Two posts in less than 12 hours… I am on a roll! I doubt I can keep that up, but I would really like to post something on here at least once. if not twice a week.

Anyway, I am skipping around because my cousin’s senior pictures were more important to get edited and completed than my personal vacation pictures.

As many of you know my family and I rented a place on Lake Superior this last week and spent some time just relaxing, reading, and being. It was quite nice. We also spent some time hanging around Grand Marais, MN. For those of you who have never been, it is a cool little town on the North Shore of Lake Superior. It is basically the last major town before you reach the Canadian border. One night we ate at an amazing local restaurant called the Angry Trout. This restaurant was created for me! Everything on the menu was locally produced (to the best of their abilities), it was all organic, and everything was served sustainably with clay dishes produced by a local artisan! AMAZING. I had fresh Lake Trout, on a bed of wild rice and portobello mushrooms, a fresh salad with all local ingredients including fresh wild raspberries and my new favorite vegetable, parsnips. I also had a cup of chowder that had whitefish and salmon in it. INCREDIBLE. I had a pot of tea and a wild blueberry torte for dessert. Needless to say, I was pretty full after that meal. To top it off the sun set just as I was taking my last sip of tea and a full moon arose over the bay surrounded by pink, orange and blue clouds. A perfect end to a perfect night.

Enough about vacation, aside from the forthcoming photos. I titled this post Grace and Water because there are so many ways in which water reminds me of grace. Obviously the concept that, “Grace is like water, it flows down to the lowest of places.” is a well known quote. I chose the title to this post because most of my pictures are of water. I am obsessed with water. It is healing for me to be near it or even think about it. Maybe it is because I grew up living in the land of 10,000 lakes!!

The clearest image of this liquid grace for me is its constant pounding on a lakeshore. As my family and I hunted for Lake Superior Agates, I came across so many stones that had been tossed and turned, pummeled and pushed around by the waves that they could have been as smooth as glass. I am reminded that grace can hurt sometimes as it pushes you around and moves over, but yields an experience that you can now use as lens to look through life with.

Night after night this last week I would fall asleep to the relentless pounding of the infamous Lake Superior. It was nice to have noise… I know it sounds weird, but my home in Tacoma is surrounded by sirens, people screaming, the neighbor fighting with her boyfriend, kids crying. My neighborhood is a cacophony of noises reminding you that you are indeed alive (probably awake) and that you are surrounded by life. This is the opposite of my room at my parent’s house in MN. We are in the middle of the silent suburbs. These waves lapping against the shore in a weird way reminded me of my home in Tacoma. Then the sound began to soothe me. It made me feel like I was surrounded by life and that I myself was feeling more alive.

I think this is like God’s grace. It is infamous, it can sink people, pounding against them relentlessly. Grace isn’t always a nice feeling, but in the end it is good.  Sometimes it even awakens life’s pain to bring about healing. Sometimes it rings the noises of life in my ears so that I can hear what I need to hear. It helps me see what I need to see. I will take a pounding just to remind me that I am alive, that I am surrounded by life, God’s grace, and the new life in His son.

May that grace be with you now. My it rise up and abide in you. I know that when I look at these photos below I will try to remember those feelings of renewal and be reminded that in my low times, even a crashing wave of liquid grace to the chest will always be welcomed.

Enjoy the photos of the beautiful area where I grew up:

My family and I are venturing up to cabin in Northern Minnesota this week. I am pretty excited to spend some time in the great North Woods and chill aside Lake Superior for a few days. What I am most excited for is the fact that I will be technology free for almost a week! It will be just me, fresh air, the lake, a comfy adirondack chair, and a few good books! So, needless to say, if you don’t hear from me for a few days, do not worry. I will get back to you all sooner than later.

These times are very important to me. I think it is vital for my being to get away, and unplug for a while. Detachment isn’t always looked at in a positive light, but for me it is necessary in order to recharge my energy and my spirit. I hope that in the midst of out busy and chaotic lives that you too can find a place to rest, relax and recharge. May you find rest and clarity in the midst of chaos and even find the ability to embrace the chaos.

For those of you who don’t know, I am in MN visiting family and friends for most of August. Last night my friends Ryan and Heather, who just moved out to Minneapolis from WA, my long-time friend Jeanne, and I had an AWESOME dinner at one of my favorite pizza places in the Twin Cities Pizza Luce (Davanni’s takes 2nd). We had their Baked Potato Pizza, The Wrangler, and Idacado Pizza which was one of the specials. It had chipotle cream cheese as a base, then a bed of garlic mashed potatos, then a layer of pico de gallo and finished off with a blend of cheeses, sour cream and an avocado crema! I know they all sound weird, and they are. I promise they were all good though. We felt that the Baked Potato and Idacado tied. Surprisingly the Wrangler came in last. It just goes to show that there can be surprising rewards in the absurd! 

After that, we went to see Ryan and Heather’s new place then decided to drive up Central Ave and ended up exploring the Holy Land Market. After that, Ryan was craving bubble tea and then so was I. So we headed to Dinkytown and went to The Tea Garden to finish off the night. Below are a few pictures I snapped of Ryan and Heather there. 

All in all, it was a fun night. It was great to hang out with friends from Washington and Jeanne from MN. It felt like my two worlds were colliding. I hope that happens more often. I think it will now that Ryan and Heather are living out here. If you are from the area or just interested, check out the church they are planting in the Twin Cities called, The Crux.

I am sorry it has been over a week since I last wrote, but with travelling to MN and finishing up editing wedding photos, blogging had to take a back seat. I am jumping back and forth between Simone Weil and Kierkegaard for my reading this summer. I know, I think I bit off more than I can chew, but they are both keeping me interested so I’ll keep it up. Don’t worry, I am mixing in some Rumi and other poetry to offset it all!

I was reading the chapter “To Accept the Void” in Gravity and Grace the other day and this section jumped out at me:

“A time has to be gone through without any reward, natural or supernatural. 

 

     The world must be regarded as containing something of a void in order that it may have the need of God. That presupposes evil.

 

     To love truth means to endure the void and, as a result, to accept death. Truth is on the side of death.

 

    Man only escapes from the laws of this world in lightening flashes. Instants when everything stands still, instants of contemplation, of pure intuition, of mental void, of acceptance of the moral void. It is through such instants that he is capable of the supernatural.

 

     Whoever endures a moment of the void either receives the supernatural bread or falls. It is a terrible risk but one that must be run, even during the instant when hope fails. But we must not throw ourselves into it.”

I know that this is a long excerpt to make you read but I felt it necessary to include it. This may be a two-part or many-part blog as there is a lot to unpack!

The very first sentence itself speaks deeply to me at this time in my life. There have been many instances over the last year where I have felt rewarded in many ways, but in general this has been a tough year in seeing fruits of my labor. I know a lot has been done, yet by the very nature of the work, fruit is at times unseen. I think part of this is due to what I wrote in my last Musing. I don’t stop to see the absurd or rely on the strength of the absurd. But this quote from Simone frees me in a sense. Perhaps this void, this dry spell over the past few months is just preparing me to see the “reward”. What is most freeing is that these voids are necessary. Thank GOD!

I am also struck with the necessity to stay in a place to see reward. I have spent much of my life moving from place to place and event to event, but I am being taught that I need to stay in one place for a while in order to see fruit. I would often move to places and be drawn to places where I felt there would be reward (or something unique and exciting). Or, I would leave a place because sometimes I would feel a void. It is funny how being taken out of a place can give new eyes and revelation. This reality has become apparent to me as I sit in a coffee shop in downtown Minneapolis. I realize and hope that when I go back to Tacoma, with renewed and re-energized eyes that perhaps I will see the fruits of the past year in a clearer way. Perhaps not, this would be fine with me as well, as it is important to sit in the void and expect the absurd to happen.

What I can perhaps hope for is that there is a higher power acting in the void. Much as the transcendent was active in the chaotic void of the universe before creation. I love the imagery in the creation account. A direct translation would be that God brooded over the chaos. Much like a protective hen holds the developing eggs within her wings, or as a penguin protects the maturing egg at its feet. I would like to think that this is what God is doing in the chaos or void of my life. That this waiting, this desert, is in fact a blessing. That I am the egg being brooded over, continually developing, growing, and changing inside. Now what I need to work on is being able to rest in the chaos and comforting warmth of the transcendent, something higher than I.

This I suppose just proves Simone’s point, that in fact the world does have something of a void. Maybe this void was created in the midst of that chaos in order for us to need a higher power, for us to depend on a God. 

I think I will end here as it is getting late and I start to ramble when I get tired. I will continue my thoughts tomorrow and pick up where I left off. Thanks again to those of you reading this. Please feel free to leave comments, I would love to discuss this stuff with you all. Pacem.

“If there were no eternal conciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair?” - from the cover of Fear and Trembling

I am reading Soren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling. I must admit that I approached this book with much fear and trembling. It has been a long time since I have tried to tackle anything in the realm of Philosophy. I am surprised at how approachable this book is. So far Kierky has made everything clear. For those of you who don’t know, this book revolves around the events of Abraham and Isaac. So far Soren is talking through the paradox of that fact that although Abraham is a ‘father of the faith’ and praised by many, he is also to an extent a murderer. There are many things I wish I had time to write about. There is much to ruminate and ruminate I will. I want to share one thing that jumped out at me today. This nugget of philosophical/theological wisdom is that of relying on the strength of the absurd.

I must confess that I often do not do this. I struggle with the absurdity of God. I don’t expect the absurd. If only we were to focus in on the absurd how much more would we see the divine and experience that which is transcendent? Does it take suspending human reason to truly enact faith?

Kierky also talks about the idea that in the physical world we are bound by finitude, that which has limits or bounds. But, in the spiritual world there is infinitude. Options are limitless and therefore can be absurd.

Again, a paradox. Why is it that faith and spirituality involve so many of these? Perhaps it is so that we learn to function in both realms. It is impossible to function in just one. Many try to solely make sense of the world in the spiritual or infinite and others try to use reason and human calculations. Each of these bring one to a point and then it dead ends. Perhaps that is faith, a collision of the infinite and finite. Maybe this is what creates absurdity. It is the infinitude of God and faith that collides with human reason and makes unexpected things happen. If it weren’t for our reason an act of faith would be nothing. For reason is what makes us doubt, that which makes a sacrifice that much more difficult to give up. Take the rich young ruler who is told to give up all his possessions, his reason tells him not to and thus he denies the opportunity for his faith and reason to collide. It takes the suspension of sensible reason and the enacting of ludicrous reason in order bring about the strength of the absurd. If Abraham had not trusted in the absurd thought that God would provide, because humanity is so used to living the world of scarcity, how different would this event in history be? If we were to trust in the strength of the absurd how different would our lives be?

May we be granted the grace to look for the absurd, to trust in that which seems ludicrous to the rest of the world. For God chose what is foolish, faith is foolishness and reason walking the fine line together. It takes balance to walk the tight-rope. Perhaps it takes living in this paradox to walk the tight-rope of faith and a life of absurdity.