a fresh start

It’s been two years since I started a blog. It was my intent to use it to describe my journey eastward, as the title would suggest (Mary Goes to Maryland). I wanted to be able to share my experiences in graduate school with friends at home – the people who had helped to get me there.

And in the process, I came to a deeper realization of something I already knew: I love to write. I have been a faithful journaler since at least jr. high, if not before. There is something so centering about putting pen to paper. Somehow, as I scrawl out my jumble of thoughts in the form of sentences and paragraphs, I begin to make sense of them. And in recent years, while I have learned to process verbally (with the help with some very wonderful and extremely verbal roommates - and you know who you are...), my introverted soul still finds sweet solace in the lined, spiral-bound pages of my journal.

These last 2 years have brought me a newfound joy in getting to share my writing with others. There is something beautifully freeing about taking a thought - a small part of my heart...condensing it, refining it - finding the exact combination of words to express it....and then releasing it - sending it off into this mysterious web of a world. 

But the fact of the matter is: I am no longer in Maryland.

Hence, the new blog.

I spent yesterday afternoon trying to come up with a title, as I sat on my patio, looking out at acres and acres of fir trees. There are many phrases I could use to describe this season of my life, the state my heart is in, my hopes for the future.

After awhile, I gave up and went about the rest of my evening, busying myself with other things. I did the dishes. Continued with the seemingly-endless task of unpacking and settling. Attempted to take pictures of myself so I can renew my passport (if someone had only videoed the entire process…you would have had a great many laughs).

It wasn’t until I poured myself a glass of wine and sat to watch the sunset that it came to me (as things are prone to do when there is wine involved…and a sunset, for that matter).

cultivating the invisible.

It’s a phrase I have come back to time and time again in the 5+ years it has percolated in me. It stems from a book that continues to change my life, “Reaching for the Invisible God” by Philip Yancey. The original quote reads this way:

“The visible world forces itself on me without invitation;
I must consciously cultivate the invisible.”

It is a principle by which I attempt to live. And it works itself out in a myriad of ways: in my commitment to taking a Sabbath – to laying the work aside and resting. In my choice to pursue music – to express the things that are beyond words. In my desire to prioritize relationships - to seek out the divine spark that only comes in human interaction.

I don’t pretend to have mastered this skill of conscious cultivation. But in a world where we are constantly in a state of sensory overload, bombarded by advertisements, technology, the temptation for more, I have found myself growing ever hungrier for the things that cannot be seen. There is beauty to be found in the stillness, in the small and ordinary, in the crooks and crannies few bother to give a second glance to. And I, for one, don't want to miss it.

So, here's to a new season.   Here's to whatever surprises it may bring.     Here's to a new blog (and whatever shape it decides to take).     Here's to the intangible, the immeasurable, the invisible.