beatitude

“You are so young, so before all beginning, and I would like to beg you, as much as I can, to be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign language. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Remembering a particularly tender moment in life drawing class, and how seen and safe and full of potential I felt there, and how things were simple. In my empty hands I held a flower - which was a prayer - and around me as I knelt on the table the room and the sketching fell away.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the pure in heart, for their shall see God.

back log

1. In January my friend Chrispy got married. I was singing at her wedding, songs all about God's love. On Thursday there was the wedding rehearsal - with the inevitable mistakes, people looking mildly terrified, starts and stops and questions. I thought of how this life on earth is like a wedding rehearsal, where we fail and fall but do so knowing that the Kingdom of Heaven to come, where the bride of Christ meets her bridegroom, is one of joy in fullness, love unending, and utter communion with God, so close we can reach out and touch him.

To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry

Nor could the scroll contain the whole

Though stretched from sky to sky

On the wedding day, I arrived early and warmed up with Jacob, then prayed over the instruments (including the bass guitar and two other guitars we weren't using for good measure) before practicing with the rest of the band to prepare for the ‘real thing’. 

But nothing can prepare you for singing in front of the bride and groom - to see their joy and to see them rejoicing not just in the day and in each other but in the Lord.

2. As part of work research I read that in Olmec culture, a premature birth that resulted in the death of the infant was considered a self-sacrifice (in a culture where sacrifice was an act which enabled the continuation of life) and touched me unexpectedly.

3. I sat down to write down 'Daily things that bring me pleasure', feeling inspired by a podcast interview with Adrienne Maree Brown. Things that bring me pleasure include the soft darkness when I wake up and am the only person in the world, as I sit and talk to God, and when the wind breathes unexpectedly and cools me down on sweaty lunch walks, and kissing Jacob (almost daily). 

4. I had what I can only describe as an anxiety attack on a Saturday, reminding me of the helplessness I felt on the train platform in Oxford, November 2018. What began as general heaviness over family tension grew into an incomprehensible fear and sadness and looked like me crying a lot. I was thankful that Jacob was there to breathe with me, and that my family has been working through the tension slowly.

5. Chinese New Year was a really special time. I felt more comfortable with my extended family for not being with them for 4 years. We still have mandarins from Chinese New Year in our fruit and vegetable drawer, and sometimes I bring them to work and peel them at my desk, which necessitates a stop from any busy-ness as I mop up their sweet juice and inhale their citrus scent.

6. The Auntie I walk past each day on my rounds in Fort Canning Park now smiles at me, after I asked her one day if she was alright/needed help when she seemed to be in discomfort. It was a small, civil thing, but now we have a sweet understanding.