Here is the time for the Sayable, Here is its homeland.
Speak and bear witness. More than ever
The Things that we might experience are vanishing, for
what crowds them out and replaces them is an imageless act.
ranier maria rilke

I read those lines in a World Lit 312, a laugh of a class that changed my life. Not drastically, and not until these days of late. Sure, I named this page after a line from the same poem: Perhaps we are here in order to say: house/bridge, fountain, gate... a different translation from the original German, but you get the idea.

I have been trying to decide for the past few weeks whether 2009 will be the year of Jubilee or the year of the Sayable. I haven't decided and it may be both when I am looking over my shoulder from 2010, but here is the time for the Sayable. Now is the time for speaking things that are not as though they are. Not to wield some heavy incantation over impossibilities, but to convince myself that God has set things right.

Romans 10.9 says "With your whole being you embrace God setting things right, and then you say it, right out loud: "God has set everything right between him and me!"

I am not one for the sayables. The right out loud idea frightens me. Somehow saying means hoping and hoping means being disappointed and disappointment means my faith is weakened, not stregthened and I need all the strength I can muster up. I sit tonight and stare across the kitchen island and say to her, why do we bother saying what we want at all? Wouldn't it be easier to just go on pretending that things are fine just as they are, that living here is exactly where I want to be, that working there is exactly where I want to work, that waking here is exactly where I want to wake?

The truth is that it would be easier, but it wouldn't be embracing God setting things right and saying it out loud. It wouldn't be believing with our hearts and confessing with our mouths that He is Lord.

I'm stumbling around on that a lot recently, to be honest. I'm a private sort of believer. I keep the bigger believing to myself. The God Has Set Everything Right sort of belief is bigger than the God Is or God Will because the latter assume that He messed it up and is scrambling to set it right before we notice.

Thank you, God, we've noticed. Now what are you going to do?

And that's what I catch on tonight, driving home from home. He Has set it. He HAS. This great plan of Hope and a Future and real, abundant life is poised for action and only needs the Sayable to usher it into motion. The Our Father, the Open the Eyes of my Heart, the Lead Me By Still Waters. And that's on us. That's on me.

So 2009 will be a year of the Sayable. Perhaps the unsayable sometimes, or the unsaid, or the missaid or the misunderstood, but said. God help me to speak, to say.

There are hordes of characters in my story. A woman with a spotted dog and a spotty memory, who mutters to herself and everyone else too. A man with hair so long and unwashed down his back like a beaver's tail that he's earned the nickname we've given him. The woman from the post office who looks over her bifocals at us, grumpy at work, but I've run into her a time or two at the co-op or library and she's actually very nice. Hordes of good-looking Asian students scurrying their way through grad school or America or the snow. The old men who sit in the corner of The Fields, so out of place, but so consistent, they're in place. These are the people who play roles in my town.

Some people say they Take a Sick Day when they don't go into work. I call all the missed days of work these past two months Sick Days that Have Taken Me. I don't enjoy life from my bedroom, it's monotonous and tiring and I don't have the energy some days to even open my eyes more than a slit. I am baited by those days I feel superb, like a new person and I tempt fate shouting It's Over! I Feel Good! but the truth is that it's not over and I don't feel good again and I'm taken sick again.

Today, all day, I've wanted a smoothie. I imagined it a strawberry-banana one with lots of yogurt and not too sweet, though I would have been happy with a plain strawberry one. But we have no fresh fruit save the apples in the basket on the table and yogurt is a precious commodity. But this evening a boy I love stomped through our apartment door and brought me something better. I like that our thoughts aren't God's thoughts, but He still knows ours.

Things I love about January:

I love leaving work in January. Unlike December it is still light out when I leave and I can watch the sun dip behind the hills. It makes me feel warm, somehow, knowing that it is below zero here but somewhere in this universe it is brilliant orange and very, very, very warm.

I love wearing slippers. I'd rather be barefoot, but it's not an option right now. So I close our apartment door behind me, slip out of felted wool shoes and into faux leather slippers from Thailand.

I love that January means that there's only a month in-between us and March. March is miserable, but after March is April and April is beautiful.

I love driving to work in the morning in cold, cold January, when the ice still clings to trees like droopy old man mustaches.

I love that summer is for music and open windows and writing in my head while I drive, but January is for NPR and yelling at the radio and intermittently blowing on my fingers to keep warm.

I love that in January I can wear scarves. Cashmere ones. Wool ones. Cotton ones. And a funny sort of blend one. I love scarves.

I love that in January I don't feel badly about reading or not, or writing or not, or thinking or not. Because soon January will be over and so will winter. And so too, the winter of my soul.

I love January because it's not always January.

It is a blustery, blowing night outside my second floor window. The streetlamps make everything golden, masking the frigid air with warm glows. I am not so easily fooled. Or maybe I am.

I say to a friend recently, that we do things sometimes with the mindset that it is not an adventure, that it is life and a choice and there is no opting out when the fun stops. I think that driving to work, driving anywhere really, nearly everyday during the winter. That I've chosen to live in a cold place where it snows and where temperatures regularly fluctuate 50 degrees. Last week I scraped an inch of ice off of my car with red and chapped hands, nearly crying because it was so cold it hurt. I wore a sweatshirt today. As the door to the print shop closed behind me I heard the manager call out to stay warm, it's going to be a cold one tomorrow. I am indifferent.

Because I've chosen life here. It isn't some choose my own adventure story, write your own history, take risks, live life on the edge sort of life. It's just normal: I pay my bills and have a lease and car insurance and coffee maker and run out of toilet paper on occasion. There is no backdoor.

One friend accuses me of the working-class mindset and another says I've beat the system, the first college graduate in a family of creative-do-it-yourselves. I couldn't do it on my own, I thought I needed a degree, I guess.

This morning I scan websites, journalism programs, masters in communication degrees, something, anything. Not to get away from here, I've chosen life here and I like it. But to feel like there is something lurking beneath that has to get out. Something to be said, something to be done, something, anything! It's not the doing of something, I think, that will make the difference. It's the knowledge that there is something to be done.

I think this happens every January. I am tired of White, white, white and cold. But I think it takes me by surprise, perhaps more every year. Because as much as I've chosen it here, it always feels like it's chosen me instead.

I jotted off a note to a friend this morning. She's gone off and put her talent to good use in the Big City and I'm proud of her if I may. May I, Leslie? She's going to visit the haven of one of our heroes and she going to do all sorts of amazingly astounding things with her pen and paper, as though she hasn't already. I'm secretly jealous of her, although by virtue of saying it here, my secret isn't so kept anymore.

Not jealous of her talents, I am not so blatant as that, jealous of taken opportunity. She set out for it and she took it, maybe later or earlier or further or longer than some would like, but took it nonetheless.

And part of me says that I've had my chance, that my parchment degrees are stashed away in a box and what good have they done?

I cry across the table from her last night asking the same question I always ask, Did I miss it? Was there a small window of time when I knew that I knew that I knew THIS was what I was meant to do and now that window has passed and I am left with the eternal question: what was it again? There is the discussion of dreams, the permission to follow them--I am a proponent of this, I see this is good. But what have I dreamed and when did I wake having forgotten what it was?

Earlier this year the prophet spoke and said things about post-it notes stuck all over me reading "No" and that now was a time for "Yes." And this resonates in me, I think about it this morning standing in the shower and saying to God, the answer is Yes, I just don't know what the question is.

If it's to be faithful with the small things, then okay, yes.
If it's to be present always, yes. Okay. I can do that.
If it's to be excited about things that aren't exciting, teach me God. Yes.
If it's to be or go or do or say, then yes.

And I know that it's all of those, but none of them feel like dreams. None of those resound in me, or make my heart sigh. I am Esau, I am the disciples who stayed in the boat and missed the miracle and the rebuke, I am the older brother who stayed home, I am Elijah hiding in a cave. I am the one who says No, because to say Yes means that there are risks. That there are losses.

But what is to be gained this way?

A friend told me recently that there are six people involved in every one relationship: the person you think you are, the person I think you are, the person you really are, the person I think I am, the person you think I am, and the person I really am. This is a lot of people running around the world.

For what it's worth, I think I am shy, introverted, a bit of a pushover, and fearful of everything. And yet every day people tell me I am friendly, today someone says I am integral, and just two days ago someone said I was destined for stardom. Who I really am is a bit of both, I suppose. Or, rather, the former constantly aware of my reality, so much so that I'll push myself into success if I have to.

Isn't this what we do?

Yesterday we talked about the Gaza strip and what we think of Israel, but what we really were talking about was human nature. And this is what I think about this week. Mostly because I feel lazy as I sleep my way through this recovery. I hate feeling lazy because, deep down, I am the laziest. I know in the recesses of who I am, there is nothing good in me. I know my nature is contrary to everything I want it to be: good-natured, pleasant, radical, and passionate.

Along with not being made for this world, I find that we were not made perfect either. Even if Eve hadn't sinned and eaten that fruit, she still could have wanted to. And I know that being tempted isn't a sin in itself, but we are human and made with limitations. Limitations are not sin, but they feel like it sometimes.

I am learning a few things this week, one is that being limited doesn't mean that I am not serious about being limitless. Another is that my current limitation is not laziness, it is necessary. In fact, submitting to my current limitation is the only thing that will bring healing. And the third thing is that in my limitation there is a very big opportunity for a limitless God to prove Himself.

Today in church I thought revival would break out, and perhaps it did in the hearts of some people around me. Healing words were spoken over some very hurting individuals. I bent over in the front row, my eyes filling with tears during one prayer my whole church has prayed for many, many years: that he would be fully healed, because he is gifted, because he is filled, because he has a mandate on his life that is bigger than seizures and episodes. But I was struck suddenly with the knowledge that we decrease so that He can increase.

We are human, so that He can be God.

Because I can:

Thinking about Reformed Theology, the Emergent or Emerging Church(es), Abortion/Poverty/War/and other issues, International House of Prayer, multi-site churches, friendship evangelism, The Shack, New Age Parenting, and a smattering of other things. I typically give my opinions on things freely--if I'm wrong (and I usually am in some respect), I'll figured it out, someone will point it out, or God will weed it out in some way. I'm not afraid of being wrong. I am, however, afraid of other people saying I'm wrong and disregarding me completely because of it.

I think about this this morning because I'm reading The Message translation, the book of Job. And I realized that I read a positive review by Eugene Peterson on a book that I didn't think was so positive--and that this was coloring my reading of his translation. Fair in some respects, what we believe about one thing affects what we believe about many things. But unfair in other respects, what we believe about one thing may not have been thought completely through to many things. It doesn't disqualify any specific thought or belief, it only cautions us to be wise with our opinions--processing them more fully. We can't know all, but we can know some, as long as we remember that our Some is still only Some.

Thinking about how nice it feels to be surrounded by things I love and things that are mine. A green mug, picked up by a dear friend six or seven years ago, holds my coffee this morning. Favorite books, forgotten books, bracketting my slipcovered sofa. A down comforter, keeping me too warm at night. Dishes, artwork, lined baskets, things lovingly kept, refinished, rescued and packed away for so long--they are my surroundings now. I am loving this new apartment. It isn't home yet, but it will be soon. I know.

Thinking about how much I already miss being a part of life at home. Warming my feet by the woodstove, beating and being beat at Scrabble, coming home to her saying "there's no beef at dinner tonight because you're here!", being a part of something that's bigger than me and my things. I have plans for this apartment on Elm Street, plans for hospitality and ministry, for rest and fellowship, but I'm glad that I was a part of a brick house in seven miles away for a season. While I lived there my things were packed away, but I learned so much. While I live here, my things are unpacked and so too, I hope, will be the lessons.

Thinking more clearly than I have in a long time. Part of the strain of the past few weeks has been the unclear thinking. I say to my coworker on Monday, "I can't even type, a combination of weakness, and inabilty to focus on simple things like spelling!" It's amazing what rest does to our bodies. I've never hated rest, I like it. But there is built inside of me this reckless and wrong belief that I can never do enough, must do more. And when I feel like I'm failing at the More part, I want to fail. I want to crawl in a hole and just Be A Failure.

A friend said to me on Tuesday, "You can't sleep too much at this point. Your body is repairing itself, recalibrating. Just let it repair. Sleep."

And I find, it isn't just my body that's been rest-less, it's been my soul, too. So my body is catching up on sleep, it is, I promise, though it still aches and needs time, but I feel my soul repairing too. I feel it thinking again.

Thinking that I like to think.

Things that go bump in the night:

1. I hoard physical affection like a kid with snowballs in a snowball fight.
2. I like sleep, but I do not love sleep.
3. I have not been to the doctors in over eight years, unless you count the walk-in visit I did last February where they took one look at my finger and said, "Honey, we don't need to x-ray that to tell you it's broken. Go put it in a splint for eight weeks and save yourself the bill." Which was very nice of them.

The past few weeks I've refused the tight-squeezes and light backrubs that have been offered. My muscles and joints hurt too much.
The past few weeks all I want to do is sleep. Call it hibernate if you will. I thought that it was just winter blues settling in, or a stressful few weeks. But there's hardly even an inch of snow on the ground and, really, can't I handle a bit of stress?
I can't focus on words, spelling, grids, anything that needs attention to detail and order, anything that I typically love, I get frustrated with in minutes. This will be a short post.
So I went to the doctors.

I have mono. No, there was no kissing involved. I promise.

The hardest part, though, is that she said, "Really, what you need, is to sleep." And I said, "Really, that's going to be hard for me, not that I'm not tired, but just sleeping all the time sounds exhausting."

But apparently not, I slept twelve hours straight last night. And I'm still tired.

Yesterday in the office one of our most faithful cheerleaders, who also doubles as one of our bosses (so it works out nicely) reminded us that God loves it when we sleep, that He created us to sleep.

So that's going to be my reminder, my salve, over the next week as I try to rid my body of this mononucleosis.