This year has been interesting here in the LightHouse. By year, I mean calendar year. The year which began on January 1, 2011.

One could speculate that it all really began back in the holiday season of 2010. Yep, I think that’s where I’ll start.

We were busy (as usual) prepping for Christmas, getting gifts sent. Purchasing gifts for each other and friends. Wrapping, decorating, baking. Best of all, anticipating the arrival of LightMom and TheGrandPea for a Christmas visit. We love having my parents visit and hanging out with them. There aren’t a lot of expectations and we just take things as they come. There was one thing I wanted to do; I wanted to see True Grit with both my parents, but especially with my dad. We both love westerns, you see (so does my mom) and I remembered that he had seen the original when it came out.

Something was off though. Something with me. I was walking through thigh deep water and could not get myself together. Plus I had a horrible cough that would not let go. When LightMom says, “You really need to see the doctor.” Yep. You make the call. Off I went. And came home with a diagnosis of pneumonia.

That just takes all the fun out of everything.

So, I spent January recovering from pneumonia. It’s a long slow boring slog.

LightHusband (in the meantime) was having a series of treatments on his back which left him … well … on his back for most of January and February. A home with two teenagers and no drivers for the better part of a month was … ahhhh … interesting. We muddled through, but none of us are really sure how that happened.

Along came March and I got sick AGAIN! This time no pneumonia, just an ordinary upper respiratory infection/bronchitisy kind of thing. The problem was that my lungs had not fully recovered from the pneumonia and it put me flat on my back because I couldn’t breath. This time though I fought the beast hard. I sequestered myself in our guest room with not one, but two vaporizers going. LightHusband brought me a television and meals. And that’s where I was for about 18 – 20 hours a day for the better part of a week.

Now one would think (being an introvert and all) that being alone in a room for 18 – 20 hours a day would be heaven. And I won’t deny that there are parts of that journey that I loved. I loved being able to say, “I’m going away now for awhile, I need to rest.” Sometimes that rest was just as much mental/emotional as it was physical. But, that room got awfully tiny after a while and I wanted to be out and around people. It got lonely in that room. When you have to make a hot, steamy environment for yourself, people don’t like to visit too often … even when they are family. And, like all sick rooms, apparently it began to take on a certain aroma, defined by LightHusband as “sweat and stale bananas.” I told him that it was the tropical atmosphere 😉 …

One thing it did give me was a lot of time to think … and read. I’ve been reading a lot about what’s going politically and economically in our country. No surprise there. And I am disturbed. Deeply, profoundly disturbed. The progress and protections that were put in place for children, for women, for the disenfranchised of all ilk in the 20th century are being attacked at every level … both in state and federal legislation. I cannot keep quiet any longer.

I started this blog July 2005 as an exercise in community. I am no longer a member of that community and have not been for four years this week. The focus changed and for a long time I wrote about the state of the church and often about women in the church. There’s not much more for me to say about that here. It’s been said. And I think that is why my pen (keyboard) has been still for so long. I haven’t had anything new to say.

Calaciriya is a place. A mythical place to be sure. But a place nonetheless. It is a place that is noted but once in the Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Rings (I think on page 229?). The translation of the name is “Ravine of Light.” And that is where this blog gets it’s name and it’s focus from … to be light shining in darkness. To be a place of light. A place where we can be reminded of who we are, who we are meant to be and what we can strive for. So the minutae of this blog is going to change and I will be writing more from a justice perspective. How does love (sometimes specifically Christian love) intersect in the public sphere to create justice? What does that look like now and what could it look like?

What, indeed, are we striving for?