Here in the Kingdom

The Irony of Elegy

2010-10-10T14:13:00.002-05:00

What was running through my head during communion this morning:

Is it more ironic that we take communion as a feast and a banquet or that we take it as a symbol of our brokenness and sorrow? But perhaps that is what is most beautiful about communion - these juxtaposed expressions of joy and grief. Where else do death and life, captivity and salvation, iniquity and redemption meet and mingle so intimately as in the bread and cup? Thanks be to God.

An Interesting Piece

2010-08-23T15:29:00.002-05:00

A Weight That Women Carry – The Compulsion to Diet in a Starved Culture

By Sallie Tisdale (taken from Minding the Body: women writers on Body and Soul)

I don’t know how much I weigh these days, though I can make a good guess. For years I’d known that number, sometimes within a quarter pound, known how it changed from day to day and hour to hour. I want to weight myself now; I lean toward the scale in the next room, imagine standing there, lining up the balance. But I don’t do it. Going this long, starting to break the scale’s spell—it’s like waking up suddenly sober.

By the time I was sixteen years old I had reached my adult height of five feet six inches and weighed 164 pounds. I weighed 164 pounds before and after a healthy pregnancy. I assume I weigh about the same now; nothing significant seems to have happened to my body, this same old body I’ve had all these years. I usually wear a size 14, a common clothing size for American women. On bad days I think my body looks lumpy and misshapen. On my good days, which are more frequent lately, I think I look plush and strong; I think I look like a lot of women whose bodies and lives I admire.

I’m not sure when the word “fat” first sounded pejorative to me, or when I first applied it to myself. My grandmother was a petite woman, the only one in my family. She stole food from other people’s plates, and hid the debris of her own meals so that no one would know how much she ate. My mother was a size 14, like me, all her adult life; we shared clothes. She fretted endlessly over food scales, calorie counters, and diet books. She didn’t want to quit smoking because she was afraid she would gain weight, and she worried about her weight until she died of cancer five years ago. Dieting was always in my mother’s way, always there in the conversations above my head, the dialogue of stocky women. But I was strong and healthy and didn’t pay too much attention to my weight until I was grown.

It probably wouldn’t have been possible for me to escape forever. It doesn’t matter that whole human epochs have celebrated big men and women, because the brief period in which I live does not; since I was born, even the voluptuous calendar girl has gone. Today’s models, the women whose pictures I see constantly, unavoidable, grow more minimal by the day. When I berate myself for not looking like—whomever I think I should look like that day, I don’t really care that no one looks like that. I don’t care the Michelle Pfeiffer doesn’t look like the photographs I see of Michelle Pfeiffer. I want to look—think I should look—like the photographs. I want her little miracles: the makeup artists, photographers, and computer imagers who can add a mole, remove a scar, lift the breasts, widen the eyes, narrow the hips, flatten the curves. The final product is what I see, have seen my whole adult life. And I’ve seen this: Even when big people become celebrities, their weight is constantly remarked upon and scrutinized; their successes seem always to be in spite of their weight. I thought my successes must be too.

I feel myself expand and diminish from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour. If I tell someone my weight, I change in their eyes: I become bigger or smaller, better or worse, depending on what that number, my weight, means to them. I know many men and women, young and old, gay and straight, who look fine, whom I love to see and whose faces and forms I cherish, who despise themselves for their weight. For their ordinary, human bodies. They and I are simply bigger than we think we should be. We always talk about weight in terms of gains and losses, and don’t wonder at the strangeness of the words. In trying always to lose weight, we’ve lost hope of simply being seen for ourselves.

My weight has never actually affected anything—it’s never seemed to mean anything one way or the other to how I lived. Yet for the last ten years I’ve felt quite bad about it. After a time, the number on the scale became my totem, more important than my experience—it was layered, metaphorical, metaphysical, and it had bewitching power. I thought if I could change that number I could change my life.

In my mid-twenties I started secretly taking diet pills. They made me feel strange, half crazed, vaguely nauseated. I lost about twenty-five pounds, dropped two sizes, and bought new clothes. I developed rituals and taboos around food, ate very little, and continued to lose weight. For a long time afterward I thought it only coincidental that with every passing week I also grew more depressed and irritable.

I could recite the details, but they’re remarkable only for being so common. I lost more weight until I was rather thin, and then I gained it all back. It came back slowly, pound by pound, in spite of erratic and melancholy and sometimes frantic dieting, dieting I clung to even though being thin had changed nothing, had meant nothing to my life except that I was thin. Looking back, I remember blinding moments of shame and lighting-bright moments of clear-headedness, which inevitably gave way to rage at the time I’d wasted—rage that eventually would become, once again, self-disgust and the urge to lose weight. So it went, until I weighed exactly what I’d weighed when I began.

I used to be attracted to the sharp angles of the chronic dieter—the caffeine-wild, chain-smoking, skinny women I see sometimes. I considered them a pinnacle not of beauty but of will. Even after I gained back my weight, I wanted to be like that, controlled and persevering, live that underfed life so unlike my own rather sensual and disorderly existence. I felt I should always be dieting, for the dieting of it; dieting had become a rule, a given, a constant. Every ordinary value is distorted in this lens. I felt guilty for not being completely absorbed in my diet, for getting distracted, for not caring enough all the time. The fat person’s character flaw is a lack of narcissism. She’s let herself go.

So I would begin again—and at first it would all seem so . . . easy. Simply arithmetic. After all, 3,500 calories equal one pound of fat—so the books and articles by the thousands say. I would calculate how long it would take to achieve the magic number on the scale, to succeed, to win. All past failures were suppressed. If 3,500 calories equal one pound, all I needed to do was cut 3,500 calories out of my intake every week. The first few days of a new diet would be colored with a sense of control—organization and planning, power over the self. Then the basic futile misery took over.

I would weigh myself with foreboding, and my weight would determine how went the rest of my day, my week, my life. When 3,500 calories didn’t equal one pound lost after all, I figured it was my body that was flawed, not the theory. One friend, who had tried for years to lose weight following prescribed diets, made what she called “an amazing discovery.” The real secret to a diet, she said, was that you had to be willing to be hungry all the time. You had to eat even less than the diet allowed.

I believed that being thin would make me happy. Such a pernicious, enduring belief. I lost weight and wasn’t happy and saw that elusive happiness disappear in a vanishing point, requiring more—more self-disgust, more of the misery of dieting. Knowing all that I know now about the biology and anthropology of weight, knowing that people naturally come in many shapes and sizes, knowing that diets are bad for me and won’t make me thin—sometimes none of this matters. I look in the mirror and think: Who am I kidding? I’ve got to do something about myself. Only then will this vague discontent disappear. Then I’ll be loved.

For ages humans believed that the body helped create the personality, from the humors of Galen to W.H. Sheldon’s somatotypes. Sheldon distinguished among three templates—endomorph, mesomorph, and ectomorph—and combined them into hundreds of variations with physical, emotional, and psychological characteristics. When I read about weight now, I see the potent shift in the last few decades: The modern culture of dieting is based on the idea that the personality creates the body. Our size must be in some way voluntary, or else it wouldn’t be subject to change. A lot of my misery over my weight wasn’t about how I looked at all. I was miserable because I believed I was bad, not my body. I felt truly reduced then, reduced to being just a body and nothing more.

Fat is perceived as an act rather than a thing. It is antisocial, and curable through the application of social controls. Even the feminist revisions of dieting, so powerful in themselves, pick up the theme: the hungry, empty heart; the woman seeking release from sexual assault, or the man from the loss of the mother, through food and fat. Fat is now a symbol not of the personality but of the soul—the cluttered, neurotic, immature soul.

Fat people eat for “mere gratification,” I read, as though no one else does. Their weight is intentioned, they simply eat “too much,” their flesh is lazy flesh. Whenever I went on a diet, eating became cheating. One pretzel was cheating. Two apples instead of one was cheating—a large potato instead of a small, carrots instead of broccoli. It didn’t matter which diet I was on; diets have failure built in, failure is in the definition. Every substitution—even carrots for broccoli—was a triumph of desire over will. When I dieted, I didn’t feel pious just for sticking to the rules. I felt condemned for the act of eating itself, as though my hunger were never normal. My penance was not to eat at all.

My attitude toward food became quite corrupt. I came, in fact, to subconsciously believe food itself was corrupt. Diet books often distinguish between “real” and “unreal” hunger, so that correct eating is hollowed out, unemotional. A friend of mine who thinks of herself as a compulsive eater says she feels bad only when she eats for pleasure. “Why?” I ask, and she says, “Because I’m eating food I don’t need.” A few years ago I might have admired that. Now I try to imagine a world where we eat only food we need, and it seems inhuman. I imagine a world devoid of holidays and wedding feasts, wakes and reunions, a unique shared joy. “What’s wrong with eating a cookie because you like cookies?” I ask her, and she hasn’t got an answer. These aren’t rational beliefs, any more than the unnecessary pleasure of ice cream is rational. Dieting presumes pleasure to be an insignificant, or at least malleable, human motive.

I felt no joy in being thin—it was just work, something I had to do. But when I began to gain back the weight, I felt despair. I started reading about the “recidivism” of dieting. I wondered if I had myself to blame not only for needing to diet in the first place but for dieting itself, the weight inevitably regained. I joined the organized weight-loss programs, spent a lot of money, listened to lectures I didn’t believe on quack nutrition, ate awful, processed diet foods. I sat in groups and applauded people who’d lost a half pound, feeling smug because I’d lost a pound and a half. I felt ill much of the time, found exercise increasingly difficult, cried often. And I thought that if I could only lose a little weight, everything would be all right.

When I say to someone “I’m fat,” I hear, “Oh, no! You’re not fat! You’re just—“ What? Plump? Big-boned? Rubenesque? I’m just not thin. That’s crime enough. I began this story by stating my weight. I said it all at once, trying to forget it and take away its power; I said it to be done being scared. Doing so, saying it out loud like that, felt like confessing a mortal sin. I have to bite my tongue not to seek reassurance, not to defend myself, not to plead. I see an old friend for the first time in years, and she comments on how much my fourteen-year-old son looks like me—“except, of course, he’s not chubby.” “Looks who’s talking,” I reply, through clenched teeth. This pettiness is never far away; concern with my weight evokes the smallest, meanest parts of me. I look at another woman passing on the street, At least I’m not that fat.

Recently I was talking with a friend who is naturally slender about a mutual acquaintance who is quite large. To my surprise my friend reproached this woman because she had seen her eating a cookie at lunchtime. “How is she going to lose weight that way?” my friend wondered. When you are as fat as our acquaintance is, you are primarily, fundamentally, seen as fat. It is your essential characteristic. There are so many presumptions in my friend’s casual, cruel remark. She assumes that this woman should diet all the time—and that she can. She pronounces whole categories of food to be denied her. She sees her unwillingness to behave in this externally prescribed way, even for a moment, as an act of rebellion. In his story “A Hunger Artist,” Kafka writes that the guards of the fasting man were “usually butchers, strangely enough.” Not so strange, I think.

I know that the world, even if it views me as overweight (and I’m not sure it really does), clearly makes a distinction between me and this very big woman. I would rather stand with her and not against her, see her for all she is besides fat. But I know our experiences aren’t the same. My thin friend assumes my fat friend is unhappy because she is fat: Therefore, if she loses weight she will be happy. My fat friend has a happy marriage and family and a good career, but insofar as her weight is a source of misery, I think she would be much happier if she could eat her cookie in peace, if people would shut up and leave her weight alone. But the world never lets up when you are her size; she cannot walk to the bank without risking insult. Her fat is seen as perverse bad manners. I have no doubt she would be rid of the fat if she could be. If my left-handedness invited the criticism her weight does, I would want to cut that hand off.

In these last several years I seem to have had an infinite number of conversations about dieting. They are really all the same conversation—weight is lost, then weight is gained back. This repetition finally began to sink in. Why did everyone soon or later have the same experience? (My friend who had learned to be hungry all the time gained back all the weight she had lost and more, just like the rest of us.) Was it really our bodies that were flawed? I began reading the biology of weight more carefully, reading the fine print in the endless studies. There is, in fact, a preponderance of evidence disputing our commonly held assumptions about weight.

The predominant biological myth of weight is that thin people live longer than fat people. The truth is far more complicated. (Some deaths of fat people attributed to heart disease seem actually to have been the result of radical dieting.) If health were our real concern, it would be dieting we questioned, not weight. The current ideal of thinness has never been held before, except as a religious ideal; the underfed body is the martyr’s body. Even if people can lose weight, maintaining an artificially low weight for any period of time requires a kind of starvation. Lots of people are naturally thin, but for those who are not, dieting is an unnatural act; biology rebels. The metabolism of the hungry body can change inalterably, making it ever harder and harder to stay thin. I think chronic dieting made me gain weight—not only pounds, but fat. This equation seemed so strange at first that I couldn’t believe it. But the weight I put back on after losing was much more stubborn than the original weight. I had lost it by taking diet pills and not eating much of anything at all for quite a long time. I haven’t touched the pills again, but not eating much of anything no longer works.

When Oprah Winfrey first revealed her lost weight, I didn’t envy her. I thought, she’s in trouble now. I knew, I was certain, she would gain it back; I believed she was biologically destined to do so. The tabloid headlines blamed it on a cheeseburger or mashed potatoes; they screamed OPRAH PASSES 200 POUNDS, and I cringed at her misery and how the world wouldn’t let up, wouldn’t leave her alone, wouldn’t let her be anything else. How dare the world do this to anyone? I thought, and then realized it I did it to myself.

The “Ideal Weight” charts my mother used were at their lowest acceptable-weight ranges in the 1950s, when I was a child. They were based on sketchy and often inaccurate actuarial evidence, using, for the most part, data on northern Europeans and allowing for the most minimal differences in size for a population of less than half a billion people. I never fit those weight charts, I was always just outside the pale. As an adult, when I would join an organized diet program, I accepted their version of my Weight Goal as gospel, knowing it would be virtually impossible to reach. But reach I tried; that’s what one does with gospel. Only in the last few years have the weight tables begun to climb back into the world of the average human. The newest ones distinguish by gender, frame, and age. And suddenly, I’m not off the charts anymore. I have a place.

A man who is attracted to fat women says, “I actually have less specific physical criteria than most men. I’m attracted to women who weigh 170 or 270 or 370. Most men are attracted to women who weigh between 100 and 135. So who’s got more of a fetish?” We look at fat as a problem of the fat person. Rarely do the tables get turned, rarely do we imagine that it might be the viewer, not the viewed, who is limited. What the hell is wrong with them, anyway? Do they believe everything they see on television?

My friend Phil, who is chronically and almost painfully thin, admitted that in his search for a partner he finds himself prejudiced against fat women. He seemed genuinely bewildered by this. I didn’t jump to reassure him that such prejudice is hard to resist. What I did was bite my tongue at my urge to be reassured by him, to be told that I, at least, wasn’t fat. That over the centuries humans have been inclined to prefer extra flesh rather than the other way around seems unimportant. All we see now tells us otherwise. Why does my kindhearted friend criticize another woman for eating a cookie when she would never dream of commenting in such a way on another person’s race or sexual orientation or disability? Deprivation is the dystopian ideal.

My mother called her endless diets “reducing plans.” Reduction, the diminution of women, is the opposite of feminism, as Kim Chernin points out in The Obsession. Smallness is what feminism strives against, the smallness that women confront everywhere. All of women’s spaces are smaller than those of men, often inadequate, without privacy. Furniture designers distinguish between a man’s and a woman’s chair, because women don’t spread out like men. (A sprawling woman means only one thing.) Even our voices are kept down. By embracing dieting I was rejecting a lot I held dear, and the emotional dissonance that created just seemed like one more necessary evil.

A fashion magazine recently celebrated the return of the “well-fed” body; a particular model was said to be “the archetype of the new womanly woman . . . stately, powerful.” She is a size 8. The images of women presented to us, images claiming so maliciously to be the images of women’s whole lives, are not merely social fictions. They are absolute fictions; they can’t exist. How would it feel, I began to wonder, to cultivate my own real womanliness rather than despise it? Because it was my fleshy curves I wanted to be rid of, after all. I dream of having a boy’s body, smooth, hipless, lean. A body rapt with possibility, a receptive body suspended before the storms of maturity. A dear friend of mine, nursing her second child, weeps at her newly voluptuous body. She loves her children and hates her own motherliness, wanting to be unripened again, to be a bud and not a flower.

Recently I’ve started shopping occasionally at stores for “large women,” where the smallest size is a 14. In department stores the size 12 and 14 and 16 clothes are kept in a ghetto called the Women’s Department. (And who would want that, to be the size of a woman? We all dream of being “juniors” instead.) In the specialty stores, the clerks are usually big women and the customers are big too, big like a lot of women in my life—friends, my sister, my mother and aunts. Not long ago I bought a pair of jeans at Lane Bryant and then walked through the mall to the Gap, with its shelves of generic clothing. I flicked through the clearance rack and suddenly remembered the Lane Bryant shopping bag in my hand and its enormous weight, the sheer heaviness of that brand name shouting to the world. The shout is that I’ve let myself go. I still feel like crying out sometimes: Can’t I feel satisfied? But I am not supposed to be satisfied, not allowed to be satisfied. My discontent fuels the market; I need to be afraid in order to fully participate.

American culture, which has produced our dieting mania, does more than reward privation and acquisition at the same time: It actually associates them with each other. Read the ads: The virtuous runner’s reward is a new pair of $180 running shoes. The fat person is thought to be impulsive, indulgent, but insufficiently or incorrectly greedy, greedy for the wrong things. The fat person lacks ambition. The young executive is complimented for being “hungry”; he is “starved for success.” We are teased with what we will have if we are willing to have not for a time. A dieting friend, avoiding the food on my table, says, “I’m just dying for a bite of that.”

Dieters are the perfect consumers: They never get enough. The dieter wistfully imagines food without substance, food that is not food, that begs the definition of food, because food is the problem. Even the ways we don’t eat are based in class. The middle class don’t eat in support groups. The poor can’t afford to not eat at all. The rich hire someone to not eat with them in private. Dieting is an emblem of capitalism. It has a venal heart.

The possibility of living another way, living without dieting, began to take root in my mind a few years ago, and finally my second trip through Weight Watchers ended dieting for me. This last time I just couldn’t stand the details, the same kind of details I’d seen and despised in other programs, on other diets: the scent of resignation, the weighing-in by the quarter pound, the before-and-after photographs of group leaders prominently displayed. Jean Nidetch, the founder of Weight Watchers, says, “Most fat people need to be hurt badly before they do something about themselves.” She mocks every aspect of our need for food, of a person’s sense of entitlement to food, of daring to eat what we want. Weight Watchers refuses to release its own weight charts except to say they make no distinction for frame size; neither has the organization ever released statistics on how many people who lose weight on the program eventually gain it back. I hated the endlessness of it, the turning of food into portions and exchanges, everything measured out, permitted, denied. I hated the very idea of “maintenance.” Finally I realized I didn’t just hate the diet. I was sick of the way I acted on a diet, the way I whined, my niggardly, penny-pinching behavior. What I liked in myself seemed to shrivel and disappear when I dieted. Slowly, slowly I saw these things. I saw that my pain was cut from whole cloth, imaginary, my own invention. I saw how much time I’d spent on something ephemeral, something that simply wasn’t important, didn’t matter. I saw that the real point of dieting is dieting—to not be done with it, ever.

I looked in the mirror and saw a woman, with flesh, curves, muscles, a few stretch marks, the beginnings of wrinkles, with strength and softness in equal measure. My body is the one part of me that is always, undeniably, here. To like myself means to be, literally, shameless, to be wanton in the pleasures of being inside a body. I feel loose this way, a little abandoned, a little dangerous. That first feeling of liking my body—not being resigned to it or despairing of change, but actually liking it—was tentative and guilty and frightening. It was alarming, because it was the way I’d felt as a child, before the world had interfered. Because surely I was wrong; I knew, I’d known for so long, that my body wasn’t all right this way. I was afraid even to act as though I were all right: I was afraid that by doing so I’d be acting a fool.

For a time I was thin. I remember—and what I remember is nothing special—strain, a kind of hollowness, the same troubles and fears, and no magic. So I imagine losing weight again. If the world applauded, would this comfort me? Or would it only compromise whatever approval the world gives me now? What else will be required of me besides thinness? What will happen to me if I get sick, or lose the use of a limb, or, God forbid, grow old?

By fussing endlessly over my body, I’ve ceased to inhabit it. I’m trying to reverse this equation now, to trust my body and enter it again with a whole heart. I know more now than I used to about what constitutes “happy” and “unhappy,” what the depths and textures of contentment are like. By letting go of dieting, I free up mental and emotional room. I have more space, I can move. The pursuit of another, elusive body, the body someone else says I should have, is a terrible distraction, a sidetracking that might have lasted my whole life long. By letting myself go, I go places.

Each of us in this culture, this twisted, inchoate culture, has to choose between battles: One battle is against the cultural ideal, and the other is against ourselves. I’ve chosen to stop fighting myself. Maybe I’m tilting at windmills; the cultural ideal is ever-changing, out of my control. It’s not a cerebral journey, except insofar as I have to remind myself to stop counting, to stop thinking in terms of numbers. I know, even now that I’ve quit dieting and eat what I want, how many calories I take in every day. If I eat as I please, I eat a lot one day and very little the next; I skip meals and snack at odd times. My nourishment is good—as far as nutrition is concerned, I’m in much better shape than when I was dieting. I know that the small losses and gains in my weight over a period of time aren’t simply related to the number of calories I eat. Someone asked me not long ago how I could possibly know my calorie intake if I’m not dieting (the implication being, perhaps, that I’m dieting secretly). I know because calorie counts and grams of fat and fiber are embedded in me. I have to work to not think of them, and I have to learn to not think of them in order to really live without fear.

When I look, really look, at the people I see every day on the street, I see a jungle of bodies, a community of women and men growing every which way like lush plants, growing tall and short and slender and round, hairy and hairless, dark and pale and soft and hard and glorious. Do I look around at the multitudes and think all these people—all these people who are like me and not like me, who are various and different—are not loved or lovable? Lately, everyone’s body interests me, every body is desirable in some way. I see how muscles and skin shift with movement; I sense a cornucopia of flesh in the world. In the midst of it I am a little capacious and unruly.

I repeat with Walt Whitman, “I dote on myself . . . there is a lot of me, and all so luscious.” I’m eating better, exercising more, feeling fine—and then I catch myself thinking Maybe I’ll lose some weight But my mood changes or my attention is caught by something else, something deeper, more lingering. Then I can catch a glimpse of myself and think only: That’s me. My face, my hips, my hands. Myself.

No Idea of my own lately, but...

2010-08-02T13:21:00.004-05:00

I've been reading a tad more lately (which doesn't say much since I'd pretty much fallen off the literary wagon, what with my hectic schedule). Poetry in particular. Most lately, I've picked up the poetry of Billy Collins, who has come highly recommended from several people whose literary (and otherwise) opinions I value a great deal. I am in the middle of of Collins' work called Sailing Alone Around the Room, which is a collection of his poems from several anthologies over the years. I love poetry that is both so thoughtful and accessible, intelligent, but not pretentiously obscure. Here is one of my favorites, and I encourage you to pick up this book and peruse if you get a chance.

Piano Lessons

My teacher lies on the floor with a bad back

off to the side of the piano.

I sit up straight on the stool.

He begins by telling me that every key

is like a different room

and I am a blind man who must learn

to walk through all twelve of them

without hitting the furniture.

I feel myself reach for the first doorknob.

He tells me that every scale has a shape

and I have to learn how to hold

each one in my hands.

At home I practice with my eyes closed.

C is an open book.

D is a vase with two handles.

G flat is a black boot.

E has the legs of a bird.

He says the scale is the mother of the chords.

I can see her pacing the bedroom floor

waiting for her children to come home.

They are out at nightclubs shading and lighting

all the songs while couples dance slowly

or stare at one another across tables.

This is the way it must be. After all,

just the right chord can bring you to tears

but no one listens to the scales,

no one listens to their mother.

I am doing my scales,

the familiar anthems of childhood.

My fingers climbs the ladder of notes

and come back down without turning around.

Anyone walking under this open window

would picture a girl of about ten

sitting at the keyboard with perfect posture,

not me slumped over in my bathrobe, disheveled,

like a white Horace Silver.

I am learning to play

"It Might As Well Be Spring"

but my left hand would rather be jingling

the change in the darkness of my pocket

or take a nap on an armrest.

I have to drag him into the music

like a difficult and neglected child.

This is the revenge of the one who never gets

to hold the pen or wave good-bye,

and now, who never gets to play the melody.

Even when I am not playing, I think about the piano.

It is the largest, heaviest,

and most beautiful object in this house.

I pause in the doorway just to take it all in.

And late at night I picture it downstairs,

this hallucination standing on three legs,

this curious beast with its enormous moonlit smile.

A Book

2010-06-29T11:37:00.001-05:00

He at and drank the precious words,

His spirit grew robust;

He knew no more that he was poor,

Nor that his frame was dust.

He danced along the dingy days,

And this bequest of wings

Was but a book. What liberty

A loosened spirit brings!

-Emily Dickinson

Here's to Summer and reading lists galore. Now get reading!

Please, Be Gentle

2010-03-24T14:25:00.002-05:00

I do not know you, yet I feel you gone

I sense your absence

Like a closet hanger

stripped of the garments

that kept it warm.

Those cotton curves now filled

by something else.

Shoulder, hip, knock-knees.

Or maybe a heap on the floor

Billows from the vent

next to the closet door.

I feel you gone.

I sense your absence

Like a castaway

Waking from the dream

of a ship that came for rescue

a prop plane that saw

the flare gun.

But there are no flares to be found

No dry wood for smoke signals

No books, no music

no sympathy.

Just miles and miles of coastline

and unbreakable palm trees.

I feel you gone

I sense your absence

like a mouth looking for words

in another language.

Intonations it cannot comprehend.

Shapes and meanings

it cannot imagine

because it has not studied this tongue.

No pictures, no context clues.

Stories it longs to tell,

but can't.

I feel you gone.

I sense your absence

like the frame of film

Misses the image

it has yet to capture.

A celluloid square

thus far unexposed

with a thin emulsion

Wanting only for light and shadow.

A thousand words painted

by a second in the sun.

An open shutter

and a window to the world.

I sense your absence

the space you have yet to fill.

I feel you not yet arrived.

(Winter/Spring 2009)

Snow Day

2010-02-16T12:14:00.002-06:00

A few observations from our beautiful little blizzard this Friday-past:

Snow days in Alabama are, to say the least, an anomaly. People walk and drive and slide about with incurable grins and eyes wide with wonder. Front yards suddenly give birth to snow citizens with sticks for arms and donning hastily repurposed clothes snatched from the giveaway box. Little dark pockmarks dot the landscape where handfuls of precipitate have been scooped up for utilization as pillowy ammunition.

Entire systems of work and order slow to a halt for irrational fear of snowing-in or dangerous roadways, but also, I suspect, out of a sense of reverent fascination. Where we are starving for rest, these fortuitous flurries become manna from Heaven, descending onto a place with quietude that is deep and thick. All in one day, a months-long stretch of record-setting cold, almost unbearably persistent, is redeemed by the play and community which ensue from three inches of groundcover.

Where I sometimes long for a location that experiences greater and more frequent volumes of snow, I am quick to acknowledge that it is the novelty of such events which lends itself to days of acceptable unproductivity and necessary Sabbath.

From where I sit on the crest of a hill, I watch arborous limbs akimbo slowly bow and torque beneath heaps of fallen sky until coming to rest, their outermost twigs nearly sweeping the ground. The wide city backdrop is now reduced to a greyscale with a stillness that rivals an antique photograph.

As the sun starts to set behind my window, I suddenly remember that we live in a color world, that black and white is an illusion created in the minds of those at eyelevel with great black trees overlooking fields that are white blank pages bearing the imprint of steel grey houses.

My Tailbone Hurts

2010-01-21T17:03:00.002-06:00

I've been sitting on a hard wooden chair for a few too many hours today reading. I'm currently underlining my way through Bonhoeffer's Life Together. Just wanted to share a few gems I ran across today, particularly in light of discussions I frequently get to have regarding community:

"It is, therefore, not good for us to take too seriously the many untoward experiences we have with ourselves in meditation. It is here that our old vanity and our illicit claims upon God may creep in by a pious detour as if it were our right to have nothing but elevating and fruitful experiences, and as if the discovery of our own inner poverty were quite below our dignity."

"The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love to God begins with listening to His Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them. It is God's love for us that He not only gives us His word but also lends us His ear. So it is His work that we do for our brother when we learn to listen to him. Christians...so often think they must always contribute something when they are in the company of others, that this is the one service they have to render. They forget that listening can be a greater service than speaking."

"To cherish no contempt for the sinner but rather to prize the privilege of bearing him means not to have to give him up as lost, to be able to accept him, to preserve fellowship with him through forgiveness."

"Our brother's ways are not in our hands; we cannot hold together what is breaking; we cannot keep life in what is determined to die. But God binds elements together in the breaking, creates community in the separation, grants grace through judgment. He has put His Word in our mouth. He wants it to be spoken through us."

Just some food for thought.

Inklings from Moss Rock

2010-01-20T17:32:00.003-06:00

There's a tree growing out of the water here, but I wonder which was here first, the tulip poplar or the riverbed. I am grateful for the wide-open respites that can be found not so far from my ordinarily inorganic life. And I am grateful for those people who are happy to lay with me on boulders overlooking a little creek and write about whatever is in our souls. Not even talk, just write. Through my fringe of unruly bangs I can see Leah's yellow pumps, Lauren's brown flats and purple sweater. We don't fit in here, but there's no one to tell us otherwise. This is our world.

Nature never seems unfamiliar to me. It does not exist as a part of a system where there are, innately, any high expectations. Sometimes when I go into a new restaurant I am all anxiety because I don't understand how the system works. Part of me feels like I missed the part of the game where they explained the rules. Do I pay at the table? Am I supposed to clear my own dishes? Do I tip? But here in the woods there is none of that. The forest could care less whether or not it feels my footfall, and yet it still feels so personal to me. It is what I wish it to be.

I'm not sure if I'm in this system or out of it, but I know I'm not above it. I can enter it, alter it, appreciate it, or destroy parts of it, but it can too easily humble me as soon as I might venture to tame it or capture it. The wilderness without so quickly tempers and overwhelms the wilderness within. I know it's important to feel small in this way sometimes. For this moment, this is all there is, and it is enough. So much more than enough.

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." -Thoreau

I'm still breathing.

When We Get There

2010-01-09T16:20:00.002-06:00

I discovered this afternoon that one of my favorite people in the whole wide world has a blog. Sarah Grace has recorded thoughts publicly in a few scattered places, but I have found this one to be the most consistent. As long as I have known her, she has been a source of great hope and insight; And where she is eloquent in person, she is astounding in writing. I was recently reading an entry of hers that followed a line of thought we often travel when spending time together, that being the direction of our individual lives, especially as it pertains to the will of a very myterious God (of whom, I might add, we both find ourselves rather fond), and the risks and benefits of pursuing great and small aspirations. She had the following to say:

But what's more crazy is how much I don't pursue the things I dream about in my heart. I'm too scared of what I love. That is just no way to live. Like everything's going to leave me. I'm just sick of it. Life is waiting while I wait for it to leave...And I hide, too. Behind dreams that perhaps don't mean as much, but are more convenient...[I want] to be a little bit more free of the anxiety of a life that must have it figured out.

And I am a prime example of said anxiety - of the life that must have it figured out. Before I get there. Before I even leave here! I am frequently reminded of a discussion we had at DF about a year ago about the call of Abraham and specifically what God told him (and didn't tell him). Genesis 12 says that "The Lord said to Abram, 'Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you." In the chapter, God goes on to give Abraham promises of provision and blessing, which were eventually fulfilled when his barren wife made him the father of a nation (I mean, totally what Abraham was probably expecting, right?). But any indication as to location, ETA, or even travel direction is conspicuously absent.

Later, in Hebrews 11 we find out that, "By faith Abraham, when called to go to a new place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going." There you have it. He went.

So let's recap. God tells Abraham to "Go to the land I will show you (as in, I'll tell you when you get there. Or maybe, you'll find a clue at the next watering hole or in a joke one of your fellow travellers tells. Or even possibly, the location has more to do with your heart than with geography). And Abraham (probably not without some reservation) just starts walking. This is terribly difficult for me to grasp.

I find myself with this unignorably restless spirit, not a lack of contendedness, per se, but an underlying anxiety over the idea of being left behind, of missing out on the rest of my life. I also find, simultaneously (have I mentioned my ambivalent nature?), that I am paralyzed by the number of possibilities and the fear of not choosing the very best one, not to mention the fear of not having stable ground under my feet. So I sit here, weighing the possibilities, talking myself out of moving toward somewhere simply because I don't know where somewhere is. I don't even usually have a vague idea as to the general direction of somewhere (as if anyone travels a linear path). Ok that's not totally true, I usually have one up on Abraham in that I at least sort of have some tiny measure of direction. But the point is, I don't end up actually going anywhere. Fear is quicksand, my friends.

Of note is that control was not an option for Abraham, not when he was truly fulfilling this nebulous call. And it's not for me either, not if I'm heeding this restlessness that I have a creeping suspicion was carefully and intentionally woven into every single fiber of my being.

Cory really broke it down pretty simply for me when she said something along the lines of, "Do what you really want to do, and if you don't like it, try something else." Sometimes we just need people to vocalize the things we already know to be true. I've done it for others, and I trust they will continue to do it for me.

Oh, and I'll call you when we get there.

Here's an old (and semi-relevant) song from a little over a year ago that I wrote for a particularly dear former-Louisianian.

These days it seems like the hardest decision you make is to get out of bed

And the strongest contender to holding out hope is your own voice alone in your head

Who ever told you that you have to be so tough?

You're too wise to believe all those half-truths you hear are enough.

And it suddenly becomes very clear

That there's nothing left for you here;

This place has known all of you it can possibly know.

So I don't think you'll die here, but you know what you're doin' these days, it don't look much like livin',

And it feels like your heart and your hands are just filled up with sand, despite all you've been given,

You're a long ways above where you started out making this climb

You've got nothing to prove, you can come on back home any time

And if I can't bring you even a spark,

Then I'll sit with you here in the dark,

And together we'll bind up the lonely and cast it away.

And it's funny how you wake up in a town you've been living in for years

But you've never felt so lost

And you still can't believe that you find yourself staring down bridges

You thought you had crossed

So it's time now to let go of your need to know, and let your story write you instead

Remember, you are hemmed in from beginning to end, so you've no need to doubt what's ahead,

Maybe falling to pieces is all part of being made whole

Just to rest in the rescue of hands that are mending your soul.

And in coming apart at the seams

You are stronger than you ever dreamed

Because you are made up of the stories of freedom you've told.

Fin.

All Things New

2009-12-31T22:14:00.002-06:00

My New Year's Eve will be less than exciting this year. Actually more along the lines of depressing. I will will breathe an honest sigh of relief as this year draws to a long-awaited close. With a still-burdened heart I will whisper a little prayer of thanks for the promise that all things are made new and that God has placed eternity in the hearts of mankind. And I will reflect with hope on the words I wrote exactly one year ago today, on a much different New Year's Eve:

It's the last cold night of the year

And I am not who I was last December

And I'm not who I thought I'd be

Though, ask who that was and I may not remember

And time won't stand still

No it doesn't wait for any one of us

None of us

Are pulling the strings

But I am not lost

I am buried in frost

Blooming inward and waiting for spring

There is wind in the windows again

From cracks in the panes, and a snowbird is singing

That all winters come to an end

And warmth melts away bitter cold that's still clinging

To memories of last year

And rocks through the glass that left me all in shards

It was hard

But it's time to move on

And clear out some room

For what's begging to bloom

Every corner the light will shine on.

Be Well.

The Now and the Not-Yet

2009-12-24T11:27:00.002-06:00

I've grown up loving the Christmas season and all it implies for a person of faith, but it's only in recent years that I've taken fast hold of this concept of Advent. In fact, it seems that the older I get the more meaningful it all becomes - this stretch of time between four-weeks-before-Christmas and epiphany (I know, Advent typically entails only the time until December 24). It's significant that we begin the Christian year with a period of resting, anticipating, peaceful longsuffering (as opposed to actively seeking, doing, going). I don't know why this greater appreciation and understanding of Advent has developed with age, but it may have something to do with life circumstances in that there are now more things which require me to wait with expectancy. Children wait, but their expectancy is, for the most part, short sighted and sure. But compounding years seem to bring both more long-sighted looking forward and greater uncertainty. It's much easier for my expectancy to look like anxiety than hope, and I need the constant reassurance that very little is actually in my hands. (Even as I sit here and write this I'm thinking about the myriad ways in which I'm trying to manipulate my situation to align with what I think will produce the greatest outcomes for the future... and I'm failing.)

Each year my comprehension of Advent becomes a bit more conceptually hearty, although the change is slow over time. It seems to have evolved from waiting patiently to waiting patiently with great hope. And this year I've clung to the idea that we wait with great hope because the promise of a savior was actually fulfilled. The Christian people have a substantiated history of seemingly far-fetched promises coming to fruition. And their hopes have been of eternal importance, and mine are mostly not. I don't think I grasped until a couple of weeks ago that between the prophecy of the birth of a messiah and the actual incarnation the Israelites waited for four hundred years in virtual silence. Four hundred years! It makes my twenty three years seem like a tiny breath. It's amazing to me that over centuries they maintained an ardent hope through prayer and tradition and the passing down of stories over time - that the ball didn't get dropped, the anticipation didn't get lost in translation or completely dissipate over time.

I keep coming back to Luke 1:45, when Mary visits Elizabeth after Gabriel has come to her in a dream and Elizabeth tells her, "Blessed is she who believes what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished."

I have great hope that the Lord works things for good, and I have evidence that he unfailingly fulfills his promises. Yes, I realize that Advent is specifically celebrating the birth of the Savior, but for me there are clearly broader implications about the character and faithfulness of God, and about the way we relate to God and love God by maintaining this hope-against-all-odds.

Yet so many things are still so up in the air for me. Those of you dearest to me know specifically what I seek, the weight of the desires and fears from under which I can't seem to climb.

Because what about the things the Lord hasn't promised, hasn't really spoken to me about at all?

I obviously still have a quite a bit of room to grow in my understanding of this beautiful, refining season and story. Here's to next Christmas.

"Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful." -Hebrews 10:23

Artists Are the Ones Who Show Up

2009-11-21T09:39:00.002-06:00

*Cory was looking through my sketch/everything else book last night and ran across this image, after which I had written a couple of pages about the process of sketching the as-yet-unfinished pencil drawing. I off-handedly assured her it was fine to read those private thoughts because I had blogged them before. Which I apparently hadn't. So I'll post it now to avoid having given her empty words. This is from almost exactly one year ago - November 15, 2008:

I'm sketching a picture of a boy with an apple. It's from a magazine photograph. And self-inflicted perfectionist that I am, it's becoming a learning experience in patience, frustration, and critical moderation (the moderation of criticism). An outside eye would call it a good picture (for an amateur) if they were not looking at the original photograph. But the problem is, I am looking at the original photograph, and my self-critical eye wants to follow the lines from discrepancy to discrepancy, unrealistic shadows, various incidences of improper proportion.

Amidst all this wearing away of pencil eraser and the blackening of my fingertips from smudge, I think I may be missing some lessons in beauty - lessons of epic proportion in relation to the way I view my life, my productivity.

One immediate issue of note is my inappropriate attitude toward my re-creation as it relates to the attitude of the original photograph. It's a full-page spread stuck in the middle of some article about apple-picking - a kind of "fun for the whole family" thing. In fact, the section of the magazine is called Everyday Celebrations - and the mood is incredibly light and celebratory. This kid is flashing a toothy grin; he's just taken a huge bite of this glorious granny-smith, and in one second he is capturing all that is good and right about childhood - innocence, leisure, dirt under the fingernails. And here I'm hating this effort more and more. No wonder I can't reconstruct that sense of levity.

I've written in the margins - which will later be filled with a background of apple barrels - these words that I've heard a lot lately - artists are the ones who show up. In essence, we're all aspiring toward something, and if we were honest with each other we'd realize that we've all felt, at some point, like we're imposters. It's easy to say I'm not an artist because my drawing of a photograph doesn't entirely resemble the photograph itself, but that would be unfortunate and untrue. I am an artist, simply for the fact that I was inspired to observe the world around me and try to put pencil to paper to express that - and that I actually did it. I didn't think about it and talk myself out of it because I haven't sketched a photograph in eight years, because I haven't ever taken a formal art class. I'm an artist because I showed up. And for that I applaud myself.

I'm also learning some things through the actual drawing process itself. I began the picture with a central element - the face, which I've always found particularly challenging to draw. I've realized that so much of what we perceive is related to light and dark, highlights and shadows. These elements give us meaning through shape, depth, texture. I've kind of taken to telling myself, "focus on this one shadow, this one highlight - take one small bite at a time. Follow this line to the next shadow or curve, blend it, thin it out. Focus on these elements each in isolation with great attention to detail and the picture will miraculously come together." To some degree this works, especially in relation to detail drawing, but at some point I'm going to have to look at the whole picture (as any viewer would ultimately do). It will only make sense when I see these details in relation to one another. This apple doesn't make sense with rounded lines drawn through it until I understand that these lines make up the fingers holding the apple. That the fingers are connected to a hand, tucked into a shirt sleeve of the shirt on the boy who is sitting in a barn eating an apple. Criss-crossed lines are senseless until, together, they create the waffle-knit texture of the shirt. Nothing in this world exists outside of a context. Nothing ever makes sense in isolation. Ever.

Keep pushing through and eventually you will break down the wall you're hitting your brain against.

Just So We're Clear On One Thing

2009-09-17T11:56:00.003-05:00

Just so we're clear on one thing, my time is valuable. If I have made time to spend with you, it's because it's important to me. If you're not going to follow through don't even bother.

I'm flexible, not dispensable. Big difference.

What Settles

2009-09-10T12:52:00.006-05:00

It's been my great pleasure in the past week and a half to experience a higher-than-normal number of fortuitous run-ins with my wonderful housemate Cory, whether at home or at Urban Standard (my other home). It seems to me this is reflective of the change in our rhythms as of late for various reasons. Anyhow, I am always thankful for these precious well-springs throughout my day. For a humble and gracious wisdom which I always feel has been poured on me as I interact with such a beautiful person.

Earlier this week, we discussed the way it often seems that we all just can't help but wound and crush each other. Humans are so incredibly fragile. I think we don't realize what we do to one another in our inevitable struggle for self-preservation. And this wounding has the unfortunate tendency toward becoming cyclical. Similar to redemptive violence, and likely related to our God-given need to relate to one another, sometimes we just want to make someone else hurt as much as we do. On the other side of the same coin, we hurt one another with the uncareful wielding of our good intentions. A simple lack of forethought or self-control can prove a potent poison. What we mistake for love can quickly become a weapon.

The redemptive part of this cycle is that people are, generally, resilient and have such a great capacity for love. With practice, we learn that we cannot avoid seeing the glory and beauty instilled in each one of us. We bear fruit we previously would scarce have recognized. And, if we let it, healing comes with time. That's not to say we finish suffering or struggling before we die; it seems where one scar fades there are always one or two more to take its place. The point is that we learn to see the mending in the midst of the tearing. We begin to be able to trace the path over which a strong and silent hand has carried us. On a good day, this gives me hope for what lies ahead. Somehow I find myself at rest through the tumultuous forward motion. I wish I had that clarity every day. But today I am holding on to a hand that has made undeniable provision.

What seems to be a crisis, what previously would have made me come completely unglued, now looks like a proving ground for sovereignty. A conduit for hope and courage and a gracious sense of humor. Now, more than ever before, I understand the peace of knowing that everything settles in the end. Through all the process and exchange and reaction, we learn the things that really matter. The products of our labor are those things with the greatest gravity. Strive, fall apart, regroup, repeat, rejoice, remain.

"I am here with open arms to help you along the way.

Just know in this maddening crowd, I am on your side."

-Neil Couvillion

Peace.

Note To Self:

2009-08-16T21:23:00.002-05:00

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless -- it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable."

-C.S. Lewis

Looks like I'm on a roll!

2009-07-21T18:03:00.002-05:00

I frequently go back and read old journal entries, partially as an indicator of forward motion, a mile-marker of sorts for the emotional journey. It's helpful in seeing where I've grown and stayed the same, accomplished or not, come back around to where I was before, made it through one more crisis, had a good moment of insight, et al.

Here's a portion of one from April (I wish I was still thinking this way consistently):

I've been thinking a lot lately about redemption, how it really is the end goal, how it permeates all things - the reconciliation of all things. And I don't just mean spiritual redemption. We are all saving each other every day. But I do appreciate the perspective I have wherein this goodness exists in relation to a gracious God I don't understand. I love that we move in great mystery. Lately, I wonder a lot if I don't confess enough - although I'm regularly throwing out token apologies. And my deep confession is usually brief and centers around the same faults; I have not loved well and I have expected too much. And every once in a while I can't stand up under the weight of a grace that is so dense, so saturated, almost oppressively present. I feel close to my frailty - just as I should. Not guilty, per se, but broken down and so far from goodness. I love what Greg said about the way (he speculates and I agree) God relates to humanity. He said God's will is not like a vase that we can knock off a table and it's shattered and irreparable. God is always looking at the messes we've made and saying, "we can work with this."

I love that God is dynamic like this, that His will is never static, that it's not unaffected by the choices we make, that when He says "here is the way, walk in it," He knows we'll take the scenic route, has made provision for all the time we will spend hiding in caves and sleeping with the enemy and wandering into the valley of the shadow of death.

And not only does God make provision, but He sorrows with us over our brokenness - not like a distant and wrathful despot. He is here in the midst of us, dwelling among and within us. So inasmuch as we can't be separated from ourselves, we can't be separated from the One who dwells in us. I don't talk about these things much with people, except in general discussion at church. It's sticky and vague. People are sensitive. They don't want to be affected. Or they don't think they do. I know I don't. I make it too much of a priority to seem unaffected. But I see here how I'm softening - a necessary dissolution of a sometimes harsh exterior.

And one from early June:

Leaving my house this afternoon, I turned back toward the door to lock the deadbolt, happening to look up and notice the reflection of a most unexpected gift in the back yard. Nestled gloriously and furtively in an understated flower pot next to the hopelessly algae-ridding pond was a gardenia bush. The sight of it actually caught my breath for a second for surprise, and I had to wade carefully through kudzu in order to reach the blossoms with my nose - to ensure that this was, in fact, my favorite flower, right in my own back yard.

Instances like these are, to me, a statement of God's lovingkindness and good will toward me. I remember, again, that I have not been forgotten.

Welcome to the end of Summer, where everything moves in slow motion in the hot rain and fading light.

Fin.

Peace and Be Still

2009-07-19T20:03:00.002-05:00

Found this last night and it brought me peace.

Another Sunday morning comes

And I resume the standard Sabbath

Of the woods, where the finest blooms

Of time return and where no path

Is worn but wears its maker out

At last and disappears in leaves

Of fallen seasons. The tracked rut

Fills and levels; here nothing grieves

In the risen season. Past life

Lives in the living. Resurrection

Is in the way each maple leaf

Commemorates its kind, by connection

Outreaching understanding. What rises

Rises into comprehension

And beyond. Even falling raises

In praise of light. What is begun

Is unfinished. And so the mind

That comes to rest among the bluebells

Comes to rest in motion, refined

By alteration. The bud swells,

Opens, makes seed, falls, is well,

Being becoming what it is:

Miracle and parable

Exceeding thought, because it is

Immeasurable; the understander

Encloses understanding, thus

Darkens the light. We can stand under

No ray that is not dimmed by us.

The mind that comes to rest is tended

In ways that it cannot intend:

Is borne, preserved, and comprehended

By what it cannot comprehend.

Your Sabbath, Lord, thus keeps us by

Your will, not ours. And it is fit

Our only choice should be to die

Into that rest or out of it.

-Wendell Berry, from A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997

Paradox. One of Many.

2009-07-18T22:28:00.002-05:00

I don't really understand how or why, but these days it seems like I spend most of my time experiencing, simultaneously, the sense that I am shutting down completely and the sense that I am coming alive like never before.

Then again, I've always seemed to make myself quite at home in the house of paradox.

Hymn To Home

2009-07-06T14:33:00.003-05:00

I haven't had much to say in the blogworld lately. I realize this, in fact, just looked at the date of my last post and cringed. All that to say, I have actually been writing, just not the rambling sort of prose I normally produce and occasionally stick here for you to do with it what you will. Lyrics have been my main stride lately.

So, if there's even anyone left who's still interested, here's a little of what's been washing over the floors of the Crescent music room (it kind of feels like cheating since this is a few months old...but it may be new to you). In case you want to get the feel of it, the music is uncomplicated and moves along in a hymn-like manner.

Hymn to Home (Sing to Me of Love and Home)

We'll hang pictures on the wall

The family tree that lines the hall

A forest of our history

Reminds us how we came to be

We'll pick out the hardwood floors

And build our dreams with two-by-fours

The table that your father made

And blankets for the window shades

So sing to me of love and home

So I will know I'm not alone

And we'll spin tales both loud and long

So we remain when we are gone

We'll hang laundry on the line

And pray it doesn't rain this time

And if clouds gather in the sky

We'll build a roof to keep us dry

I can play mom's old upright

And serenade you through the night

And once the stars are tucked away

Then hand in hand we'll greet the day

And we'll sing songs of love and home

Reminding us we're not alone

And we'll spin tales both loud and long

So we remain when we are gone.

Fin.

Of Editing and Edification

2009-04-30T15:31:00.001-05:00

I’ve always had the writing bug. It bit me early, and for as long as I can remember, my thoughts have always just made more sense on paper.

As I’ve grown older, this expression has taken on various mediums, most recently combining with another love (necessity) of mine – making music. As several of you know, I bought a 88-weighted-key keyboard last fall, sort of on a lark, as an expensive motivation for writing more music (and to scratch a particular inspirational itch). It has been one of, if not the singular best investment I have ever made.

As with any activity, I still go through alternating spells of drought, stagnation, and open-floodgate deluges of creativity – almost like a musical manic-depression. But in those instances when I am flooded with ideas, I get on a roll and it’s hard to stop myself, which is, overall, a positive thing.

The downside is that writing music can be really scary; it makes me really honest – I can’t help it. I have the inability to compose without it being at least partially personal. Sometimes I sit down and start inventing, totally unprepared for what is about to come out. I realize things about myself through writing as much as I do through interacting with people or reading or watching others live their lives. So I start running with an idea, then suddenly I’ve gained so much creative velocity that I can’t put it down, can’t extract myself from the productive process, and before I have the sense to stop it, all kinds of beautiful and uncomfortable inklings and melodies and convictions and stories have taken on literary flesh and bone.

And I love that they bring me insight and clarity, because songwriting, for me, always contains some degree of edification. But I often hate that they’re true.

This is why editing takes place and why some songs will never make it past the doors of my music room.

I Love this Understanding

2009-04-16T10:15:00.002-05:00

"I hope no reader will suppose that 'mere' Christianity is here put forward as an alternative to the creeds of existing communions--as if a man could adopt it in preference to Congregationalism or Greek Orthodoxy or anything else. It is more like a hall out of which doors open into several rooms. If I can bring anyone into that hall I shall have done what I attempted. But it is in the rooms, not in the hall, that there are fires and chairs and meals. The hall is a place to wait in, a place from which to try the various doors, not a place to live in. For that purpose the worst of rooms (whichever that may be) is, I think, preferable. It is true that some people may find they have to wait in the hall for a considerable time, while others feel certain almost at once which door they must knock at. I do not know why there is this difference, but I am sure God keeps no one waiting unless He sees that it is good for him to wait. When you do get into your room you will find that the long wait has done you some kind of good which you would not have had otherwise. But you must regard it as waiting, not as camping. You must keep on praying for light: and, of course, even in the hall, you must begin trying to obey the rules which are common to the whole house. And above all you must be asking which door is the true one; not which pleases you best by its paint and panelling. In plain language, the question should never be: 'Do I like that kind of service?' but 'Are these doctrines true: Is holiness here? Does my conscience move me towards this? Is my reluctance to knock at this door due to my pride, or my mere taste, or my personal dislike of this particular door-keeper?'
"When you have reached your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall. If they are wrong they need your prayers all the more; and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them. That is one of the rules common to the whole house."
-C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Important Piece

2009-02-11T21:59:00.001-06:00

November, November
It's time to say goodbye.
Don't forget to lock the door,
Close the curtains, mop the floor,
Leave this chapter of the book
And don't recall what lonely took
from you.

Amen.

The List On My Mirror

2009-01-03T17:57:00.002-06:00

THIS YEAR:
1. Be angry less.
2. Allow for more silence.
3. Be less passive-aggressive.
4. Pray more.
5. Surrender More. Control less.
6. Own less.
7. Write more. Create more.
8. Worry less.
9. Keep no record of wrongs.
10. Buy less. Give more.
11. Sola Gratia.
12. Assume less.
13. Wait.
14. Be present where you are.

Peace

Unsolved Mysteries

2009-01-02T22:36:00.001-06:00

[Where are you?]

The Black Thumb

2008-10-28T14:18:00.002-05:00

If thou dependeth only on the rain to water thy potted plants, they shall surely perish.
-Gardening 1:1

Equinox

2008-09-22T17:40:00.003-05:00

Today is the first day of Autumn, and I really have nothing in particular to say about it aside that my heart seems to be overflowing from the sheer fact that the afternoon light is streaming through the atmosphere and hitting the sidewalk at the perfect slanted angle and trees are becoming confused about their colors and leaves about their subsequent displacement. Today the earth with divide equally the time it spends turning to face the sun and the time it spends making its retreat. Everything is going to sleep, but I am waking up. Waking up and drumming and exercising my imagination and writing run-on sentences with haphazard punctuation. All of this being reflective of my lack of direction, but my uncanny joy at the forward motion of life and my need to express said joy as it comes up.

A Story Told with Permission

2008-09-14T13:42:00.002-05:00

Disclaimer: Not all quotes are direct...more of paraphrases for narrative purpose

I always appreciate the opportunity to be a spectator when people reveal a little bit more of their humanity - especially the people whom I love so well. I don't remember how it came up, but the other day my family was sitting around talking about homesickness and anxiety. Mom told me this story:

"When we moved [from Baton Rouge] to North Carolina, Rachel was two years old and we only had one car. So we had to share the car to go anywhere. Every morning, me and Rachel and Papa would get in the car and drive Papa to work at Research Triangle Park. We would drop him off and then all the way home I would cry and Rachel and I would sing 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow.'"

Aunt Em asks, "why did you cry?"

"I guess I was just so homesick I didn't know what to do."

For some reason this really struck a deep chord in me. My mom was 26 or 27 years old at this point - still young, but older than I am now, very a much a person well-established in adulthood (as much as that's really possible for any of us...). And for months, she cried every morning from homesickness and used music and the company of a two-year old to cope. I see so much of her in myself - experiencing the same fear and emotional undoing that I regularly experience and will probably continue to undergo in similar circumstances, beautiful as they may ultimately be. It's so important for me to see that she made it. That she's a person, overall, in a state of internal peace. These struggles never leave us - especially those of us very often hanging on a last frayed nerve. But how alive we are!

"Hope is the thing with feathers
that perches in the soul,
and sings the tune without the words
and never stops at all."
-Emily Dickinson

On-My-Ownness

2008-08-16T14:53:00.002-05:00

Today has been just one more new and exciting adventure in adulthood. I never thought my Saturday To Do list (if I ever thought I'd have one) would be this exciting:

Laundry
Cut the Grass
Pick up Prescription
Buy toothbrush and trashbags
Write thank you note

I know. I'm the most fun person I know today!

That's not to say I don't enjoy it, though. We have a non-functioning lawnmower, so our entire yard (small, though it is) has to be cut with the electric weed eater. Cutting the back yard was a learning experience. The front yard was like trying to reduce an afro with a nose-hair trimmer. My right elbow will definitely be sore tomorrow, and I am no longer a human being - I'm now just one giant mosquito bite. (As suburban as it is, I now understand at least a little, why people hire teenage boys with endless energy reserves to do their yard work.)

As tedious as I make it sound, it was empowering on a new level. It was satisfying to see the piles of loose grass along the road after I raked them out and knowing I did that myself. It was not unsatisfying to observe the stark contrast between my strip of grass and my neighbor's, where I had stopped cutting at the property line. If I had my say, these wouldn't be first on my list of Saturday morning activities, and I'm sure the novelty of adulthood will wear off sooner than I can imagine. But I'll always take opportunities when they're given - to laugh at myself, to interact with the post-man because he has to walk up my front steps to put the mail in the box, to wave at my neighbors when I'm walking or when I see them outside the neighborhood, to get my hands dirty.

What a sweet life.

"I'm amazed by life, and it's amazed by me,
We're a strange old pair, me and eternity...
It's a long, hard road with a good, good end."
-Waterdeep

Lycopene and Nicotine

2008-07-25T02:36:00.002-05:00

I was listening to a discussion on NPR last week about the recent outbreak of E. coli in certain crops of tomatoes and other plants, which have caused some consumers to become deathly ill. Subsequent to this epidemic, tomato markets across the country have nearly bottomed out and left many single-crop farmers hanging by a thread. One commentator mentioned that what has actually been so detrimental to the market was not the actual risk assumed when buying tomatoes, but the perceived risk. Although the E. coli occurred in relatively few select crops which were consumed by a comparatively small group of tomato-eating individuals (who happened to become very notably ill), consumers across the board, perceiving a high level of tomato-consumption-associated risk, stopped buying tomatoes. They made this decision even though their risk of tomato-contracted illness was slim to none.

I found this interesting in light of the success of certain markets with products boasting high levels of consumption as well as high levels of actual risk - namely cigarettes. Ultimately, a person is much more likely to develop serious and possibly lethal health complications from smoking cigarettes than he or she would be to consume a contaminated tomato and subsequently contract E. coli. Furthermore, the health risks associated with cigarette smoke are printed boldly on every box of cancer sticks sold; they can't be missed. This risk is not only perceived, but acutal, known, clinically documented. And yet, most people don't seem eager to bring down the cigarette market because is is harmful. But God help them if they should buy tomatoes!

Where (aside from the addiction factor of cigarettes) is the logic here?

What are the odds?

Maybe I'll See You There

2008-06-27T11:47:00.003-05:00

July 11, 2008 - 9 pm - Workplay Theater

The third concert of a smattering of local musicians who assemble often, lay their individual artistry on the table, and collectively create music which could not be achieved alone.

www.workplay.com www.greyhavencommunity.com

Myself, in 150 words or less

2008-06-24T13:58:00.002-05:00

"Yet another temptation goes to the other extreme. With Sartre, it says: 'L'enfer, c'est les autres!' ('Other people--that's hell!'). In that case, love itself becomes the great temptation and the great sin. Because it is an inescapable sin, it is also hell. But this too is only a disguised form of Eros--Eros in solitude. It is the love that is mortally wounded by its own incapacity to love another, and flies from others in order not to have to give itself to them. Even in its solitude this Eros is most tortured by its inescapable need of another, not for the other's sake but for its own fulfillment!"
-Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

Obligatory "Things I Learned In Europe" Post

2008-06-23T13:33:00.003-05:00

Things I learned in Europe...
1. Never fly United Airlines. Ever.
2. Some of the most beautiful things in Europe (and the world) lie at the top of the stairs (-Rachel)
3. The word "succor," pronounced SUH-koor, is a noun meaning aid or help. I win. (Rach and I argued about this. I think it's the first...and last...argument I've ever won with her).
4. My body is much more capable than I ever thought possible.
5. Home is grossly underappreciated. So is yellow mustard.
6. Salade Nicoise involves anchovies, just in case you were wondering.
7. Someday, someone is going to introduce Ranch dressing to Europe and rock the world. Just you wait.
8. Public transportation is a beautiful thing. I love subways systems.
9. Europeans have a much less well-developed sense of personal space than Americans. This includes visual space (i.e. staring), which we don't even consciously think of as personal space.
10. Most Europeans don't dislike Americans as much as I thought. Some do. Most don't. Most are genuinely eager to help, so don't be afraid to ask.
11. Europeans also have a brilliant sense of when to stop talking. They are okay with silence. Americans should learn from them.
12. Picnic meals are some of the best ones.
13. Rick Steves' books are very good, but his maps are slightly arbitrary. Maps are important; train schedules are more important.
14. "Get on with it." -a Kenyan resident of Bath, regarding how some people feel about travelling in the consistently dreary UK weather.
15. There is something refreshing about hanging clothes on an outside line to dry, praying that it won't rain in the mean time.

I'm sure there's more, but I can't think of anymore right now.

Fin.

Things to hold on to

2008-05-26T20:16:00.002-05:00

Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.
-Habakkuk 3:17-18

"Here dies another day,
During which I have had eyes, ears, hands,
And the great world around me.
And tomorrow begins another.
Why am I allowed two?"
-G.K. Chesterton

time flies when you're inundated with stuff to do

2008-05-17T15:30:00.003-05:00

So, I thought my last blog post was probably about two or three weeks ago. Turns out it was over six. Oops. Guess I haven't been doing any blog-worthy or profound thinking in the past several weeks. I have, however, been writing songs. Hmmm.

But, now that my life is once again my own, I should be back on (the writing) board again soon. That's right, I survived nursing school and I'm a college graduate. I even changed my status on facebook to alum, so it's definitely official.

Now what?

All that to say, I really have nothing to say, but I'm still here.

small, and yet so big

2008-04-01T16:18:00.001-05:00

The Holy Spirit is the earnest of our inheritance. God's guarantee that He will finish what He started.

Neat.

(see Eph. 1:13-14)

Nothing to do but write

2008-03-18T22:34:00.002-05:00

I'm sitting in a screened-in porch on the bayou, waiting for a projected thunderstorm to blow through. It's a strange feeling being protected in this way by mesh-wire windows, but at the same time feeling so close to it all. I can hear the wind hissing through the fine metal membrane, wrapping its fingers around the palm trees and stripping them from the bottom up, causing a stir among the gulls and pelicans, herding the water between the banks. It makes me worry about the workers on the roof next door.

And yet, from where I'm perched on this couch between screens, were I blind and deaf, I'd have to sit very still to even realize there was a slight breeze blowing through the space. Barely enough to turn the page of a book or pick playing cards up off the table. Raindrops are hung up in random patterns in holes in the screen. Tiny string-lanterns draped across the tops of windows bob as if in anticipation. On particularly heavy gusts, the edges of the table cloth might be inhaling and exhaling.

But that is the extent of the inside turmoil. The movement within does not match the chaos without. And yet my eyes and ears would seem to tell me (falsely, of course) that I could be swept away at any second. I'm not quite sure how to feel.

pressed down, shaken together, and running over (and running over and running over)

2008-03-02T22:09:00.002-06:00

I am so thankful to God for a day so beautiful it is almost unfair. Maybe unfair is not the right word; I think the word I'm looking for is gratuitous. It is a gratuitously beautiful day. When I saw arms hanging from the windows of the car in front of me on Shades Crest Road, fingers splayed to catch the vacuum of wind, I felt better to know that I wasn't the only one with this idea.

I have a bad habit, in my on-the-spot prose, of switching between voices (first, second, third person) and moving in and out of prayer. Just a forewarning in case the following is confusing. I won't go into the context; it doesn't really matter. Just some personal thoughts which tumbled out over a sandwich, lacking in profundity (and possibly in coherence, to anyone but myself).

It's so weird how God so often brings things full circle for me just to show me I lead a charmed life. Faces from my history returning, not to haunt me, but to know and shape me in a new context, a new place, a new paradigm. This way of returning good things to me - ideas, people - is His way of reminding me I'm not forgotten.
...Israel, I know every detail of your existence because I created that existence. I know what moves you - you may have forgotten, Israel, but I remember - and I will reveal it to you and floor you all over again. And in this way, beloved, you will know how I see you, how dear you are, because I want you to feel the weight of glory even when you turn away your face, when you think you have ceased to feel at all, ceased to be sought and found...
I see now that I was a fool every time I projected God's disdain onto myself and didn't bathe in the love, didn't bask in the pride He feels for me. I was made for glory - a light not just reflected, but instilled within me and brimming over, seeping out uncontrollably, so dense and magnificent it defies all gradients; it cannot be contained!

Oh, bring me back when I have left this place!

Seen and Heard

2008-02-23T11:43:00.004-06:00

While I was in The Urban Standard the other afternoon reading Flannery O'Connor (more on that in a second...) and getting some work done and eavesdropping, I heard the following from a man in conversation at the adjacent table. Something about it seemed terribly disjointed and made me sad in a new way...

"...but we decided in the divorce, I let her have the church. She actually joined - she became a Presbyterian. But you know, I'm not a Presbyterian. I'm a good old Southern Baptist - but a good Calvinist Southern Baptist..."

I didn't make note of this to be judgmental or to say that I am anymore enlightened in the way of grace or community than he is; and I certainly don't claim to have any insight into this man's life, but I thought 'This breaks my heart. What are we, as Christians, doing that make people think this way? What messages are we actually conveying about hope and community? What are we accomplishing through church membership and theological labels and dividing the church among ourselves like a legal asset?'

My interest was also shaded, for the moment, by the fact that I had just finished reading the story 'Greenleaf,' by Flannery O'Connor. If you haven't read it, I would recommend it. I recently picked up O'Connor again, for the first time since high school, because a number of people I love and respect think the world of what she wrote. I remember in high school thinking her stories were bizarre and alarming and pointless. I realize now I didn't get the point of a lot of her writing (I hadn't grasped the tongue-in-cheek style for which she is so well-known and the endless irony and symbolism, whose use she perfected). I didn't have the persepctive on some things that I have now. And for this perspective, reading her again with fresh eyes, I have come to appreciate her brilliance. I was actually laughing out loud (oops) in the coffee shop. I took the following slice from the story (there are many to choose from):

"Mrs. May winced. She thought the word, Jesus, should be kept inside the church building like other words inside the bedroom. She was a good Christian woman with a large respect for religion, though she did not, of course, believe any of it was true."

And finally, rediscovered a much-loved poem by Calvin Miller , from which the following is an excerpt (I love excerpts, don't I?) :

He picked up an old junk cross,
lugging it into the bookstore
after the great religious rally,
and stood dumbfounded
among the stacks of books
on how to grow a church.
"Are you conservative or liberal," I asked him.
But he only murmured, "Oh Jerusalem..."
and said the oddest thing about a hen
gathering her vicious, selfish chicks under her wings.
He left the room as I yelled out after him,
"Lord is it true you've left the church?
Quo vadis, Domine?"
"Somewhere else," he said.

Pax.

Les Miserables

2008-02-20T23:52:00.003-06:00

I sometimes forget why I love this book, how rich it is, and then I run across words like these:

"He was experiencing what the earth may experience at the moment when it is opened by the plow so wheat may be sown; it feels only the wound; the thrill of the seed and the joy of the fruit do not come until later."
-Victor Hugo

Some thoughts on Lent, in no particular order

2008-02-12T23:12:00.002-06:00

Read Exodus 3:17-22
-3:17 - When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine Country, though that was shorter...

God's economy of salvation and redemption is terribly inefficient. Efficiency is not the point.

Sometimes all this language of life and death, torn flesh and spilt blood sounds so strange to me. Foreign and unfamiliar. Phenomenal and appalling and against my better judgment.

...dying and rebirth...
...putting away and drawing out...
...forgetting and remembering...
...an exodus and a return home...
...a mourning and an exaltation...

The energy of my conflictions is such that I feel I might change states of matter. I melt, I freeze, I sublimate, I combust.

Peace.

Fly or Starve

2008-01-29T14:13:00.000-06:00

Allow me to be candid here (as if I’m not normally), but I’m not looking forward to graduation. Even though I’m a strong P (see Myers-Briggs types), I’m not resting well with the fact that I don’t have a clear plan for what comes next, aside from this foggy outline of a trip to Europe and taking my licensure exam at some point this summer. Most people I know are incredibly ready to kick the undergrad bucket and move on with their lives, but I still seem to be coming up short on the major symptoms of college senioritis. In short, like the majority human beings, I’m digging in my heels when it comes to significant life change.

Hoping for a little wisdom and empathy, I called my sister the other day to ask if she ever experienced this deep-seated anxiety over her impending graduation. Her answer was, “not really.” Awesome. (To her credit, she also had some words along the lines of, “I was nervous about what came next, but it all worked out.”) I know this is true, but it’s difficult to see from here.

In conversation with a few other senior friends the other day, I found some sympathetic voices, even among those who know where they’re headed after mid-May. I mentioned that we may have to be pushed out of the nest. And I’m willing to wager that we’re probably not that different from every other person in our current situation.

And really, even in our early twenties, we’re a lot like baby birds learning to fly. Fledglings obviously don’t fly right out of the egg. Until their wings have dried and their musculature has developed, the nest is their whole world. And yet, these aviary novices have an innate sense that flying is a natural act. “Parent birds begin to teach their fledglings the importance of flying by remaining a short distance away from the nest during feeding. If the young birds are to survive, they must step away from the nest. Frequently, this means a few hard falls to the ground followed a long trip back to the safety of the nest.” (wisegeek.com) Nobody said learning the art of flight was easy, but I imagine it’s probably also exhilarating and empowering.

Which brings me to my next thought (they’re always connected) – I started writing a song about this change adventure and the accompanying sense of I-suddenly-have-no-earthly-idea-what-I’m-doing. I used to write all the time. Ever since I churned out this little ditty about a sailboat in first grade, there were constantly ideas coming out on paper - up until college, when my writing became much more infrequent for a number of reasons into which I will not currently venture. But over the holidays this year, I got together with a friend and wrote a song. Not anywhere close to a high-caliber work of lyrical genius, but it was like a scab was pulled off and in the past month or so there’s just been this profusion of words pouring out of my head. So I’ll leave you with this little beginning of one…

Do we emerge
Just to fall to the earth
With our little wet wings
And no knowledge of things

Peace.

Do Justice, Love Mercy, Walk Humbly

2008-01-27T23:52:00.000-06:00

Found this in some old sermon notes in one of my notebooks:

"When people's needs are met, they can hear a language they've never heard before. And when we're filled with the Holy Spirit, we can speak the language of anybody he calls us to."
-Jeanette Flynn

So true. This is why the gospel is good news for everybody, because it speaks a language of each individual need. The gospel looks different for everybody.

Pack Rat

2008-01-15T20:41:00.000-06:00

At least once a week, someone in my relatively small neighborhood is throwing away furniture. I don't know if this is due to the transient nature of the living situations in my neighborhood (a good deal of the housing facilities are apartments) or if it's just the season for new furniture, but there are always piles of it on the side of the road.

Most people, I imagine, pass them by without a second look. I, on the other hand, have lost count of the number of times I've almost stopped my car and picked through the furniture to find a piece to carry home. Unfortunately, the Protege probably wouldn't take well to a sofa in its back seat (it barely survived the Christmas tree stuck through the back windows). There's also the problem of actually finding space for the new/old furniture in my apartment.

But I mean so much of this furniture is beautifully horrific vintage pieces. The kind with stories (that I may not want to know) and personality. The kind that people are lucky to find in a vintage or antique store, and that with some fixing up will leave guests asking "where on earth did you find that?" So many old chairs and sofas now strewn about some landfill, but stuck in my imagination.

And I want to sit on every one of them.

Expectations and Filled-In Spaces

2008-01-13T21:23:00.000-06:00

*I apologize in advance if I go a little cerebral or Faulkner on you here

This morning as I was willing myself to crawl from between my sheets, promising myself only one more eight-minute interval before I hit Off instead of Snooze, there were some old thoughts casting about in my attic of a brain. Incidentally, our discussions at church related to and gave a bit more form to these musings.

The impetus for the first thought was a morsel of wisdom handed to me by a close friend a couple of weeks ago. Basically she said, “God doesn’t need good odds in order to accomplish His will.” I’ve been ruminating on that ever since. How tirelessly I work trying to orchestrate all the streams of activity in my life – putting myself in the right places at the right times for me to meet the right people and say the right thing – so that “God’s will” might have the perfect conditions in which to come to fruition. Like I’m trying to grow bacteria on an agar plate. I mean, surely God’s hands have to be awfully full trying to manage His will for the lives of every single human being, not to mention coordinating the rising and setting of the sun, the cleaving of cells to create life, the naming of stars, the counting of hairs, you know, all that jazz. He could use a little help, right? Ok, so maybe I misinterpreted the scripture where it says that God created Eve to be a helper.

Why am I still worried that things won’t work out if I don’t have my hand in them, that things could go horribly wrong if I choose one thing and not the other? A couple of examples (and, while you’re laughing at my absurdity, don’t forget you’ve been in my shoes):

I’m really tired, I don’t feel like going out with friends this evening, but what if my future husband is there and I don’t meet him, and he marries someone else, and I never find someone and then I end up being that old lady next door with all the cats?! And I don’t even like cats! Or….

Forgoing the nursing career for a couple of years to go to seminary. What if I can’t pay off my debt from nursing school and I end up in financial crisis?

When did God’s will become an arbitrary prayer we toss up, as if God decided “ok Abby, I think you’ve got it under control, call me if you need me.” I often forget that A) He’s no amateur, he’s been planning this since before time began, B) compared with history and eternity, my scope is not only limited, but frequently ridiculous, and C) He’s writing the story and making provisions for every event and outcome. I’m not going to make a move ever for which God hasn’t already made provision, for which there’s no next step. God doesn’t actually need me to create an environment which is conducive to accomplishing His will. He’s just nice enough to let me in on the story. Misery is not what God wishes for me, so why do I continuously choose it over peace? I’ll let you know when I figure that one out.

The second thought which kept surfacing is related to the way we go about forming relationships with other people. For every person who is going to become a part of our lives, we have carved out a space for them to fill in our hearts. The interesting thing is that people rarely, if ever, fit into the hollows we create for them. It may have something to do with the fact that we ultimately went about fashioning the space with our greatest knowledge about people (perceptions, preferences, rough edges) coming from our greatest well of information – our own selves. In other words, the margins I draw for other people look most like a space I could fill because I used myself as the type. Consequently, no one else fits exactly into that space. The beautiful thing, though, is that we have no power to change other people, to carve or mold them and make them appropriate. Instead, we unknowlingly change the shape and surface of our own hearts until the “lock and key” are suited to one another. In this way, we keep transforming ourselves, gaining perspective on one another, on our ability to adapt to, love, and forgive one another. We carry pieces of each other around, so we can never be truly alone.

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not known until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.” –Anais Nin

so little time

2008-01-07T12:42:00.000-06:00

I have so much to say lately, but not the initiative to get it down in words. Nor the time, for that matter, to get down as much as I want to get down in writing. I've been consuming books like food, however, over the holidays and liked this latest piece from Holy the Firm by Annie Dillard.

A blur of romance clings to our notions of "publicans," "sinners," "the poor," "the people in the marketplace," "our neighbors," as though of course God should reveal himself, if at all, to these simple people, these Sunday school watercolor figures, who are so purely themselves in their tattered robes, who are single in themselves, while we now are various, complex, and full at heart. We are busy. So, I see now, were they. Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place? There is no one but us. There is no one to send, nor a clean hand, nor a pure heart on the face of the earth, nor in the earth, but only us, a generation comforting ourselves with the notion that we have come at an awkward time, that our innocent fathers are all dead -- as if innocence had ever been --and our children busy and troubled, and we ourselves unfit, not yet ready, having each of us chosen wrongly, made a false start, failed, yielded to our impulse and the tangled comfort of pleasures, and grown exhausted, unable to seek the thread, week, and involved. But there is no one but us. There has never been. There have been generations which remembered, and generations which forgot; there has never been a generation of whole men and women who lived well for even one day. Yet some have imagined well, with honesty and art, the detail of such a life, and have described it with such grace, that we mistake vision for history, dream for description, and fancy that life has devolved.

Hindsight

2007-12-30T22:12:00.001-06:00

It's funny how, once you've gotten over someone you were once interested in, things that were once endearing to you (like mismatched socks or quirky habits) about the person you once admired become disenchanting and ridiculous.

Of course, this thought is not the result of one specific incidence of unrequited pining, just a realization which I happened upon during a quiet moment in my head, a moment when an accumulation of loose ends actually becomes a recognizable pattern.

One of my favorite Christmas Hymns

2007-12-16T22:09:00.000-06:00

The tree of life my soul hath seen,
laden with fruit and always green.
The trees of nature fruitless be
compared with Christ the apple tree.

Its beauty doth all things excel;
By faith I know, but ne'er can tell
the glory which I now can see
in Jesus Christ the apple tree.

For happiness I long have sought
and treasure dearly I have bought.
I missed of all, but now can see
'tis found in Christ the apple tree.

I'm weary with my former toil;
here I will sit and rest awhile.
Under the shadow I will be
of Jesus Christ the apple tree.

Its fruit doth make my soul to thrive,
it keeps my dying faith alive,
which makes my soul in haste to be
with Jesus Christ the apple tree.

What Resonates

2007-12-02T20:39:00.000-06:00

"Ecstasy and delight are essential to the believer's soul and they promote sanctification. We are not meant to live without spiritual exhilaration...The believer is in spiritual danger if he allows himself to go for any length of time without tasting the love of Christ...When Christ ceases to fill the heart with satisfaction, our souls will go in silent search of other lovers." -Maurice Roberts (The Thought of God)

What about when it's not our fault that Christ has ceased to fill the heart with satisfaction? What if it's been so long we have forgotten how it feels to sense ecstasy and delight?

The God who made the world and everything in it, being the Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us for, "In him we live and move and have our being" -Act 17:24-28 (ESV, emphasis mine)

The Ultimate Costume Change

2007-11-27T12:46:00.000-06:00

I don't know if it's been the prolonged drought in the Southeast or the unusually long warm season we've been experiencing. Or it could be my previous failure to attend to such detail, but the trees have been changing in a way I've never seen before.

I'm used to trees changing their color all at once, overnight from green to red, then a few weeks later naked branches catching the breeze. This year however, most of the trees I've seen are three colors at once - red at the top, fading to an orange or yellow center, and still green on the bottom and inside. I feel like I've caught them in a privately sacred act of changing their seasonal garments.

And the show has been delightful.

On Taking the Next Step...

2007-10-31T12:41:00.000-05:00

Walk forward now in the light you've been given. Do not bemoan the darkness ahead.

I Need This Reminder

2007-10-22T22:18:00.000-05:00

'Whether we think of or speak to God, whether we act or suffer for Him, all is prayer, when we have no other object than His love, and the desire of pleasing Him. All that a Christian does, even in eating and sleeping, is prayer, when it is done in simplicity, according to the order of God...In souls filled with love, the desire to please God is a continual prayer."
-John Wesley

"One may long, as I do, for a gentler flame, a respite, a pause for musing. But perhaps there is no other peace for the artist than what he finds in the heat of combat. 'Every wall is a door,' Emerson correctly said. Let us not look for the door, and the way out, anywhere but in the wall against which we are living. Instead, let us seek the respite where it is - in the very thick of battle. For in my opinion, and this is where I shall close, it is there. Great ideas, it has been said, come into the world as gently as doves. Perhaps, then, if we listen attentively, we shall hear, amid the uproar of empires and nations, a faint flutter of wings, the gentle stirring of life and hope. Some will say that this hope lies in a nation, others in a man. I believe, rather that it is awakened, revived, nourished by millions of solitary individuals whose deeds and works every day negate frontiers and the crudest implications of history. As a result, there shines forth fleetingly the ever-threatened truth that each and every man, on the foundations of his own sufferings and joys, builds for them all."
-Albert Camus

And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.
-Galatians 6:9

Breathe

2007-10-07T00:09:00.000-05:00

Come stone, dry bone,
Come Ebenezer,
Come grace, come raise
This dead believer.
Be still, come kill
My sweet deceiver.
And turn from whence you've come.

Done death, old breath,
Done whitewashed tomb,
Done lost, done rust,
Done fruitless womb.
Come near, I'm here,
Done empty room.
And look at what you've done.

New flame, new name,
New soul and marrow,
New birth, more worth
Than many sparrow.
Done falter, fresh altar,
Burn smoke and sorrow.
And see new life is come.

The Lie of Well-Roundedness, or Why No Man is Really an Island

2007-10-03T13:20:00.000-05:00

I guess I have been meaning for a while now to get this down in writing, but I've been spread thinner than "gold to airy thinness beat" as John Donne so nicely put it. Subsequently it's been bouncing around in my brain, picking up speed until I had a chance to sit down and put paper to pen...or keyboard to screen, in my case. Anyhow, the fact that I've hardly had a minute slow enough to write this just augments the point I've been meaning to make, that I have once again become caught up in the lie of well-roundedness.

Here is what I mean. For as long as I can remember, I have been involved in countless activities which have, thankfully, provided me with copious opportunities to decide who I am and where I'm going. Piano lessons didn't last long. Ballet only slightly longer. Soccer nearly a decade. Show choir. TNT. First Priority. Community Service. Church of God State Youth Leadership. Not to mention school and church. (Is this starting to sound like a resume? I apologize.) And all of this before I received a high school diploma, with honors of course, because universities actually care about that sort of thing (or so I'm told). One would think that when I hit college and started discovering a little bit more about who I was, I would begin to pare down and focus my efforts in one or two directions. On the contrary, my schedule only became more discombobulated with a hectic class schedule now involving professional training time, social justice, various ministries, intramurals, making meals and cleaning house, bible studies, study groups, getting a job, etc. etc. etc. Once in a while I might even revert to satisfying those basic needs like fatigue and hunger.

And I get the creeping feeling that I'm not the only one thinking "Stop the world! I want to get off!" I think this is pretty typical of college students and twenty-somethings, and maybe it gets better with age. Or maybe it gets more monotonous as we learn to handle a hectic routine. But what answer do I so often hear spoken or implied for why I run myself absolutely ragged? "We just want you to be well-rounded."

Oh, well that makes everything worthwhile. Right?? I mean it's great that I can be anything I want to be and that I don't have to worry about being stuck in a job I hate for the rest of my life because I can just change my specialty or get another degree, or six or seven. Surely if nursing doesn't work out I can just be a folk singer, if that fails then a chef, and if all else falls through at least I'll be married by then with 2.47 children and a dog and 3.6 masters degrees and no more clue about where I'm headed than when I moved into my dorm freshman year of college. How encouraging! Maybe I'm exaggerating just a little.

When did everyone become required to be a Jack of all trades instead of just two or three trades, the ones that bring Jack the most joy in life, the one's that best fit Jack's God-given gifts, the gifts that Jill and Joe don't have because they have other gifts that Jack doesn't have? Maybe this is why Jack's feeling pulled apart at the seams. Cultures that appear to us much more "primitive" may just have more of a handle on their own identities in terms of individual giftedness and how they fit into the bigger picture. If they go to college (which, don't get me wrong, I wish everyone could) it's for the purpose of a vocation. If they don't, this specialization starts earlier. But I haven't, in my tiny limited view of others cultures, see such an emphasis on production or convenience or immediacy.

If I am well-rounded, then I can purportedly be self-sustaining, but I don't know if that's such a good idea. If I can be and do everything, then I don't need other people. And they, in their well-rounded individuality don't need me. What happens when I run into something I can't do, or when I get lonely, for crying out loud? How do I communicate that need if I've never needed anyone before? A fine example of this is our world economy, where sweat shop workers are pieces of a well-oiled machine, where exchange is in the form of information, where small farms who aren't using chemicals to produce more faster (or growing too much and then "dumping") are going out of business, and anyone who can't keep up simply perishes. Why buy from a local artist, farmer, tailor, whatever when you can go to Wal-Mart where they have everything?

Because it's cheaper and easier. Because we're stretched to the max with activities from morning until night and we don't have time to take the scenic route. The route where we stop and talk to people along the way. Where we notice when the leaves are changing colors and we are in touch with our families and communities. Where we can be the good samaritan because we're not in a hurry to get to church by 9 o'clock sharp. Where we can read a good book or take a trip to somewhere we've never seen before. Where I need what you give and you need what I give. Where a three-in-one community-oriented God looks with joy on the lovers he made who are pushing and pulling and heaving together, not against each other, and not each on our own isolated road.

"If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other." -Mother Teresa

Down in the depths of my heart. Where?

2007-09-25T21:26:00.000-05:00

I had a really nice conversation yesterday. The niceness may have been more related to my partner in conversation than the content of our discourse, but regardless, it's still a slice of time I have rewound and played over and over in my head in the hours since (even possibly at the neglect of more important subjects on which I should have been focusing my attention).

Every time an experience like this happens, the scripture that resonates in my head is "she treasured all these things in her heart." I have heard addresses delivered, usually by men, on what, exactly, this means. Mostly it boils down to the fact that she meditated on her experience. But, inasmuch as I understand the way she thought about events of particular meaning, a word as simple as meditated just seems so unsatisfactory. It falls short.

I think women meditate on things in a way that men will never be able to understand, just because of differences in the way we're wired. We take special moments and "treasure them up in our hearts." As Sarah Grace so eloquently put it, we decorate them. That's not to say we embellish the truth of what actually happened, but we contemplate with the knowledge that our feelings on the subject are unique to us alone. We remember the feeling as much as the event. We do not only replay memories, we nurture them and guard them, as if they were locked in a room to which only we have the key.

Maybe this is also why we can bring up memories at will (sometimes in an accusatory fashion, sorry guys) of which the unfortunate men in our lives seem to have no recollection.

But yesterday I felt like my heartstrings must have hummed with the same resonance as Mary's did in some far-gone century.

Posterchild for Scotch Guard

2007-09-04T10:21:00.000-05:00

I never make it very far with coffee. At least some of it always ends up as a part of my wardrobe. Usually this is in the morning, and I am stuck with that awkward stain all day.

But it's totally worth it for the conversations I get to have over said coffee. My life is rich.

Thanks be to God.

"Come, come whoever you are.
Wonderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.
It doesn't matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow
a thousand times
Come, yet again, come.
Come."
-Rumi

It's Been A While

2007-08-29T00:19:00.000-05:00

I guess it's time for me to start writing again, since people are actually starting to tell me in person that I need to update. Have I forsaken the task of life documentation because of lack of time or lack of anything interesting to say? Maybe it's a combination of the two.

In short, my two weeks in Kenya were hard and beautiful and healing. I miss so many things about Kenya, but I'm also glad to be home where God is doing exciting things within my heart and among the people I know.

I also led a three day backpacking trip for incoming Samford freshmen. Despite some minor bumps in the road, it went fabulously and it felt really good to do something I thought I could never do. And I developed some really neat relationships in the process.

The new apartment is great. Haley and I are obsessed with it. I wish I could stay here all day.

And now I'm only two days into classes and already feel like I need a break. I'm excited about the emphasis on community - both building community and/or plugging into one. It has really been stirring in this heart of mine for a while now. I get antsy about it because I'm so enthralled. But there's a lot of communities I'm trying to mentally reconcile and balance in my own head and, on top of this, my to-do lists are exanding into oblivion.

Shiloh was a much needed respite and refueling this evening, and God provided me with some very poignant words and images to renew my weary spirit. First, when April spoke of God drawing us to himself, a phrase which I've heard close to a thousand times, the first image that came to my head was from this past weekend at Council retreat when I had the joyous task of taking care of five-month-old Owen Pitts for Brian and Renee. It's Friday afternoon, there's no one else in the house; I'm sitting on the couch with my feet propped up, watching the rise and fall of baby Owen's back as he lays curled up sleeping on my chest. He has the occasional habit of burrowing his head into my collar bone, but his limbs are drawn up perfectly underneath him and all is quiet and right in the world.

This mental picture brought to mind the scripture where Jesus says "come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart...my yoke is easy and my burden is light." The literal translation of "easy" in the verse means "fitting" or "appropriate." This is how Jesus draws us in to give us holy rest - shabbat. Just like Owen was "easy" as he sprawled across my midsection, perfectly fitted between my arms and chin for rest, we are drawn into our heavenly father's arms for rest. And the space in which we dwell is fitting for us, is appropriate for our rest and comfort, because the Father knows exactly what we need, exactly how much we can bear, exactly how to bring us peace.

"A mother's arms are made of tenderness, and sweet sleep blesses the child that lies therein." -Les Miserables

"For the Sabbath was created for man, and not man for the Sabbath" -the bible

Telling

2007-07-10T18:18:00.000-05:00

Was reading back over old journal entries last night, and I found one that I find especially applicable to myself at this moment. Maybe I know myself better than I thought:

..I realized today that I struggle with discipline (which I always knew), but that because I feel so frustrated and bored at being disciplined, I'm actually squeezing God out instead of a leaving a space for Him to fill and dwell. All He asks of me is to rest - which is why He created me with such a penchant for solitude. And failure to rest is the worst weapon I use against myself and my God. It throws my whole universe off balance. And not just bodily rest, but spiritual, emotional, and mental rest. Peace. Quietude...

I'm leaving for Kenya on Friday morning. I'm feeling grateful. Still have some mixed feelings about it, but I'd rather take this emotional (and otherwise) risk than not.

Was also advised today that I need to grieve my trip to Swaziland (or lack thereof). I think this is probably somewhat true. Although I don't believe there is waste in God's economy, it truly was a loss.

Prayer is appreciated.

A better question than "why?"

2007-06-19T15:01:00.001-05:00

What now?

A Word Of Explanation...or something...

2007-06-08T11:53:00.001-05:00

This will be difficult.

Since February, I have been planning to make a great leap and embark on one of the biggest adventures of my life - two months in Swaziland. God has been incredibly faithful in providing the means for me to go, and I have been overwhelmed by the support I have received from family and friends. Before actually leaving the country for our African destination, our team goes through a week of training camp at the AIM training compound in Georgia. Night 3 of training camp, my world falls apart.

Through a number of painful circumstances and prayers, God says something along the lines of 'your number one mission is not to save the world, or go to Swaziland, or whatever else you have been preparing for. your number one mission is to trust Jesus and be obedient to that calling, and now is not your time to go to Swaziland.'

What else can I do? Where do I go from here? I am back in Birmingham, more confused than ever about who I am, who God is, why all this has happened. I am full of fear and sadness and guilt and feelings of failure. My strongest impulse is to isolate. What will people think? What does this mean for me? What am I doing here? Am I crazy? Is this all just a big mistake? What is true? Why am I still afraid? All of this is a mystery to me.

In some moments I am at peace knowing God is a god of redemption and power, not discord. Most of the time I just want to crawl out of my skin and disappear.

Now, as I'm unpacking my suitcases and washing red Georgia dirt from my clothes and reading birthday cards meant for July and notes of encouragement for the mission field, I feel like a grieving person cleaning out the house of someone who has just died.

Here is what I am sure of:
1. I am creation. Because of Jesus, God looks at me and sees no flaw.
2. God is sovereign.
3. God is the God of the oppressed in Birmingham AND in Swaziland. There is God's work to be done everywhere.

I apologize for my candidness here, but if we cannot be honest with one another in the body, then where can we truly be who we are? And now I invite your honesty. Feel free to ask questions or speak truth to me.

"I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten..."-Joel 2:25

On the Brink

2007-06-03T00:37:00.000-05:00

The other night when I was watching the national spelling bee with my family, one of the spellers said that he fights off nervousness by metaphorically picking the wings off of the butterflies in his stomach. It sounds like something I would do...am trying to do.

In about eight hours I will leave the comfort of my home, and in four more the comfort of my family. I will adopt a new family of about 15 people. I'm thrilled and anxious out of my mind. I feel like I've been waiting for this day since I was born, but for some reason there's a little tiny voice saying "Turn back now! Egypt is so safe!"

I was born to take this step. I know this is right. God has brought me here.

It would have been so different if I had been at this juncture a year ago; I am not who I was. I cannot think of a better place to be springing from than the place I am right now in my spiritual, emotional, and intellectual understanding. It is for these same reasons that I am so hesitant to go. I will miss the things which have brought me to this place; the past nine months, and especially the past four weeks or so, have been incredibly formative for me. I'm finally free. And I no longer have anything to run away from like I would have a year ago, only people and places I am sad to leave.

My even-keel since of peace is periodically disrupted by thirty second epidosdes of sheer panic. What in the name of all that is holy am I about to do?! Two months!

Only two months - they'll be gone before I know it, and I will return a different human being.

God, ground my spirit in holy community, binding us all together in perfect love. I have not been given a spirit of fear. If you say go, we will go. Jesus, you are the reason why.