live.

narayan is pike place market's resident hare krishna.
he wears traditional ochre paint smeared on his forehead, and expensive, frameless glasses: a seamless blend of ancient eastern ritual and corporate-american affluence.
after twenty minutes of conversation, some tips on travel in india and a quick sanskrit lesson, he fanagled me into an $11 copy of the bhagavad-gita.
which should have only cost me $10.
he didn't have quite enough change.
the e-mail address, copy of the tract "beyond birth and death" and the temple flower he threw in made up for it.

reza is an effulgent middle-aged iranian who speaks english a little too fast for one whose native tongue is farsi.
the day we met we ate gelato together and became steadfast friends.
i pop in to caravan antiques every now and then to receive a delightfully suffocating hug and a very un-american kiss on the cheek.
we talk about his daughters at school in africa and france. i examine his newest crop of imported persian rugs.
today he accompanied me to the flying apron bakery and bought me something made with apricots and a very good cup of tea.

julie is the woman employed by campus housing maintenance to wake me up very early in the morning to change the lightbulbs above my vanity.
they don't burn out much, so i don't see her often.
but it's a pleasure when i do.
i sit up in bed, bleary eyed and unattractive, and try to make conversation.
tuesday morning she came in. i don't remember much except my initial, hazy idea that someone was playing a practical joke.
i do remember though what she said as she was leaving.
she said that i am a missionary wherever i go.

like she is. like reza. like narayan.

antoine de saint-exupéry

"Good evening," said the little prince courteously.

"Good evening," said the snake.

"What planet is this on which I have come down?" asked the little prince.

"This is the Earth; this is Africa," the snake answered.

"Ah! Then there are no people on the Earth?"

"This is the desert. There are no people in the desert. The Earth is large," said the snake.

The little prince sat down on a stone, and raised his eyes toward the sky.

"I wonder," he said, "whether the stars are set alight in heaven so that one day each one of us may find his own again... Look at my planet. It is right there above us. But how far away it is!"

"It is beautiful," the snake said. "What has brought you here?"

"I have been having some trouble with a flower," said the little prince.

"Ah!" said the snake.

And they were both silent.

"Where are the men?" the little prince at last took up the conversation again. "It is a little lonely in the desert..."

"It is also lonely among men," the snake said.

The little prince gazed at him for a long time.

"You are a funny animal," he said at last. "You are no thicker than a finger..."

"But I am more powerful than the finger of a king," said the snake.

The little prince smiled.

"You are not very powerful. You haven't even any feet. You cannot even travel..."

"I can carry you farther than any ship could take you," said the snake.

He twined himself around the little prince's ankle, like a golden bracelet.

"Whomever I touch, I send back to the earth from whence he came," the snake spoke again.
"But you are innocent and true, and you come from a star..."

The little prince made no reply.

"You move me to pity-- you are so weak on this Earth made of granite," the snake said. "I can help you, some day, if you grow too homesick for your own planet. I can--"

"Oh! I understand you very well," said the little prince. "But why do you always speak in riddles?"

"I solve them all," said the snake.

And they were both silent.

blind.

lerin stopped to ask her if she needed help with her groceries.

i hadn't noticed. i hadn't noticed the brown oldsmobile, its trunk full of plastic bags. i hadn't noticed the lady, elderly, tired, breathing a little unsteadily.

we carried her groceries into her living room and left them. she saw us out, and told us we had made her day.

i would have walked right by.
why hadn't i noticed?
we were walking. i was talking. what about, i can't remember.
probably myself. i do a lot of that.

i'm glad that lerin's eyes were open. she saw a need and met it.

there have been times when i have too. and each time i am receptive to the whisper, something blooms inside of me.

but it doesn't happen often. walking home i thought about what paul really meant when he praised a quiet spirit.
maybe my spirit is too overwhelmed by the clamor i create myself.
i can't hear. i don't see.

how much will i be awakened if i let myself be still.

rain.

in seattle i feel as though i'm always waiting for the other foot to drop.

this afternoon the clouds were so heavy they seemed to absorb even the sunlight above them, rolling it around inside themselves and releasing it, battered and bruised, to tinge the air with a kind of sickly pallor. if we'd been in kansas it would have been tornado weather.

now the droplets are spattering against my window with a force that reminds me of the way a driving ocean gale tosses sand across a beach.

and for some reason, i am frightened.
it's the things i find beautiful that frighten me the most.

boxing day.

i am not canadian.

sure, i have the t-shirt with the maple leaf on it. and i definately say "eh?" a lot; though mostly because so often in my past i've refused to take my mom's advice and wear earplugs to concerts.

but i am about as american as they come. and we americans on the whole tend to take a lot for granted and not give much back. it's a societal ill on which i could expound at length, but for now let's just say we can learn a lot from the holidays observed by our commonwealth friends.

take boxing day. the day after christmas if you're from canada, the u.k. or the land down under, you participate in a "traditional celebration dating back to the middle ages, of which the primary practice is the giving of gifts to the poor or to people in a lower social class." (thank you, wikipedia.)

i'm not sure why america never got in on the action.

this year, some friends and i decided it was high time. a day at spent at the grocery store, k-mart and the family dollar yielded thirty pairs of socks, thirty pairs of mittens, and thirty brown bags bursting with a homemade (if makeshift) christmas dinner. we could easily have created one of those never-seems-to-get-old mastercard ads. "socks for thirty: $21.75."... you know the drill.

the external thermometer on the dashboard registered 17 degrees when we pulled up at the denver rescue mission. its neon sign declaring "Jesus saves" served to illuminate the huddled mass of people doing their best to keep warm and hoping against hope to be admitted for the night. the man we met who worked on staff said that most of them would make it in that night. but already this winter one man has frozen to death.

our thirty little packages were gone in three minutes.

so, too, were the thirty mcdonald's hamburgers we bought to supplement. the people who get in will be fed tonight. but to pull away without having satiated every person lining that street corner felt callous. it reminded me of something out of james; in the second chapter where he writes, "suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. if one of you says to him, "go, i wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? in the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead."

we did our best. we loved sixty people tangibly. but more than that, we found ourselves forced from our habit of turning a blind eye. we're determined to plan ahead, spread the word, do more.

like most of my friends, i'm in the process of being swept up in what it means to "live as an ordinary radical" thanks to shane claiborne's "the irrestistable revolution." his indefatigable search for authentic faith delves deep into the heart of what it means to follow Jesus. (listen to me. i should work in his publicity department.) he contemplates what it would look like if we, instead of embarking on hairbrained schemes and praying that Jesus would bless them, undertook the kinds of things that we know Jesus blesses.

and blessed are the poor.

i have lots of thoughts on this. how i wish they were coherent.

one thought right now though is first and foremost.
it's snowing again.
Jesus, keep them warm tonight.

discovery!

ray lamontagne has a song called "hannah."

i know, right? exciting.

my name isn't one that frequently inspires lyricists to put pen to paper and craft soulful melodies. their exertions seem to be reserved for girls with names like "adelaide," "jenny," and "michelle."

so i listened to it.
i don't think it'll make it onto his greatest hits album.
not really his best work.
but i will overlook its defects because i love the way he says my name.

"come to me, hhaanneh. hhaanneh won't you come on, to me?"

oh, i'm comin', ray. you don't have to tell me twice.

george leonard swallow.

my opa lost his wife nine years ago today.
with stooping shoulders he conveys how much he misses her.
hollow-chested, he walks with a limp now.
his once full beard lies across his sunken cheeks
white and wispy, like down.
but his laugh lines are there still,
even when his eyes are sad.
those eyes are dimming; they are watery but deep
the grey-blue of the sea he loved to sail.
they are the color of the atlantic that he conquered.
he is brave. he is very brave still.