Category — Faith

In honour of our sweet Madeleine’s first birthday, the Regional Assembly of Text is hosting their monthly letter writing party.

While the letter-writers are tip-tapping away, us and our sweet bean will be enjoying a family picnic in Queen’s Park, where Madeleine will bite her eight pearly whites into her first bit of cake.

I can’t believe she has been with us an entire year. She is our joy and delight — and this feeling, this enormous swell of abandonment, just grows and grows.

I made her a crown.

Thank you, Jesus, for the best year of our life. For her, our greatest gift.

….

Home is asking to be wrapped. Rooms wait ready to spill out door, into arms of strangers, onto trucks, into cardboard, buried in storage, carted on boat. Too many bins and boxes for my little head: what to keep, what to store, what to sell, what to bring to Bowen, what to ship out east, what to give to family, what, where, how, when…

But I know life sits out of hand. In arms a billion star courses wide. And I take her hand, now one-year-old, and walk our path to smiling eyes. Sit in her chair at our coffee house. Visit our park, swing our swings, dip in our wading pool, visit our friends, roll all over green carpet thick, laid out under our trees, eat sushi where they remember our alaska rolls and our names.

Soon, together three, we will light new paths, grieve old ones, sit huddled in front of burning hearth, welcome friends at ferry dock and feed hungry mouths, rest weary heads in our island home. We hear the Voice who’s laid out our mornings, years, seeking Face that tells our story. These six months will set a course, I can feel it.

There is much ahead. Family to forge. Words to write. Poetry to spill. Schooling to ingest. Home to make.

I met a friend while visiting in-laws last week who told me her story. Of her travels to Romania, working with Gypsies, igniting a call to international law. She’s running toward it. This relit my heart to study more: media’s impact on democracy — how our incessant ingesting of information shapes our understanding of citizenship. Perhaps a Masters in Toronto, time and prayer will tell.

Much is afoot in my little writerly life. The book, the one about women who seek Jesus but don’t all look like suburban mammas, edgy, world-changing gals who rock tats, paint up storms, influence politics here and overseas, is out as a proposal… seeking an agent / publisher. I’ll post some pages so you can see. Poetry is being submitted, I’ll share as it makes its way onto pages. I hope to start having others share their poetry here. I’ve been inspired by my friend Emily’s imperfect prose Thursdays.

My sister-in-law, Brittany, and I have a crazy idea of starting a little onesie company, using my husband’s adorable old Scouting badges: Badge of Honour onesies on Etsy. We’re setting up shop as I type.

For now we take the days as they come, living them full, here in our home in Burnaby… Thank you for sharing this adventure with us.

God’s not dead
because I thought him/her so
like the holocaust nay-sayers
the animated moon walkers stabbing two inch toothpicks into three mile styrofoam craters unlikely green

God’s not dead
because we’ve lost some children
now witness to blinking nail bed growing in woman womb
delivering half-way placentas nine pound eleven ounce spirits through openings that for thirty years were smaller than bar soap bent to its circumference
making all labia-living believers

God’s not dead
because city does not become her/him
forgetting book promises cambodian valleys cave to hazel life
seven year pupils erasing invisibility lip-spoken not theirs
up climbing through arm of unlikely stranger
otherworldly kindness our universal language

:::

Part of Imperfect Prose Thursdays

We stand at intersection. Black suit universal pause, here at Bay and King. She’s staring up at you. Boulder eyes, size of the moon. Seeking face. Your upwards morning mouth, silent words: ‘Yes child, I see you. The world is good.’

Ignore me, I don’t care, but turn your gaze on these innocent eyes because they won’t remain forever so.

I’ve been a bit silent about our planned moves on this space, mostly because I’ve been in the midst of wrapping my own head around it. It feels like the ground beneath our feet is shifting but, surprisingly, I feel unafraid.

I am typing this post from Toronto. We arrived on Friday after a perfect travel day with Madeleine. I was even able to watch an entire movie (Date Night — awesome) while she slept in my arms on the plane. We’re here for ten days for Michael’s work and to explore neighbourhoods. It’s become increasingly clear that Michael needs to be here for work as he is the sole member of his work team in Vancouver. His role has given him a lot of flexibility, even allowing him to work from home the majority of the time and this has been a huge blessing, but the time has come to make the shift east as things transition within his company.

I have lived in Vancouver all my life, save for three months in Queenstown, New Zealand in 1998 and in Toronto three months last year. The West Coast is my home. It pains me to leave. The ocean is my lifeblood. I adore the green, the mountains, rainforest, the islands. I relish being close to my parents, most of my siblings and my grandparents. I love Main Street, Gastown, Granville Island and Commercial. I adore the girls at our neighbourhood coffee shop who greet Madeleine and I with shrieks and giggles and discounted coffee every morning. I love play dates with my mom friends: Wendy and Claire, my Mother’s Unfolding gals. I love Jenn, Megan, Marisa, Avital, Steph, Hoda, Mathew… and all of my dear friends in my beautiful hometown. Yet change calls and I know in my heart it’s the right thing. 

Being here has given me even more hope. We explored Queen West, hippy-dippy Harbord and the Ossington neighbourhoods yesterday. We enjoyed brunch with Amanda and Dean at a lovely french bistro near St. Lawrence Market this afternoon. Afterwards Madeleine and I rummaged through the outdoor market befriending sunny Toronto smiles. It’s a lovely city. There’s much in store for us here.

Linux Caffe, Harbord Street, Toronto

But I know moving downtown will be a huge transition, not as difficult as leaving our family and friends, but nearly. So, though our condo went on the market over a week ago, we’re not moving to Toronto until next spring. After spending three months here last year, I refuse to make the move at the peak of ice-winter. I want to move to the city when the buds are brimming. So to pass the time we’re going to live on Bowen Island from October to March, after our house sells.   

It’s Michael’s gift to me. Before moving our family to the downtown bustle of Canada’s largest city I am desperate for a quiet retreat — a small season for us to nest as a family in a remote, wooded retreat.

Bowen Island

The house we’ll be renting on Bowen is more than I could have hoped for. It has four bedrooms plus den, a huge open concept main floor, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, an upstairs bathroom complete with a jacuzzi and skylight, and an unobstructed view of the Pacific Ocean. Good friends of ours live just down the drive and kayaks beckon for a morning turn on the shore below. 

I can hardly wait to begin the next leg of our adventure…

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature.”

- Helen Keller

“In the biggest sense, justice is when all God’s creatures receive what is due them and contribute out of their uniqueness to our common existence. We are called to do justice in every sphere of our lives: how I love and educate my daughters, collaborate with my colleagues, interact with neighbors.”

- Gideon Strauss, CEO of the Center for Public Justice (CPJ) in Washington, D.C., and editor of Comment

The other day author Nina Killham typed in the words “fear and writing.” It was one of those days and among her findings was a post by blogger Jennifer Louden who nails a daily fear for most of us:

“I have to know what my thing is and talk about it in very clever ways and be different than everybody else who does my thing or else I will starve /never matter / and be alone for the rest of my life, shut out from the brightness and goodness of life.”

“I know, that’s a powerful, believable, seductive story,” she writes. “I also know it’s a lie.”

The need to name and succeed can paralyze us. It keeps us from picking up the pen, the phone, the racket, the whatever. But as Christians it’s possible to live without fear. In fact, it’s implored of us. We are called into the dark to follow. We are led to new things without name. We are promised hardship, trials, and hard-won rewards. Yet success is seductive. Adoration, alluring. Recognition, rewarded.

I planned to begin this post with a line from J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey: 

“I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.”

I’ve been meditating on these words for the past month. They came to me from a friend in Winnipeg. I haven’t yet met someone who wants to be a nobody. I am no exception. Even as a new mother I find it difficult to say no to opportunity though I have the perfect excuse. 

But we’re not called to success, certainly not to every shiny proposition. It takes courage to blend in the shadows. It takes work. It’s counter-cultural and Biblical.

I know a lot of people that read this blog are ‘somebodys.’ People who lead organizations, professors, and CEOs. I also know some of you are artists, students, freelancers (like me) and everything in between.  

Our culture is masterful at teaching us how to ‘get there’ but where can we learn to leave, to bow out, to persevere in quiet?

Casey Downing tackles some of these questions in his recent article “Notes on Leaving the City.” He is preparing to leave New York, noting Joan Didion’s public exit from the same city in 1967. Her essay Goodbye to All That begins:

“It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends.”

Downing echoes her words:

“Suddenly we weren’t quite so young or quite so entitled. Suddenly the paradise of New York was preparing to cast many of us out. Were we unworthy? Where did we go wrong? This was something that no one had prepared us for.”

Maybe Downing and his friends weren’t being cast out. Certainly a city cannot bestow worthiness. How could he and his friends have been better prepared for the end of their stay in the city of dreams? How can we?

::: 

Originally posted on the Cardus After Hours blog.

how to make the words come when they sit idle, close behind ear yet far. how to line phrases when the world spins by over and over. how to sit with journal in lap quiet with dishes rising, dust claiming its residency. how to stay content with five good words on an average mama day. how to bask in first words from eight-toothed mouth: mama, dadadadada, hi. how to keep my spirit still when it begs to run anxious down apartment hall. how to rest in future plans when all seems ebb of mist. how to be anxious for nothing. how to see mouth filled, white and black keys played, mastery of slide, dinner plated, life as it should be, no more. how to sit with toddling one and know the world full.

“Late have I loved you, O Beauty, so ancient and so new, late have I loved you. For behold you were within me, and I outside; and I sought you outside and in my unloveliness fell upon those lovely things which you have made. You were with me, and I was not with you. I was kept from you by those things, yet had they not been in you, they would not have been at all. You called and cried to me to break open my deafness and you sent forth your beams and you shone upon me and chased away my blindness…”

- St. Augustine, City of God

::::

These words open chapter 43 of Mary Karr’s Lit, which I highly recommend. Thanks to Alissa for tipping me off.