So many thoughts and so little organization...

Today I walked Chelsea* to the kindergarten bathroom. They were repairing the first grade bathrooms. Afterwards, she got a drink from the short kindergarten drinking fountain. (Seriously, I could probably sit "criss-cross applesauce" on the floor and drink from it.) She exclaimed, "Why is it so short now? It was taller when I was in kindergarten!"

Classic, textbook dev. psych. love it.

It's interesting how days start to turn into weeks and months when your life is somewhat stable. In retrospect, one of the reasons Spain was so exhausting is that I never had monotony. This may sound romantic and glorious, but part our brain loves autonomization. (sp?)

I'm listening to Silvio Rodriguez right now, a South American musician who masterfully disguised critiques of colonization and corrupt Latin American governments behind the most beautiful love songs I've ever heard. It makes me wonder how I'd view life if my childhood would have been filled with violence. I'd probably have a very different view of the world. What that has to do with the first story, I have no idea. Go figure. I feel a little bit like my brain is trying to think about many things and in order to tell you about them all, I'd have to sit down and word vomit. And I don't feel like doing that when I could be taking the trash out and reading a book.

this is why I am not a good blogger when i am not in a foreign land.

*Name changed, as usual.

ruminating.

there's not really anyone who can live my life for me.
interfaith work is really rich.
it's really easy to not dive into something. it's much easier to just sit around on your keister all day and entertain yourself with the idea that the right combination of eating, exercising, and sleeping will bring you true contentment.
i want something. i'm just not sure what it is...
i have a habit of waiting for life to start. and it's already happening!!
for a long time, i thought that my story was going to be found in a building at 42nd and genessee. Nope. i'm already living it.
if i could describe myself with a really large venn diagram, there's a part of me that wants to study theology, a part of me that wants to run an ultramarathon, a part of me that wants to do a st. francis (in many ways), a part of me that wants to travel all over the world - and hike machu picchu!, a part that just wants to be settled, and part that wants to sit around and eat ice cream out of the container while i mindlessly cruise the web. (that one's my least favorite).
i'm not really sure what that means.
i pray that God would connect the dots and patch me together.

My dad is a sandwich

I took a delightful walk this evening with my parents. It turns out that eating right can really change your level of energy. I was literally running in circles around them, full of joy about life, the sunset, and the fact that I can run.

As is often the case when I combine joy and a lot of Spanish exposure in a day, I was singing rapid, out-of-breath Juanes as I twirled around my parents. In a tone meant to be funny, my dad said, "I'm the sandwich generation. My parents jabbered away in Czech all the time and I never had any clue what they were saying. And now my daughter is chattering away in Spanish, and I'm clueless again."

I wanted to laugh, but the laugh caught in my chest as I realized how profoundly true his statement was.

Today or I heart NY

Nine years ago
I was in Ms. Boe's English class.
They pulled her out of the room.
We went to Assembly
with rumors of car accidents and tragedy flying.
But not flying as big as what hit New York..

And since this has happened...
We MUST work towards reconciliation. Reach out.

Psalm 120

A song of ascents.

¹ I call on the LORD in my distress,
and he answers me.

² Save me, LORD,
from lying lips
and from deceitful tongues.

³ What will he do to you,
and what more besides,
you deceitful tongue?

⁴ He will punish you with a warrior's sharp arrows,
with burning coals of the broom bush.

⁵ Woe to me that I dwell in Meshek,
that I live among the tents of Kedar!

⁶ Too long have I lived
among those who hate peace.

⁷ I am for peace;
but when I speak, they are for war.

not expecting a lot of commets here...

españa, t exo d menos.

Kansas city, te quiero, pero echo de menos a españa. más que nada, echo de menos a la gente, pero también echo de menos mi castello, mi andalú, mi bici española MUY incomoda, la ceta, mi alumnado, los puestos de sol, y esa idea de que mi vida era una aventura total, on the whim of fate.

kansas city, te necesito. Me estableces, me das vida, me llevas a mi misma (never did understand if that was mí mismo, mí misma, mi misma, mi mismo, mí... oh well, it gets the point across).

inglés, eres la lengua de mi corazón, pero llevo el español muy cercita también.

Vida, tengo un amigo italiano. escribió en su Facebook "l'opposto di amare è rinunciare" (y aparte del hecho de que me encanta buscar sus statuses en google translate) me encanta lo que dice "the opposite of love is to give up"
Pero una amiga suya le escribió "ne avevamo parlato una volta.. l'opposto dell'amore è la paura." y significa "the opposite of love is fear" Y esto me lo creo mucho.

Otra frase italiana... "Dios non allontana" Dios no aleja. Me encanta esta frase también porque me amigo italiano me lo tradució con su mano. Dios no nos... empuja más lejos. Dios nos acerca. Los que nos alejamos son nosotros, es el trayecto de la vida. viniendo y yendo como la marea

¿te has dado cuenta una vez de cuanto has cambiado? Y no en mucho tiempo tampoco.
Pienso en como era hace dos años, hace tres años, hace cuatro. es increíble.

Esta mañana, hacía centering prayer, y pensaba de una idea que se ha enterrado dentro de mí. Es la idea que vivimos una narrativa. Life as story. Mi vida tiene que ser una historia, un cuento, porque es increíble. Quiero que Dios siga escribiéndome, que mi vida mueva hacia unos puntos culminantes, hacia unos propósitos.

¿Os cuento un secreto? Quiero casarme con un español. Pero dentro de este deseo es más un deseo de casarme con el español. (Aunque tampoco me vendría mal casarme con un español... tall, dark, handsome. jajajajaja. y, por favor, que hable claramente para que le entienda!)

the 'nets

Picture this:
A group of five people is sitting around a kitchen table together. All are laughing, their attention held captive. Each takes a turn entertaining the others; every turn inspires more conversation, laughing, or thought-provoking moments. They are watching YouTube videos.

Moments like these are becoming increasingly widespread, worldwide. Perhaps more surprisingly - to me anyway - the moment above happened several weeks ago with my aunt, uncle, cousin, and mom. It resembled an evening I spent in Madrid with people from four countries. Youtubing crosses cultures and SES*, even is beginning to span the generational gap for the tech savvy. (What a great word - "savvy")

As I sat around the table two weeks ago, laughing at an improve musical about napkins pulled up by my cousin Katy, I reflected on the situation. In the screenlight, I looked at the faces around me. Everyone was laughing. I thought about other times around this table, playing board games, cards, talking. Technology in this instance was not detracting from those; but instead it was simply adding another option.

For a long time, I harbored the belief that technology killed real life. Even now, I sit at the same kitchen table, listening to a choir of cicadas, the whirl of the washer. Those things seem more real to me than this blog post, these words I type on a white "New Post" screen.
I think I may have judged the internet too harshly though. While many times it has sucked life right out of me with endless facebook clicking, net surfing, and sore eyes, it has also been a lifeline when I was far away and lonely, a means of sharing my world with people I love who are hours or time zones away. I have seen God in cyberspace - because we are the internet. God dwells with us and when we start dwelling online, guess where God shows up?

Technology, like money, food, large corporations, and time is what we make it. It is not inherently good or evil. I think it has tremendous possibilities for good, for community, for learning. Heck, we watch online videos in first grade math. They are interactive. Did you watch videos in math? Yeah, me neither.
I find this YouTube video fascinating. I recommend it and the one I linked above. Let me know what you think.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o

*Those who are fortunate enough to access the internet anyway. Contrary to a quote I heard once that made me really angry: If you don't have Facebook, you DO exist. As with any social change, we MUST watch out for those with no voice.

nesting.

Today, I got up and didn't have to go to work. I slept in all the way to 7:37. It rocked. Then my mom and I had mother-daughter time. We started by getting some antibiotics for my sinus infection (woo hoo!), then proceeded to purchase some non-jean pants so that I can wear something other than skirts and dresses to work. We then stopped at Dean and Deluca, because it's somewhat of a tradition for us on special mornings or afternoons.

One of the most delightful parts of my day though, was realizing that I'm not going anywhere. In fact, I'm planning on being in this city, near this house, for at least another year. Yep. That's twelve months within the same area code. In the same (2) state(s). I asked my mom what it was like to live in the same building for a continuous amount of time. She said it still feels like she's adjusting to things all the time and lives with a family in transition.

Every August for the past four years, my church takes a weekend trip away. We go on pilgrimage to a youth camp. We stay in cabins and tents (cheaper), eat together, pray together, sit in silence together, and play, play play. Swimming pool, lake, games, walks. It's glorious. This year, on Sunday, a woman aptly named Charity shared that she was in transition and had been for about a year. She said that when she had shared this with someone they had promptly apologized, "I'm so sorry." And Charity wanted to know why. Why are we sorry? She said that transition is perhaps life's truest state. Think about it. How often have you felt like your life was stable? Like, really stable. Maybe in retrospect, but in the moment, did it feel stable?

I had a conversation last summer about stability with my dear friend Heather. We called it "being settled." It was before I went to Spain and I was telling her about how I was excited for Spain, yet a little more apprehensive than I'd hoped to be. I had, for the first time in life, experienced this desire to be settled and knew that Spain wouldn't be a very settling place. She felt it too. As we were talking, we realized slowly that "settled" is a condition of the heart more than a condition of residence in one geographical location.

So perhaps settled and stabilized can mean more than simply living in one place. I want to be present to my life and to dwell in my relationships now, in this moment. In whatever unfinished condition I find myself, my room, my life, I want to accept it and see the beauty in it now.

I pray...that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, and being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (ephesians 3)