joie de vivre

Molly over at Brittle Crazy Glass started a meme, and the rules are, in her own words: "Summer is a time when I feel an especial joie de vivre, so this meme is in honor of celebrating and loving life. If you could pick one photo that epitomizes joie de vivre, or quote one short piece of prose or poetry, or write one, what would it be? Don't think about it long and hard, just do the first thing that comes to mind."

For me, summer makes me long for distant lands...probably the product of the many a mission trip or foreign journey of summers past. This picture demonstrates my donkey riding skills (which nobody really did there in that Albanian village, we just thought it would be funny), with my "brother" Ervie and my "sister" Silva of the family I stayed with for the summer of 1996.


I also chose this picture because today was the first day that any of the guys that I work with at the gym asked me a personal question, to the tune of, "Denise, do you smoke weed?" Apparently because I give an aura of a "young suburban hippie who wears long flowing skirts, drives an old car, sits around with someone playing the guitar and smokes weed." Pretty funny, because that could have described me in high school (just exchange the weed with a hacky sac or a Bible in a quilted carrying case), but now I'm not so young and don't have much affinity for suburban life. So here is probably the last long flowing skirt that I owned, and I left it there in Albania that summer.

And since Molly cheated and did 2 things, I'm going to cheat too, especially because this poem goes along with that summer in Albania. There was a young woman in the village just up the hill name Vjollce (VOLTZ-sa) Pepa, who was in fact just like a bolt of electricity to anyone she spoke with and who had been very argumentative with us while we were teaching the gospel (and understandably so after years of communist rule with roots of Islam and Orthodox Christianity all mixed together). Yet her engagement in the discussions showed a true seeker's heart, and one day she grabbed my notepad and wrote this poem on the spot:
"For God"
Staying alone
Suddenly you came to me
Light you poured in my eyes
And with love you filled me

You are all I am
You forgive my sins
You fill me with hope
You don't let me die

When finally I met you
Lord, I understood you
O Lord just you, just you
How close I am
Alone I am not anymore
O Lord.

Now I tag Dave, Karyn and Mark to carry on Molly's meme!