unpack your bags and plant your trees

i think it started early this week

when i made some smart-ass, sarcastic, flippant comment

about mosquitoes 
lack of mountains 
and feeling homeless

about leaving Manitoba in april 

and never looking back.

and a friend's insightful comments

peered into my rootlessness 
and saw me

the backlash another smart-ass, sarcastic, totally uncalled-for dig

a witty "thanks, counselor..."

slamming the door shut

and a moment caught off-guard, stumbling awkwardly

in small-talk around a potluck

at a simple "so where are you from?" inquiry

forced to explain 

my standard "where-are-you-from" answer

rejected by one to whom i had given

one of my other standard stock answers

this week, my Father's mischievous smile 

prompting, prodding me past the shame of my immaturity

daring my adventurer's heart to risk being at home

in the awkward steps of an uncomfortable dance

to be known again, to again know deeply

"Community calls me.  Stronger than therapy, more than medicine - what do I really need?  All human beings, all deities hurt you in the end; I know this.  It's a matter of degree, a matter of choice.  Can I accept the hurt, trade it for the pretend fullness?  Can I fling myself into the void, knowing the bottom is strewn with shards of glass, knowing the bottom might just kill me if I land on it wrong, in an effort to find something meaningful simply in the falling?  I want so much more with my life.  I want to make a difference.  I want to be the kind of person I expect others to be.  I want community..."

 (from Renee Altson's "Stumbling Toward Faith")

They say that home is where the heart is.

I guess I haven't found my home.

And we keep driving round in circles,

Afraid to call this place our home.

And are we there yet?

(from Igrid Michaelson's "Are we there yet?")


"Wherever you go in life, unpack your bags - physically and mentally - and plant your trees.  Too many people never live in the now because they assume the time is too short to settle in.  They don't plant trees because they expect to be gone before the trees bear fruit.  But if you keep thinking about the next move, you'll never live fully where are are.  When it's time to go, then it's time to go, but you won't have missed what this experience was about.  If you never eat from the trees, someone else will." 

(from a father's letter to his daughter in Third Culture Kids)

Soul-restoring

I've wandered through the pages of Mark Buchanan's "The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath" off and on throughout the last few years.  I, like Mark, am learning to "keep Sabbath in the crucible of breaking it."  He says - wisely, I think - that "you will never enter the Sabbath day without a Sabbath heart."  So I am learning a Sabbath heart, that is "restful even in the midst of unrest and upheaval. It is attentive to the presence of God and others even in the welter of much coming and going... It is still and knows God even when mountains fall into the sea."  Thus... Sundays "OFF", which essentially means that nothing is done because I "must" or "ought" or "should" or "need to".  What is done is done because it in some way restores balance and rightness to life, acting to correct the lens through which I experience life.  It is stepping out of the Monday to Friday House of Mirrors, with all their distortions and exaggerations, to a place where my Creator, myself, and my fellow men and women can be seen honestly.  It is an act of faith that proclaims that my work matters less than my being.  Some days it is playing.  Resting.  Listening.  Thinking.  Worshiping.  Community.  Processing.  In Mark Buchanan's words, Sabbath is stopping to hear God, stopping to taste the Kingdom, stopping to pick up the pieces, stopping to glimpse forever, stopping to become whole, stopping just to waste time, stopping legalism, stopping to remove taskmasters, stopping to number our days aright, stopping to see God's bigness, stopping to think anew.  Now that you have the full book review...

Yesterday was full in many ways.  Rest-full.  Community-full.  Hope-full.  Joy-full.  Meaning-full.  Sabbath-full.  Courtney, Freda and I drove to church together at WEFC... rich conversation, moments of quiet, music, and frivolous chit-chat.  Gord Sawatzky... Uncle Gord from our Congo days... was speaking at WEFC - a delightful surprise - but perhaps the best part was getting a "dad hug" and having a few minutes to talk afterwards.  Seeing Alicia (his daughter) - friends who have wandered in and out of my family's life over the past 20+ years, who offer a sense of belonging, of being understood and accepted in a way that I don't think I can communicate here.  Seeing Trevor and Nicky Berg briefly, and Hannah, their daughter (she remembered me?  Apparently I made an impression).  Knowing that I can both give and receive in each of these friendships, that I am not a leech that sucks the other dry, but neither must I be a crutch that must prop up the other.  That we - with all our areas of wholeness and brokenness - can enjoy community together.

Leaves were flying off the trees all afternoon in a warm, wild, and playful wind, but the sun was shining and the thermometer reported at least 20 degrees of warmth.  So I spent the afternoon laying on a blanket in a patch of sunshine.  I catnapped, talked to my family, enjoyed a few pages of reading that really didn't need to get done (I'm one of those keener students that regrets I cannot fully absorb some of the material for lack of time).  Got lost in my own thoughts, and found my way out the other end of them.  Made a few decisions.  Came to terms with a few unknowns.  Looked at the red and yellow leaves - enjoyed each one's uniqueness, holding them up to the gusts of wind and watching them spin away from my fingers.  I basked in a patch of sunlight, comfortable in my alone-ness.

Then spontaneously decided to drive with friends - some new and some well-known - to the Sandilands east of Steinbach to explore some walking/skiing trails.  Walked through pine, oak and poplar forest with the sun setting behind us.  Saw a baby black bear and decided it was time to retrace our steps.  Met a few horseback riders (we neglected to warn them about the bear).  The last rider in line was texting-and-riding.  I pitied her.  We wondered if she would be the one most likely eaten by Baby Bear's Big Mama. We enjoyed the fading sunset by the car, eating pumpkin cupcakes and trail snacks.  We laughed.  Talked.  It was only after another black bear scuttled across the road thirty feet away from us that we decided it was time to trek back to Otterburne.

Sunday was a good Sabbath.  I hope you have a Sabbath-day this week.

I'm back.  Kind of.  Joyce (the ingenius Joyce of the bags4darfur blog) took the summer off and I did too.  Off of blogging at least.  Work is another story - my calendar contained lots of 'ON', and not quite enough 'OFF'.

But now Joyce is back on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays (over which I nearly danced with uninhibited excitement, though my trusty inhibitions saved me from certain humiliation just in time by reminding me that I was sitting in a college library).  And September seems like a good time for re-starts - so maybe I will too.  Given that I'm not entirely rejuvenated, there's no guarantee that I'll blog consistently now that fall is here.  But I shall endeavor to do so once a week.  I have designated Sundays as 'OFF' so hopefully that will function as an effective crutch for my good intentions.

This week, I wrote on a different website.  Here's my blog contribution of the week.  You're welcome to sneak a peek... a site described as:

Life in the Days of Front Line Work
Because Youth Work doesn't pay enough to afford the Therapy we need...

I have a massage in an hour and a half... ah!  Absolutely delightful.
I'm relaxed just thinking about it.

Word of the Day

Some of you may know my delight with new words, like vaguebooking and histrionics.  Here's my newest fave:

Chexting

By Zorianna Kit

Golf superstar Woods and TV celebrity James, who is married to Oscar-winning actress Sandra Bullock, have seen their lives unravel amid revelations of cheating on their spouses, in part by arranging liaisons via text messages.

Their affairs have spawned a new word in pop culture, chexting, and raised the question of whether it really is cheating on a spouse. The experts say, you bet it is.

"It's lipstick on the cellular -- digital proof that becomes evidence you've been unfaithful," says Peter Dedman of Predicto Mobile, the largest paid mobile community in America.

Definitely cheating.  Chexting.

Most of the misery in the world comes from trying to look, instead of trying to be, what one is not.

-George MacDonald

What prevents me from being genuinely true - reflecting the reality of my heart in all its beauty, brokenness, ugliness, joy, anger, meanness, hope, and mystery?  What fearfulness holds me captive?

I flipped the calendar over to April last night, and saw this...

...picture of little princess beside her buck-skin knight in shining armour.
Before I hung it up, I flipped through all the other pages...

...nostalgia.

...a revival of passion.
...a "remembering" of why I'm taking a course overload to finish my degree

...a deep love for each of these kids, and the many not pictured.

I miss my second home.