34. Or Two.

35 Works of Art. in process.

Learned more about the ascension of Christ through teaching it. We talked about how the disciples would feel. I thought about the promises -- "WAIT FOR THE GIFT THAT WAS PROMISED" and "I WILL BE WITH YOU ALWAYS" -- bookending the event. The question asked by the disciples just before -- "now, Lord? Restoring the kingdom now?" And the answer: "It's not for you to know the day or the hour...but you will be empowered to be witnesses to me. To all you've seen." (paraphrase. excuse me.)
And I see that I ask the same: now, Lord, now? Won't you come back now? Won't you fix all this madness now?
And the answer is still: You will be empowered to be my witness.
That's it. And lo, He is with me always
even to the very end of the age.
The kidlings made 'disciples.' Cardboard ones. The point was to put an expression on 'your' disciple's face. How did he feel at the ascension of Jesus? "He's amazed," said one. "I would be nervous," said another. One drew a smile right on top of a frown. Mixed emotions.
and ours change, too, over our years of encountering the promise from a God we can no longer touch with our hands.

They cracked up at today's chapter of 'Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.' I was yelling nonsense words at the top of my voice as Willy Wonka pretended to be a martian. That was nice.
Ah, but the headache was beginning then.
How is it that a headache can override so many little positives in a day to make it all feel too much? They are, after all, so loud. What kind of fool tries to play alphabet Bingo ("Sound-O") for a station during playtime? (this kind.)

We put on our 'color eyes' this afternoon. Put on your orange eyes. What do you see around us that's orange? Purple eyes. What do you see? We talked about warm colors and cool colors. And then colored a page of each. That was nice. I think I need to teach some vague, loosely monitored and defined Sensory Experience and Imagination class.

A friendly New York City policeman happened by during their recess, as I was out among my small people, and as J. was coming up to me tearfully to tattle on people not letting him play, or poking him... I forget all the details. But said policeman said "Who?" J. repeats the names of the offenders, as if NYC cop will of course know whom he is talking about. Policeman: "Point them out to me." I was too tired by this point in the day to play this out to its full potential. Wish I had. My thanks to that policeman for the moment.

incapacitated by the day. tasks after school that should have taken ten minutes took forty-five. Mind sloooooowed. Like moving through molasses. Fuzzy molasses. Blurry molasses. What?

Thirty-four.

Thirty-five. One.

35 Works of Art.
(the last child-peopled 35 days of Kindergarten; God bless them all.)

Installation (or installment) #1. Or #35 if you prefer to count backward. Which I think I do.

The plan: With notes on the realization thereof in red.

1. Welcome back from spring break. Review rules. Hope that this has some effect.
Rules review may have had some minimal effect. One kid went to Disney World over the break. I was very excited about this. Our class still struggles with calling out, which escalates into chatting at volumes so high so as to make the teacher inaudible. The teacher being: me. I do get tired of addressing this. How does one retain one's sanity addressing this again...and again...and again... ?
2. Calendar and Bible time. Bible: Review Easter, talk about the appearances of Jesus to His disciples after resurrection. ("Peace be with you," said He; loving the doubter Thomas; forgiving the unfaithful Peter; fellowship a priority; the beginnings of the Church -- "As the Father has sent me, I am sending you...") How did you celebrate Easter? Sing our latest song -- "It Was a Great Thing." Pray together.
Discussion took too long for singing to take place. But it was good talk. Surprising how many kids said they did nothing to celebrate Easter. General exclamations by all when Thomas put his hands on Jesus' wounds. I was proud of my roly-poly (in speech and body) G. when she turned to the memory verse of 3 weeks ago on the wall behind her and recited it with gusto: "For we know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. Romans 6:6." I tried to bring up limited atonement today. Those God has called into His family are those Christ died for. J.'s closing prayer included "and bless our food." Bless the boy. He's like a fifty-five year old boxer who's just been brought into a church for the first time and is trying to reverence the sacred.
3. Math: telling time. Reviewing parts of a clock. Workbook pages for basic 'o'clock' times. Playing with small demo clocks and giant clock hands and numbers on the carpet.
Surprisingly smooth. Every blessing You pour out, I'll turn back to praise.
4. Phonics: introducing lots of short 'e' words. Game played with the chart of words. Teams have Readers, Artists (to illustrate the word), Rhymers and Sentence-Makers. Work through different words as a team.
A liiiiittle chaotic. Hoping that we can repeat this and have it go much more smoothly now that they know how it works. One team was smooth and smart and open-eared. The other was wacky, didn't listen to each other, all over the place. The talking over my voice and instructions was starting to get to me by this point.
5. Their elective; lunch; free time (help! this needs more structure in order to avoid yelling, violence and chaos. We'll see what happens today. Maybe I'll give them more specific tasks). Story time (Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator) and nap. Recess.
The Great Glass Elevator is wacky. Way off from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. 60s political commentary (we're in chapter 4), puns that go way over a 5-year-old's head... I'm thinking I may need to hop over some bits in this readaloud. We got through today's chapter, but I may lose 'em if it keeps up this way. I think we all miss the chocolate and the wild machinery. Free time: we made birds by gluing fragments of tissue paper onto self-designed 'bird-shapes.' The normally unartistically-inclined J. got into how the tissue paper loses its color on the white paper when wet. I loved how his eyes gleamed when I told him it looked like he'd found the color of sunshine and captured it on paper. This made me glad.
6. I take the other Kindergarten class today -- art focus this week. Color! Rainbow day. We'll learn the chorus of "Look to the Rainbow", meet Roy G. Biv, and make rainbows with pastels, on mural paper, etc.
Messy. Fine. Didn't get to the song. They talked over me too much. But it's always good to see kids paint. I hope these parents aren't prissy about pastels all over white uniform shirts, etc. Blue paint in one kid's hair, on another's face, and all over several hands.

After school: tutoring one special lad on alphabet and sounds. He has a unique way of looking at the world. Quotes of the day from this dear alien: "I am an artist. I have art power stronger than other people." and "When I was a baby, I was good all day."

Lingering sense: Thankfulness for a day that did not sock me in the face, after a very rough morning, rough getting up, facing situation, fighting fear, inertia and other things. Hopefulness. Desire to not let the day keep talking to me negatively once school's over -- hoping to learn to let it go. Hoping the emotional frustration with being talked over will stay at a low-grade, keeping-it-in-perspective level. 35. There it was. There it is. Committed to the Lord of it. Gone and done,
and the color of sunshine on a very gray and rainy day.

Tonight I feel

...like a lost boy who's just realized that everyone else grew up.

a love as deep as hell, a love as strong as death.

from Charles Spurgeon. About our God:
"If He could grow weary of me, he would have been tired of me long before now. If He had not loved me with a love as deep as hell, and as strong as death, He would have turned from me long ago."
___________________________________________________

The mystery of God a man who bled, was whipped, who sweated and smelled and hung and whose consciousness faded into death;
A five-year-old girl watched a film of this happening yesterday and said, with small fists clenched and worry all over her face,
"Come on, God -- fight!"
And I said that He could have,
but He didn't, and why? For you, little one. For me.

Do you think He is tired of you?
He planned from before time to endure this for you. Outside time as He stands, it is still His very nature -- it will never stop being His heart, His heartbeat
...to do this for you.

It is a strange story. It is a real and living Lord we serve
when we say "Lord, Lord,"
when we say "I believe in God,"
when we say "Jesus loves you,"
it is a God who was tangible flesh, as touchable as your own hands are now. A historical reality
and a mystical reality, prophesied from the beginning of time, and known even before;
a Lamb to take your place,
a Love great enough to know what was coming and take it on anyway.
All true loves you see here on earth
are born of that love. are created in His image.

It is strange to us, this story, because
all that we clutter up the world with
tries to busy us away from the central elements of the story we see all around us:

Love, hurt, rejection and forgiveness. Justice, cruelty, help and Home. Life the gift and Death the anomaly. How it all comes together in His work, in His Word.
Sing to Him who authored the Story.
Trust in Him who authors it still.
Redeem, Lord Jesus. Come soon, Lord Jesus. Teach and forgive and consume us, dear God
on a cross.

Communion two.

Today I see the vine-juice that speaks to us of His blood -- not only speaks, but enters us, engage our senses: taste, touch, sight, and smell --
and a flash comes to me
of This Blood as the center of the universe. The Story at the Center of ALL THAT IS. I see a man on a cross.
A man in pain, blood pouring from his hands and brow,
A reconciling gift, my hope and home.
Friend on the streets, draw near and know this love.
Small sinner in a classroom, draw near and see this truth.
Lonely dweller of the great gray city, draw near and stand inside the waterfall of His so-welcoming grace.
God, increase my understanding of it all.

Communion.

Yesterday I saw my black-red blood
Flow out through narrow pipes to fill clear tubes.
So quick, so dark, so essential;
so mysterious -- to be allowed to see it so
exposed (!).

Today, I drink the cup,
Your blood.
I taste the bitter resolution.
And the color strikes me deep,
Echoing the flow that today I cannot see,
behind my skin
still running.

And I lift my hands in praise of how
You unify the Seen and Known,
the Now and Then. Of how
You honor the tangible.

You became the tangible.

Your blood,
poured out for me.I take, I taste,
again, again, this
Bitter beauty. Brightest mercy.
Washed without
By what runs within.
Washed within
By what flowed out.

Blood-giver,
Take all mine.

waiting. is active.

"I love you, gentlest of Ways,
Who ripened us as we wrestled with you."
(Rilke.) I love this because
He must be strong
to be a wrestler. Gentlest of ways, and mightier than that gentleness reveals.
Oh God, be OUR God. Be MY God. You are. You say it. The God who is protector, provider, who, for reasons we can never fathom, chooses to look out for our best interest.

You don't have to be erased. There is much in you that should be,
of course.
But He loves you. He loves you.

Looking back at old musings, scribblings, pourings-out of my mental and emotional adventures... I see how much the same I seem to stay,
always trying to Figure Things Out, so often sure that I am wrong for being what I am,
and crying out for more of God. . .

I find things in the old writings. And so,
since I have not much to say, or ability to say it, in these present days,
I think maybe I will put up some things from Ago. And see what stands forward and what fades, what is relevant in this season and what has not changed...and what has,
and where God has taken one person
in a few years of being and walking.

1. December 20, 2006. DFW Airport.


When I open my eyes
or turn around
or return from a walk through the far-off lands of 'E12,' 'E17' and 'E38'...
the lady in black jacket and baggy black pants with red racing stripe
has changed again, into a youngish Hispanic woman,
dark-haired, olive-skinned,
slouched and bored,
sloshing a newspaper around.
And then back again,
into a bulky old woman, grey-white hair slipping out of a wavy knot,
slouched and bored,
sloshing a newspaper around.
Same black jacket, same baggy pants, same chair, same shoes.
Airport agents,
presumably preventing people from slipping in where they shouldn't.

Grey-haired lady sometimes jumps into conversations of passing dazed families, to use her superknowledge, saying,
"No, it's right out here."
Sometimes they believe her.
Sometimes not.

Today I'm like this: in the restroom, in a line with two other women, a third washing her hands,
I had to stop myself from saying
"Hello, friends."

Because we are friends, we could be friends, we are compatriots and passers-by in the lifestream.
And there are times, so many, when I nearly say it, nearly welcome in with open arms
all the people
,many faces,
all I could have known,
that come across me.
Every face is a friend I love and want to help.

But what do I say to them that they will want
or understand...?

The Holy Spirit leads.
Today I know it, deep and sure and happily contented.

........

Salesmen,
salesmen,
always salesmen.
'field.' 'constituency.' 'consistency.' 'tractor.' 'see ya up there.' 'take care.' 'reservation.' 'take the job.' 'stupid if he doesn't.' 'knows the system.'

....

Television news voices are abhorrent. abhorrible. awful and horrible. terrible and sharp, false and vapid. sticky and meaningless. thoughtless and perky ...

Oblomov gave up on finding real bright light in the world through his own experience, through true and vocal and beautiful love, person-to-person... Quiet, news voices! Quiet!

"Relax." "Go wild." "Enjoy." "Indulge." Why do they throw imperatives at us? Why are they commanding me? Does that work better on people? Do we have some innate tendency to want to obey
such imperatives?
...

Bags make us all walk funnily.
Hunched or imbalanced, hulking or limping, panting and stopping.
What is all this we're carrying? What we 'need' to feel okay... are we meant to carry bags?
..............................
Minneapolis airport. same day.

in a chair.
coming off a red-faced conversation
on a plane
two tight seats and sporadic eye contact,
a middle-aged man all at sea in midair.
How do you help him?
a divorced man who talks about looking for someone...
you know Jesus would complete him
in a whole new way.
He drops hidden questions about your relationship status
and you get embarrassed for him
and rush past them.

I said JESUS
but it was hard to break through my own guard against his loneliness and his intentions...
a little boy who's grown too old for me to help easily ...
Lord, I'm sorry if I missed things I should have said
or ways I should have said...
did I come off as not as passionate about You -- as proud of You -- as I really am?
Or was I contextualizing for him, trying not to use Christian-ese?
Father, forgive me -- and now, Father, I pray for this person,
for revival and powerful, beautiful witness to enter his life.
Off he goes. I let those hours go,
sweeping off to You.

Thirsty for beautiful music.
crazy awful news voices are back again.
(how is 'celebrities caught doing ridiculous things' NEWS?)

Where am I going, again? Oh, yes. Saskatchewan...

You know
I scan the people for a kindred spirit
I imagine someone who would just sit down next to me, and we'd say
"It's you!"
and "Isn't it all...insane
,and full of color
, and full of life ?"
and it would be home.
That's You, though,
That's You.
.....
"CNN sends you best wishes for 2007."
What does that mean? Nothing. They don't know any of us;
and what are 'best wishes' -- and of what good?
A world in need of prayer.

Shall I go wash my hands, just for fun? Sure.
My seat will be taken. But I have hours to go before I fly
Yes, hours to go before I fly.

November here.

" I said to the LORD, 'You are my Lord,
apart from you I have no good thing. " (Psalm 16.2)

Dear folk out there. (Are you?)

My mother wrote to me
that God has all the gifts I don't
and will supply where I lack.

I was trying to keep Him out
of a world where I didn't want to be;

I believed He was terribly disappointed
with whatever I was and am.

Rilke wrote: "I love you, gentlest of ways,
who ripened us as we wrestled with you."

I don't know how this is going to happen,
I don't know how.
But I love the little people,
and somehow, yes, must train and shape them for a classroom life,
(though what I want is to take them out running in fields, where your feet get caught in mud, and your fingers grip the grass, and your eyes see only God-made things for miles and miles and miles.)

I am so weary, and changed by the weariness.

I wrote yesterday a small, imperfect song. well, two and some bits. Here
is one, because I don't know
what else
to say. :

Fire of holiness,
Are you neat and mild,
Are you stoic and sensible
Or raging and wild ?

In the sweetest sense, You're wild,
all the beautiful I have ever known.
Vaster than my mind can reach
wider than my vision's field.

Deeper is Your loveliness and juster is Your justice,
Sweeter is Your sweetness than a word can hold. ....

From your fire I draw mildness,
In your fire it is found.
In what appears to me as wildness,
Peace and steadiness resound...

Deeper is Your loveliness and just-er is Your justice,
Sweeter is Your sweetness than a word can hold.

Part of fire, yes, their calmness; part of fire, my heart's cry.
Do your work to shape me, change me --
only You know who am I.

Holiness higher than all our words,
Not 'calm' or 'lively,'
but both, and more,
Teach which,
and when,
and what
to be
to me, walking here bound in by either and or.

Deeper is Your loveliness and juster is Your justice,
Sweeter is Your sweetness than a word can hold.

Job. (In both senses of the word?)

"Then the LORD answered Job out of the storm. He said:
'Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?....'"

It is I, Lord. I have darkened your counsel with words without knowledge.

"Brace yourself like a man; I will question you,

and you shall answer me.

Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation?

Tell me, if you understand.

Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!

Who stretched a measuring line across it?

On what were its footings set,

or who laid its cornerstone--

while the morning stars sang together

and all the angels shouted for joy?... "

"No human being can withstand the effulgence of kabod [Hebrew. glory. weight]... Moses' request to see the kabod Yahweh is denied. He is told to cover his face while the glory passes, watching only as God departs. "I will make all my splendor [kabod] pass before you," says Yahweh, "and in your presence I will pronounce my name.... You canot see my face, for no one sees me and still lives" (Brennan Manning, quoting from Exodus 33, in Ruthless Trust, p.53).

"The manifestations of kabod -- the magnalia Dei--continue in an ever-expanding cosmos. Small wonder that ninety-four years ago the eminent biographer Canon Sheehan envisioned heaven as 'The never-ending unlocking of the inner chambers of God'" (Ruthless Trust, p.51).

A God with infinite chambers to unlock, a God of infinite beauty and wisdom and power and knowledge and understanding,
this God have I been questioning, as the way that I thought life and walking with Him should work
has been stripped away from me.

(I still don't understand.
I may not be happy with it.)
But I can be joyful in it
and persevere , if He will strengthen me,
and I can trust that He is still who He says He is,
that somehow that DOES incorporate Him loving me
and Him being all things beautiful.
I may not feel it
or see it,
but I can trust it.

Forgive me, Lord, for forgetting Your glory
, Your transcendent-ness

I know that you can do all things;
no plan of yours can be thwarted.
You asked, 'Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?'
Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know.

Melanie's assignment.

Dear friends. I'm not up to writing much about the details of here right now. But I shall speak praise for a sweet weekend, a weekend away in the fall, a remembering that there are other ways of life out there, and a reminder of my passion for weakness. Strange passion? Don't know.

But at any rate, here I am, being forced to live it out in unexpected, in washing-over, in exhausting, constant ways, day in, day out.

I love my friend Melanie. And she did this on her blog. So I will too. To remember beautiful and silly things. To fly a little. To reach out and touch her hand. Pardon the poor formatting. Here we gooooo...... off to neverland -------

Pictures of:

1. the age you will be on your next birthday

2. a place to which you'd like to travel

3. your favorite place

4. Your favorite person (persons.)

5. Your favorite food

6. Your favorite animal

7. The town in which you were born

8. The name of a past pet

9. The first name of a past love

10. Your favorite color

11. Your first name

12. Your middle name

13. Your last name

to train up a child...

Have you got any thoughts on discipline, love,
and the balance between them?
And how they should appear in the definition of childhood,
and whether obedience and boundaries
must be taught and learned before grace can be understood or received?

I'm tired of 'being consistent,' of catching every 'misbehavior' in order to remain in control,
of having to stifle their silliness in order to maintain .... order.

oh how i hope it's not a horrible, harsh environment for them.
oh how i never wanted to be part of making such a place for children
oh how i miss just loving and being with.
I see the reasons for what I'm doing.
I know everyone in their lives can't be 'the fun one.' And for now, I don't get to be.
But I miss it.

Words? Thoughts? Helps?

I have been given visions of each of them individually as a deep man or woman of God
someday ;
I pray that somehow, in spite of me, and in spite of the groupness of it all, I will get to be a part of shaping them
in that direction.
I pray that they will flourish
and grow
and choose
and blossom
in that direction.

Day 3. And Abraham.

" So how do we fit what we know of Abraham, our first father in the faith, into this new way of looking at things? If Abraham, by what he did for God, got God to approve him, he could certainly have taken credit for it. But the story we're given is a God-story, not an Abraham-story. What we read in Scripture is, "Abraham entered into what God was doing for him, and that was the turning point. He trusted God to set him right instead of trying to be right on his own." If you're a hard worker and do a good job, you deserve your pay; we don't call your wages a gift. But if you see that the job is too big for you, that it's something only God can do, and you trust him to do it—you could never do it for yourself no matter how hard and long you worked—well, that trusting-him-to-do-it is what gets you set right with God, by God. Sheer gift. "

Romans 4:1-5 in The Message. Thanks, Mom.

I sat in the park on the way home tonight,
and wrote, to God, before coming home and reading these verses from my mother,
something strangely parallel. :
That though I have trouble seeing anymore how I could one day be useful or apt in any way, in any thing, in any place...
it couldn't matter less. Because this is not about me. This whole
Life thing.
My job is to have eyes on Him, and to stay close to Him, and to follow after Him and worship Him. Not to look at myself.
I will not focus on my inabilities OR on my abilities, if there be any,
no, because I will not focus on me.
(Forgive me, Lord. For I have focused on me. )

This job is too big for me, by far. This job is so different from where my mind naturally and usually wants to go.
We will not be the Academically Best Kindergarten Class ever (unless that's the miracle You want to work). I will not be the Most Organized and Naturally-Gifted-at-Devising-Perfect-Smooth-Systems Teacher Lady ever. But I will love Jesus. And I will try hard. And then I will stop, and surrender. And I will trust Him to work miracles through and despite and within me.
Amen.

"It's better to have cold," (food, that is) said husky-voiced, matter-of-fact, bundle-of-energy, mini-Julio-Iglesias kindergartener Michael, "because when it's hot, everybody can win you." He means that if you have hot food, as I do at lunch time, you will always lose the food-eating race (which I engage him in to try to get him to finish his sandwich) to those who have cold food. "That's true," I said. "Good point." It's fun to see them draw conclusions and make logical pronouncements based on the ridiculous things you do each day.
You never know
what's going to stick.

How funny. How strange. Day 1 of Kindergarten.

You know things like "The First Day of School,"
so mythologized,
so anticipated,
so... almost hallowed in the halls of life experience and life stories?

I feel like I just gave a bunch of children a fake one.
A fake First Day of School.


I feel this way because it's me who made it all, and I know myself.
I don't feel Official like the teachers of my youth felt to me.
I feel like they can see through me, the little ones,
that I am just a Person,
not a Teacher.
But so it is.


Today was.... chaotic.
Five of my children were absent. And this led me to discover that one had been moved to pre-K just the day before, and I hadn't been told yet.

School lunches arrived in our classroom 50 minutes late. I tried to fill time while they moaned about being starving. I asked if they knew what 'whining' meant and taught them the valuable fact that complaining to the air does not make things come any faster. I read them a story. We played the 'raise your hand if...' game. Finally we got up and played. And then the lunches came.


When we went down to recess, another class was in the play area. We waited again.
When we went to the bathroom, other classes were already in the bathroom.

Some children brought ten tons of supplies that I had to dig out of their backpacks. There is no storage space in my classroom. Some children brought no supplies.
I can't really remember which were which. A more Effective Person would have made an instant checklist.


I began to wonder if a gift for teaching, in the elementary and middle school levels at least, is really a gift for winning attention and for effective crowd control. Neither of these do I have naturally.


My favorite part of today was when we prayed for my friend Wesley, who lives on the streets of Rio de Janeiro. We looked at his picture and at a picture he finger-painted for me, of the concrete arches of Rio under which we Word Made Flesh folk met with the people of the streets.
"Please give him a bed," said Jemimah.
"Please give him a lot of people and a lot of money so he can buy food and a lot of love," said Julia.
"Thank you for..." and Daniel proceeded to recount all the things he could remember that we'd done today.


Please pray that the need for behavior-molding and crowd control and correction
would not take over;
that by the miracles of them learning to pay attention,
and me becoming a better attention-getter and keeper,
we will have the space for me to really look deeply at them and love them,
and deal with them as the individuals that they are,
to love as Christ loves
each member of
my motley band.


Being a one-on-one sort of person
May be the reason I've felt so ill-suited to all of this. To teaching.
Please pray that that gift would be used somehow even in the midst of all this.
And that all this
wouldn't drown out that gift
by drowning me in discipline routines
and details.


Here is our room (now with two largeish carpets and with names on the door, not in the photographs :-) ). Thank you, brilliant Liz, for making it so.
They knocked on the door of the Crazy House today, and called to the people inside whom we cannot see... tomorrow we put the first bird on what I've decided is, among other things, a Birthday Tree.

i live in the bronx.

This city,

New York City,

makes me cry.

The forms upon forms upon forms of lostness and Christlessness,

the hard faces, the weight that seems to press down on every pair of shoulders. Weight weight weight weight weight. . .

like everyone has all the bills they owe and all the family and job responsibilities and all the anger and loneliness and resentment and hardship of a lifetime

hardened into a mask

which they wear all day long,

and no longer know how to take off.

Today I was down at the bottom of Manhattan,

and in the middle, and here in the Bronx. Today I walked a lot. And took long subway rides. And carried heavy groceries.

And how strange this place is. Unlike any other, in the way it feels to me.

And there is noise

and there are a thousand different worldviews

all clashing into a cloud of chaos

until the only value left that everyone believes in

is survival,

is: not physically hurting someone else;

and, maybe, if you're rich enough, environmentalism.

May I tell you?

This is a hard place to be poor.

and this is a hard place to be alone.

Was Rio like this? And I just didn't feel it,

because I was surrounded so closely and supportively

by a community that shouted out "KINGDOM" and refused to be hopeless

and was determined to see the world in light of God's promises

and character?

(Did I not feel it also

because it was 'foreign'?

Because of the layer of outsider's perspective that a different language adds? The alien-planetness that gives me the privilege of contemplation and analysis ...

Because of the hundreds of little words and conversations I missed

that here, I hear without trying?

And because I was not plugged into, aware of, the mass media culture there, hearing the messages people there hear...? )

Which way is the truth?

Rio was -- is -- a city full of violence, full of problems, darkness, spiritual oppression,

of course.

But I did not feel there

like I feel here.

Please pray for this city. Please come to this city

and help to transform it with the salt and light of Jesus.

Please pray that it does not step on me and squash me,

that it does not form for me a mask

as well;

that I do not lose

(most precious, precious) Hope.

I am in a job now. this is hard for me. i have been privileged to live a contemplative, fairly intuitive and improvisational day-to-day life these past years.

A life of being out and about,

walking around,

talking to people,

thinking about culture.

Praying a lot.

No human standards to live up to, few deadlines, loose schedules.

No spirit of competition;

a feeling of freedom

and joy. Easy to trust that God was everywhere and that He would fulfill His plans; all I had to do was listen

and obey...

I loved it.

I think that I thought

my crumbling-all-to-pieces days were maybe, just maybe,

behind me...

then this.

A job that is very structured

With people who seem to have, and enjoy, "Right way, Wrong way" labels for all things -- or at least "Better way, ineffective way"--

People who are very different parts of the Body than I. And sometimes I find that I've begun to fear that Jesus sees everything their way -- that it's right

and I'm so wrong. This systematic way of looking

and living,

the extreme busy-ness

.

I confess

I long for freedom.

I do not want to lose my belief that God loves and uses the foolish things.

I am not a person who is about

Achievement.

I tried, long ago, to be one of those people,

to keep up with those people. And I did.

And I was an empty shell,

and there was no depth to the world,

and no depth to God in my spirit.

Why would You take me back into such a land, oh Lord?

I do not understand.

And after giving and showing me a life that fit my heart

so well.

Please don't let me stop believing in that life's existence

and its reality and value.

Here, I am broken down to childlikeness,

not impressive in any way. Impressing no one,

by any stretch of the imagination.

not shining Jesus the way I know I want to,

and quietly ashamed

that so much could 'backslide' so soon

and so completely.

But You, O Lord, are my strength and my song.

But You, O Lord, are still You, and still died for me.

But You, O Lord, have lost none of Your strength, Your impressiveness, and Your power.

Whatever I once had

was completely by Your grace,

a gift for a time -- a miraculous work completely of God.

Whatever is gone now

is Yours to have, and to restore in Your time.

I am not in my element.

I have become last.

I need You to do this job

through me.

I need You to do this job through me.

I am humbled to the ground

I don't know how to get up

.

Please bless this place through me somehow

Please bless this place, these people.

Please bless and form these children somehow.

I do not know this place. I do not know what You want to do here.

Do it

please.

Break me down,

even those things that I thought You wanted and approved of in me,

those things I thought were permanent now, and to be joys longlasting.

If You want to take them down, and take them away,

they are Yours.

May I ask for them back

someday?

I do, Lord, I do long for happiness. For joy.

Give me, please, joy that sings louder than the suffering

, even though the suffering can still be heard.

Somehow.

I talked to you

years ago,

and months ago,

and weeks ago,

about becoming poor. About experiencing the life that so many live.

i think it is happening. I did not think I would have to be so alone.

But poverty is often loneliness.

I did not think I would have to do something so scary and so oppressive to me.

But poverty is often in scary and oppressive circumstances, and leads to having to take scary and oppressive jobs.

I loved our life in poverty in Brazil. Because we were together -- our team. Our small band

of 'new friars' .

I believe You call to loving community. I believe it's a good gift, and Your ideal for us.

I can't wait to work in it fully

again.

But for now you seem to have This Other in mind for me. Do Your will, oh Lord. Pull me through, oh Lord. Prove Yourself God in the midst of it all, oh Lord.

And please. Please wipe away the shame coloring my heart, shame for not handling this with a grin on my face and great hope pouring out of my mouth; shame for not being strong here;

did I think I was impervious? Super Transition Woman, able to leap between sin-struck cultures in a single bound, smiling all the while, never feeling, never broken ?

i am small and i am human

and i can't do this.

AND YOU CAN.

moment by moment,

carry me. and help me to trust

in Your love.

Can you, friends, help me to love this city?

Talk back. and pray. and come, please come.

Subsequent Travels. 1.

Washington, D.C.

Yes, but where am I?

Struggling.

Caught up in waves of feeling, and permeated by so much questioning that I feel I am becoming a Walking Question.

Lovely city. Remarkable place. Blank slate of the 'write-on-me' nation. Nest of idealists (and den of those who've lost their ideals but kept their power.) and planners and do-ers and talkers. Museum-land. Which makes me happy as a clam.

But here I am, all at sea, missing a Rio-lifestyle that is not validated by what's all around me. I have no expertise. I have no title or profession. I have no Project or Plan. I cannot claim to be an expert even in what I've lived in the last four months. Not even close.

So where do I belong? Not wanting 'professionalism', if it means focus on business over people, if it means no room to breathe, if it means putting Jesus in a box and pretending we know what we're doing. But feeling accused. By an efficient world,
of being lazy
or naive
or 'unrealistic.'

It's a private battle, one of constant petty skirmishes in my heart and head -- there's no loud external opposition, no earthshattering news to report to you, or stories to tell.

I don't want to be stupid. Don't want to be a baby clamoring for my own way, or a coward or a sluggard trying to evade the sharpness of the competitive world. Even 'charity' is competitive in such a world, it seems. . . But. But I cannot live well like this. I cannot enter this fray. Not now. My heart cries and thirsts and aches for a life with room in it. Room to live out love and listen to the Spirit, room to be 'unprofessional,' free from a title and possessions. This is not for everyone. Job titles, and organization, and professionalism, and possessions are not evil. But I cannot survive them
yet. Maybe someday. But for now I have to accept grace and believe that the thirst in me is part of my call. Is how I'm being called.

Called to be part of a brotherandsisterhood of broken people who claim no other titles and who enter into lives with poor people knowing only that their call is to listen and to love: to listen to both God and the people. To love both God and the people. To listen to and love one another. And trusting that 'the work' will flow out of that if God wills it.

There is this title of a book I've never read that bounces around my brain so frequently.
'Brothers, We Are Not Professionals.'

As I war with shame
and try to discern the Holy Voice;
As I wander a city alone,
meet a country,
settle in the land of notknowing for awhile;

I long for your prayers, and, I confess, for some validation

that a call to a life like I had in Rio
Is valid. Is good. Is acceptable. Might even be useful.
Above all, I want to be obedient -- even if it takes me into what smells to me of misery.
So pray openness in my heart, and joy in my days,
And above all, closeness to Him.

You see, I know nothing but Jesus.
( And suddenly I remember

that that's okay. )

We are in a battle.

Don't forget. Please don't forget.

You live on a small planet  where suffering is woven through all around you.

Don't forget. Please don't forget.

I can walk around filtering out the colors of light I prefer not to see.

I can leave "activism" to the "extreme people" and sacrifice to the missionaries.

Or I can recognize the radical call that it is to be Christ's. To be loved.

And live a life of compassion.

It's short,  this life.  Home's coming.

Meanwhile,   I want to show pieces of it here,

and I want to clear out that which would distract me from the ultimate Beauty.

And that which would distract me from the imperfection of the war zone in which we dwell

for a time.

There is love. There is beauty. There is Beethoven's 5th, and there are twinkling lights, and there is the sweetness of real companionship. There is rest. Thank you, dear and tender Lord, for all your artworks.

But dear ones, there is war, as well. May the beauty and the love be our weapons in the battle;

may we leave our baby-comforts  and walk out to meet those with no comfort at all.

We are loved, so loved, by our Maker and Purchaser. He came in and sat with us.

Let's go out and sit with them.  And fight for the beauty 

they don't even know they have.

Please help me stay clean, streamlined and simple. Please help me live love, and please help me know Jesus.

I'll help you too, 

if you want.

Pedra Lisa.

Up top,

at city's peak,

in a small square church

all white tile

white plaster

white stools within,

high ceilings, and windows framing

spectacular views

of the city beautiful, the city surreal,

the city extreme;

up top

in this white room

strange levels of possibility emerge .

a dream-laboratory

where smile elicits smile

and innocent questions rise from yet-innocent hearts;

a nether-room where one sees

how life on a steep city hillside

in the simplest of conditions

could be -- (can be) -- Beautiful.

sunlight through a window casting perfect faces with pale orange,

whispers passed through the same window

and a boy passes rocks in for the teacher.

clean slate,

world apart.

Jesus is there.

up top

at city's peak.

Rio.

mountains and sea and a Jesus in the distance
and a Jesus right with me -- the real one.
long, slow bus rides and a mind working in a language not its own,
a mind wrapping itself around a rhythm it's just meeting,
trying to pour into it, trying to speak out through it,
sometimes finding a way to flow,
and sometimes resisting with the stubborn outward push of a strong-willed child.

City I live in and hardly know.
It's the details
that catch me
and stick.

for: is there anything in this world
more absorbing and worth delighting in
than one child?
All these wild, precious wonderworks of art
running around on two legs.
I could get lost in the face of one.
(what is a city when there are these marvels to be known?)
In the blessed tenderness found in secret pockets,
in barely hidden pools
uniquely configured in each dear one,
like deep and beautiful networks of
lavish caverns
barely discovered
, in each little treasureperson.
is there any easier place to get lost
than in close-faced conversation with a child?
Where am I? I hardly know
except that I am in her eyes
and hearing her newly-minted mind pour out
like water and music.

Will I know this city,
understand its reasons and rhythms, patterns and purpose ?
i thought i would. But now I'm wondering
if what I'll know of it
is
her
and him
and her and her
and him
and him
and they will be
my Rio.

book.

read (please.) !

a treat

http://www.ubu.com/sound/komar.html

The above link will take you to something that made me laugh long and hard. And makes me laugh just thinking of parts of it now: The "scientifically" engineered most-wanted-song and least-wanted-song. I assume we're talking about in-America here. Just listen. All the way through. Then come back and tell me about your delight.

This seems like an odd thing to post about less than 48 hours before I leave the country. But when is it ever a bad time to spread a little happiness?

Maybe I'll get to post here while I'm in Brazil... or maybe I'll just have to stick to the email updates. If you want them, and you haven't gotten the first one, you should email me.

I'm well. This is going to be good. As all life in Him is, it will be good, truly and deeply and for the long haul.

And this one's for Bonnie: a picture from our week of joy last month. A week that will be a mental reservoir of sweetness for years to come.