writer's block

There's an inspirational gauge, I'm convinced. I'm feeling pretty sure that every artist, musician, writer and performer can attest to it. At either extremity of this spectrum lies creativity's nemesis, mediocrity.

On one side, you have utterly convinced yourself that your art is far superior to anything else you've seen. Recently, anyway. This illusion is generally accompanied with phrases such as "these days". I myself have been lurking in this camp for a while, sagely droning, "Well, it's not as if writing is even the same these days. Text messaging? Kids don't even understand grammatical structure anymore..." If you can correctly pronounce nuclear, for example, you are elevated to an intellectual state above a national leader. Why, then, write when the audience at large is so simple, so dull, so below your intelligence?

The other end of the spectrum are the days weeks months seasons when all you are aware of is the brilliance of your fellow artists. Being caught up in a brilliant novel, reading a crystalline couplet of poetry, scrolling through a witty blog post, recognizing that even your sixteen year old brother is writing lines such as:

I've know a few roses that are guilty of hurting little children's innocent fingers. Now I've also know little children's fingers are guilty of taking an innocent cookie out of a jar without parents permission. But also, cookies are guilty of making innocent people a few pounds heavier than usual. When do we stop with the innocent chain? Probably never, seeing as we live in a fallen world.

Reading J.D. Salinger will do this to me. Why even attempt writing when there's Salinger?

I'm writing a book. Well, in theory. And that theory lies somewhere between assuming I'm better than everyone else and worrying I'm a lunatic for attempting publication. There. I said it.

irish girls

Sean, I'd say the best one came
from Tupelo, Mississippi
I'll tell you now that grown men cry
and Irish girls are pretty
- The Proclaimers, "Sean"

My maternal great-grandfather was Irish and this, along with many Canadian mutts, gives me the right to claim that I, too, am Irish. Grampa Sam and I shared a love of classic literature (he would read every volume that his nine children would bring home as part of their school curriculum) and wit. He passed away before I was born but I grew up in the Muskoka cottage he built from scratch and have visited the gravesite of his little sister, Ellen (or "Ellie" as she was affectionately dubbed; a name so affectionate, Sam had a habit of accidentally using it for my mother, Lois), in Donegal, Ireland.

Despite being pale, freckled, and predisposed to quarreling, my only personal tie to Ireland was a 10-day visit in 2000. For most of the trip my friends and I camped out at Laurie's house, who was a resident of Newtownards, a suburb ten miles from Belfast. My most vivid memories are of her kitchen and living room as we didn't leave the house for three days due to the infamous Orangemen Parade 'celebrations' that year. Several cars in the neighbourhood were missing when we ventured out of the house on the third day, replaced with blackened pavement and debris.

When nearby relatives of mine heard that I was in the area they offered a tour of Donegal and a meal. Although I forgot to ask them for distinguishable traits (colour of car, stature, age, or any other method of telling them apart from other Irish) I recognized the entire family at the bus depot by their round, snubbed noses. They looked like Uncle Foster's nose. They looked like grandma's nose. They looked like my mom's nose. They looked like my nose. A "ski jump", my father calls it.

Donegal stretches wide, long, windy and seaswept along Ireland's northeast coast, many of its thatched-roofed and whitewashed cottages are still intact. The grass really is greener and the sea, although sun-shiney, looked and felt chilled. Even on that cloudless, midsummer afternoon my cheeks and Irish nose flushed pink in the wind.

Ellie's grave lay in a quiet church plot, a simple stone plaque. Around it grew miniature daisies and sparse, very green Irish grass. I pressed a few daisies in my passport before I left the gravesite.

Since my mother secured her Irish citizenship a few months ago through her grandfather's line (her - real - Irish friends are unimpressed), the possibility of getting my own is one step closer. The only draw would be flaunting rights, a shorter waiting line at customs when I decide to visit again, and perhaps a drink on the house on St. Patrick's Day. I think Sam would wink his approval.

kutiman

I'm sure there's more to this than I musically understand, but I one of the reasons I keep watching these videos is their sense of community. Gender, age, race, class, situation, skill - none of them seem to matter. Kutiman makes a strong case for music being the universal language.

www.thru-you.com

please give us solid ground

I know we dont live here anymore
We bought an old house on the Danforth
She loves me and her body keeps me warm
I'm happy here
But this is where we used to live

- Barenaked Ladies, "Old Apartment"

Last week (my goodness, has it only been a week?), Tuesday, I lay snuggled under our verdant duvet in our deliciously soft queen-sized bed, beside my husband, and sighed.

"Do you remember moving in to this apartment?" I whisper.
"Mm-hm..."
"Remember how nervous we were - after we had mastered living with each other at a resort in Cuba for a week - to start all over again here? How awkward were we?"
Andrew chuckles.
"And now we're professionals."

That was the last night that we slept in our apartment on Annette Street. As my breathing deepened and my logic blended to dreams I could hear the clock in the bathroom marking the seconds as they passed. Tick-tick-tick-tick. I knew I would miss our apartment. It smelled like ours.

In a post I wrote about changes, I quoted Jonathan Eibeschutz: "All pleasures contain an element of sadness". In time, there will be many more posts about our new, butter-yellow house, renovations, paint swatches, interior decorating, celebrations, memories. I know it because it has already, in one week, begun to smell like ours.

And on the first night we slept there, I lay snuggled in our deliciously soft queen-sized bed, beside my husband, who had already put up the the clock in the bathroom. I drifted to sleep while it marked the seconds as they passed.

Tick-tick-tick-tick.

Sing to me a prayer of hope and strength
I will sing to you
As if my chest is glass

As we build, please give us solid ground

When the rain becomes a flood
I believe that we will find
Tree branches to climb
Far, far, far from here

Sing to me a prayer of hope and strength.
I will sing to you
As if my chest is glass.

When the weather settles down
We will search through this mess
Where I believe that we will find
Through things left behind
The place where we began

Sing to me, please sing to me
Always through these times
And we’ll begin again.

- Sleeping at Last, "Sing to Me"

linkalicious!

From previous posts you'll have recognized me as a 24-7 Prayer enthusiast. If anyone is still reading this blog from back in the day you'll even recall a pilgrimage I made to the land of its uprising, here, here, and here, visiting as many points of 24-7 Prayer as I could in a five-week stint. We even hosted a week of 24-7 prayer in Toronto, with a paltry blog to go along with it (soon to be revamped and reborn - stay tuned!).

And, now, I find myself sharing my insights, dreams and vision for 24-7 as part of a national base team (email me!) for Canada. Last week, we had our first national jamboree in Niagara where I met 24-7 crazies, like myself, from B.C., Regina, and Brantford.

Since the days of my wanderings around the U.K. I've discovered many more initiatives that 24-7 is doing worldwide, such as:

• film shorts
• campus ministries
• party town missions lead by flipping amazing people (he's Irish...he must be amazing)
  
• new books
• downtown Boiler Rooms
  

Here's a simple enough definition of the 24-7 Prayer movement from our very own 24-7 Prayer Canada website:

24-7 Prayer Canada is first the invitation to pray.
And out of this prayer comes community.
And out of community we pray.
And out of community and prayer will flow justice and mission.
We celebrate this profound mystery and welcome it with a unified "Amen".

Although, according to the last 24-7 international gathering, they toyed around with the idea of making their new motto:

Just pray.

Amen.

leadership

I have had leadership on the brain recently.

That, in combination with an addiction to Band of Brothers, courtesy of my husband, has me contemplating what makes a good leader. Really.

"The only hope you have is to accept the fact that you're already dead. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you'll be able to function as a soldier is supposed to function."
- Lieutenant Spiers

In war, the good leaders are easy to find. For the most part, they're the ones who aren't getting themselves and their men killed. In the church, death is less obvious. We're living, breathing, praying, preaching but are we on the offense or are we on the defense? Have we lost our vision? Do we know what we're fighting? Or why we're fighting?

Or who?

Are we, each of us alone, digging foxholes with our bare hands out of fear, unaware that we've torn off all our fingernails?

President Roosevelt, who faced an America similar to President Obama's, stated:
"Without leadership alert and sensitive to change we are bogged up or lose our way." (from here)

To be alert and sensitive to change requires me to look beyond my own circumstances long enough to realize someone else's. It requires me to look beyond my present long enough to realize the future. It requires me to live beyond myself. Leadership is an end to me.

"To save a life, you must take responsibility for it." - Defiance

gotham

Jo: "It seems like the city just pisses you off."
Michah: "Nah, I love the city. I hate the city but I love the city."
- Medicine for Melencholy

Bruce Wayne: "Gotham isn't beyond saving."
- Batman Begins

"Hello city,
You've found an enemy in me
Hello city, hello city."
- Barenaked Ladies, Hello City

I dig my toes into the cool sand of Chuam Beach, South Korea. It is my birthday. I am 25 years old. I took this weekend trip, by myself, because I felt, at 25, there was no one on the planet that could celebrate my quarter-century milestone better than myself. And Jesus. I packed, took a train, to a bus, hailed a taxi, and rented a minbok by the shore.

The pre-summer weather isn't conducive to sunbathing but, then, I'm not here for a tan. I'm looking for a sign. While my year teaching ESL has been marked with singlehood, footloose and fancy freedom, I'm digging into the future with as much focus as my toes dig the sand.

A Korean family - uppa, umma, harboji, halmoni*, and the prescribed two children - dawdle along the shoreline in front of where I sit. The father and mother snap multiple digital photos. The grandma helps one of the children find and collect shells. The other child runs in front of the pack marking a crazed path of small footprints.

"Don't you want a home?" Jesus, my birthday buddy, asks me. "Don't you want to know the people, the streets, the weather, the language? Don't you want to raise your children next to your parents?"

And right then, in June 2005, I knew I did. I went home to virtually nothing. No assets, no romantic prospects, and hardly any friendships that had sustained my global wanderlust. I went home because, "it's not good to go far from your native village; then you you forget who you are". (A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry)

* "father, mother, grandpa, grandma"