Monday

June 17, 2013 — 2 Comments

 

 

I woke up this morning. Monday.

I think I am going to start an ‘Honest Monday’ series. We will get to share our honest sentiment about this day of the week that always, always looms over us like an invisible parachute. It takes off with the slightest gust of wind, and off we go – into a new week.

You may love Monday; I do sometimes. You may dread Monday; I do today.

New beginnings can be forced upon us. It may not be a choice to start over in small or even monumental ways.

New beginnings are celebrated but rarely do we sit and say: “THIS, this right here is too much.”

If your Monday is not just the beginning of a new week, but perhaps it is the beginning of a new, even as of yet painful chapter – it is okay.

I want you to know this: You are held. You are safe.

Tomorrow the beginning will be a day older, and you will receive fresh mercies. The sun, the Light has a way to break through the darkness. Whether we ask it to or not, Light is non negotiable and shines on all.

Light broke through the darkness. It broke through, and nobody knew what to do with it. There is an ancient story I think it is my favorite.

Mary Magdalene was going to tend for the dead body of her best friend, her savior, her teacher – Jesus. She went to the grave and instead of darkness she was met by the brilliant light of his Newness.

He has overcome the darkness of his Death. His Light so bright it illuminated her but still she could not recognize him. Sometimes our fear and sorrow make us blind to the light.

It happened to Mary, but the Light still brilliant and true shined.

So incredulous are we of the Light that we sometimes mistake it for someone, something else.

It’s okay to be confused, scared, to disbelief, to distrust, to be sad and alone…. You will be met. We will be met.

Light does that. It meets us in the midst of our humanity. In the middle of our Mondays the Light shines indiscriminately into our darkness.

This is the Light of resurrection, the Light redemption, the Light of restoration.

Walk steadily through your Monday. With joy or sorrow – you will be met.

Tomorrow the mercies are fresh. This is the rhythm of life, the rhythm of love.

Love.
Bianca

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In which I confess to be a little worn out and weary

February 12, 2013 — 1 Comment

I confess to you that I am a little worn out and weary.

When I was a little girl I wanted nothing more than to be surrounded by people. From the time, I was 2 or 3 years old all of my imaginary play revolved around people. I always pretended to be the city Bus-driver, or the teacher, but my favorite profession has always been that of a Pastor. It seemed to be the closest to people’s life, the rawest form of tending to peoples’s hearts. Maybe I’ll write more on that later. I envisioned and dreamed of work in the body of Christ, active, beating heart, passionate about others and life, sitting and holding a weary hand, drying a tear, transforming life through story, marching and preaching, my whole life a sermon. It seemed sincere. it never had occurred to me that people would dare to slam doors shut – all in the name of God.

I felt a deep sense of belonging then, but gradually I slipped out of this place of comfort and love, out of a childhood filled with unpretentious joys into a place of uncertainty and personal devastation.

It slowly happened years before my mother left to the West where she was building a new life, desperately hoping against all hope that the iron fist of communism would loosen and allow for her children to be reunited with her in a land filled with western opportunity. A place she would begin to call home, though it was apart from me. Today I still cannot relate, I can only imagine what it must have been like for her to peel herself away from our side and pursue the future with a fierce determination and a fervent prayer.

Putting on a fight, going through the desert into the promised land requires a vision that is higher, nearly in-perceivable in the natural or realistic realm. When does it ever make sense to leave behind everything that you have worked for all that you hold dear and move forward through an arduous journey?

Yet, is it not in these journeys that we, like Moses, realize that we are standing on holy ground?

I come from a long line of women who continually had to start over, begin again, set out anew.

It should be of no surprise to me then that, in ministry, I get to do the same thing the women in my family got to do. Set out anew.

My calling has never changed, albeit I tried to force my way down a path away from people, away from ministry. Disqualifying myself and allowing the pungent words of haters to pierce me deep like daggers. I learned something it turns out that you cannot change a persons mind. This is entirely the Spirits work, we can present, we can compel, we can even try to coerce, and we can implore… But Spirit change happens on holy ground, when we lean into the presence of God and allow our minds to be moved.

I am weary and a bit tired today, but the day is nearly over and tomorrow is a new beginning. New things shall happen, and newness shall begin to permeate our soul and haters be hating…
Truth: No man can take the blessings that God has given…

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The only Monday…

February 11, 2013 — Leave a comment

Garden

I’ve been sitting outside in my shabby back-yard for hours, noticing only the keystrokes on my lap-top, the warm sun and my children bounding around. Birds don’t seem to mind the shabbiness of it all nor do they seem to notice that I can’t grow a blade of grass on purpose.
They love it here. I’d like to think that they find the old brick path and overgrown bushes, the empty flower pot and the summer toys strewn about refreshing and wildly original.
I sat and soaked in the first day of the week, the only Monday like it. The sun warm and the sky a shade of blue that every child on earth would simply call sky-blue.
I did ‘nothing’, yet I was productive in many ways, still not worth mentioning but essential to me.

May this Monday be a small reminder that this day has never been before and shall never be again. In all it’s fullness and all it’s emptiness, in it’s sorrow and it’s joy… it is good. The only Monday like it.

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Lyrics

February 7, 2013 — Leave a comment

I am obsessed with this lyric.
“Learn to let it bend before it breaks…..

A singer-song writer writes her words down, grabs her guitar and creates, calls forth a piece of herself…

I listen. In the car, in the pub, sipping tea on the cold tile floor and somehow I’ve entered church. Worship. Engaged deeply, continually moved.

As though someone made a way to an underground spring and every time I hear the words – space is created, earth is moved and more water can quell up to flow, fresh, cool and clean.

Such is the gift of a powerful song, a soul laid bare, a heart opened, withdrawn from the world, giving space, open hearted -so as to pay attention to ‘the important’ rather than ‘the urgent’.

It says that “Jesus would withdraw to desolate places and pray.” Luke 5:16

We cling to the words he spoke, the miracles, the signs….the seen.

Yet, Jesus was much like a singer songwriter. His worship springing out of the depth of the openness, the willingness to be with the important- time spent in prayer, intimately connected to God, reaching for the will that was higher than any earthly will or desire could be – the true meaning of withdrawn is to open your heart to God and to others—
Out of that openness comes everything else. Every miracle, every word, every store, every act of radical grace unearthing a new way – The Kingdom of God, here and now.

Plenty urgent all around, as it is with us. People suffer in pain, the poor, the needy the marginalized – We need Jesus — yet, he not once said “I could have done so much more”….. The urgent can wait the important comes first.

So in song and scripture I am reminded to bare my soul. To withdraw as he did, as any artist does, through pain and suffering comes the grace that gives respite and births something new.

…let it bend before it breaks

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through grief

February 1, 2013 — Leave a comment

bench griefThis week has been long and difficult for my far-away family. We sit and mourn and grief the loss.

Some people say that “time heals all wounds” but if you asked a grieving mother you may only hear a sigh in response. She may only know to exhale, heavy, from deep within her lungs, wishing that this was her last breath too. She thinks of him, the boy who tore her when entering this earth with a violence that also gave way to the tenderness of new life. She holds deep within her heart her memories that only mothers can hold of their children. The way his fingers first wrapped around hers, the way he laughed for the first time, the way he fell apart at the sight of his first skinned knee – his eyes pleading for her to make it all better. All things are common to man.

And then her voice shifts and you hear the sting of regret permeating through. The memories of mistakes she made grow and turn to slicing pain. And when she speaks you feel the dark shadow of regret moving in over her, taking her hostage to the pain, the sting that shows no mercy.

He took his life 14 years ago. It’s when the walk through the Valley of the shadow of Death ended for him, and began for her.

She buried his body. “I gave him over on the 4th day in the the second month of the year” It takes me a minute to figure it out, it was February 4th. How does a mother continue to draw breath, and speak of grace?

She mourns. Sometimes we mourn over and over again. Resurrection, the assurance of “He is risen” comes after mourning.

I say nothing, I say I love you. I say “He is risen” and whisper
“Ich habe dich lieb, Omi.”

peace and grace be with you,
bianca

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Growing up I held one book particularly dear to my heart. A collection of Brother Grimm Fairytales (the original version). It was reading these stories, growing up under a regime that did not value freedom or the power of the human imagination, that my mind was beginning to be shaped. In simple tales I found traces of evidence for a future that was bigger and brighter than my yesterdays.

In this project I am not asking for a charitable donation, but rather I am hopeful that you feel nudged to participate in this yet small way, to give something that’s moved you and shifted you, that’s given your heart and mind new places to reach.

To share is to give of yourself with grace and a quiet confidence. It is in sharing that we begin to see one-another, in sharing that we live out the faith to which we are called.

My hope is that marginalized women will find themselves compelled to trust.
I pray we all have the courage to lean in and move in faith beyond our yesterday…

grace and peace to you,
Bianca

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Posted on January 31, 2013 In Women , , , , ,
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Autumn

October 9, 2012 — 1 Comment

Do yo notice the chill in the air? The briskness in the wind and how it carries this scent of drying leaves and something else…. Around here it’s harvest, grapes are being picked and apples are brought to the local stores by the crate full.

Just like summer brings this scent of BBQ fumes and the blessed assuredness that there is a hotdog and steaming corn available at every back yard get together. So also Autumn has it’s own trademark scent.

This may be my favorite season, maybe I said that about spring and summer too.

But I do I love autumn. The invitation to retract a bit from the busyness of life. It’s such a contemplative time. Where I come from, we’d gather our harvest and set up in the communal kitchen. Big pots and pans, tons of jars, salt, sugar, butcher paper and twine… Everything you needed to can all the fruits and pickle every sort of vegetable.

By choice, I live a much simpler life now. Instead of a field I  have a backyard that serves a playground for my children and the dog. I have a few fig trees and successfully grow some peppermint.

But I have not forgotten the other value of autumn, the value of family and food. Of gathering together and sharing a slice of spiced cake with a cup of hot steaming cider. Gathering around a stew that’s overflowing with every kind of orange and red vegetable and breaking the bread together.

Autumn invites us together, this is the season of feasts, the beginning of it. In this country we will soon gather around the Thanksgiving table, but the Thanksgiving season has already begun.

From the beginning of time people have made a big deal about harvest. It is a time when we can breathe a sigh of relief. It’s the time to connect with one another and to honor the Giver of all things good and well. To share all that we have been given.

To give hanks to God that this abundance is beyond what we worked for. It is beyond  what we earned. What we sowed multiplied in the earth, we put a morsel in the ground and we harvest a sea of golden wheat.

May we always remember that even though most of us are not farmers, we still have a harvest.

What has this season brought for you? Who are you grateful for? What friendship have you sown into, even just a morsel and are gathering this abundant blessing from? Have you gone over fractions with your child all year and you see that maybe now they are getting it?

Maybe not all your work has returned in as abundantly as you had hoped and prayed for.

This is why we canned in a communal kitchen. This way everyone put in what they had and in the end we all got an equal share.
Community is like this.
If you have a lot or you have a little, you are welcome.

Let us remember that this community economy is the dearest things to God’s heart and a pure expression of his grace.

Be blessed,

Bianca

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October 8th

October 9, 2012 — Leave a comment

I took some time to head out to the coast. Do you ever need a couple of hours when nobody can get a hold of you? Maybe you have words that have gotten themselves lodged deep within your heart and somehow all that can get them out is just quiet time and a spectacular view.

Today I am keenly aware of beginnings and ends around me. I am not going to be chasing a rabbit down a wild trail of existential questions. I am simply noticing how my own life continually presents itself in the tension between endings and beginnings, so intricately tight together.
This tension isn’t for the faint of heart and it isn’t always about life and death – the kind of death that our mind will never be able to wrap it’s arms around. This is just ends and beginning.

I am sitting at the coast within the eyes shot of the end of a river.  At the end of the bend, where the great big rock sticks out of the ground as though some giant plopped it there, the  stream in front of me meets the great Pacific Ocean. This journey will be over… something completely new will emerge.

7 years ago I said my second “I do”. We’ll spare the details of the day and how we got there… suffice it to say that I viewed the day as a new beginning. In recent years I have sometimes painfully witnessed the intricate connections between endings and beginnings. Never do I need grace more than in that thin place, the middle of life where the narrative is less clear and you get the sense that this will be a moment you’ll look back on. Have you ever felt like that? Ever sensed that this might be important to remember? These decisions may be defining ones?
7 years ago I had walked myself down the isle, my father had come to the end of his life just 3 weeks before that. I was preoccupied with the romantic notion that he was present with me, even though his absence was the only thing I could really sense.

As a little girl growing up in the Carpathian Mountains tucked away in a valley with a river that ran through it, quite idyllic when you think about it. I had learned from my stoic teacher that all rivers lead to the sea. I had been to the sea a few times when my mother and father took me on vacation, I wasn’t even 5 yet, but some of my best memories are from a place where the edge of our world met with the rest of “the universe” which we referred to as the “free world”. Going to the sea in a Communist country might as well been a trip to the moon. We were confined and always aware of the end, the edge of our abilities in the natural realm.

Today I crave to go just far enough to see something outside my daily routine.  Different enough to knock my mind off its curious patterns that create in me an uncomfortable sense of regular. Regular does not allow me to be open to what may come, to participate in the invitation that is this life.

Don’t we all need to be moved, we need to see that things come to and end all around us. That the end seems to always be loosely tight to a beginning.

And if we never came to an end how could we expect to have beginnings?

As you sit and pray, fold your hands and open your heart, allow God to speak to you about the end of something. May mercy ease over you and may you at the end of the bend merge in to something completely new.

Bianca

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The Biggest Thank YOU

October 3, 2012 — Leave a comment

“Tell everyone thank you. We love this. This is the best gift. I love my pajamas”

I really wish you could have all been there. The over pouring of joy and gratitude was palpable.

When I planned this give-away I could have never imagined the outcome. It seemed like such a small thing. Then again it’s always the small things that seem to make an impact.

Last night I drove my packed up car – 37 sets of pajamas and many extras for later, socks and chocolates- all the basic necessities for an evening with women. Only these women have walked through the city all day, looking for jobs, visiting doctors, meals at the mission, finding shelter form the elements, seeking for explanations and solutions. Their feet as swollen, their mind is weary, they often feel heartbroken. Their stresses are common to the homeless women in our community.

Though I imagine that above all the most difficult thing for these women is the incessant feeling of ‘invisibility’. How do you do that? How do you work through every day difficulties when you are not seen?

My favorite thing about Jesus is that he saw, he welcomed those who were invisible to their community.

If there is one thing I am passionate about, though flailing in execution, it would be seeing one-another and pouring out Love.

I am grateful to you for making this service project an “I SEE YOU” statement to these women.

They were all sitting in the living room, waiting for the lesson.

I usually share a story. something that made my life richer or maybe just stunned me speechless,  we incorporate it into things that make our lives fuller, we laugh a lot, we cry and we hope for revival.

This evening there was a different plan. Some helpers and I carried in each gift wrapped pajama, 30 pair. For a moment I wish I could have freeze framed their faces. There is something really spectacular about receiving a gift ‘just because’ for no reason at all, it allows for anticipation to turn into unadulterated gratitude.

Each woman received a simple gift. Women in our community donated many many sets of pajamas. All sizes, colors, all of them cozy soft and brand new — which meant so much.

I told the Ladies about my friends, about women who were exited to lean in and make a difference for another woman. Serving does require us to lean in, to trust that this small thing could be multiplied like fishes and loaves of bread.

I had hoped that they would feel loved, I couldn’t imagine how much joy and love there would be for us all.

Thank you. Thank you for seeing beyond the necessity. Thank you for giving of yourself  and contributing to this evening. Thank you for giving and serving. These Ladies are tremendously blessed and I am too.

“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.  Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.” Philippians 4:8-9

Bianca

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small things, like pajamas

September 7, 2012 — Leave a comment

small things, like pajamas  – click link to watch personal message

I grew up with a dream of changing the world and to make it a better place. (instant song flash back – or was that “heal the world, make it a better place” – I don’t know it’s been a long week)

I think children are supposed to have those aspirations. Today, I’m watching my girls and their friends develop similar ideas.

Yet, sometimes we have to start small. Like a pair of pajamas kind of small.
I am not asking for some insignificant “feel good” donation. I am also not under the impression that a pair of pajamas solves any major problem.

But I am confident that a small thing does accomplish much…
It shows one person that she is seen and loved.

This personal message is meant to encourage us all to be-love.

If this is something you can help with, please tell me.

Thank You,
Bianca

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