Slimed

There are days that end well and days when I feel like I'm just scraping the slime off. Here's what I mean.

Days can start off so pleasantly. The sun can reach into the window to greet you. Coffee is prayer in a potter's cup. Sounds of the house say that everyone is home and about to greet the day, too. We are all greeting new days together, though there are some walls that separate us.

But as the day unfolds and we dance around in it (or just shuffle through) some slime can get dumped all over us. This slime can be bits of peoples' ideas of life that squish life down to something so trivial when the whole time we're trying so hard to trace the Spirit. The slime can come in the form of self-imposed laws that we're trading in for full life and love. The slime can come in arrogant ideas that make other people out to be wrong and what's worse, less.

I'm finding ways to scrape off the slime, though. There is so much life to live and my mystic soul is catching it's breath through CBC radio which always reminds me that there is a big world out there, through the music of Romantica and Josh Ritter whose songs soar of this real life, and through new friends met after a wonderful film viewing at Regent.

There is grace upon grace.

Enter Fall

My friend Paulina and I rode our bikes at the Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve on this beautiful fall-like day.



I am drinking more Earl Grey tea.
My nose is cold when I fall asleep at night with my window open a bit.
I am wearing sweaters, shoes and socks.
I am running farther than I've ever ran before.
I am signed up to run my first race (for fun): the Turkey Trot.
The tree outside my house is all ablaze in red.

Ahhhh . . . autumn.

I Heart Music

These are some of the songs I keep playing over and over and over and over . . .

1. Patty Griffin - Mother of God
2. Caedmon's Call - I Just Don't Want Coffee
3. Over the Rhine - Trouble
4. Luke Doucet - Broken One
5. Ryan Adams - Two

Chop the Squawking Chicken's Head Off

I used to be a chicken. Especially when I was a kid. The truth is that things still scare me, especially if they require the qualities of physical prowess, grand coordination, or sporty skillfulness.

On Friday, our Student Ministries team went up Grouse Mountain on the gondola for a team lunch. This is a picture that my friend Jenni took when I wasn't looking (obviously).


Jenni called this picture "contemplative Bobbi." It's true. I was contemplating another way of getting up the mountain: the Grouse Grind. I was thinking about how much this rigorous/2.9km-straight-up/853-meter-gain hike scared me.

I have had a few people this summer tell me that I should do the Grind. I mostly dismissed this urging because I don't really trust my body to accomplish such feats. I trust my soul to move towards beauty and truth. I trust my mind to think the best of people and to keep learning. I trust my emotions to sort themselves out and to guide me in fully living. But trust my body to climb up a mountain? I'm too chicken.

As I left the mountain later on Friday, I subdued the squawking chicken in me and decided to do the Grind sooner than later. THANKFULLY, my kind roommate told me she would do it with me . . . the very next day. I find this helps with moments of squawking chicken - the sooner one chops its head off the better. Just kill the chicken and see how things go.

Yesterday Angie and I did the Grouse Grind and not only did I make it up, I did better than I thought I would. I was well in the range of the average climbers' time (just over an hour and a half), and I am not cursing my body for being stiff and sore today.