Still Here (and trying to be present)

Ever been in a phase of life when everyone you see asks you the same question? 

"So how's the wedding planning going?" - To Every Engaged Person

"So how are you feeling?" - To Every Pregnant person

"So how's school?" - To Every person aged 4-22

"So how's Matt? When's the move date?" - To Me

I should just make a shirt with this on it...

This particular image is from THIS Etsy store
that I want to remember so that I can buy stuff from it

So to answer this question for the ba-jillion-ith time: no solid move date yet (yet hoping to solidify plans in the next few days), Matt is still looking for a job and I hope to be out there soon..like by the beginning of November. But it's still hard to say.

In the meantime, Matt is out in Portland and I am here in Wilmette. Besides being apart from my best friend for waaaay too long, I'm having a pretty good time. Not because I'm unemployed and spending much quality time with Lucia, friends and family, all super great, but because I feel like I'm really living each day at a time for once in a long while. I have lots of time on my hands and because I'm in this funny transition period, I don't really want to get involved in too much here. I have so much time on my hands that I actually get bored. What a gift. No, for real.

I like being done with being busy for a little while and having time to start the day right with mindful reading, time to be present with Lucia, time to think about eating right (I'm not actually at the 'eating right' part :), time to be outside, to go for walks, do yoga, cook food and take the occasional nap. Basically---time to detox my mind, remember that each day brings it's own troubles and refresh with peace daily.

So right about now, you're thinking "what a pompous jerk. She just has soooo much time on her hands that she takes naps, boo hoo". And I would agree with you BUT it's not actually easy to be bored. You ever tried it? Ever tried being bored and not turning to some sort of device about 3 seconds later? I don't know about you, but when I have a free moment I tend to:

A) check my phone
B) check Facebook
C) turn on the TV

And in that order. It has taken me a while to turn those tendencies off in my brain and decide instead to read a great book, be fully present with my daughter and engage instead of always trying to get something done when I'm with her or sit outside and really notice the beauty of my surroundings. The positive effects on the brain are amazing. Awareness and gratefulness are powerful tools for good. If you know anything about the science of mindfulness then you know that just being aware and grateful in the small moments of your day can literally rewire the brain towards all things good. (The bible is a testament to this but I always love when science backs these ancient ideas up as well.)

As I continue to plan for this transition of moving (by not actually doing that much to prepare for it- oops), I try to stay present here while I'm still here. And as I try to stay fully here, I've noticed something going on in my brain. Whenever I feel content, my brain says to itself something like "okay, this is good, let's remember this so we can get back here when things get rough". Which is fine, except its completely impractical. Anticipating the difficulties that will surely come, my mind wants to stockpile all the good here and bring it along. But it doesn't really work like that. In light of this, my mind jumps to ponder manna, like the manna from the Bible that the wandering Israelites gathered each day to provide for each day. In one translation of the Bible (NIV) it says about the manna that "in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. When the dew was gone, thin flakes like frost on the ground appeared on the desert floor". This kind of blew my mind. I guess because I've always pictured the whole manna thing in my mind like this: the people asked God for bread and then the clouds opened up and cracker-like bread came immediately, raining down on them as they opened their mouths to catch it like snowflakes on their tongues and each day went on like this as bread miraculously fell from the sky. You know---the movie version. But as it turns out, the manna looked like something totally normal, like flakes on the ground after the dew dried. They didn't even know what it was and Moses had to tell them it was bread.

I guess the amazing thing about all this is that God provided manna every single day as He instructed them to take only what they needed for the day. And this nourishing bread turned out to be something that looked really ordinary to them. Which brings me back to trying to stockpile the good here and now to use in the future. The manna reminded me that it doesn't work like that. I have to show up everyday---meditate on the good, renew my mind, make relationships right--every day. When I show up, God does too, reminding me that sometimes the most profound peace comes in seemingly ordinary moments like reading a great book, being present and engaged with my daughter or noticing my surroundings. And as much as I would like each great moment to last, they don't. But that's a good thing, because then I can enjoy the fleeting goodness now, trusting that there will be more tomorrow...wherever I am.

Happy Lucia Day! (from our little Lucia)

One of the reasons why the name 'Lucia' is special to me is because I grew up celebrating Saint Lucia day at church. No, it is not a Catholic church but this is the one saint that is celebrated. It comes from the Swedish heritage that our church still honors. Sweden celebrates Sankta Lucia on December 13th. I'm assuming most of you reading this blog know about Lucia but I'll tell the story anyway. 

Lucia was a young Christian girl from Italy who was said to have given all she had to the poor and was known to secretly bring food to the persecuted Christians hiding in the catacombs under the city. It was said that she wore candles on her head to light the way. She was martyred for her faith in 304 AD. Lucia means light in Italian which is a fitting name since she brought light and hope to others in need.

There are many stories of how this tradition came to be celebrated in Sweden. One version is that the monks that converted Sweden to Christianity brought the story of Saint Lucia in an effort to change the pagan 'festival of lights' tradition on December 13th into Saint Lucia day. The celebration continues, still representing bringing light and hope into the darkest time of the year and marks the beginning of the Christmas season.

Here's my attempt at taking a 'Lucia' photo with Lucia...

 It was an effort to get her to be by the light without eating the light. That restriction meant there were a lot of photos like the one above.

 We celebrate at church with a breakfast and program that tells the story of Lucia. Here are Sonja and Gwen at the breakfast. They also played a part in the program and did a very impressive job singing in Swedish.

It always ends with the high school girls singing the Swedish Lucia song, one of them taking on the role of Lucia herself complete with a real (and lit) crown of candles. The copper tray and pot carried each year is the one that I inherited from my grandma (who started the Lucia celebration at church many years ago). The tray was a gift for my great-grandmother when her family went on a trip to Sweden without her since she was too young to go. One of the reasons it is special to me is because her initials 'EMJ' (for Elvira Martha Johnson) that are carved into the tray are the same as mine (Elsa Martha Johnson)!

Happy Lucia Day! May we all represent light in the darkness today.

Being Forced To Be Silent

I think the media outlets in this household have turned against us. Last week our wireless went out and this week our T.V. broke. Then last night when we were listening to Pandora, the server went out and didn't come back. Oh yeah, and the new camera that I bought broke (but I did buy it used off eBay so that one might be my fault).

So as I'm connecting the computer to the modem instead of using wireless, watching movies on the computer instead of T.V. and listening to iTunes instead of Pandora, I start to think...


Why am I working to hard to get these things back so quickly and why am I actually annoyed that I can't watch T.V. and listen to music in the background...do I really need this stuff? And even worse...are these things filling a void that they shouldn't be?


So then I start thinking that maybe I should stop rigging everything up again and think about the fact that maybe someone is trying to tell me something! The kicker is that last night as I was reading before bed I just "happened" to be at a section of my book titled "The Avoidance of the Painful Void" that went like this...


" It is the most basic human loneliness that threatens us and is so hard to face. Too often we will do everything possible to avoid the confrontation with the experience of being alone, and sometimes we are able to create the most ingenious devices to prevent ourselves from being reminded of this condition.

Our culture has become most sophisticated in the avoidance of pain, not only our physical pain but our emotional and mental pain as well. We not only bury our dead as if they were still alive, but we also bury our pains as if they were not really there.

We have become so used to this state of anesthesia, that we panic when there is nothing or nobody left to distract us. When we have no project to finish, no friend to visit, no book to read, no television to watch or no record to play, and we are left all alone by ourselves we are brought so close to the revelation of our basic human aloneness and are so afraid of experiencing an all-pervasive sense of loneliness that we will do anything to get busy again and continue the game which makes us believe that everything is fine after all."

So here I am, sitting in silence, thinking about the fact that I do not spend enough time being quiet without distractions. But at the same time I am on the computer rather than actually experiencing my 'aloneness' so this whole thing is a contradiction anyway. I guess I'm left with the challenge of living life more fully not by doing more to avoid pain but by by spending more time in meaningful solitude and taking time to experience and reflect on the pain that makes me human. Henri Nouwen sums it up well:

"The few times, however, that we do obey our severe masters and listen carefully to our restless hearts, we may start to sense that in the midst of our sadness there is joy, that in the midst of our fears there is peace, that in the midst of our greediness there is the possibility of compassion and that indeed in the midst of our irking loneliness we can find the beginnings of a quiet solitude."

Both excepts taken from the book 'Reaching Out" by Henri Nouwen.

Is It Spring yet?

I think so.
The beginning of Spring might be one of the best feelings. This goes back for me to when I was little. I have this memory of the beginning of Spring from when I was in elementary school...I get off the school bus and start skipping home while singing an impromptu song..."I love the green grass!" I sang it over and over again...skipping, smiling and loving life. Well, the thing is, I get that same exact feeling now as an adult. As the warmer weather creeps in and takes over the winter frigidness, it makes me feel alive again. This feeling makes winter feel worth it.

The beginning of Spring draws some serious parallels to the season of Lent as our pastor so eloquently illustrated in his sermon on Sunday. The first 20 or so days of Lent are days of blindness and the last 20 or so we move towards sight like the man who received sight in John 9. Easter is coming and we feel it like we feel Spring coming. The cold is passing and all the junk of winter goes with it. Spring feels like a renewal of the soul. The act and reality of Easter literally is a renewing of the soul.

I once was blind but now I see.

I hope you're enjoying the beginning of Spring as well!

Being and Doing

I find myself thinking on these a lot. Not always directly; mostly indirectly. And I think it's common since us Americans are a little obsessed with both being and doing. Sometimes it feels like the only way we know about someone's being is by what they are doing.

But I get the feeling that it's not the end of the story.

"We do not live merely in order to "do something"-no matter what.

Activity is just one of the normal expressions of life, and the life it expresses is all the more perfect when it sustains itself with an ordered economy of action. This order demands a wise alternation of activity and rest.

We do not live more fully merely by doing more, seeing more, tasting more, and experiencing more than we ever have before. On the contrary, some of us need to discover that we will not begin to live more fully until we have the courage to do and see and taste and experience much less than usual."

And our activity and rest seem directly tied to our happiness somehow.

"We cannot be happy if we expect to live all the time at the highest peak of intensity. Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony."

I know this is true but it's hard for me to really live like this is true.


Thanks for reminding us, Thomas Merton. (From No Man is an Island)

Holy Love Among Friends

You know when you read something and you think to yourself, "Yes, that is exactly true!" Like something you couldn't pinpoint and didn't put your finger on until you saw it in someone else's words? Well that's what this was for me...


"When all this has been said, the truth remains that our destiny is to love one another as Christ has loved us. Jesus had very few close friends when He was on earth, and yet He loved and loves all men and is, to every soul born into the world, that soul's most intimate friend.

The lives of all the men we meet and know are woven into our own destiny, together with the lives of many we shall never know on earth. But certain ones, very few, are our close friends. Beacuse we have more in common with them, we are able to love them with a special selfless perfection, since we have more to share.

They are inseparable from our own destiny, and, therefore, our love for them is especially holy: it is a manifestation of God in our lives."


This rings true with me. It describes that indescribable feeling you have with friends. When you are with those few really good friends, the kind talked about here, it feels effortless and easy to love each other. It does feel holy; like God Himself is manifesting through the friendship. I love those kind of friendships! And I love that God created us to have that kind of relationship with each other.

This is from a book I am reading again called "No Man Is an Island" written by Thomas Merton in 1955. There are so many little tidbits of wisdom hidden within this book that you can read it multiple times and find something new each time.