Sojourn

I've just become a big fan of Sojourn's worship album Before the Throne. It's lyrically and musically solid (sometimes a hard combination to find in worship music). I recommend it. Yay for iTunes gift cards.

An announcement(!), snow, and musings

Announcement: This is the first post I've been able to write using my very own wireless connection!! Finally I was able to make it work today. - happy dance - I never want to call tech support or tech-related customer service again. Ever.

Normal blog post: Well, it began snowing this morning just as I was leaving for the farmer's market, and it hasn't stopped yet. The farmer's market was a bit sparse anyway, being winter, and with the snow causing some of the booths to pack up early, it became even sparser. But I got to romp around in the snow with a new friend from church to get there, and I discovered a place that sells farm fresh eggs cheaper than the pseudo-farm eggs at the grocery store. Very exciting.

The snow is beautiful, and powdery, and it has been interesting to spend the evening watching it blow in gusts and swirls off the roofs of the rowhouses.

So, hearkening back to my last post: I've been thinking about Portland and Baltimore, and how Portland has a reputation for being friendly and community-oriented, and Baltimore, well, doesn't; yet I spent a year in Portland without any friends, and have been in Baltimore three weeks and have already exchanged phone numbers several times and met up with people to do random things. Granted, I have inherited some of my new friends here from my brother, but most of them are my very own (thank you very much). And--while I know I haven't had enough time or experience in either place to make these wild conjectures--I'm going to conjecture wildly anyway about why I think this is.

I think that Portland is a lonely city, because--while it's all about civic pride and community and all that jazz--it also holds so tightly to a fierce sense of independence. It's like it's "community"-oriented in the sense of having community gardens and city-wide litter-pick-up days and comfortably friendly conversations with the random people you encounter in the elevator...but that after that brief event everyone goes their own way and does "their own thing." Because that's what Portlanders do: their own thing. They are proud to be from Portland, and share a yes-I'm-a-recyling-nut-and-love-trees-too bond with other Portlanders, but that seems pretty much to be the extent of it.

While here... Well, actually, I have found the people to be friendly (much to the shock of natives, when I tell them this); but it's more that people seem to be involved with each other's lives. Like maybe it's less common to accept everything and everyone, but that once you are accepted, you're in all the way, and your life is now a part of their lives. Like Baltimore people don't have an I-am-my-own-person attitude in the same isolating way that Portlanders do (even while they remain some of the quirkiest people I've ever met).

Please understand, I love Portland. It's beautiful, and weird, and granola-y, and bookish. I love it's earthiness and openness to ideas and laid-back atmosphere, and I love it's sense of independence. But--at least where I lived--it was undeniably lonely. And for a place that prides itself in community, I think that's kind of sad.

Anyway, like I said: Wild conjectures without much basis in fact or research. But such are my unscientific musings...

This post was going to say something meaningful

Really, this blog is active again. As in, I'm planning to write regularly, and not only one or two posts a month as I have the last several months.

And I was going to wax eloquently about something meaningful tonight, to prove it. Like the ordeal of dealing with customer service, or my thoughts on why Portland is such a lonely city (as seen in contrast), or why I am not an iconoclast. But I'm on day two of some headache/scratchy-throat thing, so I'm going to go to bed instead.

But expect great things to come...

Poem of the Day (in the spirit of the refurbished blog)

Spring Morning, by A.A. Milne
--

Where am I going? I don't quite know.
Down to the stream where the king-cups grow-
Up on the hill where the pine-trees blow-
Anywhere, anywhere. I don't know.

Where am I going? The clouds sail by,
Little ones, baby ones, over the sky.
Where am I going? The shadows pass,
Little ones, baby ones, over the grass.

If you were a cloud, and sailed up there,
You'd sail on water as blue as air,
And you'd see me here in the fields and say:
"Doesn't the sky look green today?"

Where am I going? The high rooks call:
"It's awful fun to be born at all."
Where am I going? The ring-doves coo:
"We do have beautiful things to do."

If you were a bird, and lived on high,
You'd lean on the wind when the wind came by,
You'd say to the wind when it took you away:
"That's where I wanted to go today!"

Where am I going? I don't quite know.
What does it matter where people go?
Down to the wood where the blue-bells grow-
Anywhere, anywhere. I don't know.

No Fixed Land

As you can see (assuming you've visited before), I have renamed and to some degree redesigned my blog. Why, you may ask? Mostly because I see this recent move across the country as opening the next epoch of my life, and I wanted my blog (the place wherein I narcissistically muse about said life) to reflect that sense of newness. That, and I've been dying to re-create the header anyway, because I thought the old one was rather ugly.

So, the new name. No Fixed Land.

The name is part of a quote from Perelandra, the second book in C.S. Lewis' excellent space trilogy:

"He gave me no assurance. No fixed land. Always one must throw oneself into the wave."

This is one of my favorite images in literature.* With the context of the book around it, this statement is a beautiful expression of faith. It is not saying that God does not offer us assurance, but that the assurance is Him, Himself; not the land we stand upon, or the securities we create for ourselves. It is our frightening, glorious privilege to plunge ourselves into each wave as He brings it to us.

Life is nothing if not an adventure. I am not where I expected to be right now. I have no idea "what I'm doing with my life," or what next month or next year will look like. The last few years have included a lot of confusion and even disappointment about what I'm being called to do. I still wonder all the time why I'm who I am, when I am, where I am.

But that's okay. No fear. By the grace of God, I know I can confidently throw myself into this next wave, wherever it takes me. I mean, it's His wave, hey? So it's good. Sweetly exhilarating sometimes, swift and buffeting sometimes, seeming to languish in a dead calm sometimes, but always His. So always Good.

Bring it on.

---
*So, I highly recommend that you read this book and encounter this image in its full context. But in brief: The protagonist finds himself in an unfallen world where the "land" is essentially matted vegetation resting on top of the sea, which conforms to the movement and ever-changing contours of the water. There is only one "fixed land"--one solid land of rock--and it is used throughout the book to represent our human desire to have things in life "fixed": certain and secure and predictable. Among other things, the story presents a picture of our need to let that prideful, fearful, self-insurance go and to throw ourselves into the unpredictability (yet ultimate goodness and security) of God's will. Really, you should read it. It's that good.

Day 4

I'm sitting in Newton, IA, at the moment. An even more happening place than Rock Springs was.

We spent Sunday night in North Platte, NE, but had no internet access (hence no blog update). Nebraska was flat and snowy. As was Wyoming. As is Iowa. However, I still stand by my earlier assertion that this whole flat and snowy thing is actually quite beautiful in its own way. Beautiful to drive through, at least; I guess it hasn't really tempted me to stop and settle down forever. But it's so cold that the snow on the plains sparkles with ice crystals, and the trees and grass are covered in a thick layer of ice that gives the landscape a surreal sort of glassiness. When the amber afternoon sun shines through it, man. It's gorgeous.

Anyway, we're having fun and slowly but surely making it to the east coast! Good times.

Day 2

We're in the extremely happening town of Rock Springs, Wyoming. Woot woot. No exciting weather or mishaps to report.

I've decided, for the record, that this part of the country is much more beautiful in the winter than in the summer. The white dusting the reddish brown rocks provides a nice contrast, mist hovers on hilltops and rises from fences, and scrub bushes look less scraggly and dead when they are peeking out of the snow. It's actually quite breathtaking, at times.

Tomorrow, it's on towards Nebraska.

Day 1 of the Nation-Crossing Adventure

We're here safely in Boise. The scenery was beautiful and the roads were clear. So far, adventure without disaster. Tomorrow, off to Utah...