Increased awareness

Is there anything we feel in life that isn't perspective?

I was moved a few weeks ago by the story of Jacob in the book of Genesis. It was the story of Jacob fleeing from Esau, and God appearing to him in a dream in a place later named Bethel (House of God). Max led the study, I appreciated him bringing us into the mindset of Jacob. Jacob was leaving his home, his family and his understanding of purpose. He was leaving a family that had been blessed by God and that God had promised to bless and be a blessing through. He didn’t know where he was going or what had drawn him there and was uncertain how this fit into his future.

I identified with Jacob: a panic, a what am I doing here, a sense of lack of purpose, a struggle to understand my vision and how to communicate that. 

God appeared in a dream. Jacob saw a ladder, with “messengers” going up and down, with the Lord atop. The Lord spoke to him, ““I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying.  Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

Jacob woke up, made a monument, glorified God, realized the holiness inherent to this place. "Surely the Lord was in this place and I was not aware of it." he says.

What struck me was that reality had not changed overnight. Jacob woke up with the exact struggles in reality that were torturing him as he fell asleep. God was just as faithful when Jacob fell asleep, he still had plans for Jacob. All that changed was his perception. He gained a knowledge that God was for him. Would not leave him or forsake him.

Since then I feel like my perspective might have changed a bit. When I respond to someone's question of "how are you" with, "good" or "bad", what am I really saying? I mean if I believe in God's promises, that he works through suffering, that I am valuable not because of what I do but who I am and who God is, and that in the end "all things work for the good of those who love Him", how can any day be bad?

Now grief may be a different beast. But in reality, what I am saying with my response to "how are you" is: I was able to enter into the perspective of God today or I was not.
Was I able to understand the presence of God?

Because whether I am aware or not, God is surely present in this place. 

Creator increase my awareness, every day.

Sort of Suffering

“How can anyone pity anyone who is doing the will of Our Lord? Is there anything sweeter on earth than to do the will of Him one loves? And if it gives one some trouble to carry it out, the sweetness is all the greater.” –Charles de Foucauld

People often ask me why I decided to move to Vancouver this year to do work with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. For anyone not keeping up with, “Life With Derek” (apparently it’s a show), I have been residing in Vancouver for two months working with the Christian Community at Emily Carr. 

My decision making process for doing the internship looked something like this:

January: I have decided I am not going to do the internship.

February: I got a call from someone asking if I was interested in doing the internship. I prayed about it. I didn’t want to, but felt that God was desiring to develop my character so that I am willing to drop anything for what he asks of me. So I said, “yes”.

Now let me whine for a paragraph or two then I’ll get us back on track with a good mindset.

I miss a lot from my life over the past two years since graduating! I was in a career that I find very fulfilling and enjoy, I was able to live in the same town as my wonderful girlfriend Eunice, I played music with good friends and could have a weekly dose of experimenting with songs and sounds, I lived with my folks and enjoyed getting to know them as an adult. The decision to come here wasn’t one I chose out of comfort, but more so out of obedience. There was a sacrifice to come here.

I have been feeling that sacrifice over the past few months. I don’t have established friendships with people I have done life with for years. I have moved from a financial lifestyle of independence to dependence. I have moved from an established career with daily rewarding experiences to a nebulous role I feel I am drowning in for at least part of most days. Growing in a romantic relationship is harder 800km away.

Why do we do these things to ourselves?

After reading the quote I opened with, my prayer in instances of loneliness, anxiety or discomfort has been, “I love you Jesus.” That is essentially why I have said yes to coming to Vancouver! How sweet it is to suffer for the one that you love. Every time I sense that suffering, I remind myself that it is for love. It is not needless not fruitless.

The beauty of suffering for Jesus is that it’s really only sort of suffering... the reality is that this is the best place for me to be. There is no better place to be than in God’s will. Perhaps the only better place to be is in His love. If I can be in both, man! I feel like I am on a ship at sea, being shifted in the waves to the sides of the ship that are fear and insecurity. Slowly I am learning to root myself in the center, so that the ship can move all it wants in the waves but I am secure in steadfast love of the Father. In the middle I am aware not only of the constancy of love, grace, and my own ability, but I also understand that the ship is moving forward in a direction. It is going to a place that is better for me.

I encourage you that love is a person. That knowing Jesus, that loving Jesus, is the way to peace in this life, whatever suffering you are facing. And its love that is purely out of response to the love we have received in the firstplace.

Future gardens from all this rain/

Future flowers from present pain

-Jon Foreman

Hacky Sack

An Emily Carr veteran told me to inform her of stories I experience at Emily Carr. It is an exciting school, so they say. Or rather they say, “You’ll see some weird shit.” I thought I might chronicle a few of these experiences for amusement of the general population.

To those unaware, I am working with the Christian Community at Emily Carr this year, a progressive art school in Vancouver. First month, so I am getting to know folks, figure out my role, and becoming exposed to the weird and wonderful world of “art”.

They have a monthly coffee night/open mic night, so I thought I would sign up! You know, play some tunes, meet some people, and go experience the school spirit at Emily Carr. I go to sign up at the correct office and start chatting up the teacher there.

“What’s your name?” asks the bespectacled, mid-40s woman. I tell her. Her eyes light up.

“I had a favourite Derek that attended here!” Grateful for a well-respected namesake at Emily Carr  before my time, I smile and let her tell me about him.

“He just loved to be naked!  One time he came to my office covered in flour and dressed only in a towel! Then he just whipped off the towel!” I apologize for the image floating in your mind. The flour settling in the air to reveal “Food Network Gone Wild”.

“I thought it was so great, I brought him into my foundations class* and whipped the towel off of him in front of all the students!” *foundations class = 1st year students

“His ball sack was so saggy, he could have played hacky sack with it!”

I didn’t want to be her new favourite Derek. I didn’t want to make the top 10. And I won’t be baking with flour for the next 6 months, thank you.

For anyone whose been anywhere.

Anyone whose been anywhere for any length of time may experience any or all of what I am about to tell you about. You leave, you come back, and a good portion of you feels like whatever is in between those two statements never happened. Home is just so homey, the familar just so familiar. It's like whatever you do to shake things up in life, the snow in the snowglobe still settles on those fixed miniature snowmen, christmas trees, and little cabins all the same. The first few weeks back are always a bit of a feeling out, "OK, what things actually changed?" It's as if my life is an etch-a-sketch, as if even on the plane ride home the airplane's turbulence is starting to erase the lines that I didn't go back over enough times during my experience.

I've been home a total of 10 days now, and the snow is starting to settle and the etch-a-sketch is starting to get frustrated that despite the shaking, there's still some lines that won't erase. There's a few things that I believe have changed.

I've been able to separate my depression from my spirituality and self-worth. I wrote a bit about this near the end of my trip, but this is a big change to being able to function well. It is a beautiful thing to wake up feeling terribly depressed, and yet being able to realize that God is still at work in this day, that I am still awesome, and that I can still be a blessing to those around me. It's as if I have been able to corner whatever virus lurks in my mind and let it know that it can only affect me in the places it exists, it can't spread into places it really doesn't belong.

I've also been able to appreciate each day. Every day on my trip I would write a journal entry. Where I was, who I met, what I ate, what I learned, what great puns I thought up but didn't have anyone to tell. I find it creates in me a sense of appreciation for each day. The Psalm I am reading this week says, "All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." Not that I think that every day needs to be some hyper spiritual event filled with life-altering conversations and activities, but more so that each day was meant to happen. Each day is a essential part of my life, not to be skipped through or thought of as inconsequential. It makes me a bit more thankful. It makes me a bit more prayerful. It makes me a bit more purposeful.

The last thing is that I have a healthy sense of hope. "As for me, I will always have hope, I will praise your name more and more. My lips will speak of your righteousness, my tongue will tell of your salvation, though I know not its bounds... though you have made me see troubles, many and bitter, you will restore my life again... You will increase my honor and comfort me once again." (Psalm 71) Going on a bike trip across Canada I think helped me get excited about exploring life again. I can do exciting things. I can do different things. I can change and become a different person. I'm not done growing, appreciating beauty, seeing new things. And in all those things, I have the grace to make mistakes and ask forgiveness. That learning things is OK, and trying things I am not good at is necessary to finding things you love.

Some people don't need to leave to find thankfulness, gratefulness, and purpose in life. I think I need to leave more often than I do in order to get my self-awareness back in check. I encourage you, if you need a break, take it. Work, school, and people will always wait. You can stand to miss weddings, you can catch up with people when you get back, money will always be there to be earned. But life can easily rush past instead of being lived.

Halifax to home

This morning I wrestled my sister's and mine bikes into boxes for shipping. It was a bit of a process getting the boxes, of which I'll spare you the gory details, and packing them up was no easier. I used up an entire roll of packing tape getting all 129lbs of bicycles and gear into these cardboard vessels for shipping to Prince George. After 5787km of worrying about my means of transportation and subsistence, my immediate belongings are reduced to a new MEC backpack with some clothes, toothbrush, and a cooking pot I forgot to pack.

As you may be able to tell by my gradually decreasing posts and pictures, my trip documentation is growing more sparse. Not that the trip is any less enjoyable, but my capacity to care about social media is starting to wear thin. So, some of this blog may be lacking details...

PEI: beautiful, red earth, great potatoes, I learned that Anne of Green Gables isnt a real person, Cavendish is a ghost town when its not a tourist town.
One story I will elaborate on was one morning Shannon and I woke up in a gravel pit. We just started biking away when a fierce looking dog with an even more fierce bark started running towards us. Unforunately for this fierce dog, he was also wearing a cone on his head that was a fierce shade of neon green that stuck out past his snout. He bobbed along beside us for a short time clearly trying to make up for his temporary impotence by louder barks, which we shortly drowned out with out laughter.

It was great to be able to see and hang out with Shannon. She always has a way of drawing out good conversation. Probably because she is just genuinely interested in people, and especially so if you are lucky enough to be a relative that she loves more than she ought to. It was good to be able to process with someone a bit of what I've learned and experienced and to catch up on her life as well. It encourages me to see how God has moved in her life to bring her into a job she seems made for and a relationship that seems, while unconventional, perfect for both of them. It gives me hope to see how she has been dragged through the mud in alot of instances in her life but it has brought her through to somewhere she couldn't have dreamed up for herself.

One of the more important instrospections I think I had during the week was realizing that I moralize things that ought not to be moralized. Having perfectionist tendencies in most areas of life, failure becomes a wrong as opposed to a learning experience. The bridge in one of my songs goes: I'm sorry when I think my hands are just as big as yours, I'm truly sorry that I can't be everything to everybody all of the time.
Relationships, friendships, generosity, work, community, faith.
These are all areas that I have failed at during the course of my life and have put on them a weight of morality instead of an appropriate grace-covered learning experience. It's not that I am bad these things, just stupid. That may not sound better... but it is! I can handle being stupid! But if my mind puts me in a state of being perpetually morally wrong, that is pretty fertile soil for my mind to make a mess of me.

And now I am in Halifax. It is lovely to be able to spend time with my good friend Graham. We went to the much recommended "Lower Deck" pub. I was very surprised at how busy it was! There was a bouncer, and we had to pay a cover and were sent to the top of this monster 4 story pub. Wall to wall people. "This is crazy I thought! Is it like this all the time?" Apparently we chose the night of Alexander Keith's birthday party to show up at this joint! So we joined the throng outside to watch "Signal Hill" play a bunch of covers and watch freshly imbibed participants try and dance.
We also went on a beautiful hike on a stormy day along the coast. It was a trail only locals would really know, we had to scoot up someones driveway for a time and it ended at an old cement bunker looking out.
I just got back from a thoroughly enjoyable coffee with another friend Keaton Gairns.

My flight leaves at 6:40am tomorrow morning. I will steal back 4 hrs as I cross time zones and be in vancouver half past noon. Crazy to be heading back home. The sensation of flying over in 8 hours what took me 10 weeks to bike across will be surreal. I am sure I will need one or two more blog posts to reflect on what I have discovered and learned. I go back to work the Tuesday after thanksgiving on a week long trip to Tsay Keh Dene for diabetes work. Look forward to seeing many of you soon.

Finding myself in the palliative ward of a hospital.

After my last post, I walked around Moncton some more. Like all cities out here, it has alot of beautiful architecture and beautiful trails by the water. I was near an old church when Fernand, the man who had offered to let me stay at his place earlier, drove by. He hailed me over and invited me to dinner with him and a friend.

We ate at "Calactus", which I think roughly translated means: holy-crap-this-restaurant-is-amazing-despite-being-Vegetarian-only. Turns out he is a doctor. And also a music appreciater and dabbler. He also cycles and is much more active than I ever plan to be (he has done over 100 triathlons and has done 15 world loppets! Which will mean nothing to you unless you are an avid cross-country skiier, look it up...). We had some good conversation, and turns out his wife is in the hospital. She has been fighting cancer for 14 years with 3 recurrences, a tough woman. A few days earlier she had finally been switched over to palliative care. And yet this man was still so hospitable and warm.

They left, paid for my dinner, and brought his wife some take-out from the restaurant. He gave me his address and said he'd be home in a couple hours. I then proceded to slowly make my way to his house, stopping to phone various friends and catch up.

I arrived at his house around 8:30 and shortly thereafter busted out the musical instruments and beer. Mandolins, acoustics, electric guitars, harmonicas, instruments from all over the world (he is a collector). He listened to and appreciated my songs, and we jammed to covers he knew. It was midnight before we knew it and retired for the evening. A truly great night.

In the morning we had breakfast. Over breakfast I asked him what it was like to be a doctor and have a wife dying in the hospital. "You really learn who your friends are. Some colleagues don't even acknowledge it. It is like they are scared, or do not know what to say. I would rather have them say anything, even if they accidentally say something insensitive, than nothing." After breakfast he sort of sheepishly asked me, "Would you be willing to come up and see my wife? To play a few songs?" I happily agreed.

And so I found myself in the palliative care ward of the Moncton hospital, playing music with a beautiful couple who have had a long road battling cancer. She was tired. She was appreciative. She doesn't have much longer left on this earth. He is figuring out what life will look like now. I said goodye and thanked his wife. 

"What is your song about, that first one you played?" He asked me after.
"It's a song about trusting God. I wrote it in my third year of nursing school during my toughest semester both inside and outside the classroom. Its a prayer for me to really believe God's goodness, and his ability to use hard things. It's sort of a mental check for me to reorient my mind to believe that He is faithful."

It felt weird to say that to a man who is suffering hopefully more than I will ever know. But I really do believe those truths, and how much more important are they for these times? He thanked me, saying he too believed God used everything, that everything happens for a reason. He anticipates doing the Camino in Spain in the next few years, for many different reasons, emotional, spiritual, and physical.

He treated me to a second meal at a delicious Moroccan restaurant for lunch and we went to his house and parted ways. "I do not think we met by accident, thank you Derek." A truly beautiful and surreal 24 hours.   

Hobo 4 lyfe.

I had a decision to make last week. I got to Moncton earlier than expected and had a week to kill before my sister arrived. Do I a) bike around for a week, maybe make it to Bathurst or b) rent a car and go to Cape Breton for the week.

I chose b). So, sorry for those of you who thought I biked to Cape Breton, I did not. I will be back on the road shortly to do PEI and then head down to Halifax though! Fret not!

Cape Breton is one of the prettiest places I have been. It reminded me of Hawaii with its wide open panoramic views of the ocean and hilly countryside. It had bits of the rugged north with its sharp rock faces and forrested appearance. But disctinctly Atlantic with the lighthouses, oceanside homes painted bright colors, and people who look like members of Duck Dynasty who spent a decade or two on a sailboat.

One night in during stealth camping: SUV edition, I found a gem. I saw a side road that looked like it pitched over the side of a cliff and backed up to see if I couldn't take my car that way. The trail would have indeed taken me to my death had what looked like the foundation of an old house not been carved into the mountain. The cement slab offered me a 180 degree panoramic of the Atlantic stretching from Meat Cove to the Bay of St. Lawrence. The sky that night, removed from any semblance of civilization,  was the most dramatic display of stars I have seen. There were so many! If I had a long enough straw I could've drank the milky way! It was spectacular. Needless to say, I had a poor sleep. But just as I had fallen asleep to the sunset on one direction of my camping spot, I woke up to the sun rising from the other. Truly a spectacular find.

I was able to visit a friend of mine, Sean Morgan, twice. He is living in Sackville and on the way to Cape Breton we went camping. We found an abandoned... something (shipping building?)... and climbed around, drank some delicious beer and chatted until it grew dark on the Bay of Fundy. We visited Hopewell Rocks the next day which boasts the highest tide in the world, worth a look. Returning to Moncton last night I stopped and Sean, myself, and a friend of his jammed in the chapel with a guitar I rented, his cello, and a piano. The reverb in that chapel was spectacular, definitely a treat after not being able to play music for so long.

I left my rental car today, and let me tell you, it feels great. Driving is a lonely way to travel for someone who is... well... alone. You drive in your solitary vehicle. You go to grocery stores and get food instead of restaurants cuz you have more means to make it. You go to all these beautiful places and experience it by yourself (I kept track during my time in the Cape Breton National Park of people I saw travelling alone amidst the hundreds, total number: 1, besides myself of course). I am an introvert, so most times its enjoyable, but it is a lonely way to travel. But! Hop on a bike loaded with your life and you are now a talking piece. Within an hour of getting on my bike I had been approached and offered a place to stay tonight (french Canadians are winning in the hospitality department!). I pass by the shops more slowly, taking in the atmosphere and the people. I feel my muscles rejoicing with satisfaction of being used. Its a warm fall day and I am happy to be on a bike.

So tonight, I will dine and rest at Fernando's house. Tomorrow night I will welcome my sister at the airport. The day after tomorrow I start the final leg of my trip, around Prince Edward Island and to Halifax. Then I get to be home! To see family! To have a fridge to store beer in! To be able to do laundry at a whim! To make music and jam with friends! To not have to sponge bath in fast food restaurants! To not have to steal toothpaste from the homes of hosts by squeezing it into my little travel size tube (if I have stayed with you, I have likely done it...)!

Hobo 4 lyfe.