n.

my friends & i have used the metaphor of trains many times.

living in queens, the yellow line has always been near & dear to me.  the n train especially has been my train of preference because it always took me exactly where i needed to go (queensboro plaza, broadway stops) and has a very clean/bright interior (w/periwinkle seating).

but for some reason, i always feel that when i'm waiting for the subway, the r train would always come first. if i'm desperate or tired of waiting, i'll just end up taking it but it was definitely not the ideal - it will take me near my destination (but i would need to take a 5-10 min detour stroll) and definitely was more rickety/old & less aesthetically pleasing.

but the amazing thing was that this weekend, for some reason - every time i was waiting for a train, the n train would come first, which is extremely rare for me (with the exception of this strange time when the r train came disguised as the n train).

i know this is going to sound a bit loopy, but i think this was a sign - a sign that i shouldn't take the r (even if it seems convenient and accessible at the time) and that i should wait for the n, because the n is coming.

when it comes down to it - do i really want to take the r?

remember your values. remember what you want in life.  remember who you are and what you stand for.  remember not too long ago, you specifically stated what you wanted?  how can you be so silly, so fickle, so emotional?

maybe this is a time to retreat back to myself. figure out who i am, once again - before eventually finding someone who will accept it, cultivate it, and hone it.

zimbabwe

it’s funny how God can change and move our hearts in ways and places we never thought it could go. 

it’s been about a month now since coming back from zimbabwe.

it felt like a different dimension - worlds apart from nyc. although a small part of myself did miss the comforts of being home, another part of me was scared to leave this dream.  i remember the last day (after half our team had already left back to the states due to the ticketing mishap), i was strolling around pastor tatenda’s compound and a wistful, almost grievous feeling overwhelmed me. i couldn’t help but think i would probably never be back here again.  the thing is that i know i'll miss it... but not in a way that would make me want to desperately come back. it’s the kind of longing where you know that you can't recreate this time again as much as you want to. it is a memory that can never be brought back but will be frozen in that moment at that right temperature with the right circumstances and people. this is what made me truly sad. 

zimbabwe was a place of miracles, of transparency, of rawness. it was hard thinking i’d have to go back to the sterility and the emotional coldness of the NYC. but God is working here too – albeit differently. 

what i’ll miss most though is not doing ministry and doing “God’s work” per se, but it will be the familial warmth of daily Zimbabwean life.  there was a feeling of belonging/kinship at the tatenda home – cooking together, dining together, working together, just living life together. here in nyc – it’s so easy to feel alone… everything is so self-involved and individualistic (and i thought that’s what i initially liked about it), but i see now such is not the case. 

pastor tatenda – lucia – tanatsuwa – tatenda jr. – netsai – amos – adam – tapiwa – privilege – mercy – thelma – sandra 

men vs. women

“Man can never know the loneliness a woman knows. Man lies in the woman's womb only to gather strength, he nourishes himself from this fusion, and then he rises and goes into the world, into his work, into battle, into art. He is not lonely. He is busy. The memory of the swim in amniotic fluid gives him energy, completion. Woman may be busy too, but she feels empty. Sensuality for her is not only a wave of pleasure in which she is bathed, and a charge of electric joy at contact with another. When man lies in her womb, she is fulfilled, each act of love a taking of man within her, an act of birth and rebirth, of child rearing and man bearing. Man lies in her womb and is reborn each time anew with a desire to act, to be. But for woman, the climax is not in the birth, but in the moment man rests inside of her.” - anais nin  (my newest literary muse)

gave me chills

“There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven; but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else. You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that. Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw -- but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realise that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported. Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of -- something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap-clap of water against the boat's side? Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it -- tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest -- if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself -- you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say "Here at last is the thing I was made for". We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.”

― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

susan sontag's list is v. similar to my "g.a.s.p."

excerpts from "gilead"

on writing & parental love:
"for me writing has always felt like praying, even when i wasn't writing prayers, as i was often enough. you feel that you are with someone. i feel i am with you now, whatever that can mean, considering that you're only a little fellow now and when you're a man you might find these letters of no interest.  or they might never reach you, for any of a number of reasons.  well, but how deeply i regret any sadness you have suffered and how grateful i am in anticipation of any good you have enjoyed.  that is to say, i pray for you. and there's an intimacy in it. that's the truth."

on baptism:
"ludwig feuerbach says a wonderful thing about baptism. i have it marked. he says 'water is the purest, clearest liquids; in virtue of this its natural character it is the image of the spotless nature of the divine spirit. in short, water has significance in itself, as water; it is on account of its natural quality that it is consecrated and selected as the vehicle of the Holy Spirit.  so far there lies at the foundation of baptism a beautiful, profund, natural significance."

on mortality:
"you're just a nice-looking boy, a bit slight, well scrubbed and well mannered.  all that is fine, but it's your existence i love you for, mainly.  existence seems to me now the most remarkable thing that could ever be imagined.  i'm about to put on imperishability. in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye.  the twinkling of an eye - that is the most wonderful expression.  i've thought from time to time it was the best thing in life, that little incandescence you see in people when the charm of a thing strikes them, or the humor of it."

on the hardest commandment (to keep):
i believe the sin of covetise is that pang of resentment you may feel when even the people you love best have what you want and don't have. from the point of view of loving your neighbor as yourself (leviticus 19:18), there is nothing that makes a person's fallenness more undeniable than covetise - you feel it right in your heart, in your bones. in that way it is instructive.... i avoided the experience of disobeying by keeping to myself a good deal. i am sure i would have labored in my vocation more effectively if i had simply accepted covetise in myself as something inevitable, as paul seems to do, as the thorn in my side, so to speak. 'rejoice with those who rejoice.' i have found that difficult too often. i was much better at weeping with those who weep. i don't mean that as a joke, but it is kind of funny when you think about it."

on doubt & proof:
"so my advice is this - don't look for proofs.  don't bother with them at all. they are never sufficient to the question, and they're always a little impertinent, i think, because they claim for God a place within our conceptual grasp.  and they will likely sound wrong to you even if you convince someone else with them. that is very unsettling over the long term. 'let you works so shine before men,' etc. it was Coleridge who said christianity is a life, not a doctrine, words to that effect. i'm not saying never doubt or question. the Lord gave you a mind so that you would make honest use of it. i'm saying you must be sure that the doubts & questions are your own, not, so to speak, the mustache and walking stick that happen to be the fashion of any particular moment.

on the nature of God:
"i tell there are certain attributes our faith assigns to God: omniscience, omnipotence, justice, and grace. we human beings have such a slight acquaintance with power and knowledge, so little conception of justice, and so slight a capacity for grace, that the workings of these great attributes together is a mystery we cannot hope to penetrate."

life is here

from: stall wall poetry

"not only do we have to be good at waiting, we have to love it. because waiting is not waiting, it is life. too many of us live without fully engaging our minds, waiting for that moment when our real lives begin. years pass in boredom, but that is okay because when our true loves comes around, or we discover our real calling, we will begin. of course the sad truth is that if we are not present at the moment, our true love could come and go and we wouldn't even notice.  and we will have become someone other than the you or i who would be able to embrace it.  i believe an appreciation for simplicity, the everyday - the ability to dive deeply into the banal and discover life's hidden richness - is where success, let alone happiness, emerges."
-the art of learning, josh waitzkin