live life live

I haste my steps towards my red brick castle, catch my breath in anticipation; sitting down before I even shed my coat. Heart beating in a new way. I open the lid of Pandora’s Musical Box. Suddenly beauty rises from the movements of my fingers, I choke, and I know yet too little to even try to make it make sense. I play playfully, trying out new movements with dancing fingertips. Opening that black mysterical lid last night was an ephiphany that hasn’t faded.

Sure, I’ve sat behind a piano before but it never made any sense. I recently discovered what to do with my left hand, how to methodically let it press down three ivories at a time, allowing the right hand to jump and skip and be dramatic and tender and soft and outrageous. I love the sound, the present moment as the notes rise and circle up towards the high celing in my church. The formal steadiness of the left hand, seducing the right hand into melodies never heard before. 

I have no clue how one plays the piano. But I know I love doing it. I will never stop.

The horses taught me yet another lesson recently. For some time now I’ve longed to have a horse to ride and found one easily enough through connections. It was of a breed which I’ve never liked. Still, I though, “how bad can a Finnish horse be”, and tried it out, and begun to hire it against my better judgement. It only took one solo ride to realize this was NOT the desire of my heart. Yes, I wanted a horse, but not just any. I guess I’m becoming a person who’d rather go without, than make do with a mere substitue.

I always though “making do” and sacrificing were something to strive for.

C.S. Lewis writes that being selfless and forsaking things it not the most important virtue. Love is. In order love abundantly, one might indeed be forced to forsake much.  Forsaking has no meaning in it self, it is not worth striving for in itself. Now Love itself, and the Beloved,  are worth forsaking things for. 

It’s the same thing with pursuing the desires of one’s heart. The pursuit of one’s heart’s desires will cause one to sacrifice a great deal of things and perhaps one self, but nevertheless (self)sacrifice in it self brings no glory nor happiness. Sacrifice only becomes meaningful if it is a mean of pursuing that which one’s heart desires. (Be it a truly beautiful lively horse, like the one above. Tame through choise.)

The Psalmist says the Lord will give me the desires of my heart – and my sister says I’m worth enough to demand the very best. I needn’t be content with mere contentment. I needen’t live a lesser life, sacrificing for the sake of sacrificing,;I MAY pursue and fill my life with the desires of my heart.  Jesus says we should forsake our lives and thus find life. Well I’ve given my heart and life to Him, and He has taken out the stone heart and given me a new heart. Isn’t then that new heart on which He has written His law, a guide worth listening to?!

Sacrifice for its very own sake leads to stagnation. Sacrifice, as a mean of pursuing ones’ heart’s desire, however, is an empowering thing.

“Without vision the people perish” (Proverbs).

A favourite thought… not so much, yet rather frequent:

…the thought that life is to be lived between 20 and 30  and after that one IS to settle down and be boring and stagnated. And if one doesn’t calm down there is something profoundly wrong in one’s way of having relationships, in one’s capacity to live here and now and being content; one is simply immature.

So as I dance in the age of 27, I feel the pressure, the opinions, that I should now just keep walkig, head down, do my share and pay my taxes and not be a burden, not stick out, stop expanding. Where is that frickin’  lifeless though coming from??!?!!? It comes from myself, yet it doesn’t originate from me. So whom am I to fight in this battle of not agreeing to settle down and stagnate? Myself? Any other suggestions?

Or am I rather to grasp hold of healing and adventure and actively not care what people make out of my behaviour. To be whole and holy and still hulivili…. is that allowed?? When I looked at the adults around me growing up, I didn’t see life. (Perhaps it was there anyway) Jesus promise me life to the fll, more life I can ever dream of or contain. And I want that. Liveliness. And maturity and vastness and hulivility. I love spending time with close friends my age or a few years my senior, to see them grow freely and mature. Their lives whisper it is possible not to be strangled and conform.

WHY is stagnation’s call still dominating me so?

I’ve always been level headed when it comes to dreams and big ideas. “I have a dream…” says Martin Luther King, and I say, “oh, good for you” and flip the page. Still somehow longing to have a dream, too, but “thinking the better of it” and just getting on with life. Seeing only the things that are visible.

“Despair is the fate of the desiring soul”. I’m beging to long even for that despair, because of the joy it also brings with it. How lame will my life not be, if it becomes just what I dream of? I think I need God in this. “You cannot outdream God”, somebody wrote. I like that. Your thought are higher than mine, and your ways are higher than mine. So I needn’t settle for my small unimaginative thoughts, but invite God to impart His in my heart. Begining to see the invisible.

I don’t want my tomb stone to read, “She lead a life of perfect luke warm mediocracy, may she rest in indefference”.

A few days have gone since GLS, Global Leadership Summit. I’m amused by my always thinking “it won’t be good and I’ve heard it all before…” and how God still does something different from what I expact. Like making it really good and challenging. (Duh, is’t that what He IS…?) For us in Grani to have “IT”…. that something only God gives… not just the ignition but the flaming fire. As we’ve been praying in church, it feels like the table is empty now, anything can be served. Du bereder för mig ett bord… So bring it on, God!

The woman who’s almost been a flat mate this autumn (God puts the lonely in families) has talked about how we are seated with Christ in the heavenlies (Eph. Somethin:or-other). This has been a restful thought. Like when praying for something, it’s really like sitting down with Daddy, asking Him to tell the Story about how Grani was changed by Him. And as He tells me the Story, it happens. For real. How restful it is, to have God draw the furure! It doesn’t mean passivity on my part, just rest. I don’t need to come up with the Story or the solutions, I just ask Him to create.

I look forwards to enjoying what God will do.

Currently knocked out in my bed, listening to some funky & lovely home made jazz. The amount of watched dvd’s today is three. One is awaiting. Blown my nose countless times. Refrained from drinking ginger & lime -  Laura style (which means a whole chopped ginger root and three squeezed limes. Cures anything!). I am slowy healing from my symptoms. I am NOT ill, I only have symptoms of a massive cold in the head.

So far I have gotten a little taste of what’s to come workwise. The kid’s club is a real challenge! I find it difficult to realize they don’t speak with sarcasm, no dual meanings, they have fun and that’s all there is to it. And that they just simply like me. The teens I have are surely of the sweetest kind, but even so, they are teens – and thus sarcastic, funny, unsure of them selves, brave, not sure if they have fun but might be persuaded to think it really IS fun to build as high a tower as possible with cocktail sticks and jelly raspberries.

I have however been struck by how lonely this job could be. Planning alone for each time makes me doubt what’s fun and what’s not. However, even if I’d be planning with someone else, I’d still go for the lamest ideas. Lame is the new fun, surely everyone knows that! And blessed are the lame for they will be healed and skip around like calves out on pasture (some bilingual verse syncronism for all you theologians out there J).

For the past two days we’ve been doing treasure hunts with maps and riddles and the works! Before there were safes and banks, people burried their treasures and drew a map and let X mark the spot. God did something similar, only the other way around, as usual. He drew a map from the begining of the world, drew a big X in the midst of history – but He put the very Treasure ON the X. Then He let anyone get hold of the map book, for the Treasure to be found is enough for everyone. As we repent from our sins and recieve Jesus Christ we enter the Kingdom where He is Lord and King. It is right here in our midst! It’s the magical Kingdom that we belong to. It’s an up-side-down-kingdom which laws and principles and priorities differ from that of the fallen world we live in. It’s a Kingdom where impossible things are possible. It’s a Kingdom where there’s free lunches. And to seek it, I suppose, is to live a Kingdom life, to successively let it’s world view become my world view – seasoned with a righteousness from the Lord.

For the Kingdom of God is like a man who finds a treasure in a field and sells everything he owns and buys the field.

All settled then! I am now officially the youth and children’s worker at the local Methodist Church! I know it will be tough and hard work – yet it feels mostly like I have a long summer vacation ahead of me. Summer’s always been filled with camps and projects and friends and God. What used to be extra curricular activity has now officially become a job. Wow. So I am really being paid for doing fun things.

At first, I shall start up the kid’s after school group, and then bite into the big challenge: get organized with the youth! It feels like I’m walking in a secret garden at dawn: all sorts of mysterious flowers and scents begin to show them selves and open up as the first hours of light unfold. All of a sudden there are several people moving to this town I work in, young adults with devoted servant hearts who just “happen” to be thinking of joining my church. And I cannot help but stand in awe, wondering about what God is planning and preparing. I’m delighted to walk in this garden of surprise flowers! Autumn may be creeping in, but this garden that God has planted in my congregation is awakening.

As of yesterday I’ve also begun the Big Art Project: creating a cozy home out of the 36 sqm I have at my disposal. I shall truly be living in the holy of holies, right behind the altar. Presently, I am preoccupied by the, oh, so perpetually difficult job of deciding on colours. The whole place needs a good renovation. I am eager to begin scraping windows and fill holes and dents with putty and give the sink’s edges a good go of silicon. My apartment has two floors and a creaking wooden stair case: down stairs there’s one large room with three little windows, and upstairs one room and a kitchen. And a funny little closet… come to think of it, that’s the place where Lucy will get to paint her path to Narnia! The flat is most unpractial, however cute and bohemian  – I shall indeed feel very much at home. Please remember, good friend, that you are always welcomed to stay; a cuppa shall always be at your disposal.

What then of Oslo and the job I held down there? Well, I am grateful for the time I had there, the divine providence I experienced, the absence of feelings of loneliness, the simplified days, the good humoured people I worked with; and the great steps I took. I am truly blessed I got to spend a couple of months there. Now I am indeed a happy merry lady, alive, nervous, awaiting the future with great expectations – to recieve the great and small and equally precious gifts of every day life. Come and share the joy with me!

The Nazgul is slain, lying on the ground, no longer even gasping for air, no longer able to pester me with it’s foul breath. No man could kill it; indeed, I am happy that I had to do the honours myself, for this Nazgul was mine alone to slay. Both the decision to fight it and the lethal sting were mine alone.

As of tomorrow, I shall no longer be working at the post! A replacement has been found and as I’ll be going home for a week in any case, it was thought I could just as well stay home. And I rejoice! I was heading home for a funeral only, but staying on for my awakening.

This Nazgul, laying dead by my feet, has been a companion for a long time. It’s been rather large, frightful and enslaving, and most of all I wanted to ignore it or even just tame it – or, at least pretend it was tame. All the same, it slept as I slept, it stayed away as I wandered in the woods wondering about it. But as I headed off to work to do the very things I was trained to do, alas, it awoke.

This Nazgul did not equal work. It was the spirit of false loyalty and duties, the very same that would keep me a tied down captive. But fettered to what? Perhaps to status quo.

What now, after this sudden full stop? I shall apply for a part time job at a congregation, doing the things I always tell people I love doing. Youth work, kid’s clubs and coordinating/councelling voulunteers. If my application is accepted, the work will begin within a week! At first, I thought this very placement would be the easy way out and at first I was going to reject it for that very reason. However, I think I beging to see it as providence, not a way out. Why should I not work with something that doesn’t even feel like work?! (To quote my sister: “I don’t work, I dance! I only do things that are fun!” )

So dear reader and friend, pleace join me is this adventure!

Not to hide, but to gaze straight at it. Truth. To see how my own life reflects in it. Having been in Oslo for the better part of four weeks now, I have come to face the facts. At first, I did not want to see it, then I was blinded by tears, but now I begin to see reality.

Presently, I spend my days at the MRSA ward. I have lovely work mates, kind patients who are patient with my stumbling Norwegian, a good boss, better pay than ever, and, since a few weeks back I’m living somewhere for free. I have all the time in the world to wander out in the woods and get lost and find my way back again. Nor have I felt much loneliness, as Father has kept me company. Life has been simplified, stripped of stress. All is well and there is nothing to distract me any longer – I am indeed face to face with the fact that I do not enjoy my profession. Nor do I think I ever truly did. Now I see it clearly.

Am I allowed to make mistakes? Or, rather, to take a new turn? Am I truly NOT destined to stay in the same ward for forty years? Is it so, that I may walk out the door?

My boss was quite understanding, and firmly stated that life is too short for one to do something one does not want. Although I have not yet resigned, I have encouraged her to find my replacement. This Lady Éowyn shall be moving on in the near future. This might not be a great surprise to some of you, faithful readers, who have perhaps seen this coming all along. Where to, the Lady knows not.

Now, what’s next? Who knows but the Lord, and He is silent and only smiles. I know I want to bring healing; deep, true, life altering healing in the depths of souls. Health, healing, holiness, and wholeness – or, sanctification. Antonovsky writes that health is to have a sense of coherence (SOC). (Find out more about ‘salutogenesis’ on wikipedia) To attain a sense of coherence, and health, a person needs to increasingly experience meaningfulness, manageability and comprehensibility. That’s what I want to bring about, not just to place a band aid on a cut.

One lovely thing and one disturbing.

Got back from kayaking yesterday. With referals to my previous post on kayaking (aug 2007), the floating makes me think of grace. Only this time, I was overwhelmed by the sense of Jesus being my strength and guide. Sitting in the doubble kayak, feeling the strength and steering of the kayaker behind me, I felt I could go on forever. For I did not need to rely on my own strength. The notion that someone else’s strength would suffice made all the difference and made my strength come forth and put into use with gladness. I was physically reminded of the presence of Jesus in a very concrete way. Now as I am back, I keep bringing that sense of God’s strength and steering back to mind and body, and the notion makes me relax. He is good. Thank you to my kayak buddy for enabling me to have this experience, and to the one who gave me her seat.

My big sis refers to doubble kayaking as a well-functioning marriage, with the woman deciding the pace and the husband steering. I loved that parable too, and kayaking away I could feel what she meant. Perhaps she’ll write something about that as she dances on the keyboard…

I have met a fascinating man who really disturbs me. His name is Shane Claiborne and he talks about descipleship and really living the life of a Christian. As I read his book and as he shares his life and frustration and love and fun, I know I can only end up doing either of two things: 1) Ignore him, and Jesus, or, 2) pour out my life and begin to live – to lose myself compleatly and possibly win Life.

Pic: LK. Alternative ways of keeping dry.