Spiritual Thirst

It's strange sometimes, isn't it? It's hard to understand. To know. Beyond a doubt, without question, that life...this life...is a blessing, a gift, an undefinable thing. And we're often hopeless at it.

When I sit on a sun warmed rock on a cool fall day staring at the sea, feeling the noise of it pounding in my ears. Chaos echoing chaos. Chaos calming chaos. I know. I want to see the waves break against the rocks, I want to witness more power, and at the core of me, I want to see some sort of glorious unimaginable destruction. It would please me...it would answer some sort of obscure question in me to see it all fall to pieces. It would help me know that things can break outside myself too. And this great hope. This great great great hope is that somehow, I wouldn't be hopeless at living.

I turn calendar pages, scribble out "30" and replace it with "31", watch William's face change from a baby to that of a little boy. I look out my window and see a profusion of flowers and green and wonder how I could have ever lived without these shades of green. But I do manage. For months and months I manage. I look out of my window and see rain and darkness. Snow. New growth again. All too fast. All in the blink of an eye.

I wonder, what am I growing toward? Who am I becoming?

These questions are positive, strength infusing things. They keep me from running in circles, from stagnation, from feeling hopeless.

I want to strip away the useless, the negative, the fear and uncover a dazzling depth of honesty in myself. To confront myself. To grow. To set out upon the most spiritual and life changing of journeys without ever leaving my living room.

I think sometimes it would be so much easier to physically set out on a spiritual journey. To visit a place of solitude and reflection. To take up a backpack and make a difficult pilgrimage across narrow mountain roads. To be taught. To pray and meditate and focus. To go away and come back changed.

It's harder to change in a familiar place. It takes discipline to get out of your own bed each morning and think "Today I am going to learn and grow. Right here where I am. Because this is the option I have open to me right now." Examining the soul is always challenging and often unsettling. It can certainly be unpleasant at times. The alternative is to go though life blindly, always distracted, never achieving awareness or questioning yourself. Never growing. (And yes, I believe there are people who go through their lives never growing or stretching themselves.)

I like myself. I like a lot of things about myself but God forbid I ever get to a place where I feel I have no more growing or seeking left to do.

On a whole other note, my vibrant, fun and life-loving friend Serene from http://elegantbohemian.blogspot.com/ gave me this lovely award the other day:


The deal with this award is simply:

1. Thank the giver and link back to the blogger who gave it to you.
2. Reveal your 5 blogger picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.
3. Copy and paste the award on your blog.
4. Hope that the people you have sent the award to will forward it to their favorite bloggers.

So here goes:

1. Thank you Serene! (Link to her site is already posted above...if you love color and originality in clothing and character I encourage you to check it out!:)

2: - My brother Kelly at http://kellyjameswilson.wordpress.com/ because he is a great writer and super intelligent and you know, he's also my brother, born on my birthday and I like him. (I'd also like to recommend you drop by and "like" his FB page which is found here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Articles-of-Faith/209796632440184 :)

- Lovely Lidia at http://mla-crownofglory.blogspot.com/ whose writing always leaves me wanting to seek the Lord on a deeper level.

- My sister in law Olga Marie at http://kreativemariet.blogspot.com/ who creates a variety of beautiful things.

- Corinne at http://www.everydaygyaan.com/ because she is one of the most entirely positive and generous-spirited people out there!

- Jane at http://northfinchley.blogspot.com/ because I enjoy her excellent writing and her sense of humor and attitude toward life.

3.) Done.

4.) Hoping. :)

On that note, I wish you all a very happy new year. May it hold love, peace and joy for you all.

"It's Just Not Fair"

"We have no right to ask, when sorrow comes, 'Why did this happen to me?' unless we ask the same question for every joy that comes our way." Philip S Bernstein

There are certain lessons we learn our whole lives through. Patterns, habits, thoughts and actions we fall into again and again and again and then feel like giving ourselves a smack on the forehead as we think in exasperation (or sometimes despair) "Didn't I learn this last time around?!"

Many of us live under the illusion that life needs to be "fair" to us. When something isn't fair, we experience numerous reactions: childish petulance, outraged hurt, anger or we find ourselves falling into despair, anxiety, fear, a spiral of negative emotions...

When our precious sense of fair is tampered with, we often lash out at others, God, ourselves, in the immaturity of our understanding.

Where does our sense of entitlement come from?

There are many, many things in life, the world and history that aren't fair. Horrendous things happen to good and innocent people and good things happen to misguided, cruel, and evil people. Why are we always surprised anew by this as though the world has always been a haven of fairness and justice and our experience is the first of its kind? Perhaps because we were created with a deep craving for justice? Created with an innate sense of dignity that in a perfect world would always be respected and valued? Or less lofty but worth mentioning, because we are essentially selfish beings who have difficulty rising above a situation that hurts us, looking at it from angles other than "it's unfair"?

It isn't wrong to think things like "Why me?" or "It just isn't fair.". But it can't end there...those thoughts need to be the beginning of a journey toward a broader and more enlightened understanding of the situation. We can choose to step out of the role and mentality of being a perpetual victim and into one of maturity, grace, and acceptance.

I think that overcoming the idea of unfairness is a lifelong battle. I didn't think it was fair for example when shortly after learning my husband and I would never have biological children, I read a story in the newspaper announcing that Karla Homolka was pregnant. (For those of you unfamiliar with the name, she and her husband together raped, tortured and murdered many teen age girls and women, her own sister among them.) That is when the absurdidty of it struck me most intensely. I had been telling myself that I didn't deserve children, I wasn't fit to be a mother, all sorts of hurtful, self destructive things to be able to bear my own feeling of it being unfair. It struck me reading this piece of news that if Karla Homolka can get pregnant and have a baby, then fairness really has nothing to do with it and obviously neither then did the notion that I somehow wasn't fit to be a mother.

Eventually I reached a place where fair and unfair took on different and more perspective definitions. As we progressed in our first adoption journey, I came to understand fair is a bigger picture than what I can see and understand...it's so subjective. Instead of thinking "Why us? Why will we never have children of our own?" I slowly began to think "Why anybody? Why this mother in Sri Lanka who has to give up her child? Why this little boy? Why this hurting broken country?" None of it is really fair. The issue was so much larger than my initial "why me". I believe there are answers and most of the time the struggle is simply to think outside of ourselves. Let go of our sense of fair.

The Joy of Giving

I want to write about gifts. Being joyful, thankful, appreciative, and gracious in both the giving and receiving that we do.

I was told some rather surprising things about myself during the past week (at least I found them surprising:) and after thinking a little bit I suppose that this is my response. Please read it in the spirit it's written in, which is that of realization and explanation. It is not meant to be snide or the taking up of a private issue publicly, simply my own thoughts on giving and receiving gifts.

Alright, I'll end your anxious anticipation and say it's very simple for me really. :) I always have liked finding gifts for other people. I try to always choose them with thought and care and occasionally a sense of fun. I love when I find that "perfect" something for somebody else or even just something I know I would appreciate getting myself, however small. (Although here I must be careful as not everybody appreciates sparkly, bejeweled small elephants the way I do.;) I truly do believe that it's the thought that counts and that there is a big and quite obvious difference between a gift chosen with love and one just grabbed off the shelf with no thought what so ever. I think things like candles, special teas and coffees or pretty soaps etc make lovely gifts. I think those things are thoughtful even though they are small. I don't stress about buying gifts, I try to enjoy it and generally have fun doing it. It's a genuine pleasure to give gifts to others and I treat it that way for the most part.

I also love receiving gifts so I'm not entirely sure where the idea that I don't appreciate them came from, unless from my own jokes about being a grinch (which I assure you are just jokes, I am not actually a grinch) or from my real desire to live with less materially. The fact that I want to try to own less doesn't mean I don't receive joy from being given a gift. Of course I do. I value the thought and love that went into it when there has been thought and love that went in to it. I don't often say what I'd like but I'm not a difficult or a picky person because I like almost everything people get me. What I don't appreciate though is the idea that a gift must be expensive to have worth. I will be honest and say that means nothing to me. It doesn't impress me or make me feel loved. What does make me feel loved is when I see someone has found something they think I'd enjoy...my sister in law recently gave me a big, cozy mug with a bag of loose specially flavored tea for my birthday and I love that sort of thing. My brother often sends me books he thinks I'd like. Another sister in law has made me beautiful cards. What I'm saying is those are the things that warm my heart to receive. Not large, expensive items. They just do nothing for me. :)

I know this isn't a deep or profound post but I have had all week to consider this and I wanted to clear the issue up for myself and perhaps for others as well. I wanted to do it kindly but honestly. I think we should both give and receive without obligation. With a joyful, thankful, appreciative, and gracious heart.

Much love, C.

An Unusual Fondness For Elephants

As a woman actively trying to cull her possessions and achieve some sort of transcendent, zen-like, materially detached peace ;), I truly have a problem when it comes to anything embellished with an elephant design or made in the shape of an elephant itself. I loath collections but I have been guilty of buying totally useless items only because they were in the shape of a gaudy, colorful, dazzling elephant.

Take this summer for example. My husband, brother, sister and I went to Oslo. While my husband worked, my brother and sister and I like dutiful Catholics, attended daily mass in St. Olav's which actually was not a duty at all but a serene pleasure as for once William wasn't there wreaking unholy havoc during the sacred celebration of the Eucharist. When mass was finished we got out my brother Sean's laptop and searched out various thrift shops in the vicinity. Unlike North America or the UK, Norway isn't big on thrifting unfortunately but there is the odd shop here and there so each day we walked hours through the city streets in the pouring rain and hit a new one.

When we found them, we would stumble in, dripping water victoriously all over the threshold and go off in search of...treasure. Each day I discovered something elephant related. Each evening I went through buyer's remorse as I agonized over why I had needed a marble elephant shaped ashtray that was heavy enough to double as a murder weapon if the need ever arose. I giggled in alarming hysteria, eyes glazed over as I said in anxious tones..."It's for my guests that smoke! My guests! They'll use it! They will! They'll love it! When they come over and want to smoke, they'll be very happy to see a marble elephant ash tray!" But alas, I convinced nobody. Sean rolled his eyes and asked why any guests that smoked couldn't just butt their cigarettes out in an old beer can like any normal person and I had to concede that he had a point. That and the only guest I have that smokes is in fact Sean.

The next day we again searched out another Fretex (Salvation Army), this time in a more ethnically diverse area of Oslo, where we all searched through piles of garments and after some time paid for those we had chosen. Outside we all smiled at one another and were eager to see what the others had got. Mary-Anne and Sean showed their purchases and then it was my turn. "What did you get Colleen?" Clutching my tiny bag, I can't decide whether to be brazen and confident or self-deprecating... so with a flourish I reach into my bag and pull out a huge necklace with large wooden beads and a massive wooden elephant hanging off it. I try for confidence "It's really cool, isn't it?" They stare at me. Mary-Anne bites her lip. Sean looks at his hands. Awkward silence. Then with what seems a huge collected effort, they both meet my eyes and say "Yes, very nice Colleen!" But I am not fooled by their insincerity, they hate it. I look at it with new eyes. I hate it too. The next few days and purchases remain a blur. Perhaps this is no bad thing. We also enjoyed Vigeland's Sculpture park and the Edvard Munch museum very much. One must throw in a couple cultural delights in the midst of so much mass going and thrift shopping after all.



The other order of business for today is that Karen of the blog Hope, Faith and Life awarded me a Versatile blogger award last week. Karen is a talented writer and artist who uses both her words and pictures to share the Psalms. I read her posts with interest and always come away feeling refreshed and uplifted! Thank you Karen, I appreciate it and graciously accept. :)


The criteria for this award is to share five things that you may not know about me already and to pass it on to others.

Five things:

1) I am not sure if there are five things left you don't know about me.

2) I put spoonfuls of Nugati (chocolate spread for bread) in my coffee and then when it runs out more quickly than usual, I blame it on William.

3) I blame a lot of things on William actually because he can't talk yet and therefore can't say anything in his defense. It's lovely.

4) I like people who can think for themselves and not just murmur mindless cliches for every possible situation that arises.

5) I have a hard time getting rid of books that have exceptionally nice covers, even if I can't stand the book itself.

Alright, these five things are not the most serious five things I could tell you but so be it. This is what you get today my friends. :)

As for passing the award on, there truly are so many incredible, creative, wonderful bloggers out there I have trouble choosing. Therefore am I allowed to just say that anybody who is in my blogroll (and many who are not, I have to add many more people just recently met!:) are worthy of being called versatile! I encourage you to accept this award...one and all! :)

Have a most lovely day!

Much love, C.