"Perhaps in time I may meet with another Mr. Collins"

I dreamt for a second time this week about Mary. She has the face of the girl who plays her in the Nativity Story and she's kneeling and saying "do unto to me according to your word." I run past her and let the dirt and dust of the judean streets cling to me...or were they the streets of other countries I had know before...I woke up with a feeling I've had all week dissipating in the antiseptic air of my room. I woke up wondering if those thoughts I've been entertaining of possibly moving to India were even plausible. Could I get used the difference between a people whose idols were sports, beauty and leisure and those who made actual idols of marble and wood to worship? Could I ever leave the church, the 'family,' and people I love so much here?

It seemed so right as I had started considering it while visiting the home of this delightful Sikh family this past weekend and recognized the similitude of our souls in the unique eastern hospitality that they showed, in their loyality, in the boisterious cadence of their speech, and in the dramatic slant of their stories and jokes. As they painted pictures of what it was like during the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 and described their sometime hilarious experiences in the west and why they had decided to move back to India, I could feel their 15 yr old daughter staring at Jane and I. We found out later it was because she thought we looked like bollywood actresses. Poor dear thing was quite deceived of course :-) but as I thought of what it was like for her to grow up alien and over-protected the states and what it would be like for her to go back to India, I was naively happy.

Was it too late for me? Would I always be passing oblivious, happy men at holiday parties wearing cream colored sweater vests with geometric patterns as they talked to all the cowboys and mountain men who had spent hours at cvs buying hair products?...were there already too many steel skyscrapers, nameless backroads, empty red barns and fallen corn stalks in the landscapes inside of me? ...perhaps there was too much of me in the lines of Seeger and Dylan that have been playing on repeat lately.

If I could just kneel like Mary...I smile and laugh as I think about Jane telling me that, like Elizabeth Bennet, perhaps in time I may meet with another Mr. Collins. Dearest Lord I hope not.

"I can't remember your face anymore, your mouth has changed, your eyes don't look into mine. The priest wore black on the seventh day and sat stone-faced while the building burned. I waited for you on the running boards, near the cypress trees, while the springtime turned slowly into autumn....Idiot wind, blowing through the buttons of our coats, blowing through the letters that we wrote."

Standing in the Doorway

Today the frivolously warm blue sky wandered heedlessly outside my window at work. It reminded me of those old dames who show up on TV talk shows like Montel with daughters who complain that their mothers aren't acting their age. I watched the frothy terjectory of a few clouds for a moment, then became distracted by the confused birds who would take off as if leaving for a long journey only to sigh and return to sit on power lines.

I longed for the stillness that comes with a real winter. I longed to taste memories hung like suspended, silent snowflakes when the heavy gestures of falling leaves and shadows seem to stop.

I would taste for example...laying outide on a trampoline on one fall night, breathless because we were laughing and had been jumping...breathless because we watched the night stars and didn't know what the next year at college would bring....or I would remember how my mom let me stay home from school one day to do wild, crazy and girlie things together....laughing as she just pranced me into a casino even though I was only 16 just to play a round of slots...knowing even then as we sat out in the sun and she held my hand, I would never forget that day

The Foggy Dew

Last night after an exhausting week at work, I went to church and ended up hearing a message on sex. Well not really hearing...but drifting in and out of...(you know it's been a long week when you can't even stay awake for your pastor talking about sex). I'll probably write more about this later.

But I was awake last night to receive a very generous and early christmas present from a friend who works at Folkway: A box set of Woody Guthrie, discs of Pete Seeger, Cisco Houston, Sonny Terry, and Classic Mountain Songs! The time from when I received them to actually coming home and then trying to play them in my ancient CD player was almost agony because I was so excited to hear them. And although it was definitely good times meeting some of the people visiting from CHBC, I decided to make a mental note to not try and meet new people again when my brain's limit before going into la la land is midnight. Ironically we ended up talking about how it takes humility to put boundaries and limits on your schedule as people were yawning :-).

After leaving Denny's at around 1:30 or 2 a.m., I ran upstairs, put my hair in pig tails for bed....and tried unsuccessfully in my half asleep state to make my CD player play the woody gutherie cd. This is when I start talking to inanimate objects and actually entertain thoughts that they might listen to me...so much too long after my one-sided conversation and short of lighting candles and chanting around the old dingbat technology, I put in Pete Seeger hoping he would play....and oh was it was worth the wait to hear him sing the first mesmerizing tune, Banks of the Ohio...

Given the wanderlust I've been feeling lately...it was good to get away....and walk in my mind to the ingenuous, dusty backroads of another time. I fell asleep late into hours between night and day...thinking about "the foggy foggy dew"...and all its' mysteries.

Perfect Love and Katerina Souvorova

The year draws to a close and the world appears to have darkened just to heighten the juxtaposition of the light of God being born to save the world. Despite wearing my pink bunny slippers I feel as though I'm holding my breath...mostly in excitement for the season, mostly in wonder at the comfort of God's mercy to me and yet, at moments, in fear too. How I could I fear facing the unknown chasms of tomorrow?... How could I not have faith when each little babushka doll nestled inside of me holds promises fulfilled and even exceeded by God?....How...kind of God to give me opportunities to confront my fears and dissapointments to find His perfect love. "There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love." 1 John 4:18

No, this hasn't been one of spectacular years where every sock in your laundry matches up, but it has been one where I have been seemingly confronted time and again with the truths that are trustworthy and steadfast: the assurance that after I die I will go to heaven and that while I live, God is my father and I don't need to fear his judgement or wrath because of His Son. In this Christmas season, it always affects me so deeply that though Mary didn't understand all that her Son was saying...she treasured all the moments of her time with Him because her trust was in the Father and the promise that He made to her.

And how kind of God not to stop at my salvation, but to give me other dear little moments to appreciate recently:

-being able to watch Bill and Amy take care of and enjoy the precious gift of a new baby...laughing as they talk about the "pee" cloth (what the heck...who knew we would ever be talking about that, haha)

-laying on Jane's zillion tread count sheets and hearing her read poetry ...like I imagine another sweet jane or elinor would
do for Elizabeth or Marianne in a Jane Austen novel...

-Like an idiot deciding to read Lamentations 3 to a friend I visited in the hospital hospital on Monday, obviously not recalling how many times human organs are mentioned! She seemed encouraged anyway... (hopefully).

-After much anticipation and after I ended up whispering into the boughs of different trees (probably to the embrassment of my companion), "....are you katerina souvorova?" we finally found the perfect sucessor to Olaf, our portly christmas tree from last year! She wholly fit the facetious description of a real life katerina, described to my roommates and I, "as a bear of a woman." ...Perfectly buxom and plump. Usually, I like to pick the most helpless charlie brown tree that will most likely get looked over, but I knew as soon as I saw her standing there with all the other orphan trees, shivering in the cold night, she would come home with us.


"Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you." "Why were you searching for me?" he asked. "Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?" But they did not understand what he was saying to them. Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart. " Luke 2