A Path to Her Likeness

I walk a seemingly treacherous walk, at least one that could be in a different time on a different night with a different attitude. I keep convincing myself that it's nothing, nothing's wrong. The sky isn't dripping and the wind isn't biting. But it is, and my shoes soak up water as a constant reminder. So I pound through the rain on the northside of Chicago, too far from home for my immediate comfort.

Minutes before I had been on the phone with a total stranger. A stranger who has tried to steal a few kisses. I know very little about him. I don't know what he means, what it means. I'm thinking about the call as I keep avoiding puddles, hunching over in the wind and the rain, half wishing for an umbrella, half grateful I can embrace the skies.

I'm not unhappy. This is the romantic evening of a Gothic novel. On these nights nothing's unimaginable. I feel the possibility of my life changing in the present, unfolding into the future, becoming the past. I think about the chance of an adventure as I make my way to the bus stop. There's something supernatural stocked in the atmosphere of a bus or train, especially in the city night, especially in the rain.  It's the journey, the convergence of so many people with so many stories: the pregnant possibility of public transportation. When I'm on the bus... there I sit, there I rest with so many others in transit... everything in transit. So on my way to the bus stop, I convince myself that the rain is beautiful. Rain, rain, rain, rain. Beautiful rain.

My mind is buzzing, buzzing, buzzing... almost numb from the possibility of my creative writing class. I'm also buzzing, buzzing, buzzing with excitement as I dream of the possibility of new friendships, new relationships--finally forming a community in the city with people I didn't know before Monday night. And I can't stop feeling out, humming out, murmuring fragments of Regina's "Man Of a Thousand Faces."

The man of a thousand faces...
...And smiles at the moon like he knows her...
...To a place of no religion...
...Good is better than perfect...


I'm standing at the corner of Damen and Lincoln and Irving Park and Starbucks taunts me. I peer in to see the store is closed, just minutes after 9, but all I want is a pumpkin spice latte to warm my chilled toes. I'm struggling with the ethics of Starbucks, fighting "the man" in a losing battle. It doesn't matter. The reality is no pumpkin spice latte after 9.

I join two fellow CTA travelers beneath a tree. The difference between them and me is an umbrella; they've each got one and I don't. I stupidly attempt to shield myself from the rain beneath the tree as the wind shakes more dew upon me than necessary. Really, tree? I continue thinking about relationship, random intersections with random people. I'm also painfully aware that I haven't eaten since noon, and I won't be in my kitchen until the bus arrives near my door around 10PM. So I keep a hungry soul focused on the future, on accomplishing tasks, like actually reading the assigned reading for next week's writing class because I'm hungry for more and I need to take advantage of that while I'm still impassioned with the memory and feeling of class. As a procrastinator, I depend on exhausting my feelings and impulses. That's how things get done.

And the bus must be chugging slowly slowly slowly because it's past its prime functioning hours. But it arrives. I probably look like a wet umbrella-less idiot, standing there beneath the tree. My co-travelers must be judging me. I would, even if the situation is comical.

I climb safely onto the bus, wet and wet and wet. I move to the back, hoping it brings more shelter than the front, even if merely intellectual sanctuary where I can delve into these stories I'm reading for class. They keep raising questions in my mind--can I really be a writer? But I wanna be a writer. I want to be writer. I want to be a writer.--So I keep at it, keep reading. I let my mind fly into millions of pieces, arriving in millions of places. Not really. It's resting on my anxieties and fears and inadequacies. I thought they were tabled but they're resurfacing.

I pull the plug on my inner monologue by pulling the chord at Armitage. I notice one co-traveler, the one with the yellow umbrella, also stand to dismount the bus. She's not much older than me, maybe a year, maybe... I'm jealous of her umbrella. We cautiously step back into the chilly, damp Chicago night.

We cross Damen. I know where I'm going, but I have second thoughts, so I pause at the Armitage bus stop, suddenly uncertain of myself and my bearings, slightly afraid that the bus is no longer running. And Yellow Umbrella, who appears at first to be crossing the street once more, falls back and stands immediately to my left.

"At least there's an awning here!" She surprises me.

"Yeah... oh... thank you! I really appreciate it." She hovers her small yellow umbrella over the both of us.

I ask for her opinion on the bus' schedule.  She [obviously] thinks it's still running.  She's waiting.  Her boyfriend works at Coast.  I find myself full of apprehension with all the usual "what is this girl thinking about me?" dialogue running through my head, but I also feel so confident conversing with another total stranger this week. So many new acquaintances in one week! People aren't scary! They might even like me!  My face must be friendly.

The bus comes quickly, more quickly than I imagined or maybe I am just lost in conversation. We both get on, and as it turns out, she lives a block away from us. I can't believe it. This whole big city, two bus stops, two girls, total strangers who live just a block away. We start talking religion (damn my job) but it's okay. I mean, really okay. She doesn't mind. Are the stars aligning?  Am I finding ways to be comfortable in this city, in this skin? Or is it just this rainy night?

The warmth of the bus certainly helps cultivate conversation. But I know our meeting won't last long because my stop isn't too far. I want to be home, I want to eat, I want to write. I want to get everything down before it leaves me, leaves me, leaves me. And I really want to talk to Ben. But I also want to keep talking to the girl with the yellow umbrella about Catholicism, her market research job downtown, the rooms in other countries she peers into daily, her boyfriend's job at Coast, and the rolling hills of Kansas. One more stop... I'm nervous about pulling the chord because I'm so worried about talking to her, but it's her stop too. So she pulls the plug, not on our conversation... she seems like she enjoys it. She pulls the chord. And we both get off.

The moment. Is she just a nice stranger who happened to be on my cold, rainy, windy, dark and dreary October journey?  Will we become neighbors or remain strangers?  I'm hanging, hanging, hanging... waiting for a sign, wondering if I should interject.

"My name is Frances, by the way. It was really nice talking to you."  Pleasant!

"My name is Katy. Yeah, it was nice talking to you too."  Mind races!  "Listen, would you mind if we exchanged numbers? I'd just really like to talk to you some more. Would that be all right?"

I'm well aware that we're both paused in the painful rain. She's probably dying to get away. No, no... maybe she's glad I asked?  I don't know. After punching numbers into cell phones, huddling on the street at the intersection of possibility, at the intersection of what could be another route in my life... we part ways.

I knew this would happen. I just knew it.

My soaked feet carry me a few more steps to my apartment. I check the mail, anxiously, anxiously, anxiously as thousands of details flood my mind. My fingers start twitching, my feet start tingling, and my head throbs with thoughts.

Steps. Steps. Steps. Open the door with the keys. Flip on the switch and dump my things prematurely in the hallway because I'm desperately seeking a laptop. I glimpse its glow on the porch where it's perched under the glare of many casements letting in the cold and damp night. And I write down the details, smiling at the moon like I know her, wondering if I'm really a writer or if any of this is worth reading or even committing to ink. Good is better than perfect.

Death and All of His Friends

It's a bit of a mystery to me why autumn brings beginnings. I mean, I get it. Some season had to be summer’s successor. Summer is scripted with serendipity, humanity’s excuse to be childish and free. I guess fall is the end of summer and the leaves are ch-ch-changing… but still, the metaphor is broken. Fall is "back to school, back to business" but simultaneously the season we use to prime our deaths in the "autumn of our lives." Okay, so maybe I just negated my point.

But September comes just at the moment I've exhausted my impulsive desires. September is a savior. And fall in the Midwest is stunning. I’m not the only one to notice the irony of the temperament of the Temperate:

Leaves become most beautiful when they’re about to die…
when they’re about to fall from trees,
when they’re about to dry up.

Chew on that a while. Regina has such a way with words.

On a recent road trip through the wooded Wisconsin, my father—an insightful machinist whose wisdom is common and profound—and I recalled the misfortune of recent months. A year ago my grandmother’s lung cancer marked only the beginning of the most tumultuous and tragic year of my family’s career. On this particular drive we were swimming in existentialism, returning from Dad’s sister’s final resting place at our family cabin. I was learning that I never really knew my dad, not really, until his sister died.

“Your mom and I... we never really knew tragedy until this year. We had it easy. We had so many really good years. You and your sister, you’ve been given a gift: experiencing tragedy at a young age. It will shape your lives. You’ll be stronger for it, learn from it.”

The Resop clan is unemotional in a word. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen my dad cry and four of them were in the past year. Watching your uncles, your grandmother, and all your cousins come to tears while they spread your aunt’s ashes in the big woods of Wisconsin changes all your impressions about your family.

Losing someone is never easy; yet again, we’re all going to die.

I recall an NPR program from a year or two ago featuring prominent Civil War historian and Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust. She argued that the war and its alarming death toll intrinsically impacted the human condition:

“For those Americans who lived in and through the Civil War, the texture of the experience ... was the presence of death. At war's end this shared suffering would override persisting differences about the meanings of race, citizenship, and nationhood to establish sacrifice and its memorialization as the ground on which North and South would ultimately reunite.”

She argued that perhaps the people of that era had a much healthier acceptance of death, prizing the short time we do have on this earth, living each day like it could be their last.  What a beautiful, if not cliche, thought.

I’d like to think that the overwhelming presence of death in my life this past year has led me to a path of acceptance and resurrection—resurrecting my own vitality, my own vocation. I feel alive, and I love feeling that way. Relationships are more precious, the present is a present, and the seasons of my year and my life are valuable tools for instigating and measuring personal growth. And I'm living not only for myself, but for the memory of the people who have gone before me. Because "Those you've known and lost still walk behind you." But this isn't about the dead. It's about the living--the living memory, the living love, the living relationship that will always stay with me, beyond the grave.

No, I don’t wanna battle from beginning to end.
I don’t wanna cycle or recycle revenge.
I don’t wanna follow Death and all of His friends.

Instead, I’ll embrace Him. Because maybe mortality is the secret ingredient to a happy life. And life becomes most beautiful when it's about to die.

August (or "23" or "Raja ya dunia Kupendana" or "Gonna Dance" or "So Long Sweet Summer") - Sufjan-style

Into the great wide open, under them skies so blue. A rebel without a clue...

I think I'm going through a spiritual revolution of sorts, and I hesitate to call it that because labeling a moment "historic" in my own life kind of negates this new-found epiphany and belief. But I'm a history major, so I guess it's inevitable.

First of all, I'm sick and tired of projected progression and expectations. Society implies a laundry list of "class" and "worth" markers that seem required in order to have "value" in this world: two parents, home ownership, living in a certain neighborhood, eating certain foods, wearing certain clothes, a college degree, a "professional" career, going to grad school, etc, etc. There's an order to life, according to so many societal implications. Success and appearance are of the utmost value. The future will be better, brighter; YOU will be better, brighter...

But what if the Spirit of Life is really all about purely appreciating who you are, where you are, who you're with? What if we truly have created/duplicated a system of purity vs. impurity --just like the 1st Century Jewish elite (the system Christ attempted to subvert with his subversive wisdom) -- that we impose to underwrite the inherent dignity of people who are classified as "impure?" (See Borg's Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time)

And of course I'm NOT suggesting that people who are struggling in poverty and war and injustice remain in those situations. On the contrary--we must fight injustice with compassion, challenge the status quo and create a better world TOGETHER and for ALL. But a better world doesn't mean more wealth. It doesn't mean more CEOs or more possessions. A better world means food. Enough shelter. Clean water. No war. More love.

This all seems so overwhelming, of course, but my new prescription is to address it by just being myself. Using my God-given talents and gifts, my vocation. Tapping into my joys and ideas, doing what I love and not what I despise or what a world tells me I must do. It's listening both internally and externally to my deepest desires and to the call that comes from a community and from God.

Hmm, Frederick Buechner anyone? "The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet."

So right now that means learning and exploring--trying all things new. Reading. Writing. Going to the theatre. Dancing. Appreciating the simplest, every day actions and encounters. It's not wishing my life away. It's savoring the moment. Enjoying one day at a time. Finding worth and value in who I am and finding that same worth and value in the people around me each and every day... and showing them how much I love them.

It's making justice and love and compassion a way of life--like the "Jesus movement." While also appreciating the ordinary pleasures, gifts from God (Ecclesiastes). Honoring God by appreciating my life and honoring God by loving the people God created.

Life's about creative moments. Places we love. People who inspire. It's full of challenge, despair, and sorrow, but I've been through all of that, but I'm standing here today with the joy of the Lord.

I'm learning to "dance" on my own (Viola Vaughn). I'm learning to love myself and my body, to be fully present in my own life and my friends'/family's/strangers' lives. This life is short. Sweet. Beautiful.

I know everything I've written is so cliche but truthful. Maybe I finally feel it--for the first time. This is a deeper understanding than I've ever had before. I just pray I can keep perspective.

And fight so that all people can know this peace, can love without blame or shame. So all people can dance and sing, read and write. I think those pleasures are at the root of the meaning of life and Jesus' message.

Amazing, still it seems.

I'll be 23.

I won't always love what I'll never have.

I won't always live in my regrets.

It's true. Wow, look at where I am and how far I've come. I've been trying to grasp for so long how much I've grown and transformed, and it's kind of unbelievable. I can't even begin to describe what 22 was like. Tough. Beautiful. Remarkable. Challenging. Gracious.

The summer is wrapping up and the fall is approaching, which has me thrilled and nervous. It's been a wonderful summer full of new understandings and crazy plot twists. But fall is somehow simultaneously nostalgic and fresh. It has a rhythm right around the moment we become weary of the spontaneity of summer breezes. I think we need the seasons to guide our humanity and to aid our emotions and natural life processes. So the fall begins with its promise and stability. I need a little of both to complement this wonderful, carefree summer.

Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time

I found myself profoundly challenged throughout the book, but in remarkable and good ways. I previously believed myself to be a "liberal Christian," Lutheran in my understanding of Jesus Christ, but Borg provided new insights that might have challenged my beliefs, but ultimately strengthened my faith and ideas about Christ. After completing the last chapter, I was slightly upset, only because I felt cheated of this understanding my whole life. Why aren't Christians focused on teaching more about Jesus' challenge of conventional wisdom? Why aren't we preaching the "macro-stories" of scripture and interpreting Jesus through them?

I'm in the process of re-reading the Gospels through the lens of Borg's interpretation of Christ, and I've developed an insatiable curiosity for more news about the pre-Easter and post-Easter Jesus. I guess this might mean seminary... but don't applaud just yet. It might not be what you think. It might not be what I think. Who knows.

Borg has complicated my life, but I thank him for it.

What truly matters

This week has been the most incredible exercise in patience. Diligence. Discipline. While at the same time I'm free for perhaps the first time in my life.

I said no. And I might have to say no again--to things I've always thought that I cared about. To things that the world certainly seems to care a lot about. But I'm listening to another voice--the one that stirs me inside and reminds me that this is my life, afterall, and the more I accept who I am for who I am, the happier I'll be. And not just happiness is at stake: my ability to serve and care for others in the way I truly want to care.

I was taking a community organizing class, which I enjoyed on a certain level. I truly appreciated the knowledge and thought-provoking discussions about the "world as it is" and the "world as it should be." I enjoyed thinking about taking action and making a difference in the world. But I also noticed how contrived each lesson was each week. I was acting for the sake of acting--not for some deep cause or belief. I didn't have a conviction. I had a method to act with no reason to act.

So I've spent this week considering what I truly want to do with my life. What do I care about? What brings me the greatest joy? Where is God calling me? How can I continue to listen to the feeling within that I've been ignoring for so long?

There are so many things that I've always wanted to do--but for whom? My parents? My friends? For the recognition? What about for me?

Appalachia and Ecclesiastes

This flatlander is back in the mountains, this time in Appalachia. It's gorgeous. Maybe I'm a mountain girl. Let's throw in one more vocational scrambler.

I wrote this on the very short plane ride here:

I have a nausea and my head is floating while my body is suspended in this seat on this plane. My skin is swimming in a pressurized cabin, and my brain is pulsing -- while my memory tricks me into nostalgic longing.

I'm lying on the bed in Spruce, a cool breeze waving the old green curtains, weaving between old wooden bunks that interrupt its flow with the ghosts of campers past. My soft sheets wrap me up as I lie in bed on the perfect Saturday afternoon.... And I'm in heaven.

Will nothing ever live up to that "summer beneath the trees?" No attempt to forget ever seems to succeed, and now I feel my nerve endings splitting from the pain and acknowledgment that everything could be so much better.

The weight of this society doesn't sit well on my shoulders. "People living in competition. All I want is to have my peace of mind." I don't know if I'm cut out for the rat race. I don't even know if I can go back to grad school or continue working in this non-profit world. It's all so contrived and too fast-paced with little room for life's pleasures and meaning (whatever that might be?!?). Why am I seeking to improve society if I do so only so that the next generation can run the same frivolous race?

VANITY OF VANITIES, says the teacher, VANITY OF VANITIES! All is vanity.

I need to start taking note of when I feel joy and when it seems genuine. What is sustainable? What's just a profile, and what's really me? My God, my God! What is the "good life?" What do I want to be remembered for? I'm tired of competing and arguing and struggling.

Which begs the question: is ignorance really bliss?

Why did I get a college degree? Why did I take this job? Why do I live in the city? Who am I trying to impress? Am I serving others or myself... and to what end? Do I want to impress my parents? Do I want to wow my supervisors? Or rank on some world scale with my impressive credentials or accumulation of STUFF?

And I applied my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a chasing after wind. For in much wisdom is much vexation, and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow.

What am I called to do?
Where am I called to be?
Who am I supposed to be?

And where does privilege fit into this small vocational question? Why on earth do I deserve any of this? Any why do others NOT? Because where you live shouldn't determine whether or not you live. So how do I love others and hate the system we all live in?

I'm sick of being so connected, so overtaxed and overtired and unfulfilled. I don't know what I believe about life or this world or even God for that matter. I don't know what drives me and why.

I especially don't know what to think about relationship. I used to think life was all about relationship, but the brokenness of multiple relationships has left a damaging scar... one that will take a while to heal.

But my head is spinning, my heart is reeling, and my thoughts turn to that summer beneath the trees...






...like always.

Mono a Mono, a Vocational Crisis

My body says no. No, it will not get out of bed. Every morning I struggle for an hour to convince it to emerge from its pink-sheeted embrace while the alarm clock screams every 9 minutes.

Tess says maybe I'm getting sick. Maybe it's mono. Yeah, maybe it IS mono. It's a miracle I haven't had it already. It was bound to catch me one of these days. Or maybe I've been a little extreme in my caloric intake, restricting a little too much and not consuming enough vitamins and minerals. Or drinking enough water? Or maybe it's just remnants from last week's depressive state. Depression hurts.

Or it's the job. Huge can of worms. Impossible to express. My counselor's insight: the fatigue is 75% related to work. So what's the remedy?

I have no idea. I'm suddenly struck by how little I know about myself. What really brings me joy? What are my passions? What are my ideal working conditions? Where do I go from here? How do I cope with my current cirumstances?

I'm painting myself in paradigms and paradoxes. It's unclear whether I'm a city girl or a country bumpkin. I bask in the cultural glow of the city lights while I crave the open fields and piney woods of the north. I could be an All-American girl or a globe trotter. I care about these streets but I long to escape on another shore. I'm a bookworm but I want adventure and application. I want to increase and apply knowledge but also curse it for eliminating my peace of mind. I fight to be an independent woman with a career and a purpose while I daydream romantic fancies every moment.

I live for the tension and the terror, the extremes and intensity of life. But I'm exhausted. I want to experiment and grow, but I also want happiness and peace. Who am I and where do I belong? Where do I go from here? I can't live with this frustrated, stunted passion any longer. Or at least my body tells me... no.

And who is this God person anyway?

Sunsets and Boulevards

The windows in our sunroom remind me of freshman religious fervor and Campus Crusade (Fling wide, you heavenly gates! Prepare the way of the risen Lord!). Fling wide, you sunroom windows! Prepare the way for an enlightening summer day!

Mmm, the sunlight is dripping all over the place. I love dusk and summer. And Dashboard. Public confession. Fine.

If You Ain't Got Love

Tess and I watched Meet Joe Black tonight on the futon in our charming sunroom, the dusk of day aging our souls.

I want you to get swept away.
I want you to levitate.
I want you to sing with rapture and dance like a dervish...
be deliriously happy.
At least yourself open to be...
Love is passion, obsession, someone you can't live without.
I say fall head over heels.
Find someone you can love like crazy
and who will love you the same way back.
How do you find him?
Well, you forget your head and you listen to your heart.
Cause the truth is, there's no sense in living your life without this.
To make the journey and not fall deeply in love--
Well, you haven't lived a life at all.
But you have to try.
Because if you haven't tried, you haven't lived.



I'm done with bitterness and lackluster living. I'm going to breathe more deeply, write more often, sing more joyfully, dance more spiritually, laugh more passionately, and love more confidently.

Raise your glass and say a toast. It's over. Cheers to that. It's a mad world, but I'm content with running circles, and peace is on the horizon.

What do you got if you ain't got love?

Summer in the City

I've sure enjoyed the rain, but I'm looking forward to the sun.

A bright spot of adventure seems to loom on the horizon. The city grows more and more into a home as Tess and I continue settling into our apartment in the hippest spot of Chicago (I'm not biased...). Each day as I walk the boulevard, I'm in a little bit of awe. There can be life after camp. Green life, even.



The summer brings with it nostalgic bits and pieces of memory lane and quite a few tears of loss and grief for another season of life in the cube, but I'll survive and more than likely even thrive. I feel energized and rejuvenated after 3 days with international counselors. I'm not going to lie, I'm on a rock star high. There's nothing quite like shepherding 27 young internationals around the Windy Windy City. No sarcasm.


This city ain't half bad. There's joy on the streets and peace with the people. Every little thing's gonna be a'right.