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.

too much time.

my life is unfolding like a wet blanket air-drying and i am really, really cold.

the emerald cities.

if one type's in "emerald city" into google, two Wikipedia posts appear:

a. The Emerald City is the fictional capital city of the Land of Oz in L. Frank Baum's Oz books, first described in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.


b. Seattle's current official nickname is "the "Emerald City"; the reference is to the lush evergreen forests of the area.


----------
sidenote: Emerald City is also my favorite John Vanderslice cd!!

----------


this term hasnt carried too much significance for me until recently. i always wondered why Seattle was called "the emerald city," and someone explained to me that it was because it is so green here. and that makes sense. i thought it was pretty cool. also because emerald is my birthstone. not that that means anything, but cool nonetheless.

a couple of months ago before the musical Wicked was to show at The Paramount, banners started popping up about Wicked coming to the Emerald City, which of course is a pun of sorts since the musical takes place "in" the Emerald City.

i read Wicked about two or three years ago and found myself really involved in the story. i was also feeling defeated by relationships and hopes and dreams and desired very much to go at it alone. and here was a story of a girl who did it. she said "i dont need you." and i think to this day i only wish i could say that with sincerity. well, the story was not very empowering. the girl didnt actually make it. and that sucked. but i appreciated an honest fictional portrait of this character. yup, an honest fictional character portrait.

soon after i finished this story, i was actually beginning to make plans to move out to seattle (for the second time). seattle was literally MY emerald city in a lot of ways. i put all of my hopes and dreams into this place. i felt as though i would belong here and i would find everything i have always been looking for, even if i was doing it alone. and in some ways, this has been true. but in other ways, i have been disillusioned.

it turns out i am still the same girl, even in seattle. i am neurotic and scared and confused and often hopeless. and life is the same. people, including myself, are imperfect. doing the right thing or following the right path is no more illuminated here than it was back home. there is no yellow brick road and there is no magic wizard to make everything better or change who i am. just as elphaba and dorothy arrived only to find that the wizard is a fake, i came to find that life is all the same...even here. the emerald city, even in all of its glory, is filled with all of the same things and people.

but there is something about getting here that fills me with a certain amount of hope. i didnt find exactly what i was looking for, but i did find that i can actually do anything my heart desires. and there is something VERY empowering about that. i have a sense of control over my life, although i don't have much control over life itself. i cant do anything about that - but i do feel as though i have changed in this process, over the last couple of years.

i still ache for a life of solitude. like they say in the musical, "and if i'm flying solo, at least i'm flying free." and there is a lot to say for freedom. it is what allows me to NEVER be or feel stuck, even in a world where people are people and things never change.

i hope things turn out better for me than they did for elphaba. i hope this emerald city allows for hopes and dreams to come true without a wizard. and i hope i dont actually end up alone. but if i do, so be it. i really love this place all the same.