Trail of Hope

The rubber is hitting the road again, on tires and on shoes. Here I am on another road trip, with 13 youth group kids in tow, three vehicles and 6 other staff. Still, we carry a lot more with us than our luggage and food. We also carry our insatiable hunger. I would be essentializing if I tried to sum up what it was we are all hungry for. But there was a speaker this morning at this "Trial of Hope" conference we've traveled to that said in his people's language the word "God" is translated as:"The Chief over and above everything." It seems too, our hunger is narrated in so many ways as we live out our life, and what we are hungering for feels even more elusive than our thoughts. Even the sages of the past like, Lao Tze, searched out what he could only call "the way of heaven". I think if he lived today and was an indigenous person he might of called what he was searching for, the "trail of hope." I'm not sur exactly what it is, the long days, and constant mental and spiritual work out, but this trip I have been especially ravenous in my hunger for the living God, for the Chief over and above everything.
I've been thinking about this song during my time here in Durango, CO at the Fort Lewis College Campus. It talks about this trail of freedom we have to find amidst the painful history of this country. Its the part that talks about looking at the past trail of broken promises, hearing the footsteps of tears along the way and then continuing to look for the trail that will lead us home...and I would add, our home in the Creator.
"There's a trail of tears we could follow, can you hear the footsteps of the Cherokee. Its a trail of broken promises, will you walk this trail with me...
Hey brothers, we must walk with the pride of Cheif Joseph, have the courage of Geronimo. For this trail its long, so you have to be strong, just to find your way back home..." -Bill Miller "Trail of Freedom"
In this time, if I stop and let myself be still for a few moments it doesn't take long to taste that hunger and to feel just how broken I feel inside as well. To see how often I am quick to anger and wrath even though the psalmist said, "Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret—it leads only to evil." Yet, again I find myself stuck with a choice, to respect the Lord's love for me and let go of my own hurt, or remain in the darkness of my own will. So what is it that I am hungry for besides a meal that isn't from Mcdonalds or Burger King? It seems trite to say, but I think what I desire is communion with God. Not to put him on this list and make sure I've "placed" Him first somehow. But, a deep connection so deep that I am known by Him. Yet,it is my own darkness that keeps me from walking in that direction.

Growing Things

Lately I've been thinking about growing things. Maybe this phenomenon has occurred because lately I've been pretty stuck and having a hard time with personal growth. But, there is something so precious and hopeful about something that hasn't arrived, but is on its way to being grown. Sometimes in the pruning process the outside looks a bit more like mutilation than growth. But, if you don't cut down the wild direction less and diseased branches the rest of the plant will suffer in the long run.
The other day i was sitting at home listening to the familiar sounds of my apartment and surfing the internet when I heard a not so familiar sound. It was a little chirp, but I thought I was imagining it until my roomate came in tenderly and held up a small box and said, "Surpise!" I looked eagerly into the shoe box and found a little black speckled chick. It was adorable, and this fragile being that needed our care. We rescued it from a teenager, its a long story, but I'm sure you can understand the need. For the next couple days we fussed over our chick and tried our best to care for it. The first night I had a dream that it died because it was too cold, so I woke up and rushed into the bathroom to look into its new box and saw it sleeping soundly its little furry body moving slightly with its chick breaths. All the sudden there was this great visual, a little growing thing. Its been hard for me to find hope lately and Percy the chick really helped me to remember that as long as we're growing there is hope. Sometimes I just want to find the fix for my failings, or for other peoples failings and forget that I have often left out the part where Grace enters into the picture. The grace of growing things is that they are working towards a better picture of who they were meant to be, but it is ok that they are not there yet. In my perfectionist mind I often get stuck on the ways I am not right and then I'm paralyzed. I feel hard and distant from God who I assume is disappointed in me. When in reality he is waiting in love, and correcting me perhaps, in love, wanting to embrace me even though I'm covered in sin, if i am willing to let Him in and trust Him. This lesson is a difficult, and good. But, i must remember that I too am a growing thing. That when I look at a little growing flower, a little growing chick, I see something precious and beautiful and I don't dislike them because they are not blooming or full grown chickens. In the same way when God looks at me he sees a growing thing and he loves me as that. What a comforting thought, and this thought saves me daily.

Yet this I call to Mind

Life is full of strange fragile moments. One moment I am greedily playing tennis and then the next a ball slips under my foot and I am bearing down under the pain in my ankle unable to move. This recent event is significant for me because it marks an intense difficulty, a split moment that takes a long time to work out its consequences. Somehow God always uses stuff like this to really get to the point. Like a big pruning shear in the sky, sometimes he swoops down and cuts us down with precision and it hurts but it is definitely bearable and better than eternal separation from God. Through it all I do feel a bit mangled and dragged around like Jeremiah in Lamentations, although he has more right to feel that way than I. I don't mind as much as I used to that I now have to rely on friends to get around, eat, pick up after myself etc. But it is a reminder that one of my fundamental problems is that I am proud of being independent and often think I am a person unto myself, unconnected to God or anyone else. Though I am learning that I'd rather be a sinner with a forgiving, loving heart than a righteous person harboring bitterness and unforgiveness. Still, I am more like Simon the Pharisee who criticized Jesus for letting a "sinful" woman touch him than the woman who poured out her alabaster jar upon our Lords head and wept at his feet in adoration. I long to be the one close to Jesus though, the one who was forgiven much and who loves much. In this process of being hurt and uncovering more of my rotten heart, I have learned that I have been forgiven much even the hidden sins in my heart that no one sees. So, I am encouraged this morning by the words of Lamentations that Jeremiah writes. This man of sorrow who has seen every kind of suffering can call to mind why he has hope.

He has broken my teeth with gravel;
he has trampled me in the dust.

I have been deprived of peace;
I have forgotten what prosperity is.

So I say, "My splendor is gone
and all that I had hoped from the LORD."

I remember my affliction and my wandering,
the bitterness and the gall.

I well remember them,
and my soul is downcast within me.

Yet this I call to mind
and therefore I have hope:

Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.

They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.

I say to myself, "The LORD is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him."

The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him,
to the one who seeks him;

it is good to wait quietly
for the salvation of the LORD.

Ashes to ashes

Ashes to Ashes
On a back road open hills
dodging birds, dogs, drunks and road kill
I am growing up too fast and I hate it
she said
round brown face
black eyes obsidian
eligance hidden under trailor parks
dust to dust
out here swirling in the sage brush
tumblweeds stuck from one
place to another
lost so lost you want to find them
or avoid them
From dust we came
sixteen girl living on a prayer
on a yell
she puts a dark hood on
and lifts her hand in the air
i could tell you things you don't
want to hear
and dust we'll return

/e passionate

E passionate
Wait the line
Bump bump ching
Clack grrrrrung gruuung pa cha

The brick fell all the way down
Let me go I’m grown
Lift up and inside are bright
Explosiv-sions
Revisions

You are worth it he said
Am i
Is he
Yes
Wait the line
E passionate
It’s not time
At the greyhound at 8:45pm,
I wait for you.

I like it when he comes home.
Then I can hug him and the puffy
Vest is bright and says shhhhhhhhhh

Tired Rubber soles

I found out recently that I have vegan shoes, yes, unwittingly I am vegan in my shoe tastes. Converse shoes are made of rubber soles and canvas so no animals are used nor animal products, in the making of my little shoes. But, do I ever feel like I am wearing these little shoes out. I've been burning the pavement with them over the last couple months and getting tons of miles out of them. I've been to San Diego and back by car from Toppenish, Washington. Which is a feat in itself. Stopping every where in between, San Fransisco, Eugene, Portland. Although, my mind/heart has been even more places than my feet it seems like. Yeah, I started running for the first time ever in my life on my own and so I finally feel that my life is reflecting something more of who I am. I certainly am a runner, not that I really enjoyed running for running accept for when I was little. In elementary school, I ran to school almost every day, there and back just because I could and it was like four blocks. Man I wore out my shoes fast, i was hard on them. Now I'm hard on my tires making them work overtime. In some ways it seems that Gods been doing his best to slow me down a little bit since I can remember. This time I hope I'm running with Him and towards something just as good as my life now. there is this song lyric I think by U2 that says "we're running to stand still." And I think that is part of the design in me, to run to stand still and not to just run to burn out. I'd like to think someday I'll find the way to run hard and rest hard. Right now my soul feels as warn and dirty as the soles of my vegan shoes.
Life takes us on strange pathways, the one before me is too big for me and I know I don't have what it takes today to handle the challenges of tomorrow. It is my hope that somehow on the way I'll find it, pull it out from deep down, give out and still find a treasure at the bottom of my gas tank, an oil field in the bottom of my empty belly. Often i find that is where God is the most tangible and present. Not because he's only there when I'm weak, but because it is there I am humble enough to notice Him. At times I am overwhelmed by the ever changing landscape of this life, with family disbursed, with dear friends out of arms reach, as I struggle to keep time with this chaotic world, and make sense of the decisions we must face in order to survive as whole people. Whole people, not the fractured pieces of selves we strip into to feel loved and accepted. Uncertainty is scary, but I wonder are we ever more certain than we are when we tuck ourselves in bed holding our tired feet and say to to the Holy skies, the mountains, our loved ones, the coyotes, and God almighty, "I'm thankful, whatever it is, I am thankful." With a sigh we are still thankful and that is how we know we're not beyond hope and its still worth the run.

Ode to the Old Sugar Factory Who Here Lies Dead

"If you're going to do something illegal, you might as well be smart about it, Right?" I said to Hans as we turned around in a gravel inlet by the Old Sugar Factory and headed back toward the street. He shrugged his shoulders and half agreed, but continued ahead without much thought. It was a lazy dreary Sunday afternoon and we'd decided to visit the factory one last time as we'd noticed most of it missing on a the drive by a couple minutes before. Strange to see what once was a vast factory laden with bricks and metal furnishings coming out its ears like a giant and ancient dog-eared book now just sort of missing...as if most of its pages had been suddenly ripped out leaving it naked and tattered. The factory I think has some special significance to Hans because he and is best friend had many adventures there, but also it was in a way the monument of the beginning of our relationship. In reality it was just the place where one hot June day we went to hang out and all the color drained from my face as the inevitable occurred and he expressed his feelings for me. I can't say either of us said anything memorable or intelligent that day...me least of all. Anyways, it was strange coming back to the place that now looked as different as we ourselves were different from the two people who walked the Sugar factory just five months before. I for one, was much less terrified, I had more color in my face and I didn't feel like running across the open field screaming "Get me out of this!" Instead of the place where the bulk of the building stood there was now a large slab of concrete bookended by two remnants of buildings, lots of wiry metal, scatterings of bricks and random factory looking objects. On the slab was a large frozen puddle that creaks and cracks when you step on it. Hans had a really good time with that. But, it was weird looking at a building with a floor sort of hanging out of a space like a blanket hanging out a window. We sort of just explored around the ruins of what used to be different looking ruins. The wrecking ball was surprisingly small compared to the vastness of the destruction and the space we had once wandered through like a maze. It was beautiful and fallen. We found the Men's room which was just a door sticking out of a wall two stories above us. We also found a monolith of sorts and resorted to our primitive primate state for a couple moments. We were suddenly incited to feelings of violence and hit the ground with sticks for a short time (if you haven't seen "Space Odyssey 2001" you won't get that joke).
But ape-like or not, here we were at the end of this era that had already ended a long time ago and was finally really dying. The factory had closed I think at least 70 years ago but still remained standing as a shelter for tagging and teenagers looking for a good time. But, something about that place sort of held our imagination in it's asbestos walls with wonderment. Seeing it made me feel more or less admonished, it held up for so long as an empty dangerous being hovering just out side of town but it never looked lonely, just well used. And, I thought, if this place could hold its emptiness for so long, our present lonely journey couldn't be that bad. I remember going into one room with these big steel vats and on the wall were these clocks and gauges that had stopped on their time and place so many years ago and had not moved since. At the time it felt like being in Star Trek and going boldly where no one had gone before... although people had gone there before.
We eventually climbed our way out of the ruins of what felt like an ancient city and I saw there on the ground, twisted and half gone, that same clock that used to hang in that big room there still lost in time. It was then that Hans said, "Good bye Sugar Factory we hardly knew you." And that was that, it felt like a eulogy of some sort and a saying good bye to an old era that we never really knew but effects us none the less. Someday perhaps, something new will be built there, a different factory perhaps, a day spa, a Golds Gym...ha not likely here on the Rez. But, I can dream can't I? Its strange to think of so much destruction paving the way for something fresh and new, but I guess that is one of those mysteries we'd like to know about so we search out places we're not supposed to go to like the Old Sugar Factory that here lies dead.