My view from this playground

A blog friend tagged me. Here's what I see from my spot in life:

Seven things to do before I die:

1. travel around the world in whatever amount of time I want with someone i love
2. thru-hike the Appalachian Trail with a community of people or have people i love join me for sections of the journey
3. enjoy a husband and children
4. be an actress in one major motion picture (comedy)
5. do a cartwheel down a grocery store aisle
6. start a children's museum in my hometown
7. carve my name in a tree and find a message floating in a bottle (ok...I cheated there...I know)

Seven Things I Cannot Do:

1. cartwheels
2. fly a kite
3. dance
4. talk about things that require seeing relationships in math
5. save money
6. jump out of airplanes
7. remember specific things about movies or fiction books


Seven Things That (Would Be) Attract(ive) (to) Me (in a potential) Mate

1. moves toward god
2. willing to connect with his heart and the heart of others
3. likes to repair drywall, change spark plugs, and do the bills
4. leaves surprise love notes in the lunch I take to work
5. listens and wants to be listened to
6. laughs from his gut
7. passionate about something in life (in addition to me, of course)


Seven Things I Say:

1. Ok, the bell just rang. You need to clear off your desks and fill out your planner.
2. do you know what I mean?
3. shoobiddee shoobidee
4. sure
5. pass you papers in (this is to be sung aloud)
6. ahhbidee ahhbidee ahhbidee
7. you need to put that note away or i'm going to tear it up into a million little pieces and snort it up my nose!

Picture the World

Here's an invitation to visit MSN PICTURES OF THE WEEK.
You can sign up to recieve weekly emails linking you to the site. I love looking through these each week. I find so many things I enjoy in the pictures---whether it is the angle, the subject matter, the irony, or surprise...I always find at least one of the pictures that really impacts me. At the very end of the slideshow you are invited to vote for one of the pictures. I take my vote really seriously; it's really interesting. This may seem simplistic, but I made the rule for myself that my vote will go to the picture that evoked the most emotion from me. If there is not specific emotion that over rides all other emotions, then I vote for the most artistic photo or most unusual. Once you vote, you are shown the rankings of the pictrures to that point. You kind of get to see how your vote impacted the group vote.

This is the photo I voted for this week. As soon as I saw it I had an emotional response. You'd have to be dead not to! Here's the story that goes with this amazing shot:

"Anthony Enso, 23, hugs his son Anthony Enso Jr. at a hospital...on Feb. 19, after the 1-year-old was rescued from the mudslides that buried the nearby village of Guinsaugan two days before."

What a redeeming moment in this for this little one and his father! What a loving moment.

Elizabethtown Road Trip

I watched the movie, ELIZABETHTOWN, tonight with a few friends. The first thing I will say is, if you want an amazing soundtrack, I imagine this one's a winner. I really liked the movie as an integrated whole. My favorite partof the movie is how the significance of road trips is worked into the story line. A road trip is given by one friend to another. She didn't go with him on the road trip, per se, but she made his road trip happen. She made it meaningful with a handmade map, interactive no less, where every moment of the trip had purpose with thoughts to ponder, places to visit, people to meet, and songs burnt on CDs for each turn in the road. It reminded me of the discussion I had with a couple of friends about the idea of PILGRIMAGE. What would it look like to go on a pilgrimage? What would an actual spiritual pilgrimage look like today for a community of Christians? To me, it would look alot like the road trip in this movie. Drew, the main character, rediscovers and discovers life on this trip. He was both alone, and accompanied by his friend. Hmmmm...you'll have to watch it to understand what I mean. I wish I had one of those handmade road maps. What an amazing gift!

The movie also scored bonus points with me when Drew's friend included OKC (my humble childhood abode) into the important places to stop. On his road trip, Drew went by the round barn located in Arcadia, Oklahoma...just a hop-skip-and-a-jump from my house.

As Drew continued on the road trip, he began to reorganize his view of failure, disappointment, death, dreams deferred, and survival in life. One such moment occurs as he approached the Survivor Tree located at the Oklahoma City National Memorial for the bombing victims of April 19, 1995.When I visited the memorial the first time, I was most struck by this tree myself. It is a 100-year-old American elm that was the sole surviving tree across the street from the destroyed building. This amazing tree holds a story, stands as a living witness, and continues to grow with the message of resilience and hope. You should take a road trip there if you haven't already.

The final message of the movie, spoken by a renewed Drew, is "No true fiasco ever began as a quest for mere adequacy. The motto of the British Special Air Service is, 'Those who risk, win.'* A single green vine shoot is able to grow through cement. The Pacific Northwestern salmon beats itself bloody on its quest to travel hundreds of miles upstream. Against the current...with a single purpose...life."
*Side note...the movie got it wrong evidently. The official motto of the SAS is actually "Who Dares Wins." Crazy Americans translating English wrong!
**Double side note...if you have never checked out the links on the sidebar of this blog, please do. The one called ROUND AMERICA is about a couple's road trip across America.

DISCIPLINE

Here's a definition of DISCIPLINE my heart knows.

Discipline

Throw away thy rod,
Throw away thy wrath :
O my God,
Take the gentle path.

For my hearts desire
Unto thine is bent :
I aspire
To a full consent.

Nor a word or look
I affect to own,
But by book,
And thy book alone.

Though I fail, I weep :
Though I halt in pace,
Yet I creep
To the throne of grace.

Then let wrath remove ;
Love will do the deed :
For with love
Stone hearts will bleed.

Love is swift of foot ;
Love's a man of war,
And can shoot,
And can hit from far.

Who can scape his bow ?
That which wrought on thee,
Brought thee low,
Needs must work on me.

Throw away thy rod ;
Though man frailties hath,
Thou art God :
Throw away thy wrath.

- George Herbert


From: Herbert, George. The Poetical Works of George Herbert.New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1857.

Shared coffee

It only makes sense that I would want to "share" in the coffee! And what about this paradox: ice + coffee!?!

You Are an Iced Coffee

At your best, you are: hyper, modern, and athletic At your worst, you are: cheap and angsty You drink coffee when: you're out with friends Your caffeine addiction level: medium

What Kind of Coffee Are You?

CANDY HEART POEM

Ok...so after saying that I am not about Valentine's Day, here's a candy heart poem! My student teacher did a lesson in class today using candy hearts. Given 12 candy hearts, we all made a poem using the phrases. Here's mine:

home sick.
this heart
wants
more.

one thing
I know,
sure
love.

hope.
go home

(remember...we were limited to the words on the hearts!)

February 14

Happy Valentine's Day! I'm not usually someone who would be interested in highlighting valentine's day...kinda too commercialized and cheesy. But my heart is a little lighter today. Not because of Hallmark.

I received a package in the mail yesterday. The stuff in the package really wasn't what made my heart lighter. It was the overall message. My friend did something very practical that expressed that she was thinking of me. Simple and received. It breathed hope into that aching muscle of my heart.

It reminds me that it really does not take much honest movement toward a person's heart to release floods of healing.

In the movie, Wit, Vivian Bearing is participating in an agressive treatment for terminal cancer. She is reflecting on the work she has done throughout her life as a scholar of the poet John Donne. She recalls that she devoted a major portion of her life assisting her mentor in editing a collection of John Donne poems. Her point, after this labor of love and work, was that she was mentioned by her mentor in the preface of the completed work. One line of thanks. That was all she needed to feel appreciated and connected to the work. Just a small, honest movement of being seen, known, and appreciated. This same mentor was the one who showed up and offered presence, simple presence, "being there" in Vivian's moment of utter pain in the shadow of death.

It doesn't take much.

Here's a thought

Christianity, as has been offered to me throughout life, sometimes seems to be about exclusivity. ONLY ME AND JESUS. As if life is about knocking away everything until all you want is Jesus. As I entered my Seminary experience, I kind of thought of my life like a bullseye. The outer circle represented other people--relationships. The next circle in represented me. And the last circle, the inner bullseye, represented God. I don't think I can make this metaphor extend into the rest of my explanation, but bear with me as I bounce around.

So the struggle of life, under this model, is to have God swipe away anything upon which I am leaning that is not HIM--the center. Some of the mindset resulting from this includes thinking (especially when you hit disappointment) "Oh, I must have been trusting this outcome or this person too much! I have been replacing God with that thing or that person!" Then I feel shame, guilt, etc. and beg God to take those things or people away. "I'm so sorry I was leaning on them and not you!" Life's mission becomes getting rid of desire because it is dangerous! And If I can't get rid of my dangerous desires, I will get rid of people who draw them out of me! Who knows when you might just press in too much toward any given thing or person!!! If I do make that unwitting mistake of pressing in too hard, God will come by and knock me to my feet--make me fall into His arms.

In college I encountered a deep hurt from some friends. A life-marking disappointment. A spritual mentor told me to "look on the bright side...God is getting rid of all the distractions to trusting Him alone. God is about the business of knocking away all of the support structures we lean on instead of leaning on Him" The message is that your life should consist of only that bullseye--try to get rid of the other circles. Life is about making space only for God.

I REJECT THAT. I don't reject the ultimate aim--knowing and being sustained by God is the ultimate aim. But I don't think His path is the one of getting rid of everything else in the picture. I think my experience toward trusting God completely has been one of MAKING SPACE, not diminishing space. Making space for others, not getting rid of them. Making space for me, not denying my desires. This makes space for God. There's room for all of us.

It was not good for God and Adam to exclusively inhabit this earth. That's not my opinion...it's God's! The plan is not for Heaven, or Earth for that matter, to be my individual, exclusive experience. It is community. Heaven will be all of those desires for connection many Christians run around trying to erase and feel guilty for---guilty that they actually need others in their deepest points of pain. Guilty that, by needing others and being needed by others, we will end up disappointing eachother at some point. Can people really fill that God-sized space for all of us? No. Even when I lean on others in my points of deep pain, God alone meets me in my soul. But isn't heaven just about God? Yes, God in community.

Why do I need others when there is God? I need others in my deepest point of pain because that is how we are created. Not for exclusively needing God, but for needing God in community.

So my path isn't about God teaching me hard lessons by knocking away all the things that "get in the way" of me leaning exclusively on Him? NO! It is about me valuing all that He's made me to be. It is about being able to embrace others for all that they are because I have embraced myself. And by embracing others and myself, I discover that we are desiring to face our God, the bullseye. There is space for me, others, and God.

So, how does this account for disappointment and pain? The above picture seems void of any "issues." Well, this side of heaven, there is still the issue of sin as seen in pain, suffering, and brokenness. Relating to others is painful. When there is space for all of us, we can learn how to "live in our skin." I can finally have the freedom to communicate where I start and you end, and where you start and I end. It is both autonomy and community--all at once. I can tell people that they have hurt me. I can be told that I have hurt another. I can live confidently with desires for relationship and confidently with all of who I am. I can finally trust. Trust myself, trust others, and trust God. Disappointment no longer is equated with shame.

Pain in relationship doesn't mean that God is trying to "teach us a lesson." We stand together, living in our skin, in the presence of our God. In Heaven, when I no longer have skin to live in, I will no longer experience having to tell people where I start and they end--how I've been hurt or how they've hurt me. Space for us all, in heaven, will have no boundaries.

Life, on both sides of Heaven, is about making space not about hitting the bullseye.

Bold lines & Contrast

This is a painting done by an artist named STUART DAVIS. This one is called G & W. His paitings are said to reflect his interest in Jazz. Lots of bold lines and colors setting off a series of contrasts and groupings. There's a light edge to his abstract renditions--so playful. I'm thinking of painting one of his designs on my basement wall.

May it be known

I tried to call also. Just to say that I celebrate your life today. No answer. No space to leave my message. So I got the idea (from others) to leave my message floating in space. Available. Believing the best.

SuperBowl Winner: Good Friends

Just wanting to say how much I appreciate the friends I spent Sunday night with watching the SuperBowl. Life doesn't have us crossing eachother's paths very often, but we've done a decade of life together (some of us). It's just nice to know and be known by these friends.