psalm pstuff.

this fall was the first time i had reached a point where i was using the same bible for two years. i realized this because the texts from the daily office are already underlined and noted in my bible. before this, i would go through a bible each year...getting a new one because i wanted a new translation or, more often, i wanted a cooler one so that i might actually be inclined to read it. sort of like we get new running shoes and work out clothes in order to exercise.

well, i got this last bible when i was starting seminary (the first time) and have just stuck with it and it is working out just fine. i hope to be one of those old ladies who has her entire bible marked up and then i want my kid to drool over it the way i did my grandma's mocajete, which i now have in my hands and have yet to use.

anyway, it is always interesting to see what parts of the scriptures (or any book or song or creative expression) appeal to you at one point in your life and then at others. this is why i like the book of common prayer. it creates a rhythm and something for me to go by...not to mention countless others reading through the same texts at the same time and having such a multitude of interpretations. i not-so-secretly love it when i am able to go to two services in one day and hear such different stories in a sermon, pulled from the same text. i like that. i used my bcp before i ever stepped foot in an episcopal church. my friend josh, from my baptist (sort of) church back home, also preached from the lectionary so i felt good about taking his cue.

moving on...today the psalms struck me more than the other texts, even though i generally skim through the psalms because they always read the same to me and they are confusing and i dont ever know what to do with them. but today, i was intrigued.

two years ago i made so many comments about Psalm 15. i starred the thing up and down and made an embarrassing comment at the end. the psalm reads as follows:

---

O Lord, who may abide in your tent? Who may dwell on your holy hill?

Those who walk blamelessly, and do what is right, and speak the truth from their heart;

who do not slander with their tongue, and do no evil to their friends, nor take up a reproach against their neighbors;

in whose eyes the wicked are despised, but who honor those who fear the Lord; who stand by their oath even to their hurt;

who do not lend money at interest, and do not take a bribe against the innocent. Those who do these things shall never be moved.

---

it seems, today, i have no way to abide in god's tent or holy hill. i basically screw up in each and every way listed above...literally. i think before i saw this as a way to live and go about my days in order to be with god. today it seems as though, if this is the way, i dont know if i can do it. i know very well i will continue to falter in these ways. i am not completely evil, but i may not be too far off. i feel pretty ugly and wretched and have done some stupid things, and this has taken me very far from god. i dont know how to recover really. but still, i have nowhere to go but god.

this year, Psalm 25 was more appealing to me. particularly verses 16-18:

---

Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted.

Relieve the troubles of my heart, and bring me out of my distress.

Consider my affliction and my trouble, and forgive all my sins.

---

perhaps my sins have brought me affliction, trouble, and distress. this is often the case. sometimes we get what we deserve. through our many sins we have isolated ourselves and lost ourselves and forfeited many gifts and blessings all by choice. but it still hurts like hell. and we still need healing. and it seems we need forgiveness, or mostly just to recognize and own that we have screwed up royally, in order to walk a straighter path - the kind that is discussed in Psalm 15.

**the hard thing though, for me, is that sometimes we are taken to sins and dishonorable ways of life because we feel as though god has not stepped up to plate, and so we must figure something out. faithful people fall very hard this way.

it is all there and it all sucks, but regardless of the situation, i am stuck with god. there is no other avenue for peace and wholeness. so i can stay proud and angry and keep digging my grave and complain about how much it sucks. or i can ask forgiveness, turn away and trust that god will in fact come through.

i will most likely do both at extremes, at different times, for all the days of my life.

what if i cried before you
what if i let myself go

just like when we first met
you first knew me, crying
i had no control over it
it was simply how i was born
the way in which we are all born...

i feel the same today
i was brought into this world
a product of you and a part of you
and immediately separated from you

but still, you held me.

there was no understanding
there was no shared experience
there was no good reason

but that we are connected
and i am eternally yours
even when separated by miles and lack of obligation,
i am yours.

and i dont need understanding
i dont need advice or best wishes or money

i just need to be
hesitant and scared and helpless and crying
just like it was when we first met

i am the same girl
and i need the freedom to remain...

I am a city by the sea sinking into a toxic tide.

Ich bete wieder, du Elauchter
-Rainer Maria Rilke



I am praying again, Awesome One.

You hear me again, as words
from the depths of me
rush toward you in the wind.

I’ve been scattered in pieces,
torn by conflict,
mocked by laughter,
washed down in drink.

In alleyways I sweep myself up
out of garbage and broken glass.
With my half-mouth I stammer you,
who are eternal in your symmetry.
I lift to you my half-hands
in wordless beseeching, that I may find again
the eyes with which I once beheld you.

I am a house gutted by fire
where only the guilty sometimes sleep
before the punishment that devours them
hounds them out in the open.

I am a city by the sea
sinking into a toxic tide.
I am strange to myself, as though someone unknown
had poisoned my mother as she carried me.

It’s here in all the pieces of my shame
that now I find myself again.
I yearn to belong to something, to be contained
in an all-embracing mind that sees me
as a single thing.
I yearn to be held
in the great hands of your heart–
oh let them take me now.
Into them I place these fragments, my life,
and you, God–spend them however you want.


Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God.
–Barrows and Macy, trans. 1996. Rilke, Rainer Maria.

Dear Thomas à Kempis, why do you want me to hate myself and everything and everyone around me??

for the past couple of months, i have felt as though i needed to go back to the basics of my faith. everything has become so convoluted and confusing and complicated, that i have ceased to reserve even the tiniest place for faith to transform myself or my life at all.

i felt as though i needed to be reminded of who jesus is to me. why i began following this figure in the first place. and what has kept me in this tradition. if i could remind myself of these things, perhaps i could find my way back to a faith i used to hold, and that i need very much in my life.

i have had an unread copy of The Imitation of Christ for a while now. i got it from a friend who handed down all of her old seminary books to me. on the cover of my edition, it reads "next to the bible, the most widely read spiritual work of all time." surely there is some deep-seated, foundational wisdom for me to re-stumble upon.

there is indeed some wisdom to be found. but it would be a lot easier to heed if i lived my life as a nun, to be frank. i have always had a hard time connecting with contemplatives because they are so isolated, which of course brings its own sets of temptations and struggles, but not the ones i am faced with. i am sorry mr.thomas, i cant just dismiss my heart as evil and my flesh as fowl and my friends as deceitful and creation as temporal. this is the world i live in. and if my faith only shuts these realities out, instead of incorporating them in, i cannot then be a person of faith. and so, there is quite a bit i cannot take from this spiritual classic.

what the book is, though, is a call to devotion. i thought most of the words written on the page were just warped. granted, from a different people group in a different period of time with a different perspective on life and god...but i still beg to differ. i found it difficult to allow myself to really be offended or come up with arguments in my head, however, since i lack the kind of devotion to god from which this writing was produced. are my thoughts and objections even inspired? maybe so. but i would do well to invite god into my life a bit more before i make statements about this god or reject conclusions that were made by a devout catholic monk!

i think what keeps me from any sort of devotion at this point is that i am confused. and the reason i even came to this book was because i needed a clearer understanding of this god ive been following for the last ten years of my life. life has gotten trickier and messier and darker and harder and i need to know that, if i am to trust some being with life in this world, this god can be as abundantly transforming as i remember him being in previous periods of my life, and in others lives.

oddly enough, the concluding chapter of this work is titled, "That a Man Should Not Be a Curious Searcher into the Holy Sacrament, but a Humble Follower of Christ, Always Subdoing His Reason to the Faith." Kempis advises, "Faith and a good life are asked of you, not height of understanding or the depths of the mysteries of God." well shit. i came to this revered book for some understanding and on the last page, you are telling me its not going to happen??

i guess that makes sense. no friend of ours promises prior to engaging real friendship that they are going to always be a good friend. if they do, they are most likely full of shit, or just really naive. and at least god isnt those things. and as someone who makes no promises or false assurances, i should at least appreciate that.

good question.

I wanted only to try to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?
-Hermann Hesse (from Demian).

theologians.

in trying to figure out what direction to head in my life, i have come to realize that it is so difficult because i am not the same person as i was before i got here.

i dont like the same things. i dont eat the same things. i dont talk the same way. i think differently. i even look different.

a good example of this is how i used to be really into god. or, i should say - i was into god-stuff. how into god i really was, i am now questioning. but learning about god was the one thing i knew i was interested in. and so, i studied a lot of theology. it helped me make sense of things, i think.

these days, if i even hear the word theology or begin to find myself in a philosophical conversation of any kind - i check out. it not only doesnt interest me, but it makes me a little sick. not because i dont think it is valuable or meaningful. but it just isnt...anymore...for me.

i am just not a head-y person anymore. i am tired of being in my head. it doesnt make me feel any better about how jacked up everything is anymore either. and it certainly doesnt move me toward serving anyone but myself.

so, for now, i am over it. and this song makes me feel like that is okay:

Theologians - Wilco



Theologians
They don't know nothing
About my soul
About my soul

I'm an ocean
An abyss in motion
Slow motion
Slow motion

Inlitterati lumen fidei
God is with us everyday
That illiterate light
Is with us every night

Theologians
That don't know nothing
About my soul
Oh they don't know

They thin my heart with little things
And my life with change
Oh in so many ways
I find more missing every day

Theologians

I'm going away
Where you will look for me
Where I'm going you cannot come

No one's ever gonna take my life from me
I lay it down
A ghost is born
A ghost is born
A ghost is born

I'm an ocean
all emotion
I'm a cherry ghost
Cherry ghost

Hey I'm a cherry ghost
A cherry ghost.

breakfast tacos.

i tried making breakfast tacos today. i have tried a couple of times, actually. because breakfast tacos are just about the ONE thing i miss about the food back home. breakfast tacos are truly texan. and truly wonderful.

yet SO simple. growing up everyone in my family preferred a different breakfast taco. so mostly someone would prepare beans, chorizo, bacon, potato, eggs, barbacoa, etc...and everyone could just do whatever they wanted with their bfast taco. or we would go to one of our favorite little shops...so small i dont even know what they were called...and come back with a bag of a dozen or so breakfast tacos. for like three people.

my favorite breakfast taco is potato, egg, and cheese. with some salsa. it is pretty much the only way i eat potato. i was talking to my friend recently about breakfast tacos and she asked what kind of potato i used. i was baffled. "what do you mean what kind of potato? the brown one?" and then she went on to explain all the different kinds of potatoes out there. i only knew of brown and sweet. and OBVIOUSLY i wasnt using sweet potatoes.

anyhow. breakfast tacos should be one of the easiest meals to prepare. i mean really - potato, egg, cheese, tortilla. done.

but for some reason mine just dont come out right. i mean, they taste okay. but mostly they just taste like potato, egg, and cheese in a tortilla...with some salsa; not like a breakfast taco! which is the ONE thing i crave from home, like i said. my tacos are miles away from the wonderfulness that my grandma created growing up. or even my mom. maybe this is why my family thinks i am white. i can create marvelously sophisticated entrees with ingredients less than a tenth of the world has heard of. but i cant for the life of me get the breakfast taco down.

i think this is just proof that i cant have my cake and eat it too. or some similar saying. if i am brutally honest, i have found my life superior to my family life. that is not without the recognition that i was blessed beyond imagination and supported to no end to get where i am at. but i am now my own person - not just a product of a family. and not being able to make a flipping breakfast taco keeps me humble. i can get a degree and move across the country and whatever the hell else i want, but i am severely lacking without all my family offers me in my life.

i have spent years and years perhaps trying to break free and "make it on my own." and i think my failed attempts get pretty old. but i am never denied. i have never heard the words, "i told you so." and so i am trying to figure out, at this point, what level of dependency i am comfortable with. i do not want my entire existence to be simply a reaction against. nor do i want to fall into a life that is not my own.

so maybe i will keep trying to make breakfast tacos. maybe someday ill get it right. maybe i never will. either way, when i go home i know they will be prepared perfectly for me. and sometimes it is nice to not have to do everything on your own.

i missed him.

this was really fitting for me at this point in my life.



but im done now so let me know if you want to borrow my copy.