cold without Christmas

i know i should be slapped for saying this, but there's something about being at the end of our ropes that is so hopeful. Once we lose our death-grip on the last fibers, and slip off the end into oblivion, we're Free: Someone has been there the whole time, patient, waiting to envelop us in the sweet Mama-sling of rest and humility and peace and drool.

On Friday we had a Christmas-cookie-and-Elf-movie party because it's been too cold to not be Christmastime, but i think the discomfort goes deeper than that. Remember in the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, it was always winter and never Christmas when the evil witch was queen? There's something sinister about it, like death. Ropes get really short. Pressure, disease, crisis, hopelessness--unless we become reconciled to the idea of falling for miles and being smashed into smithereens like glass, because that idea might be the same as trust.

The moments that His strength flows make it easy. i'm not denying that there are also the dark moments of turning off the light and waking up in the cold morning and being late and forgetting something and letting someone down, and there's the rope mocking in your face. i don't know how to live in joy there. but i know that falling isn't miles into a canyon of sharp boulders, it is inches into His plush embrace.

The good news is that Spring comes like clockwork, like the Earth turning, like the axis staying 23.44 degrees while we whiz off to another familiar side of our orbit!

and i kazoo'd the national anthem last week but forgot today.

10:32 pm EDIT: i actually did have the opportunity to musically serve my country today: Lindi just got an earful of kazoo over the phone.

there is a great, noble life outside this window in the snow

I like that they call snow flurries snow flurries. Because that's what they do. And i'm really glad that i am sitting at this upstairs library table, right where the gnarly, angley, reachy tree can see me and tell me it's snowing. If it wasn't there i would have no distinction between the snow-motes and their mothering panel of cloud. I love that tree from very inside me, and i know that if i were snuggled in its hug i would still be cold because i would be outside and it's snowing. And there is a little sugaring on its branches already.

Moments like this have to be taken as they come, no matter what deadlines have me in their nooses, no matter how close the countdown is to zero. Life is worth living when i can take minutes to blog about my tree and the snow. But i also have to get to work. And so shall i.

I will call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised: so shall i be saved from mine enemies.
Psalm 18:3

i can't wait

Here are some things that i love to think may be in my future.

• My own garden.
  
• My own kitchen.
• My own rambunctious family of boys who love adventure and wild things.
• My own man to love and submit to and help.

I'm thankful for all the blessings i have now.. but the possibility of these things (among a great many others) is brightly shining ahead of me, and makes my heart skip.

fear and trembling

work it out.

punkins, make them muffiny and sugary and then bite them. mm.

in the same way, thrill to opportunites placed before you to serve and surrender.

the meek shall inherit the earth.

check the engine.

Home Again

"To market, to market, to buy a fat pig
Home again, home again, jiggety jig."
--Mother Goose

the Ocean

This is a ramble encompassing some of my mind-fodder of late. There is a possibility of further expounding, but it is not guaranteed.

The ocean is very large. It has regular tides and holds thousands of life forms. It is different colors under different weather patterns and has varying temperature according to latitude and longitude. It is a whole different world from the one the vast majority of humanity is comfortable in: land. This difference is as great as the simple difference between solid and liquid. However, similar qualities felt or observed within separate beings or objects create fascination; often communication. Much like different bits of color "call to one another" in a painting, so does the depth and mystery of a soul feel some sort of relation with the depth and mystery of the ocean. People splash and play and get burned to a crisp at the seaside, but there is always the sense of the ocean's inevitability. People even live and breathe upon the ocean, and become familiar with its turnings, and it seems that even then it becomes increasingly personified in their minds.

Bangkok

It's really large--the complete opposite of Denver, as cities go. There are skyscrapers splashed all over the city, not only a small cluster in the center. They drive on the left (though they were never part of the British Empire, similar to Japan and Indonesia). There's a river through the middle of it. And it's dirty.

But the people are beautiful, and they live their lives.