June 30, 2006

Last weekend I drove all over the place with my sister, spending a grand total of 17.5 hours in stop and go traffic. This week has been a mixture of joy and fear and tiredness and sadness and everything in between. It has also been busy. This weekend my friend from Ohio flies out to visit for four days, my boyfriend and I celebrate 7 months of officially dating, we’re having a BBQ, and there’s bridal shower on Sunday. Surprisingly, at the end of a crazy week, sandwiched between two crazy weekends, I’m okay and actually looking forward to everything that’s going to happen. Whatever that is. I guess it always surprises me when little unexpected things refresh me. Like cleaning house and changing light bulbs with one of my roommates last night. Who’d have thought? I feel rested and grateful right now and that’s a very very good thing.

My goal this weekend is just to be where I’m at (within reason, that is). It may sound strange to make that my goal, but given that I’m apt to be anywhere other than where I’m at, I think it’s a good one. I also need to remember to laugh. Often.

Freeway Fun June 26, 2006

LA has a seemingly endless supply of variety and options and the freeway offerings of the southlands are no exception. There is no one freeway that everyone must used in order to arrive at a given destination. It is not unusual to find new ways of traveling to a nearby city, usually based on complex scientific calculations, speed of traffic, time of day, accident reports, and whether or not one's car has air conditioning and a functional cd player. But some new routes are learned by accident. For example. This weekend I discovered that Thousand Oaks can be reached two different ways. One is to take the 5 North to the 101 North to the 23 North. This route offers the simplicity of a definitive northern theme. The other route, elaborate in its complexity and circuitous nature, is to take the 57 South to the 91 North to the 5 North to the 101 North then unintentionally merge back onto the 5 North to the 14 East to the 14 West to the 5 South to the 405 West to the 118 West to the 23 South.

I would be happy to draw you a map.

June 21, 2006

When I look at the conflict and tension and decisions in the Anglican/Episcopal church right now I feel torn apart. Fragmenting. Hurt. Dissension. I feel the tearing. I feel the muddled confusion, wondering what on earth I'm supposed to do. How do I process this and where is God in the middle of it all? Bigger than these little churches and conventions that we have on earth, surely. But why can't it just make sense?!!!

I find myself reacting like a small child. Fearful. Questioning. It feels like something I love and care about is dying or breaking into pieces or undergoing some inexorable change and I want to be angry with it. I want to scream. I want to cry. I want to beat something in absolute frustration. I want someone to fix it and make it all better. I want the tears to fall until there is nothing left inside and the turmoil is silenced.

Getting to that silent place, I realize that while I am angry and sad and hurting and frustrated, it goes beyond all of that. My tears are not just for the current happenings, they are for the Church as she continues in her march through the centuries. They are for Christendom, hurting and fragmented, but ultimately triumphant. I am grieved at the disunity. I grieve for my part in that. I mourn for the watering down of truth and misrepresentation of Christ. I hurt that some Christians will rejoice over this and delight in the fact that the Episcopal church is finally getting "what it deserves", just like I hurt when other Christians mock the exuberance of the charismatic church, or laugh at the dwindling crowd at the local Baptist church, or roll their eyes that the thought that a Catholic could know Christ.

There is no "them" in all of this, there is only "we" and "us", hurting and broken. Look at us! I want to cry. No, look at us! We are the broken and bleeding body of Christ, but we're supposed to be bleeding and broken for the world, not by each other. Lord, have mercy and forgive us. Grant us your sustaining prescence and be near to us in our brokenness.

Though with a scornful wonder

Men see her sore oppressed,

By schisms rent asunder,

By heresies distressed:

Yet saints their watch are keeping,

Their cry goes up, "How long?"

And soon the night of weeping

Shall be the morn of song!

’Mid toil and tribulation,

And tumult of her war,

She waits the consummation

Of peace forevermore;

Till, with the vision glorious,

Her longing eyes are blest,

And the great Church victorious

Shall be the Church at rest.

 

Strictly Ballroom June 21, 2006

As a child I would dance with an imaginary partner, waltzing and and curtsying to music, whether audible or imagined. I longed for the day when I would be in someone else's arms. When that spot would be filled by a flesh-and-blood person who would guide me in the dips and turns and intricacies of the dance. And of course, I would follow his lead with willing delight.

But no. That was not the case. And the cause was nothing that I would have suspected. The problem is music lessons. Yes. I took piano. I did choir. I can count to 8. And I can feel the beat in any given piece of music.

So as my boyfriend and I were dancing at our first ballroom dance class last night, I was surprised when he commented on the fact that I was trying to lead. "I'm not…" I began to protest, caught myself trying to go a different direction and laughed, "I am."

My tendencies towards control freakishness don't make it easier.

But I'm sure the dances with the imaginary partner and the piano lessons didn't help much either.

June 21, 2006

"But I'm not engaged", I protested, laughing.

"Have you seen the picture on the desk?" my boss asked the vendor. "Tell me that's not an engagement picture." Said vendor moved to inspect the picture and give his commentary. Something about birds and fluttering lashes and heads tilted a certain way.

"I'm not engaged. Yet." I said, stubbornly clinging to my story.

"Do you have a ring?" He asked.

"No", I replied, triumphant to have something that backed up my words.

"Yes she is", my boss said again. "She's not going to be engaged, she's just going to get married."

But… I'm not engaged. I'm not. Really. But I suppose there are worse things that could be assumed about me…

June 20, 2006

I was reading N.T. Wright's book, For All God's Worth, the other day and suddenly realized that at one point in time people didn't look at life and the world through a resurrection lens. I mean, I know that cognitively, of course, but it still startles me. It's stunning when I consider all of the things that changed because Christ died and rose and will come again. All that it colors, all of the implications… there was a time when people didn't have the assurance that Christ's death and resurrection had occurred, just the assurance of the promise. At a specific point in time, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world had not yet been slain in our time. That left me baffled and in absolute awe.

But I have to admit, the chapter where I suddenly realized the phrases that he was using were well-loved phrases from Eliot's Little Gidding, ranked pretty high up there in the "Wow that's so cool!" moments. It was like reading the words of one good friend while another hovered in the background. Beautiful.

 

Christian Cynicism June 17, 2006

 

Biola staff training today was all about ethics in the work place. I have to admit, I actually enjoyed this year's session (last year was fairly traumatic on several levels and not as interesting by a long shot. I liked seeing people engaging in discussion and interacting with the information. But somewhere in the middle of all that I began to think about cynicism. I suppose that's been somewhere in the back of my mind for a while as it's come up in various situations, but I thought about it again today. I think it was something about worship, standing there with hundreds of people I work with and talk to on a daily basis, singing Holy, holy, holy. There was the joy of being before God but specifically being there with all these specific people surrounding me. I began thinking about heaven and our journey there with so many different types of Christians who we rub shoulders with (or rub the wrong way, it all depends) every day. Suddenly I was flooded by specific comments I'd heard about people, about departments, about Biola in general. Not from non-Christians, but from some of the people standing and singing in the room with me. Critical, cynical, hurtful, and devisive comments that I've either made or listened to, crowded uncomfortably at the forefront of my mind . Now I'm as "J" as they come (if you're on familiar terms with the Myers-Briggs test), but for some reason that strikes me as all wrong. Yes, we need sound doctrine, yes we need to talk through issues when they come up and threaten the core of our faith, yes, we need to say what's right and wrong, but arrogant cynicism doesn't discuss and resolve, it isolates and divides.

I guess it left my soul hurting. Jesus prayed that we'd be one. And sometimes I see very clearly and poignantly that we're not yet. And yet we pray and hope…

June 13, 2006

It’s not the same.

I tell myself, letting the words

roll slowly around my mind.

Sitting with the feel of it,

just to be sure.

 

It’s not the same.

A year is both long and short.

Long in the amount of living and learning and growing

a rotation around the sun contains.

But short as well,

as in seconds, tiny pin pricks of memory

deftly bridge the gap in time.

 

Ah, this is how you felt.

No, it’s not the same.

But I sit in the quiet, caught by the

unexpected off-guardedness of it all.

 

 

Cleaning House June 13, 2006

Sometimes my room reflects the state of my soul. And sometimes it does the exact opposite. Those weeks when life is crazy and I go in and out of my room, tossing things on the floor and running out again to another activity and my bed doesn't get made and my laundry doesn't get done… those are the days my room directly reflects the busyness and chaos of life and soul.

Then there have been days like the last few… days when I feel like I'm living in an IKEA display. Days when I look around and marvel that everything is in its rightful place. Still. Days when the bed is made, shelves are dusted, and nothing is out of place. Days when I realize that I want so badly to control things when life feels too big and uncontrollable and scary that I control my physical space. Days when I wonder why emotional and physical order can't be simultaneous. Days when I contemplate messing up my room in hopes that it will bring order to my soul, but reverse psychology rarely works like that. In the mean time, my room is a very nice place to be.

June 8, 2006

Sometimes the incongruity of southern California strikes me hard. Like yesterday with its cool overcast shadow that seemed to call for lightly lapping blue-grey water and gently swaying willow trees. Instead, all I saw were colors: the jarring pink and yellow displays in front of businesses, the gaudy red trees against the skyline, the effusively outrageous purple of the jacaranda trees that are currently littering the ground with a liberal supply of funny flowers. It felt like too much, too bright, too overdone, kind of like driving along the 5 Freeway and facing the onslaught of elaborate billboards that make life out to be always bold, always colorful and always larger than life. And of course life is colorful, but sometimes its tints are muted and soft. Life doesn't always have to be the brightest or most beautiful, it doesn't have to be forced and always picture perfect, it doesn't have to have the constant smiling I-live-by-the-Happiest-Place-On-Earth sort of feel. I think that's why I like seasons. There's more room for variety and change and shifting. Sometimes so Cal as a whole feels like it's always trying to stay young and bright and beautiful.