...And Then I Saw Durian Ice Cream

These questions are from the lovely Cuileann

Please list three things that have made you either (according to your need to release sadness or share joy) happy or sad recently.
1. An email from a friend describing her work with kids in Cambodia.
2. A few good words with a girl at work, whom I have been working with for a while but never felt like I have really gotten to know.
3. Hearing that a good friend of mine is pregnant.

What is one thing you would tell someone about yourself to help her understand you better?
Just because I don't tell you right out how much I love you doesn't mean that I don't.

If you could magically and instantaneously have one skill/talent/ability that you don't have, what would it be?
The ability to carry on a meaningful conversation with someone that I don't know very well. Or else being able to write music. Or the natural ability to dance. I am lacking in all those areas, and I can't decide which I would pick.

Last thing (not necessarily book) that you read and loved?
A poem whose title I have forgotten. I read it last week as homework for my poetry writing class.

Where do you want to be?
Phnom Penh, Cambodia

An Explanation

Your dainty face was buried, nestled
like an egg in wool, an egg
warm and brown, you slept soft
with a still nose and whiskers.
But I was not still.
Alarmed I pounced, cat-like I caught
you as you dreamed.
Hastily, greedily I snatched
the warm depth, the soft folds
of the peaceful nest,
disturbed your quiet snores.

You see,
sweaters are not for mice.

New Year's Realizations

Tonight at youth group we talked about the last year and what God has done. I don't know how much any of the kids in the group got out of it, but as I thought about the last year I realized that God is doing exactly what I asked him to do.

During the last semester I spent a lot of time wondering why nothing was happening in my life, and when I sat down to think about the last year I was completely overwhelmed when I realized that everything has been happening. God has been teaching me, almost exactly since January of last year, how to love people. Not the people far away whose pictures make my heart actually hurt, but usual, every day people. The ones that are hard to love. The ones that I don't know how to love. The ones that I have to love if I am to really love orphans, widows, prostitutes, and the desperately poor and sick.

What about friends who are hard to spend time with? What about kids in the youth group who annoy me to no end? What about my own family? What about the people in my church who have huge, glaringly obvious (to me) blindspots? What about the people who have hurt me the most?

Those are the very people that I have always told God I wanted to love, and this year he has given me exactly what I asked for by teaching me what love looks like. It's inconvenient, and stressful, and messy, and painful, and most of all humbling.

But the point is that this is what I asked for.
How can God be so good?

Something Lovely

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stoppig on the bridge to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions

back from a series of hopsitalks back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on the stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with animals daying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

-W.S. Merwin

A merry little Christmas (tree)

Why, oh why

Somewhere over the rainbow
Way up high,
There's a land that I've heard of
Once in a lullaby.

Somewhere over the rainbow
The bluebirds fly so high
Birds fly over the rainbow
Why then oh why can't I

Someday I'll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far
Behind me.
Where troubles melt like lemon drops
Away above the chimney tops
That's where you'll find me.

Somewhere over the rainbow
The Bluebirds fly.
Birds fly over the rainbow
Why then oh why can't I
Why then oh why can't I

(Harold Arlen and EY Harburg)

Thanksgiving