december light

all shades of grey

My brother is in his fifth and final year of architecture at college.  Every time we drive around at home on holidays, there's a philosophical discussion started about how these houses visually flow into the ground well, the terrible social flow of this shopping plaza, or a memory of this place growing up because it had once sparked and helped build his interest and desire to pursue architecture.

That fascinates me.  The progression people tread of experiences, events, and happenstances that unfold what niche they choose to pursue.  That foreshadowing of experiences that parents love to bring up when the final result appears.  "As soon as I saw you with legos, I knew you were going to be an architect."  Uh huh, sure.

So.

I want to live in a third world country, in some little community living and loving and serving however I can.  Specifically, I want to pursue international agriculture so I can learn and teach better ways of cultivating food and plants.  I've never seen anyone do this as a job before, I've never even had a garden of my own, and I sure never had that show up on the career placement lists in middle school.

Where the harry did my passion come from? 

For the majority of people around me, there seems to be that foreshadowing of experiences.  But, I think I'm in the group of people who have a subtler progression, a progression of the heart, which is something a little harder to lay out.  Experiences still, but ones that have developed under the surface, beneath the radar of general knowledge.  Don't get me wrong, I know there's got to be plenty of overlap and anyone with a strong passion that had foreshadowing in visible experiences is likely to still have had a progression of the heart at the same time.  But, there's a group of us who only have this less visible, inward progression.  And then all of a sudden it seems this unconventional "occupation" pops out and the people surrounding you stand scratching their heads because they hadn't been able to predict it.

It's not that anyone has specifically looked down at me for not having things clear, or demanded that I make up my mind early, but there seems to be this space of not being clearly defined that makes my relationship with societal norms a bit rocky.  Yeah, that's it, societal norms and I don't mesh well with this whole "career" thing.  If I don't pick what to be from the list given, then there's a rift of not knowing where to put me.  And I think that's what's most painful about being in this grey area is that society doesn't have a clear place for me, and that feels a whole lot like not belonging here, and a whole lot like being alone.

This feeling has not been been overwhelming in my life.  It's just something that is abstractly present.  And now that I think about it... it's entirely possible that this feeling is mostly self-evoked because I am the one uneasy about not having it all clear.

Either way, I've had the luxury of being able to grow up holding onto a dream I can feel but have never seen or been able to define.  I've had the luxury of growing up in a nurturing family and community who have let me be all shades of grey, while society and a select few demand blacks & whites.  And I think I'm finally coming to terms with not being able to wholly explain how I have come to wanting to serve in a third world country.  It's just that I've been uncomfortable this whole time with not being able to figure myself out, with not being able to plan ahead or predict, and with not having something black & white.  Because I think finding a black & white job and being a black & white person sounds a whole lot easier than dreaming... but a whole lot more boring.  

So, with all those circles of thoughts, I think I beginning to understand myself.  I have a lot brewing around in me like a passion for people, a desire to learn how to love and serve, an aptitude for science, but I think something important about me is that I haven't copped out of trying to be exactly who I want to be.  Not that I manage to live in that freedom everyday or exactly know what "me" looks like, but somehow I've managed to resist the norms and blacks & whites and boxes, and I'm standing on the verge of being able to define my very own tailored "occupation."  So, although I'm still all shades of grey and I don't entirely know how I got here, I am here and it's real.  

And if grey is okay with you, it's okay with me too.

song

i find it's filling at a rate so slow

that i don't know until i look down

and i can't see my feet

the Plumber comes knocking at the door

but i decline and i don't sign

my name to the sheet

an unhindered stride is all i desire

but once again i turn down the One

who sets the pace

now time is flying at a rate so fast

that i have got myself wrapped

in a new coat of moss

the Gardener comes walking up the path

He offers to unbind me

free me from my dross

an unhindered stride is all i desire

and this time i'll follow in Your footsteps

at seventy-seven

Today was my grandma's 77th birthday.  I spent the morning at the MRC making relief kits.  Once again, I had the pleasure of working around and with a group of 70+, maybe even all 75+ lovely people bantering and joking and working efficiently.  Sometimes there's a break to joke with managers about when their pay is coming, sometimes there's a break to find a chair, sometimes to shoot rubber bands at each other, but mostly the breaks come when we run out of a supply and we're already 3/4 a skid done.

I went to lunch with four of the ladies, two sets of sisters.  And so, I happily sat listening to their lives of who's doing what, who's grandkids are doing what, who's still alive, what wonderful food they had here last week.  But the beautiful thing to me, is that even though they chatter on about their lives in this small pocket of the county when their feet rarely venture out of it anymore...  these women are just as involved and moved in their hearts for those with basic material needs in the far reaches of Africa, the Middle East, and central Asia.  And here, year after year, week after week, they sort clothes, cut jeans and fabric for quilts, make relief kits, school kits, newborn kits, package soap, and send out letters.  Aware and conscience in their hearts and heads of the acute needs of people far away, people they will rarely ever see photos of, let alone meet.  And yet willing to do and partake in ways of providing, of extending the hands of the body of Christ.  They made it a norm, a practice that gave way to routine, distancing them from any logical reason to not serve in this way.

And here I'm sitting, loving that the fact that these women have no clue how uncommon they are.

(MRC is a Material Resource Center, a warehouse-y building of the relief organization MCC, Mennonite Central Committee.  At the MRC, all sorts of kits and requests are sorted and prepared for shipment to the far reaches of the world.  The regular laborers at this MRC are largely retired folk who volunteer their time.  http://www.mcc.org/kits/)

the umbrella

so here i am, breathing in dust bunnies again

although they clog my lungs

part of me likes the predictability of life down here

flat on my face

one with the ground my feet once knew

my imagination can only take me so far

but i'll wake from my dreams

to find that the dust bunnies have been doing what they do best

and the vines have pulled me tighter to the dirt

but like last time, a shaft of light precedes

and a flowing river rushes into my bones

the strength i don't have wraps me

and i can shrug off the vines that have bound me to the ground

i don't want to ignore Your offer of freedom anymore

so i drag my sorry state and climb into Your hands

an umbrella appears on the water

You invite me to join the flow

and instead of pining on the bank amidst the sycamores

i sail onward.

"... so wherever the river flows everything will live." - Ezekiel 47:9b