effulgence and aum

much like the perfectly clear blue sky that lingered endlessly and cohesively across the sea's shoulders yesterday in the late sunlight of a warm, windy sunday afternoon, i aspire to be expansive, bright, limitless, and radiant. yet even on the most pristine of days, when the world and all its pieces are so completely awe inspiring, when my vision and my horizons seem to have so much clarity, i question whether being radiance can truly exist and thrive at all times, both in nature and in myself.

breathtaking is a word i often use to try and describe how being alive affects me. taking notice of the grandeur of things: nature, people, physical elements, emotions, awareness.

i'm doing a lot of breathtaking lately. intentionally and surprisingly. there's times in this period of transition where everything seems so clear and direct in front of me; what i need to do, who i need to be invested in, where i want to go etc. and at those very moments of pristine clarity, everything also seems so expansive, so overwhelming, so limitless that i have a hard time catching my breath.

Folding a yoga mat has become such a normal ritual to me; breathing steadily and purposefully, the muscles of my body and my mind being stretched and rejuvenated. I feel the strong deep vibrations buzzing throughout my spine and my spirit- aum-

i guess these days are filled with lots of good open space to think, to fill out job applications, to pray and meditate and ask myself thick questions about who and what i want to become, how i want to live my life, to enjoy the abundance of clear blue skies and let myself get lost in dizzying thoughts with the trust and confidence that all of those will come together in due time in a beautiful story, a beautiful unfolding journey...

under His skies,
b

home really is the heart...

"home is about love, relationship, community, and belonging, and we are all searching for home" -erwin mcmanus

i've been thinking a lot about the concept of home, the tangible reality of creating it, pursuing it, enjoying it, understanding it. we're all searching for home because we're all searching for intimacy, meaning, and belonging. we're all piling up our storehouses full of goods, talents, relationships, businesses, objects, thoughts, experiences, and dreams in hope of creating some sense of self, of security, of connectedness, when really our craving for home and this deeper burning sense of the need to be loved and to express love to others comes from our unquestionable proximity and connectedness to god.

there's this other concept i'm chewing on lately, and that is compassion. not necessarily compassion in the sense of being kind and generous and reaching out to others in need, though those actions are all aromatic fruits of a deeper seed-compassion in the sense of suffering with one another, sometimes without words or action but by practicing presence. god is known as emmanuel, or god-with-us, because he is in us, around us, desires to love us and be loved by us.

call me crazy but aren't these two notions extremely and unavoidably linked? isn't my desire for a sense of home in the midst of transition a composite of my desire for being at home with god, for being compassionate as god is compassionate and practicing a simple awareness, a presence of community based on love and relationship? i know that i am hardly representative of a minority of people who crave love, fulfilling relationships, and a place to always call home.

as i draw nearer and nearer to god through my own personal introspection, travel experiences, relationships and life lessons, i find that all the more i am swimming in his compassion, unable to escape his presence, his authority, his grandeur and his beautiful subtleties... i find the more and more that i try and set boundaries to what home is, they are equally and enigmatically struck down and rethreaded. home is not a specific place or time, not even with specific people or things, its not a memory and its not necessarily a goal...its something that exists and thrives through connectedness with other humans, through connectedness with gods spirit, nature, oneself...home is where you allow yourself to be known, to be involved, to be loved and to have compassion for and with those around you.

mcmanus also writes that 'jesus called to all who were weary and who found their souls exhausted to come to him and find rest. he is telling us that god will be for us our place called home'...

nearly every day i experience the sensation of missing being at the place i have called home for so many years. i miss my family, i miss colorado, i miss my things and my memories and all that i am physically and emotionally attached to there. yet with every day that i spend and appreciate living in san diego, i find that my home is closer to me than i have even realized. i'm able to commune with friends who are sometimes closer than family, to experience god in deep and exciting ways through people, places, and prayer. i get to be involved with movements and organizations that move me and inspire me to do good, to reach out, to grow in this world.

if anyone is serious about fulfilling that longing sense of the need for home, the need for love, the need for meaning and intimacy, he or she must realize that the kingdom of god dwells within our human hearts, that home is a result of assuming a compassionate posture before and with god, that intentional community and investing in relationships is the foundation for any fruitful root system...

home is...where the heart is...

dainty dirty hands

some author whose name unfortunately escapes me once commented that humans' big brains and dextrous hands have cause us centuries of suffering and destruction. war. politics. religions. hate. murder. rape. technology. industrialization.

somehow i can't seem to get the image of 160 shining faces looking at me from their seats in my classroom, anxiously awaiting my spoken directions and gestures as to what we would be learning for the day in english class. i think of the games i played with kids, the walls i painted for the children's home, the words i repeated persistently, all the countless gestures and movements and expressions we made with our hands to try and desperately communicate with one another when our words fell short of meaning or comprehension. i think of all the ways we touched, pointed, tickled, screamed, engineered, and planned as we spend hours with the children, teachers, fathers, pastors, mothers, and merchants of thailand. if not for our big, complicated brains, would we be able to speak or have the ingenuity of creatively connecting with one another? if not for our hands, the same no matter what size, shape, or color, would we have had a medium for telling and showing these kids our love, our personalities, our stories and theirs? suffering will always exist, for the human race is incredibly primitive, selfish, and at times far away from god.

yet goodness, joy, beauty, and communion with god is the ultimate progosis for us homosapiens, and if not for our brilliantly engineered bodies and minds, we would have very little capacity to know, to relate, to build, to create, to embrace and imagine...to be...human

"god has made everything beautiful in its time. he set eternity on the hearts of men but we cannot fathom what he has done from beginning to end. there is nothing better than to be happy and to do good while we live- to find satisfaction in our toil, that is the gift of god" -ecclesiastes 3.10

thailand. san diego. colorado. dirty smiling faces. pretty business places. new people, new ideas. ancient disciplines and modern technologies. organic communal creativity. working through emotions, ascending personal mountains, confronting social and economical crises. questions of faith and science, of love and of duty. of god and of bacteria. but having an understanding and an ability to see good in things, to practice peace, to overflow with joy in the midst of clouded horizons....that is living life to the full, is it not? that is the gift of life and the definition of this journey we're all on, is it not?

cast down your idols...and draw instead your wind chimes

we arrived at the facade of the Bandawat (the largest Buddhist temple area in Chiang Mai)and i was struck especially by the stark contrasts of man's constructed images of glistening gold, twinkling jewels, colors, bright shapes, stone relics of bird and elephant at the feet of the overly large Buddha statue. The chimes whispered so eerily in that warm silent evening, only adding to the bizarre sense that all this beauty and wealth signifying the importance and strength of Buddha was cast all to dull against the breathaking and brilliant design of god's natural dwelling place, his glorious, green, lush, unlimited landscape of forever-stretching-forests, misty-jungle-mountains, and high-stormy-skies...

though i was able to spend considerable time walking the premises, meditating in the temple rooms, breathing slowly in the sacred spaces, trying to understand and appreciate the culture and teachings of this place while also immersing myself in prayer and worship of god, surrounded by gold shimmering creatures and jewel eyed teachers, flooded my soul became with the need and the great capacity for closeness with god. i was less impressed by the bold statues, the brilliant gold and silver buildings, the colorful windows and floors, and completely taken aback by the grandeur and delicate promise evident in the most outstanding, bright rainbow that found its home softly between the storm clouds and the pure white puffs of radiance that stretched out across the sky in the background.

deep breaths as i stood in the middle of a huge, empty stone garden, listening to the windchimes dance and sing in the leaves, in the spirit of the trees, his song maybe flowing through me and all the other things...

finding the joy bird

sometimes we get lost. lost while driving. lost in physical storms. lost in the deeper, personal storms. lost while in love. feeling lost on spiritual journeys when we're really not lost at all, we just don't have a sense of where we're supposed to be going.

there are so many indicators for us simple beings, indicators for direction and guidance. i've always trusted that god has a delicately crafted plan for my life and i look to him for direction, for confidence, for hope. some people look for guidance in other forms and sometimes direction comes in the most surprising shapes and colors...that buzzing feeling deep inside of your gut spurring you on towards a decision or an adventure... or a song that continually rings right down within your chest, a song you can't ignore and can't be separated from because it is in you, it is part of you, it is you. i also think this song is god, his spirit and his energy moving within me, leading me towards the things i am naturally led to.

my best friend once told me that if i ever lost hold of my joyful spirit, my soul song, that she would 'backstroke through the muck to retrieve my joy bird'. i'm convinced that His song will never leave me, that though i will travel far, experience thick struggle and disappointment, maybe even feel disconnected from god, his song that is deep within me will always give me direction, will always give me a fresh breath and a a clear direction.

as humans relating to other humans, we are all connected, indefinitely. 'we are pieces of others. portraits painted between our brains and thymuses. we are the dirt we've eaten and the songs we've sung. we are the light of stars and darkness old beyond imagining. we are at once spontaneous fires & sacred water. we are faith and forgiveness'-Gerard Callahan

in looking for direction, for options, for encouragement, besides looking to the one who indefinitely supplies us with hope, joy and perseverance, restores our spirits and gives us a song to sing, we must look to those people around us who may feel equally lost and swirling in the midst of creation. we must pursue connectivity and unity to one another; we must see god within each other and remind each other of the melody should we ever forget or lose our place...

'create in me a clean heart, o god, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.do not cast me from your presence or take your holy spirit from me, but restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me' -psalm 51.10-

thailand: cultural explosions

i'm starting this new season of life, this portion of my personal life narrative, in media res, which in literary terminology means in the middle. i'm not quite sure what this chapter in my story is called. its somewhere in between student and adult, child and professional, listener and leader. becoming an adult means realizing and taking responsibility for the paradoxical nature of life and taking action for what moves you. having just traveled halfway across the world to spend time volunteering in Thailand, i think i am just now coming to terms with this notion, just finally arriving at some minuscule understanding of what it is that moves me, and where that movement is focused now...

i'm not sure the best way to go about recording my experiences from this trip, which is why this story will be disorganized and maybe completely illogical. but there's a delicious ambiguity to it. ...some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. my story is long underway, constantly being improvised, altered, constantly catching me off guard and teaching me in more ways than i would ever have expected...


if you think about it, culture is truly derived from a certain group of people's relationship to the land they inhabit. how they use its resources, how they survive together, how they express themselves and enjoy life in whichever manner comes naturally. at first, thailand the country and especially thai culture seemed to be something absolutely foreign to me, something that i would never quite understand or be able in any major way to take part. but after spending the last three weeks immersed in thai culture, surrounded by the most majestic, lush forests i have ever seen, befriending small, beautiful children with whom i can just get by communicating, and experiencing a surpassing degree of self reflection and inspiration, i'm getting more and more familiar with the word, culture...

thailand is all about ceremony, about respect, tradition, taking life slowly and savoring everything. my initial perceptions of this country were of a somewhat impoverished nation simply trying to survive, using food stands, markets, cell phone booths and other miscellaneous business and community centers as a means to creating and maintaining an economy. i wasn't attuned to the beauty of the culture, of the more subtle efforts at pursuing education, the arts, spirituality.

i didn't realize that these are a people who do still have some sort of relationship with the earth-their lifestyles and means of making money mostly revolve around the tending of the rice fields, the harvesting of fruit and vegetables, making fiber paper out of washed and dried elephant dung, using the plants and trees and natural resources to make housing, clothing, cookware, entertainment, hardware.

culture comes from relationships and i'm beginning to examine the idea of a one world culture, where we embrace unity rather than uniformity and begin to share with one another these various cultures, practices, understandings. its not something to differentiate humans from one another but rather to celebrate the beauty of our diverse race, our different needs and talents and habits and our creativity and dependency on the earth...