em wilk.

on love and affection.

2012-02-13T19:36:00.000-08:00

Be yourself.

Especially do not feign affection.

Neither be cynical about love;

for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,

it is perennial as the grass.

-the Desiderata

lalani.

2012-02-09T15:02:00.000-08:00

Last night, by lamp light and Ingrid Michaelson, Lalani mastered the threading of a sewing machine--the process of running the string down through the correct hooks and wheels until it reaches the needle, at which point it must be wrestled in through the miniature hole. At ten p.m., after a cool matrix of practice-stitching covered a scrap piece of cherry-red fabric, we called it a night and called it "two-hours-before-her-20th-birthday!" Lalani is a dynamite life and this morning as we were getting ready in our rooms which lie adjacent to one another, I could hear her singing through the wall--singing on her birthday morning! Happy Birthday Lalani! I appreciate you!

unpacking.

2012-02-05T09:33:00.000-08:00

PHOTO: CHAD, AFRICA. UNPACKED AND INVESTED IN A BIKE.
"I did not know who or what it was, but it hung there, this possibility, this thing on the edge of my mind. I had been waiting for so long it had simply become what I did. Sometimes it was conscious, but most of the time it was like a reflex, a verb that was my verb: waiting.

I think it is why I felt so connected to refugees, homeless women, women in prison. They spent their lives waiting--waiting for a return to their homeland, waiting for a new country to invite them in, waiting for a place where they can finally undo their bags, waiting for escape. There was a future in the waiting."
Eve Ensler, Insecure at Last

My boss at UReach Ministries asked me to come by his office on my way out of work on Friday. I sat in the leather chair and we talked about a couple of projects, marketing ideas, website details, and other work things. Then, he asked me,

"So when are you leaving here, Emily?"
Who knows, I thought.

But instead I said,
"Uh, I think maybe in July, but I don't know really, maybe six months, maybe longer...I don't think longer, but I don't know...."

We talked more about why I'd felt like I wanted to go to the DRC, but also how everything has lead me here to Loma Linda. It was nice to be asked and to have the chance to say. After listening, he shared some of his own experience and then gave me some great advice that has come out of his own journey, which turned out to be very similar to mine.

He said, "Sometimes we tell ourselves we're going somewhere and as a result, we live like we're leaving--we don't take on responsibility or let people trust us because we think we won't be there long. Then, we end up being in that place for a few years and yet we're still living like we've been there only a few months."

He went on, "Unpack your bags. Put some roots down. If in July you feel moved or impressed that you need to go to Chad or the DRC, or someplace else--we'll send you on your way with our blessing."

I got a CA diver's license and am going to get a Redlands Library card. I have my own coffee maker and am going to learn the checker's name at Stater Bros. I am going to be the Marketing and Communications Coordinator at my job, instead of only answering phones. I want to wait less--yes, still "push on potential doors" as my boss called it, but to make this room I'm in right now a place where I live.

The paragraph's by Eve Ensler really hit home for me when I read them. The idea of there being "a future in the waiting," could have easily been transcribed from my heart. Yet the future is the most false piece of time--it is unreal, un-experienced, un-guaranteed and cannot facilitate any growth or impact in my life or the lives of others. Where I am now can and will if I unpack my bags.

reflection.

2012-02-01T16:50:00.000-08:00

PHOTO: YUGGA MAKES SENSE OF IT ALL.
As if there was gold out back behind the house,
in that overgrown yard which you walked through once
two months ago--you make yourself go there.

You don't know where you're going
except that it's an old place, already gone.

And because you can't run out front into the street of tomorrow,
can't meet the kids who might want to play,
or split into teams for the big game;
you head out back behind the house,
in that overgrown yard which you walked through once
two months ago--you make yourself go there;

where all past things run together,
and then divide themselves into sense.

pirate eyes.

2012-01-31T18:42:00.000-08:00

PHOTO: BY TRINA YEO.
Pirate eyes,
you've seen the prize
and now it's all you want.

Take the ocean,
take your ship,
but harbor nothing here.

the art of memory.

2012-01-30T17:00:00.000-08:00

These are pictures of my mom when she lived up in Alaska for a summer. She stayed in a little cabin that had no running water. These are some my favorite pictures of her, and looking at them, I wonder exactly what lessons this place taught her, how it shaped her: I wonder how her memories continue to influence her.

Before the weekend, I muscled my way through a book called The Art of Memory by Frances Yates. Yikers, the thing was full of Greek and history and sentences so complex they read like spider webs--strong, but quite tangled. In the book, the author teaches us how to best tuck memories into our brains. She recommends imagining big, familiar rooms and then going around and placing things you must remember on the tables, chairs, and hearths of the room; that way, when you want to recall all the details, you must only walk your way around in that place so familiar and there will be all the things you are looking for. Pretty good idea? I need to try it.

There is a point where he talks about how true knowledge is uncovered as we take images and recollections (memories) and place them on the form or idea to which they belong. So we take that time that we hit our brother and place it on the idea of violence, and in doing that, we will get closer to the truth of that Idea. He talks about how “knowledge of the truth and of the soul consist in remembering--in the recollection of Ideas once seen by all souls of which all things [here on earth] are confused copies.” Earthly things are all not full pictures of truth; therefore, there is this discovering that needs to happen.

Story-telling plays a big part in that for me. When a story-teller shares a memory, it functions to inform in the way a fossil does a child. As kids, we’d go to Montana and split rocks open to find flattened fish, arthropods, and plants—all kinds of one dimensional history. Because we weren't paleontologists, nature encyclopedias gave more in depth information about fossils. However, getting to interact with an image or perspective personally, compelled us to ponder the truth of the animal’s life, as well as develop a sense of awe, in a way the fossil fact book could not. Seeing something personally, even if not completely, is in my opinion valuable as long as it is accurate. Personal perspective with admitted and credited limitations, foster a curiosity and awe and can memorialize an idea much better than a fact can.

From what I gather from the short time I've been a non-fiction student, we craft non-ficton like we carve soap. We do so by elimination, not fabrication. We choose what details to include; But even though we have that kind of power to craft, crafting with accuracy is really important to me. We begin with what we have, our memories, testimonies, research, and then cut and arrange from there. All of those beginnings are filtered through perspective, which, in my opinion is an accurate form of information, if clearly noted/given as perspective. How we perceive something and how it affects us is a valuable contribution to its function in the world. I think that is why the four gospels of the Bible are important to me, though discrepancies and differences definitely exist between them, and I would never claim that they are completely accurate; they are personal perspectives of a man I admire but have never met. How he was perceived by other humans on earth is important to me.

Every single event is comprised of multiple realities experienced by different people. Our individual humanity limits us to our one perspective, unless we open our minds to the true perspectives others minds are experiencing. In doing this, we perceive much more of the whole Idea—and by Idea, I am referring to those ideas which things of earth are only "confused copies" of.

Memory is such an interesting thing, and so was the book. The big question of non-fiction students has to do with this: Can non-fiction ever be true? With it passing through so many filters and lenses of people and their perspectives? Many people think it's all a bunch of fiction. Yikes!

waste, wake, or change.

2012-01-29T19:35:00.000-08:00

PHOTO: TARA BECKER, ROAD TRIP 2000andsomething.
And every day that you want to waste, that you want to waste, you can
And every day that you want to wake up, that you want to wake, you can
And every day that you want to change, that you want to change, yeah
I'll help you see it through 'cause I just really want to be with you

Waste by Foster The People

roll up your sleeves and pray.

2012-01-28T17:37:00.000-08:00

WILKENS GIRLS: LISA, EMILY, AMY, AND MINDY.
Recently, I've only felt like writing little poems. I don't know if it's because I've been tired and they are short; or because essays demand clear intentions and good endings, whereas little poems allow for conceits, two-toned perspectives, and a vagueness that can deceive someone into thinking you know what you are saying ....real poets would probably kill me for the permission I give myself.

My writing mentor told me he thought I didn't know what I wanted to say very often--he said I do this thing called "rolling-up sleeves" before writing; where I say long, maybe sweet, but always complicated prelude-prayers about my yesterdays and my worries about these next ten years before ever saying the thing I got on my knees to say in the first place--before ever getting to my point. I'm writing like I pray, which maybe means I need to pray more and be all prayed out to God (who I believe listens and cares) before I ever put pen to paper.

Now that I've said my prelude prayer, I will tell you my original intent of this post....Haha.

I'm here with my family in Arizona. We took this picture today to match the one from 20 years ago and it's crazy how little we've all changed! My cousin Lisa is visiting from China for two weeks, my cousin Amy is a lawyer here in AZ, and Mindy and I work in Loma Linda. It was great to be together.

thick full of salt.

2012-01-26T09:36:00.000-08:00

She was the sea
over bare ocean bottom,
thick full of salt
like Madam Sodom.

making true moves.

2012-01-23T21:40:00.000-08:00

PHOTOS: BY PHIL SHERWOOD.
I wonder how we'll keep on going--
like this,
swallowing all the lamp light
as fast as we can,
as fast as it comes out,
trying to keep the secrets dark enough--
quiet.

Let's refuse to do it anymore--
refuse the proper posture (for proper's sake, anyway)

the perfect kind of choices (for perfect's sake, anyway)
and just make a true move;
like a boy against a giant,
a girl against a magazine,
a blind man against everything he's heard--
like him who believes something else,
something he never needed his eyes for, anyway.

mightier than the sword, sharp as a pen.

2012-01-23T20:07:00.000-08:00

My mentor sent back my first 20 pages of writing with his comments digitally noted in the text, as well as a letter addressing the grander themes and flaws. My mentor is a very smart man, with a lot of incredible insight. But he has no baby formula to feed me, not even a drop.

"Revisit this [previous] sentence. You’ve got to be more careful when you write, Emily. I will hold you to it. The pen may be mightier than the sword, but it has to be a sharp pen: a precision instrument. Forbid yourself ever to write a less-than-perfect—or at the very least a less-than-clear—sentence. The ideas here are all fine, so far as they go (meaning so far as they go without precise language to convey them). And in case you’re wondering, yes, I am being paid to be THIS hard on you!"

Yes he is. I am paying him, actually. And with that perspective, I hope there is more critique on it's way.

painting pictures of Egypt.

2012-01-22T13:25:00.000-08:00

PHOTO: SKATING IN SPOKANE ON POND IN DECEMBER.

PHOTO: NIGHT BEFORE LEAVING CHAD, BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION FOR ESTHER--TRICK CANDLES.

I don’t want to leave here
I don’t want to stay
It feels like pinching to me either way
The places I long for the most
Are the places where I’ve been
They are calling after me like a long lost friend

It’s not about losing faith
It’s not about trust
It’s all about comfortable
When you move so much
The place I was wasn’t perfect
But I had found a way to live
It wasn’t milk or honey
But then neither is this

CHORUS
I’ve been painting pictures of Egypt
Leaving out what it lacked
The future seems so hard
And I want to go back
But the places that used to fit me
Cannot hold the things I"ve learned
And those roads closed off to me
While my back was turned

The past is so tangible
I know it by heart
Familiar things are never easy to discard
I was dying for some freedom
But now I hesitate to go
Caught between the promise
And the things I know

If it comes too quick
I may not recognize it
Is that the reason behind all this time and sand?
If it comes too quick
I may not appreciate it
Is that the reason behind all this time and sand?

-Sara Groves, Painting Pictures of Egypt

living at the Inspire House.

2012-01-19T23:44:00.000-08:00

PHOTO: MARIAH, LALANI, RENETTE, ME, DORYS, AND CASS.

Tonight, Mariah, Lalani, Dorys, Cass and I all walked to my car after we'd spent a couple hours at the gym. Lalani had hit the sauna. Dorys and Cass had run on the cool track which is actually a balcony tracing the edge of the basketball court, the court where my basketball intramural team was playing. Mariah had watched my game. DeeDee had dropped all of the girls off and I so I was their ride home. Getting to my car, I scrambled to clear room for everyone to sit, apologized for how much stuff is in the back seat. Mariah says, "Girl, do you live at the Inspire House, or do you live in here?!"

I live at the Inspire House. And I love living here. I love Renette, and the way she can dance and the way she cares about helping the homeless population. I love Dorys, with her quiet sleepy eyes when she wakes up from naps and the laughing that goes on at midnight when I'm eating a cucumber and she's eating toast. I love Cass and her strength through trials these days--the way she's hitting the first week of school and spending all her spare time by her brother's bedside in the ICU. I love Lalani and the vision she has for life--the energy and interest she pays to people. And I love Mariah, and the way she puts me in headlocks that I'm glad are just jokes--the way her heart is soft and her smile comes through her stress if a person just waits for it...I love all of them for so many reasons that are actually, most simply put, the way they are just them.

Mother Teresa used to talk about one of the biggest problems with our world--how we have forgotten that we belong to one another.

I was coughing up a storm tonight on the way home cause I'm out of shape and haven't run in the way basketball requires in, well...years. Mariah told me I sounded like a smoker, and kept thumping on my back. She made me do these breathing exercises and then when I couldn't multi-task, and I made her a little nervous with my driving, she hollered, "EMILY!!! What are you doing?! Oh my gosssshhhh!!!!" She shook her head in disbelief. Then, she told me, "You know I love you, Emily. I pick on you, but I love you." And I'm starting to believe it. I hope they believe my love, too. Because when it comes down to it, we belong to one another.

going where it feels like home.

2012-01-19T11:32:00.000-08:00

PHOTO: ARMELLE AND IN THE RICE FIELD ON LUNCH BREAK WITH OUR MATCHING HAIR STYLES.
Last night, in the sauna at the Drayson center, there was a black girl stretched out on one bench in her swim suit. I stretched out in mine on the one above, and she commented to Lalani and I about the heat. When she spoke, I knew her accent. I asked where she was from and she told me Cameroon, told me that her husband was a dentist from Loma Linda who had worked in her country for years and they'd married there. She was just 29 years old and said that she had been a national running champion in her country, but now was unemployed. She was from a village within walking distance of the Chadian border and had many friends in the capital N'Djamena. Her French was like my French--the same phrases, the same accent, and with the exact same tone of fondness for that area and more specifically it's people. Eventually, we were sitting up against the hot wood on opposites sides of the room. She said, "Did you love it?" I said, "Yeah, I did." She nodded and smiled and said, "You have to go there with your heart, not your mind, and if you do that, you will love it."

After a good 30 minutes in the sauna, my head was starting to hurt and my body was covered in sweat. Sophie commented how she came to the sauna cause it felt like home, "It's soooo hot in my country. I love it." We swapped numbers and she insists we speak French only. I am inspired to be like her, and find places that feel like home when I cannot be at home.

the nature of LA.

2012-01-18T00:46:00.000-08:00

PHOTO: SNOQUALIMIE MOUNTAINS, WA
Tonight, I left LA at nine because there are rules for traffic here, and they aren't flexible. I was just telling a friend about this problem I have; how sometimes I think I'm far above the rules of nature--like the time I tried to hike in the snow in my flip-flops. Exactly like that time. I really believed I could walk on top of my sandals in such a way that my feet would keep from freezing...(dumb I know--I now know). It's taken me this long to believe that certain laws of nature apply. Always. To everyone. To me. Not even the power of positive thinking can float an ocean up in the sky. Gravity would come and send the whole thing back to sea level--where it naturally belongs. And traffic is pretty much a piece of nature here, one of the most living, breathing, pulsing systems within the borders of California. Driving out of the parking garage, I put the windows down and the parking passes which litter my dash shuffle themselves loose in the weather.

I make it home after seeing only one middle finger
extended to either heaven
or to me,
I kind of think the latter,
and only one traffic jam.
And in a place where I'm subject to
traffic's ruling nature,
I consider that
a good drive.

opening yourself.

2012-01-15T19:19:00.000-08:00

PHOTO: CECIL
If only,

we only fell in love

in a straight single line--

fell in love with only the village and that distant quiet life,

in love with only Spokane and the pine-fir hill--

fell in love with one dream, one thing,

in one straight line--

our purpose would be simple,

like the stars' out in space.

We'd all walk it there,

like a man on a mission,

like a girl with a cause.

smhx100 and the inpsire house.

2012-01-13T14:39:00.000-08:00

PHOTOS: BEFORE AND AFTER. THE GARDEN SHED RE-PURPOSED AS A WRITING SHACK...MARIAH AND I.
It’s been a challenging first two weeks down here in CA. I've been commuting to LA twice a week getting oriented for this teaching assistant-ship, stuck in hateful traffic twice, been honked at (in the mean way) three times, started three jobs, quit one, spent one whole morning in the ER (it wasn't me), spent one whole afternoon at the police station (wasn't me either), still scrambling to meet writing deadlines and read books due in three days, haven’t seen my sister in a week, got sick, drank a lot of coffee, took a lot of DayQuil, and NyQuil, been eating cucumbers, celery sticks and eggs for breakfast, kicked the spikes on my bike pedal with my bare foot, met the landlady, met with the Inspire House founders, and re-vamped this little garden shed to be my writing-shack/!sanity! When stillness takes off, it takes TAKES OFF.

One of my jobs is as the RA for a house that helps support young women as they exit the foster-care system and head into college/independence. Already, the girls have been such a huge support for me during the transition, giving me advice, listening to me—they even cooked me my first meal. Each of the girls got into the house by filling out an application and interviewing with the Inspire Program coordinator. After being selected, they entered into a contract where they pay $100 a month, must be enrolled in full-time school and have a job. We have a chore list, we go to dinner, we dance in front of the slider-door mirrors, we have house meetings, we argue, we make up, we talk about real stuff, we read each other's poetry—we live together, and that’s all part of it. It has been challenging as well as supporting.

I hope it will be like a sister-ship.

I just picked up Mariah from work because she was throwing up last night and on the verge today. Lalani showed me where the NyQuil was when I couldn’t get to sleep cause of my stuffed up head and Dorys loves to play tennis and watch Grey’s Anatomy, and so we’ll do those together. I took Renette to the ER when she got hit by a cop car and Cassandra is going to cut my hair (she knows how she said) for me. See? A sisterhood, a new kind of family. These girls are strong, incredible women. And I’m learning a lot of new language....and texting lingo...like "SMHx100"...it means "Shake my head one hundred times at you!"

I'm learning a lot of difficult truths about the world, as well as ways many young people navigate those difficulties.

tell me about the important things.

2012-01-11T18:33:00.000-08:00

PHOTO: ESTHER AND DINGA, THROWING RICE CHAFF.
Tell me about the last time you breathed,
about the falling into debt,
about the time you lied,
and about the hurricane that blew through your city.

Then, tell me about the running back home;
the return of your heart
to its place beating tight against your lungs.

Tell me about the important things,
the things that killed you and then brought you back to life.

keeping up.

2012-01-09T19:09:00.000-08:00

PHOTO: BY MARIAH.

this prayer.

2012-01-08T00:22:00.000-08:00

PHOTO: THE ENTRY OF MY NEW HOUSE, REDLANDS CA. A SISTERHOOD OF SIX SISTERS.

In the book The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran writes about prayer and says, "And if it is for your comfort to pour your darkness into space, it is also for your delight to pour forth the dawning of your heart...." Yes! Tonight it's such a delight to feel that kind of thankful prayer-fullness--deep contentedness. Gibran goes on and says, "And I cannot teach you the prayer of the seas and the forests and the mountains. But you who are born of the mountains and the forests and the seas can find their prayer in your heart...." And maybe that's what it's been....a realization that I could never have been taught this prayer I'm feeling tonight--I couldn't have been taught how to respond to these past beautiful hours and challenging days in a ways that would sound like this, like my whole soul praying this prayer. Prayer is maybe mostly just responding--pouring our darkness into space, and pouring the dawning of our hearts out to Him. Maybe.

a statement of personal and imperfect style.

2012-01-05T04:44:00.000-08:00

Under a naked light, one so un-poisoned by filter or tint, one so sharp and presumptive that it flies at you with its piercing speed, shattering and dismantling the gritted teeth of fashion’s glary stare; I’m all of a sudden whipped to a pivot, to face the blaze of the honest light’s captain question—that question that asked me, “What is this stuff you’ve got draped over your nakedness? And what made your skin alone unable to tell your whole story anymore?” It’s a question of personal style, and I imagine a tall old man with a candle in his left hand, holding an open book in his right—one recording my whole life thus far. And over the space between us, he calls me to come show him the exact moments I grew out of my skin, or grew into my best one, whatever might be the case. At that moment, I have a strong, strong need to tell him everything--to assure him that I dress like I do for good reasons. That’s how personal this is. That’s why the naked light grips me with its question.

In order for this question to be answered, I tell the old man we have to travel. I take him over the Atlantic Ocean and cross him into the desert—the desert village of Bere, Chad, Africa. I also take us back in time to September 2009. He and I, we’re a shy step back from the scene because, though I will cringe when it plays, I want this moment to roll with the authenticity of an unwatched dancer—raw and truthful.

We look on, and there she is, 22, white, young, rich, naïve (can I go on?) and getting settled in her mud hut which she is renting from the village surgeon Samedi, the father of a family of 19. She wants to help in the village. She really does. In fact, she plans to be there for six months to work at the rural hospital. She is unpacking her suitcase full of pretty nursing outfits—matching pink and pink, tops and bottoms, blue and blue, teal and teal—color after color after color. She plans to pull on a fresh set each morning before going to work. She plans to wash her clothes at the end of each week—wash the possible spits of penicillin or ampicillin, using her bottle of detergent which she brought from her own country. She plans to live like she’s always lived in a place that, has plans to change her very life.

First morning. Pink and pink.

Second morning. Blue and blue.

Third morning. Purple and purple.

Breakfast of the fourth—a beautiful Chadian sister with a sharp and presumptive spirit, sets a plate of rice between her and Samedi. The sister snidely remarks at the green and says, “Another? You have another? You have many, many clothes.”

It is only then that the girl realizes that Samedi sits on the other side of this morning plate of rice in the same blue scrubs he’s worn the three days prior. His scrubs are browned by the dust stuck on his sweat—smeared by the bodies he’s carried to the ER. It is only then that she hates what she is wearing.

The old man, bends the page of my book and lets out a steaming sigh that threatens to snipe the candle. His sigh tells me it makes sense, that he gets it. I know this is an important moment, but I am plenty ready to go to another scene. Arriving at the next bit of history, I tell him we have to be ready to move, that this next scene starts here but ends somewhere else. He says ok, says we’ll go with the story because it will tell us so much.

The girl is in her hut again. She is trying to clean her hut, and starting with her floor. She is trying to clear it of the loose dirt which has been scuffed up over the last few days by her movement around the room. She moves her plastic travel bins from their place against the wall and when she does, two big dehydrated frogs hop out from behind them. She lifts the foot of her cot and finds an ant mound a few inches high being worked up by an army of black little pests. She begins to sweep the floor with a bundle of dried rice stalks—a home-made broom of sorts. As she does, dust flies in her eyes and fills her throat! She can hardly stand it and soon another one of the sisters, equally beautiful but less presumptuous, comes smiling and shaking her pretty head at the dusty sight. “Courra di.” Not good, the sister says. She exits the hut, but returns with a plastic pitcher of water which she sprinkles over the dirt floor. The sister asks the girl for the rice stalks, and begins to sweep at the damp ground sending small clumps of earth out the door. And the mud hut looks clean.

The girl says thank-you. As a last step of her cleaning, she ties up her trash which she’s been keeping in a white plastic bag. She leaves her hut with garbage in hand, heading to the hospital where a circular cement oven waits to be filled and later fired. Before she can leave the families courtyard, two of the brothers come and ask for the bag of trash. They want what is in there. They want her plastic. They want her packaging, her papers, and her candy wrappers. They want it all. She tell them no. NO. This is garbage. She tells them they cannot go through her garbage.

As the old man and I watch my younger self, I feel the need for him to understand this moment more. I feel the need to tell him more. I tell him using his own medicine, ask him the question, “Have you ever been ashamed of yourself? Has there ever been an action you couldn’t stand by? One you’d like to hide by burning the very proof that you ever did it?” The old man says yes with a curious gaze, and I tell him, “That is how she feels. Their desire for her trash shames her.”

The girl drops the bag off at the site for trash cremation, and heads to the hospital to check on a friend. On her way back home, she sees her brothers over the oven, digging in her trash and there is the most frightful desire to be someone other than herself! They are pulling prized zip-lock bags and a set of dust-ruined socks which have been sitting in the midst of feminine hygiene products, spoiled porridge, and a slough of other true trash.

With the old man staring on, I turn my back to the scene because this one, this one’s shame is still so strong. I remember why it is that I never want to throw a thing that isn’t trash in the trash. I remember what made me want to be trustworthy when I say, “No. NO. This is garbage.”

Shame is a heavy set of lungs. My heart needs a break from these defining moments, and without any intent other than a visit to a woman who brought me so much joy in Chad, I tell the old man I’d like him to meet my dear friend Bridgette. We transport there, down the lane and back through time. Bridgette lives in a clump of huts near my Chadian familiy’s, surrounded by a broken mud-brick wall. She lives there with her two girls, Merci and Estella and with a rather absent and abusive husband. The well in front of my hut is their closest source of water and so I know Bridgette and her girls from their visits, from our talks—by their laughs, by their energy.

I tell the old man we have to go in, that we’re going to break the rules of this mysterious book reading and slip into scene for a few minutes, because I miss my friend Bridgette. We do. When we do, Bridgette, in her electric-colored dress, sees us and gives a moment of the same glory she had given all those days past. She hollers, “Emiliooooooo!” and rambles in dialect, the dialect which has faded from my memory. But she doesn’t know that. We hug and with her face so close to mine, I see again those long flashing earrings swinging from her ears like beaded wind chimes hitting her smiling cheeks, sparkling as if they were an extension of her soul itself! I pull the old man in by his sleeve; insist he look closely, because we have stumbled upon a woman I had forgotten had such a great influence in this very story! I say, “Do you see this here? Do you see the way her outer matches her inner? I almost can’t tell where Bridgette ends and her clothing begins—there is a cohesive energy that braids the two into the tightest weave!

The old man, seeing what I see, gasps like a vacuum—as if taking in the air of this moment could give him new life. And I knew it could, for it had me.

Just then, we vanished, from Bridgette’s electric presence and I wondered what that vanishing was like for Bridgette. What was it like to be left behind in Chad? But that had always been the question—that had always been a very big question. But that was not the question we started with. That had not been the question of the sharp naked light. “What is this stuff you’ve got draped over your nakedness? And what made your skin alone unable to tell your whole story anymore?”

I feel like I’ve answered, but I use my words to be clear. “It was my excess that compels me to be simple. It was my shame that demands I live accountable.. And it was Bridgette, with her soul swinging around her ears, her heart bleeding into the very fabrics of her electric dress, that propelled me to let a spirit shine on through even the nakedness I know is me—the me which I started with, the me I hope never stops setting trends or calling for a more authentic life.”

The old man shut the book on his thumb—right in the place where he met Bridgette, because she had set the trend for the day and he, much like me, didn’t want to forget her.

iridescence.

2012-01-05T00:44:00.000-08:00

PHOTO: BY JACOB MAYOR: CHAD, AFRICA
iridescence, the essence of a neon child--
the glowing and lowing,
of her strong spirit's hum.

hop-scotching, watching her feet jumping lines--
the bullets and bullies,
the cruelest of kinds.

wholly beautiful.

2012-01-03T17:09:00.000-08:00

PHOTO: TEACHERS OF THE MCNEILUS LANGUAGE SCHOOL. PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC 2005
Beauty is brief until all is beauty. That sentence is full of holes, and if you call me on it, I'd say I'd never say that line to anyone's face--too much to argue about, too many exceptions to accept. But we could all use a perspective that included more beauty, and so with an internet distance of great bandwidth between me and your probably sound disagreements, I submit the faulty line.

There are always holes in my plans.
There are always new holes in my clothes (like this morning, a ripped a hole in the knee of my favorite pants!)
And I'm often even writing about some hole--writing to an absence, a void, about something missing, or something still on it's way.

Maybe it's part of my humanity, to notice the holes and watch them like we do water pre-boil, with the efficiency of a treadmill--lots of work that gets you nowhere. But if it's my humanity, then I'd like to be more angelic. I'd like to say more often, "Well here's a situation that is wholly good, though it scares the hell out of me, freaks me to a show, and lines my entrails with faint layers of self-doubt. This is a beautiful place to be."

This morning I met with Ed Frankel, a writing professor at UCLA. He has taken me on as a teaching assistant/girl-who-has-a-ton-to-learn-and-is-ready-to-learn. Starting next Tuesday, we'll be teaching a class similar to Freshmen Composition. He's themed the whole class around Style and the first essay asks the students to talk about their personal style.

As he walked me out, we laughed about the fact that when I was nineteen in the Czech Republic, Eva Kudranova had me and the other kid-teachers teach a class called, "Methods of Teaching" in which we passed on our well-seasoned knowledge of teaching ESL (ha!) to a classroom of Czech teachers...teachers with degrees and salaries.

A baby is never ready to be an adult when she is born. But she is destined to be one. She is developing as according to plan, and, if the air is fortified with destiny--then all is beautiful indeed.

remembering.

2012-01-01T21:25:00.000-08:00

Memory can sometimes hunger for another half to itself; ache for a layer of pretty packaging that would somehow grow over it's body, for a bow that could simply snake itself into place around all the pain and unresolved loss. James and Sarah Appel, the doctor and his wife in Chad, lost their baby Adam to malaria yesterday and I can't find any sentences to talk about that kind of loss. Please pray for God to be with them right now, maybe for him to weave a peace into these days which will be so, so difficult for their souls to hold.

In the quiet, when that hunger for answers and resolve isn't staved off by this busy, insulated life I live, there is a whistle through the belly of my memory--a desire for a place where I can set this incomplete picture.

"For us, forgetting was never an option. Remembering is a noble and necessary act. The call of memory, the call to memory, reaches us from the very dawn of history. No commandment figures so frequently, so insistently, in the Bible. It is incumbent upon us to remember the good we have received, and the evil we have suffered." --Elie Wiesel

Taylor.

2011-12-30T09:41:00.000-08:00

It's Taylor's Birthday! He's 28, and graduating dental school this May. In fact, he and his wife Nilmini, have been going to interviews up here in WA and ID for different dental positions. Nilmini has been perusing home magazines and I love watching them plan this next phase. I love you Taylor! Happy Birthday!

skating at the pond.

2011-12-29T13:13:00.000-08:00

Film by Taylor Wilkens...GoPro

transitioning.

2011-12-27T16:06:00.000-08:00

CAUGHT MID-AIR, MID-STEP, MID-MISS.
Have you ever experienced that moment when you’re caught betweensomething that just happened, something so barely behind you that the scent ofthe things that got cut is still rising off the knife, and then a massivefuture which is cloaked in a white sheet, the big-ness of it clearly comprehended,yet the specifics absolutely not? Thepast and the future lock into the tightest kiss, and you’re trapped in themiddle of it like a man with his hands up to guns—frozen, owning what just happened, but also being owned by the things that will come of it. And those things aren't bad, like the gun metaphor implies. No, they are results--things like growing and blooming and blossoming, and the big white cloak is timely in it's unveiling.

Let’s see if I can get out of the vague and get out of the un-relatable.

You’re on the airplane home to your home home, after leaving a placethat was your home. A middle minute.

You've sold your estate, and your bags are by the door--you're moving far the next day. A middle minute.

You’ve lost a loved one and after all the family gatherings,you get a minute alone—alone in a world where the person isn’t out there anymore. A middle minute.

You've quit your job, burned your Home Depot apron, and sit inyour upstairs apartment without strings on your wrists or roots through yourtoes. A middle minute.

You sit in your car after leaving a party where every bit ofyour extroverted-self was revving wild, and now turn the key to head home to a quiet place. A middle minute.

Seems those are pretty important minutes in time, in thought. Worth being there for.

about all the love He left us.

2011-12-25T17:40:00.000-08:00

PHOTO: MY GRANDPA'S LUV TRUCK.

Pre-meal, my grandma and I both grab string beans out of the bowl, hang them by their necks until the tips disappear in our mouths....our mouths which talk very much alike. Just a few minutes earlier, we were buried in the 1920's--in the scriptures written under sepia picture of my great-grandma Ruby and her episodic life. I pull passages from her life with a bit of that same hope and respect with which I pull from the eyes which wrote the book of Matthew. I see a woman who knew Jesus, a woman whose imperfect existence existed in the presence of God, and a woman who wrote an honest story of living.

I am peaceful at the thought that there's not much new under the sun--humbled by the fact that I'm cut from a reel of fabric which has been unrolling and providing for all the the searching girls who have come before me, dressing them in fittings which, of course they'd grow up out of. The dresses will stretch tight across the shoulders and the sleeves will creep up around her wrists telling her, "Go! Grow! Keep on, keeping on! Take 33 years, at least, and love like I have shown you. You're growing, from a baby up to something else. You sure are something else. Merry Christmas, with all the love I left you."

the happy hail of the sky.

2011-12-23T22:10:00.000-08:00

While we shivered like night,

under threat of day,

the gray loft of sky

hailed happy on our backs--

like when children ride hanging,

clinging,

singing--

we're not the least bit bothered.

We'll be home for Christmas.

2011-12-20T19:14:00.000-08:00

BRENT, KEVIN, TAYLOR, NILMINI, PARKER, MINDY, AND EMILY.
Tomorrow, after Taylor has finished taking his final boards for dental school, the seven of us will road trip back up to the northwest! Home for the holidays!

the story.

2011-12-18T10:29:00.000-08:00

LA traffic's slow 8 a.m. clog reminds me of the way the sewing machine began to chug against it's own gears after sewing so many shirts--the way it begged for a sip of oil. The first morning of my residency, I woke up at 5:30 a.m. in order to travel the seven miles to school, scared to death of a traffic jam like the one I'd experienced the night before. Arriving embarrassingly early, I understood that my precautions were a bit overtaken. Even after ten days there, Los Angeles still feels like a city existing most believably and complete inside of a GPS, to big of a landscape to be walked or known by one person fully.

I sat by Wendy the first night and the directors had us all talk for a couple minutes and find out three things unique or quirky about the person next to us and then share those with the rest of our cohort as introductions. Wendy's short black hair was cropped up above her ears which were punctured with various pieces of silver studding.

"It's always so hard to think of something unique when put on the spot," I said.
"Yeah, I don't really know what's unique about me."

We stay in that kind of state for at least a few minutes and I find out she's been to acting school and massage school, lived in New York and New Jersey, she finds out I live in WA and just moved to the area. But that's just all the hum and drum we decide--we need quirky facts.

"Well I am a vegan....?" she offers.
"Oh! Yeah!" I encourage, "That is totally kind of quirky and unique!"
It feels like we've finally chosen a restaurant to eat at, or made some critical decision, and I roll with it.
"I'm actually kind of a vegetarian, too!" I say, trying to let this be a bond between us. I go on, "Well mostly I'm a vegetarian, except I ate a lot of meat in Chad....in fact I learned to kill a chicken.....that's kind of quirky!"

Wendy's eyes look like someone has died. She actually wimpers a soft string of vowel sounds and grasps her chest in pain.

"Oh. oh. oh. That makes me so sad....I'm an animal activist...." Her facial expression tells me that this girl is not just a hippie hero, or someone wanting a good cause to enhance her personality--no, this girl is heart broken that chickens are losing their lives in Chad.

In that moment, I did what I always do with big, primed cultures of silence--I fed it with whatever I could spew, hoping to disturb the potential for animosity or awkwardness to grow. It is never a good idea, but then again, it's never really an idea at all, it's just an impulse.

I say, "Oh, no! I'm so sorry! I only killed one chicken, and that's all the meat I really ate was chicken, oh and then goat, we ate alot of goat too but that was just to survive and get protein and I never killed a goat, just ate it, and....."

She is quietly holding the t-shirt above her collarbone, "That makes me so sad, I actually work at a goat refuge..." and I am not sure what to say after this. I apologize with intense sincerity and she offers a quiet lament.

"There is so much being done for human rights in foreign countries, but no one is thinking of the animals."

I am humbled to know that my brain has never gone to the place where hers resides. We discuss a few more related issues, but our time is quickly up, however that was just the beginning of our friendship.

Wendy writes fiction, I write non. Wendy is an animal activist, I've killed a chicken. Wendy wants to be with a woman, and I hope to someday marry a man.

I went into my meeting with my mentor, a man slightly famed for his brutal honesty. He asked me what the story was that I wanted to write. I offered two simple answers saying, "Well I've been thinking I want to write about the DRC and also my great-grandma." He immediately responds, "Many people have written about the DRC and everybody's great-grandma was interesting. So what do you want to write?" I feel slightly pressured but offer, "Well my great-grandma was in the circus, and..." He cuts in, "No, what is her story, not her story." At that point I was certain I had so much to learn--for starters, the difference between the story and the story. Our meeting was an hour long, and though I felt like I was doing improve or karaoke, I left the meeting with clarity and excitement about discovering the roots and engines behind these topics for the next six months. What is it that makes a story our story? Why is it that Wendy and my differences are actually our similarities? That her story is really very much mine because the roots of our responses are more synonymous than the surface would suggest.

always there before me.

2011-12-14T18:43:00.000-08:00

PHOTO: FLETCHER WILKENS, PRIEST LAKE LOOK OUT.
I see my faith before me
It's always there before me
And I can no more own it
Than I can own the road that I'm on

And I don't know where it leads me
I don't know where it leads me
Peace and resurrection
Suffering and dejection
I don't know
--Sara Groves, Mystery

I'm not against it.

2011-12-13T21:54:00.000-08:00

PHOTO: JESS WORKING IN HONDURAS.
Jess is finishing her masters in Public Health here at UCLA and is planning to go back to Honduras when she is done. We hung out so much back in college--she has one of the most contagious laughs and I have loved getting to be around her once again while here in school! Jess and I went walking tonight in this cute LA neighborhood. I feel a consistent itch of danger here in LA no matter where I am...it's mostly because of the news headlines, facts like the one I heard morning: At ten a.m. a mad-man shot into the moving traffic at an intersection near here, critically injuring one driver.

Tonight as Jess and I prepared dinner, we chopped the zucchini, the yellow squash, and the onion. We sauteed the asparagus, and Jess got the plastic bin of spinach out. I'd say Jess and I eat the same, pretty content with whatever combo of things are available. Tonight, as Jess pulled a handful of spinach out of the tub, she asked me, "Should I wash this spinach?" I said, "Well I don't need you too--it came in a package, and I mean, I didn't wash the zucchini. We're going to cook it!" We were laughing and Jess said, "Well I didn't know if you were against that kind of thing, some people are!"

I told her I'm against things like racism...things like stealing and telling lies...not so much against things like unwashed vegetables. Though I will gladly wash them if someone else is!

We've had some good times eating out of her M&M bag, making chai tea, and using each other as ladders to turn off the smoke alarms or retrieve sparkling water off the top shelf of the beverage isle at the store. Her joy is undeniably contagious--much unlike that disease you can get from unwashed-packaged-spinach.

hey girl.

2011-12-12T22:35:00.000-08:00

Hey girl, be yourself now
Don't believe what they told you to

Hey girl, be yourself now
Your skin's more than a pin-up suit

Hey girl, don't conform now
No one else's got soul like you

Hey girl, you're a strong one
But none of us are bulletproof

Still looking for the blinding light
Still looking for the reason why
Still looking for the sun to shine
Take me higher and higher

--Blinding Light, Switchfoot

traffic.

2011-12-10T18:59:00.000-08:00

PHOTOS: TRINA YEO, JOLIE, MALINDI and BRIT, MOUNDEN.

Traffic in and around Los Angeles could make a person weep. Arrrrrrrrgggg! Everyone is painfully connected--by the air between our bumpers and fenders, by the mutual direction, and by the many red brake lights which, in response to those around them, flicker like laughter together, "Ha ha ha ha"...and it's funny, because I look around, and no one is laughing.

I'm in the city.

2011-12-08T14:18:00.000-08:00

PHOTO: GIOVANNA'S HOUSE WHERE I'LL BE STAYING WITH JESS IN LA WHILE I ATTEND WRITING SCHOOL.

I'm in LA.

I'm under nerve-fire.

I'm here just in time to meet Giovanna, a sweet Italian art curator, as she heads out the door.

I'm in Giovanna's house.

I'm excited.

I'm in a plan, a mystery.

I'm in like with this place.

I'm in love with my family back home.

I'm in the kitchen with Jess.

I'm in the middle of eating good beans and rice and olives.

I'm in the city that knew my great-grandma.

I'm in the city that played her like a movie reel, and put her in the movies.

I'm in the city where she loved her family like the rocks.

I'm in a piece of my own history, my own present, and my own future....all at once?

I'm in prayer for a second--

for a second I'm in the eye of the hurricane,

in a pleasant peace.

Then, I'm under nerve-fire again.

all young.

2011-12-05T19:39:00.000-08:00

PHOTO: MY GREAT-GRADMA'S FIVE DAUGHTERS (MY GRANDMA AND GREAT-AUNTS)
This morning at breakfast, in the Oakdale Ridge nursing home, I sat with my Aunt Ruby, 86, whose voice sails in sweetness--if you knew her, you'd know what I mean. She doesn't belong there at the home, really--she's quick, still drives a car, she's funny, capable, but her husband just suffered a stroke and is in Rehab at the hospital a few blocks away. She's left her home in Portola to be able to be with him, sit with him and care for him. As we waited for our oatmeal to be served, she softly and with so much heart for those around her, said, "Can you see why sometimes I'm a little depressed each day?"

I looked around to see one man eating hash-browns with his hands, almost missing his mouth with each bite; another lady squinting at her applesauce as she dragged a slice of bread through it leaving wakes on either side; and still another woman, head tipped way back, mouth open, as she took a nap....at 7:30 a.m. I nodded and said I did understand. My Aunt Ruby then said, "They were all young once. Some pretty, some funny, some homely--but all young."

slouching and shrinking.

2011-12-04T11:56:00.000-08:00

Drove through the fog of Southern Oregon most of yesterday. Absolutely, pretty.
A lazy kind of weather--
coats of fog left slopped over all the mountains,
nothing tidy,
no buzz of sunlight,
rain drops slouched off the fence wires--
the ones that keep the sheep together,
as they huddle shrinking
in their own wool.

apple bins.

2011-12-03T09:11:00.000-08:00

In the last hour of the last day of apple sales at the Blue Mountain Growers, another twenty-something and I had our heads down in the bins of Fugis, Grannies, and Reds, with our thighs pressed in hard against the edge of the wooden boxes. When you're down there, flipping apples aside of other apples, trying to pick the best remaining, your head swirls in the smell of the fruit--like your neck has been stuck down into a giant jug of cider. $10 a box. $5 a half. And I'm back on the road.

slamming on the brakes.

2011-12-01T18:41:00.000-08:00

PHOTO 1: CAMEL, HER NAME IS IZZY.
PHOTO 2: THE FRONT SEAT CHAOS--EVERYTHING I ALMOST FORGOT!
Tara Becker taught me to slam on my car brakes. Dylan Wren drilled the skill into my very being. When you see something worth stopping for, there can't be a second of hesitation or you'll miss it--you'll be fifty yards past and the cars behind you will deter you from thinking about stopping, from reversing, and from....really living! Those kind of decisions, split-second-slamming-ones, take a courage that I think maybe some people are born with, others of us have to practice.

I saw this camel outside of Walla Walla, had to slam on my brakes (are you proud Tara?)--and I pet his nose, actually! The drive to California has begun--I'm in Walla Walla at Coffee Perk, where all of us wanna-be-writers make dates with our odd essays and effort-full poems. I've been here reading my 7 non-fiction classmates' 20-page-essays (some seriously good essays!!!) in preparation for the workshopping sessions next week in LA. But at nine o clock, I have a date with the girls--Chelsey Blaser and Tina Rhuman. They haven't told me what we're doing, but I like both of them more than enough to do just about anything: Tina's dishes, Chelsey's homework, or even playing the quiet game would be OK with me--though there is no way either of them could play that game.

leaving home.

2011-12-01T08:28:00.000-08:00

It's morning and I'm leaving home. I think I am going to be homesick, which is funny because I have lived all over the place; on my own, in foreign countries, in huts, long houses, European apartments, out of a car, two hours away, a series of long flights away, and it doesn't make sense that this move would leave me missing home.

But I've left enough places now to know when I'll feel the leaving and when I won't. For me, it has to do with quality of time actually spent with the people in that place.

Leaving Prague after teaching there for a year, my best friends saw me off at the train station. I have a picture one of them took of my eyes dropping water from open train window. Though I was already nineteen, I'd grown up with those people; learned to see urban poverty, hitch-hiked to Germany, experienced Auschwitz together, struggled to stay faith-full in an atheistic country, and while learning all that, also learning to be a teacher! Leaving those people left me homesick for them almost instantly.

Chad was equally, no, even more difficult. The pace in Prague had been quick--the pace in Chad had been quiet and slow. Slow enough to shell your peanuts together, to shake your rice, to walk guests home across the village at night, and to fan a pile of coals to heat your tea over. I hadn't been able to rush through that experience. Communicating took time, cooking took time, and going anywhere with anyone took time.

And that seems to be what makes me homesick--spending so much valuable time with people, developing routines that are rich with meaning, and then having to pull yourself out of them and go to a place where you don't have that yet.

My parents have opened every piece of the house to me while I've been here. They let me take over Fletcher's old room for a sewing room--not saying a word about how crazy my creative process turns out to be, and let me use the dining room table as an office of sorts. They've helped and encouraged me through this actually kind of difficult period in my life--one where I've struggled with lack of purpose in the waiting. I remember one morning, coming downstairs and sitting across from my mom on the couch. I asked her, "So what are you going to do today?" She listed a few errands and appointments and I said, "Oh that sounds good." And then, all my efforts to hold it together fell apart and I began to cry, to admit that my day did not seem to have enough meaning in it. My mom is the person I've so often gone to for comfort--she hugged me and held me and told me I was doing so many things and that she knew it was hard. Then, she came up with ideas of solutions, classes I could take or projects I could work on. I will remember that moment of support, along with many others.

I will miss the three of us sitting in the small hot tub at night, will miss evening tea, talking, talking, running errands, planning our days, telling each other stories of our days, eating together. I am so grateful for all the time we've spent together, and I will miss them!

thick full of salt.

2011-11-29T23:32:00.001-08:00

She was the sea

over bare ocean bottom,

thick full of salt

like Madam Sodom.

open ears.

2011-11-29T00:53:00.000-08:00

Today, when I was driving, a fleet of birds flocked the power lines--all of them landing and clenching their little fists around the wires--those strings of metal jammed with the dialogue of brilliant business deals, shocking gossip, and vacation plans. I kept driving. They don't worry, Jesus said. Not about what everyone is saying, or about their inability to keep up, not even about the stuff slipping past and through their little fingers at the rate of, of, of....instantanium!!!!!!!!! Is that even a word?

I get to Freya and Second, that lucrative intersection where my Grandpa caught me pan-handling once, and with the car window being down and all, the man with the sign and I breathed the same air for a minute; long enough to crash our smiles--his lacking many teeth, mine having only the obvious edge of youth and a good dentist; long enough to swap a few sentences under the restriction of a red light; long enough to actually feel connected to my city, which I more often rake over with errands and intense speed.

It's funny, in the strictness of school zones, I don't feel the slightest bit bad about going 20. It feels good to have a purpose like children's safety that overrules the many purposes I seem to assign myself on any given day. Are we our own slave-drivers? High-speed internet is not quick enough! Full-time work is not as good as working OVERTIME, I mean that pays gooooood.

I've watched a crack traverse my windshield for almost a year now--watched it creep more quickly now that it's cold. I wonder about fixing it since some trucker will likely shoot a new bullet at me on this trip to California. It's tiring to maintain, you know? To feed these predictable cycles with new windshields, fresh hearts, and new hopes. (Whoa, Pessimism!)

Getting home requires tracking back through the valley and up our hill. I scare a pheasant out of the brush, and his tail feathers fly such a straight, strong line behind him! Like an obedient apprentice, or a peer pressured child--trying to fit and to belong to the whole!

There are days when the world offers me a million words of advice, speaks to me loudly, and I wonder what the difference is between days like today, and days when I'm check out to Neptune. Is it me? Or is it Him? Is Someone speaking louder? Or is someone opening their ears?

family, a baby, and a turkey.

2011-11-26T22:44:00.000-08:00

a woman's intuition.

2011-11-25T21:54:00.000-08:00

Not even a woman can know what the future will look like; not even the boldness of her perfect intuition (haha) dares to speak on behalf of that kind of mystery. Yet, here I am desiring to know the mystery--wanting it in ink and contracts, promises and dull, certain knowledge. Back in 1990, when I was just four, the climate in my mind matched that of each given second I existed in. Now that I'm older it seems I've got the dead of winter on my mind, and the regrets of summer, and how could someone hope to feel the dropping breeze of fall through all of that pollution?

precious heroes.

2011-11-20T22:27:00.000-08:00

When we were young, we chose heroes we could brag about. Most of them could fly, or at the very least redeem the world--save it and get rid of all of the bad guys castles and all of the dirt/trash, making it a better world than our young minds could even imagine. Our heroes had rocket propulsion out of their feet, X-ray vision, and invisible capabilities. They could slip through cracks and hold onto ledges using a combo of the sheer strength in their fingernails and that raspy, gaspy breath that seemed to somehow give them energy to hold for another second. They succeeded every time, without fail, and this was the reason, they were our heroes. They were dependable, and if we notice that trend, they were rarely real.

Anne of Green Gables was always my hero, and that's a different story, but alas, she was not real--any real girl would have cried her eyes out if she'd been insulted the way that Anne was--but she was my hero because she broke a slate over a boys head instead of caring what he said about her carrot-red hair.

I have chosen real heroes too--maybe most often subconciously. Jolie easily became one, a person I greatly admired--I mean what kind of lady can run a household of 19 and remain sane?! She'd walk around the house topless and let her grandchildren suck her breast for comfort--of course there was never any milk, but it kept them happy. She'd rally her children, grandchildren, and adopted children to dance around the fire light. She'd sells fabrics at the market, running a business on the weekends. I saw her chop heads off of chickens for dinner, harvest her personal rice field by hand with a blade--and with the help of hired hands, and haul her children out of the "cold" and into the huts at night. She was the glue for that family. Samedi was the pillar, but she was the glue and the muscle and the sugar.

So much of what she did, I admired--some of her abilities seemed like an adult equivalent to flying,and so with that, she became a real, living hero.

Returning to Chad a second time, I was allowed to understand more of the dirt in the family--all families have fights and disagreements, they occasionally make poor financial decisions and can tire from having too many guests--I saw all of these things happen. I saw a few more fights, witnessed some taking sides, sat through some tense conversations, and the perfection with which I'd labeled them, wasn't met.

I remember one specific evening when I came home from work, and Jolie was out in the courtyard sitting on a bench. She had a bottle of some kind of alcohol and she was pouring it into little shot glasses, tipping them back and saying, "I just want to rest! How am I supposed to take care of allllll of these children! All they ask for is food, food, food, 'Mama, Mama, Mama,' they say, always hungry, and me, there is no rest for me!" At that point, she then filled a cup and handed it to Koumatei who is only eight, and let her sip at the drink while another child brought a cup. Jolie was smiling a little, but mostly at the end of her rope. She talked more with a hint of joking in her voice, saying, "I need to go far, far away, and find a peaceful life! But for now, I will just drink."

I had never seen Jolie speak like this, or drink like this--in fact, she reprimanded the boys for sneaking off to the local brewery. I know she recognizes the role that alcohol plays in her village, draining food budgets and ruining many livers, and yet, here she was pouring her children and grandchildren glasses to drink. The experience confused me. She was a perfect mother, a perfect villager, a perfect decision maker, a perfect hero--and there was no room for her to be human or to have this bad of a day--not up on the pedestal where I'd placed her.

I've thought back on the way seeing her like that attempted to divide me from the massive amount of admiration I had for Jolie.

I had other friends in the village, like our neighbor down the road, a mother of two young girls, who would come visit me drunk and laugh the smell of excessively-consumed alcohol into the air of the evening, and my perception and appreciation for her never changed. Her substance abuse, the fact that she was wasting her money--none of that changed the way I felt about her (though I put in words about the habit), or the level to which I valued her visits to see me.

It's too much pressure to ask anyone to be perfect, to forget their humanity or the fact that they struggle--maybe very, very much. I know there's a lot to be said about expectations being unmet--because being let down is one of the hardest things. But creating room for the people we love to make mistakes, is something that could maybe allow love grow much more deeply? I want to continue learning how this works--because as we grow older and revisit the places and people who we have held as heroes--if they are real humans, we will find them faulty and if there is no room for fault, we could lose something precious.

VICTORIA.

2011-11-19T08:48:00.000-08:00

PHOTOS: DOWNTOWN SPOKANE, WITH VICTORIA VIZCARRA

waiting.

2011-11-17T13:27:00.000-08:00

PHOTO: PARENTS IN FRONT OF THE BARN.
I go between fretting about not having enough to do, and then all of a sudden, being slammed by an ever-present periphery--by a company of pressures and forethought which lays fifty billion things that I could be doing better in front of me and in those seconds, I just feel overwhelmed--never quite sure where to start. I make a lot of lists these days, and once in a while I find myself praying through spits of tears.

When I get to have meaningful conversations with my parents,

or get to hold Stephanie's (my swahili teacher's) first handmade sweatshirt and skirt,

or spend an evening with friends at the ATLAS,

I'm equalized, balanced, and reminded.

trouble.

2011-11-16T10:49:00.000-08:00

But it's trouble ahead if you think you have made it.

What you have is all you'll ever get.

And it's trouble ahead if you're satisfied with yourself.

Your self will not satisfy you for long.

...

There's trouble ahead when you live only for the approval of others, saying what flatters them, doing what indulges them. Popularity contests are not truth contests--look how many scoundrel preachers were approved by your ancestors! Your task is to be true, not popular. Luke 6:something- The Message

hardly staying.

2011-11-14T22:36:00.000-08:00

Like the rebel kids,

whose ribs heave and hive,

over smokey lungs and hopeful hearts.

Running.

Like the bees in spring,

with their feet tracking, trespassing

all over the petals of pretty things.

Flying.

Like a wind torn woman,

with hair hardly staying,

on her head which thinks, asks--

is praying,

For the time that goes through her, to be also passed through Him and for all the places it's taken, or mistaken, or mis-used/abused--that all time will stay given, even when it hardly stays.

a structure to hold up when will fails.

2011-11-12T18:16:00.001-08:00

Last night, on my way to Walla Walla, I missed a turn that I've taken probably 100+ times and found myself too far gone to go back--I needed a new route. To spare you many details and to give you one all-encompassing one, I'll tell you it took me six hours to get to Walla Walla, a journey that should have been two and a half. At one point out somewhere in the empty lands of a "shortcut", feeling impatient, sleepy and angry, I put the window down to the November freeze. My left arm flopped out over the window ledge, locking itself straight at the elbow joint, a perfect angle for cutting up the air--like a stick standing strong in a current, or a stubborn person, I could watch a structure which I was just simply born with, hold my will-less body in form. The spirit of travel, of conquest, of discovery were ancient at that point and I just wanted to make it to Tina's house.

PART 1: upward social mobility.

2011-11-09T22:19:00.000-08:00

PHOTOS: EARLY, EARLY CHRISTMAS MORNING. HAHA, PABRIS LOOKS LESS THAN EXCITED!
In order for this to make sense, you need to know what Dylan's Six Month Plan is.

About a month ago, I was in Portland, sitting in an arm chair in my brother and sister's apartment. I had a couple hours before I was supposed to speak to the nursing school, and I'd been re-vamping my talk all morning. Getting side-tracked, I thought, "I wonder what people have said about my book." I don't know what I really expected from a search like "African Rice Heart Reviews," I mean, it's not like my book has not been widely reviewed, but I did it. "African Rice Heart Reviews." There were a couple of Student Missionary blogs that mentioned my book (Jeanne sent a copy to all Walla Walla's volunteers), there were a few people who had it on book lists, there were a million links to my own blog (wow that made me feel a little self-promoting--haha) and then there was this other blog--a girl who reviews books. She had reviewed mine, and this is what she said:

African Rice Heart, by Emily Watkins
I should have known not to read this book. I should have known I am skeptic when it comes to religious missionary do-gooders, going over seas, and “helping poor people.” I think as though the conversation of what is occurring in poor countries gets lost in the dialogue of a religious fanatic, spreading the “good news” to the uneducated and heathen masses.

Watkins, a 24 year old, 7th day Adventist, travels to Chad after graduation from university, with very little money. She even stands on a street corner in Spokane (Freya and 2nd) and people give her money for her trip. She finally subsidizes her trip to Chad with money from strangers and by selling shirts she makes that praise God. She flies overseas and is set up with a family that is supporting 19 people.

The entire time I read this book, which was lauded by NPR, I wondered, who is this white girl? How did she become connected with this family in Chad? Why were they so willing to let her live with them? Why was she spreading the message of 7th day adventistism? Do the people of Chad need a christian version of God? Why do Christian’s do this? And then my head started spinning and became angrier and angrier.

I am all about relief missions and giving to third world nations. I am not about the giving being cloaked by the spreading of the message of the Christian God.

So did I like this book? No way. Did Emily Watkins do some good? Probably and she probably even learned some lessons along the way about how she is lucky to come from a wealthy family. But what is so endemic about this kind of giving is that centers around the selfishness of the givee. Emily in her book describes how much she gave this family of Chad. I kind of wanted to shake my head and say “Did you give or did you take? Did you take food from their mouths by staying there? Blankets for them to cover up with by sharing a bed with some of the 19 household members.

Ok I have to stop now, because I could continue for days. This book is not good. 1/5 Stars.

As I sat there in Laura and Fletcher's living room, I started to get the shakes and feeling cold--I don't know if you've ever had that happen, but someone explained it as the body's defense mechanism, a sort of survival technique where everything shuts down so that you won't get hurt any further. I'd felt attacked--and maybe even more, misunderstood.

I've watched a number of parents dress like Santa and then come to their children with deep HO HO HO's only to make their children screammmmmm. It's at that point, that the parent's response is to rip off the costume and correct the child's understanding--to stop the misunderstanding right there, along with the crying by getting rid of the falsehood.

I felt a little like that. Misunderstood. I wanted to tell her that

I brought my own blankets!!!
and that I paid them for rent and food!!
and that I did chores!!!
and also that I was young,
and I learning,
and so seriously human!
but that we all cared about each other.
Oh, and my name is Emily WILKENS!

How I've written it is exactly how I felt it in my head. All, other of those corrections, except that last one. (haha) felt urgent. And when I take a minute to remember, I know where that fight comes from. It's coming from a place in my heart that felt guilty for leaving. I had nightmares about how my Chadian family there was struggling, and in America I was doing nothing immediate. I was having a hard time living in the now, and my mind was constantly on the aware of the struggle in Chad, the one I'd left behind. I especially struggled when Dinga died, because it felt like I should have done more. And I still shake my fist at the ocean, and at the two to three months it takes to get a package into the village. I still feel like the distance asks the question, "Do you even care about them now that you're gone?" I always answer with a defiant YES! But then the ocean, the two months of mail-man time, and the insecure me, asks again, "Well then why don't you do more?"

As I talked to some friends, worked through some of those feelings again, I was reminded that our physical body can only be in one place at a time, and that from that place, we have to trust a love that we know is present.

With all that said, that is not really what I wanted to say. (Oh man this is long, but stay with me!)

There was another part to her letter that got to me. And this is what I intended to write about from the word one of this blog. Haha, sorry!

She assessed my faith. Actually, she made a snap judgement of who I was and where I was at in my spiritual understanding and commitment--taking just enough time to slot me in a religion and call it good...or I guess bad. But it wasn't here streamlining simplicity that got me. It was actually the complexity of my response to it....the way that, as I began to really search for

what purpose faith did have in my life,
for what I actually believed without a doubt and with all my heart,
for what I actually thought had brought so much hope and purpose to my own life...that I'd want to tell another person about it?

....well, it was the complicated evasiveness of the answers to those questions which got to me.

And so I've been trying to put something down under the first of the categories of Dylan's Six-Month-Plan. Upward Social Mobility (spiritual goals). It's not like this category of goals will be completed in six months...I am pretty sure Dylan wasn't thinking like that either, but I can focus on them, and maybe renew them in six months.

So here are three things I want to try and focus on.

Care less about what happens in a public spiritual life, and more what happens behind a closed door, or in a quiet moment. Audrey, a friend from Whitworth shared that thought with me; the conversations and time spent with God alone, is some of the most truthful time. I mean, it's time that says, You God, are here and I want to know You and there is no one I am pretending for--be sure of this God. So that means no hiding in or running from religious institutions--both of those uses of and responses to religion seems to paralyze a growing relationship with Jesus. It means being honest.
That brings me to a second bit. Spend time reading about Jesus. Even those who don't believe he was the savior, can see the light he brought to the world--the way he stood up for the poor, the widow, the child, and the woman with so much shame. A friend of mine reminded me of the definition of apprenticeship--it being, when you look over the shoulder and through the heart of someone you aspire to be like. If I would just take the time to look over His shoulder, and through His heart...
Pray for people intentionally. In high-school, I had bunk-beds. When I climbed in the bottom bunk each night, there were a whole lot of pictures of people--names of friends, of struggles and purposes written on slips of paper and jammed up into the bed-bars of the top bunk and each night or nap or rest, those reminders of the things I'd committed to God, thanked him for, asked him for help on, or laid down, were there. I have not been intentional like that. And I want to.

Sigh. I know, because of my lack of discipline, I'm going to probably struggle slash fail at this category of the Six Month Plan. But one of my favorite books is called Practicing the Presence of God, written by a monk named Brother Lawrence. The book is a set of conversations where he talks about his desire to do everything for the love of God, and if you read it, you'll appreciate this quote I want to share even more. He talks about how for him, getting close to God came through the imperfect process of

{falling away and coming back}
{falling and coming}
{falling-coming}
{falling and coming back again}

He writes, "In continuing the practice of conversing with God throughout each day, and quickly seeking His forgiveness when I fell or strayed, His presence has become as easy and natural to me now as it once was difficult to attain." I can't imagine it being easy, but I think I would like to move toward Him. Upward Social Mobility--a goal of moving towards Him and of communicating with Him.

SHIRTS AND SWEATSHIRTS.

2011-11-07T17:58:00.000-08:00

PHOTO: MY TWIN! KARALEE!

I've been getting people to model these shirts and sweatshirts for a while now. And tomorrow I'm gonna start putting them up. I've asked each of the models to speak a line or two about something that they Re-purpose in their own lives. There is a Facebook page too for LIBERATION=JOY, so if you'd like it, or share it, that would be great! Here is the link to the LIBERATION=JOY BLOG.

a six month plan.

2011-11-06T13:12:00.000-08:00

PHOTO: DYLAN FLIPS A BULL SO HE CAN CASTRATE HIM.

My friend Dylan, has this thing called a Six Month Plan. He has big white boards mounted on his wall and he fills them with the proposed set of goals for the next half of a year. The goals are divided into categories, all of which I think are well chosen:

Upward Social Mobility (spiritual goals)
Financial (getting rid of debt, spending goals)
Travel (US travel and world)
Literature (books, magz, etc.)
Ministry Of Propaganda (things like writing a Christmas letter, or sending more hand-written letters)
Wellness (taking care of the body)
Unleash Innovation (learning a new language, new skill or craft)
World Service (giving back)
Minding The Business (furthering of career)

I'm working on a sixth month plan. I will post it when I'm done. But in the meantime, I thought I'd share his categories in case you all wanted to make one too.

selling your conciousness to the moon.

2011-11-01T23:53:00.000-07:00

PHOTO: AN EVENING WITH SOME MASON JARS AND FRIENDS.

This evening, after my dad got home, we sat down and ate my mom's taco soup--split an avocado, shared a bag of chips, and talked about everything. Downstairs, my mom helped a couple of high school girls find 40's costumes for the annual talent show at Upper Columbia Academy. (Years back, my mom took over my dad's shop, and turned it into a costume room, for which she already had costumes enough to fill. There are isles of wild out-fittings--that's how many!)

After eating, and the girls leaving, my mom comes up.

I put some dishes in the wash,

she asks where our cat Lucy is,

there is talk of hot-tubbing,

but they are tired,

and my parents go to bed,

and I brush my teeth,

knowing full-well that I'll not be able to sleep yet.

I sleep well when I have routines. When I don't have routines, appointments, duties, disciplines--when I don't have a beginning signed off by an ending--well, I don't end up feeling like the day deserves to end. I don't like this rut or way I tend to go, but it is what seems to be right now. I have tried to force myself to hold still and think of nothing. I've tried reading in bed. I've tried watching Grey's Anatomy (way too intense to put me to sleep), I've tried listening to music, taking a shower, a bath, drinking tea--any other suggestions?!

When I can't sleep, I usually head to Fletcher's old room (he's a married man now), which I've turned into a sewing room. The place is a beautiful mess. Against one whole wall there are mountains of fabrics. Pillowcases ripped at the seams, old quilts, men's dress shirts, cotton, polyester seventies, corduroy, handkerchiefs, lace and many sweatshirts and t-shirts ready to be re-purposed. Nothing has a place to where it should return when not in use. Wherever it is, is where it is.

My mom came in the other day and was literally taken back. She said, "Oh, wow." It doesn't look like anything productive could possibly happen in the room, I know.

But once you're sitting in the middle of all those colors and grains of fabric,

maybe sitting on top of them,

and you touch the sweatshirt with your left hand,

while pulling at a scrap at the bottom of a heap with your right,

and you lay it there,

over another piece,

which you then cut a little,

and pin it,

so you won't forget the meaning or the placement--

Yes, once you're there,

you realize it's actually a very inspiring place to be...

There are pins like land-mines/hidden-spike-strips all through-out the piles of fabrics, under my sewing chair and at my feet, buried in the carpet. I'm a careless seamstress--no, NO, I'm not careless...in fact, I care alot. It's just that my care is almost all for getting to the machine and stitching the whole works in place while it's still humming that right-ness which at that moment is, well, just so right. Yes, I care more for that than for tidy organization, or for pin-pricking-through-feet-sort-of-potentials. I don't care about being poked a little. For those of you who bake, I'll speak to you like this. I'm the girl who bakes blizzards in her kitchen--leaves everything out on the tile as she goes, working through the recipe (be it in her head or in her book) and let's all the ingredients pile and remind her--let's them confuse and keep her company until the bread is finally in the oven. THEN--then, she can clean up the kitchen.

Some things are so right.

and the right-ness,

and the hard driven motions which keep the faith in that right-ness,

leave something of a beautiful mess for later.

Oh how what we love speaks to our own souls the best. And the rest of the world must be looking on and saying, "Oh, wow." But in their own blizzard or right-ness, they feel the same inspiration you do, it just looks different.

Usually, after sewing, hot-tubbing, and writing, (all three of which I've done already tonight), I curl up on the couch and shove my feet in between the cushion where the floor heater fills the empty space--and that routine, the combo of all those things, tends to sell my consciousness to moon.

2011-10-30T23:47:00.000-07:00

YAKIMA SKY: SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 30.

I close my eyes and go back in time
I can see you’re smiling, you’re so alive
we were so young, we had no fear
we were so young, we had no idea
that life was just happening.

-Switchfoot

the expense of fall.

2011-10-29T16:20:00.000-07:00

At The Woods Coffee House, I ordered a a tall pumpkin spice latte. The barista said, "That'll be $4.45," and then turned to pump the expensive squirts of syrups into my cup. I immediately said, "ACTUALLY! Can I just have a cup of drip coffee? I suddenly feel like drip coffee." I love fall so much, but it's so expensive to celebrate!!!

appreciating the important things.

2011-10-28T23:51:00.000-07:00

Today, in Mill Creek, I watched a small girl sit across from her well-dressed grandfather, the chair suspending her legs above the floor like wind chimes slightly swinging in response to restless air. As she listened to what he was saying, I wondered if there was any way she could possibly be comprehending the serious strings of information he appeared to be delivering. Though I believed she must be bored or restless, she was listening so well--so well in fact that each bite of ice cream was delayed at lengths giving the dessert time to melt down the curvature of the spoon right to it's lip, at which point she'd slide it between her lips. Where did this little girl get this ability to tune in? How was it that she could be sitting in such restless air--a place that made her legs slightly swing over top of the surfaces which I'm sure she would have rather been rolling or running on, and yet appreciate the important things well enough that even her ice-cream was given over to time and gravity? I would like to know.

Kerry Park. Seattle, WA.

2011-10-28T16:00:00.000-07:00

PHOTO: This morning with KATIE H. at Kerry Park, Seattle WA
It's been raining like a fickle electrical connection here in Seattle--on and off, and it's full on right now. There's a plaque on the wall at Kerry Park that says, "Kerry Park given to the City in 1927 by Mr. and Mrs. Albert Sperry Kerry, Sr., so that all who stop here may enjoy this view."

the headless woman.

2011-10-26T21:11:00.000-07:00

GUESS WHO?

congo.

2011-10-25T18:10:00.000-07:00

PHOTO: LIKE ANY KID, ARMELLE HATED TO HAVE HER NOSE WIPED. SINCE THE FAMILY WAS SO BIG, SHE GOT HER WAY.
I gave Stephanie, my Swahili teacher her first sewing lesson today. I felt out of control most of the lesson, watching the oscillating needle run towards her fingers like one hungry and aggressive tooth, her foot finding no middle speed on the sewing-pedal which was under her foot! When my mom used to give us driving lessons, she'd always set one hand on the emergency brake, just in case. Well there is no e-brake on a sewing machine. Sometimes I'd find myself with my hands up by my ears, saying all the wrong French words in those panicked moments. I didn't know the word for sewing needle, for pedal, or for impaling your finger on a spike that would follow through your fingernail without a second thought! In a very under-stated warning, I said, "Attention, il va piquer vous!" Careful! He will poke you!

I'm going to the Congo in January, to work for the Panzi Foundation, and while I've been so scared of saying these plans out loud--of them falling through, being with Stephanie makes my desire to go irrepressible. I know that the learning is starting here, in Spokane, with Stephanie and her three kids who have lived through the horror of losing their father and two of their siblings in the on-going war; who survived being displaced and living in tents for ten years; who survive, no, thrive, daily in Spokane,

in the public school system,
on the public transport system,
and inside the American social systems that are wildly different from where they've come.

I don't have a ticket to the Congo, which means plans could change any second. But right now, the Congo is teaching me, and talking about it is what I need to do.

I dropped Stephanie off at her doctors appointment on my way into town. Donne, her 19 year old son came with us. At the doctor's office, Stephanie climbed out of the car and said what sounded like, "See you never?" I said, "What? Why? Wait, won't I see you tomorrow?" She said, "Yes, see you never?" I was so confused, and Donne, 19, jumped in and said, "Oh, neuf heure! See you neuf heure! She'll see you at nine 'o clock! She is speaking English and French together!" Mis-communication is such good communication sometimes. As his mom got out of the car, Donne hollered after her, "See you never!" And we both had another good laugh.

models in my life.

2011-10-24T19:28:00.000-07:00

PHOTOS: LIBERATION=JOY PHOTO SHOOT. MY GRANDMA IS A MODEL ISN'T SHE?!
It's evening and Monday passed all too quickly. I missed most of the daylight because I was inside. Coffee. Unpack car from the weekend. Clean room. Do Laundry. Shuffle papers. Sew. Drink a cup of water. Haul a box spring with my mom to put under my bed. Visit my grandparents, where Shaun snapped these pictures and well, that's it--the sun burned on down past the treeline and into the skyline--dug it's way down into the earth, to give us motivation to rest. When I feel like a day is unproductive, I try and focus on at least one moment that made the day valuable. This picture of my grandma, and the one's I haven't posted of my grandpa, are the little snippets of time that would have been lost, had today not been as it was.

the wind in Montana.

2011-10-22T21:57:00.000-07:00

PHOTOS: MONTANA WIND PRESS, HUNKERED DOWN.
My uncle Eric is such a calming, kind guy. He is an anesthesiologist, but also a pilot and so we have been staying with him and Quinn, his fiance, in an apartment which connects to his airplane hanger. On my way to the restroom, I pass his 4-seater Cessna and I feel like I'm at the airport!

Quinn tells me that the wind here in Montana can make her restless because of the way it comes and ambushes the windows. From my bed here, it sounds a bit like the ocean does, but the ocean is so eternally reliable and maybe because of that, I never stress about what it's doing. My uncle told me that the plaster coat on the roof of the hanger cracked. I guess the wind pushes that hard here. Buildings aren't meant to flex so much unless you're in an earthquake zone. I mean, it's like an old woman with an arthritic back shouldn't do a back bend unless she wants her spine to break and pop out of her stomach! Yeah, I know! BAD DEAL!

I want to write more about these two because they're just such wonderful people who live outdoors and so, so intentionally, but my belly is full of polenta, a million fresh herbs, and rooibos tea, and despite the wind of Montana, I feel peace.

bring me stillness.

2011-10-21T21:39:00.000-07:00

Bring the wind and bring the thunder,

bring the rain till I am tried,

when its over bring me stillness,

let my face reflect the sky,

and all the grace and all the wonder of a peace that I can't fake--

wide open like a lake.

--Sara Groves

meet the baker, and meeting our Maker.

2011-10-20T23:37:00.000-07:00

This morning, as my mom and I were heading out to drive to Montana, we stopped at Great Harvest Bread Company. This is one of my favorite places to go--they give thick, free slices of homemade bread to their customers and the guy at the counter wears this shirt that says, "Prepare to meet your baker..." Also, if you bring your own cup, you can fill it with Craven's Coffee for just seventy-five cents.

I feel a little biased to Craven's Coffee because about a year ago I met Rebecca and Simon, the local roasters, and Simon even made me a latte himself.

I went to go fill my cup scanned the options; Decaf, nope. Nicaragua blend, meh. Montana Jacks, Ha! Yes, please! The Montana Series Coffee label says, "Montana is not just a place. It's the people, too. They inspire this intense, strong coffee. It's a bold, distinct taste that reminds us of a few people we know."

I like coincidences, because I'll bet, when we finally someday meet our Maker and this complex reality's Maker, we'll find out that there was a realm of workings we had no idea about. A friend of mine once said that maybe we'd find out that everything was more connected than we ever could bring ourselves to believe or comprehend. That made sense to me. Like perhaps because there's a God who knows where we have come from and where we are headed, that our presents and our futures are linked, and no I'm not trying to figure out ideas like pre-destination or anything so ambitious. But what if elements in our presents are miniature prefaces, connections and preparations to and for our futures. What if because I was heading to Montana, I was more likely to encounter Montana coffee? Don't laugh. And don't try to think about that too hard. :) I'm just saying. that I like coincidences for how they let me think bigger.

My mom and I are sleeping at Mt. Ellis Academy tonight. Actually, she is sleeping, I'm having trouble. But tomorrow night we'll head to Great Falls, and see my Uncle Eric and his fiance Quinn--who are definitely, the bold, inspiring types of people. Excited to see them!

superlatives.

2011-10-18T19:52:00.000-07:00

It's been the prettiest day here in Spokane, and I know I used a superlative, which kind of makes my statement dead and flat like the piece of road-kill out on the Palouse Highway--but if you could not throw it out just yet, and instead picture the way that,

the sun has hung over our city like a 1910 chandelier--

a kind of glass lace that dresses a room so attractively

you believe you must be somewhere good--

or at least that, somebody good,

who loves beauty has been in that place.

I texted my dad at work, "What a dang pretty day! I hope you get outside for a minute."

He texted back, "Just took a walk in fact, in heaven. Tx."

Everybody noticed the day, I'm not just using superlatives...

missing someone.

2011-10-18T00:19:00.000-07:00

PHOTO: ESTHER
Tonight, I got to talk to Jolie, Samedi, and Esther. Esther told me that her boyfriend broke up with her, and that school was alright, and that she was eating chicken for breakfast. I love chicken for breakfast and I love eating chicken with Esther for breakfast--the way the meat would sit on top of the rice and there was this little battle that went on the whole meal where we'd shove the meat back and forth insisting the other person take the good pieces. There is this quote I saw and I don't know who said it, but it's exactly how missing works for me. It says,

"Missing someone isn't about how long it's been since you've seen them last, or the amount of time since you've talked. It's about that very moment when you're doing something, and you wish that they were right there with you."

2011-10-17T00:23:00.000-07:00

Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entaglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken. It will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable. ~C.S. Lewis

living in a vivid world.

2011-10-16T13:33:00.000-07:00

There was a ten year period of time when my brothers and I were younger that we lived on somewhat of a farm. We had a few of every kind of animal—horses (Cyan and Abu), dogs (Margret, Buela and Blossom), cats (Mack and Catsa), goats (Rack and Ruin), chickens (Many, many, many) , a pig (Wilbur), guinea pigs (Salt and Pepper), a hamster (Hammy), rabbits, snakes, lizards, salamanders, and fish. We had puppies, kittens, chicks and kids. I saw many animals take their first breaths.

Whenever one of the goats was close to delivery, my parents would sleep with one baby monitor out in the goat shed and the other by their bed so that when the goat went into labor, they would hear her. They’d wake my brothers and me up and we’d pull on our hats, bathrobes and boots before plodding like little lead mummies out through the dark. The three of us would sit on our knees in the straw while the chickens quietly clucked and the mother goat lay having contractions on her side. Once, when the baby goat was part way out, Fletcher began to cheer Ruin on, “Come on Ruin, you can do it!”

Vivid moments don’t have to be shocking or uncomfortable—vivid means, “producing a strong or clear impression on the senses.” We don’t have to live in a vivid world these days. I mean, it’s incredibly possible to live separated—un-appraoached, unchallenged, numb, and disengaged. I think the first step to living in a vivid world is showing up. Getting out of your warm bed and plodding like little lead mummies out to the shed where life is being born. Then from there, things might get messy or beautiful or a bit crazy.

I think my parents must have started a farm just for us because now that we’re grown, they have just one cat named Lucy.

the best photos.

2011-10-14T01:58:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, when I'm flipping through my pictures, I discover ones like this one that are almost still moving--moments so candid that you can feel what's happening. Those make the best photos, don't they? This one was taken by Phil.

working under pressure.

2011-10-13T17:06:00.000-07:00

I think I work best under pressure. I could take two months to do something, or I could take two days, and I always try and take two months because I'm scared of trusting myself to take two days, but maybe I should just take two days? And save the two months? Super risky!

fifth, one, fourth, and the twenty.

2011-10-12T16:46:00.000-07:00

This is my fifth cup of tea--the same one tea bag steeped in all five cups, and it's my fourth draft of twenty pages of writing. How could I not like the fourth draft? How could, by the fourth draft, I want to roll it up and dip it in a pitcher of acid, believing that whatever way that act might dishevel and rearrange the words/paragraphs might be better than what I've got? I have a feeling I'm going to learn some good lessons very soon. I'm ready, Professor Discouragement. Bring. It. On.

reality.

2011-10-12T12:47:00.000-07:00

It's midnight in Portland. People have been shot in an old episode of Grey's Anatomy, and Laura is tearing up. One doctor dies in the arms of another--under shooter lock-down he bleeds to death on the tile floor. We sit on the suede couch under my REI sleeping bag. I hug her and say, "Aweeee, Laur!" and she says, "I never cry in shows!" Laura is laughing while she's crying. Laughing that she's crying.

Are we ok? I mean, they are ok. Does that mean we are ok, too?

PHOTOS: PHIL AND RYAN MAKE THEMSELVES CRY.

evening.

2011-10-10T17:54:00.000-07:00

Oh love wash over a multitude of things
Love wash over a multitude of things
Love wash over a multitude of things
Make us whole
-Sara Groves

gathering focus.

2011-10-09T10:28:00.000-07:00

PHOTOS: MUSHROOM IN THE BLUE MOUNTAINS.

melodrama.

2011-10-06T12:17:00.000-07:00

PHOTO: GEESE WALKING. RAINY DAY IN SPOKANE, WA.

I have begun doing two things quite regularly. Plugging my phone in every night (this means it's almost always charged), and flossing my teeth every day. I don't know why I never made such consistent habits of these things before now. Oh, and I stopped putting (everything) in the microwave for 3 minutes. Changing that habit turned out to be as simple as just pressing 1 instead of 3 and now I never over-heat my tea, soup, or muffin. Such is the melodrama in my life these days. :)

"I am a nun."

2011-10-05T19:41:00.000-07:00

During Swahili lesson tonight, my teacher Stephanie, who is a refugee from the Congo, taught me to say, "I don't have a husband. I am a nun." She made me practice it over and over, laughing and laughing--her kids laughing and laughing.

settling myself.

2011-10-03T20:32:00.000-07:00

Today I felt busy for the first time in a very long while. I felt like Chelsea I would think I was a flake if I did not show up to walk at the Rockwood Bakery at 5.30a.m., felt like someone expected me to put the books in the mail to them by 2.p.m., that a friend needed to talk, and that my Swahili teacher would wonder where I was if I did not show up to my lesson. JAMBO!

I was talking to Susan Davis the other day in her chocolate shop--the one I visit always hoping she'll happen to drop in. We caught up on the last few weeks and she said, "You hear people say, 'I've just been SO busy,' as if it is the biggest burden yet the biggest accomplishment and ya'just want to say, 'Well, now that's just great isn't it?!'" I laughed at her animation and sarcasm. She went on, "I, too, sometimes lean towards packing life too full, but I don't want to do it, and I don't want that to be where I gather my worth from."

I am grateful for thoughts from adults--for their lives unwrapped and gifted to us who have come after.

I can be honest and say that I am horrible at not being busy. It's a red flag, a victory cry from the warriors who beat my up optimism and destroy my patience in times of waiting. I too, like Susan don't want to gain my worth from doing things. I would like to enjoy days like today and days like the last seven, to the same degree, reaching somewhere else, to settle myself.

hush.

2011-10-02T23:02:00.000-07:00

PHOTO: SPRAY FALLS (WITH ALEX PAULSEN), BERE, CHAD (WITH ALEX PAULSEN)
The streams whose seams were
bursting with rush,
cried like babies--
no mothers to hush.

a prayer someone shared with me.

2011-09-30T19:21:00.000-07:00

Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals by Shane Claiborne
Lord of Creation,
create in us a new rhythm of life
composed of hours that sustain rather than stress,
of days that deliver rather than destroy,
of time that tickles rather than tackles.

Lord of Liberation,
by the rhythm of your truth, set us free
from the bondage and baggage that break us,
from the Pharaohs and fellow who fail us,
from the plans and pursuits that prey upon us.

Lord of Resurrection,
may we be raised into the rhythm of your new life,
dead to deceitful calendars,
dead to fleeting friend requests,
dead to the empty peace of our accomplishments.

To our packed-full planners, we bid, "Peace!"
To our over-caffeinated consciences, we say "Cease!"
To our suffocating selves, Lord, grant release.

Drowning in a sea of deadlines and death chimes,
we rest in you, our lifeline.

By your ever-restful grace,
allow us to enter your Sabbath rest
as your Sabbath rest enters into us.

In the name of our Creator,
our Liberator,
our Resurrection and Life
we pray.
Amen.

gigging and writing school.

2011-09-29T11:50:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to Gonzaga University where Josh, the professor there, had asked Kevin (founder of the non-profit BIG TABLE) and I to come share our struggle with vocation--which has been and will be life-long...because vocation is understood in terms of realizing your true self--who you are not just what you want to do. Driving to the school campus, I felt a little intimidated. Gonzaga is a competative school, and the class was going to be full of seniors, ready to graduate, who I imagined probably had a boat load of opportunity paired with direction and motivation and goals and dreams and plans and certainty, and, and, and...

And while, I was right on about the fact that they were dreamers, achievers, passionate, motivated people, that word certainty was hardly a word I would have attributed to all of them, and so, I was not alone. The questions that have been reverberating among YOU my friends and in my own heart, were planted all throughout the Comprehensive Leadership class.

"I'm deciding whether or not to go to law school. I love writing, but I'm not sure it's sustainable." I hear you!

"My dad is a doctor, and there is innate pressure." Hmmm.

"I cried when I turned 19 because I felt like life was passing me by--not enough time to do everything." Mm!

"I feel as though if I choose one thing, I will have to let go of another." Opportunity costs.

"I want to go to Zambia, but then I think about relationships, about goals of family, etc." Yep.

"How can we navigate periods of deep despair when we feel uncertain about our future." Excellent question.

So many excellent questions.

I remember on my book tour back in March, when we got to TN,

I had a deferral hanging in the air for PA school,

an application to Nutrition school mostly completed,

and a Nursing school application essay struggling to find it's convincing and convicted thread,

because really--

I just wanted to be a writer,

a t-shirt sew-er,

maybe a girl who draws people's blood sometimes (like a phlebotomist, silly),

or changes a bandage for someone--

a girl who loves language,

a teacher--whether employed as one or not,

a person who,

loves her job so much she would do it for free...

There was a girl in the class who talked about how her friends called her a "gigger". The class laughed at the word, but she explained further. "You know, a person who just has all these little gigs, but never commits to one thing." She posed the questions, "How do you get over that?"

Haha I understood her way too well, and I thought she and I would do well in sitting down and having a conversation about that question--to discuss why we are gigging...

Are we gigging because we don't know what we want to do?

Are we gigging because we fear our ability to succeed at the things we want to do?

Are we gigging because we are trying to please many people with many different plans for our lives?

Why are we gigging?

The night was so good for me--I appreciated the community I found in that classroom and the conversations after. I told them I thought they were some of the luckiest people to be all in one place having those conversations in a formal way, with great attention. They agreed.

Today, I'm paying my hefty non-refundable confirmation fee for grad school! Beginning December 8th and for the the two years after that, I will be enrolled in Antioch University's low-residency MFA in Creative Writing program. The program has an emphasis on writing for social justice and change in society. Instead of working towards one full-length manuscript while in school, the program "educates students in the various roles of the Writer in Society, how to make a difference on the page and in the diverse communities where writers work and live." Our time is broken up into four six-month project periods, where we can explore different roles of writing in communities and work with different mentors. The program's low-residency format allows someone to live anywhere in the world and write from those places--places where people might find themselves

changing bandages,

teaching sewing,

learning languages,

or cleaning toilets,

all the while working with mentors via the internet, coming back to LA every six months for ten-day residencies--time spent with a community of teachers, writers and fellow students.

I am terrified of many parts of this next step. Like the part where, by Oct. 14, I have to have 20 pages of writing turned in so that people can pick it apart at the residency in Dec. The fear of not succeeding at the things I want to do is ever-present for me when the pursuits are things I care so much about.

I realize that people who get good at what they do, and make a long-lasting difference, commit to a purpose for a period of time. However, even while we commit to something like law school, writing school, medical school, a job, a year of service--whatever it is, I believe we have the ability to gig every day. An act of kindness gig. A short poem written out gig. A ten minute song on the piano gig. A meet with someone and have tea gig.

I want to thank the CLP class for such an open conversation. It encouraged me big time! :)

Kevin, the founder of Big Table, responded to that question, ""How can we navigate periods of deep despair when we feel uncertain about our future?" by saying, "Find people who are going to sit with you through that, who won't simply tell you trite things, but will listen to and support you." There are so many people I have to thank for that kind of support.

Ok. I better call and pay that deposit. :)

where bravery comes from?

2011-09-26T22:59:00.000-07:00

"We're barely breathing, you and I." We stayed close, both wanting to disappear into the bravery of the other--that bravery that one scared person assumes the other scared person must have at least a shred bit more of when both are threatened. To be found out, or figured out; to be seen--uncovered like a stump tipped back, all the insect caves half un-caved and the creatures, there in the dirt, blinded and choked by a crisp cold light and a bright air of panic. No one likes the way that feels.

We sat longer and longer until our presence didn't seem like it threatened our existence--until a bravery came in and sat like a third person, as if no one could have found it inside his own heart alone, or another's, for that matter.

the way daylight fights.

2011-09-25T19:30:00.000-07:00

PHOTO: LAST NIGHT IN BERE.

When our hands slapped high five,

the space between us died.

We cried for days, and days--

for reason upon reason,

because this time,

we walked away.

The lie that we'd see each other soon,

oh, the moon had felt so kind.

But daylight fights

the night's glow,

the night's promise--

and the morning brought different truths.

a Seattle stop.

2011-09-24T19:52:00.001-07:00

the tall, lean European space.

2011-09-23T22:59:00.000-07:00

PHOTO: BACK IN THE REDWOODS.

The camper shower is a tall, lean, European type of space. The back wall meets my body with the chill of a waterslide—a thick plastic cage that sends all the water down, and that’s where I fall when the truck accelerates. Back wall catching body. Body against plastic.

The shower curtain wraps closely around the front side of the space. It almost feels like those times when my mom would hold a towel around me so I could change decently in public places--there I’d be, elbows trapped by towel, towel splitting open when I bent forward, and towel just so up in my space—making it hard to get the task at hand, done.

I drop my clothes to a square foot piece of carpet which is holding my feet. I step into the little back-wall-front-curtain space, and reach over to turn the sink on. Then I pull the switch to open the shower hose.

To make matters more complicated, let’s remember that the whole shower is on wheels, driving the snake lanes of highway 101. My legs brace themselves like a tripod, except, there are only two of them, and that’s why I lean my back against the back wall. Back wall catching body. Body against plastic.

The water is not warm and I feel like I’m doing work to be in that shower. It’s not pleasant, but it’s clean, and by golly I will be clean. I fly into dancer pose when my dad slams on the breaks. My front arm extends out into the curtain, fully followed by my body which finds itself against another wall, one which is not part of the shower. Regaining my balance, I rinse the shampoo out of my hair, scrap the idea of conditioner (another wash-rinse step? I think not) and flip the water off. My skin is proudly dripping camper water-tank water onto the square foot piece of carpet which is once again holding my feet.

I dry my face with a beach towel that still smells like Bodega Bay ocean salt. Looking into the mirror, my eyes look proud for a second—I catch them looking proud for the way I’ve just managed. Is this all it takes then? Just a task to take on? A challenge or purpose?

I reach out and grab my tooth brush and start scrubbing my teeth—there in the mirror, toothpaste foams around my lips and I stop taking myself so seriously. I’m clean and we’re almost to Seattle.

avenue of the giants.

2011-09-22T12:55:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, we biked through the redwood forest--right down the Avenue of the Giants. A dog came out of these people's shanty living quarters and I had to swing my left leg hard and fast at his head/teeth while hollering, "Go home! Go home!" Yikes.

Today is my mom's birthday! She and my dad are just five days apart--he's a bit older than her. So today, since it's her birthday, we're going to stop at all the thrift stores and antique shacks we see.

We are heading into OR, the beaches remind me that I've got to live by one someday. Just a reminder, though. Life's not there yet...

the crust of the pacific.

2011-09-21T16:24:00.000-07:00

This is a route I know fairly well for being me, and for only having lived 25 years. San Francisco, NorCal Coast, Highway 1, to Highway 101, to the Redwoods and so on up. My dad’s duelee truck sounds like farm equipment when it revs up hills and the camper’s top-heavy weight rocks us at our base, like a toddler with tippy balance. Highway 1, in case you’ve never driven it, is a 30 mile per hour paved route and serves as the crust of the Pacific Ocean, keeping you within earshot of the breaking waters and rarely taking you away from the sheer and unforgiving cliffs. It’s a slow road compared to Interstate 5, which is so straight and can be driven without any special attention, going seventy miles per hour.

But the experience of driving highway one, if I could begin to relate it, comes from a line of living that is carefully tailored for a human ready to watch and ready to stop, to breathe for a second longer than makes good sense.

The houses that hang on the ever-eroding crust, give a real sense that we are temporal, that our earthly existence will pass within one lifetime, and that there is no risk in living in a danger which will never catch us, anyway.

Maybe that was a selfish sentence...definitely bolder than I am. I believe in preserving the future of our earth for our children, in preventing the onset of problems that slowly destroy. But I also believe in graduating from fear, from blacks and whites and strictness. I believe in living on the edge (though I'm often not the first to do it.) I believe in living in uncertainty--mostly because we must, and also because loving the questions is something that is bringing more and more freedom.

REVOLUTION.

2011-09-18T00:18:00.000-07:00

PHOTO: INN MARIN, BEN AND ERINNE'S WEDDING. UNCLE BARRY DANCES HIS SOLO.

We've been dancing at the Inn Marin here in San Francisco for the last few hours--dancing with cousins, mothers, children, and grandpa's--my grandpa, too. There was one point later in the night where Laura, Fletcher, Nilmini, Shaun and I, our bodies damp with sweat, were singing the Party Rock Anthem to each other, shuffling under the strobe and hopping around like teenage-children, that I thought, "I am so in love with these people."

That's what weddings are about, right? Love. Promise. Committing to another, to each other. Symbols. Getting someone's back. Celebration. Coming together. Being more unified, more like a body, more like one.

We pushed my Uncle Barry into the middle of the dance floor to solo, and like a sharp glass of lemon, he drank down the spotlight, in his best suit, with his children watching, like a father, like a son, like a human radical, starting a revolution in the hearts of any timid man, woman or child.

When we set our pride down, we start revolutions. Things change. Things begin to move. We, as one, begin to actually move.

quiet heart.

2011-09-15T20:26:00.000-07:00

PHOTO: A CITY OF TREES IN MT. RAINIER NATIONAL PARK.

sewing.

2011-09-14T22:36:00.000-07:00

PHOTO: Stitch. Stitch. Stitch.
This kind of sewing? It's like painting more than sewing, really. Painting....with fabrics. :)

experiencing from all angles.

2011-09-14T00:13:00.000-07:00

PHOTO: SPRAY FALLS (from all angles), MT. RAINIER NATIONAL PARK.

Even when the rain falls,

Even when the flood starts rising,

Even when the storm comes,

I am washed by the water.

--Needtobreathe

feathers.

2011-09-12T11:05:00.000-07:00

Last night I left Jerrod and Jiffer's wedding (beautiful), headed via 82E, onto I90, and then I saw a sign that said, "Tired?" and I thought, "Yes." Then the sign said, "Rest Area 10 Miles." And that was the end of me. I pulled in and parked by a semi whose low hum kicked the fear of being alone at such an hour of the night. Sleep.

I wake up to a text from my dad at seven saying, "Up?" I say, "Yup."

I climb out of my sleeping bag and instantly am surrounded by a flock of down feathers. There is a hole in the lining of my sleeping bag--I'm taking it back to you REI, you hear me? The feathers continue to float--they are everywhere, stuck to my black and white striped dress, settling onto the passengers seat and onto the stacks of belongings which I've been carrying around for the last few weeks away from home. I roll the windows down and like a vacuum, the window draws the feathers out, leaving my car clean and homeward bound.

three in a bed.

2011-09-09T07:06:00.000-07:00

It's an early morning at the Hampton Inn in Walla Walla. I slept in a king bed between my grandma and mom last night, my grandma with her finger in one ear, pillow against the other to keep the noise of the fan out, "If you need to tell me something just tap me because my finger is in my ear." We all look a little alike, and we all act a little similar.

luck and blessing.

2011-09-05T20:49:00.000-07:00

I lace one shoe up around my left, and then the other around my right. They tighten down in the same way cold skin does--shrinking in close around your body. Vibrims are meant to be nothing more than a little insulator—a sole so thin that your feet talk to rock, and the rocks talk back. My mind is a better runner than I and has been functioning as a vocational calculator for the last few years. For this run, there is no need to try to guess what might be in your left hand, God—or your right hand, future. I run past a silver spider string, catching light as its length goes from sky to ground, and I’m undeniably aware of the Invisible for just a second.

She confuses me, God that is. It’s a recipe for a real trip to desire to know Him—for He, She, however you would like to envision the Father or Mother of Lights, is still mysterious to most who are honest.

The other day, I told someone I was very glad that they were safe after their car was totaled in a collision with a semi. The person’s life was spared and his response was, “God is good, we are so blessed.”

I’ve noticed that we almost always use the word blessing to identified a wing of protection, a big break, the business that flourishes, or that family who grows healthy and happy. “We are so blessed.” We say it in response to goodness, don’t we?

But is his blessing always displayed through goodness?

Is earthly goodness a symptom of his blessing?

Is it related at all?

Sometimes I’ll say things like, “Dang! We are so lucky to be on top of this mountain!” My grandma always corrects me and says, “We’re not lucky, we’re blessed.”

Does goodness ever seem like a thing of luck to you?

It does to me. Who lives and who dies? Who wins and who loses?

Lucky break, fast break, broken heart, shattered heart.

Who gets what? Who gets it when?

Free choice.

Divine intervention…sometimes?

A creative God working good from that which goes bad.

Complex. Mystery.

Je ne comprend pas.

Sara Groves has a new album out. It’s called Invisible Empires and there’s a song on it called Open My Hands. In this song, she articulates this question...she doesn’t answer the question, but rather poses it in a way that keeps the question going in faith—she lets mystery echo.

“I believe in a blessing I don’t understand.

I’ve seen rain fall on wicked and just.

Rain is no measure of his faithfulness,

He withholds no good thing from us.

I believe in a peace that flows deeper than pain.

That broken find healing in love.

Pain is no measure of his faithfulness,

He with holds no good thing from us.

I believe in a fathom that won’t ever run dry,

though I’ve thirsted and didn’t have enough.

Thirst is no measure of his faithfulness,

He withholds no good thing from us.

I am nodding my head,

an emphatic yes,

to all that you have for me.”

waking up rested.

2011-09-04T17:54:00.000-07:00

PHOTO: GOMA WATCHES UGGA SLEEP...I WATCH GOMA WATCH UGGA.

The day we watched you sleep,

was a day of celebration.

You weren't fighting who you were,

or where you slept that day.

The day we smiled at you,

and you, you never knew.

You slept on through the hot afternoon,

until you woke up rested.

exhale.

2011-09-04T15:42:00.000-07:00

when you feel the smallness.

2011-09-02T08:35:00.000-07:00

"Dear, dear Corinthians, I can't tell you how much I long for you to enter this wide-open spacious life. We didn't fence you in. The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren't small, but you're living them in a small way. I'm speaking as plainly as I can with great affection. Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively." 2nd Corinthians 6:something

hello hurricane, you're not enough.

2011-08-31T18:47:00.000-07:00

Hello Hurricane, you're not enough.

Hello Hurricane, you can't silence my love

--Switchfoot

I listened to my uncle this morning share about his visit to Panzi Hospital in the Congo, a country broken by war--where women who have been sexually assulted and raped are receiving fistula repair surgeries. This 60-minutes video reveals the situation for the women there.

My uncle said that the women were singing when he went to the hospital. They were singing about Dr. Mukwege, who was performing these life altering surgeries for them, because this surgery which he has learned to do so well, would give them a new life.

The song Hello Hurricane (I put it on my playlist over on the right) by Switchfoot, helps me understand healing in a different manner. Jon Foreman writes about where the song came from.

"This is a subject matter that I speak of with holy reverence. Having grown up on the East Coast I know firsthand of the houses lost, of the dreams turned into nightmares. I take my shoes off and recognize that this is a matter that is dear to our nation, especially of late-with every passing hurricane season. Last year, with Habitat for Humanity we helped to build a house for a woman who lost everything in Hurricane Katrina. The hurricane had taken her city, her house, and her leg. As she relocated to Baton Rouge and learned how to walk as an amputee, her mantra was this: "I walked out of my house and my life in New Orleans on my own legs, I'm going to walk into this one the same way." This is the spirit that I wanted to capture with this song, and moreover with this record. The storms of life might take my house, my loved ones, or even my life-but they cannot silence my love.

Yes, the reactionary impulses of hate, fear, and despair really are defenseless against the storms of this life. And yet, this selfless love really might be stronger than death. Perhaps, the kingdom of the heavens really is at hand, ready to give, ready to love. And with this love as my song I will overcome. In surrender to divine love I will find my strength. "Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love another.""- Jon Foreman

hello monday.

2011-08-29T09:37:00.000-07:00

I look down over the edge of my bed while sitting cross-legged on my blue sheets. My clothes feel dull from my restless sleep, and I need to go climb in the shower--that place where it still rains when the skies outside are so clear, happy and insensitive.

breakfast at the chalet.

2011-08-28T11:56:00.000-07:00

PHOTOS: BREAKFAST WITH FLETCH AND LAURA.

Fletcher and Laura got back from their Hawaiian honeymoon and came up this weekend for a reception in Spokane. My mom planned a Hawaiian Luau and invited the whole church, extended family and friends. My cousins Katie and Spencer climbed trees for most of the reception, Marion Norgan (94 year-old family friend) moved around chattering in her salmon pink blouse, Susan Davis replenished the vegetable platter, fruit skewers, and the fruit skins filled with sorbet, while Fletcher and Laura caught up with hundreds of people they hadn't seen for a while. As the evening closed, I introduced my mom and grandma and they performed an authentic Hula dance dedicated to Fletcher and Laura--a highlight for sure! (They are really good!)

This morning, up in the loft of The Chalet, we ate (mostly omelets and french toast) with Laura and Fletch and Laura's parents before they all had to head back to Portland. Fletcher looks much older with a ring on--more responsible (not that he wasn't before), like he's got mouths to feed back home or something! Love them very, very much.