My Mind and My Travels

I hardly know where to begin this post. I've actually been putting it off, because it feels like reporting a list of events, and not actually thinking anything. And who wants to read a list?

Let's try and get the list out of the way quickly: we went to San Fran, I wandered around Market and Mission and we went to a Giants game. That's 2 pro baseball games on this trip. I don't even follow baseball.

Then we moved north seeking the Pacific Ocean, and found it. And it was very, very cold. We tried to stay in a hostel, but it was full and found ourselves camping for $10 night, not bad. We also picked up a "friend" who was very interesting! He wore pirate shorts, and nothing else, we talked about how he would sum up the world with the word "Huh?" and about pot. He slept on our picknick table at the campsite. It was Friday night, and since we were already where we needed to be, we tried to head up to the vineyard we were supposed to start working. But they wouldn't let us come until Monday. So we spent 3 nights camping and hanging out, bathing in the lake. The nights got mighty cold for camping.

When we finally got to the vineyard, we were greeted with "Hey you're here, put up this clothesline." Basically the folks we were working for were miserable people who couldn't afford regular work crews and were using WWOOFers to do harvest for them. The other workers were most interested in smoking up and drinking, but they were just fine, we enjoyed them. We only stayed for 3 days and then ran away in the middle of the night to escape the bosses and "slavery", and laughing to ourselves that they had actually made us afraid! We went back across the state to the Catholic Worker, where people are glad you are there, feed you well and treat you with basic dignity.

We contacted the ranch we had plans with next, and asked if we could show up early, and they gave us the go ahead. We arrived Saturday night, to horses, milk cows, and wide open spaces in the Nevada desert.

In the midst of all this it's tough to figure out how I see God at work, what I am learning, what the point in any of it might be. I've been having lessons in learning to simply be, sitting beside a lake with nowhere else to be, may be enviable, but it can also make one feel wasteful. Is being quiet and unproductive wasteful?

I've been rereading The New Friars and asking this time what I can apply to the life I am already living. I don't want to be immobilized by it's radical call, I want to be changed. And I'm asking God to make next steps a little clearer, I have the ideas I've been thinking about, but I want to be sure He is leading, not me. And then there is learning how to communicate well with others, how to put others first. Trying to remember that God wants to work the fruit of the Spirit into my life, and that I must seek first the Kingdom.

My brain and heart are in as much a whirlwind as the traveling and working we've been doing.

Loss

Last week my cell phone was mostly stolen, and yesterday morning in the -30C my car would not start, and as I have been alone at my place, and have no cell phone or internet connection right now, I was totally stuck. I wondered to myself how long it would be until someone would come looking for me. Not to mention that I needed to be at church, it's kind of my job.
The solution I came to was to bundle in many extra layers, and venture out into the cold, and walk in the direction of the rest of the church staff's homes. Since we almost all live within a 10 block radius of each other. I walked in the direction of the tightest gathering of homes, thinking if someone wasn't home, I could go to the next, and so on. I was lucky enough to get a ride from the first home I tried, which was good, because I was beginning to think that in that cold, I might not make it back home, if all my pursuits failed me. It was a great start to the day.
I arrived at church in time for the second service, which was 2 hours late, for "work", but just in time to catch my parents coming in. My dad pulled my sister and I aside and told us the news we had been waiting day-to-day to hear. My Granddad had passed away in the night. Mostly my heart breaks for my dad, I think I'm better at empathy, than at feeling for myself. I feel the emptiness in this loss. For someone raised and firmly certain of the salvation of those whose trust is in Jesus, the loss of a family member who did not choose that trust, is decidedly empty. And somewhat surprising, I've always couched death in terms of "going home." What do I say now?
So now my task is trying to figure out how to support my dad, how to think and speak about this, how to pray.

Bearing the Scars

On Saturday night, the worship keyed down, and the leader began speaking about the premature birth of one of his kids, and the battle for his life, the praying, the suffering and the leaning on Christ. And as often happens, my heart was transported to brokenness I've known in birth and death. And those pains were fresh in my heart, and in my eyes. So I'm standing just outside the auditorium, listening, praying, crying. And asking God to reveal why, I still hold these sufferings in my heart.
It's not that I think my hurts and trials even hold a shadow to the suffering of so many, I have been blessed by God, I don't pretend to have suffered myself. Instead, God has granted that I walk alongside others who suffer. Grieving women especially. I've seen abortion, I've seen stillbirth, I've told a mother her child did not survive.
And so the questions in my heart have remained, Why didn't our Lord intervene, when we prayed like we did? And, Why do I still bear these hurts so deeply? As painful as each of those moments were, I count it as privilege to have walked with those women in tragedy. But now it has been so long, why are these wounds so fresh, what can I better contribute or accomplish for the Kingdom because of these?
So I'm crying and asking God these questions. Wondering what to do with the pain, other than let it bleed out in my tears. And He reminded me that Christ bore the pain and sin of the world. And that God has always called His people to bear the suffering of mankind. I know these things, so I'm not angry or resentful, just lost. I return to the crowd of worshipers, still heavy hearted, and as we sing somewhere in the words God speaks to my heart. And my question is answered.
I bear these sufferings still because I can not become like my King if I do not. I follow the Suffering Servant, and to be made into His image, I too must bear the scars.

In Between

Sometimes I wish to use this blog to share those deepest things, things that I get out best with pen and paper in hand. Which is something I haven't been doing this year. So sometimes I think it would be easy just to write them out here. But then there they would be, for all the world to read. And so I don't.
Sometimes I wonder at how my blog becomes a sounding place for only the happy and momentous. I don't share pictures of the day-to-day, and I rarely write of anything resembling pain. At least not since I returned home. Fact is I almost don't know where to begin. And then I wonder if I should trust the whole world, (though there are surely only 5 of you reading). So I don't write.
One thing that I have been facing, noticing and living in the midst of is my personal tendency to experience other's pain. Empathy. I have too much of it. For the last three months now I have been quite able to cry, in every moment. And I certainly have, I can't count how many times I've cried at work, I mean I even had a good cry at the swimming pool during Teen Camp.
I was talking to my Nana last week, talking about the realization and experience of a love that can not fix everything. A heartbreaking truth; our best attempts, (and our failures), all added up do not directly equal some sort of wholeness or healing. A mirror of the way that even God's perfect love does not force us to respond to Him. A reality of heartbreak. In my life and in others around me.
And I feel like an emotional cripple. I can't deal with the reality of constant sadness, disappointment and emptiness. So when I get a hold on all the tears, I straighten myself up, turn to look the opposite way and tell God, "I can't deal with this. You have to." And try to ignore it. Because when my thoughts and heart return to the matters that surround, the depths of brokenness overwhelm me and I become a person who uses cold compress tea bags to maintain a normal appearance.
Hmm, perhaps this is why I don't write. Because who in reading, wants to be brought down into the mire? I do not mean to cause anyone any sense of alarm. I do not pretend that the sadnesses I feel all around me are greater than the sadnesses that surround most of us. But rather I am in the midst, and I'm crying my way through. With desperate, ineloquent prayers too. So in between the pictures I post, I hope you might know me more honestly, living out happy occasions, yes, but not always carefree.

Rain

It appears that it is storm season here in Asia. I was beginning to think that "rainy" season here in the mid-Visayas actually meant "not-really-really-dry" season. But the last 2 days have proved me wrong as the rain has poured down outside. Cutting power, and dripping through my roof to land in strategically placed buckets. I love rain, have always loved it, I even love those gray days that look like rain and don't deliver. And these days I am learning that it is because I have never had to deal with the violence of nature, or with the lives of ones I love being snuffed out in a storm.
As far as I know rainy season has not disappointed inhabitants of Luzon, with the usual typhoons, and floods hitting them for the last few months. And as I read in the news today it appears that storms have been claiming quite a toll in Bangladesh with estimates of some 10,000 dead in the wake of a cyclone last week! My God! It's unimaginable, and perhaps you've been watching it all on the news, perhaps you don't have to imagine it now. But this is the first I've heard, and my heart is heavy with the weight of all those lives lost so violently. So meaninglessly.
I will NEVER understand the meaning of all the world's suffering. I will never have answers to my questions about disparity or brokeness. And as a storm rages outside, and I am safe right here, I wonder how it's fair that I have the privilege of safety. The privilege of loving rain storms.