To Do List

Sometimes my desk reflects the state of my brain.
What I’m trying to say is: I need to organize.

I said goodbye

I said goodbye and walked away,
I left it there and turned around.
It was privilege,
excess,
there was just no room,
it couldn’t come.
My heart tore, it peeled and cracked like dried paint
a wound deeper than I expected.

But here you are,
persistent and bulletproof.
You didn’t stay down,
you didn’t let me walk away.
Now what do I do with you?
What do I make of you?
I picked a road and stayed on it,
how can you come too?
It doesn’t make sense,
how do these pieces fit together?

You’ll have to wait though,
I’ve got something to finish,
I don’t think you’ll mind.
You’ve gone deeper than I realize,
and now you begin to fit.
I don’t know when, or how, or where…
but time will tell.

Comfort

I bought a new baking dish and decided that it had to be used the very second I walked in the door – a flurry of magical forces entailed as I whipped up a glorious dish of comfort food – straight up Saskatchewan style – it was very good and very comforting indeed.

10 Beautiful things

- a library I can use whenever I want
- a really comfortable bed
- food in my fridge
- space to pray/think/dream
- drinkable tap water
- Eleanor
- getting to know strangers
- scarfs
- the canvass sitting in my room
- the smell of apple cinnamon oatmeal in the morning.

Well, Well, Well

Ben Harper is one of my musical heros.
This album with the Blind Boys of Alabama “live at the Apollo” is glorious.
Just wanted to share one of the songs from the album – one of my fav’s.

Nothing is what it seems…

You know when the things you see physically with your eyes just don’t make sense? The grid from which you view things is telling you one thing, and yet what you see/experience is telling you something very different?
Have you ever had words spoken out loud, a physical thing moving towards you, get consumed by your being and explode inside you like a grenade? Your paradigms and thoughts, feelings and understandings left in heaps and piles. Sometimes I wonder just how many times I will experience my paradigms collapsing….

Movement

This has been an interesting term – in all respects. Full of differences and nuances, challenges and strife, surprising joy and gratefulness seeming to well up out of nowhere. It is moving so fast though, like water falling through my fingers I see and feel these moments greet me and move on. Its like they are playfully teasing me with their speed, daring me to try and reach out to hold them. Most days I feel my chief task is to grab and hold, to find a way to stop that water from falling through my fingers.

an ache

blurry

out of focus

aching

unsatisfied

..

I turned and walked out the door and ran as hard as I could.

The Valley Song

It is striking how one situation of grief you learn about seems too ripple into the lives around you. Learning of so many people in my circle of acquaintances that are dealing with losses of loved ones and are situated in grief at the moment. I sat down for some background music to do my homework to and the following song came on – one that has always been a favorite and is now poignantly applicable…

Turn your volume up and have a listen…

You have led me to the sadness
I have carried this pain
On a back bruised, nearly broken
I’m crying out to you

Chorus
I will sing of Your mercy
That leads me through valleys of sorrow
To rivers of joy

When death like a Gypsy
Comes to steal what I love
I will still look to the heavens
I will still seek your face

But I fear you aren’t listening
Because there are no words
Just the stillness and the hunger
For a faith that assures

Alleluia, alleluia
Alleluia, alleluia

While we wait for rescue
With our eyes tightly shut
Face to the ground using our hands
To cover the fatal cut

And though the pain is an ocean
Tossing us around, around, around
You have calmed greater waters
Higher mountains have come down

Alleluia, alleluia
Alleluia, alleluia

Alleluia, alleluia alleluia, alleluia
Alleluia, alleluia alleluia, alleluia

Oh, Lord sing of Your mercy,
Mercy
Your mercy