Carving Out a New Path

Crisis

2010-04-25T00:12:00.000-07:00

Well...its been a long while for those of you who still read this. Tonight's musings revolve around the church and crisis, because right now my heart is heavy with worry and confusion. So why is it that, by and large, today's church hymnals and our praise and worship PowerPoint slides lack songs for times of crisis - crisis of faith, crisis of life, crisis of conscience? The most famous hymn (Psalm) Jesus quotes is Psalm 22: "My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?," a line originally attributed to David. If God's Son can feel forsaken, should we not also expect times of life where this also applies to us as his followers? Where nothing makes sense, and the "will of God" does not match our own in the slightest?

In New Testament class, our last several assignments have involved reading an entire gospel in one sitting (sometimes it is more like 2 or 3 sittings for me, but the idea is large chunks together, all if it in a short period of time). This has been an invaluable experience, but one recurring theme in Matthew and Mark is the faith that spurs miracles. Jesus heals when a miracle is performed often (not always) because of the faith of the person (or of their friends, like in the case of the man lowered through the roof on a mat). When faith is lacking, so are the miracles. This relationship is impossible to avoid, and yet in my own life, I find the correlation much less common. Making sense of this discrepancy is what leads me to title this blog 'crisis.' I am not in a crisis of faith as such, for I know that God exists beyond a shadow of a doubt and that God is love. This can never be shaken from my being. But why has God forsaken me - that is an altogether different question.

Worshiping in my church with this underlying question at the root of my current relationship status with God feels ... dissatisfying, I guess. When I know the songs will be upbeat praise tunes, how can I authentically question and wonder in worship? Certainly affirming God's goodness even while lamenting is biblical and good for the soul. But what is missing is the lamenting part. How do we reintroduce the lament into church (as the Psalmists so wisely did in the Psalter), so that both God's goodness and God's sometimes confusing, undeniable Otherness are both affirmed and so that no one feels the need to be fake in worship? Perhaps the answer lies not so much in song choice as in worshiping with people who care about you, who know where you are at, and who lament with you when you need to lament, and who rejoice with you when you need to rejoice, and who share Eucharist with you regardless. May I learn how to follow Paul's advice, to "rejoice always, pray continually, and give thanks in all circumstances" with sincerity of heart, and may we as a church learn how to lament in worship with those who mourn.

When things don't turn out the way they should...

2010-01-11T15:34:00.000-08:00

I pray often. But as I've posted somewhat recently, understanding prayer and how much God intervenes in the world has been a real struggle for me. When hundreds of people prayed and my sister's cyst still appeared to have returned after her surgery, I got frustrated. And when literally thousands of people prayed for days, and my friend Anthony still did not come down from Mt. Hood (alive or otherwise) this fall, I was devastated. My questions get bigger, it seems, and not smaller, as I've begun a journey through seminary.

In the bathroom, I've been keeping Joan Chittester's book "The Breath of the Soul" on hand (borrowed from a classmate), which is a tiny book with two-page chapters on prayer (much more than this on prayer at a given time, and I have trouble making any of it stick). Just the other day, I read a chapter that really soothed my spirit. Below, I've quoted from the chapter (called "Humility" - something I can always use more of), because not only do I think it may help someone reading this one day, but because I want to come back to this (after I return the book) when my questions grow bigger yet again:

"We spend so much of our lives pretending to be God it is often difficult to remember that we aren't. We proclaim it to the office staff, we remind the family of it by the day, we ply friends with stories of our supernatural victories over small children and store clerks and neighbors. Even early in the process when we go to prayer, we take with us the same attitude of the imperious and the agitated. We order people and things to do our bidding and make our worlds perfect. We secretly expect God to do the same. As Aldous Huxley put it, "the Third Petition of the Lord's Prayer is repeated daily by millions who have not the slightest intention of letting anyone's will be done but their own.

"But then, somewhere in life, we find ourselves facing walls that will not move. We have a child who needs special care now - and will need special care all their lives. We lose the savings of a lifetime and all the retirement plans go with them. We develop a chronic disease that will not end our life but will certainly limit it severely. We watch the business fail through no fault of our own but so far beyond us there's not a thing we can do to save it.

"Now, we find ourselves new people. We have become the spiritual beggars we never before understood. Except that even begging is useless now. And we know it.

"So for what do we pray at a time like this? In fact, why bother?

"The questions are important ones. It is possible that there is nothing that teaches prayer more quickly, more effectively than having nothing to pray for that can possibly happen. We are lost in the land of nowhere to go but God, not to change the circumstances of our lives but to change our whole attitude about what life is really about.

"We learn now in the throes of a heavy heart that the grace simply to be may be one of the greatest graces of life. We discover in the silent arms of God that it is enough to be loved, to be understood, rather than "saved," from the things that are their own kind of salvation.

"Sickness saves us from glorifying the cosmetics of life.

"Need saves us from isolating ourselves from the rest of the world.

"The limitations of others save us from self-centeredness.

"Powerlessness saves us from the sickness of arrogance.

"Then, when we go to prayer we go, not to be given something but to be quiet, to develop a heartbeat of acceptance, to become the calm that is calming. Humility makes listeners of us. And in listening to everything that happens to us, we find God's word for us."

I certainly believe that it is not wrong to pray for our heart's desires (to make the sick well, to mend a broken business, etc), and the Bible is full of examples of this in people of great faith. Sometimes God answers the way they ask, and sometimes God does not. But it is in the "not," that we must find a way to pull through, to return to prayer without returning jaded or cynical. Only in a good measure of humility, of admitting we are not God nor do we know better than God, does this seem possible.

Here's to you, Aughts

2010-01-03T23:49:00.001-08:00

In a decade, I've graduated from high school and college, and begun graduate school (ha - never thought I'd be saying that!) I've held 8 different jobs, I've moved like 15 times, I have moved back in and then back out of my parents house. I earned my CPA license. I've fallen in love 4 or 5 times. I've had my heart broken. I made three "forever" type friends. I quit a "dream" job to pursue a different kind of dream. I purchased and a car and paid it off. I crossed the Pacific ocean six times. I joined a band. I spent 5 summers at summer camps. I spent at least part of every one of those ten years in ministry with youth. I watched my sister survive an intense surgery and bravely battle emotional demons I can only attempt to imagine. I lost a grandmother and watched Alheimers claim my grandfather. My faith has gone through the ringer and gone through again, and has come out in tact with stronger, more flexible edges.

What does the next decade hold? Only a few items on the above list would have made my "ten-year-plan" as a seventeen year-old ringing in the new Millennium. Shouldn't I know better than to try and plan the next ten years? I think I mostly do. My list of desires and hopes is shorter, more general: I'd like to fall in love and have a family. I'd like to become a pastor or a missionary or a part-time minister of some sort and use my seminary degree in some way. I'd like to continue to travel but I'd also like to put down roots in a community and stay in one spot. Other than that? I want to live a life that honors the one who gave it to me.

All in all, 2009 wasn't exactly a "top of the list" year for me, though looking back a lot of good came out of it. A lot of rough things happened to. But to take the good and forget the bad cheats me out of both a greater appreciation for the times that are good, and allows me to forget that the time I spend in this world is NOT supposed to be perfect. I cannot try so hard to create a perfect life for myself that I forget that joy does not depend on life's circumstances, good or otherwise. My dependence belongs on something much more steadfast, much more reliable than something that can change faster than the wind. My friend Anthony's death this December while climbing on Mt. Hood was quite a shocking reminder of that. Anything I cling to in this life will disappear, change, or disappoint.

So, where does the ultimate steadiness come from? God does not change, disappear, or disappoint, though sometimes He seems to. I have no assurance that anything circumstantial in the coming decades will improve upon the one I just lived. Hell, I have no assurance that I will live through the coming decades. Change (in people, jobs, families, friends) is a reality of life - I would never try to downplay its effect on me. But if I can't hold on to something that does not change, something that is always true no matter what happens around me, no hope is in sight. So this New Year, I am thankful for a God who does not change. I am prayerful that my joy, my constant will always be with that God.

So here's to you, decade of the Aughts. You brought me a lot more than your namesake might suggest. May I now have the grace to look forward and not behind and live the Tens more vibrantly, fearlessly and lovingly because of what I have learned from you.

On the cusp...

2009-09-27T20:10:00.001-07:00

...of starting seminary tomorrow (officially), there seems to be a lot weighing on my mind. I attended worship tonight at University Presbyterian for the first time in a church building/traditional setting in a really long time (camp has "Boat in" out-door services, and somehow I've been otherwise occupied every Sunday since I got back.) and it was a surprisingly emotional experience for me.

Somehow - maybe through my world travels, or discussions with many Midwestern, liberal Lutherans, or just my own growing interest in theology - in the last several months, my understanding of God has grown larger and larger and simultaneously, less and less personal. What was once an incredibly personal relationship has become a much more logically sound, defensible set of doctrines. These doctrines seemed to make sense of intense suffering, of the seemingly great disparity of "blessings" given someone like me and, say, the people in the Tanzanian village in which my friend Brie currently dwells as a Peace Corp Volunteer. How could an intensely personal and involved Creator God pick and choose some to bestow copious amounts of comfort and health upon, and others to orphan and fight hunger and illness? Rather than try to make sense of this, or embrace a strange sort of guilt for my own tremendous privilege, it was easier to remove God from the day-to-day altogether. God still exists as Creator, but not so much on the personal Friend type.

While I had not sorted all of these thoughts out theologically (they don't really sort out very well), I definitely moved away from any prayer that either praised or requested God's interaction in my daily life, or that of those around me. I carefully prayed only for Spiritual gifts (comfort, wisdom, discernment, etc.), as opposed to any physical health, or jobs/financial things, food for the hungry, or heaven-forbid a change in the weather. Operating upon the assumption that it was up to me to find a job, that health is inevitably going to fail, that providing food was up to those of us blessed to have more than enough, and that the weather was going to do whatever it pleased. Why would God interact with these mundane things of life, when God gave us the intellect and ability to deal with them, and also allowed death and destruction to occur in their time? Don't ask me what I thought Jesus' miracles were - just a fluke I suppose (like I said, there were still a lot of holes)...I was close to believing they were perhaps fabricated, certainly not a central part of his message!

Again, much of this was a reaction to the popular right-wing Christian argument that Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment of an evil city, or the more extreme Charismatic belief that if we just pray "in the Spirit", God will take care of it (sickness, unemployment, birthing pains, you name it) - big "Genie in the Sky" style. But, if these things aren't true, as I cannot really believe that they are, then what in the heck IS true of God's interaction with the world? Why are people in pain, hungry, not healed when prayed for (heck, a lot of the time they die), or suicidally-depressed, if we have a God who does interact with the world?

Of course, these questions and shifting beliefs in due course changed much of my interaction with God. I stopped reading the Bible, because I couldn't reconcile it with these new theories, I struggled to pray with any honesty because I had to so carefully craft my prayers around Spiritual concerns alone, and I stopped encountering God in worship in the way I used to.

Then I landed at the Spiritual Formation week-long seminary class at Camp Casey with the 20+ seminarians I will be studying with for the next three years. Not realizing that all of the "shifting" I discuss above had been going on inside of me, I was shocked to hear all their personal testimonies about how personally, and often radically, God had worked in their lives. Their passion and personal view of God combined with intelligent working theologies could not be ignored, and I brokenly had to reevaluate my own beliefs. I found that without realizing, I was profoundly missing God in my life, even as I'd been thinking so much about God and God's world.

None of this has been solved for me. I'm not suddenly a charismatic healer who will pray for any injury that comes my way. However, I also have reaffirmed my belief that miracles DO happen, that God interacts with the world every day, most of the times in ways that are not visible. God holds a MUCH larger picture than I do, and I ultimately trust that though every single person who enters life on earth suffers pain, loss, and ultimately, death - without exception - they also nearly invariably experience joy, love, and some form of hope. And in my limited understanding, I can only hope to glimpse one puzzle piece at a time of a multi-billion piece puzzle, that God continues to put together. God's got the box, the end-of-the-project picture that none of us gets to see. We get clues, maybe, but nothing like the end. Heck, we can't even get our arms around infinity - we are simply stuck in this thing called time.

Too many of us, myself definitely included, presume that the puzzle-pieces we've seen make us experts on the Puzzler and the picture as whole. My friend Brie, the PCV I mentioned above, doesn't believe in God, and her village largely does. Their faith seems simple, and foolish, to her, I think much of the time. It probably would to me also. Yet, they've seen a much different part of the puzzle than I have. Maybe instead, I (and she) should learn from their faith and the ways in which they've seen God interact (and not interact) and attempt to broaden our view rather than change theirs.

Ok, this is a really long post, and most of you have probably stopped reading because I'm rambling and being theological, but all that to say that tonight, in worship, God's intensely personal, life-sustaining love grabbed a hold of me, reminding me of why I am in seminary, of why - at the end of the day - I keep coming back to a God who THANKFULLY is hugely bigger than me, or my very small and narrow brain, and placing my trust in that God's vision for a broken world in need. In the meantime, I will spend my life trying to see that picture a little more clearly, and acting accordingly.

Check off To- Do List

2009-09-23T12:02:00.000-07:00

- New (hopefully awesome) part-time job - check!
- New Apartment - check!
- New (must-be-awesome) Roommate - check!
- New Seminary - check!
- New (hideously long) Blogpost - check!
- New Church & volunteer position - (on the schedule for Sunday)
- New Boyfriend - (position open)

Ok, 5 out of 7 not bad! :) I know its been FOREVER since I've done anything with this site, and while I would LOVE to take you all (meaning all 2 of you who are still actually checking this thing) on the "last 5 month's of Jenny's life" tour, I am going to instead try to just pick up where I left off with only a very very brief summary of my amazing summer.

In the coming months, I hope you can expect that I'll be using this as a way to process all that I'm learning in Seminary and how its going actually putting it all into practice in my life.

So, summer...

Adam and I had an awesome roadtrip across the US to Minnesota, but I haven't heard much from him since, which although a bit painful was probably for the best.

Nothing like wearing crazy clothes to help you get over yourself!

Played lots of guitar - and I swear I finally got to a point where I didn't have to look at my fingers, or at the chords, or at anyone but the kids - I loved being "one of the strong ones!" Go chick rockers!

I learned a lot from finding the time to be quiet. Beauty never ceases to open up the communication lines between me and my Creator.

OOPS - DID I MENTION I GOT TO GO TO HONG KONG & MAINLAND CHINA!?

This was an incredible trip. We put on a week of camp in each place, and between playing Mighty Mighty on the beach, having my campers show me the Big Buddha, and generally making wonderful friends, Hong Kong was a blast.

Mainland China, on the other hand, was incredible in a different way. Its beauty, rich history, fascinating and a bit frightening government-rule, and the simply wonderful kids, who face more pressure than we can even describe in English words, made the time fly by. I will always treasure my experience of camp in China. Here are a few pix that show a beautiful hike we took near Xinyang, the way the kids opened up around the campfire our last night, my dear group of girls, etc.

And btw - we got to FEED monkeys! and Ostriches! and it was awesome. And scary - don't look a monkey in the eye - they see it as a sign of aggression. FYI.

And oh yeah - our imprompu layover in Japan was awesome. Here are my male teammates making good use of the hotel robes (one of us decided they were a complimentary present on behalf of the airline and packed it away, but I'm not naming names... the clear imprint of the hotel name inside did not appear to be enough evidence to the contrary).

All in all, I may write more on this trip later. It profoundly moved me in realizing the importance and value in camping ministry, in helping people, esp. kids, to move outside their everyday lives to encounter something bigger, to encounter people who love them independent of their achievements or abilities, and to ultimately, encounter a God who created and loves them. Maybe this is where God is leading me, but more on that later...

In 21 days...

2009-04-22T16:41:00.001-07:00

...Adam and I will begin a 4 1/2 day road trip from Seattle to Minneapolis, via Yellowstone National Park & Mt Rushmore. I can't wait! I have missed road-tripping SOO much after driving through 19 states with New Dawn last fall, and seeing random parts of this amazing country. Since I got to see much of the midwest and the East Coast/South, I am now excited to see more of my own side of the country. Crazy to have lived in the NW my whole life and never been to Montana or Wyoming or the Dakotas!

I have to give a shout-out to both Deloitte (who had me travel so much during my years of working there that I earned ~120,000 points at the Holiday Inn hotels, or up to 12 free nights) and to Northwest Airlines, who provided Adam a returning one-way ticket for less than $70, without which this trip may not have been possible! Old Faithful & Thomas Jefferson, here we come!

It also bears noting that I am equally excited about the destination of the Twin Cities, where some of my dear friends await me. Carly, Dave, Luke, Joshua & I will all be reunited this summer (the former 3 and I working at camp once again), and I cannot wait for vicious rounds of Ui77, Carcassone, Brandy & Banter. I think we are being given a gift of time that I will be thankful for the rest of my life. Who knew we'd get that chance!?

All that said, yesterday's run to Gasworks, a familiar haunt of mine in this city of Seattle reminded me that I love this city, and that spending yet another summer away from it is bittersweet. It is a dear wish of mie that many summers to come will be spent here in this city in this corner of the world which has ultimately captured my heart.

Unemployed

2009-04-09T12:16:00.000-07:00

Well, I think I should update any one still reading this... I am now unemployed and back to living life quite as I please. Unlike many people in this economy & time, I actually told the firm I was working for that I would only be committing temporarily, and try as they may to persuade me to stay, after working 5 months (to the day) for the firm, I did as I'd promised and packed up my stuff to leave.

Here's the thing. I am good at public accounting (here's me tooting my own horn..."TOOT!"). It comes easily, I enjoy the daily challenges of the job, I love the people I get to work with, and it pays really well. And I'm never going to go back to it unless God whacks me over the head and makes me. :) It is all of the above, and yet spending 60 hours a week determining whether other people are tracking their money correctly just does not bring me the same peace as I knew last year, trekking through Filipino villages to sing praises to the Lord, or as telling a Taiwanese high school girl about the freedom that comes in knowing Jesus Christ for the first time. Lately, I have been thinking a lot about how short life on earth is. About how I really only get one crack at it, I have no idea how long my shot at life will be, and I don't get to decide if I die tomorrow or 60 years from now. So what DO I get to decide? TODAY!

And that's why instead of auditing benefit plans this summer, I am going to make my third journey across the Pacific Ocean and lead summer camps in Hong Kong and then in China with my teammate from last year Dave and a bunch of other camp-types. Its why I'm trading in pay checks to work for free to mentor & support college-aged kids who are deciding to spend a summer pouring out their time, energy, and emotions to campers. Its why in the fall, I'm going to go to seminary and spend a few years finding out more about God and people in relation to Him. Do I know that I want to be a paster - I have NO IDEA if I can hack it. I only know that regardless of what lies on the other side, learning more about who God is and about how to communicate that to people through words & actions can only enrich this time I have on earth.

So...good bye public accounting, and all the securities and creature comforts it brought. This next month of unemployment will actually be harder for me than you might expect as I try to remind myself that my worth is not based on productivity. And I will be fighting daily to remind myself of all the reasons I am not crazy (or at least, certifiably crazy) to be giving up a secure, good-paying job in the height of an economic recession to listen and obey the command to not worry about tomorrow but to store up treasure in Heaven instead of on Earth.

Below: My life for the next month - in drawings.

Holy Week

2009-04-09T11:33:00.000-07:00

Ok, so its been a while. My sister actually inspired me to write again, because I had a lot of thoughts on one of her more recent blogs (see her blog post-, summarized in the next paragraph). I started commenting on it, only to realize maybe I should just post my thoughts on Holy Week :). Warning: may seem a bit "cheesy" or "churchy" - humor me. I try to stay away from being too much that way on my blog, but this being Holy Week, I granted myself a pass.

Summary of Maryann's Thoughts: She was basically questioning why Jesus had to die the way he did. Why God would choose such a death as necessary to His master plan. She also said a lot about how we are supposed to feel in church, but especially on Easter/Good Friday (which is tomorrow). Are we supposed to feel guilty for His death, and then super excited for his life? The roller coaster of emotions Easter Weekend tends to take us through I think sound a bit overwhelming and overused. I can't blame her. But I do think there are some answers out there (not necessarily perfect answers, but partial answers at least). Below is my feeble attempt to respond to her post with my own thoughts, largely that came to me this morning as I was thinking about the upcoming "holidays"...

Response:
Ok, so I was thinking about what you wrote this morning. I could never begin to have an answer to all your questions, but I have had some of the same ones. Here are just a few thoughts.

I think an "ultimate sacrifice" kind of death was used by God in Jesus at the time because it was what would make the most sense to the Jews and to those Gentiles who understood Jewish law. God originally laid down this law of sacrifice for sins to help Jews (and thereby the whole world) understand their own shortcomings, and come clean before their Creator, who desired better for them. When God confirmed that this law was no longer really accomplishing this goal, I think He knew it was time to fulfill the law. To come and complete what He began with Abraham and Moses.

In fulfilling the law through Jesus, He also showed us the ultimate type of love - a self-sacrificing servant love that provided the sacrifice-to-end-all-sacrifices by basically making himself the lamb... Not only does this show us how loved we are, and our importance to our Creator, but it also shows us how to love in return.

Good Friday should not be about us feeling guilty for making Christ die - no one made him die, or even asked him to, for our sins. The beauty is it is a FREE gift, like you said. I think I become sad when I realize that I have not mirrored the love he came to show in living out my own life. Day to day, I choose myself over others so often, that I ignore the way Jesus showed us love.

My favorite "good friday" song is When I Survey The Wondrous Cross (not the new version, but the old hymn version) because the last lines are "Love so amazing, so divine demands my soul, my life, my all." I cry every single time I sing that, because I know that I am still so far from giving all of that up to God. So...all that to say, Good Friday should not be a time for us to wallow in our sin that hung Jesus on a gruesome cross...but to experience once again the challenge Jesus gives us to live differently. To live sacrificially because its the ultimate way of communicating love, and of responding to the way he loves us.

And Easter? I think Easter is a time to celebrate Life. To celebrate that our collection of earthly experiences, our guest appearance on earth is not the end. That Christ promises us eternal life and showed us physically that this is not the end. It can get really depressing to think that of the millions of years Earth is here, we are here for a tiny fraction of it...we are but a breath. Yet, God says no...you matter more to me than a breath, you are made of stuff that is more lasting than that. I will one day call you home, where you will find your deepest longings fulfilled and your experiences from earth only magnified. Easter is a time to celebrate that we are more than just a passing wind, like Solomon laments in Ecclesiastes. That we, like Jesus, get to rise again. Because of a God who loves us more than we understand or deserve.

As far as emotions in church go, I don't think we should base our relationship with God on how we connect or don't connect emotionally in a given church service. I know my sister is a very emotional being, and that its probably impossible to separate her relationship with God from her emotions (and I don't know that she should), but it is dangerous to assume that because we do not feel the sadness of Good Friday or the joy of Easter, that our faith is slipping or somehow less than it should be.

Whether or not we like it, as grown, intellectual human beings, sometimes we get bogged down with the schematics of Holy Week ...the theologies of what what we are mourning & then celebrating. I think this can be both very important and very stifling in our faith journey. It can be much harder to have faith like a child when you are asking questions like "Why did God plan it this way?" or "Should I feel guilty that God sent Jesus to die on a cross when I never asked Him to and he's Omnipotent and I'm not, so He should have figured out a better way if it sucked so much for Jesus?" We can't ignore these questions once they arise...at the same time, we also must learn how to live with some mystery. If mystery wasn't involved, neither would faith be.

There is a song that says "There will be a day where there is no more hope and no more faith" (or something like that)...meaning, we will KNOW and therefore hope and faith will not be needed. Until then, to have faith, we can wrestle with these questions, we can come up with partial answers and theories, but the end of the day brings the same central question: Do you trust the God you claim to believe in? If the answer is yes, you may not understand why or how He did all of what He did, but you can TRUST that it was right, and that we can celebrate Him on Easter, and on Good Friday, and on every other day, because we still have faith that He is ultimately Good.

Thanks for letting me post your post :) I love you sis!

Thirst

2009-01-11T21:57:00.000-08:00

Something seems to happen to me lately as I attend worship that I can't fully explain. Its sort of like the relief you get when you're thirsty as you gulp a glass of cold water, or the rest you find after a long, exhausting day when you fall into a warm, soft bed. When I hear worship music, something in me wells up and tears come for no cognitive reason. And actually, its more than just the music. Sometimes its Scripture, or a simple truth I've somehow misplaced that the pastor lays out in a sermon.

This makes me wonder if after leading worship for a year on a nearly daily basis, if after immersing myself in an environment of Christian thought and scripture and community, that it now feels that much more like coming home when I am in that environment. If now, my soul longs for worship that much more deeply, and the scarcity (by comparison) of my time spent in worship makes it seem all that much more precious and needed.

All I know is that suddenly, tears that well up from I-don't-know-where leak from my eyes every time I go to church, and I can no more control it than I can my intense focus on the scripture and sermon, or my voice joining along with the songs (whether or not I know them!) I suppose a thirst really is the right word, although its somewhat an overdone analogy, being Scriptural and all. Its deeper than my human brain really understands, and its not the thoughts in my head that cause the tears, its more like my soul trying to express through my simple bodily functions (i.e. tears, not other bodily functions) what it feels to be in worship.

Perhaps this sort of unexplainable longing, more than anything else I can articulate, is part of what is urging me to find a path in this life which will fulfill that need on more than a weekly basis. Perhaps I should see if in these next few months of working insane hours with numbers & memos, I can figure out how to worship God more than just at church in a way that satisfies my soul, so that it doesn't feel the need to soak my shirt every time I walk into a church. Or maybe, I should just appreciate the physical affirmation of the importance of worship & let the tears come.

Resolutions

2009-01-10T11:07:00.000-08:00

First of all, I hate the word "resolutions," because for some reason it has bad connotations for me. If I resolve to do something, its usually something I don't like that I feel I should do anyway. So, when people ask: "What are your New Year's Resolutions?", my response is to bristle just a little and try to respond with something I plan to do in the new year because I love it, not because I feel like I should.

All that said, I love the opportunity the end of each year brings to look back and look ahead, which is both important and dangerous. For me, the year 2008 brought more joy, more pain, more challenge, and more adventure than any of the twenty-five and half before it. Looking back I can say with complete confidence that I LIVED in 2008, and I learned and grew more than I thought possible. Now, what do I do with 2009? I get to live 2009 as the person I became last year, and that is how I can look ahead with anticipation to the coming months. I've included a list of the dreams I have, big and small, for 2009 in hopes that the people who read it will gently keep me in line with them should I risk missing the opportunities I have to fulfill any one hope:

Live with joy in every moment, both good and bad
Travel somewhere new
Begin seminary classes
Spend time with the Lord in some way every day
Go on an official date
Take runs as often as possible
Keep my toe nails painted
Live more simply with regard to: clothes, food, gas, & coffee
Read LOTS of books of all kinds
Find a local charity to support consistently
Write new songs
Learn to cook something new
Swim in a lake
Go sailing with your dad
Take more walks with the people you love
Journal whenever you can
Answer your phone whenever possible
Find a great roommate
Love better today than you did yesterday

Thanks to Susan, who suggested our morning walk today. I was so blessed by the time, and look forward to many more!

A Christmas to Remember

2008-12-25T20:38:00.000-08:00

There are many reasons I will remember this blessed Christmas of 2008. But a sampling follows, and I have only to say aside from these: how thankful I am for my family and dear friends, a warm house and bountiful food, and a God who gifts me with the coming of the close of the year that has changed my life more than perhaps any other.

Reasons to remember this Christmas:
10) My dad four-wheeling in my Ford Escape on our way to the Christmas Eve service, claiming that (and I quote): "This car can do anything!"

9) Reading myself to sleep while watching my breath puff out in warm puffs of air against the bitter cold caused by our power going out for 50+ hours (Until about 4 pm Christmas Eve). This resulted also in our family huddling by the fire every night to read and talk, and while it sounds more romantic than it was, the time was no less quite precious.

8) Taking our annual family shopping trip (usually downtown) to Washington Square mall and then Fred Meyer's where we bought one another the bulk of their presents and went to great lengths to keep them hidden from one another in the not-so-roomy Escape. This included some near-sprints to the car, half-truths, and excessive packaging.

7) Cutting down, carting home, erecting and lighting a Christmas tree without the aid of my capable Father for the first time, to decorate Susan's & my house with her and my sister.

6) Listening to Amy Grant's (2nd & best) Christmas Album on loop at least 20 times throughout the first two weeks of December during our Seattle evenings of card writing & decorating. Without getting sick of it at all. Amazing.

5) Receiving approximately 20 pairs of socks on Christmas morning from my mother, who apparently found great deals!

4) Spending Christmas morning brunch with some very gracious neighbors (and also some interesting ones), most of whom we met upon arrival. Delicious egg-bake & cinnamon twists!

3) Taking a walk to Starbucks on Christmas Eve and the 1.25 mile round-trip walk taking over 2 hours because of all the people we know stopping us to complain about the power outage. The last count we heard: 119 houses were out of power in our neighborhood and Portland General Electric received 359 calls from our power grid in the span of less than 48 hours. Apparently, Lake Oswegoans do NOT handle camping-like conditions very gracefully.

2) Its our last Christmas in my Lake Oswego childhood home, as my parents have sold the house and will move to Vancouver in the early Spring. The many memories we have in this house and neighborhood may never be forgotten, but I will dearly miss the place, the familiarity, the homeyness. It is hard to picture returning home anywhere else, much less spending a beloved holiday in a new home. But this Christmas is special in knowing that we will never again experience Christmas within the same space.

1) IT WAS A WHITE CHRISTMAS! For the first time in my memory, there was a thick blanket of snow on the ground on Christmas day. Lake Oswego got no less than 16-17 inches of snow (and a good half-inch of ice) leading up to Christmas. This caused horrific traffic conditions (chains were required on all Portland-metro roads & highways for over 2 days), a scare that Maryann and I might not make it home for Christmas, thousands of people stranded in the Northwest for the holiday due to flight cancellations, and a slew of other closures and problems (including many services which were canceled Christmas Eve). All this, and I still felt like a giddy school child who just got her wish a few years too late for a blanket of snow. (Quick note: the last time it snowed like this in Portland was 1968 - 14 years before I was even born.) Even though tomorrow it will start to disappear slowly, I will never forget this Christmas for this reason alone. Oh, and my dad barbecuing in the snow for our Christmas Dinner is also a unique experience! :)

God bless you all and a very, very Merry Christmas!

Turkey, Football, and its December!

2008-12-01T18:08:00.000-08:00

Another Thanksgiving has come and gone, and I am thankful for the time with family. My immediate family spent a wonderful (and FULL) holiday weekend entertaining other family members, eating LOTS of delicious food (personal favs: stuffing, rolls, and pie - carbs, anyone?), Christmas tree hunting (and we found the perfect one, by the way, as per usual), wine-tasting (because you can't Christmas tree hunt in Oregon without finding a Pinot Noir maker right next door), watching WONDERFUL old black and white Christmas movies like (The Bishop's Wife), and, of course, watching football.

This last one is very bittersweet for me. More than any other year of my life, I have wrapped my schedule around the Oregon State Beavers who have had a heck of a season. I've really gotten into cheering for these college players who have a ton of heart and a lot of cool stories amongst them. After their win over #1 USC, I was hooked, and attended 5 of the ensuing games, flying to California, grabbing tickets for UW/OSU off Craigslist, and making 3 separate treks to Corvallis from Seattle to see them play at Reser. When I couldn't fly to Arizona, I drug my sister and my friend Kate (visiting from Iowa) to Fox Sports Grill just to be able to watch them slug out a win.

My father shares my passion (ok, he was the one who instigated it in the first place - he actually WENT there) and together we would cheer and yell and party in honor of this team. When we realized they would go to the Rose Bowl (a very prestigious game) if they won out their last 3 games, we agreed to fly our whole family to Pasadena to watch them play in this once in a lifetime game (the last time they were there was 1964, so we're talking for real, once in a lifetime).

Well, this last weekend, they only had one more game to win - vs. University of Oregon. And I was there with my dad, more nervous than I ever was for a high school voice recital! And I had to watch as these young, exhausted, beat-up players I've been cheering for got routed by their arch rival. It was such a sad day, and it tainted my Thanksgiving just a bit. I now spend New Year's in Portland instead of sunny Pasadena, and endure the taunts from the Duck fans who will talk about the game for years to come.

Boo hoo for me, right? Most of you probably want to say "Jenny, ummm....there are real problems out in the world, and you're wasting emotional energy on a college football team?" I know, I know. Today is World Aids Day, and believe me, I was reminded. The thing is, I've been mulling over this. I was only one of thousands and thousands of people who felt a let-down stronger than I did. Why do we attach ourselves so strongly to something so, relatively, unimportant and impersonal? I think it stems partly from a desire to be part of something bigger than ourselves, to join a community who is for the same thing.

The thing is, it is only a shadow of what we truly long for. I had to remind myself that I am part of something much bigger than this football team. I am part of a Body that is headed by Someone who never disappoints, never fails, never loses. Granted, I may not always understand how He gets to the win, or why He makes some play calls, but I know the end result, and I know we will get there. A little perspective was therefore served up with my stuffing, and I hope I can keep it next year, when the OSU Beavers make another run for the Rose Bowl.

World Hunger Week

2008-11-18T12:48:00.001-08:00

I came across this article thanks to CNN's website today, and thought I would post the main text of it because it is so important. It also references Haiti, a country my childhood church has significant ties to, and that I someday very much would like to visit.

AS CHILDREN STARVE, WORLD STRUGGLES FOR SOLUTION
By John Blake
CNN

(CNN) -- Some mothers choose what their children will eat. Others choose which children will eat and which will die.

A Haitian boy begs for food. One child dies from hunger every six seconds, an aid agency says.

Those mothers forced to make the grim life-or-death choices are the impoverished women Patricia Wolff, executive director of Meds & Food for Kids, encounters during her frequent trips to Haiti.

Wolff says Haitians are so desperate for food that many mothers wait to name their newborns because so many infants die of malnourishment. Other Haitian mothers keep their children alive by parceling out food to them, but some make an excruciating choice when their food rationing fails, she says.

"It's horrible. They have to choose among their children," says Wolff, whose nonprofit group was formed to fight childhood malnutrition. "They try to keep them alive by feeding them, but sometimes they make the decision that this one has to go."

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. declared in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech that "I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies." Four decades later, King's wish remains unfulfilled. The global food market's shelves are getting bare, hunger activists say -- and it will get worse.

Food riots erupted across the globe this year in countries such as Egypt and India. Food pantries in the United States also warned that they were running out of food because of unprecedented demand. The news from the World Food Programme is even grimmer: A child dies of hunger every six seconds, and hunger now kills more people every year than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.

The end of food?

Wolff thinks hunger can be conquered. Her group produces "Medika Mamba," energy dense, peanut butter food that's designed to ensure Haitian children survive childhood. Medika Mamba is easy to make, store, preserve and distribute, she says.

"It just takes the will to do it," she says of eliminating hunger. "Look at what we did for Wall Street. We didn't have enough money for infrastructure, schools, but all of a sudden, we had all of this money for Wall Street."

Raj Patel, author of "Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System," says the right to food should be seen as a human right. But, he says, powerful corporate food distributors control too much of the world's food supply to ensure a robust global food supply.

Patel says "2008 was a record year in terms of harvest. There's more food per person in 2008 than there's ever been in history. The problem is not food, but how we distribute it."

Other causes for the rise in global hunger have been documented. They include:

• Surging oil costs have made it more expensive to harvest, fertilize, store and deliver food.

• The rise in droughts and hurricanes worldwide has wiped out crops and made farming more difficult.

• The world is running out of the raw materials -- water, oil, good farmland -- needed to keep the food system intact.

"A lot of people have begun to understand at various levels that the food system, as it is, can't go on," says Paul Roberts, author of "The End of Food."

Every time an American bites down on a steak or hamburger, they're contributing to global hunger, Roberts says. As other countries become more affluent, they're copying our meat-heavy diet. The problem: It takes so much grain and other resources to produce meat, he says.

"If the rest of the world were to eat like we do, the planet would collapse," Roberts says. "There's been this unspoken assumption that the rest of the world won't eat meat like we do. That doesn't go over well in countries like China."

Fixing our food system would be similar to weaning ourselves of our addiction to oil, Roberts says. It's going to require innovation, heavy business involvement and changes in public policy.

People are going to have to find ways to grow food with less fertilizer and water, and use less energy to store and transport food, he says.

Much of this innovation will have to be driven not just by activist and aid workers, but by savvy business people, he says.

"It's going to have to be profitable or the market won't be interested in it," Roberts says. "And if the market isn't interested in it, it's not going to happen."

In the meantime, Wolff offers some of her own solutions. She says the practice of big foreign aid agencies shipping in food to poor countries like Haiti needs to be modified. Food has become too expensive to produce, ship and store, she says.

"You can't count on big aid agencies showing up to save everybody," she says. "Not everybody can do it, and when they do it, it's not soon enough and not long enough."

She suggests that more groups teach local farmers in poor places how to produce their own crops. In Haiti, for example, her group employs 22 Haitians who make Medika Mamba and teaches other farmers how to grow crops for the mixture.

"Instead of throwing fish in the crowd, we should be teaching people how to fish," she says.

Until that day takes place, Wolff, who is a pediatrician in St. Louis, Missouri, will continue to make her trips to Haiti, where mothers are forced to make their grim choices.

"It's the most difficult thing I've ever done," she says. "You realize how absolutely blessed you are by the fate of your soul coming down the chute in the United States of America," she says. "You wonder: Why did this happen to me and not to them?' ''

Seattle buses

2008-11-13T17:26:00.000-08:00

So, today marked my 13th straight working day taking the bus to and from my job at a downtown accounting firm in Seattle. My bus ride is easy (20 minutes, no transfers), and the buses come pretty promptly and often. Its actually been one of the more enjoyable parts of my day, as I get 40 minutes each day to people watch, observe, sit quietly, eavesdrop, etc.

That said, today it finally dawned on me that the bus is awkward. Kind of like elevator awkward, except much longer lasting. I climbed on the 4:02 pm bus from downtown, and it was one of those really long 3 sets of wheels ones. I sat in the center (where the middle turns - i am not so seasoned a rider that I don't still think this is pretty cool!), and 3 people sat down soon afterward in the cool turning-center-thingy with me. We were facing each other, and about close enough that if you put a card table down between us we easily could have played hearts (or Cribbominoes).

Well, none of them made eye contact! They pretended each of the rest of us wasn't there! Then I began to look around, and listen, and notice that the bus was silent, and most people had a blank stare on their face, or else were sleeping or reading, or what have you. We are all crammed into a small space, many of us touching, and no contact. Is this how we were designed? I don't think so! I think we are supposed to be relational, and interact as human beings. THe people on the bus today looked dead. I seriously only caught one person's eye on a bus with probably 100 people (and I was trying HARD!).

I will say that a man named Jose (the one who did make eye contact) defied the mold. He was intrigued by my curiosity and open staring (or something), and he crossed the imaginary card table space to sit next to me when my seat partner (who absolutely refused to look my way) got up and left. He sat down and introduced himself in broken English. He's from El Salvador, and could only speak a few sentences to me (unfortunately, I don't speak Spanish though I'm becoming more interested each day.) How is it that this man, for whom communication is so difficult in our country, had the energy and interest in speaking with a fellow rider what little he could, when so many of my compatriots who were born speaking my language did not even care to smile?

How does this happen? What in our society causes that many people, on a day in and day out basis, to try their hardest to pretend they are alone on a bus so clearly filled with people? Are we so maxed out by our jobs, our families, our busy lives, that to strike up a conversation with someone else, or even to offer a friendly smile as they sit down next to you closer than you'd ever sit next to a relative in the comfort of your own living room, requires too much effort?

Anyway, those were my musings today. The rest of this month (which marks a job switch, so I'm not sure how much bus riding I'll be doing after it), I may just make it my goal to talk to one person (or at least catch their eye long enough to smile!) each ride. That would be a potential 20 people I could encourage, smile at, or get to know a little who likely live and/or work in my neighborhood. I'll keep you posted, and try to stay out of trouble! :)

A day for the history books...

2008-11-04T21:42:00.000-08:00

Well, probably every one who blogs is blogging about this topic, so I certainly don't feel original or creative in writing about the election, but it is so stinkin' blog worthy!

I voted a week and a half ago (kind of anti-climactic in hindsight) and was glad for the opportunity, but didn't think a whole lot of it. Today, as I heard people on the bus claim they wouldn't go to work tomorrow if Obama did not win they'd be so depressed, I secretly scoffed at their fervor. I mean, come on: really, what is going to be so different tomorrow than today? Nothing. Even one year from now, will those people's lives be radically different? Even a little different because of who our president will be? Not likely...

So, I got home, and (still eager to see that Obama won) checked it out online to find that in fact he had! I was excited, but come on: moderately so, right? And who doesn't feel just the slightest bit bad for McCain, who poured his heart and soul into his campaign and who really did have a lot of good qualities, and who honestly believes he could bring important change and good things to the office just like Obama does?

Well, I couldn't bring myself to watch McCain's concession speech, its too sad, but I could watch Obama's. And I cried! For real! Who cries at these things, when they feel the way I did on the bus? I realized that the emotion gripping me as they played the big music and panned the crowd of 10s of thousands, was not for the change to come, but for the change that is. Look at us! We were still passing civil rights laws while the generations voting were alive and well. We have come so far in so little time, to be able to elect a non-white, non-full-European-background person to the presidency. And its not even a close race!!

As Obama said, all around the world people are watching. My friend Brienne in the Peace Corp in Tanzania said that the Tanzanians are partying because Obama won! What!? How crazy! But the world can see in our president a more accurate depiction of our country. We are not all white, or black, or hispanic, or any other race, but a true melting pot. We are learning how to meld all that together to be one unified country, and we made a statement today. Yes, Obama will bring change, I believe good change, but he represents to me that we are already changed, and indeed are willing to change as a country. That is what is so hopeful. That IS worth crying over.

A Sweet Sunday...

2008-10-19T20:07:00.000-07:00

Today, Susan and I decided we would try out a new church in our very diverse and vibrant neighborhood of Seattle. We headed out to the local Lutheran church, only to find a wonderful congregation of roughly 70 people who meet together every week. The gospel choir made me cry, as I saw the face of Unity staring back at me. These people just got it. Their choir was made up of about 8-9 people of several cultural backgrounds: African American, Filipino, Caucasian, etc. They sang "Just as I am" with such raw belief and the knowledge that all of them, just as they are, are loved by God radically, no matter race, culture, language, etc. After working so hard to promote the message of unity and peace in the world-wide church over the past year on New Dawn, this was like a sweet gift of a morning to see it personified by a small church body in a very diverse neighborhood.

After church got out (2 hours later - they didn't exactly follow the 1 hour rule most Lutheran churches abide by so strictly), and we'd participated in social hour at the specific request of the pastor, we went for a run through the neighborhood. The leaves are SO pretty, and we took a new route that looped us through some beautiful park before depositing us at the bottom of a classic HUGE Seattle hill (which we conquered, thank you very much!)

The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering the Fremont market (I bought some recycled yarn to knit with once I finish the scarf I'm currently working on. Projected completion date: October 2011. Clearly I have a lot of vision without a lot of skills in this new hobby), and then we shopped at the Asian market in our neighborhood to pick up a few key things. I found Jackfruit and SkyFlakes - two favorites from the Philippines and was in heaven! Susan indulged my excitement and even purchased my SkyFlakes for me as my treat. :)

We made dinner and listened to music, I got to catch up on the phone with an old friend, and I realized I can get used to this "living in the moment" thing. Today was pretty amazing if I think over all the cool moments we had.

Now

2008-10-17T14:56:00.000-07:00

So, I've been reading Brennan Manning's Ruthless Trust and very much experiencing growing pains while I do. He writes such using simple concepts my mind can easily wrap itself around, yet my actions and my heart are not too good at following his oh so amazing logic. I am currently attempting more avidly than I may ever have before to be present in the moment I am in, and not look ahead at what is to come or back at what was. This is especially difficult coming off a year that was more amazing than any before it. How can I trust that things will get even better? I simply must. And part of that is living today, not yesterday. So, here is one of my favorite quotes from the book...

"There is only now. Thus Jesus counsels, 'Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink or what you will wear.' Instead, Jesus says, 'Look at the birds'. After instructing us not to have a hissy fit about what may or may not happen tomorrow, he adds a bit of dark humor: 'Today's trouble is enough for today.'

"One of the fringe benefits of being Now/here is freedom from concern about our spiritual condition. Being in the now removes us from endless and fruitless self-analysis. Moreover, in the absence of self-observation, guilt and shame mysteriously disappear. Removed from the sphere of our feelings, thoughts, and analyses, we are free to hear the music of what is happening. Lost in Now/here, we are found in the infinity of the eternal Now."

I love this thought, and have discovered how important it is. He goes on to say that this does not preclude ever planning or reflecting on life, which is responsible behavior, but never at the expense of escaping from Now/here. Whenever I catch myself gripped with fear of what the future may or may not hold, or with regret of what I wish had happened in the past, I have begun to focus on whatever is in front of me. Maybe it is the beautiful fall leaves, maybe it is a delicious bite of food I'm blessed to have, maybe it is a very dear friend who will cry my tears with me, maybe it is the symphony of rain and wind playing through the trees on Seattle's streets, and maybe it is simply my Father trying to tell me again and again that no matter what I might be going through, I am loved. I AM loved. Now.

Oregon Coast Weekend

2008-10-14T16:33:00.000-07:00

So, I spent the weekend at the Oregon coast with 17 high school kids and a few great friends on retreat! We tootled around Seaside, played with the sand, sang and played guitar under the stars with the moonlit waves before us, and spent lots of small group time talking through the hurt and pain each of us carries hidden beneath the surface. It was a great weekend, some great ministry happened, and by the end I was wondering why our theme had to be "Life hurts, God heals" and not something lighter, because the burdens these teenagers face are much heavier than anything I've ever personally experienced. But, in all honesty, I was so glad God had me there this weekend.

Here are some fun pix. Seven or so of us did our best to disguise ourselves Sunday afternoon and hid around downtown Seaside while the rest of the group scavenged for us! It was pretty hilarious!

In other news, your friend Jenny now has a job! I'm employed, even if its only an internship and currently only a one month commitment on the company's part - I did say I wanted temporary, so there's no complaining, especially given the state of the economy today. Also, I'm starting to fill our seminary applications. Whoa. That's intense. My dear friend Chris Lyons was a great mentor to me yesterday, though, and really gave me some good things to think about regarding seminaries and denominations. I am so thankful to have such dear people in my life helping me find the right direction, when I feel there are so many possible directions to take.

Moving slowly

2008-10-08T15:40:00.000-07:00

So, life is moving along rather slowly as I still don't have a job, and spend most of my days in an easy but not-too-difficult routine of waking up and reading the news online in front of a bowl of Special K, and then usually play (and win) a few rounds of Word Twist before bringing up the Colbert Report from the previous night to watch online while cleaning up the kitchen.

I often go for a walk, find a coffee shop, or make a cup of Americano and then read the Bible, some books on pastoring and seminary, or continue my knitting until Sus gets home and we go for a run around our neighborhood. The evenings are more fun and we either meet up with people, have people over, or spend them cooking and talking and drinking wine. While I am more than ready to be employed and not have to fill my days so lazily, this time of rest has been incredibly blessed. God is teaching me and moving me to dream big about the future, not to hold back by what seems like a safe or secure idea, but to trust Him no matter what and think about what He might desire for me.

Don't worry, a job IS in the works, I've been also researching seminaries, catching up with old friends, and doing various other important things with my time, but learning how to rest, not to find worth in doing but in simply loving, being loved and living, how to trust... that is a valuable and priceless lesson I have the great opportunity to learn during these weeks. I'm reading Brennan Manning's Ruthless Trust right now, and his first chapter on how to trust says we need to live gratefully. Being thankful for anything and everything we have, knowing there is a loving God watching over us, who has numbered the hairs on our head and who knows what we need before we ask - this is part of trusting Him to provide good things, even if they don't seem good at the time.

So I am intent on being grateful, even when the unemployed single life seems burdensome, because I know God is good and I trust Him even today.

Its Fall!

2008-10-07T15:36:00.000-07:00

I love this time of year. The wind is up today and the leaves are beginning to turn, its chilly and I'm wearing a coat that is probably a little overly warm for the weather just because I'm excited to need one at all. After spending much of the last year in summery weather, I am so excited to get to spend the fall in Seattle. This is bad, but I'm already looking forward to holiday drinks at Starbucks and wearing scarfs.

In honor of the change in weather, I even picked up a new habit: knitting! Ok, I'm SUPER slow, and concentrating so hard on such small things as needles kind of makes me nauseous, so don't be too impressed yet. I think I've knitted about 9 rows of a scarf that is all fall colors, though, and feeling pretty smug about my new "skill".

These are a few pics of the beauty of the season (from Camp Timberlee in Michigan when we were there last fall). Make sure you breathe it in and enjoy!

Middle

2008-09-26T15:49:00.000-07:00

The following are some slightly modified lyrics (to flow a little better for the reader) to a song by Casting Crowns called "Somewhere in the Middle". As many sleepless nights have found me asking the big questions about life and fighting between what is easy and what is right, this song sort of pegs me exactly. I'm not who I used to be or who i want to be and should there even be a middle ground? Anyway, I wanted to post the lyrics here. They are pretty thoughtful, and full of the dichotomies I seem to be currently struggling against.

Somewhere between the hot and the cold, between the new and the old, between who I am and who I used to be...

Somewhere between the wrong and the right, between the darkness and the light, between who I was and who You're making me, somewhere in the middle you'll find me.

Just how close can I get, Lord, to surrendering, without losing all control?

Fearless warriors in a picket fence, reckless abandon wrapped in common sense, deep water faith in the shallow end and we are caught in the middle.
With eyes wide open to the differences between the God we want and the God who is: will we trade our dreams for His or are we caught in the middle?

Somewhere between my heart and my hands, between my faith and my plans, between the safety of the boat and the crashing waves...

Somewhere between a whisper and a roar, between the altar and the door, between contented peace and always wanting more, somewhere in the middle You'll find me.

Just how close can I get, Lord, to surrendering, without losing all control?

Lord, I feel You in this place and I know You're by my side, loving me even on these nights when I'm caught in the middle.

A long hiatus...

2008-09-25T17:28:00.000-07:00

I have no idea who still will even read this, after such a long break from posting, but as I think and pray about the next steps in my life, I decided blogging might be a fun way to keep people updated and simultaneously think "aloud" and process.

So, a little catch up. A month ago (tomorrow) I officially ended all commitments with Youth Encounter, after a year of traveling. After we left the Philippines, we went onto Taiwan and spent three very involved weeks working with schools and churches in and around the city of Chiayi. I will include some of the most meaningful pix at the end of this post so that you can see a little taste of where we were. After our 3 weeks in Taiwan, we were on a plane back to the States. The time went so fast, yet I was somewhat surprisingly ready to be home and excited to see family. Saying goodbye to the Philippines was harder than saying goodbye to Southeast Asia in general.

Our summer was spent working at a camp called "Lake Wapogasset Lutheran Bible Camp, Inc." in Amery, Wisconsin (a small farming community). It was stretching and difficult and amazing all at the same time to be at camp. I missed my New Dawn teammates and the closeness we'd shared over the previous 8 months as we were thrust into a much larger community. On the other hand, I embraced the new friends and immensely enjoyed my role as a "team leader" of college-aged counselors at the camp. Investing in people was my main focus, and I found my niche. I loved it, as hard as the transition was being back in the States and trying to re-adjust to life here.

We had a brief final visit to Hong Kong in the middle of July to put on an English Bible Camp for 70 youth in partnership with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hong Kong (ELCHK). It was a wonderful experience to travel back to Asia and meet up with friends, as well as to be have concentrated time with New Dawn for those precious days. What a cool opportunity to be a counselor in a cabin with high-school aged youth from Hong Kong - I learned so much from them about their culture, and what its like to grow up in a predominantly non-Christian environment. I appreciated their perspective, and wished we could have stayed longer.

So, that pretty much brings me to the end of the summer. My family came out for the homecoming concert, and I bawled as my team and I sang together for the last time, realizing that making music together was one of the most precious and unique opportunities we'd had, that I so often took for granted. I will never forget the joy of getting to sing and play with Luke, Carly, Dave and Joshua.

Now, I'm back on the West Coast, and trying to tread carefully, intentionally. I don't want to do anything because its easy or safe anymore. I want to live with integrity as the person I have become through all my experiences, especially those the last year brought to me. While accounting is something I can easily and successfully do, I have little assurance that that is the vocation God is calling me to in order to best love His world with my gifts. This blog, from here on out, will be even more appropriately about my "new dawn" as I start from ground zero once again, trying to discern where I am called, and what I want my life to be about.

Here are some pix from my remaining time overseas. They are some of my favorites, and only a very, very small sampling of the thousands I have filed away to remind me of this fascinating dream year.

Me trying to be cool with some friends in Batangas.

Mt. Pulag congregation group photo!

Living statues in Taiwan outside a Masul temple we visited.

My cabin in Hong Kong this summer - what amazing girls!

Chatting with the Chiayi girls

Spending a day holding babies in a Manila orphanage. Close to heaven.

One of our young Filipino friends trying his hand at the djembe.

Two darling girls in San Roque, Mindanao

Singing our hearts out in a Chiayi classroom.

We hiked to the top of the Philippines' 2nd tallest mountain: Mt. Pulag. That's a new dawn behind us, which we awoke at 2:30 in the morning to catch. Incredible.

The North Country

2008-02-28T17:38:00.000-08:00

Well, after leaving Mindanao and spending some time in Metro-Manila, we have made the long trek through the north to the tip of the north-most island of Luzon (still in the Philippines). Its been pretty incredible to have the opportunity to see so much of this country.

While there is still much the same here in this part of the country, we've definitely noticed some key differences: the people here seem even more intent upon feeding us vast amounts of food! We eat 6, 7 sometimes 8 times a day, and it almost always includes some form of rice (which does grow everywhere here - there are rice patties all over the place and they are SO green and beautiful!) While we sometimes end up eating when we are already full, the hospitality and generosity that is evident in these crazy amounts of food more than makes up for our discomfort. I continue to be amazed by the way people who don't know us wish to make us feel at home, and give up their beds, their food, their time and energy, etc. to us strangers. Do you know that when our hosts serve us, they almost never actually eat with us? They set the table just for our team and then eat our leftovers when we have finished. This has definitely taken some getting used to, as we would rather spend the meal with our hosts, but its their way of serving us, and denying them that would be insulting in most circumstances.

Another thing about the north: its cold here! We are dressed in fleeces and jackets to brace the 75 degree days (apparently our bodies were more used to 90 degrees and humid than we thought!) There is still a bountiful amount of fruit and vegetables, and yesterday we got to eat "buko" (coconut) from the tree for the 2nd or 3rd time, drinking the juice and then scraping the meat from the coconuts. They seem to taste even better here than in the south, so sweet and filling.

Finally, we have noticed that here in the North, our schedule has been much busier. We have been waking up most days between 5 and 6 am, (sometimes earlier), and we seem to average 1-3 programs each day. There are lots of small churches to visit, and the people speak different languages here than they did in the south (Ilokano mainly). We've translated our closing song "Unify Us" into six different dialects now, and it is incredibly fun to sing with the people. Its been fun to try to figure out how to fit the many many syllables into the tune of the song (Unify Us, for example, translates into "Pag-ma-y-ma-y-sa-em" in Ilokano, crazy!)

So, life on team is still wonderful. I miss my family and friends, and definitely miss the familiarity of the place called home, but I also find I'm increasingly feeling at home in this country. It helps a lot to feel like my team is a second family, and I no longer cringe at the thought of using the "CR" (comfort room/bathrooM) here as my leg muscles are much stronger. We only have about six weeks or less left here in the Philippines, and I find that I am already dreading having to leave.

We have finally arrived...

2008-01-25T01:36:00.001-08:00

It is hard to believe we are finally in the Philippines! Currently, I am writing from Davao, a city near the southern end of the island of Mindanao (about 7 degrees above the equator - VERY WARM weather!) We have experienced nothing but the most gracious hospitality since we arrived here in the Philippine islands, and I find myself adjusting to life here rather easily after 10 days in this country. We say "Salamat" more than any other Tagalog word (meaning Thank you), and the people here are definitely my favorite part of our overseas tour so far.

Yesterday, we got back from a 3 day trip south to Banga and Malungon, the second destination being a small village in the mountains, where we road a bus and then piled 4 or 5 of us onto a motorcycle (along with our bags, guitars, drum, etc) and rode another 25 minutes up into the hills over the roads made out of dirt & rock. The trip was an adventure, but definitely a worthwhile one. Our program that night drew close to 200 people from the village (most of which were kids!) even at last minute notice, and the next day, one pastor walked 30 miles to hear us give a program for the church. Pretty incredible!

So far, just being here, so far from home (back in Portland, you are all 16 hours behind me!), continues to amaze me. I am learning lots about this culture, family values, and what it means to sacrifice and serve others. The language barrier can be hard (be praying that it will not be an obstacle), and the heat can become exhausting, but every day I wake up thankful to be here, and hoping that the time does not run too quickly.

Hong Kong!

2008-01-12T07:12:00.000-08:00

Whoa - I cannot believe it, but I am writing this from Hong Kong. I've been here just over 48 hours now, and I have learned and experienced SO much! This city is incredible, and in the last 7 meals I've eaten more "unusual" foods than I've eaten in my entire lifetime (from Pig's skin, Octopus, Chinese mushrooms that look like Octopus, chicken feet, Pig's tongue, fried whole baby fish - eyes and all, and several other things I can't remember.)

We've also taken in the last 48 hours a great many modes of transportation to traverse this very large city: double decker buses, light-rails, subways, trains, taxis, ferries, more double decker buses, and of course lots of walking. I think the only one we have not used is the ever popular bicycle. I have learned that here, all dining tables are round, and family style food is the only way to eat. The culture here could teach us much about sharing and serving others before ourselves - tea (of course) is very prevalent at each meal, and one always pours tea for their neighbors before themselves, even if their glass is only 1/2 empty. All food is shared, and no one orders for themselves alone.

I have loved these differences, and even though the food is quite different (noodles & soup for breakfast!?), I find I enjoy the variety of flavors and the rich traditions that accompany each meal. It is very overwhelming (and yet strangely calming at times) to be surrounded by a language for which I have no understanding, and for which I cannot even begin to pronounce the characters. We will soon be moving on to another culture and different customs as we travel to the Philippines on Monday, but our time here has been so full. We have been surrounded by wonderful people willing to teach us about the language and culture and city, and our instant bond in Christ has been a pretty incredible bridge across the barriers of our many differences.

To bed with me - the 16 hour time difference is still catching up with me!

We live in a Beautiful Country...

2008-01-01T21:37:00.001-08:00

In 3 months, my team and I traveled through 19 states during one of the most beautiful times of the year. We saw pretty amazing places, from the hills of Pennsylvania to the warm, green streets of Savannah, from the bustling Central Park to the rural Smoky Mountains of Kentucky, it was quite an adventure to get to see so many places, and the scenery was truly stunning. I wanted to share some of the more beautiful pictures we took just to give you a flavor of our journey and the beauty that lies all over this country.

God's creation never ceases to amaze me. I will say that returning home to the Northwest after being all over the East Coast & Midwest made me remember how much I love my little part of the country. Yesterday, Melissa and Andrew and I went up to Mt. Hood to ski, and it was a crystal clear day - you could see the Three Sisters and Mt. Jefferson from the top of the mountain - in fact, it seemed as if you could see the entire state. While I found beauty in nearly every place we traveled this fall, and I no doubt will continue to do so as we head further west this winter, I have yet to find a place I find more beautiful than home.

It's not about the music, but...

2007-11-19T19:19:00.000-08:00

During our month of training back in August, they told us how our music & programs are secondary to being passionate about showing Christ's love to the people we encounter. I ate it up, because for me, playing guitar and singing in front of people was a nerve-wracking concept. When we began rehearsing daily as a team, and I (at the time) was the only guitarist, my heart would pound before each session. My fingers killed me as they tried to get used to pressing on metal strings for hours a day, and my voice wobbled as it tried to sing in the presence of so many new people.

It took a lot of concentration to remember each day that I didn't need to worry about how I sounded, because it is ultimately NOT ABOUT ME. Well, now, about 3 months later, my heart no longer pounds uncontrollably before programs and I have stopped worrying about whether or not I will be able to play the songs (thanks in part to hours and hours of practice, and in part to the addition of our teammate Joshua, who is a very good guitarist). My fingers have grown rock solid (i think i probably have about 1/2 an inch of dead skin in each of my left hand fingers), and singing in front of people is actually something I look forward to.

In fact, I currently love making music nearly every day with my 4 teammates. As a team, we are fairly unique in that we all love to sing and can easily harmonize - so that we have come to a place where the music flows fairly freely, and our message is (we don't think) hindered much by a poor sound quality.

Problem with this newfound confidence? The thing is, I still often forget that ITS NOT ABOUT ME nor is it, ultimately, about how we sound. We may sound great, but if its all about how we sound, then we are failing to show love (which is not self-seeking, proud, or boastful) to the people around us. my nervousness nor my confidence have proven to be useful in forgetting myself and focusing on the needs of those around me, and on worshipping the God I love and serve. The best defense mechanism against this error in focus that I have found is prayer, but I still don't use it nearly often enough.

I guess its going to be a long road to gaining humility, which does not mean that I need to be shy or timid about my gifts - rather, it means I need to forget about them as my focus turns outward to God and those around me. Before I sign off, I will tell you one thing I have NOT found much more confidence in, despite hours of practice: While I have now participated in at least 30-40 puppet shows, I have not gained any more skills as a puppeteer and I'm NOT being humble, just honest. (I play Daniel in Daniel & the Lion's Den, and funny, but he sounds exactly like me, as does the other puppet I play!) Luckily, my teammates were able to find another role for me in one of our puppet shows, so that I do not have to be behind a curtain quite as often. ;)

Team Life: Status Update

2007-11-10T15:19:00.001-08:00

Approximately 12 weeks ago, on August 19 I walked into a gymnasium at Christ the King Lutheran Church in Minneapolis and was introduced to Luke, Dave, Carly and (eventually) Ua, all of whom would be joining me for the following 365 days touring the country and the world.

Now, during training they warned us that we were about to experience what can only be described as a marriage to these 4 people - we would eat, sleep, work, rehearse, perform, pray, travel, and play TOGETHER. In the days following August 19, I have only been separated from these 4 people for 3 days (when I briefly returned home to run Hood to Coast.) We have learned one another's sleeping habits (Carly gives back-rubs in her sleep!), eating preferences (all of us have a crazy affinity for Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies), flatulence patterns (ok, mostly just Dave's...), music tastes (Ua and my love for Country is vehemently NOT shared by the rest of the team), political views, faith stories, pet peeves (Dave hates it when Carly plays her kazoo), and even the smell of one another's feet can be quickly identified.

All this to say, God has blessed us with an incredible community for a year - I have so enjoyed the opportunity to be put under a microscope, so to speak, by agreeing to live and breath the same space with my four amazing teammates. They challenge me to voice my opinions when I am tempted to keep quiet, to live more selflessly, to live more simply (I've discovered that frequent showers are not as necessary as originally thought, and "clean clothes" does not necessarily mean unworn clothes), to live in the moment (especially when I'm tempted to look ahead to the end of this year already and worry), and they challenge me to continue to look at my beliefs and understand my core faith. In short, I am loving team life.

On a light note, the team loves playing games together as well! When we have down time, we play everything from Frisbee to Five Crowns, Rook, Ui77 (a card game Ua made up the other day that is REALLY fun), 5 rocks, Liar's Dice, Flux, Blokus, and Up & Down the River (and I only named a few!) Our most significant arguments thus far have actually been over games (all of us are a bit competetive), and those have been fairly inconsequential.

Our team's strengths: we are all low-key, low-maintenance, low-stress people. We enjoy people & we are all young at heart (we love playgrounds, children's museums, building sandcastles, etc.), and thus are easily entertained and rarely bored. We are all musically gifted as well - every one of us sings and we have been blessed with some amazing songs & cool harmonies for our programs, which makes singing together really fun!

Team weaknesses: we struggle to plan ahead, and sometimes we argue over minor things (like games). We all are human and therefore sometimes our focus shifts to ourselves instead of our ministry at hand. However, by and large, all of us are enjoying and growing from the team experience and I personally cannot think of a better way to spend this year.

Whoa - first blog ever!

2007-11-05T20:36:00.000-08:00

Alright, here goes nothing.

I will start off by just explaining that I titled my blog address "Jenny's new dawn" for a couple of reasons: for one, all the obvious ones like "jenny shaw" were taken, and two, for me this year on the road with Youth Encounter's team New Dawn is truly a new beginning for me. After spending all of my 25 years with a definitive plan for my life (school, college, accounting degree, accounting job, etc), with very little spontaneity involved, I finally quit my job at Deloitte and have embarked on a year traveling the country and the world with just a backpack full of clothes, my guitar, and 4 people I didn't start out knowing.

This is my "new dawn" if you will, and at the end of this year, I have no idea what comes next, for the first time in my life. It is a scary and really exciting time for me - I love being on the road, (we travel around in a 15 passenger tan van), and my team is amazing. They truly are starting to feel like a family, which is an incredible gift, and we enjoy one another a whole lot. After spending a month in training in Minnesota, we have been on the road for about 7 weeks, and I love seeing so much of this country - since we left Minneapolis, we have been to at least 15 states, and each place has such a different and unique feel. If there are so many cultural differences here in the U.S., between places like Long Island, NY and Savannah, GA, how different will Taiwan or the Philippines feel when we are there come January?

A shadow of an answer to that very question came this weekend, as Carly and I spent our day off with a woman (Susie, or Lin Ying) who is from Taiwan and her husband (Jerry) who served as a missionary there for 22 years. We learned some Mandarin Chinese from them while we were here, and even received Chinese names (mine spelled phoenetically is Shao Zhen Ni, derived from "Shaw Jenny" because your family name is more important than your individual name in China, and meaning Precious young lady). After learning only about 25 characters and pronunciations, my brain already feels as though it is on overload - it is a good reminder that immersing ourselves in a different culture will likely be exhausting but if its as much fun as tonight was, we are in for the experience of a lifetime.