I feel numb, out of touch with my own thoughts and feelings. And I am pretty sure that not talking to dear friends is half the reason for it.
Like right now, I feel stuffed full of feelings and fears... but I can hardly reach them enough to tell you about them.
I feel overwhelmed by being a grown up. I hate all the bills, all the mail I go through every day and yet somehow still miss things, lose things, forget things. This weekend I totaled our car. We're ok but it was so scary, and now on top of everything else we'll have a car payment. Grad school costs money. Health costs money. I'm tempted to become Amish and move to a farm and not leave a forwarding address for the credit world to follow. I am so weary of these distractions from deeper things. Do poets just...not pay their bills? How do you live well in both worlds? How do I find time for my soul?
My kitty is trying to lay across the laptop - unabashedly wants to be loved and not ignored by me. It's working pretty well...
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Restlessness and Resttoomuchness
So I'm on the couch which serves as Samm's office chair with my new laptop(!!) compliments of my church. I am wrestling with the freedom I have. I don't have to get up early, I don't have to get dressed (every day). The good news is I have a lot of homework starting next week which will spin me into having lots to do. And I am already spending way too much time working on stuff for youth group.
How do free-lancers do it? How do you feel like you are working and more importantly when do you know you are done? Last night I was working on a letter to parents until 11:30. Yet I feel like I haven't "worked" in days. It's a funny concept, work. I guess good goals, check lists that are realistic. Planning the things that you want and then accepting the day as successful.
I found a Moody grad (Sara Bergoff) on facebook today and discovered she is sort of an atheist now. I read her husband's blog about "disevangelism" and Samm commented on it.
It made me freshly aware not that what I believe is not just "nice" and "good" and within the rules. (Which for me, are drawing points or being a Christian because I like following rules, generally). But Christianity is crazy and costly and shockingly invisible but true. I hear the questions he raised. About the misogyny in Scripture, about the seemingly unjust systems in Israel's early judicial system.
I think about my good kids at church, how old they were/are when they learned the "s-word" and how they probably have never met an atheist. And how I have to help them realize that what they believe/act like they believe/think they should believe is crazy, beautiful, shocking, rocky.
It's daunting.
How do free-lancers do it? How do you feel like you are working and more importantly when do you know you are done? Last night I was working on a letter to parents until 11:30. Yet I feel like I haven't "worked" in days. It's a funny concept, work. I guess good goals, check lists that are realistic. Planning the things that you want and then accepting the day as successful.
I found a Moody grad (Sara Bergoff) on facebook today and discovered she is sort of an atheist now. I read her husband's blog about "disevangelism" and Samm commented on it.
It made me freshly aware not that what I believe is not just "nice" and "good" and within the rules. (Which for me, are drawing points or being a Christian because I like following rules, generally). But Christianity is crazy and costly and shockingly invisible but true. I hear the questions he raised. About the misogyny in Scripture, about the seemingly unjust systems in Israel's early judicial system.
I think about my good kids at church, how old they were/are when they learned the "s-word" and how they probably have never met an atheist. And how I have to help them realize that what they believe/act like they believe/think they should believe is crazy, beautiful, shocking, rocky.
It's daunting.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Ice I will miss
Samm and I have been hosting Phin, his brother, for roughly three weeks. My sister Helen and her friend/Luke's girlfriend and my sister Jodi also stayed with us intermittenly over the holidays, and it all finally ended today at the airport.
It's been good, wild, chaotic, full of intense talks, uncomfortable up-closeness (hearing how you talk to your husband through his brother's ears and realizing you aren't as nice as you thought - oh and there was the time we thought he wasn't there and our bedroom door was open...), flowing beer and whiskey, vanishing coffee/food from my kitchen, a new kitten we all fell in love with, hard questions about everything, hard realizations, new jokes... I feel Phin and I are friends now. Three weeks ago we were strangers. I feel closer to Helen than I have since moving here to PA. I feel happy to death to just be home and back to normal again. I am a little stunned at the stillness.
The last few days Samm, Phin and I drove to Gettysburg and New York. The battlefields were breathtaking, haunting. I don't make any sacrifices for this country - so to try to imagine making that ultimate one, and so many young men making it... it was overwhelming. New York was so big, so full of little people everywhere... it was also overwhelming. We dropped Phin off at the airport in DC and took the scenic road less traveled by home through the mountains.
During the night icy rain had covered the rolling woods with a thick gray glaze. The trees seemed painfully old and stiff, bent over with the cold weight and set against the cloudy dark sky. As we drove higher and higher into the slopes of western Maryland we turned a corner and collided with a piece of blue sky. Beams of heaven shot through into the icy forest around us in a way I can only describe as a magical. It made me feel so homesick, so delighted to be there, at that moment, and so full of longing. Now I remember why I go on roadtrips! It was dreadful to whizz past, to descend again into the small towns below with their Walmarts and KFCs and cheap motels.
Most of life is in those towns I guess, trying to stay off Facebook, to wake up early enough to pray, to remember that this world and my life will be made new - reborn in a flash which I hope will resemble the sun hitting those trees today.
It's been good, wild, chaotic, full of intense talks, uncomfortable up-closeness (hearing how you talk to your husband through his brother's ears and realizing you aren't as nice as you thought - oh and there was the time we thought he wasn't there and our bedroom door was open...), flowing beer and whiskey, vanishing coffee/food from my kitchen, a new kitten we all fell in love with, hard questions about everything, hard realizations, new jokes... I feel Phin and I are friends now. Three weeks ago we were strangers. I feel closer to Helen than I have since moving here to PA. I feel happy to death to just be home and back to normal again. I am a little stunned at the stillness.
The last few days Samm, Phin and I drove to Gettysburg and New York. The battlefields were breathtaking, haunting. I don't make any sacrifices for this country - so to try to imagine making that ultimate one, and so many young men making it... it was overwhelming. New York was so big, so full of little people everywhere... it was also overwhelming. We dropped Phin off at the airport in DC and took the scenic road less traveled by home through the mountains.
During the night icy rain had covered the rolling woods with a thick gray glaze. The trees seemed painfully old and stiff, bent over with the cold weight and set against the cloudy dark sky. As we drove higher and higher into the slopes of western Maryland we turned a corner and collided with a piece of blue sky. Beams of heaven shot through into the icy forest around us in a way I can only describe as a magical. It made me feel so homesick, so delighted to be there, at that moment, and so full of longing. Now I remember why I go on roadtrips! It was dreadful to whizz past, to descend again into the small towns below with their Walmarts and KFCs and cheap motels.
Most of life is in those towns I guess, trying to stay off Facebook, to wake up early enough to pray, to remember that this world and my life will be made new - reborn in a flash which I hope will resemble the sun hitting those trees today.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Prayerless
I haven't prayed since...mm... can't remember. Days? Weeks? Longer? I am going to be a "youth minister" starting next week, but I feel such a spiritual defecit. I ache to be close to God again, yet I shy away from the old routes I used to depend on to be close, though none of them were ever reliable. Closeness was always fleeting, which makes sense, considering God is invisible, Spirit, other, Deity, returning eventually - but not at the moment.
I want to be free of myself. I want to be surrendered to Christ because as strange and confusing and cliche as that phrase now sounds in my mouth, I know that it is a better place to be than in control. I know that I felt free when I was surrendered. But I also know that I probably twisted every situation in my life to explain the way I thought things worked. So sometimes I question if God was ever "taking control" or "working things out." How involved could/would/should...IS the Holy One in the details of life? In the "closed doors" and "clear paths" and green lights and car crashes and cancer?
And without knowing the answer to that, how can I say that I trust God? What do I trust Him to do, exactly? How can I have such a looming construction of ideas about Him (ie adhere to the Nicene Creed, etc) without hardly ever daring to interact with the reality of those ideas? But then, how DOES one interact with that reality!?
-- I can pray and believe He hears... but I know that it won't mean healing the sick or finding the lost check or whatever. It might, but it might not.
-- I can read the book I believe to be inspired by Him... but I know that everyone throughout history, throughout the world reads the same words and comes to such different conclusions: God will save all. God will save the Jews + those who call themselves "Christians." God will save only Christians. Only conservative Christians. etc.
But I can read this creed... and be so deeply moved, so filled with hope, so kindled to live expectantly:
We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.
Amen.
I want to be free of myself. I want to be surrendered to Christ because as strange and confusing and cliche as that phrase now sounds in my mouth, I know that it is a better place to be than in control. I know that I felt free when I was surrendered. But I also know that I probably twisted every situation in my life to explain the way I thought things worked. So sometimes I question if God was ever "taking control" or "working things out." How involved could/would/should...IS the Holy One in the details of life? In the "closed doors" and "clear paths" and green lights and car crashes and cancer?
And without knowing the answer to that, how can I say that I trust God? What do I trust Him to do, exactly? How can I have such a looming construction of ideas about Him (ie adhere to the Nicene Creed, etc) without hardly ever daring to interact with the reality of those ideas? But then, how DOES one interact with that reality!?
-- I can pray and believe He hears... but I know that it won't mean healing the sick or finding the lost check or whatever. It might, but it might not.
-- I can read the book I believe to be inspired by Him... but I know that everyone throughout history, throughout the world reads the same words and comes to such different conclusions: God will save all. God will save the Jews + those who call themselves "Christians." God will save only Christians. Only conservative Christians. etc.
But I can read this creed... and be so deeply moved, so filled with hope, so kindled to live expectantly:
We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.
Amen.
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