Author: Laura Elizabeth

Mandolin

Standing room only – fight for the best you can with what you have. It is good enough and with stupid resolve I resign. Before we even step into the whole mass of wine and suits I resign to the fact that we will probably not even see. The quiet reasoning heckles, “I mean, what’s really more important,” with its hard lets-make-the-best-of-it face.

“. . .Seeing the musician, or hearing his music?”

Stand small in the echoes and enjoy the gift.

(But he kept rocking back and forth, he swayed the music out,
and the light kept beating off of the string-holder into the crowd.)

Over the course of two hours my eyes met light and the music unwrapped rare chai in the physical throws of notes you must see to believe. ‘Even just the hem’ is the whole opportunity of standing room only.

And Counting

And Counting

Recently saw a throwback to the winter of 1999, when we thought the machines would turn on us at 11:59:59? “Remember to turn your computer off before midnight on 12/31” the ad said. Hysterics. Hysterical and it got me thinking, at 11:30 on 12/31, “What if this–this particular Wednesday night countdown–was the last 30 min. countdown of the whole story?”

“They licked their plates of Pinterest and HGTV for three hours…ever after in jammies…Fin.” Black screen.

I had done nothing but feel like I’d let someone down. Way down. In jammies. Nothing we could’ve done about it either.

With a blank page on that calendar, have you questioned your things yet: motives, plans, how you spend time, your fill-in-the-blank of what matters most? It’s been 24 hours. For me, it’s been 4 years flown by and 24 hours of trying to pull up sweet memories of moments lost to mind-less-ness.

J says you only remember the pieces marked by the extremes–the über happy or discontent. That’s all?

"Approaching Shadow" by Fan Ho, 1954

This blank white month has one thought written on it. Still retracing letters:

“[W]hat makes you feel strong? (–not talking about the traditional human resources kind of stock answer, like what you think your talents are, or what you’re best at during the day.) But literally this — what makes you feel strong?”

“So much of the time, we’re all focused on what needs improving, the gaps and cracks, the broken places. What about the moments in the day when we feel so clear and calm that we don’t think about anything else? What if we organized our days around those moments? What if the bulk of our work came from that place of strength?” paraphrase, Shauna Ahern, glutenfreegirl

(For the record, I have a thing for this girl.)

What are your sources of strength–not what you do impressively well, but what makes you really well, re-grounded and calm? Or who does?

Make a new list. Re-prioritize mindful “organization,” of strong, grounded, clear, real-calm moments. It is of utter importance, it seems, when it comes to counting years.

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Pictured: I stumbled upon this quote some time ago, written on a stranger’s chalkboard somewhere in the world. Twitter. It is a charming remembrance around endings (and beginnings); paired with a striking work captured by Fan Ho. Happy New Year!

dare alla luce

dare alla luce

There are rare moments of shooting stars and rarer moments of shot stars aligning. Even Winter gives birth [to notebooks].

It’s a mystery–

The way light shooting out of the head gets mistaken for horns. The way a thing (a troll thing) thrives, moves through the night…gets turned to stone when when the sun comes up. And where light is dark cannot be, where dark is light cannot be; but in perfect balance, right butted up next to the other figures take on breathtaking clarity. These things they taught us about oil, and stone…

The light and the dark and the unformed idea are everything.

So when you think you have horns–your darkness in the light shows horns curling out of your head–why does it matter? You’re a bull, anyhow, and [still] a bearer of light, and truth in stone.

“Watch for the way light falls on things instead of the things.” – Ahern

Watch for the way light falls on you instead of you. Despite you.

800-Narcissus-Caravaggio

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Dare alla luce.
(literal) To give to the light.
 (translated) “to give birth.”

Burning. The candle is receding too quickly on Sunday and the sun will rise on Monday and it will be time for more moving-shaking, and burning out until another candle is lit. I have gotten so many things in my eyes today. Even now, I wipe sticky dough from between my fingers and feel the burn of many flours pillowed into my face. I wash, and blink, and blink long. Eyes closed.

The things we love most, the things that take all the energy and time we give to them, will get in our eyes [for better].

Tough and Sweet to the tooth

“To hold onto something with a desperate grip is not the way to die. Death is a painful process, and restoratives offered to the dying wretch bound to his wheel only prolong his agony. There are times when the thing to do is simply to die. I am thinking, of course, of dying to the self. We clutch so tenaciously to our rights, hopes, ambitions, something to which God has perhaps said a plain no. If would-be comforters offer us consolation and sympathy, if they assist us to strengthen our grasp when it should be loosened, they do not love us as God loves us. The way into life is death, and if we refuse it we are refusing Him who showed us that way and no other. The love which is strong as death is not only willing to save the beloved, it is willing to seem, if necessary, pitiless, insensitive, unloving, if that is what will help the beloved to die–that is, to be released from the bondage of self, which is death, and thus enter the gateway of life.

Archbishop Fenelon wrote to the countess of Montberon, ‘You want to die, but to die without any pain…. You must give all or nothing when God asks it. If you have not the courage to give at least let Him take.’”

And so the mystery of life through death lives on with a passing over. It is a new day, and I have felt more peace with the morning than usual mornings. It is finished, and the sun rises again in the East with the song, “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us” playing through my tired mind. Let it play. 

Yesterday, I made Tsoureki: Greek Easter bread. Traditional Easter breads carry the makers mark of symbolic sweetness and heartiness. Rich, eggy, yeasty. Like other festival breads,  they might be celebrated by coating bite for bite in honey before meeting the lips. Just a week ago I was reading about the opposite – Passover bread – unleavened, empty, disheartened, and eaten with bitter herbs.  Today, the sweetness is good enough. It is enough. It is good.

For the past few weeks I’ve been communally re-visiting our Bible’s “children’s stories.” Adam, Eve, Moses, Noah, Abraham, Jonah…you know them – the big guys. After catching a glimpse of The Passion movie in this Sunday’s service, foreshadowed by a procession of the “big” guys preparing the way of the Lord, “Live On,” seems to be the one thing written over and over and over. This is not your day to stop, this is not the end of the story. Get up and walk. Enter the land I have prepared for you. Live on.

Elisabeth’s devotion today is harder to swallow, but reminds me of this morning’s peace. Death has been swallowed. It’s day one of a new year of life going on after death. Taste and see the good.

When I asked Joseph how he found out about S.O.U.L Church, he told me he followed his nose. “I could smell the food…” he followed up with an honest chuckle.

Another new acquaintance, Dan, told me, “Well, you really can’t miss the music!”

I learned about S.O.U.L’s  ministry through Holy Yoga (*the odds*), practicing one Saturday morning with Pastor Leon’s wife, Jennifer. Yesterday, I had the pleasure of getting to participate for the first time. Dan and Joseph are spot on, you can’t miss the sounds and smells radiating from this small, open lot beneath the crossroads, downtown. Hands and feet numb on this Sunday morning, hugs abundant, eyes and ears eagerly opened, heart – crazy full. Hundreds of friends gathered to celebrate a birthday, a marriage, new life, new testimonies, peace beyond understanding, a hot breakfast, worship, dancing and singing with abandon (in Jesus’ name). If you’re ever in the area on a Sunday morning, I encourage you to get involved. Maybe you’ve been looking for this too? I’ll provide an early bird wake up call and we’ll go together!

Get the details, and more info that I can provide on S.O.U.L. here >>