in haiti

i'm in haiti this week with some friends of mine. wanna read a page from my journal?

4/16/09
les cayes, haiti

Usually when I write I'm at my computer. The words come and go and when I don't care for the shape or flow it's easy to change it. I backspace or delete. I cut and paste. All of these adjustments leave no trace of themselves, and I'm left with a thought that is clean and satisfying.

In Haiti, I go back to pen and paper and this is fitting. Corrections require something more radical, and a kind of scar is left behind. Once the ink touches the fibers of the paper I can only change my mind by scratching out what's already there. It's a violent act in a way, at least for a writer. And sometimes what I'm left with is a confused and rambling tangle of thoughts.

Everything is like this in Haiti. The simplest act can demand extraordinary energy and effort. Here, we say, "de gaje" on a regular basis. It means essentially that you just make do with what you have. Most of the time you don't have much so you leave behind a tangle of your good intentions, scars of what you wanted to say or do, scribbling hopes. The landscape is covered with the ink of things scratched out and rewritten over and over.

So I'm writing these words here in a journal and giving it to God. He knows what I wanted to say.

weeks four and five and then some...

it's been a while and some of you might be wondering where the last couple of weeks worth of poems are. well, you can go here and you'll be able to download an animate booklet which not only has the last couple of poems, but also contains five weeks worth of individual and group exercises in imaginative prayer all written by yours truly. if you want to follow the sermon series that goes along with this, it will start the weekend after easter. go here and you'll have the choice of downloading audio or video files. and it's all for free. how's that for making it up to you? don't ever say i never gave you anything.

peace...

week three (finally)

your feet

lately i’ve been thinking of
your feet-

tender little baby toes
in the filth of an old manger-

dusty, calloused feet
walking all those lonely miles
in the punishing heat of the desert sun-
to bring good news-

your feet that skimmed the surface of
the sea,
taming dark choppy waves
to calm my fears-

feet pointed towards jerusalem
anointed with tears and oil-
prepared for the grave-
still taking each step with that knowledge-

and those same feet
with spikes driven through them
holding up your body to take the weight off your beautiful, pain-filled hands-

all for me.

i love your feet.

call me gramma (meet lincoln david churchill)

week two

words

i’ve been trying to reach you
climbing a tower of words.

babbling words-
dead ink-

my heart
cannot speak this language,
so it smiles politely and nods its head,
and pretends to understand.

but your words are not like this.

you opened your mouth
and creation said “yes”
and appeared from nothing-
day and night
oceans and land
and me-
all this with a few words.

i want to hear you this way.

i want to hear you in
flesh and blood
and blinding colors
and music that carries me to you.

can you carve your meaning
into my heart?

will you say to the motionless ink
“rise and walk”?

poetry anyone?

Sarah over at a warrior princess and a set of wings wrote the best poem the other day, and it inspired me to post some of mine. I've been writing a workbook for our church that will be used for a five week series on imaginative prayer. Cool project. And for each week, I wrote a poem to accompany the exercises. The poems are all prayers. So, for your reading enjoyment (and hopefully also for your spiritual nourishment), I give you the poem for week one:

waiting

i am here.

i’m in this place, waiting for you.

i’m waiting like those wise men,
following a star like a fool.

i’m waiting like jonah
covered in the slime and scale of the sea,
deep in the belly of darkness
hoping for a rescue.

i’m waiting like your mother
pregnant with fear and love.

i’m waiting like our first parents
in the stillness of the garden
listening for your footsteps.

i’m waiting like you did
on the day I was born and
you spoke my name into the world
and said I was good.

what a surprise to find you
already here
so quiet-
waiting for me.

a letter to anyone who cares

Hello Friends,

I've received many emails and comments asking how I am and letting me know that you miss this blog. I appreciate that so much. I thought I would try to update you all, and let you know what I'm thinking. Hopefully, as I write this, my thoughts will be more clear to me as well.

First of all, I want to acknowledge how amazing it has been to get to know so many of you. I think that I began this blog as a way to discipline myself to write and organize my thoughts, and the relationships that developed completely surprised me. I always was a little mystified by people who seemed to have meaningful internet relationships. I guess I was kind of skeptical that such a thing was even possible. I stand corrected.

Related to the relationships I've developed, I also have loved reading all of your blogs. You may think that I haven't been reading any of your thoughts since I fell silent, but that's just not true. I haven't been vocally present, but I have continued to stop by regularly, and I continue to be blown away by what you have to say. It has shaped me in ways that I don't think I can even fully appreciate myself. When I think about the direction my life has taken, I realize that I owe you all a huge debt of gratitude.

Another really valuable thing that came out of this blog was that it provided an outlet for some of the things that were floating around in my brain. I learned a lot about myself. I don't think I can adequately express how important that has been for me. I've written more in the last year than I have for probably the last ten years. I'm so grateful for that.

So, why have I stopped writing here?

Partially, the answer is that I don't really know. Have you ever just known that you had to do something (or not do something) but you couldn't really articulate the reason? There's a significant slice of this whole thing that I don't quite understand...I just know.

But there are some pieces of this that I think I understand pretty well.

First of all, I think I was a little too attached to the attention I got from this blog. I would post a blog, and the next several days would be an obsessive stake-out at my computer waiting for comments. I felt a little like I was in junior high waiting for a call from a boy. I'm kind of embarrassed to admit this, but I'm hoping some of you are out there nodding your head in recognition. Anyway, this was just not good for me.

Another negative thing that developed for me is that I felt more and more pressure to maintain all of the virtual relationships, to the point where I noticed that it was interfering with my ability to really be present to the people around me. I was always a little distracted and anxious. It was taking more and more of my time and attention. This is not anyone's fault, and it's not anything that anyone was demanding of me. It's just a personal vulnerability in me. (I tend not to notice my limits until I've crossed them...or obliterated them.)

I guess the last thing I'll mention is that I was feeling a very strong need to organize my life in radically different ways. I was feeling a need for much more space and quiet. I needed to find ways to descend into my inner life and really listen with patience to what God seemed to be up to. I needed to attend to the structure of my days and nights and notice what that structure was letting in and what it was keeping out. I'm still very much in process with this. It's been very, very good. And it's given birth to all kinds of challenges and possibilities.

There's more to this, but I can't possibly make all of it understandable here. There have been health issues and enormous family shifts and changes in my job and my significant relationships, all difficult to put into categories of "good" or "bad", so I'm resisting the urge to characterize things that way. It's life. It's what is here in this moment right in front of me. I'm trying to show up for it in ways that move me forward.

I hope that helps anyone out there who is wondering about what happened here or who is worrying about me. I'm still here. Thank you for caring.

soft bodies/hard world

In the last several months many people I love have been hospitalized from various traumas or illnesses or other kinds of even darker suffering. A couple of weeks ago my little brother was playing an innocent little game of softball and ended up with a fractured skull and a broken face. Soft-ball. The irony of that didn't slip by me. The last week has been especially hard.

We are soft bodies moving through a world of jagged edges...infants in a nursery lined with broken glass. One little misstep, and you're falling off a cliff onto the rocks below. I've talked about this before. It's nothing new for me to be thinking about these things. But it's feeling heavy to me again, so I'm sharing it here. So many things around me are painful these days, and I'm tired.

It's not only the physical suffering that is getting to me. I'm in the middle of some intense interpersonal conflict, and I think that exacts a heavier toll than other kinds of crises. Sometimes I think my emotional skin has worn thin over time. It's like an old woman's transparent, paper-mache skin tearing open with every bump, fine veins clearly visible and easily exposed.

I know I've been especially absent these last many months. I hope all of you understand. I've even considered deleting this blog...vaporizing like a puff of smoke. I'm struggling to be present in ways that make sense, and I'm unclear about the role that blogging should play in my life. I know that I have benefited in surprising ways from the kindness of so many of you whom I've never even met. But I've felt unable to keep up with the interactions, and that's created a new responsibility (and guilt) that I don't know how to handle. It's also created a new level of "public-ness" that is a little disorienting to me.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but I felt like it was time to say some of it out loud. I'm launching a new initiative in my ministry tonight (Monday). I wonder if I'm ready. I'm afraid of what it will require of me. I'm excited about the possibilities. I'm resisting the urge to bury myself under my covers and never come out. I'm trusting that God is real. I'm reaching out to him.

tenacity

Well, I've had a great couple of weeks away from work and other concerns. I just returned from a week on the north shore of Lake Superior with no internet access. It's always interesting to notice what a slave I have become to electronic devices. We didn't even have cell phone reception most of the time. For the first couple of days I was pretty anxious about that, but after a while I settled into the freedom of becoming "untethered".

I spent a lot of time hiking through thick forests and down into deep gorges where rivers have carved out a path to the shores of Superior. The good news is, my camera was repaired in time to take along, so I have images to share with you. For now I just want to give you a peek into something that has always fascinated me. Whenever you bump up against nature in an intentional way, you discover this amazing tenacity. Things grow in the most unlikely of places. Lichens clinging to bare rock and tender little wild flowers springing up out of the face of a sheer cliff. These images are comforting to me somehow. They give me courage.

So here are some of my favorite images along these lines. I'll share more later...

my bad

i can't believe it's been so long since i've posted. sorry about that. i've been somewhat overwhelmed with some new things going on with my job (all good) and summers are normally busier anyway. plus i've been dealing with some health issues, but i'm doing better now. (am i excused yet?) thanks to all of you who have been inquiring after me. especially tammy. (and for the record tammy, aliens look just like you and me and are quite kind, contrary to their undeserved reputation.)

i'm going to be away for the next week to a place that is so beautiful it stops my heart. unfortunately, my camera took a nose-dive and is currently being repaired. i'll see what i can do to get you some images. love to all of you! i'll try to catch up on the enormously overwhelming backlog of blogs i have neglected...

things i'm learning (haiti, part three)

providence ministries blog entry from port au prince, haiti:

October 26, 2007

When you enter the supply room of the Missionaries of Charity, it’s easy to miss the little things. There’s a table pushed against a wall with metal trays of random supplies including bandages, alcohol swabs, and half-used vials of IV meds. There are notebooks and ledgers containing each child’s name and treatments, xrays stuffed in files, and a clear glass paperweight. Hidden away behind all this chaos is a little index card box. The box is decorated with magic marker: a tiny rainbow and delicate script carefully spelling out, “Things I’m Learning.” I wanted so badly to open this box and discover the secrets written there. But in a way I have my own box, and I’m adding treasures to it each moment I’m here. Here is what is written on my heart today:

Jen and I spent about an hour and a half with a little girl this afternoon. Her name is Jennifer. Sister Rose Martha asked Jen to start an IV because she was dehydrated and listless. Jennifer is 9 months old and weighs 13 ½ pounds. Her lips are covered with weeping wounds from malnutrition and her skin hangs on her tiny frame in loose folds. Jen tried to find a suitable vein as I held her, but each time the needle pierced her skin the vein would disappear like smoke. We tried so many sites with the same frustrating results. And all this time Jennifer’s eyes burned right through me. She lay almost perfectly still.

This is Haiti.

You see a problem and the solution seems deceptively simple. You come to offer help and find that the solutions pour through your hands like water. I’m thinking of Jen and so many others in Haiti who fight so hard to make a difference. I’m playing the picture of days upon days with no discernible movement forward. I can’t describe the sensation of falling, of slowly sinking into something dark and terrible. But something pulls you on because the alternative is unthinkable. If you do nothing there is no hope at all. So you keep searching for the vein.

We never did get an IV started for Jennifer. Jen decided to insert a nasogastric tube to get her the fluids and meds she needed. Slowly, her little body animated. We handed her to the room mother, gathered our things, and left for the day. It would have to be enough. This is what I learned today. This is what is written on my heart.

little sister haiti (haiti, part two)

my little sister is looking at me with those eyes
she is poking at me
annoying me
she is asking a million questions i can’t answer

(she is good to me that way)

my little sister is holding up her pain
like a gift
asking me to unwrap it carefully
without tearing the paper

she is leading me to places i would rather not go
tugging at my arm
gently

i try to ditch her to play with my friends
i want to shake free of her
but she always finds me
and my father asks me to take her along with me everywhere
can you believe that?

(he is good to me that way)

my little sister is teaching me
in little whispers
if i’ll listen

my little sister is not well
her fever is rising
her skin is hot and dry
her bones are showing

still, she is teaching me
in her beautiful little whispers
if i’ll listen

haiti, part one

Some of you know that I serve on the board of a non-profit ministry. A group of my friends helped establish a small children's home in southern Haiti, and that has become a really important part of my life. It's really just a Haitian family that agreed to take in some girls and raise them as their own. From there we also partner with other ministries and do some education work. It's completely Haitian-run on the Haiti side and we just build on those relationships and provide needed resources. It's called Providence Ministries, and if you're interested you can read more about us here.

Anyway, I thought that since I seem to be short on time and words, I would reprint some essays about my time in Haiti that I've written over the years. Today will be the first of a yet-to-be-determined number of installments. (You know how I hate to hem myself in.)

Haiti Behind My Eyes

This happens all the time. I might be answering emails or working on a lesson or even just walking from one room to the next and suddenly I'm in Haiti. I feel the rush of heat that smothers me and anchors me to the world. I hear the singing cadence of Kreyol, only comprehending a small portion of what I'm hearing, but enjoying the music anyway. I see Francianne's face, a curious map of grief and gratitude and longing and joy. It lasts for only a moment and then I return to where I am. I like it when I return, but I'm never really comfortable. I haven't really been comfortable since I first set foot in Haiti over ten years ago.

I both love and hate Haiti. I have seen some of the most awe-inspiring beauty and some of the most soul-killing ugliness there. Most of the time this beauty and ugliness are woven together like conjoined twins. It breaks your heart wide open and prompts the kinds of questions that you will wrestle with for the rest of your life. The biggest question is this: how is it that I was born in this plush little cradle in the world and Francianne and everyone else I love there were born in the fear-drenched regions of poverty and despair?

I don't think there's an answer to this question, but it binds me to Haiti in peculiar ways. I drift there in my mind periodically to wrestle with demons and to remember how lucky I am.

meme schmeme revisited

I've been tagged for two separate memes so i'll start with the more involved one. Tess tagged me a while ago with this little beauty:

1. The rules of the game get posted at the beginning.
2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.
3. At the end of the post, the player then tags five people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read the player’s blog.
4. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

As most of you know by now, I'm a notorious rule-breaker, so here's the deal...I'll answer the questions, but I won't necessarily follow all the tagging rules. Gol Tess, you're not the boss of me! ;)

1. What were you doing five years ago?

Um, pretty much the same thing I'm doing right now.

2. What are five snacks you enjoy?

This is a tricky question with all of the digestive issues I've had lately...but here are my answers assuming I'm able to digest these things without repercussions:

• almonds
• ice cream
• anything chocolate
• kettle chips
• milk duds
  

3. What are five things on your to-do list today?

I'm posting this at night, so here's my to-do list for tomorrow:

• get out of bed
• prepare for an information session for next year's counseling class
• catch up on work that has been piling up since I got sick
  
• show up for several counseling sessions
• clean my livingroom/sick-room

4. What five things would you do if you were a billionaire?

I suspect that becoming a billionaire would destroy my life, but here's my best guesses at actions that might keep me out of hell:

• give a lot of it away to several non-profits like this one
• develop ministry-oriented communities like the one Danny is starting
• develop and support green initiatives
• live as simply as possible
• read a lot

5. What are five of your bad habits?

Only five?

• procrastinating
• buying more books when I have stacks that I haven't read yet
• withdrawing when I'm overwhelmed
• eating things that have a good chance of making me miserable
• spending way too much time on-line

6. What are five places where you have lived?

• I've lived in Minnesota my whole life, but I've moved about eight million times. I've lived in the worst neighborhoods and some very respectable neighborhoods, and if you want to know the truth, I prefer diverse, edgier areas. That's where I grew up, and that's where I feel most at home.
  

7. What are five jobs you've had?

• nurse
• pastor/counselor
• business forms designer (before computers did this)
• nanny
• program instructor for handicapped adults

8. What five people do you want to tag?

Oh, I think you know who you are. Actually, whoever feels moved by this meme can consider themselves tagged.

I was tagged for a second meme by several people. James, Tammy and Nate asked me to list six random things about myself. Here goes...

• I started smoking in the first grade. My babysitter taught me how. Of course, when you're in the first grade, you only smoke other people's butts or cigarettes that you manage to steal here and there, so I guess I also started to steal in the first grade.
• My uncle was a member of the hell's outcasts motorcycle gang, so periodically during my formative years, we had several motorcycle thugs living with us. They were the gentlest people I ever knew, and were always willing to share their cigarettes.
• I had a color-blind art teacher in high school.
  
• I have two cocker spaniels who sometimes make my life a misery and other times make me deliriously happy.
• My husband's eighty-five year old mother lives with us. She still drives and has more of a social life than I do.
• As a part of my role on the board of a small non-profit ministry, I have been to Haiti more times than I can count. On the first of these trips, the house I was staying in burned to the ground. It changed my life.

So there you go. How's that for random? And anyone reading this who is so inclined can consider yourself tagged.

pain math

i'm seriously no good at math, but i couldn't prove that to you by showing you my transcripts. i aced every class i ever took. in fact, i took a statistics class in college back in the days when you had to do all those problems manually and it would take two pages to solve one problem (yes, that was an "i'm old" reference), and even though i was terrified going into it i ended up helping other students. it always struck me as miraculous that i would come up with the right answer after all of those mathematic gymnastics. the problem is that if you tested me a month after the class ended i would flunk the test i previously breezed through. numbers don't seem to stay in my head. even simple things like the multiplication tables can't seem to stay put. i've memorized them about eight million times and they just don't stick.

that's what i feel like when it comes to pain. i've been in a lot of pain recently, and i guess you could say that i've experienced a lot of pain my whole life. (no worries, i'm not seriously ill.) if it's true that pain teaches you things (and i believe that's true) then i should be a pain genius, but i'm not. the lessons slip away so quickly and very soon after the pain subsides i forget what i've learned. so here's my attempt at capturing what i've learned from this latest run-in with my old teacher...my latest pain exam. i'd better write it down before it pours out of me like water.

1. i am finite. probably all of you learned that a long time ago, but i pretty much live my life as though this was negotiable. i have limits, and i ignore them at my own peril.
2. i need other people. it's hard for me to ask for help, but then pain comes along and demands that i live my life in the context of closely woven relationships. weird. but very, very good.
3. the world doesn't really need me. please don't argue with me on this one...it will only sustain my poisonous illusions. the world plugged along just fine while i was sick, and it would have plugged along just fine even if i didn't recover and could never again do any of the things i'm doing now.
   
4. my value doesn't have anything to do with my activity. i can't explain how pain teaches me this...maybe it's just that it stops me long enough to realize that i am valued apart from my contributions. it's easy for me to forget about that.
5. there is something more real than pain. when i am helplessly at the end of myself, i always bump up against something larger than me. it's very similar to what happens when i go on my silent retreats, only much less comfortable. somehow, God shows up.

so there it is, the algebra of my pain. i'm sure i'll slip into my normal amnesia soon enough. but the people around me will probably keep reminding me in that annoying way they do. and if they forget too, pain is always willing to lend a hand and bring me through my multiplication tables once again.

i just realized that i never updated you on how i'm doing...i was discharged from the hospital on tuesday and i'm feeling much better. i'll return to work on monday. thanks for the prayers and kind words. love to all of you...