Offering Home

I had a incredible opportunity this weekend to talk with the leader of the L'arche London community I volunteer at. I hadn't had the chance to talk to her for many months and it was really interesting to find out some things that I hadn't heard or ever expected.

When I came back to London at the beginning of the year, I needed to find a community to fill part of my heart that was missing. I felt more empty than I thought I would be when I left my summer job and there were so many things that I worried about the year. I came to the L'arche community in London feeling empty and desperately seeking something. I knew that I came with empty hands. I felt as though I had nothing to offer.

The references I was given from my earlier community were apparently very good and everyone spoke highly of me. For some reason this made my other leader very worried that there would be nothing for London to offer to me. When she told me that this weekend, I was shocked, almost into silence. The reason why I came to the community was not to find what I could be offered, but to see what I might be able to offer them between the hours of class I crammed into my life. The incredible thing was that when I came thinking that I had something to offer, I found that I gained so much more.

I came to Jubilee with very little. I had my music to offer and not much more. What I found offered back to me was much more worthy than what I had to give. I was offered a home. I needed a home in London, and that is where I found one. I think perhaps when we come with empty hands that we have so much more to offer. We don't think that we have something to give, but when we come with our hands open we see how full they really are.

The Universal Language

I just spent a weekend in Montreal at a Taize prayer retreat, which was truly fantastic. The most interesting part of being there were the number of languages that I heard spoken on a regular basis. There were more languages than just French and English which I had expected. I don't even remember how many languages I heard. The most interesting part about listening to all of the languages was how they all seemed to make sense regardless of what I actually understood and could translate.

It was interesting to be in such an international place and still feel at home. In some ways it was similar to being back at L'arche. While many of us speak different languages, have different customs and separate traditions, we still are bound by something, even when we don't necessarily understand it.

Blogger has been adding more languages to the blogs that people can create. I was looking at some of what they had been doing and they had wanted to create a universal language that they called "Love." What they showed made very little sense to me, but the idea was very nice. I think the concept of creating a universal written and spoken language is pointless when a universal language already does exist despite the fact that it is not written. And it has the same name.

Sometimes we get stuck on the idea that when we can't communicate with people when we don't speak their language. We let the boundaries that we can create between ourselves stop us from reaching out. We don't always want to be able to communicate without using words because that is so much more personal than what society expects or requires of us. When we don't use words to reach out to each other, we open ourselves to more possibilities and deepen our relationships. It is then that we speak using the only truly universal language. Love.

Peter Pan's Shadow

I love the story of Peter Pan. I've always found it utterly captivating and so tempting. There are days I would love to leave my reality behind and go find my Neverland with beautiful deas and mischievous fairies. Most people would agree that is much more my kind of reality than the one I currently reside in.

Lately I've been thinking more about Peter Pan's shadow. I found it interesting that his shadow can leave and that he always feels the need to attempt to sew it back on. I can somehow see that so clearly in my mind. A boy desperately trying to bind parts of himself back together, perhaps because he feels incomplete without his shadow.

Over the past few years I've had the the experience, or developed the ability to separate parts of myself. I've compartmentalized areas of myself so well that I can clearly see the division between them. My reflective side exists well with my social side and few people realize how often I'm writing in my head while being social. The most marked difference or division I suppose is between my body and what I'm feeling. I have learned to detach myself so far from what is going on around me that it no longer stays like me. Being that detached also makes it difficult to recall memories because it feels as though I wasn't even there.

I'm unsure if this is a common phenomenon or not, but I feel it happening on a regular basis. And I'm fairly sure I no longer like it. I don't like the fact that I get myself into situations I feel the need to disassociate myself from. I also don't enjoy the fact that I can forget what happened. The last twenty minutes before I go to sleep in usually a write off as far as memory goes as it enters a dream sequence feeling of my life. I hav ein the past called people to confirm that parts of a conversation actually occurred. They seem to be surprised when I don't remember, but they get used to it.

Over the past few weeks I've begun to feel more and more like Peter Pan with a desperate desire to hold all aspects of my life together. Sadly, I may need something stronger than sewing thread. Crazy glue doesn't seem to be working, but I may have found something that does. The love I have from my friends and family seems to be helping. The acceptance that I can't do it on my own it getting a lot closer to the heart of the problem. When I admit that I can't do it on my own that is when my world begins to pull itself together. Duct tape has a little bit less of a use and I can put away my needle and thread for awhile. I no longer have Peter Pan's shadow. I just have me.

Support System

Over a beer yesterday I was talking to my friends about always supporting each other. Somedays we have trouble supporting each other when we don't necessarily fully agree with the decisions that our friends make. We can watch our friends make so many mistakes even when we know that they are making them. I know my friends spent a large part of last year watching me make mistakes and were supportive anyways.

I think it is a mark of friendship to be there for your friends even when you don't necessarily approve of their choices. For the most part, that is really what friends are there for. When we screw up and make the wrong decisions, friends are the ones we call to take care of the plane crash that is our life. Support is not what we give to our friends only when we decide that they are making the right decision. That support is needed as well, but not nearly as much. Support is what exists in friendships when someone is making a terrible mistake and all you can do is help pick up the pieces when it falls apart.

It's unfair to withold support from a friend until they support you. Friendship is not something that holds back until there is equal support because that's not love. Friendship is acknowledging that you will be there even when you don't agree, most especially when you don't agree. Friendship is holding a hand to help heal a broken heart and putting a smile on your face to match the smile on someone else's. Somedays it's hard because you think you can see clearly the end result and you don't like. The thing we have to remember is that our perceptions are changed by what we know and how we know the person we love. We aren't inside their heads and we can't be. But that's not really the point of being a good friend. Who really wants to be friends with a carbon copy of themselves? That would be boring. Our friends are not supposed to live our lives. That's not how we choose our friends. They don't live our lives, but they do complement them. They make life fuller and more complete for being there for us. And we do the same for them.

Friendship isn't about always about understanding the choices our friends make. It is about accepting and supporting them though. It's about loving them no matter what. No matter how many times they may screw up or make huge mistakes, it's being there for them and forming their support system. That's what friends are really for.

Start at the Very Beginning

I had story time with a friend a few days ago which is our way to catch each other up on our lives. We haven't known each other for very long, so there are a lot of gaps between what we think we should know about each other and what we actually do. The problem with having story time is having to start at the beginning of stories. For me, that is absolutely brutal. I'm too aware that so many things influence each other and that so many parts of my life are really tied together. I began to tell her about a friend who I have become very attached to over the past year since I met him. She didn't know anything about him, so I had to go all the way back to the point we met.

When you tell a story, how far are you supposed to go back to create a prologue? And what exactly does start at the beginning mean? When we begin to tell a story, there are always threads that we choose to follow and ones that we choose to let fall. Occassionally we try and trace a thread back to the very beginning. The only problem then lies in determining where the beginning really comes. Does it come at the point where two lives first cross or where a life begins? When we are told to start at the very beginning, what definition is it that we choose?

There is the beginning of time, the beginning of history, the beginning of civilizations. We have our own beginnings that are unique from everyone else. The interesting thing to look at is the fact that every beginning is a part of an ending. Without an ending of some kind, nothing new can begin. It may be the end of a university career that leads to the beginning of a life in the real world. The end of a relationship leads to the possibility of something new. I suppose when we start at the beginning, we are really starting at an end and at a beginning. All of our lives blend into a combination of beginnings and endings. To go back the beginning goes through a number of endings and different possibilities we may have originally ignored. We trace the threads back through our lives to the beginning and find that there are beginnings of beginnings. There are always more things to consider and more things involved than we thought there were. It's only when we try to start at the beginning that we see how far we really have to go to get there. And in seeing how far we have to go to get there, we see how far we have come.

Making Life Choices

I'm realizing more and more that many of the people around me are making choices that will change the rest of their lives. And I get to see how hard it is. It's also forced me to realize that choices I make now do affect the rest of my life, whether I want them to or not. My father always tells me that there are no bad choices at this point in my life. Only choices that will change my life.

It's hard to figure out which factors have to come into making life choices. When you are younger, choices are so much easier because they can focus on your family. You don't have to go very far from where you are situated originally and your most strenuous decisions are made more or less for you. When you get older and have to choose where you are going to attend university, there are so many more things that factor into the decision. There's your family which is sometimes less of the decision than it might otherwise be. Friends are important because they define your social life while you are in high school. Every so often there is a significant other who is important to consider, but also should not sway the entire decision. We realize that the decision we make will change the rest of our lives, but at the time it feels like less of a life changing decision than it really is.

Once we get to university we get to see that all the decisions are really more life changing than we used to think they were. We get to choose where we live, who we live with and what program will allow us to live the rest of our lives in the way we want to. It might be the choices we make when we are preparing to leave university that scare us the most. Many of us have fallen in love at some point over the course of our university career and we have to decide if that is a forever kind of love or a just for now kind. If it does turn out to be a forever kind, then we need to decide if that will lead to marriage or just living together to try and see if it works. We need to decide which of our dreams we are going to follow and which we are going to let fall. These are the choices that determine the path we set ourselves on for the foreseeable future.

We don't realize how many things we take into account when we decide where we are going to go. What language we speak determines which countries are open to us. The depth of our sense of adventure also does. Some of us want to be more settled and others want to take off for far off places. Some of us are unattached and others have someone permanent in their lives. We get to choose to experience so many parts of the world and of life and we need to figure out which ones we want to have. We need to figure out what we crave most in life and what our deepest desires are. Once we do, making life choices becomes a lot easier. Or maybe they still remain hard. I haven't quite figured that one out yet.

Just One of Those Things

It's interesting to see how different relationships become as we grow older. When we are younger we are so sure that our first relationships will be our last. When they do end, as most inevitably do, we think that our world has ended and nobody will ever love us because one person was not right for us. Most people who are in university have hit the stage in their lives when they have loved and lost at least one person who they thought they would be able to spend the rest of their lives with. And for the most part, we have survived. Sometimes just barely, but we get through it.

We occassionally continue to see relationships as things that will be the be all and end all of our lives. After a few endings of things we expect to be the rest of our lives, we begin to accept the fact that not every relationship will lead to the rest of our lives. Some will work and some won't. The ones that won't are not our fault as much as we would like to blame ourselves for the failure of "the rest of our lives."

As we get older we begin to see that the ending of relationships is not always our fault. And it's not the fault of the other half of the relationship. There are some cases when there is a way to assign blame for the end of our relationship, but for the most part that's only our way of easing the grief we feel at the loss of something we held dear. We realize that although assigning blame for the end of a relationship may be the easiest way to deal with the end of it, it's probably not the most productive way to do so. When we cease seeking a way to assign specific blame for the end of a relationship, we are more open to seeing why it really did end. And sometimes it's just one of those things.

It's a beautiful idea to think that all relationships will be "The One," the most fulfilling part of our lives and a large part of the rest of our lives. The reality is that this doesn't always happen. In fact, it usually only happens once. There are so many other times in our lives that the beginning and the end of relationships are not exceedingly well planned, but they make us happy for the time we have them. Looking back on them we can see that they were just one of those things. The things that you take a crazy chance on, just because you can. The end may be something that you could see coming, or something you couldn't, but hindsight gives you 20/20 vision on it.

Relationships can be just one of those things for so many reasons. Usually timing is to blame. Maybe because someone is moving out of a city right when the other enters it, or there is another love in the picture who re-enters or has never really left. There might be an age gap that cannot be bridged by love alone, or the desire for two things that are simply too far apart to ever be reconciled. Sometimes they began in a manner that was suited only to crashing and burning in a magnificent sort of manner. For whatever reasons relationships don't work, I don't think we should work so hard to assign blame for the failure. We can wish "If only" all we want, but that won't change anything. We just need to accept that it can be just one of those things and wait for the day that it is the one thing that is right.

Inner Compass

I have no inner compass. And I'm ok with that. It is something I'm highly aware of. Anyone who has ever driven with me will know how bad I am when it comes to directions. Mapquest is one of the most visited website in my life and cell phone numbers are a requirement before I leave my house to visit people.

While I may have no physical directional compass, I'm beginning to get better when it comes to figuring out where I'm going. Even when I don't know exactly where I'm going, I know how to listen to my inner compass in order to figure it out. I will eventually get there.

This is the point in the lives of many university students when we are supposed to figure out where we are going and determine how fast we can get there. I'm not really a fan of that. I have some idea of where I want to go, or more accurately, where I'm supposed to be, but I have no reason to rush there. It would be much more entertaining to take a detour and just check out the scenery for a few years. This will be the only time in my life when I will be able to do this. There is no reason for me to rush. My inner compass knows where I'm going and also how it will keep me on track.

The other great thing about my inner compass is that there really is no concrete set direction. The destination can change as I change and the way I get there is more a general idea than specific directions. I don't know where to turn left, but I do know that I will get there, wherever there is. There is no reason to rush getting there simple because it's what people expect. Not everyone has to have the specific directions to get where they are going and some of us are ok with just general ideas.

I don't want to always listen to what I'm being told, but that doesn't mean that I don't hear it. I do eventually listen, even when I really don't want to. Detours are fun, and the scenery is great, but eventually I want to get where I'm going. And I will at some point. Even when I seem to have no direction. I really do have an inner compass. I swear.

Creating Different Bubbles

I have a theory that we all create our own bubbles in which we live our lives. We seem to have the idea that some of our bubbles are all encompassing of life, but they aren't as much as we would like them to be. We all have our own bubbles, whether we are aware of it or not. They are created by the experiences we have, the choices we make and the places we want to keep ourselves.

Someone accused me of living my life in a bubble today, partially because I choose to not live a life similar to hers. During the year I live in the world of music because that is the program I am in. The summer takes my life to be a part of the L'arche community. These are both bubbles in their own way and I'm completely alright with that. I know that I have separate bubbles in my life and I know that they will change as I continue to live and be open to different experiences. I may not have drastically different experiences throughout my life but those are what I chose and the bubbles I am most comfortable in.

It is not valid to attack someone else's choices or to accuse them of living in the bubble with the assumption that you don't live in a similar situation. There are always bubbles in our lives. We are limited by what we have tried and what we have seen. There is no way to experience everything, to see all the paintings or listen to all the music. We cannot physically sample all the incredible things life has to offer, so we pick and choose what we can see. We create different bubbles for our worlds. We can choose to lock ourselves inside them or to leave them more open to allow more things to come through to us. It's our choice to see how different our bubbles will be, but we still live in them. Despite of how much we may not want to.

Hunted by History

There are times when we try to outrun our history. We decide that we don't like it and we sometimes will rewrite our histories. The only problem with doing these things is that we can't. We don't get to run away and we don't get to rewrite.

In the past few weeks I've felt the hot breath of my past breathing down my neck. There are memories triggered by small things that make me feel completely lost and unable to fight back against what has happened, what I feel I have let happen to me. Most days I can outrun my past, or rewrite part of it, but I seem to be failing in both of those endeavours right now.

It's funny how we spend so much time focusing on our future, making plans and goals for the things we see coming while we are so unwilling to look back. Our past is something we see as a part of us, but not a part at all. We set it aside and don't necessarily allow it to play a part of our everyday lives. When it begins to affect our daily routines, we feel blindsided, almost offended that something we put away has the audacity to interfere in how we live.

The way our past comes up behind us is like being stalked. We have been hunted by something that is behind us. Something we are determined to run from. Many days we are able to succeed in running. There are just a few days when we are not able to. When our past catches up with us and we are completely incapacitated by something we had left behind. We will always be hunted by what we leave behind until we turn around and face it with the decision that we can't keep running for the rest of our lives. We can't allow for something to exhaust us and drain our emotions for the rest of our lives. We need to choose to make our past a part of ourselves no matter how bad it was. Because no matter how bad it was, it doesn't make us bad. It simply makes us strong. And the more we are willing to accept it, the stronger we become because we accept all parts of us and not just the easy ones. It is all these parts that make us who we are when we stop becoming prey to our past. We make so much more of ourselves that way. We become ourselves.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

We all have parts of our lives that are good, and we all have some bad parts. Occassionally there are ugly parts that make us want to hide in the darkest corner we can find. Some of those parts are easier to deal with than others. And some are easier to not deal with than others.

It's beginning to become clearer to me that friendship is not always based on what we see as the best part of us. Friends are the incredible people who are there when we don't expect them to be. They are there for the good - the great parts of our lives that we want them to be there for - as well as the bad - the parts we don't necessarily want them to be there for. It's hard to deal with the fact that our friends will accept us even when the days aren't good. It's hard enough to deal with friends when we have a bad day. It's hard to realize that they are actually going to be there and not run away when something gets a little bit rough.

The worst part of realizing that your friends are always going to be there is when you kick back at them and they don't go away. The days when you are at your absolute lowest and can't imagine that anyone would ever have any remote reason to love you. The days when the person who comes closest to you is the one who receives the brunt of your anger and your inability to deal with yourself. Those are the days when you realize that your friend are in the frienship for the long haul. They are in no way dependent on you always having a good day and are there when you have really bad ones.

It is so easy for us to accept our friends when they are there for the good days. That's when we expect them to be there. The bad days are the ones we get surprised when we turn around and our friends are still there. The ugly days are when we get the shock of our lives that we are not alone. That's when we realize how important our friendships are and how much our friends actually care about us. It's almost like taking vows. Friends are the ones who are there. For better or for worse. For the good, the bad and the ugly.

The Perfect Moment

I am beginning to open up in so many parts of my life and am realizing more and more how much we hold back from others who are close to us in our lives. I am one of the worst people for telling people how I feel because I don't want to give them the power to hurt me.

There are so many times in our lives that we wait for the "perfect moment" to say something to someone or do something that we know will change our lives. We wait for the right moment to tell someone that we love them, or that we want to spend the rest of our lives with them. We wait to tell people we care about them because once we do, that leaves us vulnerable. The only problem with waiting until the "perfect moment" is that sometimes the perfect moment never comes. And then we have spent all our time waiting for something that has never come.

The other thing problem with waiting for the perfect moment is that we can only see the imperfections in moments. There are no perfect moments in life, there are simply imperfect moments that we can make perfect in our lives. Instead of waiting for something that is perfect to come along, we can work to make the imperfect times in our lives more perfect. And that is so worth it. We can make things so more perfect when we are able to appreciate the perfection in the small moments in our lives.

We should not feel the need to hold back what we feel and what we want to do for the perfect moment. The only perfect moments in our life are the ones that we create. Waiting for something to happen in our lives is very pointless. If we want the perfect moment to say something or the perfect time to do something, then we have to create it. It is the doing of something special that makes the perfect moment and the perfect time, not the moment itself.

The power for the perfect moment is held within ourselves and we need to take control of some of the power we hold. When we realize that, the reasons that hold us back from being open with someone are gone. And then we have more power over ourselves and the emotions in our lives. That's when we really get to feel the "perfect moments."

Soldier's Cry

I will be the first in the entire world to admit that I am a pacifist and I don't stand behind the idea of war. I have yet to find any war that I can truly consider just. Most wars begin for foolish, selfish reasons in my opinion. It wasn't until this year that I found any reason to support the soldiers fighting in so many countries around the world.

I met an Irish soldier over the summer and saw him shortly before he deployed for Lebanon. More recently than that I was faced with the reality that someone I care about may have sent himself to Afghanistan. That truly terrified me. The night I found out about that, I heard a beautiful and heart breaking song called "A Soldier's Cry." And I cried. I may have gone beyond crying. It was a pretty horrifying sight I'm sure. One good thing about the song is it made me realize why I am losing friends to overseas and partially appreciate what they are fighting for.

A friend of mine has a brother posted in Afghanistan and his MSN name says something that is very insightful. "If you don't stand behind our soldiers, feel free to stand in front of them." As the number of deaths mount in the Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan, the amount of the support for our mostly pathetic armed forces mounts. When there is no evident reason to fight, no reason that we can support, we don't support the troops we send overseas. We do now though. We mourn the ones we have lost and pray for the ones we still have far away from us.

We don't always think of the reasons so many of the younger generation volunteer to take themselves away from their family and loved ones. Canada is such a multi-cultural country that sometimes we don't see it as a nation. But we really are. And that is what our soldiers are fighting for. To keep our nation proud and free. That is the cry they have and what they fight for while we stay safe. That is why we have to stand behind them, regardless of how we feel about war or the reason they are fighting at all. Because they are fighting for us.

Growing Out

It seems to be the opinion of some that the process of growing older must be linked with the process of growing up. I disagree. I think growing up is a process many of us can avoid for the majority of our lives. Instead of growing up, we spend our time growing out. That's what I have spent a lot of my time doing.

I have grown out of so many things over the past few months and years. I've grown out of so many of my clothes, or perhaps I should say, shrunk out of them. My style has also changed. I care less about what I look like and more about how I feel. I'm beginning to grow out of my music bubble and it feels good. It's nice to not be completely consumed by just one part of my life. I'm growing out of some of the books I used to read. They just don't have the power to hold my attention for very long. Very few things have the power to hold my attention anymore.

There are things I want to grow out of such as my fear of committment and my incredible ability to make plans for the future. Or I suppose, my inability to let go of the plans I have made for the future. I am getting there. Every day I get to let go of a little bit more of the things I cling to. I can grow out of the things I once hung onto with all of my strength and I feel so much better because of it. I'm not really growing up, because I still feel the same way I did two years ago. I've just grown out and tried so many more things. And there is no way I would want to go back.

We tend to see the process of growing up as a part of getting older. As nice and simple as that can be, that makes life seem so linear. And that makes growth so restricting. When we are willing to attempt to grow out, to try new experiences and see how far they can take us, it is only then that we really get the chance to grow up. By growing out.

We can take the chance to branch out, to try something that we haven't before and that is when we really get to grow. When we only expand the things we have already tried, we don't really get to grow. We don't get the chance to change. We leave somethings behind when we grow out, but it also gives us the chance to grow up and become who we really want to be. This is a chance I'm beginning to be willing to take.

Opening a Broken Heart

This Sunday marks Doubting Thomas in the church year. And there was a fantastic sermon this morning. My resident wise man was wondering if he would make an appearance in my writing because of his wise words this morning and they of course will because they fit my life perfectly right now.

The premise of most of the sermon was that we should change Thomas' name from Doubting to Brokenhearted. Thomas is not willing to believe because he is hurt. He has lost someone who he loved and he doesn't want to have to go through that again. I know what that feels like. There are times after getting hurt that you don't want to open your heart. You don't want to be open to the possibility that you can care about someone again, because then they might just hurt you . . . again.

Thomas doesn't want to believe without seeing that the one he loves may be alive, because if it turns out to not be true, then his heart will simply break a second time. It's the same for us. When we get hurt, we only want to believe that this can never happen again. We block off our hearts and decide that we can't feel the same way again. So we try to stop feeling love for those around us. Feeling love for people opens our heart to being hurt and that scares us. It doesn't mean we doubt the possibilities of love but simply that our broken hearts hurt too much.

Closing off our hearts happens in so many different ways. There is the doubt that someone else can care for us, the fear that even when we fall in love with someone they will only hurt us. We begin to doubt not only those around us, but also ourselves. None of these things are fair to us or those around us. We don't allow ourselves to love and we don't allow others to love us.

It's when we begin to open our hearts that we realize how great that feels. When we let down the drawbridge and see if there is someone standing there, willing to love us, we might be surprised. There is the fear that something might not work, but the chance that it might is far too fantastic to ignore. So opening our broken hearts is worth it, even though there are doubts and fears in doing so, is entirely worth it.

Damaging Joy

Over the past few months I have noticed in the music faculty that many of us are injured by what we love. Tendonitis is becoming more of a common problem than it used to be. I'm definitely not the only one anymore. Many of us cannot hold pens at the end of the night and have problems typing enough to finish essays on time. It's hard for us to let go of something that used to bring us such great joy is now damaging us.

It's almost like watching an abusive relationship. Or even just a really bad one. When you are in the relationship, you just see the happiness and the joy that exists there. Sometimes you feel the hurt, but the happiness overrides that. You ignore your friends because you think they just can't see how truly fantastic the relationship is for you.

The shoe is on the other foot when you watch someone else go through the same thing. You see the pain, and you see the damage. You think you know how to stop what is going on even when the person you're trying to protect doesn't seem to be able to see it. The happiness that is there is tainted by the damage that is done. And you want to stop that so badly. It's hard to be so powerless to stop that.

There is still the powerlessness to stop what is going on in our lives when we find our true joy is damaging to us. Whether it's in a relationship we know we shouldn't be in, or the job we do that makes us happy. We can sometimes see that what we love is damaging us, but we don't want to leave. It's hard to leave something that gives us joy. It's hard, but sometimes it might be worth it. To take the time and have the courage to find something that gives us joy without damaging our bodies or our hearts. It's really hard. But it might be worth it. Our joy will become healthy when it doesn't damage us. And it's worth it to take the risk to lose something that we used to cling to in order to find something we can hold on to.

Comforting Feelings

It's strange what things are most comforting. Or the littlest things that may provide the exact level of comfort we need. Sometimes it is the simplest thing in the entire world. Something like burrowing under warm covers for a few extra minutes in the morning and watching the sun come up. Or finding that there is indeed enough hot water for a shower. It can be something like getting an email from a friend who you haven't heard from in awhile, or finding something you thought was lost.

I've found a lot of new comfort feelings this year and the importance of some old ones has been augmented. A cup of tea can be the most important thing in the morning, and also the best comfort at the end of a long day. Both my housemate and I seem to fans of eating cookie dough, as bad as that can be for us. It seems to work when we get into moods. Staying in bed for a few extra minutes each morning makes getting out of bed more bearable and most of my days seem to go better. I've grown more attached to my teddy bear than I had previously been and my attachment to my notebooks and pens has been augmented by the fact that I have rediscovered my love of writing.

Today I seem to be looking for something that is comforting. I've tried a few of the usual things - blankets, tea, sugary things - but none of them seem to be working. I feel restless, more so than usual, which doesn't make a lot of sense as I tend to be a settled person. Very much so. Somedays too much so. I might try a nap soon, but I'm not sure if even that will work. I wish I had someone to cuddle with, but that won't happen for awhile I'm sure. I wish I could find my ultimate comfort feeling, but I'm not entirely sure what that is yet. I think I'll just have to keep looking.

Not Running

We are a society that finds its optimum operating speed to be fast, mostly at a running speed. Despite the fact that actually watching me run is a painful experience, I tend to operate at a similar speed. There are always two options for what we do with out optimum speed. We either run to something, or we run away from something. And we are really good at both.

When we're running towards something, it always seems to be something we are so sure we can't live without. A new house, a new car, a better job, more money, more power, more prestige. These are the things we have placed the highest value on. We spend so many hours a week pursuing these things that, at the end of the day, are really not that important. The length of our work weeks has gone up, as have the number of stress related disorders. We focus so hard on getting to a specific place as fast as we can that not only do we now stop to smell the roses, we don't even notice they are there. Our tunnel vision can sometimes become so great that the edges of our life fall under a blackout and we only have one thing left. Our drive to succeed.

It's really hard to not do this, to not assume that our own ambitions are the most important. It is difficult to slow down from our highest speed, and slow down enough to really see and appreciate thsoe around us. It can be so hard to not put ourselves first and integrate the lives of others into ours. The black spots eventually disappear and when this happens, the goal seems a lot less important and the journey is a lot more enjoyable.

The other direction we run is away. We run away from responsibility of any kind. We run away from love and the possibility of intimacy. We are a strange society. We bemoan the lack or the depth of relationships in our lives, but when a caring, loving, intimate relationship comes along, we think it must be too good to be true. Soemtimes it is, and it is these situations we hold as the template for how every relationship should function. And so we run. We run away from the possibility that we may find a great relationship that we can make work. Because if we do find a relationship, we would have no idea what to do with it. Soemtimes it's easier to be alone than risk screwing up and losing a good thing. It can be worth it though. We may lose what we have, but we may get to keep it. And what we gain is worth the risk of losing it.

I will be the first to admit that I've become very good at running over the past few years. I've always had a goal and focused specifically on that. Over the past few months my goals have shifted and partially disappeared. They're still there, but they aren't my focus. I know that eventually I want to be somewhere that isn't where I am right now. I just refuse to risk to get there fast. There are so many incredible things in my life - experiences, relationships, events, foreign cities I will never get to see if I rush. And I want to see it all.

Sadly, I've also become good at bolting away from relationships. I really don't let a lot of people get close to me. But I'm not avoiding relationships anymore. Or at least I'm trying not to. Relationships are another kind of responsibility that is very hard to deal with. But it's the best kind of responsibility. The hardest, but definitely the best. I'm not running so hard anymore. Occassionally the odd initial sprint away from something that seems too serious, but I'm not running anymore. And I'm learning that it's worth it. It really is.

A Misty Veil

It may be the knowledge of an upcoming trip to the AGO that has brought to the front of my mind a beautiful painting by Monet. I have no idea what it's called, but I recall standing in front of it for a long time the last time I was there. It's a painting of a castle, or manor house, almost entirely obscured by mists. It looks as though a heavy veil of mist is all that separates us from a much more magical place. A place where mistakes are obscured and there is no pain.

Somedays it feels as though a heavy veil is all that separates us from a beautiful place, a more perfect society, a better world. We can see how we want the world to be. We know what a good, peaceful society would look like. Because we can see it. We just can't see a way to get there. There is a mist blocking our way.

It's almost like Brigadoon, a town that only appears once every hundred years. You can't find it unless you know it's there and you have to head through the mist to get there. It can be hard, and I'm sure that would be frightening, but to find the love of your life (or so the story goes) apparently it's worth it. I wonder if we feel the same way about creating a peaceful world. We're not really sure how that would turn out. We actually have no idea. There has never been a world where everyone has enough to eat and no one lives in fear. We have an ideal that we can sort of see through a misty veil. The basic ideas are there, the details are just a little fuzzy for us. It might be worth it to try and see the details, to pull back the veil and find out how that world works. I hope that one day we will be able to find the courage to do that. To step up and take responsibility for something like that. To create a loving and just society. Or we can let the veil of mist stay where it is. Perhaps somethings are easier to just imagine . . .

Making Mistakes

Mistakes hurt. Maybe that's why we try to avoid making them. It's hard though, because the more we try to avoid making mistakes, the more we make and the more they hurt.

Maybe there are worse thing than making mistakes. Like not making mistakes. Mistakes can only happen when we try something new, when we push boundaries, when we take a chance. If we are never willing to take a risk, to accept that we may be hurt then we will never change or grow. We will never be able to become who we are meant to be. Unless we take a chance, knowing that we might make some mistakes, life remains the same. We remain the same.

Fearing mistakes also means that we fear change. We fear the endless amounts of possibilities that exist within all of us. When we try something new, we can either find something that will stay with us for the rest of our lives, or something we would rather avoid for the rest of our lives. And taking the chance to find out can sometimes be too terrifying. The chance that we may realize we love something else more than what we have already dedicated our lives to is scary because that would mean we've made a mistake. It's so worth it though.

It is through mistakes, through all the mistakes that we make, that we are able to figure out who we are. It is through our mistakes that we are able to define ourselves, to find the truest part of ourselves. It's strange that we are so frightened of making mistakes, when making some mistakes doesn't make us bad or defective, it simple makes us human. It also makes us unique individuals. How we make mistakes, how we deal with them, that is what defines us. It makes us who we are.

Wind and Water

I played a concert on Tuesday night, and the professor of the performance class told me that I looked like wind and water. It was nice to look pretty and not have to wear black for a performance. The piece we were playing represents the elements and it was comforting to be told that I looked like part of our piece.

I learned a lot that night. I learned so much more than I ever thought I would when I signed up to take the class. I thought I would take the class and come out a little bit worse for playing a few more hours a week, but I never really looked forward to it before the beginning of the class. I learned how comforting it is to play as part of a small group, to be able to see the faces of all those who I'm creating music with. I learned that the thrill of a great concert like that will give a high like no other, even when I'm completely exhausted. I learned that I can play in ways that I didn't think I could. I can be more than something pretty that adds to a performance with some glisses. I can be an integral part of something, and that is pretty exciting.

The other things I learned came from what I was called. Wind and water. My angel shirt looks like wind. And I kind of like that. I like the idea that I can be the one who just blows through, creating some changes as I do so. I think I may be more of the calming breeze type than anything else. That's still pretty nice. My connection to water goes so far beyond that though. I have always loved water. I think that it is the most relaxing thing in the entire world. And the msot beautiful. It is more a part of my life than so many other things. When I get older, I would like to live near water, be that an ocean or a lake. Simply something that will always relax me. It's great to be dubbed after my most relaxing elements when I'm going to do something that is stressful for me. So before I play concerts, I think I need to remember that's what I am. Both wind and water.

Safe Community

This may be an oxymoron.

I think what triggered this thought process is the fact that at my mom's church chose to wash hands instead of washing feet on Maunday Thursday which is the traditional service to celebrate serving others, amongst other things. They opted to wash hands instead of feet so that no one would be left out and every one would be comfortable with what was going on. For me that's really not the point though. Those who choose to live in community with others will understand that it's not something that's supposed to be comfortable or easy. Because it's not.

Community is not something that is easy or always safe. It is hard and it's messy. There are things that are don't always work, there are fights. Not everyone is always comfortable, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't work. Community does become safe, after awhile, but only when you are willing to take chances, to push your boundaries, to love farther than you thought you could. It involves caring beyond your boundaries and knowing that there will be something to catch you if you do overextend yourself. Pushing beyond your boundaries is not a bad thing. You become more open to many other things when you do let your boundaries down a little bit. And you are so much more able to help others around you when you don't worry that how you help or serve might be seen as icky, or too personal. It is actually at those times that the community you create are the most personal and the ones that will be there to support you.

Creating community is not something that is safe or easy. You will get hurt. And sometimes the other people around you will get hurt to. But that's what life is. Life hurts. Love hurts. And sometimes it's totally worth it.

Oddly Intimate

This will be prefaced with something that I have said many times. I am a music student. That means that I am used to be in a touchy feely place and being more comfortable with my friends touching me than most other people are. I realized last night there is something I am not really comfortable with. And that is someone touching my feet.

No one has touched my feet for a really long time. The last person I allowed to touch my feet was someone I was in a relatively long relationship with. At least a long relationship for me. It was part of our routine with each other, perhaps one of the most intimate parts of it. I never thought that it would be so hard to let someone touch my feet. For some reason it is though. I had expected to really care about it that much. I had my feet washed at the Maundy Thursday service last night and it was one of the most indredible things that has happened to me recently. The water didn't burn my feet this year, but they tingled. And they still do.

It's amazing all the little things in life that you don't expect to be intimate, or the little things that you don't expect to lead to initmacy. And most days it's the really small things. Somedays it's sharing a bathroom with someone, or making meals in the same kitchen as someone. It's knowing that someone will wake you up if they think you will be late for class, or having someone shout hi when they walk through the door of the house. It can be something like letting someone listen to you practice (musicians - you understand what I mean). There are always things in your life that will be intimate, especially when you don't expect them to. Sometimes it's surprising, and sometimes it's nice. It can also be terrifying.

It's so easy to run away from the intimate moments that present themselves in our lives. They really are scary. Accepting them means that there is something connecting us to another person. There will be more of a bound between the two people who shared the moment then there was before. Avoiding them means there is no responsibility and few possibilities. Accepting them opens up a whole new world of possibilities that didn't exist before.

It's strange how something as simple as someone touching my feet can be so intimate. Strange, and terrifying, and thrilling. And I think I might finally be willing to accept that.

Risking Happiness

Now that I have been properly chastised for writing the most whiny, angsty, emo blog that I have ever written, that will never happen ever again.

I had a great night last night. An incredible concert was followed by interesting conversations and good beer with two friends. As per usual to the to the time of our lives, the conversation worked it's way around to relationships (after a reenactment of Dara O'Briain, which was just too fantastic to have missed). As I was the only one representing the single population at the table, my love life (or distinct lack thereof) became the focus. This topic failed to yield much interesting material, we spoke of the many unrequited loves of this year. I'm astounded that there are so many. It seems to just be the year for unrequited love in many forms.

After catching up with the lives of those around us, my friends said something that has been running thorugh my head ever since. We expect to be unhappy and we expect to get hurt. We tend to get into relationships with these expectations and somehow seem to be surprised when they come to pass. We don't, however, expect to be happy. And that prospect is entirely terrifying.

I'm not really sure why we are so frightened of the possibility of finding happiness with someone else. Maybe we are worried that our happiness will become dependent on the other person in our lives and if they disappear, or something happens, our happiness will be taken with them. Perhaps we are worried that we do find happiness and then what would we do? We spend so much time seeking after happiness that we would be left with nothing to seek if we didn't have something to look for. If we weren't able to seek happiness, if we were able to accept that we can be happy, what would we do?

So many of us end up in relationships where we are not happy, we know we are not happy and are unlikely to become so in this relationship simply because it's easier. We don't have to risk losing the happiness that we never had and never have to take the responsibility for someone else's happiness that was never dependent on us. What would happen if we took that risk though? What we do if we committed to a relationship we knew would make us happy and someone else happy in return? Would we be able to take that chance to be happy? Would we be willing to risk so much in return for so much more? I know I am.

Reading Between the Lines

*WARNING: What appears written here in no way applies to anyone who is genetically related to me. If my cell phone bill increases because of concerned family calling, I will be annoyed.*

Someone pointed out to me once that it is more or less impossible to follow the actual events of my life through my blog. My response to that was that is someone wants to know what is going on in my life they just need to talk to me. It's really not that hard.

Even though I attempt to keep my life out of my blog (and for the most part, do a fairly decent job) my writing is intensely personal. It always has been. I love words. I love what they can say, and what they can not say. I love how it looks when I write in a fancy script on a blank piece of paper. I love the colour and the shape of the letters. Most of all though, I love the space between the letters, the white space that is still there when the words are all written down. As much as our words can say, there is so much more said in those tiny spaces of white. They contain the words that we don't speak, the pleas that we don't make. It is the space in between the words that speaks so much more than we are willing to, but it's there. It's there is you are willing to look for it.

One of my more astute friends asked me how I was feeling this weekend. He had been reading my blog and was worried that I may be having some fluctuations in my moods over the past few weeks. He was right. But so far he's been the only one to notice that, and the only one who seems to care. It's hard when I don't have any desire to post my heart and soul on the Internet for any to read to get through to my friends that maybe I need someone to listen to me. It's hard because I can see in between the lines so clearly the words so many of my own unvoiced pleas, the need for some attention, the need for someone to call and just listen. I need someone to hear that maybe I need to get out of my house, or someone to hang on to for just a little while. There's so much more in the space between the lines that isn't just white. There are words there. There are colors. There are moods. There is what I am unwillingly to say, what I can't say and what I don't that I want to say there. It's there in the silences, in the noise, in the words and in the conversations. Take a second to look a little bit harder and not brush things off so quickly in everyone's life. I'm not the only one who has the white spaces between the letters or silences where there would otherwise be words. Take a chance and look for those. You would be amazed at what you can find out. And how you can help.

Created in His Image

I listened to an interesting sermon this morning. One of the first points that was made was that God created man in His image. For some reason we felt the need to return the favor. It's really true.

We seem to expect God to fit into our perfect image if Him. When something happens to surprise us, we don't immediately accept it. No one expected a Saviour to born in a stable, or to willingly die on a cross. More than just seeing God in a specific way, we have also created images of God in way that resembles us. Or should I say the Caucasian us. Most paintings are not representing a man from the Middle East who spent most of his life walking around in the sand. We expect him to look like someone who lived in a century that wasn't his, but ours. We want him to look like us, because then we can relate to him. But that's not who he is. And maybe that's not who we are.

We expected Him to come 2000 years ago as a king, someone who would come with riches and power, but He didn't. Now we want Him to be meek and mild, and not interfere too much in our lives. But that's not the point. We don't always get what we want, and we don't have the right to manipulate what we have to make it what we want. He came in the only way He could to make the kind of difference that He could. We don't get to change that. We also don't get to choose how He will come again. That's up to Him.

Instead of always trying to make something fit into the image that we want, maybe we should take some time and accept people and things without the image we want to see on them. This can be really hard to do. When you stop seeing parents as exclusively parents and start seeing them as people. When you see your friends in only a supportive way, and not as people who also have needs. When you can see all those around you as people who need love and not simply people who walk past you. When you stop seeing yourself as someone who knows exactly what is going on, and have the ability to see yourself as someone who needs the same amount of love and acceptance as those around you. It's hard to stop putting people into the images that we want them to be in. It's hard because then we have to see them and not just look. It is worth it though. There are so many more people than the images that we shoehorn them into. And that's pretty cool to be able to see.