Extremamente Grata

Vendo que o Dia de Ação de Graças passou sem peru, cranberry, watergate salad, e torta de maça, (Eu acho que este foi o primeiro Dia de Ação de Graças na qual eu não me engordei 1 ou 2 quilos em um dia só) Eu quase esqueci de parar e refletir sobre as coisas pelas quais eu sou grata na minha vida. Então, vamos lá...

Sou grata pelas pessoas na minha vida que me lembram quem eu sou, quando eu esqueço tão rapidamente; as pessoas que me ancoram quando as minhas emoções irracionais querem me levar embora.

Sou grata por uma família grega que me faz lembrar o sentido real da vida (comer, beber, e rir juntos).

Sou grata que tenho um sobrinho e uma irmã quem me fazem querer ser mãe um dia (embora esse dia não seja hoje).

Sou grata que ainda mantenho dentro de mim, a voz da minha avó e da minha mãe, e que de vez em quando, encontro pessoas que me dizem que é ridículo que eu não compartilho essa voz mais com os outros.

Sou grata que a graça de Deus nunca se esgota, mesmo quando a graça que eu tenho comigo mesma e muito pouco.

Sou grata pelas pessoas lindas e maravilhosas que têm povoado a minha existência e sempre aparecem justamente nos momentos quando eu mais as preciso.

Sou grata pela minha identidade dupla de ser uma Americana e ter encontrado uma paixão pelo Brasil 6 anos atrás que nunca me largou.  Tem dias nas quais é a coisa mais difícil e mais edificante que eu já fiz na minha vida.

Sou grata pelas pessoas que me revelem o que significa ser corajosas, cheias de paixão, e ousadias pela causa do amor de Deus e dos próximos- e as que me dão a coragem de ser a mesma.

Sou grata pelos momentos nas quais eu me torno um idiota ou passo com vergonha, só para lembrar que não é pra ser perfeito na vida, apenas eu...

Sou grata pelos momentos de dor e sofrimento, momentos de dúvida e confusão que me ensinam estar em paz quando estiver triste e sozinha, sabendo que essas emoções não duram para sempre.

Sou grata por cada vez que o meu coração se abriu para amar, mesmo se ele partiu ou se magoou, pois eu sou convicta que este processo é o que verdadeiramente significa ser criada na imagem e semelhança de Deus.

Sou grata pelas pessoas quem me desafiam, me apoiam, me encorajam, e são prontas para me dar um soro na cara quando for preciso.

Sou grata pelo presente de risada, rir até doer, até chorar, só para rir mais um pouco. Pois às vezes, eu acho que Deus se encanta com a nossa risada e muitas vezes nós tornamos Deus numa coisa muito mais séria que ela realmente é.    

Sou grata que a distancia não impede as amizades e que não há distancia suficiente maior que o skype não alcance.

Sou grata pela minha educação, por cada pessoa que já me ensinou a me apaixonar por Deus e me desafiou a aumentar a minha imagem de Deus e do que poderia estar fazendo no mundo quando a minha visão tornou-se pequeno.

Eu sou grata pela vida, a vida abundante, que sempre se encontra na tensão entre êxtase e dificuldade; que sempre me espanta e me segura mesmo quando eu chuto e grito e quero ficar livre dela.

Eu sou grata pela habilidade de dançar, pois nunca me sinto tão viva, tão perto do Reino de Deus, como quando eu liberto o meu corpo de todo padrão, expectativa, demanda, e deixo ele fazer o que foi criado a fazer.

Sou grata que não importa o quanto eu tento fugir de Deus, pois nunca posso escapar o alcance do amor dela, manifestada por mim através das pessoas, a graça, a risada, dançar, cantar, e todas essas coisas pelas quais eu fico tão grata...

Thankful

Seeing as that Thanksgiving came and went without any turkey, cranberry, watergate salad, or sour cream apple pie (I think this is the first thanksgiving of my life where I didn’t gain 3-5 pounds in one day), I almost forgot to stop and reflect on the many many things I am grateful for in my life. So here goes…. In no particular order…

I am grateful for the people in my life who remind me who I am when I so easily forget, anchoring me down when my irrational emotions want to carry me away.

I am grateful for a family full of Greeks who make me realize what life really is all about (drinking and eating).

I am grateful that I have a nephew and a sister who make me want to be a mother one day, even though that day isn’t today.

I am grateful that I have still have Grammy’s (and mom’s) voice deep within me, and that every once in a while someone reminds me that it is ridiculous that I don’t share that voice more often with people.

I am grateful that God’s grace never runs out, even when my grace with myself is in short supply.

I am grateful for the beautiful and amazing people who have populated my existence and seem to show up in the exact moments that God knows I need them most.

I am grateful for my dual identity of being an American and yet finding a deep passion for Brazil that caught hold of me 6 years ago and hasn’t let go.  There are days where it is the hardest and yet most rewarding thing I have ever done.

I am grateful for people who reveal to me what it means to be courageous, passionate, daring, all for the sake of loving God and loving others- and the ones that give me the courage to do the same.

I am grateful for moments where I make a fool out of myself so that I remember that life isn’t about being perfect, its about being me.

I am grateful for moments of pain and struggle, moments of doubt and confusion, that teach me how to be okay with feeling sad and lonely, knowing that these emotions won’t last forever.

I am grateful for every time my heart has been opened to love, even if it means breaking it, for I am convinced that this process is truly what it means to be human and created in the image of God.

I am grateful for people who challenge me, hold me accountable, support me, encourage me and are ready, willing and able to smack me across the face when I need it.

I am grateful for the gift of laughter, laughing until it hurts, until you cry, and then laughing some more. Because sometimes I think that God delights in our laughter and we all too often make God out to be way more serious than she really is.

I am grateful that distance is no impediment to friendship and that no distance is too great for skype.

I am grateful for my education, for everyone who has taught me to fall in love with God and challenged me to expand my image of what God could possibly be up to in the world when my vision gets too narrow.

I am grateful for life- life abundant, that never ceases to be found in the tension between ecstasy and difficulty. Never ceases to amaze me and never ceases to let go of me, even when I kick and scream…

I am grateful for the ability to dance for never do I feel more alive, more part of the kingdom of God, than when I let my body free itself from every standard, expectation, demand, and just do what it was created to do.

I am grateful that no matter how hard or fast or far I run from God, I can never escape the bounding and ever reaching grasp of God’s love- made manifest to me in people, in grace, in laughter, in dance, in singing, and in all of these things which I am so thankful for…. 

Pieces of Puzzles

Forrest Gump may have said, “life is like a box of chocolates (you never know what you are gonna get)”, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that life is like a puzzle- you spend your whole life putting the pieces together and trying to figure out what the image is supposed to be.

We see the individual pieces all sitting on the table and we try to make sense of them. We desperately want to know how they will eventually fit together to make the picture come alive. We see our passions, our dreams, our hopes, our goals, and we want to know how they will all work themselves into the fabric of our story. How we can mold them and sew them together?

We want to know what the picture is going to be. We want to see the end result. The point of a puzzle is to create the picture, right? Why would you buy a puzzle if you aren’t going to put it together? We spend day after day in prayer and asking “God what do you want me to do with my life?” What is my calling? My vocation? What does this mean? Where am I going? For the love of you…what do you want from me?" I see bits and pieces sitting on the table and I can make out a general idea of what this might look like but I need some clarity and vision (unlike a puzzle, life doesn’t come with a box that has the whole picture already painted on it- that would be really nice…. Or would it??)

And so, we get to work. We see colors and shapes and pieces of the whole. We start organizing and arranging. Pieces of similar colors go together, edge pieces are moved to one pile. Everyone has their own tendencies of how they put a puzzle together- what they think works best for them.  Some of us prefer to work on puzzles alone, forgetting that in life (and often times with puzzles too) we are not the only ones at the table. Our loved ones, those who have worked their way into our stories, are also trying to put their own puzzled lives together and we often find our puzzle pieces getting mixed up with theirs which often makes things a bit more complicated but all the more beautiful at the same time.  

So after we get organized, we start to try to put a few pieces together. Unfortunately sometimes the pieces we thought would be the easiest to fit don’t. We swear they are supposed to fit together. We force them to line up and they just don’t feel right. We realize that we are different. We don’t easily fit into the mold that has been created for us (as women, daughters, sisters, Christians, pastors or even seminary students). That sometimes what the world tells us we are supposed to want we don’t. Instead we find ourselves longing for things that make no sense at all and yet we know in the very deepest fiber of our beings that they make all the sense in the world. We fight and struggle and push and pull, caught between our reason, our sense, and our hearts and we find it is to no avail. Sometimes we have to let a certain piece go before we can find the other piece that was right in front of us all along: the one that fits perfectly. Sometimes we have to change course, change direction, let one dream or hope die so that it can be resurrected or another one can be born.  Sometimes pieces that seemed to have fit together for a certain time suddenly don’t fit together anymore and we have to have the courage to start over, take things apart in order to rebuild them again in new shapes and forms. Relationships end. Loved ones die. Jobs are lost. Friends move far away. Doors are shut and we can’t seem to find the window that everyone keeps talking about. We have to face our fears of starting over. We have to face our disappointment and frustration and keep going. We have to let go of the expectations we create for life, relationships, experiences and let them be what they are- pieces of our story that can last for mere moments and yet change the course of our stories forever.

Sometimes we think we have the gotten things pretty well figured out. We have a good idea of what the picture is going to look like and then God throws another piece on the table that we weren’t expecting and we have to figure out how it fits in our already perfect plan- perhaps a piece that had accidentally fallen on the floor. We fall in love. Discover a baby on the way that wasn’t planned. We get offered an amazing opportunity to pursue something that we have always wanted. As amazing as this piece is, sometimes we find it a bit harder to reorganize the other pieces of our lives for it to fit and sometimes this makes us just want to stick with the picture we have got. We settle for less because we are scared of what could be. Risks are scary when we don’t know how they will change our lives… or break our hearts.

If life is about putting the puzzle together, we all too often fool ourselves into thinking that this means one day the puzzle will be complete. That one day (perhaps when we are old and gray) we will stand back and look at a finished product and see the big picture and understand it all. But the more time I spend putting this puzzle of my life together (and taking it apart and putting it back together again) I am starting to suspect that the whole point is not to reach the end product. There is not just one picture waiting to be discovered if we just spend enough time at the table or work hard enough. The point is to realize that there are many people at the table working on their own puzzles together with us. That we sometimes are called to leave our own puzzles aside for a while to join others in creating theirs. That God is in fact at the table with us helping us piece together our lives. And in the mean time, as we work- we laugh, we tell stories, we cry, we dance, we listen, we talk, and most importantly we love. The people who are sitting at the table with us are the ones that make putting the puzzle together worth it. That is the point.

So the next time we ask God what we should do with our lives, don’t be surprised if God pulls us up off our knees, opens our eyes to the life that is right in front of us- with all of its complications, messiness, joys, laughter, sadness, tears, and abundance- and says, “Go! Live! Keep creating. Keep piecing it together. Keep loving. Don’t be afraid to weave your stories and your lives with others. Don’t be afraid to pick up all the pieces and start over again. Don’t stop because you can’t see the big picture. Enjoy the process of putting this together and know that I am with you. Know that you are both deeply loved and capable of loving deeply. Know that the process of creation is more important than the finished product. In the end, that is what makes any puzzle, any story, worth putting together. 

A cabeça e o coração

Se os opostos de fato se atraem, então Deus sabia o que estava fazendo quando nos deu uma cabeça e um coração. Às vezes eu acho que eles não se comunicam uma com o outro, e quando falam, estão constantemente lutando- a cabeça mandando o coração a se apressar, andar com mais rapidez, o coração dizendo à cabeça se acalmar um pouco e curtir o passeio. Parece que muitas vezes, a cabeça já sabe onde o coração deve chegar bem antes do coração querer ouvir. E o coração parece lembrar a cabeça que na vida, a viagem é mais importante que o destino. O coração parece ser, às vezes, a criança teimosa que não quer sair do parque e a cabeça, a mãe frustrada que tem que arrastá-la para ir embora, chutando e gritando. O coração nos lembra que a vida não vale a pena sem paixão, alegria, abandono total, e riso abundante. E a cabeça nos lembra que pode haver beleza em ordem e senso- que a complexidade e a profundidade de ciência e conhecimento pode levá-la a ficar-se em reverência diante da presença de Deus, assim como você se sente na presença de Deus quando vê um por do sol, um bebê recém-nascido, ou percebe que você esta completamente apaixonada.

O coração nos leva a assumir riscos, cair, levantar-se de novo, esperar contra toda a esperança. A cabeça nos ensina lições e nos ajuda a crescer e amadurecer, mudar para que possamos ser direcionado até experiências novas de coração, parar de repetir os mesmos erros uma e outra vez e colocar sentido na bagunça e confusão de emoções que o nosso coração às vezes nos causa. A cabeça lembra-nos que nós somos curadas quando nós colocamo-nos vulneráveis na frente dos outros, que somos todos curadores feridas. O coração agradece à cabeça dizendo que ele prefere manter seus segredos profundos para si mesmo, muito obrigado. A cabeça lembra-nos que não temos nada a temer quando Deus nos chama para além de nós mesmos, mesmo quando tudo o que queremos fazer é correr e se esconder. O coração lembra do que significa ser frágil, humano, quebrado e esgotado por uma questão de amar os outros. A cabeça lembra-nos na profundidade de nossa dor e desespero que a ressurreição existe e algumas coisas têm que morrer para que outras possam nascer. Algumas coisas têm que ser deixadas atrás para que outras coisas possam ser alcançadas. O coração nos lembra que somos mais fortes do que jamais gostaríamos de admitir e a cabeça nos lembra que toda vez que o nosso coração for quebrado, se nós permitirmos, Deus nos ajudará a remendá-lo de uma forma que o torna um pouco mais forte , um pouco mais sábio e um pouco mais capaz de amar.

A vida é uma luta constante entre a nossa cabeças e o nosso coração. Há raros momentos em que eles ocupam a mesma esfera e conseguem sentar-se juntos, calmamente, o coração tendo finalmente alcançado a cabeça e a cabeça finalmente contente em apenas sentar e estar com o coração, por onde quer que ele esteja. E esses momentos devem ser apreciados, porque são raros mesmo. A maioria do tempo, nós ficamos na duvida sobre quem vai vencer no campo de batalha das nossas almas, frustradas com os nossos corações, demorando a sanar-se, mas gratas visto que as nossas cabeças podem (às vezes) esclarecer o caminho à nossa frente e nos dirigir na direção que nós sabemos que devemos seguir. Que possamos sempre viver a vida no equilíbrio da nossa cabeça e o nosso coração, sabendo que este paradoxo, essa tensão, é parte da própria imagem em que fomos criadas ....

Entre as colinas, quando vos sentais à sombra fresca dos brancos álamos, disfrutando da paz e serenidade dos campos e prados distantes deixai o vosso coração dizer silenciosamente,

"Deus repousa na razão".

E quando vier a tempestade, e o vento forte assolar a floresta, e a trovoada e os relâmpagos proclamarem a majestade do céu, deixai que o vosso coração diga

"Deus move-se na paixão".

E uma vez que sois um sopro na esfera de Deus e uma folha na floresta de Deus, também vós devieis repousar na razão e mover-vos na paixão.- O Profeta, Kahlil Gibran

The Head and the Heart

If opposites do indeed attract, then God knew what God was doing when God gave us both a head and a heart. Sometimes I think they don’t communicate at all with each other, and when they do they are constantly fighting- the head telling the heart to catch up, walk a little faster, the heart telling the head to slow down a little bit and enjoy the ride. The head often seems to know where the heart should go long before the heart wants to listen. And the heart seems to remind the head that it is more about the journey than the destination. The heart seems to be at times the stubborn child who doesn’t want to leave the playground and the head the frustrated parent that has to drag her out kicking and screaming. The heart reminds us that life is not a life worth living without passion, joy, reckless abandon, abundant laughter. And the head reminds us that there can be beauty in order and sense- that the complexity and depth of science and knowledge can make you stand in awe at God’s presence, even as you stand in awe at God’s presence when you see a sunset, a newborn baby, or realize you have fallen in love. 

The heart urges us to take risks, fall down, get up again, hope against all hope. The head teaches us lessons and helps us to grow and mature and change so that we can be directed to new heart experiences, stop repeating the same mistakes over and over again and make sense out of the jumbled mess of emotions that our heart sometimes leaves us with. The head reminds us that there is healing in allowing yourself to be vulnerable with others- that we are all wounded healers. The heart tells the head it is crazy and that it would rather keep its deep dark secrets to itself, thank you very much. The head reminds us that we have nothing to fear when God calls us beyond ourselves, and all we want to do is run and hide. The heart reminds of what it means to be fragile, human, broken and spent for the sake of loving others. The head reminds us in the depth of our pain and despair that resurrection exists and some things have to die for others to be born. Some things have to be let go of for other things to be grasped onto. The heart reminds us that we are stronger than we ever like to give ourselves credit and the head reminds us that every time our hear breaks, if we allow it, God will help us piece it back together in a way that makes it a little stronger, a little wiser, and a little bit more able to love. 

Life is about the constant struggle between our heads and our hearts. There are the rare moments when they occupy the same sphere and sit quietly together, the heart having finally caught up to the head and the head finally content to just sit and be. And these moments are to be enjoyed because they are rare indeed. The majority of the time we are left to wonder who is going to win on the battlefield of our souls, frustrated at our hearts taking their own sweet time to heal, yet grateful that our heads can (sometimes) shine a light on the path in front of us and guide us in the direction we know we should go. May we continually live life in the balancing act of our heads and our hearts, knowing that this paradox, this tension, this pull, is part of the very image in which we were created....

Among the hills, when you sit in the cool shade of the white poplars, sharing the peace and serenity of distant fields and meadows -- then let your heart say in silence, "God rests in reason."

And when the storm comes, and the mighty wind shakes the forest, and thunder and lightning proclaim the majesty of the sky, -- then let your heart say in awe, "God moves in passion."

And since you are a breath in God's sphere, and a leaf in God's forest, you too should rest in reason and move in passion. 

The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran