A Waterless Tap! A Dry Filter!

We have a very small kitchenette here at the office with two taps, one for regular tap water and the other for drinking water. For that one, the drinking water tap, we use a cool kind of filter. They come in almost every imaginable colour and they gave me the privilege to pick the colour every month! I picked yellow for June! sun and all!

The filter is actually like a huge cotton thing attached to this coloured plastic end that enters in the mouth of the tap and the water passes through and the cotton gets wet and we have , supposedly, clean water in our cups and for the delicious coffee that I make! (I think I need to work on my describing skills but oh well that is my best, I count on your awesome imagination to guess how our filter looks like!)

I love, love, love to be the one using the filter for the first time. It makes like this sparkling (sparkles fascinate me) sound as the cotton end expands a bit with the water. 

Now sadly for the past couple of days, from the beginning of this week that is, we have no drinking water running down this tap. (Do not worry! We are washing our hands after using the bathroom!! The other tap is working magically well... she's even a bit boastful to be "the one and only one" for now).

Yesterday and the day before we could still get a few drops out of the filter, but today it was totally dry. I felt like it migrated to the desert... and this made me realize something! For two days I did not really realize the impact of no water running out of this tap, beside the fact that we were using bottled water instead. But today it was crystal clear. It was dry, dry unlike when we put it newly... it was dead! I cannot wait for when the water comes back! It will be so cool to see the filter come alive again!!

This made me think of my life... Many times I decide to cut out the Water... to become a waterless tap, ... Many times I dare journey away from the Running Water, from the Fountain of Life ...and for quite some time I do not feel the change... I am still somehow able to give a few drops here and there but soon enough I get dry... and dry unlike the first time I ever realized that I was dry, I crack, I stink... I die... And I walk like I am still functional attached to the tap but in reality I am only a useless colourful (maybe) filter... but this Water, unlike ours here, will never stop and waits for me to come again and revive this dry, dead, filter that I am... I pray that I will ever always immerse myself in the Living Water! I pray that I never allow my filter to think he is functional alone, away from the source... And I pray that even if I do that I realize quickly my dryness and reopen the tap, enter again into His reviving preserve and get imbibe myself in all His ways! 

June: A Generous Tune

O taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are those who take refuge in him 

 Psalm 34:8

It is a beautiful sunny afternoon and I am thinking... oh how nice it is to have such a vibrant sun out there. June is finally kicking! I love the sun so so much that I feel we have some magnetic attraction her and me... In all her positivity all my negativity just melts!

June is very generous... and it reminded me of the goodness and the generosity of the Lord. There is a certain feeling of drunkenness that one gets from the heat that is so similar to the one we get from eating too much or dancing too much or even just sleeping too much... It is so hazy, I dare say one may almost hallucinate... June is rememberful, as in he awakes the memory, of stories in our childhood, of summers long ago, of our beloveds, of things from here and there... And my colleagues was taken by this spirit of rememberfullness and he was telling me a story about how good the Lord is and how He sees everything. That reminded me of a story! (What a Juneful cycle!) ps. If anyone is searching for a neologist linguister, I am all up for it!

A few years ago I was attending vespers at a very nice little church and at the end of the service they give some very tasty beard . Usually there is enough (and more) for everyone but that day, they had just enough for everyone except the lady behind me.This bread  is probably as delightful as manna was for the Moses generation! And here I had my piece in hand and was ready to devour it and I saw that there was no more and so in some very unusual act of generosity of my part, I turn and offer her my piece which she takes happily (she was not aware that is was the last piece). I was not sad, actually I was happy. My heart was peaceful... I went back to my place to take my bag and leave just to see a  dude running toward me with one WHOLE bread loaf and he goes "this is all for you miss"... I say "oh wow, why... how!"... And he tells me that he was inside watching the line and he saw what happened and he has this one kept aside for later but he decided to give it to me and get some more for later. I was happy before... but now I was very very happy! And truly happy are those who take refuge in the Lord... Not because of a small (or big piece of bread) but because it goes far far more beyond that.... 

It is a silly story but it reminded me of the goodness of the Lord. That no matter how generous we are, He is the source of generosity... No matter how tasty that bread was, He is the sweetest taste our souls can ever feast upon.... and if sometimes bitterness grows here and there I will shake it off me because I have tasted and seen how good our God is...

June gave my heart a song of thanksgiving. June gave my heart a taste of heaven...

Really the Lord sees, and really the Lord is generous...

O taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are those who take refuge in him...

It is a beautiful afternoon!!

A Confetti Confession

I think... surprising, I know ... because if you have any insight about me, it would be definitely that I am far far from being a thinker... But nonetheless I do some rare times think... 

I think if confetti particles had a way to express themselves (confetti particles: you can thank me later for being your audible voice) they would let us know how much of a mess they are. They are, supposedly, the rest of the fancy paper we use for greater decoration. They are the trash of our paper perforation. They are the edges, the cut-outs, the residues, the leftovers... And perhaps they are truly just for garbage, outright truth. Yet, my tiny confetti friends do no give up. The gather themselves from the deep bag of uselessness and march toward the packet of celebration (yay). One confettus (I imagine that would be the singular for confetti... ref. cacti and cactus... Unless! it has Italian origins than it would be confetto... thoughts?) does not accept the mess of a confettus he is. He rises... even if a broom is needed... and one smack on the bottom cannot always be a bad thing... !  He joins! He joins the multitude of other confetti particles and shouts a song of joy at the victory, the victory of rising from the utter uselessness to one of great use...  To be tossed around...To being a celebration's most lovely guest! CONFETTI!!!( yes! They do make me happy in a silly way!)

Maybe my life after all is just one big bag of little confetti... A mess after the other... yet they rise... and they are gathered...sometimes pushed, sometimes smacked... but they do rise and they will join their voices to make some sort of sense... They will, in their utmost uselessness be of a great use... just maybe... I hope! To be a guest in the  great celebration before His throne... When my life will unfold all its particles in one deep shout of joy, one final toss into His arms!

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!