I Can Fly, Too!

The hair I’d knotted into a tight twist at the back of my head felt heavy as I spun under Gwen’s arm. By this, my fourth attempt, I’d finally sunk into a fluid step that approximated her precise Lindy and was able to dispense with the internal one, two, triple-step; three, four, triple-step litany and just dance. It felt intentional and emphatic and fantastic. Jeff took the next couple songs and twirled me with wide and energetic East coast steps until I threw my head back and laughed out loud. Trying to keep up with Tom was  a blast, although I never quite succeeded in following him perfectly – I’d just make something up or sugar in place until he caught my hand again. The night spun out between the bright hardwood floors and my Sperrys, fading the color from our thin clothes and flushing it into our faces. We tumbled out into the streets at midnight, and the rain mingled with the sweat and laughter it found on our skin.

There’s something fantastically fulfilling about dancing, especially when you master the technicalities and can begin to lend something of your own personality to the steps. Gwen and her dance match – she moves deliberately, with grace and precision, executing the steps with a clarity that she imbues with her own strong joy. Tom? No suprise here -he’s a wildcard. He knows dozens of steps and leads me into trios of spins that we have to repeat once, twice, until I finally catch on and can match the motion. He steps with a light, quick looseness, with unconcerned energy and a barely repressed passion for the beat. And me? I’m still learning. I have no idea what I look like when I dance, but my legs feel long and my mouth is always smiling.

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Commitment

I perched on the squat stone wall that arcs neatly across the West Capitol courtyard, folded my legs against my chest and wrapped them loosely in my arms. I stared up at the brilliantly-illuminated dome while the Capitol police stared at me. Three of them clustered on the dim stairs nearby; their alert awareness of my presence relaxed slowly into idle interest as the night shift settled down between us. The sounds of their low voices hung heavily over the quiet expanse of pavement. Every so often, a plane curved low across the horizon, skirting the closed airspace. Short, single-minded breezes came and went. Out on the Mall, the Washington Monument blinked indifferently. For a long, calm moment, I knew where I was.

Today is full of small little shocks – I received things I never would have thought of for myself, and these turn my mind again and again to the Lord. Here are six realizations:

I hurried into St. Patrick at noon to find that daily Mass had been cancelled in favor of a community reconciliation service. A dozen priests and a bishop had come from all over the diocese to hear confessions, and mine fell easily on sympathetic ears. He instructed me to pray familiar prayers, and these nearly brought me down with the sudden newness of the refreshed significance they carried.

It hit me at the corner of 10th St and Pennsylvania Ave that prayer is more powerful than any set of events that I have the ability to set in motion.

A sudden bout of true anger mid afternoon cleared my head, allowing me to finally answer some important questions about who I am and what I’m doing. (It turns out that trying to fit yourself into the life you lived in the past doesn’t work.)

The peace that came like the quiet sun after a storm courses smoothly through my veins, fortifying me with the strength I’ll need to support some one else.

There is a spiritual  family of which I am a part, that needs my love and feeds my need as well. The nourishment each of us shares with the others has allowed this to emerge.

I’m okay. Really and truly and wonderfully alright. And it’s also okay for me to be this way.

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Evidence of Yesterday

I woke at two o’clock and knew it had rained. The noisy acceleration of cars at the intersection below my window was accompanied by the thin hiss of tire treads ripping water from the pavement.

There are days that feel so full, that run over with bright streams of ideas and plans and messages. These days are hot, yellow monoliths in my memory, anchoring the fabric of my mind beneath the steadiness of the people and pages that keep me alive here. ~ And then there are days like today – silken days made for rain and for silence, a dozen liquid hours that I can cup in my hands.

The only words I can find today are all preoccupied with the sheer volume of words inspired by yesterday’s secrets and sunshine – yesterday’s words are frozen across thirteen pages of my journal and light up my cell phone’s entire storage capacity. They’re sorted into colorful playlists on my iPod. They overwhelm my planner.  They’re stacked on a dozen sheets ripped hastily from yellow legal pads. They kept me up with a pen in my hand for three hours after I was supposed to have gone to sleep. They confront me at my desk this morning.

At some point, I’m going to have to find the time to leave some evidence that today happened, too.

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Wine Drugged with Myrrh

We  sat feigning normalcy around a small table at a bright window. We didn’t touch, although we were close. Our thoughts, however, bridged that gap, collided and mingled and shaped one another, coloring the small distances between our serious heads. Smiles flashed like lighting, punctuating the thunder that rolled across the table beneath those critical words. Laughter emphasized the silence that pressed on the bubble our focus had quietly woven around us. Our eyes met and thought that perhaps they truly saw each other.  Our hearts were full. Sometimes, you don’t realize you’re starving until you begin to eat. That’s how this feels.

Lent combines fasting and feasting in the most unexpected ways. The silence inherent in the season allows us to listen to ourselves, to recognize all the ways we hunger. Each meditation on the Passion strips your soul bare, places you in the perfect position to accept corrections and guidance with the full awareness of how much you need them. Each act of physical self-denial leaves you with a space filled so much more beautifully by love. Prayer sears, drives you again and again to the church, to the Sacrament, to your knees.

This turmoil finds us roving, searching each other out for encouragement. Minds open and hearts come clean. Simplicity and honesty begin to replace destructive habits of mind. Relationships become more and more of what they ought to have been all along. These transitions overcome us painfully, by degrees. Grace flows.

I’m embedded in the season of endings. Pain happens in places that I didn’t know could hurt as growth and acceptance unfold from the inside. I am not strong by myself, but God gives me to sing the song of His strength, and it ignites hope.

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Out Of The Darkness

It was too hard to commit to a song on my iPod, so instead I just walked, listening –listening hard – to the sounds I passed through. I walked blindly, seeing without processing, soaking up noise.

I heard a dozen footstep cadences.  Women pushing strollers, chattering away in Spanish; a kid swaggering belligerently, blaring hip hop through his headphones at an earsplitting volume; two businessmen shouting into their cellphones as they wove past, sprinting. Music poured from open restaurant doors and got tangled up and trampled in the roar of two passing trucks. Construction on a street corner was accompanied by rapid, metallic banging.

I collected the noises, compressing them into a stream, a soundtrack in my head – I wish you could have heard it; you’d have known exactly where I was.

The sunshine on my face and neck distracted me as I turned a corner and began to move through the light. My awareness of the noise dropped away as I savored the sensation of the heat in my hair, settling slowly through its layers. A lazy breeze shuffled it silkily about my neck and shoulders. I felt rather than saw when shadows shivered over me. My cotton tank top caught and held the heat so that it saturated my skin, soaking down to ease the narrow chill wedged inside my hollow bones.

Sounds and sensations unite people. Someone could have been with me, but I doubt we would have been talking. There was too much to hear, too much to see and feel. We wouldn’t have needed to speak, anyway – hearing the same things, feeling the same things, seeing the same things … it’s as close to getting inside my head as you can get.

It’s funny, the way I get wrapped up in my thoughts. My eyes got so wide when I took just a few minutes to experience everything that was happening just outside my head.

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Break With Energy

The exhilarated expression of recognition on Tom’s face lit me up like an adrenaline rush. I had kept all of this to myself, determined not to voice it to anybody but this best of mentors, and it had been a good decision. Clouds of words streamed from between my lips, hanging in bright swirls around the folds of my long black skirt and spinning out behind me as I hurried to keep pace with my thoughts. The light dropped slowly  from the air as night began collecting in corners, and still we walked, circling our ideas and the same city block again and again.

Sometimes the best prayer comes when you’re completely exhausted. I stumbled into church that night after speaking my mind to Tom for what felt like days, and collapsed to my knees as all the thoughts I had so carefully ordered scattered to the floor like so many shiny plastic beads. It takes effort to close your mind – effort that I couldn’t muster as I contemplated the altar, aware of the Presence contemplating me. Not having the energy to (attempt to) hide my thoughts left them bare to my own roving eyes, as well, which slid shut as my true needs, my true desires looked back at me. I am a sinner in need of grace, a confused woman aspiring to godliness. I desire to experience truth, want companionship as I wander in its pursuit. The moment told me that there’s not as much to me as I like to think sometimes – I’m really just a child. Sleepy children, however, have the sense to surrender at day’s end. They know enough to risk vulnerability when there are sweet dreams to be had. In the sanctuary that night, I broke from my usual headlong sprint long enough to remember what such vulnerability feels like. Who knew what could happen when you rest long enough for all your sweetest dreams to catch you?

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Hasta que puedo pintarme de colores …

There are moments when you realize that you’ve become comfortable. They happen during in-between times – when you’re balancing on the curb, absentmindedly counting the seconds until the light changes. When you realize you’ve memorized your new telephone number. When you’ve woken yourself up without the need for an alarm.  When you’re shoving your apartment windows open. And then you remember that a comfort level in this place was something you never wanted, never expected to have. An airplane slides into view, and you find yourself wondering crazily whether you can catch it if you run.

I’m beginning to realize that it’s true, what my mom explained to me on the phone the other night. I’m never going to be able to do the same thing for too long – I’ll always be after the next big adventure or new challenge, which is probably why I spend so much time idealizing quiet days at home.  “You and dad wrecked me,” I told her, laughing. All the extracurriculars and summer camps and travel and internships that they made possible for me also made it so that I’ll never be able to hold still.

I’ll continue to orbit, though, the way I do now: always roving, but never too far from home – at least, not for too long. My family and friends and forests and rivers and lakes call me back again and again, and it’s the love for these that gives me pause, that makes me shrink from this place which has coated itself in asphalt and political rhetoric,  rejecting the things that make it a place at all. Their memory strengthens my resolve. I won’t bend to the process, won’t fit myself into cubicles and campaigns – I’m here to topple the spiritual challenge I’ve erected for myself. I will walk into this city, the one that scares me and smothers me, and live, carrying silence and smooth stones through my days. They won’t be able to catch me up, to sweep me into their ugly cadence. They won’t find me locked in an office or stumbling out of a bar – I will burn out a place for myself, and it will spill grace into the grid. And when I start to encounter reasons to stay,  I’ll throw my head back  and run until the ground beneath my feet sings of the North and no regrets.

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Are You Back Yet?

They were three or four miles from shore, with as many left yet to row before they would reach the lights of Capernaum. Darkness had already fallen when they had set out, leaving Jesus behind in the dusky hills alone somewhere, and the thoughtful silence under which they had embarked slid uneasily into one of anxiety as the wind began to pick up, flinging water about threateningly. Just then, a silhouette began to take shape among the waves — a man. He wandered among them, making his way toward the boat; with each step, the disciples’ panic expanded, doubling, clouding their thoughts and filling their lungs until their hands dropped the oars and their chests burned for air. Jesus strode over, smiled reassuringly, flooded their heads with His words, “It is I. Do not be afraid.” Peter’s eyes were fixed on Jesus’ steady stance, the waves lapping at the hem of His garmet – one inch along the hem was saturated, nothing more. “Get — get in the boat!” he stammered. As the words left his mouth, the hull scraped the shore.

I think that Penn Quarter is possibly my favorite part of DC. There’s nothing terribly deep about this city, but walking the streets of this neighborhood makes me aware of the semblance of character that they possess. Glimpses of the National Archives and National Portrait Gallery are visible at intersections, lending a sense of finality to the riot of colorful awnings and kiosks lining the streets that connect them. There are people on the streets here, and not just suits, either. Savvy tourists and policy wonks and noisy teenagers mingle in streams, wandering in and out of stores and restaurants and hotels and museums that range from stuffy to cheesy to trendy, often to the pulse of somebody’s music blaring and always to the rumble of traffic washing by.

John’s Gospel reminds me as I pass along these streets that, if I am where Jesus is,  I have already arrived at my destination —  regardless of where I perceive myself to be. This knowledge is a comfort and an ecouragement as I struggle, as usual, with indecision in the face of too many options. Granted, it’s hardly a problem, let alone one worth complaining about, but I’m faced with the uncomfortable choice which was never supposed to be a difficult decision. I was never supposed to have to struggle:  I had always thought that, for me, such a choice would be no choice at all. And yet I oscillate. So these words ground me in the realization that, in every moment, it’s less about experiencing the fear of future uncertainty and more about realizing that, for right now,  I’ve already arrived.

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Spring-Fed

Today is DC’s first hot, sunny day, and I have the entire afternoon to myself. Some of this will be dedicated to cleaning up and doing homework, but, right now, it feels so good to be sitting barefoot at the table in my apartment listening to the wind rushing through the open window. I feel slightly guilty that, as I write this, I’m not outside enjoying the day, but the sight of the sun beating down on the city streets below and the recent memory of the way it felt in my hair as I ran my errands during the lunch hour creates a summery awareness in my head that is nearly as fulfilling.

It’s barely spring, and yet the sun-burned breeze scrambled to get past me this morning, already dropping sounds of summer as it streamed by. My hair luffed about in the breeze, and I walked the way I do when summer overflows onto an October day on campus. It’s pouring through my window now, carrying bright scents and wide sounds that fill me up with a thick, silent nostalgia. Flags snap audibly, clanking their tethers, until the pitch and wash of my dad’s sailboat clouds my vision.  The grass toasts slowly and fragrantly under the thunder of traffic, and the sound and the smell mingle in my head, vague approximations of things I remember from August weeks on front lawns and football fields in Midland. A woman shouting gaily from the street corner four stories below reminds me of my aunt, and I wish to be seven years old and running to her down a July beach with a fistful of Indian paintbrushes in my hand, orange and red and yellow. The air is fresh and mild, and I’m enjoying this spring day the way I always have, freezing because it’s still too early for shorts and sandals and laughing at how, for me, spring is always the coldest season.

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Educere

“Sit down and work out who Jesus is,” I was told. “It’s a fundamental reality that nothing is more attractive than holiness … when we see it, it’s powerful. That’s why Jesus always drew a crowd. That’s why the way that Christians love and work and live intrigues others – don’t blend in! We are meant for a life of passion and purpose that fascinates others, to live with people who challenge us to be our best selves.”

It’s 8:04, and sunlight hangs in the empty lobby as I step out of the elevator, fumbling with gloves, keys, my Metro card. I pause for a split second before I press the release that will unlock the door and admit me to the waves of activity outside. Father. The button clicks under my thumb. I’m conscious of the silence streaming out behind me as I step onto the front walk, and I move quickly to let the door fall shut,  to prevent any more from escaping. It bounces once, producing a metallic bang that I lose in the grind of traffic, the hot, heavy rattle of buses and a hundred hurried footseps that comprise the essence of “morning commute.” On the train I share space with a woman holding a Bible whose face questions me in response to my observation. I smile happily into her eyes, and we stand a little more comfortably together as the car lurches forward.

By 5:47 I’m back in the cool marble atrium at Union Station, still in a hurry but free from the press of people on the platform below. I love the view of the sky between the pillars as I exit through the collonade; the large plaza in front of the station makes room for rosy clouds to gather at the end of every day. I’m thinking of home, of fresh air and the way these clouds look from below one of my favorite blessings, piney trees. I realize that people are staring as I swing along the sidewalk – my face tilts toward the sky, and there’s a silly, dreamy smile spread across it.

At 7:22 I slip gratefully into a creaky pew at St. Joseph’s, sinking onto my knees into the place I ought to have been all day. Miriel will be here soon to pray with me, and to share in the glow it brings afterward. My roommate wondered aloud why I’m here for the third night this week, and the echoes of my useless explanations fade as I draw the weight of the heavy stained glass, my Papa’s enduring embrace, around me. It’s in the silence that things start to make sense. That’s where answers to decisions that I honestly struggled with seem startlingly obvious, and I wonder how the debate with myself even began. It’s where I breathe God, who rushes to be with me before my invitation to Him has even begun.

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