Introverted Tendancies

Announcement: I am an introvert. I am an introvert who loves being around people and needs contact and relationship to stay sane... but it is also draining. I have to have a place to come home to and be restored. Be re-energized. This causes some particular problems in this field where so much of my life and job are to be with people. I recognize that everyone needs some alone time and that all people crave human contact but there is a difference between the people who get their energy FROM other people and people who get their energy from being alone.

So says the source of all common knowledge, Wikipedia: Extraverts (also spelled extroverts) tend to be gregarious, assertive, and interested in seeking out excitement. They tend to think out loud and cannot solve things in their heads as well as introverts. However, it should not necessarily be assumed that just because one has many friends that they are an extravert. Introverts, in contrast, tend to be more reserved, less outgoing, and less sociable. They are not necessarily loners but they tend to have smaller circles of friends. Introverts have an easier time solving things inside their head without help. Introversion does not describe social discomfort but rather social preference. An introvert may not be shy at all but may merely prefer non social or less social activities. There are people who are inbetween, those that don't mind to be in a big crowd or alone. These people may have a large group of friends but don't mind spending time alone.

I am an introvert. So right now, I'm basically ready for a nap. Anyone else?

Where has my blog gone?

Frankly, I blame it on poor time management. Alas, I'm going to try to get this going again for internship. I'll need my outlet!

I'll be moving out of my Chicago apartment on the 20th of August and driving to Billings in three parts - Chicago to St. Paul/Minneapolis; MN to Bismark, ND; ND to Billings. That way I get to stop in on family and visit and it is nicely chunked out in 6-7 hour pieces (20 hours total). I'm going to attempt to pack Henry and nothing else. I might mail a few boxes out west in the end, depending on how much stuff I have. And let's remember... I have a lot of stuff. I try to keep consolidating and what not, but I'm a single woman. I have a tool box; multiple sets of sheets and towels; wall decor; books galore; various kitchen objects that range from useful to fun; a laptop, guitar, and an xbox; and clothing including winter wear! It's going to be fun...

But I have a whole month to get there. Let me tell you what I've been up to this SUMMER!

That's right. I got/get a summer. One of the last, I'm assuming. That's the beauty of starting internship September 1st. But I got a summer job - several jobs in fact. Small ones but they are fantastic and put a little money in my pocket. The first is working for a youth mission program out of the seminary. For one of the programs (there are several), I spent three weeks with 16 high school students and a few other adult mentors. We spent a week in Chicago (meeting with various Chicago advocacy groups and professors, touring Hyde Park, learning about Islam and meeting with Muslim youth, and beginning to talk about traveling to Mexico...), one week in Mexico (at the Lutheran Center in Mexico City and CCIDD in Cuernevaca learning about the culture and the effects of NAFTA, meeting with Mexicans, and seeing where Liberation Theology was born), then a week back in Chicago (to meet with immigrants in the Chicago area, debrief everything, and say goodbye). Generally, this sounds like an introvert's version of hell but it was really quite fantastic. I got to work with some of my favorite people and the youth taught me a lot about how crappy it is to be a teenager right now. I couldn't be happier I did it though I was more than exhausted at the end of the third week.

Besides that, I've been meeting with youth groups coming to Chicago for the week. We talk about vocation and where God might be calling them - both now and in the future. I've been babysitting two fantastic youngin's - we go on long walks, chill, and talk about the alphabet. It has been ridiculously hot, so I've been sleeping a bunch (/recovering from school and the youth mission program) and staying near my AC window unit. I played through the rest of Mass Effect and borrowed Mass Effect 2 from my friend Nils who is out of the country and am happily making my way through that. I'm journaling. I'm reading books. I'm organizing my head and heart and soul and apartment all at the same time in preparation for the year ahead. I'm pumped!

I'm ready for internship. For open skies. For new places. For new people and faces. For a culture that might be as foreign to me as Mexico or as familiar as my home town. For new adventures. For getting stretched, humbled, and spiritually fed. For all that the year holds of which I have no idea. Can't wait, can't wait, but can totally take another month to get there. ;)

It's best to compose a poem...

Hello my lemons,

I'm writing poetry again. But the new stuff is too raw still so I shall post something I wrote for the seniors last year which seems perfect for the semester's wind down:

For the Seniors

If I hung you on the wall like a mirror,
I wonder if you'd talk like me, act like me.
Could I dress you up and keep you here with me?
Sing you stories and show you songs about me?
Could I hug you in the quiet crazy of my sleep
When houses I no longer live in call me home
And running never gets me where I'm going.
But they are pretty, all the same, these dream sleep dreams.
They tap at our unspoken and the too much spoken
And yet demand no specific answer for their questions.

Find me in the midst of these and sing,
Tell me how you are like my skin, my story,
But how you dream instead of ponds and rivers
Sometimes frozen but rarely walkable or warm.
How you hang art on the wall instead of mirrors
And find yourself staring at the thick paint,
Wondering why the artist painted blue
When you had always considered grass green.
Which then makes you think of open plains and fields
And following your footsteps to some new house
Some home where mirrors and art are hung side by side
But maybe you don't recognize your skin or the color of paint
When it sketches itself in unrecognizable colors and hues
On walls that look nothing like the home in your head.

Find yourself there where the rivers freeze overnight
And the sick do not always remember your name.
Find there the sad cry of tired voices
And their need for a dream like yours.
Not for mirrors or symbolic art on church walls
But for passion and a willingness to hold the pain.
For recognizing that grass is not always green
And that sometimes the strangest dreams let you run the farthest.
Hold them there and let me be here in my wandering,
Also finding the places that somehow feel like home.

More lyrics. Alanis style.

How bout getting off of these antibiotics
How bout stopping eating when I'm full up
How bout them transparent dangling carrots
How bout that ever elusive kudo

Thank you India
Thank you terror
Thank you disillusionment
Thank you frailty
Thank you consequence
Thank you thank you silence

How bout me not blaming you for everything
How bout me enjoying the moment for once
How bout how good it feels to finally forgive you
How bout grieving it all one at a time

Thank you India
Thank you terror
Thank you disillusionment
Thank you frailty
Thank you consequence
Thank you thank you silence

The moment I let go of it was
The moment I got more than I could handle
The moment I jumped off of it was
The moment I touched down

How bout no longer being masochistic
How bout remembering your divinity
How bout unabashedly bawling your eyes out
How bout not equating death with stopping

Thank you India
Thank you providence
Thank you disillusionment
Thank you nothingness
Thank you clarity
Thank you thank you silence

I'm going to Montana

....and I just keep singing parts of this song in my head.

"Wide Open Spaces" by Dixie Chicks

Who doesn't know what I'm talking about
Who's never left home, who's never struck out
To find a dream and a life of their own
A place in the clouds, a foundation of stone

Many precede and many will follow
A young girl's dream no longer hollow
It takes the shape of a place out west
But what it holds for her, she hasn't yet guessed

[Chorus:]
She needs wide open spaces
Room to make her big mistakes
She needs new faces
She knows the high stakes

She traveled this road as a child
Wide eyed and grinning, she never tired
But now she won't be coming back with the rest
If these are life's lessons, she'll take this test

[Repeat Chorus]
She knows the highest stakes
She knows the highest stakes
She knows the highest stakes
She knows the highest stakes

The art of Love

I keep saying I have a problem with the phrase, "Hate the Sin, Love the Sinner." Most of this is based on the fact that I think we stop at the first part of the phrase or even the first word. Getting permission to hate in the name of doing something good has unleashed an awful kind of hell on the world. Let's just have the second part - "Love the Sinner." Wasn't Jesus' commandment to love God and neighbor? There wasn't hate in that phrase. I wonder if we are even capable of separating the two. Perhaps only Jesus is capable of that.

At least, I've not seen it successfully done by any human or any church. How does one hate the sin but love the sinner? Surely we understand that sin is wrong, etc, etc and that God loves the person and not the sin. I've just been getting multiple challenges lately to hate the sin. (It generally begins with, "But the bible says....") Is this our call? Are we called to hate the sin and love the sinner? I don't think I like being called to hate. I recognize that sin is worth hating and I certainly am not promoting it but I don't really think we as humans can actually separate the hate and love. In our task to hate the sin, we hate the sinner. Or as someone else posed, perhaps the problem is that we really, really love the sin and aren't actually capable of hating it. So I'm casting the question outward - can we hate the sin and love the sinner TRULY? I feel like I am called to love - I'm not so sure about this hate thing.

The Task

It is hard to think of ministry as a blessing right now. Jesus as my friend. God at my side.... Not because God is absent but because of how incredibly difficult this life is. The odd isolation that choosing to be a prophet for God brings. The challenge of being a model for others, a leader, a guide. Someone who has her spiritual gifts and blessings straightened out and is living into the life God has called her to. Even the little things like remembering to actually pray for someone when you told them you would. Completing assignments even when your emotions are distracting. Staying in touch with family and friends who are far away when there never seems to be time for a phone call. Remembering to take time for myself and not knowing what exactly to do in that time but sleep.

I'm just saying it is difficult, even while it is a blessing. Trying to be happy that God has called me to ministry while at the same time grimacing with how much it seems to take of me, how much it costs. But isn't that the point? That God wants all of me?

A calling

Is this song a call story or what?

Snow Patrol - Chocolate

This could be the very minute
I'm aware I'm alive
All these places feel like home

With a name I'd never chosen
I can make my first steps
As a child of 25

This is the straw, final straw in the
Roof of my mouth as I lie to you
Just because I'm sorry doesn't mean
I didn't enjoy it at the time

You're the only thing that I love
It scares me more every day
On my knees I think clearer

Goodness knows I saw it coming
Or at least I'll claim I did
But in truth I'm lost for words

What have I done it's too late for that
What have I become truth is nothing yet
A simple mistake starts the hardest time
I promise I'll do anything you ask...this time

And the beat goes on...

Love is not a victory march, it's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah.
-"Hallelujah"

After 5 months of a really good thing, my boyfriend and I have parted ways. We said back in the beginning that being in love did not mean two people should be in a relationship. We certainly loved. That was the beautiful gift - love. But we decided it was in our mutual interest to end things now. So, I just wanted you to know.

In other news:
1. Lent is finally drawing to a close. I'm preaching Palm Sunday and the 2nd sunday of Easter.
2. My home church voted to stay in the ELCA despite the fact that some were upset by the decision to ordain gays and lesbians. The best comment about this came from a gay friend of mine: "You know, more and more of those decisions are failing..." I love it.
3. I will find out my internship site April 19th. I've interviewed so far in Somonauk, IL, Billings, MT, Austin, TX, and Vancouver, WA. I've got a few more coming up for TX and Iowa. I'll keep you posted.

Wearing the sign of the cross

I got ashes on my forehead around noon today. Still had them across my forehead when I met with the Muslim woman I tutor in English. She saw them and was about to let me know that I had some dirt on my forehead when I realized what she was pointing to. I had to explain. This is a cross of ash. This is the beginning of Lent. This is when we remember our mortality. We are dust. To dust we shall return.

Then on my way back to my apartment, an African American man saw the cross, pointed to it and nodded at me. Then we stopped and chatted for a while. He needed some cash to feed his girls so I gave him the little cash I had in my car. But what I find incredible is the connection that the ashes gave us. (Tragically, that's the only part I know wasn't a lie.) Almost like, "Hey, you, you are a Christian. Me, too."

As I continued walking I wondered, if I had washed the cross off, what would have been different about my conversations? For the man I spoke with on the street, would I have been just a college student that might have had money to give him? Instead, with both people, I got to have conversation.

So I think my Lenten discipline will be to wear the sign of the cross each day - not in ashes but perhaps in jewelry or in clothing. What will it change about how I present myself to the world? Shame? Pride? Confidence? Humility? We'll see. I'll let you know.