Hope - from chapter 1- NaNoWriMo 2010

Grey orangle light filters through the trees and eases the shadows by the time we break from the tree line up on the High Ridge.


The effects of the water have mostly worn off and I feel grateful to rest as we caome to the cliff’s edge. The wood stretchs out behind us, covering the backside of the hill. Below us, Holen lies quiet and deceptively at ease. For a moment, I wish the peace was real but that would mean taking back all the events of the last seven days. I can’t honestly wish that. I wouldn’t take back from Nathan what he has only begun to discover.


Even the murder?

He did not murder her!


“Nathan liked this place.” Nick interrupts my internal quarrel. He leans forward at the very edge of the bluff. His precarious balance makes me feel lightheaded.


“He did.” The truth of the comment strikes me then. “How did you know?”


The old man shruggs slightly and his body sways to counter balance the gesture, “You can see this ridge from his room.”


I picture the view from his window. He is right but he hasn’t really answered the question. Just how well had Nick known Nathan before he came to Holen? “Did he like high places when he was a child?”


“Perhaps.” Nick says, noncommittal again. “I had thought to come up here first before I came across your bit of skullduggery.”


I think back to the tattooed man at the well and the creepy call. “It served its purpose.”


“Perhaps,” Nick frowns, “even a little delay can help… or hinder. He has a night’s start in front of us all.” He took a breath and I knew the question was coming again. “Tell me, adalan, did Nathan leave as a fugitive, or not?”


Not the question I had expected. I would have taken offense but there was no slight in the way he asked it. He truly wondered.


“The council would mark him a fugitive.” I say. The light continues to grow. The council would be ensconced with Jared now to deliberate pursuing Nathan.


“And you?”


You are not a murderer, Nathan. “I would call him seeker.” I say at last.


“And what does he seek?”


“Sneaky,” I reply, “isn’t that another way of asking where he is going?”


“I have not passed judgment on him yet.”


I look away from Holen to face Nick, “but you would put him on trial.”


Nick meets my gaze, “He confessed to murder.”


How did Nick know that? The simple words pierce my confidence. “You weren’t there. You don’t know what he said.”


“Your entire council witnessed his confession. It is recorded in their meeting records. Do you accuse them of falsehood?”


I turn away. I can hear Nathan’s voice in my head, speaking the words I refuse to believe. I swallow and blink back tears. “Not of falsehood, I think they misunderstand.”


“You weren’t there.”


My own words turn on me. “No. I wasn’t.”


“I read the record. There is not much room for ambiguity in what he said.”


I know my anger towards Nick is irrational but I can’t keep the hot flush from spreading up my face. I ball my fists, missing the reassuring feel of my stave. “You said, you haven’t judged him. Why not if the evidence is so clear?”


“I try to make a point of not judging a man in his absence.” Nick’s voice remains impassive, making my venom even more shameful. “You seem very certain of his innocence, in spite of his own words, why?”


I open my mouth and press it shut again. There is no contempt in his statement, only puzzlement. My anger ebbs almost as quickly as it had flamed, leaving only sorrow.


How can I explain something to him that I can’t explain to myself?


My legs refuse to hold me and I sink into the grass. I hold the grief in, let it wind through the whole of me unreleased. If I cry now, I don’t know when I will stop.
Nick kneels down near me. Errol whines and whirrs deep in his throat.
“You love him.” He says.


“My heart is held in the palm of his hand .” I reply. How strange to first say the words to a stranger and not to Nathan.

Oh, how I miss him already.


Compassion tinges Nick’s next words, “If he is a man worthy of such esteem, then I promise you, I will not be his enemy.” Errol flitts from his shoulder to bump his head under my chin. He chirrups encouragement and I can’t help but smile.


“Please,” Nick says softly, “tell me where he went.”

I Will Rise

-May song story from Chris Tomlin's "I Will Rise"-





When I step through the veil, everything changes.


The incessant buzzing stops so suddenly, the silence is like music. I take a slow breath and the air tastes free. I want to open my eyes but then the anticipation will be over. I wait.


Softly, music does begin. An oboe beckons with a sound at once so far away that I take another step forward and yet so close that my spine tingles up to my ears. How can it be both at once? I don’t know.


Other instruments join, drums, piano, guitar. If I focus, I can hear the individual melodies in the harmony. Each tells a different story. All entwine into an epic so strange and familiar and romantic, I start to laugh.


A breeze, scented with lilac and cinnamon, swirls and spins around me. It teases my face. The grass tickles my toes.


Do I dare step in further? Do I open my eyes?


A low rumble moves through the music. The light against my eyelids remains as bright as ever but now gentle raindrops fall. The wind catches the rain and tosses it about so it falls up as well as down.


Already dizzy with laughter, I spin in the rain.


I don’t know how or when it happens but the ground disappears from beneath me. I am rising, flying.


It is nothing like swimming or falling or floating or anything else I ever imagined flying might be. I’m dancing and the centre of gravity has changed. I am not drawn up or down, I am drawn further in.


The rain ebbs. My feet touch down on warm mossy rock. Mixed in with the music, I hear the laughter and murmuring of other people but the place where I wait belongs only to me and one other.


When I open my eyes, my heart knows whom I will finally see.

Why Write?

Bizarrely enough, listening to Romeo Dallaire the other night reminded me of why I want to write (besides the whole characters who talk back when I talk to them crazy story loving obsessiveness).


I want to be able to write down the stories of others. The tragic, the beautiful, the simple, the ridiculous. More along the lines of collections of short stories than complete biographies. I would like to spend time in long term care centres learning/writing the stories of the seniors. The same in refugee/displaced persons' camps.
My writing skills have a long way to go to reach this but we'll see.

In the realm of fiction, I am drawn mostly to allegory. I would like for people to be able to see their own lives/experiences in the stories I write, to relate to the brokenness and then the hope. Blurring the line between reality and imaginary in my stories that the readers might be more likely to see the connection between the physical and the spiritual.

I want to learn how to tell stories in the old fashioned auditory way as well, to make bedtime stories for my kids like I did for the campers this summer.

All that said, I don't see myself writing as a career. More like writing will just be a part of the other things that I do. I am a nurse, a dancer and an intercessor all of which connect to story.

Most of all, I really want my writing to be another way I show God I love Him, another form of worship.

Oh the Great Romance!

*dances in circles*

Knowing God

On the Circle, TC posted this question:

"What do you really know personally about God? Not from Sunday School, not from 3rd grade sermons from countless sleepy Sunday mornings, not from Bible Studies, or small groups, not from your Dad or Mom, brother or sister, not from friends, movies, books, and stories, not even from the Holy Scriptures… but from your personal intimate interaction alone with…..Him."

The full thread is here , and I recommend reading through it and considering the question yourself.

Yo conozco Dios. What has he spoken to me personally?
He loves me more
(more than anyone else who loves me, more than I can conceive, more than I love Him)

He loves His bride and longs deeply for those in rebellion against Him.

He loves Anna.

He is trustworthy.

What I hear most frequently:

*silence*

"I love you"

"Trust me"

*laughter*

"Wait"

"Dance with me"

Wonderous grace, unfathomable mystery

Through each day the LORD pours his unfailing love upon me, and through each night I sing his songs, praying to God who gives me life. Psalm 42:8


As the deer pants for water, so my soul longs after you.
Tengo sed, Senor.
Only you satisfy.

Confession

Ever feel like you have so much to say but when you pick up the pen or rest your fingers on the keyboard, nothing comes?

It is hard to capture a particular thought or emotion long enough to elaborate on it. But maybe elaborating isn't needed. Here are a few thoughts and emotions:

God loves me.

I love Him.

There is something dangerous happening in the spiritual realm right now.

Joy.

Wonder.

Fear.

Hope.

Confession is a necessary and painful part of growth. Something that isn't done very often but something that I think I need to do as part of this spiritual battle.

Abba, what would you have me say?

I confess that I have hidden behind a mask of spirituality. I hold myself to be a person of integrity and honest vulnerability but that isn't true. I have sought the esteem of my friends, Church and strangers first. Lord, forgive me for being deceitful. Even a single lie tarnishes the trust others have given.
I confess that I am afraid of this confession. That everything I have said and done will be judged by the confession. That the truth I have spoken or acted upon will be lost.
Abba, help me to seek You first. Always. I love you.

*cries*

Cause for Hope

I finished “People of the Lie” today.

There was a lot of truth and much provoking food for thought which I am mulling over. I do not understand the origin of evil, how exactly it manifests or why it continues to exist but I am certain of how it is defeated.

“Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” –Jesus (Gospel of John)

“When a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards” –C.S. Lewis (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe)

“There is a mysterious alchemy whereby the victim becomes the victor… I know that good people can deliberately allow themselves to be pierced by the evil of others –to be broken thereby yet somehow not broken – to even be killed in some sense and yet still survive and not succumb” –M. Scott Peck (People of the Lie)

“If he could only have understood the precise and terrible power of that sacrifice, he would not, perhaps, have dared to touch your blood…” –J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows)

As outrageously simple as it sounds, love is the way to vanquish evil. Admittedly, love becomes more complicated when trying to practice it.

So I choose to follow the lead of the Author of love, God, who is the Creator of the great romance. By knowing and loving Him more, I will love others and myself more…and evil will be defeated.

“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” –Paul the apostle (Letter to the Romans)

Love is eternal, lies are not.