To love our God: the reason we live

Why dismiss anything as being a coincidence?

This is a blog entry in which Colleen will make a lot of declarative statements and claim them as facts.

Yesterday, I left New York for what will be about half a year. I was in tech for about four weeks now (one weekend off), for six shows. (if we count this slightly over a week period where I have not been in school as a part of this semester, I worked on ten shows this semester.) Besides the shows, I was living in Brooklyn, folding paper cranes in Washington Square Park, and having delightful meetings. And that little question of, "What did you learn?" keeps singing in my head. I chuckle at that question, now, because it seems like all the things I've learned are deceivingly simple, or things I am constantly relearning... or not relearning, but continuing to be surprised by.

I have started to learn how to sit still.

I have started to learn how to listen.

I continue to marvel at this thing that we cannot describe but is the unity that runs underneath all of creation. We call it God. We call it Love. We call it by many names and yet the only true descriptor is that is it what it is. I Am That I Am. It loves. And Love seeks for the good of that which it loves, so all of the world is filled with Love's attempts to care for us and point us towards the way to live.

I have learned that attitude is inexplicably important and honesty in how you do what you do is essential. I was not honest during The Maker of Dreams and I was during Tongues, and that actually had a huge effect.

I have learned that life is not about accomplishments.

I have learned that there is joy in suffering.

And I have learned that there is no such thing as loss.

There is only one moment--time is simply how we categorize it, experience it. Everything that has been, is, and will be is all now. Time is not horizontal, it is vertical. In every moment, I am five writing a poem about fireflies, and thirteen listening to heavy metal and hating everything, and seventeen crying on Becker's shoulder after my last musical at ARGS, and twenty waking up from a nap in the theater between the two performances of my successful first directing piece with "Voices of Light" playing on the sound system, and twenty five, forty, sixty, doing things that I have no idea what they are yet. Those moments where something clicks, these coincidences where you met someone once and then ten years later you reconnect and that casual first meeting becomes something more significant than you could ever have dreamed? Those are the moments where it feels like it's all happening at the same moment, for me.

"We are one body," is not simply a reflection on the community of the church. It is the truth of the community of the world. To paraphrase, the different "members of the body" are all essential to the functioning of the body. "If all were an eye, where would the sense of smell be?" I'll play a radical role here and say, "If we were all Christian, where would the challengers be? How would progress be made?" Other religions, atheism... we are all essential to each other in how we challenge each other and develop our lives further.

In this body, in this moment, in this unity we are all connected, and therefore loss is this thing that we create as humans by ripping off the connections and insisting that they simply disappeared, usually because a relationship has changed or because someone is no longer physically there--but they are.

I've just said goodbye to a lot of people I love dearly for a long time. I felt the beautiful pangs of missing them when my train pulled out of New York and I knew I was leaving them. If there is a pain more lovely than the pain of missing people you love and who have made an impact, I don't know what it is. ("And what is gained is loss." Zoo Story.) But beyond that pain is the honest fact that I am the person I am at this moment because they are in my life. They have been God's potter hands to my clay and no physical distance will change that. And in this eternal moment that we live in, everything we ever have been or will be to each other exists at the same time--we simply haven't discovered it yet.

I have learned that it is important, if not essential, to learn how to let go with grace. When we cling to things past, we let those things eat us whole. However, sometimes we must fight. I was in a situation this week fighting hugely for something that needed to happen. And I thought, "Let it go, let it go, let it go," but something told me I shouldn't. I thought about fighting for ARGS over winter break, how that was something I could not stand by and let go of. And I started to wonder, "When should we let go and when should we fight?"

We fight when it matters deeply to do so. And what I have started, and I do mean JUST started, to learn is that as we listen to Love there is a compass effect... Love, wanting the best for us, guides us to where we are meant to go. And sometimes that place is devastating. I was about to say "and sometimes it's beautiful" but I think it's all beautiful, even the devastation. I cannot tell you the number of times lately that I have gone somewhere not knowing why, and then found someone who needs me at that moment. It's actually eerie. One of my friends said to me, "It's strange when I'm having an emotional moment and you DON'T randomly run into me." And I think in listening to this compass we start to align our egos with it. It's a sound that I hear, but I don't know where it comes from or where it's going. (That verse is something I've never understood and have been obsessed with ever since I read it.)

And I don't really know where I'm going. I mean, literally, I do, but I know that God WILL surprise me with what I find there. But I feel like everything up until this moment of my life was preparing me to walk the path that is set before me. Not like, "Oh, now I know everything and I can just move through life!" Not like that at all, but that the preparation work has happened and now it's about walking the road and learning from that road. In a way, I've gone through a complete reversal, from someone who was cynical and jaded and bitter far too early on, to someone who actually lives with joy. One of my friends at PHTS said to me once, "Colleen, you're the busiest person I know and yet you are ALWAYS smiling." (Which, okay, I'm not ALWAYS smiling... but almost.) But actually, I think instead of a reversal, it's a completion.

And whatever path this is that I'm on, it feels right. And generally I don't use the words "right" and "wrong", but this DOES feel right. My last 48 hours have been beautiful. I cleaned the apartment and baked muffins and when I stopped by the theater, there was a dance parade on 8th St. And just as I was starting to feel bitter about "oh all these other cultures have such amazing traditional dances and America doesn't have anything," I saw between a group of Indian dancers and Irish people on stilts... a group of contra dancers. Contra dancing happens every Thursday during the summer at Warren Wilson College near Asheville, and there's always a group of Montreat summer staff there. An amp was being wheeled around with them so someone could call the dance. I nearly cried out of the beauty of seeing contra dancing in the streets of New York. Then I went to the theater of a show I worked on to deliver muffins, and there happened to have been sound problems that day and when I walked in and asked the SM and ASM if I could help... well, I've never seen two faces more gratefully surprised to see me. (I couldn't do much but confirm what they thought and come up with a backup plan, but they seemed to appreciate that confirmation.) I ate my last supper in NYC, Halal food and a cupcake all bought from carts. Another show I worked on opened. As I left the theater, the theater owner poured me a shot of whiskey because "anyone who wears a hat like that deserves a shot of Jameson", and for a second the theater staff, the director, and I all shared a drink in the relieved aftermath of two successful openings. I caught the 3am train after chatting with my assistant for a few hours, and immediately after getting off the train, I headed to church, feeling like I was coming directly from tech, in a t-shirt and pants still dusty from when I checked out that speaker. And I thought, "This is right." I spent over two hours with Becker, chatting about life and musical theater and saying goodbye before he moves halfway across the country. I hung out with Emily and ate good steak that was cheaper than some New York sandwiches.

I think what has made these hours so beautiful are all the people--the absolute joy of being in Bon Air and seeing everyone there, the time I've spent one-on-one with people close to my heart, the strangers and new friends, because all I feel for them is Love--and the knowledge that none of this was an accident or a coincidence.

On that slightly-cheesy-but-I'm-still-completely-serious-so-maybe-it-will-be-charming-not-cheesy note, I am now headed to Montreat.

:D