[As you can see by the timestamps, it's been nearly a year since I've posted anything at all. For whatever reason, this post came out last night, and I didn't know what to do with it, so naturally, the answer was to put it on the internet.]


For me to say that color is a big part of my spirituality might put you off a little, though it may not surprise you. If you are on one side of things, you might say that this is "hyperspirituality," and pretty soon, everything and anything will be "holy," right down to picking your nose. On another side, you may say that it is idolatry, or pantheism, or something like that.

And, well, as with most things important to one's spiritual life, I struggle to keep things where they should be.

But disclaimers aside, this is what color is to me--

a sign of Grace. a sign of Love.

I'm finding that the more I discover, the more I unfold, the fewer words I have to describe things like 'Grace,' miracles like 'Love.'They are big words. They are brimming words, words that throb when you pick them up and hold them in your hand.

But anyway, colors are just so lavishly given, aren't they?

It reminds me of a friends favorite saying about food: "God could have just designed us to be hooked up to a gas pump or something and get nutrients in our armpits. But He didn't."

But He didn't. And that makes me think of things like Grace and Love.

I don't know what the equivalent would be to color. I'm sure scientists could tell me that our brains need it to keep us safe, as sensory communication, something. Me no talk science good. Me watch Planet Earth and Disney Cats.

Maybe. I don't think that threatens the beauty of it, though.

Additionally, color is one of the few things, one of the few experiences that I daresay can be shared by all of humanity. All can experience the freedom in a clear blue sky, the glory in a person's skin tone.

It is a gift.

More than once, it has been the deep purple of a favorite shirt, the rich green of tree, the grey-blue of my own eyes that has pulled me out of despair, as whispers of hope, tokens of love, causes of praise, reminders of the One who gave them.

I know this isn't the same for everyone--my friend Erica takes butterflies to be those signposts to the Giver of all good things, and even I have other examples--squirrels and quail are reminders of joy, and don't even get me started on the spiritual experience a good meal (especially with good people!) can be.

Or, this may not make sense to you at all. I get that.
But I hope maybe you start to notice things like color, or food, or music, or friends as gifts, as glory, and are pointed to their Giver, the Glorious One.

I haven't posted lately due to my need to read copious amounts of Dante (because of course, I am veryveryvery far from my reading goal at the beginning of the summer,) and  due to the fact that I am moving back to Waco day after tomorrow. And even now, this is post is half-filled with poetry (but don't stop reading now! :) )


With the stressexcitement of moving back, the frustration I feel with financial aid and all things monetary, the somewhat-imminence of graduation, and a plethora of other worries and emotions, I have taken little time to pause in my spirit. Part of me says "'Pause in my spirit?' Sheesh, like I haven't heard the 'Lookattheliliesandseehowtheydonotworry sermon' before." 


But the other part (hopefully the stronger part) of me knows that I desperately need to be reminded that His eye is on the sparrow. And that my worry depletes my ability to praise, to have joy, to love properly...and so many other things. 


Anyway, I came across this poem and was struck by the reminder to recognize beauty daily, and to transform 'regular' moments into ones of praise. I had to share. Enjoy it, enjoy this day, for He has made it good. 




Morning Song  by Marcia Brown


Here, I place
a blue glazed cup
where the wood
is slightly whitened.
Here, I lay down
two bright spoons,
our breakfast saucers, napkins
white and smooth as milk.

I am stirring at the sink,
I am stirring
the amount of dew
you can gather in two hands,
folding it into the fragile
quiet of the house.
Before the eggs,
before the coffee
heaving like a warm cat,
I step out to the feeder-
one foot, then the other,
alive on wet blades.
Air lifts my gown - I might fly-

This thistle seed I pour
is for the tiny birds.
This ritual,
for all things frail
and imperiled.
Wings surround me, frothing
the air. I am struck
by what becomes holy.

A woman
who lost her teenage child
to an illness without mercy,
said that at the end, her daughter
sat up in her hospital bed
and asked:
What should I do?
What should I do?

Into a white enamel bath
I lower four brown eggs.
You fill the door frame,
warm and rumpled, kiss
the crown of my head.
I know how the topmost leaves
of dusty trees
feel at the advent
of the monsoon rains.

I carry the woman with the lost child
in my pocket, where she murmurs
her love song without end:
           Just this, each day:
           Bear yourself up on small wings
           to receive what is given.
           Feed one another
           with such tenderness,
           it could almost be an answer.

Just a bit over a week until I move back to the bustling metropolis of Waco, and all of the nervousexcitement has been building up again.

You would think that after doing this twice, I wouldn't have butterflies about starting college...again.

It's my third year, and my third time to be facing new things simultaneously scary and thrilling. At first it was freshman year in its entirety, and last year it was being in a CL in a new hall and a new staff.

And you know, both turned out splendidly. Freshman year was incredible, and being a NoRo CL was better than I ever dreamed. I grew and grew through them both. I hope and pray that this time next year, I will be saying the same thing about changing my major to GTX and adding Creative Writing as a minor.

I don't like decisions I make myself: if it doesn't turn out the way I want it to, then guess what? My fault. [I learned that the hard way this summer.] . Understanding direction and His will have always been desperate points of panic for me. I feel like if I get on the wrong train, nothing can be right again; the whole trip is ruined. But all in all, I feel good about this one. I think I've done my best listening to whisperings and responding to nudges. I have no idea where any of this is taking me, and my mother's talk of picking a grad school makes me want to cry, but...cross my fingers, hope to die I think it'll be ok.

And now for a Billy Collins poem. It's relative, sort of. Well, really just to the fact that I'm minoring in poetry now. Anyways, enjoy :)




The Effort
Would anyone care to join me
in flicking a few pebbles in the direction
of teachers who are fond of asking the question:
"What is the poet trying to say?"

as if Thomas Hardy and Emily Dickinson
had struggled but ultimately failed in their efforts—
inarticulate wretches that they were,
biting their pens and staring out the window for a clue.

Yes, it seems that Whitman, Amy Lowell
and the rest could only try and fail
but we in Mrs. Parker's third-period English class
here at Springfield High will succeed

with the help of these study questions
in saying what the poor poet could not,
and we will get all this done before
that orgy of egg salad and tuna fish known as lunch.

Tonight, however, I am the one trying
to say what it is this absence means,
the two of us sleeping and waking under different roofs.
The image of this vase of cut flowers,

not from our garden, is no help.
And the same goes for the single plate,
the solitary lamp, and the weather that presses its face
against these new windows--the drizzle and the
    morning frost.

So I will leave it up to Mrs. Parker,
who is tapping a piece of chalk against the blackboard,
and her students—a few with their hands up,
others slouching with their caps on backwards—

to figure out what it is I am trying to say
about this place where I find myself
and to do it before the noon bell rings
and that whirlwind of meatloaf is unleashed. 

There are few memories of my childhood (pre-10) that I can truly pin down when I try.

Mostly, images flit randomly across a screen between my ears--a dalmatian jumping against a screen door, the Eiffel Tower, a lizard in the garden, Mom telling Dad that the neighbor's yard smells like pot, and me being very much in love with one of the homeschool co-op kids when I was 7.

But one of few is clear.

I am about 6, and I am kneeling on my bedroom floor. The afternoon sun bathes the pepto-bismol walls and the wood floor. I am trying to pry bright pink play-doh out of the cracks in the floorboards. I suddenly look up as my mom calls my name. [I don't think I am supposed to be playing with play-doh.]

She tells me that a neighbor unknowingly ran over Wolfie, the best dog in the universe. The world stops.

The truth is, now I can't remember much of Wolfie, except that he was named for Mozart, and that my mom spoke to him in Spanish sometimes.

And yet I have this strange urge to visit his grave behind my grandmother's house every time I visit. It's been 14 or 15 years, true, but the blank cement brick in the ground under the apricot tree marks my first memory of loss.

But then, as I intimated in the previous post, I have odd nostalgic associations. I keep things.

Which is why it is hard to imagine that my grandmother will be selling her house soonish. Ok, well, not because of the dog buried in the backyard, but also because Opa and I planted a garden in the courtyard. And picked fruit from the back trees. And because Nano and I watched hummingbirds on her porch, and then went inside to play dominoes.
I have picked swiss chard,
chased lizards with my cousins,
taken awkward family photos (I insisted on holding an American flag to cover up the bruise on my arm. The bruise showed anyway),
chatted at dinner parties,
lined the driveway with luminarias,
and spent hours opening Christmas presents.

Amidst changing houses and parents and schools and friends, this house is what I have always been able to come back to. So, coming to grips with the fact that all this nacimientos and paintings will have to go somewhere else soon is a bit overwhelming.

But hey, a house is a house right? Memories are one thing, but people are another.

All that said, if you appreciate beauty at all, you should check out the virtual tour of the house--and you might come to understand where I got any of my personal style and love of color :)
enjoy! (Facebookers, you might have to click "view original post" to see it.)

Tomorrow morning, my house is undergoing surgery. At least, that's how I've been thinking of it--our abode has a disease, and people much smarter than us (we? correct me) are going to literally cut it out and make it good again.

Well, really, there's apparently a lot of moldnastiness growing in the wall that joins my bedroom to the bathroom. Guys with tools will be here at a(n?) hour that I would normally like to be waking up.

Anyways. Therefore, somehow all this means that my bedroom gets a new paint job and carpet. Yay me. I've spent a good part of the day deconstructing my room, bit by bit, and I have learned something about myself. I am a pack rat. Of memories, mostly. Pinned to my bulletin board were:

• remnants of homecoming/prom corsages. I like dead flowers, apparently. 
• tickets from operas, plays, and even movies I deemed important at the time (Pirates 3, Bourne Ultimatum, Spiderman, and so forth.)
• a collection of junk with my name on it. Call it narcicissim narcissism, but my "Antonia" (in case you didn't know), is difficult to find on bicycle license plates and gift-shop coffee mugs. So, I keep most things that bear my name: keychains, bracelets,  even name tags from Student Leadership University (uh, 2005?) and Baylor orientation and Line Camp. You know too much, this is embarrassing.
• pictures: my sister when she was yet a tiny imp, New Mexico churches and sunsets, and high school dances and homecoming traditions. My favorite of the latter might be one of Joshua, Karon, and Taylor in full wacky-tacky apparel karate-chopping the air. 
• Various fortune cookie fortunes that have meant something to me at some point. My favorite might be: "you create your own stage. The audience is waiting." It sounds a lot like something my dear friend and teacher Angela told me--about taking the stage, stepping into the spotlight and so forth, and fully committing to the character that I am supposed to play in this story. [She was my theater teacher, so I rolled with it :) ]
• Posters and other memorabilia from The Visitors, the play that Alia, Joshua, and I wrote, directed, and produced. For some reason, I feel the need to keep everything--I still have a full box of flyers. Not just one or two, but the whole box of 'em.
• I should also note that if you have written me a note or a birthday card in the last five years or so, I probably still have it. They remind me of how freakin blessed I am to have the friends and family that I have.

There is something to be said about a friend that will leave you alone in her house, trusting you to feed the cat and lock the door when you leave. "Stay as long as you need to," she says.

I am in awe of friendship. I am sitting in a house of long-standing friendship, thinking, "how did I get here? and why haven't these people kicked me out yet?" Alia and I have, in a sense, shared our lives for several years now, so our friendship is like wearing a pair of broken-in jeans; they just fit well. I don't know if I am more "myself" with her than with most people, because I don't know what that means, but it comes pretty close. And then Angela. Little did I know that the woman who gushed about Donald Miller at a state speech meet competition would also live in this long-standingfriendshiphouse. From theater teacher to mentor to friend, from Montana and back again, I've discovered that this lady's my twin, so I need to pay attention. I have bared all before them, and have borne a lot with them. And they still love me a lot.

And these are only two of my friends. There are certainly more I could write about. How did I get so lucky?


 

From musical stars to Baylor professors, from getting arrested to owning a menagerie, for the past week, I've been having really nutso dreams, full of random characters and events.  And I don't know why. I've never really been able to remember my dreams, especially in the minute detail of late. So yes, this is blog-worthy. Really, this post started out as me just recording these rare occurrences. But why not share, especially since it's summer, and most of us are bored already? Maybe some Joseph with a technicolor dreamcoat reads my blog and will tell me about years of plenty to come.