a day in ned

yippee! i have some pictures to share! i finally had a much needed day of rest yesterday with my dear and lovely friends in the mountain town of Nederland. we ended up in a cozy old railroad train, turned coffee shop, very cool. we laughed and rested and listened to patty griffin and talked about pretty much nothing for 2 hours...it was sooo wonderful.








i know, even on off days i'm still mischievous as ever...oopsies.

today i went to the outdoor pool for some lap swimming, but it was closed. so i sat on a bench in the park for a while as a friend of mine came walking past with his little foxy pup. as we talked about art and architecture his little lady pup was very keen on watching the squirrels that temptatioulsy (not sure if that's a word, but it seemed to fit right) flaunted their way very near to her restrained, furry body. it's funny how mischief and restraint very often go hand in hand. and i had to laugh at myself.

overalls in namibia

today i put on my old, patched-up overalls and smiled. i used to wear those old friends everyday while on african soil, making pottery and wipping the red clay on their fading denim. everytime i put them on i think of namibia.

i went around barefoot all day and layed down in the grass. it smelled like summer. green grass, wet soil and lilacs. the sky was so blue and clear. the leaves on the branches above were a thousand little green flags clapping together and laughing. green and blue mixed with a little red makes deep purple. that was the color of my soul. rest, quietness and purging merged within.

namibia is a desert. but within that desert one can find an oasis. and on the oasis is the color of red mixed with blue, mixed with green. it rains sometimes there. when it does, the flowers bloom quickly and then fade quickly. hardly anyone sees the flowers that bloom in the desert. but they still bloom. they still show their pretty faces and smile very brightly towards the heavens. and then they fall asleep again.

kind of like old patch-up denim overalls.

dorothy and the red wagon

I was thinking about Dorothy today. She was trying to reach the Emerald City. But all she really wanted was to reach home. I wonder if I’m Dorothy. I wonder if I’m trying to reach a place that’s green and sparkly and pretty when all along all I really want is to reach home.

A friend told me today that my dreads are wild and crazy and colorful and that they look like the way her insides feel. And I wondered why I wear my heart on the outside of me.

Last night I dreamt of a massive, churning, violent tornado coming straight towards the place where I lived and I knew that if I asked God to keep it from devouring us, He would change it’s course. So I asked, I actually screamed the request. The tornado snarled it’s way towards us and in the very last minute it darted to the left and only took a small nip out of the side of the home. Prayer is a very mysterious thing. I wonder if it’s the language of change. Or maybe it’s the language of love.

Once I was given a leadership role over eleven young women. They would often come to me and ask for prayer. I often cried afterwards because I was asking God to work within them the very things I wanted to ask God to work within me. One day, while in tears I explained this to my leader. He told me about the red wagon. Say there was a little girl who knew that her little sister wanted a red wagon very much. And so the little girl goes to her father with some money she's saved up and tells him that she wants to use the money to buy a red wagon for her little sister. All the while though, this same little girl very much wants a red wagon herself. Would the father, seeing the little girl's desire for her little sister and the tears brimming in her sweet eyes not also buy a wagon for her?

Prayer is like coming home. And coming home is like love. And love is worth it…every time.

mystery

Tonight I want to write from my heart. I want to become alive with the mystery of my own heart. It’s strange how ones heart can be their closest companion as well as their greatest stranger. I feel I’ve spent so much of my life trying to become a friend of my own heart. How can something so near to one be so far away as well?

How can the sky be flush against my skin, hugging my being on every side, wrapping itself around me as a waterfall of invisible molecules, and yet seem so distant? I find myself looking heavenwards, my arms reaching, wanting to somehow embrace the vast breath of air far above me and feeling as though it is completely unreachable, completely untouchable. Little realizing that I am not only touching it, but am actually consuming it with every breath I take, with every one of my movements. It’s constantly dancing around me, flowing as a current of water over rocks and broken trees, the solidity of my being merging and colliding with it’s vulnerability. And the air fills me, the fusion of oxygen and blood creating new life within the darkness of my being.

I love the pulsing of my heart. I hold my breath quiet, stilling any movement from my body and I begin to listen. And there it always is. The methodical swishing of fluid in and out of my ears, the ever-so-slight bounce of my thumbs as the blood rushes in and out of veins. The existence of a pulse always means the existence of life. Without my pulse my body would hold no life. Without my heart regulating the currents of blood rushing through my being, I would simply cease to exist.

My physical heart speaks to me in rhythm. But the invisible part of my heart speaks to me in words. It touches me with emotions. It warns me, cautions me. It laughs, and sings. It weeps and heaves. It dreams. And sometimes it even seems to deceive me. The perfect stranger. The perfect friend. The perfect mystery.

the mirror

1.27.07

Tonight I had a little conversation with myself. I stood in front of my mirror and asked myself who I saw. Attempting to play a little trick on myself, I decided to imagine that this person I was looking at in the mirror I had never once seen before. For anyone wanting to attempt this trick on there own, I will warn that it required a couple of trips to the mirror. During this first trip, the person looking back at me was very familiar to me. In fact, she was so familiar, that I found myself looking very closely at her face. I decided that picking the teeny, weeny deposits of sleep out of her eyes, itching her forehead, scrunching her nose, and picking her teeth clean probably wouldn’t be the first things I would do to a complete stranger.

Before the next trip to the mirror, I decided to turn on all the lights in the house just so I could get the full effect of color and light on this “stranger” I was looking at in the mirror. This time I grabbed my trusty little mirror from under my bathroom sink so I could get the full-scale reflection of the person I was looking at, from booty to poochy. Shoulders back, check. Head straight ahead, check. Stomach in, check. Head moderately cocked, lips slightly curved to form a smile, eyebrows lifted; check, check, check. And then, I began pulling at the waist of her butt-sagging, black fleece pants, attempting to bring some lift to them. Her nostrils gave a slight flare as I noticed the hole on the front of her pants from a little hot “kiln” accident a month prior. I complimented her vibrant, sage-green wool sweater (thanks to local thrift store,) and laughed at her bright red, longhaired slippers protruding from under her pant legs.

On the third trip, I hid behind the corner of the mirror, attempted to clear my mind of all pre-images of myself, counted to three, and then walked out (with little mirror in hand) and stood in front of the mirror. I looked at the woman before me. She stood confidently. She enjoyed her long, red, black and brown dreads, wildly hugging her shoulders and back. She was hip, funky, and smiled a lot. She was comfortable in her not-so-perfect clothes and actually seemed to like herself in them. The curves of her face were gentle, encircling kind eyes that spoke knowingly of joy and pain. The creases around her mouth and eyebrows were deepened by 26 years of laughter and tears.

I liked her. I was intrigued with her and wanted to know more about her. I wanted to take her out for coffee and hear her laugh and sigh and speak of experiences, of ideas and dreams. I wanted to watch her work her magic on the potters’ wheel and create pieces of art out of mud. I wanted to eat breakfast with her and talk about her dreams from the night before. I wanted to drink a glass of iced water (with hints of lime juice and vanilla mixed in) with her while she talked aloud and typed away on her computer. I wanted to be her friend. And I could tell she wanted to be mine.

Dreams

I wonder about my dreams. And not about the dreams I have when I’m sleeping at night. I wonder about the “fond hopes” I carry within my heart. And fond they are. And deep they are. And yet, how futile they seem too. How distant and dormant do they burrow themselves within my being.

And I wonder how to unlock them? How do I open their eyes and look at them without feeling sadness within? How do I begin to nurture and care for them as babies without fearing that I will lose them as I have lost so many dreams before?

Dreams feel sometimes as close as your skin. They are warm and soft and a part of your being. They free you to expose yourself to the world, to soak in the sunshine, to resist the elements of rain, dirt and wind. They make you want to live and risk and love. And yet, dreams can be pierced, wounded. They can cause the insides of you to bleed and ache. Dreams are so vulnerable.

I fear that by unlocking these dreams, by exposing them to air, I will ultimately fail them. I will ultimately not know how to nurture them, how to care for them. Why is fear such a strong lock? How can fear weave and wrap itself around everything that is true and real and make it seem like a mirage, like something that does not exist nor will ever exist?

I wonder if living ones dreams is far less of an arrival point as it is a course. I wonder if my dreams haven’t already been unlocked. I think they have. And I think I am nurturing them. It’s just not exactly in the way that I had expected caring for them would look like.

Maybe I didn’t think they really would be as close as my skin. I didn’t think they would be so vulnerable. So easily wounded and affected by the elements of life: Of relationships, of experiences, of living and breathing on this side of Eternity.

Solomon had a way of wording these realities so poignantly:

There is a time for everything…
I have seen the burden God has laid on men.
He has made everything beautiful in it’s time.
He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; and yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

~ Ecclesiastes 3:1-11