Rela-nity

community...relationship. both are centered around the same thing of one broken human interacting with another broken human. different people need it to differing degrees.

for me, i know that i need it to a great degree. in fact, it is the hardest part of my current situation for me. not the lack of a full time job or a place to live. it is not having those to be in relationship with and share our lives.

what is community for you? is it important to you? do you feel like you need it or are you quite satisfied? let me know what you are thinking.

life to the tune of james taylor.

There's a song that they sing when they take to the highway
A song that they sing when they take to the sea
A song that they sing of their home in the sky
Maybe you can believe it if it helps you to sleep
But singing works just fine for me

do you have a song? is your life a song? i think that mine is. if so, i hope that i take it to the highway and the sea. where am i in my song? am i singing it or is someone else writing it for me? i hope that i am writing it.

right now it feels like it is written in the minor key. plodding and dark and mysterious. will it suddenly brighten up like the chorale in beethoven's 9th? i guess my song has multiple movements. there are so many ways to think about this.

...i wonder in what movement my song becomes a duet...

rain

well, this looks like the third post in a week. i better be careful or this might become a pattern.

we got some rain yesterday and we are getting a lot today. sometimes it is coming down hard, other times it is just drizzling. right now it is pouring. as i look out the windows of the cafe, i am thrust into thought. i like the rain. i didn't always. i never minded the rain, but it wasn't until living in germany and encountering day upon day of rain that i developed a fondness for it. i like it because it calms things. it slows things down. it quiets. it washes and cleans. it floods and takes away. it now reminds me of germany.

to have a cup of coffee, a glass of wine and be in front of a fire reading a book and listening to jazz. ah, that is refreshing. soul soothing. sometimes i wish it would rain in my heart and soul. to wash away the dirt and make it calm and quiet. to pull me out of myself and wash me towards love and grace.

PS. as i sit here and write this i wish that you would walk through that door. you, a dear friend that i long to talk to, but you live elsewhere. colorado, wisconsin, texas, germany, minnesota, ireland, and spread many other places. may god bless all of you.

stream

not really sure what to write about which means i probably shouldn't but maybe i will try this stream of consciousness style. so here goes...

have you ever noticed that life keeps going? we wish it would slow down in those amazing and special times. we wish it would skip or speed up in the hard and painful times. time doesn't seem to listen, it just goes. it doesn't try to be hurtful or to rush our lives. it is steady, reliable and always...on-time.

so how do we react. should we relish the pain or suckiness? should we breeze through that amazing little glimpse of beauty? those are the times i would love time to stop and just relax. the beauty. whether it is the walk outside amongst the hills or the cup of coffee with that amazing person across the table.

they say that there is beauty in pain, but i am not sure that we can see that in the middle of the trial. it seems that the beauty shows itself when we look back on the pain and uncover the layers of dirt and tears. the beauty is there, but much harder to find. usually more beautiful that the good times, but still hard.

our lives just keep going. the falls and rises and moves of the painter. i just hope that a bright colour is going to start soon.

the movement of life

though weighed down in breath, is lightened by love.

life can be described by many things. it can be a journey, it can be a symphony. it can be a struggle, or a joy. many of these are just moments in life. or maybe life is just a movement of a symphony that is so much bigger than us.

this movement goes up and down. it grows and settles, it hurries and slows. one thing that slows it is breath. the daily routine of life. it is steady and doesn't alter, we go through the same things every day. It is part of the rhythm of life and it can weigh us down. we can easily get bogged down with the little routines and lose sight of the larger movement.

what can pulls us out of this daily dirge? love. it can lighten our day and make us realize that there are things much bigger than us and our days going on. it guides us toward the big picture and pulls us out of our daily grind and into thinking about how we can add to the beautiful movement that is life.

so what can you do to add to the beautiful movement of life?