journals and eyeglasses.

I’m a very sentimental person and tend to attach deep meaning to all sorts of seemingly frivolous things.  As such, there are two “big” decisions that I always anticipate with great apprehension…new journals and new eyeglasses. 

After nearly a decade of relatively consistent journaling, I’ve got journal shopping down to a science.  I can estimate almost to the day how long it will be before I need a new journal, and I give myself at least a week to find a new one.  I know it shouldn’t be that hard, but it’s a big deal.  Some of it has to do with how particular I am…right size, right paper, right line width (although blank paper has been my most recent choice), and not to mention what the cover looks like.  I can confess that on more than one occasion, the deciding factor has come down to things like smell or the texture of the paper. 

I justify all this fuss because, in many ways, the words that each journal holds are an extension of my heart and soul.  Yes, many times the pages are filled with stories of my daily life.  But the reason I journal so diligently is to continue telling myself the story of God’s faithfulness.  Most of the words are prayers cried and prayers answered.  And so I imagine the journals I choose as prayers themselves.  A new journal is literally the beginning of a new book, a new volume, a new chapter of my life. (Only on two occasions have I bought a new journal without finishing the current one…both times it was because of a break-up.)  In a season of significant growth, the journal I chose looked like tree bark…praying for more growth to continue.  In a season of heartache, I chose a journal covered in small birds and fruit…praying that I would come to know the freedom of a bird not caged, and praying that I might be a fruit-bearing tree.  And in this most recent season of great uncertainty and transition, the blank white pages of my journal have spoken not only to my most vulnerable anxieties of the future, but also the infinite hope of possibility. (Sometime I’ll write more on blank white paper…)

So about once a year, my dear, dear mom oh so patiently ventures to Barnes and Noble with me and we stand before the wall of journals praying for the stories and memories and prayers that will fill one of those empty books.

Much like journal shopping, choosing new glasses presents about the same level of complexity.  Fortunately, I only shop for glasses every few years.  The last time was just before I started my first year of college.  The decision to choose the orange and purple frames proved a very decisive moment…in a deeply symbolic way, I was relinquishing the years of being known by my love for orange.  (Love is an understatement.  For several years, I insisted upon wearing something orange every day.  My walls were—and still are—orange.  My furniture was—and still is—orange.  Orange, orange, orange always and forever.)  Orange, of course, meant all sorts of things other than color.  I let it articulate my desire to be different, my acceptance of quirkiness, and it paired well with my nickname “Spunky.”  Purple, seemed like a little more subtle version of all those desires…still lively, but maybe a little more mature…or at least that’s how it all seemed when I was fresh out of high school and preparing to move all the way to California.

Today, it was time for new eyeglasses.  So my dear, dear mom oh so patiently ventured with me to pick out new frames.  I had to have tried on at least 30 or 40 pairs, which we slowly whittled down to 10 and then 4 and eventually there were only 2 left.  Again, I know full well that no other person will ever infer all the meaning that I see in any pair of glasses frames, but there was an extensive deliberation in choosing between those last two frames.  One said “past”; one said “future.”  One seemed like the perfect, funky, just-graduated-from-college-and-am-totally-confident-enough-to-wear-whatever-kind-of-glasses-I-want frames.  The other was the I-just-graduated-from-college-and-am-still-young-and-adventurous-but-also-ready-to-begin-my-life-as-a-somewhat-sophistacated-professional.  The first would be totally California fashionable.  The latter were more classic and surely acceptable anywhere—probably even Hazlehurst, Mississippi.  And so off and on each pair went.  This mirror, that mirror, hair up, hair down.  Walk around the store for a few minutes and try them again with fresh eyes.  And as I stood in front the 2^nd mirror from the left (the one with the best lighting), my mom started asking the questions to unravel all the tangled thoughts and anxieties that I had attached to this relatively insignificant decision. 

Looking into the mirror, I started praying the same prayer that I pray when looking for journals and the same prayer that I’ve prayed during all my “new teacher clothes-shopping.”  I realized that no set of glasses frames or new dress or new journal will really be able to tell me who I am, nor will they really shape who I become.  Yes, in some small way they are an articulation of my fashion or style or personality, and maybe even a little of my heart.  But on their own, they can’t say all that I’m asking them to say.  So stepping a little closer to the mirror, I tried to look beyond their plastic glass and ask my eyes what my heart and soul were saying.  And they again spoke of the terrible tension of this season…all the pain and heartache and excitement and hope that come with leaving and going.  They confessed again how desperately I wish I was going back to Azusa in three months, and how terrified I am of the world that lies on the other side of the River.  And then they begged me to let go just a little more, with the hope and promise of having more hand space for the good things to come.

After tearing up for just a second, I chose the pair of glasses that will give me new vision in my new life—hopefully new vision in more ways than one!

dirty hands.

Today, I finally got to "get my hands in the dirt."  And it was more lovely and wonderful than I'd remembered.  There is something about the smell of dirt and the feel of it between my fingers that just hits a place somewhere deep inside.  

My mom and I spent most of the morning and early afternoon planting flowers in front of our house.  Yesterday we spent hours planning and searching for our favorites...  The African marigolds are always tricky to find, but the Osteospermum were a fantastic discovery.  Every year, shaded flowers for the bed under the window and beneath the pine tree present quite a challenge, but our geraniums, lobelia, pansies and coral bells look really beautiful.  

Tomorrow we'll add some snapdragons to the mailbox corner, a few lavender to the lamb's ear along the back fence, and continue our search for a potentilla bush (my dad's favorite) for the front porch.  

We haven't bought any dianthus yet, but saw some really gorgeous ones today that will look great next to the peonies in the back.  

And I'm still trying to convince them that a few tomatoes would be perfect in the corner planter and that rhubarb would be fill in the area on the side of the house quite nicely.

It's been a year since I was in Tennessee planting flowers with my Aunt Susan, learning about cucumbers and tomatoes from Uncle Wayne and watching the moonflowers every night with Aunt Joan and Uncle Jim.  It was incredible how quickly all those memories flooded back today with the smells of the dirt and flowers.  And with those memories, stirred in my heart and soul so many of the beautiful things that have been buried beneath the clutter of the busy weeks and months of this year.  

There is a patience, a humility, a slowness and trust in gardening that most of my life rushes right past.  I remembered today that it takes days and weeks of patient watering and nurturing to see the little plants grow.  I remembered that the neatness and patterning of my planting has little to do with the beauty of the flowers--it's really not about my work to arrange them in some artistic way at all, their beauty is entirely their own. I remembered the trust required to hope that little seeds will turn into new plants that will bear their own seeds.

I think these were really important things to think about today, to be reminded of.  There is a lot of uncertainty on my horizon.  Yes, I know I'm going to Mississippi in 13 days.  Yes, I know I'll be teaching at Hazlehurst Elementary School.  But my imagination can hardly handle the questions and apprehensions and hopes held within those certainties.  And I know that right now, all I can do is wait, and pray.  I know that these next few days may offer the moments of Sabbath rest that I know my weary soul needs if I can slow down long enough to escape the anxiety and apathy that can so quickly suffocate and paralyze.  

So, I'm going to keep putting my hands in the dirt.  I'm excited to see how much my little flowers might grown in the next 2 weeks and I know they might not at all.  But there is something that happens out there in the dirt that quiets my heart and nourishes my soul in desperately needed way right now.

In all this thinking, I did some reading through my journals from last summer and found this little bit.  I really truly believed it then, and am praying for these truths to settle in again...

“Come breath, go breath; I’m not going to pull any longer.”  ~Nana

If only we understood the deep wisdom of these words.  This kind of breathing is of the kind of living that overflows from the deep well of freedom.

Free from the desperate striving and agonized clutching that are the ladder climb to ‘success.’  Free from the anxious heartache of one who has lost control.  The metronome marking the rhythm of this breath is not heard among the ringing, dinging, clanking of our scurried lives.  It is the rhythm of the silence of the darkest hour of night before the dawn as the symphony of birds await their cue.  It is the rhythm of the rain as it tumbles down the leaves and pats upon the ground.  It is the rhythm of the lightening bugs as they paint their portraits in the sky.

“Be still and know that I am God.”

Stillness and ‘non-motion’ are hardly the same.  Rather, stillness invites the most elegant and vigorous dances of motion.  In stillness, all the world arrives at once.  The blackberries and raspberries are sweetest when they are left on the vine just one day longer.  The stillness of the harvester’s hand is not apathetic or lazy or ignorant as it waits.  It is moving in time with the movement already and always swirling through the pulse of life.  The same the moonflower and the wren’s eggs and the human heart.

“Be still and know that I am God.”

Oh the patience of stillness requires more endurance than a marathon!  To be still is an act of great humility…surrendering one’s self-importance, one’s assured autonomy, one’s skill, determination and strength.  Courage is not the absence of fear, but the absence of self.  And still illumines our deepest fears of self.

“Who am I?  Am I able?  What is the measure of my value?”

“Will the raspberries ripen for tomorrow?  Will the wren’s egg hatch?  Will the moonflowers open their blooms if the moon’s light is lost in the clouds?”

And yet, with each inhale the lungs relinquish the breath to be exhaled.  In stillness, we see and hear and smell and taste and feel the pulse of this rhythm calling us to open our selves, to open our hands and spread our arms wide in the embrace of freedom.

“Be still and know that I am God.”

And in this freedom, we stop looking for our own reflection in the people of our lives.  We stop chasing our own shadows.  Rather than seeking to shape people into our own image and squeeze every moment into our best laid plan, we begin to look into our own eyes and remember that the essence of our existence is the rhythm of our breath.  We are not ‘alive’ until our first cry or breath and our death is marked by our final exhale.  And then we begin to look into the eyes of the neighbor and the mother and the stranger and the friend and remember that the essence of their existence is the rhythm of the same breath.  We look at the food we eat grown from the plants which are nourished by our exhale and remember that they too have life by breath.  We see the mark of eternity within the breath of every person and in the heartbeats and roots of all living things.

And thus, in our stillness, we begin to know God.

“Be still and know that I am God.”

Amen...again.

again...

again:  You know when you get a word stuck in your head?  Like when you hear a really good word that you want to look up in the dictionary later so you can find out exactly how and when to use it because it just sounds so smart?  Or when random foreign language class factoids emerge from the recesses of your mind and you can’t stop repeating them behind your thoughts and conversations?  I’ve had “again” stuck in my head for days and weeks and approaching months.  Yes, it is an odd word to spend so much time thinking about it.  But lately it seems to jump off every page and catches my ear in every conversation.  And if it’s possible to have a favorite word, again is mine.

By definition, it means:  “another time, once more; returning to a previous position or condition; in addition to what has already been mentioned.”  I’m not an etymologist by any means, but a little research led to me to the German root entgegen which means something like “against, in opposition to; returning.”

I think our whole story is about again.

Again is every dusk hoping for another dawn. Again is the frozen ground of winter hoping for spring’s thaw. Again is the seed buried in the soil hoping to bear fruit. Again is the blank white page hoping for words. Again is the hollow lines of the music score hoping for melodies. Again is the painter’s canvas hoping for color.

Again is shattered relationships hoping for reconciliation. Again is the barren womb hoping for creation.  Again is the lungs’ hoping for another breath. Again is the rumbling stomach hoping for food.  Again is violence hoping for peace.  Again is the empty tomb birthing life.  Again is the aching heart hoping for love.  Again is the ailing body hoping to dance.  Again is the impossible hope of life after death.  Again is the hope of resurrection after crucifixion.  Again is the broken body and shed blood hoping for the Kingdom come.  Again is the church.

Again is about hope.  Again is about imagination.  Again is looking the world in the face, into the eyes of those most helpless and hopeless and seeing something new.  It is about “once more” entering into the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ.  It is about “returning to our previous position or condition” as homo adorans—created as priests to received the gifts of God and return them to him, again and again.  And “in addition” to that work which has already been completed, there is an eschatological imagination drawing us into hope.  It occurs “against, in opposition to” the narratives and stories and liturgies of this world.  It is a “returning” to the cross, the empty tomb.  Again emerges from that which was, moving toward that which may be.  What was does not guarantee what might be, but hopes for it.  Hope comes from, or rather through, that which was.  Again is the in between, the already and almost and not yet.

the church:  Theologically, I think the church happens as again.  The church is not a building, nor is it the individuals in that building congregating for personal devotions together.  The church is the work these people do together.  The question, then, might not be “what is the church,” or “who is the church,” but “how is the church.”  The church is that community which sees and knows and proclaims how God is working the work of again in the world.  Their proclamation is the liturgy of the Eucharist, and the Eucharist is all about again-ing.  Again and again and again we come to the table.  Again and again and again we eat the bread and drink the wine.  Again and again and again we pray for the Kingdom to come.  Again and again and again we walk away from the table and out into the world to be consumed—to be martyred—as the bread and wine, body and blood of Christ.  Again and again and again we return to the table.  And again and again and again once more the bread and wine bring life.  Again and again and again they see and know and proclaim the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ.

I need, we need, the church to be about again-ing.  The church tells us our story when we forget, and because of our fallen nature, we are always forgetting and always needing to hear it again.  It is the work of the church to remind us of who we are, where we are from.  It is the work of the church to cast the vision of where we are going and imagine how we might get there.  Because all of this happens in the liturgy of the Eucharist, it the work of the church to continue baking bread and pressing wine and washing the dishes at the end of the day.  The church, then, is not limited to a weekly service or to the task of saving souls.  No, the church is about the most basic and mundane moments of life.  It is about our bodies and our food, our homes and families and friends and strangers.  It is about where we shop and how we spend our time.  In all of these, the church creates a new language and vocabulary, a new palette with which we understand and speak and imagine the life of these lived moments.  Again and again and again the story of the church pulls these bits and pieces of our lives back into the open and spacious body of Christ.  As we are His, they too are His.  The Eucharist becomes a new center of gravity holding together all that which might otherwise spin out into fragmented space.

leaving and going:  In these last weeks and months, again has become one of the most honest and gut-wrenching prayers I can pray.  As my college graduation loomed on the horizon and my future seemed so uncertain for so many months, fear become paralyzing and anxiety suffocating.  And then as plans began to fall into place, from the reality of immanent goodbyes with undetermined hellos a deep sadness and sorrow settled into my heart.  My last weeks became a tangled mess of celebrating and grieving.  Everything to celebrate was cause to grieve and everything to grieve was only cause to grieve because of how celebration worthy it was.  Memories and stories and friendships and places all became sources of tears…and it became more and more difficult to differentiate the happy and sad tears.

I think that memories are a really, truly beautiful gift and I am so grateful for the memories of the last four years.  But I’m also finding that sometimes walking through memories can be a little like walking through a cemetery—I’m looking for life where there once was life but where there isn’t any anymore.  Maybe that’s a weird illustration, but I know I’m fighting the temptation of getting stuck in those memories, clinging to the past and grasping for the present and being satisfied with a headstone that doesn’t have room for new stories.  But I’m learning that while these memories tell us beautiful stories, they are only valuable in how they move us into the future.

So I’m learning to pray again.  I’m trying to move from leaving to going.  Those two are surprisingly different and I know that it will take some time.  I’m trying remember and grieve and celebrate and dream, all at the same time.  I am trusting that this is not an ending, but a beginning.  I know that if I really truly believe in the giftedness of these last four years, I have to continue seeking the kind of community and life and love and hope that I have found there.  I've had in my head two images for the last several months...one is of my palms bleeding, but the wounds are the little crescent moons of my own fingernails from clutching so tightly to so many things; the other is of my palms bleeding but with the marks of the nails of the cross...learning to let go has been harder than I'd anticipated, so I just keep praying again—accepting the gifts I have been given and with open hands surrendering them again and again.  And I am hopeful that there are good, good things to come again and again and again.  

My hope and prayer is that I would take all that I have learned and shared and experienced this year living together with the beautiful girls of 1^st West and the incredible women of the Adams staff, and do this again.  I’m praying that the patience and honesty and vulnerability and humility I have begun to learn would not stop here, but that I would continue to grow in these and live them again and again.  I’m praying that the laughter and joy and fun I have had with so many dear, dear friends would continue to bring life again and again.  I’m praying that all that I have begun to learn in classes and in chapels and in conversations would not be forgotten, but that I would keep learning them again and again.  I’m praying that the ways my thinking has been pushed and challenged would happen again and again.  I’m praying that I would remember God’s faithful provision in all my fears and anxieties and find peace in that truth again and again.  I’m praying that I would continue to tell the stories of these years again and again not only because they bring laughter and tears, but because woven throughout all of them is the story of what God is doing in His kingdom.  I think I’ve seen some moments of what that looks like with my sisters and brothers, and I pray that we would always fight to see them again and again.  I'm praying that I would continue to know and see and live the rhythms of the church as it agains.

And I'm praying that even thought I won’t be living this new season with those I love most, that because we really are held together by God's good grace that we will keep living this story together and apart again and again.