I remember reading one time in some teen magazine a letter from the editor to the parents about what she had learned about their tweens, teens, and teeny-boppers while she was the editor of this magazine. She said that one of the things she had learned was that the bedroom was the seat of the soul. I always remembered that because as soon as I read that I immediately believed that was true. At that time I had several bed spread/curtain combinations and had painted my room several different colors and then plastered those tear-out posters from teen magazines of Jonathan Taylor Thomas and BradRenfro and Shawn from Boy Meets World. I took full advantage of that tiger beat. But I remember feeling so excited to 'redo my room' as if it changed anything practical in my life, when actually it didn't change life, it just changed the space in which I did life. When you're a kid, your bedroom is really all you've got to give you degrees of definition and identity. Even now, with the magazine posters off the wall, my idea of interior design has evolved from the Tiger Beat boys to pictures of people I actually know, but the motivation of definition and idenity has basically stayed the same. That these things I decorate my space with are all things that I loved or things that reminded me of people that I loved, books I read, quotes I both stuck to a bulletin board and ingrained in my mind, all these things made up a collection of myself or the best version of myself.
Two weeks ago Jake and I stacked up, packed up, gave away our stuff and moved out of our little apartment. When we were organizing ourselves, I told him to save the pictures for last, as if it made sense for some reason, but the truth was I didn’t want to see them come off the walls. These were the pictures I had taken of people that I loved, I had hung on the walls of the apartment that I loved and for the past two years they watched me live the little life I loved. Taking these down meant that we were indeed leaving this little nest to move to a different little nest meant the end of this chapter. So Jake did eventually take this pictures off the wall of our old apartment (so he could then go about doing the manly work of spackling) and two days ago we moved me all downtown to be a fellow. Knoxville Fellows is a community building, faith based, God seeking, ten month urban monastic program where six girls and six guys live, work, play and pray in Market Square. Myself and 11 other jolly good Knoxville Fellows packed up our pictures and our lives and trudged up 3 and 4 flights of stairs to unpack and spread out together in 4 Market Square. Jake and Murphy helped me move into this place, my new nest, with white walls and empty drawers and an unmade bed. Just as this room is new, stark and white, the relationships with the other 11 people beside and below me are new too. I’m anxious to know my new friends and to be known and begin to build relationships out of this newness like old, lived in rooms. Old friends have drawers filled with memories and inside jokes and secrets and other things that makes their life together. I become anxious and impatient at the beginning, ready to know and be known and stop this silly baby bird hobbling and really fly together. And then it begins, the figurative jet engine I get stuck in, what Anne Lamott calls radio station K-Fucked, what I call Chicken Little. This is to say that occasionally my brain tunes into a voice of criticism and insecurity streaming through my head telling me awful things about myself, how my little sky is falling, and how my job might now work out and I might not fit in and what if our friendship room is always bare and there are never walls filled with embarrassment and affection. And occasionally whenever would scan across this station this summer, these things were my fears. And I swear that every time in my life where I’ve experienced change, leaving, going away from a home to make a new home I’ve felt just like a little baby bird who was leaving for the first time hoping I could remember how to fly and make a a nest before and find other birds of a feather to flock together. This is all apart of starting out, like birthing pains, this voice is something we all here but it’s the unreasonable, self deprecating and the opposite of hope. As Murphy and I start unpacking my room and one of the first things we did is hang pictures. We got a vision for the bare walls around my bed and my dresser and went to work to make my nest. And as these went up on the wall the anxious demons started to lie down. I was reminded of my family’s and friend’s faces looking back at me.
I remembered that I, like Andy Warhol, thought everbody should like everybody (and also thought bright colors were important).
I knew that We all want Peace and that Jesus loves even me.
I also hung a Langston Hughes poem and a Caedmon's call song and a picture of my Grandad's old hand. And Michaelango quote, "I'm still Learning." (Age 87)
These things that I hang reminded who I am and who I love and of what brought me here and brought me away from worry and back to hope, back to reason, and patience. And remindedme that God tells about nesting, about how he feels about all the little birdies and flying things:
Enter New Testament:
Matthew 6:25-27
25"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?
So why do I worry? Why do I freak out?
Enter, Jon Foreman:
Heavenly Father
You always amaze me
Let your kingdom come
In my world and in my life
You give me the food I need To live through the day
And forgive me as I forgive The people that wronged me
Lead me far from temptation
Deliver me from the evil one
I look out the window The birds are composing
Not a note is out of tune Or out of place
I look at the meadow And stare at the flowers
Better dressed than any girl On her wedding day
So why do I worry?
Why do I freak out?
God knows what I need
You know what I need
So why do I worry? Why do I freak out? All of these things are more than just things, these are about nesting, about fake sunflowers and things torn out of magazines and all the things we hang reminding us that we are "much more valuable than the sparrows".
