I will not wait to love as best I can

"I will not wait to love as best I can. We thought we were young and that there would be time to love well sometime in the future. This is a terrible way to think. It is not a way to live, to wait to love." - David Eggers

I read this quote a while back and remember being taken aback like I had been smacked upside the head but was in a rush so I just jotted it on a piece of paper and shoved into a journal to remember to look at and reflect on later…then I forgot about it, until just recently when I decided I felt like writing again and found it in an old journal I hadn’t written in for ages. I unfolded the edges and read it again. And there it was again, that same smack upside the head.

I’ve always been a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to random things like writing papers and baking cookies. They always needed a little something extra; they were never quite right. The biggie of the bunch was love. To be able to love, I always thought, I needed a lot of work and I did and still do. I kept the thought in my head that if I can just fix this bad trait or this lack of trust or my fears, if I could just get my act together-then maybe I could love someone or someone could love me. If everything could be just so then…it could be great. The problem is, everything will never be just so. If everyone thought this way, nobody would ever love anybody. It would be a world without love, which is the saddest of all thoughts. Sure we may be not be the best at loving people, but it’s a process. All the great things in this life are a process; it’s like taking the long road, getting lost along the way but seeing so much more beauty in the meantime.

Recently, life and the circumstance at hand have me marinating on this whole idea of waiting to love. The thought I’ve kept coming back to over these past few weeks is that faith and love are a choice. We wake up every day and choose to love this person and this God. We arrange our lives in a way that will support them and grow those relationships. We strive to better them. But in the end, we’re human and flawed and we mess up and we make mistakes and we don’t love well. And in those moments, thank goodness for grace and forgiveness. We soak and sit in that grace. I love how Anne LaMott puts it, "I do not understand the mystery of grace -- only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us." We grow and learn and we wake up to another day and we try again, to love fully and well. It's a process we learn to embrace and fall into the rhythm of. We will never love perfectly, not even in the future. But we can love the best we can, knowing that we are imperfect and it will be ridiculously tough at times. We can acknowledge it for the process that is is, and we will be all the better for it in the end.

It is not a way to live, to wait to love.

on love

"When you're in love, you can't stop smiling, yet you can't smile enough."

-My Aunt Cathy

On Saturday, my cousin Brian got married to Jennifer, the love of his life. I couldn't be happier for the two of them and their new life together. Brian is a smiley guy to begin with but he was just beaming and giddy all day.

In the car as we were driving back to the ferry, we were reflecting on the day and talking about how happy B was and my aunt out of nowhere and so nonchalantly rattles off this beautiful but true string of words. "When you're in love, you can't stop smiling, yet you can't smile enough."

I just like that, a lot.

Living With Hope

Some words from Henri Nouwen...

Living with Hope

Optimism and hope are radically different attitudes. Optimism is the expectation that things-the weather, human relationships, the economy, the political situation, and so on-will get better. Hope is the trust that God will fulfill God's promises to us in a way that leads us to true freedom. The optimist speaks about concrete changes in the future. The person of hope lives in the moment with the knowledge and trust that all of life is in good hands.

All the great spiritual leaders in history were people of hope. Abraham, Moses, Ruth, Mary, Jesus, Rumi, Gandhi, and Dorothy Day all lived with a promise in their hearts that guided them toward the future without the need to know exactly what it would look like. Let's live with hope.

truth

I'm not sure who said this...

"Speak the truth, even if your voice shakes."

but wow...it's so good.

geography of redemption

I realize I posted less than five minutes ago, but this quote is just too good and is speaking to me on so many levels right now. I'm letting this one settle in the depths of me.

"There is a geography to redemption, a way in which the ideals of
grace and renewal make themselves real in this world. all of creation
is groaning for its redemption, and we join in that chorus. we are
surrounded on all sides by the forest of our failures, our dirty feet
fighting the thorny underbrush. or we wander the used-up cities of
cement dreams and strip-mall seductions. this is where we live. but to
us who are weary and broken, the god of redemption gives the plains,
and a view of the land we have yet to claim, yet to sow, yet to reap.
here there is space, and a chance, to make all things new...the land
of redemption, where signs of promise abound, where the reptiles
witness, where the rocks cry out, and where hope stretches as far as
the lazy eye can see. this is where we, with trembling hands, toil and
subdue. and where the rain of grace pounds the dirt until life breaks
through the mud and reaches for the sun..."-Caedmon's Call

a couple winners

I have a bazillion thoughts circling around and around and upside down in my head, and I'm not feeling up to the challenge of catching them and attempting to make sense of them just yet, so I'll leave you with a couple favorites. First, a poem by Billy Collins, whom I LOVE. His writing is gold.

On Turning Ten

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.


Also, a couple quotes from one of my favorite books, Simpler Living, Compassionate Life.

“Hardly anyone dares to face with open eyes the great delights of love.” –Andre Berton

“I think of my own stream of desires, how cautious I have become with love. It is a vulnerable enterprise to feel deeply and I may not survive my affections… If I choose not to become attached to nouns-a person, place, or thing-then when I refuse an intimate’s love or hoard my spirit, when a known landscape is bought, sold, and developed, chained or grazed to a stubble, or a hawk is shot and hung by its feet on a barbed wire fence, my heart cannot be broken because I never risked giving it away. “ –Terry Tempest Williams

(Note: This book is amazing in so many ways. It's a collection of essays on fundamental issues of life: time, money, food, sustainability, spirituality, and community. It provides an honest reflection on how we can live in the world but not of the world. I highly recommend it!)

Now for me...I'm heading back to my books, Healthcare Policy and Family of Origin Therapy here I come!

If there isn't laughter; it's not for me.

“Laughing means people are enjoying each other. It brings a state of felicity, of delight. You feel glad to be alive and you think, this is it! You don’t need much more than this-a group of friends enjoying each other. But laughter is really an indicator of something more basic: of people accepting each other. You are valued because you are alive, not because of how much money you earn or how big your house is. When we have that sense of being valued, of being connected, we don’t live lives of consumerism and ambition. We don’t need to prove that we have worth.” –Cecile Andrews

I had so much fun with friends in Seattle and am just in awe of the amazing community that I am able to keep across state lines and oceans. All I wanted was to talk and laugh and be in their presence and it was wonderful. I was nourished by my dear friends and am so thankful for each and every one of them and how they each call me to more, bringing forth glory from my depths.

Seattle is beautiful. Of course, as I'm getting ready to drive back to Portland, Seattle pulls out all the stops and gives the most glorious day of sunshine and clouds. It almost made me want to stay, just a little bit longer. My deep love of the city was creeping back in and making me wonder why I moved away in the first place. This is the view from Carey Park, can you say heavenly day?!

As I drove away thinking Seattle is the most beautiful place on Earth and how lame is it that I live in Portland now and if only I could live in Seattle, I arrived in Portland and got to spend some time with an old high school friend, Kristin. And I was reminded as we walked along the river front that Portland is pretty wonderful, too. And for now, this is home...

Jon Foreman

"Seems like every story I can relate to starts off with a broken heart, broken dreams and bleeding parts. There's a story I know about a man named Israel who wrestled with God. From that day on he walked with a limp. I guess in a lot of ways I don't trust a man who doesn't have a limp. The future is yet unwritten. Write it well.'
Jon Foreman

Oregon memories and Nouwen

It's a beautiful Portland morning and I find myself sitting in a sunshine filled window of a bustling neighborhood coffee house. Feeling the warmth of the sunshine's rays, I look out on the changing leaves, the train chugging by and the line of Montessori kids holding hands down the sidewalk. As if this moment couldn't be any more perfect, right beside me is a man playing lovely music on his acoustic guitar and providing the most peaceful soundtrack to this Oregon memory...

Also, of note, I was reading some Nouwen this morning and read this little pearl, which is what I needed to hear today.

"It can be discouraging to discover how quickly you lose your inner peace. Someone who happens to enter your life can suddenly create restlessness and anxiety in you. Sometimes this feeling is there before you fully realize it. You thought you were centered; you thought you could trust yourself; you thought you could stay with God. But then someone you do not even know intimately makes you feel insecure. You ask yourself whether you are loved or not, and that stranger becomes the criterion. Thus, you start feeling disillusioned by your own reaction.

Don't whip yourself for your lack of spiritual progress. If you do, you will easily be pulled even further away from your center. You will damage yourself and make it more difficult to come home again. It is obviously good not to act on your sudden emotions. But you don't have to repress them, either. You can acknowledge them and let them pass by. In a certain sense, you have to befriend them so that you do not become their victim.

The way to "victory" is not in trying to overcome your dispiriting emotions directly but in building a deeper sense of safety and at-homeness and a more incarnate knowledge that you are deeply loved. Then, little by little, you will stop giving so much power to strangers.

Do not be discouraged. Be sure that God will truly fulfill all your needs. Keep remembering that. It will help you not to expect that fulfillment from people who you already know are incapable of giving it."

An old favorite...

(One of my favorite books when I was a little girl and still, today. The Velveteen Rabbit.)

“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

“I suppose you are real?” said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.

“The Boy’s Uncle made me Real,” he said. “That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.”

By Margery Williams

oh Powell's books...you win my heart every time

I was downtown this morning running some errands in the Pearl district and couldn’t stop myself from wandering into Powell’s Books AKA heaven. It’s a whole city block worth of books, several floors, levels, color coded rooms-thousands and thousands of books. I love going in there. The downfall, I always buy something regardless of how bleak my current financial situation is and somehow hours pass as I wander through the rooms, picking up random books and reading excerpts from every book I fancy. I get lost in the world of books. I think in another life I would be someone who holes up to read in a big sunny chair all day every day. My current reading habits are more along the lines of reading four or five books at any given time and sometimes finishing them months of years later. It’s not an effective process in slightest, but it’s the truth.

At one point I think I was holding a stack of ten books. I don’t have money for ten books, so I plopped down on the hardwood floor to read some more excerpts and narrow it down. I ended up buying On the Road by Jack Kerouac and The Inner Voice of Love by Henri Nouwen. Here are the excerpts that sealed the deal for me.

From Kerouac,

“He was simply a youth tremendously excited with life, and though he was a con-man, he was only conning because he wanted so much to live and to get involved with people who would otherwise pay no attention to him. He was conning me and I knew it, and he knew I knew, but I didn’t care and we got along fine- no pestering, no catering; we tiptoed around each other like heartbreaking new friends.”

“Marylou was a pretty blonde with immense ringlets of hair like a sea of golden tresses; she sat there on the edge of the couch with her hands hanging in her lap and her smoky blue country eyes fixed in a wide stare”

(This is one of my favorite quotes-however; I didn’t know it was from this book until I read it on the pages.)

“Then they danced down the street like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!’”

And from Nouwen,

“Love Deeply. Do not hesitate to love and to love deeply. You might be afraid of the pain that deep love can cause. When those you love deeply reject you, leave you, or die. Your heart will be broken. But that should not hold you back from loving deeply. The pain the comes from deep love makes your love ever more fruitful. It is like a plow that breaks the ground to allow the seed to take root and grow into a strong plant. Every time you experience the pain of rejection, absence, or death, you are faced with a choice. You can become bitter and decide not to love again, or you can stand straight in your pain and let the soil on which you stand become richer and more able to give life to new seeds.”

Good words, good words. Now if I could pull myself away from reading these new treasures and start reading my textbooks for school, I’ll be back in business.

I found a home, er...a studio!

I am signing a lease tomorrow on a cute little studio. Little as in really little…but also very cute and charming. I am so excited to move in! It's two blocks from work, close to the street car and the bus. It’s small and old and it has hardwood floors and milk boxes and old fashioned phones and lots of sunlight. And oh my word, how I have missed sunlight this year. I’ll be living by myself for the first time in the history of my quarter-century life. Part of me is terrified to live by myself but the other part of me is pretty stoked to spend some time with me in my own space. I have always had roommates and most of the time lots of them. I’ve lived with 11 girls. I’ve lived with 8 girls. I lived with 5 girls. I’ve lived with one other girl. I love having roommates, especially when they are all your favorite people. I’ve been blessed to be able to live with all my favorite people and even work with a majority of them at the same coffee shop. It was heavenly to come home from a long exhausting day and have someone making dinner, someone watching Ellen, someone napping on the couch, someone studying down the street. Someone ready to play. There was always something fun to do and always someone fun to hang out with. It made my entire social life effortless.

Portland has been challenging and a bit of a reality check at times with my lack of community and circle of awesome-ness always around. It felt a bit like a two-by-four to the face, until I realized that community doesn’t always come so easy. I’m excited to challenge my hermit self and get out and find some good Portlanders to be my people. I’ll have to be intentional in making plans and stretching myself, which will be good for me. I can tell. I’ll be in the city and closer to people. I do love people. It reminds me of a Ben Lee lyric, “thinking bout the city, it’s living proof that people need to be together.” People do need to be together. We’re created to be together. And that’s why I’m living by myself…near lots and lots of people…ha. In any case, I’m excited for this year and quality time with me in my new city.

Side note: I’m still reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I’m the slowest reader ever, because I insist on reading at least four books at a time. But here’s a great quote,

“The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful…Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.” –Milan Kundera

Brennen Manning Quote

"The dominant characteristic of an authentic spiritual life is the gratitude that flows from trust—not only for all the gifts that I receive from God, but gratitude for all the suffering. Because in that purifying experience, suffering has often been the shortest path to intimacy with God."

Paulo Coelho

"For her, every day was the same, and when each day is the same as the next, it's because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises."
-The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)

quote time

"In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit." ~Albert Schweitzer

Here's to Jack Kerouac

"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round heads in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. But the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."
-Jack Kerouac