I suppose this is an indicator as well...

Yep, a big girl for sure.

So, Saturday was all about the bed.

But Sunday?

 Guess who got a new phone?

Then, of course, I had to try it out.

There was the patience of this dear one,

 who waited the nearly two hours it took

to get the phone in the first place.

And then there was some texting,

 in which there was a learning curve.

My evening work night with these oldies but goodies

involved cleaning up contacts and figuring things out,

[and don't worry, Caleb was far less hostile than it may appear...]

and for the first time in my life
I was able to see a scene like this and say:

Oh! I'll just take a little picture,

with. my. phone.

I am a blessed big girl

[and a broke one....]

for sure.

I guess I am a big girl now...

Don't get me wrong--

I am beyond grateful for the use of this bed over the past 5 years.

 But, given that it was the childhood bed of a friend now in her 30s...

It was time.

If you need me,

I will be sleeping.

[Checklist of Big Girl Items:
1) Fancy Penn State Parking Pass? Check.

2) Bed made out of actually comfortable materials? Check.

3) A phone that does not hate me, and is very smart? 

Coming soon, to an upgrade near you.]

Truth & Reconciliation Film Festival

Over the course of a few months sometime last year, 

I had a series of dreams.

The details varied, but there was a common theme:

Division of Black vs. White

and

Violence.

In their collective, they spoke to me as a warning,

whispering: Racial conversation is coming. Be ready.

I had, of course, no idea what that meant.

Then, Ferguson happened,

and students were dying-in on campus

just around the corner from my office.

My facebook feed exploded with hurtings of some dear ones,

and I messaged them to say: My heart is with you.

And they wrote me back, and we exchanged deep words,

and they taught me much as I wept Holy Spirit tears.

And I understood I had been invited 

to take part in some doing-something; I just didn't know how.

But then, a turning point conversation, where I realized

the place where I work is a powerful setting in which to put on the table

historical and pervasive realities of race in our country.

The perfect setting in which to do something.

~~~~

We kicked it off with a film festival,

for which my parents came to town.

There were films of course,

 a whole list of intense ones.

 But there were also smart introductions to set the context,

 and panel discussions to fill that context out.

 There were community members who wanted to talk,

who asked questions like "what do we do?" 

and gave answers like "we need to look inside ourselves" 

and "we need to acknowledge the painful truth."

 There was an out-of-town guest,

 the Co-Producer/Writer/Director of this documentary,

telling us the story of the 1968 sanitation worker's strike in Memphis,

and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

When all was said and done, we called it a success.

 We realized people need the space to talk,

and we look forward to more to come.

IAH

I would just like to say,

I love my job.

Waiting

He pulls me back, from all the world.
[sit with Me. sit with Me.]
I do not hear His voice,
but I know His very shape.

I maneuver the dishes and sit with Him
I knife the onion and sit with Him
I rag the counters and sit with Him

I make the coffee and climb in my chair
and the Bible is open on my lap
and I sit. with. Him.
~~
Years ago now I sat in a different chair,
in a different place.
I approached Him with eyes on
my sacrifice;
I cried out for understanding,
as if beating on His back.

I wanted what I wanted,
and I wanted it immediate.

Then.

An expanse spread out before me,
deep and blue and pulsing dark.
Depths of ocean, and in it moving
a giant ancient of the ancient,
crusty with gathering sedge.

A whale. Moving. Slow.
Slower than ever I could imagine.

His eye locked on mine,
old. deep. holy. quiet.
my clenched fist not larger,
that dark blue-black meeting me with keenest wise, and knowing.

This girth steadily coursing, moving past me,
His eye locked straight unto my spirit;
I saw its edges, the rings of time,
and from It thundered words of invitation:

Are you going to go with Me?

Invitation, and conviction.

I climbed on His back, and went.
~~
I sit here now, new chair, new place.
The expanse is deep and all around me.

I am quiet now, such older.
All my words are spent,
my fist no longer beats;
my sacrifice folded into untold silence,
bleeding threads throughout these years.

Then.

In the silence, a whisper, a briefly ancient golden moment
rippling along the ocean bottom.

I look and I notice, I see a simple thing:

A girl, resting on the back of a beast,
her arms around His great wide solid,
her head laid down, her eyes bent along His side.
Simply she is being. With peace, reliance, trust
in His ancient beautiful.

I remember:
She had gone with Him, a stranger,
she had sat in straight-backed faith.
She had trusted His keenly knowing eye,
but her eyes looked out, ahead.

And now, I understand:
Today she is sown only to Him, satisfied.

In the slow, the ocean of the ancient deep and holy quiet,
the eye of Keenly Wise has turned my heart to love.
~~
He pulls me back, from all the world.
[sit with Me. sit with Me.]
I do not hear His voice,
but I know His very shape.
~~
"In the spiritual life (God chooses) to try our patience first of all by his slowness...He is slow, we are swift and precipitate. It is because we are but for a time, and he has been from eternity. There is something greatly overawing in the extreme slowness of God. Let it overshadow our souls, but let it not disquiet them...We must wait for God, long, meekly, in the wind and the wet, in the thunder and the lightning, in the cold and the dark. Wait, and he will come. He never comes to those who do not wait. He does not go to their road. When he comes, go with him, but go slowly, fall a little behind; when he quickens his pace, be sure of it, before you quicken yours. But when he slackens, slacken at once. And do not be slow only, but silent, very silent, for He is God." [Frederick Faber]

This is how you know life is worth living:

When you find a super-pack of sticky notes

on super-sale at Staples,

and when your inbox finally reads:

Woohoo! You've read all the messages in your inbox.

The Piano is Not Dead

It is, in fact, very much alive and kicking.

I have been reunited with this gem,

playing the piano duet score of Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande

with this co-pianist and these fine students.

Every Tuesday/Thursday/Sunday we gather for long hours,

and work.

And then, today marks the beginning of a new year 

of all of those piano babies.

I've been preparing like a little piano monster,

thinking about repertoire,

sorting through worksheets,
[taking over living rooms not my own, 

losing feeling in all of my limbs, etc.]

so that each may have their very own perfect book
of all the things they specifically need to know,

all the things that need reinforcing.

There are charts and stickers and competitions afoot,

[when planning to bribe the children,
is it wise to let the children
advise you on worthwhile prizes?...]

and it's gonna be a good piano-ful year.

This is how you know you're loved:

When your dear ones spend 

quality time together in a totally different state,

 but text you and call you until you answer the phone,

to make sure you never doubt it.

For all these things, amen.

Tell them:

"At twilight you will eat meat,

and in the morning you will be filled with bread.

Then you will know

that I am the Lord your God."

[Exodus 16]

It's called:

Tiny kitchen/love to cook problems.

It's called: This is what Saturday morning is for.

My favorite little baker

"Don't think I'm weird," she says,

"but can we make it a baking night?"

I had to laugh

I just came upstairs to this:

Yes,

that's how I feel too.

There is More

This morning I wake up, early early.
I lie on my bed in the black moon dark,
and my mind is alive
with the hurts and the needs of
the ones my heart loves.
~~
I remember
a bright mid-day, lying flat on my bed,
back before my innocence got kicked
straight out from under me,
many years now, ago.

Was I napping? Just reflecting?
I saw before my eyes three visions.

I was not raised to know visions,
or to trust them as True.
I forgot them as soon I saw them.

They said: I would enter into a time of refinement,
that it was exactly where God wanted me to be,
that He was doing His work.

I didn't understand this, of course,
until after I'd walked through the season to follow,
so burning so dark so brutal.

Until after I was delivered from it,
by what can only be called the powerful hand of the Lord.

Those visions returned after a time
to my mind,
and I understood:

He had shown me my exile,
the place where I would learn Him.
~~
Then He called me out, into a spacious place,
and my mind was set free, to see.

Visions are commonplace to me now;
days that go by without one
have become the strange thing.

~~

In the early days of healing
I sat in a room with others, praying.
I was still reeling, from the brutal and the delivering.
I sat with my eyes bowed, and listened.

And then my head snapped up and I thought,
"what was that?"
Because in my mind's eye I saw:

A king, dressed in finest finest robes,
kneeling before a simple man dressed in sheath of white,
and the king held a sword across both of his hands.
He knelt before the simple man,
and he offered Him his sword.
And the simple man bent,
and took it.

The king, was me. The simple man, was Jesus.
And ever since, in every daily thing,
my prayer has been:

Lord, I hand you my sword.
~~
This morning I wake up, early early.
I lie on my bed in the black moon dark,
and my mind is alive
with the hurts and the needs of
the ones my heart loves.

And I remember the journey from innocence
through darkness
and into Truth and Light.

And I look at the hard stories of those I love
held here in my hands. The hopes and the dreams
and the delay of them, even decimation.
And I think:

He will do whatever it takes,
to loosen our grasp on this earth we call home.
He will do whatever it takes,
so that we might know: There is more.

That we might be given the grace
to kneel before His feet and say:
Here, take it. It's yours.

A New Year

My life has always revolved on an Academic Calendar,

and hence, here we are, at the New Year.

This year finds me a real grown up, 

with a multi-year contract, and a big fancy title:

​

Lauren Kooistra, Ph.D.

Associate Director & Research Associate 

Institute for the Arts and Humanities

The Pennsylvania State University

I even have a grown-up parking pass now,

indication that I have, indeed, arrived.

You might think that a new year might find me tucked safely back in my Penn State cottage, after a summer of working from home, but alas.

Renovations never take the time we think they might,

especially when the building is old,

and termites have been--apparently--rampant.

And so, this new year finds me relegated out 

to temporary space on the edges of campus,

in what I'm not even sure we can call "campus".

We moved in this week,

into what was the old Child Study Center--
which means that this giant mirror 

across from my desk is actually a two-way mirror,
used way back in the day to covertly study the behaviors of children

from a weird hidden chamber
tucked into the middle of a corridor of rooms.

It's kind of creepy, but kind of fitting,

all the same.

So today is my first day without getting-settled drama.

On my way over I thought,

"gosh, I'd like some coffee,

but on this end of town there isn't a convenient place."

And then, I remembered:

There's a Dunkin' in the gas station I go right past! 

And then I found:

A Dunkin' gift card goldmine sitting in my wallet,

from many years ago.

And so, treasures given long ago bear their fruit today.

Good news to remember,

as I settle in to This New Year.