Your kindness, Lord, leads us

Down at Independence Park a bit ago, dusk leaned, and a little boy ran up the path, stopping each person to announce:
"The mosquitoes are out!"

He said it with gravity, panting from the urgency of his message. We all needed to know this most important fact. "The mosquitoes are out!" I smiled the whole way home, each time his words replayed - his words, and the seriousness of their delivery.


Earlier this week, the 451 bus stopped on Cabot St, near they YMCA, and rumbled there. Cars lined up behind it. Then started honking, but the bus just sat. Then a woman, dangerously thin, unsteady, stepped out. She was turning back, to talk to the driver - she seemed confused - but the honking continued and the bus pulled away. As I passed, I felt a sadness, and the phrase we must be kind positioned itself at the front of my mind. The impatient car-horns hurt me. All I could think was what kind of difference will an act of kindness instead of frustration make?

Yesterday at the tea shop, a couple came in. One of them bought a whole pound of a tea he's never tried. The other bought good amounts of several other teas - also unknown to him. When they told us that they'd been married three years ago, there was uncertainty and challenge in the older one's voice. They were both friendly, and open, and that now how will you treat us? saddened me. After they left, my co-worker and I talked about it. We both noticed the challenge, and we both were not quite surprised by the statement, and we both felt that we hadn't started acting differently because of it. What good does it do anyone, we agreed, if we treat people unkindly when we disagree with them, or are challenged by them? Or if they look differently or act differently than we anticipated? How can we expect to be a positive influence if we will not treat people with kindness?

I am reminded of the fruits of the Spirit so often recited from Galatians: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Do we remember all of them? I forget the middle few. I remember love, joy, peace, and patience. And I remember self-control, because I spent my teen years forming rigid boundaries for myself. But what about kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and gentleness?

These four deeply concern our relations with others, with strangers and friends. And I forget them. I try to learn how to love people, but then get lost in the details of how to love. But isn't kindness a display of love? Doesn't true gentleness come from a heart that is dwelling in peace? How about faithfulness - is perhaps our ability to be faithful a corollary to our patience? Then I must ask: is goodness connected to joy? Whether it is or not, if I treat people with kindness and gentleness, they will feel loved. If in all my dealings, I exhibit goodness and faithfulness, people will see something rare.

As Irene blows towards us, much more peaceful than predicted, I can't help but think that there's more to a diminished storm than God's mercy. We've been praying for that - for mercy - and there will be much less damage than we originally thought. But God knows better than we do what is good for us - mercy could have included a hurricane. Instead, mercy is gentleness. He gives the East Coast less than we expect, less than we arguably deserve. Maybe we need to pick up on this.

Maybe we, as the people of God, need to focus more on kindness and gentleness than on argument or annoyance. Maybe we need to learn to cultivate goodness instead of loudly decrying evil. Maybe we need to be faithful in the relationships we have, and in how we live our lives, instead of shifting our stance or availability when the weather changes.

How kind am I?

How gentle, how good, how faithful?

Not nearly enough. I want to be better - I desire more kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and gentleness. No incident is too small to be significant - am I kind, or rude? Did I act in accordance to the way I speak, or is there discrepancy between who I say I am, and who I seem to be?

Father God, in Your kindness and faithfulness to me, help me to become more kind and faithful. Out of Your goodness, teach me to be good. With Your gentleness, lead me into a more gentle life. Give me a kind life, a good mind, a faithful heart, and a gentle spirit.

Northfield's Promise

I ask again: how is it I know such amazing people?

Today was our annual Wisdom Way family meeting - and family they all are. From a few months to many decades old, they are such beautiful, encouraging, light-filled people. Who also have tremendous sense of humour...

I arrived early, and strolled barefoot through diamond-damp grass up to the hilltop behind Hibbard Hall. Its lovely familiarity refreshed me. I prayed a bit, sang quietly, and concentrated on the grass between my toes. I breathed in the coolness, and remembered promises, dreams, hopes ignited in the place two years ago.

The beginning was here, I thought.

Northfield showed me the glory of a community of praying people. It introduced me to a more active, charismatic, joyful expression of worship than I'd seen before. These people spoke wisdom. They encouraged my spiritual discernment, they helped me see truth, they loved me. And I dreamed of returning. Every time I revisit the place, it feels like home. It stirs up a longing, too - a longing for great, glorious, beautiful things.

Longing for heaven and home...

I long to see wholeness, to see joy, and life. I long to watch people become real. I long to be not only involved in the development of minds, but in the development of the whole being. In many ways, this summer has been a time of pieces starting to fall into place. More than ever before, things are making sense. Much remains to be seen - many pieces are unknown, unclear. But it's so much more clear now.

Standing by a marble bench, looking out over the campus, I remembered all I heard then, and all that has been spoken at 10 Days of Prayer since. Dreams...

Dreams of teaching, in some capacity. Dreams of watching people discover the joy of learning, of books, of finding expression of reality and truth and goodness in all things. Dreams of music, of singing, of playing many instruments, of writing my own songs, and singing my own words. Dreams of food, of cooking creatively, healthfully, and eating with people, drinking in the friendship that naturally builds around the table. Dreams of knowing others, and being known by them, and complete, genuine love for each other. Dreams of the body of Christ actually being a body, united in love and purpose. Dreams of prayer... of praying becoming a natural thing for any group of believers to do. What would it be like if we automatically prayed together any time we saw each other? And dreams of God - of knowing Him more and more deeply every day.

So many dreams. I stood in the shade by D. L. Moody's headstone. He, like so many others, lived always in those hopes, those dreams. Every bit of grace, every answer to prayer, just leads to desire for more. If we can have this little bit of glory and truth, why not more? God is not stingy. But we tend to dream and ask so small. I tend to dream to small.

My small voice is timid, "God, may I please, maybe, someday, help people learn? And, if You're ok with it, I would like - though do I deserve to ask? - I would like to not be alone. I mean, I want friends. I want sisters and brothers... But I would like something deeper, more together, more permanent. For instance, maybe a husband?"

And I can almost see Him shake His head. Why so small? Why so doubtful? If I am a Father who is good, and if I know your depths, and if your dreams and desires are from me and good, will not I answer? Will I not fulfill what I have begun? And are not my hopes for you even greater than what you could imagine? Ask BIG. Dream BIG. Expect much from Me, and I will delight in giving you much.

Already, He has given me much. But He wants to give more. Today, several people spoke this during our prayer time: we're thinking and asking too small - He wants us to ask for more.

I touch birch-bark, look into the sky. I hear stories of God's faithfulness, and how He's weaving pieces together for so many. I hear the thankful expectation in their voices, the passion for their land, their friends.

I eat fresh peaches, watch the nine children laughing and playing train on the low rock wall. I hear more about the new college being planned for this campus. I learn that there are so many more than I realized gathering those around them to pray, and to seek unity. So much is happening across New England, in so many little, powerful ways.

More is going to happen. Simple devotion and obedience are required - how could we deny that? So many promises have been given, and much seed sown. That which is sown will bear fruit.

Driving home, a rainbow's edge touched the North Shore.

On this last Bout of the River Syndrome*

(Warning: this is rather a long post. *the River Syndrome: my name for the kind of craziness exemplified by the character River Tam in 'Firefly' and 'Serenity'.)

I’ve had a lot whirling around my head recently. Trying to make sense of it is like… well, it’s like something really difficult. I can’t find a tidy simile at the moment.

It all started almost two weeks ago… actually, this isn’t where it started, but I’m only able to go back that far right now. I got gluten. I’m not sure which exact circumstances (out of two possibilities) provided the poison, but there it was. I crashed late Friday morning, and Saturday, Sunday, and Monday were miserable. By Tuesday, the worst was over, and the rest of last week saw slow improvement. But that crash, and those days, triggered a LOT of introspection and frustration, on several different levels.

Firstly, it wrecked me physically. I’ve been exercising regularly since the beginning of June, and it’s been making a HUGE difference. I’ve been getting stronger, more energetic, more flexible… but after just four days, I felt like I’d lost at least two weeks of work. While my body’s glutenized, I’m fatigued. My muscles are just plain weak and tired and achey. I have trouble sleeping, so I’m exhausted too. But once the gluten wore off, my muscles still felt weak. They’re still not back to where they were before, and it is such a fight to push myself through exercises that were easier before. It also didn’t help that during those days I wasn’t able to think clearly, and my eating suffered. All that added up? I lost muscle. At least, it felt like I did. And that is incredibly frustrating, when my body has finally been gaining strength and mobility.

Secondly, mentally it’s a struggle to re-calibrate. Gluten always affects me mentally – if that’s all it did, I would avoid it. It wrecks my ability to concentrate, to follow any train of thought (or even any complete thought), and it deadens my memory. Short-term memory – gone. The result is that I live in a mental fog. I can’t think, I can’t remember, and coming out of it, I still can’t remember.

The interesting thing about this bout is that I was somewhat prepared. Funny. I had just been re-reading old blog postings, and my attention was caught by the difference in tone before and after I stopped eating gluten. Especially that last year before I stopped, I was increasingly unstable, manic, confused. So I was thinking about what it tends to do, and how it shifts my emotional-mental state into such extremes. When it hit, I was able to think: I don’t want that. I don’t want to be crazy. I don’t want to feel destructive or depressed. I don’t want to be lost in those extremes. So I put all of the little energy and ability I had into trying to keep myself mentally stable. That meant forcing myself to be thankful – to verbalize blessings – when I felt my thoughts turning down. It meant running song lyrics, or short phrases of Scripture, or something else I could focus on through my mind whenever I started going crazy. It meant shutting all the whirlwind of thoughts down, pinpointing one little thing to get stuck on so that I didn’t super-ball bounce in my head. And this was hard. I forced myself, on occasion, to join my flatmates in the living room, even though I had nothing to contribute, simply because trying to follow the conversation pulled me out of myself enough to keep me from curling up into a corner and rocking back and forth. I refused to let myself make decisions based on my emotional-mental state, about me, about others, about potentials. And I was less crazy than I’ve ever been with gluten.

But I was still exhausted. I’m still reeling from the effort of it all. I had a FULL week of work last week, so I had no time off, no significant time to rest, or get away, or anything. And I was still living in mud and fog. I tell people that I lost several days of my life, and I still feel that way. Nothing happened. I was elsewhere, I didn’t exist, nothing made sense, nothing made anything. I lost almost 5 days of my life, and coming back after that is not easy. Trying to get out of the mud and fog is not easy. The sun slow burns through the haze. I tell myself not be blame myself, not to be frustrated with myself – that will only make it worse. I tell myself to think about food – make sure I’m eating enough, and eating well and very very carefully. I tell myself to let go, to forgive myself, to not cling to what it was like. I tell myself that yes, it is good to process this – it’s been awhile, so yes, think about what happened, and how you dealt with it well, and how you dealt with it poorly – but it is not good to accuse. I remind myself: you didn’t sit in a corner, knees to chin, rocking back and forth; you didn’t go around punching walls; you didn’t talk nonsense for three hours straight; you didn’t cry yourself to sleep; you didn’t skip work; you didn’t… This was SO MUCH better than before! Maybe I’m learning how to live around the madness. In spite of it. Maybe next time I’ll be even better able to deal. Maybe I’ll tell my flatmates sooner, have some kind of support in place with people helping me remember to eat, helping me relax, keeping me more stable. But enough of the maybes.

The other tricky thing about dropping again into the craziness is that my mind still remembers what it was like. In some ways, it’s like a drug, and when it’s recalled to strongly, there’s a temptation to give in to it, to twist my mind into that shape again, to act manic just because. There’s a fine line for me between simply thinking about the craziness, and thinking like the craziness. Because I can. The neural pathways are still there – are reawakened by my recent bout. But I won’t. I don’t want to. I hate it. I’d rather be sane, even though insanity is fascinating. I’d rather not have mud sucking at my feet. I’d rather not feel like someone with a creepy cackle is using my heart as a juggling ball. I’d rather not my mind bounce crazily, uncontrollably. I’d just rather not.

And there are so many random pieces that I may have noticed before but don’t understand: why do some people’s mere presence stabilize and calm me? Why does loud heavy music reduce my emotional extremes? Why does it tend to make me cry, and afterwards feel better? Why is it so hard to read? Why do I find myself walking and walking, far past hunger and tiredness, until I’m ready to drop from exhaustion? Why do I feel like if I’m alone, I have to keep moving, almost running, keeping one step away from… something? Why do people make such a difference? Why does rain make it better? Why is it so hard for me to prepare food – why do I just want to grab and eat, sweet and salty things, mostly? Why do I prefer liquids? Why chocolate? Why does touch make such a difference?

I don’t know yet.

And I’m still fatigued. I’m tired of being exhausted. My strength is returning, though. My body is demanding even more food than normal, trying to regain what it lost, I suppose. The fog is lifting. I’m relaxing more. I’m family-sick, though. Having my brother around would help me. (Hah. One reason I can’t go through my entire life alone: people are necessary for full recovery from glutenization. More specifically, guys are necessary, but only certain ones help. There are those few, of which my brother is one, whose very presence is a stabilizer for me. And I need them when I’m coming off gluten! Another unexplained oddity. Hrrmph.)

Things will get better. They already are, and they will continue to. I need to be extra careful. I need to keep practicing and choosing trust. Keep breathing, Suzanne. You have much to be thankful for, and much to look forward to. You are still discovering how all those seemingly disparate passions and desires and skills actually fit together. Be patient with yourself. Be patient with the picture – it will not always be incomplete, and it is already so much more complete than it ever has been. Rejoice in what has been. Rejoice in what is. Rejoice in what will be. For that is trust – that is hope – to rejoice before.

Good-bye again, crazy self. Over destruction and senselessness, I choose life.