Serendipity

I feel like an adult ... yes I know I am an adult ... but The Beloved and I entered a mature phase of adulthood. We took a 7 day a week subscription to the Washington Post. So, every morning we creak open the front door and rescue the plastic bagged treasure of news. If we're lucky, we get to read some of it in the morning with a cup of tea. Then we really are adults!

The challenge for us now is how do you read a daily paper? I was reared on TV soundbites and local weekly papers, and the odd treat of a weekend edition where the magazine was often the first port of call. More recently the BBC website has been my source of news along with quick forays into US news sites and blogger commentaries. As with all these news sources, The Post condenses and edits; molds and direct what I consume. But the benefit and challenge of a broad sheet comes from its ability to have longer and more varied content. It also exposes to me to stories I might not usually seek out or care about.

Nicholas Carr's insightful cover story in The Atlantic "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" (July/August 2008) ignited research into what the internet is doing to our brains. Scientists have explored how the internet makes us better decision makers, how it has changed our memories and some suggest it has actually made us stupid and smarter at the same time.

I'm as addicted to the internet as the next girl and I'm adding my own two pennies worth to it's offering plate with this blog. But I think we might be being robbed.

Google's company mission is to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful".  This is really very kind and helpful of them. However, when someone else organizes all the world's information for me they're deciding what and how I should think. And as for the concept of deciding 'usefulness' ... well don't get me started.

When someone else organizes the world's information for me they rob me of serendipity. Remember when you used to go to the library or a bookstore and happen on a book that turned out to be a gem, but you chose it because you liked the cover or it was next to one of your favorite authors? Much harder to do on Amazon. What about when you were writing a paper for school and you headed off down a thrilling rabbit trail of footnotes? A rarer adventure when we only read the ten articles on page one of our Google Scholar search.

When we're bereft of serendipity, we're bound to miss secret doorways that happen to take us into new worlds.  We'll miss new friends and loved ones that could change our dreams. We'll have decided (or someone will have decided for us) how the world should be so there'll be no room for hope or the miraculous.

So, I'm off to read today's Washington Post - I'm going to read all the articles, not just the ones that catch my eye; I'm going to read the uncomfortable ones and the boring ones, the gossipy ones and the economic ones. I'm going to be open to a serendipitous moment when a new light comes on and I see the world in a new way.

Friends

Last week I had the chance to go to a Q&A with Don Miller and Bob Goff. They encouraged us to be true to who we are and not what society expects of us. You could feel the angst ridden 5 W and 1 H questions popping across the room. What, who, where, when, why and how? Be yourself. Easy to say, hard to find and be.

But perhaps the key was right before us. These two men are working out who they are uniquely meant to be through their tender, generous friendship. They graciously, humbly allowed the 100 odd people in the room a momentary glimpse behind the curtain. The magic they created wasn't born out of the shallow waters of flattery but rose of out the depths of authenticity.

Bob Goff talked of how he would make a terrible 'Don' and how 'Don' would be a rubbish 'Bob'. Nice. Within that paradigm unhealthy comparisons and self-righteous judgements have no air time. Rather there is permission to be true to oneself, to be dramatically different and still know love. That's a pretty good recipe for friendship.

Recently I've been thinking about the concept of accountability in friendship. The idea makes me uncomfortable, it feels so disempowering. All the privilege rests with the other person and my agency is deemed worthy or appropriate by their yardstick. Now I'm not saying we let our friends stick their hand in the proverbial fire without a warning shout; but I wonder what would happen if we moved from holding our friends accountable to holding their hand as we jump into the big sea of being mutually known?

Perhaps a posture of 'calling out' the true-self in our friendships would open up spaces and vistas hidden by the veils of disappointment, demerits and missed expectations. We could then spend our times together talking about our dreams and how we're going to get there. We could devise ways of practicing repentance and seeking forgiveness. We could hold up our friends arms when they're weary, cheer SO loudly when they take off and mourn when they are hurt.

I need my friends to help me find my voice, to illumine my gifts and heal my wounds. I need them to guide me to myself and Jesus. In them I find Emmanuel - God with me, with hands, hugs, lips, laughter and tears. For that I am eternally grateful.

Thank-you Don and Bob for letting the world see your friendship. May we learn to know ourselves better as we cherish our friends.

 
Me and my best friend! Dec 2012

Hidden

It's a bright chilly morning in DC. President Obama is safely inaugerated, the fiscal cliff has been avoided until Spring and the novelty of post-Christmas diets and frugality has worn off. It's not exactly an inspiring time of year.

To escape the wind and feed our souls, The Beloved and I visited the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.  These two museums encircle the honeycombed roofed Kogod Courtyard - a gathering place for art devourers, city escapees, culture hungry tourists and starlight seeking lovers. Just being there opens space in one's imagination.

We've been to these museums lots of times since moving to DC and so apart from the new exhibitions about Potraits On The Edge and the life of Amelia Earhart  (inspirational stuff!), we assumed we'd the space nailed. A well-known and loved beauty.

Then we wandered through a side door into Narnia. The majestic mosaic grey blue floor of the Luce Foundation Center led us into a Victorianna haven of wrought iron railings and a domed glass roof. What a hidden gem. We'd no idea. Secreted away off the narrow galleried walkways are magical drawers of French miniatures and thin sliced cabinets of icons and portraits. Pieces of the museum's collections currently not on display in the main galleries but just too good not to have on show somewhere!


It's fitting that we found this space on a day that I had gone to there to write; to be infected by other people's stories. There are people I think I've sown up - I know lots about their history and their perspectives, their likes and their challenges. Yet, there's always more. There's always hidden gems of patterned paths, intricate boundaries and treasures just too good to not be on show. If only I'll go through some new doors and be open to being surprised.

I wonder what undiscovered gems lie within us? We're the curators of our own souls - we choose what and where we display our portraits, we decide the form of our icons, and nurture or neglect the gallery space that has been entrusted to us.

Pay attention to those side doors today - you never know what treasures lie waiting for and in you!

A&E

Happy New Year! Can't say I'm sad to see the back of 2012 - it was a year of physical, emotional and spiritual challenges. There's a lot of hope riding on 2013.

In the spirit of new year intentions, a confession. I have a fetish for .... stationery. Yep, there is it, I've said it. Pencils and pens, paper and cards, clips and pins. Put me in a stationery store and I'm in heaven. It doesn't matter that I'm no longer a classroom teacher and so I really do not need 12 colours of bicycle shaped paperclips, they will still find their way into my basket and my overstuffed 'office supply' box. And as for pens, be still my beating heart. All colours, patterns, lengths, nibs are welcome in my pot. The more the merrier.

There is no better feeling that opening a fresh notebook, taking a new set of pens and writing. It's all so crisp and new, the possibilities are endless and perfection beckons.

Then you make a mistake. The pages get wringley and the words get smudged. Bummer.

I can't decide whether this inevitable outcome reinforces or produces another one of my fetishes ... being stationary. Grinding to a halt after a glossy start; coming up short when one hits a bump; starting strong then giving up when the going gets tough. You get the picture.

It's amazing that by changing one letter I can either be in a place of potential or a place of stoppage.

Grammarist.com notes that "Though stationary and stationery are spelled almost alike, they have different origins. Stationary comes from the Latin stationarius, meaning belonging to a military station, while stationery comes from the Middle English noun staciouner, meaning bookseller."

Now this much I do know, I'd rather be in a book shop than in a military station. I'd rather live surrounded by dreams, adventures, astounding maps and tales of journeys, legends of art and makers of history; than be hemmed in by rules, regulations and relationships determined by chains of command. I want to live in E not in A.

Each new year starts like the fresh, unblemished notepad - just waiting for me to leave my indelible mark. Not long into January I'll make mistakes and smudges and the wringles lap at my dreams. But this year I want to grab a fabulous pen and delightful notepad and keep moving, I'm going to write with effervescence the enlightened and endless exploits of the "E" shaped 2013.