thoughts from my spanish friend

The other day I unexpectedly met one of my friends in Caffe Fiore.  I was going there to read alone because I felt like I needed it, but there she was, all 5′3 of her warm Spanish personality that fills the room, so I sat with her.  Golden nuggets from her….

It takes more work to get better than to feel bad for yourself, that’s why people swim in their own messes and depressions and pain.

If you are having a bad day, just tell the people around you. Spare them from the unnecessary guilt that they might go through.

You have to take toxic people out of your life.

Don’t make other people pay for your own pain.

She asked me how old I was, and when I said 25, she said some of the things I was talking about made sense.  Some of the struggles.  So she talked about what happens in your 30’s.  She said there is something about your 30’s where you have firm feet to stand on.  It’s like you have your core.  You get this core set about you and you coat it. In your 20’s (or at least hers) things still get into the core and shake it around..In your 30’s people all still have legitimate fears and worries, but they know who they are…interesting.

Then I asked her what she believed about God.  She told me she knew there has to be something out there or up there for very poignant reasons.

She talked about the innate desire to look up and to pray, so to speak, when in trouble.

Innate longings.

She had people volunteer to carry  a child for her/donate eggs if she lost her ovaries to cancer before approaching a surgery where the status of the tumor was unknonw.

Love. Sacrifice.

And children, the internal love and goodness they carry.

Bearing the image of something (Someone) so deep.

I was so blessed by her, I got out my journal and just started writing.  She is beautiful, and I pray that she really sees how much she is worth, because it is so evident to me.

leaving on a jet plane

Today I walked past a younger man (and by younger I mean around my age) playing guitar on the edge of skate park in Ballard.  Plain green hooded sweatshirt, black jeans, boxer briefs haning out the top.

Not disheveled, but not fully put together.

Skateboard and satchel were off to the side.  A softshell guitar case with a few floating dollars flapped in the slight breeze.

He had a pretty black guitar, a harmonica set up around his mouth, and he played with passion.

Two minutes before I had passed one of those annoying street vendors trying to sell me some kind of cell phone.  I was reminded of the words a friend told me a few weeks ago.  ”You have to look people in the eyes.”  That’s what Jesus did, looked people fully in the eyes, drew near to them.  Because that kind of love was and still is irresistible.

So I did.  And said hello instead of avoiding him.  I think he appreciated it, or maybe I just thought he did.

Then the guitarist. The homeless guy to my right and I stood together, he was part drunkenly echoing the Collective Soul lyrics, and I let him stand close to my body, unafraid of him.  Not sure if the girl off to my left sitting and bob-swaying to the muisc was his girlfriend, but she was digging it.  Then he played his own rendition of leaving on a jet plane.  It was awesome.  Fingers slid up the fret board like butter between barred chords and not barred chords. Then he looked at me- mulitple times- slightly dancing himself, no smile, and I stared straight back in his eyes. It wasn’t suggestive. It was piercing.

What I would tell him if I could is that the music and look from his eyes made me feel alive.  For what felt like the first time in a long time, I lost track of the burdensome thoughts in my mind.  I felt near to humanity, a place I belong.

Near to humanity, a place we belong.

tonight’s lyrics

Like a desperado you run

hanging onto shards of broken glass

but I gave you flowers in a vase

baby, hold on loosely to things

sometimes we hold on so hard, we completely lose sight of the original beauty

heartfelt quotes

“It takes a profound conversion to accept that God is relentlessly tender and compassionate toward us just as we are- not in spite of our sins and faults (that would not be total acceptance, but with them.  Though God does not condone or sanction evil, He does not withhold His love because there is evil in us…The sorrow of God lies in or fear of Him, our fear of life, and our fear of ourselves.  He anguishes over self-absorption and self-sufficiency…God’s sorrow lies in our refusal to approach Him when we have sinned and failed.” (Manning)

“This [brokenness] is what needs to be accepted.  Unfortunately, this is what we tend to reject.  Here the painful seeds of a corrosive self-hatred take root.  This painful vulnerability is the characteristic feature of our humanity that most needs to be embraced in order to restore out human condition to a healed state.” (Nicolas Harnan)

Manning talks with refreshing and raw honesty about many personal retreats/times of solitude spent desperately searching for the acceptance and love of God inside Christian spirituality.  One such profound retreat was in the Colorado Rockies, where he realized that for 18 years he had never been able to feel God’s love, even as a minister of God’s love and grace. He could stare at an individual completely convinced of God’s love and passion for them, nowhere near to experiencing it himself. He says:

“It used to be that I never felt safe with myself unless I was performing flawlessly.  My desire to be perfect had transcended my desire for God.  Tyrannized by an all-or-nothing mentality, I interpreted weakness as mediocrity and inconsistency as a loss of nerve.  I dismissed compassion and self-acceptance as inappropriate responses.  My jaded perception of personal failure and inadequacy led to a loss of self-esteem, triggering episodes of mild depression and anxiety. Unwittingly I had projected onto God my feelings about myself.  I felt safe with Him only when I saw myself as noble, generous, and loving, without scars, fears or tears. Perfect!”

“But on that radiant morning in a cabin hidden deep in the Colorado Rockies, I came out of hiding.  Jesus removed the shroud of perfectionist performance and now, forgiven and free, I ran home.  For I knew that I knew Someone was there for me.  Gripped in the depth of my soul, tears streaming down my cheeks, I internalized and finally felt all the words I have written and spoken about stubborn, unrelenting Love.  That morning I understood that the words are but straw compared to the Reality.  I leaped from simply being the teacher of Gods’ love to becoming Abba’s delight. I said good-bye to feeling frightened and shalom to feeling safe.”

talk of healing

Lately much has surfaced in my life.  I wish I could say that all of it is positive and wonderful, but it really isn’t.  In fact, it has actually been really tough.  I’m not saying any of that for pity; I just believe in honesty.  Relationships from the past have resurfaced, some to be dealt with, some to be closed.  Relationships from the present are trying to figure out how to exist in the midst of all of those strains and memories unaffected, yet they are.  None seem to be exactly “light” on the mind or heart.  Lot of big words and deep conversations are in the lives of the people around me as well.  As I listen and as I think (too much) one theme rings out…healing.  I (and we all) need healing. I risk in saying that. I risk sounding like a baby.  I risk sounding needy. I risk becoming self-focused.  Sometimes the most clever ploy of the devil is for us to focus inward on weaknesses and wounds so much that it paralyzes us from forward movement.  I’ve experienced that, even lately.  Now, I want to move on.  But I need help.  Some of the spiritual aspects and some of the mental/emotional aspects require wisdom beyond what I have.  God is providing, and all my hope has to rest that He will and is giving me the right things and people to figure these things out.

The book Abba’s Child was brought to my mind last weekend, one that I read back as a freshman in college in a class called Personal Growth and Helping Others.  The whole goal of the class was to look at your life and figure out where you’ve been in your family of origin, what events/ideas have shaped your views, and where you are going.  The book was powerful.  So, I’m going to quote some of the passages that have spoken to me as I walk through these things again for myself.  May they bless you.

One thing author Brennen Manning is sure of is this- we are the beloved of Jesus and He views us tenderly.  And that needs to be the defining fact of our life.  It seems to be my pursuit.

for the m(e)asses

In a thousand ways, this quote is what I think about my life right now.  I found it a few years ago when I was working on the East Coast.  At the time, I was living to much in my head trying so hard to grasp at answers I didn’t have, remembering past epiphanies but a far cry from actually living them out.  I was lonely and out of community.  I’ve felt way too in my head for the last couple of weeks, and when I live there, I miss out on life totally.

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves lik locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.  Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them.  And the point is, to live everything.  Live the questions now.  Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, and live along some distant day into the answer.”

-Ranier Maria Rilke

kingdom message

There is a message that we’re learning to catch onto.  I can tell I’m young in learning about it, but not so young that I don’t understand its significance or its relevance.  It is the message of the kingdom.  And it is forceful.  I was at home two weeks ago taking a break from the pace of life in Seattle.  It was the first time I had actually felt like I needed to get away.

I spent time recharging.  I spent time repenting. Rethinking.  Renewing.  I decided to read this book called Kingdom Come.  The problem with me and books is that I never finish them.  I start six and get stuck in the middle of all six of them.  I’m proud to say that I finished.  And it simultaneously rocked my world.  It delved into the message of the Kingdom of God, the reality of the Kingdom Jesus Christ announced the arrival of when he came to earth.

It’s HUGE!  It’s salvation, yes, but it is also restoration of everything.  It is the release from bondage to death and decay in every sense.  It is the promise that the rules that govern God’s kingdom- perfect love, justic, peace, and truth will come again at Jesus’ return.  And we, as Christ’s vessels, get to be the conduits, the representations of this kingdom on earth.  Christ wants to show this reflection through us.  He wants to us to bring others into that.  It’s so powerful!  It’s so much more than saying a prayer for salvation.  It’s a whole new paradigm and way of life!

This is our world, people.  This is our message.  How are we going to respond?

divine movement

God is at work, my friends.  This last week, I have literally witnessed a miracle.  I was blessed enough to be in the room the very moment one of my dear friends gave her life to Christ.  Those moments are so holy and precious, how am I supposed to write about them?

I can’t tell you why or how much the power and love of Christ can come in and completely fill a room, or a life.  I just know that it did.  I know that 29 years of wondering, feeling, searching, questions, landscapes, wonder, and pain found a home inside of Christ’s love at 12:34 AM Tuesday, August 4th. I am a strong believer in the all-encompassing depth of the word “beautiful.”  Even so, it seems a little inadequate.  But Christ’s transforming power in her life is beautiful.  Much followed those moments and much remains.  But His stripes of healing, redemption, forgiveness and beauty have washed over it all.

It feels as though new life has come into the community in which I live and serve.  To see such radical changes, not just in my friend’s life, but in others as well. These movements.  These divine movements.  Paintings.  Brush strokes on the soul, ridding years of darkness.  More join the kingdom mosaic and everything becomes more beautiful.  We stare at these moments awestruck and humbled having tasted something we can no longer go back from.  We are wiped and changed, broken down and rebuilt. Part of a story woven into the Epic.

Like sewn thread ripping out of seams

remove my sins so woven into me.

to a friend

as you go, and I didn’t get to say good-bye.. you will get this soon enough

“…What’s been good out here, as you will experience, is a fresh start.  No baggage with men.  No baggage with friends. Yet….it will always be people.  They will always weigh the most.  And the tearing (eyes) and the tearing (heart) that goes with the loss of them, the change of them, the hurt of them.  The joy of them….That is what I’m coming to terms with again and again.  People.  Just one love–God.  Just one manifestation–people..”

all i desire for you is hope and redemption,

case