The world is hollow...: 2010

The old way feels safer

"Whatever goes against the Book of Law [the belief system you were raised to believe in] will make you feel a funny sensation in your solar plexus, and it's called fear. Breaking the rules in the Book of Law opens your emotional wounds, and your reaction is to create emotional poison. Because everything that is in the Book of Law has to be true, anything that challenges what you believe is going to make you feel unsafe. Even if the Book of Law is wrong, it makes you feel safe."

--"The Four Agreements" by Don Miguel Ruiz

This has been my experience. When I first started questioning my beliefs, I was rather scared. Was it ok that I was questioning? What was wrong with me? Was I a bad person for questioning? I've gotten to the point now where I'm ok to question things. If the stuff written in my "Book of Law" is really true, then it will hold up to questioning.

I was just talking to my friend Ryan tonight, and he was sharing a little about how he went from growing up in the church to becoming Atheist to becoming Agnostic to coming back to the church. He said he's wondered if the reason why Christianity makes more sense to him than any of the other religions is because he grew up in it, or if it really does just make more sense. Would he have become a Hindu if that's what he'd grown up in? Who knows.

I read "Crazy For God" and "Patience With God" by Frank Schaeffer this summer. Both of these books helped me get to the point where I'm ok to question things, and even ok to have no answers to my questions. I particularly enjoyed "Crazy For God" for this reason. In "Patience With God", though, Frank talks about how he fluctuates between being Christian, Agnostic, and Atheist...and try as he might, he can't completely shake the Christian beliefs he was raised in. It becomes a part of you...whether you were raised Christian or Hindu or Muslim or Atheist...it is your "Book of Law".

This place of unknowing. Of questioning. Of suspense and adventure... I'm content and happy right now. Right here.

Sometimes I catch myself thinking....

the old way feels safer.

posted under beliefs, books | 1 Comments

A thank you

International House's Junior Program of the summer of 2010...what an experience! Mostly good. Some bad. I definitely learned a lot and I think I made some pretty good friends.

A few months ago I broke off my engagement. Naturally, that was a very hard thing to do and it hasn't been easy getting over it. I'm not even sure if I'm completely over it yet. But I do know that some of my new friends unwittingly and significantly helped me through. For that I would like to thank Matt, Bobby, John, and Joe. Strangely enough, just hanging out with you guys and your incessant joking and teasing has helped a lot in healing the pain. I don't know if any of you will read this...probably not...but I just needed to say it here. Thank you. Jerks. =D

posted under life, thank you | 2 Comments

Lady Old, Lady New

Who would have guessed I'd learn something new about myself while playing games on Facebook? Certainly not I!

I am rather addicted to Kingdoms of Camelot right now...although, it's not so much the game as the sarcastic bantering that takes place in the rather small alliance I belong to. Yesterday I popped on to build a little more of my city and discovered that three new people had joined my alliance and one "old" member had left...apparently due to a misunderstanding between her and one of the new members. My friend (the "old" member) had given an ultimatum: "Either she goes or I go". I guess maybe people thought she was bluffing or something, and nobody really likes to respond to ultimatums anyway. So when nobody did away with Lady New, Lady Old left like she had threatened to do.

I was sad to see her go.

Later that evening Lord Peacemaker sent me a private message asking me for my vote: Lady Old or Lady New? I was hesitant to give an answer because I thought it was just idle talk, and I didn't know the whole story and couldn't say who was right or wrong or anything. With the knowledge I had, I said my vote was for Lady Old because I knew her. I don't know Lady New from a hole in the ground, though the little I had seen of her in the chat room seemed to suggest she would fit very nicely in our alliance. But I also mentioned my lack of knowledge of what had transpired between the two ladies. He later informed me that Lord Chancellor had handed the issue over to him, which was why he was taking a vote. He wanted to know what the rest of us voted. Apparently everyone (or almost everyone...I don't really know) voted Lady Old, because today Lord Chancellor talked to Lady New and explained things to her (probably still trying to work things out so both ladies could stay!), and she left. Lady Old is back!

Through this whole thing, but particularly through the dialogue I had with Lord Peacemaker about the vote, I learned that I tend to value "right" and "wrong" over relationship. I wasn't sure who to vote for at first because I didn't know which of the ladies was more in the "right" and which was more in the "wrong". But I think it shouldn't matter so much. Right or wrong, you stick by your friends. Ultimately that's where I cast my vote, but I'm a little disappointed that I couldn't see it that way before.

Anyway, I THINK I believe that relationship comes first and THEN you can worry about right and wrong. But I will admit that I haven't sat down and thought this out completely to it's logical conclusion. It just occurred to me that placing right and wrong before relationship could lead to becoming more like the villains that scare me most--the logical, un-emotional, un-relational ones. For example, the Borg from Star Trek or the people on drugs in Equilibrium. And as with almost everything else in my life right now, I'm at the point where I really don't know what I believe so pretty much everything is open for consideration.

posted under beliefs, life | 1 Comments

Happy birthday Mitchell!

Today was my brother's 12th birthday. I was allowed to take the day off, so I caught the bus in to White Rock and spent the day with him and the rest of the family. It's always great to hang out with them...I hate saying goodbye at the end though. Some of the kids get a little teary-eyed, and I feel I'm leaving part of myself behind. Still, this time wasn't SOOOO bad as they're planning to come in to town in a few days and spend the afternoon with me.

This afternoon Mom and I visited a second hand bookstore (always a dangerous place for us!!!) where we found a couple of books to take home. She and Dad have been reading "Conversations With God" by Neale Donald Walsch, and we found another book by him called "Tomorrow's God" that she and Dad decided to buy. I found a book called "The Four Agreements" by Don Miguel Ruiz that I recently heard about (via a new friend I made while playing a game called "Kingdoms of Camelot" on Facebook) and was wanting to read. However, Mom was also interested in it so I left it in White Rock for her to read while she's there. She started it this afternoon and already found it interesting enough to share a few things with me...which of course peaked my interest and now I can't wait to read it myself!!!

posted under books, family | 1 Comments

Pillow fight!

I have the best job in the world, apparently! At what other job do you get PAID to beat children with pillows? Seriously, it was a good night. Some of us started out with a few games of Twister...which we promptly abandoned once we heard there was a pillow fight going on upstairs. Twenty or so kids and a couple councillors running, screaming, and beating on each other with pillows equals a lot of happy kids. Then we "quieted" them down with GuitarHero (one of the kids bought it yesterday at the mall). Now I have a little bit of free time. Not much else to share...except a favourite poem of mine that I re-discovered today.

"Earth" by John Hall Wheelock

"A planet doesn't explode of itself," said drily

The Martian astronomer, gazing off into the air--

"That they were able to do it is proof that highly

Intelligent beings must have been living there."

posted under life, poetry, random | 1 Comments

Roses

Lovely sunny afternoon...I'm so glad I have a laptop! Now I can blog on the grass in the sun while listening to worship music in Mandarin. Can life get any better? I submit it cannot!

Since a group of Taiwanese students arrived late last night, they had to stay behind and do placement tests while the other kids went off to their English classes. After the test, Matt and I took them on a tour of the campus (like we did for the first batch of kids). Thanks to these two tours, I have changed my opinion of...roses.

Yes, roses. I've never really liked roses. I mean, if someone were to give me a rose (or a bouquet of roses), I would receive it/them graciously, and appreciate the thought behind them. But they are not my kind of flowers. I like wild flowers (among which, ironically, wild roses rank very high on my list of preferred flowers!). I remember a number of summers ago I was rather obsessed with the story of Beauty and the Beast and read several different versions/variations of the story. All VERY different and all VERY good. One of them was told from the perspective of The Beast, an unfortunate Persian prince who was turned into a lion and as such was chased from his kingdom. This particular prince loved roses above all other flowers and had a huge rose garden back in Persia that he had spent many many hours working in. I never understood this obsession of his. Until now.

Here on the university campus there is a rose garden. I'll admit I groaned inwardly when I saw we were going in...but inside it's so pretty! So many shades of red, pink, orange, yellow...and the SMELL! Sun-kissed roses in a slight breeze....

Maybe not quite as close to Heaven as the smell of pineapples, but it's definitely up there!

posted under random | 3 Comments

The next six weeks...

I'm being really stretched right now! Today is my first real day as a councillor for an ESL youth program, and I'm exhausted! Up at 7:30 to get people in to breakfast around 8, temporarily loosing 2 students, orientation, finding the 2 students (changed rooms without telling any councillors, slept in, and did not respond to our door knocking or yelling “HELLO! ANYONE IN THERE?”), ESL placement tests, lunch, campus tour (2 hours of walking!!!!), meeting 2 new students, dinner, ice breaker games, announcements for tomorrow's schedule, new batch of Taiwanese students to meet at 10pm tonight, give them an orientation and get them settled in...

The stretching part is being a leader when I have no idea what I'm doing! But it's all going relatively well, and I'm sure by the end of the week I'll have got the hang of it and the next 5 weeks won't be so hard. It's good though. Last night I laid in bed and all I could really do was thank God for what He's teaching me through this and how He's stretching me and helping me to grow into the best version of myself.

posted under ESL | 2 Comments

The shots you take

I always seem to find myself in a pickle...wanting to try new things, take risks, live an adventure...and being too scared to take the plunge. In fact, I'm kind of facing that right now.

Last month I finally took a TESL course to become a certified ESL teacher. It's something I've talked about doing for about 7 years, but wasn't quite sure if it was what I really wanted or if I'd be good at it. Thanks to the encouragement of my family and a few friends I decided to just go for it. And I'm glad I did. But now I have to find a job...which can be a little trickier. Apparently a lot of schools around the world only like to hire certified ESL teachers who have some kind of university degree...and I don't have one. But that doesn't rule out some of the private schools, nor does it eliminate the opportunity for private students. And that last one is the option I think I like best.

So now, here is where the risks show up: I'm thinking about teaching English in another country. I have a few friends in Korea, some of whom are already ESL teachers and think I should go teach there. Korea is supposedly a very good place to work and live. I've heard great things about it, and I'd love to go...but really only because I have friends there. Otherwise, I'm not naturally attracted to Asia. And it's the same thing with Taiwan. I have a friend who is going back there next month, and she thinks I should come and teach there. She and her sister have contacts and she thinks I wouldn't have a hard time finding a job there at all. Besides, she was teaching me Mandarin while she was here and thinks I should take the opportunity to immerse myself in the culture and the language and become fluent.

The other place I've started thinking about is Mexico. I have the opportunity to go down there in August...which is actually a very attractive idea. I never really wanted to go to Mexico because that's where EVERYONE seems to go. But Central and South America have always fascinated me, and I really badly want to become fluent in Spanish. I took it for a year and a half, and can still remember a lot of what I learned, but I've never really had the opportunity to practice it. One of the draw-backs to this idea is that while you can make decent money in Korea and Taiwan by teaching English, you really can't in Mexico. However, I guess it's not that bad as the cost of living is quite low. And it would be a good starting place to exploring the rest of the continent.

So, these are some options. But do I have the guts to pursue any of them? Like Wayne Gretsky says, "Statistically 100 percent of the shots you don't take don't go in."

posted under ESL, travel | 3 Comments

Hey

The grass beneath a tree is content

and silent.

A squirrel holds an acorn in its praying hands,

offering thanks, it looks like.

The nut tastes sweet; I bet the prayer spiced

it up somehow.

The broken shells fall on the grass,

and the grass looks up

and says,

"Hey."

And the squirrel looks down

and says,

"Hey."

I have been saying "Hey" lately too,

to God.

Formalities just weren't

working.

~Jalaludin Rumi translated by Daniel Ladinsky

posted under poetry | 2 Comments

What do you want in life?

I was gonna write about something totally different, but had to look it up in a notebook I keep in my purse first...and got sidetracked reading some of the other stuff I wrote in there. So instead of my original idea, I'm going to share something I wrote during one of my lunch breaks at work back in January 2007. My desire is the same as back then, but unfortunately I don't think I've made much progress towards it. Anyway, here it is:

"What do you want in life?" I want the world to be my home. I want to know different countries, live in them, have friends with different cultural backgrounds, and not limit my residence to Canada. I want to spend my life learning about life, people...developing friendships.

I want to learn how to wisely invest my money...to be free of financial worry...what the heck! I just want to be free of worry! To be able to take my life one day at a time and enjoy it and fully experience it. I want a life of intensity: joy, happiness, pain, sorrow, anger, forgiveness. But I want to be able to control them because it's not good to be run by your emotions.

I want to share this journey with someone. I want to get married and share his journey. I want to have kids and show them the world.

I want to be sensitive to God's leading. Sensitive to the spiritual realm. I want to understand what's going on around me.

I want to have time--to relax, think, listen to people, watch the world...

I want to write about life. People. Ideas. Beliefs. Food. Travel. Lessons.

I want to major in life. Learn to observe. Take time for little things like flowers opening.

I want to take risks, have adventures, and live dangerously though not stupidly.

I want a nice villa in Spain!

posted under life, lists, travel, wishes, writing | 1 Comments

I am righteous and holy!

A year and a half ago I wrote decrees from Patricia King's "Decree" book into the back of my journal, and I used to read them aloud every day. Basically they are just a collection of verses in the Bible that declare who I am in Christ and what He has promised me as His child. I haven't read them for a while, and I think maybe that's one of the reasons why I have reverted back to not liking myself. Because, honestly, I don't like myself and can't see why anyone would.

I need to start to speak life into myself again. Things like "The Lord loves me with an everlasting love and has promised to give me a future and a hope (Jeremiah 31:3)" and "I am a new creation in Christ; old things have passed away and all things have become new (2 Corinthians 5:17)." When I read through all these different decrees, I find that they come directly against all the negative things I have begun to believe about myself again. I do not like who I have become...but if I begin to speak God's truth into my life again, He will work things out on the inside. His word is powerful.

posted under words | 2 Comments

Three

If I could change 3 things about my life right now, they would be...

I would be an ESL teacher and would be making a decent living from that. Let's hope this one will actually happen even though I don't have a university degree. There must be some ways of doing this WITHOUT the degree. After all, a degree doesn't say I can teach English. It says I spent years of my life with my nose in a book, writing tests and papers, and racking up a huge debt that will take me years to pay off
I would be traveling...maybe even teaching ESL while I did it. I want to see new countries, experience different cultures, and get to know the people in their natural environment.
I would write more...which I guess is where this blog comes in. It's hopefully a reason to start writing again...because, well, I just miss it. I've recently become very bad at expressing myself clearly.

This short list was rather hard to come up with! Everything I could think of seemed to be things I would change about MYSELF, not my life...I guess because who or what I am affects what happens in my life.

posted under ESL, life, lists, travel, wishes, writing | 1 Comments

"Never have your dog stuffed"

I've tried writing a few blogs over the years...some a little more successful than others...but I really haven't done it for a while. And I miss it. I considered reviving one of the old ones, but that just didn't feel right. Life is so different from what it was when I wrote them, and I think I just need to start fresh again. It reminds me of the title of Alan Alda's autobiography I read a few years ago: Never Have Your Dog Stuffed. The idea behind that is to recognize that there are different seasons throughout life, and it is not good to hold on to past seasons but to embrace the one we are currently in. So, this blog is just a part of my attempt to do that.

Welcome.

posted under life, seasons | 1 Comments