good morning!

I don’t know how to describe this. The glorious sensation of living. I can only call it gratitude and even for that I am grateful. As the wind that blows so beautifully today, so the spirit moves and though I can’t see it, the effects are evident and oh so lovely.

I haven’t written much lately. Right now I’m listening to Jacob Fentress on myspace music. I’ve a good half hour before I leave to pick up my sister. There’s no excuse for sitting idle and with a heart so full how cruelly negligent I would be to selfishly keep it to myself.

Part of the reason I’ve refrained from writing, besides my overwhelming unwillingness to be disciplined in approaching things not urgent, is that I got tired of hearing about myself. (Then too, I wasn’t sure who I’d be writing of if I wrote about myself.) For a woman who claims to care for the world and its welfare I am amazingly uninvolved and ignorant. At twenty-five years old I am just now becoming comfortable with asking questions out loud. Without questions how can anyone even understand what is outside or even be sure of what is inside. Even now it’s a battle to overcome the fearful reluctance to reveal my lack of knowledge and the thoughts that flounder through my mind are so often unspoken. And how foolish! For the more I protect myself the nearer I am to death.

“Wake up, oh sleeper, rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you.”

This verse, found somewhere in Ephesians, has long been a favorite of mine and one of which I so often need reminding. So many days I walk through, asleep, ignorant of the life that soars and sings around me.

I woke this morning at 6:15 a.m. to a resident of Healing Rain asking me if the alarm was off and if it was okay for her to go outside and smoke. I’d been sleeping on the couch of the community house. My first overnight at work. I fell asleep for another half hour or so then woke again without an alarm and feeling well rested. Outside on the porch a couple of women were talking over coffee. I went out to join them and they met me with laughter, “you’re so funny Amy, you must be happy all the time, A. said even when she woke you up you were smiling.”

I am always happy? That was enough to make me laugh. Though, looking at my life, there is no reason I should not be. What a strange aspect of our nature that instead of rejoicing in the good we look to the problems and lead ourselves to a state where our usefulness wanes and our spirit is diminished. In the moment I look toward my best self; in the midst of all my faltering unbelief I continue to believe, to move forward, to say with thanks, “I am living, I am strong, I am free—thanks be to God!”