I am one of those who gets excited about words like subversive. That is just the thing for me. You can go and make your life make sense in all the practical forms, I’ll just be upside down and backwards. I hope this life never makes sense to the powerful.

Find me, chasing down back alleys and sitting at bus stop coffee shops even though I am not going anywhere. Isn’t this where the truth got dropped off?

I met a man on Commercial Drive the other day. He wanted to take me on a date to the Union Gospel Mission….amazing food for just a couple of bucks…dinner on me he said. I told him my cab was coming to take me to the airport, he waited it out as he didn’t want anything bad to happen to me. He stood a bit too close and the speed of his movement didn’t set me at ease. But wait he did. He said I could catch the bus to anywhere after lunch, he would show me how. I said I am always going too many directions and I do need someone to tell me which way to go. He stood with me, closed my yellow door,  watched me go. He waved me off like I was a loved one crossing an ocean.

I’ve thought again about all my directions. Like how my best friends have never met my work friends, who don’t know my church friends who have never met my running buddies who absolutely have not met my family, not even my husband. The parents I visit with every day after school do not know that I keep a blog, that I make friends on the internet who I hold quite dear. Nobody knows that I write short stories as the day turns to night or that I read depressing articles about the abyss of this world non-stop but also how I consume books that lay out the formula that will turn the abyss inside out and kingdom side up. I’ve a twitter account for my job and a facebook page for this blog and I manage social media for ministries I start and all the directions I go. I am excitable you see. You can say a lot about me but unenthusiastic is not one of those things. I keep pushing at doors that are locking me out and I’m reading it as a sign of change coming and I’ve said for years how ready I am. I know a dream when I see it, and this hasn’t been mine but it pays the bills you know. So tell me how it is I turn all these passions to purpose, and purpose to something that pays back the bank?

I know for sure if I looked myself in the eyes and gave that girl my best advice I would talk about a concentrated focus and setting my eyes on the prize set before me. I would tell myself that life is never about our place in the race but about how our legs keep moving forward. I would tell myself to catch the bus to nowhere, that seems to be where the adventure is.

But there are small winter boots kicking at the inside of my dryer tonight, scuffing it up with black rubber. They remind me of my people here and how much I wish I was the sort of woman who could attend a PAC meeting without having to crack wild jokes to throw off all that would bind me. I wish I was the type of woman who could care about manicures and cleaning my mouldings. I wish I could be the kind of person who could put all of THIS on strips of paper and into a paper cup, draw out just one and make a life out of it. I wish I was the kind of woman who could be tamed and bridled. I just keep kicking at the trainers, bucking off the rider, biting the hand that feeds me. I am a mustang, kicking at the fence, let me race. I don’t care where.

I wish I had gone to the mission for lunch. Perhaps his directions may have helped.

I stepped in a muddy puddle today. It looked like ice but it wasn’t. Loosing your footing happens mostly on ground that looks solid. There isn’t anywhere to truly trust your steps except the rock. Everything else is quick sand, speeding treadmills.

So here we are, half past January and I’ve starting watching Sherlock like I am one of his fiends. These cold days, it can’t be helped. I hope for so much more, but here it is. I squeeze all I can from the days, nestle quiet in the clear black nights.

I’m torn up by the state of the world. Desperate to find my place to stand. Solid footing. You know that space? The pressure point that keeps the tear from reaching deeper, the world from ripping in half. This seems to be my permanent state, right here, the simultaneous devastated heart-break, and an overwhelming sense of hope, and profound peace. If that is not proof of God then I don’t know what.

Grace, crumbs, spinning planets, dirty dishes and the setting sun…we begin again. People doing the best they can though it seldom looks like that. That is the nature of the kingdom coming, the way it begins in our broken hearts. The way we never split in two.

Today I read about the training grace. And I thought yes. That is it. Training. The point is in the walking, the ever more deliberate gait, the learning to recognize and trust the worthy footholds. Learning to walk with him even if the belt seems to be spinning beneath our feet and the progress is slow. This is the training grace.