by grace

my name means grace. as a child my biggest aspiration was to be an olympic ice skater, a dream which had no hope of ever coming true due to my complete lack of physical grace. i thought the meaning of my name was a little bit funny because i thought of grace as the ability to balance books on one's head while walking in high heels or maybe even while doing triple axles. it wasn't until recently that i recognized that i could still be full of grace, a different kind, a more important kind. the kind that god is.

grace is my favorite thing about god. i can't tell you how impossible being a good, worthy, progressing person feels sometimes. i can feel so stuck, so inadequate of latter-day sainthood, so clumsily but also sort of beautifully flawed. the most important thing, and perhaps the only thing i know is that god exists, and that he will make up the difference between my potential and my often halfhearted and flailing attempts at discipleship.

so, clearly, i have doubts. i have questions. very serious ones that i'm not sure have answers.

and, should i dare to mention her name, so does kate kelly. i sat in a basement across from her a few months ago. she took off her boots, propped her feet up on the coffee table, and she answered our questions. regardless of right and wrong and questions and methods of asking, i think what we have been failing to do as a people is to recognize kate kelly and ordain women as representative instead of a fringe minority. while the easy road is to dismiss OW as a group of angry feminists who are bitter just for the sake of being bitter, it takes much more humility and compassion to see what this mormon feminist movement really means: that there are many women within this church, myself included, that feel hurt, limited, and undervalued. we can try to explain away this feeling with scriptural evidence and conference quotes that woman are equal in our institution, but all that jargon and frankly mental gymnastics doesn't change what it often feels like to be a female member of our church. it feels lonely, it feels constrained, and it can be heartbreaking.

still, at the end of the day, i feel god's familiar presence through the holy spirit. he reminds me of my worth. he comforts me with my divine potential. i feel it like a giant, fluffy, favorite blanket around my shoulders, mismatched patches of floral fabric woven through with a few gleaming golden threads, every inch of it symbolic, every mismatched part of me acknowledged, planned, usable, and wanted. this is why i am a saint: because god knows me. because he wants me, he opens up pathways for me to use my gifts, because he gave me power simply because i am his, and this power does not lie completely and solely within my physical/symbolic womb. i don't often get this from the church as an institution. i can talk a lot about the reasons why i feel this way, why i feel OW has merit, and how we can respond to these issues as a church, which i would be happy to do individually with anybody. but this is my space, one where i want to move past justifying the existence of feminism and do what i sat down to do: talk about grace.

i don't think god's grace is something he only uses at the very end of this world to save us or something only he holds. i think he is constantly filling in our gaps, forgiving us, and being compassionately patient with us as we fall short as his servants. i also think we have to capacity to do this for each other and that god expects us to. i think he expects us to forgive ourselves and others of shortcomings, to do what we can to make up for them, and to offer each other space for change and room for progression.

i wish we could act with more grace. when we mess up, when anger flames through us, when we suffer at the hands of each other, and when we fail, when we brilliantly and outrightly fail as saints, i wish we had more grace with each other. i wish we had the confidence in god and in our own faith to feel secure when it is challenged instead of placing blame and using big words to explain away doubt. i wish we had the capacity to forgive and the kindness to tenderly listen to each other before we pull out our defenses. i wish that we could admit when we are wrong and forgive ourselves with enough grace that we have room to grow again. i wish we could envelop each other with it, i wish we could truly mourn with those that mourn, i wish that we could fight for each other as sisters in zion. for us, grace and works go hand in hand. grace is action.

by grace we will be saved. with grace we will save each other.

littles

i adore lithuania. i adore the translucent green trees and the ubiquitous lakes and the baroque architecture and the breathtaking train rides. i adore lithuania's complications and contrasts and the spectacular 10 pm sunsets. i love my free sunny mornings, my evenings brushing through fields as tall as me and my nights on the swing set. i love touching little heads and holding little hands, and oh, how i crave those little hugs.

for some reason i'm resistant to saying i'm a kid person. it's some kind of feminist attempt to prove the point that women can be women regardless of how nurturing they are, but in all honestly i am 100% "a kid person". i love them. i'm not the kind of person that hits it off immediately with kids but i do have this pretty powerful ability to bond with them through quiet love. i am happiest when i have them in my life, and i think there are two reasons for that. one is their loyalty, trust, and their simple, straightforward, and bottomless love. the other is their wonder, spontaneity, imagination, spunk, and joy. the world is full of love with children, and it is also filled with beauty and adventure.

i'm starting to feel that completion again, that wholeness of self and purpose that came to me in china and that was so very hard to leave. i love who i am when i am a teacher. i sure as hell don't get it all right, but luckily i work with the most forgiving souls on this earth.

и это было все желтые

what is it about this place?
i am not shocked by unflushable toilets and malnourishing diets. i feel no discomfort, no rush of new.
so what is it, what am i supposed to learn here?

i walk outside and breathe in the wet air. this baltic sky still has a lightness to it at 11 pm. can only two stars make a constellation?

gravel crunches beneath my feet and the chains of the swing sigh under me. stretches of identical apartment buildings surround me, nine floors for miles and miles. the trees here are old. the willow looks the size of my apartment. it saw invasion, production, revolution, and stagnation. it must be wise.

there are so many things about the world that i don't understand. the complacency of rule. the hunger of occupation. or, could it be? a generosity of spirit? a trust in authority? the more i touch the world, the more gray it gets.

but, still. that moment of his tiny arms around my neck are a reminder of what love feels like and what love is: learning to let go.

a haiku map of my dc

this is my city as i know it.

dc surprised me. i didn't expect to love it as much as i do, but it will always hold a lot of significance for me. i became much more of an adult here, and i think more authentic. the city offered me a lot of opportunities to really invest in an interesting, ambitious, courageous version of me and i like who she is becoming. it was lovely for me to feel like i belonged in a place and within a few different groups of people. that feeling doesn't often come to me in provo.

my little map has red and green pins of all my favorite places to eat and to go. i wrote a little bit about them, but then i decided i'd rather remember the memories in all these places and i wasn't sure how to include that. so i made extra purple pins of all those street corners where my love is and wrote a little haiku about my memories. hi, i'm pretentious. we're going with it.

so here's my formal goodbye to dc: thank you. you were perfect. and i can't wait to return to you.

love beginning

i'm here. i live in a baltic state. in a little soviet apartment. in the land of rain. 

i'm teaching english again, this time as the head teacher. my leadership abilities often feel questionable. it has been chaotic as the beginning always is. i think about china all the time and i miss those sweet children that hold so much of my heart. i can already feel it here, though. i can see love beginning. 

i've said it a zillion times but that love i felt in china changed my life and my soul. living in a different country, especially countries like china and lithuania, is challenging. the other teachers don't see it yet because they haven't lived it, but i am already anticipating those heart bursting goodbyes and the way it feels to miss a life and a self that you cannot go back to. 

missing is something i am getting very good at. it feels like a gift now. i want to feel it, that sinking soaring feeling of loving something so much that it hurts, or just that simple and deep appreciation for people and places that have offered you growth. missing is terrifying and precious. i have spent too much time numb. 

i've loved and lost, and the world still spins on. love and attachment have never broken me. i would rather continue to give it without requirement for reciprocation than protect myself. not to say that i don't have fears or pause. i can give love and accept love, but the idea of needing, of dependence, that still seems suffocating. i am probably still afraid of it, but now i would rather be brave.

i met a mormon latvian national volleyball player named matiss this weekend, and his name sounds exactly like matisse, and i am so happy about that. eastern europe is treating me well.

tin

i read a short story once, and in it it described how every age you've ever been is like a tiny tin can inside another tin can, and on and on, like russian nesting dolls, and all the while all your ages are rattling inside you. i was thinking about it on my walk to school, and i thought that maybe love is like that, too. maybe all the people we meet and love make our hearts grow, but our hearts grow layer by layer, person by person. so the reason our hearts can be so big is because we've loved and been loved by so many, and the influence of those people rattle inside us as we move along. 

but maybe not, maybe that's not what love is at all. who really knows?

but i do know that i can still feel certain things rattling inside me. certain people rattle inside my heart, making noise and reminding me. i wonder how much of me i really am, and how much if me is a conglomeration of all the people i've met and all the love i've felt.

i wonder if my determination is jenoa rattling inside of me, or if jackson's tin can is what makes me so still or if trevor's drives me to be kind, and maybe julia and whitney are where my laughter comes from and the way i squeeze people's hands comes from mikelle's place in my chest, and maybe mack gave me two aspiring green thumbs.

when i gracefully concede in arguments, parker taught me how. michelle painted me lavender, and the wrinkles in my nose when i laugh are steve's. i think my generosity originated all the way from the sands of weihai's international beach, where mei first handed me an orange and a can of coconut milk.perhaps all future lifts of my right eyebrow will have a bit of ben in them; perhaps my blinks will be sydnee's. all my sunshine came from allie's light, and colin is in the way i dance.

i ask emily's questions and listen with ari's ears,
or at least all that is what i'm trying to do.

and i could go on and on,
and on and on,
but if you're ever around and you hear rattling,
it's my heart making room for your's, too.




originally written 8/25/12
*i often find that things i wrote on the diaries of a fly on the wall keep teaching me lessons i need to learn. i would like to relearn them, add to them, and collect them again. anything posted with a date at the bottom like this is a repeat of something already written.

Open Window, or: My Insides Look Like A Matisse

this is my favorite painting.

when i was fifteen i visited the national gallery, which happened to be showing a lot of matisse. his colors struck me first. without much thought, i bought a postcard of open window.

a few weeks later my parents separated. walls fell. oh, they immediately tumbled. what was left was the core of me, this very vulnerable but very authentic self that i hadn't ever met before. my internal demolition also knocked the words out of me. i found myself struggling to verbalize, struggling to feel understood. the little postcard hung on my wall.

i went to park city a few months later. in a tiny art gallery on main street, i found myself in front of a picasso sketch. i remember this feeling vividly. i remember feeling bright blue like a mylar balloon. my mind was clear.

so it was then that i noticed the connection i had with art. paintings and i, we both couldn't speak. we were made up of colors. i carefully collected postcards and hung them on my bedroom wall. i laid on my bed for hours just looking at them. we understood each other. they still decorate the walls inside of me.

we often talk about tearing walls down like its winning, like a person belongs to you if you can get past theirs. but walls are valuable. protection is important. walls are meant to make homes. the danger comes when we create our own cages.

it was one of those days, those silent afternoons studying brush strokes, that i began construction.

and here i am. i have walls. they are a gallery. they are malleable. they are the color of roses and emeralds. they are frescoed lavender. and they frame many, many open windows.