Waiting for Christmas

I want to wait for Christmas this year.

I want to celebrate, don't get me wrong. The lights are already up in my front window. The carols are playing right now. I'm not turning into some sort of scrooge here. I want to take the best the season offers, and I intend to. At the same time though, I am sitting here and thinking and feeling the need to cultivate an attitude of expectation in my heart.

I want to want something, to actively, consciously want something this Christmas that no blinky, colored lights or crooning about warm fires and cold snow can satisfy. I want to want, to wait for, the birth of Jesus. Not because it's so cute to imagine the sheep and donkeys looking at the baby in the manger. Not because it makes me feel vaguely hopeful and happy and good-willed. I want to wait. I want to expect, desire, long for, yearn, wish for Christmas because I want to remember how the whole world waited for its creator to come and save them. I want to wait for Jesus' birth.

Click, click, click

That is the sound of the pieces of my life coming together. It has been a good day. A lot of little and not so little things are snapping into place.

I'm two weeks into school. Classes are interesting and challenging. Teaching is rewarding and challenging. Living in a new place is exciting and challenging.

Something I (apparently) wrote

While looking through my old journals the other day, I found this and thought it was still interesting. For your reading pleasure. Hopefully.

"The lamplight bends in the glass and diffuses through the handprints and smudges from hundreds of coffee drinkers and not enough washings in between. The sign across the street, “Latah County Title Co” is likewise bent and framed by the light. Light only travels in straight lines, they tell me, unless there is something in the way to bend it. But when is there not something in the way, I would ask, to bend the light and change it, something to take it and twist it and spread it around and make it less mathematical and more poetic? Specks of dust make the light shimmer, and leaves spread above us turn what is pure and hard into a luminescent glow of green. Even the rising of heat from the earth and from our bodies bends the light so that it wavers like a pool of water. There is always something in the way of light to bend it, to make it something other than what it was, in appearance if not in essence. . . and I am glad.

I am glad that we get to see the light through our own human personalities. I am glad that our eyes bend the light and focus it and make it into something that we can understand. I am grateful that we are not faced day after day with the hard edged reality of light in its purest form. Pure light we can only imagine. That kind of light, I think, would not be gentle with us. I think that it would be like a spear. I think it would fill us and be everywhere at once, glorious and terrifying and inescapable. I think that it is the kind of light we long for in one sense and dread in another."

Reading old journal entries

I saw a facebook post from a friend recently asking the question, "Is there anything more depressing than reading old journal entries?" For him, seeing where he had been was hard. For me, seeing where I have come is amazing.

Last night, after a kind of homesick day, I picked up a bunch of old notebooks and started rifling through them. It was strange to see how much my heart now connected with my heart then. I was the same, but at the same time I was SO different.

A lot of what I wrote in those old journals were prayers. Reading through all of them again, I was struck by the strong theme of all those prayers. I didn't see it at the time, but now it seems so clear. Over and over, in the midst of all kinds of specific circumstances, I was praying the same prayer. "God, I don't want to be afraid."

I prayed that my relationships would not be ruled by fear of rejection and failure.
I prayed that my future decisions would not be made from a place of fear.
I prayed that my faith in Jesus would be one of confidence, not fear.
I prayed that I would be able to face suffering without anxiety or fear.

I can't claim to be without fear. I'm scared. There is a lot in my life that is unknown and unclear and out of my control and that is scary. Underneath that surface fear, though, I feel that something has changed in my soul. I may feel scared about teaching in a new place. I may feel anxious about my ability to handle the workload of the program. I may feel nervous about meeting all these new people. Underneath that fear, though, I have a new basic level of confidence and trust. God has seen me through so much already. I can trust him for this too.

This confidence is SO not my own doing. It's amazing. After all this time, God is still working on me.

Backyard wildlife

This morning, I saw a cottontail rabbit in my backyard. When my parents were here, my dad saw a woodchuck which is apparently living under my shed. Since I got here, I have put up two bird feeders--a hummingbird feeder in the back and a songbird feeder in the front. The hummingbirds have found the feeder, but I am still waiting on the songbirds. Last night I dreamed about my songbird feeder. I really want it to attract cardinals.

When I first found out I was moving here, I planned to get a cat. I don't think I am going to actually do that anymore. It is just too big of a responsibility and hassle if I want to go out of town. Watching the animals in my yard is my consolation prize.

Agendaless

I don't really have much that to say this afternoon. I haven't had any major revelations or insights since yesterday. Still, I am trying to form a habit of blogging so I am here. Here are some things I have been thinking and doing.

I went to church twice in the last 24 hours. There was a service last night and one this morning. Finding a church is hard. I don't like being the new kid. It makes me uncomfortable. It gets easy for me to start judging the churches I visit based on whether they talk to me or not, how easy it is to get involved, music, preaching, overall atmosphere, etc. . . I try to shut that kind of thinking down.

The church I went to this morning might actually be the place I end up staying. Really friendly people. Vibrant ministry. Small and intimate. My only problem is that, as far as I can tell, I am the only unmarried adult in the entire church. Should that really be a problem? I can be in community with married people, obviously. It's just that I am so new here and know so few people. I was hoping that church would be a place where I could not only find spiritual community, but find some friendships and a social life as well. Couples tend to do things with other couples. That's fine, but it does make me feel a little out of place. I'll give it some time.

What else is going on? Well, I cleaned my room and hung up a bunch of pictures yesterday. This afternoon, my roommate and I are going to the movies. Tomorrow I am going to campus to sign my I9. I lead an exciting life.

First impressions and absences making the heart grow fonder

What's this? Is she really blogging two days in a row? Indeed. Look what happens when I get away from all those distractions like my job and living in a town where I actually know people. Introspection, that's what.

Today, I just want to take a few minutes to jot down some of the things I've noticed about my new home--things I like. So here we go. In list format.

1. Trees. Trees are like weeds here. They grow without anyone's permission. They act like they own the place. The first morning in my new house I stepped out in the backyard to count the trees. Sixteen. Sixteen fully grown oaks and maples. This is a novel landscape for me.

2. Fireflies. I know it's cliche to like fireflies. They are such weird little creatures--insects who basically have a chemical reaction in their backsides that makes their hiney's glow. Weird. But a lot of fun to watch from my front porch in the dusk.

3. Ambient Bird and Insect Noise. I live in a quiet neighborhood, but it is never really silent. The quieter the cars and people get, it seems, the louder the insects and birds get. I think it's the buzz of the cicadas and the unfamiliar bird calls more than anything else that remind me that I'm not just one or two towns over from my old home. I am in a completely different environment.

4. Being Anonymous. I am an unknown quantity here. I go out, and I don't run into anyone I know. I'm not un-conflicted about this fact. There are definitely bad sides to it, which I will get to shortly, but I also really enjoy it. It feels like stepping into a clean white room. There is no personality and it may not be very comfortable or lived in, but it is clean. I haven't built up any relational mess or personal clutter here. I like that, but I know that it is a dangerous place to be at the same time. As my friend Josh wisely told me once when I was fed up with some of the relational mess back home and wanted to run away, "You take yourself wherever you go." Being in a new place may make me feel different, but it doesn't make me different. In every good and bad way, I have brought myself to my new home.

5. Meeting New People. Being with old friends makes the world seem small and safe. The past few days of meeting people in my new program have made the world seem very big and myself small. Yesterday I went out to lunch with a group of six other graduate students in my program. My department is very international. In our group of seven people, seven different countries were represented. We are in my home country, but this is not my home town, and I'm new here too. I felt foreign. It was an unsettling feeling for me. It was also unsettling to realize how rarely I have felt out of my native element like that. I felt my personal boarders expanding. I'm excited to see where these friendships go.

I suppose it is only natural that the things I notice and enjoy here make me think of the things that I rarely noticed but now miss from my previous home. I miss a lot of things from that other college town. It's not a sad kind of missing, though. It doesn't feel like bereavement. It feels like being hopeful. It feels like saying "Thank you." It feels like saying "Please."

1. Resonate Community. I miss my church family. Of course I miss the people. They are my friends and I miss them. That should be a given. But I miss more than just my friends. Resonate was my community for the past three and a half years. As my community (or a community of which I was a part), Resonate was more than the sum of its people. Resonate was something special and nothing special. Resonate was a local church--normal and amazing, intimate and transcendent. It's not the only one. It's not God's home. God is here too. God is in his church here too. I know this. If there is one thing Resonate taught me, it is that church is not optional and it's not an obligation. It is an integral part of how we are designed to know God and serve the world. God taught me this. In Resonate. God is teaching me this now. I am looking ahead. I'm praying for a new community. I trust God has a place for me here. Resonate is not the end of my ongoing relationship with the church. I still miss it, though.

2. Being a Local. Back in my other home, I knew my bus drivers. I knew the baristas at the coffee shop by my work. I waved to people on the street. I was a local. Sometimes that made me feel trapped. But it also made me feel known. I miss that.

3. My Family. I didn't live with them before. I didn't go to my parent's house that often. I could, though. Anytime I wanted to, I could blow off a few responsibilities and be there within 3 hours. It's a little harder now. I miss them. I miss being in the same time zone.

4. Dry Heat. My hair is a mess here.

5. Friends. I am starting to miss people. Before, I think I was missing familiarity. I was missing comfort. I was missing a network of human connections that had built itself around me over four years of day in and day out interaction. I still miss that part, but, now, I am starting to miss individuals too. It's missing friends that scares me most. My family is not going anywhere. I know that. I wont loose touch with them. We wont grow apart. My friends, though, at least many of them, are much more tenuous relationships, and despite all my, and their, protestations that we will keep in touch, I know that things are inevitably going to change. I'm trying to fight it and I'm trying to be okay with it. I don't want to lose these people. I pray that I don't, even if I lose the current relationships I have with them.

I didn't intend for this post to get so personal. I'm sitting in a tea and coffee shop called Saints and right now I am feeling a little overwhelmed. I have been so incredibly blessed. I'm not sure when these ramblings turned into a prayer, but they have.

Thank you. Please.

Refinishing floors and the nature of sin

I spent most of last week on my hands and knees.

After pulling up all the carpet in my house, we found some serious staining on the hardwood floors. Somebody in the 50 year history of this house had a dog. Somebody in that 50 year history did not let his or her dog out often enough. Somebody's dog peed all over the carpet. It sank through to the floors and stained and damaged the boards. There were also patterns of water damage in the traffic patterns all throughout the house. Not as dramatic of an event as the dog version, but over the 50 year history of this house, people walked in and out of the doors with wet shoes. Other people tried to clean up the wet-shoes-on-carpet-mess by steam-cleaning, but only drove the moisture deeper into the carpet, and from there into the wood floor below. It was a mess.

Anyway, as I spent the week on my hands and knees pulling out staples and sanding damaged wood and painting over the damage, I thought about that dog and about those people and I thought about the nature of sin.

The way I see it, some sin is like a dog peeing on a floor. It's an event. It's something that you probably notice. It's obvious and obviously not a good thing. Other sin is more like the traffic patterns. You can't point back to one storm or one day or one set of muddy boots. It just builds up slowly until you can see the tracks over all those areas you habitually travel.

And just like sin, whether the stains came suddenly or gradually, covering it up was not a viable answer. That's what all the people before me in this house did. They saw the mess, and instead of cleaning the floors, they replaced the carpet. They just hid it and hoped nobody would notice.

Let me tell you from personal experience (both with sin and carpet removal): covering it up does not make it go away. Before we pulled up the carpet, the house had a smell. It didn't stink outright, but I'd find myself walking through a door or kneeling down to get something and thinking "What IS that?" There was an odor of decay and mildew. As soon as we pulled up the carpet, it became obvious what it was we had been smelling, but if we hadn't looked underneath, we probably would have just kept opening windows and lighting candles and hoping that we could banish the smell when all along it was coming from under our feet.

The floors are all refinished now: truly beautiful and truly clean. I want them to be a reminder to me--covering it up doesn't get rid of it.

Bus Passenger Portraits -- 2, yellow ribbon

You wouldn't expect it. Or at least I wouldn't expect it. Not of her. She climbs on the bus every morning. Her hair is always curled. Her face is always powdered. Her eyebrows are always plucked and penciled into perfect arcs. Her bleached teeth sparkle.

I wouldn't expect it, not of her, because I am prejudiced against sweatpants and uggs and girls who talk about how trashed they got on the weekend. I wouldn't expect it of her because I too often assume that a polished exterior is a shallow exterior and that a shallow exterior hides a shallow interior.

As we pull into the transfer station, she puts in her pink headphones and opens her designer purse. Her fingers disappear inside as she shifts wallet and keys, searching for something in the bottom. The man next to her looks and smiles. She has found it and pulls it out, disentangling it from the loose threads of the liner.

She holds him between her fingertips. He reclines on his plastic stomach, propped up on his plastic elbows, holding a green plastic rifle in his green plastic hands.
She is singing along to the music now, her lined and glossed lips forming the words silently. Her shadowed eyelids slide half closed and her blue eyes peer past the mascarad curtain of her eyelashes to look out the grimy bus window.

I watched her lips forming the silent words and turning her fingers turning her soldier over and over in her hands like a nun fingering the beads of a rosary.

I wouldn't heave expected it, not of her, but I knew that in her mind and in her heart she was praying for him, whoever he is.

I prayed too.

Bus Passenger Portraits -- 1, the drummer

I get a lot of enjoyment out of watching people on the bus. This is something I wrote last year about that people watching. My goal for the next week is to really see at least one person on the bus every day and then write about them here.

The Drummer

His face is a picture of concentration, eyes closed tight, thin straight nose, lips moving so slightly together and apart with the down beat. He slaps and pounds his knees and the seat next to him, alternating between palm and finger tips with his left hand. A leather brace impedes his right hand, but still he pounds away, wrist and forearm and palm rendered into one unmoving block.

I am watching from my seat in the back, but he doesn’t notice with his eyes closed tight and his head swinging and bouncing from his curved down neck. He doesn’t notice, so I watch without trying to hide my watching and I am fascinated. I am fascinated with the dirty grey stocking cap pulled down to his eyebrows. I am fascinated with the stains on the fingers of his brace, how they shine with oil and are bent back from the relentless pounding of hand on leg and seat edge. I am fascinated with the concentration and oblivion and joy.

Without opening his eyes, he pulls the cord. The bus’s breaks squeal as it stops. His eyes open and he stands up on the one and swings around the pole and out the door. As the bus pulls away, I watch him disappear behind us, and it is two more stops before I realize that my feet are still tapping to his rhythm.

college boy speak (the fraternity dialect)

In my Spanish class today, I had an interesting linguistic experience, one that didn't involve Spanish actually. Our teacher, Ambar (who I have a suspicion is younger than me) had us get into groups to review before our midterm. I ended up with three young men. Three young men who are all part of the greek system and speak in abbreviations and inside jokes and nonstandard uses of expletives. It was interesting to be a part of it. They were interesting characters. One of them, a freshman, is blonde and almost pretty. He bears a strong resemblance to Neill Patrick Harris, and has a way of looking at you just a second longer than you would expect when you say something to him. But he is not staring blankly. Just thinking.

Fraternity boy 2 has taken Spanish before, "never studied, and "can talk about anything" in Spanish as long as he is not asked to spell it. He likes to casually show off his Spanish knowledge.

Brother 3 looks like Owen Wilson and wears the biggest cubic zirconia studs that I have ever seen in both of his ears. He talks slowly.

Anyway, I sat there in between Spanish exercises and wondered what they were talking about. It was interesting.

Oh, and my ring turned my finger green today. I always thought people were exaggerating when the said that fake jewelry did that. I stand corrected.

Getting back into it. . .

So, I have this blog. I created it about two years ago. I never use it. That is about to change.

Up to this point I have had a pretty bad case of blogging anxiety. That is what happens when the people who read your blog are all English majors or intelligent and thoughtful people you are eager to impress with your own intelligence and thoughtfulness. Too much pressure. People who blog are supposed to have an adventurous life or a philosophical turn of mind or some sort of unique hobby that becomes the subject of their musings.

I'm not sure that I have any of these.

What I do have, however, is a looming life and location change. What I have is a group of friends with whom I desperately want to keep in touch. What I have (or sometimes have or hope to have) is a powers of observation and a sense of wonder and a desire to grow into a more thoughtful and self reflective person. As the result of some combination of history and personality and the speed at which my brain and heart process things, all of these traits become more pronounced in me when I am writing than when I am just thinking or even talking to people. So that is why I am, yet again, starting up this blog.

That, and the fact that I really like to talk about myself.

So anyway, if you are reading this, it is probably because I have asked you to. Hello. Don't expect anything too exciting or insightful here because if I set that before myself as a goal I will never update this thing. And I want to make this attempt at self-expression, thinking through typing, or whatever all this is, stick.

So here we go. Blog numero uno.

It is Saturday. There is tea next to me, music in my headphones, and a student sitting at a table near the door of this oh-so-collegiate coffee shop. We are in each others' lines of sight and every once in a while, we glance up at the same time and make eye contact before looking at the edges of our tables or our computer screens like they are what we intended to study all along.

Saturdays are my day off--24 hours in which I refuse to do anything related to my classes. I never (ever, ever) thought I would become the sort of person who had to discipline herself to take a day off, but such is my life these days.

But that is not what I want to talk about right now. What I want to talk about right now is moss.

Yeah, that's right. Moss.

I have lived here for 4 years now, but I can't ever remember noticing the moss until just a few weeks ago. If you live here, you should start to keep your eyes open for it because there is a lot of it and it is actually a kind of interesting substance.

I walked to this oh-so-collegiate coffee shop this morning and upon leaving my door realized that my ipod had been running on shuffle all night long and was dead. So, Regina Spektorless, I set out with the sounds of cars and my own footsteps.

It's kind of amazing how much space in my head was cleared out by the lack of sound. I felt like I was thinking and noticing more than my usual ear-budded self. (Which is ironic because the very Regina Spektor album I was planning on listening to has a line "You keep in your headphones to drown out your mind. Ironic.) And as I was walking along, I started noticing the moss again. It was growing in individual little green mounds on the edges of the curbs and, even though I can only assume it was all the same species, varied in shades from a deep, dirty olive to glow-stick green. A little farther along I started noticing it on the trees as well -- a bright green spray of it flocking the the northwest side of the trees.

So anyway, I walked downtown and thought about moss. I thought:

• It reminds me of coral growing on a shipwreck.
• What does it actually eat, growing on concrete like that, and how does it hold on?
• What would it look like to decorate an apartment in those moss colors? Would it be cool or overwhelming.
• God created moss--thought it up and figured it all out.
  
• Once you notice something once (in this case, moss) you start to notice it all the time.

So that is what I have to say today. Moss. And with this total non-sequiter, you all have a pretty good idea of what to expect from my future posts. So if you like reading about moss, please bookmark this page and come back often. Who knows, you might be treated to a discussion on watching paint dry next time.