Slice of the Pie

I just had a wonderfully relaxing weekend with an old friend from Bible school. Lisa just moved back to Vancouver, B.C. from Toronto after 2 years of dental hygienist school. She and her husband are starting up life again in downtown Van. She came down yesterday morning and we ate omelettes and talked and listened to music all afternoon. We then went to downtown Bellingham to Wasabes and had some decliciouso sushi. On to Boundary Bay for a glass of red (I went off my detox for this little treat. How often do you reconnect with an old friend?). Then we watched Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and ate stovetop popcorn just like my mom does. This morning we slept until ELEVEN (I can't believe it) then drank coffee in bed and listened to her pastor in Toronto's sermon. We got up for the day at 5pm and went and got more sushi and watched the sunset off a trail on Chuckanut Dr. It was amazing and so great.

It makes me sentimental and sad that regular life can't hold these times in it ALL the time. Maybe its where I'm at right now, maybe its the fact that Lisa is so sweet and soft and open but times like these are a slice of heaven. It brings me back to Bible school. That blessed year that I got to experience a very real human existence with people, God, nature, joy. I hold 2001 in my heart as a very sacred time. I could never go back to that exact place, my experiences and cynicism and intellect would never allow it. It was the isolated time to open my eyes to the Grand Narrative and understand who I am apart from my upbringing. So much has happened in the face of that since then. So many firsts, some positive, some negative. Pain and happiness and dreams and depression.

What I take from it is that there is a kind of community and sharing that can happen here and now. It is the practicing for a renewed heaven and earth, bathing ourselves in knowing the other and sharing our insides. Its not going to happen easily, or all the time, or even often in different seasons, but its something I can believe in and be open to. I want the softness back I held when I was there. While Lisa was here, an old friend stopped by that happened to be at Capernwray with us. Seeing him and Lisa at the same time reminded me of what we were. I don't know where he is at in his belief, but in the past we have had many conversations about the disillusion and doubt, but none as late, and the point from there to here was painfully clear to me when I saw him. I'm not one that likes to live in the past or hold people to what they were because I believe in change and growth, but the vulnerability I knew of him there reflected to me his heart to know God. If thats not held as a high value, at least as a desire, it can be buried in commitment, decisions, lifestyles, toys, entertainment, philosophies, people, relationships, career, education. I absolutely one hundred percent long for him to be what I knew because it encouraged me. God was real to him. These feelings come very inconvienently because I prefer not to care, or hurt, for someone of the opposite sex. So now I have to deal with that.

The whole pie will be amazing, and until then I will take a slice. Thank you Lisa.

Deep and wide, deep and wide,
theres a fountain flowing deep and wide.
Deep and wide, deep and wide,
theres a fountain flowing deep and wide.