and humid storms, cool breezes at night. I stand on my balcony like I always do when the storms are at their fiercest, full of awe and peace at the dance of light playing out among the clouds, at the crashes of sound that shake my foundations. Inhaling the sharp scent of ozone and wet earth, I remember watching storms roll in with my Opa who was just as fascinated as I am now.

I am surrounded by June light and by storms and sunsets, and I am grateful.

God On A Bike

It was windy this morning. Really windy. On an 80 degree day like today, the wind probably feels like sweet angel breath to someone digging in their garden or sitting on their patio, sipping iced tea. But to an out-of-shape 20-something pedaling a bike uphill, facing into the wind with the sun beating down, it felt more like the scene from Twister where the cow got swept into the storm. In that moment, I felt like the cow. In more ways than one.

It had been a lovely bike ride up until that point. I don't always love where I live, but on my bike rides, I understand the magic of flat Wisconsin farm fields. I notice the life in the ditches and hedges along the way, I savor the intoxicating awareness of my smallness among the bigness of the sky and the land. Usually I am alone with my thoughts and prayers and cursing and the blackbirds. Today was not one of those days.

My usually empty farm roads were full. Of bikers. Fancy bikes, fancy helmets, color-coordinated biking suits, all rubbing my face in their biking superiority and my puny attempts to join them. There must have been some sort of race taking place and these rural roads were part of the route. They were streaming down the roads, in front of and behind me in little packs. At one point, we were traveling in opposite directions so I waved as I passed. Nothing. They could probably tell I was a fraud.

I put them out of my mind, trying to regain some enjoyment in the ride. It worked for a little while until I turned at the stop sign and began traveling into the wind- which also happened to be in the direction the bikers were taking. There were more of them. Thankfully, we were all pretty spaced out so I wasn't worried until I noticed a group of bikers behind me. They had been a long way behind when I had turned onto this road but they were not keeping their distance. I knew with every slow, agonizing turn of my bicycle wheels they were coming on me fast.

So here I am. On a hill, pummeled by a wind doing its best to push me over, surrounded by a cadre of biking pros, and I suddenly come to the horrible realization that this is going to be the day when I actually can't make it to the top. I will have to stop and rest or, worse yet, walk my bike the rest of the way. (Sadly, it's not even a substantial hill. It's more of an incline. Pathetic.) I am starting to panic about this when the group from behind overtakes me. I flush with embarrassment, as tortuous hours of elementary and middle-school gym class flash before my eyes. What am I doing out here? Why did I think I could do this? How embarrassing. As they come alongside me, two of the men turn and call out to me. "Good job!" "You're getting there!" "You can do this!"

I couldn't believe it. My face broke into a ridiculous grin as I squeaked out a very grateful "Thanks!" I sat up straighter on my bike, felt my confidence grow. I swear my legs felt stronger. The whole ride changed. Instead of wanting to crawl into the nearest ditch, I suddenly wanted to own those roads and kick up some dust. I grinned like an idiot for the rest of the bike ride, buoyed by just that small bit of encouragement and kindness. I even cried a little, astonished by how good those words had felt. And I made it to the top.

I am convinced that if you look hard enough, you will find God anywhere because He is in everything and everyone. Well, he was definitely doing some bike riding today.

Lunch Break

I took my lunch into the community garden behind the library and plunked into the grass, my back resting against a bed full of newborn greens. I stretched my feet out in the warm sun. I am still in awe that summer is here, still surprised every morning to be greeted with green rather than white, still marveling at the miracle of leaves twirling like ribbons on the tree branches above me. Summer has finally shook that ole' lingering Winter from her back. It doesn't surprise me that the changing of seasons was once celebrated as a holy time. It's transformation and uncertainty and hope all rolled into one.

I've been practicing how to be still, how to just sit and observe, since I have the tendency to try to cram every waking moment with productivity and busyness and to-do lists. So instead of grabbing my book, I ate my salad and orange while keeping my eyes trained on the scene in front of me. The greens waved at me as I turned their way. I saw a squirrel practically lose his footing on a massive tree. The scent of lilacs stole into the garden once or twice. Ants crawled all over my legs, like Lilliputians trying to hold me down. Nothing happened and everything happened. It was holy.

Hold the Morning

I'm just going to start typing. This week I have felt full of nothing but words that can't get out and it hurts, each word pricking me like a pin as they try to find a way to leave. So I'm just going to open the floodgates and let them fall. School is almost over and the world is waking up with warmth and green. My soul is so full that it should be pouring out all over the place but I'm buried in a fort of books, stretched on the couch, reading five at a time because I can't get enough. I sit in the kitchen sink with Cassandra Mortmain, then I march in a vigil with Anne Lamott. The evening stretches before me to go where I want- to have time is one of the best feelings in the world.

I have started to meditate now, but not as often as I'd like. Developing new habits is hard work and I often don't have enough motivation to get out of bed earlier than normal. In the mornings, whether in bed or out, I take deep breaths, noticing the work of my lungs for the first time in ages. I feel God in my breath, in my deep prayers, in being next to Nate, in trying to be still and clearing my mind which sounds like an ideal state to be in but doesn't happen for long. I'm still practicing.

I fling the door open and breathe loamy earth from the field freshly plowed next door and the mourning doves flit all over my balcony, singing their own type of prayers. The days are longer and my bike gleams in the living room, waiting for another spin on the country roads. The last time I went out I realized how out-of-shape I've become, how hard it was to breathe after awhile. I see that the bike will be like a prayer mat for me, another place to focus and breathe and watch the sacred unfold around me, even as I sweat too much and coast down hills.

Getting dressed this morning, I slid my favorite bracelet on over my wrist, a wooden piece of art from Cameroon given to me years ago by a friend from that small nation next to Nigeria, where over 200 girls and women are still missing. Wearing it is my small way to remember them, to remind myself that we are sisters, no different, that their fates matter to the world and to me. Their names are printed out and propped up on my computer at work and I let my eyes drift over the list throughout the day. Mairama. Juliana. Lugwa. Asabe. Ruth. Esther. Rahap. Each name a little prayer. I am still furious at men I've never seen with an anger that I can't let go of. I'm sick of men determining women's rights and fates. I'm tired of women defined as "less than", whether in Nigeria, in Iran, or in the U.S. This isn't a Nigerian issue- it's a world issue. And I feel powerless, which makes me angrier.

I grab another book from my pile, a precarious stack on my bedside table. Any day the cat will knock it over but I keep adding to it. There is so much in this world to know and see- I always feel like I'm racing against time to experience it all. I don't have any answers to all of the questions in my soul, but I do know that the day is lovely, that words are powerful, and that I, like everyone else, am part of it all. The powerful play goes on and we all contribute a verse.

Whimsy and Water

I was in Kansas City, Missouri on Friday, several states away from the cold and gloom of the northern Midwest. I was there for a conference that turned out to be inspiring and exhilarating, a chance to network and score free coffee. The days were 80 degree ones, full of green and sun and the smell of hot tarmac. Several of us left the conference center for an exploratory walk through a park and down busy streets, into a beautiful old train station that held the sunlight and reflected it from marble floor to gilded ceiling. I felt as if I was in a sacred space, the echoes of hellos and goodbyes murmuring from the walls.

We ate lunch in a square full of families and white tables covered with umbrellas. I leaned back, weightless as a balloon without the heavy drag of a coat. Warm breezes playfully lifted my skirt and for several minutes, I think I entered heaven on a Kansas City afternoon. The day would have been perfect with all of that, but an announcement filled the courtyard and kids of all sizes scampered to a nearby fountain in the square. Adults everywhere turned expectantly and we waited. Soon enough, an unseen symphony started its opening notes and suddenly the fountain came to life, plumes of water dancing and sashaying around in time to the music. Like children, the jets of water skipped and leaped, as if they were drunk on the playful music and the spring sunshine. The strings hit their crescendo and the water rose higher and higher until it came crashing down, the children squealing and shrieking as the water darted out to touch them. My group all sat and watched this beautiful thing we had stumbled upon and I felt dizzy with gladness to be alive, here in Kansas City with warm rays of sun cloaking my arms, surrounded by friends and beauty, music and water. What an opportunity, what a gift to be able to live to see such things. How lucky to be able to bear witness to the fact that whimsy still exists in this world and that we are all prepared to put down our lunches to enjoy it. 

Coffee Shop Inspiration

This coffee shop is full of noise, a pulsing potpourri of voices and laughs and typing. Inspiration is so easy for me to find in this world and it varies with the day and my mood and the work I'm trying to do. Sometimes I find it under a tree or burrowed in the quilt on my bed. On Saturday, I heard it call me as I drove into the town on the Mississippi River in which I used to live for four years with all of my soulmates. I had been tense and worried as I wound around the bluffs in my little red car but as I turned the last bend, my soul leaped inside me like John the Baptist and the ugly floated out the window. My soul knows what it needs even when my head has no clue.

But this coffee shop is it today, the perfect blend of subdued frenzy and caffeinated energy that I need to power through the homework lying before me and the writing I'm dying to do. In a room full of people, I feel slightly invisible and small, which can be good feelings to have sometimes. This atmosphere- vibrant, loud, full of life- evokes a desire in me to be part of this world, to "contribute a verse," which helps me pick up the textbook and pull out the notebook. I listen and watch, one person with a story in a crowd of strangers who are probably just like me under the skin. My tea fills me up like grace and mercy, like a weekend of family and friends, like a lesson of compassion and a wordless prayer.

Holy Week Holy Life

Beginning of Holy Week. Bread in my mouth, wine on my tongue. Hymn song, stained glass light, walking through a cloud-spattered morning waving palm branches and calling my Hosanna to the crows above. I pray in the shower, the steam rising from my skin. Besides driving in the car, it is one of my favorite places to pray, where I am naked and vulnerable before my God, without armor and distractions, cut off from the things of this world. Just me.

I am convinced that I have become crazy, that the soul thirst I have been feeling for months has consumed me and I embrace it, flinging myself into an awe too great for words, at this existent Great Spirit that I happen to call God. I am a soul with a body, a spiritual being, connected to the universe in unimaginable ways. We all are. This is the spring of my reawakening. I swear I can feel myself growing. It's all starts and stops, fits and spurts, but it's happening in a wave of vulnerability and connection and humbling and exalting. I hunger for words,  from the Bible, from Jesus, rediscovering Paul (I used to really dislike that guy), but also from women of faith I respect: Sarah Bessey, Jen Hatmaker, Anne Lamott, Rachel Held Evans. Reading histories of the Bible, discovering how it was written and how it has been passed to us over centuries. And I still have no answers, only questions, but the questions exhilarate me. I love not having the answers.

Lent has been a practice in trying to embrace and accept who I am- even the messy, the unlikable pieces- instead of working to be someone I'm not. Trying to show myself grace even as I work to give others even more grace. I've started to realize that we all have the answers, that we are all living the best way we know how, and I am learning to accept everybody for exactly who God created them to be. I'm learning that people of faith come in all guises- that the definition of faith is far greater and more radical than I ever understood. I see now that there is no black and white, no either/or. There is both/and, there are gradations of gray, and God is in all of it. I try to worship not only with my voice, but with my eyes, with my hands, with a smile. And I see God everywhere now. He is in the sacred stillness of ritual, in candle flame, in the grass under my feet, in the songs of birds, in books, in the rude patron, in the garbage, in awkward silences, in the growth. And I'm amazed all over again.

The vulnerability, the opening-up, the deep gratitude, the connection, recognizing the souls of others- this is holy.

Whole in the Green Silences

Because my anticipation for spring and trees and grass under my feet is overwhelming, I'm sharing this piece from last year. It makes summer feel closer.

Fall has returned from its long hiatus, slipping silently into summer like a diver into water, without a splash. We greet each other as I sit under the tree where I sat a year ago. I see the ghost of myself a few feet off, head bent in concentration, her posture vibrating with nervousness and excitement, unsure of herself at the precipice of something new, yet ready to conquer. I salute her and pull my book from my bag, already stamping this place again with my memory. As the sun swims downward, I read my latest Barbara Kingsolver- a book of essays, the lyrical words and crisp fall breeze knitting a cocoon around my body. I read of hopes and fears and finding solace in the wild things. "Among the greatest of all gifts is to know our place." Yes. Me too. Always. Barbara Kingsolver has it- the magic of blending quiet words with a powerful voice. She pulls the detritus away and reveals shining nuggets of truth in mere sentences. It is a haunting power, and I eagerly sift through the debris with her. "People need wild places...We need to be able to taste grace and know once again that we desire it."

I look at the time and then at the woods nearby. There's time enough. Quietly I stuff the book away, hitch up my bag, and follow the steep trail into a grove of trees that quickly muffles the sights and sounds of students. I take my time, wending down the path, stopping to watch a chipmunk- their voices sound like the chirp of birds, how did I never know that- and come to a little bridge, shielded from the bike path nearby, utterly alone and yet surrounded by life.

Slowly, I feel my mind stop its whirling dance, like a bird alighting on a fencepost. Letting go of the to-do lists written on the chalkboard inside my head, the endless litany of things to be done and things to worry over, I sink down and lay on the bridge. Pulling my body into various stretches, I breathe in and out, centering myself here, with the trees and the birds and the chipmunks. Now. Now is good. Feeling small is good. I lay down on the bridge, my gaze stretching up and I feel such a surge of love for the plants and animals. A connection thrums through my body like a plucked guitar string, bringing sudden tears to my eyes. I am part of this, I am of this, we are all of the same God. The trees above me seem so strong and enduring, but they are slowly being poisoned as I lay here, the whole earth bleeding out with each second that passes. The trees are the tangible past, our history, hundreds of years of days and nights that I get to witness. I wonder if the seedlings at my feet will someday stretch over the heads of my great-great-grandchildren or if this secret place will be a parking garage or a wasteland and trees will be beyond memory. And I feel such love and protectiveness for this massive system which is dying, but I cannot save it and I am filled with despair.

I stand and breathe in the oxygen these trees are making for me. I exhale some carbon for them. We feed each other. I feel so whole in the green silences, as I always do, as if I found something I forgot I was missing. In the wildness, I can let myself be me in a way I cannot in the world of people. The trees watch me with no judgment, no agenda, and I whisper promises we cannot keep to the leaves that flutter like fragments of paper above me. We could learn from the trees, ways of being that could save our souls. To watch and listen and let others be. To stand firm, but without malice or judgment. To understand our place and the larger picture we fit into. To love without destruction. I want to fill myself with the trees, with their knowledge and patience and beauty, and carry it with me like a talisman against all of the things I cannot change. I lift my arms above my head, like a child begging to be picked up, waiting to be anointed. Trying to slip my fingers into this awesome silence, offering my prayers and holy words to the caverns of leaves and branches above.

The sun is low. As I turn and walk on, the chime of bells from a campus building swells into the silence, the capstone of the sanctuary's architecture. There is still hope. There has to be.

"Look and listen for the welfare of the whole people and have always in view not only the present but also the coming generations, even those whose faces are yet beneath the surface of the ground- the unborn of the future Nation." ~ The Constitution of the Iroquois Nations

Learning

Tonight was a night of stress, where it all seemed to go wrong. My paper wasn't coming out right, another project not even started, and then I found I didn't get into the class I need this summer. It's always right when I think I have everything under control that I trip on the rug and fall flat. Deep breath. Inhale. Exhale. Quick prayer. Jesus, give me some of that strength. Or turn my water into wine. Literally or figuratively, either one works for me.

I remind myself that these shake-ups are good because they ask me to trust, they help me remember that it is ok not to be in control. It doesn't mean I don't hate them though. I cry a bit and eat some ice cream and say some more prayers as Nate looks over my paper (God, bless him for not killing my crazy and emotional self when I get like this) and then I lean into the quiet again and get back to business. My stomach is roiling less feverishly now and I even feel slightly relaxed, but the tears are hiding just behind the ridge and I know that stress weight on my shoulders will stay with me all weekend as I check my email, hoping for a tiny miracle. But tonight: Pray. Write. Eat ice cream. Heal. Start again tomorrow.

Inishmurray Island: One Great Irish Spot

The story of Inishmurray, like all good Irish stories, is a beautiful one, tinged with the sacred and with lament. It is a story of men of great faith, of a hard-working and tight-knit community, of painful farewells, and of the sea. The island still holds the ancient monastery- its church open to the heavens and the weather, a beehive hut still snug and dry. It also contains more weathered remains- the cottages and cemetery of the community who lived and worked, danced and cried, were born and died there until the last survivors left in 1948.

This is just an excerpt from a piece I wrote for "The Wild Geese" about my favorite Irish Spot. Please follow the link to The Wild Geese blog to read more. :)