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?

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

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.

BFFs.

Something beautiful.

Thanks AJU.

Monday.

I hate mistakes.

I made a few recently.

I hate that.

And I hate spilling coffee all over my desk. And I hate spilling in general, and I do it a lot. And it’s a Monday. Maybe I shouldn’t post a stream-of-consciousness blog on a Monday. My Positivity strength is taking a break today.

East/West.

I promised I would never tell this story. But I think the statute of limitations has passed. And it’s so funny.

When I arrived in November Brent set up an appointment for me to meet with our accountants at an office in the far west of Omaha. He got MapQuest directions. We left 30 minutes early. At some point in the midst of our chatting he realized that we were getting close to Lincoln, Nebraska. We appeared to have missed our exit. Nuts. We turned around and headed back, taking another wrong exit. 45 minutes of driving time passed. We kept turning and driving until finally we found ourselves on some kind of dirt path alongside a corn field, heading away from any civilization. We called the office for directions. “Head east on ___ street.” they told us. 60 minutes. For 15 more minutes Brent confidently drove us in the direction of more cornfields. I asked Brent “How do you know we’re going the right way? This seems a bit sketchy to me.” He pointed up at the setting sun “See, I just go towards the sun setting in the East.“