Saying it since 2001

2010-03-10T16:55:00.001-05:00

I'm keeping my options open here, but it's slow going for sure. We're trudging across the grass, an afternoon walk to break up the four walls of our day. I'm asking her if she feels any different, spiritually, not physically. We've been fasting for three and a half weeks now, subsisting on fruits and vegetables. Every morning I gulp my smoothie and pinch my skin to see if anything's changed. It hasn't. I still feel dry inside, dehydrated, thirsty.

I prop an index card with a verse from Colossians on my desk at work, we read through 4 or 5 chapters of the Bible every morning, we've exhausted our playlist of tolerable Christian music sixty times over, and I'm hungry. I'm really hungry. But I still don't feel different. I wanted to feel different at this point.

The debate is ongoing while I type this, "Shouldn't our spiritual disciplines be private? Closeted practices that sharpen us on which we hinge our growth?" But honesty wins out: I'm not out to get brownie points from God (or you) here, trust me. I've finished with all that legalism stuff. But the truth is, like someone said to me the other day, the purpose of the (Lenten) fast is almost so we do fail, so that we can know that God is bigger, that He wins. That's consoling for a few minutes and in the big picture, but here on earth, that is not consoling in the least. I'm not really interested in long term benefits these days. I want action and I want feeling. And I want it now.

I need it now, I say to her, we're dipping down on the path at the edge of the field. I need to know that if I ask, He'll answer. That if I hold out my hands for bread, I'll at least be offered a saltine instead of a stone. I don't ask for a lot, I admit to her, at least not of God. I'm too accustomed to disappointment. It's safer to just not ask. But what has this past month been if not asking? What have the past few months been if not asking? Sure, I didn't use words until recently, but my heart hasn't changed. I'm asking. I'm asking for a lot right now. I'm asking for Him to show himself to me, to not pass me by, to heal me, to bless me, to give me a glimpse of His glory. I'm selfishly hording all the blessings I have so that I can stare at them when the doubt rises, to assure myself that My God Reigns.

I'm asking that He heals my knee. I smashed it six months ago and it's still swollen and tender. I'm sure surgery is in order, but I'm asking that it not be.
I'm asking that He pulls through financially. Things are tight. Always tight.
I'm asking that He restores some relationships I still don't understand the depths of.
I'm asking that He teaches me resistance and courage.
I'm asking that He heals my unbelief. My belief got wounded somewhere along the way, it needs to be healed completely.
I'm asking that He answers my prayers. Or at least nods in my general direction. That would do.

2010-03-04T22:56:00.001-05:00

We are learning to touch the fragile things, carefully. I remember being small and learning that touching the petals of a flower made them wilt and drop. And I remember feeling this unfair advantage over things of such beauty--why would God make things so touchable, so off-limits? Now that I am older and somewhat wiser, I see that the most tempting things are the most fragile on purpose.

I do not dream. I stopped dreaming a few years ago, somewhere between 21 and now. I stopped asking and stopped hoping. There are things that we wish for, long for, ask for, hope for and when we turn around each corner and find it as empty as the one we left, we eventually learn to stop wishing and sometimes to stop turning corners. We prop our collective feet on the ottoman of disappointment and tune our collective ear to the dismal quiet. It is easier to not touch a thing so fragile than to touch it and watch it drop to the ground, come unhinged from its lifesource.

I am saying this to my friend while we sit on the couch and dream. I am saying to her that to dream is to touch a fragile thing and fragile things break in my hands. She says that she is good for me and I can't help but agree. She does most of the talking and I just let fragile things grow from the inside of me, where I am touching them from the very start, where I am a part of their lifesource.

I read Hebrews the other morning "Without faith it is impossible to please God" and the answer comes easily, slides in and stays. This spinning wheel, this slippery slope, this trying desperately to please God and failing every single morning and every night too is borne of one thing only: without faith. I'm trying to do the impossible, please God without faith and He's not pleased.

If the lifesource is faith, not pleasing God, then I can touch the fragile things. Then we will see.

2010-03-03T21:46:00.001-05:00

I walked to the coffee shop tonight, trudging through puddles and thoughts the whole way there. I am determined to make something happen in my soul these days. I am determined to find a course and stay on it. I find that the options are huge and full and there was once a time I didn't fear writing them out here, in this place. I stop on the corner of Walnut and Market, stick my hands deep in the pockets of my fleece and wonder where that time went?

She was a more fearless, determined, free and certain person than she is today, on the corner of Walnut and Market. She had plenty of friends, joy, deep contentment, and passion. Dreams enough to satiate five persons. She packed away everything and moved to Guatemala. She traveled to Asia a few times. She worked at wilderness camps, managing ropes courses despite a fear of heights. She transferred to a southern university sight unseen, she wrote everyday, she painted, she worshiped, she fell in love, she grew up. And then she grew fearful. Or maybe she was fearful all along and when all the stuff stopped the fear poked through. She doesn't know anymore.

And then I walked the rest of the way to the coffee shop, which was closed, so I turned around and went home.

It would be easy to say that the cares of the world coddle those fears, that a life unhindered by bills and jobs and debts and furniture is a fearless life. From this vantage point it seems that would be the truest thing. But I know people who own little, carry little, and fear much. So I cannot think that it is stuff that cultivates the fear, but I think that I John was onto something when he talked about the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life. I think that there must be something to those wicked three, something that lends an ultimate fear in a person.

I make a strategy while I walk, ways to alleviate my cell phone, snowball my school debt, lessen the cares of the world so that there is nothing to boast about in life--what is there after all? But even these strategies feel limp and fearful (who says that should the giant be ten inches smaller, he should look like less of a giant to a dwarf?).

Tonight I edit an article I wrote last year and never submitted. Maybe tomorrow I will submit it. Not to get published, no, but to say to fear that I am afraid of much, but I am not afraid of fear. Not tonight.

2010-02-26T10:06:00.003-05:00

The clouds roll like tumbleweed over the Saint Lawrence, gathering their supply before heading back over the mountains to our right. It is grey everywhere recently, not like Summer or Autumn around here, where everything is lit with color. We grow accustomed to the sameness of Winter and Spring; even the daffodils and small violets are a minute shock to our existence. Which of these things doesn't belong?

I have made a Caricature God. What's yours?

Mine is a God of sameness. When I was small the parishioners would sing in four-part harmony "Great is Thy faithfulness, there is no shadow of turning with Thee, Thou changest not.." and you know the rest. I envisioned a God who had a lethargy any five year old would disdane. I did. Mine is a God of deceptive bordem, a continual plod toward a New Heaven and New Earth. This is no journeyman with a wunderlust for life, this is no rigid taskmaster with a end goal in sight, this is a God who marks tallies on a cave wall: Day 263. Day 8754. Day 24,788.

Mine is a God who has been seated on a throne for more days than I understand and whose beard has grown past his knees and who has grown accustomed to my mistakes and missteps. He nods from that great throne and glances at the calendar to see if it's almost time to just bring us all home where we belong.

I wake every morning to deceptive sameness. This week is full of grey spring rain, enough to make the grass turn a brilliant green and to break the icy winter dams that have held back the rushing and wild water. And maybe it's the rain that makes me think that every day changest not, but more perhaps it's the daily grind of life. The same coffee maker churning out the same cup of coffee keeping me awake through the same morning to do the same things to go the same places. Ad nauseum.

And I wonder today, how He does it? This Caricature God of mine. How does he remain faithful? How does his changelessness and faithfulness defy the impressions of a five year-old and this twenty-something year old? He says Faithful, I say Boring. He says Unchangeable, I say New Toy Please. The book of Hebrews says:

In the same way God, desiring even more to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose, interposed with an oath,so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us.

Right about now I need some strong encouragement. Not that I'm faltering or failing or hopelessly flailing around, but just because His unchangeableness seems a little grey right now, a little too constant, a little too familiar. I'm asking for something that doesn't belong to jolt me wide awake and put some color into my world. I'm asking for a fresh impression of God.

2010-02-18T22:16:00.002-05:00

Before I moved into this house I said it was the first place that felt like my home since the miracle house on 345 6th Street in Tennessee. I lived there with some of the best friends of my life, both roommates and others who filled our open door home. When Christina and I drove in the driveway of our present home in December we gasped and collectively said that this was it. We were home. Windows, a front porch, a backyard, cozy, comfy rooms, an upstairs to dream about and live in: it was a no brainer.

But tonight, here, Summer reading on the couch, Christina laying on the floor with Fitzgerald, two friends in the kitchen making taco salad, me writing, music, like water, trickling from laptop speakers, here tonight, we are home.

So many times over the past two months I've braced myself, afraid to get too attached to this place--345 6th Street was the longest I'd lived in one place since leaving home in 2001. I'm realizing that I've grown afraid of being in one place long enough to grow accustomed to ritual and comfort--afraid of being sucked into the American Dream. Fight the American Dream has become my mantra. And yet here, with paint brushes spreading color on old furniture and candles lit, washed blankets piling over thrift store baskets and boys making taco salad in the kitchen, roommates who love one another and the same things, I am finding that home has sprung up around me. I think that's the difference between chasing an empty dream and waking one morning to find it thrust upon you. One is elusive and the other is a surprising gift.

I'm not saying that this home here will always be my portion, I've done this Christian thing long enough to realize that my plans aren't usually His plans, but I am saying that today I'm grateful today for the gift of this home.

50. Discovering new music.
51. The best coworker in the history of the world.
52. Lent and the opportunity to cut back, reflect, see, practice, know.
53. Self-discipline.
54. 50 cent bunches of orange roses the day after Valentine's Day.
54b. I don't even like roses. But it's the thought that counts. 50 cent thoughts especially.
55. The weather we're having here, the oddest winter in my history of living here: a record snowfall of about ten inches the whole winter.
56. Honesty.
57. She is moving home a week from today. Home! Here! We haven't lived in the same community since 2005.
58. A friend sitting at our dining room table tonight remarking how he loves our home because it's always full of creativity.
59. The hope that our creative heads can live up to that word.
60. Pineapple Cilantro candles.
61. Saving enough pennies to make this screenprinting press as soon as it's warm enough to use our garage.

2010-02-14T20:16:00.001-05:00

From my sent box:

And if contentment is all I need, and is all He's doing, than I hope He answers my daily prayer soon. I wonder how one can want contentment as badly as I do and still find it ever illusive. As I was driving home tonight I list the things that make me feel content: a daily, normal schedule, daily exercise, rising early, lots of writing, lots of color and indoor plants, gardening--and I think that these things can't be the catalysts for my contentment. They can't be! They're far too selfish, far too worldly, far too here.

But then I remember Richard Wilbur's poem, Love Calls Us to the Things of This World--and I think of laundry and housekeeping and bread-winning and daily schedules and gardens, and I realize that though we're not to love the things of this world, we're called to love and Love put us here on earth with a Garden to tend--the least I can do is tend my plot well. Even if it is just dirt.

This is my lesson daily. To tend my plot, to live by that punctual rape of every blessed day. To watch the hour hand rise and fall and rise again, its only hope a paycheck and a kept-to schedule. I'm learning about sweeping sawdust and waiting for 30, for release and a sense of what is to come.

Right now it's to be faithful with the little things, to weed that plot and keep dirt beneath my fingernails--proof that this life isn't clean and orderly and understood, but it is real and created and that I am a part of it.

Right now Love calls me to not know the end of the story, but to hang my heart, like laundry on lines, on the hope that certainty is the hour hand and the end. And that punctual rise and fall and rise again will yield another sort of hope that doesn't disappoint or be crowded out by weeds and failed seeds.

Now they are flying in place, conveying
The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving
And staying like white water; and now of a sudden
They swoon down into so rapt a quiet
That nobody seems to be there.
The soul shrinks

From all that is about to remember,
From the punctual rape of every blessed day,
And cries,
"Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,
Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam
And clear dances done in the sight of heaven.''

2010-02-13T18:33:00.000-05:00

34. Swimming with a favorite person.
35. A gifted bag a dried mangos.
36. Dreaming about exact colors I wanted to paint some furniture, then finding those exact colors already mixed and on the clearance shelf at the hardware store.
37. A perfectly beautiful movie in every way.
38. A clean house.
39. Hearing a chickadee outside this morning and coming out to see it staring at me levelly.
40. This song of jibberish.
41. Pulling out a sewing machine and creating for a few hours.
42. Seeing my family tomorrow.
43. Growing my hair out and being okay with the in-between it's been for the past few months (and next few months to come).
44. Knowing there's snow in almost all 50 states, but that the bulk it is not in New York (for once).
45. Valentines Day: which I love and look forward to loving with someone someday. Just not today. And that's okay.
46. The Bible read aloud to me online.
47. Really, just anything read aloud to me.
48. Finding very cool vintage fabric at a thrift store today.
49. The truth of this post.

2010-02-08T22:57:00.002-05:00

18. Two new pairs of jeans, my size, my length. Free.
19. A sermon that only capped the mountain of my current weaknesses. It is working its way more deeply in.
20. A car. A 1999 Honda Civic, standard, grey.
21. A friend who drove me to get it, to register it; who listens to me ramble, about nothing.
22. Another friend who test drove it and put a deposit on it in my absence.
23. Companionable silence and conversation happening in our living room currently.
24. Reaching near the end of the root vegetables in our lower cabinet, which can only mean one thing: that winter is almost over and spring is almost here (or that we are a household of poor girls).
25. A new Bible that doesn't feel like mine yet, but will. But will.
26. Roommates who chip away at vision, putting one foot in front of the other toward the deep things inside.
27. An afghan in progress, named Sunshine on a Rainy Day, and aptly so.
28. When we're all being creative in our living room.
29. Meeting people who surprise me with their niceness and bless me with their candidness.
30. Realizing that this year will mark ten years since a lot of really hard things.
31. Being okay with that.
32. Inexplicable love for some people, even when I still won't share their chapstick.
33. The decision to infuse our office with faith, starting tomorrow. We will write it in black magic marker on the walls if necessary. We will post-it note on our foreheads. We will make it our desktop wallpaper. We will remind one another. We are going to be Nazi-like with our faith.

I wish I had enough money to:

Buy a house for them.
Settle all her debts.
Get him to a doctor who can tell him what's wrong with his insides.
Finance his home ministry.
Fix her car.
Pay her credit card.
Give them a couple hundred, just to get them through the next month.

I am thinking, constantly these days, of ways I can cut back. Cheat my budget of all inessentials: cell phone, eating out, even coffee on occasion, new clothes. What else? What else can I do without because I want to know the sacrifice of giving to other people, instead of just giving to a broken down car or 400 unused cell phone minutes a month or a closet full of clothes that I might like, but don't need.

An unusual post, to be sure, but what I am saying today nonetheless.

2010-02-04T11:08:00.000-05:00

I drove home in tears, sobs that shook my shoulders and the black abundance of my heart in my mouth.

Paul asks, "Who will bring a charge against my Elect?" and it is me. I charged Him with not providing, with not giving, with taking away, with leaving my heart out in the cold and not meeting my expectations. I pulled the car over, thinking only of John 14, "If you cannot believe in me, believe on the evidence of me." If you can't believe in a God, believe on the miracles, believe in what you can see, believe on the tangible. And so I pray for a miracle. I, who pride myself on belief in an unseen God, on an invisible Savior--I asked for bread and expected bread, I asked for fish and expected fish. I needed it.

A few years ago I taught a class on Miriam and the things we say, how the deep recesses of our hearts are revealed by the tongue. And the revelations of my heart this week have sickened me; all the charges against God that have been sitting in the murky depths of my heart. On the surface my heart is consistent and congenial, but one upset of that still water plunges into depths of ungratefulness, fear, doubt, and resentment.

There are multiple reasons the past few weeks for me to shake my fist at God, to kick my tires and sneer at the Goodness of God. And I won't deny that I've taken advantage of the pummeling to do my share of sneering. This is Your provision? This is your reward? This?

In that class I taught I recommended the blog of someone I admire, Ann Voskamp, someone who takes the weight of life off her shoulders, gives it to an invisible God in the form of gratefulness. Someone who releases fear by the admission of thanksgiving. Someone who might very well struggle with belief in an unseen God at times, but who gathers the miracles and numbers them weekly, sometimes daily, reaching into the thousands with her nuggets of evidence.

A friend says to me on the phone the other night, "I wish I knew who the best Christian in the world was. I wish I knew so I could just go sit at their feet, watch them, learn from them." Ann springs to my mind--because I think the best Christian in the world might just be the best child in the world, and a good child is one who expects goodness from her parent and lines her blessings up like the treasures they are. So today I am lining, a small pile of goodness because I am not the best Christian in the world and I need the proof, the evidence sometimes. I need a provider.

Things I'm grateful for:

1. This song.
2. A friend who stood by me in church on Sunday, who cradled a baby with one arm, had a two year by her side and a weeping me into her shoulder.
3. My co-worker and best friend, who's lent me her car more times in the past two weeks than, well, even a best friend should do.
4. My roommates and our cozy, winter home, with tea every night and coffee every morning, and piles of books and conversation.
5. The possibility of a new car--and being finished with car shopping with the hopes that I will never have to do this again. (Allow me some naivety, please.)
6. Two brothers who are serving in the military--while I hate the thought of war and guns and violence, I'm proud of my soldiers who are willing to serve.
7. The Potsdam site that our church is starting in August.
8. A February that is just like every February with lingering snow, cold temperatures, early nights, hope for what's around the corner.
9. A February that gave me four (4!) brothers over the past 31 years. Yeah, 31. Can I possibly have a brother that old?
10. RSS feeds that show the whole post.
10b. And for that matter, blogs that have many, many posts on their page instead of having to click "older posts" a million times.
11. Ideas for making Christmas presents already (got to get started).
12. The fact that in March it will start to warm up, and that means we get to start using our awesome, huge upstairs room!
13. Tea with friends, snuggled under blankets, watching a good movie last night.
14. An awesome family--regardless of divorce, death, hurt, distance--my family is great and I love them.
15. My almost-sister-in-law teaching me how to crochet.
15b. Crocheting anything I can get my hands on, making up stitches and patterns. Loving it.
16. A friend who lets me cry in her van, be honest about faith and doubt, and who yells at me because I need it.
17. Her boys. Who are my favorite boys in the world. The world.

2010-01-23T14:04:00.003-05:00

I was coming to the coffee shop to blog about hope and faith too. I was coming to get the weight of words off my heart and put some order to them. I was coming to straighten out the floating ideas. In the same way about a month ago I was driving home from Florida and ended up spending the night in a 24 hour McDonalds, courtesy of a state trooper and an insistent father and a supposed blown head-gasket. I have plans and they are changed. Like today. Suffice it to say that the adventure of a few minutes ago includes a tire falling off, an airbag deployed, and a passerby who kindly informed me that my car probably wasn't worth getting fixed anyway.

Thank you.

Thank you, I know that I have an 18 year old car, that kids in drivers-ed are younger than my car. Thank you, I know that my car has cost me far more than it's been worth since I bought it three years ago. Thank you, I know that the events of the past few months concerning said car should probably have given me the slightest clue that regardless of a mere 130,000 miles on a Honda that will run for another 100,000 based on the engine alone, I should probably have given up on her six months ago. Regardless of all her sage green goodness that everyone thinks suits me well--some books may be judged by the cover, but this is not usually recommended when it comes to vehicles.

Thank you. I know that I pride myself on just getting by and thrift stores and making do with scraps and leftovers because it makes me feel creative and useful. Thank you, I know that Christ came to give us life abundant, but I'll stay as far from indulgent as possible. Thank you, I'll take the the employment that pays peanuts for the trade-off environment. Thank you, I'm very happy with hand me downs and give aways and cheap cars with good gas mileage and endless cups of coffee and repurposing and things that are cool like that. No really, kindly passerby, don't judge my worth on the worth of my car.

That's only for me to do, thank you very much.

Because I'll tell you, dear reader, when you grow so accustomed to just making do that you always come up short and one day you find yourself with a fat lip from an airbag and a tow truck guy who tells you that "Probly bend your fender when we pull it on the flatbed, just so you know, you'll have to get that fixed too...if they don't total it already..." Dear reader, you begin to wonder if bad things happen to good people because you're worth as much as the bad things that happen.

And, I know, I know, that that isn't true. That there isn't even an ounce of truth in that statement--but the wondering doesn't stop. It doesn't. And it doesn't stop because there's just life and life hits hard sometimes. For some more than others.

A friend once exclaimed to me, "Lor, you're always in the middle of scrapes and situations!" Which is ironic, because I love peace and loathe drama so much. But for some reason, it's true. I don't know how to end this on a happy note and if only you knew, dear reader, how my drafts folder is just piling up recently with things that don't end on a happy note and so I deem unworthy of posting here on this page. But I'm posting it anyway--not for pity, but for prayer. If you have time and inclination. I could use the prayer.

So could my car.

2010-01-15T19:37:00.000-05:00

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.

Reposted from March 2008.

2010-01-07T21:36:00.001-05:00

Some of the stickiness that I'm experiencing isn't all bad, just so you know. Right now I'm so stuck in Jeremiah that my bible falls open there of its own accord. Last night I'm rereading chapter 15. I'm stuck on this recently:

If you return, then I will restore you--
Before Me you will stand;
and if you extract the precious from the worthless,
you will become My spokesman.
They for their part may turn to you,
but as for you, you must not turn to them

I'm stuck there for purely selfish reasons, I'll admit. I'm trying to look at what seems (feels, is, might be) worthless and extract particles of precious. I'm wrote a poem a few years ago, The Alchemy of Happiness, a few lines pulse through me all today:

Wrought in the bowels of earth,
life veins surprised by progeny,
puddles of metal spooled into gold,
deeply in, heavily crowned

I'm wringing out the bowels of earth these days, picking my face up from the grindstone, making a conscious decision when it would be easier (faster, less painful, lazier) to just passively let earth pass me by. I'm looking for a surprise here, I'm waiting for a surprise, around the next corner if you please. Or not, if you don't.

There are a few notable Ifs in that verse above and I'm mindful of them, I am. I promise. I know the teetering edge on which I stand. Here's the If/Then, and here's another one, and then here's the outcome once you get your silly head out of the worthless and into the precious: you still have to extract, you still have to stand, you still have to not buckle. In other words, the pressure never ends. The alchemist never stops--we're always mixing and matching and trying and failing and never, never, never stopping until we get gold.

I think I have this concept that God gets easier, like college algebra and learning to read--the more we do, the easier it is. But I think I need a new concept, God is not easier, like nothing else I can even compare. He's just a deeper cave to mine.

2010-01-03T19:30:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I got an email from a friend across the world; he asked for a blog post filled with excitement, life and a hope for the future. I'm asking for the same thing, though I'm hoping it manifests in my life before I put it in a blog post. But he's right for asking and I appreciate that. Today, from the stirrings of the morning until now, sitting on a friend of a friend's couch while they shop for dinner, I try to plan what this year could look like. Without my fettering, without my strings, without my school-debt, without my lease, without my fear: What does two-thousand-ten look like?

I voice it to my friend tonight, over coffee at The Fields. We're both near to tears and tears are near to us recently. I'm grateful for a friend who cries with those who cry. She says even my weeping brings her peace. For me, peace just comes from the partnership of sorrow. We're sharing this, this expectation, this fear, this hope, this life. We're doing it together and for that I'm grateful.

Someone said today that they are learning that it's not so much about doing, it's about grace and receiving and I agree with him, I do. But my sin is the sin of getting and never giving, receiving and never putting out. I stumble in fear. I read about the trees clapping their hands and hills breaking forth and I am reminded of the -ingness of the gospel. That ever moving, ever present, ever blowing spiritual wind. It's moving, it's breaking, it's clapping because it is its nature to do so. Stagnancy is not the sign of the redeemed.

I read over the email again, he's afraid of offending me with his challenges and forthrightness. But the only offense here is what I'm doing to the gospel by denying that it has the power to change 2009 The Year of Questions into 2010 The Year of Answers (Or At The Very Least Hope). I write back to him about the glimmer of Couldness, the flame of Possibility, it feels dim to me right now and it feels in question, but it is seen. To see is to hope. And to hope is to know. God help me know.

Cursed is the one who trusts in man,
who depends on flesh for his strength
and whose heart turns away from the LORD.

He will be like a bush in the wastelands;
he will not see prosperity when it comes.
He will dwell in the parched places of the desert,
in a salt land where no one lives.

But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD,
whose confidence is in him.

He will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit."

2009-12-31T14:20:00.001-05:00

The world is round at night, every crest beginning the long road back to where we are right now. When I was young I used to imagine digging a hole through the earth, I would finger the cardboard globe, estimating that I'd stick my head up through the dirt somewhere in Turkey and yell "Surprise!" Now I think less of digging through the world and just about traveling over it, which everyone knows will just lead you right back to where you started.

It's hard to not feel stuck these days. I say to her today that I'm afraid of opening my slip of paper on Sunday morning at our annual New Year service at church. I'm afraid to read what I wrote a year ago because I'm afraid not much has changed. I'm sure I prayed for vision, for a plan, to not feel so aimless, and for hope and a future. I'm sure that what I write on 2010's slip will read much the same. I'm a predictable sort. Too predictable.

It's no secret that I've been trying to make theology real in the past few months. Nebulous thoughts and things I previously ascribed to, I'm now really just trying to work out. I want what I believe to be realized and worked out in every fiber of me--not just a thesis I hand to whomever asks. It's changing the way I see people and it's changing the way I see Jesus, but it's not yet changing the way I see me. I'm confident that it will, but it seems that the more I see of Jesus and the more I see of people, the more I want to be a part of what He's doing in them and in the world. It's hard to feel like I'm doing that from here.

I'm not saying it's not happening. I'm just saying that staying right here, doing all of this, feels like being stuck. Feels like ending up where I started every single day.

So 2010, everyone's talking about a new decade, a new start. I'm not asking much except this: please show me a different side of the world? Please unstick me from here, if even for a week, a month. Please show me more of God, more of people. Please give me something different to write on my card for 2011. And I know that this is asking a lot, but please don't disappoint me.

2009-12-21T21:14:00.002-05:00

Bullet Point Biography:

I am moving, again, to the first place that's felt like home since 345 6th St.
I am leaving tomorrow with a bunch of brothers and an almost sister-in-law to spend Christmas at my mum's in Florida.
It's a 23 hour drive.
We are packing our house tonight so that we can move upon arrival at home on the 28th.
I have been fighting a sore throat for a week and today it's turning into a full blown cold.
I am guzzling emergency-C and ginger tea with lemon and honey.
Because it's a 23 hour drive.
I sorted through two floor to ceiling bookcases tonight and am getting rid of four big bags of books.
I should be heartbroken, but all I can think of is, "How can I get rid of more?"
One of my best friends has been in town for a few weeks and is only here for a bit more and I feel like I haven't seen her at all.
I take all the blame.
Another friend and I are dreaming of a roadtrip next year (which is almost here, can you believe it?).
I need to air my head out.
And my heart.
The conversation happening around me is about locker room showers.
The entire upstairs of our new house is one room with dormers and wood floors and space, wide open space.
We're dubbing it the Common Room and filling it with soft things, throw rugs, and spaces for art and the Holy Spirit.
We making it a place for homework, artwork, worship, and prayer. Come one, come all.
We need futons and a papazan and other flexible furniture for it: do you have some?
I'm in love. I confess.
My heart is completely besotted with two boys.
I don't care who knows.
No, you cannot have my awesome orange leather chair that I got for free.
Because I said so.

2009-12-11T22:33:00.004-05:00

Tears are falling, hearts are breaking
How we need to hear from God
You've been promised, we've been waiting
Welcome Holy Child
Welcome Holy Child

Hope that you don't mind our manger
How I wish we would have known
But long-awaited Holy Stranger
Make Yourself at home
Please make Yourself at home

Bring Your peace into our violence
Bid our hungry souls be filled
Word now breaking Heaven's silence
Welcome to our world
Welcome to our world

Fragile finger sent to heal us
Tender brow prepared for thorn
Tiny heart whose blood will save us
Unto us is born
Unto us is born

So wrap our injured flesh around You
Breathe our air and walk our sod
Rob our sin and make us holy
Perfect Son of God
Perfect Son of God

chris rice--welcome to our world

2009-12-09T20:24:00.003-05:00

She's making banners these days. Flying them from mantels and window frames. Little paper cutaways embellished with color and love. They are filled with Christmas cheer, the regulars, you know, joy, hope, peace. She says it's therapizing [sic]. I won't argue with her--we find rest in the mundane and the strange, we take it where we can get it.

She asked me what mine should say and there was an easy answer: peace, it should say peace. My illusive friend, my favorite fruit of the spirit and my middle name if I could have chosen myself. Sometimes when superlatives are the topic of the conversation, peace is what they say about me. But I think perhaps I try too hard, it covers my person, but doesn't infiltrate my soul. It comes out of my mouth, but doesn't plummet my heart.

There are questions, to be sure, questions without answers. There are deep searches happening around here. Spelunking the cave of my heart and of His Word--staring hard enough at the evidence that I'm sure that answers will appear and I will pack and go. I am not a fool, though, and I know well enough that at the end of every day and every question and every feeble failure, what we are left with is often just Jesus and not peripheral answers or palpable principles or peace. No alliteration intended. But further in, further on, in that chapter of roadmaps and wherefores and Whos and whens, there's a blip about peace, the sort the world can't give. And I'm hungry for that.

I know I find my peace in my circumstances, my homes, my colors and my books. I know that should I need a moment, I can shut the door on the world and the rain and the demands. But in the end, peace leaves before I do.

Because peace isn't meant to be found--it's meant to be given.

And may peace rain down from Heaven
Like little pieces of the sky
Little keepers of the promise
Falling on these souls
This drought has dried
In His Blood and in His Body
In the Bread and in this wine
Peace to you
Peace of Christ to you
Rich Mullins: Peace

2009-12-07T22:43:00.000-05:00

We sat at a table past closing time the other night, three of us, same age, different pages. We have to do something! she exclaimed, the gregarious one. I smiled back, because I know she's right, but there's a bigger knowing in me that says she's wrong. Why not? he asked. And I couldn't answer that one. I don't know why not: because it's too hard? Because it's not redeeming the time? Because it seems impulsive and I'm not? Because I'm afraid of too much Me in any equation?

Tonight I leaned on the counter and told her the preposterous idea. She chopped broccoli and her eyes lit up. Do it! she said, and I tucked my chin and raised my eyebrows. But why would I expect another response from her? She's been the boot that's kicked me into most of my adventures. None of which I regret. Well, not entirely.

I say back to her that every time I raise the possibility of another adventure of some sort a Puddleglum assures me that I have contentment issues and to stuff it, buckle down, and conjure up joy. (I am my own worst Puddleglum. Just saying is all.) But the truth is I do have joy and I AM doing it. I'm not dragging my heels to work and church and events and I'm opening my door to joy and people and change and whatever else the boot kicks around. It's just that I look at deep desires in my heart and pages of prophetic words and say contentment isn't sitting still, it's actively taking hold of what's available and doing something with it.

The tyranny of fear is the worst of all. I think. Fear of man is my worst enemy, fear of you my second. Fear that I'll make the wrong step. Fear that I heard wrong, or someone else did. The fear is not that I'll end up penniless and alone, but that my sole company will be someone standing there shaking their finger at me, "I told you so" their only words. The fear is that I'll disappoint people and the fear is that I'll disappoint you. That you'll shrug your shoulders and say, what is she thinking?

So I'm not there yet, for what it's worth, I'm not making any huge decisions for adventures. I'm not making promises. I'm digging down deep, trying to figure out what the great desire of my heart is and then deciding that no matter how scary that desire is, or how many fingers point in my face, or how much faith I'm going to need to explore it, that I'm going to do something.

I've got to do something!

2009-12-06T21:59:00.001-05:00

I'll admit, this was a long, lonely week in the office for me. I didn't have my buddy staring at me from across the desk and had to suffice with sending her pitiful emails containing one liners that I would have said had she been there. It's okay though, she was trudging through feets of snow in Calgary with her other bestie. I'm okay with sharing her, especially if she leaves the snow there when she comes home. Which she did.

I kept a steady flow of tunes swirling to take the edge off of the quiet though. New favorites and old favorites, anything goes. One day was a full day of Over The Rhine and one song in particular on repeat. It's resonating in me recently because I might be fickle, but I'm not altogether unpredictable. I might be indecisive, but I'm not indulgent or impulsive. These might seem mutually exclusive, but they're not.

My soul has been fully sad and fully happy in recent weeks, months. There have been moments of tears driving to Potsdam, talking on red chairs in the back of the sanctuary, and being with friends around a Thanksgiving woodstove--the tears are joy and the tears are fear. The tears are fullness and the tears are deep heartache, big unanswered questions, and great hopes.

The idea that we are born one thing and we remain unchanged at our core is a concept that I dislike more and more--if this, this deep pulsing thing in the core of me is all I am, what hope is there for any of us? If I am captive to the idea that my personality will always bend to one direction and the joke's on anyone who assumes otherwise, well, the joke's really on me. This concept is liberating for me recently. I have lived for long enough to realize that deep sorrow is not without its inklings of joy and every joy has peripheral pain---we are not fully there, you see. We are not fully realized. To be one thing only is to be cold to the workings of the Holy Spirit, to nudges that send our personality running and surprise us with bravado.

Someone asks me recently how I am and I purge. I ramble for an hour, probably more. I spend all my questions and caveat it all by the promise that I'm OKAY. I'm really OKAY. I'm good, but these are just things I am thinking and wondering and feeling and not really saying. She says it would be okay if I didn't feel okay, that it would be understandable and I'm grateful for that, her understanding. But even more, I'm grateful that men like David existed, that depths and heights are not exclusive from one another and that trust and unbelief coexist because what is there to be convinced of if we first do not doubt?

This is rambling, I know. This is probably a little ambiguous and maybe a little confusing and I'm okay with that. I guess. For tonight I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that because I'm finding a peace I didn't know existed, it's a peace that's built from the knowledge that Jesus was a man too. Fully God. Fully man. A careful and brave juxtaposition, no better example of the imago dei. I love that. I need that. My fickle, tearful, fearful, hopeful heart needs that.

2009-11-26T16:20:00.001-05:00

Things I am loving:

Really tight hugs from people who knew me back when I wore huge, blue glasses* and was in ninth grade.
A promised journal, black leather bound, graph paper innards, now in my possession.
Staying up way too late with two girls.
Wedding dresses that cost 10 dollars.
Talking about weddings with one of those girls.
Surprising my little brothers at my Gram's house.
Playing wii and seeing our reflections in the tv screen.
Evidence that he is a head taller than me.
Cuddling with my golden friend.
Looking up directions to Germantown on google maps.
Caring less about Germantown and more about people who live there!
Being surrounded by evidence of a nurturer: green potted plants, a turtle named Will Robinson, a grapefruit tree started from a grapefruit seed.
Knowing that the rest of the world is going hog wild at retail stores tomorrow, but my golden friend and I will be thrifting at favorite places.
Using less than a tank of gas to make a six hour trip.
Gas prices that kept dropping the further south I got.
Ginger snaps.
Bucks County.
Driving on roads that I grew up driving on and finding small memories I've tucked in the recesses of my mind.
Did I mention Bucks County? And stone houses?
Fall in eastern Pennsylvania.
Thanksgiving. I am loving Thanksgiving.

*someone kindly just reminded me that I still wear huge, blue glasses. thank you very much. the current ones are more chic. i promise.

2009-11-25T12:33:00.000-05:00

He called me the other night, driving somewhere in western Pennsylvania, asking me a question about theology and people. But the real questions come out later in the conversation: we are fleshing out faith, like Jesus did coming to earth in swaddling clothes and calloused carpenter hands. We are putting theology in action, asking what it means first, but living it then, on purpose.

Today the heaviness wrings out, it is time to live the truths we talk about, to survive the things we say.

We are asking a collective question: where are you? Because though our theology is just Christ cloaked, mostly we need Christ alone, the body, the flesh. Him alone.

It is easy to stand on this side of the resurrection and know with certainty that the good guys win and us with them. How did the disciples not doubt? I think of Thomas today. I think one who doubts at all must be one of deep loyalty; what is there to doubt if there is nothing to be sure of? It is easy to stand on this side of certainty and know that all our doubts are silenced, that we stick our hands in the side of Christ, that we have moments of realization, of how could we be so foolish? of deep joy, knowing that it wasn't in vain, it wasn't for nothing and it won't be either.

But today, on the front side of pain, it is hard.

2009-11-14T21:57:00.002-05:00

We are buried beneath fleece blankets and our day, piles of warmth and war. She asks if I'm going to write and I say no. You never write anymore, she says and I protest. Never is a more definite term than how little I write. It's hard to write, I say to her, when the things I'm thinking about are so current, so raw. It's easy to tell the story of my life, it's not my story after all, it doesn't belong to me. It's more difficult, even impossible, to write the story of others lives.

This season is an others season. I feel like every war, every tear, and every worn down sigh is born of a battle not my own. This is not my war, I am not built for this, I remind myself. My job is not the Redeemer, I merely point to Heaven and pray He comes through and quick.

It's more difficult to point to heaven, though, when the roadsigns around point everywhere but. I confuse even myself.

I say to him tonight that I confuse my rights and lefts, but I still somehow have a good sense of direction. I don't know which way I'm heading, but I know I'm heading there. And aren't we all? Thomas, my favorite disciple, said "We don't know where You're going, how will we know the way?" And Jesus, ever the consummate quip, answers that He IS the way. He is looking straight at His Father for the next step and they are checking for roadmaps in the folds of his robes. Isn't that just like us?

We are convinced that there must be some other way to make all things work together for good. Some other savior, some dues ex machina, a surprise ending, a troubadour with a song and a trick, a chart even, a list. And when we find that the answer is Jesus, just Jesus, well, that makes things a little disappointing, a little anticlimactic. There is nothing to check off at the end of a day when your to-do list is Living and Active.

And so, like Isaiah wrote, we trust that we heard the voice behind us saying, "This, this is the way. Walk in this way. Whether you go to the right or the left." Because Heaven is a destination, but it's also written on our hearts already. We've heard the voice behind us and we stand at every crossroad trusting He knows His rights and lefts better than we ever will.

2009-11-09T16:53:00.001-05:00

There were tears to be had this morning. Suffering is close and our hearts wrap around it, welcome it, the answer is to comfort; the answer is to condition; the answer is to confront. We all answer accordingly.

I feel the judgment yesterday, I hear it in his words, coarse, sarcastic. I hear it in her comment, it sears across my mind and I don't know what to do with it. Forgiveness is easy, it's figuring how that looks that's hard. There are totem poles of history, priorities of piety and preciousness: these are the things we hold dear and the gospel does not top the carved teller when we want our story to be heard so badly.

My heart is grieved--the gospel does not top my list. I concern myself with things of this world, pleasure and recourse, provision and appearances. I am obsessed with the front that's shown. I cry this morning, across from her (with her there is no front, there is only a face and a bared heart). I weep because we, ourselves, I, me, we meet felt needs thinking that the gospel will eventually come through, crossing our fingers for salvation, a wing and a prayer. But shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't the gospel be first as we give cups of cold water, rides to and from, and our testimony?

Shouldn't the gospel be first?

We are listening to this song twice, "Your fingers reach around the bone, you set the break and set the tone." Isn't to set the tone to show how it's done, gospel first, all else second? Coming so small, so holy, so discarded, and waiting 30 years and His lifetime to do the first of so few miracles. Meeting needs is only a comfort, a condition and a confrontation of all that's wrong in the world. But He didn't set the break and set the tone to show us how to right what's wrong with the world, He reached around and did it a different way--He righted it for us.

We talked long last night and I drove home with one constant thought: Thank you God. For doing it for us. For me. I have climbed to the top of the totem pole, set myself atop ideals, easy fixes, and misplaced priorities, and still been further from Heaven than before.

The answer is the gospel.

2009-10-30T14:24:00.003-04:00

I am no theologian, but I am a sinner and I suppose this makes it okay for me to write about things like this. Theology is just the way we see Jesus and, God Knows, I need to see Jesus.

I am captured by one recycled thought, a repeating theology that is changing me. A present theology. There are things, I am learning, that have the power to change us at once. I am calling them 180 Theologies--these things have the power to turn us from one direction to the other in immediacy. We are changed. We who were dead are now alive. These things are remarkable and astounding, miraculous to anyone who asks.

But there are what I'm calling Present Theologies in my mind these days. The gerunds of the Christian grammar: being, ongoing, growing, being, being, being! The things that are happening. The things we understand at once to be finished, but we understand again that they are never fully finished. These things are miraculous too, I'm finding. Taking captive thoughts. Unveiling Christ to ourselves and others. Being built to be a dwelling place for the Spirit.

The cross is finished, has finished it for us, all of us.
But we aren't finished yet.

I love that. I love that!

It is so easy to catch ourselves in where things went wrong, which iota of the gospel we didn't understand, which theology failed, which principle led us down the wrong path. Instead, if we choose to meditate on the -ing of the gospel message, we are set up for a hope and a future. Rome wasn't built in a day, neither was Paul, and Praise God, neither am I!

This is the sound of the redeemed
Rising up to praise the King
Our hope is in You
This is the sound of the redeemed
Rising up to praise the King
We The Redeemed--Jill McCloghry

2009-10-28T23:07:00.001-04:00

I am exhausted recently. I've been taking my vitamins and getting a full eight hours of sleep every night and taking time in the car to breathe and pray, but still, I'm exhausted. It's not the burnt out exhausted, though, it's the spiritual ebb and flow that's making my limbs feel heavy and my eyelids too.

Someone asked me tonight "How are you?" and the truth was easy, it came easy and it was true: I'm Good. I am full of joy, contentment, brimming with vision, excited to be finding community everywhere I look (even if the quota of close friends isn't on the rise), I'm good. If these things throw me into the gamut of goodness, then it is good through and through.

A few years ago, before I was about to embark on an extended international adventure a friend prayed these words over me, and I've never forgotten: He is your source, but you've got to walk to the source, you've got to draw from the source, you have to choose to drink from the source. When you can't find Him, when you can't see Him, when you don't want to choose Him, He's still your source.

I'm remembering that a lot recently, because to be honest, the only reason I'm good these days is because He's good eternally.

I read these words tonight, standing in worship:

I have set the LORD continually before me;
Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.
Therefore my heart is glad and my glory rejoices;
My flesh also will dwell securely.
Psalm 16.8,9

I dwell most securely when I set Him most continually before me. On purpose.