dreams from a bumpy van ride

So, here it is: I'm going to Kenya. Six months, ten time zones away, a few friends and many more to make. It was all a dream at first, one I conjured up on the long, bumpy van ride from maasai-land back to Nairobi. My skin red and bumpy from the strong, constant equatorial sun (even from behind the clouds, I felt it), bags under my eyes from six nights of sleeping (or not) in a tent while the night air scatters dust from on place to another. Exhausted but for the adrenaline, some might say. Spent but for the love, is what I knew.

Dreams are hard to pin down, the way they whisper in a jumbled tongue in your ear and leave you to decipher their meaning. Could this be for real? I wondered as I tried to hold onto the thought even as it slipped away. But then someone else said it, too: what if I could move here? Just for a few months? I said, me, too and I began to understand that something new was happening. Just maybe, I thought.

Bits of dreams make their way to the surface of life, cracked shells washed up on the shore to remind us of all that's living out in the depths beyond. Every time I told the dream to another, however tentatively I traced its outline, pieced together what little I knew, the response was always yes.

That feels right. 

I had a sense. 

I always knew you would love this.

Seers, not into the future but into my heart, into the way that perhaps was always laid out before me.

I think now of the bumpy van ride, the many hours I've spent in that van, the way it makes my butt hurt, the way I am often needing more air, the way it fills with dust when we leave the windows open while driving through dirt, the way it breaks down then, with a jiggle it comes back to life (or so it always seems to me). The way I reach out the window with my phone for a photo, but I'm never able to capture what I see. It's just too expansive. By now, I know the way a way forward is often like this -- bumpy, imperfect, too big to comprehend.

***
(photo: trying to capture what i see from the van, kenya 2014)

as a means to communion

We  are hungry. We eat. We are filled... and emptied. 

And still, we look at the fruit and see only the material means to fill our emptiness. We don't see the material world for what it is meant to be: as a means to communion with God.

- Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts, emphasis hers

(reminds me of some things I've been thinking about...)

***
(photo: the material world, in Atwater Village to be exact)

the only way through is through

I lived with a small family for a few years. These were friends of mine who were a newly-married couple when we all moved in together, and a family of four when I moved out four years later. She, the wife, was pregnant twice. During the early months, she stayed in her room during most dinners to avoid strange smells, and when we watched Project Runway together she’d get up to spit into the bathroom sink at every commercial break. Her body changed slowly at first, then fast, from what I could see, anyway. Her belly stretched, her body tired, her breathing become more strained. Inside of her, a new life took form.

One evening partway through her second pregnancy, she sat across from me in the living room. It was quiet, dark outside. The first child was asleep, our other housemates doing other things. She and I were likely both reading. I remember pausing what I was doing and looking over at her. Her legs were tucked under her, her breathing a little louder than normal from the weight of her belly. She would have been at least six months along at this point.

Are you afraid of labor? I asked her.

She looked up from whatever she was doing and, without much thought, responded something like, No, not really. That was how she was about most things – calm, deliberate, un-phased.

I don’t remember if she asked me why I asked or if I told her or how long our conversation lasted. What I remember is thinking that, for her, the only way forward was through such great pain.

I’ve often wondered at my impulse to shut things down partway through. I get scared and turn around. When I was five or six, I went to the town carnival with my family and followed my sisters into a haunted house, the kind where you enter and are guided through until you reach the end, exiting through a different door. Once in, I got scared and backed up and went out the front door, probably crying and looking for my mom.

Transition can feel a lot like pregnancy (and maybe a little like that haunted house, too). When you enter into it, the thing at the end is what you’re thinking of: the baby, the delight, the new life. But halfway in, when the only way through is through, can feel frightful. I think of pregnancy and how the only way to prevent the pain of labor is to cause death to what’s inside, and even then, it still needs to come out. I’m sorry if that’s graphic. But maybe I’m not sorry because it’s true, of babies and of the things being birthed in us. 

Jesus uses this illustration to tell those following him that they would experience great sorrow, like a woman in labor. But, he said, you will also have great joy, like that of a women in her new baby, so great that the pain of what you went through will be forgotten. And no one will be able to take this joy from you, he says.

She had her baby, this housemate of mine. The girl is three years old now, with big, sparkling eyes, a laugh that comes quickly and a stubbornness that befits a younger sister. She was given the name Naomi, meaning beautiful, delightful, pleasant, and I am touched knowing what lively delight and deep, abiding love such pain as labor can bring.

***

(photo: three-year birthday date with Naomi)

(uh, guys, I fell off the nablopomo wagon. Oops.)

it is finished (but not final)

It is sunny today, that kind of clear brightness that makes the deep blue sky stand out against the brown folds of mountains to the north. I walked out of my apartment shortly after eight, and the air was warm, unseasonably so. Even in all this brightness, the mood feels dulled. There is disbelief and disappointment, there is pain, and maybe there is also relief.

It is finished.

That’s the phrase that keeps turning around in my head. Jesus said it just before giving up his spirit and dying. There has been a death, for sure, and who can say when it started. I’m not just talking about the election of a man whom many think ridiculous, racist and unrestrained. The death is one of hope, community, understanding and peace.

There is a lot of pain, to be sure. I feel it when I think of legislation that is meant to protect but ends up dividing. I feel it when I think of how we’d hoped women might be empowered through the campaign of our first female presidential candidate, but instead degradation has only been more prominently exposed. I feel it when I think of how it seems that most people felt so strongly against that it drove them to vote for (shouldn’t it be the other way around?). I feel it when I think of how few options so many people feel they have, on many levels.

And yet. When Jesus said it is finished, he didn’t mean it is final. New life would come, a new kingdom would start to gain momentum. I am trying to cultivate this hope.

And here are a few ways:

Needing someone to speak truth to me, I listened to the latest The New Activist podcast episode. David Gungor, a peacemaker/musician, talks about using music to speak beyond “his tribe” to prompt people to see the other in new, more compassionate ways. I can’t think of a better voice to listen to this morning.

This song has been my comfort over the past few weeks, in both the personal and the political and everything in between.

I haven't been reading as much online (so I don't have links for you). But, I'm reading and listening to a mix of books right now that, I think, offer humility, hope and some directions to move in. Bad Feminist is my easy and fun read. Strong and Weak plays on Audible during some of my commutes and is such good news that I think I'll read it over the next few months. The Bright Continent tells how Africa shines in ways only the ones who truly look can see. And Soul Feast, as assigned reading, has some gems.

Hope to you...

***

(photo: light shines in darkness)

more than a fairy tale

I grew up going to Sunday School, which means a few things: I drank a lot of red juice from dixie cups, I made a lot of Bible-themed crafts, many involving popsicle sticks (why?), and I memorized certain stories that were taught over and over.

These became like fairy tales to me: full of drama and the stuff of dreams, but diminished and made metaphorical. They were not to be taken literally. These stories were told maybe to expand our imagination (about who God is), but mostly to shape our character and actions in a more tame, straightforward manner. Moses and the burning bush didn’t teach me to look for the fire of God, Zaccheus didn’t teach me to climb trees recklessly, Esther didn't teach me to speak my mind to kings. Trust in God. Love Jesus. These were the polite and domestic (and too abstract) morals of the stories.

This morning I remembered the very not-tame story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. It was always one of my favorites. When I was in third grade, our Junior Choir at church performed a musical production of the story. If I remember right, my oldest sister and two of her friends (the oldest – and coolest – girls in our church’s small group of kids) got the parts of the three main characters. I sang my first and last solo, and had my dream of becoming a singer/songwriter dashed in the first few notes, which I could not find. In my nervousness, I sang the whole verse completely off key. 

I don’t remember how we re-enacted the scene where the three are thrown into a furnace, or who played God, that forth figure that shows up among the flames. In my Sunday School mind, I see four cartoon characters, slightly transparent against dancing flames. For some reason, they slightly resemble the seven dwarves (fairy tales, I tell you). Smiling, cheeks rosy from the heat.

But let’s be real, this is a gruesome story. I think of other events in our history when people were thrown into furnaces, and how these are remembered still with our deepest collective horror. And then, I think about how these men could have easily avoided the furnace by bowing down. And then I also think of a verse in Isaiah, where God tells his people that he'll be with them when they walk through the fire. Not if, but when, and how had I never connected that or thought about that literally before? I think of the fire and remember when I suffered an incredibly difficult season with my health, or when people at work treat me wrongly. Painful, but not capable of burning my flesh. 

I don't know what I'm writing towards, exactly, except that those men are way more interesting to me than the seven dwarves ever will be, their substance more than three men with the silly names, their story more than a fairy tale. 

all i have to share

(a photo is about all I have to share tonight.)

yes, and

.... Love for the earth
and love for you are having such a long
conversation in my heart.

from Thirst by Mary Oliver

This is a line from one of my favorite poems. The first time I read it, I sat on the floor between shelves of books in Borders, probably looking through a stack of magazines I piled in my arms and lugged with me. The title of the book, which is the title of this poem, stuck out to me from the binding of the thin paperback where it sat on cart of books to be shelved. I picked it up, thumbed through, read a few short poems, and cried when I read this one, stuck in at the very end of the collection. And, when I first read it, and for years after, this line seemed to me to describe a battle. An either/or. You choose the earth or "you" (God) and the author, trying to choose God, gives away a lot of things (we read in the next lines of the poem). 

The poem appealed to something in me, but I struggled with this line because, I realized, I really like the earth. Not just like the geese and ponds that Mary Oliver usually writes about (though sometimtes I like those, too). But I'm talking the way I feel after a run, sweaty and satisfied. Feeding my people with brunch or a really good salad. Tears that are happy or cathartic. Rhythm and dancing. Holding a book in my hand. Finding a piece of clothing or jewelry that I love or that are flattering on me. I like being carnal - of the body, of the earth. But am I supposed to not like these things? What does it feel like to like God more? To let him dominate the conversation? Win the battle?

But the word she uses isn't "battle," but "conversation."

My friend is a comedian and has taken improv classes. She's hosted groups of creatives at her apartment, and as a warm up activity, she leads us in "Yes, And." Two of us sit across from each other, are given a premise, and make a story by affirming what the other says and building on it. "Yes, and." 

The last time I read the poem, that word "conversation" stuck out to me and I realized that  it was this kind of conversation that these loves may want to have in my heart.

Yes, and. The things we love about being in a body, being on an earth, holding and smelling and feeling and being with - all this in conversation, affirming and building on the things we love about being God's, of the spirit, able to sense and intuit mystery and be filled with grace and see how one plus one can equal some crazy number we didn't think possible. 

***

(photo: lights in trees, pasadena nights)