survival mode [perspective]

[perspective: the view from our porch as a thunderstorm rolls in ]

because it seemed that the days had been coming in frantic rushes.  there were details to remember, a farewell party to coordinate, daniel's show going late, late, late cutting into precious sleep, arranging babysitters, a saturday board meeting to chair.  round & round she goes.

& i sat in the tuk tuk & exhaled deeply. mind racing, i thought:

"we've been living in survival mode ever since cedar was born.  when will it end?"

& then i remembered.

i remembered the woman with the recycling cart & her newborn slung in a scarf between the bars that she pushed, walking the streets asking for others' trash., unable to rest - where was her maternity leave?

i remembered the boys huddled at the bus stop sniffing the glue bottle.  so young & beautiful & already longing to be numb.

i remembered our own ming kohm & how she had to leave her tiny daughters to go work in the rice fields.  how she heard their cries when a neighbor lied & told them that she was never returning.  how she showed me how she would bind her breasts so she could go the whole day without feeding her baby.

i looked down & remembered that the coffee i was drinking as i whizzed through the city costs the daily wage of the construction workers i watch from my kitchen window.

 oh, right. 

i have never, not ever, known what it is like to live in survival mode.

sometimes perspective is like a swift slap to the face. 

 [but the good kind, like the kind that snaps you out of navel gazing & jolts you into gratitude]

abundance [a tropical thanksgiving]

But the good news of God’s creation is that the fundamental reality, the deepest truth, is not scarcity, but abundance. There is enough, and overflowing – until we, in our scarcity-mindset, decide that there’s not enough, and start grasping. That grasping cuts us off and, as much as it’s up to us, breaks the flow of abundance. We find ourselves dried up, burned out, prunishly wondering why we feel so lousy and “don’t have anything to offer” (you should hear the words between the quotation marks as spoken awkwardly through an overly stuffed mouth)

-Aron Reppman, "An overflowing theme" in catapult magazine

This year we had the great fortune to celebrate Thanksgiving three times! We celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving in October & last week we hosted a Thanksgiving feast for our MCC colleagues & also attending another feast mostly full of Australians celebrating their first Thanksgiving.

[tropical feast!]

[apple cider (thanks christina!) & peach crisp]

[eating on our porch]

& amidst the busyness of it all, when I really allow myself to contemplate the abundance that surrounds me, especially in this place where scarcity has been the norm, I am stunned.

& thankful.

very thankful.