Alright, Already...

Okay...Whew, what a whirlwind of life!
Paris finally let me in. So I went. Can I just comment on the Madrid airport? The first five minutes it reminded me of the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Very whimsical...but then it became a nightmare...I was so irritated.
But, whatever. Made it into Paris. Which ended up being just the therapy I needed to recover....let me tell you:

So, I went for an arts and culture conference. Incredible...met the most amazing people, had gorgeous conversations, heard words that inspired and challenged, and felt my heart thud, and wrench and grieve and rejoice.
Okay, so I am a little emotional. (nothing new there)
Sunday morning, as we worshiped in the oldest Baptist church in Paris with voices singing French and English (and Spanish...I couldn't help it) melded together and steeped the air with praise, echoing off high beams and stained glass, God spoke to me in that hushed soul whisper.
And I know exactly what these words mean to me, and I am a little shaken by all that is happening and all that is to come.
But it is good.
Paris, ahhhh, sweet bliss! It even rained for me on Sunday! Made some new friends and talked them into a trip to the Eiffel Tower in the rain at night. They have this light mechanism that makes it "twinkle" for ten minutes on every hour.
We ate chocolate mousse and talked about all we had absorbed and were still trying to absorb from the gathering of artists with more vision and passion than can fit into one week.

If you are wanting to hear more, please write me. I cannot begin to describe all that has happened, not in this blog.

Yeah. Oh, and I lost my cell phone on the subway and freaked out my co-workers here and my family. They called my cell phone while it was lost and this French dude answers. But he did meet me at the train station to return my phone. My only source of contact with the world. I hate it...
Anyhow.
God takes care of us, no? Oui...Si...Yes...

New Earth

All you in Kansas City (and some Waterdeep fans outside) will appreciate this...I am in ¨New Earth¨coffeehouse in Santiago de Compostela, Spain...

It´s actually called ¨Terra Nova¨which is Gallego (the regional dialect of Galicia) for New Earth....

Nate is playing the hammer dulcimer here and there is a new artist displaying her paintings.

It feels like home.

Mediterranean Waters

I'm in Barcelona for an incredible (and surprisingly much needed) staff retreat.

Yesterday I walked along and in Mediterranean (is that spelled right?) waters with the warm spring wind and Steven Delopolous in my ears. I

And yesterday I was listening to a song I have listened to so many times, but it took on new meaning.

Knowledge is the season for knowing when and why...balances and reason keep me from the fire. And every time I'm placed, within the perfect role...people come and go, people come and go...

Fire can be friendly, raising perfect pain. Burning off tomorrow..and yesterday the same. To
always be so weak, and never want to know you know we come and go, we come and then we go.

Of course I always thought about the going...but now I realize the exquisite beauty in the season of coming...even the fire and the pain are truly divine and full and rich.

Now it just feels safe and secure and surrounded. I am in a place of rest and inspiration.

Whimsy and the Spanish emergency room

It's been perfect walking in the rain weather these past few days...not cold, not too windy...just drizzly.
Every once in a while a brushing wind will kick up...the kind that makes you close your eyes. So I do. Just close my eyes and live it.
And I hope that while I am walking those few steps with my eyes closed I don't smack into a lampost or worse, a moving car.
You can only be whimsical as long as you are still alive. And the Spanish emergency room is one part of Spain I do not want to experience.

But in seriousness, I am still pressing on. Sometimes it's so hard and I feel so disconnected. Other times it's exhilerating and full, and then there are days like today. I feel like this is reality.
It's mellow, slightly routine, but every once in a while I sense a calm breathed into my ears.
It's tranquility in the midst of those quick, cool bursts of rainy wind.
Ahhh....Bien. Muy bien.

Listening to an old favorite of mine, the score from 1998's "Great Expectations" I don't know why I just love this cd so much, but it definately suits my mood these days.

Everything intense.

I don’t suppose there has to be a theme to this writing. I mainly just want to get these thoughts out of my head.
I’ve been reading and thinking about a little bit of everything intense. Life, war, justice, eternity, peoples’ souls and how God is in all of these things. I am tired and less talkative these days.

I ride the bus every day and watch people walk the streets and sit beside me and drive their cars, and look out their windows. I grow frustrated and kind of sad. Because I have a very strong sense that so many of them are hurting or numb. And then I try to understand this burden and reconcile it with what I gut-wrenchingly feel about God. Not just God in a general sense…GOD. I can’t say it any other way. I don’t know. All I know is my own self, I understand very little about other people.

It’s true, you know. None of us can really understand other people. Even if we have been through their same situations, it doesn’t matter. Every story is so diverse. Experiences, relationships, time, emotions, they all build into our lives a work of story that is thoroughly unique. Seriously. So there is NO POSSIBLE WAY to truly understand what a person feels when something happens to them. Not completely anyway.
We can only know ourselves. I don’t mean this in a selfish way. I just mean that we should make peace with not understanding a single thing. That’s the way it is. I’ll keep trying, but there is a point of surrender.
People spend their whole lives looking for a way out of pain, a way to feel something, someone to hold their hand. Riding the bus, looking into their faces, I feel very weighed down. If there has to be a point of surrender, then God, I surrender. I’ll never understand these people the way I want to. If I don’t surrender this need to understand, I’ll drive myself crazy.
I stop for a minute, close my eyes. I have to do this several times a day. Breathe out. We can’t know.
Truth exists. Mystery holds truth. God is cloaked in unknown…to us. It’s unsettling, but it doesn’t have to be. When I surrender, as often as I need to, there are moments when I am washed in the calm of profound beauty. In the words of a favorite poet:
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart…try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.” Ranier Maria Rilke

On being thought Stupid.

And if this night won't let me rest,
don't let me second guess
...what I know to be real.
Take my security from me,
and maybe finally...I won't have to know everything.


The days are full...sometimes that's bad because you end up doing a lot and accomplishing...not a lot. And you are tired.
But my days are full in a good way, I believe.

I'm learning a new language. People think I am stupid. It's not bad to go through times when everybody thinks you are stupid.
I know that I am not, and I also know that I kind of am. And that overall, people can't dictate either way.

Except me, I can dictate sometimes, and I think I might be quite good at it.
Hmmmm...

TODAY'S HIGHLIGHTS:
-20 minutes at the bakery with coffee, a pastry, and the Holy Book.
-A series of travel videos in spanish class...
-Being yelled at by the language school's cleaning lady (and called stupid...but we've already discussed how unimportant that is)
-Being stopped by another car for directions (they always leave frustrated...but I always leave thrilled that at least I look like I belong)
Si...good day.

Pepe plays the guitar.

We have Alpha meetings at a bar down the street from the church every Tuesday night. This past week an older man wandered in to the back of the bar where we meet, because he saw the guitars laying on the table.
He picked one up and began to play this incredibly gorgeous classical Spanish song. Nate, one of my fellow short-termers, began to play with him. Somehow, as we all listened to him and he met everyone, he decided to stay for the meal, and then the video, and then the discussion groups...it was random. But very good.
I don't know what his story is...I have been thinking a lot about it though. Every one's story, so different, but the author of life never ceases to awe me in his innate ability to twist and turn and create the most incredible stories by pouring his presence over the pages.

Pepe. The random guitarist.

Beginning of a wonderful story?

February 2006
As rain raced down the sides and over the shaky bus stop that was my feeble shelter from the pelting rains of La Coruña, Spain, I shivered deep into my oversized rain jacket.
It was one of those nylon deals that folds into its self and zips up into a pouch. I bought it for a trip to Alaska three summers ago, and I will admit that it was a lot more fitting for that trip than for today. Today, it not only provided very little warmth from this chilly Galicia rain, it also was a major faux paux in a very fashion-conscious city. “American, right here!” The jacket screams to the passing cars. Wet, shivering, clueless, American.

A car pulls up to the stop. “This will not end good,” I think to myself “this can only end in disaster”.
The window rolled down and the woman inside began to speak to me. And for so many reasons I couldn’t reply. First of all, I understand little Spanish. I speak even less, and even if I could have understood her, the echo of the rain pelting the plexi-glass overhang and the roar of passing cars on a soaked street made hearing her a complete impossibility. And furthermore, I am pretty sure she was asking for directions (she yelled and gestured in that way that people do when they are lost and frustrated enough to ask a total stranger for help) and I have only lived here for a little over two weeks. Needless to say, it did, in fact, not end well.
I started to say that I don’t speak Spanish, but only needed to get three words out before she looked at me in that sad way, as if to say “You are even more lost than I am…”,rolled up her window and drove on.
It serves her right. Didn’t she notice the huge navy-blue nylon rain hoodie? How do you miss that?
Then again, maybe she was stopping to tell me how ridiculous I looked.
Tough to catch a bus in this town, it is.

I eventually gave up on catching the bus and went home. I didn’t need to go to the supermarket that badly. I sloshed up the stairs to an empty, silent apartment. I needed to call Mom. For being the kind of person who could go days without talking to another person, I was starting to feel a little too isolated. It had only been about twelve hours. “Strange…” I muttered under my breath.
I have a wicked cold. I even had to go back out into that weather to get some cough drops and tissues. Right now I am resting. I really should be studying Spanish, but I want to write this.
I guess I’m hoping it will be the introduction to a wonderful story.