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.