Cathedrals in My Heart

The days are getting longer, the nights shorter. I can hear the kids outside my window or door dribbling the basketball down the pavement or playing tag across the lawns well past dinner time. I'm staying up later also, somehow feeling like there's more time in my day just as I did when I could run outside with the fireflies when I was young. Like I never have to be AT anything, like no one was necessarily expecting me at any specifice time. Before the heat strikes and seems nearly debilitating, this is a stretch of the year I enjoy. School is coming to a close, a bit of excitement of a schedule/routine change and restrictions being lessened. Though I am feeling a bit regretful as this is the first summer in probably 7 years that I don't have a trip planned. Nothing; no Asia or Europe or Africa or cross-country drive. I'm torn between that urge to get up and go and the relief of just being able to relax yet get some things done. I don't necessarily want to run away anymore....maybe in a sense, but I don't hate going to work. Seriously, I have hated going to work. A lot. And suddenly, I don't hate it so much anymore. Not at all, really. I've been seeing these little blessings, if you will, that have popped up just because I stuck around. Because I stuck it out. There's been a light at the end of the tunnel, if you will, a reward for perservering and however long I stay now, I have that affirmation and satisfaction.

One Small Step, One Giant Leap

He did it. And then jumped into my arms to celebrate. I told myself I was perfectly fine with the notion that he may never do it, not for a long while at least, and understood the anxiety, but I think deep down I wanted him to know he COULD do it if he made up his mind. I wanted him to have a victory. 
We talked about here and there for two weeks. More than two weeks, and he assured me that he had no intention of conquering this fear. "Go ahead, ask the Arch question," he instigated, and answered with a resounding, "No." But then he got in line and took a deep breath because all the other kids were. The tears just started flowing, but he stayed put. 
He was so happy he jumped into my arms at the top. Literally left the ground to hug me in jubilation. 
He even reminded me a day later that he did it, with a an ear to ear smile.I still look at him, nearly 5 years after we met,amazed at his progress and think to myself, "I had something to do with that." Actually, I've been told I had a lot to do with that.


This is my living faith, an active faith, a faith of verbs: to question, explore, experiment, experience, walk, run, dance, play, eat, love, learn, dare, taste, touch, smell, listen, speak, write, read, draw, provoke, emote, scream, sin, repent, cry, kneel, pray, bow, rise, stand, look, laugh, cajole, create, confront, confound, walk back, walk forward, circle, hide, and seek.
- Terry Tempest Williams

Picking Out Stars Between Thumb and Finger

Its a night like this one, when the air is cool and a bit crisp, but still and silent, and the moon peaks over tree limbs while the stars cling to the sky like bugs on a windshield (or like splotches of ink on notebook paper, if the tools were reversed) I may feel most alive. I'm running, my lungs are swelling and sweat is framing my face, but my legs are weightless and spry. This is the feeling of 

possibility and....hope, because you feel powerful and backed by something powerful as well. 

It also makes me think of Africa, where I have felt more alive and...in sync; its something which is immensly difficult to put into words because the feeling is typically at a time or in a moment you weren't necessarily prepared for. My moments are unexpected and sometimes slowly but often instantly, I feel full. If something were missing, I feel like I found it. The stars usually do it, and in Africa the stars were more dazzling than I have ever witnessed. Its a night like this one that feeling comes back along with the remembrance of things that have accompanied it...

Better Yet

Ahhhhhh. Spring - freshness, newness, lively, healthy, airy, cheerful, and inspiring. It feels a bit like a clean start but with blessings I am familiar with. I am well aware that it could be gone soon enough though I'm trying not to think about it. I am on a fervent mission to not return to a certain place next school year. I feel like I'm almost actually where I belong....and there's still something better yet.

defeat, my defeat, my deathless courage, you and I shall laugh together with the storm, and together we shall dig graves for all that die in us, and we shall stand in the sun with a will, and we shall be dangerous.

-kahlil gibran; the madman 

photo via awelltravelledwoman

I Am in Your Light

Never would I have imagined this seemingly coming full circle. I guess you could call this a circle; perhaps an ellipsee as it surrounds two focal points, or maybe just a curve because I still don't really know where this is going to take me. As much as I would like to have a plan, and often do with a lot of things, somethings I just ride out. I know I've been doing that with this job a little too long, but its also allowed me the chance to do some other incredible things. But now I've returned to Beasley, under completely different pretenses of course because I never would have agreed to it otherwise. Nope. No way would you have gotten back in that building working side-by-side with certain someone. Not that we ever worked side-by-side; she moreso loomed over me and then ducked when responsibility came looking for her.

❝ I don’t think that anything happens by coincidence. No one is here by accident. Everyone who crosses our path has a message for us. Otherwise they would have taken another path, or left earlier or later. The fact that these people are here means that they are here for some reason. ❞

JAMES REDFIELD, THE CELESTINE PROPHECY

At the time I was happy to leave, and I think I'm happy to be back. Wohlwend had become so frustrating it took away from what we were trying to invest in the kids. It didn't even feeling like investing anymore; it was just getting by, making do, showing up. I can't say this new gig is going to be any more rewarding, but much of the (pardon my language) bullshit within the actual building and classroom seems to be absent. I walked in a little nervous today, just because I thought there would be a possibility of let down.  Change can be hard, frightening. Leaving what you at least know, however frustrating and disheartening, is safe.  What if they don't take to me well or we don't mix? What if its crazy and I'm not equipped? What if no one cares or wants to help? There are so many things that can make the transition intimidating. But it can be so good, too, and bring so many things along with it.  In this case, peace. Its almost like I've been vindicated.

This is the Thing

This is the thing: When you hit 28 or 30, everything begins to divide. You can see very clearly two kinds of people. On one side, people who have used their 20s to learn and grow, to find … themselves and their dreams, people who know what works and what doesn’t, who have pushed through to become real live adults. Then there’s the other kind, who are hanging onto college, or high school even, with all their might. They’ve stayed in jobs they hate, because they’re too scared to get another one. They’ve stayed with men or women who are good but not great, because they don’t want to be lonely. … they mean to develop intimate friendships, they mean to stop drinking like life is one big frat party. But they don’t do those things, so they live in an extended adolescence, no closer to adulthood than when they graduated.
Don’t be like that. Don’t get stuck. Move, travel, take a class, take a risk. There is a season for wildness and a season for settledness, and this is neither. This season is about becoming. Don’t lose yourself at happy hour, but don’t lose yourself on the corporate ladder either. Stop every once in a while and go out to coffee or climb in bed with your journal.
Ask yourself some good questions like: “Am I proud of the life I’m living? What have I tried this month? … Do the people I’m spending time with give me life, or make me feel small? Is there any brokenness in my life that’s keeping me from moving forward?”

Now is your time. Walk closely with people you love, and with people who believe … life is a grand adventure. Don’t get stuck in the past, and don’t try to fast-forward yourself into a future you haven’t yet earned. Give today all the love and intensity and courage you can, and keep traveling honestly along life’s path.

- Relevant magazine

Jagged Pill

You live you learn, you love you learn

You cry you learn, you lose you learn

You bleed you learn, you scream you learn

I guess Alanis Morisette figured it out years ago...I thought almost certainly I had figured it out years ago, too but things still creep up and then wallop you. Hard. Sometimes you feel like a fool, sometimes you feel sorry for yourself, sometimes both if you've been hit hard enough. Though, I'll admit, its not so much the impact or the force of the blow; I've been fortunate to make it out intact and for that I'm very thankful. Its much more about the frequency. The things that have happened have happened in a relatively short period of time. It can feel like your being engulfed in negativety and dissent. And when you feel like you're being swallowed, things start to look hazy and unclear, without a direction of where to go. I hate not knowing what to do, and that, in and of itself, can often be the problem. I've failed to acknowledge that things aren't in my hands; I've been failing to acknowledge that, instead trying to fix things all my own or, worse, just accept defeat.  I think the reality is that clarity often causes confussion, while murkiness can lead you out. Its the realization that maybe you don't have all the answers, maybe you don't have a handful of options, you just have the sacredness of calling on someone else...

Holy places are dark places. It is life and strength, not knowledge and words, that we get in them. Holy wisdom is not clear and thin like water, but thick and dark like blood.

                  - C. S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces