A closeness I've never named. 

Thoughts today

1. It is possible to be hurt, without accepting the narrative of being the 'victim'. 

2. It is not possible to anticipate each step of your journey, so use that energy to strengthen your legs instead. 

City of God

"He is the Cause of all causes, although not of all choices." 

You cannot be obedient - that is, to Choose to obey - if you have not developed your will. 

Uh ohh

It's not often (maybe too often?) that I meet someone that makes me want to be completely honest and open with them. At what point will I grow up and learn that hey: life isn't just here in this moment you know, it isn't just this laugh, that ray of sunset, the mint breeze or this electricity. It's decades of misunderstandings, of fragile hopes that crumble like butterfly wings between the fingers of the mundane, of missed-matching careers with no end or purpose and bank balances that would direct the course of destiny but instead wrest it from you. 

How do you reconcile all this? Where is the sweet centre, the peaceful pivot point where all the stars hang in harmonious balance against the well ordered night. Consistently black. 

How? When I am the ocean, and my heart, a splintering vessel adrift with no sailor and no sail? 

Yangon Sunday's

Occupying space in Yangon Bake House Inya Road; getting over the shame of having blown up at a taxi driver for having brought me to Inya Lake Hotel instead, as if he had only heard the first two syllabus of my instructions. Why am I surprised? 

Reading City of God (St. Augustine) and Man's Search for Meaning (Victor E. Frankl). Learning that you can be happy in life. You can live a fulfilled life, a happy life, a life with meaning. Devoid of empty structures and meaningless obligations (except note that freedom is balanced with responsibility, and in that tension do we have the material to build a life). 

I think I need to start thinking about tension - about how to live in tension and and to use that to grow, to build. To embrace instead of run away. 

Telling myself over and over again that this too shall pass, that my days are numbered and that while I am not afraid of my inevitable demise from this world, how do I prepare myself for this hole that will be left behind, here and in me? I have so much love for this space and the people. How? 

The Message

Take away from the first day of the St. Augustine book club: 

If the person of Jesus is the message, there are no rules and no answers. There is only this sacred relationship, and the stories and experiences that ensue, with Jesus. 

The Day that She Came, I'm Freezing that Frame

Dinner with Sam Y that spiraled into an endless conversation on love, hurt, relationships and faith. Gentle encouragement, a calming spirit, truth spoken in love. Not too close but not far at all. She gave me her book.

I suddenly realise why God brought me to Burma all those years ago. It was not to do anything, but instead to be done in. No great calling, no mission to fulfill, but to be broken and to receive healing of my person. How strong and stubborn I must be, to be dragged out all the way here just to be crushed. Or maybe this is God being gentle. 

It's humbling to realise that all this while, as I was gearing up for flight, God was just about to teach me how to walk. 

零

I'd lost the words that I had meant to pen down. They are swimming somewhere else at the back of my cranium. They whisper of love and something about the grace of God having reached out through the strangest of hands to heal. Surgeon scalpels pulling back scar tissue and the blood flows freely revealing sick stones embedded in aching flesh. 

No wonder I hurt. 

Take these stones, these worldly possessions, the gold, guns, girls, and teach me the simple truths: 

That home isn't a place, it's a person- no- it is the tension between two persons so tangible and yet malleable enough to weave into chords that bind. Don't lose that tension on me now. 

I ran wildly toward the mirages in my sight -ambition and technical glory- and still Grace chased me down to give me you, you and you. Flesh, blood, bone and spirit. Gift of gifts. 

I am utterly complete, the way a cipher, a zero, has no beginning or end, and is, at its core, empty.