God knows.

The only place on campus with a working wireless network tonight is the student union--decidedly my least favorite place to do the mound of homework in front of me. But the stranger next to me has the song that brings me to my face and tears of repentance to my eyes playing on his laptop.

Freedom reigns in this place.
Showers of mercy and grace.
Falling on every face.
There is freedom.

God knows.

Even beauty gets old.
Tom Waits: Bend Down the Branches

I wrote once this summer about this exhilarating feeling inside of me, this thing so beautiful that I was afraid to touch it for fear that it would melt, or worse, crumble, beneath my human touch. It was spiritual, it was new, it was mine, and it was me.

I am full of first times. We all are. We say always that something was the best day of our life, or the happiest memory, or the first time we felt something deep and real. And it's all true. Everything good is better than the last good thing because we have more experience under our feet and bottled in our hearts.

This was my first time to feel fully me. Fully alive. Fully free and fully brave. I felt that way in December of last year too. And before that in July. And once, I felt it prick me in March of 2005, a taste of what was to come. Each time I felt I had reached the pinnacle, it couldn't possibly get any better than this. Could it?

I'm not feeling particularly beautiful lately. The stuff of my heart looks ugly to me, and maybe to you too. I feel as though that pinnacle, once so tangible, is far far away, and the journey to it impossible. I'm not feeling fully me lately, not full of grace or the things I know are my portion and my inheritance. I feel dried, and used up, and old.

But this morning I remembered a prophetic word, spoken in that brief moment of life in March “You are like a stem, standing tall and straight in the wind, watching all your perfect petals fall around you. Asking what more, Lord? What more can you ask of me, I've given all the things I know to give? And I tell you, you will bloom again. You will blossom, and this time your fragrance will draw even the most reticent to come. Stand firm, then. You will bloom again.”

Because even beauty gets old. Even beauty gets wilted, and frosted, and under-appreciated. Even beauty, that thing we think is so sure, so perfect, so us—even that thing must die every season, has to feel that pinnacle of perfection and then that sting of death. So that we can see that even when everything has been given, and there is nothing left to do but stand firm, we do that.

The beauty is not in the perfection, the pinnacle, the sacrifice, or the promise, it is in the ability to trust that even stems still have roots and those things keep us strong when everything else is gone.

A montage worthy of nothing but reading in your daily perusal of weblogs and other electronic fixes:

I have a favorite CD, Liturgy, Legacy, and a Ragamuffin Band, and I've been listening to a few songs from it on repeat the past few days. The writing is spectacular; I think that every time I hear a Rich Mullins song, especially now, though, since I've a new respect for this man who sold everything and lived with the paupers, a modern monk. Today song of choice talks about earth and heaven and how much we long for earth in the belief that it brings hope and satisfaction and peace, when all it really is is a sojourn. Sheldon Van Auken wrote about it in A Severe Mercy, and I can't quote it exactly, but "One night at Magdelen we (C.S. Lewis and he) spoke about that longing for a yacht or a secluded island resort. Long for it in the belief that it will bring joy, which it never fully does, because we eventually realize all we're really longing for is God." Mullins knew that:

Nobody tells you when you get born here
How much you'll come to love it
And how you'll never belong here
So I call you my country
And I'll be lonely for my home
And I wish that I could take you there with me

The thing about it is that for all the wishing I do about earth, how much have I wished for heaven while here on earth? I don't want to long so heavily for heaven, that my taste for life is satisfied. Being all here, even while keeping the culture of heaven, is a tension I am learning acutely again.

It has been raining a full day here in Cleveland, Tennessee. We roll our pant legs and our back porch piles with wet shoes, wet umbrellas, and wet jackets. We live close enough to school that driving is taboo and besides, doesn't everyone need to walk in the rain at least once every few months? Consequently, though, people are late to classes and grumpy besides. I'm enjoying a few minutes of quiet, even while I watch the rain pour outside the window.

Shall I tell you my options? Mostly so you'll know and you won't have to ask, because I know you're all dying to know my social and academic calender. Here they are, feel free to peruse and offer advice.

Potsdam State University MA in English and Communications. Potsdam, NY. Two year program with an assistantship. Could live at home [glorious home!] and be with family.
The Salt Institute for Documentary Studies. Portland, ME. One semester graduate studies program concentrating on creative non-fiction documentary writing. could live in beautiful beautiful Maine for a semester and then transfer to another of these programs.
Goddard College. Plainfield, VT. Two year low-residency MFA creative non-fiction documentary program. Could live at home and commute once a week to VT.
Goucher College. Baltimore, MD. Two year low-residency MPA creative non-fiction documentary program. Couldn't probably live at home at all.
University of Tennessee. Chattanooga, TN. Two year resident program with assistantship. MA in English Composition. Could stay here, at my second home.
University of Vermont, Union Institute. Montpelier, VT. Two year resident program. MA in English and Rhetoic. Couldn't live at home, but could come home on the weekends [?].
Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY. Two year residency with a very nice assistantship package. MFA in creative writing. Couldn't live at home, but could come home sometimes.

I'm not going to tell you which one I'd most prefer or the order in which I place them. Those are my current options. As it stands right now, I'm definitely applying to one and waiting for a definite yes or no from the Lord on the others.

Wishing I had gone home for fall break, because even though I'm trying desperately to make heaven a more appealing home, the reality is that home reminds me a little bit of what heaven is like. And maybe I'm all washed up, and maybe you think I'm too melodramatic and ought to concentrate on better things, but really honestly and truly, it's hard to be here sometimes when my heart is there.

I've suddenly been hungry for home in a bigger way recently. It could be the fact that I've been home a total of two (count 'em) weeks the entire year, it could be the fact that people at home have been missing me and letting me know it, it could be the fact that even though here feels like home on the surface, in its depth there are still very intrinsic things missing. Or it could be that it is autumn, and autumn always makes me lonesome for the things I want out of life. Whatever they be.

Home is certainly one, though.

I'm learning to stand on my own again. I don't know how or why exactly I began to find crutches on which to lean, or how or why exactly those crutches broke beneath my leaning, but I'm learning to quell the bile in my stomach when I think of all the things I'm not brave enough to do on my own, and confessing that I am able. And that I am brave enough.

And that even when I'm not, He is.

Peter wasn't billed as the disciple whom Jesus loved. He wasn't the student of spirit like John the Baptist. And he wasn't going to bend down and wash anyone's feet. But somehow Jesus was friends with him. Somehow, with the sort of tossing that the book of James talks about, Peter was able to keep Jesus' attention. He was the first out of the boat, the one told to get behind, the rock upon which the church would be built, and the speaker of three denials. If anyone was inconsistent in their faith, in their attempts to reach some sort of balance and medium, it was Peter. But some reason Jesus maintained consistency in all his interactions with him.

I've been glaringly aware of my lack of balance recently. It's supposed to come easily to people like me, phlegmatic sorts who don't get rocked by much; or at least it always has. But of late I'm as inconsistent and unreliable as Peter was in his attempts to be radically obedient. And I guess the thing is that I'm realizing that it is not consistency, or reliability, or a balance between reckless abandonment and confident contentedness, or any of the things that I'm convinced that Christian living is supposed to be. Obedience is the requirement. That's it. That's all.

Living each day with an expectation that my will is utterly lost and without purpose unless it has at its core a complete desperation to obey the Lord--without hesitation, without complaining, without question.

I wanted to find a place, quiet and warm, to write and read. I wanted to find a place where the storms could be shut outside a room of my own and where the only storms I could war against were the kind of my own choosing. But the campus is closed down, locked up; Fall Break even infringes on those of us too far from home.

Instead I come home and find that my house is just as good as any other place. Especially with another roommate whose plan was to do the same as I. We are companionable, we two.

A friend asked me today what things were rolling around in my head. I tried to be articulate, but I'm sure it came out all wrong.

I've been thinking about Abraham, really, and Isaac. About how God didn't ask Abraham to disinherit his son, disown him, outcast him, or change his relationship with him. He asked him to do what in the eyes of the world was foolish; He asked him to recognize that obedience to God was Abraham's goal in prayer, not descendants as many as the stars; He asked him to kill his son.

I've been thinking about a word given to me a little more than a year ago, “There are going to be paths in front of you, choices to be made, routes to take, and some things are just going to make sense in everyone's eyes. The people of the world, your community, even at times your closest friends, will say yes, go this way. But there's going to be this little bit of doubt that says 'no, I've heard the Lord and this is the way I need to go' and you will turn and walk in a different direction. And people will be astounded at the good that results.”

I've been thinking about the words my closest friend penned, “And when Thy touch of death lies on a thing most dear, let me recognize the answer to my prayer.”

And these three things are related, I promise.

I am recognizing the answer to my prayer of late. I am recognizing that obedience, in all its vain glory and radical nature, is simple when it seems to be consistent with my prayer. When the hard things must be done in order to reach some lofty goal, some heartfelt desire. Obedience is easy when the end result is tangible, or at least visible. But obedience is most difficult when my prayer remembers to be Not My Will, But Thine and ceases to be a Christmas List satiated with needs and wants.

But when God asks to sacrifice the son and Abraham doesn't know that a ram will be provided. When the world around him was pointing fingers and questioning his resolution to a God who would ask not only a thing most dear, but the only thing that offered fulfillment to the promise. When in that struggle Abraham had to realize that it was not the son that God wanted, but Abraham's obedience---that was the thing most dear, after all, wasn't it?

That, my friend, is what I've been thinking about. God isn't interested in my sacrificial offering of baubles, beads, or wishes and dreams; He wants to give me Heaven and Earth, after all. God is interested in a posture of obedience, a place of submission. He wants his wisdom, even when thought to be foolish by men, to be the thing that propels me into His great and glorious adventure. He wants me to realize that some form of tragedy is the only means through which I grasp true obedience. It is only when that touch of death lies on the thing most dear, that I must recognize it as the answer to my prayer, and respond with obedience.

“Our vision is so limited we can hardly imagine a love that does not show itself in protection from suffering. The love of God is of a different nature altogether. It does not hate tragedy. It never denies reality. It stands in the very teeth of suffering. The love of God did not protect His own Son. That was the proof of His love—that He gave that Son, that He let Him go to Calvary's cross, though legions of angels might have rescued Him. He will not necessarily protect us—not from anything it takes to make us like His Son." Elisabeth Eliot--Passion and Purity

I feel as though, through my silence, you wonder what it is that pulses through me. I wonder at my silence as well. But it isn't for lack of words, just lack of shareable words. And I shamefully dip my head, the thing I love so well and so much is the thing that hordes none of my attention of late.

It isn't because there aren't feelings and reflections and secreted hopes and testimonies and things brimming on the surface of me. It is because those things are better left quiet and still; brevity is my new friend.

But I am aware of the lack---and so I give you this:

Last night six or seven of us sat in a familiar living room. We sipped chai and nibbled on biscuits and honey, listened to a friend read Garrison Kieller out loud, with Christmas carols playing in the background. I had my head in another friend's lap and my fingers in another friend's hair. We all closed our eyes, save the reader, and loved the togetherness of it all.

Right now, as I write, most of those six or seven are taking off for a weekend in the mountains. I opted out of this camping trip--Forever Plaid is playing at the local theater tonight and we get student discounts. Plus, I like the quiet of my day. We went camping a few weeks ago, roughing through tornado warnings and torrential downpours. It was the most fun. But some things are better left for memories and not for competition.

In the past two weeks I have rediscovered the practice rooms on the third floor of the Humanities Center and have adopted one of said rooms for my own. The sunlight pours in the window in the afternoon and, if I time it well, the sunset is my companion at dusk. In there I am with the Lord, a piano, and my heart is better at settling.

I wrote about John 9 a few weeks ago. About the man whose blindness was not caused by his sin or his parents, but for God's glory. The Lord is testing that theory on me currently--as I watch the things in which I've rested for the past year break in my desire for obedience. The blindness is sometimes overwhelming, the desire to see past the pain and the plans and the hopes and the beautiful mess, to see the Kingdom at hand. But I remember where that blind man spent his days, in front of the temple, and I keep myself in that posture. Christ's glory is the only thing that matters ultimately and I will be no less than an opportunity for that to manifest.

God Help Me.

The pile of graduate options simultaneously grows and dwindles. I set my mind on six or seven programs, and my heart on one, but the knowledge that my feet will take the path most likely headed in the direction of the Kingdom keeps me certain. I whisper my hopes and He hears me. That is enough for me.

A friend and I sat at a table in the corner of the student union yesterday and I shared my heart with her, my fears of the past few months and the victory that is almost tangibly in my heart now, the testimony and the hurt. When I am finished and I am sure my eyes are glowing with expectancy, her eyes pool with tears as she takes my hands and tells me, assures me, comforts me, encourages me with the faithfulness of my God. Because we know He's good, because we know He's eternal, because we know that even when we can't see which way is the right way, we know what faith tastes like and we like that flavor more than anything else.

Even when it's not popular. Even when it hurts. Even when it looks like there is no return but His glory. Even when it means making difficult decisions and sticking with them.

We've tasted faith.
And there is nothing else more satisfying.

Lewis Carroll said it best:

The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things; of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings. And why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings.

I'm learning about princes and kings, and a conglomeration of other nonsensical things.

Machiavelli wrote that a prince ought always to act as though he had virtue, even though he be made of vices, so that should the opportunity arise for the vices to be used, they are readily available and it is not against his true nature to use them. Today I read this:

O Lord, in Your strength the king will be glad. And in Your salvation how greatly he will rejoice. You have given him his heart's desire, and you have not withheld the request of his lips. For You meet him with the blessings of good things; You set a crown of fine gold on his head. He asked life of You--You gave it to him, length of days forever and ever. His glory is great through Your salvation; Splendor and majesty You place upon him. For You make him most blessed forever. You make him joyful with gladness in Your presence. For the king trusts in the Lord and through the lovingkindness of the Most High he will not be shaken.
Psalm 21.

I am neither prince nor king, heir of great riches or in the line of royalty, but I am learning that life must be walked, as Machiavelli said, as though we had viture. As though we are hopeful and expectant and full of all the goodness that we desire and know is ours. But what Machiavelli didn't fully understand was that when virtue is the path chosen and walked upon, virtue is what rises up within us.

David wrote of all the blessings a king would receive, his heart's desire, the request of his lips, the blessings of good things, golden crowns, and life, salvation, joy with gladness, unshaken. These are the things that a king expects to have. His bloodline, his name, decrees him everything he could want, without exception.

I am learning about walking in expectation, as though I am royalty, and as though the blessings are mine, without exception. I am learning about walking with virtue, trusting that the vices will vanish under the faithfulness of my God. I am learning about the weakness that accompanies all the depth of my humanity, and the abyss on which I feel myself teetering. I am learning that vices do not define me and failures do not disqualify me.

I haven't got the bloodline of a king, but I have the bloodshed of One and that is my expectation. That is my hope. That is my confidence.