50 years is a long time to love something.

Photo: Dr. Loren Dickinson, founder of KGTS in 1963, stands in the door of the main studio. Pictures of former staff line the wall.

This weekend, we celebrated 50 years of service at the radio station. Hundreds of people came through our doors to look around, see what's changed, see what we're doing. 

There were tears welling up in my eyes as I listened to speeches and we sang the doxology together. I have been working there since I was 17 years old- and all I could think about as I listened was how blessed I am to have been saved by this ministry. It is buzzing with the loving yearning of God to connect with us. 

Let me tell you- it is hard to see the impact a group of people working for Christ can have until someone sits you down and tells you the story. PLR broadcasts 24/7 Christian music throughout the Northwest and all over the world through the website, they work to sponsor children through Compassion International, feed people in Cambodia with Musicianaries International, partner with local businesses, are present at church events, work to fill local food banks in the summer, partner to put on massive concerts and sometimes intimate smaller concerts. Our DJs go out to events to connect with listeners, they pray with listeners on the phone. They all work long, long hours. Overtime and weekends. They have families, they have pains, they are so ordinary, but come together and every day and become extraordinary. 

Scott Ligman, an Administrator for the University, said, "This team is committed to high-quality, Christ-centered programming. If you're not a regular listener  you should be. Starting with Don in the morning, who often is my companion on my treadmill even though he doesn't know it. They pursue a connection with their listener audience and make a positive difference in the lives of their listeners. PLR, Positive Life Radio, is not just a marketing phrase, it is reality on the air and in the offices that you see here. I'm proud to brag about this station. It is the most positive department atmosphere on our campus. They always make me feel welcome...It is a wonderful place to work."

As I sat there mhmm-ing, feeling so warm and safe, he said "This is a ministry that has far reaching inputs and outcomes all over the Northwest and worldwide." I love these people, I love this ministry, I'm in love with every bit of it. I hope to love it for as long as Dr. Dickinson has, 50 years and more. 

Morning Person

My friend Jenae posted this on her blog and it started my morning off in the right way. So I had to share it, too :). 

Morning Person

by Vassar Miller

God, best at making in the morning, tossed
stars and planets, singing and dancing, rolled
Saturn's rings spinning and humming, twirled the earth
so hard it coughed and spat the moon up, brilliant
bubble floating around it for good, stretched holy
hands till birds in nervous sparks flew forth from
them and beasts--lizards, big and little, apes,
lions, elephants, dogs and cats cavorting,
tumbling over themselves, dizzy with joy when
God made us in the morning, too, both man
and woman, leaving Adam no time for
sleep so nimbly was Eve bouncing out of
his side till as night came everything and
everybody, growing tired, declined, sat
down in one soft descended Hallelujah.

Bonding on the go--

Nick Ham the Man

There is a deep respect developing in me for the act of hanging over the side of a cliff, seeing my feet dip into the abyss of thin air. 

Normal couples go on normal dates; bond over nice dinners, ice cream, and walks and...I don't know, normal things! Nice things. 

When Nick Ham and I climbed at Smith Rocks in mid-March, we bonded over five pitches of cold climbing at early o'clock in the morning. Not that we haven't bonded like normal people. We love to share the veggie torta sandwich at Graze on 9th Street, we have gone to the movies, and we ride bikes together. We're normal! 

But there is just nothing else that can make you decide whether you really want to be with someone until you're attached to them by a thin rope hundreds of feet up the side of a rock. I held his life in my hands, he held mine. For three hours. Not normal. 

For my entire life, I can't remember being afraid of heights. There was only one incident at Silverwood Theme Park where I rode an apparatus obviously designed by a schizophrenic that had no belts to keep me secure in the tiny metal egg that spun into the sky and then plummeted to the earth- repeatedly. I wrapped myself in a death squeeze around the steel bar that locked loosely across my lap, making funeral preparations in my head. After that, I swore I'd never go UP again. God could not have gotten me back on that ride. Brad Pitt could not have made me get back on that ride! I was the most pissed off 11-year old in the park that day. 

But then I started climbing real rocks around my freshman year of college, allowing a real human to hold me inside the hypothetical egg-cage of protection, dangling on the end of a rope like a yo-yo. Humans are not as strong as steel bars. And I have said a lot of prayers over the years while glued to the side of a boulder. 

As Nick and I moved up the side of the cliff, I was gently suppressing the panic that would bubble to the surface of my heart each time I lost sight of him ahead of me; each time I tied myself into the end of the rope to begin climbing another pitch; each time I looked down to the ground, so far away from me. 

We had just begun our fourth pitch when I overestimated my ability to make wise decisions about foot placement (and my ability to make wise decisions in life, deciding with a clear mind to follow this wild man wherever he may roam!) and my foot slipped. I swung into nothingness and profanities flew from my mouth like birds. 

After the echo of all my cussing had stopped reverberating and ripping holes through the ears drums of climbers a few hundred feet beneath us, I put my hands back on the rock and heard Nick above me (& very out of sight) say, "No worries! You got this." He was calm as a sleeping baby up there! Toting me on the end of a line, secure in his steel-bar strength. He knew what was ahead of me, because he had already climbed up before me.

I figured out I really would rather be dating Nick that day than anyone else. I also have figured out since that I can trust God with my life. Because He has gone before us, He knows us deeply and the challenges we will face. There is no fear in this life, because Christ has raced ahead and is calling down, saying "No worries. You got this."

From Anne Lamott

"Frederick Buechner wrote, "Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid."

But it is hard not to be afraid, isn't it? Some wisdom traditions say that you can't have love and fear at the same time, but I beg to differ. You can be a passionate believer in God, in Goodness, in Divine Mind, and the immortality of the soul, and still be afraid. I'm Exhibit A. 

The temptation is to say, as cute little Christians sometimes do, Oh, it will all make sense someday. Great blessings will arise from the tragedy, seeds of new life sown. And I absolutely believe those things, but if it minimizes the terror, it's bullshit.

My understanding is that we have to admit the nightmare, and not pretend that it wasn't heinous and agonizing; not pretend it as something more esoteric. Certain spiritual traditions could say about Hiroshima, Oh, it's the whole world passing away.

Well, I don't know.

I wish I could do what spiritual teachers teach, and get my thoughts into alignment with purer thoughts, so I could see peace and perfection in Hiroshima, in Newton, in Boston. Next time around, I hope to be a cloistered Buddhist. This time, though, I'm just a regular screwed up sad worried faithful human being.

There is amazing love and grace in people's response to the killings. It's like white blood cells pouring in to surround and heal the infection. It just breaks your heart every time, in the good way, where Hope tiptoes in to peer around. For the time being, I am not going to pretend to be spiritually more evolved than I am. I'm keeping things very simple: right foot, left foot, right foot, breathe; telling my stories, and reading yours. I keep thinking about Barry Lopez's wonderful line, "Everyone is held together with stories. That is all that is holding us together; stories and compassion."

That rings one of the few bells I am hearing right now, and it is a beautiful crystalline sound. I'm so in."

today's.

Oof- today. Today. Today. My heart is feeling for Boston. My heart is feeling for Ashlin. And for kids that have grown up since the Oklahoma City Bombings and the solider choosing to starve himself to death instead of continuing to fight for life. I've watched a lot of CNN over the weekend and talked to a lot of mothers of sons and daughters, and saying how the world is changing and maybe coming to a close. Sometimes I just have to log off, so that I can remember what KTW said to me tonight while we made dinner in my warm, safe kitchen: "Don't forget that there are good people doing good  things in this world. You don't always see them on the news, but they're there and you can be one and we can all choose to be good."
I believe that God is pulling everything together, like gathering dirt in between His hands in a garden to plant something beautiful-- all for our eternal good.

roommates and airports

Today I planned on biking a very casual 12 miles. Mostly because on Sunday, I have to bike 12 miles for a triathlon the University is sponsoring and I got stuck with the biking part. Or maybe I should say I am privileged to have to do the biking part, heaven forbid I should drown in the swimming pool. Running and biking I can do, but the thing about swimming is that I can't breathe underwater. Breathing for me is essential. 

A mile into my bike ride, I saw KD running towards me in the opposite direction and I stopped my bike. I never got back on my bike because we stood on the side of the road yapping away as car after car (and biker after biker, no doubt practicing for Sunday) zoomed past us. Airplanes flew overhead too I should mention. Multiple airplanes. And this is something I appreciate so much in my roommate is that she allows her entire routine to change in order to speak and listen to someone. We finally turned around to walk the mile home and she asked me how I was feeling about graduating. 

KD said, "It's just funny that once you've graduated and say you're gonna go get a real job and do something that's important to you- you've kind of arrived! You are no longer working towards something, you are doing [hopefully] that something. You've arrived!" And that's pretty true haha! And that's really wonderful and amazing! But it also reminded me of the times we have all come and gone and come and gone, and always arrived and then later departed. 

the ups and downs of owning keys.

KD and I have been waiting for the mailman for a few days now. Not because he's not bringing the mail, but because we lost our mailbox keys. And in an attempt to avoid paying $40 for new ones, we're hoping we can casually drop in on the mailman like "Oh, hello! How convenient that you're here! I was just going to grab my mail...do you have any more for me? Wanna hand me everything that's been building up in my mailbox for the past FOUR WEEKS, please?"

And also, I lost my house keys. They were on a ring with my spare car key, my other mailbox key, and some really really really really cool key chains. 

Because of this, we leave the house unlocked during the day, but (and here's the kicker) when we swing the front door open sometimes it bumps up against the fridge and that pushes the lock in again and boom- door is locked. So the solution to the no-house-key problem is to climb through my window. Which does not have the same welcoming effect as walking through the front door. Definitely makes me feel like a thief in the daytime. So the most important thing becomes not letting anyone see me creeper-crawling through my window instead of walking normally into my own home, where I pay rent, in order to make dinner. 

Why does everything I need to get into have a lock?? This is a good lesson, listen up kids! First- with many keys comes much responsibility. Second- the best things in life (like a house with a warm bed and mailboxes and people whose hearts have been broken) have locks and often you will need to either pay or EARN the key privileges. Once you have the keys, do not LOSE the keys. Dang it! The end!

lines.

Yesterday, I witnessed a guy get sling shot into the ground by a slackline. It's weird how life moves in slow motion when you know something crazy is about to occur. He was running across the lawn  at full speed, being chased by a smiling friend. And as I watched him come closer and closer, everyone around the slackline got quiet- there were maybe six of us out there and not a single person piped up. I felt all of us think at the same time "Does he see the line??" and then he folded into it. His head hit the ground so hard I felt it reverberate through the bottom of my feet.

What's ironic is that later, I told my roommate KD about it and we both agreed that it is the kind of thing "that would happen to" her since she often walks around a little distracted. But definitely not because we wanted it to! But it did tonight after one of the boys left their line up in the dark on the administration building lawn. She was running fast to her car when it caught her across the neck and clotheslined her like a sumo wrestler into the grass. 

Sometimes you gotta run right into something, no thinking and with gusto and passion. And I find that there are lots of things that can slam you out of nowhere telling you to feel regretful, not good enough, as if the decision to seize what is it you are running towards is a bad idea. 

This is so not a new idea- to put yourself out there because life's about the journey, not the destination, blah blah blah. But I guess what I'm trying to acknowledge in my own life right now is that maybe it is also important to get caught seriously off guard by a hypothetical slackline in order to remember to avoid it or jump over it or just maybe take it down the next time you book it across the lawn. 

I get that. Literally after the past couple of days and also metaphorically :)