jamie's wanderings

 In my dashboard, I have three unfinished blogs that are too angry, too over the top to be published and I've let them block my writing, as I have moved through so many emotions and processed through so many situaitons in the last two or three months. When you write a blog that is deeply personal, deeply introspective, this happens. It's not a diary blog of cooking, family life, vacations, travel, but rather, a blog of the experiences of someone who has lived very far from her home and worldview, and has watched the definitions of home and worldview change and evolve and maybe even warp a little over the 20plus years of living not in my passport country. And watching the current events unfold in my passport country have made things even more facinating in the last couple of weeks....I refuse to be political, or at least avertly so in my publishings, but it is easy for me to state at this point, fo the first time in my adult life I'm deeply considering not voting. I sat on t

 For the second time this month, for a long weekend, I sit in a quite place. The first one was for our anniversary, and we relished being meters away from the coast and hearing the waves crash upon our rocky beach as we sat on the balcony, or merely just opened the door to our bedroom. The bed wasn't anything to write home about, but the small apartment with a balcony, big comfy sofa and nice tv, and a kitchen equipped to do what we needed, is all that we really wanted for those three nights. Today, my views are birds and sky, sheep and rolling olive groves and pretty Spanish villas that used to be second homes. The two dogs alternate coming out on to the terrace to sniff the air, lay in the sun or shade, and make sure we are still around. The pool glistens underneath me, matching the blue of my aptly named Aygo, Blueberry. This weekend we are house sitting and after a long stretch of a lot of work, and some really tough emotional moments, this is respite. It's all I can do, ju

  A long time ago, my aunt and uncle lived in Granada and we lived in each other's back pockets. They held our hands in language school and those first 10 years as we figured out Granada and culture and life and love and happiness and grief. I will never forget those days. Even though they now live between two other worlds, I know they left a chunk of their hearts here and we talk regularly, sometimes more and sometimes less. This week, as we walk through a family crisis with my dad's health, we have spoken a bit more. They left me, probably without meaning to, a book called L'abri, which discusses a long ago refuge created by the Schaeffers in the 1950s in Switzerland. They were in another time and another place and a different way of communicating, but God provided. They chose to step out in some crazy decisions, but God was there. And so, at my lowest moments, I pull out the book and reread the passages. Last night after shopping, I drove up to the edge of our property.

 I don't always publish back to back days, but I've run across a few interesting quotes on the state of life in general and wished to put these thoughts down before they flit across my brain and we are done.. I've again found a fascination with e.e.cummings who broke poetry rules and wrote as he felt, without caps and punctuation. In recent moments I've adapted something of my own of the lists of things that rollout of me without commas or periods so that you can follow where I'm really going. See what I just did? But, he, cummings, is still the King. And when the winter turns to spring far sooner here than the northern reaches of this planet, I remember his simple turns of phrases that suddenly cause us to remember spring pasts. I told Miguel Angel last month that I'm team Spring. So many people crawl out of the woodwork in August longing for cooler weather, and I shake my head at them, because, I'm team Spring. With the almonds bursting into bloom as we wo

 My super young (no age to protect her innocence ) at heart relative called me today, we talk at least once a month about various issues, sometimes cry, sometimes laugh, usually both, and I feel so blessed to have her. See, her story, just like all stories, has its share of violence, but she abounds in grace. This phrase is stolen from a dear professor of mine from my undergrad days, who needed to show a conservative Bible school that it wasn't just about memorzing theology and verses, but that story is what shapes who we are. So, she had a literature course that dedicated itself to the theme of violence and grace. Those of us who took it drank it in like water from a fire hose and some of the themes I learned almost 30 years ago, echo in my mind time and time again. These moments of violence, be they true violence like disaster, destruction, crime and more, or violence of the heart and emotions, are evil. Being unkind is just as evil as other bits of evil you can imagine, as bones

 I have been overwhelmed as of late of the deep intense unkindness that has seemed to ooze deep into our society. But, I am reminded of those kindnesses give towards me as well. One does not preclude the other, but sometimes the unkindess has felt echoey, loud and reverbating that I find myself choking back tears late at night wondering what the world has gotten itself into. I am an intense fan of the goodness that we have, both inherantly and also given to to us by God. I believe that many people in this world do not knowingly commit evil, but rather are motivated by selfish desires. I do believe that people can change, and not always say the same, but I believe we can do so because we have been empowered by God, and not only from ourselves. All this to say, I acknowledge the brokeness, the evil in the world, but I hesitate to meditate on the depravity of man. I believe that when we focus on our collective and personal evils, we do nothing but feed them, and allow more evil to perish.