Almost Springtime Thoughts

Today there were fat snowflakes falling on the cherry blossoms. I sat at my table at Pete’s Coffee with my usual Friday writing group, enjoying my view of Green Lake. Quite contentedly, I watched Seattle’s version of a blizzard. The other day I just had had a moment of panic when I realized that winter is very nearly gone and I needed to start savoring the limited time left to wear scarves. But, I don’t think it is quite time yet to panic over such things.

This afternoon at 5:00 when the sun came out, I walked to the post office and put my first book proposal in the mail. It is the culmination of 7 months of focused work, and still it feels like only a little seed. I have written about 100 pages of this book (rough draft, mind you!) and it all feels like seeds. Ok, maybe it’s more like the little Spring flowers just barely peeking above ground. It is amazing that something that could take so much work, heart, angst, and emotional resources, is still so young in its lifespan. I long for summer with this project– when I have the completed rough draft of the manuscript and I can more fully see the story it wants to be.

I gotta go! I am off to a bridal shower for my sister.

Taxes and Tulips and Sadness

Today I went to a tax accountant for the first time. As I was driving home in the dismal rain and reflecting on the thousands of dollars I owe the government (yikes), I remembered a Bible verse I think I learned when I was 13– “the peace of God will guard your heart.” I repeated it to myself and felt a mini soul exhale. Sometimes I surprise myself in my moments of rare equanimity, but my hunch is that when I get the most super–duper stressed out is just when all my mechanisms of denial operate at their best. So driving home and reflecting calmly on the 2493 dollars I don’t have that Mr. Sam is waiting for, I was either practicing a measure of surprising faith or just deciding I didn’t really feel like dealing too much with reality today.

Then, since it was such a rainy day, I went to the supermarket for soup. As I always do, I hung out in the flower section for a while perusing all the bouquets. I am usually just a window shopper when it comes to flowers, since they don’t make the budget of necessities. But, today the yellow and orange tipped tulips tempted me too much. And I bought them. I felt terribly guilty for spending 7 dollars on a bouquet of flowers and every step of the way home I vacillated on the foolishness of my splurge. But, I wanted to protest, it is such a dreary day and…I want to remember Spring is on its way…and who else was going to give me flowers…and isn’t this soul care to attend to beauty and invest in tulips for your kitchen counter? My pep talk didn’t work very well, though, because by the time I got home, I think I felt more stressed out and had more knots and fears in my stomach over a bouquet of tulips than thousands of dollars in taxes. Such is the brilliance of my system of worrying, in that I can project all fear onto 7 dollars just to forget 2, 493 dollars.

When I got home, I got a phone call. A friend of a friend– a thirty something woman– had gotten a headache this afternoon. She suffered a brain aneurysm and is now at Harborview with a prognosis without much hope.

So, now I am sitting here, aching and looking at tulips and praying. I am feeling how much of our lives get sold to moments of worries and fears and worries and fears that are such a foolish waste, because every day– every morning and afternoon and evening and friendship and birthday party and dance and song and loved one and flower bouquet and raindrop is always, always a gift. Life is so ridiculously precious. Why does it take tragedy to jolt that into me? I don't get this. Why do I pretend life is about so many things when it might just be about noticing we are alive and are receiving something so fragile and mysterious and exquisite that most of the time we just glimpse the gift we are living and breathing in?

My Writing Life

This week I have the first article of a two part series being published at theooze.com entitled Rethinking the Sin of Sodom: What We Missed and Why It Matters.

I am curious to see the feedback I get, as I am essentially arguing this particular story of the Bible has pretty much nothing to do with modern notions of same–sex relationships (how it is almost always interpreted by evangelical churches). I did the research for this article last summer when I took a class on the Old Testament: I changed its original tone and format to try to make it more palatable for a larger audience.

On another writing note, for those who remember me mentioning last fall the article I was writing with Andy on homosexuality and Christianity, we heard back last week that it is being considered for Relief Journal.

(Its not a guarantee of acceptance, just some encouragement that the article made it to a good stage in their rounds of review. We shall see, but it brought a very large smile to our faces to hear from them.)

And as a final note, I just purchased a plane ticket to go to Michigan this April for the Festival of Faith and Writing. I am so thrilled for the opportunity to go, and encouraged that not being in school this semester is allowing me to focus so much on writing dreams...though I could not have imagined before how difficult it is to spend so many hours of the day (and night) creating words. It is a tremendous privilege to get to live into this part of my heart (I do love it), but the joy of it is rarely on the surface these days.  

A New Article

I have a new article up at theooze.com for those wanting to take a look.

An Excerpt from Chapter 1

"When I was a little girl, I used to lie down in the prickly grass of my front yard, sprawled snow-angel style. Looking up at the sky, I would watch puffs of lazy clouds while hoping, with all my heart, to feel the earth spinning through the universe. My 1st grade teacher had said that the planet was being hurled around a star, while spinning like a top, and I couldn’t believe the news. Laying in the grass, feeling the weight of my small body on the ground, I was determined to discover the tilt of the earth and the whirl of the ride. I could only imagine it would be something like the grown up rollers coasters I had pined for at Disneyland but hadn’t been allowed to go on, because the top of my head hadn’t quite met the marker on the Mickey Mouse sign. But, I was sure that if I just paid enough attention, I didn’t need Magic Mountain anyways, because I was already on the most sensational ride in the galaxy.

I have never felt the ride quite like I had hoped, but I think I might have gotten close. There were moments of soft sunshine on my face and cloud puffs in my eyes and hope in my heart where I would experience a subtle rush and wondered if it could have been…the wind of the twirling planet...."

Ending and Beginnings

With the New Year here, much seems like it has shifted in my little world. I finally made the rather illogical decision to withdraw from a grad program I am half–way through, in an effort to focus more of my mind, heart, and resources on getting into a PhD program where I can study the intersection of literature and psychology. I have loved my time at Mars Hill, but more and more I am realizing I don’t have the academic support to do the writing/projects/research I had hoped to do when I started. So, I won’t be in school this spring, but knowing my obsessive tendencies, I will be studying/researching many hours away in libraries around Seattle, hoping to prepare for getting into another program.

Not being in school will afford me the time to focus even more on my current book project, too. I just spent 4 days in the woods, Thoreau-like, trying to put together a book proposal. I think I left the cabin twice. I spent my time by a fire, drinking tea, and staring at my computer screen while I painfully typed away. Writing can be so blissful and it can be agony. This time, it was agony. I have a picture of the ocean as my background on my computer and the one time I did escape the cabin and walk to the beach, I was sort of aghast. So, this is what the real ocean looks like? Why hadn’t it crossed my mind to see the real thing, a five–minute walk from the heartache of my writers’ block?

I am just going to have to find balance. Working harder and harder is not going to get this book written, because I just go mad after about 4 days of staring at a screen. I need more fresh air and ocean breezes. Withdrawing from school only feeds my fears, which then feeds my obsessive impulses, which then effectively cramps the love which needs to be the fuel of this project. Aaack. Holly says this is just a season. I hope so, because I would like emerge from these anxieties and remember why I used to love playing with words.

Coffee and Soul Food

I am at this moment sitting in Tully’s Coffee, which is at a quaint intersection on the top of Queen Anne Hill. In addition to Tully’s, the small intersection is circled by Starbucks, Pete’s Coffee, Café Ladro, and a tea-shop. This is madness. Five coffee/tea shops at one little intersection. Pete’s is actually in its grand opening. Who knew 30 square feet of earth with 4 coffee shops was needing a 5th? Either way, I am very happy, because each of these places makes me uniquely happy.

Tully’s has the fire, Starbucks has good food, Pete’s has the best coffee, Ladro has the most beautiful light fixtures and warm ambience.

I happen to currently own very nicely loaded gift cards to both Tully’s and Starbucks (teachers get gift cards around Christmas time). So, while I just finished an eggnog latte at Tully’s, I had to venture across the intersection to get my lunch at Starbucks (to return to my prime fireside seat at Tully’s).

While I was there, my heart got tugged out, and before I get back to my studies, I have to write about the tug.

One of the Starbuck’s employees (a young woman) was cleaning the glass cases. Another woman was helping her by staying close beside her, holding her up when she began to lose her tentative balance, as the muscles in her legs were weak. The young woman doing the cleaning appeared to be deaf, and it was also fairly clear by her movements that her vision was limited too. She was cleaning the case that housed my lunch, and the other was helping her do her job.

Something about the moment was so beautiful, but it was the kind of beauty that is married to sorrow and breaks my heart.

I feel so convicted in those kinds of moments. I am so terribly caught up in myself and my pursuits; I am so easily discontented when my dreams have not been realized today. And here are others who are just trying to stand; whose courage to work and live into their potential just humbles my ego. If I can say this without sounding like a complete narcissist, sometimes I feel like my abilities and talents become my own curse. I can’t seem to be happy with myself unless I am doing, striving, taking on a broken world and trying to fix it.

And here I am, ordering my lunch, and the courage of this one woman has just asked me to pause and consider again who I am and what I am about and why. I have these lofty ideas to write words that will matter in very large ways, and here this woman's being has spoken more than my words ever could.