Roots and rocks...

During church today, the passage we were reading was from Isaiah 61: "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lords favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to provide for those who mourn in Zion- to give them a garland instead of ashes, olive oil in exchange for tears...For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations."  Isn't that beautiful?  We often do lectio divino instead of a sermon, where the people reflect on verses that especially stand out to them from the scripture reading.  I reflected on the metaphor of "shoots" for the springing up of righteousness and praise.  Shoots are temporary.  They spring up, and then they die.  This was especially moving for me because I have been feeling down since around Thanksgiving.  It's like the steadfastness, and freedom inside me have withered and died.  My roots are in really shaky ground, so my sense of self collapses for no apparent reason.  While I am somewhat reassured in knowing that my shoots of righteousness and praise will no doubt spring up again in time, having my sense of rootedness dislodged is disconcerting.  When the pastor asked us all the Adventen question of what vision of God we hope will be born on Christmas morning, I responded, "God the rock."  I miss my groundedness.

We then paired up and discussed who God calls us to be.  The man I talked to responded immediately with "father, husband, teacher."  I was struck by how he found his sense of self and calling in his relationships to others.  My relationships are always changing, so I can't find anything more than an impermanent identity within them.  I always need to put down roots in a community (here come the horticultural metaphors again), and yet I struggle to identify myself by that community because it changes every year.  I shared these reflections with my dialogue partner, and he brought up willows and poplars.  The EPA is planting them in poisoned areas because they put down roots very quickly and are able to draw toxins out of the soil and metabolize them.  At the same time, they do not last very long.  I resonated with that image of the willow tree.  I am trying to put down roots and draw toxins out of this community for the short time that I am here.  I'm not sure if I'm supposed to find a grounding that will endure past this year, or simply develop the ability to pull up roots and grow in new soil very quickly when this year ends.  Both seem very daunting to me. 

         

I wrote a poem. 

All right, computer's wonky.  Song's in the comments.

On Fridays at the drop-in youth tutoring program, we have the kids journal for 20 minutes.  The youth services supervisor advised us to find some bit of work that we need to do or list to make during the time, so we would be modeling the writing for the kids.  I usually use the time to write stories and poetry or whatever's on my mind, and I turned one of my stories into a song.  My first song ever!  Whoa.

My dad may be reading this! Yay! He's creating a blog, and you should go reading it. It will have lots of Buffy and politics stuff among other things.

Sometimes my own wangst overwhelms me.

So, here I am back in Oberlin. Whew. The rush of moving in and unpacking is over, but my room is still not neat. Unsurprisingly.

Before I left I went to Montreal with my mom & assorted, which was okay. We were going for a business conference of Drew's, and the convention was like a bad movie. Montreal was also stereotypical; everyone there was uber-fashionable and the night life was great. I hadn't realized how easy/fun it was to learn a language when you were actually exposed to it, and picked up some French while there, at least enough to understand ~20% of everything that was said to me. Of course, I wasn't doing any business or engaging in conversation, so I feel the language thrown at me was pretty common. I had a good time, and would be glad to go back, though next time not with my little, super-tense siblings.

After Montreal most of my time was spent on the final for my Financial Analysis class and moving everything out of the house, which is being sold. I thought it was going to be torn down, but apparently it's going to be sold and rented out. I would actually rather nobody else got to use it, but I suppose it's better than yet another condo in the neighborhood.

So. Yes. In Oberlin. Nothing much happening yet; so far I'm enjoying the house, as opposed to the dorms. The apartment is cheaper per person and we get a pretty sweet kitchen. Having a private bathroom is also cool. I took advantage of the privacy of the bathroom recently to take a shower, only to realize that I didn't actually have any anymore, having had to ditch them in the frantic scramble to vacate my room quickly enough. So I decided a nice casual walk down to my room sans clothing was probably the best way to get some stuff to dry off with (aka my dirty-but-not-too-dirty laundry). Ha. Danielle chose that moment to come up the stairs with two of her (male) Aikido friends. Apparently my modesty was preserved by my very quick escape to my room, but still. The dangers of thinking you can walk around naked in a shared apartment, I guess.

TTFN

Hi everyone,

I've started a new blog with the other Cap Corps folks.  The address is http://capcorps0809.blogspot.com.