Gro.....25

my life was one that I
shared from the very beginning.
we were two very different people.
I reread every-
thing


.

I have read and reread many times,
the truth alone and
sometimes wishing someone on high would
toss me a comforting lie. I used to say "What will it be
like ten years from now, Where will we be?

very honest, very logical wouldn't
do it. Couldn't do it. Now, I live in a world of lies
where truth is often ignored o
you
don't know what you want."

every man must find
somewhere A man he
has love look. don't think so much

to figure out what he means. I have wiped my tears on the
thought
I sat on the side of my bed holding that
last night, and
remembered:

Love - no thing but that
Ungemmed, unbidden, wishing not to hurt,



I bring, you calling out as children do,
Look what I have - And these all for you.

It was he I had always loved . I didn't know until
He had died
.

I hear the First step is always release

I slip in and out of consciousness while my foot steadies my bike tire to keep the handle bars from hitting the woman to my left. The guy next to me is sitting close with his duffle-bag, frantically scribbling notes into a little booklet of paper and murmering to himself. I notice the latino man sitting across from me who won't stop staring even when I look him in the eyes. The tatooed writer stands up and punches the wall of the Metro Rail subway bus as we slowly make our way through Hollywood. The five of us in that car look cautiously to our right as he screams out "Los Angeles is dead!" and sits back down to write.

It is Sunday evening so there are not many commuters out.

There are five large books next to me on the desk waiting to be read and referenced for my project due tomorrow. After another night of cramming out my third research project in three weeks I will be able to inform anyone about the 70AD Destruction of Jerusalem's significance and the ramifications it has had on the history of the world. Or the entire geographical layout of the Old Testamnet holy lands, or the life and impact of Francis Xavier. I'm sure that guy on the Metro would be so comforted by it.

I have been meeting alot of "connections" at my new job in Hollywood. So many legit artisit and producers and professors who want to collaborate with me, or record me, or let me act in their musicals...I feel somewhat lame, not really having much to give on my end other than some light-hearted, genuine conversation. I guess it is refreshing for some people, when it isn't completely saturated with sarcasm or anger.

I started reading a book that we have at work called, "Animal Ingredients A to Z." I think it is going to make me become a vegan. I'll let you know.

I also was reminded of grace today, and it was nice.

Vegan Smackdown

I am almost halfway through my first semester at "The Master's" College. It has proved to be an intersting time. I am thankful for it, while it is. I also just recently got a job at a great little vegan resturaunt called "Pure Luck" in Hollywood. I also learned how to build bikes...bicycles that is. I have recently found an investor for my small business I want to start, and have been writing alot of music.

I have also been studying my butt off for school.....A little voice keeps singin in my head to build a little red boat and sail away. Maybe I will one day, but for now I am trying to still focus on that whole "commintment" thing that has been so difficult for me my entire life.

It is an amazing time when you get placed in an enviroment that shatters your mindset on certain issues, and reminds you that you really don't know much of anything, and that I never really "understood" people like I made myself believe. Talk is cheap, and most of what I have been learning in the past few months is how to keep my mouth shut, and live radically.

and so it is.

Deep calls to Deep

By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me

Mi Ultimo Dia en Pascuales

Today was my last day with all my kids in Pascuales.

At the end of the day we took some pictures, they kissed me on the cheek and then hugged me and ran off to some adventure. But there were a few who stayed around a little bit longer.

The day was pretty normal. I showed up in the morning, with my Ecuadorian friend who came along to translate my last chapel message. We played, ran around, reviewed our english material, sang songs, and had chapel. I talked about the last three colors; white, yellow and green. They listened as I explained how easy it is for us to get dirty everyday, and how God will continue to clean us, and forgive us; and about how there is such a place as heaven, and God is there. It will be a place without anger, and pain; without murders, without people hitting other people...We sang some worship songs and then I went around with Bartola and tied on all the braclets I had made for each of them with the 5 colors.

By 11:00am they were off, running down the dirt hills to there homes.

Jose and Fransisco, Jayz and her mother, and Israel and his mother stuck around. Jose and Fransisco presented me with a small gift bag full of a matching necklace and earing set, 2 braclets, and 4 jeweled barrets for my hair. Attatched to the bag was a note from Jose, including his phone number. Franscico sat hugging me for a long time before they finally left and he ran back in about 5 times to hug me more. Jose just shouted chau, and awkwardly began to leave, until Bartola told him that he could kiss me on the cheek, and not to worry because I will be coming back to see him by the end of the year.

Israel presented me with a little stuffed bear, and his mom so genuinly thanked me for eveything.

Things with Jayz were not as simple. I spent another hour and a half with them. Jayz is the girl who has become very attatched to me since I have been here. She asks her mom for me everyday. I have been able to spend time with her family at their house. The family has been through alot of hard things. Rosio, Jayz' mom, just became a christian 20 days ago. She and Bartola told me they needed to speak with me. They explained how there was somehting missing for the children at the school before I came. They said there was a sadness and something they needed. And then I came, and there has been a change with many of the kids. (Now, I personally think that this is a slightly exagerrated claim on their part) Rosio said that she has seen a huge change with Jayz, ecspecially. They family has many problems. They do not have much money, the father left to live with another woman and does not help with anything. She is trying to raise 5 children on her own. She said Jayz was so sad and would cry every night, and could not sleep. But, she said, since I have been here, it is like the sadness left her. She was so grateful to me. But then we also began to talk about what will happen when I leave next week. Jayz refuses to believe that I am really leaving. For example, today she kept saying (in spanish of course), "Okay Kathryn, I will see you tomorrow when you come over to my house, yeah, see you tomorrow." I would tell her gently that I could not come to her house, but that I would see her on Sunday when I go to her church. The mom and Bartola asked me to speak with this precious little 5 year old girl on Sunday and explain to her that they are telling the truth and I am leaving. They asked me to explain to her that it is okay her dad left, and it is okay I am leaving, that I do love her, and that she does not need to be sad. They asked me to give her hope, and to pray with her.

Sometimes I wonder if I am going to hurt some of these kids, like Jayz and Francisco, by leaving and if it may have been better to have not gotten invloved in their lives at all. But I do not think so, at least I hope not. So we all talked, and prayed. We prayed for Jayz family, and her mother, and for my conversation on Sunday.

It is amazing how much love can effect people. Especially children. I do not think I did anything very special, or particularly useful down here. I loved some kids, I was nice to them, I played with them. I hugged them everyday and told them they were my brothers and sisters. I wore the same $3 shoes as them. I tried to sing there songs, and speak there language. But nothing extraordinary. It just shows how much people really need love; a present love.

I watched a movie about Africa last night and it made my heart ache. Kind of like it does right now. I do not know if I have started going through the begining phases of some kind of seperation deppression but I am extremely sad. But the sadness does not come from the fact that I will miss Ecuador, or the families, or the kids. Whenever I am in a certain place, there is always 10 others places I wish I could be also. My heart, and the people I love seem to be spread out all over the world. But this feeling is different. It is an aching, a yearning for something. I think C.S. Lewis does the best job of explaining it when he wrote;

"Most of us find it very difficult to wwant 'Heaven' at all-except in so far as Heaven means meeting again our friends who have died. One reason for this difficulty is that we have not been trained: our whole education tends to fix our minds on this world. Another reason is that when the real want for Heaven is present in us, we do not recognize it. Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, wwould know that they do want, and want acutly, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise. The longings which arise in us when we first fall in love, or first think of some foreign country, or first take up some subject that excites us, are longings which no marriage, no travel, no learning, can really satisfy. I am not now speaking of what would ordinarily be called unsuccessful marriages. or holidays, or learned careers. I am speaking of the best possible ones. There was something we grasped at, in the first moment of longing, which just fades away in reality. I think everyone knows what I am talking about. The wife may be a good wife, and the hotels and scenery may have been excellent, and chemistry may be a very interesting job: but something has evaded us....The Christian says, "Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the mst probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or to be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find until after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others do the same."

Two more weeks.

Three more days with my children at Pascuales,

then it will be back to Los Angeles

back to school

back to work

and figuring out how to silence my deep desire to be in this part of the world; loving people

and how to not forget

I don't think I ever could, forget that is, though sometimes it seems like it would be easier

I will see my friends again, the people I love...I will be able to sing songs and learn to play more of them on guitar, in ENGLISH finally.

I will shop in grocery stores instead of the markets

and will be reminded of how much I do not fit in because of the way I think.

but it all makes me hope for that day when this longing in my heart will be satisfied. And we will all be where we were meant to be

together

in love

in perfection

singing

and dancing

with nothing to hold us back from communicating, or relating...we will be able to love eachother as we really want. There will not be the deep pain of realizing you can not help all the people who are hurting, and you cannot hold all the kids who are crying; or the 25 year old who thinks they will never be good enough and are afraid to make the wrong choice, or the 60 year old who cannot trust in hope anymore. We will be washed, unashamed, and healed.

But right now, I just have two more weeks to think about. Three more days to give hugs, and let them climb on me, and play with my hair, and call me their sister telling me stories about how we will go play at their house and do this or that. And I have two more weeks to learn from the family I am staying with. To be reminded that I do not have to be afraid, and that we are forgiven, and we are loved. Two more weeks to listen to the little neighbor kids run and play outside my window talking in their precious little spanish voices. Two more weeks of fresh air, and laid back culture. Two more weeks of greeting every single person standing in the room with a kiss.

"We were paying even more attention than usual, trying to tether ourselves to the earth, because the world was coming to an end."

I know Anne Lamott was not refering to Ecuador when she wrote this, but I feel as though it could be applied...At least by my first instinct. I feel as though I want to memorize everything, and then dig my claws into it, or forget something crucial here so it would make it impossible for me never to return. But I have gotten past that. I know that as soon as everyone comes back from a "missions trip" or a vacation from some part of the world they talk so much about returing their and how serious they are...then 4 or 5 months goes by and they have moved on. I do not want this to happen, and I do not expect it to. We will see in 9 months from now

Si Dios quiere, volverE

El Amor de Dios es Maravilloso

Tenemos un amigo que nos ama, noa ama, nos ama...tenemos un amigo que me ama, su nombre es JesUs... Chapel again...we got to talk about Jesus. My friend David played a few songs with the kids.

Hermana Dorothy came as my translator again.

We sang, talked about Jesus, and then prayed...then I got ambushed by my children. and I love them