It is so like me to be unoriginal. I think I'm being original and then I find out that everybody liked Slumdog Millionaire even before it won a million Oscars and everybody knows that kettle corn is the best and everybody really hates Disneyworld. So please forgive me for being hopelessly unoriginal today and talking about a book that nearly everybody lauds as a great post-modern piece of Christian literature. I know, okay, I know. Nobody's accusing Donald Miller of being the next Diederich Bonhoffer or C.S. Lewis though, so shut your yapper. The rest disdain it with upturned noses, so that's not really original of you either.

A few weeks ago I started to reread Blue Like Jazz and remembered how much I'd liked it the first time around. On a short roadtrip last week we took turns reading chapters out loud to each other and no one really wanted to stop, but we all really had to use the bathroom and breaks like that sort of mess up the mood. So we stopped. But I continued reading, short paragraphs, whole chapters, a sentence here and there. Today I came across my favorite section. I remembered it being my favorite section three years ago and realized today how unoriginal it was of me to pick this section as my favorite. Here's why: it's where the title came from, so it must have been the author's favorite section too. Blast.

In any case, I still like it. Which is not the point of all this at all. Here is the point, a snippet of my favorite section:

That's the thing about giving yourself to God. Some people get really emotional about it, and some people don't feel much of anything except the peace they have after making an important decision. I felt a lot of that peace.

Contrary to popular belief, even though I easily cry over very small meaningful things and very big inconsequential things, at the most pivotal junctures of my spiritual life there are not usually tears involved. There are resolute jaws and hard and fast rules and a whole lot of grace. But not usually emotion. But then sneaks in the peace. Crawling over my shoulder, nesting in my heart, finding a nook all its own. Peace.

And then I know I've made the right decision.

So there are decisions in front of me: rights or lefts, rights or wrongs. And even though there's a part of me that just wants some emotional reason to creep in, a feeling that just feels right, a certainty first and a decision afterward, the truth is that I've got to say yes and then the peace will come.

I was just hoping things would be different this time around. Which is so unoriginal of me.

Settled in?

Two months ago a friend and I were having this great conversation in which we were talking on the phone and sending links from the internet back and forth to one another. He's an artist and I fancy myself sort of into art too, which is fine because I'm a writer but he fancies himself sort of into writing too. Whenever I find something interesting in the art field, whatever medium, I send the link to him. Appreciation is only half the fun if you can't share it with someone.

Anyway, we were talking about hard work, sweat on your brow sort of stuff, he in regard to painting and I in regard to writing the next great memoir, but we both were really talking about it in spiritual terms. Art is spiritual to us. As it should be. He sent me this link to one of our favorite musician's blogs and directed me to this section:

Music and art and writing: extravagant, essential, the act of spilling something, a cup running over... The simultaneous cry of, You must change your life, and Welcome home. I've been trying to write songs again, and I've been hitting a maze of dead ends. I want the songs to reveal something to me, teach me something. It's slow going. I'm not sure where I'm going. Uncertainty abounds. But the writing works on me little by little and begins to change me. That's why I would recommend not putting off writing if it's something you feel called to: if you put it off, then the writing can't do the work that it needs to do to you. Yes, I think there's something there. If you don't do the work, the work can't change you. (No one expects to change overnight.)

And I love that. I said it to my friend that night, I love that. I made him read it out loud to me twice, that section. Because I loved it so much.

Here I was thinking that I was the one scraping two pennies together in the act of writing, writing out of my poverty, squeezing drops of creativity out of an empty, sweating brain. But I love what Linford said here: if you put it off the writing it can't do the work it needs to do to you.

I've seemingly taken the hard route spiritually, working out my salvation with fear and trembling. I like the works gospel, I'm not going to lie. I like knowing that if I mess up there's penance to be done and I can handle it. Read my bible a little more, throw in a few good repentant-like prayers, stir and walk on. But the truth is, that's actually the easy route. The truth is that grace isn't something we do, it's something that's done to us. And it can't do what it needs to do unless we work on letting it.

That's the only work the gospel requires.

And I find that when I actually do get down to it and write, write, WRITE, that I don't put out a bunch of stellar writing. What I get is a heap of life and strength and a hope for tomorrow. I find that the work it requires to make myself write isn't really all that much compared to what the work accomplishes in me.

This morning I skipped the sermon. I did. I sat in a chair in my office across from a friend and we pervaded our conversation with the gospel. We talked about how it's not at all about us and that if the work of grace were only for us individually it would be a sorry gospel. The truth is that what is worked out in us is for others. It reaches in, squeezes our innards, works us over, and does what it needs to do to invoke Change. That's what the gospel is about: Change. New Creation. Spilling over on all creation.

I love that.

I talk big, I know. I talk about vision and life and purpose and the kingdom, I know. But my life is small, it is. It is filled with small things done in succession, rudimentary living done as right as I can, but still so small when the world only seems to get bigger.

I am talking to the girl across from me, but really I'm just asking a question that we all have at one point: Is it just me? Did I miss the time when all of this stopped being important and we moved on to bigger and better things? Because, to me, it's still a big enough thing. Which makes me feel smaller than the rest of the world, as though they've got some corner on the market, some hotline to God and government and I'm only riding on their tailwind.

The thing I've been realizing in the past few days is that to get vision we have to lose sight of everything else.

I gave all the keys to my kingdoms to that same girl and am hiding out in safe places, places where I won't be touched by the seemingly big things, big ideas, big talk. Because right now I need small things. I need a God so small that he fills the end of the telescope through which I look, determined to see nothing but Him. I need a God who teaches me the small things again because the big things aren't really that important anyway. We're going to heaven, we already know that. We just need to know the way.

So here is the way, right now: the way is to pursue undistractedness. Even the good things must pale in comparison to Him. I remember a few years ago when we were all passionate about undistracted devotion, when a lifetime of celibacy looked appealing because none of us were married and all of us could. It is tempting now to think, like Elijah on the mountain, that I alone am left and that that changes things. But it doesn't.

The unmarried person is concerned with the things of the Lord, how they may please Him.

I am more concerned with my life, however small, than I am captivated by Him. Will I ever own nice pots and pans? Will I ever feel settled down? Will I ever have a best friend? Will I ever be someone's best friend? Will I always be found lacking or will my cup ever overflow? These are the questions that distract me. These are what I am wrestling to lose sight of. These are peripheral concerns:

I want to see only One.

This morning I realized it's been four years since these feet stood on foreign soil. I had grand plans for this summer but, as usual, grand plans fail when they're more of a noun than a verb. I dream of spicy food and dirty streets and children babbling in different languages. And jet lag. I dream in nouns.

In the office we listen to an eclectic mix of music and every once in a while a song comes on that reminds me of the happiest summer of my life. In it I spent the mornings in class, the afternoons life-guarding poolside, and the evenings on our front porch reading poetry by candlelight and sorting out deep life issues. Nothing was ever resolved, unless you count happiness. We resolved to be happy. And we were. David Gray was the soundtrack to our happiness.

I say to my pretty officemate yesterday that I just haven't gotten peace about a decision I made recently. Peace feels like no pit in my stomach, it tastes like nothing, and it sounds like laughter and excitement. Instead I'm just feeling like in order to bring a harvest we start with a plow and maybe it's time to put my hand to one.

It's hard, sometimes, to not feel like the leftovers are my portion. I have a file-folder of things I dream about, blues and greens and art and hydrangeas and little girls names. I stopped putting slips of paper in it over a year ago, it was too painful to see things I dreamed about become others' realities. The problem was, I didn't give up what was already in there and I walked forward, fists clenched around the dreams, growing more discouraged each time someone took my idea and passed it off as their own (as though hydrangeas were my idea in the first place: who was I kidding?).

I've been thinking recently, though, that unless I start making my life more of a verb and less a file of nouns, I will go to the grave like the Pharoahs. Buried beneath of mountains of gold, horded treasure held onto until the bitter end.

...for where your treasure is,
there your heart will be also. Matthew 6.21

It's supposed to rain for the next few days. We let the sun shine long enough to get in some kayaking, weeding, and walking, then we turn off the sunlight and suffice ourselves with thinking about next week. The ground needs rain more than we do.

I say to a friend the other day something I didn't say first at all: It rains on the just and the unjust. I used to think that was just a platitude for scoundrels and saints, a pat on the head to comfort or condone, I don't know. All I know is that it's a rainy season, which is good or bad depending on how how you look at it.

Last night I got home to a notice from the IRS saying my taxes had been filed incorrectly and I owed another several hundred on top of the exorbitant amount I've already graciously given them. I wondered what unjust sort of thing I'd done to deserve it. I mentally catalogued my doing and being and going and came up empty. I think God does that on purpose, just so we don't get too caught up on our merits.

Then one day, while we are tripping over ourselves with sin and snagging every loose thread on character flaws, puddle jumping because the rain is so plenteous, we can remember that rain isn't just a inconvenient interloper: it can be a reward too. Depending on how you look at it. It's not always a cause and effect thing.

So I'm puddle jumping and looking for buttercups because I don't see the point in the downpours of late, but I'm sure it's bigger than my good deeds or bad. It's got to be.

Besides, this dry ground is thirsty.

I page through the conference brochure we just got in the mail at work. It feels pretty. It looks pretty. It shouts names like Louie Giglio and Andy Stanley and Francis Chan. It has a cool cut out in the centerfold, a X marking the spot where you, I, all of us belong at this year's conference. I look over my monitor at my pretty co-worker and said (as I am expected to say after paging through such prettiness) "I want to go."

Instead I open the InDesign project I'm working on and adjust character styles and justifications. Because I'm learning to reframe things.

There's been a lot of talk about moving to China and Philadelphia and Korea and Rochester and Somewhere Else in the past few weeks. Anywhere else for a change of scenery, circumstance and chore. He called the office the other day and asked if I had more vision for here. I said no. He asked if there was more vision for Somewhere Else and I also said no. There isn't a lot of vision for anything much right now. That's what I like to hear he said. And I know it wasn't the lack of vision that he referred to, but the fact that until God speaks something clearly, I'm not dumb enough get waylaid by pretty brochures and historic downtowns and a good Thai restaurant within walking distance.

And even though God didn't speak clearly, I've learned from experience that God not speaking at all is nearly the same as hearing an audible voice from the Heavens. Or hearing a slew of good teaching from reliable sources like a friend's journal, the front of a Sunday School classroom, or the front of a church sanctuary. In each I hear this repeated: circumstances don't determine one's ability to be effective in the kingdom.

And here I thought they did.

I'm held captive by the thought that I'm only as good as my circumstances, only as effective as my immediate vision, and only as mobile as my county line.

I stare at success, even what seems like Kingdom Success (pretty conference brochures and designs and ministries and missionaries in Indonesia) and I get mesmerized by it all. I belong there! Not here! I belong in a community like that! I belong in a church like that! I belong in an atmosphere like that.

When really, I'm just looking at the wrong things. So this week I'm learning to reframe things:

Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself.
He had equal status with God but didn't think so much of himself
that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what.
Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity
and took on the status of a slave, became human!
Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process.
He didn't claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life
and then died a selfless, obedient death. Philippians 2.5-8

The moon is full and orbed in a pane of the french doors to my bedroom. I am sitting on our couch, listening to summer through open windows. Today I run into someone I haven't seen for a long time--she is happy and full, smiling when she tells me that she feels like she's in the center of God's will, feeling it fully. She is sorting organic produce at the food co-op two doors down from me when she tells me this. But she is happy and full.

Today a friend sits across from me, reads me a page or two from her journal, some recent counsel she recorded: when you find yourself at a crossroads, remember what the last thing the Lord spoke to you was: does it jive?

We both stop and look at each other. When was the last time the Lord spoke to us? What did He say? What were the specifics or even the generalities? Did it really happen or was it make believe?

And I remember the last time the Lord spoke to me, something that resonated so deeply in my soil, something that pushed me to touch the hem of his robe, something that made me feel like things were in sight. Vision was soon. Or at least the harvest. But that was last summer. Last August. And I waited and waited and waited. Because He said it was soon. He said that.

Instead all I felt was more pruning, less joy, less fullness, less harvest.

I trip on the Ephesians this week, the lost love ones. They knew they put it somewhere, they just couldn't find it. That's a hard place to be in, I concur. It isn't like we lose it on purpose, stuffing it away like winter clothing in favor of something lighter or a hide-a-key stuck to the wheel-well. No, it's been lost. Misplaced. Crowded out, like a middle child or an important receipt, a nondescript thing of value.

But we still want it. It still belongs to us. It still feels right to us. That joy and fullness that accompanies the knowledge that we're in the center of God's will. Not the actual being there, but the knowledge that this is right. God has said it, and it is right.

There are deep furrows in my soul. Lines of pitted dirt waiting for seeds. Everybody wants to know these days: What's your vision?

I want to know too.

There are easier, cheaper seeds to plant. Shallowly dug holes, dusts of dirt covering over precious lots. What will they do when the rain comes? And the wind? And the searing sun? No, we must go down more deeply, into the dark earth and cover it over with black soil. We know they're there, but no one else does. We know they're there, but sometimes we forget.

Our noses pressed against window panes, our bellies resting on garden perimeters, watching, waiting. The only sign of what's to come is a popsicle stick with Sugar Snap Peas written on it in purple magic marker. Otherwise we'd forget what we planted.

So it is that I've forgotten what I planted. So I'm not sure what I'm expecting to grow.

I pass the coffee shop downtown last night, a For Sale sign is taped to the window: I want to buy it, resurrect it. I wake this morning and want to buy the florist shop for sale in West Potsdam. I see a photograph of a white dress and a happy bride, I want to take pictures of white dresses and happy brides. My phone vibrates this afternoon and I smile at the message, I want to be there too. Anything is better than waiting, forgetting, trying to figure out what lays beneath this dark patch of earth.

What do you want? It's the question that I hate most these days because I don't know the answer and I don't like that. I know it's not right of me to not know what I want.

What I should want is to be happy here, content to serve and live and walk and give and go home every night and do it all again the next day. I should want that. But I don't. No, I don't know what else there is to want either. Because what I want isn't spiritual, it's real, it's tangible, physical, touchable.

What I want is a quickened harvest.