It seems that everything is changing, now.  Life is never stagnant.  It's exciting and scary at the same time. There are choices and no clear answers, yet.  I want to know.  To understand.

  So I'm waiting. Trying to stay grounded, focused and in prayer.

"I once thought, "I would like to feel the contours of these times with my fingertips." I was sitting at my desk with no idea what to make of life...And then I was suddenly flung into one of many flashpoints of human suffering.  And there, in the faces of people, in a thousand gestures,small changes of expression, life stories, I was suddenly able to read our age....Surrounded by my writers and poets and the flowers on my desk I loved life...There was simply one great, meaningful whole. Will I be able to describe all that one day? So that others can feel too how lovely and worth living and just-yes, just-life really is?"

-From Etty Hillesum: An Interrupted Life the Diaries, 1941-1943 and Letters from Westerbork 

Life is always beautiful, I'm learning.  It may not always be pleasant.  It may not always be entirely clear which direction it will go but when broken down into moments, moments of just cleaving, and when one knows that 'great, meaningful whole', there can be a peace and even a new view of tragedy, a sort of hushed acceptance.

My natural reaction, in times like these, is to isolate, go inward and shy from the unknown.  But I find I'm not doing that.  I'm open and waiting for what God has to bring.  I'm seeing that He sees me and that it's okay.

I was reading John 4 today, struck by the fact that Jesus, when He spoke to the Samaritan woman, immediately exposed her sin. Candidly, matter-of- factly but leaving out judgement.  It seems like judgement was not His purpose.  Rather, He wanted her to know that He knew her.

How often does this scene play out between Jesus and me?  How often does He ask something of me and I respond that I can not give, given who He is and who I am ( or am not).  And He says, "Well, ask of me then and I will give to you...so that you will know, then, how to give." And He shows me that He knows exactly who I really am here on earth.  What I have done, or what I have not done.  And contends that, still, He is offering Himself to me.

The Living Water flows and it is mine to take, to never thirst again.

Teresa of Avila, in Interior Castle, says that, "It is no small pity, and should cause us no little shame, that, through our own fault, we do not understand ourselves, or know who we are. Would it not be a sign of great ignorance...if a person were asked who he was and could not say..."

She speaks of our souls and the lack of care we give to them, that our bodies are where we place most of our interest rather than on the inner man.  And how true this is. I know who I am because I know Who created me and Who lives within me.  I cannot know the future but I can know that God knows me intimately and loves me and blesses me and this means everything.  It means that in the midst, of all I never thought would happen, I can come here and share, still, because I am known.




-new beginnings
-being known, being seen
-opportunities
-time to write
-revelation
-flowers on a desk
-birds chirping
-snoring dog
-treasures every where
-courage given


With Ann because it's Monday