coming into a new day

[photo from Pinterest]

Ooooooh goodness. I'm saying this as if I am just back from a long bike ride, wiping sweat from my head and pushing my hair back with my hands. I'm graduating in a week!!!!! From COLLEGE! And I know that people have gone before me and that people will come after me, but this is still a big deal. A sad deal too because it means that I am leaving and others are moving- this place will never be the same.

And I'll admit that I love it when things stay the same- no, I just enjoy consistency. Nostalgia sometimes compromises my ability to adapt to new life and opportunities. The years I've spent in college have been so special. Walla Walla is a magical place, and the time I spent in Spain is comparable to nothing! My friends are all unique and beautiful.

California has always meant warmth and light and freedom to me. Perhaps that will change when I start my job there, but I hope it doesn't. I hope that I can carry the things in my heart that I have planted there while in college here and abroad. That I'll wake with hope in the morning and trusting in God at night, so that I can come into each new day fully embracing the past, present and future.

mercies and movements.

David in Venice- some December morning, 2010

I feel like I have been missing for a while now. People have left and I have changed and certain things have dissipated- floating off like when you blow on a wishy washy and all the little seeds go trembling through the air. 

Nick has been gone for eight weeks in Yosemite. He has climbed huge rocks, ones I have only ever seen pictures of. One night as we chatted on the phone, he casually mentioned his plans to climb Half Dome in the morning with a German guy he had just met. I wish you could hear the way he says it, like "Haaaayeaaaah it'll be cool!" But eight weeks is so long and I have been missing my friend very much. 

Also, I've been missing The Awakening, our church service that ended last year. I haven't quite found a way to worship in place of it. I hadn't realized the significance of not having it would have on me, and to others who were deeply involved with it as well. I have attended other services, but none have taken the shape of a porch light of a warm house in the middle of the night like The Awakening was. 

And as always, my body seems to want to face east to Spain. There have been little things that catch my eyes. Our little Spanish family that came back from a year abroad has stayed so close. But it is not the same when we were free to roam streets and roam across borders into countries we had only ever seen pictures of. Oh that feeling! Of movement and adventure- it is indescribable and desirable.

How am I supposed to write about missing people and places when its so personal, experienced on a fleshy level, in every minute of the day and around certain corners of certain streets? Its about the tiny cells that make me a me and you a you. The memory patterns we walk ourselves through as we try to adjust ourselves to being without someone is awkward, a looping of "maybe this will help...nope. Okay, maybe this will help...nope again." I've moved back and forth from my bed to the couch and back again six or seven times, uncomfortable in both places. I've put my hair up, then down, up again, figuring out which makes me look more like my mom so I can carry her with me. I sit on the porch on Sabbath mornings, or sleep in, or drink coffee and try to read religious books, but my church community feels more like a vapor than it ever has. It's all very weird!

Now, I'm moving to California. Away from everything I know. In a little more than a month, which is exciting but I find myself already missing the Northwest. In a way that I want to lay on every solid surface- the streets, mountains, woody trails, up against walls and in friend's houses, my apartment floor- and memorize the curvy body of my homeland. 

But there's good news in all this- Nick is coming home tomorrow :). He's driving right now and listening to Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott. And that is what I'm wishing for him and what I am hoping for myself through all this missing and moving: traveling mercies. 

“What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family.” - Mama T

the making of peace, over the course of two days

Every year, the Office of Diversity at the WWU puts on a Peacemaking Weekend. It's headed up by a very unique and loved Theology professor named Pedrito- he was once referred to by the university president as a "spicy Jamaican " And he really is. He is full to the brim with passion and zest for life, so when Pedrito calls for peace, you had better answer!

We went downtown and read poems about peace to the passing community; poems and prose and speeches. Appropriately, and to Pedrito's absolute delight, the entire steel band came out as well to play some island jams in between readings. The reading I appreciated the most, KTW had chosen. It is part of President Obama's Speech to the Muslim World at Cairo University from June 4, 2009:

"All of us share this world for but a brief moment in time. The question is whether we spend that time focused on what pushes us apart, or whether we commit ourselves to an effort — a sustained effort — to find common ground, to focus on the future we seek for our children, and to respect the dignity of all human beings.

It is easier to start wars than to end them. It is easier to blame others than to look inward; to see what is different about someone than to find the things we share. But we should choose the right path, not just the easy path. There is also one rule that lies at the heart of every religion — that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. This truth transcends nations and peoples — a belief that isn't new; that isn't black or white or brown; that isn't Christian, or Muslim or Jew. It's a belief that pulsed in the cradle of civilization, and that still beats in the heart of billions. It's a faith in other people, and it's what brought me here today.

We have the power to make the world we seek, but only if we have the courage to make a new beginning, keeping in mind what has been written.

The Holy Koran tells us, "O mankind! We have created you male and a female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another."

The Talmud tells us: "The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace."

The Holy Bible tells us, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God."

The people of the world can live together in peace. We know that is God's vision. Now, that must be our work here on Earth."

We know that we can live peacefully- and it begins very small in each individual. Today, I am making peace in small ways as an individual. 

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."