Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Daily 5 - Year 2, Day 218

Today's Daily 5:
  1. Wearing a favorite hoodie
  2. A bus that came on time
  3. lunch and conversation with my pastor
  4. a few hours of uninterrupted time to read, study, and ponder the questions the reading was raising
  5. a really helpful natural health treatment
  6. treating myself to Macdonalds
  7. the best day I've had in several weeks in terms of managing moods and life and coming out feeling peaceful
  8. laughing at the way the material for the study I'm leading is hitting home in my own life
  9. smiling when I see the palm tree/beach scenes stuck to the wall beside my bed
  10. finishing two different books that I had in progress

A Spinning, Discombobulated Post

If yesterday was the first day of spring, well, it made a poor showing here in Calgary, arriving with blustery dampness, and more snow, leaving me sleepy and rambling as I sat on the bus and pondered the fact that I had nothing planned for my blog for today.

I try to write these morning posts ahead of time, taking a chunk of time out of my weekend and sitting down to construct a string of thoughtful ponderings, book reviews and whatever fun things I encounter.

I'm writing this post at nearly midnight on Monday night, only hours before it will go live.  And it's the only post I've managed to schedule for this week thus far.

I feel a bit at a loss for words.

I have one book review I badly want to write, but I'm still working to form words around the way the words of another author are shaping my heart in this season.  I wish I could take each of you out for tea instead, paging through the book, reading favorite bits to you, trying to expound with facial expression and tone what I can't quite find the words for.

I'm reading another book that I'm quite sure will need a post of it's own as well.  It's about as different from the first as possible, polar opposites, really, though both are memoirs of sorts, written by women.  But this book, too, is working on my heart and mind in interesting ways.

This is a week full of school and people.  On the school front, there is the perpetual need to tackle Greek and Latin vocabulary lessons, a project to prepare, and a term paper to research and write, and the never ending assigned readings to accomplish.  On the people front, there is a lunch with my pastor, house church on Thursday evening (which I'm leading these days, so that will require my time as well), and arranged times to have meals or coffee or visits with at least three good friends who I simply don't manage to see regularly.

Life is moving quickly these days, and my internal world seems to spin as well, leaving me discombobulated, at a loss for words, and regularly turning an incredulous countenance to Jesus with the question, "Did you really say what I think you just said?"

The author Susan Isaacs has a line about conversation with God that goes, "Sarcasm is a viable form of communication."  My relationship with God is definitely marked all too regularly with a sarcastic quotation of one of my favorite Grey's Anatomy lines, "Seriously? Seriously?"

(Though I find myself working these days for a tone less marked with sarcasm and more characterized by a peaceful and trusting acquiescence.)

In the midst of the spinning it seems to be a season where I just don't have as many words to share in a public forum, nor the time I'd like to craft the words I do share.  And so, there will be more of these rambling, discombobulated posts as I devote time to school, to friends, and to my spinning internal world.  But hey, at least they reflect the true state of my life!