don't force it.

It's French press Saturday again and the house is silent. Even the washing machine has stopped running and all I hear is the faint hum of the refrigerator, a few birds outside. Ah, yes.

I've been thinking lately about how our lives gradually unravel, like threads in a tightly wound cord. With each slow turn, the threads become a bit loser and begin to separate. Eventually, one can start to see each individual strand and how it fits into the whole.

Or perhaps our lives are more like books that can only be read one paragraph at a time. We cannot skip ahead to read the final outcome. We cannot know how the plot will twist and turn or how our character will be shaped by the events and people that weave in and out of our trajectory. We can only know the part we are reading now, in the moment, and each paragraph gradually alters how will things will play out in the future.

This is how life has felt lately for me. I am an odd one. I like to read books and magazines from back to front, or sometimes I like to plop myself right in the middle and skip around from there. This drives my left-brained, linear-minded husband absolutely mad. But me, I am not so linear. My mind likes to flit and float around, jumping associatively from one topic to the next. It sometimes resists a neat and orderly narrative.

But there is no jumping around in the narrative of my life, no option to read from back to front or to start somewhere in the middle. There is only here and now--there is only the sentence that God is currently constructing, one word at a time, and each word is formed based on the one that preceded it. Sometimes the process feels painstakingly slow. Yet it is in the slowness and stillness that I'm learning to listen to His voice. I'm learning to slow down myself, to trust that He will uphold my character through all of the peaks and valleys, twists and turns ahead. I don't need to rush the story or try to force the action before its due time.

Don't force it. That's what I keep telling myself. I'm aware that I've tried to force many things in my life, and I'm equally aware of how unnecessary it is. I don't need to have it all figured out. I don't need to make decisions before I'm ready to or before I'm required to do so. Wait and trust, wait and trust, I say.

I dropped my last poetry class a few weeks ago. It is the very last class I need before I can begin my thesis. I am so close, yet so far away from finishing this MFA. I knew in my gut that I needed to drop it. I knew that with everything that's going on in our lives right now, I would not be able to get my mind into it. I need to be fully present and engaged in what is happening right now--with God, with myself, with my family, with Ren. I can't do that and school. Besides, if required to write poetry at a time like this, I'm pretty sure my poems would end up sounding a little something like this:

The cat sat
on a mat
and then it
ate a rat.
What do you
think about that?

So, as of now, I'm registered to take my next class this December. I'm thinking that our lives might be a bit more "stable" at that point, but who knows. Most people say that the first year post-adoption is insanity, so I will have to cross that bridge when I get to it. If I don't take the December class, then I'll be dropped from my program and I'll have to reapply again if I want to complete my degree. If this happens, I'll also be required to take three extra classes that weren't required when I originally started the program. And to be honest, I'm okay with all of that. I want to finish this degree...I have come so far...but I am also at peace if for some reason it doesn't work out and I can't finish. I don't want to force it if the timing is not right.

Sometimes other things come along and get in the way of our plans. Sometimes, something big, like Love, gets in the way, and our trajectory is forever altered, our original plans get modified, and who we become is no longer compatible with the dreams we once had. We become different and maybe we learn to dream even bigger dreams than before.

Who knows what lies ahead in my narrative? Only God. Who knows if I'll ever finish this MFA? Only God.

But one thing's for sure.

I'll never stop writing.

hot pink

Please excuse my blog, it has a mood disorder. It can't maintain one template...or one topic of conversation...for very long.

While driving in the car today, I was thinking about how long life is. It takes an entire lifetime for each of our stories to be told. Try as I might, I can't wrap my mind around eternity, and in my minuscule understanding time, a human life seems like forever.  Nothing of significance happens quickly. I suppose we won't understand the full narrative of our lives until after the fact, until we are reading it page by page, perhaps on some cloud in heaven.

This all feels a little daunting to me, which is perhaps why poetry feels like a more inviting place to camp out these days. Poetry...it can tell a story...but typically that story is contained within a moment. One scene. One finite flash in time.

As Dean Young says,

"Poetry is an art of beginnings and endings. You want middles, read novels. You want happy endings, read cookbooks."

In a poem, it's okay to just be where you are in a given moment. There's no concern for how it's all going to turn out in the future or how this one particular scene will drive the plot forward. It's here. It's now. It has no ulterior motive. There's something refreshing to me about that.

Totally off-topic:

I bought these shoes today.

They are fluorescent pink. The photo doesn't come close to capturing just how bright they are. They are loud, impractical, and trendy. As I was in the store today, I was trying to decide if they were totally cute or absolutely atrocious. These shoes are so many things that I've tried not to be for a decent portion of my life...so I bought them. It's time for a change. I'm really not as practical as I try to be anyways.

Another thought today:

The word FERVENT.  You usually hear it in the context of prayer. I have been fervently praying about Ren. I have wondered if it's possible to be fervent and restful at the same time. I want to be like the persistent widow, knocking on God's door until He gives me what I want, and I also want my hands to be open, trusting His plan for us. 

How do the two coexist? 

It's one of those tricky things where the right state of being is smack-dab in the middle of the tension...the least comfortable place to exist. Dang it, why does that seem to be the answer to everything? In the tension. Live in the tension.

Ah, well.  These neon pink shoes make me smile in the midst of it.

What tension are you existing in right now? What makes you smile in the midst of it? 

words, words, words...

How many words do we really need?

I find that Americans are excessive on almost every level, even the way we use language.

There is so much traffic and commotion on the internet.  Run-on blog posts, tweets, status updates, opinions. Words, words, words.  We have a lot of them. I realize the irony of this post, as I am merely adding to them.

But what are we really saying?

I know that in my own experience, it sometimes requires a lot of words and a lot of talking in order for me to pin down what I want to say--the heart of my message.  But once I get to the heart, can't I start to cut away the excess?

This is what a love about poetry--the condensed language--"the best words in their best order."

I'm wondering how this would translate to the way that I live--what would my life look like if I knew the heart of my message--the message that God wants to speak through me--and started to delete the rest of the clutter?

My favorite poet, Linda Pastan, says--

"I'd like to write long narrative poems. I'd like to write a novel. And any time I start anything long, I keep trying to take out anything extraneous, anything that doesn't belong, and I end up with a small lyric poem that just happens...But each poem of mine goes through something like 100 revisions...I want every word to have to be there. I want a certain kind of impact on the reader or on myself when I read it, the sort of condensed energy that can then go out."

Simple. Concise. Condensed. Powerful. The core, the meat, the good stuff. Nothing else.

In his book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, Donald Miller writes about living a good story.

I'm wondering what it would look like to live poetry.

Jesus spoke in poetry. His parables were metaphors, and as Tony Hoagland says, "metaphor is the raw uranium of poetry." Those simple, short metaphors carried so much density, meaning, and mystery, that they eluded most people. They still elude us. Perhaps that is why they're so brilliant. We try to pin down their meaning, but despite all of our thick commentaries, we can't.

Jesus chose His words wisely and His words were few. He didn't need a lot of them.

He is the Word.

Word...as in singular.

I can find nothing superfluous, excessive, or wordy about Jesus or the way He communicates.

I am taking notes. The implications are profound.

wild geese

I went on a run at the duck pond on base this morning. I almost didn't go because it was so cold out, but I decided to bundle up and brave the bite in the air. The duck pond is one of my favorite places to run. It has many interesting attractions that a treadmill lacks--a long, winding trail, a gorgeous view of the Napa hills, and geese...lots of geese.  

A whole flock of them had taken up residence on one stretch of the jogging path, and as I tried to weave in and out of them, they waddled their plump white rumps out of the way...except for one. One of them wouldn't budge. His beady black eyes stared a whole through me, and as I jogged past, he opened his dark beak, cranked back his neck, and released a loud, angry hiss.

I jogged on and laughed a little. It was one of those moments that caught me off guard. When I thought about what the day would hold, I didn't envision being hissed at by a goose. It definitely got my attention.

***

In the process of writing a poem for school this week, I've been noticing how the emotional and spiritual seasons we go through in life are reflected in nature. Nature repeats itself. Most beauty is in this repetition. This morning as I ran, I noticed the naked, silver branches, the placid pond, the black birds scattering across the cloudless blue sky. These details are beautiful. They are significant. They are not random images God placed in creation. They tell us something about Him. They tell us something about how to live a meaningful life. They tell us how we might fit into all of that.

***

This evening I received an email from a friend.  He attached a poem for me to read by an incredible contemporary poet, Mary Oliver.  The poem...of all poems...is called "Wild Geese."

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting

over and over announcing your place 

in the family of things.

the way the leaves keep falling.

Autumn comes late here in northern California. The trees are almost at their peak and tomorrow is already December.  Many of the leaves won't surrender until around Christmas, and it is not until early January that their branches are truly bare.

There's this couple of trees I pass on my way to Lucy's Mom's Day Out program.  They grab my attention every time.  I stopped at the side of the road and took a photo of them today.  Watching their leaves all aglow in gold, the way the ground surrounding their trunks is now gold as well, reminds me of this poem by my favorite poet, Linda Pastan.  I thought I'd share it with you...

The Way the Leaves Keep Falling

It is November
and morning--time to get to work.
I feel the little whip
of my conscience flick
as I stand at the window watching
the great harvest of leaves.
Across the street my neighbor,
his leaf blower already roaring,
tries to make order
from the chaos of fading color.
He seems brave and a bit foolish.
It is almost tidal, the way
the leaves keep falling
wave after wave to earth.

In Eden there were
no seasons, and sometimes
I think it was the tidiness
of that garden
Eve hated, all the wooden tags
with the new names of plants and trees.
Still, I am Adam's child too
and I like order, though
the margins of my poems
are ragged, and I stand here
all morning watching the leaves.

tea and things.

So, according to my calendar, I'm just about six months "pregnant" now, and over the past weeks I've been experiencing sudden, intense cravings for Chinese food. Go figure.  

There is a hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant less than one mile down the road that serves up some amazing chow-mein. The noodles are salty, earthy, and doughy...wholly satisfying.  They soothe my waiting spirit, my primal maternal angst, which is starting to groan and moan daily as we wait for our referral from China. 

Chris and I had a date night a few weeks ago and we went out to eat...Chinese food again.  Each time we crack open our fortune cookies at the end of the meal, I hope for some sort of sign, wanting God to cosmically communicate some secret message that indicates how this will all pan out and when it will all go down. But instead, I open up my crinkled piece of paper and read,

"a modest man never talks to himself."

Hmmm...whatever.  That gives me nothing.

We are nearing the end of paperwork now, and every evening when Chris comes home with the mail, I ask...

Did IT come?

That is, our approval from US Immigration, the last prized piece of paper we need before our dossier is COMPLETE.  

We're coming up on two months since we sent in our application, which is the usual amount of time it takes China families to get immigration's approval, so it should be any day now.

In the meantime, we are just waiting...drinking tea, eating lots of noodles, and reading lots of meaningless fortunes.  

We hope and anticipate that our dossier will be in China by the end of July, and that we will find out who our boy is by the end of the summer.

***  

In other news, I'm reminded that nothing passes the time like busyness and distraction, which equals SCHOOL for me.  I'm back in school this summer, completing the final two classes before I start my thesis, which I'm still uncertain about, but I'll cross that bridge when it comes.

The class I'm currently taking is Advanced Workshop in Poetry II. This is actually the first poetry class I've ever taken--I volunteered to move up into the advanced level course because it was going to cancel unless a few more students joined.  I also moved up because the professor of this class is one cool dude and is the head of our whole MFA program.  So far, so good.

The description of our "student lounge"--the message board where we can virtually raise our hands and ask questions--reads:

This is the Student Lounge. It has plush leather chairs and a mini-fridge filled with travel sized bottles of Cristal. There is a masseuse on call, and take my word, the personal chef creates the gustatory experience of a lifetime. If you have forgotten your smoking jacket, loaners can be found on the rack to your left, next to the Rodin. Yes, indeed, the National University MFA program spares no expense!

Needless to say, the Student Lounge is my kinda place, and it's amazing what kind of classroom you can create for yourself when it's left to your imagination.

Anyhow, some words that immediately come to mind though when I think of poetry are:

frivolous

impractical

unnecessary

melodramatic

And...I suppose it can be all of these things...and I LOVE IT.  Perhaps I have an affinity for impracticality. I think Chris is expecting me to change my track from nonfiction to poetry. I'm not sure, but we'll see. Poetry, just like prose, seems to be GOOD THERAPY. Putting thought and emotion into words is cathartic and freeing, and I find that it offers a great sense of pleasure and relief in the midst of life circumstances that are largely out of our control. So, in that sense, poetry is the most practical and necessary thing ever! 

So...you guys may be seeing more poetry up in here over the next eight weeks.

For me it's been hot tea, chinese noodles, and poetry...

but what soothes your waiting heart?

growing you.

growing you

doesn’t look 

like two

cells that 

divide 

inside

my womb.

you grew 

within

my new

soft heart

alive 

inside

of me.

meeting you

doesn’t look

like two

colors

black/white

that light

a screen.

i meet

you in

my dreams

my mind

i trace

your face

within.

chasing you

doesn’t look

like two

small feet

that run

fast one

from me.

i chase

your heart

replace

the wounds

with love

above

the shame.

seeing you

doesn’t look

like two

brown eyes

or skin

akin

to mine.

I see

black eyes

to me

you shine

handsome

boy come

home.