new blog!

http://laurenbernhagen.wordpress.com/
still working on the layout. 
check it out.

i will not have a junk drawer.

Hi blog.

This is just a post to say that I will no longer have a junk drawer because they are ridiculous and take way too long to sort through. I will not have one. I like to be neat, but I've always had one drawer that I put random cards or whiteboard markers or weird little nick knacks like sock monkey key chains and the Xacto blade that the janitor gave all the girl RAs to cut the hair off of the bottom of the hall vacuum. Not only does this drawer take too long to clean out, but you can forget about finding anything you need if you stick it in that black hole.  I'm not going to have one anymore. 

You may now start placing bets on my success.

will be canning soon.

I think when I was younger, I always wanted to grow up a bit faster because it represented freedom. People tell me that when I'm older, I'll want those years back and wish to be younger because it represents a different kind of freedom. Right now, I feel fairly in the middle - that's why the college years are some of the best, right? Much of the freedom of an adult without the added responsibility of seven different types of bills, plus the sweet blessing of dorm life and a tightly knit community.

There are still many days when I wish I was settled with a family in a home of my own. But right now, this is what the Lord has for me. I'm excited to get really involved with my church this summer and grow richly in that community, and I am excited for all the time I will get with my family in the next few months. Aunt Molly and I are in the beginnings of planning a canning party with Mom, Katie, Grandma, and some of the other women on the Bernhagen side - I just received an email from Grandma B this morning about how Uncle Ron planted lots of tomatoes this year, and we will have cukes around the first part of August to pickle. We might do some jams too. Also, as of late, Seattle plans are coming together nicely, and we might spend some time up in Banff and Calgary in Canada for part of the trip as well (shameless plug for Bon Iver's new album: download the early release song free - Calgary).

Currently, from where I'm sitting, if I crack the blinds on my window about two inches, all I can see are different shades of green from the pines and the old trees next to the refurbished farmhouse. The new puppy, whom I suggested we name Andy Warhol or Devotchka but is now tritely named Paityn, is curled up in a ball on the fluffier part of the white duvet. I have a mug of Good Earth tea beside me, and the whole house smells like rain.

Some days I feel overwhelmed because I thought I had this whole growing up thing under my belt already, and often, I don't. I'm trying to learn how to trust truth over emotion each day because the heart is deceitful above all things. Emotions can be very fickle. There was a group started by some men on campus last semester called the Unfading. They wanted to encourage the women on campus regarding the world's lies about body image and work through other struggles while also helping fellow men make war on pornography addictions and a range of other issues like these. We discussed the verse that talks about "the beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit" and how this doesn't refer to a woman being shy and literally quiet. It means that before the Lord and, consequently, before others, that spirit is at peace and rest because this woman is finding her joy and strength in God.

This was a great encouragement for me. Being peaceful before the throne is one of the best feelings in the world.

This summer in the Cities is filled with hope.  Looking forward to what it holds.

That's all for now,
lo

a grief observed.

It is stormy this morning. I'm sitting by the big windows upstairs and watching the mass of vibrantly green trees in the field next door shake. It is a 10am storm, yes it is. I wonder if the aspen (now growing in the wooden plot that was once our vegetable garden) knows it is being fed or if it just is frightened by the loudness of the sky. I know that God needs to water the earth, and intricately, this is how He does it. An ordinary trend in all aspects of life: pain produces fruit.

I finished A Grief Observed a couple days ago whilst sitting by the fire/tightly zipped in a blue, nylon sleeping bag at Wild River State Park. It's pretty short, really it only takes a day or so to read. The book follows the thoughts and emotions of C.S. Lewis after his beloved wife died of cancer in 1960. I highly recommend it to anyone who has known any sort of grief of any kind (not just a death). He nails the strength of feeling and conversely, the promises God has laid out in exactness. The book opens with this:

"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing. At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me." 

Pastor Steve preached a message on grief at HopeCC a couple months ago and explained why grief feels so wrong, so confusing. He described us as how we first were, in Eden, and clarified that we were not created for mourning or despair or any of those numerous feelings that fit in the black bag of suffering.

Elisabeth Elliot says in Passion and Purity: "The most deeply taught Christians are generally those who have been brought into the searching fires of deep soul-anguish. If you have been praying to know more of Christ, do not be surprised if He takes you aside into a desert place, or leads you into a furnace of pain."

While we as humans were not fashioned for bereavement, the beauty of it all is that God still uses pain to produce good, in fact even marvelous, things (This seems like an obvious, cliche statement, but is in fact a very difficult thing to grasp when in the midst of it). The fight occurs when our flesh desires to ease the searing ache with worldly tools. Our souls are too eternal for this ("He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart..." Ecc. 3:11) - everything we try to fill this gaping in our hearts with falls right out, our souls are bottomless. Only He, who is eternal, can fill something fashioned with eternity in its rims.

I think this grief-manufacturing-hope is beautiful in a different kind of way than any normal, pretty thing generally is. I find it complex and mysterious and grand. It is like the night birds that I heard in the tree by my window two nights ago at 3AM. It is like the conversation with Jessie, yesterday, downtown, when she told me about hurts and grace, and her words were like jewels on the air. It is the "letting down of wings" (Ezekiel 1:25) and the changing of dust.

I am grateful for this. All of it.
Praying for fresh, new, healing things.

tukutendereza.

The Kenyan woman, Anna, who lived in my hall this semester flew back to Africa today. Two nights ago, she had Els and me over for some Kenyan rice, meat, bread, and some vegetables. She was drinking something that looked like hot chocolate but had the consistency of Malt-O-Meal. Somehow, it was very comforting...like drinking porridge. She was also playing Kenyan music videos and explaining to us that Africa is a culture of dance, and no one would buy a song that you couldn't dance to.

Each and every time I interacted with this woman, she blessed me with the love of God and spoke directly to my heart. More stories to come.

In this video, Anna said that the woman is saying when Satan calls, she isn't available to answer.

jealous arm.

And where are they now?
Our silent golden cows?
His swift and jealous arm has thrown them down.

Lift up your eyes, little ones.
Rejoice chosen sons.

manna.

But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped. For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked....But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I discerned their end...When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you. Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel and afterward you will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever...But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all your works. [Psalm 73:2-3,16-28]

Passing alongside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, "Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men." And immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going on a little farther, he saw James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, who were in their boat mending the nets. And immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed him. [Mark 1:16-20]

title gets a makeover.

my, isn't this exciting.

hymn.

If to distant lands I scatter,
If I sail to farthest seas,
Would you find and firm and gather
'til I only dwell in Thee?

jane.

I haven't had many years like this one. Its been pretty fiercely bittersweet in its revelations, intensity of emotion, etc. But I have had many moments, seconds, days that are very long, times where I was walking down the sidewalk and looking at the trees with all their interlocked branches like antlers and lengthy patches where my fleshly self simply craved the approval of others. Daily, I am venturing to throw this part of myself over the bridge and into the river and rely more heavily on the Lord for any and all of these gut reactions. I read Gwen's book, When People Are Big and God is Small, last year, and that was the first time I soundly grasped how this fear of man had been shaping me and how beautiful it could be if I only feared the Lord instead and let Him shape me.

I'm reading Jane Eyre right now and there is this portion where Jane, as a ten-year-old child, is sitting before the fire late at night and consulting her fellow classmate and dear friend, Helen Burns, on the trials of her small life. Helen, a prudent thirteen-year-old, pours forth wisdom:

"If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt," Helen spoke, "you would not be without friends."

"No; I know I should think well of myself; but that is not enough; if others don't love me, I would rather die than live - I cannot bear to be solitary and hated, Helen. Look here; to gain some real affection from you, or Miss Temple, or any other whom I truly love, I would willingly submit to have the bone of my arm broken, or to let a bull toss me, or to stand behind a kicking horse, and let it dash its hoof at my chest -"

"Hush, Jane! you think too much of the love of human beings; you are too impulsive, too vehement: the sovereign Hand that created your frame, and put life into it, has provided you with other resources than your feeble self, or than creatures feeble as you. Besides this earth, and besides the race of men, there is an invisible world and a kingdom of spirits: that world is round us, for it is everywhere...God waits only the separation of spirit from flesh to crown us with a full reward. Why, then, should we ever sink overwhelmed with distress?"

And so, through a child's wisdom (or rather Charlotte Bronte's and more largely, the Lord's), I am attempting. This is a daily declining that I have to do, unmanageable only if I make it that way. Trying to "lay down these crowns" I constantly "clench with fisted hands."


"Who, then, are those who fear the LORD? 
He will instruct them in the ways they should choose.
They will spend their days in prosperity, 
and their descendants will inherit the land.
The LORD confides in those who fear him; 
he makes his covenant known to them" Psalm 25:12-14

If you're going to walk on the white.

I've been seeking truth in several areas regarding the Lord and His love as of late. I've felt pretty cushioned by the Holy Spirit this last month, like I have pillows on all sides of me. There's really no other place I want to be right now. I know this poem is loosely tethered, but my heart is very much in this place. Trying to aim for truth.


If you're going to walk on the white
side of the curb, by the gutter,
and search for deader plants
behind the sewer grates, slowly,
then I will wait. I guess.
I halted in this frothy glasshouse,
damp
before it was silent, but still
deadening in the weight of
its sliding sheets of pale
or thin light. I sat between the vines
to be in the state of the glorified
libraries and the tilting cathedrals with their
fallen doors, the basilicas
that have torn down their
own wallpapers and repainted
curious images of antiseptic gods
on insubstantial sanctums. We
could always see through
the fake beams the modern chaplains
innately rooted like boorish
trees that snake through the Amazon.
Looking up the curved, impressionistic
dome toward the keynote core that
leveled the force of the angels, you
told me of how it used to be, how it really is -
deep - rumbling down through the stratums
of the ocean and latching on to both
sides of the continent (and we are covered
still). It is an exquisite following.
The smell of the hickory pew
and melted candlesticks is what
I remember the least.

this.

Let this goodbye of ours, this last goodbye
Be still and splendid like a forest tree...
Let there be one grand look within our eyes
Built of the wonderment of the past years
Too vast a thing of beauty to be lost
In quivering lips and burning floods of tears.
- Alice Meynell
via Elisabeth Elliot

wordpress.

anyone want to learn me on how to switch over to wordpress? it is time.

the fire escape on the old schoolbuilding.

I sit towards the left, backhand corner of the large classroom at the end of the hall, generally. The room is blue and white, flaking with age, Victorian colors. In the afternoon, I scratch a tree in the faux wood desk, Do you know you are not real maple? Do you know? I smudge the branches out by three o'clock, so I can leave nonchalantly.

There is a fire escape, too, out the window, which I watch with careful eyes. The casing on the frame always makes me think of the crude ivory elephants from India. The staircase itself is of a hidden meaning, green and blistering iron, otherworldly. It's thirty-foot skeleton sways somehow, sways with suggestion, to keep them alive and me involved. The steps themselves rasp beside the brick wall, branching this year to the other century and its deep water, with a movement that is, I would assume, strangely familiar. But the stairs still scare me like ghosts when I see them shifting up and down in the wind.

The wrought metal seems to be for thinner scholars, those lettered intellectuals with blue monogrammed sweaters, and narrow ties. There is also a solid crank, several decaying leaves musty and feral, and a severe unrest, disabled and forgotten and blank, a severe unrest that I must go stand outside underneath and see.

Four hours ago, the getaway swelled and wrinkled, what was left of it: a reedy expression of railing and lattice, and a hard shell of uncertainty by which I've always seen it move. Tomorrow, if the other buildings turn and notice, the palisade will melt to the wall. The frayed establishments bordering the iron are impish and well informed of skies, a belt of calculated systems.

When the undergrads pack up and leave slowly, like tourists or troubadours, I mostly close the curtain, and after I go the fire gate never is fully there.

crows & locusts.

The fields are bleeding.
It's been seven years, they say.
The foxes ran through and set the wheat on fire
after the ruling and
the tribes melted into their armor.
I drop this pottery in the dust
by my feet, and it breaks and scatters
before I can gather the blue-hewn chips into
neat, small piles with my hands. The
burnt powder on my forearms
was always red and dark, ready
for hotter deserts or a more sacred
harvest, so I will stand under this tree
even if this tree doesn't want me.
          The women are still there with their baskets.
You told me my hair was like rain
or looked like I had stolen something
in the afternoon light, and I vended
the rocks you left just so you'd tell me
to stop. Even so, you unhitched
the smoke-dried knots and pulled
down the fastened arches between the mounts.
Everything was flooded then.
Now, we walk on brittle land
and crack whips without thinking.

The fire is coming down.



"I could have stretched forth My hand and stricken you...
and you would have been effaced from this earth.
Nevertheless I have spared you for this purpose in order
to show you My power..."
          Exodus 9:15-16

lit for the sum.

In an effort to remember the books that I keep putting on my to-read-in-the-summer list in my head, here is a listing of what I am reading and what I fully intend to go through as soon as I'm done with Studies in European Lit. I would love more recommendations though.
My list includes:

1. A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
2. A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis
3. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers - currently reading
4. The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis
5. Bleak House by Charles Dickens - currently reading
6. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

the weight.

Somewhere inside of me is a place that hopes that heaven isn't like the pictures on my grandfather's wall in the old, mustard-colored den. The room was a restful place, with a mahogany davenport, books, and a small black and white television. But I will never be able to fully separate the wispy light and the transparent garments of the youthful angels on the wall from that spot. Baby sheep, a twinkling staircase, and a Jesus with a halo disc around the back of his head were smattered over different size paintings on several different walls.

I would sit on the burnt orange shag carpet and wonder, Is heaven really all pastels? Will everything just glare, too clean to touch? I don't think I want to stay for all of eternity in a chalky temple that looks hard, lonely, and like an ancient Greece emptied of all its people. I'd feel guilty as a child, as heaven was supposed to be the place where there was no suffering or tears, but everything there seemed very singular and lonely to me. In my heart, I'd secretly decide that I would stay on earth where there were warm rooms with roaring fires and family and comfortable, cushy chairs thank you very much. Hopefully God would change something up with heaven by the time I got there. 

As of late, these pictures in my mind of celestial beings and glory have been challenged, and I am now understanding that heaven (a word that has consistently had a gold glow around it in my head) is not simply a place with white bunnies and a pale yellow sky. The word "glory" in the ancient languages actually meant "weight" or "substantial." In glory is where the actual weight is. What is on earth is the see-through, and everything in this eternal place will be so much more potent. God is not some wispy, metaphysical thing...He is more substantial than anything in this world and quite different from the Renaissance art found in most museums. In a place where that kind of Being eternally dwells, food and fragrance and color will be so contrasting, so intense and thick.

I take comfort in these images that the Lord has started to reveal to me. I don't very much understand it yet, but it is so reassuring to know that heaven isn't simply up above the ceiling and sky but beyond. Which means that it could be in a pocket of air that I can't quite see in the corner of my room or somewhere else that I can't quite interpret (a wardrobe?). Makes me think of Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time. I remember being in about the fourth grade and trying to understand the complexities of Meg's "tessering."

There are so many impressions of God in this world: the different realms of art and beauty and music and emotion are brilliantly wrapped up and entangled in everything. I see this in the way C.S. Lewis describes creation in The Magician's Nephew and Dicken's illustration of wine and twilight on the window seat in Bleak House. I'm seeing now that the devil has sought to flip our view of heaven upside down - he is clever that way, and in response, the church has cheerfully charged into acceptance of these theologically incorrect and simplistic paintings of the eternal.

David Wells has suitably captured this issue in culture today: "It is a condition we have assigned Him after having nudged him out to the periphery of our secularized life. . . . Weightlessness tells us nothing about God but everything about ourselves, about our condition, about our psychological disposition to exclude God from our reality.”

hearth.

I am home, sitting by the fireplace upstairs. The brown afghan on the couch is warm but not too warm, and Mom just made lemon tea and went downstairs. I have my Bible and Bleak House on the pillow, and Addie's staring out the window at the big field and the pine trees next door. The rest of the family is downstairs, about to start a movie, something with Claire Danes I think.

I feel so peaceful, and so full of thinking. I've been writing on the backs of napkins and Mapquest directions for the last couple of weeks, and Els gave me the idea to write unplanned thoughts on note cards (carried in my bag of course) like Anne Lamott talks about in Bird by Bird. I try to write in a little notebook, but it always gets left behind on my desk or in the living room. I think I'm going to need to sort for awhile.

Today we went out to western MN to visit Alex, and when we got there, we drank hot chocolate made with Dutch cocoa from some Mennonite farmers, and then we went antiquing. I fell asleep on the way back because the sun was hot on my cheek and my arm, and Els has always been a good driver.

Also, last night I dreamt about an ocean that was rushing into the sky, and we were singing to the Lord and it was echoing everywhere. I think I know what it means but I'm not sure...I'm open to discussion if you have a special knack towards dream interpretation and want the details.


As soon as I got home, Dad mentioned that we might take an impromptu trip up north to stay in a cabin on the north shore. We might just sit and watch the boats in the frozen wharf or hike in the woods (snowshoeing?). What I'm wondering is if it's possible to stay in a lighthouse...If you have any special information or know of any peaceful places near Duluth or Ely, let me know.

Trying to slow down the time, learning to love solitude.

snow by tove jansson

When we got to the strange house it began to
snow in quite a different way. A mass of tired old clouds
opened and flung snow at us, all of a sudden and just
anyhow. They weren’t ordinary snowflakes – they fell
straight down in large sticky lumps, they clung to each
other and sank quickly and they weren’t white, but grey.
The whole world was as heavy as lead.
Mummy carried in the suitcases and stamped her feet
on the doormat and talked the whole time because she
thought the whole thing was such fun and that every-
thing was different.

But I said nothing because I didn’t like this strange
house. I stood in the window and watched the snow
falling, and it was all wrong. It wasn’t the same as in
town. There it blows black and white over the roof or
falls gently as if from heaven, and forms beautiful arches
over the sitting-room window. The landscape looked
dangerous too. It was bare and open and swallowed up
the snow, and the trees stood in black rows that ended
in nothing. At the edge of the world there was a narrow
fringe of forest. Everything was wrong. It should be
winter in town and summer in the country. Everything
was topsy-turvy.

The house was big and empty, and there were too
many rooms. Everything was very clean and you could
never hear your own steps as you walked because the
carpets were so big and they were as soft as fur.
If you stood in the furthest room, you could see
through all the other rooms and it made you feel sad; it
was like a train ready to leave with its lights shining over
the platform. The last room was dark like the inside of
a tunnel except for a faint glow in the gold frames and
the mirror which was hung too high on the wall. All the
lamps were soft and misty and made a very tiny circle of
light. And when you ran you made no noise.
It was just the same outside. Soft and vague, and the
snow went on falling and falling.

I asked why we were living in this strange house but
got no proper answer. The person who cooked the food
was hardly ever to be seen and didn’t talk. She padded
in without one noticing her and then out again. The
door swung to without a sound and rocked backwards
and forwards for a long time before it was still. I showed
that I didn’t like this house by keeping quiet. I didn’t
say a word.

In the afternoon the snow was even greyer and fell
in flocks and stuck to the window-panes and then
slid down and new flocks appeared out of the twilight
and replaced them. They were like grey hands with a
hundred fingers. I tried to watch one all the way as it
fell, it spread out and fell, faster and faster. I stared at the
next one and the next one and in the end my eyes began
to hurt and I got scared.
It was hot everywhere and there was enough room
for crowds of people but there were only two of us. 
I said nothing.
Mummy was happy and rushed all over the place
saying: “What peace and quiet! Isn’t it lovely and warm!”
And so she sat down at a big shiny table and began to
draw. She took the lace tablecloth off and spread out all
her illustrations and opened the bottle of Indian ink.
Then I went upstairs. The stairs creaked and groaned
and made lots of noises that stairs make when a family
has gone up and down them for ages. That’s good. Stairs
should do that sort of thing. one knows exactly which
step squeaks and which one doesn’t and where one has
to tread if one doesn’t want to make oneself heard. It
was just that this staircase wasn’t our staircase. Quite
a different family had used it. Therefore I thought this
staircase was creepy.

Upstairs all the soft lamps were on in the same way
and all the rooms were warm and tidy and all the doors
were standing open. Only one door was closed. Inside,
it was cold and dark. It was the box room. The other
family’s belongings were lying there in packing-cases and
trunks and there were mothproof bags hanging in long
rows with a little snow on top of them.
Now I could hear the snow. It was falling all the time,
whispering and rustling to itself and in one corner it had
crept onto the floor.

The other family was everywhere in there, so I shut
the door and went down again and said I wanted to go
to bed. Actually I didn’t want to go to bed at all, but I
thought it would be best. Then I wouldn’t have to say
anything. The bed was as wide and desolate as the land-
scape outside. The eiderdown was like a hand, too. You
sank and sank right to the bottom of the earth under a
big soft hand. Nothing was like it was at home, or like
anywhere else.

In the morning it was still snowing in just the same
way. Mummy had already got started with her work
and was very cheerful. She didn’t have to light fires or
get meals ready and didn’t have to be worried about
anybody. I said nothing.

I went to the furthest room and watched the snow. I
had a great responsibility and had to see what the snow
was doing. It had risen since yesterday. A thousand tons
of wet snow had slithered down the window-panes, and I
had to climb onto a chair to see the long grey landscape.
The snow had risen out there, too. The trees were thin-
ner and more timid and the horizon had moved further
away. I looked at everything until I knew that soon we
would be done for. This snow had decided to go on fall-
ing until everything was a single, vast wet snowdrift, and
nobody would remember what had been underneath it. 

All the trees would sink into the earth and all the
houses. No roads and no tracks – just snow falling and
falling and falling.
I went up to the boxroom and listened to it falling,
I heard how it stuck fast and grew. I couldn’t think of
anything but the snow.
Mummy went on drawing.

I was building with the cushions on the sofa and some-
times I looked at her through a peephole between them.
She felt me looking and asked: “Are you alright?” while
she went on drawing. And I answered: “of course”.
Then I crept on hands and knees into the end room and
climbed onto a chair and saw how the snow was sinking
down over me. Now the whole horizon had crept below
the edge of the world. The fringe of forest couldn’t be
seen any longer; it had slid over. The world had capsized,
it was turning over quietly, a little bit every day.

The very thought of it made me feel giddy. Slowly,
slowly, the world was turning, heavy with snow. The
trees and houses were no longer upright. They were
slanting. Soon it would be difficult to walk straight.
All the people on earth would have to creep. If they
had forgotten to fasten their windows, they would
burst open. The doors would burst open. The water
barrels would fall over and begin to roll over the endless
field and out over the edge of the world. The whole
world was full of things rolling, slithering and falling.
Big things rumbled, you could hear them from far off,
and you had to work out where they would come, and
get away from them. Here they were, rumbling past,
leaping in the snow when the angle was too great, and
finally falling into space. Small houses without cellars
broke loose and whirled away. The snow stopped fall-
ing downwards, it flew horizontally. It fell upwards and
disappeared. Everything that couldn’t hold on tight
rolled out into space, and slowly the sky went dark and
turned black. We crept under the furniture between
the windows, taking care not to tread on the glass. But
from time to time a picture or a lamp bracket fell and
smashed the window-pane. The house groaned and the
plaster came loose. And outside, large heavy objects
rumbled past, rolling right through the whole of Finland
all the way down from the Arctic Circle, and they were
even heavier because they had collected so much snow
as they rolled and sometimes people fell past screaming
all the time.

The snow on the ground began to slither away. It slid
in an enormous avalanche which grew and grew over
the edge of the world … oh no! oh no!
I rolled backwards and forwards on the carpet to make
the horror of it seem greater, and in the end I saw the
wall heave over me and the pictures hung straight out
on their wires.
“What are you doing?” Mummy asked.
Then I lay still and said nothing.
“Shall we have a story?” she asked, and went on 
drawing.
But I didn’t want any other story than this one of my
own. But one doesn’t say that sort of thing. So I said:
“Come up and look at the attic.”

Mummy dried her Indian ink pen and came with me.
We stood in the attic and froze for a while and Mummy
said “It’s lonely here,” so we went back into the warmth
again and she forgot to tell me a story. Then I went 
to bed.

Next morning the daylight was green, underwater
lighting throughout the room. Mummy was asleep. I got
up and opened the door and saw that the lamps were on
in all the rooms although it was morning and the green
light came through the snow which covered the windows
all the way up. Now it had happened. The house was a
single enormous snowdrift, and the surface of the ground
was somewhere high up above the roof. Soon the trees
would creep down into the snow until only their tops
stuck out, and then the tops would disappear too and
everything would level itself off and be flat. I could see
it, I knew. Not even praying would stop it. 
I became very solemn and quite calm and sat down on
the carpet in front of the blazing fire.

Mummy woke up and came in and said, “Look how
funny it is with snow covering the windows,” because
she didn’t understand how serious it all was. When I
told her what had really happened, she became very
thoughtful.
“In fact,” she said after a while, “we have gone into
hibernation. nobody can get in any longer and no one
can get out!”

I looked carefully at her and understood that we were
saved. At last we were absolutely safe and protected.
This menacing snow had hidden us inside in the warmth
for ever and we didn’t have to worry a bit about what
went on there outside. I was filled with enormous relief,
and I shouted, “I love you, I LOVE YOU,” and took all
the cushions and threw them at her and laughed and
shouted and Mummy threw them all back, and in the
end we were lying on the floor just laughing.
Then we began our underground life. We walked
around in our nighties and did nothing. Mummy didn’t
draw. We were bears with pine needles in our stomachs
and anyone who dared come near our winter lair was
torn to pieces. We were lavish with the wood, and threw
log after log onto the fire until it roared.
Sometimes we growled. We let the dangerous world
outside look after itself; it had died, it had fallen out into
space. Only Mummy and I were left.

It began in the room at the end. At first it was the
nasty scraping sound made by shovels. Then the snow
fell down over the windows and grey light came in
everywhere. Somebody tramped past outside and came
to the next window and let in more light. It was awful.
The scraping sound went along the whole row of
windows until the lamps were burning as if at a funeral.
Outside snow was falling. The trees were standing in
rows and were as black as they had been before and they
let the snow fall on them and the fringe of forest on the
horizon was still there.
We went and got dressed. Mummy sat down to draw.
A dark man went on shovelling outside the door and
all of a sudden I started to cry and I screamed: “I’ll bite
him! I’ll go outside and bite him!”

“I shouldn’t do that,” Mummy said. “He wouldn’t
understand.” She screwed the top onto the bottle of
Indian ink and said: “what about going home?”
“Yes,” I said.
So we went home.

africa days.

This current semester, I have had two international students transfer into my hall. One is Trescillia, a 22-year-old woman from India, and the other is Anna, a 44-year-old woman from Kenya. Neither have ever been to the United States before or even seen snow for that matter, so the culture shock has been a difficult circumstance to deal with. Never before have I so badly wished to be able to speak Swahili or Hindi.

A few days ago, I knocked on Anna's door to check in with her and see how she was doing. I could hear her moving around the apartment, rustling papers, and then a plodding toward the door.

"Lauren! Come in, come in," she told me in her thick, African accent as she peeked around the door.

She slowly widened the door space, and I followed her into the thinly decorated room.

"Do you want some tea?" she offered, gesturing graciously for me to sit on the couch.

"Oh I'm okay, thanks Anna," I said hastily. She didn't seem to have a whole lot of food, and I didn't want to dip into what she did have, even if it was just tea. I was also meeting with someone in twenty minutes for coffee, so I didn't want to get overly caffeinated.

She raised an eyebrow at me and spoke very directly in her broken English: "Lauren - in my culture - when someone offers you tea, you take the tea."

I took the tea. 

She proceeded to make me authentic lemongrass tea from Africa with natural, Kenyan honey in a little white mug. It was strong and sweet and thick, and I ended up drinking the entire cup. We also ended up talking for over an hour (my friend was willing to wait) about the cultural differences between America and Kenya. She explained how "You Americans are always so hurried! Hurry here, hurry there. Time, time, time. In Africa, one day, you might walk for miles to talk with friends and just sit down somewhere to eat and then walk back. No time, time, time, hurry up. People just want to sit and talk with you." 

She clarified that some may view this as laziness, and she thought that some people in Africa do take it too far, but I couldn't stop thinking of the truth she was speaking: how many Africans are rich in time and relationship, while many Americans are solely focused on riches in money. We are quite poor in our ability to take a long period of time or even a few days to just rest and spend time with sweet friends.

When Gwen and I met for coffee yesterday, we both agreed we needed some Africa days. So this weekend, we might just walk around a little, eat, sit, talk, be with Jesus - stop focusing on the doing and focus on the being.

Trying to dwell on these verses this week. Jesus called us to rest all the time.

Mark 6:31 - "And He said to them, 'Come away by yourselves to a lonely place and rest a while.' For there were many people coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat. 

Matthew 11:28-30 - "Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you shall find rest for your souls.' For my yoke is easy, and My load is light."

Here's some nature sounds to get you started:

stalls?

I wonder if anyone's ever kept a tally of which bathroom stalls are used the most. The long, abandoned bathroom in the basement of the library made me wonder this yesterday morning. Do people like the big, handicapped ones better or the small, fitted stalls that you can hardly turn around in (more cozy? homey?) Or does the common bathroom goer just choose the first one because it's closest to the door? I suppose that a certain personality would habitually use the first stall - in and out. The organized, structured type. Enter, go, come out, wash hands, leave. That's that. I came here for a reason, and now I'm done, so I'm out.

But I bet there are other people who spend a little time choosing a stall...the ones who daydream a little or pray on the toilet. The ones who aren't in a rush and are really only in the bathroom to get out of a work meeting or class for a little think time. One must choose wisely in this case.

I don't think it's disrespectful to pray on the toilet, but then I think about how people took their shoes off when they entered the Holy of Holys and I wonder. What are your thoughts?

pretty pretty bedrooms.

feeling a little homesick today and missing my bedroom at home.

onion, lantern, money.

nights too, it seems a risk to sleep;
i remember you walking by the cathedral,
head down, a bucket of clouds and oil smeared above.
you were waiting to be strewn by my brush or hand,
rearranged and altered in the white spaces.
but it never worked, really,
or at least that's what you said.

it was strict, the way we walked;
only your shoulder remained obscene,
but i never wished that or our perforations away.
and now you sit on my bench under the spruce,
a cup of cold water in your hand
that you won't look up from.

winter edition.

It's so cold outside right now that it makes me want to stay in my bed all day long and do nothing but read C.S. Lewis, Bleak House, and the Bible and drink tea.

a new year.

i love this newly picked, garden-fresh, crisp, unwilted, raw, natural new year already. i only have a pair of considerations for 2011. two of the biggest things that i complain about not having/taking/making enough time for are the Bible and exercise. ultimately, knowing the Lord is not solely about reading your Bible everyday - yes, one understands His heart and passions better by reading about Him, but knowing God also includes conversing with Him, worshiping, and just resting in Him. but it can't be all these things and none of the other. so with this blank canvas of a new year, i desire to be with Him everyday (in all arenas, but especially Bible-reading) and also to incorporate the classic push toward healthier living: exercise 3+ times a week (gwen is signed up with me for this one).

this break has just made me feel so fresh. even working at The Gap has been easy and enjoyable. mornings and evenings have been especially special. i usually get up late, have some coffee, watch the news, and then exercise at the Y with jojo or lifetime with mom. in the evening, the whole family gathers downstairs with blankets and pizza or tea and we watch an episode or two of planet earth. we love nature shows...anything from bbc or channel 2.

it's late now, and i can hear our dog addie breathing outside my door. hearing her sleepy, rhythmic inhale and exhale is making me tired. getting up early tomorrow to go to a core conditioning class with amy and then out to pazzaluna's and swede hollow to celebrate her 21st birthday, so i am off to bed.

peace.

lo