and this i keep coming back to - more than all of the comforts and the settled downness, more than all of my routine and all of my busy, more than all of the charms and the affections, i want him. i want my beloved.

it hits me as the evening closes down. jesus, make it so.

wanderlust

want to go

postman

hahahahahaha!

thinking out my job.

today was one of those days in which i knew that everything was perfect, even when almost nothing was perfect. romans woke me up with tears flowing from my heart. i am lovesick for him, for my beloved. and then there was so much sunshine and so much work.

there's this strange thing that's happening at work. i walk in and i begin to giggle a little bit. i smile. today i was so nervous shakey stressed and bossman hugged me. we laugh. we really like each other. i love my job.

after work there was more work - a concert, a scouting.

life in san luis is sometimes a little bit of an anthropological experiment. i'm under no delusion that it's a city, or that it has any sort of high culture, or even that its really that cool. we are not L.A., San Fran, nor New York. we are small. we are mostly wealthy and white and skinny. we are a very large clique. and it is an interesting little challenge - trying to find the scene and understand it. i've landed in an odd position, being the event manager for the best cafe in town.

how strange. how ill-fitting it sometimes feels. i don't hardly even know what goes on downtown. this friday, walking home, was the first time i'd seen bars lit up in lights, who knew they became night clubs.

and yet, tonight. watching regulars that i know by name throw themselves against other regulars in a frenzy when the music beats get going. greeting all the band members and scoping out who will play next.

at the same time that i am shmoozing and loving music and dancing with my newest pair of dancing shoes, i am watching. people becomes characters as they walk on stage. and i watch him sing and his force pour out and affect the crowds. now you will dance, now you will stomp. now you will feel happy and now you will feel anger. and i think, we are all pretending. i am watching a very well choreographed show. is this real life and if it is (which i very much doubt), how do we all seem to be the same? i cannot participate in such scenes of performance without the constant thought in the back of my mind, this is not us, really. this is just who we present ourselves to be. and i wonder, how can i, a person who craves authenticity with the deepest heart strings, be throwing myself deep into the music world, (small as it is)?

and i wonder more. how does one create some culture? how does one create space for people to be honest, true, and good (while still, of course, have more fun than normal?) the beginnings of the answer lie in my heart, waiting for me. be honest, true and good. and, start with line dancing.

no one can take themselves too seriously when the coolest cafe in town hosts line dancing.

this is what we must do.

when i ask her what she wants,

she says, ' a yellow bicycle'.

-robert hass

the second good song of the night.

so many good songs lately

stirrings & meditations

"the reason my father loves me is that i lay down my life - only to take it up again."

the selflessness of jesus, pouring in and taking out. the commands of jesus. the command of jesus. jesus is a command. the selflessness and the authority and the grace and the love. the power in a man who does not fear the cost of death at the price of love. love. the love of jesus serving. the love of dying daily only to die again only to live. the compulsion to die daily only to die only to live. the beauty of dying for another. the beauty of a love so compelling i think not of my self. do not pray for yourself, pray for others and see what happens to yourself. a game, a test with the father to experiment what his commands might mean. the desire, the deepest desire to spend more time away, more time hidden, more time with him. the feeling, the stirring, that this is all or nothing. that my life has to look differently than before. the deepest desire to be among the poor. to house the widows. to fast for the hungry. to die only to live again.

the stirrings of jesus. the beginnings of seeing a man, and why he died, and why he mattered. a man so familiar he's easy to miss. the addiction to his presence, the conviction of his name.

these things stir. john 10.10. life abundant might not mean anything about what i think it means. only to die in order to live. and, here i pray, like paul, to only know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.

yes, i pray to know even that. even so i might greater know his joy.

surprises from the postman!

i have every love for the postman, my momma, and team mckinniss. now i can wear our jersey proud. i'm on this team for the long haul, it seems, so i might as well dress like the rest of them.

(in my frenzy to take a picture, i forgot that my scarf didn't match. my floor is littered in scarves. movementphotos.)

songs of the week.

and this one - etta james, i want to be loved. which i could only find on some russian youtube.

nesting

there are a good many things that make it worth coming home at night.

pretty hooks to hang up pretty things.

other hooks. and the most perfect coming home sweater.

chanel no. 5 & i finally found my fish's pair.

postcards from abroad and a rose on top of my school's coaster.

i found old things to make me feel at home.

christina's world, lavender, and jo march's chronicles.

my favorite team is now bi-coastal.

my mother once told me that i have no problem pleasing my soul. she was not condemning me, but rather affirming me. this room is full of all the of the good things that i love and love to look at. it makes me want to take my coat off and stay awhile. what a good thing, nesting is.

it comes in waves and heat waves.

there is something in christianity that demands my presence. i must be here. i am sitting on a real chair and typing at a real desk and just finished writing a real letter. ink on paper and flowing words to form an expression of a real friendship that i have. presence is real.

there are times in california that i must fight to engage in the dirt earth world around me. times that i must fight to not pick up another book and must not stare off into thoughts as i am driving down the same road. the road that i take home when i am tired of the highway. california is a real place and then occasionally i remember that i live here. people actually live here. places are no longer distant thoughts but ground that i walk on.

i am learning to be present in my job. to smile when i am thinking of something else. when i get choke caught up in anxious worries. when i am heart sick. i am learning to think about other real hearts that are beating on the other side of a counter who long for something. i am asking to know their longings too. to be so present that i might know their presence too.

and there is something to G-D who demands my presence. who walks into my shame heart hung low posture that i have been carrying and unloading and carrying for sometime and demands me to look up and demands me not to strive and demands me not to try, but also demands me to try. be. there is a real being in the person of Jesus and there is a real being in his holy spirit companion and he wants my being. and he sat on chairs and i am sitting on one.

in some ways this is hopeful. Jesus perhaps had a sore back and pinched nerve that woke him up in tears and so perhaps he might know how to run his fingers down my spine in such a way that the pain that is taking over the left side might not do that anymore. in other ways this is terrifying. he is not a thing that maybe i created one day -- the safe corner in my imagination where i run to so that i can breathe on the days that i am particularly sad, or anxious, or over feeling. he is not a voice that will echo back to me all of the niceties and pleasantries that make me feel as though i am not at fault.

he is not those things. he is something that i don't quite understand.

a man.

a god.

i do not understand either of those creatures. i am a woman, not even close to a demi-god much less the incarnate living-being from whom all other living beings have their source. i may have three or at most ten living beings that draw their source from me at one point in time but even then, i am not a god. i am just a woman who is at times afraid of men and G-D and at other times loves men but not G-D and in other days loves G-D and cannot see men or can see them and is afraid of them or maybe sometimes hates them a little. these are the things that i am, some of them.

but his presence, like my shame in one sense but not in many others, comes in waves and heat waves. and i want it to be real. present. and i too, want to be real. present.

and this is why we eat body and blood and this is why we pray ABBA and this is why we shake and cry and sometimes we laugh, and i would like to laugh more. and this is sometimes why its better to eat body and blood over meat and dairy and all good foods because we are starving for his presence. i am starving for his presence.

so hungry for his love that is real and matters because it walked on water over waves and heat waves of shame and other such destructive things.

consecration

january started on a monday evening in december. buried in a basement i cried wearing the weight of guilt. oh YWHW make it better.

make me clean, make me clean.

Late Ripeness, Czeslaw Milosz

Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year,
I felt a door opening in me and I entered
the clarity of early morning.

One after another my former lives were departing,
like ships, together with their sorrow.

And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seas
assigned to my brush came closer,
ready now to be described better than they were before.

I was not separated from people,
grief and pity joined us.
We forget - I kept saying - that we are all children of the King.

For where we come from there is no division
into Yes and No, into is, was, and will be.

We were miserable, we used no more than a hundredth part
of the gift we received for our long journey.

Moments from yesterday and from centuries ago -
a sword blow, the painting of eyelashes before a mirror
of polished metal, a lethal musket shot, a caravel
staving its hull against a reef - they dwell in us,
waiting for a fulfillment.

I knew, always, that I would be a worker in the vineyard,
as are all men and women living at the same time,
whether they are aware of it or not.

this is the winter

i am accustomed to the coldest winters. i am familiar with winds that sting and steal my breath. i am accustomed to steal winds. i only know winter to be a struggle.

winter on the east was a struggle. there were demons and dragons to fight off. i have found something rather remarkable about the L-RD. He very rarely marks me by my failures. I have found that in my most recent heartaches for holiness there are fights. there are fights within myself, cutting off heart-limbs that have lived so long for comfort. and i have found that in my failures, he whispers something of pride, encouragement, a keep going. there is company here, i think. (woman, you have had too many lovers. go and sin no more. let me give you drink never ending. woman you have met the messiah.)

and then i flew westward with his promises written on my heart. (woman, i will make you mine. i will make you look like me.) new years eve i woke up in my favorite room in california and for the first time in a long time, felt light. my heart secured only by balloon strings. and then the drive back -- i realized it again. i am so happy here. there is so much hope living in these hills.

it has been raining here. we are flooded and it is still pouring. but, on my drive home on the stretch of highway that runs along the pacific and looks down on the cliffs to my left and the hills to the right, i realize that california has never been more beautiful. the grey clouds brooding over the ocean and the breakers crashing on the cliffs and the coves and ragged coast line and the light that only sometimes breaks through, its all to my left. and the hills and valleys undulating, sprouting green and bursting life and looking like hidden mysteries waiting to be discovered, to my right. and it seems as though california has turned into ireland or new zealand. it seems as though california is magic.

and it seems strange to be aware of so much life in the winter. this is the winter where it rained and we came to life.