Catching Up

I must confess I have gotten out of the habit of posting - but things have been busy! A wonderful week long trip with family and cousins up to the North of California - (try, Big Sur before the fires) with lots of camping in our condo-sized tent, games, hiking, beaches, a train-ride through the coastal redwood forest (big, big trees! and very cool too. they literally suck in the morning fog and then exude the moisture on hot days for their own personal airconditioning. yay for sequoia sempervirons!) We hung out at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk and rode the fourth oldest still running wooden rollercoaster The Big Dipper. We played about four games of Lord of the Rings Risk - the battle for Middle Earth could not have been more intense. We ate a lot. We went to the Monterrey Aquarium. We stayed at LimeKiln state park and wandered the rocky coasts. My cousin Nath undertook a miraculous rescue of his sister's shoes which were swept into the surf during an intense volleyball game (while less motivated people watched said shoes drift out). We climbed some trees, skipped a prodigious amount of rocks (Nath clearly won with upwards of 15! I was impressed). We spent a lot of time just together and even a few days out of cell-phone reception, which was rather horrific for our "attached" girls (my sister Lauren and cousin Moira) who hiked miles in an unfruitful search for reception. Lauren was even more pouty and despondent, but cheered up a bit after using a payphone that was practically a relic. All in all, it was really nice.
Since then I have just been working - swim lessons are picking up and its actually really fun, unless I have to dunk screaming kids or coax crying ones off the wall. However, it is really rewarding to have kids like Gracie who's 3 to go from crying to saying, "me want to go under now!" I am, as always, happy to oblige.

Sad girl

Her hands;
slender, efficient.
Her smile;
polite, perfunctory.
Her laugh;
timed, cautious, taught.
She is beautiful.
Her eyes caress the uneven ground.
She looks to the sky in her dreams,
and waking, sighs.

A walk with my sister

Thief stealing twilight
she runs like a dancer along curbs.
From the terraced gardens
a single rose leans over the wall.
I gently tug its thorn-webbed stem downwards,
I steal a breath of rose,
I stare into the turmoil of her petals and see myself.
Sister sees the blackberries ripening!
Easing a berry from its nippled stem,
I taste sunshine wine, darkened by cool nights.
We mourn the fallen berry,
crushed beneath clumsy shoes,
then skip away laughing,
eyes wide as the sky.
We leap over still, posioned water in the concrete river.
We blow the spores of grasses for good luck.
We sprint across deserted intersections,
following the path of star constellations
drawn out in abandoned coins.

To the people I will never meet

Saw something weird today as I was walking around the building where I work. I kept thinking of the people who laid the foundation, tiled the walkways, stuccoed the sides of the building in arching S-shaped curves. I picture them sweeping their trowels across the canvas of stucco. Who was making art, who was making money? I see them eating lunch in the open courtyard where now they've installed fake carpet grass, and constructed a fake river, and placed little bronze statues at strategic places where children might be playing, reading, napping, exploring. I think of the men whose memories are faded, who maybe don't remember the hours they devoted to this building which houses so many people's livelihoods. How many other invisibles are we indebted to? I wonder who ground this pepper, picked these bananas, molded these noodles, crafted this table that I sit at, sewed my shirt? Who, for that matter, thought of all these things like blogs, email, television, cell phones, computer that I take for granted? It is very strange not to know who these people are. Stranger that I don't think about it most of the time.

Work

Today marks the beginning of my second week as a divorce lawyer's personal assistant. I have to say its pretty ugly. I can tune out most of it - the office is quiet, I typically just answer phones, take messages, make copies, print emails, fax stuff - but as soon as I start reading things, being my nosy self, my heart just aches. How do people live with such anger, bitterness, vindictiveness? It makes me want to never get married, thinking, could that be me? could I become that?

Leaving is like getting out of someone else's nightmare - I can't help thinking of the people I leave behind as soon as I can. Where is the spirit of repentance? Where is reconciliation? Where is God in this hateful mess of suffering kids and wounded people isolating themselves from God, from everyone, from love with their anger? Has anyone ever asked for forgiveness? Has anyone ever stopped keeping score of all the old injustices to seek a new time of peace?

Cari said something the other day that was really profound (big surprise!). She said she wants to live a life towards people, even people that have hurt us, stolen things from us. Even people who haven't been towards us and never want to be. I don't know how to do this, to always be leaning closer to each other in love, but I think that this being towards people has a lot to do with bowing. We bow to recognize God in that other person. We bow to recognize that person's invaluable, incalculable worth. We bow to say, I am your servant, let me wash your feet.

What if we were all living in this mutual love and respect, affirming one another and calling goodness out of each other?

What does it mean for me to live towards God?

I don't know. Lots of questions, few answers. I think I am going to try to be more conscious of this as I move around my little world, "walking softly and bowing often" as Mary Oliver would say.

so what does the church look like?

last night five people came over to my house to pray.

that is in itself a weird thing, I think in today's world. Who has time on a Wednesday night at 8:30 to come to a crazy girl's house and sit in the "spare 'oom" for the express purpose of praying, of coming to know God? Surely, there must be something better on TV.

Nevertheless, they came, maybe because they are friends and because I called and bullied them all a few hours before to make sure they were coming. Maybe they came because they see that there is something else in this world worth living for and it isn't our culture that tells you how important you are and how happy you will be if you satisfy all these needs. How many hours of our time are we pouring into jobs that do not stretch us, that do not create or nurture good, just so we can buy the next thing to make us interesting/cool/satisfied/beautiful/skinny/happy/
fulfilledf? I can't believe this bullshit anymore.

We read 1 Corinthian's 13-15, the chapters on spiritual gifts, on the church as a body, on love, on speaking in tongues, and on orderly worship. Actually, I just pulled those chapters out of nowhere when we began, and I feared what these people who I loved would say. After all, it is very nice to consider that we are one body and one in christ, but this is not "cool" nor is it "practical." I'm really frustrated by this fear because it inhibits me. Stops the momentum of Christ that surges inside me. Praise God that he is faithful when I am not, when I am a faltering, fearful, cringing, backsliding fool!

I am actually really hopeful for what will happen here. Sure, we chatted a lot, but that in itself is a lovely thing, being neighborly. And as we sat in a circle, holding hands and praying, we sat in silence for a long, long time and it seemed no one wanted to let go.

Please pray for the church in Moorpark. Pray for me that I might be a faithful vessel, light and salt, despite my fearful nature and my propensity to freeze, inactive. Pray that we all might be fruitful wherever we have been planted, even if it is temporary.

Our times are in his hands.

Oh friend, I cannot wait to see you!

I just talked to Cari and remembered (how could I forget even a little?) how much I love her. She is lovely and raw and pure and wild! Thoreau would love her.
I am going up to SB tomorrow (yayfortheday!) to go to the monastery and see Joe Bunting, a great friend and a talented musician, play at NorthStar. And in between? My friend from home, Jen, who has been on the best friend list since maybe second grade, when she was the cool kid with hot pink cheetah print rain boots, is coming too. It will be good for her to see where I've been these past two years, where so much of my heart is. We will all go on some adventuring together, Cari and Jen and I, and maybe some time catching up and maybe some just being. I would like that very very much.
For as much as Cari and I are different, we are heart-sisters, and it has been so hard to be away from her a whole semester, while she was up in San Fran. Not to mention I will be abroad next fall in England, which will be amazing minus the fact that I won't be here. Sigh. I guess I shouldn't despair too much and probably not at all.
But I am so excited about tomorrow and the people it will bring! I'm not sure that I can sleep, although I need to get up pretty damn early...