The thought for the day:
“God’s hands are more skilled than a great surgeon;
they are more tender than a caring nurse;
they are more precise than a fine diamond cutter;
they are more creative than the finest artist or designer.”
Blue skies, a few clouds.
It’s going to be a great day.
St. Mary’s Girlzone event “The One About Sex and Relationships” (looking at dating, singleness, dealing with abuse, sex for marrieds, body image, resolving conflict and lots more) could not have come at a better time. I was really psyched to meet more women my age and then fly by the seat of my jeans and go out for Tango lessons with a friend who also attended!
It was super refreshing to have women stand before me who were feminine, strong, smart, sensitive and interesting (my last week’s conference had a woman actually say, “I can’t believe men let us do the budgets”… not funny, even if it’s part of the comedy routine!). Plus we had amazing cupcakes and a curry! (for only £10 as opposed to £105… oh crap! the stupid blonde routine from the first conference REALLY is a hoax!!)
Some of the thoughts that aren’t necessarily new but great to hear again:
-Self loathing is limiting the impact we have upon the world
-Every time we repeat the same mistakes we’re just coming back to lessons we have not yet mastered
-One guy in a survey said he was looking for a smile that “makes [him] feel both dangerous and safe at the same time”
-A woman who was challenged to give a guy a chance, to take interest in his interests and act as if she loved him… 40 years later she recalls loving dangerously… and poses the question, what might your love bring out in someone? And how would you know unless you give him a chance?
-Always respect a person in a relationship so they walk away with a positive experience and aren’t harmed for the next person.
-Are we living as if we’re loved?
Not to get too philosophical, but as I was led backwards in circles around a room, I couldn’t help but think how relevant it all was… even more than just the leading and following perspective… for me, more, the relaxing and going with the flow!
…is running into a friend I met nine years ago at Rice University in Texas here in London! When I turned my head to see who else was in church!!
What an amazing blessing and huge encouragement to see S.
12th January: Day 91 of doing one thing as if I was living that day as my last.
For some reason I still think in semesters. There’s fall and spring and then summer (break!…not). And each time I’ve moved it’s been during summer (the worst time to make friends), acclimation is in the fall (a bit depressing as everything around you begins to die off, just like the initial excitement of your new location), and then with the spring semester comes the settling in, integration, and beginning of the new life.
I left London in December, with a distinct feeling that after the break, would come the breakthrough.
And it’s beginning.
Like on the night of 12th January.
Introduced by a friend of a friend to another friend, I was in a bar in Clapham talking to a girl who had the same vision as I have. We talked about art and faith and creative potential… of collaboration, support, prayer… of festivals, workshops, new things. She had the passion, but little experience with this sort of thing. Sitting there I was amazed to think of all of the intersections of art and faith I’d experienced before: in Greenwich, Connecticut, Houston, Texas, New York, London… and whilst I don’t have the vision of recreating these places, I’m certain that I’m here to encourage A’s art prayer group, share some of the things I have seen, and simply be here, to be used as needed.
I’m awed and humbled to see the pieces start to fall in place…
4th January: Day 83 of doing one thing as if I was living that day as my last.
I had made the big move for more than just bringing home the British bacon – or rashers as they call it.
Instead, I thought it was about art, faith, community, connections. I wasn’t sure quite what that meant. But I was here. And open to it.
But I felt like I was hitting my head against a wall in the fall. The community I thought I was to volunteer for didn’t need me. Had I just imagined this sense of purpose? Was all the passion to just dissipate? It would be so easy to just drop it. Get busy. And be safe.
But then the connections started. The art church in Knightsbridge. The friend of a friend that was starting an arts prayer group in Clapham.
One contact at a time.
And today, a service for the arts.
Not sure what’s happening. But whatever it is, it is happening.
28th December: Day 76 of doing one thing as if I was living that day as my last.
This is one of my very favourite places in the world. On the rare occasion that I’m in Connecticut on a Sunday, you’ll find me here. So there I was, feeling extraordinarily lucky to finally be sharing this with M… even if Ian wasn’t giving the talk. We were not disappointed though, not with Rwandan dancers performing, and even more, not with their leader’s story of having his family killed by his best friend in the genocide and his journey of radical forgiveness.
And of course, it was amazing as always to be surrounded by worship lead by Rob Mathes … who was just the musical director for the Obama pre-inaugural concert!!! (performing with Bono, Bruce Springsteen, Garth Brooks, Beyonce, Mary J. Blige, Sheryl Crow, Renee Fleming, Josh Groban, John Legend, Usher, Shakira, James Taylor, Stevie Wonder, John Mellencamp, Jennifer Nettles, Heather Headly, and others).
I love London, but I do wish I could teleport there for every Sunday morning!
25th December: Day 73 of doing one thing as if I was living that day as my last.
I didn’t expect to receive so things this Christmas…. and didn’t expect that the biggest thing I’d come away with is the deep, deep sense of how amazingly blessed I am. It feels like it would cheapen it to elaborate, but I also know from a non-religious perspective it may seem a bit “glory, glory, hallelujah,” gag me with a Popsicle stick to hear the b-word. So let me put it in friendlier terms… it was a bit like mourning a really, really big loss and all of a sudden, I am avalanched. Totally provided for. My vision is recovered and not only do I see things I didn’t see before, but I realise that things have been placed in my hands. Not the same things, but things that make me know that I am still very much loved. And like it will be okay…
Even better than okay was the Christmas dinner that completely spoiled my palate:
Chateaubriand with wine reduction and shallots
Tomatoes baked with Parmesan
Garlic mashed potatoes and gravy
Asparagus tips
Snow peas
Carrots
24th December: Day 72 of doing one thing as if I was living that day as my last.
It makes me cry each year, without fail.
Silent night. for me a
Holy night.
All is calm. scarily calm. amazingly silent in the breathing spaces. just voices. and quiet.
All is bright when i stare into the flame of the candle that’s dripping on my hand and wish i could bottle it. the calm. the light. the sacred feeling.
Yet I still can’t quite put a finger on why it’s so special to me. Why I wouldn’t rather be anywhere else but there on Christmas Eve.
Because it gives me the same feeling whatever continent I’m on?
Or because of the holiday build up? And that I know this will deliver exactly what I expect?
Or maybe because my voice joins the others to become part of a bigger song?
Or more recently, that the wounds are still fresh.
And that here, I am accepted.
16th November: Day 35 of doing one thing as if I was living that day as my last.
As Sunday approached, I kept thinking about the story in Matthew. It’s one about a woman who poured very expensive perfume upon Jesus’s feet. I had heard numerous sermons about it over the years. The bit that stayed with me were that this perfume had cost the woman a year’s salary. The sermons usually left me feeling challenged, but a bit overwhelmed, really.
This weekend I began to see it in another light, though. I went back to another story – the one about the master that gave out talents to his servents, left for holiday and found varying results upon return. The bottom line was that a few servants had big returns on their investment, but one had been a little hoarder. In 2002, I heard a different take than the usual invest your gifts and money moral. Alternatively, I was challenged to consider if perhaps these talents represent suffering. Hard earned, they have so much more potential for reaching the silver lining, than if they are swept under the basement rug.
The little aha came just as I prepared for my baptism. I was to speak beforehand about my story. It would have been so easy to give a generic plotline. But I had fluid on the brain, luckily only in a metaphoric sense, and I kept thinking about pouring myself out. Sharing what I did have, what was more costly than money, the narrative of my year in Brussels.
And so I stood before two hundred people and tipped the pitcher. I emptied my heart of my story. I felt the superlative of vulnerable. But it captured the significance of plunging beneath the water. And whilst I hesitate to say it, I will anyway. My outpouring was met. I saw tears in eyes in the eyes of my friends. I had twenty-five people come and talk to me afterwards. And I felt loved. Supported. At peace. That I had done what I was supposed to do. And that somewhere in the middle of all of this, there was a very shiny dash of silver.
9th November: Day 28 of doing one thing as if I was living that day as my last.
There are times when I am still and the moment settles upon me. I remain motionless, feeling it wrap around me like a cool breeze on a stifling summer day. Awe and wonder stir deep within me.
Sunday was one of these sticky summer days. Back from the social justice conference, I sliced open the tape of the care package that arrived with the Customs contents Sharpie-ed out and was speechless. It was from one of my amazing adopted families.
In September I received a bubbly email from K that asked three very important questions: “How’s London? Any new menfolk in your life? So today I have my first confirmation class and I have to choose someone to sponsor me when I get confirmed. And I would love to have you do it!!” For some, this may have been a standard question. For me, these three questions, especially the last, made my day. It was all in the history – all of the obstacles before K was born, all of the years of art projects and scavenger hunts as K’s first babysitter, their move to Florida, the move back, the way they nursed me back to health last year after being in the hospital…. and that I was actually on the radar of this fourteen year-old who clearly should be tc for a twenty-six year-old who no longer speaks the language of whatever has now replaced OMG. I had joked with her that she was my adopted little sis, but felt like it’d be too high on the cheese factor to tell her what I really wanted to say: that when all goes pear-shaped and her parents were just hopeless at understanding or she didn’t want them to know, never mind understand, that she could always call me… thus making the sponsor question a really flattering and exciting one…. Even if I couldn’t actually make it to the ceremony itself due to my whirlwind of an event.
Right, back to what’s beneath all of the peanuts… pictures, a postcard from K, a framed photos and a gift…. for me!? And not just any gift. A gift that poked out in robin’s egg blue wrapping from underneath the styrofoam. Inside a necklace… from Tiffany’s!!! But it was the card that did it. M recounted when she met me when I was eight years old, how she has seen my faith grow over time and will share it with K, and concluded with “We are all so lucky to have you in our lives, but it is in my own personal memory of that little earnest girl that I will always treasure.”
This was not the only surprise gift of the weekend. Sunday morning before departing from A’s, she gave me a lovely, lovely green leather journal (fair trade, of course, from Saturday), after hearing me talking about how much I love writing.
What a Sunday… filled with awe and wonder. I kept thinking back to a thank you note my friend R wrote me in high school. He said, “You did all of that for little old me!?”
So, to borrow the words of another dear old friend, thank you, M, K and A for doing all of that for little old me.
AND ONE LAST THING: A big happy birthday to K, now 15!!!
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