Please, Be Gentle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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