about seeing more

For most holidays, I write my parents a poem.  I've been doing it since I was little and the tradition stuck.

This year, I was fortunate enough to take a trip to Italy with my family.  As I was working on my Christmas poem, our time in Venice kept coming back to me.  I've written the city several poems now, but this one is a bit more about the internal experience of being there.

There is so much magic in being someplace new, maybe because the patterns of your life fade away by force and there are endless valleys of space to dream and critique and examine and hope.

Anyway, that is a small bit of insight into these thoughts below.  I am so excited about 2015 -- my goal is that it too will be filled with new places and a newness of self.
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Ten Thousand Mirrors in Venice 

There are ten thousand mirrors in Venice,

all dipped in still canals below bridge bellies.

In early morning, their faces grin out

cathedral bells with low counts, wear clothes

of cart-pushers in the skinny warzone of alleys;

the mirrors ebb in espresso-bubble tides. 

In daylight, there is pigeon-feather confetti on the

surface, and nighttime, moon - all light without shadow,

writing verses on the mirrors in between oars,

and reflecting the shimmer of the edge of the world. 

-

We walk along the spine of all these things

and see how water pushes back exponentially

sight, color, taste, and sound – even dreams

our hearts had asked of this place, multiplied. 

There is no history in the four of our lives

to match the years of here, with its stories and

visitors like us, getting lost, listening to quartets

playing in the square, agreeing always to linger

even with so many things sideways, even sinking –

reflecting like mirrors our histories, our love.    

about being real-life known

I've started Netflix binging watching this really intriguing UK series called "Black Mirror".  Have you heard of it?  It's pretty dark/crazy and not necessarily a feel-good, watch-before-bed type of thing, but worth your time.

A lot of the show focuses on human nature and the impact of technology on the functions of our lives.  In one episode, the protagonist loses her husband in a car accident and uses advanced technology that "recreates" loved ones, formulating their personalities based on their internet presence - tweets, facebook posts, e-mails, etc.

The created "humans" are perfect in image and eerily spot-on with personality.  But something about them isn't right. One scene has haunted me all weekend - the wife is standing in a hallway, upset about something, and the newly-created husband stares at her, unable to offer the comfort he did when he was alive.  She starts beating her fists against his chest and she looks at him and says "you just aren't enough". 

And that is wildly true and honestly, stabs me a bit to my core -- who we are behind a computer screen is not enough.  

It's not enough to satisfy our needs to be known -- because that IS a need, and one we were created with.  And it's not enough of giving ourselves away for other people -- because that IS what we were deisigned to do.

Our world and our fears push us to settle for the shadows of relationships instead of the real deal.

And it's just not cutting it.

It's so easy to THINK that you are being known online.  It's easy to feel momentarily part of someone's life when they "like" your life-event, or retweet something you enjoyed, or comment on a photo with a memory you've had.

But what is missing on the internet are those vulnerable moments when your knees crumble and you don't have a second to catch yourself.  You're missing the conversations born from pure spontaneity, from emotion and reaction and presence.  You miss the beauty of being looked at in the eye, or the sound of someone's breath, or being held when you need that.  You miss the awkward misunderstandings and the risk of disagreement. You miss the volume of a laugh or tear-filled eyes or the shampoo-smell of someone's hair when you hug them -- and all of those things are beautiful.  They are less easy than being known online, but they are infinitely more good.  

You're probably thinking right now is that there is a lot of hypocrisy in this post. Here I am again, behind the curtain of a computer screen across time and space.  And yet, I write it all the same because perhaps you are in this boat with me, and I write it because I need you in this.

I need to be reminded that there is a glorious good in being known face-to-face.

That is not easy for me. It feels like this great risk, being transparent when there isn't a zillion miles and an internet connection keeping me at arms length.  I simply need to be reminded -- when I struggle to say I'm struggling, and when I put on a happy-face by default, and when I become Interviewer Emily asking a thousand questions to deflect any from being directed my way -- I need to be reminded in my fear that glorious good comes from being real-life known. 

It's the only thing that's really enough. 

about translations and birthdays

This afternoon, in honor of T.Swift's day of birth, I started learning how to translate one of my favorite songs on the album into ASL.  It's a rough start, but a fun way to waste some of the afternoon!

HBD TS! and yes, I really do love you this much!

about the labor of waiting

Disclaimer: in this blog post, I am going to relate faith to the Nicholas Spark’s story “The Notebook”.  So just, you know, prepare yourselves.

But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. (Romans 8:25) 

There is something challenging and unique about Advent.  In a season when we prepare ourselves to celebrate, when we reflect on the anticipatory story of light and hope born into a bleak and dreary darkness, we are asked to do something that goes against everything our culture values: 

we're asked to wait.  

Advent is this magical moment where we concern ourselves with the gorgeous blessing of the birth of Christ, and we're reminded that in a broken world, his return is pending. 

I know this is slightly ridiculous and is not at all a perfect connection, but for some reason I started thinking about what waiting actually looks like today.

And I thought about Ryan Gosling. 

Follow me on this one.

Surely you’ve seen the (classic hit) film “The Notebook”.  It’s the story of Allie and Noah, who fall in love as teenagers and then are separated for several years and lots of stuff happens but eventually they are reunited at long last which is good because they belong together (I should probably be a professional movie-synopsis writer). 

Anyway, in the season where Allie and Noah are separated, they both endure this really long period of waiting. 

I love that clip above, the part of the movie where Noah is longing for Allie to return to him and starts to build her dream house, because 1) Noah is moved by an unshakeable hope and 2) his waiting is not passive.  

That is beautiful to me.  

And I think that this hits right on the point of Advent and the purpose of our waiting – it is a labor of love. 

Waiting is really hard.   Especially in our brokenness, we wait impatiently for a healing to our world that feels so often out of reach.  

And yet, there is so much to be done in our waiting.  I actually really love reflecting on the fact that Noah builds a home - a place for the one he loves to delight in and reside.  That mirrors so much of what we SHOULD be doing in our waiting.  We should "prepare him room", and our doing so is witness to our patient hope, our utmost desires. 

I love the chapter of Romans that that verse I posted above comes from.  Paul says, "who hopes for what they already have?" I think that so often, we let our deficiencies and our longings drive us to impatience, and we grow stagnant and bitter in our hearts. 

But how different it would be, if our joy came not because we have already obtained it all, but because we knew that in our waiting, we could build something beautiful, if not complete. 

about walking away

I am not a farmer.

This is probably not a surprise.  But even generally, I don't really have much of an intuition for how to grow and sustain things.  A few weeks ago, I killed my desk plant (RIP Susie Succulent), and I don't think those things even need that much attention.

Regardless of these facts, for the past few days, I've been thinking about farming.

On Monday, in between meetings and phone calls with clients, one of my best friends started g-chatting me and suddenly we were talking about Jesus, which is often exactly the kind of break I need in the office. She talked about the difficulty of going to God and giving him things, like actually laying them down.

I've thought about it ever since, because when she said it, I realized that I don't actually think too much about the process of bringing things to Jesus.  I try to do it, but rarely do I stop and think about what that actually means.

My brain processes things the best in the context of stories or metaphors, which is one reason I think the bible is so lovely, that it's filled with all of those things.  And so, when I was driving to work in the rain yesterday, this thought came to me:

As we attempt to surrender our futures/worries/desires/gifts/money/talent/relationships/conversations/minutes&seconds to Jesus, it's a lot like farming. 

Imagine you are holding a precious seed, and you have all sorts of hopes for this little thing - you have fears too, and concerns, and doubts and wishes. Isn't that how we are with most of the things that plague our thoughts or mean the most to us?

And at the same time, as we look in our hands at the things that mean the most to us, we must also remember that the control doesn't belong there. That's where the "laying down" comes -- Jesus asks  us to come to him with all our things, and to follow and to trust that he is sovereign over them.

He asks us to put them before him.

I imagine this is how a farmer feels readying a crop.  There is so much hope and fear in the planting. The farmer must lay down the seed and trust it to either grow or die. He can't constantly come back, dig it up, and carry it around everywhere he goes.

And yet, it's so easy to do that! To go before the Lord one minute, bearing all and placing a fear or dream before him, and then the next to return with panicky hands and snatch the thing back because it feels safer with us. 

But that is not what surrender looks like.

You go, you place your things right there into the soil, and then you walk away.

The harvest does not come because we lugged around the seed; it comes because we let it go. 

about finding old poems

I was looking through old documents tonight and found this poem that I wrote after my grandmother's death when I was in high school.  Funny how things can bring you right back to a memory -- words, and smells, and old lines you wrote awhile ago that you still really feel.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Golden & bearing some French name,

they’re sitting on the shelves

in the bathroom, unused. Waiting.

We pack your room into foul brown boxes.

I want to burn your sweaters.

I want to pull them down over my shoulders.

All of it feels so ordinary- death. My pain.

Even those manufactured scents, your fear of their

discontinuation rather than what ended first.   

This morning, a woman in the grocery store

walked pass & it was you.  You with the smell

of imagined Parisian parlors & afternoon rose gardens.

I wanted her skin to fall

from her bones.

I wanted to curl inside her arms. 

When I was young, you’d visit

& I’d cry as soon as you left.

Now I’m seven again.

I’m sitting in the guest closet, my head against

forgotten coats. Arm in arm, we’re exploring Arc de Triomphe

& I don’t have to miss you so much.  

about the given life, and not the planned

You may not be as air-headed as I am, but you've probably experienced this type of morning: 

You’re flying out the door, you grab your bag and your coffee, you do a quick scan of the house and think you’ve packed up all you need for the day, jump in the car, and realize that you left your wallet on the table.  And then you go grab that and ten minutes down the road you remember the turkey sandwich sitting on the shelf of your fridge that you’d made for lunch.  

All of that to say – this has been my experience with gratitude this year. 

I’ve written to you about it a thousand times.  I’ve thought about it in a thousand different ways.  It is my anthem that plays on the radio over and over again and just won’t quiet.  Sometimes I think I’ve packed away every inch of it in my bag, and then in a split second I realize that there is more and more of it I’m forgetting and haven’t captured yet.   

So, if you’ll humor me, today we’re walking back inside and we’re going to grab more of this gratitude stuff we’ve left behind.   

One of the most beautifully written stories I’ve ever read is “Hannah Coulter” by Wendell Berry.  There are so many profound lines in it, and often I revisit them or they come to me randomly and I am entranced by how eloquent and truthful they are.  

As I was thinking of gratitude today, this part came to me: 

“The chance you had is the life you've got. You can make complaints about what people, including you, make of their lives after they have got them, and about what people make of other people's lives, ...but you mustn't wish for another life. You mustn't want to be somebody else. What you must do is this:
Rejoice evermore.
Pray without ceasing.
In everything give thanks.
I am not all the way capable of so much, but those are the right instructions.”

I read this over a thousand times in a coffee shop today and it came to me, the thing that I'd been forgetting on the kitchen table when it comes to gratitude -- to be grateful not only for what is given to me, but for my specific life. 

I've gotten into a good habit of being thankful for the small gifts that enter my day - for sunrises, for good conversations, for surprise pizza parties at work.  But what I don't do too well is give thanks that I am Emily Thompson. 

I am a daughter.  I am a sister.  I am a coworker. I am a friend. 

I am a lover of words, a loather of cabbage, a loud laugher, a frequent faller-down of stairs.  

I am specifically me in specific places to specific people, and all of that is total gift. 

I think what Hannah is talking about is living a life of gratitude that reflects our purpose in the world.  It is devastatingly easy to compare your life to others, or to wish you were made differently or dealt a different hand.  But when we compare and complain, we forget the intentionality behind who we are and where we are, and what we will do and who we will become. 

Berry once closed one of his poems with the line "we live the given life, and not the planned."  I find this to be such a beautiful sentiment and truth.  

There is so much thanks to be given simply for the fact that we are not haphazard.  

Hallelujah for that. 

about first loves

I had this amazing English teacher in high school.  Many people didn't like her, because she was strict and strange and seemed to pick favorites.  She wasn't perfect, but she was one of those teachers who did for me what teachers should do -- she brought me face to face with my passion.

Sitting in her class, I unwrapped language the way a child may unwrap a present on Christmas morning, with an eagerness she spurred on and coached.  In her classroom, I read some of the books that are still my favorites today, and I sat with her and talked about their meaning and significance to my life, and about the power of writing - not just the goodness of it for my soul, but the power of it in the world.

For some reason, I was thinking of her today.  I thought about one of the first poems I read in her class - "Song of Myself" by Whitman.  Reading that poem felt like falling in love.  Its lines sometimes come to me when I'm walking down the street with my grocery bags.  It awakened a love in my that has stayed.

And so, I wrote a poem.  It's a poem about that poem and also a poem, I think, about first loves, how they awaken in you a vastness so present and beautiful and lasting that they deserve to be celebrated.

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Every Atom

“…Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.” – Whitman, “Song of Myself”

I wielded large, airless anthologies

over to her table in the library,

like a little doe pointing to lines

have you read these words?

because I could not believe them to exist

in a room in my high school, or in any

room in any small part

of this world.

She smiled silently, leaving

me alone to uncover

what those words undid

inside of me.

With first love I was

champagne bubbles and butterflies

on orange carpet, in a stale

corridor down from the art

wing, where I read for millenniums:

            “And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”

over and over, amazed at language,

amazed at feeling, not noticing

how that line put my fingertips

at the cusp of the cliff of the meaning

of those words:

            before the feeling of falling,

            of disparity with my bones,

            of wanting to weld and give them

            to someone else,

            my fingers

            not yet surrendered to the truth

            of being loved as much now as ever.