mhgs

Jak and i moved to seattle two years ago. the trek across country was for us to go to mars hill grad school. Jak wanted to do the spiritual direction certificate to balance out his mdiv degree, and managed taking several sd classes before his work schedule made it impossible to continue (but he at least got to take enough classes to let him feel a bit more balanced in his education, and still plans to take more as he can squeeze them in). i wanted to get my master's in counseling at mhgs.

when we first decided to move, it was mid-summer and a bit late for the application process. so when we arrived, i began taking classes with plans to apply for the following year.

i loved my classes that first year, but life got in the way of my plans to apply, and i never did. after all, by the end of the year i was doubting i'd even take more classes. but i did take more classes all of this last school year, and completed about as many credits as i could as a not-real student there.

at the end of spring term, i finally applied - and got in! so i'll be starting my master's program this fall. the counseling degree at mhgs is usually considered a 3-year program, but since i've already taken a bunch of classes, i'm hoping those credits will allow me to finish in another two years.

anyway, i do hope to take time to blog about my classes (as i've failed to do for the most part these last two years) and my experience at mars hill - which will hopefully have me posting here more often.

arriving at church

Jak and i started attending a new church a few months ago (right around easter), and in the last few months have made a few decisions and changes regarding church and stuff like that. i won't go into all the details here, but just the most recent part.

i've spent over a decade feeling too catholic for protestants and too protestant for catholics. i think i've (hopefully) found a place where i can be just enough of both. a church with catholic liturgy and protestant theology. a church where theology is found through liturgy and prayers instead of dogma. a church that affirms the historic ecumenical creeds (nicene, apostolic, and athanasian) and whose catechism is just skeletal enough to allow for conversation about just about everything beyond the creeds. a church that has a lot of room for lay ministry and doesn't discriminate by gender.

no, i don't agree with everything within the church, but it's a community that's open enough to have room for people like me who disagree with some stuff.

so this last sunday, i was received into the episcopal church. a church that lets me be anglo-catholic, enjoying catholic liturgy and practices while believing protestant theology.

displace me 4.28.07 - update

57, 644 people have signed up so far (14 just since i started writing this post).

3 days from now.

and, once again: if you live in (or near) atlanta, austin, chicago, denver, kansas city, l.a., nashville, new orleans, new york, orlando, phoenix, pittsburgh, san francisco, seattle, or washington d.c., i strongly encourage you to sign up and go to this event.

i haven't posted anything else in the last few days because i want the posts about displace me to be what you see when you come here :) oh, that and the fact that i've got a lot of schoolwork to do, stuff to read, papers to write, by 4:30 this Friday afternoon.

but, fear not, after this weekend, i'll make sure to write about something else (though i may blog about the event after the fact as well, as that will probably be more interesting than this post).

two weeks

my MiL is in town for two weeks

i have about half a dozen essays hanging over me right now that i need to get finished (some a few days ago, some asap, some for mid-april). but i'll be busy playing tour-guide and resting in between.

so i probably won't post much for a while. i might on occasion, but in general, i think i will be quite absent from the blogosphere.

questions i'm pondering about therapy

so i'm sitting in class all day (all day) today (and tomorrow), and no one can expect me to be in class from 9-630 and not have my mind wander in a million directions (per minute).

the class i'm in all weekend is called History and Therapeutic Perspectives, so it's essentially a class covering theories and practices of psychological therapy.

the thoughts i'm pondering in particular during my mental break right now are ones that have to do with why i want to get a master's in counseling and what that means to me, questions about what i believe make a good counselor (or a bad counselor), and what are good things that therapists do (and the things that are downright bad).

my professor just said that for him, the greatest sin as a therapist is making the person less than they are, and that he does this through being distracted.

so i find myself feeling the need to figure out the details as to why i want this degree, what i want to do with it, whether it is something i can do well - because i believe that those who don't do it well often become abusive in one form or another. and i find myself needing to set out the things that i think are most important to do and to avoid.

anyway, just some random thoughts for the day.

seattle attractions?

my MiL is going to be in town at the end of the month for a couple of weeks. since we're still new to seattle, i'm looking for ideas as to what there is to do around these parts. so if any of you locals (or folks who've been here) have any suggestions, i'd love to hear them.

i'm overloaded with school stuff these days and haven't had the time to figure out what we can do while she's here.

Jak's brother's going to be here as well for a few days, but i think we know enough stuff to fill in that time, it's the longer visit i don't know how to cover.

useless in seattle

this weekend my mom took my dad to the hospital when he had trouble with his left side. he had a ct scan which showed some claudification, but didn't stay long enough for an mri. so he had an mri done on wednesday which showed that he's had two strokes.

they live in miami. Jak and i live in seattle.

he's going in for surgery this afternoon (friday @ 1 eastern time), but we're not arriving until saturday night.

there's a real sense of impotence being so many thousands of miles away while my family goes through this, especially just over a month past my grandmother's passing.

i'm thankful that we'll be able to be there as of saturday, but this week that has passed in between his visit to the er and now, has been one of worry and frustration (hence the silence in this little corner of the blogosphere).

so for those who are people of prayer, i ask that you keep my family in your prayers in the coming days. i probably won't be posting for at least another week and a half or so as i don't expect to have the time or much to say for a while.

[updated 1.5.07]
my dad had his surgery today (a stent inserted into his right carotid artery which had been 90% blocked), and all went well. he should be out of the hospital and recovering at home tomorrow, just a few hours before we arrive.

a year in review

a new year has just begun, so i thought i'd start it off with a rundown of the one that has just ended.

significant moments:
in may, after too many years in and out of college, i finally finished with a BA in psychology from boston college.
and in may, Jak graduated with his MDiv from gordon-conwell.
in the middle of the summer (after i'd finally finished college), i finally received a diagnosis for my adhd.
this summer we also took our first trip to maine, because we couldn't bring ourselves to leave new england without having seen the famous maine coast.
in august, Jak and i drove our car and a truck with our two cats across the country for a week, as we moved from boston to seattle.
in september, Jak was accepted into the spiritual direction certificate program at mars hill grad school, and we both began our classes there.
and throughout the year, we forged and strengthened many wonderful friendships with some truly amazing people.
in november, my grandmother passed away and we attended her memorial service in panama.
so it was a year of grand celebrations and one of losses as well.

favorite books of 2006:
it's hard to remember everything i've read this year, especially those things that came before i began this blog. so i'll just list a few memorable books (with links to my previous comments about the ones i've posted about) off the top of my head, in no particular order.
1. christ the lord: out of egypt by Anne Rice
2. a generous orthodoxy: by Brian McLaren
3. velvet elvis: by Rob Bell
4. driven to distraction: by Ned Hallowell
5. becoming attached: by Robert Karen
6. scattered: by Gabor Mate
7. a bright red scream: by Marilee Strong
8. the pressure's off: by Larry Crabb
9. through painted deserts: by Donald Miller
10. good omens: by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

final week of class

ah, the home stretch, the final week of classes.

with this time there comes the expected stress of more papers to write, too much to read, and the panic of realizing how much procrastinating has preceded this week.

there's also the excitement, looking forward to finishing a term and knowing that there is a period of rest in between.

the funny thing though - being here at mars hill - i think for the first time in my life, i'm also experiencing a pang of sadness to know that this first trimester here is already finishing. i have so enjoyed my classes and most of my experiences, that knowing that there are only a few days left brings a twinge of sadness. i want to go on learning and experiencing in these courses, i'm not quite ready for them to end.

already, i look forward with anticipation towards next term, knowing my experience here will continue on for at least this next trimester.

of course, in between, my work will not end, since i'm currently only taking classes as a non-matriculated student and still have to get my application done and turned in within the next month, so that next fall, i can - hopefully - begin working towards a degree.

a crazy week

i haven't been blogging much. i've had too much going on in my life to worry about something like blogging.


thanksgiving night, our water heater broke, setting off an alarm in the middle of the night and leaving us without hot water for a couple of days.


later that weekend, from sunday to monday, it snowed. it doesn't snow in seattle. seattle doesn't know how to handle snow. a mere few inches of snow paralyzed the city. my usual 45 minute drive home from school took me six hours on monday night. six hours. a week later, i still can't believe it.


in between those two things, my grandmother passed away. she's been sick, and we all knew it was coming, but even that never makes death easy.


of course, my passport had expired. i desperately wanted to be there for the memorial service, so i had my passport expedited so Jak and i could go to panama on tuesday to be there for the service on thursday night.


i picked up my passport tuesday morning, we got on the plane that night, and arrived in panama on wednesday afternoon. we were only there for a few days, before spending all day saturday traveling back here to seattle.


it was a hectic week or so, to say the least.


now, as i sit here procrastinating on my studies, i find i have so much more to say, about my grandmother, about our relationship, about life and death, about grief. . . all while knowing that i have many pages to read and several papers to write before my semester ends in a week and half.


so instead of lengthening this post, i'll keep those thoughts for another time.

it's been a long time

i know, i know, i haven't posted in over a month. the thing is, with packing up boxes, loading up a truck, driving over 3000 miles across the country, then unloading a tuck, unpacking boxes, and starting classes, it gets kinda tough to find time to do things like this. that's especially true when you don't have internet access for the first couple of weeks, and then when you do, you don't have your computer available. . .

but now, i have access (high speed, no less!) and a nifty new computer thanks to my MiL.

i have managed in the past month to not finish any book that i can think of, even the ones i'd already started before we moved, so i can't post about books. and, actually, i don't have a ton of time for posting right now, so i won't even say anything about school, or tv shows, or movies, or our trip across the country, or any of the other things i thought i could post about.

so if you want to know what's going on, you'll have to wait for future posts, which i promise won't be as long in coming as this one was.

we're moving to seattle!

i'm sure i've read some stuff recently, and i'll hopefully get around to posting about those books in the next day or so, but i've been too busy with everything else to bother with blogging much.

Jak and i had planned to move to Seattle next year, but a whole bunch of things happened in april and may that made me reconsider that plan. so in may, i asked him about the possibility of our moving there this summer instead of next. of course, since i have impeccable timing, he was in the midst of finals. he pretty much just stared at me, then he said we'd talk about it once he'd finished up school and graduated.

to make the story short, we decided to see if we could do it. of course, that means he has to relocate for work, we needed to break our lease, i needed to find an apartment out there, and, most importantly, we had to come up with a few thousand dollars that we didn't have so we could pay for moving expenses.

in a very short period of time, we were able to get the money, straighten things out with his job, and talk to our landlady about our current lease. we couldn't afford to be paying two rents at once, so we were kind of stuck until we knew if this place would be rented. i finally got tired of waiting, and figured that this was a great enough place that it would be rented. so on a weds night a few weeks back, we bought airline tix for me to go apartment hunting in seattle. the next day our apartment was rented out.

i spent a week in seattle looking for an apartment. i called at least 80 numbers, talked to maybe 20 people, and only saw 3 apartments. the first one smelled of weed and mildew. . . the second one, well, the landlord had been smoking too much weed, and i never heard back from him. so i went with the third one. of course, i saw that one on the day i was leaving, with just enough time to fill out the paperwork, grab my bags, pick up my friend whose car i'd borrowed, and get to the airport. perfect timing.

essentially, things couldn't be working out more perfectly than they are.

i'd love to spend a whole post here talking in detail about the absolutely amazing people i met in seattle and what an awesome time i had. . . but since we're leaving here on friday, i still have a ton of packing to do, and should get to it.

maine-ly maine

Jak and i have been living in the Boston area for nearly three years now. we've ventured up to new hampshire a couple of times, but had yet to make it all the way to maine. since we're hoping to move to seattle soon, we wanted to take some time to make sure we saw the coast of maine before leaving new england.

did you know that nearly every store in maine has the word "maine-ly" or "mainely" in their name? i don't think a single child in maine can grow up knowing how to actually spell the word correctly.

we camped at lamoine state park, right around the corner from acadia national park.

the weather couldn't have been better. the temps were in the seventies during the days, and just cool enough at night to be comfortable in our tiny tent.

we arrived in the late afternoon on saturday, having taken the scenic route up to (and then past) our destination. we set up camp and relaxed for the evening, enjoying our shishkabobs and the gorgeous moon that rose with a brilliant orange color.

we spent sunday relaxing on the rocky coast, with the end result of our looking like maine's renowned lobsters.

monday we kayaked along the bay, between the mainland and the islands, stopping for a snack on an island owned by the rockefellers. the wind was at our back the whole way, making it a nice, easy paddle.

we headed back after i ate a quite disappointing lobster roll, and drove up to our house around one a.m.

yeah, like anyone wanted that little rundown.

it was just nice to get back outside. we haven't camped in a while, and we certainly are the sort of people who need to do it much more often. it was so refreshing, physically (even with the resulting aches and pains), spiritually, and emotionally.

i couldn't have imagined the views we had, or what the maine coast looked like, had we not gone. the full moon rose glowing bright orange the three nights that we got to see it. everything was perfect and beautiful.

when i see things in such ridiculous colors, like the orange moon in maine, or the sunsets in florida, i have to laugh at God's sense of humor. i mean, if we draw anything like it, if we try to paint an orange moon, or a pink and purple sunset, it looks like some semi-abstract work, or some cheesy commercial painting. yet, God uses this absurd colors in nature, that we are never able to reproduce in any sort of meaningful way. we can create this colors through artificial means, but they remain artificial, they never look like the beauty in nature. we simply fall short in all of our attempts. so much so, that when viewing these colors in nature, that they can seem unreal if we take a moment to think about it, as if they shouldn't really exist naturally, but only artificially, while the artificial versions look so fake.