Rightfully Guided: The Mop Stick Friend!

I was clearing the bathrooms of the house yesterday (late for my Saturday chores, I know... Oh the shame!). I have a deep love for this chore in particular. Not sure if it grew on me because so many times they could not find a better suited service for me in missions, camps and such... putting me with people was not really an option, sort of disastrous damages could be predicted... and  so clearing bathroom or peeling potatoes were much more brilliant ideas... in all cases they did have a permanent effect in making me  love doing the toilet cleaning... Actually I might explain this more later...

So, anyway, back to yesterday!  I have successfully managed to convince my roommate that I should be the one in doing the bathroom in our room all the time, to my heart's delight! And yesterday I had the wonderful chance to be cleaning all three of them (and not the one of my room only!). You can imagine the ecstasy! I was really happy!  Thoughts in my mind were all over the place but do not worry, I will not bore you with an account  but I thought it is a little bit unfair for the mop stick that the broom is always so much more famous. The Quidditch, the broom of the witches, and many other instances... So I thought to talk about it, the mop stick that is, because it is really a beautiful tool and yesterday it was the star!

So! I was cleaning and the water was getting in ever direction on the floor and I had no idea how to contain it! I so needed the mop stick but I was trapped inside with my feet damped but I managed to catch a far fetched towel (I am tall and a little bit flexible and can reach things oddly but easily... my dream is to be a ballet dancer, among other unattainable goals... but karate is much plausible taking into consideration my graciousness...). Now my feet were no longer watery (thank you towel!) and I can step where my friend had already cleaned without a dangerous glance and! I got the mop stick! The water that was everywhere was soon to vanish into that hole in the ground! I have a mop stick now! It was really magical and very very entertaining! Watching all this flood of water slowly being guided to where they should be and slowly being swept away, was enchanting. It was a beautiful process! Some places where harder to reach but still, it was just as great! One mop stick was all I needed to do all this and soon after this, the floor was shining! 

I was remembering a friend too when I was doing all that cleaning. We invited her with a couple other girls over dinner a few weeks ago and one of those other girls was a bit like my water on the bathroom floor. Really insightful, really cleansing, really wise. but a bit all over the place. It was a bit hard to know how to exactly react or get what she was "cleaning". This friend though was her mop stick. She gently guided her, she magically made flow out of the puddle and what the girl was trying to get to us, the hole in the ground (or the brain) was getting to us through that mop stick!  She did not stay there watching, she took a step and used her flexibility to make things better. It was a nice dinner (beside the food that is always! nice). 

I am really thankful for mop stick friends who keep me rightfully guided... and God knows how I need a few of those around me!

I pray too that I will learn to be a good mop stick for others as well... It is a wonderful blessing to be around people who are not afraid to go in ever direction and it is a wonderful blessing too to learn to me a mop stick friend! 

Nothing but a Breath

Today I did nothing of importance beside breathing and so breathing is on my mind. It is so beautiful to breathe (I think the word beautiful is beautiful by the way). It gives a sweet comfort to think about it, breathing that is. The subtle way the chest rises and falls, the pretty way the stomach follows. The gentleness with which the air enters in our noses, the calmness it makes it way out (normally, now if you are sighing or trying to blow something, that is a different story...). It really is magical to breathe. We breath all the time, one of the first things we started to do actually and maybe the most constant frequent thing we ever did. It is effortless, unless you think you are a fish (I am not a fish) and you try breathe underwater... then, it might be a little bit painful! But in all cases it is essential. So very essential that by the breath of God the whole universe came to be. By His breath we came to be. He breathed us into being, that first breath we took was His sovereignty breathed into our lungs, it was His gracious gift of Life for us...

... And He, He is the very breath of God. And He, He is the very Air that gives life. He is the Spirit by whom all things were formed! Him, the Spirit of the Lord. The Holy Spirit! The gentle breath of God, the life-giver, the reviver, the holy beyond holy presence... The comforter... The gift-giver... The Spirit of God Himself!

... And before this I stand and feel my nothingness... And I feel the reality of being nothing but a breath... It makes me feel my utterly unimportant importance. I consider myself such a nothing that I suddenly (I realize so many things suddenly...)  realize that... If I am to be but a breath... I'd better let Him breath in and out of me every second. I'd better let my nothing be used as a vessel for the Holy Air rather than any air... If I am but a breath, I'd better be His Breath. And that gives me comfort. It gives me comfort to be a nothing and all the pressure of this world to rise into something crumbles before this magnificent beauty of being nothing, nothing but a Breath and Him being the air that fills these lungs!

I am a happy nothing... 

You are the Vowels of the Words...

Words are on my mind. Actually more specifically letters are on my mind today.I have a fascination for phonetics and the sounds of letters, the way they come out, the way we hear the differences... The way they are pronounced. Everything really. 

Lately I have been paying more attention to the way I say things because someone pointed out that I have a "cute" way to give out the sound "sh"  /ʃ/ and similar sounds. I do not like to sound cute, I am a very serious human being, serious people do not sound cute. So! I am determined to exterminate every reason he has to think that and in the process I have been paying more attention to what makes a sound come out and I discovered that it is actually the vowels! (Is it still called a discovery if someone else, let alone everyone else, noticed it before us but did not inform us? in all cases I am a discovered so there you go!)

One of my lovely friend came out of the blue yesterday and asked me to try to find a word that has more than three Os in it. It was hard but we did find. I won't give it out though. (I'd like to know if anyone found some, because I have a theory and I want to see if it sticks).  

You know there are a lot of obvious things in this life that sometimes pop up and you go like wow! This is so with vowel and me. I thought wow! They are just so little in number but make all the sounds come out. Even the beyond-awesome letter V would not be heard or able to pronounced if not for the little /i/ sound after it!! And I thought that is something really humbling for the greatest letter in the alphabet but at the same time it drew my attention more to the character of this minority of letters: the vowels. They did not go day in and out stating how little of a group they are and how they are threatened to vanish. They did not go about and preach their inefficiency and tiredness and claim protection. These letters are heroic. They went in the middle of the other group and decided to bring out flavour, to bring Sound in the midst of unbearable pronunciation. They decided to bear witness to their call not in shouts and nags, but in doing their role faithfully in bearing witness to Sound calmly (oxymoron, or I hope so because it's my favourite figure of speech maybe). Vowel are gentle and humble. We never see them trying to act that they are the sound themselves, they actually don't, they serve others with a great heart.

And we Christians are a minority in a world that is all soundless, all consternate. We know that nothing will ever make sense or be able to be pronounced without Christ. Not even the lovely and great letter Love. And we are called to act like vowels. To have the humility but the persistence of a vowel. To have the gentleness but the efficiency of a vowel. To have the courage and the bravery to venture in every world, word and to give it sense, sound. We have nothing to fear. We are the vowels of the words. Or I pray we are!

Pee-kaboo (Awkward Granted)

Warning: If Sigmund Freud reads this, he might be interested in seeing me. This should inform you enough about the state of my brain.

Many would argue about what gives us pleasure in this beautiful world, but there is one particular feeling that I think every human being will agree on loving.

Peeing after a long halt.

I love, as in true true love, to go to the bathroom and pee after holding it enough time before I find a clean toilet or after decided it is more urgent to let it go than to be lazy. The feeling before and after, the process, the result... all this is just so beautiful and let me explain! There is this amount of water (with other material I believe) that is held captive in your bladder and you just can't let go of it and sooner than you think the empty space down there gets filled -you are like a P(ee-oo) machine- till you get to a point of almost explosion and you feel that there is an army there ready to attack and over-throne you (embarrass you in today's language)! Me of course, being the queen of the whole universe, cannot permit such thing to happen and thus start an ardent diligent search for a canalization till Mr. T offers a deal! Let me take care of these in my eternal black hole and in return you will have to regularly let me feast upon this rebellious yellow substance!  I shake hands with Mr. T! (Don't worry, I will wash them later, but one ought to take such deals seriously! First drop and heaven on earth! It feels like you have had this desire for a long time that you cannot name and then suddenly you feel it in your heart and you are satisfied. For a moment you think you are at the top of it all. Majestic. Sublime. You let go a sigh of relief and you just want to stay silent, in respect of what happened for a little while. And then the rest of it get out and you are just happy! Life can go on with peace on earth and room in your stomach for clean, new, yummy water and juices! I probably should stop here before not only Freud gets worried.

This phenomenon, peeing that is, had my appreciation for quite a long time, as long as I can remember. But on Friday, I was out with friends and this epiphany happened in my mind! I think our spiritual body needs to pee too! There is this huge amount of fluids we take from all sorts of sources and when we come at the Fountain of Life we find ourselves full and there is no room for it to cleanse us inside out. And He invites us to empty this soul of ours and make room but sometimes we just enjoy compiling and filling and just holding back. We feel in control over our kingdom. Until we feel the rebellion rising, this world pressing and bothering. Today, and everyday, the Living Water is inviting me, to come and make a deal out of my nasty yellow substance: Empty it at my feet and let me fill you with new, clean, limpid water. Give me space in your guts, make room in your inside for me to reside. Come with all that you have, I will take whatever and I will give you the best. There is this sweet comfort that awaits for you as you let sin and worry out and let Me in. Stop carrying what you are not meant to carry. Stop going around with a baggage that is not yours and have this burden upon you. Come to me and get rest, get true pleasure, get Life and fullness of it!!

ps. I need to go pee now!! And yes this post is yellow in honour of... PEE-KABOO!

Hello May

May in flower

May it flower

A bit of flour

A sparkle

And a cake

A midnight dance

A summer trance

A cup of beer

And Shakespeare

And the month of May came again! Sometimes I think we take months coming and going for granted and that is a bit sad. If I am coming and going regularly at work, I would still like a small welcome every day, at least a little hello. But really we get so used to constant things that we forget that they are a bestowed blessing, a privilege, an out of the ordinary yet ordinary event. 

The month of May in particular, stirs something in my heart. It's such a beautiful name for a month! Far from it being my favourite one, since nothing in the whole cycle of months can compare to September (the beautiful month of my birthday and on the 25th of it of this fantastic year, I turned 25!) it is yet one of the most hopeful and generous months. I think those who named it knew exactly what they were doing! It's the month of joy, the month of bloom, the month of possibilities. The month of sight, the month of life. It's generous. It gives back what we planted all year long. It's generous in its fruits and flowers and rich smells. It keeps nothing to itself, it just spreads and share and gives. May never withheld a ray of sun. May never forgot a drop of rain to refresh our souls. May comes calmly and yet so vividly!

May. The name is hope. May with many wishes, desires. May His will be done. May His kingdom come. May it be done. May your heart's desires be granted. May blessings overwhelm you. May His Spirit lead you. May we walk blamelessly. May His face shine upon us and may we shine His face! May the sun warm our hearts. May the Son warm our hearts. May we go forth in joy! And even maybe! 

I decided this year that May shall not pass without changing my heart. I decided that I will not ignore a generous thought, I will not let a idea of a gift to someone to be kept on hold or just contemplate it in my brain. May is active and shares. I will share. May gifts, I will gift!

I will be hopeful. I will go against the flow of despair that comes from this world. I will spread and share the message of Christ, the message of hope! I will declare his freedom and His name against every bound that wants to ensnare me and every thought that wants to enslave me! 

And I thought to extend this to my beloved ones, dear friends and family. I made a list of "May..." for each one as the spirit inspires and I am praying one each day for every one of them! And I know that my Lord listens! So! if you felt extremely blessed this couple of weeks... You now know why! If not, then open your eyes! 

Balloon Inscription

On the 25th of September of this fantastic year, I turned 25! I have annoyed almost every human being that had the mischance to meet me since about this wonderful fortune that the calendar bestowed upon me. 

I got many beautiful things and people were really super great with me during the whole week! I thought, wow, I am going to fake a new birthday with every new person I meet and cover the whole year so I can get to feel Queen of the Universe every single day. (Don't worry, it was just a moment of narcissism that vanished the second I thought what pride did to the Angel of Light! No thank you! I don't want that fate!) 

One of the cool things I got this year were balloons. My little beautiful sister got them, with wonderful flowers as beautiful as her... and that is A LOT! They were two balloons, one yellow and one purple with the inscription Happy Birthday repeated all over with confetti design. I love confetti, it makes me happy. 

Balloons are a touching gift if someone inflate them for you with their very breath, but it if it is a random tool inflating them they are not as dramatic but! they remain beautiful and one cannot throw away a beautiful thing so I left those two cool balloons, (with the confetti design!!) hanging on the handle of my closet at work. Day after day the air vanished from the inside to join the big world outside! And day after day the inscription and the confetti design! got smaller and smaller. (By the way, the cleaning lady asked me why am I still keeping these and I tried to explain about my obsession with my 25 becoming 25 and about the opportunity to get a fake happy birthday wish from someone new who would think they are actually only a few days old but it was in vain because of a language barrier. But she smiled and everyday she sees them she smiles again, so that is my new reason to keep them! To make her smile (or secretly laugh at me)). 

The inscription getting smaller (or bigger for that matter) made me wonder. I thought, it was initially made this small and when the air got in the rubber, it dilated. It is an amazing phenomenon. I remember trying this many times, getting balloons and writing on them with a pen and see how the drawing would get as it gets bigger. It is sort of magical, from this o to this O. A small speck can become a big dot and something almost invisible can suddenly show up! Is it not so brilliant?! And I thought wow! I thought how many times we do things that seem so little a speck but actually when the right time comes, the air will get it in and the impact of that very small action will be made! I thought of the small tasks of the every day and I thought oh! these are like the small inscriptions... The little time we give for friends, the time we give to listen, the time we give to be punctual... every single small deed of all kind and colour, even the sort of invisible sacrifices we make... are like these small tiny balloon inscription! And it gave me courage! Courage to continue to do what seems now tiny and silly because one day those tiny spots, might be part of a great confetti! balloon design! I mean confetti! yey!

Ps. I still accept birthday wishes... AND gifts!

Danke Deutschen

A few days ago I went to have ice cream with a bunch of friends. (useless bit of information but I so love ice cream and my friends that I decided to give it a shout out).

At the age of 16, I could not form a proper English sentence beside: "Hello, my name is..." , "Thank you very much" and "Nice to meet you, good bye.". To my utter humiliation... 

During the summer of that sweet sixteen, my parents offered me  trip to Germany. I panicked. All I heard before was that Germans are very stern, very rigid, have very strong personalities,  and that they will basically not help anyone unless they spoke German. I barely knew English. I am seriously (ill-ly) disoriented. Topped with a wandering spirit (I am with a group and out of the bluest blue I almost always find myself behind or ahead and I totally lose the group!), I was doomed, I thought. 

Day 1- 5 pm - Munich. Rathaus-Glockenspiel Clock Tower. Everyone stopped to behold this masterpiece. The music plays. The figurines start to dance. It is so beautiful. It felt like I stood there for a lifetime.  The Bavarians wins. The music ends. I look around me. No one is there. My heart beats hard. I search my pockets for the address of my hotel. I get the map out . I turn it 90 degrees, then other 90 then another... then back to first position. I turn in my place a full circle. I sit ready to weep. "Français?" "French" "Me lost, speak French". Nods of no, looks of pity in their eyes. Until a guy saw me, tears in me eyes. He looked very German. I did not even approach. He comes towards me. Says things in German that sounded totally like a call for war or something.

Me: "No English. No German. Me lost." 

Guy: "Me no English. Map?"

Me: "Yes. map." 

I hand him my map and my address. He smiles big. Makes sign in his hands of something tiny. Smart me guess that he meant close. He walks. I follow. Point to the hotel sing. I find my friends. They were looking for me. I try to explain my gratitude to the wonderful German. I just wave stupidly. He waves back. I sit. He goes on in his way. 

I never forgot this incident. There was so much compassion in the eyes of that wonderful stranger. I thought, my, I did not even ask him for help, something in him was genuinely kind. In my mind I was trying to avoid all circumstances where I would be in need of the natives because of the myth I built about their unwillingness to help and dislike of foreigners but I was confronted with such a generous freeness to help from the very first day till the day I left (and trust me that was not the only time I got lost!) that I can only remember them graciously now. 

I learned something very valuable from this daring gentleman. He did not think about the language barrier. He did not think of the risk he took to talk to a stranger. He did not think about anything beside trying to help a person clearly in need. And I learned that many times we are not equipped for the task ahead but with the mere courage of having the willingness and taking the step, comes a lot of blessings, if not all the blessings we need for the journey. I learned that when I hear the call of duty ringing, to stop and go forth without counting on the languages I know or know not, about the strangeness of the journey ahead or its normality but to trust the Spirit that leads and take a leap of faith, of faith in Him who set the course before us. And I pray that He takes away my cowardice and replaces it with bravery no matter what the cost is! 

ps. Thank you German people for the lesson and for the wonderful hospitality!
pps. I am NOT, unfortunately, with Germany in the world cup. Just thought it was important to mention!

My Life as a Music Box

Anastasia, the animated movie was on my mind this week. The story is so touching and the songs are really so so well done, specially the tune that the music box plays. I liked it this much probably because of my small obsession in music boxes.They are simply fascinating. I do not think there is a living human that would disagree. 

As a kid I would play with them endlessly or rather till the end, that is till I break them or ruin them! Then I would see the inside! Wow. A cylinder all chaotically doted and  this this thing that looks like a tiny hairbrush. It makes no sense. I tried to brush with it the cylinder but it did not produce the same thing. The phenomenon was mystifying. It went beyond my childish brain. There is so much beauty contained in such a small thing. The beautiful art in the box itself and the music it makes are breathtaking but once you open it, it just makes no sense. Only a doted iron tube and a hairbrush! 

This morning I was sitting drinking coffee with a wonderfully beautiful lady and we were talking about books and then we started recollecting memories. And for one moment everything seemed to have stopped in my mind! In a long story short version, I was looking for a book to give it to her through a common friend before I have actually met her ever!! And music boxes came back to my mind!! Suddenly it clicked! I thought, My! How things seem to be random but how in fact they are so perfectly arranged and now they might go in a perfect 360 degree before they make any sense! These dots, these event that appear to be scatted so chaotically in my life, have been in reality so meticulously placed by the Master of all event. And how when we force our brush of understanding over this life of ours it just does not make any meaningful noise but when we give the Conductor the brush, the stick of our orchestra, it makes all the difference and the noise turns the music! Many thing happen that just surpass me, but today I learned to let them be and in due time, in due season, I will hear them played magically and that day my heart will know the meaning but till them let them rest in peace and assurance that there is one Hand turning everything in the right direction.