Daily Inspiration

Hanging Balls of Flowers

2011-07-13T17:40:00.000-07:00

Two weeks after restarting this blog titled daily inspiration and I have yet to post anything new or inspiring. I was aware of the descent into un-inspiration as I was spiraling down. Those first few days I felt like my eyes were open to the world around me in a new way, my brain synapses were on fire, and I was crafting a hundred different posts in my head as I went about the day. I started to notice things, smell things, feel things that I had never noticed, smelled and felt before (or in a long time). But with each new noticing came a wall of self-doubt that slowly crumbled my inspiration...Why would anyone care to see a picture of hanging balls of flowers?

In talking with a friend about this spiraling descension into nothingness, I was reminded that this is a space for me to get out all that goes on in my mind. It is a place to process those connections that fire me up for some reason, and write it down in a place that may eventually inspire someone else to pay attention to the magical world we live in. And then, create space in my brain to continue building on these connections, space to continue growing.

And so this is my second attempt. I accept there may be a third, fourth and fifth as time goes by and self-doubt triumphs over inspiration. But as another step forward, I share with you those lovely hanging balls of flowers that I love!

Next Things

2011-06-23T11:19:00.000-07:00

"I want to be where the dreamers are"
This morning I woke up with this phrase on my lips, so I decided to update my blog for the first time in three years. Here is the backstory:

Last week I was introduced to the Secret Language of Destiny, which is basically a personality theory based on astrology called "personology". Coming from a Christian background, astrology is the devil's work; but as a thinking Christian, I tend to think of astrology as the science of the ancient world. It's interesting in an historical sense, and a bit freaky in how similar the personality structures determined by stars and birthdates align with the new science of my MBTI test results (which I first experienced at a Christian organization where the results were used to help direct me to who God had created me to be).

My personology type is Pisces III, born in the week of Dreamers & Dancers. Yes. Just the phrase elevates my spirit to joy, enchantment and desire. It has stuck with me and inspired me to do something, and in this day and age, that something has to be blogging! This blog, Next Things, began at a time of transition in my life five years ago. It was a way to communicate and share life with people far away. This time around, I am looking for a place to share inspiration, to communicate the aspects of my life that draw me into wonder, mystery and vision.

The distinction between Dreamers and Dancers to me is the difference between thinkers & doers, choreographers & dancers, visionaries & entreprenuers. They are qualities that are interdependent, and may even exist within the same person, and yet are different functions that when brought together can make the impossible possible. I tend to be more of a Dancer, a practical person, but there is a lot of Dreamer in me as well, which is why I think I seek out those people in my life. They call me into wholeness.

And thus, this next thing begins. A continuation of my journey.

Winter Soltice

2008-12-21T14:56:00.000-08:00

The Franklin house covered in snow. Notice the awesome candy cane lights!

The neighborhood park looks like a winter wonderland.

It's gotta be at least a foot deep! So fun!

And, I chopped off my hair! Just thought I would throw that in too.

Happy first day of Winter!

2008-06-30T20:15:00.000-07:00

I have been absent, but in my absence I have become obsessed with the new CD's from Jason Mraz and Alanis Morrissette. In particular, Alanis (yes, we are on a first name basis) has a song called "Incomplete" that has resonated deeply with the past few months of my life. So as a first step to re-entry into the blogosphere, here is a poetic snapshot into the struggle that has kept me silent for so long:

One day
I'll find relief
I'll be arrived
And I'll be friend to my friends who know how to be friends
One day
I'll be at peace
I'll be enlightened
and I'll be married with children and maybe adopt
One day
I will be healed
I will gather my wounds forge the end of tragic comedy

I have been running so sweaty my whole life
Urgent for a finish line
And I have been missing the rapture this whole time
of being forever incomplete

One day
my mind will retreat
And I'll know God
And I'll be constantly one with her night dusk and day
One day
I'll be secure
Like the women I see on their thirtieth anniversaries

I have been running so sweaty my whole life
Urgent for a finish line
And I have been missing the rapture this whole time
of being forever incomplete

Ever unfolding
Ever expanding
Ever adventurous
And torturous
And never done

One day I will speak freely
I'll be less afraid
And measured outside of my poems and lyrics and art
One day I will be faith-filled
I'll be trusting and spacious authentic and grounded and home

I have been running so sweaty my whole life
Urgent for a finish line
And I have been missing the rapture this whole time
of being forever incomplete

Conversations

2008-04-17T18:46:00.000-07:00

This morning my mind was full of wandering thoughts. One of them was about a book I read last month for a vocational counseling class I am taking. The book is David Whyte's Crossing the Unknown Sea. Specifically, I was thinking about this one idea:

To wake the giant inside ourselves, we have to be faithful to our own eccentric nature, and bring it out into conversation with the world.

He talks about how some people are asleep in their vocations. We know these people, especially when they are our leaders. They are the people who we know we can no longer count on to provide vision, support, or direction. We have all probably been asleep in some job at some point, I know I certainly have. But what I love about this idea even more than the call to wake up, is what Whyte calls his readers to wake up to - our unique, eccentric, made in the image of God, self. I think this is such a hard concept to consider as a born and bred Christian. I have been taught all of my life to die to my self, not to be faithful to it. So, for my Christian world view, I have to understand such a statement in different language - I have to to be faithful to the person God created me to be, that is marred by sin, and redeemed by the resurrection of the divinely human Jesus Christ. I live, we all live, on the resurrection side of the redemptive cross, which means that I am called to die no more, but to live in Christ, the savior that redeemed me so that I could live as God created me to be - my self.

In my morning hours, I dwelt on the idea of conversation with the world. It reminds me of the attachment theories I am learning in school that describe how an infant is formed by their interaction with their environment. Their first environment is their mother, then the father and siblings that they gradually become aware of, then there are peers and eventually a spouse or intimate relationship. We are in constant conversation with the people around us, and those conversations shape who we are and who we become. I have spent two years trudging through the pains and the blessings of how my conversations with the people of my life have shaped me. I have been learning how to have new conversations with these important people. But this path can tow a very tight line with complete self-absorption, and I am ready to start having conversations with the world.

As I consider my past conversations with the world, they were often extremely conforming. I was agreeable to everything I felt I was supposed to agree about, and I hated everything I thought I was supposed to hate. Over the past few years, all that changed, and I have been very angry, and all of the sudden my conformist conversations turned into fighting and disagreement. I am beginning to grow weary of fighting, and there is no way I will go back to conforming. As I talked through these thoughts with a friend, she pointed out that both fighting and conforming are reactive ways of being, and therefore neither are living out of faithfulness to my self. I have gone from extreme of reaction to the other extreme, and now I am ready to start settling into who I am.

This is the beginning of my conversation with the world about maturity as opposed to reactivity. It is still hard to fathom that the world would want to converse with me, which I suppose will have to be part of the conversation, but this is about seeking to be part of the world as a unique woman who knows she has something to offer the world.

1-2-3 Meme

2008-02-15T15:12:00.000-08:00

I saw this 1-2-3 Meme on my friend Matt's blog, and I thought it sounded like a fun idea. Here's what you do: grab the book closest to you, turn to page 123, go to the 5th sentence, and then write out the next 3 sentences. Here's the one non-school book by my bed:

The Architecture of Happiness, Alain de Botton
"But what remains to these stones is their eloquent ability to deliver the message common to all funerary architecture, from marble tomb to rough wooden roadside shrine - namely, 'Remember'. The poignancy of the roughly chiselled family of mossy orthostats, keeping their lonely watch over a landscape around which none save sheep and the occasional rain-proofed hiker now roam, is heightened only by the awareness that we recall nothing whatsoever about the one they memorialise - aside, that is, from this leader's evident desire, strong enough to inspire his clan to raise a forty-tonne capstone in his honour, that he not be forgotten.

The fear of forgetting anything precious can trigger in us the wish to raise a structure, like a paperweight to hold down our memories."

Ok friends, it's your turn! Post a comment with your book quote or link to your own blog!

Unconscious Bias

2008-02-12T11:48:00.000-08:00

Scanning the web during class I came across some important and fascinating research about unconscious racism and bias.

First up, are you a Secret Hater? I think this is an important conversation to be had. We are so afraid to admit to our deep seated racism and bias toward others. Our politically correct culture doesn't help much with one's pursuit of authenticity. But the truth is, if we don't own up and repent of our prejudices then we will only continue to harm others and continue the cycle of prejudice and oppression in our culture.

Next, there is a link in the article to the Implicit Association Test. You can register for free and take a series of tests that will measure your unconscious preferences. I don't even know how to explain it, but I encourage you all to take some time to do this. One of the tests is measuring presidential candidate preferences, and quite surprisingly I had a strong unconscious preference for Hillary Clinton over Obama, Huckabee and McCain. If you read my previous post, you know I don't plan on voting for her. So it is interesting to consider my bias toward women leaders over men.

Finally, another link in the article is to the We're Only Human blog. Disclaimer: I haven't had a chance to actually read it yet, but I browsed the post titles and it sounds like a really interesting look at the psychology of human life.

So, all in all, it has been a really successful class time this morning. =)

Elephonkeys and Donkephants

2008-02-09T19:42:00.000-08:00

Today I went to my first caucus. As a Washington resident, I was able to join my neighborhood at the local elementary school to cast my vote for the next presidential candidate. It was really fun to be in the midst of chaotic assembling, hearing debate amongst participants, watching people volunteering to be delegates. It felt important and active and inspiring.

What will be shocking to most of my friends and family is that it was a Democratic caucus, not Republican. I have been a card carrying Republican since I turned 18. I remember my first election in 1996 as a Biola University student proudly casting my ballot for Bob Dole. I was a passionate supporter of George Bush both elections. But no matter how I feel about the legitimacy of the war in Iraq, the last few years have been tiring.

Here are some of my primary thoughts about casting a ballot outside of my party line:

The past couple years I have been asked to engage difference. This has taken many forms. Psychologically, the ability to handle ambiguity is a feature of a sound mind. Theologically, it has been the expanding understanding of the scope of my Christian faith (including the multitude of influences of paganism and other religions on the formation of beliefs we currently hold today as evangelicals). Speaking of humanity, I have been called to engage the different races and socio-economic experiences of people in this country and throughout the world. I just can't look at say, poverty, anymore without the consideration of systematic oppression, or at least indifferent elitism, being a key factor in some people's daily life. I just don't see many current Republican leaders releasing rigid dogma in order to engage difference in a healthy way.

Then there is hope...hint, hint. I can't lie, I have been really inspired to hear a candidate for US President talking about hope. It's just plain weird, and yet really inspiring. I have learned a lot about hope this past year, and one thing I have learned is that it is not a fluffy, feel-good concept. It is about suffering, it is about faith in the goodness of God, and it is about doubting...because faith isn't faith unless you doubt. I am full of doubt about our nation, our politics, our choices, our economy, and perhaps most significantly the concept of the American Dream. So to hear someone address my doubt with a message of hope, rather than a bunch of fix-it checklists that will never be followed through on and don't address a system that needs a new imagination, is really refreshing.

It is still an uphill battle for Obama to win the nomination. And there is a lot of debate yet to happen once it is the actual presidential election, but for now I am relishing my position as an Obama Republican.

Girl Power

2008-01-20T12:31:00.001-08:00

At MHGS we talk a lot about power...acknowledging your power, owning your power, using power for good or ill, white power, feminine power, people borrowing power from others, people giving their power to others, etc. When I returned to Seattle a couple weeks ago I experienced an inner crisis about my own power. After some contemplation, I realized that I have become very cognizant of power within my family, and I have realized that it is fun and enjoyable to own my power in those relationships (and probably a lot less harmful now that I am aware of it, I hope!). I got back to Seattle and entered a place where I feel safe to be more authentic in some ways, and yet it is a place that I feel very powerless, and when I feel powerless I revert right back to inauthenticity. My power in my relationships and career at home is the very thing that makes me feel like an outsider here. This past week I have been struggling to understand how I can own my power in this new context in a way that honors myself and others. Part of that is being able to ask for things I desire without shame, as well as being able name my failures with humility rather than shame.

I am compelled to write about this because of several pop culture and political things going on right now. As I write this, I am watching TLC's Miss America Reality Check. It is a reality show where all the Miss America contestants are getting a make-over, and really they are trying to make-over the entire Miss America image. They are trying to get rid of the stiff walks, the overdone hair and make-up, and the hideous fashions. They are trying to make Miss America authentic. From a business perspective, I think it is kind of genius. In the wake of all the documentary revelations about the pageant world, perhaps this is a first step creating more authentic role models for girls. From a personal perspective, I find myself relating to so much of these girl's struggles to let go of their facades in fear of being themselves. It is so much easier to be judged and rejected as a fake persona than as your real self. And yet, there is no power in living out of a fake self.

The other contest currently going on is for the US President, and Hillary Clinton is the first viable female candidate in our history. That is exciting to me. I was watching my Sunday news shows this morning and the topic of conversation was her husband. The pundits are saying that Hillary is using Bill to play the "bad cop" role in her campaign, saying all the ugly, hard things about Obama. The result is they are questioning her ability to control her husband as well as her ability to take and give hard punches on her own. Peggy Noonan said that it was an "un-feminist" move by Hillary to hide behind her husband. I think it is all a little unfair; it's not like Bill is some no-name husband, he is former president for goodness sake! We just don't have any good examples of a man and a woman both holding the same level of power and being married to each other.

And whether or not Hillary becomes President, or whether you vote for her, I think we have to be able to step back and acknowledge that like it or not this is the woman that has been defining the role of women in politics for the past 15 years. First she redefined the role a First Lady, then the role of Senator with obvious ambitions, and now as Presidential candidate. That is a heavy load for her to bear, and it is a role that as a woman I feel I have to pay attention to.

Then there is Cashmere Mafia, a new TV show on ABC that is about 4 women friends from business school who all hold powerful positions in their respective careers. It is Sex and the City gone corporate. The first episode kind of made me queasy. I am sure it is some unresolved something, but I hate TV shows that, by portraying women in the extremes, make me feel like I should want more stuff in my life that I don't actually need. But anyway, it is an interesting show to watch as I consider "girl power." They are women being faced with repercussions of their power; mainly, in relationship to their significant others. So really this show featuring 4 powerful women is about how men struggle with women leading, and how the women then struggle with their men.

Perhaps this is the gist of what I am writing about, that feminism has changed because in the big picture of media we aren't struggling with women getting to positions of power, but the struggle has shifted to how women use the power they have and the impact on their relationships. For centuries, perhaps millenia, women have sought to be married to power by playing roles and wearing pretty facades. When, as "simple" wives, they directed powerful charities and built respectability for their own skills, they still believed they were worthless without their Mrs. title. That facade has been shattered.

With feminism women fought to have equal status as men, but often to the detriment of their femininity. My generation, after a winding road through owning our sexual power a la Ally McBeal and Carrie Bradshaw, is finally wanting to struggle with how feminine power is different than masculine power. How do we embrace our sexuality without using it? How do we (I) own our (my) power of competence without crushing others with it, especially the male ego? How do we surrender ourselves to the support of men and women we do feel helpless? It feels to me that it is the quest for authentic power. It is the quest that I suppose I am on myself in my own way.

Marking

2008-01-01T18:26:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year friends and family!

I have not had many memorable New Year celebrations. I remember last new year's eve as the night my windshield got hit by a firecracker leaving a beautiful display of cracked glass (that remains to this day). There was the new year's eve in high school at a girl's house (whose name I can't remember) that was fun. And then there were the childhood celebrations that included struggling to stay up until midnight so we could participate in the subversive act of banging pans in the street in the middle of the night without consequence.

This new year was different. My roommate Stef organized a simple potluck and bought some extra plates to smash. We finished our good luck meal of pork and sour kraut and proceeded to write all the things we wanted to leave behind in 2007 with markers on the plates. After a solemn few minutes of reading our plates to each other, we took turns smashing the plates on our front porch. I realize this is probably very representative of a bunch of MHGS counseling students' way of "celebrating," but really it is about marking - something I hope to carry with me throughout my life.

2007 was the year I learned about marking moments in time. My 30th birth-day was ushered in by a midnight mass to ceremonially bring an end to my 20's. I still have a little bottle of ashes from that midnight "celebration" to remind me of that marking. I have a friend who writes a letter to each of his children on their birthdays. He writes about his impressions of them in their past year of life, he seals it and stashes the letters away for when his children have grown.

Marking is not about being sentimental, and it isn't about being overly dramatic about life events, but I think it is about choosing to make space for the sacredness of our everyday life. Marking is about choosing to remember the past in a way that frees you from living in the past. It is choosing to be fully present, even just for a moment, to take in all the beauty and the misery that has shaped us. Marking is also about keeping in view the great paradox of a spiritual life - that suffering and goodness often intertwine. Marking is about having hope, being filled with love, and acknowledging desire for your future. Last night I wrote down things I wanted to leave behind, but only because I have deep desires for my future. I suspect I would have found this marking celebration quite silly a few years ago when I had no concept of the depth of my own desires. And I suspect that the act of marking without reverence and hope is what makes traditions become meaningless rituals.

I am very grateful for how my life has been marked by people and experiences this past year. Thank you family and friends for marking my life!

Festivities

2007-11-27T20:49:00.000-08:00

This was my first Thanksgiving not spent with family. In retrospect, it is really one of the first Thanksgivings that I even had a choice. Most of my friends were married young, they live near their families and holidays were not a time to spend with friends. So, it was really amazing to have a group of friends to share a traditional Thanksgiving meal with this holiday. There was so much difference at the table that wasn't filled with conflict or drama, but instead inspired curiosity and laughter. Different family traditions, different cultures, different stories, and I still got to sit in front of the TV with a full belly to watch a post-dinner movie. Thank you Jessica and Rachel for hosting us and cooking an amazing turkey!

The day after Thanksgiving I did something I have never done or desired to do - enter the post-Thanksgiving Christmas bonanza. Having easily accessible public transportation helped alleviate the parking frustration. And the amazing Seattle street performers added to the enjoyment of the craziness. For instance, I learned from the crazy street preachers that Thanksgiving is a holiday to thank God he has not killed me yet; good to know. Thankfully, the joyful tub-thumpers were nearby to remind me of the beauty of God's creation and why there is much to delight in. Then there was the free Starbuck's tent endearing a bunch of "buy local" Seattle-ites to mega-corporations one tiny cup of free hot chocolate at a time.

However, the festivities were all about the Christmas Tree lighting and the fireworks. It was the first time I felt playful in a really long time. There was some dancing, some yelling, singing along with carols, and a lot of waving the fun star lights in the air. I felt free, and it felt good. That is so much to be thankful for.

Happy Birthday & A Self-Soothing Christmas!

2007-11-01T09:08:00.000-07:00

So, October is great. However, I think I am equally excited about November 1st. First of all, it is my dear friend Tira's (AKA Sporty Spice) birthday! Happy Birthday Tira! Welcome to the world of your third decade; I hope it's full of all new surprises, growth, children, and fun memories together.

This is also the official start of the Christmas season. This can be an incredibly irritating fact, like our entire world wants to skip over gratitude to get to the gifts. But one thing I am thankful for is the amazing string of made for TV holiday movies that will be blessing me with wonderfully heartwarming, romantic fluff for the next two months. There will be a creative retelling of the story of scrooge, the criminal hiding out in a small town who finds redemption, the work-aholic corporate woman who discovers love on Christmas Eve, and of course the black and white classics (of which, Holiday Inn is by far my favorite). And then, a couple weeks before Christmas, the tv executives will get really creative by having the "12 Days Before Christmas" countdown. This means instead of one holiday movies a week, I will get to watch one every single night!!!

Part of this holiday movie extravaganza fantasy is plush carpet. As I am taking a sexual disorders class right now, I may need to grapple with the fetish level of this carpet desire as I literally became teary-eyed rubbing my feet into a carpet the other night. But in the meantime, my holiday fantasy for this season will definitely involve watching these movies on the comfort of the plush carpet in my family's homes. Many of you know...I am what I like to call a "floor dweller." I would choose to sit on the floor over the couch any day. But I am also very tactile...I love texture. I calm myself by sliding my hand over various textures, like my polished nails or my therapists suede couch. Anyway, I don't have carpet at my house, so typically I just lay in bed to watch movies, which is really a horrible habit, but what is a tactile, cheesy-movie loving girl to do?

So fanciful holiday movies + plush carpet = Sarah's self-soothing Christmas.

For my counseling friends, I just want you all to know that I will continue to plunge the depth of meaning into these various pathologies so that the self-soothingness of these activities will be out of the choice to be kind to myself rather than perpetuate dissociation from the realities of my life experience and feelings. =)

Braking & Falling

2007-10-23T15:10:00.000-07:00

Happy October!

October was always one of my most favorite months back in 'zona, but this month has become my full-fledged favorite now that I am in Seattle. While east coasters bemoan the weak display of fall colors, my desert-raised self glories in what is on display in the great northwest. When you add some sunny days and little warmer weather to the mix it becomes downright fantastic. The sky has cleared the last few days, which to be honest has made me really grumpy, but today there isn't a cloud in the sky so the beautiful Olympic Mountains are showing off above the Puget Sound. I think there is something about these grand mountains that always humbles me and makes so grateful for life and beauty.

To add to the fall excitement, today I went grocery shopping with a bucket load of coupons. I saved $80! I am so fricken proud of myself. Plus, I got things like apple butter, pumpkin cream cheese, beef stew fixins and a lot of red wine.

This week is also fall break for mhgs. It is a much needed break for me. Though the weather and colorful beauty of this month are wonderful, it has been a rough month. School has inadvertently been playing out my internal struggle to know who I am. My perfectionist and very-latent overachieving self has pushed into a schedule of classes that was way too much. The papers and projects have called me to live into who I desire to be, and yet they have fed into my same ole self and perfectionist patterns. It is a strange dichotomy. I am caught in this place of wanting to be different without knowing exactly what it is I want to change.

So the idea of braking has been a nice one this week. Just stopping. Not falling apart, breaking into pieces, and giving up...all of which sounds very tempting right now. But pausing long enough to feel the weight of the questions and struggles that I am working through right now. Letting it all sink in, perhaps with the quiet hope that change will come whether I know it or not!

Church History Brain Drain

2007-09-30T20:19:00.002-07:00

This is what happens after a graduate student drinks coffee before going to bed, can't fall asleep, then sleeps in late, has a paper due the next day and therefore chooses to forgo bathing and getting out of bed in order to work on said paper all day, and then becomes so tired of paper topic that taking photos of oneself becomes a welcome distraction:

Rain and Ryan Adams

2007-09-30T11:10:00.000-07:00

The rain has arrived in Seattle. It is so beautiful and refreshing. I just don't get how people don't like this weather!?! The fall colors are also starting arrive. You can see little patches of red and yellow appearing on the green trees. It is so beautiful. I am so excited for fall!

The perfect musical accompaniment to the fall season is Ryan Adams. I realize I am one of the last people to become a fan of Adams, but whatever. I actually had one of his albums on my iPod for a while now, and as I drove a friend home a few weeks ago he told me I needed to be in love with Adam's song Avalanche. I did, and then moved on to other Ryan Adams gems. I just can't get this one out of my head:

"When The Stars Go Blue"

Dancin' where the stars go blue
Dancin' where the evening fell
Dancin' in your wooden shoes
In a wedding gown

Dancin' out on 7th street
Dancin' through the underground
Dancin' little marionette
Are you happy now?

Where do you go when you're lonely
Where do you go when you're blue
Where do you go when you're lonely
I'll follow you
When the stars go blue

Laughing with your pretty mouth
Laughing with your broken eyes
Laughing with your lover's tongue
In a lullaby

Where do you go when you're lonely
Where do you go when you're blue
Where do you go when you're lonely
I'll follow you
When the stars go blue
The stars go blue, stars go blue

Laughing with broken eyes...oh my, I think I want to rename my blog based on this line. This song just feels and sounds like life to me. It is melancholy and oddly happy. It is filled with love and loneliness. There is beauty and darkness. Life.

Playing House

2007-09-18T20:39:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me today that my life feels like a very prolonged game of playing house. The game has become very complicated with relationships, bills, and lots of keys (which really was a sign of adulthood to me in my pre-teen years...adults get to have so many keys!)

I am doing all these grown up things in my determination not to be a child, but unfortunately I just can't continue to hide the fact that I am really a little 8 year old pretending to know how to be an adult. There are other problems...

Children don't know how to express their needs and desires.
Adults don't want to be friends with children.
Children are very easy to trample over.
Children are prone to tantrums.
They need help to grow and mature, and children playing house think they can do everything on their own.

Apparently, in my pretending, I forgot that I was just playing. Of course, children pretending to be adults have no time for playing.

Now I am sitting here with grown-up problems that my very mature 8 year old self just doesn't know how to pretend my way out of, and I am pissed. I am pissed at the 8 year old for not having it figured out, and I am pissed at the 30 year old that let an 8 year old run their life for the past 22 years.

Summer School Recap

2007-08-31T20:38:00.000-07:00

It was a long, hard summer. It started with two classes...

Psychopathology 1: it was as horrible as it sounds. Probably made especially hard by my own pathology, but whatever. This was my first Master of Counseling Psychology class since I switched from M.Div. to MACP. It kind of freaked me out to be sitting with counseling students talking about psych hospitals and reading (and rewriting) giant medical manuals...this just wasn't part of my new vision of combining theology and psychology.

New Testament Genre: ahh, a breath of fresh air surrounding my psychopathology class each week. Taught by Professor Joanne Badley, whom I highly respect, and I got to learn about the ins and outs of NT theology. I went through the book of 1 Corinthians to outline the narrative of the church relations with Paul that led to his writing of this letter, and it was fascinating to see the context and story develop. I know it bores most people, but this kind of stuff makes me smile...any chance I get to help me make more sense of the bible is a very welcome thing.

In this midst of these two classes I had a Leadership intensive class. What I thought was going to be a very cerebral class turned out to be tremendously emotional for me. As I was taking personality tests realizing how different my way of relating to the world is compared to most of my MHGS peers, I was also missing out on the student leadership retreat I was meant to be at. The culmination of these two isolating experiences probably set the tone for one of the loneliest seasons I have had in years this summer. oh, fun.

July and August were filled with lots of free time with two intensive classes in between:

Multicultural Issues: Holy shit. It is a humbling, sad, frightening experience to have your white privilege held up for you to see. It is even more humbling when it is people of color, who have experienced all the hatred they are calling me to recognize in myself, who offer this education with such incredible grace. One of our assignments was to go to places where we would be the minority. It was stunning to pay attention to what I was thinking and feeling - terror, self-consciousness, fear, mistrusting people's kind greetings, the relief to see another white person. It made me realize that even my theology of church is an indication of my privilege; if I was the minority in every church I visited, I would surely find comfort in almost any church where I was surrounded by people who look like me, and my personal church style and theology preferences probably wouldn't even be a consideration. There were lots of realizations during this class, but this one was most impactful because I have held to the idea that theology, or our faith in God, is what could bring us to racial reconciliation. Now I see even that idea is seeped in issues of white privilege.

And finally, Philosophy 1: just a big, long mess of trying to grasp Plato and his Forms; Augustine and Aquinas' attempts to make Greek philosophy Christian; and the depressing turn in Descartes and Kant to complete doubt, individualism and relativity. This was the first class I almost dropped, but I made it and am glad for it (thank you Blaine for recommending Passion of the Western Mind!). Like it or not, our ideas of Christianity are seeped in ancient philosophies, so it was helpful to get the background understanding.

So, that was my summer school in a very big nutshell. I don't know if I am genuinely struggling with this whole student thing, or if I am simply on the brink of burnout after a full-throttle year, but I am tired. And yet, I can't even imagine what I would do if I re-entered the "real world." So, I hope to just hunker down over the next few months with Christmas as my light at the end of this tunnel.

Vacation!

2007-08-31T19:42:00.000-07:00

My Mom and Aunt Elaine came to Seattle for a visit last week. It was so nice to be treated to a luxurious vacation in my new home state. We visited Pike Place Market, the historic underground tour of Seattle, the Ballard Locks, Golden Gardens beach and ate a ton of great food in Seattle. For a family that is perfectly happy watching movies and drinking wine all day, that is a pretty impressive list. (Although, we did get our share of wine in too).

Then we headed over to the Olympic Peninsula of Washington, which I have wanted to do since I moved here last summer. We stayed in charming B&B's, went whale watching and visited the beach and mountain parks. It is stunningly beautiful. Here are some pics of the places and the family!

Mom & Aunt Elaine at the Market

Me & mom hanging on drift wood

Massive, beautiful driftwood on Rialto Beach

Hoh Rainforest

Sol Duc Falls

It was so wonderful to be with family. My last name is Casbeer, but being around my mom and aunt reminds me that I am all Chapman! It felt so good to be with people who know and understand me even in the midst of all of our differences and quirks, and who love me just the same!

Love you mom!

Some Thoughts

2007-08-07T20:27:00.000-07:00

Amidst a flurry of various hell, fire & brimstone messages on a overtly Christian bus of sorts was this message:
The words of the living God are the highest of all education.

I think it simply frustrated me. Not because I take personal offense to the evangelist tour bus, but because I know this thought is fairly prevalent among Christians. I am in school to learn about the living God and God's word and how that knowledge intersects with an understanding of self and others. I wouldn't say that this education is more valuable than knowledge of the Bible, but I also think it is naive to think that the Bible is plain text. The word of God would be meaningless to someone who could not read or understand the language it was presented in (which, by the way, would include all of us English speaking evangelicals considering the Bible was written in Hebrew and Greek!). And if this pithy phrase was meant only to refer to the moral education offered in the Bible...that would require a whole other post, but my thoughts would be somewhere along the lines of how the Bible has been used to justify all kinds of cruelty and harm against others out of selfish ambition.

Okay, the next thought.

I realized this weekend that if you take away Target, Bed Bath & Beyond, Walmart and every other big box retailer, I have no clue where to buy a toilet bowl cleaner. How sad!

End thoughts.

Angels My @#$

2007-08-02T10:28:00.000-07:00

I just discovered one reason to NOT like living in the East Lake Union neighborhood:
The Blue Angels. Oh my goodness, those jets are loud when they are flying directly over your roof!

Body Love

2007-08-01T20:19:00.001-07:00

I have been reflecting on the body a lot lately. I have been wrestling with my own body image issues as I try to get myself back into the gym for the hundredth time. I wish I loved it. I wish it made me ecstatic. It doesn't. Mostly it just makes me tired, but maybe I just need some time.

Right now I am somewhere in between angry and motivated. I got a flush of anger at a cafe this week as a woman sat with her legs crossed twice, like her legs were little vines intertwining each other. Is that really comfortable? I also got perturbed with the guy that was double stepping the stairs to the grocery store. Is that really necessary? So your skinny, so you are athletic. I am tired of fat jokes and open scrutiny of other people's bodies. Do you see me? And I am really sick of the nation's new found focus on child obesity that blames the children and let's the parents in charge of feeding them completely off the hook. I wish there was a study of those parents. I would put my total savings on the outcome being those mothers and fathers having serious eating disorders or at least seriously disordered eating. Why don't we get that behaviors are learned, even if it is an opposite behavior? This is a portion of my anger.

I wonder how much of our body issues truly are mental. And by mental, I do mean psychological. Like the Indexed image above, our minds are getting played with all the time about what we should look like. The crazy thing is, most of us know this to be true, and yet we still judge ourselves and each other by magazine cover standards. Psychologically, these are issues of self worth. But I think after exploring the psychological aspects of this issue for a couple of months, I am still left wanting for more.

This has led me to the concept of honoring the body as spiritual discipline. From Lauren Winner's Mudhouse Sabbath, here are some thoughts along this line:

Attending Christianly to our bodies is a matter of some urgency, because there is no neutral way to be a body...What I want is to pay more attention - and more explicitly theological attention - to my body and the things it does every day and the connections between the work of my body and the daily service of God.

...the church fathers labeled Gnostism, with its insistence that spirit was separate from and superior to matter, a heresy...Even the most faithful Christians can sometimes catch themselves in a Gnostic mindset of wanting to deny, rather than rightly order bodily desires for sex, food, even sleep.

I also started reading Honoring the Body by Stephanie Paulsell. So far, she is speaking to the dichotomies of the body. Integrity (our distinctness) and relationality (our connectedness with other bodies), freedom and constraint as "practices that seem to constrain the body often have freedom as their motive," and lastly sacredness (deeply blessed) and vulnerability (fragile).

I wish I could soak this all in. I wish I could have such a vision of the body, a vision that internalizes the goodness of God and the beauty of my created self...body and all. I wish that as I go to the gym tomorrow I could maintain the perspective that caring for my body is one small practice of worship to God, and that God does not require self mutilation or condemnation in this practice in order to make it holy. I hope that I will soak up the belief that God actually cares about what I eat. That the God who instituted feasts, dietary laws, Lord's Supper and the tree of good and evil actually still cares about how, and what, and when, and with whom I eat.

Is this possible? This mix of freedom and constraint, this tension between sacred and vulnerable...are they neat categories, or could I really learn to "rightly order" my body?

Coming Down

2007-07-28T20:49:00.000-07:00

I'm coming down from a long week. It started last week as I worked, for money, for the first time in many months. It felt good. I basically made coffee for 4 days for the Story Workshop at school, but I gained a lot of pleasure in making coffee...something to do with mindlessness, and being out of the house, and making a little money. But, I sat in on the final few hours of the workshop which was the most heartbreaking and the most rejuvenating experience. I sat and listened to the attendees share their stories, their past stories of harm, as well as their current stories of feeling hope. It was a great reminder of why I am at this school. It is graduate work, but it is a whole lot of heart work too, and it is beautiful. For anyone who is interested in experiencing Mars Hill Graduate School but doesn't want to be a student, I highly recommend this workshop.

Then I sat in on Philosophy for 4 full days. I have zero experience with philosophy, and those four days didn't improve my knowledge much. Hopefully working on the final paper will help it all come together. But we had an entertaining professor, Carl Raschke, who has a knack for saying and doing some crazy things. I thought I would share a few of the moments that snapped me out of my lecture stupor...

Theology is the shotgun marriage between Plato and Paul.

What makes us Christian is that we have a God that actually pooped.

One of the best ways to shake up a church is to read scripture.

And for those who like to stay up to date on Postmodernism, apparently...
Derrida is out. Spinoza is in.
You can take that information to the bank...or at least wikipedia!

Happy weekend!

Plato

2007-07-17T13:58:00.001-07:00

He says about unity that "by diverging, it agrees with itself...like the harmony of a bow or a lyre." ...Harmony is concord, and concord is a kind of agreement; but agreement cannot be created from divergent things while they are still divergent, and harmony cannot be created unless divergent things agree.

The Symposium

Hate

2007-07-15T16:30:00.000-07:00

It is amazing to see, as I plumb the depths of my hate, how much of life appears to be a complete facade - a play with well constructed scripts and costumes, perfectly practiced gestures and facial expressions. People will say, "You don't hate yourself-you look so put together," "you're not a racist-you're so nice to people," "you aren't playing a part-you are so honest." I think today is the first time in the past year at MHGS that I have truly believed in the complete and utter depravity of mankind.

Today, I see no good in the world and I find no hope in God - the apparent mastermind of this mess. And yet today, I went to church where they are celebrating a year of hope, and it felt so good. But now I sit here, trapped in my little room in the enormous world too afraid to step out and fuck it up all the more by my mere hateful presence, and too scared to stay in here all alone murdering myself.

The Fourth on Franklin

2007-07-05T16:45:00.000-07:00

Happy Independence Day!

We inaugurated our new home last night with our first party for the fourth of July. Our Eastlake neighborhood basically shuts down as we are just blocks away from Lake Union where there is a fireworks show. The night started with just hanging in our front yard watching our new neighbors having water balloon fights. These soon turned into throwing water balloons at cars driving by.

Most of the drivers laughed it off, but someone got pissed and called the bike cops, which left the lingering question...how do you call a bike cop? Anyway, Rachel was on top of it - eaves dropping and filling us in. She actually heard the bike cop say, "help me help you!"

Then we headed down to the Lake to watch the fireworks. Hope everyone had a good holiday!

Father's Day

2007-06-17T22:34:00.000-07:00

Today has been filled with so much emotion. It began with me recalling how fun and funny my dad was. He was filled with life, and yet he always had this hidden twinge of melancholy about him. I wish I had known what that melancholy was about when he was still alive.

I have joined Student Council at Mars Hill Graduate School, and today was the end of the annual retreat. It was spent in worship - silence, remembrance, communion. On days like this, silence is deadly. My 30 minutes of silent prayer and reflection were filled with tears and wrestling. Dan Allender said in my Leadership class this week that it is a beautiful thing when we can leave behind our deconstruction of idols because we have something even greater to reconstruct. I reflected on this idea. Is it time for me to stop deconstructing my dad, my family? I know the patterns, the pain, the worship of my dad; is it time to begin reconstructing myself and how I will live out my story in the ways of Jesus?

There is part of me that thinks if I could get to the place of reconstruction then I could finally truly mourn my past. There isn't a lot of room for real grief in the midst of anger.

I have also been reflecting today on my understanding of God, of our culture's understanding of God. In my New Testament class, we read a little bit about the culture of 1st century Roman empire/Jewish culture where the father was the provider for all - wife, children, slaves, etc. The emperor was the father of a nation, Paul was a father of the Philippians, God is Father. Can we even know and understand this idea today where father does not necessarily imply provider, life-giver, leader? Even in families where fathers are the primary providers they are often very absent emotionally. Can middle/upper class Americans have a theology of fatherhood that informs our knowledge of God? Do we even want that today in a culture where leaders and fathers are absent and/or corrupt?

This got me thinking about the names of God; specifically, God's name for Godself in the OT - I AM. I know this will probably sound heretical, or at least outlandish, but I wonder if I AM is the God we can relate to today in our First World experience of individualism. I don't know if this even makes sense, but as I searched today to understand God in light of my sad and difficult relationship with my dad, I turned immediately to I AM, the God who is self sufficient and all knowing, and yet created humanity and lives in communion with the Son & the Spirit. I can relate to I AM IN COMMUNITY. That is bigger than me, it is more glorious than me, and yet it helps me understand God perhaps in the same way the Biblical heroes understood God as a Father within their culture.

In my culture, our American culture, "I" is the only real source of power that we know. We create our own futures, we make choices to determine our 5-10-20 year life plans. God is intermixed with these individual pursuits of happiness, but ultimately it is up to me. If it took Paul and the early church to adopt the idea of God as Father as a frame of reference for the character of God within their culture, then perhaps I need to embrace the idea of an individual God in the midst of community as a frame of reference for my understanding of God. I am an individual who needs community, but I fail at this all the time, and so I need a God who is an individual within community to turn to for my salvation.

This is what has been floating around in my head today...Happy Father's Day. May the concept of Father be redeemed in our broken culture. I AM knows I need it!

Bible Club

2007-06-13T23:41:00.000-07:00

It has begun. Bible Club convened with the reading of a modern day Epistle written by our fellow worker in Christ, Cabe, which was so apropos. We proceeded to hash out all our thoughts and hopes and interests and expectations, and then we finally settled into John 17 as our first passage to study. I am so excited.

Kate asked at one point why we were all truly interested in this idea. It immediately occurred to me that I have never really experienced community reading the Bible together, studying together, wrestling together. I have been in lots of Bible Studies, but that means I have been in lots of groups where leaders told me what a passage meant and how I was supposed to live and believe. I am not dissing those experiences because I know I learned much from many leaders in my past, but all I had to do was show up and soak it up...it required very little of me.

There is something incredibly more exciting about engaging the text myself and with others, of getting to follow the passion within me that draws me to a text while still learning from others. It is exciting to do this with the intent of learning how to really live the gospel out in our 21st century, American, affluent, and pluralistic society, as opposed to just fulfilling my Christian duty with a daily quiet time which has always brought me more guilt and confusion than real transformation. We get to "play" with the Text, which to me means I get to get my hands dirty with friends as we struggle to understand what it means to have the faith of a mustard seed in a society where we get pre-maid mustard in handy, squeezable bottles at the supermarket; or, what it means to love your neighbor in a culture of fences and locked doors...and terrorists who decapitate their enemies. This could perhaps be called a midrash group, at least deep down I hope that will be the experience.

I feel kind of weird being so excited, but this new group brings life to my soul. I have had a really rough week, but tonight I have laughed and smiled much. It is good.

Unlocked

2007-06-12T22:08:00.000-07:00

In the past week I have had my personality tested and my handwriting analyzed. In one page or less all of my problems have been made sense of. I literally want to print out this stuff and take it into my therapist or my school or my house and scream...maybe this is just the way I am!!! Maybe all these relational and personal and familial issues are just my personality.

For instance, I hate chit chat. On occasion I can do it, but as a general rule I just don't get it. Here is the answer:
INTJs do not readily grasp the social rituals; for instance, they tend to have little patience and less understanding of such things as small talk and flirtation (which most types consider half the fun of a relationship).

Of course there is a lot more, but I am an INTJ, so I am too private to share it all. Sometimes these assessments help me feel free, even for just a moment, to be okay with who I am. Maybe I just need to scream that to myself.

Next Things

2007-06-08T09:54:00.000-07:00

It has been almost a year living in Seattle. What a ride!

I can feel the sentimentality as well as the stress approaching as Stef, Smruti and I have to move by the end of the month. This house, which has come to called the Meridian House, has been so wonderful. So much has happened within the confines of this space, good and bad. There has been lots of tears and laughter, deep conversations and partying, football and Grey's Anatomy.

It would be really sad if we weren't moving here, the Franklin House:

This big, beautiful house is going to be our new home. It is closer to downtown and in a really cute neighborhood called Eastlake. And we will be adding a new roommate, Holly, which we are really excited about.

The other big news...Bible Club is starting! Yeah! There is just something oddly ironic and subversive about starting a bible club at Mars Hill Graduate School. Not because we don't respect and believe in this Text, but because we spend so much time deconstructing all the ideas we have ever held about the bible that have gotten in the way of us actually reading it well. It is kind of exciting to know that I can continue deconstructing while at the same time reconstructing a new appreciation and love for this odd and beautiful text. If this club gets off the ground, it will have to be in honor of Joanne Badley, NT scholar and professor at MHGS, who first gave us the assignment to study the Sermon on the Mount that inspired the Bible Club.

Self Service

2007-06-05T13:54:00.000-07:00

I just returned from a wonderful weekend with old friends. It is interesting to consider how adulthood, marriage and motherhood have changed our views of the world. There was a lot of discussion around selfishness. The message is everywhere, from Oprah to Christian self-help to the endless array of fashion, home improvement, flashy cars and more that are paraded by us every minute of every day. Where we once would have enjoyed dishing on celebrity gossip we are now turned off by the excessiveness of our culture.

And yet, here I am working on a graduate degree in counseling psychology. Everything I learn is about the self - the part of us that is the culmination of parenting, environment, learning, experience, as well as the mysterious internal make-up of innate personality, desires, likes/dislikes that makes us each different. We were created diverse, there is not one human being that is the same, and so therefore I have to think there is something about "self" that reflects the glory of God. If we believe we were created by God, then understanding our self must reveal something of the glory and character of God, right?

I remember my first encounter with therapy. My therapist did not practice from a Christian worldview, and he kept telling me that I needed to be more selfish. I was dumbfounded and resisted him for months. Then I read a book that talked about co-dependency - enmeshing yourself with others to the point that you don't think or act out of your own agency. I remember going to my next session with the a-ha: he wasn't asking me to be selfish, he was asking me to stop being self-less, or without a self. I wonder if the Christian community has become so enmeshed in pleasing each other by obeying social structures that we have forgotten to really seek God's call for our own self. Have we come to equate living out of one's uniqueness with selfishness? It seems kind of ironic really, because if we are upset with others stepping out to do something different aren't we really getting upset because they won't be around for us anymore!

Of course, I am probably making this more complex than it needs to be due to our lack of language. There are more obvious external forms of selfishness - living with no regard for how you impact others (i.e. drunk driving), consuming and collecting stuff without need, not sharing what you have been given with others. But I also think there is internal selfishness that can only be unearthed with a little digging. I hide. I have never thought of this as selfish because I never really thought anybody needed or expected anything of me. But as I grapple with my self - my personality, calling, worth, I am realizing more and more that hiding is selfish. A selfishness that comes from the sad place of not believing you have anything to offer.

It is an odd paradox that the more I have come to understand my self, the more I desire to extend myself out to others, to serve. But I guess that is another language issue. Is not being selfish the equivalent of serving others? Can you serve others with an attitude of selfishness? I guess a truer sense of self will not always lead to service, just as serving others will not always be a sign of selflessness.

So where does this leave me? I think a lot of this has been stirred up not only from my girls trip, but also from just finishing a paper on Luke 12:42-48, the parable of the unfaithful servant. Read it. It's disturbing. But ultimately it is about being vigilant and watchful for Jesus' return. It is about choosing to treat our brothers and sisters with dignity and care since the kingdom of God is here, and not yet. It is choosing to work and live out of Jesus'example. For me, this is where theology and counseling intersect. The goal of the therapist should be to help the servant live more fully into the kingdom of God, building the courage and strength to fight against their depravity in order to live out of their God-given glory.

Folklife

2007-05-27T12:21:00.001-07:00

This weekend is Seattle's Folklife Festival. It is one of those events that provides wonderfully amusing people watching and some good music. Lots of tie dye shirts, kilts, and opportunities for checking off your list of things you never thought you would see.

Old man being a human video game, check:

My brothers in Christ. Uhg:

Wading in the water with Cabe & Kj. Don't look too close, there are naked children in the background!

Bluegrass under the Space Needle:

Spring

2007-05-25T12:30:00.000-07:00

I just went through some pictures from this spring. Thought I would share...

Loving Life

2007-05-17T08:22:00.000-07:00

I sleep until at least 7:30 every morning, get up, drink coffee while reading or watching the Today Show. Some days I don't groom until the afternoon as I putz around the house and do homework. This morning I did a weekly blog read through, took out the trash and looked up to see the Olympic Mountains, which are covered in clouds today, but I still know they are out there and it made me smile.

I am embarking on my toughest trimester yet, and I feel less stressed than I have all year. Go figure. I just paid bills and realized that I have money in my account, which means my tax refund finally arrived...praise God! My skin is still sensitive from a sunburn as we had a week of sunshine! Also, I have not had my life story and style of relating prodded and picked at for almost two weeks now, and I gotta say...it has been wonderful.

I am just happy.

Remembrance

2007-05-04T19:18:00.000-07:00

Today I attempted to review the ending of my second semester at Mars Hill Graduate School. What a mess.

I didn't even make it to my class notes; I didn't even make it through all of my personal journals. but what I have recalled so far is that it was a semester rich with heartache and confusion for me. There have been moments of such hurt and disappointment, and there have been moments that felt like the glory of the sun breaking through the clouds. I love dark, cloudy days, but anytime the sun rays break through here in Seattle, my head and neck seem to respond automatically - lifting up and toward the light and the warmth. There have been several days as I walked between skyscrapers on my way to school that I would shiver in the shadows of the buildings hoping for a red light to stop me at each intersection so I could enjoy a few brief moments of sunshine.

Isn't it interesting though that the most beautiful skyscapes are those that have light pouring through a gray sky, sunset colors painted on big white clouds, or the rainbows created through the raindrops. In the end of this semester, I came to realize some important things...things that give me hope that I can endure two more years of dark, cloudy days...or a lifetime of them.

It's not about me. The process, the transformation of a broken heart or a lost soul, especially my own...it's not about me. I don't think God is a crutch. I think religion is a crutch, a man made structure that we can lean on while the amazing, almighty God does his healing and transformative work on us. The crutch, perhaps I could call it community since I am not attending a church, doesn't ease the pain, instead it creates blisters and muscle pain in your arms. The new pain is helpful because it gives me something else to bitch and moan about while the slower healing work is going on inside.

I think eventually, I hope at least, that I will see how important that community is in relieving the pressure off my broken body. I can't end any of this, I can't fix it or make it go away, and I can't fix you either. All I can do is make your arms ache while your body heals, just as you do the same for me. It's a blessed and hopeful thing that in rubbing against each other we are in essence offering our bodies to God for healing.

I have also learned that wounds can be full of hope. I have gone back to the story of Jacob wrestling with God, and I find it fascinating that he was simply touched by the stranger and his hip was disjointed in a manner that marked him for the rest of his life. A wound of hope because it forever represented that night that Jacob saw the face of God, the night he was blessed with a new and redeemed name. I was talking to someone yesterday who told the story of being pierced by hope. Same idea...hope is full of suffering.

As I reread this it all sounds pretty self-centered. But I guess that has been the reality of the past year for me - a lot of looking at myself so I could hopefully get to a place loving others well. I sat down to reflect on the last four months so I could "close the book" and move on, but I am realizing that just can't happen. I have been marked, wounded with hope, and I think I may be limping for the rest of my life, and I am okay with that as long as it always draws me back to remembrance that I have seen God.

Jericho

2007-04-12T09:06:00.000-07:00

This semester has been a roller coaster. Here I am right back at sad. I am tired of story, of my story in particular. Sometimes I just wish a question could be a question and not some deep reflection of my past wounds. Sometimes I wish I could just be sad without it being about my fucked up family. Sometimes I wish I could make a decision without considering what patterns I am falling into.

As I feel things falling to pieces, this has been my theme song:

Jericho
Tara McLean, Passenger

March around
Jericho loved the music and fell
into your arms breathless

Heard a sound
Shut my eyes so tight
From the whisper of a storm coming

Oh, funny how
I spent this time waiting around
It's a lie
Everything you felt until now

Saw her dancing
The floor gave way
Opened its mouth
To say her name

Saw her falling
Cast away, cast away
She learned to fly one day

Oh, funny how
I spent this time on the ground
It's a lie
Everything you felt until now

Same place I've always been
I'm just lost on these roads again
Just as i got near the end
I keep falling in the holes you left in me

Oh, funny how
I spent this time lashing out
It's a lie
Everything you felt until now

Farewell March

2007-03-31T09:54:00.000-07:00

This has been a month of full of newness and life for me. It began with a 10 minute eye surgery that corrected my vision forever. Stunning, amazing, unbelievable...how is that everyone doesn't get LASIK?!? That was actually the beginning of the most anxious filled three weeks of school yet, but this is a post about life. So.

Next up was a funeral for my twenties in order to create the space I needed to celebrate my 30th birthday! Yes, a funeral, and it was beautiful, holy, an amazing blessing to mourn the heartache of the past decade with my dear friends. My 30th birthday was such a great day. There were phone calls and lunch with a friend and getting highlights in my hair, and then a surprise dinner with friends. So special.

There were two births in the Spice Girl group. Nixon born the end of February and Simon born two weeks ago. Congratulations Tira and Holly! Can't wait to meet you new little boys!

And in true Mars Hill fashion, there was emotional turmoil and wrestling that has led to much life within me. I have been grappling with the idea of leaning into the person I was created to be. My automatic reaction is to shy away, to find comfort in the corner, but I have really been challenging myself to take up some space in life, and to be okay with it. The result, honestly, seems to lead to more heart ache right now, but it is the kind of heartache that is bittersweet; the kind that even as I am sitting in the shit of my life feels a little hopeful because I keep getting whiffs of blossoms. There is more life to come.

So, farewell March. You have been good to me, and I thank you for the blessings that I will forever treasure!

Breaking Things

2007-02-26T20:02:00.000-08:00

I wrote a paper last week where I compared the horse whisperer/trainer character (Tom) in the movie Seabiscuit with the Holy Spirit. I wrote about how Tom had to "tame" Seabiscuit's angry and bitter behavior in order to give the horse the freedom to be a racehorse. This has been sticking with me.

I keep talking about my sadness. It might be getting obnoxious. But it's just so present. In terms of my own experience right now, I keep getting the image of my body being full of bones that have been broken and healed improperly. I just kept trying to get past the pain by ignoring it, and now those bones are being broken so they can be set correctly, and healed correctly. This is my process of being tamed, and my light at the end of the sadness is the hope of a new sense of freedom.

Damn, every week, more broken bones. Everything hurts. Some times I start to get scared that I am getting used to this state of being, other times I feel like the pain is too much to bear. I question whether or not I am forcing myself to stay in a hard place when I should just be getting over it and moving on with life. And then I wonder if that attitude is exactly what led to so many broken bones healing so poorly.

So tomorrow begins my weekly process of being broken all over again. But I am finding that the more I stop fighting this process, the more I feel cared for in the midst of this process.

Wrestling

2007-02-24T15:48:00.000-08:00

In the midst of sadness, there has been major wrestling. I wrote a paper last semester describing my personal hermeneutic as one of wrestling with God, Scriptures, Truth, etc. I think it is a good metaphor for me. I know I don't struggle with much grace. My most unkempt moments are those of struggle.

I am wrestling with diversity, multi-culturalism, reconciliation. My month at mhgs has been one filled with talk of oppression in various forms, from the somewhat trivial (adult popularity contests) to the severe (my acts of oppression on a friend), and there have been some in-betweens as well. I suppose it is a sliding scale measuring depth of impact, and in the end I can only be accountable for how I oppress others. But how?

There have been many conversations, some very heartfelt apologies and very real tears on behalf of others. There is the helplessness of simply being born into a situation that is oppressive to others (white, middle class, suburbia). There is the empowerment of reconsidering my belief systems and embracing new ideas. There is the hope of breaking through the awkwardness and fear to enter into what diversity, culture and reconciliation even mean to begin with. There is the systems level dreaming...what if the western Christian church stopped talking for the next 2000 years and just started listening to church leaders in other cultures (as asked by my inspiring prof Dwight Friesen)?

I can only pray that this is the start of more reflection and ultimately action. I can feel the wrestling leaving my body and mind...I know it could so easily slip away into "a difficult conversation I had that one time years ago." I don't want that. Too much is at stake for my friends, the church, and my own transformation into the likeness of Jesus.

For Comfort, Mourn

2007-02-23T11:15:00.000-08:00

The last two weeks have been a time of mourning for me. The sadness, frustration and hopelessness have felt constantly present, which has led to a lot of tears and even more time in bed. Bed has become my one place of comfort. I just feel in constant need of being held, and my bed is the only thing available that envelops me.

For a class this week I read a 4th centurty exegete's sermon on the Beatitudes. He had a simple phrase that brought a little hope in the midst of this uncomfortable sadness: if you seek comfort, then mourn. It certainly twists the order of the words of Jesus, but in a way that opens comfort up to all people if they choose to mourn. And some days, I think there is so much for every person to mourn, even if it is just on behalf of another.

This little sentence has also caught me in all my efforts to create comfort in order to avoid mourning. I have worked so hard throughout my life to avoid pain and suffering, as if the bad feelings are what needed to be comforted rather than the actual loss that caused the bad feelings to begin with.

So here I sit in the midst of the sadness, laying in bed with wadded tissues all around me, just hoping for comfort.

Time

2007-02-05T08:22:00.000-08:00

I pick up Time magazine to read about the presidential race. I am flipping through the pages and came across the factoid that a measles vaccine costs only $0.16 and most Africans can't afford it, but you can also buy a bottle of beer for dogs for $2.14. I flip a couple more pages to the election coverage and find out that it costs $100 million to run for president and there are currently 20+ candidates, which means there is about $2 billion dollars potentially in play to elect our president.

I admit that the poverty statistics in Africa have never really moved me, but for some reason reading all this in a matter of 5 minutes just really pissed me off. If I did my math right, if we bypassed the mudslinging tv ads we could vaccinate over 12 billion people, which I know is ridiculous because the world population is only 6 billion. And beer for dogs? really?

Limbo

2007-01-30T08:07:00.000-08:00

As usual, I find myself at a natural ending (the end of January) realizing that I have not paid much attention to this blog. And so, I have so much to share, and yet so little since memory has already slipped away. I am fighting those guilty feelings, and then shaking my head in disbelief that I feel guilty about a blog.

This new season has become more pronounced. School is in full swing. I am in a bunch of classes and activities that are surrounding me with new people, so I feel like a freshman all over again. My freshman year of high school I switched high schools. I went from my community, small and Christian, to a public school. Everyone had their cliques and groups and roles, and I was the newbie. It was so lonely. There is that inherent awkwardness of not knowing where to butt myself in and where to hold back in meeting new people. I am in that place all over again.

My job has finally come to an end, which was more sad than upsetting. I love my boss. I doubt I will ever work for anyone else like him. He has been a huge support and a huge cheerleader for me going to grad school. He was also my last real tie to Phoenix outside of friends and mom that are there. All the things that physically connected to me to Phoenix are gone. Any illusions that I wasn't actually a grad student are also gone as I am finally facing student loan checks and FAFSA filings.

And then there is the constant call to enter my story more deeply. To experience the grief, sadness and joys that are there. At this point gratitude seems far off, and grief and sadness are just too close and disrupting to enter. So I feel in limbo, in all of these areas, there is just that funky feeling of not knowing what's next, where to turn, where to look, where to enter. Limbo.

Seasons

2007-01-12T07:43:00.000-08:00

This week was the beginning of a new season, another trimester at mhgs. I spent 12 hours of lecture time with Dan Allender as he presented his teachings on marriage and family. It was fascinating, disturbing, uncomfortable. He says that the goal of marriage is to call forth the glory of your spouse, so there was a lot of talk about glory. It is weight and light, it is substance and essence, it is God and God reflected in us.

It started snowing on Wednesday. I am captured by the glory of snow, just like I was captured by the glory of the fall colors. It was midnight and I was restless to go to sleep because I knew the snow was pouring down right out my window and I didn't want to miss it. I got up and sat in a chair facing the window and just watched the snow fall for an hour. It is amazing, glorious. The next morning I woke up to this outside my window:

As much as I love these changes in season I don't handle them very well. This snow season has been costly for me, literally. As I watched the snow fall I kept wondering what it was about the snow that was so intriguing to me. I finally decided that it was silent and yet leaves a beautiful mess the next day that can be so destructive. Rain is violent, and yet it leaves clearer skies and produces greener spaces. Snow causes me, and this whole city, to slow down, or even shut down. It makes us wait, but the view is beautiful.

I am compelled to consider which season I am transitioning into right now, or will it even be that different than the last? In retrospect, I entered last trimester with complete anxiety and fear. As I look to the year ahead, I think this season will be more about some kind of active rest, letting go and yet pushing forward, pulling people closer even as I gain more clarity as to who I am called to be.

New Year's Musings

2007-01-01T18:19:00.000-08:00

Amazingly, I have not put a lot of thought into the new year. No resolutions, no stated hopes, no real regrets. But, for posterity sake I feel I must post some musings. Here is where I am at on the first day of 2007:

I am quickly approaching my 12th day of sickness. Perhaps the reason for so few deep thoughts lately. I am so sick of being sick! *cough*

2007 is the year I will turn 30. It is scary and exciting. It feels like such a mile marker, and yet completely over-hyped. I never had a crystal clear picture or plan of where I would be at 30, but I am absolutely sure none of my daydreams included grad school, seattle or single!

I read three books about the Celts over Christmas and came to realize that everything I learned last semester (and hence, perhaps the foundational theology for this school?) comes from 4th century Celtic Christianity...as in St. Patrick. All of humanity is made in God's image, and therefore at our core, true self we are good. Sin cannot take away from the inherent goodness within us. Jesus is the savior of our true selves, through him we can live out a taste of the fulfillment we will experience in heaven. Why do we cling to all that is bad within us? Why was this message considered heresy in favor of the emphasis on our depravity?

I can't stop playing Sufjan Stevens music. I can't pick a favorite song or album. It's all good.

My hair is finally long enough to twist up, which makes me wonder why I am trying to grow it out in the first place if what I am excited about is being able to pull it up?

*cough* *cough*

My old worship pastor stayed at my house over Christmas, and I got to have dinner with him and his wife before they left. I felt my deep judgement of the Church and Christianity spewing out to them, which has made me deeply desire for a time when I can get past this place of judging.

I am longing for some good reality TV marathons today, but my only choices are Beauty and the Geek and the Biggest Loser. I sooo need to get a job in TV and set these networks straight!

I actually made it to midnight last night at a 007 new year's party. I was quite proud of myself because I felt like going to bed around 8 p.m. But that would make me just like my mother, and despite turning 30 this year, I am still too young for that! =) *laugh at myself* *cough* *cough* *smile* I left at 12:05 a.m. to find a fire cracker had hit my windshield and left several circular cracks. The kicker...I just got my car back after a month in the shop following my snow slide accident (see post below)! I refuse to take this as an omen!

Happy New Year!

Contextuality

2006-12-08T11:32:00.000-08:00

Last night in theology class I was exposed to a new understanding that is kind of rocking my world...or at least my understanding of the bible.

The Jews of Jesus' time did not live in a constant expectancy for the Messiah. It was something they would yearn for during times of oppression, such as when they were ruled over by the Romans, which is the context that Jesus arrived into. And even the concept of a Messiah was not one of a soul savior, but rather a king or ruler that would save them from subjugation by the Romans. This brings a whole new light on Jesus' question to Peter...who do the people say I am? and Who do you say I am? It makes sense that Jesus kept telling people he encountered to not tell others about him as noone knew what the Messiah was really about...ushering in the kingdom of God on earth, rather than a finite kingdom of man. All of this I had a sense of before, but the idea that the Jewish people were not waiting expectantly for a Messiah (perhaps in the way Christians are waiting for the return of Jesus with consistent expectancy) really makes me see Jesus and the Bible in a whole new light.

There's more. With regard to the New Testament, I knew that Paul's epistles were letters to church's that he helped plant. But what I had never really contemplated that these letters were the work of a missionary taking the gospel truths and putting them into a new culture, with new customs and understandings. So, the Bible we read, and accept as truth for us today, is actually a recontextualized presentation of the gospel. This has such huge implications for me...

This idea reminds me of the book Peace Child. It is about missionaries in Papau New Guinea that work to bring the gospel to a tribe that offer their children as sacrifices in order to make peace with another. The missionaries used this practice as a way of describing what God did by sending his Son to die to make peace with all of humanity. They contextualized the gospel to make it understandable to the tribe. But I wonder...what if we as first world, wealthy western people were told to accept this tribal understanding as the gospel and apply it to our lives. What would be the implications for us trying to understand and practice the gospel within the context of sacrificial killings of children, community/tribal living, etc.?

Would accepting their context mean that we would need to begin practicing sacrifices to understand the gospel? Would it mean that we need to start living in tribes so we can practice the gospel in the same way? Would it even make sense for us to engage their gospel since it is two very different cultures?

As most ideas, this one leads me to the idea of women in the church. Are we imposing a first century, Greco-Roman concept of women's roles to our 21st century context in order to stay faithful to the bible's teachings? If Paul had written planted churches in a society where women had equal status and education as men, would he have written the same admonitions of women? If Jesus entered our current world how would he have approached us? I can't imagine that he would enter with parables on the church steps and sermons on mountain tops.

In some ways all of this gives me a new excitement and hope about the biblical text. It holds so much more opportunity and freedom to me to explore the themes and ideas rather than the actual facts and propositions. In other ways it fills me with doubt and skepticism about the usefulness of the bible to me today. As we move further away from that context of 2,000 years ago, should the bible become less significant? It seems like in our stretching to make the bible relevant for today so much evil and harm is done toward others. What would the church look like if sought first the kingdom of God rather than the biblical text?

Snow Days

2006-12-01T07:39:00.000-08:00

This has been my week...

Monday:
Arrive home from Thanksgiving with the family.

Yeah! There is snow on the ground, on my car, on the trees! We go to class and come out to a blizzard that makes the commute home a 3.5 hour tour!

Tuesday:

Snow Day! No Classes! Friends spent the night on Monday, so we have a snow day morning together playing SkipBo!

Wednesday:

Another snow fall is about to blow in, so class is cancelled again! Yeah! Friends go sledding in laundry baskets down our neighborhood hills. Oh, how I wish I knew how to upload movies so you could see them spinning down an icy hill...good times!

Wednesday Night:

Run an errand, drive up a hill that ends up being covered in ice. I get stuck, car comes around the corner, slides down the ice and hits me, and speeds off. Good news: the crash gets me unstuck, and the other cars license plate fell off! Bad news: my car is undriveable. I leave my car and proceed home to another snow day party where I enjoy several rum & cokes.

Thursday:

Snow Days Suck! Picture of the aftermath. And to top it off, that license plate isn't saving me from paying a $1000 deductable as my insurance company won't investigate the hit and runner until they have a financial interest, and the police won't investigate until maybe next week. Snow days suck!

Friday:

Intense anger and stress result in skipping class and going to bed early last night. So here I sit, with the snow almost completely melted outside, and a rental car waiting to be picked up. So much for the joy of snow days.

Giving Up

2006-11-17T10:54:00.000-08:00

It has been a long week. In one class this week we were called into a different way of disagreeing, into a different way of listening, and into silence. It was the most disrupting peace I have experienced in a long time.

I left with this overwhelming desire to just give up...in a good way. I battle so much within myself, and sitting in silence made me desire real rest. Since that moment of release, this has been my theme song...Slow Motion by David Gray.

While I was watching, you did a slow dissolve

Did I imagine, or do the walls have eyes

Did I imagine they held us hypnotized

Did I imagine, or do the walls have eyes

Life in slow motion, somehow it don't feel real

Snowflakes are falling, I'll catch them in my hands

Snowflakes are falling, now your my longlost friend

Getting Messy

2006-11-12T10:38:00.000-08:00

It occurred to me this weekend that I treat this blog like I do a friend or conversation in general. I feel like I have to have everything together in order to be presentable and acceptable. Granted, I owe no loyalties to this blog, but it is much safer to analyze a relationship to an inanimate object than to an actual human being. It is less messy.

My life feels so messy right now. My living spaces are a literal mess - piles of clothes and paperwork everywhere. My finances are a total disaster - rent past due and what I could pay was short with no money coming in for a few more days. My emotions are always on edge as I feel I am being called to live in the messy places of my story...all the time. I question everything about myself as I exist in this hyper-sensitive state of understanding my story, my transference, my countertransference, and my response-ability to it all. It is hard not to feel constantly analyzed by new friends that are in this program, and it is hard not to "practice" on them what I am learning - thankfully we are all aware that we are doing this to each other to some degree.

Being in this messy place is incredibly uncomfortable to me. I think people have always viewed me as a very mature person, which is probably true on many levels, but this weekend I found myself searching Amazon for books on parenting, reparenting and inner child work. I may be mature on the outside, but I feel so immature when it comes to seemingly simple adult competencies - like cleaning my room, managing my money, and being able to express basic needs.

When I moved to Seattle my landlord told me that it would start raining in November. November 2nd it started raining and I think we have seen sunshine twice since then. So, when my mom and brother called me last week to ask if my house was flooded, and I started getting little notes in emails about staying dry and not forgetting my umbrella, I just thought they were commenting on the fact that it rains a lot in Seattle. But no, come to find out it is flooding all over western Washington, and the amount of rain we have had is very abnormal. This feels like a metaphor....

I feel like there is this way that I am. I can't describe it because it has always just been that way. I have assumed it was good and right because it was affirmed and praised throughout my life. And now I am getting little messages inferring that something is wrong, something is abnormal. And come to find out, I am a mess, I am flooding and I didn't even know it. Typing that sounds arrogant...I don't mean that I thought I was perfect, but I guess I thought I was okay, but I just needed some emotional healing from past wounds. But now it is being revealed that that healing will never come unless I allow myself to be not okay, I have to allow myself to get messy.

This is the part where I always have to ask..."why in the world did I sign up for this!?!"

Advent of Restoration

2006-11-08T13:31:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I surprise myself as to how passionate I get about the issue of women's leadership and equality within our culture. I don't have a dramatic story of being burned by male leadership, I thankfully have never been abused by a man, I don't have some qualifier to provide a reasonable explanation for my passion about this issue. But even as I write those words I think how sad it is that I feel I must have a qualifing story in order to substantiate my sense of being "less than" as a woman.

Anyway, this was stirred up within me as I was doing some research for a paper. I came across this quote that I found affirming and lovely and sad all in one. There is still so much about male-female relationships that is yet to be restored:

"Perhaps it is no wonder that the women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man - there never has been such another. A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them, never flattered or coaxed or patronised: who never made arch jokes about them...; who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unself-conscious. There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that borrows its pungency from female perversity; nobody could possibly guess from the words and deeds of Jesus that there was anything "funny" about woman's nature." (Dorothy Sayers, as quoted in the book "Freeing Theology")

Reading this quote makes me realize all the little qualifiers I do have in my life, but more importantly it turns my focus to who Jesus is. I had a professor declare to me last week (in question format) that I must not like Jesus a whole lot. I didn't really like that statement, but in the context of our conversation it made sense. But reading this passage today made me really love Jesus. It made me so excited for the season of Advent that is upon us...I just can't wait to celebrate God's entry into this world that is the answer to all the restoration we need.

More Color

2006-10-19T10:41:00.000-07:00

The Fall colors are just so beautiful that I had to post some more pics. Enjoy!

Fall Days

2006-10-17T22:18:00.000-07:00

Today was a truly lovely fall day. This will be my first fall season with trees that actually change color since my couple of fall seasons at Biola U many years ago. I turned in a paper yesterday, and I have two due tomorrow, one of which I haven't even started, but today I just could not focus. I have had an entire day that has been completely wasted on my meanderings through Green Lake and various Sufjan Steven's songs! Here is a little taste of my day...

Sufjan, who I am crushing on big time since going to his concert this weekend (how can a girl resist a guy wearing butterfly wings playing the banjo with inflatable Santa and Superman dolls all around him??), well he has some beautiful music. Here are the lyrics to my favorite song of the day:

For The Widows in Paradise; for The Fatherless in Ypsilanti
(Welcome to Michigan album)
I have called you children,
I have called you son.
What is there to answer if I'm the only one?
Morning comes in Paradise,
morning comes in light.
Still I must obey, still I must invite.
If there's anything to say, if there's anything to do,
If there's any other way, I'll do anything for you.

I was dressed embarrassment.
I was dressed in wine.
If you had a part of me,
will you take you're time?
Even if I come back, even if I die
Is there some idea to replace my life?

Like a father to impress;
Like a mother's mourning dress,
If you ever make a mess,
I'll do anything for you

I have called you preacher;
I have called you son.
If you have a father or if you haven't one,
I'll do anything for you.
I did everything for you

And then there was the walk in the park. A professor started crying last week as he talked about the beauty of the fall trees near our school. Honestly, I thought it was a little cheesy, that is until today as I stood near tears staring at a magenta red-pink tree. Take a look:

Rest

2006-10-10T09:43:00.000-07:00

It has been about six weeks since school started, and all the "disruption" is catching up with me. My brain is tired. I am emotional all the time. I am sensitive to everything going on around me, and every thought I have is somehow connected to Martin Buber's book "I and Thou," which means I am living in a really twisted reality!

But in the midst of all this there has been some fun and beauty. Per Sporty Spice's request...finally, some photos!

Beautiful Mt. Ranier from my street on a clear day! I have seen it dozens of times, but it still takes my breath away every time I come upon a view of this massive mountain!

Friend Katie and roommate Stef's birthday party at this weekend's birthday bash and bar hopping (but there wasn't much hopping, just sitting in one bar! We are fierce party animals!)

Roommate Smruti, birthday friend Katie and me:

Paperweight

2006-10-02T10:39:00.000-07:00

My roommates and I are obsessed with The Last Kiss Soundtrack right now. You can read about Stef's favorite songs on her blog (http://www.stefshaf.blogspot.com/), and she inspired me to share this one...

Paperweight

(Schyler Fisk feat. Joshua Radin)

Been up all night

staring at you

wondering what's on your mind

i've been this way with so many before

but this feels like the first time

you want the sunrise to go back to bed

i want to make you laugh

mess up my bed with me

kick off the covers i'm waiting

every word you say

i think i should write down

don't want to forget come daylight

happy to lay here

just happy to be here

i'm happy to know you

play me a song

your newest one

please leave your taste on my tongue

paperweight on my back

cover me like a blanket

mess up my bed with me

kick off the covers i'm waiting

every word you say

i think i should write down

don't want to forget come daylight

and no need to worry

that's wastin time

and no need to wonder what's been on my mind

it's you it's you it's you

every word you say

i think i should write down

don't want to forget come daylight

and i give up

i let you win

you win cause i'm not counting

you made it back to sleep again

wonder what you're dreaming

For those that wonder what Mars Hill Graduate School is all about, I think this song is a good picture. Going beyond the obvious sexual nature of this song, I think the idea of inviting someone into our bed to mess it up together is a pretty good analogy. We are being asked to invite others into the intimate places within us, not just for cathartic reasons, but allowing others to mess with our stories...even if it means getting hurt in the process. Because it is just that - process. I tell a story, you enter my story, we mess with it, you may hurt me, but from that hurt I learn even more about my own story, and you learn how to respond better to others. Voila! Mars Hill Graduate School...anyone else want to sign up for this craziness! =)

But there is also a playfulness. We all seem to have this "just happy to be here" attitude that gets us through the days that suck. And there is a sense of profoundness in what we are learning from professors and from each other. Perhaps I am reading too much into these lyrics, but it just fits!

One Thing

2006-09-19T22:59:00.000-07:00

Ambivalence has been a recurring theme within my first few weeks of school. The idea of having two ideas contradicting each other, and yet both are true. So often we feel the need to choose one side of the contradiction and stick to it with dear life as truth, all the while ignoring the other side of the coin (or truth). How hard it is to simply allow the contradiction, the ambivalence, to rest within us.

I was reminded today of my journey to Germany earlier this year. Prior and during the trip I felt this urgency to understand what God wanted to do with me, with my mentor Kathy, with the ministry that would be done. There had to be "one thing" that God desired for this trip. It was painful the amount of speculation and analyzing that went into discovering the great, "one" mystery!

About half way through the trip, when in fact many great things had happened, I finally had to admit that perhaps God was bigger than "one thing". Perhaps God desires many things for me, for us, for that trip to Germany. For some reason that was a very hard conclusion to come to for me. Now I understand why...Because it required me to live within the tension of contradiction, which made me expand my understanding of how big God actually is. It also required me to give up my dogma of "one thing" which is so safe and comforting.

What I have yet to learn is what is actually means to rest, to sit, with ambivalence...Perhaps there isn't just one way!

Words

2006-09-08T14:13:00.000-07:00

My first week at Mars Hill Graduate School has come to end, at least the classes have. I am heading out to the school's annual retreat with the hope it will be a time for some facilitated reflection. This week was intense in too many ways to try to explain, but there are a few words that have been lingering in my mind from this week...

Ignorance. In our orientation we were called to come quickly to the realization of how ignorant we all are...very odd start to grad school! But it resonated with me, and then I did come very quickly to that realization (or reminder?) as I entered the classroom. I found myself struggling with the definitions to the most basic words and concepts, and I caught myself speaking before really thinking. I feel inept, which isn't a bad thing since I love to learn, and this first week was such a reminder that all the understanding we have (I have) is so minute in comparison to the vastness of God!

Play. Allender mentions this word a lot in his books and lectures. I find myself both fearful and intrigued by this word. Fearful because I don't know how to play...to move, to laugh, to joke in the physical senses of those words. Intrigued because the idea of playing with thoughts and words is stimulating and inviting to me. But this word has also made me question a bit...how playful am I in my relationship with God? Is He playing with me?

Theology. I thought theology was the study of God. But I also knew that there are specific theologies that people identify with, so therefore it must be a system too. But now I am being asked about MY theology, and I haven't a clue how to answer that question. Part of me feels indignant my churches and teachers never instilled in me a deep understanding of what Christian theology is, and part of me is thankful that I have never been so tied to a particular system that I can't think outside of it without feeling like I have betrayed someone/thing.

There were so many more words that stirred me up, so many ideas and concepts that I am starting to struggle through. I have been fighting the urge all week to sink into hiding, but to instead engage with these ideas with hope and be grateful that I get to be in this place. So off I go...

Footsteps

2006-08-31T14:00:00.000-07:00

I have been reading and participating in a few discussions taking place on other blogs about women in leadership, which has stirred up this issue within me…again. I struggled through this issue last year, and have a mound of books on the subject that I poured through seeking an answer to this contentious debate. I didn’t leave that struggle with an answer, but I did come away with the understanding that women are in fact very loved and important to God. (Sad that growing up in the church this was not something I understood).

I guess now that I am on the brink of starting seminary classes, this issue is once again surfacing as I ponder how I got here in the first place. Why am I getting a Master of Divinity degree? What’s the point? As a woman, there will be fewer opportunities for me to work within ministry, and if I don’t end up in ministry then why get this very expensive degree? I of course have ideas of what will come from this education, I have desires and dreams, but I don’t feel that I can honestly answer the question “what are you going to with your degree”. As with any single, young woman, there is the gigantic elephant in the room called “marriage and children” that must be tiptoed around in any conversation about future goals and desires. I can’t pretend I don’t desire them, and I can’t pretend that those two relationships won’t affect any course I set out on. It is not succumbing to a traditional role, it is the desire to be fully present in two of the most intimate relationships one can have – spouse and parent. Just the questions of how, what and why makes me want to give up before I start.

But now I am in Seattle, slowly meeting other students, and I am realizing that the combination of my gender and degree program set me apart in this community, as well as the larger body of M.Div. students everywhere. Part of me bristles at the thought that I was accepted by this school simply because of my gender & program (speculation on my part), but another part of me is peeking through to the glory and excitement of knowing that what I am doing is important. There have been lots of women to journey into theology before me, but it is still important that I am here, in this program, at this time. Women have been withheld from this arena for millennia, but once the door opened we have also withdrawn ourselves from this arena, choosing to believe it is not our place to know God. I have a growing sense of gratitude and amazement that I get to be a part of the ranks that have chosen to take on this endeavor.

This isn’t just about a degree though. I traveled through Germany with my mentor this past spring as she trained youth ministry workers on military bases. We stayed with a woman who is a director of this ministry, and between these two amazingly gifted and God-honoring women there were horrific stories of battle and wounds…not just with the enemy but with their brothers in Christ. These are the women in the trenches who are courageous enough to stand up and ask for opportunities to serve, to call male leaders out when they easily glide into dishonoring dialogue and behaviors toward women, to keep serving their ministries while wounded and bleeding and choosing to lean completely on Jesus to give them the strength to keep fighting and loving their brothers in the midst of the pain. These women are my heroes. They are affecting change in the day-to-day living out of their faith and gifts. Although it is sad that these ministers of Christ, whose hearts are to lead people to Christ's love, are expending so much energy to simply remain standing within the walls of the Church.

The male affirming books and programs are good in some aspects, but again my fear is where is the humility? Where is the surrendering to Christ? I know these men often believe women should not be teaching them, but I wish they could see my heroes choosing to love their brothers into Christ-honoring ministry partnership and learn a different way. We don’t need men to circle their wagons and prepare male-affirming battle against women leaders in the church. We need them to submit and serve the women and invite them into partnership, knowing they will get wounded along the way, but still choosing to fight for the kingdom of God and love those women that willfully or inadvertently come against them.

What are these reflections for? My heart is not to be one of the guys. My heart is for the Church, and specifically the men in the church, to not discount me and my contributions because I am "just" a gal. It is seeking out validation, for a real world example, that God does indeed value women, and that we are indeed vital to the ushering in of the kingdom of God. I know that it is ridiculous to seek this kind of validation from mankind, but it is still my hearts desire…a desire that should push me into the heart of my Father. I admit that my path from seeking worldly validation to God’s embrace is long and winding. But it is women like my mentor, and many others, that inspire me to keep pressing into desire. Women who seek out who God created them to be, invest their giftedness in the Kingdom, and with faith step into battles they know will bring pain, and in the battle they lean on their Christian family knowing that at times they will lean directly into a sword of betrayal, and yet they trust that in this life and in eternity there will be healing and redemption. They are women walking in the footsteps of Christ.

Romans 16:19 Says

2006-08-31T11:13:00.000-07:00

Wow. I just spent over an hour writing an intense post that left me in tears, and then it disappeared. Seriously...just disappeared on my screen.
I am going to assume, since I am super-spiritual, that it was Satan (since super-spiritual people like me are imune to human errors, like mispelling "immune"), and therefore I will fight back and try to rewrite it later!

Everyone sing with me now!....(remember to really hit the pronounciations, or you just don't get the same effect, and if you know the hand motions, then play along!)

Ro-mans
six-teen
nine-teen
says
The Gaaahhhd
of peace
will sooooon
crush Sa-tan!
The Gaaahhhhd
of peace
will crush him under his feet! hey!

Gotta love the old church youth group songs!

Bored

2006-08-30T10:53:00.000-07:00

I have had trouble posting lately simply because I am just bored. My days are slow and lazy as I await school to start. I am a complete procrastinator, so the more pressure I have on me the more I get done. Right now - zero pressure and accomplishing nothing. I feel like my brain is a little mushy from lack of stimulation over the past month, and so those deep and profound thoughts that blogs were created for just aren't coming. =)

So I will share a few random tidbits from my past month of being a new resident in Seattle:

A month of sunny, 80 degree days in the middle of summer has convinced me that all people that live in Phoenix are completely insane...I am so relieved that God saved me from the insanity and provided me this lovely place to begin my recovery.
Though I remain in the USA, I feel at times that this is a completely different culture. Case in point - there are no full-service car washes or drive-up ATM's (Seattlites don't even know what they are missing!); the streets are so narrow and hilly that I feel like a speedracer when I go over 30 mph; you have to pay to park everywhere; and the parks have big green sticks and wavy blue liquid - I learned about these things in a geography class at Arizona State...they are called trees and lakes...amazing.
I have enjoyed many marathons over the past month: Project Runway, Weeds, Rome, Design Star, The 4400...tv marathons that is!
I bought a very expensive camera this year in anticipation of some trips and this move, and was so disappointed with it that I lost all interest in learning how to use it. But I am starting to give it a second chance to redeem itself. Below is a photo taken from my front yard! If you look hard you will see the amazing Olympia mountains on the horizon!

More Woman

2006-08-22T10:40:00.000-07:00

Came across this quote from the Talmud on a forum:

The woman came out of a man's rib. Not from his feet to be walked on. Not from his head to be superior, but from the side to be equal. Under the arm to be protected, and next to the heart to be loved.

Woman

2006-08-16T12:49:00.000-07:00

I love that there are many discussions, books, speakers, etc. that are engaging the question of what it means to be a man. I see that men are in a state of confusion and need to be affirmed in the masculinity God created them with. I can see just in my own family what a skewed vision of manhood we have based on the personality of my dad, and how it created so much conflict in my brother. I can see how us women really haven't helped the situation much with our lack of understanding. Manhood needs to be addressed.

But in response to the manhood discussion, there have been a few books about being a woman and femininity. I kind of hate being the sex that is the afterthought. It almost seems that in the Creation account in Genesis woman was an afterthought to God too. Woman was created in response to man's loneliness. Woman was created from man's flesh, in the image of the man who was already created in the image of God. In the new testament it says that man is the glory of God, and woman is the glory of man. hmmph.

I think that men in this culture treat women as an afterthought too. They set forth in their puposes and, if they are enlightened to the value of woman, they find a way to fit their woman into their purposes. If they are not enlightened to woman's value, they just expect women to continue to be their props - someone to feed them and birth their legacies. Uhg. I hate sounding like a freakish feminist. I really am not angry (at least not as I type this!). But are these thoughts that I have the courage to type, but not speak, really that off-base? I guess I am just confused...still...as to what my place is as a woman, and a follower of Christ, in this culture.

And that is where I get frustrated with the manhood debates, as needed as they are, because woman is not being addressed or given voice. Instead woman is expected to stand and rally around the men at their own expense. And I don't think this is menacing...I think it is, as most things are in the church culture, completely unbalanced. Even if woman was created after man, God gave mankind (man and woman) a singular command - to subdue, rule, fill and multiply the earth. God gave the first woman and man the same rule within the garden - to remember that he is God and they are not. So how can we confront and converse about the redefining of gender without minimizing the other, and the Other?

If I believe that God is perfect, then I can't believe that woman was an afterthought. So now I am confronted with the fact that either a) my understanding of God is wrong, which leaves God being wrong and out of control, and therefore woman is indeed a divine afterthought or b) my understanding of God's ways are wrong, which means God is in control and there is something about the way he created man and woman that I don't yet understand.

Even if there is some chance that God isn't perfect, he is still bigger than me, so I tend to avoid picking fights with him. So I accept b) - that I am not God.

Now where do I go from here?

Unknown

2006-07-28T13:15:00.000-07:00

I have made it to Seattle. It was a fantastic journey that included spending time with all of my long-distance friends, enjoying their hospitality, watching their children play, and getting caught-up in a way that only women can do.

My first week in my new hometown has been a mixed bag. It is exciting to explore all the neighborhoods in this city, but I am tired of being lost. I love my new house, but I am discovering all of it's not-so-charming quirks. I love decorating and searching for decor, but I am nervous about my dwindling income. I love having the freedom to roam throughout the day, but I am starting to ache for some connection.

I am experiencing the joy of the adventure, and yet a sadness that comes with not being known. I am mourning being familiar with my surroundings and with a community. I know familiarity will come, but today it feels like it isn't coming soon enough.

The Gift of Go

2006-07-14T09:47:00.000-07:00

I am living in the moments that will make up my last few days in Phoenix. I have lived other places over the years, but they were always temporary. Phoenix has always been home. Not a home I have loved or cherished, but home in the sense that this is where my community has been, my family. Two years ago I bought my own home, further planting me in this community. And now I am pulling up my roots of the last 20 years in search of a new home.

I am reading an amazing book called Searching for Home, by M. Craig Barnes, one of my favorite authors. It was a book I bought for someone else, but was definitely meant for me in this time - a reminder that as a Christian, home will never be found on earth, but only in eternity with Christ. Some of my favorite lines...

"...the right place isn't something you choose, but a place that chooses you, molds you, and tells you who you are."

"...there is no way to find home without leaving home. It is a grace to be told to go."

"...the redemption we are offered by God results only in becoming a purer form of ourselves."

It seems that the hardest things often bring the greatest gifts and blessings. My dad dying over three years ago was devestating, but has brought a lot of freedom...perhaps because it is easier to forgive those that are gone. Owning a home has not been the American Dream for me with leaking roofs and backed-up sewer lines, but owning it has made me wealthier than I started and afforded me the luxury of becoming a full-time student again. And this move to a new place has been difficult. Lots of anxiety and reluctant goodbyes. I don't know what the end will look like...it is many years down the road, but I sit here with great expectations of the transformation that is about to begin (as well as a little dread for the rough roads that will inevitably be taken on this new journey).

House Joy

2006-06-04T21:50:00.000-07:00

The last month or two I have been carrying a huge burden. Simple questions really, but extremely overwhelming for me. Selling a house, moving to a new town, starting grad school, finding a new home, figuring out how to make my job part time in another city, buying a new car, ahh...the list itself stresses me out.

Last week I was doing my weight training day at the gym. I worked out all my muscles just fine, but then I got to my shoulders and I could not get through 5 reps without stopping. Now I know there are a lot of variables at play, but I walked away feeling like I had just lived through a symbolic moment...the weight of my world has been so heavy on my shoulders that I just couldn't bear any more.

But this morning I woke up happy, actually quite joyful. I spent the last two days looking for a new home with my new roommates in my new hometown...Seattle. We found a beautiful house in Greenlake that is perfect for each of our individual needs. I now have a place to call home for the next year. I have a distraction in the planning of the move to keep me from dwelling on the more pressing questions, such as...what the hell am I thinking moving to Seattle and becoming a student again? Just checking off that one item from my overwhelming To Do list has helped me feel free again to dream of a new life in Seattle.

Pictures coming soon!

Sex

2006-05-29T15:26:00.000-07:00

I want some.

Virginity in the Christian community I have always lived in is such a virtue, something to be admired, which means it is something that you receive genteel womanly smiles for and pats on the back.

I wish we could be more honest about how hard it is. At 29, my body feels like it is at a breaking point. As I listened to my "worldly" brother briefly mention the fact that he has had several flings since his divorce, my heart and body groaned. Why does he get grace? Why don't I take advantage of that same grace that I know is available to me and release some of this pent up sexual energy?

Because either out of total naivete or church brainwashing or perhaps real belief I anticipate that there is a blessing in honoring God by holding out for a covenant relationship. Dear God, please let it be real.

In the meantime, I finally opened up about this struggle with a friend. The conversation led to laughter...avoid the older car salesmen as I shop for a car - I might end up getting laid...keep reading those piles of books on my bedstand to get through those "lonely" nights...which led me to this song by Over the Rhine...

So open up my heart-shaped box
It's full of combination locks
I've swallowed all my love-sick pills
To keep from getting chills
Look at all the books I've read
In my lonely single bed
But when you say love, OH

Ahh...this is the beauty of life...finding laughter in the midst of struggle.

Engaging

2006-04-29T21:07:00.000-07:00

I have spent a lot of my life un-engaged with the world around me. I have always stepped back into the shadows to avoid putting a burden on others, to avoid being seen or heard, to avoid being known. And yet in those shadows my heart has always wept in grief that I was not seen or heard, that my life had no impact on others, that no one really knew me.

The last few months have been about engaging the world around me. Stepping out into the unknown situations that life presents and choosing to embrace the moment, the person, the place. It has been a seemingly easy transition. It has led to new friendships, new adventures, and new heart aches. Each step out has resulted in a powerful recoil of self, a recoil into self. It is a fear, or intense shame, that questions my very being in the moments of engagement that have passed.

What is this fear? And why is it so intense now?

I am moving toward a new challenge that I know will force me into engagement at a whole new level. It is an adventure that will ask me to be fully present and completely authentic. It will ask me to be myself in the face of rejection, to speak truth in the midst of disagreement. Right now I fear that challenge, and yet I know that it will be the battle against my fears that will give me confidence to continue to engage.

Christ calls his followers to engage. So why is this fear so present in my life right now? I can only suppose that Jesus is seeking me out, calling me out of the shadows I have lived in, asking me to depend on his grace and strength in my weakness. It is a beautifully frightening call.

Delight

2006-04-13T18:32:00.000-07:00

Have you ever sensed someone delighting in you? Someone simply enjoying you? It's the sparkle in their eye or the tone of their voice that tips you off to the fact that they are embracing your presence.

I felt that today for a brief moment. It is a wonderful thing.

Justice

2006-04-13T10:41:00.000-07:00

Isaiah 1:
16 Wash yourselves; make yourselves
clean;remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes;cease to do evil,17
learn to do good;seek justice,correct oppression;bring justice to the
fatherless,plead the widow's cause.

...One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for
all.
Pledge of Allegiance

What does it mean to be just? In Isaiah, I am learning, the lack of justice towards those in need and vulnerable was a big part of God's anger toward the Israelites. It was evil to withhold justice to the fatherless and widowed. I am also learning that justice is almost always mentioned in partnership with righteousness...Learning to do good. When we are seeking righteousness, justice should be a natural outflow of the goodness we are practicing.

Confession: the word justice makes my skin crawl. The word brings up images of angry crowds of people, chanting intelligible and ridiculous phrases, using their fingers to point at others in blame rather than to truly do good. Perhaps those are all very stereotypical images, but that is what comes to my mind. But, if I am a follower of Christ, then I have to ask the question...am I practicing justice? I am sure the answer is "no."

Another confession: I am scared of giving, fighting for, practicing justice, because it will require me to ignore the injustices in my own life in order to participate in justice for others. Who will fight for me? I am scared of embracing the dirtiest and most wounded parts of our world...I fear it is more pain and suffering than I have the ability to handle. I am scared that I would do more harm than good by speaking, serving, and fighting inappropriately.

I think Christian Americans are often guilty of pledging more allegiance to this nation than to our God. But this nation, by our very pledge, is under the authority of our God. So who should we really be placing our allegiance with? I want to walk in allegiance with God, which means embracing the command to practice justice. I don't know what that looks like, and I expect that it will involve much stumbling, as do most of my attempts to learn God's calling for me.

Silence

2006-04-08T15:22:00.000-07:00

Growing up as a little girl my family had a cabin that was a full day's drive from home. We had the good 'ol Suburban to carry us into the woods of Ruidoso, New Mexico, and I remember the sounds of talk radio and the story time of Garrison Keeler. It killed me when I was little. I would get boredom headaches. Perhaps I just needed some silence.

I have spent the entire morning pouring over music websites trying to find some new tunes to update my already overflowing collection. I am so excited to have found a few artists that are new to me. Here is a sample...

Needtobreathe
Mainstay
Imogen Heap
Marc Broussard
Ashton Allen
Nada Surf

But after hours of perusing so many bands, listening to so many songs...my head hurts. It could be a sugar overdose from the massive Cherry Limeade I just drank down from Sonic, but I think just need some silence.

Doing The Next Thing

2006-04-06T18:59:00.000-07:00

Do the next thing.

That has been the consistent advice of my mentor for 10 years. It is advice that has taken me 10 years to even begin to understand. This is one little next step to figuring out the next steps ahead, and inviting others to participate.

Making one's thoughts public seems terribly narcissistic, or on the other extreme, needy. And yet there is something incredibly desirous about having others participate in your internal dialogue. Perhaps any thoughts that make it to this space could be stored away in a private journal, but then they would be just that. Private, like a secret. The daily meandering of my life isn't a secret, and I don't want it to be. And so here I go...

My life seems full of next steps right now.

Stepping out of a career,

and stepping into grad school.

Stepping out of the roles I had accepted for myself,

and stepping into uncharted paths.

Stepping out of comfort and control,

and stepping into the unknown.

Fortunately, there are many others that have taken these steps before me. Like this one...

"Never be afraid to trust an unkown future to a known God."

Corrie Ten Boom