Journalling, Special Tea, and Sacred Spaces

There has been an idea growing in my mind lately that threads in and out of my normal thoughts. Last night it surfaced again and I couldn't file it away, so I decided that it was time that I make it happen.

Before university I was a coffee lover. I still am a coffee lover. Strong, full tastes appeal to me and the robust flavour of coffee tops the list. I was convinced that I would be the ultimate candidate for full blown coffee addiction in university but, in a surprising twist of fate, I have switched my allegiance to chai tea. Coffee has slipped to a (very) close second. I will still drink coffee at any hour of any day, and I still love the taste, but chai tea has become my drink of choice here.

There is a chai tea blend at Teavana that I love. I ask for it unsweetened, without sugar, and it is the most amazing drink ever. It is my Special Tea, a tea that I will only ever reserve for special occasions because I do not ever want to get tired of it.

The idea that dropped into my mind was to strike out to the mall, get my Special Tea, grab a booth and do some writing, and that is exactly what happened. Maybe it is abnormal for someone my age to say that they absolutely loved going to the mall to drink tea alone, but I'll admit to it.

One of the best parts of the whole excursion was writing on paper again. I've written in a pen-and-paper journal since I was nine and, in recent years, I've journalled almost every day. However, university changed more than my preferences in hot drinks: I stopped journalling on paper. It blindsided me a little. I didn't expect that over a decade of writing in pen and paper would dissolve in a matter of a few months, but it did. 

Maybe this is part of why I feel this silence so acutely. Journalling has been my form of prayer, of connecting to God, of debriefing the day, of holding myself in check, and tracing back to see how I've grown. I didn't anticipate this discipline changing as drastically as it has. I tried to keep it alive at the beginning, but it felt forced and unnatural. 

I made an executive decision and declared a paper journal hiatus. All my personal writing had deferred to a Word document on my laptop, so I decided to allow that to become my stand-in journal. It is still good, but it is not the same, and I was reminded of that when I sat down in the booth today with my tea. 

When I sat down to write this morning, it felt like old times again. My writing is the most authentic and raw when it is written on paper and I could feel a release of pressure with every line filled.

Pages and pages later, I had to force myself to stop.

That hour in the mall this morning, just drinking tea and writing and praying, stayed with me the whole day. I've been thinking over it, wondering why my journalling (and when I say journalling, that is synonymous with prayer) only worked when I completely removed myself from my normal location.

A change of space. A meeting ground. An intentional connecting of heart and spirit. Maybe this is where I need to be more often. When I lived at home, I would journal at the end of the day in my room. Here at school, my room is where a large part of my life unfolds. I study and work in my room. It is my home base. At home I never did anything in my room except sleep and read and journal. It was, in a way, a sacred space.

Carving out sacred spaces is a theme that I have noticed subtly unfolding in my life over the past few months. I've met God in coffee shops, on bridges, and in an empty atrium. Maybe the shape of this season includes intentional pauses and finding a location to do nothing but meet with God. 

I'm going to try to do this on a weekly basis: to very intentionally carve out portion of my day to meet with God somehow. It doesn't have to be Special Tea every time, but a new rhythm needs to form. A rhythm of meeting. A rhythm of expectation. 

A rhythm of sacred spaces.

Hollow {Or: Silence. Part 2}

My life is a constant rhythm of one step foreword, three steps back.

Or so it feels.

I'm usually spinning in ten different directions in my mind, dissecting thoughts, analyzing everything, noticing details. It's normally a pretty crazy place in there and I'm juggling all the ideas and words in a valiant attempt to shuffle them into some kind of linear sense.

Lately, however, I've become a mellow line rolling steadily onward.

It has been really, really quiet around here.

My last post was all about silence and growing through it, but I feel as though I'm growing out of it at this point. I desperately want to shake things up. I don't recognize this place and I miss the random bursts of colour, the unpredictable, the anticipation of possibility.

: :

Smells are very important to me for some reason. I go rogue in soap and lotion stores. I'm not into anything too fruity or too perfume-y. The smell has to be distinct, yet subtle. Smells are directly connected to location and memory (and I didn't make that up, either. That is an actual fact). I found a lotion today that I used for all of first semester, and one whiff took me back to the days of early fall and econ class and the different shades and nuances that season held for me.

Now I am here and in some ways I feel as if I have digressed. I like to think that I'm always pushing foreword and growing, constantly building up and gaining new ground. These days, though, I'm either stalling or rolling backwards. I get moments of air and clarity sprinkled throughout my days and, in those spaces, I convince myself that I'm totally fine. What was I worrying about again? There's nothing wrong. It'll work itself out. Life is dandy.

Then I notice how quiet everything is.

What I'm really doing here is kicking around the inside of my shell, trying to punch a hole in it. I really hope I'm making sense, but if I'm not, I'm ok with that too. I don't have all the answers. This is a journey and I'm standing at a point in the road where I can't see where I'm going. It's a little foggy.

: :

In attempt to gain some direction, I've been running over these frayed ends, trying to pull them together in some kind of connection. Scattered ideas are all I have.

• I could be on the verge of something. I feel as though I'm walking around with a blindfold on and earplugs in, stumbling around with my arms waving out in front of me, but when this blindfold comes off, I could find myself further ahead and standing in a place of more brilliant freedom and maturity. I can let this silence create distance between myself and God, or I can press in and allow it to draw me closer toward him. 

• I might need to do something. There is a thought bouncing around in the back of my mind that I need to stop thinking sometimes and start doing things. I don't think this means ignoring underlying issues or pretending away what I feel, but I might be overthinking all of this just a bit. It might be time to pull out of all the theorizing, stop connecting the dots and start taking action.

• I am not defeated. Honestly, all of this quiet kind of trailed me into autopilot after a while (hence the plodding mellow line). All of last year I lived with a sense of total and complete awareness of God. I was still a confused and wandering mess of a child, but I'd seek hard and pray hard and watch intently as God kept showing up in my life. It floored me every time. Somewhere, somehow, the bottom cracked a bit. I felt it, but at the beginning I had no idea how the hollowness would reverberate through every part of me. I still pray all the time, but I'm not as expectant as I used to be. My prayers wilted a little. I'm walking around with an attitude of defeat when I should be standing in a posture of victory and freedom. 

This is me shuffling through, scraping back, and trying to regain my footing. This is a messy part, choppy water, but when is life ever a free ticket to serendipity? Usually the most joyful moments are found in pockets scattered over the hard road. I've lived this. I know this. 

Sometimes it takes a while for my heart to catch up with my head. 

*Note: I am not blaming God or suggesting that I need to do something to "gain his favour" again. What I am getting at is this: I am prone to wander. I have so much more to learn. God is always faithful. I may not understand, but maybe I don't have to, and maybe I never will. The word "trust" comes to mind....

Silence and a Hymn

Sometimes you just need a quiet space and a way to worship.

To be honest, I've been walking through one of those periods of spiritual quiet for some time, now. I've been straining to hear, craning my neck to see, but nothing comes.

I've kept my eyes and ears open, waiting for a glimpse or a whisper, but all I receive is a reverberating silence and my own words dissolving into thin air.

I would say that it has been a source of tension for me, and it has, but it has also been a calming type of quiet. Yes, I've tossed a few harshly worded prayers to heaven in moments of frustration, but I have also come to know the silence well and sometimes, if I look or listen hard enough, I can see a shadow or echo of presence, a ripple of something more real that I know moving beneath the surface.

I am not alone, and when I press into the silence, I understand that. I know that a friendship has reached a deeper level when I can simply sit in comfortable silence with the other person. Perhaps this kind of silence from God is similar.

When the silence comes, I become more alert. My senses are sharpened because I'm desperate to hear, to see, to feel. When this period of silence is over, I know I will appreciate my relationship with God in a fresh way. I'm not taking Him for granted.

I am simultaneously waiting in peaceful quiet and actively searching for God. I know I am not abandoned, yet I can't wait to come to the place of meeting again.

Patience.

Those frustrating moments I mentioned? They agitate, like sandpaper against the soul. My heart is a stone and the silence is scraping, smoothing my rough edges, wearing me down....

Breaking point.

I went downstairs tonight and sat in front of a piano and played hymns. I played hymns and paid attention to their words and one hymn struck me. It is called "Lord, You Sometimes Speak in Wonders," written my Christopher M. Idle, and these are the words:

Lord, you sometimes speak in wonders

unmistakable and clear;

mighty signs prove your presence

overcoming doubt and fear.

Lord, you sometimes speak in whispers,

still and small and scarcely heard;

only those who want to listen

catch the all-important word.

Lord, sometimes you speak in silence

through our loud and noisy day:

we can know and trust you better

when we quietly wait and pray.

Lord, you often speak in Scripture,

words that summon from the page,

shown and taught us by your Spirit

with fresh light for every age.

Lord, you always speak in Jesus,

always new yet still the same;

teach us now more of our Saviour:

make our lives display his name.

Silence is what remains when all the noise is chiseled and fallen away. We're swimming in noise and silence is the ocean floor. It is the bottom, the solid, the canvas before it is painted. A seed doesn't need sound to grow.

I'm learning to see silence as space. It is space to grow and think and be still. it is a space to ask questions and prepare for answers. It is a baseline, it is the foundation, and, like it or not, I am here.

Lord, sometimes you speak in silence...... 

Now and Then

Life is, as always, a collage of pieces that make up the whole. Right now the fragments of my life that make up this collage include studying, watching movies way too late at night, eating really good Asian food, going to church, laughing, drinking tea, so much singing and even more studying.

Once in a while, though, stress creeps in and there might be a temporary digression in my resolve and maturity. Last night may have looked like me laying on the floor and eating chocolate while listening to the Ultimate Playlist of Angst.

We all have our low moments.

However, a good night's sleep can cure a multitude of anxiety and the sun did rise again this morning. Today is a day called "You Must Crush Every Scrap of Work in Your Path," and my motivation has been restored.

That is my external situation. Internally, I've been batting around some new questions and allowing myself to consider some new answers. Something fresh is taking root and growing and that is both healthy and hard. I realized that there are a couple of things in my life that I could be gripping too tightly. One of these things is an ideal and the other is a kind of "chapter" I've been living in for a while. If I lost them both tomorrow I don't think I would react well. At all. I am hovering dangerously close to placing too much of my identity and hope into these things and I do not want that. I've also been getting the feeling that I will have to let go of them sooner than later, and I want to do that with grace and integrity when the time comes.

The realization that letting go is on the horizon is sometimes hard to reconcile. It starts with an idea that leads to a consideration, and suddenly little signs and signals begin to arise and line up and point to a truth. I've come to a place where I see where all of this is going and I have to decide whether to accept this reality or live in a rosy glow of denial, prolonging the issue.

The problem is that denial and attempts at justification and resisting change takes up so much effort that is, essentially, wasted. I've done it all before and it is exhausting. This time I want to try something different. Instead of resisting, I want to relinquish with gratitude. I want to enjoy what I am given while I have it and, when the time comes to let go, release and embrace what may come. These are not life or death issues, and life will go on beyond them.

These decisions are, like I said, still a dust cloud on the horizon. I'm not trying to be melodramatic. These are just questions nagging in the back of my mind and I want to be honest about them.

In the meantime, in the now, my collage is coming together nicely. I'm so thankful for what it has become.

Grounded

So I say that I am going to work on my candour and it turns out that it isn't very hard so far because life is, well, not too exciting, to say the least. We're knee deep in our second semester of first year, which means that (most) of the all nighters and crazy antics have run their course. We got it out of our system early and now we're in a whole new rhythm that is more healthy, but slightly less eventful.

I love it, in a way. I liked the crazy spontaneous nature of first semester, but I think it ended while it was still good, and it needed to. Someone (genius) once told me not to mourn too long over the old seasons that pass, but appreciate what was and look full into the face of what is. I used to chronically look over my shoulder, wishing for a wisp of the past to return, but I missed so much of the good that was happening in the moment. Now I'm trying to be more intentional about noticing the seasons passing and appreciating them for what they are.

If there was a word to describe this season, it would be "grounded." I don't normally label the seasons I go through, but this time "grounded" seems to fit. I'm less hurried these days, less anxious and less analytical. I'm very present, and my stress level is significantly lower, thank goodness. It is suspiciously calm around here. Normally I could pinpoint something that I did to get me to this place of peace and security, but there aren't any obvious tricks or magical answers this time. I do have some theories, though:

1. I made a promise to myself not to procrastinate this semester. I've been a procrastinator for as long as I can remember and exam time last semester was absolutely not enjoyable as a result. I am not ready to repeat that this semester, so this time around I have not procrastinated much at all. It is definitely a better way to live.

2. The reason why not procrastinating is easier this time is because I enjoy what I am studying. This is a sign to me that I am in the right place in school. I switched my program twice, but I've found my niche. Looking back, I wouldn't have wanted to find this place any other way. The exploration was the part of the journey that confirmed the destination. I know for sure I'm in the place I should be because I know for sure where I shouldn't be, and that is valuable knowledge.

3. There is something to be said for giving yourself permission to be who you are and to embrace failure along the way. Recently I stumbled across the realization that I so often glance over into other's lives and wish for things I don't have. I started looking at my own life and found that I actually appreciate who I am and where I am right now. It turns out that I wouldn't want anyone else's life and that is very freeing. It allows more room for possibility and, strangely enough, permission to fail. Failure doesn't pinch the same way when you love where you are and who you are becoming. It adds some colour to your story and can be very good and needed if you allow it to be.

So I'm standing now in a place of middle ground. I said before that I felt as though I was running up a vertical learning curve, but I think it plateaued more quickly than I expected. Thank goodness for grounded spaces.

Return to Honesty {read: enter at your own risk}

I was thinking about creativity the other morning and it suddenly struck me that so much of creativity is about honesty. If the artist is not being honest in their art, its impact will be far less and the art is reduced to something more mediocre. Raw honesty is compelling and true. Art should remind the viewer of something familiar, something they might not be able to put their finger on, but they recognize it as something deeply real, or maybe something forgotten or lost in themselves. Art needs to make the viewer think, look deeper, see the world from a different angle or a new lens.

This is the voice in me when I write, too: Keep it honest, Christy. Keep it honest and true........

You can't sugarcoat art or bundle it up so it doesn't hurt when it pricks you. Art is there. It is ours. It reveals our humanity in a million different ways and all art contributes to our story- the one we're trying to weave together, the one about us.

The other day, I wrote a phrase that kind of fell into my mind one evening when I was brushing my teeth

I have confidence in my writing because it never fails to force me up against all my insecurities. If it did anything less, I wouldn't trust it.

I keep coming back to this because I wonder if I actually believe that. I wonder if I actually want to believe that. 

I was walking to class today and thinking about it, and I suddenly realized that I'm not always honest in the way I share my writing. Not here, at least. I pick and choose what I want to publish and, in all honesty, most of what I put up here is the end of the means. It delivers the good stuff in an easy package, but I edit out all of the other writing that leads up to these ideas. The reason I say that this is not honest is because I don't offer the journey. Yes, these are glimpses and snapshots, but not the whole.

I'm challenging myself to a new level of real, here. It might look a little messy and detached sometimes, but I am going to offer more in the little chips and snatches of writing that I would have kept saved in a document on my computer. That's not exactly an apology, either. It is a precursor, and that is exciting even to me, because I have no idea what is coming next.

Enter at your own risk.

There Are More Questions Than "Why"

For the past few months I have been running up a huge learning curve. Actually, it isn't even a curve. It has just been a straight line pointing "up" and it doesn't show signs of sloping downward any time soon. However, I feel as though I've hashed through enough lately that I'm gaining some kind of clarity.

I'm notorious for asking questions. Even if I don't voice these questions, they are definitely there, percolating in my mind, swirling around as I toss them up and try to cut in at every angle in an attempt to gain a more whole picture. I admit that sometimes a question presents itself in my mind and it nags until I take up the line to pursue it. It is almost an obsession to know. I have to know.

The most common question that rises in my mind is why. I've grown cold toward this word because it always leads me to the edge of a cliff and leaves me stranded. Why is tricky, sometimes unanswerable, and always frustrating. Why questions run like a broken record in my mind, spinning out and leading me to dead ends all over the place.

A few weeks ago I was praying and getting to that desperate place that I so often find myself in; a place where I feel restless and undone and claustrophobic. I had been feeling random anxiety and I was sitting there asking God why. "Why do I feel this way? Why here? Why now?" Then I fell silent and a clear thought rang in my mind:

There are more questions than why.

When a doctor or a journalist or a counsellor wants to know something, they ask more questions than just why.

This may seem so simple, but it was a paradigm shift for me. Why questions can be bookends. They might initiate an exploration or prompt a reflection, but the journey to the answer often looks more gritty or colourful than the dead-end why.

So rather than asking why I am feeling anxiety and waiting for a banner in the sky to wave an answer from heaven, I begin to pray through different questions:

Where was I when I started to feel anxious?
Who was around me?
When did it happen?
What was I thinking about?
How was I acting?


With these questions I come in at different angles and loosen the tight locks of the situation so it can breathe a little. This is just one, very simple, example, but I'm finding that more often than not, why is the wrong question to end with. Why is a signal to look deeper, whether that is running myself through new questions, or whether that is intentionally paying attention to what God might be speaking to me or noticing different patterns that arise in my life. The more I ask new questions and pay attention to the answers, the less stuck I become. If I'm asking the question why, it probably means that I don't know the answer. If I'm asking God why all the time, there is probably a reason that I don't know. I may be learning something, my vision might be too narrow, it might be too much for me to handle; God knows the situation and He knows all of the answers. He also knows me better than I do.

There are times, though, when why is a call to action. An answer might not be sufficient; I might just need to grieve or apologize or take a new risk. It might be time to stop analyzing the past or worrying about the future or making excuses for the present. I might feel stuck in why because I am stuck. I'm not moving foreword and I need to. The time is now.

So, rather than staying in the dead-end, why has become a signpost to me. It has become a kind of code language for wait or watch or you're still learning. Sometimes it means go or do or rest. It prompts me to ask different questions and it asks me to be patient.

I still don't get answers very quickly, but sometimes the best remedies come slowly. They assemble quietly as I follow my string of questions and gather up bits and pieces of answer along the way. Then, one day, I might find myself standing at the end of a chapter or a page and see that the response I wanted so quickly grew up slowly and, in the end, it bloomed in a more unexpected and more beautiful (yet sometimes more painful) way than I wanted it to.

Somehow, though, it is still good.

There are more questions than why. There is more than one way to answer.

Joy and Pain

Our lives beat with the pulse of joy and pain. These two emotions are braided into the roots of our being, mingling together and spinning us in an erratic dance called "life." Within this dance, joy and pain swing us high in arcs of euphoria and drop us deep into suffering. There is no birth without pain, and the deepest joy is birthed from pain. When an infant enters the world, it slips into the light from the darkest place. . . (join me, here, to read the rest?)

So, Who Will You Be?

It's university and I'm eighteen years old and attempting to construct some plan my future, but I'm caught in a tension. The dilemma is whether I should do what I want to do, what I think I should do, or if there is any difference at all between those two questions. I say that I want to make the right decision to get myself a good job, but since when did I ever care that much about getting a "good" job? That's already a signal to me that I'm trying to hide something from myself.

The problem right now is that I'm only half doing what I want- the other half is doing something that I want to do too, but for completely different reasons. It feels a little bit wrong. The tension is whether I want a degree in business, which I hate, or a degree in english, which I love. There are many other variables to this issue (trust me), but this is the basic core of it.

The question that keeps circling in my head is: "are you just taking business so that you sound smarter?" I think that I might be walking right back into my old habits without even realizing it. I might be back to wishing that I was the logical math genius rather than this complicated, creative personality that I've been given. Is it because I always want the quick answers and rather, I am the one who must explore, uncover and experience things the hard way before realizing what I knew all along? That is what makes me myself, and I do love it, but I also think that I am wishing myself, pushing myself, into a mold that doesn't quite fit me. I can slip into it and wear it, but it doesn't flatter who I really am or highlight my best qualities. I'm not my best self here.

The reason this is risky- switching programs- is not because I'm so worried about my future career path. I trust that that will unfold somehow. That's not the point. The risk is that I feel like I'm about to let that elusive math and logic "self" beat me again. This means that I'm letting go of an ideal, trusting a lot (and giving up a job that might sound "smarter").

I have to trust that God did not create me to be naturally systematic and logical for a reason. There is a reason why I've been gifted with this specific skill set and why this is my true passion.
I was walking to make an appointment with my academic advisor to talk about switching my program when suddenly I felt like I had put it off long enough. I needed to sit under this tree right now and write, for heaven's sake.

Because something great might come from this; and how can I give up english for business? I'll go further doing what I love than cinching myself into something I hate, something I know I'll never really excel at. Maybe quitting business isn't allowing it to trump me at all- maybe it is saving myself, freeing myself. Maybe it's allowing myself space and energy to invest into doing what I love. I'd rather fight later for english and a job in that field than fight right now for an economics grade that I don't even care about.

So, true to my usual self, nothing ever happens in any kind of conventional way for me. Nothing is very linear in my life. I think, though, that at some point honesty has to take over. I have to be willing to risk doing what I love for the sake of my sanity and my calling. I can't fight the truth forever.

On Community and Why I Love Story

I haven't written here for a while. It isn't for lack of wanting to, but sometimes there are more intense seasons we walk through in life that require rest and recuperation after we experience them. As much as I hate to admit it, I have limitations and seasons of rest are just as important as seasons of productivity. I've intentionally paused from writing here for a couple of weeks.

I have been writing outside of this space, though, and I've been so honoured at the response I have received from those who have read either my stories or the stories that others have graciously allowed me to tell. It is a blessing to me. The reason I love to write other people's stories is because sometimes we can't see the meaning or depth of our stories, especially the painful ones, until someone else tells it for us. I love to be able to give that gift through my words.

The following is an excerpt from a longer essay I wrote recently about learning and how it extends far beyond the classroom. Community and story is what is really teaching us, however subtly, and prodding us toward a deeper understanding of ourselves, our lives, our world. Story teaches us something about being human. When someone is brave enough to be transparent, the impact an be huge. Story moves us.

Community can be an amazing place to learn and grow together but it can also teach us hard lessons in very painful ways.

". . . The truth is that there can be deep hurt within a community and some people draw back from this. I've been this person; the one with the broken trust and guarded soul, wary of groups and people because I've watched good churches split and good friends become cold. I've had the privilege of being wrapped in a wild, gracious, loving community with friends like brothers and sisters to me and I've had to say good-bye to them and break away. I've watched beloved family members die slowly. Through all of these experiences my heart closed a little bit more.

In Writer's Craft class this year my teacher handed me a specific quote after reading a short story I had written and it screamed at me like a siren.

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries. . . .  Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket-safe, dark, motionless, airless-it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable."
-C.S Lewis (The Four Loves)

I know I've missed out on rich relationships because I've kept people at arm's length. I can list names of the people who have reached out to me, yet I turned a cold shoulder because I couldn't take the risk. I was wrestling with this issue when I was given this quote and it loosened the noose around my heart a little. It put a crack in the walls I hide behind . . ..

We start each Writer's Craft class with prayer and the moments that we share prayer requests together have become a kind of holy space. Here, we share the burdens we carry or the burdens we see others carry. We spread the load a little between us all and it forms a connection, a shared bond. We sit in a circle and as the burdens and joys are spoken, I always see them falling in the middle and resting on the web of laughter and tears that runs between us and pulls us closer. We learn from the raw experience of others . . .."

I've been learning to be transparent with my own story because so many people have been willing to share pieces of their own honest stories with me. These people have been brave enough to show me the more hidden, broken parts of who they are. This is rich to me and I've learned so much from their truthfulness. I have to be fair and allow you to see what I've learned from my own messy, beautiful story. We weren't made to walk through life alone, but so many people live in isolated pain, breaking from the inside out; it is healing to share the fractured pieces of our narratives as well as the good parts. Sharing our stories is healthy and needed. It strengthens our bond, builds community, and it might even allow us to see a new dimension of purpose to our lives. That is the power of story.