danny

Introducing: my little brother. Have I mentioned how much I love him?

tozer

Let us remember that when we talk of the rendering of the veil we are speaking in a figure, and the thought of it is poetical, almost pleasant, but in actuality there is nothing pleasant about it. In human experience that veil is made of living spiritual tissue; it is composed of the sentient, quivering stuff of which our whole beings consist, and to touch it is to touch us where we feel pain. To tear it away is to injure us, to hurt us and make us bleed. To say otherwise is the make the cross no cross and death no death at all. It is never fun to die. To rip through the fear and tender stuff of which life is made can never be anything but deeply painful. Yet that is what the cross did to Jesus and it what the cross would do to every man to set him free.

rules

Aren’t there rules about things like this? Feelings like this and thoughts like these? Isn’t there a handbook full of cute anecdotes and catchy phrases and practical how-tos for situations like this? Isn’t there an old wives tale or some soothing salve to make occasions like these somehow a little more bearable, a lot more resolving? And if there isn’t, well then why not? Hasn’t this book been written a hundred times before and hasn’t history repeated itself well enough to leave well enough alone and only pick on the big guys? Or at least someone its own size? Why does it choose to remake and reinvent history with a new batch of unsuspecting prey every few years? Why us and why now?
There aren’t answers and there won’t be, I guess. Trial and error and hindsight and by accidents and mistakes and completion are all part of our lots in this journey. The moment one figures it all out is the moment another one is embarking on that same journey, apt to walk the same path and make the same mistakes.
The only thing that hasn’t changed isn’t a thing at all, but a God who delights in doing new things, looking to old paths, leading with little children and confounding those same children with the crowns of grey hair and ancient wisdom encircling them. He is a God of paradox and promise, sufficiency and surprise. He is a God worth our meager praise and our empty hands. And He is a God who takes our ‘I don’t knows’ and our ‘But waits’ and shushes them with a finger in the right direction.

leaving

So much is changing. Home is nowhere and nowhere is really settling. Even moving on and moving in means someday moving out and moving off. Can't stay one place too long; don't put down roots anywhere; This world is not my home. Why, when one longs just for a home, is that the one thing which is denied the pleasure of. An ascetic distaining nod in my direction 'She'll learn someday' is the constant wagging tongue, as if I haven't already? Nobody said it would be easy, and this is suppose to be my consolation prize? The satisfaction of nobody being right for once?

The first half of my room is empty, evidence of the first to leave. Soon the chocolate brown bedroom upstairs will vacate and then the china blue and white one will be still. Soon after that I will once again leave a green painted haven for the second time this year. I picked green because it reminds me of home. Not home in the literal sense, but the abstract [if there is anything abstract about home]. Green feels like home. It feels like growth and sometimes pain, but it always feels right. Anne Shirley knew that. She headed to her green gables. Adam and Eve knew that, otherwise it wouldn't have hurt so badly to leave Eden. Even the Jolly Giant knows that he looks better in Green.

The house I grew up in was green and the house I left last winter had a kelly green roof which could be seen several miles from the north or south on US State Route 11. "Look for the green roof" I always told people.

head

My town is my cathedral
the drifts, the pews
the sky, the ceiling

and the
stars, the glass windows
letting
light in

I breathe
I pray
in cold silence