Ultimately, our gift to the world around us is HOPE- not blind hope that pretends everything is fine. The Church has nothing to say to the world until they learn to throw better parties: Backyards, basements, porches (living rooms, parks, tiny apartment kitchens ..) It is the flow of REAL LIFE, in the places that we live and move with the people that are on the journey with us that we are reminded it is God’s world and we are going to be okay. (rob bell)
..heaven only knows why we love it so.
So I sit, in my big wonderful chaise lounge in what was probably designed to be a breakfast nook of some kind in the apartment. My mom gave us when we moved in, never to put a table . This chair is oversized, micro fiber and, in its former life, used to live in my mom’s bedroom and be a bed/drool cushion for Goldberg our fat bulldog. Now, depending on who you asked, me or Goldberg, the chair has moved on up, literally, to our second floor apartment and sits overlooking the sliding glass door which leads out to the patio for our breathtaking view of the parking lot and one of its many dumpsters. Community trash receptacles aside, this apartment is perfect because of its windows and I love to sit in this spot in the morning and look at the soft morning light and the bark peeling off the trees, or right now, let the darkness look in me. It is night now and the only light one is from the lamp with the kokopelli man on the table beside me. I remember buying the lamp when Jake and I first moved in and I remembered loving it, loving all of this. I placed the on the table beside the chair so the little man can appreciate the view of the dumpster and he has thanked me by playing faithfully on his lamp stand ever since. This little apartment is my home and it has felt like home since my brother and I moved in over 2 years ago. I read somewhere not too long ago that a body is just a ‘soul container’ and this apartment is really nothing more than just a container the little details of this little life of mine. Jake, the kokopelli lamp man and I moved in 2 years ago from my mom’s house into this place. It was the first time Jake had lived away from home and my first apartment in Knoxville and I remember the both the feeling of freedom and the sense of nesting, of finding a place to put up a little temporary white picket fence and park my little black car out front with and have now, this moment of nostalgia with my computer screen glowing blue in the falling dusk. After we’d moved in and set up all our respective things, we invited over our respective friends for a ‘party’. I don’t remember many parties when I was in high school or ever having the pleasure and pressure of hosting one, but this space contained what was to be my hostessing debut. The borders mafia and some other people came to humor the over-excited hostess and christen our humble abode and when it was over, Jake said, Jen that was really fun, lets do it again. So we did again, and again, and again. Basically any excuse- Oscar watch party, Spring break NINTENDO PARTY!, Easter dinner, basketball playoff party, impromtu dance parties, new years, jay’s birthday, Shannon’s birthday, etc, Thuper Thinny Thursday! So this place contained those days and nights and quiet morning prayers and lots of other memories of me coming to love these people on this journey with me during these last 2 years, this time that has been so sweet and the happiest I have ever been. This is where Murphy and Jake met, where I had marathon paper writing sessions, wrapped presents, gave presents, took pictures, posed for pictures long talks on the patio in what are now patio chairs #2, as the first ones met their maker at Bonnaroo last year. I remember sitting on the patio reading Madeline l’engle last summer and laying in my bed with flashlight reading John Steinbeck the summer before that. I loved this place because it helped me contain all that. And now the apartment is quiet just me and the heat lightning outside and I've been writing this blog for so long that the computer is hot on my lap. and cocopeli man and the flowers still here placed by my little morning seat since my birthday. The bouquet placed in a makeshift ‘vase’ of a two liter coke bottle, leaves slowly turning downward and petals have landed all over the table, the cocopeli man, my bible, my old journal, my new journal, and all over the floor. petals have falling off as if the flowers had been playing a game of ’loves me, loves me not’. I found a petal in the fridge earlier. Heaven only knew why I loved that so. I thought about cleaning this up, but a flower bouquet’s love life is frankly none of my business. This space is big enough to contain the both of us.
so I love this place, this space container with the big windows but mostly I love it for how it has helped me contain all of this and all of you people that I carry in my suitcase heart. And I will miss this come July. But sometimes its time for things to slowly begin to end. like the flowers petals on my bible.
