the weight of the world

Christopher and I were sitting in a bagel shop downtown the other morning, having shuffled our children off for the weekend so we could enjoy some alone time together, when our conversation came around to the weightier issues of the world and what we're supposed to do about them. It ocurred to me that, while the world is a mighty big place full of mighty big problems, it shouldn't really be that hard to 'spread the love', so to speak, and start making a dent in the suffering experienced around the world.

On our own, it's easy to think that our small contributions to humanity can't possibly make any difference. Christopher turned to me at one point in our conversation and queried me about whether we needed to be doing more about the homelessness problem in Colorado Springs, and it suddenly felt as if we were neglecting the needs of our fellow man completely. But I asked him, "What would it take for us to feel like we're doing enough?" And that question didn't have an easy answer until we began to consider how easy it would be to solve a great many problems if we all just did a little.

What if each of us supported just one other person in some way? What if, for each child in the United States who has been blessed with an economically stable home, there was a poor child in a third-world country being supported financially, educationally, spiritually, and medically? What if a family with enough sponsored a family without enough? What if a pregnant woman in the United States helped provide prenatal support for a pregnant woman in Afghanistan? What if a single adult in America sponsored a single adult in Haiti?

Then the weight of the world would be on all of our shoulders, where it belongs, where we carry each other, where we are carried by each other, and where we all carry the world forward.
--Teri.

confessions of a reluctant jesus freak

Jesus lives in me. There-- I said it. That hurt.

I was challenged at church on Sunday morning to resist the urge to pandyfoot around my religion and to start being more up-front about what I believe. I didn't think that would be too much of a problem--until the speaker challenged the crowd to use the words. At that moment, a quote I learned in childhood popped into my head: "If you tell people you talk to God, they say you're religious. If you tell them that God talks to you, they say you're crazy." For me to say 'Jesus lives in me' is even crazier-sounding than 'God talks to me', and yet it's pretty much the core of my belief as a Jesus-freak.

So what does it mean?

Good question. Maybe I haven't spent enough time thinking about that. If we're talking about a manifestation of an actual spirit, that's awefully hard for me to get my head around. What's easier to think about is the essence of Jesus' teaching and ethos living on in my heart and mind. Then again, maybe I'm tempted to limit the power of the supernatural, and maybe there is some sort of mystical possession taking place. And I guess I'm okay with that, though it's a lot harder to explain and feels pretty woo-woo to write or speak about. I do know that when I have moments of extreme clarity or above-and-beyond patience or understanding, it doesn't feel like it comes from me, but Someone higher granting much-needed grace in the middle of my lack-of-wisdomness.

Maybe faith is like skin, strong and yet tenuous, and I've never felt completely comfortable within either one, but I've never been able to do without the essential nature of either one, either. So somewhere inside of my faith and inside of my skin, Jesus lives in some fashion, and I hope He understands the relationship better than I do and that He's comfortable here.
--Teri.

dreaming in reverse

There are times when I guess my mind decompresses from the stress of the day by replaying its events, albeit bizarrely, in the form of my nightdreaming. I usually awaken the next morning somewhat confused, maybe even with some blurred lines between what was real and what was the dreaming, but ready to move on with the day.

Things have been changing a little lately.

Lately I'm sort of dreaming in reverse. Well, not reverse exactly. It's more like my mind has a backload of work that it has to process through, so my mind and my dreams are off-sync by about 4 days right now. In other words, last night I dreamed about the events of about 4 days ago; the night-before-last, I dreamed about what happened 5 days ago. I suspect that, because today was kind of boring (or at least low-key, because I was taught long ago that you're only 'bored' if you're 'boring'--ack!) I might catch up on 2 days' worth of dreaming and will have some really wild mashup of Tuesday and Wednesday. This might be a good thing, since life has been going by too quickly lately and I can't remember so well, at least when I'm waking, what happened that long ago.

It would really be cool if I not only caught up in my dreaming, but actually got ahead a little bit and started having contorted prophetic dreams about what was going to happen in the next couple of days. Maybe if I sit really still for about 48 hours, my mind will have a chance to catch up and show me some interesting things.

Then again, I might just have desperately long, dreadfully boring dreams about myself sitting, waiting. Hmm.
--Teri.

sacred sorrow

i'm wrapped
folded
maybe tangled--
inside this warmth,
the quiet of a sacred brown sorrow;
dark like a dirty teardrop,
deeper than the dreaming.

--teri.

peace

When faced with life-altering decisions, I always find myself expecting a lighted path, maybe some neon and flashers, pointing the way to the right choice. And I expect there to be an accompanying feeling of serenity that surrounds and imbues the decision, once made, with an aura of rightness.

I was faced with one of those decisions today, and I concentrated very hard in my mind to pick out the bright lights, recalling the psalmist David who once wrote, "You are a light to my path..." when reminding himself that God had a hand in this decision-making business. Ernest as I was, though, no illumination appeared. Instead, what I got was an image of me, on a bike, at a fork in the road, both paths obscured by deep fog. I pictured myself choosing the more exciting path to the right and sailing off into the fog, breathless and exhilirated, and then I pictured myself turning away from it and, suddenly on my feet, walking somberly into the fog on the left and into the less exciting but more stable decision.

Both paths carried with them unknown risks, unforeseen outcomes, hidden joys and sorrows. And I had no idea which one was the right path.

I finally chose the stable path into the unknown, and I think it was the right decision...for now. And now I'm wondering what peace feels like. If this is peace, it feels profound, like an amputation, only less painful in a way. It feels serious, like a prison sentence, but without the shame. And it feels hollow, like a little piece of my heart is gone, only without the ache. Maybe it's like the feeling of just having birthed a baby, when you realize that there's a huge part of you missing, only it's not missing at all, and you struggle to reconcile the bodily sensation of sudden vacancy to the spiritual feeling of overwhelming completion.

There weren't any attending angels holding lanterns over this foggy path I chose to tread today, but I think there was a peace, uneasy and awkward as it may be, and I think I can walk now into the shrouded unknown of a decision made and feel my footfalls landing softly on the quiet solid of my future.

--Teri.

3 days

Life,
like a promise,
broken--
torn from history
Word from page
Living Water
conscripted to stone.



grey dawning,
bereft as night
forgotten Key
fog on the Road.



impossible Dream --
sickened hearts
aFlame!
Fire
consuming marrow
burning ashes
night--
overcome.

something wrong with good

There's been a feeling creeping up the back of my mind for the last several years, lingering around that analytical part of my brain and tickling the bottoms of my sensibilities.

The feeling is this: Good Friday shouldn't be called 'Good' at all.

What was good about the leather and lead that took first flesh, then muscle, then tendon, then bone?
What good was there in thorny spikes invading that tender space between scalp and skull?
Was it good that a Man fell under the weight of His own death trap? Or that nails were driven through feet that had walked countless miles to give love and hands that had touched the untouchable?
What can we call good in the baseness of Roman soldiers who thought so little of killing that they played dice games while blood dripped?
What was good about that horrible day when the sky was a black funerary shroud and the earth convulsed in its grief?

I think they need to rename the day.

--Teri.

internal monologue of the elemental potato

We went for our first bike ride of the season yesterday. It was my first time on a bike since giving birth, and ultimately, I've decided that childbirth is quite a bit easier for me than pedaling a bike downtown and back. The following constitutes the thoughts that coursed through my mind as my body coursed down the bike trail on the back of my dear bike, the Chartreuse Caboose (named thusly because it's green, and you know where a caboose is always located in a train):

Mile 1: This seat is harder than I remember. A lot harder. Why does my calorie-o-meter only say that I've only burned 5 calories? I'm sure it's at least 75. Must need a new battery.

Mile 2: Ahh, I'm settling in. I feel so alive! I was born to bike! I think I'll sign up for a century (a hundred-mile ride) this year, just to give myself a challenge for the summer. Why do they make bike saddles so hard, anyway? Guess they know what they're doing.

Mile 3: Why does my odometer say that I've only gone 3 miles? I'm sure it's at least 6. Really must need a new battery. Biking is not for sissies, but it's cool, because I'm all over it.

Mile 4: Did they do something to the trail to increase the incline since last summer? Is there something wrong with just making the whole thing flat?? This is getting tougher, but I'm so thankful to have a husband who pushes me farther than I think I can go. He's awesome. My butt hurts. What a cool cyclist I am.

Mile 5: Why does my calorie-o-meter only read 250 calories?? Haven't I burnt at least 1000? Who in their right mind would even consider signing up for a stupid century ride? That's suicide! This whole 'sometimes-the-path-is-paved-and-sometimes-it's-gravel' thing is really not funny. Not funny, City of Colorado Springs! Oh, and my butt hurts. Do you hear that, City of Colorado Springs?? My butt hurts!!

Mile 6: My butt hurts. My butt hurts. My butt hurts.

Mile 7: Ahh, on the way home now. What the heck--where did that hill come from? It was downhill just a minute ago!! Did we get lost??

Mile 8: Dang right, calorie-o-meter--you just keep climbing. What is the deal with my husband? Why does he always push me way farther than I can go? Insensitive rogue.

Mile 9: What is UP with the the swordfish and the bloated dummy, anyway?

Mile 10: Curse you, all you naturally athletic types! If one more hippy-dippy cyclist passes me and says, "Good morning! How are ya?!" or is biking and juggling at the same time, I'm going to give new meaning to the phrase 'the wheel spoke'!

Mile 11: Killll meeeee. KIIIILLLL MMMMEEEE. My butt will never be the same. It's going to be a black-and-blue horror in about two minutes. I'm going to look like a baboon all week! My sadistic husband is going to be hearing about this every 4 minutes for at least a month.

Mile 12: What's the point in even trying to get home? If I make it into the driveway, I'll just collapse there for a day or two, and they can haul my blackened carcass into the house and to the couch where it belongs.

Mile 12.1: Look, butt! We're home! We made it! Butt?? Speak to me, butt! I'm sorry, butt. We'll just stay on the couch from now on, I promise. Some people were made to bike, others were made to hold the furniture down. We'll stay right here on the couch and write nasty letters to bike saddle manufacturers. Until next time.

--Teri. And Teri's Butt.

ubiquitousness

Every once in awhile I get a Providential reminder about humanity.

I forget sometimes that we're important, all of us. I go on my way, passing through my days like I hold the monopoly on soulful journeying, like I am special. And some days, the tables turn and I go through my days as though I'm just another cookie cut from a cosmic mold.

Thing is, I am special. And so are the 6.some-odd billion other divine sparks running around on this great ball. It's easy to slip into the not-so-clever lie that, because we are ubiquitous, we are therefore mundane. How can my story matter in the hugeness of life? How can yours? How can hers? The real question should be, "How can it not?" If we were not gifted with sentient souls, it might be easier to dismiss humanity as one more biological curiosity, though one could argue that we're all amazing just on the merits of our crazily complicated and unique biology alone.

But we each carry something much deeper and much higher than just the body, and it is because of this, if nothing else, that each story of each life bears such gravity and is so profoundly important. The old men in the parking lot yelling at each other over a dented car; the grumpy lady in the check-out line who couldn't get past being run into by a 5-year-old unsteadily wielding a cart; the orphan in Sudan dying of the same disease that took her parents; the Chinese miner who died along with 200 of his coworkers. We all matter.

It's a good idea to re-align our perspectives every once in awhile and refuse to be swallowed by the immensity of the importance of our humanity, don't you think?

--Teri.

there will be bored.

I don't know how I got on this kick, but evidently I'm on it now and can't get off. I'm questing for the perfect movie, one that will challenge me, reaffirm my love for humanity, make me think about things a little differently, make me laugh and then cry and then laugh some more, and that will be, of course, completely off the beaten path of Hollywood films.

Where, oh where, can this movie be?

I watched There Will Be Blood the other night with my hubby, thinking we'd spend a cultured evening watching a somewhat avant-garde character sketch and come away feeling, you know, artsy. My little big brother Matt raves about this film, and I've come to appreciate his taste in cinema; it was he, after all, who turned me on to Serenity, Gattaca, and Stardust, mostly against my will but with no regrets. So I figured that if he said that Daniel Day-Lewis was masterful in this performance, than this must be a film worth watching. Maybe even the film.

That said, at the risk of insulting my sibling's sensibilities, I hated this film. I hated the creepy, disjointed soundtrack that never, ever, ever matched the action and left me constantly on edge, thinking that some horrible creature of the damned would soon be dredged up from the oily depths of the earth. I hated Daniel Day-Lewis' character, an ambiguous man whose wildly spinning moral compass left not only everyone in the movie but also everyone in the audience (this audience, anyway) feeling confused, perplexed, alienated, and more than a little freaked out. I hated the plot, if indeed there was one beyond a strange man getting stranger. I hated the title, which caused me to continually half-expect Clint Eastwood to appear on the scene with a couple of six-shooters and a bad mood. I hated the other characters, a bunch of truly weird charismatic Christian freako hypocrites with a demented take on everything from family to power to, well, everything. Mostly, though, I hated wasting a perfectly good Friday night waiting on a movie to redeem itself, only to come to the twisted, bitter end and realize that it was a completely non-redemptive film. On purpose. This film was like a French western in the style of Quinten Tarantino with elements of Stanley Kubrick thrown in for effect.

If there's something in this film that I'm missing, like dynamic character development, subtle plot twists, irony, some sense of transcendent conflict, even tragedy, please, please clue me in.
In the meantime, I guess I'll just keep looking for the perfect film.

--Teri.