Changes come, turn my world around....

A season of change, a season of growth and introspection... of realizing that I am an addicted extrovert, and learning how to spend time breaking my addiction by sitting on my couch alone in my empty house, crocheting and listening to George Winston paint lovers and sunrises, poetry and peace with his fingers and a set of ivory keys...

The leaves are mostly off the trees now, from 24 karats of sparkling autumn exuberance to the mulch that is now composting in the gutters along the sides of the winter streets.  Most days it is nice to ride my bike (my little love, companion, and only means of transportation) to work, and to dance, with the crisp wind stinging my cheeks and making my eyes stream.  Most days it is nice, except for the rainy ones. 

The blog has been neglected lately, mostly because of the vast and far-reaching sphere of influence that facebook has overtaken...

I wanted to share this somewhere publicly because I think it is wonderful.

And a poet said "Speak to us of Beauty".

And he said, "Where shall you seek beauty, and how shall you find her unless she herself be your way and your guide?

And how shall you speak of her unless she be the weaver of your speech?"

In winter say the snow-bound, "She shall come with the spring leaping upon the hills."

And in the summer heat the reapers say, "We have seen her dancing with the autumn leaves, and we saw a drift of snow in her hair."

All these things have you said of beauty, Yet in truth you speak not of her but of needs unsatisified.   And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.  It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth, But rather a heart inflamed and a soul enchanted.

It is not the image you would see, nor the song you would hear, but rather an image you see though you close your eyes, and a song you would hear though you close your ears.

People, ... beauty is life when life unveils her holy face."

Kahlil Gibran - 1923

'Grey or gray is a color between white and black. It is a color seen commonly in nature and fashion. In pigment,it is created by mixing complementary colors (colors directly opposite on the color wheel, e.g. yellow and violet). In light, or additive color, it is created by adding equal amounts of red light, green light, and blue light.'

Grey is wistful, melancholy, musing... (inspiring pensive sadness - the soul's responding to gentle fragments of beauty, swept together under a steamed milk sky), charismatic, enchanting... (fog's sweet tongue whispering secrets over damp lonely streets).... 

Sometimes days are grey like a newspaper, grandma's hair, ashes.  Grey like rain - heaven's kisses and tears meeting Earth, champagne bubbles spilling over and down -wet and wonderful, pooling in puddles and lingering... caressing tired pavement and hanging heavy like a lovers' silence.

memory:  April in India... travelling home from the hospital; the raw, exposed sun beating down on our rickshaw as we sweated and rattled through the crowded, uneven streets.  The forty-five degree air was heavy laden with untreated, ozone-killing exhaust filling our lungs, burning our eyes, soaking into our pores.  Finally arriving at the gate behind which we lived was a relief, but walking up the wide stone steps that led to the church was an ominous challenge to our weary bodies that were already pushed past the point of exhaustion (emotional and physical). 

We plod up the steps, foot after blood-spattered foot, heads down, not speaking.  Almost as if we imagined it, the air gets cooler - easier to breathe.  Clouds begin to cover the sun, then the entire sky, wasting no time (as if they are in a hurry). One monsoon raindrop swells, then falls thickly to earth like a bullet in slow motion.  It lands, shatters, and - almost as if on a stage cue - delicious, luscious, passionate rain comes crashing down on the dry and thirsty land, kissing my cheeks as I lift my upturned face to receive its embrace.

I stand in the window watching the grey sky turn black, and lightning illuminates the stone cathedral that towers out the window in front of me.  ''Arise, my beloved, and come away with me".... He beckons me with his sweet fragrance... the fragrance of sweet cool rain, steam rising from the baked concrete courtyard, the fragrance of a jealous and passionate romance that blows in the open window, tenderly lifting my hair and silk dupatta from my shoulders, twirling and flowing behind me like a dance.  In this moment I am alive, and I am in love.

"Pleasing is your fragrance.... your name is like perfume poured out..

no wonder the maidens love you...

take me away..."

(Song of Songs - The Holy Bible)

And so I find myself in Northern BC, preparing to do all the things a maid of honor does in her younger sister's wedding!  Terrace is a small town where you walk down the street and recognize faces everywhere, bumping into people in the grocery store that seem to know more about your personal life than you know about their name...

This morning the ragtag members of my rather large family, myself included, were attempting to ready ourselves for church.  The service starts at 11:00.

At 10:59 and counting, Mickayla, the youngest, starts to cook herself some lumpy looking stovetop oatmeal.  This sets off Claire, who is ushering kids down the stairs like a dictator, barking about how its ELEVEN O'CLOCK and we need to go!  NOW!

My stepmom leisurely steps halfway down the stairs and calmly announces that she's going to lady's retreat, and we are going to church without her.  My granny is puttering back and forth near the front door muttering about how she can't drive anymore so she has to wait for someone to drive her, and why can't we just start driving when there are so many cars and so many drivers.  Kids are still running up and down the stairs looking for various articles of clothing and shoes.  We pile out the door to find that my stepmom is taking the car, my dad's truck is full of garbage to take to the dump, and the other truck isn't big enough so we start loading into the family aerostar van.  Somehow we ended up having to cram Granny, myself, my 5 younger siblings, Claire's fiance Shane, and my cousin Julie into the van.  My Dad knocks on the drivers side window to be let in - the door doesn't open from the outside, we're all squished together and somebody forgot to brush their teeth...

As we clatter up the gravel road that leads to church, Claire remarks that we might as well not even go because we're so late, and Aaron pipes up in agreement "yeah, we're gonna walk in halfway through the sermon..."  Then me: "but guys, at least we'll get there for some of it, and that means we might even scrape by getting into heaven!"  The kids laugh nervously, silence ensues from the front seat as Dad remains calm and Granny sits with her cane under her arm and her ears plugged.

There is a recklessness in romance.  A drunkenness that ebbs and flows throughout life

like the oceans tide.  Ebbs and flows over my feet as I drag them through soft white sand ripples

making clouds.

My head makes a shadow on the sand, right through the water.  Light streams away from it in beams,

like a halo trying to escape.

A halo made of ocean, and sunlight, wrapped around the big black shadow of my head.

It radiates outwards, but it doesn't leave its place.  Stuck there, just there, on my head - on the sand.

The ocean is one of the best places I can think of to look for God,

because here He can show off.  Here, He can show you how

breathtaking and enticing and beckoning and passionate and dangerous

He is.

Full of bliss and life and holy rage.

"Ecstasy, I think, is a soul's response to the waves holiness makes as it nears." - Annie Dillard

Plunge into the waves.  Be tossed and spun by the passion, like kelp.

Recently suffering an extreme lack of inspiration for new blogs, I opted out of posting last week, and am struggling to post this week.  On the bright side, my SISTER Claire arrived on April24th, and will be staying with me until May 13th! 

She has been able to visit the Mother Teresa home, where we did loads and loads of pooey laundry in giant buckets of sudsy water by hand, and got soaked from waist to toe :)  We also went to help one of our YWAM contacts with his feeding program, which consists of him and his wife cooking for 60 or so slum children and bringing the food to them every day except Sunday.  We cooked Tamarind rice in their sweltering 50 degree kitchen, then walked to the slum and gave out the food to the delighted, ragamuffin little darlings. 

On Friday, Claire had the opportunity to not only WITNESS her first delivery EVER, but to be a part of it, as my hands guided her hands in bringing a beautiful, fat, 3.9kg baby girl into the world!  I have pictures, but they are a little graphic and will be reserved for family and those who are sincerely interested.  Here we are in the newborn room, after she was bathed and dried, hatted, named and prayed for!  Little 'Aurea Sunshine' :)

In other news, we were blessed enough to deliver a second baby girl together, and we gave her the hat I made just the night before.  When I had finished the main part, Claire commented:  "aww! you should give it ears!"  So I busily get to work, putting 'ears' on this hat.  When I finished, I proudly held it up for her approval and she burst into laughter, explaining that she meant "ear FLAPS", not kitty ears.  heh. :)

We (well, I helped once, but mostly Bess, a girl from the DTS Annemarie, and Lisa's "brother" from Tonga) painted a mural on the wall, behind the admissions desk.  It is a tree from Revelation 22, about the tree that grows on both sides of the river of life, and its leaves are for the healing of the nations.  We wanted it to be about a message of hope.  The promise of new life!

Thats the back of Claire in my punjabi that used to be Michaela's!

Fin.