Current & Future.

I am a bit melancholic these days and working on two dances that reflect that spirit. Melancholy is the easiest way for me to get creative. One dance is a solo of Latter Days by Over the Rhine. The second is just beginning, it’s based on this poem I have loved for years:

Does it go into my file? The one marked:

“Unanswered?”

like

so many others, on yellowing slips

scarred by messy penmanship,

faded by tears,

crumpling, the edges worn thin by overhandling.

These archives,

useless for research,

repositories for hopes and dreams,

once rocket launched in anger

now cocooned in heavenly

lockboxes.

Break the seals and read

let your whispering voice breathe,

sigh,

set them alight…

Butterflies

rising out of the ashes

of a million Amens.

            Jenna Pashley, “Prayer No. 2936”

I’m also thinking of that verse in the Bible where Jesus says “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

A couple dances I’m in right now:

My Center: Ignatian Life Repost.

As BRENT pointed out, lots of devotional type content lately. Here’s another repost from ignatianlife.org just to keep something new on your Google Reader. Finally set mine up all the way- MAGIC.

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“Don’t let people steal your center.” Sister Dorothy tells me every spiritual direction. My center, this elusive place in my body that as a dancer I’m always trying to find. “Get your center to do that turn,” Lift your leg from your center,” “Start the movement in your center.” Center. Center. Center.

Today I am struck that the theme that is emerging from my daily meditations this past month is my dependency on God to be centered. Still in the preparation weeks of the 19th annotation, I keep thinking “When will I get to sin?” That thought is always followed quickly by “Who says that?!”  In Love, A Guide for Prayer by Bergan & Schwan, every prayer meditation starts with a declaration of our dependency on God. I’m dependent on God even for God to meet me in silent prayer. I never realized that. I keep bringing my work ethic into my prayer life; if I can just focus harder, God will meet me. If I think myself into a prayer frame of mind I’ll be centered.

It doesn’t work that way. I can’t find my center by grabbing for it, and can’t keep it by working to hold onto it. In some mystical meeting of my surrender and God’s action I hear the Spirit. In the moments I release control, or even desire to control I can keep hold of my center when I feel surrounded by chaos. I’ve only found that has really happened a few times in the last month, the spare moments when I was able to truly stop and be dependent on something other than myself. Those moments were breathtakingly beautiful.

Ah, St Ignatius and Sister Dorothy get it right again.

We know nothing until we know everything

I have no object to defend

for all is of equal value to me.

I cannot lose anything in this

place of abundance I have found.

If something my heart cherishes

is taken away,

I just say “Lord, what happened?”

And a hundred more appear.

- St Catherine of Siena

Choose Life- Choose Death.

Choose Life- Choose Death

 - Today’s meditation from Fr. Richard Rohr of the Center for Action and Contemplation -

How have I learned to walk through the stages of dying?
We must learn how to walk through the stages of dying. We have to grieve over lost friends, relatives, and loves. Death cannot be dealt with through quick answers, religious platitudes, or a stiff upper lip. Dying must be allowed to happen over time, in predictable and necessary stages, both in those who die graciously and in those who love them. Grief is a time where God can fill the tragic gap with something new and totally unexpected. Yet the process cannot be rushed.

It is not only the loss of persons that leads to grief, but also the loss of ideals, visions, plans, places, and our very youth. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross helped us name those stages as denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. Grief work might be one of the most redemptive, and yet still unappreciated, ministries in the church. Thank God, it is being discovered as a time of spacious grace and painful gift.

A Year Later: Staying at the Table.

I need courage to put my

whole self in the chair,

pick up a glass of wine

and take a drink.

 

I’ve been edging away, a finger

here or there, lately my

legs outside the room,

just leaving a set of eyes to watch.

 

Scan right – left

dry turkey, tense conversation

at the end of the table.

Slow blink,

all of our legs are dancing

in separate rooms, disconnected

from our bodies.

 

Inhale 1- 5, exhale the same,

bring one leg back and then the other

underneath me, connecting tendons,

bones to muscle until I am

there in one piece.

 

Scan right- left

we’re all here. Let’s eat.

Dry turkey. Still edible.

How You Gonna?

One time Cesia wrote me a text that said “How u gonna leave without saying bye?! ”  haha. But I know how she felt in that moment.

It’s hard to say goodbye. Today I don’t like loving people so much or living in a community. How do you let people go in and out of your life and keep your heart soft to love them?

Weddings In Review.

Three weddings. Five weeks. Three states. Three up-dos (all to the side). Three dresses. Three bachelorette parties, three wedding ceremonies – so different, four receptions. Cinnabuns, dessert smorgasbord, cupcakes. Three amazing bridal parties, love Caroline, Marie F, Sally, and all of Jara’s witnesses. Reconnecting with old friends. Crying and laughing. Two head colds. Lots of laughing. Dancing, dancing, dancing.

 

I need to start journaling and not stop until I can get all the beautiful memories of each wedding down on paper. Write it down for goodness’ sake!

Social 1.

This is what it’s like to be a Social 1 with a 2 wing:

• You are always guilty. It’s always your fault.
• You always have an opinion. Even if you’ve never heard of the topic at hand, you just make up an opinion and commit to it. Then you debate people on it.
• When you are mad or sad at someone you find a political cause and get really focused on it or write an angry blog post about short term missions.
• You have to win like a 3 and are as loud as an 8, and you feel really guilty for both of those things.
• You are evangelical about something or many things, but you are always converting people to things. And good at it.
• You love the party. I mean LOVE the party. (But you also feel guilty for having fun.)
• You are so focused on your cause(s) or work that you forget to eat and sleep.
• You define yourself by affiliations with causes; I AM a Republican, I AM a pro-lifer, I AM a Democrat, I AM a Fleshie, I AM a liberal, etc.
• There is no such thing as an understatement, everything is very dramatic.
• You project anger and intensity without realizing it.
• You can make change.
• You are passionate about a lot of things.
• You are fun.
• You are intuitive about people.

Ah, Enneagram, how I love you.

The Jarry.

I love my Jarry. She got married this weekend, it was (in a word) flawless. By flawless I mean too full of good people, good food, parties, love, and laughing! I will write an ode to the fabulous people soon: (Jason aka “Jansen”, Crockie, all my running club women & Chad, Heuertz’s!, Brent, Amey and Leia, Kenley’s UN crew from NYC, Amanda, Noemi!, Amina the non-spiritual director, Marci formerly known as Marcia’s father, Chuli Bulie Julie!, Daph/Caleb, so many more) … but this post is all about the Jara.

Father Ron, the sweet priest who married Kenley and Jara at St Martin’s got to the middle of the service. After they said their vows to each other, Father Ron said “blah blah blah Kenley Davis and Sarah Brooks.”  I started laughing uncontrollably. I love my Jarry because she laughed about it, and she laughed afterward when we started calling her Sarah Brooks, and she’ll still be laughing about it tonight when we hang out.

Weddings are a good time to cry and a good time to laugh, and a great time to reflect on how much you love someone. I love my Jarry.

OCR Pictures.

I know, I know, I said you couldn’t see OCR pics. But just one?

Omaha Community Retreat

Rummaging for God.

Last night Fr. Dennis Hamm spoke to the Ignatian Associates about “rummaging for God” in our days. I like the word rummaging. I like rummage sales, I like looking for special deals, and I really like this new (to me) idea of the Ignatian style examen of conscience. He explained that the word for conscience in English doesn’t fully grasp the meaning of what conscience is- conscience being also consciousness, awareness, thoughts, events, and ideas, not just sins or feelings of guilt. I actually don’t really like doing examinations of conscience because I feel like I’m already living with the inner critic inside my head “That was stupid Elizabeth.” “REALLY?” “You just totally embarrassed yourself.” “What would JESUS do?” He (yes, the man in my head) says to me. I felt a little drop in my stomach when my Spiritual Director said “You should do an examen each night for twenty minutes.” That’ll be, uh, fun. But she went to explain what she meant, and this is what it looked like:

1) Ask for light : “Jesus, help me to see through the events of this day and know where you were with me, where I was with myself, and what I felt, experienced and saw that should stick with me.”

2) Look with gratitude at all the events of your day from beginning to end: Hmmm… woke up this morning, rode to the airport in Michigan. Got to spend time with my best friend Lara, ate the BEST QUIZNOS sandwich ever, finished Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, was in Minneapolis airport – I love that place! Home smelled like cookies and was so beautiful to me after three weeks on and off the road. I love snow on the streets and cold weather, riding my bike around. Home, thanks God for all the good and such a great home.

3) Find feelings that affected you throughout your day. Tired, hungry, back hurt, happy, sad to leave, happy to be home, safe. Very safe at the end of the day in my own bed.

4) Pray from one feeling. Thanks God for places of safety and rest. I want to find more safety throughout my work days, my vacations, my time with friends and family… I rest in that good feeling of being home and at peace and long for it more.

5) Pray for the events of the next day. Back to work after a hectic three weeks means e-mail. I hate e-mail Jesus, order my day, help me to pace myself, help me to retain a sense of being home and being safe throughout the day tomorrow.