Well, you know me with that ancient gaze.

It might be simple as faith.
It might be simple as hearing his struggle with a faithful God.
It might be simple as looking into the eyes of a lover scorned and seeing her look to heaven with resiliency and grace.
It might be in the saddened eyes of the loneliest soul you have ever seen.
In these and many more, there was hope. Hope that the divine, that God held it all. Hope that God knew something. There was trust in Him, wounded and bruised trust, but it was there.
Maybe it really is all around me.
I had the opportunity to attend a large gathering of God-lovers (otherwise known as a conference) last weekend. And to my surprise, I was not so much moved by the messages but by the people. I was moved by the people around me that were clearly hurting and wounded and bruised. Gazing into their eyes you could see all this pain, but right next to this pain there was a slight glimmer of hope in their eyes. It was so powerful, pain and hope in complete juxtaposition to each other, struggling and giving with each other.
For so long I have walked by sight, but I have seen faith like never before. My own hope seemed so forlorn and now I am not so sure anymore.


Roo Panes-Know Me Well
http://soundcloud.com/crcmusic/roo-panes-know-me-well

Like the last breath I will breathe, like home to me.

Did I see a flash of gold, of that precious ticket that you hold?
Did I see your white teeth pass me by and never gave them a chance?
I think the knife hurt us all.
Dream.Real.Dream.Real
reality. No, the fortune did not say anything about this.
Let
it
go
Let
  this
          go.
Stay.
                  Stay with me, these
are the last minutes I have inside the eye of this storm.
        Is this real, not real?
Are we barely living, or living barely?
                      Your question of what
we
had.
No chance at all.
I saw your golden ticket and off you go.
Tell the mad hatter I say hello,
tell the queen I wanted you.
Tell
     your
            lovers
     that
           you
                 will
always be
w
   r
    a
      p
    p
  e
d
          r  o
       a      u
            d n
this
fraud.
Wasting such a perfect age,
                                   Such a let-
               



                                                          down.

A monologue to God

I turn twenty-one this weekend and I don't know if you'll be in the neighborhood or not, but if you are anywhere near 1902 and you could spare a few minutes for a talk, or a walk, or a hug, or a feeling or a breeze, my schedule is wide open.
It's okay if you can't, I get it.Times are hard, things are changing.
Did you see that the leaves have finally begun to fall?
I sat out in my porch today and I witnessed one of my lasts, for who knows if and when I'll ever be here again.
Anyways, let me know if you have time to spare. I will also welcome you if you come unannounced.
Even if you don't come I'll be looking out to the horizon;
My only hope is that we haven’t abandoned each other entirely.  

You were just saving yourself when you hide it

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. 

Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung 

and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, 

you must give your heart to 

no one, 

not even to an animal. 

Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; 

avoid all entanglements; 

lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. 

But in that casket- 

 safe, 

dark, 

motionless, 

airless

--

it will change. 

It will not be broken; 

 it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”

-C.S. Lewis

Of God, life, love and MCAT scores from Ampfing.

There is one question that has been reverberating in my mind for quite some time. It simply asks,

What is God to you? Well,

God to me is an empty room. 

All the walls are blue and the ceiling is white.

There is a wooden floor and I'm sitting right in the middle of it. Hugging my knees and waiting.

Waiting for God to show up. But he never does. 

Sometimes a little cloud invades this room. It is faint and temporary, much like Berndnaut Smilde's fantastic display of clouds inside of rooms.

That little cloud is my tiny little glimpse of God's presence in this room. 

Sometimes it seems that He is coming, almost as if I can hear his footsteps rounding the corner into this room. And sometimes he feels so far away, I feel as if I've forgotten that he was coming at all. And sometimes all I get is a fleeting cloud. 

I think I could walk away from this room and take one of two different paths and finally find some peace of mind. But something keeps me here, in this room. Here, where nothing resolves. 

Because as crazy as it is I keep waiting for God to show up. I keep waiting for the time when all will be made right. I used to pray to understand all that I cannot understand. I used to pray for Him to show up, for me to see Him in the ordinary or extraordinary. 

Some people might say that my eyes have been closed, but I feel as if they have never been this wide open. I'm looking for him anywhere and everywhere. Don't get me wrong, because I do catch glimpses here and there, but my soul is not satisfied. I want resolution, I crave it. More than anything else in this world I want this. 

I think I keep myself in this room, because after all of this I still have faith in Him. Maybe my faith might be conditional, but maybe only because I hope that He is bigger than that. I keep myself in this room, because I know, that someday it will resolve. But I need to be here now, in order for that to happen. I need to be here now to encounter the pain, the struggle, the plurality of this world. 

So here I sit in this now not so empty room, maybe it is filling, at least temporarily. But that's the beauty of it all. 

Hope. Living and Breathing on it.

This year had an odd start. Before I knew it, it had begun. Two thousand and eleven was far behind me, and as the fireworks shot through the air I knew that I know nothing.
This year also came with a highly anticipated internship at Hospital Vozandes Quito. On January 3rd it began slowly and awkwardly (perhaps mirroring my own self).
I began with Clinical rotation where I rarely got to see patients but rather listened intently to symptoms and possible diagnosis in the daily meetings the clinical doctors had. I was excited for the 8th of January to roll around for I would be in surgical rotation. I got to observe two amazing surgeries. But I couldn't shake the feeling of the importance of the patient. The importance of the person inside.
This had never mattered before,
or maybe it was all that had mattered before.
This week in my ER rotation a patient came in that seemed to bring everything into focus, or was it out of focus? I'm still not sure. This patient had physical wounds that required a lot of money to restore to full capacity. Money which they did not have.
So simple healing, not restoration, seemed like the only option left. And although bravery encompassed this patient fully, there was something beyond the eyes that screamed out sadness.
And my heart ached, for even though we could give the patient physical healing, there was a whole other part that didn't seem to also heal. It seemed as if the patient's spirit was also broken. How my hands ached to reach out and whisper comfort, whisper hope!
The only Hope I have known.
But this hope now seemed like a thin thread I was hanging onto dearly.
A thread that threatened to break every hour, every day.
I still longed to whisper of this God I once thought I knew.
Oh how I ached; how I ache still!
How could I breathe life into dry bones? How could I bring light into dark eyes?
How could I give someone the Hope I have been searching for and have not found fully? How could I share this very last fragment of Hope I have when I don't know what it means still? How could I explain this metaphysical area which I cannot fully grasp?
I couldn't. I can't.
I reluctantly left the patient. For although an inner war waged within my soul about God. He had never seemed so real as he did then.
When the last scrap of hope I owned seemed to leap out of me. When my hope in God was the only thing that room that seemed to really make things okay.
I still don't understand a lot. And all that I know is this hope. But maybe it's enough. Maybe it is what will pull me from this darkness. This hope in God that seems to speak louder than my faith. The God in which I hope. The God that stirs something deep within my soul, beyond what I could recognize.