All I currently have to say is that Sufjan Stevens new album is changing my soul. Well God is actually, through listening to this man’s creative expressions. I had the privilege of seeing him live last week. He seems to be uninhibited creatively, and it is this quality in him that I am completely jealous of.

I have also recently made friends with a cat, for the first time, ever, in my life. I have named her (or him?) Miss Thang. She is a small black cat that lives by my apartment. She is friendly, cuddly, and very skiddish. I like her/him. For some reason I find this significant for me.

You know when you live in a small space when:

Your kitchen is your living room is your bedroom is your closet…..

You do your dishes in the bathroom sink, and your teapot is the decorative piece on the back of your toilet.

It takes you more than a month to make everything fit.

You step on a fork when you get in the shower: thank God it was plastic!

You hang as much of your stuff on the walls as you possibly can; Everything you own is considered at one point or another as a piece of art that can be hung.

There is not enough room to lay down on the floor, but this time not because you are messy.

People need to leave the premises for someone to use bathroom.

You could reach everything you need from your bed if you had one of those extender-grabber devices that they give old people in nursing homes.

Pictures to come soon.

But since Pfeffer, I kind of shut off to animals for a while, until recently. I’ve had some bad experiences since I have been out here living in LA. THe first place I lived there was a lady next door with hundreds of cats. I mean hundreds. My landlord had actually taken her to People’s Court for this, after many visits by animal control to remove the cats. My first LA summer was one of sleeping with earplugs because of hundreds of cats in heat. Awful, torturous sounds, which only solidified my past hatred of cats.

The second place I lived we had rats/mice in our garage. Again…..our neighbor had a pig, and so because of the pig pig, “they” said we would never get rid of the mice. Many days of going to do laundry in the garage included rat spottings, of which I had shivers up my spine, made sure to move quickly, turn on lights, slam the door a few times before coming in, and to limit the amount of laundry I did.

I moved again however. And since I have lived there, there have been some lovely snails, a hummingbird, friendly cats that aren’t disgusting, a baby possum which didn’t really bother me to be honest, a dog that reminds me of Pfeffer, named Stella….and hand-fulls of puppies are brought to the coffee shop I work at.

I heard a story last night about a “guard/watch”dog that can sense when it’s diabetic owner has low blood sugar and/or will have a seizure. AMAZING!?/WHAT!? I’ve never heard of such a thing. My friends cat was reclusive for days before the earthquake this week; he said that’s how he knows an earthquake is coming: his cat hides.

To be honest, I’m not sure anything has changed but me, and my heart. I’m grateful for whatever has been shifted in me to this place, and that the season of closed-off-ness is over, though I know it had a purpose to help this season of appreciation too. Thank you God for all the incredible creatures.

One day on my way to an appointment I was thinking about what I would do afterward and God reminded me of some money I had, and a store I liked to run through that I hadn’t visited in a while. I was thrilled at remembering this and then asked God that if there were a pair of boots there I would be really excited, ….I think that is telling God actually. I told God again what I wanted.

After my appointment I walked into the store. I saw these pair of boots which were similar, but not exactly, what I was looking for. I put them on and they fit perfectly however. I stood in them for a minute and really checked them out and grew to love them in about the course of 4 minutes. I was like ‘WOW oh WOW’ inside, and looked at the price which was perfectly within what I could afford. I got VERY excited. I bought the boots.

God wanted me to have the boots. For now atleast. And I am enjoying the socks off them. They may be taken away or fall apart one day, but I believe that the relationship that led to the discovery of the boots is one that can carry me through any searching. longing, loss and finding of good gifts. The boots are a blessing. I love wearing the boots and get lots of compliments. They were not what I totally expected, but also not outside of what I like in a pair of boots. The boots have become a meaningful gift of God giving me permission to ask for what I want, wait for what I want, own my longing and desires. Permission….and a lesson in holding things open-handedly. I pray every time they adorn my feet ( i love feet ) I would be recalled of the good God who guides them, even if into the mud.

A new friend. I am grateful for openness to God, invitations and sharing about seeing another through a lens.

Abbie Smith – on being female

http://www.conversantlife.com/relationships/in-gratitude-of-estrogen

Cate MacDonald – on Jennifer Knapp’s coming out ….

http://mereorthodoxy.com/?p=2677

A very tall black man with sharp eyes and curly hair sat down in front of me on the CTA, no more well-to-do than any other traveler on the CTA, in fact looking a little less than.  A Latina woman and her daughter were sitting across the aisle next to him. A while into the ride, the girl starred very suspiciously and glanced at the man’s very large foot, dressed with a large purple and white basketball shoe. She scowled in fact. He caught her scowl and looked straight back. She became more fierce and backed up into her mother’s protective sphere.

The man responded to the girl, “what’s that look for?” I searched to hear for his tone as I observed their interaction. She said nothing and just starred harder, got more scared and stuck her finger in her mouth. His face lightened and he responded playfully, ” I know: God blessed me with BIG feet. My daughter used to make the same kinds of faces at my feet.” She nodded and the tension in her face eased. He proceeded to share a delightful conversation with her about shoes, her rain boots and his own daughter.

When she got of the train, he turned back at me, noticing I had been observing, and laughed. “Did you see that? She was so scared of me! I saw that look on her face and thought, ‘Oh no! I have to nip that fast, there is no need for that.” I assume referring to the girls fear and suspicion of a man very different from herself. We conversed for another few stops until he had to get off, and I learned he was in Chicago for a graphic design job while his family, whom he dearly missed, remained in West Virginia. He coached basketball and tennis and was very gregarious. Earlier I had found myself wrestling, though not as externally as the girl, with my own childlike suspicion of this man.

After he got off I found myself very grateful for his direct confrontation of fear and suspicion with his own honesty, kindness and ability to diffuse whatever holds all us humans back from connecting to our neighbors around us, be it race, class, education, looks or any other sort of judgement. He wanted to be understood, just as I do, and the girl did. I hope to be a little more like him, and take whatever hangs in the air between us, tempting us to be divisive and afraid of others, and to nip it, hopefully as eloquently as he.

I am grateful for work, to use my hands, for a very modest income, and for some sort of rhythm to add to my days. It helps me be freer. It helps me feel more valuable. I imagine there is some unhealthy, sinful enjoyment, value and meaning i get out of working, earning and feeling deserving or more honorable; I also think there is something in us as humans that needs to work to satisfy a deeply imbedded God image, as Miroslav Volf’s, Work in the Spirit: Toward a Theology of Work, would attest to. Adam and Eve worked the Garden before they screwed up the situation. I think it is this later satisfaction that I am finding, and pray I don’t slip into the ever so subtle and dangerous first motive, of working for the sake of money, identity, and ultimate purpose. I work, and prayerfully try to, because God has put it on me and in me to work for Him, his kingdom come, no matter what I do, get paid or who I work for, be they believing or not. Even as I type I pray God’s Spirit work this in my more, and the other things out.

So now I enter my “season of transition” as I have been referring to it. I realize I don’t really know what this is. Other transitions have been less intentional and more chaotic and survival oriented. I hope with my ‘transitional job’ I will have a rhythm that allows me to continue doing what I most love about my current vocational opportunities, offering Spiritual Direction, and the remaining time to pursue what I believe to be encouragement towards a fuller, richer, more free and lively version of myself and things I am interested in, dare I say, ‘passions,’ of being creative, human sexuality, psychology, spiritual formation, and things revolving around issues of social/political injustice. Will God call me to a vocational endeavor in any one of these things? Will my vocation in them have anything to do with my current employment? Will I be employed in any of my vocational passions? Or will I always have a ‘transitional job’ or type of life sustaining day job, that allows me to pursue these other vocations.

Ultimately my vocation of being in love, giving and receiving, never stops, not by day job, or night. I can love and be loved anywhere, place or time, making coffee….or while, like some of my other friends, who I perceive to be doing things they love, writing books, raising money for those in need through running marathons, church planting, doing non-profit work etc. Love never stops or fails whatever my existential job crisis or dream job I have. Will my ‘transitional job’ become a permanent part of my vocational rhythms? That is the scarier, deeper question I am wrestling with. I want to do what I love, and come alive doing it. I don’t know what IT is yet. …..God still has to teach me more about me. So I wait…..and make some coffee in the mean time.

2. My car battery needed replaced. I bought a new one and it spilled in my car and I was freaking out because it is majorly poisonous. I was able to contain the spill to an old beloved orange picnic comforter that had to be buried, though it had a heroic death. Then I found a guy who put my battery in for free!

3. Two of my ceramics pieces made it into an art show for Women’s History month at Biola.

4. My roommates and I have been sharing amazing baskets of local vegetables the last month or so. I discovered a love for beet-orange juice and swiss chard.

5. The song by Monsters of Folk – ‘His Master’s Voice’ …..”the one that I love best, the voice inside my chest, I hear my master calling” and another song by Sufjan Stevens  - Seven Swans …..”He will take you. If you run, He will chase you ’cause He is the Lord”

6. Offering Spiritual Direction has been empowering, joyful, challenging, and live-giving. Grateful to walk with others on their insides.

What grabbed me most was conviction over feeling similarly about Jesus in my time of unemployment. I want to drag Jesus along with me and say “Here! Look! Give me a job! Give me this job!” You’ve done all these great things in my life, you’ve provided for me and I can name example after example of your goodness and faithfulness to me. But damn it! Why not now……and so my heart wrestles with deciding if I will trust in God’s love for the day or if I will succumb to anger, anxiety, my doubts. This has been my wrestling for the last month or more, since returning from Israel. And I feel my Lenten “fast” is better off a fast from my doubts, and a feasting on God’s work in my life up until this point, so that I can act out in my body trust, love, hope even if my heart doesn’t always match.