can't sleep.

My body obviously resents me working nights and is choosing revenge precisely now, when the house is empty and I have eight whole hours of potential rest, alone with my exhausted self.

but no.

Sleep is a naughty child with tangled hair who will run through the social crowd of my weekend with her screaming absence, popping all our conversation bubbles and smearing discontented pink gum on ruined hopes of fun.

oh dear.

The funny thing is, I may miss these quiet moments with myself in the very near future. It's just right now, these moments seem malicious, determined to rob me of my glorious time off with Josh --

I imagine every moment awake now ticking off an equally long and precious moment with him on the sun-drenched road to Calgary...

(yes, I am delusional, in both my hopes and my fears.)

sigh. poor, confused body.
poor, frantic mind.
poor, determined heart.

mother-of-pearl

The sunset tonight was as subtle as a shell.

I wish our atmosphere could make pearls from pollutants, like oysters do.

if i had my way...

I'd be a walking 5' balloon, because I'd eat tangy lemon bars every day (sigh... and other sweet churchy recipes).

I wouldn't recognize love. I'd be stuck on a hamster-wheel of emotional thrills and spills.

I'd miss a lot of spectacular weather, in the interest of comfort and warmth.

's wounds

"If God had a face, what would it look like? And would you want to see, if seeing meant that you would have to believe...?" (Joan Osborne)

Let's call him Rothchild. Rothchild is an old man who only sometimes seems infantile. He wears a knitted rainbow toque all seasons of the year and plucks at his prophetic white beard. Maybe you've seen him sailing the streets of Edmonton with his ship of three shopping carts lashed together, piled high with recyclables. A beautiful way to make a living. Yesterday he was navigating his fleet down the steep curve of 101 St, tenacious and systematic, nosing each cart into the bush off the sidewalk, inching them, equal distances apart, closer to the river. One night he came to the shelter and signed for me to fill an empty milk bottle with water. HOT, he scratched on the pavement with his ancient fingernails, cradling the milk jug like a baby. And curled up with it outside the door until the sun rose.

But if you try to give Rothchild a hug, he'll grope you.

Aiden is much younger, perhaps much less hardened. Unlike Rothchild, he still speaks to the world in general. Speaks with a fuzzy lisp because his teeth are so crooked, sometimes flashes a crooked grin. He's so tall he looks like a Roald Dahl character. Lately he's been wearing shorts, for summer days, and long socks, for air-conditioned shelter nights. He pulls them up to his knees to sleep, and always leaves smudges of mud and dried blood on his pillowcases. Aiden's younger sister won the lottery so he buys tickets every day, and communicates his discontent. F---. Why are you people never prepared? -- when we're out of milk and cereal. Yeah, whatever, leave me alone. -- when we're counting him down to morning wake-up. Nice girls' clothes... -- when we're looking through donations for a jacket that'll fit. Last night I did my own share of grumbling and clung to patience, playing solitaire at the same table as him until he conversed in the only way that seems possible these days: Hey, do you guys have a pair of shorts? These ones have a hole.

Oh, Aiden. So much of you is tattered.

Kevin is proud of his scars, boasts of being "white trash." Scares us all, sometimes, with his conspiracy theories -- alien abductions, terrorists everywhere -- and his imaginations of manliness, basically slaughter and rape. I wonder what rampaging music he's plugged into as he rolls his cigarrettes, wonder what wounding was done to him as a young child, to barricade him into these schizoid episodes. Jean Vanier would say Kevin is more true to the logic of his being than I am. Someone stabbed Kevin's sense of value early on, and he's been bleeding self-hatred ever since. I've been shown more love by family and friends than I know what to do with, but instead of freely giving what I've been freely given, I often let that love slide. Nevertheless, there's a clear shine in Kevin's eyes when he talks about his job at Chili's, and I think he just may be the most faithful dishwasher there.

So love can trump logic, even in Kevin.

These are the shuttered, the torn, the crazy faces of God's boys, and I have to believe his healing gleam, even in their wounds. I have to respond to the jagged bits of love that spill out.

For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. (St. John)

the work of your hands

I didn't speed on the way to work tonight. Instead I listened to loud music and watched the clouds slouching, Simpons-esque, in the sky (though I'm sure there are even better things up there than yellow cartoon letters).

Here at the shelter we got to see a perfectly executed kickflip. Got to hear some really good advice, from a guy who was silent for about four months, and then suddenly sprung loose with all sorts of wandering wisdom: "In the winter, you know you need sunshine. So you just gotta take the summer in while it's here, because winter will come again...". Another guy talked about playing Ponyboy in his school's production of The Outsiders (best jr. high book ever).

It's been a good week, bittersweet. I miss my sisters -- the newly wed Mrs. Rachel Tomalty!!! (honeymooning it up in Cuba), and the not-so-newly wed Mrs. Katie Wong (teaching again in Thailand).

So I've mellowed out a lot in the past few days. Moped, slept, barely "help!"-ed my way into prayer (as if it's "my way"). Baked bread and ate it, honey-spread, by the river with Josh one night. Visited Ratch in Tofield and went for a bike ride on a flat highway, then a flat gravel road (the extremes of rural Alberta!). Intended to fold laundry, clean the bathroom. Sat chatting and eating Gouda cheese with visiting relatives instead. Picked lettuce from the garden and got bit by stinging nettle.

In the field behind our house I saw an albino thistle. Those recessive blades of grass that look like they've been dipped half-way in red paint. A dandelion gone to seed, the size of a mini-basketball. Robins grown hefty like the high school football team, prepping for fall. A fuzzy Remy-orange caterpillar, primed only to win the gorge-yourself-on-a-leaf race. A beetle with a green shell, as tough as the top-coat nail polish Katie forgot in the bathroom drawer, but shimmery like velvet. Dragonflies with cool maneuvers that would beat a fleet of helicopters hands-down, any day.

It may be a blithe assumption, but in these, the details of my days, I can't help translating care. There's something intricate and generous and a little bit stunning in the people and places I love.

O Lord,
our Lord,
how majestic is Your Name
in all the earth...

When we consider the work of your hands...
who are we, that You are mindful of us?

How to Cook a Green Banana

1. Grab the aforementioned fruit on the way out the door in the morning.

2. Toss the banana on the passenger seat of your car and forget about it.

3. Park in a sunny location and leave for approximately 8 hours.

4. Return to car, and now fragrant banana.

5. Shuffle around on the seat, encounter warm brown fruit.

6. Mmmm... Enjoy!