autumnal beauty

Fall has begun. In the morning a thin feathery layer of frost spreads across my windows. My breath comes in cloudy puffs as I run. Crisp, bright air paints vivid spots of color on my cheeks. Beneath my feet, a rich crackling carpet has formed. Above my head, a heavenly dappled dome, the sun glows through leaves of gold and scarlet. And all about me, enfolding and caressing me, sweet warm, earthy air swirls in with the harvest.

Today fall was perfected into a day of warm, blissful beauty.

As my family biked up to a park near the river, my heart consigned me to driving to meet them - but as in all things it worked out for good and not evil, joy instead of sadness, and stillness amidst my busyness. 
As I drove through the canyon, along the river, and over the bridges the vivid blue sky reflected in the river created a watery pathway. Along its  rippling edges dark layers of rock build there way up to touch the sky and colorful trees cling to its cracks and creases, dotting it with bright splotches of crimson, chartreuse, and ocher.

As I step out of the car autumn fills my lungs, transporting me to hundred different places at once - I am flying into a giant pile of leaves, I smell that sweet bonfire and feel the apple cider clutched in my hands spreading it's warmth along my fingertips, I feel the slippery cool insides of a pumpkin entwined around my fingers. And as I make my way to the river, the rustling of furled brown leaves underfoot, reminds me once more that fall has indeed arrived. At the river's edge, thousands of minnows swirl in choreographed perfection and dropping leaves twirl and spin along with the eddies of the current. Is sit there, alternately losing myself in the in the landscape and the witty prose of my newest Jane Austen novel. As I glance up, as I have a million times already, the loveliness makes my heart swell and my mind turns to praise the Artist.

My family arrives and we settle down to a simple picnic, made delicious by the effort to reach it and the surrounding beauty. Afterwards my sister and I roll up in quilt, leaves tangle in our hair as we squirm and laugh. We grab our camera and snap pictures that send us into body-quaking spasms of laughter, slowly we settle down listening to music, swinging from giggles to reminiscence.

Slowly time moves on and my family makes there way back into town, I give them a head start giving myself a few more moments in my autumnal paradise. I lie on my back and think of little besides the clear azure sky stretched above me. Drifting between my books and daydreams I slowly pack up, lingering by the river for one last gleam of sunshine on the water and a glimpse of my dancing minnow friends. Happiness seeps through my being, joy awakening every sense.

We rendezvous downtown, strolling down the streets and wandering into the shop of choice for a resignedly jealous look at things I will never need and never afford. Slowly the scents of the surrounding restaurants coax our stomachs into suggesting dinner. We gather up our provisions and once more head to a park to soak up the last rays of sun filtering through the trees.

It was a day  heart-rending happiness - a thing of beauty.

so this is 20

"You're twenty, do you feel any different?"

"No."

But, you see, I thought I would.

Age is a surprisingly fickle thing. I always expect so much out of a certain age, projecting myself forward into the years, imagining how grown-up, mature, and changed I will be. When I was 12 I thought of 18-year-old Breanna with such awe and respect, but when I was 18 I still looked up to that ever-teasing shadow of grown-up Breanna. I've been chasing her through the years. Now, my latest projection is that of a worldly-wise, elegant, svelte, poised 25 year-old Breanna. Shockingly I imagined that exact same vision for 16 year-old Breanna. Some things don't change through the years... and I am among them.

For 20 I had great ambitions of maturity, beauty, and charisma but instead what I find is this strange child. You see, twenty year-olds are not supposed to pounce on there almost-sleeping parents late at night. Twenty year-olds are not supposed to get into tickle wars with their Daddies.  They are not supposed to stick their tongues out at their little sisters. They are not supposed to laugh at bodily noises. They are not supposed to slide down the banisters of the state capital. Twenty year-olds are not supposed to be silly, goofy, awkward, or immature. And yet, somehow, I find that I - twenty year-old Breanna - am all of the above. And yet, somehow, I am strangely pleased with this Breanna. Strange child though I may be, I'm loving life.

color

I sit, suspended in a world of light.

The water around me casts blue light shadows,
From beneath, green light glows deep,
Where distant gold lights flicker in the sand.

Eyes closed tight, a crimson confusion swirls.

Love and fear.

Passion and angst.
Eyes wide open, the blue light envelops me:

Cooling and soothing, 

Hopeful and thoughtful. 

Layers of light in a color-full life.

Birds and a One-Inch Picture Frame

Life for me, a confused 20-year-old, at times feels like a massive rock I'm trying to push up an insurmountable mountain. I feel like that guy, Sisyphus maybe, in one of those Greek myths – sentenced to pushing a rock up a mountain, only to have it roll back again and again, a tragic tale of the futility of hard labor.

Lately, though, I have been trying to view the future not quite so bleakly...

After reading Anne Lamott's book, Bird by Bird, which was about writing and not at all, really, about life counseling, I've been trying to adopt a philosophy of life that reflects the way she chooses to write - by short assignments.

After a jaunt through the panicked day-dreams of a writer's blocked writer (which are shockingly similar to those of a confused 20-year-old), she says,

“I go back to trying to breathe, slowly and calmly, and I finally notice the one-inch picture frame that I put on my desk to remind me of short assignments... it reminds me that all I have to do is to write down as much as I can see through the one-inch picture frame. This is all I have to bite off for the time being... I also remember a story that I know I've told elsewhere but that over and over helps me to get a grip: thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at that time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”

On the kitchen table of my mind I am surrounded by birds - unfinished stories, half-formed dreams, unexplored ideas, and shadowed visions of the future – and I am “immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead.” I am gazing at the tapestry of my life, so large that in my close proximity I cannot see the whole of it. Yet, despite it's epic proportions I somehow how, depressingly, still manage to spot the sections left to complete, the frayed ends of untwisted threads and it seems impossible to conquer. Overwhelmed, waves of panic and confusion roll over me, my mind goes into over-drive listing all the things yet to do, organizing them by importance, then reorganizing them by priority, then becoming bitterly disappointed with the realization that I do not in fact have a hundred hands to juggle this all. But, somehow, amidst all the crowding, clamoring thoughts a small voices speaks, miraculously getting through my muddled brain,

“Bird by bird... Through a one-inch picture frame,” it says.

“Impossible,” I retort.” Have you seen how many birds there are?”

“Bird by bird...”

“Hmph,” goes my schizophrenic, self-arguing subconscious.

Defeated but slightly relieved, I begin to breath. Calming down, I peak through my fingers, fingers that are bravely, though misguidedly, trying to separate me from reality. Gazing through the slits, I see once more my life-tapestry, huge and beautiful in its divinely ordered confusion. Standing right up close, my nose brushing the rough fabric, I resolve to look through my one-inch picture frame. I un-crick my neck from it's upward-gazing position and shift my focus to what is placed in front of me, a small, pretty pattern in need of completion. Slowly, reluctantly, I pick up the ends of the thread and begin to knot them together, hoping that somehow what I'm doing will make something of beauty and all the while reigning in my panicking upward- and outward-gazing mind. As I weave I remind myself that one small knot in my tapestry is one small part of the whole, and that in its mundane simplicity it is a thing of beauty and purpose. Over and over again I remind myself that for me to live is to take life one bird at a time, one line of life written with care and beauty in the smallest details, one thoughtfully constructed stanza of the poem that is my heart's journey.

Slowly I work and slowly, one inch at a time I push my rock over the mountain, realizing all the while that life isn't about reaching the top but finding beauty in the pushing.

changing faces

On the clothesline of my heart,

a hundred faces hang.

I fly  

the bold colors of 

Bondage.

They flap in the wind,

that gale of opinion.

Upon the Legion I gaze, 

Faceless.

pottery

Maybe it's a memory, maybe it's a childhood fantasy, maybe it's from that old Mary Kate and Ashley movie, It Takes Two, maybe it's a memory of a childhood fantasy from that old Mary Kate and Ashley movie. Whatever it is, wherever it's from, there is an image in my mind.

I have this image of me - a small child, bent head with hair in a riotous confusion of dark curls, the slightest pink tip of my tongue working itself back and forth between lips pursed in concentration, busy hands still dimpled and plump, lacking full dexterity, retaining the faint, yet visible echoes of babyhood. I sit, my short legs straddling a potter's wheel of epic proportions (in my child's perspective). I have cupped within my hands a whirling lump of silky, slippery clay. With fierce determination and visions of vases and beauteous bowls, I set out to find the fantastic form that is concealed within this mysterious mound. Each time, though, as I begin to apply, what I believe to be, the slightest amount of pressure, a clay geyser shoots up only to quickly flop and return to its previous globule form. Frustrated but as determined as ever I try yet again... and again... and again. But with the reliability of Old Faithful, I achieve nothing more than a clay fountain each time. With an exasperated huff I slump, wilting under defeat. I push an offending curl out of my eyes, smudge my face and give the even more offending lump of clay the stink eye. But from behind I feel another body settle next to mine and I hear a warm, reassuring voice whisper in my ear, "Try again."

"Huh uh." Even my child's brain can figure out the outcome. But once again that whisper comes, "Try it again, we'll do it together."

Weathered, practiced hands cup my own, enveloping mine, blurring and merging the lines of young and old. Slowly, slowly the wheel spins. Slowly, slowly we move our hands up and down. And slowly, slowly a form begins to emerge. Faster, faster I try to spin the wheel, eager to see the finished product. But gently, strongly the hands restrain and guide my own. "Patience, patience little one," says the voice once more, "in time we'll see."

I feel my life taking shape under the Master's hands.

a facebook-status life

This afternoon I was asked how my week went - a simple, nonthreatening question - but for a panic-stricken moment I was transported into my own brain: a dusky, dusty library. While there, I began urgently rifling around in a catalog full of neatly and efficiently categorized memories. In that catalog there is a small section entitled "Short-term Memories," as I flipped hastily through the pages, small, random clippings fluttered, revealing memorable moments in the not-so-distant-past, but there, in Section 8 pages 22 through 28... nothing. Not a single jot, not a single lazily scrawled thought or roughly sketched image - a stark white blank page of un-extraordinariness...


Often I have caught myself  enviously scrolling through the status updates of my friends on Facebook, jealously coveting there status-worthy lives. Given, this is not a regular occurrence. In everyone's life there will always be the mundane, trivial blurbs that no one really cares about but there are a few, privileged people who seem to live lives just made for a Facebook status; their updates are peppered with brilliant flashes of poignancy, pleasure-filled moments of joy, profound thoughts on profound experiences. Filled with dissatisfaction at the blank space after my name that is my life, I find myself walking through my life cultivating vignettes, specially crafted to dab color on an otherwise gray canvas. In part this is a helpful way to engage with the passing hours of my life, but also in part this is a sadly pathetic indicator of the tenor of my life.


... Recalled to the present, I guiltily stammered through a vaguely strung together reply. But the ugly truth stood out with the nakedness of those empty pages - I had lived a week of my life and could remember a wasteful nothing. And in my world living life means daily updating my Facebook status and living a meaningful life means being able to follow that update with 3-7 exclamation points.

the selfless station and household idols

So I was scrounging around for something to write when a late-night conversation with my sister just clicked some things together for me - I knew there was a reason I write so late at night (also, I believe my muse works the graveshift).

Have you ever seen those guys that drive around in their low-rider cars with the shiny spinners? They're the same ones that never take off their designer sunglasses, even when it seems frightfully like a safety hazard; the ones that drive around with their music so loud that everyone within a five-mile radius can also enjoy it; the ones that drape their arm, in what must be a horribly uncomfortable position, over the steering wheel so that they can conveniently flex their triceps; the ones that roll down all the windows, not for a coolness sake but for the sake of having their coolness noted from all angles.

I am one of those guys.

No, I am not a hermaphrodite, but in a lot of ways I feel just as split down the middle. I want to be one person, but I act another, and in my case it is, shamefully, the part of a ghetto cruiser.

So often I am reminded of just how self-centered I am but today the reminder felt more like a sucker punch to the gut. I would like to skip the embarrassing details, so I will cut this long story short and only say that, in one sickening moment, I reminded myself of one those guys at whom I scowl so heavily and judge so harshly.

We all have our household idols. And one of the little devils I spit-polish and lovingly and unknowingly  place on the mantel of my heart is vanity. In my mind's eye my little idol doesn't so much resemble the cliche, and oh so anotomically challenged, Krishna statues as it does the little stackable Russian dolls - the ones that begin with the large bowling pin shaped dolls and, about 5,000 dolls later, end with a microscopic little peanut. For me, I can only see a few dolls into it, maybe to a small doll called Insecurity but I am sure she hides within her a whole host of others that I cannot even begin to name.

Earlier this evening my little sister encouragingly mentioned how selfless I seemed to have become, but I laughed. She hasn't met Joey, my ghetto-cruising-alter-ego. You see, my train has not arrived at the selfless station, I am stalled at the me-myself-and-I station, sipping wine and staring at myself in a mirror.

assembly-line amusement

I had a good day today. Sometimes I don't have good days, but today was one of those days where happiness settled me into quietness and laughter.

One thing I found amusing and slightly disturbing, though, is how so many institutionalized places of fun, like fairs and water parks, look so much like giant factories full of colorful assembly-lines and human product. We bob along these neat lines and we enter into the contraption meant to inject fun, and after just three nauseous minutes we are funneled out again and moved to the next machine where we jump dutifully onto the conveyor belt. All the while we keep asking, "Was that it?" We chase soap-bubble entertainment.

Despite the amount of money it takes to get into these special factories the whole atmosphere is cheap - it's cheating humanity of the rich life-joy found in spontaneous moments of everyday bliss, moments that come before pain and carry us through hard times. Moments where we laugh so hard our stomach aches and tears roll down our cheeks, moments where we feel free to twirl, arms outstretched and head thrown back, just because, moments where we sit in stillness with a heart wanting to burst for happiness. These are the happy moments that come not from a manufactured doing but from a spontaneous heartset, a joy-filled being.

existence and being

Existence. I've never really thought about it much. Maybe in the morbid correlation with death, or in the frantic imaginings of life after death, or maybe in the blank, black void that is the product of my failed imaginings. Other than that I've not given it much thought, but then the other day I had an epiphany about it.

A few afternoons ago I was holding my beautiful little niece, she was asleep and I had her laid out on my lap so that I could watch her dreaming little face work itself through an array of different emotions. As I traced her delicate features with my eyes, touching the curve of her soft, downy cheek, the little upturn of her nose, the slant of her sleepy eyes, I began to see her differently. I saw her as a compilation of my sister and her husband. I saw the unique ratio of their features converged in beautiful unity within her little body, barely three weeks old. With startling realization, I saw her as a newly created being - a being which, in the not so distant past, did not exist but would now exist completely, even into eternity.

For a second my brain couldn't wrap aroung that. I was, as I watched this perfect baby sleep, witnessing the beginning her existence. I think for a moment, a small achingly poingnant moment, I was given a glmpse through the eyes of God. I saw my little niece's life, barely begun as it was, laid out before me: I saw her as this rosy cheeked little baby, I saw her as a spirited toddler, a precosious little girl, an enthusiastic teenager, a passionate young woman, a beautifully strong woman, a godly old woman - I saw the story of her existence stretched out to completion and it was beautiful.

I think this seems so foreign and strange to me because in my own memory I have no recolection of the beginning of my existence, in my mind there has never been a time in which I did not exist, I have always been. Yes, I've read of times when even my parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents did not exist but that was not my world, the world in which I frame my existence. I'm not sure if it makes sense, but I think at the core of what I'm saying is that in my mind I am a god, eternal - no beginning, no end. And yet, through my neice I saw my own mortality, linked not to the end of life as is usually done, but to the beginning of life in way that was as humbling as it was beautiful.

cold pizza, cherry limeades, and my life story

It's mid-night and I am laying upside down in my bed eating cold, leftover pizza; every once and a while I sit up and take a long drag on the straw of my long-since-emptied cherry limeade. Thirty-some books surround my bed and yet I'm staring at my computer screen, eyeing the Facebook tab with narcissistic desire. Above me my fan alternately whirs and clicks coaxing me hypnotically into tiredness but I will rally, never fear.  As the greasy pizza rumbles uneasily in my stomach another hunger flares up to take its place in the forefront of my mind. This hunger, insatiable, has been with me for quite some time. It's been in the background for as long as I can remember: sometimes it's a consuming fire filling me with frenetic energy and angst, sometimes it's a dull ache that leaves me listless and apathetic, but most times it's an annoying twinge, frustrating me with feelings of inadequacy. This hunger, a heart-hunger of sorts, consists of the desire for a life not wasted, for gifts and dreams not squandered, for a story remembered. And if my life is a story and my timeline the plot then I'm living the exposition, nearing dangerously close to the rising action.

I find myself boring, partly because I do not know all of me yet and partly because what I do know of me is, at best, commonplace and, at worst, offensive. I am nineteen with a few loose plans, a few grand dreams and even fewer resources. I've grown up in a small city, in a state that I have often, in the past, bitterly dubbed as boring, in a family I've lovingly and flippantly called "a blessing." I've grown up quietly, in other words, with a few blotches of color in the soft gray of my life. My past is a small part of the whole, in a way, a microcosm of me: soft gray with a few bright spots of color.

One of those spots of color, a slight glimmer of the Redeemer grafted miraculously into me, is that I can dream. At face value I may lead an average, boring life but in my dreams I can conquer the world. I can go to South Africa and be a journalist, saving lives through my pen. I can adopt unwanted babies saving tiny hearts through the beauty of motherhood, I can be a gourmet chef, reflecting the Creator and savoring life with enjoyment, I can do a fundraiser for cancer victims, breaking my heart and sharing life... I simply can.
So far, this has been merely a sprawling, possibly useless exposition of me but my hope is that by looking at my life, seeing it's shape and angularity, its ordinariness and simplicity, I can - through Jesus, by Jesus, and for Jesus - change the course of my life, I can write the pages of my story, intentionally fitting them into the one Divine Narrative I long to be a part of - I can redeem my life, my story.

And to accomplish this I want to start a used bookstore in my small, boring  little city. Laid out like that, so plain and stark, it seems like an anti-climax. But, you see, what gives me joy, what excites me, is all the embellishments I can add to that small dream - it is merely a skeleton, the framing, the naked plot line. I want to create a place, a bookstore, where culture is bred, where creative thought is fed, where community is formed. I want to create a place where a small bit of the Kingdom of God touches earth, a place where the best art is appreciated to its full because we know the great Artist of it all, a place where the best music in all its varied forms is delighted in because we know the God who created sound itself, a place where the greatest thought and literature is pondered because we know the Spirit who formed language and plumbs the depths of God's own mind.

I want to start a bookstore that is filled floor-to-ceiling with fragrant old books, with corners and nooks full of overstuffed chairs and pillows, where people chat over a casual cup of coffee or flip through books silently lost in a timeless world. I want a kids section that is covered in visuals that awakens the imagination and evokes youthful beauty. I want there to be a local author spotlight, public readings, discussion groups, book clubs, and writing forums. I want it to be a place where creative thought is nurtured, people interact, and the intellect is fed. I want to take something mundane and ordinary, like my life, and make it useful and beautiful - to redeem it.

Can a small little bookstore accomplish all that? Call me a dreamer, but I believe it can. Yet as in all good stories there is conflict and the greatest antagonist in my story is me. Yes I dream but I do not act. In a lot of ways I let life just happen to me, to see it as it comes, to go-with-the-flow, call it what you like but at the root of it all, it's really just an avoidance tactic. If I ignore certain choices for long enough they'll go away, no longer be an option, no longer be a hard decision I must make. Inaction is my greatest obstacle within my own heart. Outside of it, though, there lies a whole host of other obstacles mostly rooted in money, I being a nineteen-year-old nothing, nobody. To begin this whole process I would like to finish getting my degree in English with a minor in Business, which takes money. I would like to buy a pre-existing book store, which takes money. I would then like to refurbish that pre-existing bookstore, which takes money. I would like to buy more books for that pre-existing, refurbished bookstore, which takes money. Then I would like to staff that pre-existing, refurbished, restocked bookstore which (low and behold) takes money. There are so many things that take money but I refuse to be tied down, even amidst an economic downturn, and I choose to believe that God is still God in the midst of it all.

But despite all the seeming impossibility of money matters, it is, like I said, myself that I feel is my greatest liability and that is where I feel this conference (www.donmilleris.com/conference) comes in. Quite simply, what I hope to draw from the conference is mainly just raw encouragement, motivation, and inspiration. If I am to live out my story in a way that is remembered then I will not be doing it alone and I would like to begin my story with a group of people to be sharpened and spurred on by. I want to be encouraged to take steps of faith, to turn those steps into a walk because in the end, no matter what exactly I end up doing I want to not just say that I believe my life is a story filled with purpose and meaning but to act on that belief; to choose my paths in life with reckless abandon - going with every whim of God, exploring areas where I feel God's pleasure in joy-filled contentment- to live quietly or wildly, but to live freely and joyfully, in God's best and to its fullest. This is what I desire my story to look like. And when I reach that part of my story where I can look back, when I reach that Divine Dénouement, that is what I want to see.


 p.s. I was supposed to post a video but my thinking capacity has been inhibited by too much artery/brain-clogging pizza and I couldn't manage to do it.

beginnings and stream-side thoughts

I like to begin projects auspiciously, with profound thoughts and grand promises.
There is nothing special about this day; it's an early Monday morning and I should be asleep. I would like to have some profound thoughts to share but my sleep-deprived brain is reluctant to function at such a demanding pace. I would also like to makes some blindly hopeful promises but the best I can do is that I hope to write every day. And therein lies my project's purpose - to write, to hopefully improve, to mentally engage with the passing days of my life.


I also would like to have some flow, to ease gradually into the sharing of my scattered thoughts, but once again I am veering from my preferred course of action - without any sort of introduction, without any connection, and without frills, I shall begin writing.

A few days ago I sat by my stream filled with a strange happiness, a happiness that is often overlooked in it's subtlety, but is full to the brim of stunning poignancy. Found in the ordinary stuff of life, it's beauty at it's simplest...
It's tiny white butterflies,
Storm clouds and roses,
It's the trills of a songbird's music,
A baby's soft-curled fist, furled in sleep-brought surrender,
It's downy ducklings and dappled sunlight,
It's water's cool kiss on baby toes,
A daddy and his daughter,
It's warm earth and long shadows,
It's the wind through a poplar's leaves,
It's the heavy sweetness of a Russian Olive,
It's the leering laughter of a duck disturbed,
It's sun-warmed pavement under summer-calloused feet,
It's grass-stained knees and dirt-smudged hands,

It's everyday bliss.