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.

Things That Are Yours.

I am at work and taking a quick second to write you because in several hours I’m headed to Michigan for a wedding and so won’t be writing for at least another week.

This weekend we had our Omaha Community Retreat, and I helped coordinate it. One of the things that we did was get a bunch of disposable cameras for people to use during the retreat. Jara said that in relationships you need mystery, and Facebook is slowly killing that mystery. I am an over-inviter and I’m learning that sometimes in community and in friendships you should be a bit slow to invite. I feel selfish for these people, especially as a group of people constantly working for others, hosting others, and being in touch with others. I want us to have something that is just our own. I think in community sometimes to have good hospitality you also need to have things that are just yours, and then when people come around you can be more inviting because you don’t have to use that time as a time for inside jokes or stories that only the 12 of us ‘get.’

So I got these cameras and when I develop the pics we’ll put them in a scrapbook and keep them here at the office, we won’t post them on Facebook or tweet them, they’ll just be ours. I was there, so were Mandy, Cesia, Marcia, Jara, Phileena, Chris, Randy, Kim, Chad, Amanda, Adia, Priya, Jedi, Elijah, & Hilary. It was special, it was hard and good and we cried, laughed and prayed together. It was ours.