time and tide

you built sandcastles

though we never made it to the sea

fantastical dream palaces

I decorated with driftwood

pieces of feathered hopes and rocky dreams

a dash of seaweed possibilities

the ocean echoed with joy

a royal fanfare chorus

and the sun smiled down

until the tide came in

I watched the castles dissolve

in an instant as if they'd never been

you went away too

leaving barely a ripple in your wake

I shook my head with dry eyes

perhaps you meant more

than I would care to admit

as the waves keep breaking

the choice once more

time and again I watched you walk away

though you wore a different face

the message was the same

friend, lover, family, foe

you shook your head and went

and I was left alone

I see it in your eyes each time

the wrestle to believe

I stretch my arms a little wider

and will you not to go

I know I'm an eagle

in a world of ostriches

but you could fly too

choose to embrace the heart I offer

know it wants His best

He'll catch us when we stumble

a thousand scars testify

the only unbearable thing

is if you decide not to love

as broken as I feel I won't relent

each new face holds hope

I'll consider my heart well-spent 

Advent 4: Shine

The last Sunday of Advent is here. It's also the darkest Sunday of the year for the northern hemisphere. The sun doesn't even grace the sky for nine hours north of the 45th parallel. We go to work by streetlight and come home the same, missing sunrise and sunset equally. This year the absence of light seems telling, a culmination of a year that held many dark days. Not only days of death but days when, isolated, we faced the machinations of our own hearts and perhaps are left with broken lives in their wake. Marriages ending as couples find without the distractions of normal life they don't care to stay committed. Many turning to food, bringing quips about an extra 15. Of course many feel the darkness enter their souls and counsellors face inundation with new clients dealing with depression and addiction, among other things.

The darkness presses in from outside our lives as well, as again and again we face helpless moments as seemingly arbitrary government restrictions change from one day to another. With every ounce of our beings we want to pretend this year never happened. Sensational news focuses on dramatic moments, augmenting the atmosphere of hopelessness. Facts fall by the wayside and all we hear from every direction is fear. In spite of doing what we think is right in the moment perhaps we still find ourselves alone, wounded by love, sickened in body, exhausted in mind. Darkness. Death. 

Into the dying year comes a day to remember light. Trivialised with trappings of glitz and glamour that are helpless against the darkness all around, still a glimmer of light comes through a crack in the doorway. He came into a world equally struggling with hope. To an oppressed people who longed with everything inside them to see the promised redemption. He came - He comes - proclaiming love - joy - hope - peace, the only One who truly shines with assurance of these things. He stood - He stands - with arms outstretched offering the very thing that dispels the darkness and many chose - and still choose - to keep their eyes shut and wave their hands on their own in these dark days, not recognising the significance right before them.

This year was significant. The darkness rose up like a towering storm cloud and reminded us of the futility of arranging life on our own. But significant moments are often unusually packaged like that dark night in Bethlehem and come when we least expect it. Have we reached the end of ourselves? The end of our striving, our attempts to arrange life on our own? Can we open our eyes to see the light that is shining in the darkness and embrace Him, becoming a glass vessel through which He can gleam? The choice is ever before us--He invites us to come, to step into the light, to shine ever brighter as the darkness spreads. 

Happy Christmas

May you let Him transform you and may next year be even more glorious.

Advent 3: Death as the Beginning

Hope - Love - Joy - Peace. 

We celebrate life in our many festivities, and in this season new birth, the Holy One incarnate among us. Life brings hope, we suppose, and we hold fervently, ecstatically to the things we think bring us life. Yet the thought of Christmas, of Christ coming, inevitably leads the mind to the end of the story, or rather the climax that is the beginning of our story as believers: His death on the cross. "Rejoice", the angels said, but Simeon prophesied to Mary, "a sword will pierce your own soul." How could this be? How could God's promise--the promise of life that lasts forever--end with the death of the very chosen one, our Messiah?

As paradoxical as it seems, death can be the only way to life. Death of your own petty dreams and selfish desires. Think of a field of weeds, choking the harvest. The weeds must die in order for the good seed to bear fruit. We often hold so tightly to the dead end ways that we have convinced ourselves will bring us the very thing we long for and He, in His mercy, knows that we must allow Him to wrench them out of our lives--through death--in order that we can live unto Him and the surpassingly great life that He offers. Consider relationships in which we fail time and again because we have habits or are choosing temporary satisfaction instead of love that lasts. We must die to the immediacy that our world loudly proclaims to grasp profound intimacy that remains.

This year presented an opportunity to experience a shaking of things that could seem to be the way to life but in reality they only bring death because they represent our grasping for life on our own terms. He can use the upheaval of a world in turmoil uniquely in each of our lives to reveal areas in which we are demanding life on our own terms, and He can bring death into them if we have the eyes to see how He is coming in this year. It's our choice, after all. We can shake our fist and zombie-like run back to the same devices, gnashing our teeth and waiting for life to get back to "normal". Or we can embrace death; let Him reveal life His way and begin again, renewed in hope for the joyful abundant life He offers. Look closely at the places you felt death the most and ask Him how you can see the possibility of a life. Ask how you can be a life-bearer in that. He is coming. He offers a new beginning.

I close with the ending of a book I love by CS Lewis that captures the ultimate idea--that death is only the beginning for those of us who have tasted life eternal:

"'...and all of you are--as you used to call it in the Shadowlands--dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.' [...] but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. Now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before." 

buoyant again

I take the scissors in my steady right hand

the string I grasp in my left

a million miles beneath I see the ground

like a quilt left in childhood

or the kaleidoscope of seashells on the sand

too far away to touch or hold

it is the work of a simple moment in time

cutting the rope that ties me

I watch it fall away towards yesterday

a laugh bubbles up inside

you can never know how far is the sky

until you let it all go away

ebullience is a word I embrace again

leaving the darkness below

my face is set once more toward the light

hope can still surprise my heart

as my spirit begins to soar beyond the vale

Your love gives me wings

Advent 2: Emmaus

2020 has been a year of death. Not as much actual death as the reaction and initial speculation belied, although that did happen accompanied by magnified attention which does nothing to alleviate sorrow. Rather death came in hopes deferred or destroyed. Weddings that couldn't happen. Celebrations cancelled. Trips never taken. Businesses and careers ended. Relationships broken. Truly a pandemic of lost hope swept throughout the world this year and leaves behind a global trauma that no one can say from how we can recover.

A couple millennia ago on a road in dusty Palestine two men explained to a third how a year had culminated in hopes and dreams dashed upon the ground. A man had come and for three glorious years he had spoken of a life beyond anything they could imagine. Freedom. A kingdom they longed for, although they glossed over "not of this world". Even as they didn't always understand his descriptions such as eating flesh and drinking blood, they clung to the belief that their imaginings of the longed-for Messiah had finally embodied themselves in this one man. After all, they had a rich history of a Red Sea parted, the sun standing still, and walls falling down. So what if Isaiah mentioned bruised and battered in his colourful description of the coming Saviour? No doubt God knew what was needed in this time.

The two men shared how people followed him, leaving their jobs and livelihood to wander throughout the land, learning at his feet. How he sent them out to share his words and they found every need provided and saw miracles. He even raised a dead man! Those three years were exhilarating and everything in them knew that the end would come for the oppressors and the promised land would once again blossom. The Romans and their puppet Herods's days were numbered.

Everything they hoped and dreamed, in one short day died. He died. He who had raised the dead, made the blind see, healed lifelong diseases, knew their deepest heart's desires, was laid dead in a tomb. Where could they go from here? They had staked everything they knew on him and nothing remained. To accept the disheartening truth would rearrange their world and their aching hearts could not see how to believe again. Where was Emmanuel in this moment? Why hadn't he done what he said he would do? And what to make of the extraordinary missing body?

Then He spoke. In the midst of death He showed how God is the One who does the impossible. He is the One who takes a hopeless situation and brings hope. Freedom to captives. Fruit to barren wombs. Life to dead people. And most miraculous of all, redemption to sinners. He spoke to the two men, showed them how, in a world consumed with death, the only way was to turn death upside down, beat the enemy at his own game. And still the two men wondered, struggling to believe how Emmanuel could come in such a package.

At the table, their eyes still clouded with confusion, He took an ordinary loaf of bread and broke it. He blessed it. And their burning hearts leapt as their eyes opened and they saw that His way of bringing dreams to reality took their narrow desires and transformed them, fulfilling them beyond any wild imagination they ever had. 

Look up from the dusty road. In a year full of death and dung, can we see Him working to not simply fulfil the little dreams we have but to use us--if we are willing--to bring hope to many? As His death brought life, can we die to selfish habits and live to glorious joy? He is Emmanuel, even when the road is not the one we would have chosen. He is coming.

thoughts on being unique

the more rare something is the more valuable and consequently the greater the desire to own and control and use so that many people walk around trying to handle and touch and make something they do not possess a little closer to their own liking and sometimes you find that you are that something, that rarity, that oddity, and maybe more often than sometimes you awake to find yet another person has merely used you and like fingerprints on polished silver tarnished you in an attempt to consume to enthral as if secretly they want to cut you down to their size, to find that your uniqueness will transfer and perhaps make them all they have lost yet as you pick yourself up from the inevitable fall that such consumerism ensues, sadly disenchanted by the realisation that it was not you they desired but the way you made them feel or the way you made their business soar or the way you listened, a glimmer persists in your resilient heart, a hope for as you see in the eyes of a few friends you still hold close not all merely squander the gift of your nonpareil heartbeat, for after all you know who counts every hair and so you again place each shattered dream in His hands, refusing to become like those very cardboard people who mishandled you and instead shine again in hope that though lonely be the road His smile will see you home

little foxes

it's the door just left cracked open

to a whisper of the night

when the darkness seeps in slowly

and puts out a little light

it's the voice that says stop trying

after all you know the end

and behind that smiling face

you no longer see a friend

it's the thought you entertain

that perhaps it's time to go

take your battered heart away

lean in to the fears you know

it's the melancholy morning

when you slip back out the door

tell yourself how strong you are

when your dreams lie on the floor

it's the times you choose to stop

wrap the barbed wire round your heart

turn away from those who love you

grasp the lie and stay apart

but the glimmer of a prayer

for a hero at the gate

kills the foxes that destroy

before it's now too late

Advent 1: Packaging

It's here. The season many love and others dread. This year, more perhaps than others, a frisson of apprehension or excitement surrounds the close of all the lost hopes, upset dreams, and upside down life that this year held. Christmas lights came up early as if families are trying to hasten the inevitable by bright bulbs that do little to dispel the darkness. Bing Crosby croons his way through the shopping malls as retail stores endeavour vainly to recapture the traditional time when red gives way to black.

In the darkness of a Bethlehem night a gift came, the greatest gift, yet the packaging affronted all the expectations this advent entailed. Emmanuel came. The world He came to rejected Him. We reject Him still. He came serving, challenging, convicting. We want nice packages wrapped in bows, pats on the back and a host of good feelings. He came with a sword to divide. Everything He is we desperately need and yet we push Him away, demanding that He come on our terms. Turning to the lives spread around us, we distance from them as well. Choosing our safe isolation not realising that resiliency and strength are born through adversity. To lay down in the manger, to take up our cross, is to find that we can love beyond ourselves. 

In a year full of unsettlement the light can shine brighter. How am I pushing Him away when He appears in ways I do not understand? Can I press in to the hard places, find hope in dark times, and trust when my heart is breaking in two? Beyond the fears and false hopes that a million other ways offer, can you see Him coming down into your broken world with the promise that in His arms all will be well? He's here. 

random

a car drove by

unlike another

its red design

clearly bespoke

a mousy nod

with 95

i marvelled at

its quirky lines

amused and glad

something so odd

a fleeting laugh

on rubber wheels

some 4-year-old

somewhat adulting

then hours later

the fabric tears

the world spins round

i'm upside down

a random man

gives me a sign

a glossy poster

common design

of that same car

unique offscreen

and rarely seen

i wonder dazed

at such a thing

coincidence

it seems

Weather Advisory

The rocking chair squeaked like an upset kitten as the old man leaned back and forth, his faded blue jean overalls patched up in the usual places. Outside the torrent showed no signs of letting up and to all appearances the road would be renamed Mill River by midnight. He muttered as the relentless drops kept up a steady beat as if the roof dreamed of being a timpani in another life.

I leant closer to hear.

"I lost it. I lost it. I lost it."

"What? What did you lose?"

He kept muttering, the repetition as metronomic as the raindrops. Like an occasional cymbal crash, almost as an afterthought I repeated my question when the muttering fluctuated in any way. The day began to slip into night without much more than dim turning dimmer and I considered finally giving up and passing on, but thought to try one last time. Perhaps the flickering streetlights, sputtering in the deluge, sparked his mind.

He stopped. His bleary eyes focused on me for the first time. His voice not more than a hoarse whisper, partly from age and partly from the incessant words, came so low that I leaned in to hear.

"I lost the way."

"The way to where?"

"Home."

this year

I wanted you to win

in a future bright with hope

each moment better than the last

with time never running out

but the rain is pounding down

and the field is barren

unable to be rewritten

the test results to be negative

stop the blood from being spilt

tear the pink slip in two

open the barricaded doors

hold love in my empty arms

our world is reeling

a topsy-turvy tragic unity

heir to a thousand choices

reverberating like a gong

in the face of senseless consequence

I thought you were something

but the days slip away

like sand through my fingers

I turn my collar to the wind

unsure if the drops are salty

when all I feel is loss

find a way to say amen

jots and tittles

i leave little papers around

reminders of things to do

or thoughts that stick and burn

i reuse the back of an envelope

or one of a million notepads

torn-off strips of forgotten letters

the lists find the waste basket

but the quotes and notes linger

until one day i've forgotten why

i can no longer feel the impact

like the memory of your touch

your fingerprints will fade away

tomorrow i'll make a new memo

the hour hand belies indelibility

and a thousand scars will heal

though i stroke their painful tracks

flinching at the occasional twinge

the completed list grows surely

sometimes quickly sometimes slowly

as clear as my scratches on a page

is my heart hiding or healing today

as i ponder another might-have-been

a little memory left lying around

wondering if it'll ever be carved in stone

a frosty morn

silver threads of frost snake across the shiny boards

as wan sunshine fails to warm the chilly air and i

gaze in wonder at a world gone south leaving these

the barren northern faces stripped of green life alone

time itself pausing as if to allow bereft hearts a pause

grieving comes in waves even after years a sharp pang

the dying season as leaves fall in glorious agony heaps

souls mourn what was what could have been and always

what never will be

a trickle of melting ice sparkles bravely in the sunshine

cascading down to water the crusty waiting earth and i

ponder seeds laid down again in hope of balmy breezes

a sweeter time to come when thoughts turn to love 

although the arctic fingers slip up around my throat

whispering of darker days to come and storms yet

this season too must pass when sorrow that endures

finds a shout of joy with the dawn and what will be

will ever be

2020

 the dark hours of the night passed with driving rain that beat and tore at the walls of the house dashing sleep from my eyes an echo to the beating that a year full of the island of dreams coming true and if you know the reference that's not a good thing because if all that our subconscious minds feared and desired materialised before us it would tear our souls in two and we would walk forward, forever broken in pieces yet in many ways this year has done exactly that by ripping away the shrouds of security that we carefully draped around a nice little life like the author says instead of grabbing on to things that are solid we grab on to each other yet we're all sliding off into eternity but what i ponder when shattered i gaze on all that i thought could be as ripped and tattered for now is how much hope can still remain for though it may be cliche shakings bring the possibility of seeing what you are made of and if you are still standing in the midst of incredible heartache you can take a step forward and see that He can bring beauty out of ashes for after all this world is not my home and through the salty water running down my face i can still stand and say amen

Zeno's Paradox

it's not hi or goodbye

it's the space in between

where heartache and laughter

are so often seen

where words bend and break us

and forever change

we leave empty-handed

though memories remain

the staying's not easy

so onward we press

past new hopes in greeting

away from the mess

but secretly yearning

in spite of it all

that someday at last

we would finally fall

embraced without fear

in the space in between

to never say farewell

and truly be seen

wind storm

 wind. 

not the lovely breeze that refreshes or invigorates. no, the gale force wind that almost knocks you off your feet. the strength of gusts when you must press in to counterbalance or risk toppling. funny, that. you must lean in, push back against the force of something that is hitting you harder than you think you can bear. literally. to continue standing you must embrace, move towards, lean into. counterintuitive. 

wind. 

i'm learning to not run from the forces that knock me off my feet. sure, it may feel like flying for a bit but it also means i can never stand still and i often fall. i must trust that He is with me and the change the wind can bring--not always just of me but others too--is for His best. He can carry me through. whether i am able to stand or not i will lean in and trust.

falling back

like a tickle just under my skin

the waves move in and out never still

heartbeats that steal my sleep aside

as thoughts run to and fro to and fro

i walk here and there half asleep

footsteps chasing a memory gained

whispers that throb loudly in my ears

til silence seems a distant evensong

caught somewhere inside a living dream

my prayers slip between my fingers

i long for a hem to touch in faith

to feel peace smooth my dancing veins

but trust is dearly bought and sold

and the heart fears the price too high

the tide brings only today's flotsam

tomorrow's sunset tells its own tale

hazy days

diffused rays on a lazy summer sun day bathe the world in sepia tones that soothe and deceptively calm the gaze that belies the voracious cause until i breathe deeply and choke on a thousand embers ashy haze of trees and houses and wildflowers
turned to blackened
dust and clogs the
lungs with never-
mores and can-
not-bes until i
shut the door and
pray for autumn
rains to clean the
air and wash the
last summer days
into falling mist

when the train whistle blows

 he never saw it coming though

it's hard to believe something

that big could sneak up on any

one person clearly following a

seemingly straight path while

some argue he must have heard

the warnings here and there as

everyone knows what happens if

you make that crossing yet it

must have surprised him because

he never flinched and those that

know him attest to his cautious

concern for all matters related

to health and safety so he would

hardly have been one to neglect

so crucial a moment as his last

but that is ironically the tone

set by many as they rush to and

fro ignoring the inevitable or

rather trying to avoid it at all

costs when perhaps better spent

the life that looks the beam of

eternity right in the eye and is

ready when the train whistle blows

morning breaks

the sun intrudes destroying my
sleep the dreams that excite or
frighten banished by the molten
ball of fire and i gasp into another
day unsure in this unexpected year
what tomorrow looks like yet
knowing that today i breathe i live
i can worship and with my second
gasp i bow to the One greater than
any sun who chooses to awaken me
each day knowing that i can choose
to fight for hope to recognise the gifts
He gives and the days allotted to look
with joy upon lives that surround me
and creation's wonders and resist the
fear and nightmarish quality this world
daily succumbs to while pressing into
today and knowing no matter what sea
is in my way He does the impossible
and the more dark it seems the more
opportunity for Him to shine forth
brighter than the light that broke
in upon me this sunny morning

the puzzle life

Imagine you are going to work on a puzzle.
Imagine you do not have the puzzle picture.
Imagine that is your life.

You dump out a bunch of pieces that seem very random. Fitting the edges together is the easiest part--they all have one side that is straight. Except, of course, for those puzzles that try to trick you with inner pieces that also have smooth edges. When you have that kind of puzzle you think a piece is an edge but later it emerges it was just part of a tree, a growing area. Maybe you outline your life, the borders where your days are contained--a career, a country, a people. Within those borders there are still some confusing pieces but at least you can see an outline even if you can't see the big picture.

Sometimes you can even fit pieces together inside without looking at the picture, just as in life some things seem to make sense even when you don't know where all this is going. You get the job you like, you have a good friend, maybe you get married. Those pieces fit, you think you see the big picture and you call it "life" and it seems to be working. You keep pulling pieces in and connecting them to the areas you have built and a picture starts taking shape. The picture of you.

Then suddenly you grab a piece and try as you might you cannot make it fit. There's a little bit of blue but the blue you thought it would match when you first saw it is different as it comes closer to your puzzle. Why did you lose that job you loved? Why did that dear friend say those hurtful things? Why did that guy dump you? Why did your child die? Just as trying to force a piece into the wrong spot, things that don't fit your picture of life jarring ruin the jigsaw you are assembling.

A pile of random puzzle pieces illustrates nothing. Until you put them all together. Until the end of the puzzle you cannot see the whole picture--at least, not unless you had the picture in the first place (which, of course, is the usual way to assemble puzzles). Life makes sense in reverse. Life makes sense when you see the big picture.

Imagine you are here for a purpose.
Imagine you can know the big picture.
Imagine this is your life


A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it. 
~ GK Chesterton

From the Front Lines

“Sir!”

“Yes, Buz? You have a report from the brick zone?”

“Sir, yes sir! Zone is clean. Target saturation is ten percent. Remaining target group comprised of low value assets. Sir!”

“Distressing! Did you see the mobile dispensaries?”

“Sir, no sir! Mobile dispensaries absent, sir. Area swept clean.”

“Any word from the feast?”

“Sir, yes sir! Reconnoitred with Sargent Zip. Feast zone shuttered, zero output. Sir.”

“Inconceivable! What are these targets doing? It’s been over forty orbits!”

“Sir, yes sir! Also, something else. Sir.”

 “Well Buz? Out with it.”

“Sir, yes sir. It’s some of the troops, sir. They are growing restless, sir.”

“Well? Permission to speak freely Buz.”

“Sir, yes sir. Well, there’s talk of…”

“Yes?”

“…of foraging. Sir.”

“FORAGING?”

“Sir, yes sir! Foraging. Primal target hunting. Robin formations.”

“Despicable. We have not come this far to revert to such extreme measures. Buz, must I remind you how our winged ancestors fought their way up to symbiotic co-existence with the profitable urban targets? How they became masters of the brick zone, feasting on the carelessness of opulent targets? We cannot retreat!”

“But sir we must survive!”

“I don’t appreciate your tone Sergeant Buz. If we retreat to the green zone the hairy monsters will take back the targets’ riches and we will have lost our advantage.”

“Sir, yes sir. But what are we to do.”

“I have a plan. See that deceptive screen gateway there?”

“Sir, yes sir!” 

“I have been observing the two targets inside while waiting for you. I have taken care to let my wing hang and not move once. One sympathetic target keeps checking on me. This is what we will do. You will approach the screen gateway and tap on the danger partition. The target will assume that you have an injured ally (me) and are asking for succour. The gullible target will open the screen gateway to provide sustenance and we will be victorious once more!”

“Sir, yes sir!” 

“Onward, Buz! To your post!”

Bloody Adventures ;)

“Well she lied.” His words hung in the tense air like knives. The day had started out with such promise, who could have known one person’s irritability could destroy an otherwise uplifting outing? Blood drives during a pandemic have pitfalls and procedures change on a semi-regular basis. Masks are the nom de jeu currently and most people respond with sheeplike compliance, obediently accepting the uncomfortable dust mask provided they didn’t bring their own. This busy blood drive boasted two plasma stations and three regular beds, with forty-five donors scheduled--the most I’d ever seen. 

From the start things did not bode well. The volunteer coordinator had called me in at the last minute—someone had cancelled. My assistant was a high schooler marking her first drive. The drive organiser did not appear until partway through and followed a hands-off approach, usually just fine by me but as the phlebotomist lead also seemed to prefer a laissez-faire style trouble immediately began brewing in the form of an assertive male tech (Grumpy) who for reasons unknown adopted a style early on of offending donors. 

When donors arrive they march right on in—-they have an appointment after all. Due to whatever reason set-up was woefully slow and when the first donor entered they were not ready for her. I tried to reach her but Grumpy got there first and harshly told her to get out as they weren’t ready. I followed up apologising but the tone had been set and continued as he gnashed his teeth at a long waiting group later and then finally culminated in the mask confrontation.

Two donors entered for an end-of-the-day appointment without masks. As I cheerfully handed them each the paper ones the younger donor slightly balked, worried that the mask would cause claustrophobia and even a panic attack. Concerned, I suggested that as the masks were for close-contact protection, as long as she was simply waiting in a socially-distanced manner she could take it off until it was necessary. 

Minutes later Grumpy saw her and the tense confrontation in which he informed her that I was a liar ensued. Needless to say she was quite upset with him. I ushered her outside to wait instead and gave my sincerest regrets at the unfortunate situation. It turns out Grumpy pissed off the wrong person: this donor used to work for the organisation and she had his boss on speed dial. If Grumpy was having a bad day it was going to get much worse later when the powers that be addressed his actions. Turns out blood can be quite exciting.

bushwhacking

Many of my closest friends know that turning back is rarely an option for me. When I decide to do something I have prayed, analysed, prepared (but not planned--I like to keep my options open), and thought quite a bit before I jump. But sometimes (often?) a key component of my decision is based on intuition. I know, sense, that this is the way to go. Yes, I have some facts to back it up, mostly.
[This reminds me of a time I won a game of Clue on the second round--I knew the answer but my reasoning (while proven true) was so unsubstantiated that one of the players refused to ever play with me again. But I digress...]
Anyway, I don't like to reverse. Jump ship, change course, perhaps. Likely. But go back? No. It's not that I've burnt bridges--in the area of employment for example I've returned to a previous employer in four different instances. It's more of an adventurous there's-more-to-explore attitude. I want to find a new path, a new way of doing things. Pioneer and all that. Once I've mastered it it becomes stale (which is probably why I was never fitted for accounting long term).
Speaking of paths those closest friends I mentioned can also tell you that if you hike with me and let me choose the route I won't get you lost...eventually...but there will likely be some bushwhacking involved. My sense of direction, inherited from my beloved geographer father, is pretty good but sometimes the people who make paths neglect to connect them or put them where I feel they should go. One time I ended up with two friends outside LA climbing an almost vertical hill to get to another path (because we had taken the wrong turn and, well, I don't go back when the goal is so close). Not one of my brighter moments as the little jack russell still had stitches...but fortunately he emerged unscathed and uninfected. In Bangkok I almost got attacked by a pack of wild dogs when I left the touristy area. Another time some blackberries were involved...
Leaving the well-traveled trail is never the safest route. You might get a few scratches. Maybe you could have got there another way. But that's not my story. The best stories lie outside of the mainstream and the courageous few get to tell them. And I do love a good story...

Karfreitag

i pass row upon row of empty 
houses soaking in splendid sunshine
home to bees and bugs cavorting
in eerie wrinkled time as if the
world is holding its breath while
humans hide from the fate common
to all and i marvel at this moment
on a day to remember One who 
never hid walking boldly where
no other could go and took the
sting and the victory so that we
could come out fig leaves gone
yet so many are still waiting in
fear and folly finding comfort and 
security in edifices built on sand
refusing to turn to the only true
the only way coming out of the
crypts sitting warmed by spring
heat yet lifeless this good friday

Fear nothing—not wild wolves in the night,

    not flying arrows in the day,
Not disease that prowls through the darkness,
    not disaster that erupts at high noon.
Yes, because God’s your refuge,
    the High God your very own home,
Evil can’t get close to you,
    harm can’t get through the door.

~Psalm 91

charity, chainsaws, and change

The trees are over 50 years old. My great aunt probably planted them not too long after they had the house built, a deciduous pair near all the evergreens. The powers that be decided the trees exhibited little signs of life and being precariously close to the house the time had come to take them out. In one day, the chainsaws destroy 50 years of painstaking growth.

As the chainsaw hums its staccato tune, I watch branches with solid cores and green leaves tumble down. The trees, welcoming spring had put forth leaves in spite of their moss-covered trunks, as if begging for the chance to live another year.

I ponder the grace that grants me one more day. The stay of execution based on the love that desires I also bear fruit, since the axe is already laid at the roots of those trees that produce nothing good (Matt 3.10). While I have breath I can grow and change, bringing forth love, joy, peace, patience and the like.

Sometimes it takes long years to see significance, to see the leaves unfurling, to see His glory reflected in my actions. Sometimes I forget that the goal is not my achievements and I despair until I remember another lesson of the trees: always point upward. That, by His grace I can do.

gathering dust

Sitting on my shelf is a new iPod touch, purchased for my trip. I haven't turned it on or set it up; it's still in the case. I got it a couple weeks before I was scheduled to leave and just a few days before Apple decided to close all their stores. I cannot return it...at least not right now. Maybe I don't want to return it. It sits gathering dust while I relegate it to that part of my mind that is half in denial the world is as it is and not as it should be.

It's a holding pattern. More than a week passed before I unpacked my bags because, after all, am I staying? Will I go again? What would staying even look like? No job is temporarily suspended, no jobs are really available in this climate. Of course, would I even want one if one turned up? Waiting.

Avoiding decisions like the space grey iPod. After all, most decisions are out of my hands. Even Costco doesn't want my temporary assistance. The few clamouring voices I can tackle may include what to eat and when to exercise and whether nine hours of sleep on a consistent basis is healthy but they seem hollow in light of the silent ones like what now, God?

Restlessness stirs some moments but most pulse with a hesitant expectancy. When the whole world lays aside individual freedom for a perhaps overrated virus something big must be coming. At the very least, life as I know it is over. Like Frodo we can never go home again. It's a brave new world.

Maranatha

scraps

one of my favourite art activities has been to create collages from old magazines, like the slightly blurry one above. i once wallpapered my door in snippets including words that spoke meaning to my heart. if the test of great art is the time one can gaze is wrap wonder then for me this is timeless. in each image i can drown, lost in a world of imagination and dreams. 

scrapspieces of a life
images
words
what does the collage of your life look like? does it radiate beauty and grace? is it full of unforgettable moments or ones you have forgotten? i have so many experiences that, like my hodgepodge creations don't fit into a seamless cohesive picture yet all together they make me uniquely me. from wrangling to roaming to writing.
these days of limbo 
we all get to pause.
selah
to take a brief look at the mosaic of memories and decide can tomorrow be different, better? no earthly eye knows all your clippings and some are better off in the recycling bin. when nothing is as it seems anything is possible. rearrange the scraps of yesterdays to paint a life that breathes hope. no matter what tomorrow brings it can be beautiful.

quarantine

it's not so bad day one i see
the sun is shining i can still
run and play i have a nice
house and food's ok so what
about day two the forecast is
solid rain i finished the puzzle
but i still can't complain i have
enough tp and a bottle of wine
maybe day three is starting fine
no it's raining again and the book
is done not the one i should write
the one i just read ok now the day
four is dawning and i have nowhere
to go yet i want to go somewhere
the itch is for real and i'm tired of
texting i would rather have a face
not onscreen to talk to and i wish
i had bought extra chocolate and
maybe some ice cream no i'm glad
i'm not there instead maybe another
workout is two a day ok pretty sure
sleeping nine hours because what
does the day hold i really should
do something but it's not so bad
wait how many days are left?

fear

Everyone consciously and unconsciously adopts life mottos as they age. Some idealistic, some practical, some attainable, some less so. A line from a favourite movie of mine, Strictly Ballroom, resonated with me immediately the first time I heard it: "Vivir con miedo es como vivir a medias".

Simply put in English: a life lived in fear is a life half-lived.

Daily life right now pulsates with fear. Turn on the tv. Chat with a friend. Greet a stranger (well, better not unless you yell from a great distance). Unprecedented times of uncertainty and what happens now is on every one's lips.

Example: the grocery store. Signs proclaiming the requisite 6 feet of distance (in aisles that are only 5 feet wide). The checkout line. I stand patiently at the sign but the lady ahead hesitates and does not move immediately to her spot. Instead she looks at me with something akin to loathing and says in a tight voice, "get back! that's not 6 feet away!" Mortified, amused, feeling like a slug she would like to salt, I respond, "I'm waiting at the sign." Fighting back tears--I dislike confrontation especially unnecessary--I gratefully engaged with the sympathetic cashier who recognised my innocence and we agreed that grace is the only answer.

Grace, love, trust. These things fight fear. I know how the Story ends, so I don't have to fear the bumps in my story. 

Perhaps you say I don't understand. I'm a traveller who loves a good adventure. Yet just as anyone else from the moment I wake up fears clamour for dominion. I am an unemployed, over-educated ageing single woman who has survived cancer and lost a parent. And those are only the external arenas that fear would like to rule. Much more significant are the thousand thoughts that analyse every outcome and every interaction.

I choose not to live in fear. I choose to believe that I may have planned a way, but He directs my steps.

I choose moreover to live in expectation and hope. He gives good gifts and I want to find them through trust and perseverance. So live a full life. Leave fear behind. Trust.

paper

As I sit to write my table is covered with paper. A notebook containing a more-or-less master list, scraps of lists of things not to forget, pads of paper that I collect with a compulsion. Packing has always been an excruciatingly cathartic time to purge yet paper has always been the most difficult thing to sort. A product of a generation caught between everything electronic and hard copies, I'm forever unsure if I should keep or destroy the silent trees' lesser products. I rely daily on the passwords stored in my apple id and keep a handy tb of electronic storage but to my heart no email can take the place of a handwritten letter lovingly sent. 

The very act of setting pen to paper anchors me in time in a way nothing else can. I write the lists and promptly forget to take them to the store but somehow it works. Somehow simply setting it down is a form of accomplishment that allows me to immediately procrastinate by blogging instead of checking off items. Yet beyond that just having paper ready to write, notepads with their clean, promising pages--I collect them as if by having them I captured the permanence and prosperity they exude. Perhaps growing up in a home where sticky notes were a luxury we could not indulge in and notepads were gifts not necessities has spawned my collection that even as I pare down another dragon skin's level I cannot bring myself to discard the last few pages of a heart-stamped notepad. 

So I will squirrel away the bicycle papers that were discarded by another with less emotional attachment to the echo of permanence and forest paths. I will write a letter or two, sharing my precious treasures with friends who may not understand but will hopefully welcome the nostalgic method of communication so lacking in the immediacy of a world in which I can travel so easily, bringing the gift of being present like the letters on the page.