The Pastor Praises the Creator

Dearly beloved, I mean today
to praise the God who gave the tribes
wine, the crisp flesh of suckling pig,
then told them, "Thou must not."

Who gave them swords and ploughshares,
lambs and lions, demons and redeemers.
Who made half of them like pestles,
half like mortars, then told them

in themselves they were complete.
Cool soothing fingers and fevers
between the legs. Reason and gooseflesh,
curtains and candles, lightning and oak,

seven days to live and as many sins,
lungs and mold, books and blind men, veins
and age. Who fashioned them a harvest home,
then created wanderlust and roads.

-David Citino

today's assortment of random thoughts

I notice I'm not the only one who smiles at cats while walking to work.

The piano interlude in Nina Simone's "My Baby Just Cares for Me" is the surest way to clear out any residual Monday negativity.

Sometimes my skin quickens as much to sunlight as to a kiss full on the mouth.

Even imaginary friends can be good company.

Sometimes making just that one bright student smile bewilderedly during class is worth all the getting out of bed in the morning.

Apparently, you can't freeze onions.

"grant us wisdom, grant us courage, for the living of these days"

old familiar words

I'm thinking of changing the blog's name to "unmitigated navel gazing." Thoughts?

Report: 2 weeks back

Ah friends…

First, let me say that I will never cease to be amazed by how much wholeness I feel simply from washing my dishes and gazing at my clean counters.

I’ve been back two weeks already and no doubt you faithful readers will have noticed the dramatic uptick in my frequency of blog posts! This may have something to do with my amazing open teaching schedule this semester, which I’m afraid has given way to somewhat obsessive blog-surfing, linking and general rabbit-trail-following that I’ll probably need to curb here soon (no doubt sometime around when I collect the first set of essays!). I do take refuge in the fact that, as my friend Karen put it yesterday, “if you were doing the same reading in book form, would you feel as guilty?” Thank you, Karen.

A feeling passed over me last night as I wrestled to put my brain to sleep, and I think it felt like hope.

There have been scores of blessings this first week and a half, all of which remind me that God has not forgotten me over here in this windy Baltic land! I am blessed by my new colleague Karen in the office next to mine, for walking home from school with, with whom I have a standing weekly date to sit down and write on Tuesday afternoons. I am blessed by laughter over lunch with Janis and Charlotte and Karen after church on Sunday. And by the deliberate, honest reading of Psalms with Maja and Keith beforehand. (And that I actually went to church for the first time since September.) Blessed especially by the prayer that I'm praying every morning and night, by the fact that my teaching load is precisely HALF what it was in the fall, and that I get to teach creative writing again.

Yesterday, I was sitting at my kitchen table (hence, all my kitchen table posts!) looking around my apartment, thinking, “this is the life you want.” Oh how I rush and grumble toward some imagined future when all my social, intellectual, physical and emotional needs will be poised in perfect balance. But now, I have work to do, enough of it, but time to sit and drink tea and talk with friends. Time to bake bread, to make dinner and set a full table. I even have enough time to plan travel in March, and friends to go with.

Even beyond this present well-being, I feel the metaphorical dark clouds over my future back in the States beginning to part a bit. I am invited to teach in Turkey again this July and August, which is not only adventure but the hope of a modest paycheck after 3 years of volunteering. I’m excited and heartened by the engagement of yet another close friend this past weekend, continuing the life-game of Red Rover we all seem to be playing. This brings my May/June wedding slate to five, yes five, and I can be home for all of them! (Applications to be my date will be posted soon. !)

As I think about work I might do next year, a process that was giving me anxiety episodes back at home, I realize that what I end up doing is so much less important than who I continue becoming. Part of me thinks that sounds like a cheesy Hallmark statement, but more deeply I think this is the essence of being a disciple. Faith seems to have resolved itself to a very simple, simple core – to be faithful in trusting that what God says about the world is true, and to actively rest in His mercy.

No matter what the calendar says of my age this year (“let us not speak of it,” I’ve been saying!), I somehow feel like I’m about to graduate from college again. The options are open. I can do anything or everything.

What I realize from my vantage point here is that I have to go home with as much intentionality as I came to Lithuania. I need to choose deliberately and thoughtfully where I will live, what I will drive, where I’ll go to church, how I will spend whatever little money I might make – otherwise the cultural default settings will do the choosing for me.

So as I look ahead…

I want to hold still.
I want to stay put somewhere and dig in, and for the time being, stand still when my heart gets hungry for new horizons, more stamps in the passport, more languages.
I want time to read.
A small house with a small kitchen.
Not riches, richness.
Simplicity and quiet.
A very ordered, contemplative life, with time to sit with cups of coffee in my hands, listening to friends.
Time for taking walks, for writing things in notebooks.
My grandparents’ old piano.
Hospitality.
Growth.
Commitment and patience.
Contribution to my neighbor's good as well as my own.
Contribution to my city’s good as well as my own.
Civility.

Good grief, I am so old fashioned! Does anybody actually lead lives like this anymore?

Thanks for letting me ramble on, friends – I am happy to have this outlet for all the processing I know I need to do to meaningfully close this chapter of my life over the next few months. Those of you who have been emotionally tagging along from the beginning of this thing are amazing in your faithfulness to me, even with all my doubts and restlessness! (I feel like I should shout out, “who’s still with me!?”) And when the time comes, thank you for giving me something to come home to.

Calling all eccentrics.

Those who believe they believe in God, but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in the idea of God, and not in God himself.

- Unamuno

Picture sitting on my kitchen table

(North Michigan Reservoir, Rawah Wilderness, Colorado)
(yes, a repost from June 2006)

"Do you think because you suffered for love
nothing more will be asked of you?"

- David Brendan Hopes, from Winter Birds

Single Girlfriends... this might explain everything...

"Whom you marry depends on where you live, but also on how old you are and what race you are....

What might cause an imbalance in some of these local marriage markets? Imbalances in cities might be caused by unskilled young men rationally deciding to give up and move to the country, or stay there in the first place. But another major reason for men being absent from local marriage markets is prison. There are two million men in US prisons and just 100,000 women; and the men in prison are spread unevenly across age, race and geography."

-Tim Harford, here.

Okay, I admit, his thesis is mostly focused on young black men & women, but I just love the idea of using this explanation at the next family gathering.

The Bride of Christ

"I went through the bookstore Barnes and Noble in the Jesus section... and I tried to think about if I was an alien from another planet and I was trying to figure out what is it that these people who follow Jesus believe the most... I think I would think the most important thing for Christians was to be effective, to find purpose.

But I think the most important thing that God is asking us is "Will you be faithful?"

He didn't say He was going to come back for an effective bride, and you better have a whole bunch of work done when I get back, you better have a factory full of products that you've produced. He just said,
"When I come back, will you look pretty for me?"

- Seth McCoy, Woodland Hills Church, January 2008

I'm going to post this without comment. And yet, my very act of posting is itself a comment. Alas.

Read. Think. Pray.

Sometimes other voices sing it exactly, exactly right

I woke up at 4:35 still jet lagged from another plane ride
And opened my window over bondi beach
Where all the stars seemed out of reach
And recognized none but the southern cross
Sitting on my bed with the light turned off
Till i found a sweet song on the little clock radio and it made me cry
Singing have some faith, have some faith

And i don't know what i want but i know where i want to be
And everywhere i go, i wish you were here with me
Stars hang on tiny strings, my dreams are made of memories
Once everything made sense, now i get so alone that i can't sleep
Will somebody please tell me if this is where i'm supposed to be

Bottles on the table and socks on the floor
Trying to remember what i started this for
When a surfer friend of mine came and picked me up
And we paddled out as the sun was coming up
Talking about how everybody has to find
Something that gives them the strength to be alive
And out laying on our boards in the southern hemisphere, he said to me
Gotta have some faith, have some faith

And i don't know what i want but i know where i want to be
And everywhere i go, i wish you were here with me
Stars hang on tiny strings, my dreams are made of memories
Once everything made sense, now i get so alone that i can't sleep
Will somebody please tell me if this is where i'm supposed to be

(Mason Jennings, "Southern Cross" - yes, I'm on a Mason Jennings kick right now!)

the soup seemed to ask for bread

i'm making soup

words from a Skype chat

there is not one single person on this planet who is totally worth our trust and who will not hurt us

i wish that i could say something that would make you calmer, less scared, because i know that is what you want.

but the best i can say is, just be patient, wait, and pray

none of us can really do more than that

because it is grey today, I remember these moments from home...

And regardless, in the evening
A light is thrown by the setting sun
It speeds along this vast familiar
And silently crosses everyone

It's the light that's changing
It's the light that's changing
It's the light that's changing
It's only the light

Across the schoolyards, across the gardens
Across the chapels where lovers have leapt
Across the table in our old kitchen
Across the cities where our future slept

It's the light that's changing
It's the light that's changing
It's the light that's changing
It's only the light...

(Mason Jennings, "The Light (II)")

Blogging Makes Me Lonely

Well, I'm up at 4 again. Sheesh. Fortunately, I had new stuff to read, thanks to Annie. She got an earful from me this evening, which must have prompted her to think about her sad, sad friend over in Lithuania. Okay, so I'm not sad, sad... totally, but I am perplexed, and confused (and incidentally, really hungry for 4 a.m.). Within 24 hours of my leaving the States, my sister got a new puppy, my sister-in-law got a new job, my best friend got engaged, and my grandpa got a diagnosis that his cancer has started spreading.

(I tried to space those in order of significance.)

Having just been home for three weeks, I feel all reconnected into each of their lives, so it feels ever more like a slam to be just missing out on sharing the joy and the excitement, the pain and the anxiety, the preparations and the LIFE that are inherent in each of these events. Instead, here I am in Klaipeda, having been home for two days and having seen and talked to ONE PERSON since I've been back. (A sprinkling of text messages do not constitute seeing and talking). This is a harsher blow than usual since I've just spent the past week literally scheduling morning-lunch-afternoon-and-dinner meet-ups with friends around Colorado. It was a full friendship week.

I don't really have a point to this post. Talking with Annie, I told her that I realized that blogging actually makes me lonelier, rather than helping me feel connected. I think it's because I can write this from the corner of my blue couch, here in Lithuania, at 4 a.m. You, dear reader, can read it and can know what it going on in my psyche (bitter, twisted and tired as it it), and feel like you are part of my life. I, however, if I don't hear from you, don't have a similar insight into your pains and joys, your struggles and moments of triumphs, but rather feel like I'm on the end of a one-sided relationship.

Being home and sitting face-to-face with friends was healthy for me, helped me not to feel like I am the only one doing the relating. I does make me consider, though, if it might be better for me not to post here. Better for me to try real relationships. But this does help (particularly when jet-lagged).... so I'm at a loss.

I think I should crawl back in bed now...

Some of my own thoughts (for a change)

(Being a disciple of Jesus is difficult. )

These words formed in my head at 4:30 this morning when I woke up disoriented in a Copenhagen hotel, stuck overnight on my way back to Lithuania. I left Colorado two days ago, and I'm still not home yet. I should be used to all this solo travel, to the anxiety that THIS might be the time they lose my suitcases for good, to the carefully rationed pounds and kroner, eeked out to pay for coffees and bagels. But I am tired of shouldering these kinds of detours, head upheld, forced patience smoothing out my forehead.

But then again... yesterday, I sat in the middle of Heathrow's third terminal, typing away at lesson plans, a cup of coffee at hand, and the entire world's citizens milling around me while I planned my lessons on poetry, sketched out my spring travel... what kind of amazing life I do have! Really. I am doing what I most want - I travel, I read, I write, I teach. On holidays, I wing myself home and ski on the white hills under the bluest sky anywhere in the wide world. Things are not so bad.

I woke up this morning at 4:30, knowing just how much I need to pray. Knowing that I absolutely must get my knees back down on the hard floor, lay face down and raise up my hands, ask forgiveness for my hidden heart, ask forgiveness for my stubbornness that is not satisfied with the gifts I am given. I've always been bad about that - many a Christmas has seen me, rather than thankful, wishing for the gifts I didn't get, caluculating the ones I've been given against those I'd asked for.

But I have this one - this ordinary morning, ordinary, sitting at familiar table in Copenhagen airport, watching the screen tick out the gates, waiting for my departure to be called. I've done all my favorite things, sampled the Elizabeth Arden Green tea hand lotion, run my fingers over the pashminas in Hermes, traced the colorful cut-paper cards with my eyes, lifted the Royal Dutch china and determined it to be too expensive, read the back covers and front flaps of English books with the manner of saying goodbye to a friend - slow and deliberate.

Why are we never happy with the portion we are given? Why has this year in Lithuania felt like such a burden to undertake, instead of the amazing gift it felt like when I first went? I'm thinking a lot about my years at LCC this trip; it's inevitable. I consciously know that this is my last journey this direction. The last beginning to a semester there and I cannot help but feel the difference in my heart to how it feels compared to that first one. Most of what I've felt this past year is how desperately I want my VISION back, how much I lack the enthusiasm and energy that carried me through year one. But I know too much now - I know the kinds of demands that Jesus makes of my heart. I know what it means to submit hopes and fears to him, to give up things and people and loves that distract from him.

I know I'm going to be tempted to regret this time in Lithuania - this Christmas I feel I got a taste of how BEHIND in life I feel having chosen to give these three years to pursuits that don't have tangible monetary or relational results. I see the ugly dragon of materialism slinking back into frame, feel his claws prick at me in reminder that I no longer own anything solid and calculable. Not even a bed. I felt the jealousy of watching financially secure siblings and friends plan purchases so out-of-my-reach that I can't even imagine them. When I start to compare myself and what I have "to show" for my time in Lithuania, it feels like it amounts to a few new wrinkles on my forehead, a busted-up heart and faith that's stretched beyond what it can snap back from.

Paradoxically, I also know I'm going to be tempted to paint the time in Lithuania with simplistic, happy primary colors (red, yellow, green). To try and neatly package what I've been through here, try to come up with some tidy lessons that I can carry around like nuggets in my pocket, applying as needed.

And what have I learned? Maybe only one thing (watch, here comes the package-ing): That the heart's submission to God's will is the everlasting, ongoing, singular task of a discipled life.

There are tangential lessons of course, but this is the sum total of what I will take from my time in Lithuania, that being a "Christian" is not easy or comfortable. I knew this before, of course, but never have had to continually, repeatedly, wrenchingly put to death my own hopes in the practice of following what I believe to be the sake of God's Kingdom. At first, this seems adventurous, like Frodo on a great quest, the excitment of serving a cause greater than yourself. We, as young believers, get high on these kinds of quests (try a jolt of this any time at a conference like Urbana), and often these intial visions can sustain a period of intensity and committment. But pretty soon (soon being relative), the self, the heart, our own desires will announce themselves, and we'll have to do battle. Or the task will seem compromised and unworthy of our time, so we'll quit. Or, any number of other factors will arise. And then we learn what it means to follow Jesus, to be His disciple, His instrument, His hands and feet. It means that we must die to ourself.

I had an atheist friend this summer who said something about believers that I've heard repeated often by writers and philosophers in disparaging people of faith. (Well, sometimes it sounds like they mean it kindly, but to me it always comes off as a slam). They say that belief in God is instinctive, comforting, something we need in troubled times.

I'm sorry atheist friends, but my belief in God is profoundly UN-comfortable. There are many, many times when God's existence, the demands that His reality makes on the life of a follower, are discomforting in the extreme. I think the only way that they must get away with making this argument is that so often believers live as functional atheists, only turning to God when we encounter things we can't handle or deal with on our own.

This may explain my extreme distaste for books such as "Live your best life now" (yes, I know poor Joel Osteen is everyone's whipping boy, but it's just so easy). I think that these kinds of books and beliefs, that propogate the idea that Christianity will bring comfort and peace and fulfillment for it's followers, only further prop up the atheist assertion that we're all in this for the goodies, for the satisfying retirement package. I don't think Christ-following is all gloom and martyrdom, BUT I do believe that serious Christ-following means that we are going to be uncomfortable. Our SELF is going to get KILLED. Dietrich Bonhoffer says, "when Jesus calls a man, he bids him come and die." Christ will lead us, not into white-fenced suburban bliss, but into the places where the darkness is darkest.

How do I know this? Because that is where Jesus went. That is how he spent his life on earth, battling against oppression, sickness, disease and fear. If we are His true followers, He is going to take us there too. And we are not always going to like it. Our comfort-seeking selves are going to feel it as keenly as if our skins were being peeled away. (I always love that Eustace-as-dragon metaphor in Lewis's The Voyage of the Dawn Treader).

So, this is my sermon to myself as I embark on a final four months at LCC. This is my personal smack across the forehead. A reminder that this experience is both a) amazing, fulfilling, and perfect for me, so don't go whining for something easier and lesser, and b) the only way I'm going to be able to accept it as such is through self-denial, through obedience to God.

We'll see how I do. Stay tuned.

"If you're like me
you need Hope, Coffee and Melody."

Robbie Seay Band

Winter Hike in Estes

Winter trees

Longs Peak from Gem Lake Trail

Mary Oliver is my salvation

Messenger

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird --
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

The land of sunshine and mountains