Is It Any Wonder?

The title of this entry is also the title of a song by Keane: "Is It Any Wonder."

"I always thought that I knew
I'd always have the right to
Be living the kingdom of the good and true and so on
But now I think I was wrong
And you were laughing along
And now I look a fool for thinking you were on my side."

Stress, travel, relationships..."Is it any wonder I'm tired? Is it any wonder that I feel uptight? Is it any wonder I don't know what's right?"

Is it any wonder...Worried about work. Thinking about my future. Confused about dating. Wondering what could be next..."Is it any wonder I'm tired? Is it any wonder that I feel uptight? Is it any wonder I don't know what's right?"

"Sometimes I get the feeling that I'm
Stranded in the wrong time
Where love is just a lyric in a children's rhyme."

Am I too sensitive? Do I feel too much too quickly? It's a double-edged sword, really. I feel extremely compassionate and caring toward people who are marginalized in our society or who are suffering because of natural and social disasters. So I have a great capacity to feel. I'm ready to love. I'm ready do discover things about myself that I might not even realize I know about love. But as the song says..."Stranded in the wrong time where love is just a lyric in a children's rhyme." That can be very disappointing.

"Nothing left beside this old cathedral
Just the sad lonely spires
How do you make it right?
Oh but you try."

So I'll try.

I'll live my own life. On my own terms. I'll live the life of a passionate lover of/in a world where "love is just a lyric." This means I will need to be tough sometimes...And maybe a little tired. Tough enough not to settle and tough enough not to be settled for.

What does that mean? What will my life look like? Sad lonely spires? I don't know...That might not be all bad.

Cathedrals are grand and beautiful things. One of my favorite memories is sitting among the spires and the gargoyles of the Duomo Cathedral in Milan. Cathedrals leave a legacy. Cathedrals last. Cathedrals are majestic, spiritual and holy places. I want my life to be a majestic, spiritual and holy place.

"Nothing left beside this old cathedral
Just the sad lonely spires
How do you make it right?
Oh but you try."

So I'll try. Is it any wonder that I would try?

Compassionate Detachment

Compassionate detachment. This is a phrase I've gained from author Anne Lamott. She uses it in her book "Bird by Bird." I love this book.

Compassionate detachment is a loving, simple way to remove the judgmental over-analyzing layer of thinking that prohibits writers from seeing the true nature of their characters. Likewise, Lamott encourages writers to use compassionate detachment on themselves and be a little kinder and gentler as we accept ourselves and the real characters in our lives for who they are.

Lamott shares the challenge:
"Obviously it's harder by far to look at yourself with this same sense of compassionate detachment. Practice helps. As with exercise, you may be sore the first few days, but then you will get a little bit better at it every day. I am learning slowly to bring my crazy pinball machine mind back to this place of friendly detachment toward myself so I can look at the world and see all those other things with respect."

Lamott cautions to be gentle with yourself in this new practice...It's a difficult task sometimes.

I know, and I'm trying to be gentle with myself.

I'm trying to detach from my over-thinking, analyzing and wicked-self that exaggerates and over-reacts.

I'm trying to relax and find the true essence of myself and my feelings in relationships.

What a challenge when it's so easy for my head to start thinking and tearing a situation apart...Trying to understand. Sometimes you just can't understand a situation or a relationship or a conversation. And maybe we're not supposed to. Correction: we don't always need to understand. We need to find the essence of a situation or a relationship or a conversation.

Lamott also says, "You can see the underlying essence only when you strip away the busyness, and then some surprising connections appear."

One more thought, another quote, actually: " The important thing is this, to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become," Charles DuBois

Well...I'm ready to give up the busyness. I'm ready to sacrifice the ease with which I sometimes think and take on the challenge of feeling, really feeling the essence of life. I'm ready to be what I can become.

Fireworks

Fireworks. The Fourth of July. Music and cheers. At times I don't feel very patriotic, and the bursts of explosive light resemble too closely "the bombs bursting in air" over several nations of the world. All in all, though I enjoy the spontaneous glow and colorful displays.

Fireworks. Fireworks between people: sometimes meaning an argument, and sometimes meaning a romantic feeling. I prefer the latter. The spark-like emotion is passionate or on-fire, if you will.

My favorite fireworks are the ones that cling to the air for a little while and fall through the sky resembling a weeping-willow tree. They are slow, which is contrary to most explosions. Sometimes they continue to burst into smaller willow trees. It's a pyrotechnic wonder.

My favorite fireworks are my favorite relationships. They stick around for a while. There's an element of passionate explosion, and yet something slow and graceful about the way the stages of the relationship float through time.

A Summer To Remember

A photographer originally from Mississippi is working on a new project and photographing portraits of the Freedom Riders who worked to integrate bus stations, train stations and airports in the south during the summer of 1961.

The present-day portraits are paired with the then-prisoners mug shots from the Jackson City Jail.

The photographs are very moving and the stories of some of the Freedom Riders are equally passionate, as these young men and women were willing to serve time in prison to preserve justice.

The series of photographs is called "Breach of Peace: Portraits of the Mississippi Freedom Riders" and some of the photos were featured in the The New York Times Magazine on July 2, 2006.

Dry Bones

Ezekiel's Dream
"The had of the Lord was upon me, and the Lord brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. The Lord led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. The Lord asked me, "Son of man, can these bones live?"
I said, "O Sovereign Lord, you alone know." Ezekiel 37:1-3

A Hurricane's Reality

After the destruction of a hurricane, there are dry bones all around. Neighborhoods are ripped to shreds. Houses are skeletons. Trees are without leaves and branches. Bridges have had their surfaces torn away.
There are plenty of dry bones to see on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. The hurricane damage in Mississippi was caused by a tidal wave that crashed into the coast, swept water inland up to six miles from the shore, and then receded back into the Gulf of Mexico. The body of communities, towns, housing developments, commercial businesses, and churches was reduced to bones in some places.

Breath of Life

"Then he said to me, "Prophesy to these bones and say to them, 'Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the
Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath, enter you, and you will come to life." Ezekiel 37:4-5
The dry bones in Mississippi are coming to life. Many residents returned to find only the concrete slab or foundation their homes once stood on. The new life in the dry bones might be a FEMA trailer. The breath of life from volunteers and resilient residents is rebuilding homes.
The breath of life that has entered the dry bones of physical structures has also entered the dry bones of hurricane survivors who know that the power and presence of God will restore and renew their spirits as they search for hope in the midst of destruction.