Bearing witness to the process...

Nine days from now I will begin counselling as a practicum student. When people ask me if I'm excited about this, I tell them that the truth is that I'm terrified. How can I, a young women with only twenty-six years of life experience under her belt, possible have anything to offer in the way of help to those who come desperately seeking it. It makes me wish that I was starting in the high schools rather than the counselling center, at least with teenagers I have more life experience than them.

I'm trying to remind myself that many great speakers and performers continue to get anxious before going on stage, even when they've done it a million times, some would say that the anxiety is what gives them their edge and keeps them from getting complacent. Maybe it is the same thing with counselling, maybe no matter how much experience I have I will continue to get anxious before walking into a counselling session, maybe that is what will keep me from thinking I have the answers and ensure that I continue to honour the journey of the individual's life I am about to have the privilege of bearing witness to. 

Another thing that I am afraid of is my ability to carry the weight of the stories I hear. People don't usually show up at counselling because things in their life are going well, and I have a tendency to carry people's pain a little bit too close. While I am confident that I am sustained by a great God who bears my burdens (Psalm 68:19 - Praise be to the Lord, to God our Saviour, who daily bears our burdens), I too often neglect to take the time to lay them down for Him to carry. If you are reading this and are someone who prays, I would appreciate a prayer for me, that I would allow God to carry the burdens that threaten to weigh me down.

This entering into other's life stories, exposure to different experiences and understandings of the world,  I'm sure is going to bring into question many ideas and beliefs I have come to hold, which is kind of why I am here. Hopefully getting into this blog again will give me a place to process these things, and hopefully others will join in on the conversation :)

I'll leave you with a quote I came across in one of my readings from my fall classes... which is really more a reminder for myself than anything else:
"Maturing as a person both inside and outside the consultation room, ultimately you will find that what you have to offer is not a technique, not a theory, but who you are." - Kramer

my soul cries...

I am easily broken
when your actions call into question
that I belong
that I am valued
that I am loved
and my heart aches
and I feel all alone

It takes courage to grow up to be who you really are...

The last time I checked in on this list was january 3 2007... two years have passed and I don't think I've made much progress... some will be especially difficult to accomplish because they aren't so much under my control, like falling in love and getting married.... but I've got to get moving if I'm going to do all this in the next four years and four months!

30 things to do before I'm 30...  (newly completed things are in green)
1. Graduate with my BA
2. See Lifehouse in concert
3. Play in the pit band of a musical
4. Live outside of Ontario for at least 1 year
5. Find the perfect dress
6. Go to Europe
7. Go to South Africa
8. Open a youth drop-in center
9. Fall in love
10. Get married
11. Wear contacts
12. Own a piano (this used to say grand piano but I'm so happy to have a piano at all I decided to change it!)
13. See Les Miserables
14. See a musical on Broadway
15. Get blue highlights
16. Paint a picture on a canvas
17. Go on a cruise
18. Go on a round the world trip
19. Wax my eyebrows
20. See Rent for a second time
21. Take a photography course
22. Get a Masters degree (this will be done when I'm 26.. woot!)
23. Watch an entire season of a TV show in one day
24. Buy a car (planning this for the summer)
25. Sleep under the stars
26. Make a scrapbook for myself
27. Tithe consistantly
28. Work at a job that fulfills me
29. Get a piercing

I don't know who I am without you...

It is when I'm stressed beyond all sanity
that I hate my singleness the most
Because I start to believe that
I am all alone in the world and no one has my back
And my brain is to fried to convince me otherwise
So I need to be held
Tightly and for a long time
As a physical reminder
That I am not alone

Don't tell me I'll be fine...

Well I've been here before
Sat on the floor in a grey grey room
Where I stay in all day
I don't eat, but I play with this grey grey food

Desolé, if someone is prayin' then I might break out,
Desolé, even if I scream I can't scream that loud

I'm all alone again
Crawling back home again
Stuck by the phone again

Well I've been here before
Sat on a floor in a grey grey mood
Where I stay up all night
And all that I write is a grey grey tune

So pray for me child, just for a while
That I might break out yeah
Pray for me child
Even a smile would do for now

'Cause I'm all alone again
Crawling back home again
Stuck by the phone again

Have I still got you to be my open door
Have I still got you to be my sandy shore
Have I still got you to cross my bridge in this storm
Have I still got you to keep me warm

If I squeeze my grape and I drink my wine
Coz if I squeeze my grape and I drink my wine
Oh coz nothing is lost, it's just frozen in frost,
And it's opening time, there's no-one in line

But I've still got me to be your open door,
I've still got me to be your sandy shore
I've still got me to cross your bridge in this storm
And I've still got me to keep you warm

Warmer than warm, yeah

                                                 -Damien Rice

curl up with a book...

You get a little moody sometimes but I think that’s because you like to read. People that like to read are always a little fucked up.

— Pat Conroy

we give the best of our hearts uncritically - to those who hardly think about us in return...

I
HATE
THAT
YOU
AREN'T
HERE
(x2)

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.

— Dwight Eisenhower

It's raining harder now...

Standing outside in a thunderstorm
she could cry and the tears would just mingle
with the rain pouring down her face
no one would know
instead she runs through the rain
like a little girl
the cool water washes away all the adult problems
that weigh her down
when she's done she takes of her shoes
and walks home barefoot through the wet grass
the sun peeks through the clouds
and the storm passes

What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created?

This speech was given by Robert F Kennedy over 40 years ago.
The issues he speaks on are still issues today.
Nothing has changed in 40 years.
Humanity reeks of failure.

---------------------------------------

This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity, my only event of today, to speak briefly to you about the mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.

It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one - no matter where he lives or what he does - can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on and on in this country of ours.

Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by an assassin's bullet.

No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of reason.

Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.

"Among free men," said Abraham Lincoln, "there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs."

Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far-off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire whatever weapons and ammunition they desire.

Too often we honor swagger and bluster and wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach non-violence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.

Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.

For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.

This is the breaking of a man's spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all.

I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered.

We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community; men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this, there are no final answers.

Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.

We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.

Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanquish it with a program, nor with a resolution.

But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again.