after greenbelt...

from today's writer's almanac...

"Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being."

- Goethe

::

oh how i need that lesson... not only do i fail to treat people as if they were being what they ought to be, i fail to treat them as they are, opting instead for treating them like i perceive them to be... and which all to often sells them short on their humanity and complexity... i so desperately want to run from all that seems fake, false, shallow, & plastic wrapped for a demographic rather than our humanity... to run toward that which is solid, real... authentic... substantive... but the path that leads from cynicism toward compassion can seems narrow some days, narrower than i can tread... most days it leaves me in need of forgiveness upon forgiveness...

i have 3 weeks before i head to the US for just shy of 3 months... i wonder what lessons it will bring... which will be hard won... which will come in the form of an easier grace...?

LB

from before greenbelt

with appreciation for those that help us through...

finally getting around to jotting down some thoughts... something i have (clearly) struggled and failed to do of late...

the summer, if we dare call it that after 60mm of rain in 12 hours, has been hard but improving... but these have been days of unrest in many guises... the past few months have been lessons in holding steady... and where once deep lows were followed by peaks of overwhelmed thankfulness and surprise, these days are marked by a slower, quieter kind of acceptance that i cannot do this alone... there has been little celebration this time of survival, but instead a close-to-tired acknowledgement that sometimes when we hope, we are rewarded only temporarily... i am mindful now that if there was not the risk of failure then it would not be a risk at all. my heart perhaps feels beaten... and while i am aware of great love in my life, i also sense the deep sadness i carry... that maybe this time i am not going to refind the wild hope i had a year ago... and so we hope for hope itself...

and it is with mystery and the ever present sense of stumbling that i find faith has pulled me through from dark days of lostness that i find myself still being found... still listening for something that might be listening for me...

sarah m and myself have been writing words to one another on prayer... wondering at how one prays when that to which we might pray seems absent... yet pray i do...

if the lab can work fast enough, i am looking forward to receiving a new pair of glasses this week before i depart for greenbelt08. it will hopefully make working on the laptop less tiring than i am finding it at present. i guess i need clarity in more ways than one.

somewhere between grieving and breathing, there is a thing we do called living...

post 'belt thoughts will follow. i hope...

LB,x