I practice my Spanish grammar, rolling words over my tongue, la nieve se fundirá, la nieve se funde, la nieve se has fundido: the snow will melt, the snow is melting, the snow has melted because I wish for it to be so.

It still sprawls over hills and low slung valleys, but we who are looking see last Summer's leftovers ringing around tree bottoms and lining the roads. We see cupfuls of salt left in the streets, brought to the floor by its melting adversary. We see it because we are looking for it, and because we are discontent with leftovers of last year, because we are looking for the real thing. We don't want to get caught calling our Lord a mere gardener.

"Why are you weeping and Whom do you seek?"

Mary is me and I am she. Both of us looking desperately for some sign of life, some evidence of a promise spoken, both blinded by our expectations and what we do see. It's hard to see past the sprawling snow and the weak blades of brown grass right now. It's hard to feel Spring in the air and to not check the status of frozen, regressing river water. It's hard to see past the ratted clothes of a grounds-keeper and see the One we're looking for.

Because sometimes promises feel void, because three days feel like an eternity, and because stone tombs and winter blues feel like impossibilities.

But it doesn't change the promise--and that is what we cling to. We wait, like Mary, to hear our names with exclamation points at the end. We wait, like Mary, to hear His words and not just His voice. Because His voice feels crowded sometimes, pedestrian and plain. His voice sounds hollow sometimes, rhetorical and placating. But His words, speaking our names, this is how we know.

"Mary!"
"Rabboni!"

And we answer, in spite of it all. Because we who are looking see past.

Tonight we gathered around a piano and one another, and fumbled our way through mismatched copies of Methodist hymnals, stumbling over verses and harmonies. The piano sung and we all did too, He is Risen, Alleluia! The Wonderful Cross! Low In The Grave He Lay...on and on, anthems of our gospel, lyrics of our life and hope. The hymnals soon closed, or lay ignored in our laps in favor of words we all knew by heart, with heart. And from the piano a song I haven't heard in many years, but which, in my mind epitomizes this day:

Jesus Christ, I think upon Your sacrifice
You became nothing
Poured out to death
Many times, I've wondered at your gift of life
I'm in that place once again
I'm in that place once again

And once again I look upon the cross where You died
I'm humbled by Your mercy and I'm broken inside
Once again I thank You,
Once again I pour out my life

Once before, I sung this song in another living room, surrounded by different family, family of the blood sort. It was four days after my brother was killed and we opted out of attending church to stay home surrounded by those who knew to mourn with those who mourned. These people knew Jesus, though, and as chairs were pulled from every corner of our home, children sat on staircases and laps, and guitars were tuned, this first Easter of my heart--I knew it would be unforgettable.

It was the first time in my life that I had experienced Jesus. Others talked about the power of the Holy Spirit, others talked about the presence of God. I didn't know Him like that. I knew about Jesus. I knew about creation. I knew about Eden and the fall. I even knew about the tomb and had heard words about Pentecost and tongues of fire and the Holy Spirit, but I didn't know. I didn't know it could be like this.

I didn't know that the cross had the power to save. That this cross we were being asked to bear would point me to Jesus. That this cross would drive me to despair and hope. I didn't know that looking upon this cross would break me inside. I didn't know that pouring out my life wouldn't be just for today. That singing Once Again would give me the hope that Christianity is about sanctification and forgiveness and every single day doing it all over again.

I didn't know it until that day, in that living room.

But today, eight years later, surrounded again, singing again, I feel my eyes well up and my heart breathe fullness. Because no matter the cost, no matter the subsequent crosses, no matter the falls or the failures, or the great heaviness that we're asked to bear on His behalf--no matter---His cross brings us Life Abundant!

And once again, and over and over again, this is the anthem of my soul.

He is risen!
He is risen indeed!

I talked about something with her this morning, described the feeling, the moment, and the hope. Her response was textbook, it always is with these sort of things: Write! But you can't blog it this time, she said. I can, I replied. I can write about things--I just consider the ramifications more heavily than I ought to.

See once someone told me that a weblog is a pulpit. I may not being teaching or preaching or presenting hell-fire and damnation, but I'm telling you what my life looks like. And for those of you who know me before I've had my coffee or after I come home from work, my real life isn't pretty wonderings about spring and shaping sentences with ease and pretension--I'm not like that.

I'm moody and don't talk much. I'm fiercely competitive at card games and fiercely opinionated about colors. I'm reading the Bible through this year, but honestly, it's the first time all the way through. I drive five miles over the speed limit almost always and I got my first ticket a few weeks ago for talking on my cell phone. I get jealous of other people's homes and things and families and lives. I mutilated a cat in my car engine this past month and half cried, half laughed in the parking lot. I struggle with biting my tongue, especially with regard to things I'm passionate about and things I don't know anything about. I idolize peace; so much so that it eludes me most of the time.

That's what I'm like in real life.

This page isn't a very accurate representation of who I am. It is, however, a very accurate representation of who I think I would like to be and, therefore, am becoming.

Yesterday was Good Friday, and while other people were laying out Easter clothes, pulling tapers out of the freezer, or stuffing brightly colored baskets full of Cadbury and plastic grass, I was thinking about how exciting it is to celebrate a day that has no feeling of completion. In twenty-four hours we'll be shouting "He is Risen!" but yesterday and today we are left with a half-finished sort of feeling.

Uncomfortably aware that the story isn't over yet.

We call the gospel our peace, the resurrection our hope, and the cross our power, but to most of us the tomb is only the thing out of which He walked--not the place where he inhabited while taking all of our humanity and sinfulness to a more suitable place. But that's where the wonder is! He died on the cross, but He's God, He could handle that. He walked out of the tomb, but He's God, He does things like that. He gave gifts to men and ascended to heaven, but He's God, that's His prerogative.

On the day we call Good Friday, he took all of our Bad, wrapped it in grave clothes around his death, swaddled all of us in with all of Him, and disposed of death completely.

This is our pulpit--that we are becoming. That we, in so many ways, walk through life in the tomb. A half-life of sorts. The story isn't finished, Good Friday has just happened and we're waiting for the full Resurrection. We're waiting for full Life. We're waiting for the moment we shed all of the habits and things that hinder, for the day we walk out too.

That's what we're like in real life.

The grass hasn't shown itself and the trees are still waving their branches like wet cowlicks on end, bare and black. Other people talk about daffodils and he said it's warm there, like sixty-five degrees. I squeeze my eyes and try to imagine that the color in my cheeks, from last week's break, is real tangible evidence that summer is coming on and its way.

But the truth is that this evening, as I left work after six, the sun was still high behind my car and the sky was still blue and clear.

And, even though my bed is still covered in layers of quilts, and my feet are currently cold, and there's a fire in the woodstove, and the wind is whirling around the house in wintery songs, it still felt like the first day of Spring.

The half-open oven is in front of me with a cheesecake within. I opted out of the first batch of walkers to stay home and finish the baking process. I don't mind--there is sunlight through the window behind me and the smell of a west coast spring coming through the open door. One of my favorite people is sleeping on the couch in the other room. We've been looking forward to this week for a long time.

When pressure and duties and deadlines and the unceasing gamut of needs walks through our office door and then out again, we look at each other and simultaneously think "California."

We're not live for tomorrow sort of people, she and I. We're both definitely take it as it comes sort of girls. We like today and we like it best, or at least better than anything else within our limited eyesight. So longing for this week as much as we both have been has been out of character for both of us. But now that we're here, and things are green and quiet and slow, at least at 937 Middle Ave, we're very happy to be take it as it comes sort of people again.

Today is her birthday, hence the cheesecake in the oven, and I'm so glad to be here with her. Today as I drove circles around the grocery store parking lot, keeping the beautiful boy in the backseat asleep, we talked about how very hard some things are--being here, and realizing that in a bigger way, keeps me remembering how hard it is to be a place where even though you know people, people don't know you. It's hard to not be known.

Today, as a gift for visiting a new church, we three were given Starbucks gift cards! I slip this piece of information in my back pocket and begin to think of other ways we can bless the new folks who walk through the door at the place I call home.

The more I think about it, though, the more I realize that what really keeps us coming back isn't the free doughnuts in the hospitality room, or the Starbucks coffee served downstairs. It isn't the great worship team or the amazing preaching. It can't be the meet and greet time where the marathon goal of half the church body is to meet a new person.

What keeps us coming back is that through those doors, and thank the Lord even outside those doors, there is this very real sense of belonging and being. There is this deep seeded knowledge that these people know me, they sit behind me on Sunday and watch me worship, or not worship. They tap my shoulder and give me a word of encouragement. They beckon from the front row and tell me to sit with them. They lean down and grab my hand and say that I belong.

I think that's the thing about the body of Christ that keeps us coming back. It's easy to fit in anywhere, it's easy to succeed anywhere, it's easy to make an impression anywhere--it is, really, try it. Really try it, you'll do it. But it isn't easy to know that no matter what I belong here. That even if I don't fit in anywhere else, even if I fail at everything I put my hand to, and even if no one anywhere is impressed with me--I can still come home. And belong.

The cheesecake is done. And so am I. This post isn't anything really, just a little update on today's brief thoughts.

We test the air with our forearms and lungs and, finding it fair, we open the windows letting the Spring come in. Beds are stripped and chairs are set upside down atop tables, the house smells like pine and lemon scented cleaners and we dive in recklessly.

Spring Cleaning. It's my favorite time of the year, really. More than Christmas with its cheery ambiance and family togetherness or the dead of summer when we sit on the side porch until too late listening to crickets and silence. Spring cleaning, that first warm, free day when with abandon we are singularly focused on clearing every space of stuff so the air can permeate into the drifts that winter left behind.

I stare out the window at the six inches of snow still encircling our tree trunks, leveling our porches, lining our streets and think that even on March 1st, Spring Cleaning still feels a long way off.

This isn't about sweeping dust and winter salt, making piles of laundry and airing out down-comforters. This is about the Spring Cleaning of our Souls.

My Soul has grown accustomed to the heavy covers of winter, blanketed in down and snow, bedded and hidden from even my sight. It's been so long since I've opened the windows and breathed, taking inventory of the ugliness and the dank and ridding my heart of both.

My Soul affects my Mood and my Mood, dear friends, has been riding waves of the tumultuous sort. James wrote about the sort of person who is like those waves, the kind of person who doubts. And while my mood may seem like the aftereffects of a long winter or misshapen plan, the truth is that my mood is the direct effect of "not believing and thus doubting."

So this morning, while our tears mingled and I acknowledged the winter of my Soul, while I said I was sorry for my Mood, and I really was, all I could think about was the need for some Spring Cleaning. To reach into the deepest parts, or maybe start with the surfaces, or maybe the order doesn't matter at all, but to reach in and begin sorting out. To inflict character and righteousness and humility and belief on all those winter-worn areas.

To fling wide the windows, air out the smell of sleep, scrub deeply the recesses, and let the sun shine in.