wake up my soul!

lately my minds gone to wandering...

i dug up a mass of part of my mountain of buried treasure pictures. i sat amongst a pile of memories and felt like Sarah from the movie the Labyrinth smack in the middle of a junk pile trying to find her way out. i started to arrange pictures chronologically to put them into some sort of order. all these minor moments started to turn into years of my life. moments which seemed simple by themselves...added up to something so much bigger. i didn't realize certain events in my life would be pivotal or alter its direction. yet, the sum of my experiences turned into...life changes. i think i was more aware of it at the time but was just trying to go along with the gravitational pull on my life. no matter how it happened, pictures are proof of the choices i made carving out my path in life in all the little segments of captured time.

i started flashing back to the labyrinth of memories in my life. soft ernesto rain and gray skies outside added a adam duritz melodrama to my nostalgic daydreaming. i think there is something about the rhythmic sound of the rain that invokes a part of your brain to trigger memory reflection. i started listening to a music mix (a gift from a beloved female soulmate) and it brought me back to "cleaning up a coffeehouse in grand rapids, Michigan." seriously. i realized...i worked at fourfriends for a few months of uncertainty. its amazing how you can be in a thought in 2002 and also be thinking of it in 2006. i get so rattled and dumbfounded by sitting in the present looking to the past and planning the future that i am glad God never granted me my wish to see time the way it truly passes in all dimensions at once. tom, a taller than average boy-but normal height for the dutch lads who flanked the grounds of calvin college-used to say that he wished his future was imprinted on the sole of his foot so he could just look under to see, "oh this is who my wife will be. this is what my career will be."

emily sanders from the indigo girls sings it like this:

"i said to you the one gift which i'd adore
the package of the next 10 years unfolding
but you told me if i had my way i'd be bored
right then i knew i loved you best born of your scolding"-language or the kiss

last year my dearest mama got us coldplay tickets for a christmas present (yes, she is the greatest). when chris martin started to sing "yellow" i remembered listening to the song on a mix cd bobby made me the month i met him. my wizard of oz tornado of thought ended with a whirlwind of looking next to me-at that very same boy i started dating in grand rapids, Michigan, who is sitting beside me in Washington d.c. next to my older brother and his wife, realizing that boy who made me a mix cd ended up to be my husband, moved with me from California to Washington d.c., and is about to live in a family compound house with my brother, sis in law, and their baby and baby on the way! whhhhhaaat! sometimes god/life is just plain trippy.

as a child, i had this..."i think i like it..." feeling with the movie the labyrinth. i was partly intrigued by its mysterious magical nature and partly frightened by the david bowieness/child snatcher in the dark of the night element. it was like it opened up the world of darkness and light and i was scared to be somewhere in it without someone to protect me. i feel that with hailey. at the park yesterday she thought about trying something daring and turned in an instant to know i was right there. she was going down the junglegym faster than her cautious nature prefers for the mission of quickly hiding pine cones from lucy gaining on her in the chase to snatch the pine cones for a scrumptious new chew toy. hailey started to fall and i caught her. she let out a cry but feeling my arms pick her up and hold her into mine she decided she was fine and could go back to her mission of hoarding and collecting as many forest treats she could hold in her toddler hands. in the labyrinth movie, Sarah, the heroine had to save and protect her little brother. she faces the dangers and toils of the labyrinth and brings her brother safely home.


one thing that really annoyed my little brother growing up was this habit of mine to listen to a cd or record or tape over and over again. i was really into listening to old records in high school but i would be too lazy to change the record often so i would relisten to the same album (sometimes even the same side!) for hours and days! poor ry would get so sick of hearing the same old songs play.

i started thinking about certain musicians and albums which became apart of my own skin in different periods of my life. it is incredible to live in a world where there is diversity, and its brilliant to experience the diversity in pleasurous forms like humor, eating, and art. while its nice to bask in drones of artistic stimuli, i love that feeling when i am entranced by a single artist who envelopes me and reiterates everything that i am feeling or just says it so profoundly that i have to pause. the artists that can do this always hold a place inside me. but, i owe artists my utter gratitude for being my angel and assisting me through certain years, trials, and experiences in my life. sometimes it takes a while for me like i have to go through something and suddenly i go back to a musician or artist and they pierce me and i need their voice to explain my own and the musician moves from entertaining to soul sister. like dylan, carly simon, and neil young my junior year of high school, ben harper and counting crows my senior year, indigo girls and ani my freshman year of college, samples my junior year, patty griffin my senior year, flaming lips on my journey to California. i flock to my habit of repetitive listening until one day the music has gotten me past it and i can reach over and put on a new record.

i think sometimes the weather feels fickle and resistant to the process of change as well as humans. my grandma used to tell us this Michigan cliche that, "if you don't like the weather wait until tomorrow." meaning that the weather in Michigan changes like my moods. this week even, started out with a cooler September air and ended up hooking back up with the August heat by the end.

so lately, i've been listening to relaxation music to calm me at the end of my days and get me back to kirsten energy shape. this music is (opps!) and reminds me of my momma. growing up she got us meditation lessons, massages on a regular basis, and did energy work on us. she would play these new age Sedona sounding Native American drums and mystical chants and have us cleanse our auras through crystals. my favorite music was her pachelbel done ocean style and dolphin love cd. i have this distinct memory of her curing me from my asthma one day with a rain stick...kid you not. she is a healer and she tapped into mother earth and took my wheezing away so i could breathe again. she is the woman i go to when i am ill or for the three times i have ever been homesick in my life. in some karmic way, i married a boy who is also a healer but didn't even realize it. now when my momma is at a geographical distance and i call her with an aliment or emotional wailing, she asks me, "where is bobby?" whenever she says that i feel the physical separation of marriage. i long for her that motherly connection and yet i feel warmed that she entrusts me to bobby and passes me on from one healer to the next.

most people in our culture are turned off by the spiritual superstitious dimensions of life. not my momma. she embraced my fictional, mystic, imaginative, fairytale side and encouraged me to dream and believe in the unseen wonders of the world. even my practical grandma would encourage my brothers and i to embrace our artistic talents while she preferred more athletic outlets. my mom taught me that there was more to life going on than science, or medical expertise, or even though she would never want me taking it into this aspect of my life...grades. growing up she taught us about communicating our emotions and coping with life in healthy ways like verbal, art, relaxation, meditation, massages, dancing, running, singing or for her...hot baths. i have become a hot bath addict like my mom although i don't partake as frequently as she. we learned early on that treating sickness is a holistic process, meaning sometimes my body was a physical manifestation of an internal spiritual, emotional, or mental issue and sometimes it was a physical issue to get my spirit to take better care of my physical body. what separates humans from angels and animals is that we are made up of both a physical body and a soul. if my momma hadn't taught me early on and nurtured my spiritual superstitious self, i don't know if i could relate as well to other cultures or my Lord.
while i feel like most days, my labyrinth is emotional, i know that my life on an earthly level is as well. after the movie of course, the first understanding i had of a labyrinth was in Greek mythology. a tale of a woman helping a man, Ariadne saves the Athenian hero Theseus' life by assisting him through King Minos' labyrinth by giving him a thread to follow on his exit since a labyrinth is constructed with only one entrance and exit being one and the same. the tricky thing about this labyrinth was that it held a Minotaur which Theseus slain in his escape. poor half man, half bull! then again in philosophy, my friend Plato mentioned the labyrinth again. In Euthydemus, Socrates describes the labyrinthine line of a logical argument:

"Then it seemed like falling into a labyrinth: we thought we were at the finish, but our way bent round and we found ourselves as it were back at the beginning, and just as far from that which we were seeking at first."

the labyrinth is seen in several different countries and cultures. in the medieval times they used the labyrinth as a spiritual journey. since many could not afford to travel far distances to make a pilgrimage they would use a labyrinth instead to walk and be centered on God as they traveled to the middle of the labyrinth reminded of of their spiritual walk in life. this year, i started craving a pilgrimage. i started praying asking God for time to go on a journey with only my Lord. since i have the blessing of a job, this could not be arranged. however, the Holy one aliviated some of my symptoms of need and gave me other outlets to journey since a geographical one could not take place at the given time. a labyrinth is different from a confusing maze for it is not constructed for the sole purpose of trickery. while it is challenging, it has no false walls and has only one entry/exit. the classical labyrinth models were configured around the center of a cross shape therefore evoking many spiritual journeys for those in the Christian faith reflecting upon a faith built around the significence of a risen Christ.

in this process of reflection i am getting that feeling that another life change is going to be happening soon. i feel betwixt in that space where things are yet to change but they have not yet. a year from now, my life will look a little different but i am not sure yet as to how. in the meditation of my labyrinth, i feel myself crawling to my Maker reminded of how she has watched over me, cradled me, and delivered me to the place i am now. whenever i am feeling estranged in the current of my own emotions unable to cling to anything to slow me down, i reach for the psalms to rescue me.

"my heart is confident in you, O God;
no wonder i can sing your praises!
wake up, my soul!
wake up, O harp and lyre!
i will waken the dawn with my song.
i will thank you, Lord, in front of all the people.
i will sing your praises among the nations.
for you unfailing love is as high as the heavens.
your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.
be exalted, O God, above the highest heavens.
may your glory shine over all the earth."

psalm 57:8-11 (nlt)