THIS world is not conclusion;

Da Big News!!!

2009-06-15T18:01:00.003-04:00

Well as some of you might already know: Michael and I are pregnant!! We feel so blessed and really can't hardly believe it. It all started when I was supposed to get more radiology tests done on my back and figured I would take a pregnancy test just to be on the safe side. Well after I couldn't understand what the crazy lines were telling me on the first test, I went out and bought three others that spelled it out pretty clearly "pregnant."

I couldn't believe it...I think after the radiation and my doctors always telling me that that I was going to have a hard time getting pregnant, I definitely didn't think we were going to get pregnant and certainly not while I was still recovering from my back injury. Below is a hilarious conversation that I had with the nurse who did the initial tests as she watched me struggle to get on the exam table:

Nurse: Oh Honey, you're husband took advantage of you
Me: Well the doctor told me to try and be 'more active' and well I guess we took it literally (haha)
Nurse: (Smiling) Honey I think he probably meant walking

Whatever the circumstance we find ourselves in, Michael and I are trusting God's timing for our little baby gruden.

In The Mood For...

2009-03-31T15:42:00.003-04:00

As some of you might know, one of my all time favorite movies is the Wong Kar-Wai film,“In the Mood For Love.” The story stripped is basically about two characters in 1960s Hong Kong that end up falling in love with each other despite their conviction to not end up like their adulterous spouses. Amid the incredible artistry and highly stylized sensuality of the colors and textures of Kar-Wai’s sets, the two characters move past each others’ lonely lives, painfully committed to their sense of morality. In one of the scenes the man tells his work colleagues during dinner of how:

“Before in the old days when people had secrets they didn’t want to share…They’d climb a mountain and find a tree… Carve a hole in the tree and whisper the secret into the tree… and cover the hole with mud…that way no one would ever discover the secret.”

This is important, as I’m sure I annoyingly mentioned repeatedly to Michael while clutching his forearm, wondering in anticipation if he would feel the weight of emotion I do every time I see the final scene of the film in which years have passed and we see the main character making his way alone down a corridor to a hole in the wall of the ruins of an old Cambodian temple. There he is seen by us and a solitary monk seated above, while he whispers with his sad eyes closed and then finally leaves, alone. As many times as I’ve seen this film, I am haunted by unseen emotions and feelings that have only been allowed to subsist in the wistful adagios that haunt each scene in this beautiful film.

I don’t know why this film has come to mind lately except that one of the lines in the film keeps coming back to me as I’ve gone up the proverbial mountain and have whispered and poured out my owns prayers to God. I’ve laid them before him.

“That era has passed…Nothing that belongs to it exists anymore.” (In the Mood For Love)

la Phare

2009-02-17T01:25:00.015-05:00

Some birthdays are sentimental. Some are 'special,' as in, I'm going to take my nieces to Chucky Cheese, it's going to be so 'special." And finally some birthdays are just like an explosion; of emotions, of life, and of memories. This birthday was of the later kind.

I could tell you about the thoughtful and extravagantly undeserving gifts I received (a handmade easel from Papa Gruden!!), but the best gift this birthday was just being next to the soul that is as inextricably part of myself as I am. We ate cassoulet toulouse-style, we walked against the city wind, and we reveled in the amber glows of candlelight and memories. I wept for things I could not understand during this season, and I heard the whispers of holy scripture. I laughed at who I used to be and still am. We got lost and found the way all the while repeatedly making sure the auto lock was working on the car doors. I secretly stared at my favorite pair of blue eyes that have been my beacon and reminder of God's love.

I thanked God for these moments that I do not deserve and for His faithfulness despite my faithlessness.

No Charlie Brown Tree fo' THIS Family!!!

2008-12-06T14:50:00.008-05:00

Mr. Gruden here ... so my family has always had amazing artificial Christmas trees. There is something comforting in knowing that your little tree is resting nearby (in the basement) to resurrect another year to share Christmas memories.

Personally, I've enjoyed having the same faux tree year after year. Mrs. Gruden on the other hand has always had real trees, so in attempt to bless my wife and "branch out" if you will (lame joke I know, but it's still funny to me) we decided to get a live Christmas tree this year.

Our dear neighbors/landlords/close friends, the Sylvesters recommended that we go to a Christmas tree farm a couple miles up from our home. I think they forgot to mention that the Christmas tree man was on medication ... thanks for the memories Sylvester fam!!
Here are some pics with us picking our first Christmas tree and patronizing our "special" salesman!

Feliz Navidad! More Christmas tree pictures to come...

My love has a birthday

2008-12-06T10:53:00.012-05:00

My love recently had a birthday! I'm not sure why, but I know that since we've been married I've been intensely impressed how every moment with Michael are rare gifts that I want to cherish.

This past birthday as Michael and I shared a surprise Birthday getaway to Virginia's hunt country it was no different in one sense of being yet another enchanted memory with my incredible husband and yet it was so different because it was a chance to honor and express how much I daily grow in my respect for my husband whose thirst and desire to be more Christ-like betrays his young age. Of course, his magnetic charm and smooth moves don't hurt him any :-).

When I think of my love and how he swept into my world, at times with the surprising force of a hurricane and at times with the patience of a zephyr; I am still amazed at the precious moments God has gifted me to be by your side. Happy Birthday darling Michael!

Pictures: top, our first night at this wonderful Inn in the Virginia Hunt Country and bottom, Michael enjoying this amazing four course birthday breakfast prepared by this super five-star chef!

Grace...C'est Si Bon

2008-12-06T09:27:00.010-05:00

I've been remiss in updating this blog, but what can I say....

Grace interrupted my life. Grace, as I've come to understand it these past five years since becoming a Christian is Christ's unmerited favor and forgiveness of my sins despite my rebellion and rejection of God's commands. Now, as a Michael's wife, each day I'm seized anew with not just how sinful and selfish I can be BUT God's love through Michael's love and gracious care of me.

I read this quote recently by Bono, the U2 front man recently and I thought how interesting that he captured how God interrupts and reminds me of love that I know I do not deserve. Soli Deo Gloria.

"Bono: You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics—in physical laws—every action is met by an equal or an opposite one. It's clear to me that Karma is at the very heart of the universe. I'm absolutely sure of it. And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that "as you reap, so you will sow" stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I've done a lot of stupid stuff.mercy and kindness to me through the graces "

Lost ......

2007-09-18T11:07:00.001-04:00

Lost in the forest...

Lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twig
and lifted its whisper to my thirsty lips:
maybe it was the voice of the rain crying,
a cracked bell, or a torn heart.

Something from far off it seemed
deep and secret to me, hidden by the earth,
a shout muffled by huge autumns,
by the moist half-open darkness of the leaves.

Wakening from the dreaming forest there, the hazel-sprig
sang under my tongue, its drifting fragrance
climbed up through my conscious mind

as if suddenly the roots I had left behind
cried out to me, the land I had lost with my childhood---
and I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent.

Pablo Neruda

celebrity skin

2007-07-25T01:05:00.000-04:00

At night, I stare through the creamy gossamer canopy that creates a spurious shelter around my bed. I can't sleep. I've been listening to Lindsay Lohan's "Confessions of a Broken Heart" song. Its' words, like piles of broken shells are strewn in my consciousness.

I remember a summer long ago when I stood in the ocean and let it's fearful and strange wetness inundate my skin, my face, my hair. I squander my time thinking about how similar and fearful it feels sometimes to letting oneself be known by another person. How like it is to having a guarded yet crafted celebrity skin that becomes transparent in one camera flash...

Then I open God's word and instead of the fear, I slowly feel the gracious freedom of being known by God, by the one God who is always faithful and will never fail me. How like Him to gather me up with all the taters of my desperate faith and in His great mercy place me again in the shelter of His arms. How like this sinner to try and build my own shelter with proverbial popsicle sticks when I have a Father who protects and provides. How like Him to patiently teach me to swim in the overwhelming ocean of His love and grace in Christ Jesus!

"I said, 'oh, that I had the wings of a dove! I would fly away and be at rest-I would fly away and stay in the desert; I would hurry to my place of shelter, far from the storm and tempest.'" psalm 55

So Real

2007-06-12T22:26:00.000-04:00

In the month of June, heat that lain beaten on the pavement (heat that had been trampled by wayward smokers moving like aimless irrisdent slaves) climbed slowly to my window and whispered:

"Everybody's wearing a disguise
To hide what they've got left behind their eyes.
But me, I can't cover what I am
Wherever the children go I'll follow them." BD

the very thought of You

2007-04-02T12:12:00.000-04:00

Tonight after many months of existing as if in a daydream, after forgetting to the do the many ordinary things as the song would say, I feel an abstracted peace as the quietude of brisk spring night surrounds me and fills my blue room.

When I close my eyes I remember waking despite myself to a sunrise that was nothing more than a silent streetlamp whose brunt orange light was shivering on the still street. Alone, my mind races through the noise of my yesterdays and I stop and recognize myself sitting on an expanse of sand, furtively watching a little girl flying a kite with her father behind my big sunglasses. I watched as she danced in exhuberance while his shadow created the protective boundaries of her joy. The sea gulls gnawed greedily on the french fries left behind and tried hopelessly to join her peals of laughter with their wild cries. The father continues to fix the sometimes tangled string and helps a daughter carry a kite she can hardly hold. I walk away... and later think about God.

I think about being nothing more than a runny watercolor trying to cling to an empty white paper ... I think about forgetting too easily the shadow of a real Father who has created the boundaries of my happiness and pain.

i love you much(most beautiful darling)

2007-01-23T23:51:00.000-05:00

Today is my mom's birthday and I can only borrow the words of another to express the ineffable depths of feelings for her. If I were with her, I would take her small hands into mine. She'll tell me that her hands look too old now and I'll smile and deny the truth as I smooth over wrinkled skin with my short caresses. And if she could stop asking what I am praying for of late or why I'm not sleeping enough, I would recite this poem to her in the silence:

i love you much(most beautiful darling)

more than anyone on the earth and i
like you better than everything in the sky

-sunlight and singing welcome your coming

although winter may be everywhere
with such a silence and such a darkness
noone can quite begin to guess

(except my life)the true time of year-

and if what calls itself a world should have
the luck to hear such singing(or glimpse such
sunlight as will leap higher than high
through gayer than gayest someone's heart at your each

nearness)everyone certainly would(my
most beautiful darling)believe in nothing but love - e.e. cummings

Marshmellow World

2007-01-22T22:42:00.000-05:00

oh the snow...how I had waited for it every abnormally warm december evening, but when it finally arrived, I was unfortunately driving. Mind you contrary to popular opinion, this (me operating a vehicle) doesn't always mean something hazardous is about take place, but in this instance I guess it did because I ended up doing a 360 spin in which I miraculously avoided colliding with a big fat tree and a white suv headed straight toward me.

I can't imagine that anything I've done in the past, like play super mario brothers or avoiding perms from zealous hairdressers, could have prepared me to stay calm and coherant in the face of danger, but in any case, by God's grace and my amazement, I'm alive people. And as far as baby, not even the pink flower stuck on the antenna was harmed.

Boaz and his Escalade

2007-01-17T21:00:00.000-05:00

Oh that crazy Mark did it again...making me look like a crazy as I shook with laughter like a total dork listening to one of his sermons online at work. Check it out for yourselves in his newest sermon series called Redeeming Ruth. You'll hear about Ruth, Boaz and his Escalade with rims and that oh so memorable line..."she's hot, but so is hell" that still had me laughing as I drove home.

"And what does God do for you?"

2007-01-15T13:02:00.000-05:00

Perhaps it was the combination of Yann Tiersen's music scores and Dostoevsky against the pale backdrop of today but I could not help the idle tears that seemed to flow as I read:

"'So you pray to God a great deal, Sonia?' he asked her. Sonia did not speak, he stood beside her waiting for an answer. 'What should I be without God?' she whispered rapidly...

Raskolnikov turned and looked at her with emotion. Yes, he had known it! She was trembling in real physical fever. He had expected it. She was getting near the story of the greatest miracle and a feeling of immense triumph came over her. Her voice rang out like a bell; triumph and joy gave it power. The lines danced before her eyes, but she knew what she was reading by heart. At the least verse 'Could not this Man which opened the eyes of the blind...' dropping her voice she passionately reproduced the doubt, the reproach and censure of the blind disbelieving...

The candle-end was flickering out in the battered candlestick, dimly lighting up in the poverty-stricken room the murderer and the harlot who had so strangely been reading together the eternal book." ~Dostoevsky

"The Countess"

2007-01-11T22:38:00.000-05:00

Tonight having returned from the play "The Countess" by Gregory Murphy, my mind resounds with some of the powerful themes implied by the dialogue of this true life tale. In it, John Ruskin, the brilliant intellectual (art critic, poet and writer), is the husband who will not consummate his marriage to the beautiful Effie Gray because he finds that she does not live up to his expectations of what a woman's person should be when compared to what he sees in art. Effie Gray is the woman who is ironically loved by all of society because of her spirit and physical beauty but believes she is deformed and diseased because her husband constantly tells her she is not how a woman should be. And John Millias is the man (a visual genius himself) who falls hopelessly in love with her for the woman she is despite the fact that her husband is his mentor. You can't make up stuff like this.

All together I was impressed at how the play delievered so much more than just the mere facts of the lives of these celebrious individuals. I found it fasinating to think how even in the strict mores and milieu of victorian society, here was a man (Ruskin) who had so feasted on the idealized beauty portrayed in art, that he could no longer be excited in the form of the real woman he had married. Or as Millias says in the play of Ruskin, he is "forever theorizing about lovely things and yet looks at the practical woman before him with contempt." It reminded me very much of the insightful article in New York magazine called "The Porn Myth" by Naomi Wolf. As I continued to watch the play, I realized of course that this was not just a problem of this man wanting the perfectly beautiful wife or even all men desiring the idealized beauty but that this was the trouble all mankind encounters when carrying something of the created realm and placing it into that of the divine. Perhaps that is why Ruskin remarks that "all bachelors marry goddesses, but husbands live only with women." Perhaps he forgot that he was also not the god that his wife married and that she too had now to live with the mere man.

One of the more humorous lines of the play was another line from Millias to Ruskin as they touch upon Ruskin preference or excitement for younger women or girls and Millias asks him how he could be "looking to acorn for shade when the comfort of oak is before him." Obviously this was not the 'I love lucy" funny, it just reminded me of a high school friend mentioning to me over Christmas break that he could never see himself marrying a younger woman because he had observed one too many of his colleagues having to go to music concerts filled with the olsen twin dopplegangers to appease their younger wives. I had laughed but I remember feeling a little disconcerted when I suddenly recalled that two of my most favorite movies last year weren't even targeted toward the teen crowd but the pre-teeny boppers who still dream about making eye contact with their crushes not sleeping with them. I know sometimes I have wished in my heart for simplier times when beauty wasn't about comparison to idealized photoshop creations on magazines or having yourself displayed immodestly to attract attention, so if nothing else, this play was a great reminder to me of the nature of sin during any time period to corrupt the good thing that God created and also the amazing truth that even if no man on earth sees, God sees past the external and into the heart of what true beauty is.

"Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight" 1 Peter 3:4

la condition humaine

2007-01-10T23:03:00.000-05:00

Much to the vexation of Jane et al., I have been quite immersed in Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment." There seems to be a strange delight in reading it again for me, especially in the height of winter when I feel a silly yet distant affinity with Dostoevsky who wrote the novel after his return from exile in Siberia. I imagine that like my hands that will not warm even as I hold and flip the worn, old pages, his icy hands would forever bear the residue of the Siberian winters as they wrote.

I imagine too, Raskolnikov, in all his arresting intellectual arrogance holding a guitar and singing about the "sin to know and feel too much within." I think of Sonia Marmeladov, "who lay down down on the bed with her face to the wall; ...and her body ...shuddering..." and men who sing ballads of women who beg them to keep them from the foggy dew.

If after all this, I needed to reinforce the certitude of fallen condition of humans, tomorrow night I will see "The Countess" about Ruskin, John Millias and Effie Gray. I can't help thinking of the ironic juxtaposition of the pre-raphaelites' microcosm of utopian ideals on pristine white canvases with the muddled palettes of their actual lives.

"Quelqu'un m'a dit"

2007-01-04T23:49:00.000-05:00

La voix trise de Carla Bruni me rend témoignage aux specters effrayants … et à mon âme timid et faible à ce moment.

Ce soir je me souviens encore d'un ami ancien, Neruda. Celui qui j’ai reconnu à Toulouse parmi les soirs éclatants et éphémèraux. Peut-être j’ai perdu ma tête car j’ai envie de lire Dostoevsky et Neruda au même temps mais c’est un hiver foncé et j’ai besoins .... quoi?...je ne sais rien . Mais j’ai décidé qu’il n’y aura plus de Dylan, plus de Rilke…plus de la silence qui ne rêve que à toi.

"Ici je t’aime.
Dans les obscures pins se démêle le vent.
La lune phosphorescente sur les eaux errantes
Des jours égaux passent en se poursuivant…

Ici je t’aime et l’horizon en vain t’occulte.
Je t’aime encore parmi ces choses froides.
Parfois mes baisers vont sur ces bateaux graves,
Qui vont par les mers vers où ils n’arrivent pas.

Dèjà je me vois oublié comme ces vieilles ancres.
Les quais sont plus tristes quand le soir jete les amarres.
Ma vie inutilement affamé se fatigue.
J’aime ce que je n’ai pas. Toi tu es si distante…

Les étoiles les plus grandes me regardent avec tes yeux
Et puisque je t’aime, les pins dans le vent
Veulent chanter ton nom avec leurs feuilles de fil de fer." (XVIII)

I ain't lookin' for nothin' in anyone's eyes

2007-01-01T16:59:00.000-05:00

The gray hues and the silent white sky of today all remind me that my time in the country with my sad eyed lady of the lowlands will soon be over. Stories of her people during the war, her glances as I paint, games of her one room childhood, the face of the man she has picked out for me, all oscillate in the muddy puddles outside the door as the steady rain falls softly. Tomorrow the red syrup of pomegranate seeds that runs between my fingers like they did when I was five and sat on the tiled courtyard in a desert will be wiped away and I’ll make my way out of the door frame of a shaking house that I cannot hide in anymore.

Mercedes Sosa sings “Gracias a la Vida” in my mind and like the first time I heard her singing it, laying on the dark hardwood floor in the room above the art studio at Westover in the Connecticut winter, I wish I could understand Spanish and that red wine could actually warm you up. Gvansta and I are laughing as I ask for the gazillionth time to translate each line of this much covered folk song…

“Thanks to life which has given me so much,
It gave me two eyes that when I open them,
I can distinguish perfectly black from white,
And in the high heaven its starry background,
And in the multitudes the man I love.”

I don't know what God has in the year to come or what looms in the multitudes, but I know I can trust the loving Father and thank him for the life I've been given.

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

2006-12-23T15:04:00.000-05:00

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

2006-12-11T22:24:00.000-05:00

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

2006-12-09T10:59:00.000-05:00

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

2006-12-06T22:19:00.000-05:00

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

Needing New Names

2006-11-25T23:22:00.000-05:00

As I sat watching the ever engaging "Mulan" with my adorable nieces and nephew this weekend, there was a strange moment of clarity as all three main character sit dejected in the snow after their joyous moment of vanquishing personal demons quickly dissipates into disgrace and Mulan acknowledges that she has brought dishonor to the family, the lucky cricket confesses that he's not lucky at all, and the scrawny family dragon admits that essentially he wasn't even worthy enough to be considered being sent by the 'ancestors' to help Mulan.

Perhaps it was the company I've been keeping of late, Blood on the Tracks, "The Man Watching," and the Heidelberg Catechism, ...but as I watched...I kept thinking about Jacob wrestling with God, of fighting for faith, of how even that faith is a gift to us, of what it is to be found a good and worthy servant of the Lord, of the man in Lamentations 3 who could end by that devastating verse that is so rooted in God's character and not his own circumstances, and what it meant for me that Christ endured opposition from sinful men, so that I could be redeemed. In the end it was about God afterall, not being worthy or lucky because of me, but His love giving me worth. I know all these thoughts seem like a plate of stringy nonsensical leftover pasta but really for one second...it almost was as touching and pertinent as a Pollock.

"What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights with us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.

When we win it's with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small..." Rilke

"Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail" Lamentations 3

"...you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome." Genesis 32

Returning to the Surface

2006-11-21T18:23:00.000-05:00

“The one returning to the surface is always different from the one who dives” RILKE

Borders. I sat alone at lunch.

I watched a man darker than me, drinking in a letter he had received in an envelope with red and blue stripes on the edges. There was something so intimate and vulnerable about the way he held it so close to the wet surface of his glassy eyes… that I wanted to look away but I couldn’t.

Just like I couldn’t look away from the cemetery of the naked trees that seemed to stretch their bony fingers towards God at Catoctin this weekend.

Did they rejoice in being part of God’s bigger plan? Were they aware that underneath the shrouds of dead leaves…lies His promise of spring?

“On dit: j’ai rêvé, et non: j’ai menti.
on se réveille, on fait la refonte,
reentrant avec un peu de honte
dans la chamber anéantie.

L’ascenseur nous remet à l’étage,
dit "de la réalité" et s’en va.

Et on montre aux choses sages
sa figure de mardi gras.

Y a-t—il advantage en fait de mensonge?
cela depend du chasseur et de la chasse.
Celui qui revient à la surface
est toujour un autre que celui qui plonge.” RILKE

Nothing left to say except...

2006-11-19T21:56:00.000-05:00

if strangers meet

life begins-
not poor not rich
(only aware)
kind neither
nor cruel
(only complete)
i not not you
not possible;
only truthful
-truthfully,once
if strangers(who
deep our most are
selves)touch:
forever

(and so to dark)

-e.e. cummings

Autumn Song

2006-09-30T13:02:00.000-04:00

Home and my soul breathes a sigh that I hear accompanying the slight wind moving through the bare, still corn stalks behind the house. I look up at the muted colors of the day, soft pale blues, yellow, and down at the greens and browns of the land that is underneath my jcrew flip flops. I feel like I'm in a dream, in a painting by Hopper.

It's fall again and I'm so relieved. Relieved that my pottery barn catalog is filled with bay leaves and candles again instead of patio furniture, that the heated frenzy of summer has settled into neat little book bags on the shoulders of school children and that winter ahead is also bringing the promise of Christmas.

Something about the quiet dignity of those stalks suddenly makes me think of my mother and just how much I love coming home to see her face. To see those dark tired eyes searching mine. To feel her hands that used to look like mine. I love those hands. The brown skin on them. The wrinkles and lines that now gives them a wistful beauty that mine don't have. The bright pink nail polish that should only be worn by 14 yr old girls who live in staten island but that I can't persuade my mother to stop buying. Sometimes I think I drive two hours just so I can hold them in mine. I think about that verse in Ecclesiastes 3:11 that talks about how God "has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end." I hope that one day if I get to be old and if I'm blessed with a daughter; that she'll find lots of wrinkles around my eyes and face and find that I'm as beautiful as my mom is to me right now.

What is it about the fall that makes me want to recite Verlaine, swish around words like languorous, and be filled almost to the brim with excitement but also melancholy?

It Was For Freedom

2006-09-12T22:08:00.000-04:00

"I drove to New York
in the van, with my friend
we slept in parking lots
I don't mind, I don't mind
I was in love with the place
in my mind, in my mind
I made a lot of mistakes
in my mind, in my mind ....

if I was crying
in the van, with my friend
it was for freedom
from myself and from the land

I made a lot of mistakes
I made a lot of mistakes" Sufjan Stevens

the good, the bad, the ugly

2006-08-16T23:13:00.000-04:00

the good: listening to ray lamontagne and thinking about looking at the cobblestone old town alexandria streets and pier through the eyes of my niece and nephew. It was magic to see their trusting eyes look through crowds of strangers, searching for pirate ships and distracted by every sensation of color strewn in our path. There were the balloons, the two chinese sketch artists, the parot man, the planes flying overhead and the lazy old anchor leaning in the park. All that yellow, orange, white, blue against the warm canvas of the night. I know that Jeff thinks I will feel different when I have my own kids, but I couldn't help wondering if it were possible to love and be fascinated more by little people as I was by my little sarah, william wallace and zoe.

the bad: okay I'm just going to get to the ugly

the ugly: knowing that I am going to have the face a judge with the other criminals because this weekend I got a ticket for reckless driving. I was speeding, but somehow this feels so much worse and not unlike that long walk I had to make to see the Drama teacher after a paint fight with Brian where we pretty much coated the whole set with yellow paint during the high school play.

"Being and Nothingness"

2006-08-08T01:36:00.000-04:00

A few more hours until I'm supposed to wake up and unfortunately I can't sleep. The night, the house, and even the crickets aren't breathing or it could very well be that I'm losing my hearing. I'm reminded for some strange reason of John Burnside and this haunting poem I used to love a long time ago:

"...the trees fill with heat,
the stations arrive at light
by a process of logic;
goat willow, birchwoods,
a cluster of dusty leaves,

then brickwork
and a street that aches for snow.
I never sleep on trains, I'd soon be lost
and how would I know myself
if not for the way you listen in your sleep
and find me,
turning,
waking,
drifting off; ..."

Si j'avais les ailes de la colombe

2006-08-07T23:00:00.000-04:00

"Je dis: Oh! si j'avais les ailes de la colombe, Je m'envolerais, et je trouverais le repos; Voici, je fuirais bien loin, J'irais séjourner au désert; Je m'échapperais en toute hâte, Plus rapide que le vent impétueux, que la tempête....

Ce n'est pas un ennemi qui m'outrage, je le supporterais; Ce n'est pas mon adversaire qui s'élève contre moi, Je me cacherais devant lui.

C'est toi, que j'estimais mon égal, Toi, mon confident et mon ami! Ensemble nous vivions dans une douce intimité, Nous allions avec la foule à la maison de Dieu!

--Psaume de David

Never too late to start a revolution

2006-08-06T18:27:00.000-04:00

This was a weekend of movies. Friday we watched a great showing of "North by Northwest" (which was totally scandalous and turned my tan skin all sorts of shades of red as Eve Marie Saint and Cary Grant got a little too steamy for my taste in the train comparment). But overall it was a great time of being outside with great friends as we enjoyed some witty cary grant and a little reprieve from the heat.

Saturday night we also ended up watching a wonderful little german movie called "Schultze Gets the Blues" about this accordion player who has just retired from being a minor, receives a rock shaped lamp for his retirement and then ends up dabbling in somes blues from the South. Although I didn't really know what to expect, almost from the very beginning I was quite endeared by the long lanquid montages, the eerie silences instead of a hugh music score and an exalting of the ordinary. It was a film that gave you a lump in your throat just waiting for what would happen to Schultze. But what happens are quiet silent notes that makes up the moments of the life of a very lonely accordian player. It wasn't all sentimentality though, it was a picture of lonliness with moments of hilarity. I think one of my favorites scenes was Schultze and two of his old friends are sitting around and one of them says "let's start a revolution." Then one of his other retired friends slams down his beer and says, "it's never too late to start a revolution."

Au revoir, Arrivederci, Bye, Bye-bye

2006-08-01T22:28:00.000-04:00

Two years after we met him, tonight my small group at church said goodbye to our friend Noble. What a bittersweet departure as I thought about all the small things he did so selflessly in church and how I was always the grateful recipient of his brotherly care as he always made it a point to walk me out to the car, help us move, and to always find me at the biggest gathering to say hello. It was so good to tell him all the ways we were so grateful for him, the least of which was that he is such a snazzy dresser.

As I left and walked into the night, where a slice of the buttery moon was melting into the sky, I felt a slight tug as I thought about how difficult seasons of change can be when I take my eyes off of God. Noble leaving seems like the beginning but how good to be reminded tonight that God did take me from my little dark corner where I stood aimless and stilled the troubled waters. That all along He had a plan. That while I never knew His plan, I can't say that I've ever regretted that moment that I gave Him the wheel of my rickety car.

"I took you from the ends of the earth,
from its farthest corners I called you.
I said, 'You are my servant';
I have chosen you and have not rejected you.

So do not fear, for I am with you;
do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you;
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand." Isaiah 41:9

my mailman, my matchmaker?

2006-07-24T11:10:00.000-04:00

The night outside is steamy and clingy so it is even more delicious to be writing in the cool cocoon of my blue room. Patsy Cline drifts in and out. The fan beside me is blowing so hard that I feel like I should be talking to Dana Andrews as he is flying one of those old WWII bombers on his way home in "The Best Years of Our Lives." What would I say? That I wish I treated every year like the best year. There has been so much to be grateful for these past few weeks:

-My tests came back saying that I'm in remission for the first year! What a relief after dreaming for days that I was inside my body and cells everywhere were floating like clouds but totally out of reach.

-My mailman who I got to know after staying home from surgery came to say hello as he delivered my mail and told me how he introduced a couple of the people on his route. They eventually split up he says sadly because she was crazy. I couldn't tell if he was offering his services, but I was happy nonetheless as I looked at his beard which grew longer on side than the other, that he was kind and he was my mailman. Such a dear man!

-Getting a bear hug from my niece Sara and even having her do my hair so I ended looking like David bowie only with a thousand pink bows and clips

Madame Butterfly

2006-07-13T21:07:00.000-04:00

Careful and slow, this week closes its pages and I sigh. Tomorrow I will go once again for another test. I will wade through the palpable heat that rushes at me like a thousand children that haven't seen me and cling to me now. Walking slowly...hoping.

Hoping this will be the last of those needles, those nurses who cover their mouths with their hand in shock and say "oh honey" as if they were in "Gone With the Wind" because you were yelping like a 5 year old and they don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' babies and those temporary receptionist who keep telling you how amazing it is that you knew their name was Allen (when you were just trying to tell him your last name) and could you call your other doctor on your cell to confirm something because he hates using the phone. What could I do but smile.

Smile, sit and reminisce in the mauvy cotton candy pink waiting rooms about another summer where I first saw Madame Butterfly. I recall my surprising flood of tears for Butterfly and I know that this waiting room cannot be half as unbearable as hers'.

Needle and the Damage done

2006-07-10T23:00:00.000-04:00

Somewhere I can't remember, shards of the word hurt tear boorishly though skin and the needle damages a familiar crevice in my arm. My eyes are closed, so tight, but I can't get away from the color red. I start thinking of lines from one of my favorite poems by cummings:

"or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;"

I imagine the snow, silent and precise. I hear the echo of a verses I cling to:

"therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." (2 Corth 4:16)

"for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith--of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire--may be proved genuine.." (1 Peter 1)

"let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. Who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider Him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart" (Hebrews 12)

Somewhere I can't remember, I hear someone say, "see you tomorrow." It will be a long week.

Zizou: mais Pourquoi?

2006-07-09T23:20:00.000-04:00

Wasn't "you must control your temper!" something one of the teapots said to the beast in beauty and the beast? I wish Zidane had remembered that this afternoon. Depite the political din that surrounds the French, I got nostalgic and was so hoping that one of my favorite players would have been able to finish his career with a bang. I didn't expect that bang to be a head-butt in the chest of the Italian player. Who says anger isn't a sin? It was almost painful to see Zidane absent from the penalty kicks and from the subsequent award ceremony where he would have led his team out as the captain. As his absence filled my tv screen, all the very public, shameful, and sinful responses I've had in anger throughout my life started popping up in my mind like that wack-a=mole game at theme parks and I just wanted to cry for Zidane. Who knew that the world cup would be a reminder to me of the cost of sin.

Om

2006-07-09T23:14:00.000-04:00

Still thinking about putting a pillow underneath my shirt and taking prenatal yoga classes with Amy. I just have this horrible feeling though that we'll go in there and end up wearing bells, chanting Om...Om...Om, choking on incense and sweating in weird positions. My co-worker who has told me about the classes insists that Amen and Shalom are words derived from Om, and though I want ask "so why don't we just say Amen or Shalom," I don't, because she also plays women's soccer, comes in to work with all sorts of bruises and could probably beat me up with her pinky finger. She insists that yoga is probably in my blood and I remember slightly that all my people across the ocean probably think of om-ing and chanting as a smashingly good time. Since dancing and being stick thin should actually be in my blood too, I'm not sure I'd buy that even with the fortune I've accumulated in monopoly money.

Drive Home

2006-07-07T13:11:00.000-04:00

Although I can't drive for more than two hours without wanting to pull out every hair on my head, I am already ancipating the green fields fading past me like a runny watercolor. Past corn fields and remnants of tradition standing as still and scared as red barns. Old things. I will most likely be contempling the word hope. Hope as dry as fallow wheat fields. Hope waiting for its season to arrive. Abraham who hoped against all hope (Rom. 4). Love always protect,always trusts,always hopes, always perseveres (1 corth 13). Thoughts to swim in on the drive home.

Romans 5:3-5
"Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us."

Rain Drops Falling on My Head

2006-07-06T22:54:00.000-04:00

The pouring rain has been entertaining us for days here. Its drops have been racing down my bedroom window, down streams of memory, pursuing strains of rachmaninoff's vocalise. They pause slowly to watch a girl dancing on cold slippery tile of a flooded courtyard of a home by the sea. The laughter fractures in the distance.

I keep thinking of proverbs 20:30 "Blows and wounds cleanse away evil, and beatings purge the inmost being.." Keep thinking of how most of the beauty I've observed is wrought by violence, by struggle. Flowers that break the dark surface of the earth, the child born out of a womb, mountains shaped by storms. My own life restored after being broken because Another was broken for me. Thinking of Christ dying for my sins, wounded, beaten, so I could be forgiveness and restored. Amazing.

Amazing to hear the brokeness of the night trickle down my bedroom window. I will wait for beauty.

Welcome

2006-07-06T22:26:00.000-04:00

LXXXIII

THIS world is not conclusion;
A sequel stands beyond,
Invisible, as music,
But positive, as sound.
It beckons and it baffles;
Philosophies don’t know,
And through a riddle, at the last,
Sagacity must go.
To guess it puzzles scholars;
To gain it, men have shown
Contempt of generations,
And crucifixion known. -- Emily Dickinson