Montana Tour Day Three,Four and Five

Kamloops, the city we are rehearsing in, is one of the only places in Canada to be classified as a "desert". The land is jutting and exposed, layers of brown with only the occasional manicured green lawn for reprieve. It is so dry here that M.'s eyes are going red with her contacts in, all of our skin seems to be drinking up the moisturizer we put on it, and even the ground itself seems to crack open.
I have become a bit of a semi-arid desert myself of late. Rehearsals are HARD, physically exhausting and technically demanding. Its hard to present a confidant front when each hour seems to break down your self-esteem and each criticism drain your last bit of energy. My carefully presented surface is cracking under stress and exhaustion.
Because all of the company is living together while we are on tour it is impossible to hide anything. I do not like to show weakness, especially here, as I already feel like the underdog in this group -- having far less dance training and ability. I am spent...completely. And it doesn't help that this city is teeming with painful memories from my past. The girls noticed and M . and A. tried to give me a hug, I refused. Sometimes I feel like love is like water in a desert. It is exactly what I need, but even one drop will bring the whole pillar of sand crumbling down, leaving me a muddy mess.
It is difficult for me to accept love...I have always felt that isolating myself, and surviving on my own is safer. If my ability to be whole does not relie on anyone else then no one can disappoint me. But the truth is I have -like all humans- always craved love. I have longed for people who would break through my tough front and love me. Seeing this wall cracking down, around near strangers no less, is incredibly painful. Painful but also healing --when I finally allowed myself to cry in front of the women in the dance company it was a relief. I was bare and exposed and it was wonderful.
The desert seems harsh at first, the rocks and dirt a rough replacement for the greenery of home...but I am learning that it can be beautiful. When the sun sets here the pinks of the sky intermingle with the orange browns of the ground swirling me into the landscape...like a comforting embrace.
The time for refusing love has come to an end.

Montana Tour Day Three,Four, and Five

Kamloops, the city we are rehearsing in, is one of the only places in Canada to be classified as "desert". The land is jutting and exposed, layers of brown with only the occasional manicured green lawn for reprief. It is so dry here that M.'s eyes are going red with her contacts in, all of our skin seems to be drinking up the moisturizer we put on it, and even the ground itself seems to crack open.

I have become a bit of a semi-aried desert myself of late. Rehersals are HARD, physically exhausting and technically demanding, we all struggle to retain the dances we are learning. Its hard to present a confidant front when each hour seems to break down your self-esteem. My carefully presented surface is cracking under stress,exhaustion, and critique. Because all of the company is living together while we are on tour it is impossible to hide anything. I do not like to show weakness, especially here, as I already feel like the underdog in this group -- having far less dance training and ability. But I have not been able to hide.I am spent...completely. The girls noticed and M tried to give me a hug, I refused. Sometimes I feel like love is like water in a desert. It exactly what I need, but even one drop with bring the whole pillar of sand crumbling down, leaving me a muddy mess.

The girls allowed me more time and I crumbled all on my own. You see my father died in Kamloops 2 years ago. I avoid coming here because of that. To make matters worse the hospice he died in is literally a block from where all of us are staying - I drive by it every day on the way to rehearsal. Very few people know much of this part of my life and sharing it with the dancers I thought would leave me powerless.

It didn't.

Crying with them was a relief. I was bare and exposed and it was wonderful. The desert seems harsh at first, the rocks and dirt a rough replacement for the greenery of home...but I am learning that it can be beautiful. When the sun sets here it is amazing the pinks of the sky with the orange brown of the ground makes you feel swirled into the landscape...like a hug. The time for refusing love has come to an end.

Montana Tour Day One and Two

“To set spirit free from stone” – Alison Wearing

I love this quote. A sculptor wrote it and it speaks to me of what I want my art to be -- of what I want my life to be, my art setting free the broken through the love of God.

Nerves, hesitancy, and excitement all intermingled yesterday as I drove to meet the other 3 women in the dance company I am now a part of. The 4 of us come from all over North America and have, without ever meeting each other (and some with out even meeting the company director or her us, since auditions were by DVD) decided to commit the next 4 months of our lives to tour a brand new production about poverty, the oppressed, and human suffering. The show is a multimedia production that will tours across America, Canada, and Belize raising fund for social justice non-profit-organizations at home and abroad.

Aw doesn’t that sound ever so artistically wonderful and lofty?
– enter reality stage right.

Yesterday after 2 of the girls flew from the east coast (one with her teething one year old baby) we all packed into an incredibly tiny hatchback and headed off for the interior of BC where we would be rehearsing. Ok now when I say `packed in` I mean PACKED IN, every inch of the car was covered in our luggage, dance wear, purses, oh and of course a stroller and car seat. Exhausted we arrived right before midnight at the house we would be staying at. A house that has no hot water, only 1 bed (a single at that), and -as of this moment- no toilet paper, somehow the shows themes have seeped into our lives…(okay I am exaggerating, after all real poverty is not the absence of sheets and hair blow dryers).

The work is inspiring, the rehearsals physically exhausting, and the potential of what lies ahead in the tour brings goose bumps to my arms. I am discovering one cold shower at a time that I am not quite the self sacrificing humanitarian that I supposed – and one sore muscle at a time am discovering my humanity. Apparently setting spirit free from stone requires a little more chiselling than I knew.

Stay tuned…

Desire and Naseau (with a lot of unrelated bracketed thoughts)

I haven't been able to eat much lately, which I have to say is very annoying as it is one of my favorite things to do. Instead about 10min into a meal I become overwhelmingly nauseous. Its a result of a concussion I got from being on the losing end of a hit and run; an accident that wonderfully did not injure my cute little smart car, but frustratingly did send a lot of impact to my head and neck.

The odd thing is, even though I know that delving into a meal will make me feel ill, that pushing myself will bring on headaches, and that dancing all day can cause me to almost blackout - I keep doing them all. What is that about?!

I suppose that is the nature of desire, whether it be the desire to succeed, to express, or in the simplest form - to eat, it is so all consuming that the consequence is outweighed by the longing.

I usually think of desire as an associate of sin. After all the quintessential "apple" in the Garden of Eden was all about desire and that brought a hell of a lot more than nausea with it.

But lets take a moment to reclaim the word (because nothing is more enjoyable than reading a blog about reclaimed words...you are welcome). Desire is a symptom emotion after all, not distinctively good or bad -- I mean it shows a need. Ie. My need for nourishment makes me desire food, my need to create makes me desire to dance, my need for external affirmation makes me desire to push myself incessantly to accomplish more and more and more...(OK lets not delve into that last one...) So really desire --while it rings with the tone of temptress-- is really just need.

But then again so is nausea. Its my body saying "I need rest you crazy dancing fool" (my body apparently talks to me like a sarcastic rapper). Sadly nausea is just not very convincing. It is the wimp in the boxing ring slapping instead of punching. It takes from the future while desire is so wonderfully in the now. The present need seems like such an easy choice.

How can desire not win? I think I am going to go eat now -- ha .

*Please note this silly blog should be in no way applied as actual moral truths. Er the present desire not always such a swell idea (doing such could result in addiction, illness, or pregnancy).

**Also please note that 24 years in the Church has taught me that the 'apple' in the garden was not actually an apple...it was only for literary purposes that I suggested it. I promise. I have not gone heretical on you all.

***At least I don't think I am heretical hmmm...

The weight of bread,cheese, and chocolate

I have just returned home from work, hours later than usual and burdened with a paper bag of groceries. The three items in the bag: a sausage roll, a block of aged cheddar, and a couple of Italian chocolates -- are as close as I could get to the staples of basic nourishment. I did not buy them for myself and they stare up at me like leftover Eucharist host, spirit filled but purposeless. I, somewhat guiltily, heat up the sausage roll for my supper and try to ignore the abandoned cheese and chocolates in their bag on the dining room table. Who knew dairy products could be so convicting?


This was not how I saw my evening panning out.

It all started when a shard of glass got lodged in my tire this morning on the way to work. By 4pm my tire was as flat as a botched boob job. So, annoyed, but excited to use my smart-car 12inch electric air compressor, I blew the tire back up and drove to the nearest Kal-tire. An hour later I was back on the road with a patched tire and -surprisingly- no bill (oh the perks of being young and female in an automotive shop).
As per usual I got lost when I tried to find a new route home and ended up stuck at a light going the wrong way up Terminal Ave. As a young man begging approached my car I did the usual locked-door-windows-up-avert-eyes routine; but as he paced with his hand drawn sign "Travelling, broke, hungry...anything helps" my eyes misted over. God loves this boy, this boy that can't be much older than my little brother, who was covered in scrapes and sores -- marks of travelling a path that no one had cleared for him. I realized I did have fifteen dollars in my purse but I was in conflict, wasn't it bad to encourage 'these people' with money, what if he threatened me, what if...?

The light changed and I drove away leaving his hollow face behind. And as my free tire gripped the road Christ gripped my heart "I was hungry and you did not feed me, I was naked and you
didn't give me clothes..." The grossness of my fear and prejudice slapped me in the face - there is no such thing as "those people" there are all His creation, His people. I changed my route again and headed to the Italian bakery down the road.

If you know me, or have even read my few posts you will notice I am a girl accustomed to fear. I am not taken by fits of passion or bravery -- at least, on my own I'm not. But in this moment I felt I could walk through fire, the courage of God surpasses my understanding! So I walked into the shop and got chocolates and cheese, and a sausage roll at the shop next door. I was freed knowing this money was not mine, not really, and found myself tipping the cashier. When I walked back onto the street a man begged for 70 cents and instead of turning away I gave him all I had. I drove back to the stop light thinking of how I would offer the food; but the boy had left, I searched the streets looking around the intersection, but he had moved on...a hungry traveller still.

I looked around the streets as I drove home, trying to see someone who could benefit from the food. And what I saw amazed me, for the first time I really saw the people who lived in East Van. Many hungry travellers in their own way -- some lost, some searching, and all hungry. Somehow my bread and cheese felt heavy. The need was big and my offering too small. Disappointed I pulled up to my house, and brought the food into the house with me.

Somewhere a boy is hungry and alone while I am full.
Thirsty and I am satisfied-
Naked and I am clothed.

Lord Jesus have mercy
have mercy on us all.

Amen

Of clouds in climbless skies...

The polka-dot emblazoned woman sitting beside me, who i would guess was in her late fifties, groggily asked "are those mountains we are flying over now?" Apparently her eyesight was a couple decades older than she was. We were flying over the Pacific Ocean as we had been 95% of our flight from Vancouver to honolulu. The shapes out our plane window, which she had mistaken for mountains ,were a glorious blanket of clouds ranging from gossamer thinness to thick pillow top comfoters. The vastness of this "skyscape" blew my mind as I saw the fingerprints of God's hands swirled in the never-ending fushia and tangerine coloured horizon. I was in utter peace.
Not that my trip started so serenely. Flying stand-by is apparently much like gambling. You really don't know until minutes before the flight whether or not you'll get on (ohh thats why they call it stand-by...). Once my friend who had dropped me off at the airport left, full on panic set in. I did not feel like sleeping at YVR, I needed to get to this wedding in Hawaii as cheaply as possible, and every westjet airline attendant I spoke with readily listed the many factors standing in the way of my ticket. All things which were annoyingly out of my control.

I felt God asking me to trust him which caused the following 2 hour long internal arguement:
What if I trust him to get me on this flight and it falls through, then I will need to come up with the reason why he actually meant for me to not get on. Oh but I really want to fly out tonight! But maybe that's not what he wants, maybe this is selfish of me. Maybe I am only supposed to go for a couple of days so he'll make me miss this flight for the later one in the week. Or perhaps this is to teach me how to deal with the difficulties of travel so I am more equipped when he calls me as a missionary to Timbuktu where I will probably die as a martyr...or maybe this flight is going down and that's why I shouldn't push my ticket through or I'll end up dead floating face down in the ocean, my body swollen with salt water and little carnivorous fish feeding on my...
That's the jest of it without going any further into the creative morbidity of my brain.

Then my name was called and I boarded the plane.

This made me realize that I am often trying to outsmart God -- well perhaps not God as much as
much as my faith. I worry that if i can't figure out the big picture and I choose to trust God anyway, I will be let down. My faith will prove ungrounded. My provision and protection will not be there and I will be alone. And I desperately do not want that. Blame it on abadonment issues but i have a fear of God letting me down and me having nothing left to believe in. So I don't ask God to prove himself to me, I make sure he doesn't have to so that I can have a strong belief in his divinity...just not his relationally. Instead I prove myself to him (yes I realize now that God must find that pretty funny).

The plane landed safe and sound in Honolulu 20 minutes ahead of schedule. I was neither saline filled, or stranded. The flight apparently hand not been God's harsh blow of discipline or a painful didactic lesson. Instead, staring out from my window seat at the beauty of the elements spun together in the starry night sky, there was peace. For a moment the anxiety that whimpers its lies in my head was silenced by an overwhelming feeling that I was loved. That God was powerful. That it didn't matter if I was floating my way to hawaii balancing on the surface of a single wine cork, God's plan and majesty are so far beyond me I may as well take a breath, and learn to trust because this ride ain't over yet. And the clouds? ...they are only the beginning.

On Choking (and other issues pertaining to breathing)

Choking is my call to community. Its not odd when you think about it, really, I mean it is the wake up call to the one-man islands, to the cocky singles, to the isolated hermits: we are not enough on our own.

I was just outside soaking in the sun on a lazy summer evening, enjoying the immense space -- both literal and internal -- that this phase of my life resides in. I am single in a very contented way. Today no communal urges (which tend to range from horniness to loneliness) pulled at me. So I lay down and read my book and bathed in the beauty of being 23. Until an ant the size of a hippo crawled on my bare tummy. Then I sat up, but then the white of the pages of my book caught the suns rays and glared up into my eyes. I gave up and headed inside for a drink of water. A tall cold glass of water still fit the sensuous freedom of my evening. But then I swallowed weird, ended up choking, and spewed water all over the counter in an effort to avoid drowning.

This sadly is not an unknown occurrence for me. I do not have 'coordination of the epiglottis'.

But choking is also a divine reminder for me. God tapping me gently on the shoulder (or trachea) to remind me that while contentment is wonderful, community is still needed. Treating myself to evenings of self-indulgent relaxation can be beautiful -- but if I do not share life with family, friends, the random old guy on the street that smiles in an ambiguous way, I am missing out. I will relax myself right into a pathetic obituary "young woman dies of clumsy swallowing: glass of water proves fatal". Well perhaps I am exaggerating. But my point is, while we often grow frustrated with our communities, dream of time to be alone, and wish to avoid the hubbub around us -- they are the arm that is raised waiting to heimlich us back to life. Without community we become indulgent creatures that choke on our own isolation. Choking reminds me that no woman is an island... and also that drowning is possible with a very small amount of water.

And hey next time you see me, make sure I am drinking with a straw.

J

Watch out I'm merging...

Some people are born risk takers - they seem almost casual about leaping into commitment- be it financial, relational, or career. This, however, is not me.
I am currently typing this on the first computer I have ever bought. Yes, I was a computer virgin. I made it through four years of university without feeling the urge to drop some dough on a laptop. Actually I take that back, I felt the urge I just fought it. In fact fighting urges is something I have made into an art form. (I know what you’re thinking, and no, I’m not just a computer virgin.)
Well my current car is at 280,000 km and the need to purchase a new car has been looming over me for months. But I have been putting it off. I have a million excuses that I use to convince myself that I don’t need to buy another car yet: its too expensive- I could just take transit-- my car works why sell it?
But the truth is I am afraid. The fear of making the wrong choice, getting myself in a financial bind, or feeling trapped, overwhelm me. This is the same fear that kept me trudging off to the library to use email, scheduling paper writing around when room mates were using their computer, and avoiding male relationships so that my first kiss was with a cast mate not a boyfriend.
But the times my friends they are a changing. I have purchased a laptop, leaped out into auditions and career, and am looking into buying a smart car. The fear is still there buts its nagging no longer clings to me like a familiar friend - it is anxiety that I know is nothing but an obstacle.
This is one tall girl who is about to buy one small car and while I might not be ready to fly over uncharted roads, this gal’s switching lanes, and life better watch out.