Two Days
in two days, i'll get to spend some quality time with a quality guy (and some other really cool people). i have meetings in Marin, but am going the weekend before to deepen and nurture relationships.
in two days, a dear friend and coworker will be
sitka-bound. she and her husband are going to sitka, alaska where he will be a nurse at a native hospital there and the two of them will live missionally furthering the kingdom of God. i'll have said my goodbyes with a thankful heart and tears in my eyes, full of the realization that God is a giver of good gifts and has allowed amazing people to come into my life.
in two days, there will be a funeral for Bob. he worked here in the office until last Thursday. he was on oxygen even then. he died Monday night, sooner than anyone expected. he was a gentleman, full of smiles and service. he will be greatly missed.
woman
This is written in the Hebrew Talmud, the book where all of the sayings and preaching of Rabbis are conserved over time.
It says: "Be very careful if you make a woman cry, because God counts her tears. The woman came out of a man's rib. Not from his feet to be walked on. Not from his head to be superior, but from the side to be equal. Under the arm to be protected, and next to the heart to be loved"
it struck me
so i had to share it with others
The Rain by Robert Creeley
All night the sound had come back again,
and again falls
this quiet, persistent rain.
What am I to myself that must be remembered,
insisted upon,
so often? Is it
that never the ease,
even the hardness,
of rain falling
will have for me
something other than this,
something not so insistent—
am I to be locked in this
final uneasiness.
Love, if you love me,
lie next to me.
Be for me, like rain,
the getting out
of the tiredness, the fatuousness,
the semi-lust of intentional indifference.
Be wet
with a decent happiness.
it's been a while
didn't realize it's been almost two weeks since i've blogged last. thanks for reminding me,
jeff.
sobering: my life is filled with one dichotomy after another (irony that i juxtaposed one with dichotomy, but i digress). my day job is pretty mundane, mostly boring, especially now that my boss is gone for the better part of the rest of the year. i edit documents, i send e-mails, i make sure library books are in order on the shelves. i mean, it's not rocket science folks. then i go home to the transitional home for single moms and i'm put in my place time and again. the latest happening involves a prospective new resident. she's turning 18 wednesday. she's two months pregnant. about 5 months ago she got dropped off by her mom at a bus stop with all of her belongings. that's it. the folks at the bus station called the cops. they came, almost arrested her for breaking curfew, when they realized she'd been abandoned and had no place to go. they took her to a crisis center. she entered into a consensual relationship with a 24 year old. she got pregnant. he went to jail, she was placed in a foster home. now she's about to be homeless unless we offer her a place to stay. hopefully she'll move in, we'll be able to provide her with a safe place and hope for a future. she's had a rough life. i'm amazed at her willingness to continue to try at all. from the mundane to the shocking reality of what some people live through and face each day.
i'm really trying to live in the here and now when i so easily jump to the future, a future i'd like to create and make fit into a neat little picture of bliss. much easier imagined than waited upon. so i am caught between the what is and what will be. as
beth orton so aptly puts it:
Some of the time the futureComes right round to haunt meSome of the time the future Comes round just to seeThat all is as it should beLike it’s there to remind meWe’ve got to wait and seeGot to let it beWait and seein other news, i'm also learning how difficult distance can be, how much of a girl i really am, and how i just really don't like surfacey conversations that cover over a multitude of questions and desires and words not spoken because of a lack of proximity.
