little bits

i saw an old man on the street corner yesterday blowing great big bubbles from his bike just as it started to rain and it made me so happy.

lovin' the song, 'your hand in mine' by explosions in the sky. the couple who's wedding i helped shoot this past week in zihuatanejo, walked down the aisle to this song. it's so pretty.

also lovin' the song, 'never let me go' off the new florence + the machine album. btw, this album is so great.

i want a dog more and more. while i was in mexico. on our beach stroll, this street dog just walked with us down the beach and back and then sat under our feet as we stopped for a beer-that cost one whole dollar (ohsogreat). reminds me of my beach walks as a little girl on the island. by the time i got to the end of the beach there'd be seven dogs by my side that joined me along the way. i just love 'em.

painful experiences are awful and i wouldn't wish suffering on anyone, but nothing connects people the way pain does, and i find that to be one of the most beautiful things. the redemption, if we have the eyes and privelege to see it is amazing and breathtaking, makes me heartfull and thankful and ultimately more faithful.

“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.”

and lastly, love this quote.

"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."
-Emerson

quote.

"Charles Dickens tells us every heart is a profound mystery to the heart beating nearest it." Don Miller

and if you're curious of the original quote like I was...

"A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!" - Charles Dickens

just marinating on this little gem today.

hot potato

Sometimes an emotion will hit me upside the head, just right out of left field. After all this talk about sitting with pain and working through it. I definitely have those days in which I do that very thing and it's hard but it's also good. Then I have other days like today where it's like I'm playing that hot potato game, where you throw the potato around to others as fast as you can and you lose if you hang onto it too long, only it's my emotions that I'm tossing around. Throwing it right back before I even have the chance to be with it for even a moment. All I know is its discomfort, and the logical thing in the moment is to throw it right back before it has the chance to burn me.

I find myself thinking back to one of the first sermons I heard at Imago dei Community and the voice of a 92 year old woman saying the words, "hang on and hang in". You can listen to the sermon here.

I want to know

if you have touched

the centre of your own sorrow

if you have been opened

by life’s betrayals

or have become shrivelled and closed

from fear of further pain.

I want to know

if you can sit with pain

mine or your own

without moving to hide it

or fade it

or fix it.

(from The Invitation)

the long way around

I woke up this morning earlier than anticipated. I tried to curl back into sleep for rest’s sake but my stubborn mind wouldn’t rest. I stayed nestled in my bed (which continues to be the warmest place in the house since we as a house have refused to turn on the heat) and turned on some music. I found myself reflecting on life and faith and reading old journal entries. I sighed as I remembered so many moments just like this a couple years ago, I call it “cocooning”.

Cocooning was that time I gave myself to just be still and give myself the space to process and grow and the cozier and safer that space was the better. I had just bought this book, When the Heart Waits randomly on a sale table at Powell’s Books purely because she was the writer of my favorite book, The Secret Life of Bees. In this spiritual memoir of sorts she writes about butterflies and cocoons and waiting. I took in her words like a desert to rain. I related with so much of what she had to say but especially to the cocoon. For a time, she recalls being inundated with images of butterflies and cocoons. One instance, she recalls a poster of a butterfly against a great big sky, on it were the words “Your soul is your greatest work of art” and right down in the corner is the husk of an empty cocoon. A painful reminder that bright wings and works of art don’t just happen, they require courage and letting go and a time of becoming. I think the most fascinating thing about cocoons is that on the outside it looks as if nothing is happening and it looks like the caterpillar inside is hiding, but on the inside, change and transformation are taking place. The butterfly is becoming. The cocoon isn’t an escape but a transformation place.

It got me thinking about this season of life that was so painful. There were ways to escape pain sure, but I was making an intentional decision to face it and sit with it. Funny how easy that sentence was to type out but so incredibly difficult to actually do. I think it’s a natural desire to run from pain, to numb out or pretend it’s not there. It’s so easy to want to arrive, to be at a point where it doesn’t hurt anymore, where everything is perfect and just so. I had spent most of my life thinking if I don’t look at my pain then all would be well. Sure, it worked for a while but you know what? I still knew it was there and my fear of it just grew. When dealing with our wounds, it takes time.

“We went onto heaven the long way around.” -Henry David Thoreau

I love this quote, so much.

Makes me think of something I find myself saying often. The most rewarding things in life take time to build and grow. Most people want heaven now, like every other pleasure in life, instant happiness. Taking the long way isn’t seen as desirable but I would argue that it’s the only way to truly live. It’s long and arduous and oftentimes painful, but there is so much more wisdom to gain and grace to receive along the way. Every day I wake up and commit to taking the long way and I think my soul will be all the better for it.

a woman of strength and softness

a friend of mine shared this poem with me when i was in malawi a few years ago. i scribbled it down in my journal then only to reread it this week. i think it's so beautiful and had to share it.

A Woman of Strength and Softness

Surrendered heart, not surrendered identity

a strength to be reckoned with

She does not demand respect

but you want to give it to her

Her presence invites you to rest

in fact she is like a tree

holding forth nurturing branches

not a spiderweb, trapping you for her soul food

Her vulnerability is so lovely

you cannot keep your soul out of hers

She is marked by genuine kindness

of one who has already forgiven you

for how you will fail her

She exudes the kind of strength

that trusts and waits and suffers

as unto God's purposes, not her own

She lays her own life down

like a lamb, not a dog

Her surrender flows from her love

not fear or desperation

Her surrender is a chosen thing

She lives in the vulnerability of her longing to be treasured

her longing to be known

her longing to be invited in

But she lets her disillusionment

tenderize, not toughen her heart

She does not hold the objects of her love captive

She does not make them pay

or tie them to her with guilt

or keep them in terror of her critical eye

But rather lets them fly free

Enjoying all the more the reunion

They get to choose to be with her

She lives at the mercy of no one

She is captive only to the Father

Thus she is free to love

Even if it means she loses

She chooses doing love over getting love.

Written by Lottie K. Hillard

The Impossible Dream

To dream the impossible dream

To fight the unbeatable foe

To bear with unbearable sorrow

To run where the brave dare not go

To right the un-rightable wrong

To be better far than you are

To try when your arms are too weary

The reach the unreachable star

This is my quest, to follow that star

No matter how hopeless,

No matter how far

To fight for the right

Without question or pause

To be willing to march into hell

For a heavenly cause

And I know if I'll only be true

To this glorious quest

That my heart will be peaceful and calm

When I'm laid to my rest

And the world would be better for this

That one man scorned and covered with scars

Still strove with his last ounce of courage

To reach the unreachable star

I was sitting in a coffee shop editing wedding photos and listening to Pandora this morning. Patty Griffin’s sweet and soulful voice was singing “top of the world” and at the song’s end came silence and then she continued on with “to dream the impossible dream”…

I felt my heart tug and I stopped, wondering why those words struck me so. Then I remembered that it was one of the songs that my Grandma would sing, just out of the blue or sometimes she would sing it to me over a voicemail on my birthday. It’s been a song that has woven itself into our relationship all these years. I’ve been hearing her sing those words since I was just a little girl. I don’t think I’ll hear her sing them again in this life. Dementia has taken her captive and she can scarcely remember anyone in our family. As I listened to those words, I’m taken back to a few years ago when I was visiting her in the nursing home and she kept telling me every other sentence how proud she was of me and how she loved me “to the max”. She was her sweet self, so full of joy and kindness. I took a bunch of hold-out pictures of us that day and we laughed and laughed at our own silliness. Then she walked over to the piano and played Impossible Dream and sang for me and it was so beautiful. I didn’t realize what a gift that day was. That was the last visit I had with the Grandma that I knew all these years. She’s different now and the disease has laid claim over her mind and body, but I am so glad I have that sweet day to remember her by.

I am a lyrics girl when it comes to music, so I was surprised that I had never really thought about the words to this song. Now, as I sit here reading the lyrics, I love the song even more. What a great life anthem; I may need to adopt this one as my own.

May we all dream the impossible dream.

quotage

"We are undefinable. We are shades of masculine and feminine looking for someone to bounce life off of, looking for someone to give when we need to receive, to receive when we need to give, and when it's done right both get done at the same time. Being to being, here let me hold that soul for you because you've been... drowning in labels for so long you've grown tired of survival. Here is a moment of bliss, a moment of aliveness. All day long I expend. I hold together, I lift up, I give out, and sometimes... I just take in." ~ Lauren Zuniga