I've taken to speaking in tongues-on the occasional moment. The past few months have been nothing short of overwhelming, bordering on fearful when approached by my forever growing to-do list.  I was lying in bed one night inundated.  My list had become my first Kamloops basement-suite apartment founded by my friend Alexandra and I.  Within our first month our lonely two bedrooms were stacked wall-to-wall with transient friends needing a temporary place to stay.  Temporary, I learned that year is a relative term. And much like this list of mine, getting friends and acquaintances to move on becomes more difficult when they find themselves habituated and comfortable in the space; even if it is just a curtain over the stair alcove with crayon writings of "Dave's Cave" written overhead.

My list has been growing, more things being added than being crossed off.  The very nature of a to-do list is in itself supposed to be temporary, but I am finding my items have become as comfortable as my young twenty-something roommates and needing a sort of act of god in removing them.  That's where the speaking in tongues regained fixture in my life.

I don't like to talk about this part of my life.  So many things I don't know how to explain.  So many things which cause me to shudder.  Anomalies fist-fight in my head; simplistic beauty confounded; rules about God made by man; superstition dressed in monotheistic robes and crowns: Just a few short thoughts on my past with Christianity.  But that night, I needed something; I needed assurance everything would be O.K..  I was in need of an act of God per-say.  So I prayed.  But not in a language I can comprehend, not to a God I presumed to know or understand.  I just uttered the dusty words of this 'gift?' I was given? created?  and all my anxiety, my fear began to chisel away.  The air around me changed.  I didn't need to understand the author of this world, I didn't need to decide whether there even was one.  I allowed myself to trust that there was something bigger than me taking care of me. Sigh. How I appreciate that I was still able melt into a moment like that-even today.  Even with my sullied theology and disenchanted existential views.  

And so I have started to pray in tongues-when I remember to think of it that is.  In the morning, in the shower when breathing seems hard to grasp in light of all the day requires from me; in the night when I wrestle with sleep, too intimidated to close my eyes as images of my pesky list taunts me in it's gluttonous staying power.  It works.  I won't claim to know why.  Its hypnotic effect takes me above my small world's minute towering problems.  It's a warm comfy blanket in a cold drafty house.  It's my yoga.  It's me not knowing what to say or what to ask, but allowing my spirit more wiser than myself to speak for me.  It's me not caring to confess that I speak what sounds like gibberish out-loud, gibberish which was once whole-heartily believed capable of moving the very foundations of this world when uttered.  

This is an unusual post after such a long silence.  I thought it made for a funny statement, casually expressing a topic so layered and weighted such as 'taking to speaking in tongues' as if I were simply mentioning I had become a tea drinker.  I made myself more naked than I anticipated in its confession.  I was once told that was what made a good writer: The ability to be vulnerable and naked.  Interestingly enough it is also what I was told made for a good Christian: Transparency towards God.  I am not sure I care about either of those anymore.

Well there you go, a long overdue update.  My intention today was to ideally finish my paper on Hume's moral theory... I am really bad with to-do lists.