idelette

We hiked down to this spot at Lily Point in Point Roberts, WA yesterday. Sometimes I am amazed at how close paradise really is.

Question: Where do you go to get away from it all?

Setting up camp here today:

Prayer is not a stratagem for occasional use, a refuge to resort to now and then. It is rather like an established residence for the innermost self. All things have a home: the bird has a nest, the fox has a hole, the bee has a hive. A soul without prayer is a soul without a home. –By Abraham Joshua Heschel

Source: The Wisdom of Heschel

via Prayer: the Soul’s Residence | Inward/Outward.

A soul in prayer, then, is a soul at home?

Question: When or where is your soul most at home?

I love this list by Zen peacekeeper, change-maker, human rights activist and twitter friend Marianne Elliott:

Not a manifesto, just a list of 10 things I’ve learned lately | Marianne Elliott.

She mentions vanilla rooibos, after all.

Mary DeMuth already had me at her first two paragraphs of Thin Places: A Memoir:

“Growing up, I find myself housed in a scrawny sort of body–legs thin as broomsticks, interrupted by knees so knobby they bang into each other when I walk. My doctor makes me drink whole milk so I’ll fatten up. Kids use words like rail, string bean, or stick to describe me.

I, myself, am a thin place.”

Stunning.

I savored the rest of the book, taking great care in between my mommy days to enjoy the raw words, honest stories and beautiful writing. Mary retraces her life and highlights the thin places–the places where she meets God and experiences God most intimately–often and especially in moments of deep pain and shame. She gets naked on the page, so we may find redemption in her story. She does it beautifully.

It’s a tender book. Perhaps how we should feel when we honestly share our stories.

Thank you, Mary, for pouring out your feminine heart. Your honesty and craftsmanship turned this book into a thin place for me.

This so intrigued me today.

Got to hang out with Jacynta this morning. “I am just called to love people,” she told me over breakfast at The Ovaltine Cafe, a greasy spoon on East Hastings. Then we went back to my sis-in-law’s place and Jacynta sang a few of her songs, including this one. Watch this girl.

There were seven of us girls hanging out at the Great Room last night.

I imagine this is what Gwen dreamed about when the Great Room was still just an idea. I imagine her to dream about a place where women could come into a safe, beautiful environment, find sacred space, friendship, grace and love.

Last night I got to be me in that very room.

It’s in harsh contrast to the intimidation of drugs, gangs, pimps and police happening outside.

Around 7:45pm last night, as I walked up to meet Elizabeth at the Great Room, one of our friends was being arrested outside the front door. Jacynta stood and watched, to make sure she was treated with dignity.

Upstairs and inside the lights were on and Carol was teaching Tracy how to make cards. Elizabeth was watching the events unfolding outside the window, waiting for me.

Trisha, Jacynta and Arely joined us.

“I needed to come home tonight,” Trisha said. It’s my community. I needed to be here.”

Strangely, every time I come, even as a visitor, I am drawn up into this deep well of community in the Downtown Eastside.

It’s Water.

As we talked without an agenda or a purpose last night, I tasted something different. It felt like expectations were off. Not one person had to bring anything to the conversation except her honest self. I couldn’t tell you what anyone was wearing. Nobody made a meal. There were no invitations. There was no hierarchy in the conversation. It just happened.

Jacynta went out earlier in the evening to buy Coke, Fanta and milk for tea. I laughed and told them the last time I drank Fanta was with the girls at the hairdressing school in Nairobi.

We talked about tattoos. Trisha just had a big one done on her left upper arm and it was itchy. We talked about how to become a landed immigrant and laughed at pee stories and awkward kid moments. We talked about holding babies in an orphanage in Africa. We talked about being home.

I remember having a moment, thinking: Why don’t I do this more often? Just this barefoot being with girlfriends.

Too many schedules to sync, probably. Too much cleaning up and picking up to do before I want to let anyone in.

And so I miss out on drinking from the deep Water of community. I don’t think I’m the only one.

Question: Where have you tasted community?

Also, do yourself a favour and check out the work of Linwood House Ministries.

Waiting on the platform at the YVR Airport skytrain station. It’s probably not a coincidence that I am all alone right here at the beginning of this Journey. Not another person in sight.

Train arriving in 3 minutes.

I’m packing for a weekend in the Downtown Eastside. Tonight around 7pm I’ll be meeting Elizabeth, my radical hostess, at the Great Room on East Hastings.

I don’t have too many plans; I just want to spend the weekend in one of Canada’s poorest neighbourhoods, not as tourist or evangelist, but as friend. I want to see, smell, drink coffee and hang out. Truth is I can only go as myself which means I am always the observer, always a writer, essentially a woman.

I am moving intentionally out of vanilla neighbourhood-ness, tweeting and blogging from my phone. I hope you’ll join me on this journey and I’d appreciate your comments and encouragement along the way.

I’d also like to tell you about the work of Linwood House Ministries as I go along on this reverse Journey, of sorts. Meanwhile check out what I mean when I talk about The Journey.

Question: What do you think would be a creative name for this “reverse Journey.” We could call it that. Trading Journeys, perhaps. Any other ideas? Would love to hear from you.