Living Wide Open

I will not die an unlived life.

I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible;
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance,
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom,
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.

–Dawna Markova

This poem struck me when I first read it on someone's blog, it grabbed me when I read it again today. Yes, even though I've been feeling like 'my heart's been ripped out of me' in recent weeks, I choose not to step back, recoil, stop loving, stop trusting. I must, and I will, continue to risk. Interesting how energizing it feels, to make this choice, and choose to view events this way.

Christmas Eve, Then and Now

"Then" was Mary, Joseph and Jesus, in a stable. "Now" is me in an airport. How similar? How different?

We're all on a journey, spending the night away from home in less than comfortable surroundings. Glad I'm not nine months pregnant--giving birth in such a place, and thankful that the smell here is quite...normal--no barn smells. Although I'm pretty exhausted, the rigours that have caused mine are different from theirs.

They didn't seem to complain, at least we don't hear about it. I haven't been complaining either. Kind of used to this routine. Perhaps we've all learned to trust God as the one over and above our circumstances...well, sometimes I can trust Him this way.

Mary, travelled accompanied by her loving husband, in the company of other travellers in similar situations, and in the presence of God...inside of her. I wonder if she felt like she was in the presence of God. No husband here. I am in the company of others whose flights have been delayed. I, too, travel in the presence of God, though I have had virtually no 'inspiring thoughts' or meaningful impulses. As much as I had wanted to enjoy advent meditations, and be moved and reflective, jetlag and a head cold have dulled all such thoughts. No sense of connection with God, being led by Him, or what He might be saying to me this day, at this season.

As they travelled was it in the awareness of the great purpose they were to fulfill, or just because they had to? They were aware of part of the purpose of their situation. Did they remember the Bethlehem part of the prophecies? Or did they fulfill important purposes just in the living and doing what needed to be done each day? My purpose in this trip is not nearly as grand as theirs, but theirs was for them and mine is for me. I'm aware of some of the purpose, but wonder if there might be more that I don't know.

Wishing for Extremes

Oh how I wish the answer to how to live could be found living in the extremes. This trying to figure out and then live the delicate middle is so hard--I'm so doomed to failure.

So long in this Country

I've lived in this country so long, practically all my life. I often don't really know how strange, how odd, its customs are for others. To me, some are just so basic. So...the other day I was talking to someone, and I couldn't believe it. He didn't know that we should stand up for the weak and oppressed. He didn't know that if a child was being beaten (as in violence, in anger, not restrained and limited discipline) that someone else should come to the rescue and it's a shame when no one does. Earlier we had been walking along, and he was surprised that I was noticing others around me. "And you didn't?" I said, "That woman...she was walking along crying before she turned into that house. That other woman who was shouting as the man was trying to pull her into the car..."

A few weeks ago I realized--I've been so long in this country, enjoying its benefits, that I think I take them for granted, forgetting to be grateful--to live in grace, and love, to know that there is new mercy and new strength for each day. May I never take it for granted.

And still, for as long as I've been here, and as much as the culture is part of me, there is still much that is strange, much that is not yet fully my own. While I live in such grace, I extend it as freely as it has come to me. While I am learning to understand and appreciate that the best and most real work happening within me is slow, and even though others cannot see it, it counts, and IS progress. Yet I can be so impatient with others and their battles--shouldn't they just grow faster!

The longer I live here, though, the more I like it. Love it really! The life is so much more extraordinarily free, and full, than I could have ever hoped or imagined. The options are numerous. The emotions encompass the heights and the depths. And I love that there is always HOPE--for me, for others--no matter what has happened, there is always the hope of a new life and a better future.

In this Kingdom, with this King...where else would I rather be? Except ... finally ... maybe ... a little closer.

Snail’s pace blogging

Ah...now I know, this is what I do.

Stopped…by the sound of children

Busy… anxious… intent on getting lots done
Frustrated … by all the stupid silly obstacles that keep coming up
Can’t figure out how to work better
Can’t figure out…
“oh oh… hi hi… ah ah…”
Another email. Done. Yay
Website updated. Yay
Great, I’m getting things done today.
“hi hi …. oh oh…”
I stop, open the window… look down and enjoy
Five and six year olds just out of school
walking home, backpacks on their backs
and singing…
“hi hi… ho ho…”
I don’t know what they are singing…
actually there is just one that is
but it’s beautiful
carefree
and I could be too
I could smile
I could saunter down the road
“hi hi… ho ho… ah ah…”
Who cares what else is going on
Doesn’t matter the load that is on my plate
The sun is shining
Good God up in heaven has everything under His control
And He loves me
He enjoys me
Help me to stop and enjoy this day, this life You’ve given.

Hope Rising

Today the new season starts. It's a new semester for students starting school. It's the time when I plan and adjust my and our daily and weekly schedule, trying to figure out what needs adjusting, what are the priorities, and how it will all fit together.

It's a time that can be really overwhelming, and hard, and this time even more so as so much seems up in the air. One pretty vital staff member is leaving. Financing and planning for the students is needing to change. Our office is needing some gifts and abilities that I don't have, and don't know how train for. It could be a pretty overwhelming time.

Yet today, I sense hope rising. I put my trust in God's unfailing love and faithfulness. He knows. He has brought me and us to this point now. I'm thankful that He is calling me to spend a lot more time with Him and learning from Him, and at the same has me in circumstances where I cannot forget that I desperately need Him. He will direct and lead. He will give insight for the rhythms of life that need to be in place to keep me hearing in His presence. He will give ideas, maybe even very fresh ones, that meet the needs. He will strengthen me for the work of each day, for it pleases Him to make me stong. And I can joyfully walk in the light of His presence each day.

Happy are those who hear the joyful call to worship,
for they will walk in the light of your presence, LORD.
They rejoice all day long in your wonderful reputation.
They exult in your righteousness.
You are their glorious strength.
It pleases you to make us strong.
Yes, our protection comes from the LORD,
and he, the Holy One of Israel, has given us our king.
Ps 89:15-18 NLT

Street Food

It's one of the great delights of life, and of travel--the miscellaneous morsels sold by street vendors that you can pick up for a song as you walk about. Where I live it's the rolled noodle lunches in the summer and the barbeque (on a stick) all year--tofu skin, cabbage, potatoes, pork, all barbequed, and then with their pickled salad on top--mmm!! Well, the description does is not nearly as great as the reality! In Hong Kong, it's a tradition to stop and buy the egg balls. Now, in Thailand, I'm enjoying the fruit--pineapple and mango especially. The other day I had a roasted banana, cut in pieces and on a stick, with a lite caramel sauce--all for about 15 cents CAD. A noodles or wonton breakfast was less than a dollar, and fresh squeezed orange juice about 30 cents. The barbequed chicken really smells good too.

Ah, simple pleasures in this life we live.

(Oh, btw, you might want to keep some charcoal (medicinal kind) on hand in case you wake up in the night with your stomach feeling a little odd--take 2 or 3 and you'll be good to go, enjoying street food again the next day.)

Danger

"There is no greater proof in the world of our spiritual danger than the reluctance which most people always have and all people sometimes have to pray; so weary of their length, so glad when they are done, so clever to excuse and neglect their opportunity. Yet prayer is nothing but desiring God to give us the greatest and best things we can have and that can make us happy. It is a work so easy, so honorable, and to so great a purpose, that (except in the incarnation of His Son) God has never given us a greater argument of His willingness to have us saved and our unwillingness to accept it, of His goodness and our gracelessness, of His infinite condescension and our folly, than by rewarding so easy a duty with such great blessings."

Jeremy Taylor, quoted in The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime, p. 648