"history, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, however, if faced with courage, need not be lived again." maya angelou

the snow lay softly on the mountains this morning. it has snowed much in these last few days. i spent all of yesterday shoveling snow. i even conned some local kids to shovel with me by saying that if they shoveled one of the walks they could use the snow for a fort. i love kids. ha. my bones are sore this morning. i am tired, but alive and well.

i am learning so much about growing and moving forward. moving on. moving up. growing endlessly toward heaven blue skies. i think that i have such a fondness for mountains because they stretch themselves, longing so much for the sky that the erupt from the ground, contradicting gravity and silently conversing with the stars they succeed at the impossible.

living in a house with 27 other people (give or take 1-5 people passing through at a time) makes life very interesting. everyone knows your arguments, your sadness, your laughter, your socks. i came with 14 pair of socks and last time i checked, 6 are accounted for. there are 2 functioning showers, 4 functioning toilets, 1 kitchen, mismatched plates, mugs and silverware... we share everything from our lives and sorrows to our beds, clothes, snow pants, songs and absurd stories. there is rarely, if ever, silence in the house. there is this hodge podge of beliefs, styles and dreams. it is a mosaic. it is as beautiful as stained glass and can be as fragile too. i am amazed every day at my own selfishness living with this many other souls. i feel old. i feel young. i feel free.

life is meant to be lived moment by moment. drinking in all of it. soaking it 'til our bones are full of it's magic and wonder. i cannot change the things that have been. i cannot make them any different, but i do not have to keep living in that place. the pheonix dies in the fire then rises from the ash. stoke this fire then i will burn this fortress down. i will fly. i am.

be still.
be loved.

questions...

it is the question beneath the questions beneath the questions. it is the question that drives us to study theology, philosophy, science, art, anything really... we ask the greater questions of life and death, God and pain because, when it boils down to it, we want to know one thing... "do you love me? (am i even loveable?) then this question poses others like: why? why not? what is this pounding in my soul? we seek truth, we seek God (or even to know the existence of God) because we truly just want to know if we are loved. it is all we hope for. all we want is for someone to love us.
I have been decompressing my image of God over these last few years and in the silence i have found, to quote a song, that "a voice rises within me saying hold on my child, i'll give you strength, i'll give you hope, just stay a little while. i believe in the sun even when it is not shining and i believe in God, even when there's no one there."
today was a hard day. i long for the familiar. to be in the company of people who know me, know me well. to sit and read with my dog at my feet. to have coffee with my dad, sit in the kitchen with my mom, play catch with my sister... the comforts of home.
i sat in a chapel today weeping. i sang with a broken voice through the tears as i looked back on the life i have had. it has been anything but orderly, nothing like i planned it to be, far from what i had originally hoped. yet i am not disappointed. i am glad at who i am. to feel pain deeply is to enter into a beautifully broken world, to see colors brighter than before, to cry and laugh and feel all of it. to sit in a tiny church in the swiss alps and know that i am loved... this is goodness.
my roommate from england told me this today and i cling to her words, "this day will pass annie, and don't forget that you are lovely through all of this, it's beautiful to be broken."

ask.
be still.
be loved.

Toliet seats and Rilke's grave adventure

...so we go on living. one breath at a time. one heart beat, then the next. to steal a thought from Mary Karr, the clock ticks, "now, now." there is urgency with every step, a hurriedness to every bite. then i woke to that awful sensation. and my mind said in a voice resembling Ralph from the simpson's, "Oh no! my mouth tastes like burning." a few hours later, i emerged from the stale cold bathroom, pepto pink tiles lining the walls seemed a like a sunrise next to what was emitting itself from my own being. no nausea, just puke. 2 days of puke.

today was our day off. Tim and i had planned to go to a town about an hour or 2 away to visit the poet Rainer Maria Rilke's grave. ( i inserted Early Spring one of his poem's below) such beauty to his work, such insight into a world that is so beautifully broken with potential. well, thanks to my late night rendezvoux with le toilet, plans had to be changed. we instead made a winter world in my bunk, complete with poetry and drawn pictures of the grave yard. it was a beautiful day, one of which i slept much away. to be ill and wrapped in the warm arms of a poem seems just like the stillness my soul was searching for this week.

i mentioned in my last blog that i had received some hard news. the funny thing is, i am so happy it came. i am so glad that it is finally done. that though it may have initially been hard, it is good. we watched a movie last night called "the choosen" about 2 jewish teenagers who become friends. the hasidic one's father tells him towards the end of the movie that he spent much of their time together in silence because it was in the silence that he learned how to connect his head and his heart. the son learned the great pain and loneliness of the world, while at the same time learning the great joy and compassion or it as well. the father asks, "was i wrong to teach in this way? was i not a good father? i do not know." i think that was such a beautiful image of God, we think that He is cold, or not there, but in His silence He is loving us more than we could ever know and teaching us how to use that love.

i am learning. it is good. it is silent, but for that i am thankful.

be still. be loved.

Early Spring

Harshness vanished. A sudden softness
has replaced the meadows' wintry grey.
Little rivulets of water changed
their singing accents. Tendernesses,

hesitantly, reach toward the earth
from space, and country lanes are showing
these unexpected subtle risings
that find expression in the empty trees.

turkish baths

There is an interesting moment in life when it all seems too much. When the weight seems like it will surely break not only your back, but every last bone in your body... when the pain of growth seems more ominous than the static of numbing the heart. when you stare numbly into the mountainside, hoping that for a moment, it would come alive and embrace you the way your mother did when you scrapped you knee or fought with a playground friend. there is a tenderness here in these overgrown hills. a dangerous safety. for the first time in a long time i have been able to be still and face the demons i ran from for so long. there is nothing more frightening and freeing than the ability to stand in the midst of my demons and face the reality that the worst demon might just be myself. a friend once said that bitterness is the poison that we drink and wait for the other person to die. i have realized the gravity of my own selfishness, and the pain of my past. at moments it seems too much, but then a song rises in the air, mingling with the clouds, dancing until they become one. it is a beautiful moment, somewhere in the in-between.

i am so thankful to be here. so thankful to wake up each morning. so proud that i am taking very hard steps to become the kind of woman i hope to be. i love life. i love simplicity. i love walking up and up and up... until the horizon seems so close and so far all at once.

we wake up each day, eat breakfast, read books, clean, discuss, shovel snow, make snowmen / angels, dance, sing, laugh much, cry often....

the chalet i am living in was once a home for kids with physical disabilities and disorders, it was a place of healing and care, outside of its inhabitants, not much has changed.

today i went to the turkish baths near by with two of the guys here, Thomas, a worker here and Timmy Time, a rock star organic farmer from Washington state. We spent the day swimming under a canopy of mountainous skies, steam baths, saunas... and avoiding old men in speedos (a near impossible task). it was a really refreshing day, much needed for my body and soul (sometime i may write about the hike we took the other day, which ended with us not being able to find a path down and using a ski hill complete with trudging through 4 feet of snow for about a 1000 ft drop... but that's for another day). My favorite part of the day was going into the turkish baths... there was a men's, women's and co-ed. the co-ed was packed, don't know about the men's, but the women's was completely empty. it was a room filled floor to ceiling with white tiles, only the ceiling had pin hole lights in in, looking like the stars were my only companions. i danced in the mist of the heat and starlight. liberation. freedom. my soul is at ease. i got some pretty hard news today, but honestly, i could not be more at peace with my soul and the life i have.

i love you all, and miss so many. if only my arms could stretch continents. for now i keep you in my heart, on my mind and through my prayers.

be still.

the swiss know how to make mountains...

i have debated writing a new blog many a time, but the simple fact of the matter is i don't know where to start. what is one to say when they wake up every morning to the most beautiful sight they have ever seen? when the sun breaks over the mountains during breakfast and the lake of fog in the valley below glows a soft pink? when the snow smells sweet and looks like icing spread thick over a sky of mountains? when the red wine is served mulled and warm? when the smell of homemade bread warms the air just before every meal? when the chocolate has the texture of melted butter in your mouth? where to start i ask?

i have been so overwhelmed this week. wrapped in beauty and books. i woke the other morning at 4:30 and couldn't fall back asleep. i sat in my bunk and listened to the night whispering sweet hymns down the halls of this chalet built for giants, kings and well... servants like me. that morning as the hours past i got up, took a cold... freezing shower (unknown to me, we ran out of oil during the night rendering us without heat or hot water). i watched as the snow capped mountains turned from the blue found on a marines formal dress to the softest amber. it is a humbling place to be.

i have slept well. i feel better than i have in years. i feel alive. i have the energy i did when i was in high school... if any of you can remember how obnoxious that was...

i have so much to learn i am sure of it. discipline is hard... i haven't read a full book in what seems like years. i have already read 2 since tuesday. i have fallen in love with the routine... hoping that i continuously keep falling in love with it.

it is a magically normal place to be. 3 meals a day, chores, study. plain. simple. peaceful. wonderful.

so i will go now, stand on the balcony and watch a full moon shine, whispering its prayers as i do into the mountain's slumber.

arrived in Dublin

so i made it to dublin. i am stopping here for a few days and to bring in the new year before i head on to Switzerland. Pete and Curt decided to come along, and i am so very glad to have them here. we have certainly enjoyed ourselves thus far...

first a flight to NYC. then a layover... we had enough time to go out into the city and walk around, eat some pizza, enjoy the company of each other... a cab ride or two... so i may or may not get motion sick, which you wouldn't think since i lived in almost constant migration on a moving vehicle for the last few years. i was so very glad to get back to the airport... 

wrapped in the excitement of it all i woke sunday morning, stayed up all night until monday, flew out monday and arrived early tuesday in Dublin without ever sleeping on the plane. i was so excited to get into a bed... however that was not an option. our room would not be ready until 2 or 3 in the afternoon. it was not quite 9 am. so we wandered. what a beautiful wandering it was. we enjoyed some breakfast (for 2 hours) and some stillness. however the stillness and the exhaustion met and we again took to our wanderings. i truly like Dublin, or at least what i have seen this far. 

i got in bed around half 2 (2:30) dublin time... 8:30am nashville time, 47 hours since i got out of my bed at my sister's house in west nash. i got up for about an hour to have dinner, and it is now almost 5 in the morning here and i just woke up. beautiful. 

i can say that i am excited for this journey. i am excited to grow. i am excited to become...

listen to the music of life. dance with it's rhythm. enjoy it's company. today i live. 

oh the blessing

So i wrote a blog about being alone... i want to clarify... 1. it was late. 2. i am not heartbroken, was, a long time ago. 3. i am sooooooo Loved. 4. i am sooooooo loved. 

allow me to elaborate. 

there are times in life when we build things up and we fret and we begin to believe things that simply aren't true. over these last few weeks of preparing to go, i began to worry that i would be ever so alone on this journey. 

HOW WRONG I WAS!!!

this past sunday i was overwhelmed in e-mails, "i love yous," prayers, hugs and tears. the outpouring of love in my life is so wonderful i could simply drown in the joy of it all. to know that so many will keep me in their thoughts and prayers over the next months (and even years) is to know how alone i am not. 

so thank you to all who are walking this journey with me. my heart is glad and my mind is humbled.