Revelations

This week's been a bit off, and since Tuesday I've been contemplating throwing in the towel. It's that feeling that I'm holding up all the pillars in my life, that I'm the only one trying, that if I were to let go, then things would come crashing down: people would leave, work would slip, opportunities would disappear right before my eyes. I would miss the boat/window/whatever have you. Safe spaces. Where are you?

So I was struggling with God this morning. I questioned - why is it that when things are 'good' with you Lord, when I bring things to you in prayer, that things go well but when I 'drop the ball' on devotional/prayer time, things just. . .go? Must I pray for everything? This is surely silly Lord because if that's the case then it appears that it all depends on me - how hard I pray, how much time I spend, (and on and on). That can't be right. That can't be good. Because it's not about me and my efforts - it's about your will.

And God answered. Walking up the steps to the UL, He opened my eyes to this point: the prayers, the time spent with Him is not for him but for me. It's not about moving His hand to do x or y, to change the course of my life in this direction or that; rather, it's about preparing my heart for the events and moments that He's already determined. The context, the reality of situations never changes; just my attitude, my perception. There are two ways of looking at any situation: from the world's point of view and then from God's. A long time ago, Pastor Kwek explained it like this: 'prayer is for us. It's about re-aligning our hearts with God's'. And so that's it. I need the realignment; and I need spiritual eyes.

(re)considerations

Perspective is a funny thing and at any given point, it all depends on the kind of coloured glasses that we wear. Just as we all approach a text with our own baggage, so we approach any situation in life. You would be hard pressed to find two people who approach a situation in the same way.

I'm learning, and it's better. It's about two steps forwards and three steps back. But sometimes, it requires you to rewind all your steps, revisualise it all and recentre. Then you can see straight. Sometimes, it's about five, ten, or even fifteen steps backwards; because it is then and only then that you actually move forward.

ebb

There is a castle that sits in the sand,
built by human hands.

It stands firm and strong,
walls sturdy and hardy
like a fortress to defend and to please.

It reaches upward upward toward the sky
full of dreams and visions
of dazzling knights and soft princes
where even the dragons are light shades of green

'It's beautiful', they say.
'It's steadfast', they affirm.
'It's right and true and good'.

This is the hope that we have thus been waiting for.
This is the hope we've found.

But it is a castle built by human hands.
It is a castle that sits in the sand.


And -
(it is sand.)

If

Sometimes I'm steadfast; sometimes I'm not so sure.

Right now, in this moment, I'm going to choose to walk on water.

(and pray I won't drown).

One pair of shoes

There is one pair of shoes outside my door tonight.

From two days ago, there were two beds, two sets of towels, two piles of messy clothes, shared shampoo and toothpaste and ginger snaps and apples. There were two heads propped up on pillows laughing and talking until 4 am; there were discussions about serious things like love and life and less serious things like boys and the SNL version of American politics. There was me, sick and unable to move on Thanksgiving day and there was you, laying with me, talking with me, getting juice and crackers for me. There was me being carried by you. All things shared by your girlfriends.

I waved goodbye from the platform of the train station this morning. It was raining. It always rains when I say goodbye. Maybe God just knows. Goodbyes are always hard, and as much as I'd like to think that they get easier they don't. When a friend comes to visit, it's this beautiful insertion. But God's grace sustains and I make it to now. Life restarts and work resumes.

There is one pair of shoes outside my room tonight, and I smiled as I noticed. Thank you for this weekend Janice.

Berne

It's been an incredible week and a half - incredible in the very literal sense of not being credible, of being beyond belief.

Sitting on the train going back to Geneva, Kareen and I passed by such peaceful mountains. Different from the Rockies but still beautiful. For like all things on the Continent, in the old world, there is a veneer of faded beauty. These rocks do not have the untouched majesty of the Canadian wild; they are viable - existing in perfect symbiosis with the people who day-in and day-out make their way up and down those hilly steps. I like this picture. In some weird way, it captures both the inside of the moving train and the steadfast wilderness outside; humans superimposed on nature. I guess that's how it's always been.

I learned a lot this week and weekend; there was so much emotional expenditure. All of me feels exhausted and I long for a rest that is put on delay. Even these words, this entry, cannot help untie the knot within; words do not even exist in me. At least, not yet. In their nascent form, perhaps they will remain ineffable. Memories held in my mind.

This week and weekend, so many successive events took place in parallel. Before one (anyone) could share, another event happened, and another, and another. Some of it is documented, some of it witnessed - in an email exchange in an airport in Geneva, in an upstairs apartment in the West end of New York, in voice last night. The process. The reflection. The witness. The life of someone special past. How does one even begin to make sense of all the lessons learned, to peel back each layer - layers which piled one on top of the other so quick that you could not understand? All you can feel is that you've aged, immeasurably. Within a week and a half, you've aged and they've aged. And you don't know how you got here.

Trading spaces

Cambridge, England

A series of significant moves this past week, all of which have provided a change in perspective, and hopefully this year a radical movement of the heart.

There was the cybermove here;
the move to a beautiful house near the train station and the eclectic Mill Road;
and the refurbishment of my room in Calgary, Canada (not a move, but a change nonetheless).

To speak of the coincidence of these three changes can only testify to God's goodness, and the way He opened a succession of doors within the time frame of seven days. This last week I witnessed the immediacy of action and was allowed a taste of what it means to be circumscribed in a will greater than my own. After hearing about these events, my best friend appositely remarked: 'Wow, this is so not about you'. There is a thin line I tread between overestimating my role in this will and ingratitude; for not to recognise the impossibility (and therefore the singularity) of these events is to refuse to acknowledge the shaping hand through it all. I cannot find any other explanation for the incredible movements and the conversations and blessings that have couched each change, and I am learning (see Pastor Marvin's sermon) that there is a difference between dreaming vertically rather than horizontally. My hope for this year is that I enter into the former.

I think this year is about public spaces, mental and physical. It's the recognition that things are not my own, and that there is responsibility for every action taken. It is the responsibility that accompanies the pursuit of knowledge (which is not in itself the end but an effect of the ultimate pursuit of the ultimate Truth). It's about questioning first principles and starting from the centre to which God has called us. It's about something else.