Tuesday, September 25, 2007

home alone

Gordon's in Montreal. Working terribly long days and not getting to enjoy a beautiful city.

I'm here. By myself (this is where you feel at least a twinge of compassion).

He's not the loudest person, but this place seems awfully quiet without him.

No humming from the den (which happens when he programs).
No "They have surrendered, my liege." (which is said by some guy on the computer when he's playing Medieval War Something-or-Other).
And, no one to help me procrastinate from doing school work. I've had to do that all on my own. (You'll all be quite relieved to know that I'm equally as gifted at solo and collaborative procrastination).

(Come home soon, okay?)

Monday, September 17, 2007

worship conversation

I have been uncomfortable with the "Jesus is my boyfriend" variety of worship songs for a long time.

I have had a particular gripe with "Let my words be few" by Martin Smith...If I were to use it, we would sing the following:

"You are God in heaven
And here I am on earth
So I'll let my words be few

(silence)

I'll stand in awe of You
I'll stand in awe of You"

Well, we sang it AGAIN yesterday in church. (That's two weeks in a row!)

And I sang the above words and then spent the rest of the song confessing my contempt and disdain for these songs, searching for some sort of missed understanding, wondering if I'm just not as 'intimate' in my 'personal relationship with Jesus', and finally realizing that I'm not so sure I have a 'personal relationship with Jesus' but that I relate to Jesus as an individual, yes, but as an individual who has been grafted into the family of God. I'm an "I" in the midst of a family that stretches through centuries and across continents...and I like the "we"-ness of that too!

Well, John Stackhousehas blogged about the same experience. And with quite a lot of response. (I'm the ajt in the comments!)

Thursday, September 13, 2007

what's in a name...

Originally, this blog began when I was between jobs, between living accommodations and between relational statuses. (how does one pluralize "status"?) All was transition and in between seemed like the most appropriate name for my new blog. What I realized quite quickly is that we're always in between. I think I already knew this, but I re-learned it as I moved from dating to engaged to married; from a church job to the Regent job; from a temporary apartment to my brother & sister-in-law's place to Gordon & my condo. With all of these three major transitions "finished" I still found myself in between.

This past month has had a lot of that "in between-ness" to it as well. Time off that also had a list of things I hoped to accomplish (and mostly didn't). Waiting with my in-laws for visas that seemingly wouldn't come...three weeks of sitting on packed suitcases. They definitely were living in the in between. (The visas did come and they are off on grand adventure!) I went to Calgary for a week and visited family and friends there and found that this place I come from still has a place for me even though I don't feel so much that I belong there anymore. Regent life has resumed and I find myself walking the line between student and staff, fitting into neither category very neatly. I'm in between. New students have arrived and there is this strange sense of unfamiliarity and yet the knowledge that, within a very short time, they will be very much a part of things, offering us gifts of themselves that we've yet to discover. And with the return to the Regent community there are all sorts of joys and sorrows that are poignant reminders that in a cosmic sense we are living in the in between, the kingdom has already come, but not yet in full. We are rejoicing over the birth of twin girls to our dear friends Ben & Nickaela. We are gently welcoming back two faculty members who, last fall, were not able to work due to a stroke and a severe depression. But we are also reeling at the news of a cancer diagnosis given to an emeritus faculty member who just spent the summer with us and to the tragic death of a couple's baby boy the week before his due date. I cannot tell you how much this last item has shaken us. God's hand is hard to trace here, except in the support that I have seen their community fill in to give them.

We are in between great joy and deep distress.

We are in between glimpses of a kingdom and signs of the brokenness of a fallen creation.

For now, it would seem that in between is where we live.

Saturday, September 08, 2007

one of my favourite human beings...

Madeleine L'Engle died on Thursday.

From the NY Times article (linked above)
“Why does anybody tell a story?” Ms. L’Engle once asked, even though she knew the answer.

“It does indeed have something to do with faith,” she said, “faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically.”