awake

The sky hangs dark and somber this morning. Winter is slowly wrapping white, frosty fingers around windshields and windows. Cold pushes its way under door frames and nibbles on exposed fingers and toes. The morning yawns and slowly stretches into day.

I sit here with uneasiness and expectancy. Like the morning, I have only just woken from a long sleep and looking lazily around, I see unfamiliarity with every new surge of the sun's light. Things have changed while I've been sleeping. Things I thought were alive and vibrant have fallen victim to the heaviness of winter and death.

I don’t know how I so easily become the walking dead: moving, talking, walking, doing. I’m not sure when the flames of passion for justice and Christ got flooded in the waters of my laziness. Whatever the reason for my acquiescence to the lullaby of indifference, I woke up.

Hallelujah, I woke up.

I saw George again last weekend. I don’t know what it is about the way his heart beats audibly through his chest, but whenever I hear it, I am caught up in the beat. It isn’t George. It isn’t even Africa. It’s the sound of Jesus calling out for justice. How do I so easily forget this call? Why do I so quickly dance to another drummer’s beat? This past weekend I was awakened to the heartbeat again, drawn into the beauty of a coming Kingdom. I was flooded with excitement for Africa.

It’s the first week of Advent and somehow that means something to me this year. I am sitting in expectancy of the coming Christ. He’s going to meet me here, where I am, still rubbing sleep out of my eyes. He’s going to step into this space I occupy and breathe his hope into the fractured pieces of my dreams. He loves me. He loves me and I’m going back to Africa. He loves me and he wants to give me something new. He loves me even though I so easily fall asleep.

The Problem is the Parking Stall

This morning I am living out another fantasy that I wasn’t sure existed until the moment when it happened.

I am typing lazily into my computer. I like the clicking of the keys over the chatter of the ladies beside me, the cooing of their babies and the hum of the espresso machine. There is a rhythm here and we are all playing along, swaying to the beat, contributing. Outside the day is offering a warmth I didn’t think possible at this juncture in time. The snow has melted and the leaves are resuming their place on center stage – flying like emancipated birds through the sweet fall air. People wait at stop lights. Cars drive by. Ah.

Peeking above my computer screen, I can’t help smiling at Shane. He is muttering out loud as he struggles with the morning crossword. Occasionally the little girl beside us stomps up and down on her pretty purple Mary Janes hoping they will light up, and our eyes meet to share a giggle. This is the rhythm of the morning. This is the fantasy. Is this my life?

Sunday we went to look at a beautiful condo downtown for curiosity’s sake. For a mere $500,000 we could have owned it. Not that we’re house shopping. I felt for a moment though like we were playing house. It was somewhere between the math of the mortgage payment and the realtor advising us the parking stall was an additional $15,000 that I woke up. My car is worth less than the stall to park it in!

Suddenly the absurdity of this tiny place having the capacity to bankrupt me sunk in. People do this! People buy houses they cannot afford with $15,000 parking stalls! I was embarrassed to discover that my monthly salary would not be sufficient to meet the outrageous mortgage payments on the condo. And that’s before property taxes and condo fees. Not to mention the upgraded car in order to feel worthy of the stall in which to park, flanked by Cadillacs and Hummers.

Add to that the expense of new furniture (pay now or later!) worthy of the expensive hardwood on which it will rest, under chandeliers and the twinkling lights of the downtown streets. Before long I’m wondering what kind of wardrobe a person would need in order to leave a building like that? And what dishware to serve food to guests who visit? Could you really buy NoName hand soap for the bathroom with granite countertops?!

Exhaustion settles quickly into the place where the initial attraction to such luxury first grew. I’m too tired to pretend to be rich. I’m too tired for a mortgage. I’d have to work more. When could I play my guitar?

I look up again from my furious typing and wonder what kind of a life I envision for myself. Coffee. Crosswords. Perhaps a new pair of light-up shoes. Or just enough kids around to enjoy theirs.

Pretty much I’m already living my fantasy life. I just need to remember to notice it.

On Life and Living It

Anything one does feels more indulgent and sophisticated with a glass of champagne in hand. I know because I am trying it right now. The whole of my anxious and unsettled being is quelled by this sensation of expectancy and pleasure.

Taste and see that the Lord is good.

He knew I'd find champagne. And Havarti with jalapenos. And garden tomatoes.

The day did not begin here. It was more panicked. I woke up with a start.

Shane's parents are coming over for dinner and I am immersed in this culture that tells me it's important to: have a clean house, have flooring on your stairs, have only one colour on your wall in the kitchen, not kill people with salmonella poisoning. So I felt nervous. I live in a persistent construction zone in which no construction is happening. I also don't regularly dust. I don't ever dust. Oh priorities.

Today, however, I chose life.

First of all, I threw the flowers that had withered and died into the garbage. Leaves, stems, browned petals, vase and all. They had been sitting on the piano since my dad's funeral. They had been there so long reminding me of the horrific day I said goodbye to my dad, that I almost had a perverse and sentimental attachment to them.

I apologized to my dad. And then I also removed his plaques and awards from the piano where they have been collecting dirty Kleenexes and grief all this time. My dad seemed relieved. I wiped his photo with my sweater and we smiled at each other.

Today, he wanted me to live my life too. I could just tell.

It only got better from there. Around ten, my beautiful friend Kim showed up with huge canvases. We painted in my living room, nibbling fancy cheese and sipping champagne. The beauty was not only in the reality of our morning ritual, but in the fact that it was actually morning. There is something terribly luxurious about discovering that you can adore the life you're living with such minimal adjustments.

This afternoon, with my last glass of champagne still swirling around in my martini glass (I use this glass because I like the feel of the bubbles on my nose) I am ready to finish making dinner. I might even clean the floors. Don't hold me to that if I decide instead to write a song or do a crossword. Either way, if the point is living, today I choose it.

False Start

I'm nervous to write here.
I'm anxious that anything I say from my cozy kitchen (jazz music humming behind me, coffee steaming beside me) will sound like horse shit beside all the stories from "Africa". (I have no explanation for those quotation marks. I just really wanted to use them. They just embody my conflict.)

A number of things seems less noble or noteworthy now that I am home, the least of which, I swear like a trucker.

I feel like once I start writing again I will just start rambling about nonsense and drivel thereby making this safe place, this honest place, a lame tabloid.

Oh yeah, and I'm in love.

I feel as though this new reality of my state of being has forced me to surrender my sarcastic and critical tone. I fear it makes me less interesting. I've got stars in my eyes where once there was discernment; I have a vague, dreamy look in lieu of purpose. Not that this is bad. I'm in love for crying out loud, not leprous! I'm just not really sure what to do with it.

I'm not sure where to start with an update, or if anyone is even interested in that. Is there anyone even? What a strange idea to project ones very heart and mind into the anonymity of cyber space and hope that strangers will take care not to damage or abuse you when you're vulnerable and bear.

What is God teaching me? That he is good.

Presently I am in the throes of negotiating a return trip.
There's something disturbingly cyclical about the time frame. I should be back right around the same time I left last year. It's funny but it's comforting to know that nearly a year separates me from the moment of impact that broke my heart. I'm eager to get back to the heat and the mystery to figure out what I've learned, how I've grown, and what's changed.

Mostly, I am eager to live out a story that matters, to have a life that is in fact life and not awaiting death. I want to live in a place of expectancy and hope. I want to be part of something that matters, the Kingdom of God really. I just hope this path is leading there.

So, I've been sleeping a lot.
10 hours a night usually. Unless I can sleep in. Then more.

I've been cracking the spines of new books; smelling the delicious scent of fresh ideas; drinking in the wisdom of fine thinkers, philosophers and poets.

I've been writing music which basically amounts to a pitiful culmination of weak melodies and cliche lyrics that I sing at top volume with my impotent accomplice, my guitar.

Occasionally I wail on my djambe.

Often I sit in the morning sun by the big bay window overlooking the cul-de-sac and meditate, or nap, or dream.

Almost daily I am meeting with and talking to people who love Jesus and see him waving Hope and a Future in their faces.

Often, I cry: sometimes with, usually without, reasonable explanation. At the insurance company. In my car. While playing the piano. When I read something beautiful.

Most days I avoid mounds of paperwork and pending phone conversations. I spend hours psyching myself up or out and then give up and bake cakes.

And all of this, all of this amounts to one thing: waiting. I am waiting.
I wish I could say I was waiting patiently on the Lord. I wish I could say I was being brave and courageous. Mostly I am just waiting. Actually, always, except for moments when I forget, I am waiting.

But today, I feel like enough is enough.

Injustice hounds me like a ravenous beast, devouring bits of hope and leaving a wake of despair. I see too much that is too much and I want to DO something already.

Today I hear that heartbeat again.

I heard it in the desperate plea for partners and people of compassion to unify to build transitional housing for addicts and their children. It was less than an hour later that I ran into a social worker who informed me that one of my girls is an addict herself, at the tender age of 13. After lunch, to pick up the tone, I went to a funeral for a man whose story and situation so closely echoed my dad's I felt like I was living an out-of-body experience. And for desert, la piece de resistance, I listened to a representative of International Justice Mission telling me about the millions, yes millions!, of children living and working in the sex trade.

How long, o lord, will you stand so far off?
Or, how long will you allow me to stand so far off?

Waiting.
Waiting.
Tiring of waiting.
Still waiting.

Tha-thump.
It drums on.

Tha-thump.
Tha-thump.
Tha-thump.

The heart beat is pumping, pumping, pumping.

Tha-thump.
Tha-thump.

I hear this beat, blood surging through every vein. It is quietly, gently, rhythmically calling me back.

George was here. In Saskatoon. All weekend. Need I say more?

George, the father of the Hands at Work family, has a way of making the story of injustice tangible. It hangs in the air like a moving picture. I can smell it. I can taste it. I can feel the warm breath of air on my cheek. If I just stretch out my hand I could brush those kids again. If I just knelt down I would be right back on the hard, red earth.

There is no place like home.
There's no place like home.
There's no place like home.

My chanting doesn't work. This is not a fairytale!

I am living in a mystery and it would seem that the joke is on me. The only one in the dark about my own life is me! What is the next step? I call over the :Tha-thump, tha-thump, tha-thump! It's a fever pitch hammering in my ears! The tha-thump reminding me of His heart which beats for justice! The pounding drum of compassion drawing me into action. In moments of frustration I am screaming: WHAT!? What do you want me to do? I am willing!

But it's unclear. I calm down. Lulled by the beat.
Just the beat. The beat. Of justice. Propelling me deeper into the father's throne room. Deeper. Toward the surging waters of his justice. Deeper. Into the the very ventricles of his heart. Where a plan awaits. Deeper.

too dry, tonight

I stopped writing here thinking the abrupt end to my trip signified the abrupt end to this journey. I realize the journey persists in a way that this mystical space in time cannot limit. I am never at the end. I am never where I am going, even in the moments when I am still, but I am always on the way. My journey to Africa is not what I thought: neither noble nor meaningless; neither selfless nor selfish. It was the beginning to an entirely different journey that I did not realize I would embark on: Grief.
My homesickness for Africa is both irrational and palpable. How can six weeks in a person's life substitute the balance of 25 years for the safety it offered? Yet, somehow, it holds a power that is neither real nor imagined. I experienced something there that was real. But I could only bring home a piece of that reality and every day it loses a little more of its life.
Tonight, like many other nights in the past two months, I sit with nostalgia and memories. I am wishing senselessly for a return to the last week in Africa when I had not yet uncovered the truth which would then overshadow the next months perhaps years, of my life. Those weeks, those precious days, so far away, when my dad was still alive. And even though I wasn't with him, he still existed.
I miss him terribly tonight.
And I miss the way I never had to miss him when he was alive.
I miss the blissful ignorance of those days before his death when I didn't have to worry that he would soon be gone.
Yes, Africa was not about Africa, for me. Africa, was about me. Perhaps Africa just wasn't as fragile as I anticipated. Perhaps it is I who am fragile. I who must be handled with care. It seems I went to Africa to learn that God loves me so that I could come home and face Grief with companionship. It seems the good people of Africa showed the grace with which a person can accept suffering, the joy that avails to those who wait patiently on the Lord.
Presently I am living elsewhere. I am not in the world, per se, I am just witnessing it. I am playing my drum and reading the Word and falling asleep in the afternoon. I am baking cakes and crying and writing a book. I am eating and dreaming and hoping and laughing. And I'm not sure where this goes.
Suffice to say, I am never anywhere but always on the way.