The gulls fly en masse, a swarm of white and a sound of screams. What frightened them from their river shore I don't know, but they make an exit reminiscent of an audience after a bad play. I am sitting on the back stairs in the early afternoon sunlight. I snack on lime tortilla chips and homemade salsa, and I read Isaiah.

I like peace. I'm a secondborn, some people call it the peacemaker's position, some people call it avoidance. I think it's a little a both. Isaiah must not have been a secondborn--peace wasn't really his overall message. But it's still one of my favorite books of the Bible. I gravitate to it often, when the gospels fail to inspire and the epistles fail to chastise. I'm always up for a little excitement in the form of rebukes and prophecies.

Isaiah slips peace into all of his talk of forthcoming punishment and wrath. It's the reward, he says, and the roadmap. It's salvation and strength. Today, he says, it is righteousness. I like that. I like righteousness. My conscience likes righteousness. It's easier than, well, walking by the Spirit alone or sinning for a season of fun.

He says that the work of righteousness will be peace. And I stop here. Reread that line. A few times. Does that mean that righteousness will yield peace? That those who are righteous will have peace? That peace is righteousness? That righteousness is peace? None of those feel right. None of them seem right.

I sit and think for too long about that line. The binding of my Bible slips between my knees and I lay back on the cement, closing my eyes to the sunshine and gulls. I chew righteousness and peace like a round peppermint candy, rolling it around until all that's left is a skeleton of goodness.

I don't know what Isaiah was saying here, but here is what I absorb in my half-hour break on the back porch: Peace is not born of avoidance or surrender. Peace is work. It is righteousness at work. Righteousness at work looks like peace. We will and we order and we do it every single day.

This morning in our staff meeting he spoke about how our posture should always be to assume that the same Spirit at work in us is at work in others. This is work, is my first thought. I like to think it comes naturally to me, but the truth is, it doesn't. What comes naturally to me is to avoid situations where the seeming peace might be interrupted.

But peace is work. Righteousness yields peace. And Righteousness is work.

I have no master but Thee, no law but Thy will, no delight but Thyself, no wealth but that Thou givest, no good but that Thou blessest, no peace but that Thou bestowest. I am nothing but that Thou makest me. I have nothing but that I receive from Thee. I can be nothing but that grace adorns me. QUARRY ME DEEP, dear Lord, and then fill me to overflowing with living water. Valley of Vision

I drive early this morning, fog still lifting from the road and the rivers. I say that it looks like what I imagine England to look like, all deep green and misted. The rolling greens and spiraling gardens testify to their maker--we're growing, we are! With all the rain and intermittent sun, humidity and long summer days, they get plenty of all the things they need to flourish. Not too hot, not too dry, not too wet, not too windy. It has been a summer of perfect balance. They get what they need most when they need it most.

Unlike me and us.

I'm pestered by all this talk of balance in the Christian life. It has always brushed my shoulders with indignation, its lofty evenness spreading like hot gravy into every crevice on my plate of life. I am a legalist by nature--we all are, thinking that our way is right, that our apple is different. I bristle against balance and grasp for it at the same time. I feel the pendulum swing left and scramble for right. Always right.

Today in class he talked about being extreme, none of this cool modern idea of balance and political correctness. He talked about an extreme Christ, an extreme life and an extreme death. I think about how His food was the do the will of the One who sent Him--how He did what He saw His Father doing. How this is what made Christ extreme--not miracles or grace or love or death or consistency or balance.

He was extreme because His sustenance was doing all of the things He saw His Father doing.

But He still kept the cloak of the people wrapped around His shoulders, still with a rock for a pillow and an outstretched hand to a whore; still with righteous indignation in the temple and little children gathered to Him; still with a rebuke to His disciples and an eye on His mother; still with healing in one hand and a carpenter's hammer in the other; still God and still fully man.

He did what He saw His Father doing, not motivated by a method or principle or a denomination or politic or gene. He was confident of His sonship and never strove for balance.

Just more of God, however He chose to work that day.

Always seek peace between your heart
and God, but in this world, always be careful
to remain ever-restless, never satisfied,
and always abounding in the work of the Lord.
Jim Elliot

When my closest childhood friend and I were still sleeping over at one another's homes for recreation and not convenience, when we were wishing on glow-in-the-dark sticker stars, and when we were stuffing four years of memories in a metal Time Capsule, somewhere in between all of that, we used to quote Lewis Carroll to one another: "the time has come the Walrus said, to talk of many things..." We knew most of it by heart. Memorizing was in the blood of our friendship; we met as the two leads in a school play.

One year we saved hundreds of Calvin and Hobbes comic strips and sticky-tacked them to her bathroom wall. We used to collect banana stickers and coke tabs, I don't remember why. She was into collecting things--t-shirts and rocks and photos and things. She still is. I'm always awed by her collections. She makes mundane clutter look like art. And peace. Art and peace at the same time.

We lived less than a mile from one another, a bike ride or quick walk, but every few months we would have spontaneous Fun Mail Weeks where we'd package treasures in plastic bottles and Capri Sun boxes and band-aid tins and mail them to a mile away. It was so much more fun to get a tin plastered with first class stamps than anything else. I kept all the letters she wrote and stuffed in those odd canisters; they are packed away with the rest of my proof of life.

My family was her family, she and I stood in the delivery of my younger brother and watched first breaths together. Her family was my family, the scent of their home lingered on my clothes long after I left at night. If home for us is remembered in a scent, like laundry detergent or watermelon, then I feel most at home inside their aroma. Our families blended together and grew and ebbed. My brothers still talk about lullabies she sang to them and I'm not sure when her younger siblings became my friends too, but they did.

Her first camera was the mirror of my life. Chronicling everything we did together. She had more talent in a cheap film 35mm than anyone I knew. Her photos were alive: touchable. They still are, even if she's moved on to bigger and better equipment. The last time I was at her house I bent down and caught a glimpse of myself, seven years ago, in my favorite wool sweater. She shot it in the backyard of her old house, a graveyard, our playground. The other day I was packing some things up and pulled a photo out of the frame of my mirror: her and me on a South American adventure.

I remember little about the time surrounding my younger brother's death, save this: the night of April 19, 2000, my best friend lay beside me all night long, stroking my hair. I think she must have stayed awake all night because I drifted off and on, in and out, and every time I stirred she quieted me with her spirit. Every time. Through every moment of shocked disbelief that I have walked through in the past 12 years, through every elation and crushed disappointment, she has been constant.

She still sends me spontaneous mail, reminiscent of our Fun Mail Weeks. She is known to all by a nickname that my family pseudo-christened her with. She quotes me on her blog and makes me feel like a million bucks. She still likes to cuddle when we pass through our respective hometowns. She takes photos that stun me with their personality and depth. She loves people with absolute abandon and she loves them deeply and loyally. She loves God with a simple fervor I have never known anyone else to possess.

She is my friend. She is, to me, gold.

I drive home slowly, enjoying the now familiar detour, the roadside stands, and small peaks of blue in front of me. I am memorizing portions of Psalm 50 and singing scripture with my ipod. Reminding myself again of the sound of thanksgiving.

I think He wants sacrifice from me. I'm sure of it. I'm positive, always, that what I want can't ever be what He wants. I train myself to not want, because I've grown accustomed to sighing and handing it over to Him every time anyway. It's easier to not hope at all than it is to be disappointed by hope deferred. It's fear and a lack of faith.

It's sin. And my heart is sick.

It comes in slick, packaged neatly. It doesn't have the stink of legalism, putting on airs that make us better. It doesn't feel like asceticism, cowering under a cloak of emptiness. It sounds radical, appealing; it feels like liberation, throwing off the bonds of this world.

But this world is too much with us; late and soon: even sacrifice can be sin. We aren't so above that.

He is not glorified in my piety or my purity--He is displayed through these things: to him who orders his way right, I will show the salvation of God. Psalm 50.23 This is our testimony. This is our offering to the world.

He who offers a sacrifice of thanksgiving honors me. Psalm 50.23 But our offering to Him is thanksgiving. Thanksgiving honors Him.

I close my eyes on Sunday and I quiet my heart, drown out five hundred voices, guitars, drums, and my head. I drop my head and my shoulders and admit that I am tired of giving. I admit that giving feels empty. I admit that giving feels joyless. And I hear Him say: but that is to them, what are you giving to Me?

I drive home slowly, my mouth forming words of thanksgiving. It is not what I give to Him, I am realizing, it it the acknowledgment of what He has given to me. This is the sacrifice of praise, the sacrifice of thanksgiving. This is what honors Him.

I overhear from the neighboring office today, "Yeah, there's this like worry gland in women when it comes to money..." I laughed and I'm sure said something smart back, if not in my head. I am a woman. I worry about money. I worry about not enough. I worry about too much. I just worry. And I don't know anything about glands.

What I know is that He satisfies.

I don't know it always: I kick myself on Sunday mornings, standing in the front row, desperate for a touch of God like the old days. Days when I wept because of His goodness, days when I shouted because of His worth, and days when I was broken by His faithfulness. I am not so easily persuaded these days.

But I am aware that none of the things after which I chase satisfy like He does.

I get so tired of chasing, expecting, and being disappointed--not because the result isn't what I wanted, but because it isn't Him.

I am satisfied by You alone
Just one touch from you, oh Lord
Reach within my heart and make it new
Oh I must have more of you

These are the words that pound through my speakers, that resonate in my car and heart this evening. Not because I mean them, but because I'm sure of them. Because sometimes I'm not sure of them, but I want to be sure of them. Because sometimes I don't want to be sure of them, but I want to want to be. I declare that I am satisfied by Him alone, because I know my propensity is to want more than Him alone.

I don't need more of anything; I need a heart change. A new heart.

Too often I try to refurbish, renovate, recycle the one I have, but what I need are His mercies new every morning. What I need is more of Him.

It is hot here, but as I watched channel 7 news tonight, heard the forecasted thunderstorms, and listened to Mr. Difranco talk about the sweltering 92 degrees that it is, I laughed inwardly. I am reminded of last summer and the summer before. The northeast is in me, in my blood and history, and I am in it. But my time spent in the south ruined me for the four full seasons I experience here. I sometimes would just prefer it to be summer for eight months a year and autumn for the final four. I just liked that.

I spent the Fourth of July with my three youngest brothers in Lake Placid. My aunt, who lives in Cape May, New Jersey (where other people vacation) was vacationing in my neck of the woods. I couldn't argue with her invitation to the four of us to join her and her brigade in the mountains to my right. We left early and spent the drive listening to Nickel Creek loudly, getting lost (we took back-roads the whole way), and teaching a spanking new 11 years old the basic principles of driving standard and (don't read this Mama) letting him have a go at the shift stick.

We arrived and spent the day getting properly sunburnt, paraded, hot-dogged, water-logged, and ice-creamed. It really was a treasure and, while the three of the slept, I couldn't keep the thankfulness from creeping out in the form of tears as I drove back through the Big Green to my dad's house. There were no fireworks or sparklers. There was no barbeque and no plethora of desserts featuring marshmellows. There was just us. Us and a favorite aunt. In mountains. Together.

If Independance Day is about being independant, I'll have none of it. If it's about being free, I can't think of a better way to spend it.

Personal pronoun confusion aside, I say this verse to myself much recently:

They ask Me for just decisions, they delight in the nearness of God.
Isaiah 58.2

A friend says to me today, "Can you be so desperate to not miss the will of God that you miss the will of God?" I nod my head from my side of the room, heaviness in my heart, not because I really believe it--I don't. Not ultimately. But it sure feels like it a lot of the time. I center my heart, center the Lord, center my desires, my pleas; I ask for just decisions in the same breath that I ask for His will--thinking that they must be the same. I stumble on theology, truths infused by experience, confirmed by scripture, seared by testing.

I think I'm asking for just decisions, for His will, and find that I'm just asking for it all to come out okay. For me. For us. For this. For you.

I'm asking more for the nearness of God.

Because His will seems far away, feels nebulous. What I need is His nearness. Like a child who trusts the hand that holds his, not the direction in which he heads. What I need is to ask for His will, but be content with His nearness. Delight in his nearness.

Last night I swung my feet back and forth talking about the moon, watching the moon, a sliver chased by its greater bulk. It set in the southeastern sky, its face turning orange, reflecting the still light horizon. The big dipper dipped and the little one made a showing too. I sat on a turning world in the dark watching falling bodies of light, reflections of light, shooting bursts of light, and felt small and stubborn.

Even the stars above, things that seem still, are still changing.

Ben Folds

I turn too because I am bound by gravity, not because I am fond of it---or of any sort of change for that matter. I am not.

So when my soul does feel the need to change, I take note and listen. Not to its prodding (my soul is unreliable and fickle), but to what it is saying. It is, after all, dictated to by my spirit and I have great respect for that. I've been feeling the need for change. Impatient for it recently. Waiting. Answering questions with shrugs and lopsided smiles, the sort that tell people that no I don't want to talk about it but I don't know what else to tell you. There are lists of things I'm waiting for, it's nothing in particular, and I'm not so foolish as to assume that even when things get checked off of that list that I will somehow be eternally satisfied.

My soul is a thirsty master.

I wake up this morning and stare at the red numbers to my right, send a text message, roll to my left and throw back the covers. I wash, rinse, repeat. I down coffee that tastes like the bottom of the pot and I make my soul do my bidding. I arrive at church, the worship team is playing to an audience of none, church doesn't start for another two and a half hours, I am measuring paper in my office, I sing along with the music from the sanctuary. I sit for a few minutes in one Sunday School class, reading over notes for children's church, and remember other things I should be doing. I head downstairs, grumbling in my head, smiling on my face. We pitch together and we make it happen. It happens. We are late to worship in the sanctuary. I leave as soon as the last chords end and from my classrooms of kindergarteners I hear clapping, laughing, music, announcements, and loud prayers from the open windows to the right. I play Red Light, Green Light. Wash, Rinse, Repeat. It is 12:30pm, still barely afternoon.

Life feels monotonous sometimes. Overwhelmingly same. And no matter how much I hate change, no matter how much I fear it and stand shaking my head at anyone who offers it, stillness is sometimes just as hard. But I am learning again that in the midst of stillness there's still change. Minute motions, things I tell my soul to do, ways I churn character out, all of this is because there's a bigger picture, one I can't see.

Unless I sit for a while staring at the details through a scope bigger than the details.

Also with moisture He loads the thick cloud;
He disperses the cloud of His lightning.
It changes direction, turning around by His guidance,
That it may do whatever He commands it
On the face of the inhabited earth.
Whether for correction, or for His world,
Or for lovingkindness, He causes it to happen.
Job 37.11-13

I jumped on the Facebook wagon gently, to say the least. I was a new student at Lee University and in a blasted hurry to store the sea of faces around me in some sort of organized system. Facebook was the newest social network (the only social network as far as I knew. I was always more suited to the real life, in your tangible face sort of interaction.) and I succumbed.

There have been numerous times over the past three years that I have regretted that leap, held my cursor over the Delete Profile button, but I never pressed it. Ignored the thing altogether, yes, but delete, no. And I'm glad for it, honestly. I am known for ignoring my Facebook Inbox, my sidebar of requests for all sorts of Very Strange Applications, and I let the Friend Requests pile up until it's more like sorting dirty laundry than it is like Christmas day. I am very good at being a very bad Facebooker.

But. I will say that I have found Facebook to be very, very useful in many ways. People I think of and wonder if they think of me, I find they do! they do! And then, suddenly, I find that I'm actually curious about what the heck the boy I babysat when I was eleven and he was five is up to now that he's a strapping 21 year old college jock. Or the mousy girl from down the road, she's a neonatal nurse now and no more mousy than a lioness in her element.

Occasionally I get a Friend Request (This is, to you non-Facebookers, when someone formally requests to be your friend, regardless of whether you have never met and therefore have no reason to be friends, or whether you are in real life Very Close Chums and Wouldn't Think Of Not Being Friends. You still have to make the formal Friend Request before it's official. It's a sad, sad world.) from someone who thinks they know me, or perhaps really does, but I don't know them. This is embarrassing. For me. And for them. But sometimes it can turn into a good thing.

The ways in which I have found Facebook to be useful are as follows:

I can find out what is going on minute by minute in the faithful status updaters: Susie Jones is trying to suck chocolate chips from her Blizzard through her Dairy Queen straw. Fascinating stuff that.

I can view, tag, untag, comment on, and otherwise enjoy dozens and dozens of flattering and very unflattering photos of people I know. This is fine blackmail. But I would never resort to blackmail. I'm just saying is all.

I can see who everyone considers to be their top friends and keep tabs on my Top Friend Status. (I was on the Top Friend List of nine other Facebookers last time I check. I'm not sure whether this is very popular or very wallflower.)

I can canvass reams of people very quickly to let them know about anything in the world I want to. Pretty much every person I know can know about anything I want them to know within seconds. This is very helpful. Ask any serious Facebooker. They know.

There are more ways I find Facebook helpful, but in case you noticed, this is not an essay toting the glories of Facebook. This is actually my attempt to assure myself that there are good things in the Facebook World. And to tell you that if we are not friends on Facebook then we are just not friends.

Just kidding.
Sort of.