Blow Away

Today while I was walking I had the most magical moment of this fall. Anyone else who is still really quite a child inside will share this excitement.

The turning of the leaves is always the best part of the year, it's like the buildup in a song that leads to your favorite part. The grand crescendo, the climax of the story! And then it's silent, the gentlest part of the song: winter. And it brings with it all the peace and rest of the months, a sleep from the technicolored summertime. But the leaves blaze the way, in all their colors. And when their life is lost they fall to the ground to continue bringing to us a change in the seasons for all of our senses. I was walking across the campus at Missouri Southern, and as I passed under the road through the tunnel, I could hear the scratching of a leaf as the wind pushed it across the concrete. But, with my aviators in place I couldn't see it... until it was right in front of me. And I stepped right on it. It was hands down the most satisfying leaf-crunch I have ever experienced. It echoed in the tunnel. It was like it had been running right towards me. Because at this point in the season, most people are dreading the cold, hating the mess of fallen leaves, and despising the empty trees. This little leaf was a lone herald, begging for the continued beauty of fall to be appreciated and noticed, even in its fading life. And I did.

Running outside today was like a continuation of this high. I ran and looked up at the skeletal trees, with the curled up leaves hanging on for dear life. Yet, here on the dry trees they will find no nourishment. So, they flocked to the sidewalks, where my red running shoes enjoyed once more the percussion section of nature. I ran through pile after pile that the wind had selflessly made just for me. And it was beautiful. Every stick, every stone, every brown leaf. The bend, twist and knot in every branch that has fallen to the ground, blocking my path, causing me to hurdle, is a masterful piece of art. It's not just the sharp wind that brings tears to my eyes, but the act of loving my Creator by loving His creation, by crying out with the puddles in the woods, by slowing my pace just to watch the deer bound across the trail, by running- face towards the sky- feeling the pulsing air of the birds' wings. By listening to the leaves blow away, and stalling them with the sole of my foot.

Life as a House

This is another recycled piece of writing. One I enjoyed writing more than most. In another round the question game with a friend, I asked, "If you could build a house, what would it be like?" After watching the architecture of their house come together with words, I built one of my own.

If I could build a house now, it would be in a place where I could be near the ocean and in the mountains. Probably somewhere in Maine. It would be in a small town, maybe built around a lake in the mountains... where everyone's house backs up onto their docks on the lake. And you can swim looking at the mountains. It would be New England style with a high roof and wood floors... and bay windows. And there would be a room in the house that would look out to the mountains or over the ocean and it would be full of huge windows. The walls would be lined with them. And in it would be my piano and it’s there that I would write music. And the kitchen would have yellow walls. There would be an oak table. And red couches.

I want to have my home decorated with pieces from other people's stories. I like to re-use beauty. I think it makes me feel like the quality in the decor is not synthetic. I want to have paintings hanging in my house that my friends have done. My room will be green, the same green as the lichen that grows on the maple trees in Maine. And I want my house to be lived in. I want the guests who come in to feel like they live there too. I want my kitchen to constantly be full of people, cooking together, eating together. I want a big kitchen for that. With blue tile counters, that I have to clean every night so that they aren't smeared, but when they're clean, they're the color of a mountain lake. Deep blue, reflecting the ceiling. I want floral plates- they won't match. I'll buy them from all over. It will be a collection of recycled beauty.

I want a room whose focal point is a giant map on the wall. I want pictures and artifacts from everywhere I've been to be in this room. Maybe it will be my children's room so that they will always remember the value of exploration. No, it will be the library. Where I keep all my books. My children’s room will be white. They will be allowed to decorate the walls with their dreams and their favorite super heroes, their best art attempts. Because my children will know that what they create and what they dream is more important than having me decorate their rooms for them. And that their creativity is more beautiful than my inspiration to decorate. They will absolutely have a loft in their room. It will be their pirate ship, their fort, their stage, their space shuttle. Just like it was for my brother and I.

The windows in my house will always be kept open. I want to always remember that the world is bigger than my reality. And I want extra rooms, each with their unique qualities. Because I want enough room to give people who don't have a home a place to stay, or those without people to love, a family. Single mothers without a roof will find a home in mine. Missionaries, friends, neighbors, travelers and strangers.

The backyard will be unkempt. Or, it might be a lake. I don't know. But, it will be the source of many adventures. And it will be wild, because I love nature. And I want to see it in an explosion of freedom in my backyard- not untidy, just untamed.

Lastly. I want a red front door. It is the passage-way to bold adventures, so it deserves an electric color.

Takeoff

I’m sure I’ve said this before: my favorite place to write is 30,000 feet in the air. So here I am, looking out my window on my flight to Baltimore, Maryland on my way back to Missouri. Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros sing my flight safely to the runway. I am accompanied by my tall Starbuck’s Christmas blend, and the happiness that is a good trip home.

I’m not attempting to be morbid, but I’ll be honest. If I could die anywhere, it would be right here, up in the air; on an airplane, embarking on a new adventure or returning from some exploration. My mind would be full of stories, my feet dirty with the memories of a new place traveled to, or an old one revisited. And it’s here, right up here, that I feel most at home: on my way somewhere. It’s my muse, my element, my passion.

Takeoff is a surge, sure of momentum, but for me, it’s my healing. Airports breed a whole host of emotions: aching at the departure of a loved one, anxiety at the prospect of being so far off the ground, ecstasy at the return of a missing piece, anticipation at the road ahead, fear of the unknown, and comfort in business routines. Despite anything I’ve been feeling prior to boarding the plane, it dissipates the moment the plane accelerates. It’s the deepest comfort, soothing my ever spinning soul, opening the flood gates for wanderlust to take over my mind, and to be safe knowing my longing will be fulfilled. Back to morbidity then: such contentment… this is where I would want to have my last breath. Here, this channel for such great journeys on earth, to be the gateway to the greatest adventure I’ve never tasted, death. New life. Completion, touching my Savior.

So, if ever my life ends en route to a new adventure, whether it be crossing a great ocean on the deck of a ferry, flying across the great mass of continents, or blazing through the miles of some beautiful country in a long black train, don’t cry for me. It will have been a reflection of every other moment in my life, always moving, a transient soul longing to taste all the energy of exploration. My bittersweet drug, always dragging me from one place I love, into the hurricane of lust for the next place.

Children screaming on planes...

It’s not always that we write for others. Sometimes the words that color the page are simply for ourselves. The thoughts we write help us understand who we are. Josh and I drove from Joplin to Kansas City last night, we talked about a lot, sometimes we actually spoke. But, interaction always takes place even when we are silent. We talked about how interesting humans can be… how strange we are. We are always so fascinated when we learn something new about ourselves. When we recognize a pattern or behavior that leads us to understand our own selves. It can take years, ironically, for us to understand even the simplest of things about us. I suppose that this is the broken relationship between man and himself. We go through these sort of self-destructive stages that eventually lead us into adulthood.

As children, we have no understanding that we should want to be any different than we are. And so we just say whatever we think, speak our minds, even with jibberish. We love who we love and we behave instinctively.

We get a little older, and the cruel reality sets in that we will not be allowed to continue in our courageous naivety. And a lack of sureness about who we are develops. We act out, misbehave, and cry for no reason. Is it possible that even as children we feel the weight of a broken world?

By our adolescence we believe we are not who we should be. So, we pretend to be someone else we think we should be, denying the entire time our own beliefs, our own affections, our own thoughts. We adopt the popular culture as our personality. Those who don’t are marginalized…

High school comes around and we have all become professionals at pretending we aren’t who we are. Some of us have even forgotten who we really are and our personalities become so fluid we could be anyone… and no one. Something itches to escape though, something that says we’d really rather be experiencing the things we deeply enjoy. Instead of listening to the music that puts us in a box of accepted society, or using the colloquialisms that fit us into our generation, something in us asks if maybe, possibly, we could just do the things that actually make us happy? I didn’t realize in highschool I was even doing this. I was always different, I never wanted to be who others told me. But I still acquiesced to this idea that I needed to suppress the wild child in me that could only produce irresponsibility and regret. How wrong they were. Due to the hot pursuit of a crazy God I finally realized…

Then college. Most of us finally come to that place where we throw out all of the facades that have been our crutch for so many years. Excitement at the prospect of just saying “f--- it” and being who we are. Going where we want, developing not into the model citizens our social constructs sent us the blueprints for, but instead into people with passions, opinions, goals, and individuality, who are part of a bigger community, maybe even a meta-narrative… we have a better way of being: raw. Josh made the observation: this is adulthood. This moment when we still have questions, but we have laid to rest our games of pretend, and taken hold of our own imagination and creativity, to love and be who we are.

But some never do. And the weight of an image that doesn’t fit their spirit remains the back stabbing friend of those who have lost their courage and the sight to grow out of the oppression of a culture that demands a globalized personality to its citizens.

This will label me a tree hugger for sure...

In the course of a question game with a friend with an imaginative mind, the challenge was posed to me: describe a tree. Simple enough I suppose. Unless you want anyone reading to be able to climb through the branches in their imagination, and know the tree like they're there. This small story was getting dusty just sitting on my computer so I'm blogging it... it's really just a rant, an outpouring of imagination and creation.

To smell, hear, see and touch a tree is like experiencing creation. It is unexplainable. The sap that is unwashable, staining your favorite jeans, and sticking in your hair. The small branches you didn't see that hit your face, and make your eyes water uncontrollably. Or, the unsteady branch that gives way when a child is too reckless. The spiders and ants that flow out of crevices in the tree, using its resources to continue their busy preoccupied lives. The smell of pine cones, and pine needles that seems to linger beyond the forest. Or the simplicity of the mechanics of helicopter seeds, dancing to the ground to begin new life... a glimpse of new creation, those seeds, sheltered in their vessel, disrupted by the chubby fingers of a child and their mother, exploring the fall ground.

Peeling the white bark of a birch, not realizing as a child that skinning the slender tree was killing it. How can curiosity be disruptive? I suppose the trees just smirk through their pain that children can be so unknowing. The callouses on barefeet that fade only in winter, from grasping at the thick bark and low branches, to hoist oneself up from a sad existence attached only to the ground. A restorative pain when your hands are bleeding from swinging from the branches. Fueling our essays and our newspapers by providing the last of their usefulness to an uncurious city. But, in the woods, no one dares look down. Only, the utmost respect and adventure to look up, and feel that childhood inspiration.

Good habits.

Sometimes I forget I have a blog. Well that's not entirely true. For the last 6 months I have felt I literally have had nothing good to say. I don't feel particularly different today. I just miss writing. There's something about being able to create something, a new combination of words no one has ever put together quite the same way, even if it's just a period in a different place, that is slightly addicting. I suppose lack of inspiration could be a product of learning nothing new, or maybe being overwhelmed from too much learning. Either way, I hate to just blog about my mind, I feel vain. So I will blog about a monastery.

This weekend I had the opportunity to spend a weekend in silence and solitude up in Eureka Springs at a retreat center run by a monastery. On Sunday I got to go to mass at the monastery and was given a little history and tour of the place. I will tell you honestly I was floored. I've never quite experienced something like that. The monks and nuns were Franciscan but also Benedictine. They were so accepting and hospitable. And real. There was an awareness of reality, the importance of also being in the world, not just in their community. So their community consists of the monastic community up in Eureka Springs or other monasteries that have opened, and also the domestic members, who live all over America... and 3 or 4 other countries. And they had a grasp on something I see go misunderstood in my own denomination too often: non-denominational Christians do not have a monopoly on salvation. They are ecumenical and stand with wide open arms to begin healing the divisions that have formed in the church... not claiming they have everything right, but with humility and brotherly love. I was speechless (well mostly I was anyway because I had a weekend of "silence") at the beauty of their community. They had it right. We ostracize our celibates. We push our singles into marriage. We push our married couples to have children. And we put the families in our churches on a pedestal. They live together, all of these: celibates, singles, married, families. The celibates have families in their brothers and sisters, down to having a community kitchen with their singles brothers and sisters, because cooking and eating together fosters more community than anything I know in domestic life. The children in the community (in the words of Sister Carolyn) "are everyone's children... they have no idea how lucky they are to be loved by so many people." They don't. They are provided with more support and investment than most children. Their family lives will be complete. And the celibates, who will never have children of their own, get to nurture and parent children. It's beautiful.

As much as I wanted to stay, here I am in my dorm room. What I saw and experienced provoked questions that need answers. The more I look at life, the more I live life, the more I see that we all want reform. There is something in us that wants something better. We are to bring the Kingdom of God now. Praying the Lord's Prayer at Mass 3 times this weekend was a precious reminder that we are the answer. And, the inspiration for a new kind of life continues as God forms a picture of how He longs for His church to love in my heart and mind.

Writer's block conquered. Inner blogger back, fed for now, soon to be longing to write again.

Girls are not for sale

Girls are precious
Girls are smart
Girls are courageous
Girls are helpful
Girls are bold
Girls are beautiful
Girls are NOT for sale.

Girls are heroes. Rachel Lloyd of New York State is the founder of the only organization in NY that helps girls and young women who have been trafficked or sexually abused. GEMS (Girls Educational & Mentoring Services) has made huge strides in helping young women caught in trafficking to get out of "the life" and back to being just girls. Normal girls, who go to school and get married, who have children and are allowed to grow up. After all, the average age of girls trafficked in NYC is 13. Do you remember what you were doing when you were 13? I ran cross country and was on stage in the local theater. But, there are hundreds and thousands of New Yorkers who are being prostituted, played, and manipulated by pimps who swear they love them.

Girls are powerful. Rachel Lloyd knows what that is like. As a teenager, she also was sexually exploited. It only takes one girl to touch the lives of thousands. In 1999, she started GEMS, a one woman operation from her kitchen table. It has grown to be one of the largest organizations that provides aid and an alternative life to commercial exploitation of young women. Girls at GEMS are allowed to be girls. They are encouraged to remember their dreams, and to make the choices to get them there.

Girls are fighters. In 2007, a documentary by David Schisgall called Very Young Girls was produced outlining the stories of several girls who have been involved with GEMS and of the history of GEMS itself. It has won several awards for its inside look at girls in "the life" in NYC.

Girls are able. That's where Lloyd started. She came to the US as a missionary wanting to reach out to women exiting prostitution, and she found herself fulfilling her purpose. She has spoken to the UN, NYU and other prestigious universities, done profile interviews for major news stations and magazines and in 2006 won the Reebok Human Rights Foundation award. Her response to this award was : "This award recognizes for the first time publicly that the sexual exploitation of children in our country is a human rights issue. You look at places like the Philippines, and Thailand and the Ukraine and we talk about trafficking and sexual exploitation and yet when it's happening two blocks from this auditorium, when it's happening in Bedford Stuyvesant, or in Hudson Point or in Queen's Plaza, we look the other way. We recently saw the Academy Award for Best Song go to 'It's Hard out Here For a Pimp,' well let me tell you, it's hard out here for a 13 year old girl who has run away from home, who sells her body every night who is beat and raped by a man who is old enough to be her father, who is bought and sold by adult men."

Girls are not for sale.