It's my last Sunday on this favorite porch. As much as I talk about not making this world my home, I still like a good home now and then and this place as been that. This little house on the corner of Market and Grove with the revolving door and perhaps revolving hearts (who said the female is not a fickle creature?). We have laughed and loved and cried and opened and closed and learned and grown here and that I will miss. I've nearly always had the best when it comes to roommates though and I'm unconcerned about the next living situation (Who could be, with a girl like this as your roommate?).

But I will miss this porch. Season tells me that a porch is a must-have on our home in Texas and who I am to argue with a born and bred Texan, even one so sweet and gentle as she? This porch, the one we saw as Christina and I rounded the corner last fall and glanced at each other and said "this is it. we're home." This is the porch I'll miss. We strung a hammock on it, swayed ourselves to sleep and peace. We put a table on it and learned about loving Jesus more than things. We lined the edges with plants with names and wildflowers that only last a week, no matter though, there are more where those came from.


On this porch we have celebrated birthdays and filmed movies and journaled and sit-a-spelled. We are not adverse to strangers showing up on this porch at all hours of the day and night and so they do. Some become friends.

When we moved here, we dreamed of calling our home The Common Room and somehow it has become so. Differently than we planned and probably with more angst and work and sushi dinners than we'd thought it would take, but it's become it. Someone tells me the other day that he will miss my consolation. I ask for clarification and he says, your peace. But I know, secretly, it's not my peace, it's the Holy Spirit and what he can do when we share things in common on purpose.


So I will miss this porch, not because I will miss its peeling paint and sloping floors or spider webs constantly forming in the corners. I will miss it perhaps for its pillars and sides, perfect for sitting on and leaning against; perhaps I will miss it for its stairs facing the sunset every night; perhaps for the morning glory that is slowly making its way up the railing. I'm not sure. There are characteristics of things we miss everywhere, every scent a nostalgic memory and every color a nudging reminder. But I am learning to leave things as they are.

Instead I'm grateful for the front porches in my life, the places that provide spaces for us to learn and grow and be and sway in hammocks and make friends with strangers who become friends.

We shared a rock and stared at the brilliant sunset. Some things you can count on, I said, a thaw in January, a frost in May, and every day a brilliant day in autumn in Potsdam.

This is my favorite season; I wait for it every year and nearly cry when the last maple leaf has fallen and the ground we walk on has become crispy with ice tipped blades of grass. Strange that I would leave when I stand on the cusp of something I love. Instead this season will be a season of replacement. I will replace my favorite colors and time of the year with a land that last week was still experiencing 107 degree temperatures and sports one consistent color: beige.

I heard a sermon a few weeks ago in which the speaker talks about St. Augustine's Disordered Loves and how the root of all sin is a disordered love (I love money more than generosity so I am selfish, instant gratification more than patience so I am impulsive, things more than people so I am stingy, etc.). I am reminded a lot recently of what my mother said to someone who expressed concern that I wasn't getting baptized with all my other 13 year old peers, "When Lore makes a decision, she'll do it 210%, and there will be no forcing her beforehand." I'm grateful for a parent who recognized the virtue in my then-present disordered love: stubbornness. I may take a long time to come around, but when I do, you can usually count on my loyalty.

So it is with gusto that I part ways with nearly everything I own, shoving books and dressers and lamps and anything you'll take into your hands. "Are you sad to see it go?" you ask. No! I think. But only say "No." Lest you think I am cold-hearted and calloused. My loves are so disordered that I don't even know what love is these days. Is it attachment? Is it contentment? Is it security? And, most of all, is it in something other than Jesus?

So this morning when I left the dentist several hundred dollars poorer, and the other night when I paid all of our bills, and the other day when I mailed off a few checks to unassuming people, and when I gave you the dresser I've had since I was younger and the books that once I treasured, and anything else that might be in the way of loving Jesus and me, I think one thing to myself. What does love feel like and when will I know it the way the woman who pushed through the crowd knew it? She loved her healing more than she loved Jesus because she didn't know Jesus, but once she was healed, and that was out of the way, then she loved Jesus alone.

And I want that.

I want to replace and replace and replace until my orders are to love Him and Him alone. That's it.

You making a list, he asked and gestured to the open notebook on my twice painted wooden coffee table. Yeah, I said. I glance at it, sections labeled according to their content's demise. I am unapologetic in my efforts to scale down. I've never been a stuff person, the most expensive thing I own is my car, valued at $4000 and that is wildly above the next most expensive thing I own, this laptop.

After that, well, it's all downhill, no electronics, no movies, no cds. My favorite things are my bike, offered to my roommate for a mere $5 and given to me by her; my vintage glasses, the ones that look like they have marijuana leaves on them (but I know better). I love my orange leather chair, a castoff from my sister-in-law's friend, and those green living things I refer to as Graham, Stanley, and Po. I love the artwork on my dining room wall, some original, some small postcards with perfect colors, all worthless to the keen eye. I'm partial to the ceramic bowls gifted my second mom who keeps her eye out for all things orange and I'm partial too to a set of flea market baskets, lined with dark blue cotton. I love my camera.

A friend sent me an email recently with these words: "I have no love lost for the American Dream, but I'm glad to take care of all this stuff while God lets me have it." And I can't help but admire his candid admission and gentle balance. I can't seem to find any of that balance in my life. When I realize something or feel passionately about it, all reason fades and I'm on a mission to accomplish. I have no one to blame (nor do I look for anyone) for the inconsistencies in my life, the constant moving, the lack of sticktoitiveness. I guess when Jesus said, to whom much is given much is required, I took him literally. I figure it probably works the other way around too, the less I have, the less will be required.

And I know my logic fails there somewhere. Someone asked me recently why I'm always trying to avoid the call of God, slip out of places of leadership and responsibility, sure I don't have what it takes. "The call of God is relentless" he said, "you won't escape it. You know that right?"

And I guess the truth is that I don't know it. Not for real. I guess that there is some part of me, like Gomer, who wants to push my Savior to His limits, see how far He'll go for me. Not a fair challenge, I know. But I wonder if Jesus told the disciples to take no bread, no bag and no money, it was less because He knew the value of traveling light and more because He knew the value of complete dependence on Him alone.

I don't know and I don't promise to have the corner on this market. What I do know is that there is a list on that coffee table that is forcing me to make decisions about where my treasure is--and, this I know for sure, it is hard to give up treasures.

I'm not going to rant. I promise. I have no room to rant and no room to spout. What I'm learning is at the feet of a hundred other people who know far more than I do and who have lived it out far longer. But there are things brewing in me that have been brewing all of my life and feel ready to spill out, or at least have brewed high enough in my life that I'm ready to start living them out.

When I was 19 I had a dream about a bedroom that was painted apple green, with pretty furniture, painted white floors, and bookcases floor to ceiling, packed with books. So I spent the next half a dozen years trying to replicate that bedroom. To me, it was a place a peace and a place of comfort. It said, "Here you will be happy. Here you will find peace." And I won't deny that my homes, wherever they've been and whatever color they've been painted, have been places of peace. For the most part. They've been places I could come home and feel a sense of knowing. That at least one of my dreams could come true.

A month ago I made a spreadsheet of all my books, listed them cheaply, and watched my two floor to ceiling bookcases empty of my life's collection, my life's idolatry. I kept one box, and it's not even full. I've been giving away everything I own, giving or selling, not even to the highest bidder. Just emptying my life of all the things that define peace to me. I've been divorcing myself from the picture I've had of completion. I said to her yesterday, I'm no fool, I know the moment we think we've learned something is the moment we find that we have not. So I will not rush to say that this season of physical emptiness (or stufflessness) that I'm experiencing is the pinnacle of what I'm going to learn. But I am learning this: I am no less complete without my dreams; I am more complete without them because He is more magnified when He is the only one.

This is so contrary to the norm that I'm almost afraid to say it out loud (afraid that I will get all sorts of "Don't let go of your dreams!" comments). But I'm finding it to be true. Today I'm finding it to be true.

See, I've loved things more than people. And I've loved people more than the gospel. And I've even loved the gospel more than Jesus. And I'm afraid we all might do a lot more of this than we think. Collecting things, furniture, good habits, even marriage or children, a savings account, all of these things can too easily become the goal. A friend called me yesterday, telling me about a sermon he heard recently, in which the speaker talked about really living as though these things are passing away (because they are). But we don't live as though they are.

I'm not saying that I'm living like I am either. I'm not. I'm still packing my car full of things that will make my life easier in Texas and wherever next I go, full of good stewardship, full of things that matter much to me. But I'm leaving one thing behind: I'm leaving comfort behind. Every step of the way I'm aiming to shed a little more comfort and pick up a little more faith.

I landed on the hammock when I got home today and stared at my beautiful roommate and our beautiful porch table. I love my roommate, but this isn't about her. It's about the table. I like that table, I do. It's a pedestal table, wooden, with delicate details carved into it. Our porch is this bastion of green, flowers, peace, and comfort. We live out there. We live around this table.


As I've walked through our house the past few weeks I've touched things and let go of things, asked myself the question "Do I need this?" And usually the answer is no, but sometimes the answer is "No, but I love it." And there the battle begins--I don't need it, but I love it, and how much do I love it and does that mean I ought to definitely keep it or definitely rid myself of it? (No one can accuse me of not putting enough thought into my actions...just saying is all.)

I haven't ever really gone deeper than want, need, love and do I have to? Today though, I looked at that table, the table I wanted for our front porch and found under an antique dealer's pile of junk and gave him forty bucks for, and I said to myself "What's the root of wanting to keep that table?" And the root was fear, surprisingly. Fear that I'd never find another table just like that (likely), or that I'd never find another sort of table like it, but as cheap (unlikely), or that by getting rid of the table I would be tableless for the rest of my life (very unlikely). Once I got here it was easy to decide, nope, not keeping the table.

See, a few weeks ago I sat in the living room of a family I love and they talked to me about loving things more than God. And, while I pride myself on being very unattached to material things, I realized I've let the fear of not having things overtake the fear of not loving God--I've been more consumed with building a home, than being a dwelling place of the Holy Spirit, more desirous of beautiful colors, than appreciating the master creator, and more attached to my savings account balance than to a great provider. It's a sneakier thing than I think and every day I'm more and more struck by my attachments. I feel in some ways like this season is a season of shedding skin, ideas, things, dreams, all the things that have crowded out Just Jesus.

So, anybody want a hardwood pedestal table?

I'm selling tons of books--if you're interested, let me know (I'll ship, if you cover postage). Here's the link to all of the books: http://tiny.cc/0j0mv

(Ignore the colored slots--these are books that have been claimed and are colored to help me keep track of who's getting them and to let you know that they're taken!)

I also have some older/rare books that I'm not sure where to sell, if any of you have any brilliant ideas, let me know!

Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Caroll (inscription reads 1901)
The Birthday Book, Rudyard Kipling 1899
One Commonplace Day, Pansy 1899

I've been thinking about tent pegs for a few months now. Years maybe. A while for sure. Probably since I sat in a car with a friend in the spring of 2007. I cried and he challenged, unrelenting with his words: you are tied to an earth that is passing away, untie yourself or you will die with it. I am struck by the reality that we modern Christians laud stability and consistency, while the fathers of our faith were so transient that they were identified first by their name and then by their place of origin: Abraham of Ur, Jesus of Nazareth, etc.

They packed their whole house on the backs of camels and we fill our whole trunk with this week's groceries.

Jesus took it a step further: the Son of man has no place to lay his head. He didn't even carry a pillow.

The past few months I've been pushing away some things that have crowded my faith, finding that my faith lies mostly in practices and broken promises, and rarely in a God who never changes. The deeper down I've gone, the more I've realized that deep inside of me there is a pioneering heart that has indulged far too long in the stuff of this world. Part of the aim in me moving is to learn greater dependence on a God who supplies and not necessarily a bank account that can sustain.

One of the reasons I have set a cap on my time in Texas is not because I'm counting on it being a dismal failure and having to run home to Potsdam or because I'm counting on staying in Texas and I just want to make you all warm up to the idea. It's because I want to live a tent peg lifestyle. I want to live today with a pilgrimage heart, stopping when necessary, going when necessary. I want to live that way as a single person (because I can) and if someday I'm a married person, I want to continue to live that way. I want to be ready to leave at a moment's notice with no thought for what I'm leaving behind or what I've accumulated in the meantime.

I don't know if I can do it--it's hard to carry a knapsack and not much else in western society--but I want to pack light. I want to untie myself from stuff and this earth. I want to be known by my place of origin: the kingdom of God.

And how blessed all those in whom you live, whose lives become roads you travel; They wind through lonesome valleys, come upon brooks, discover cool springs and pools brimming with rain! God-traveled, these roads curve up the mountain, and at the last turn—Zion! God in full view! Psalm 84:5-7

I don't know when I got it into my head that everything about me must be certain and solid and unchangeable and forever. i don't know how this lie crept in or when. I'm hardly bothering to take account though. Somewhere along the way I demanded of myself that every word, written and spoken, ought to be fully truth, fully spiritual, and fully certain. It was as though I took the unchangeableness of a pristine and solid rock God and tried to paste it onto the cardboard cutout of me and said "It is good."

The only thing good about this is that contrary to the childish game, rock does beat paper. Rock always prevails.

I say that so that you know that what follows is not written by Lore the Invincible (someone told me this week that that's what people think of me) and so that you know that it is actually written by Lore the Lame (of Jacob and the Angel wrestling fame). I walk with a limp and these days I am okay with limps.

I am moving. Like Abraham, when he was told to leave his father's house. Like Elijah, when he hid in the cave. Like Mary and Joseph, when they birthed something holy in the middle of squalor. Like David, when he brought five stones and a slingshot. Like Jonah, when he ran away.

The point is, I don't know why exactly I'm moving or what will be born of it. What I know is that I feel a deep peace about it and I feel an expectation inside of me that It Is Good.

There are three reasons why I'm moving where I moving and if you want to know them, I'll say them to you. There are no reasons why I'm moving from where I'm moving, so even if you ask, I will not say them to you. I am happy here. I love Potsdam. I love my home on Grove Street. I love my church. I love my coworkers and my employers. I love my farmer's market. I love my friends. I love my small group. I love my mountains. But one thing I am learning is that there are more reasons to live somewhere than because it makes one happy.

There are many facets to the story of this and I wish I could give you a bullet point list of them all. Well, no, I don't wish that. I wish I could sit and have coffee and scones with each of you and say the whole story face to face. I am not so good at virtual relationships as I once was.

I will be going to Texas for an undetermined amount of time, somewhere under six months though. Already some people have issued their concern that I will never be back. Some people have said they'd be disappointed if I came back. Some people have said don't ever come back. Some people have said we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. And honestly, I feel good about writing my story as I go. I feel good about being a cardboard cutout, covered by the grace of God and little else.

This might not work for you and you will demand explanation, proof of a great career opportunity in Dallas or a purpose more certain than "because I feel certain." But the truth is, I feel certain. A few years ago a guest minister prayed these words over me, with his hand on my head:

The Lord's hand is on you for ministry. Do not buy into the secular value system, there are going to be paths ahead of you that just make sense in everyone's eyes and yet there's going to be this little thread of doubt in you, that's the spirit of God. Listen to it, even if it doesn't make sense to the rest of the world. You hear his voice. You can know.

In this, today, I feel like I know.

Our house is the full gamut, whatever that means. This afternoon one person after another sits on our porch, lays on our couch, sits on her bed, hunches on our front steps, tromps up our back stairs, and finally pulls into our driveway in a little red car with New Hampshire plates. The last one, and sorry if you're any of the others, is my favorite. One of the best people I know and certainly one of my most favorite people in the world. We walked around Potsdam for an hour before landing back on my front porch, him leaning up against a pillar and me rocking on the hammock.

I live for times like these.

I thought I was an introvert all these years; I function best when I'm alone. I get the most done when there's one or none around me. I am a powerhouse of duty with no audience to be had. But I'll tell you this: enter someone I love and my heart is a happy place.

Thing number two that I'm learning is that everything is going to be okay, but sometimes okay is a tiny bit better with other people around. I might still be an introvert and maybe someday I'll be a bastion of output--a veritable factory of invention when I'm all by myself. But today and in this season, I am grateful for the true blues in my life. There are many and maybe there are few, but there are some. Some who when we sit across from each other in the dark on my front porch and talk about values and finances and self-employment and church and God and thrift store jeans and Polynesian stir-fry, my heart is glad.

I just got home from an amazing ten days in Texas to a found sweet vintage road bike, a dinner of whole grain rice, our favorite lentil dish, and carrot sticks, and my favorite roommates. And a card from my Ma which had arrived sometime during my time away. The front made me cry and what dropped out when I opened it made me cry more. The name of this blog "Perhaps we are here..." is from a Rilke poem and he's one of my favorite poets. The front of the card contained these words by the very same poet:

"I beg you...to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answers."

I feel as though this is my life recently. Perhaps I ought to be more like my peers who are settling into home ownership and child training and career tracking, but I am not. And if there is one thing this season is teaching me more than anything else, it is that my future may not ever look like anyone else's future, but that's okay. Also, my present might not look like anyone's present, but that's okay. Also, my calling and values might be different than others' calling and values, but that's okay. Also, my sanctification process will be different, but that's okay. Also, I may not have the answers today, but that's okay. Also, everything is going to be okay.

So, dear readers (those five or six of you who are left after URL changing and a severe lack of anything worth reading), here's one thing I need you to know: things are not okay, but they are going to be okay. My heart, my soul, my mind, my dreams, my awareness sin, my prayers, my faith, my lacks, my vision, my hope--these things are not okay, they are precarious and feeble and teetering and maybe, deeply in, there are good things happening, but not today. Not now. But there will be. There will be okay again.

How do I know this? I don't know. I think for maybe the first time in my life I have no guarantee of okay in this lifetime. But what's different now is that I'm okay with that.

We are:

Sweeping our house of miscommunication and dustballs.
Filling our house with lilacs and
Kissing the scarred trees we stole from.
Making movies.
Riding bikes in circles on The May Road.
Moving furniture.
Making plans.
Getting vision.

Falling in love and changing our minds. Everyday.
--because we are girls and girls may.
Turning our porch light on after nine and
Putting bouquets in jars on porch tables.
Sitting side by side on the kitchen floor and
Letting ourselves cry.

Listening to voices we love upstairs.
Assuring ourselves that God hears and
That He answers
Sometimes faster
Sometimes slower.
Rearranging books
Giving things away.
Driving to airports to pick up best friends
With brothers who make us laugh harder than people ought to laugh.

Forcing ourselves to use up the week's end groceries in one dish and
Eating a really yummy new recipe.
Sorting out life.
Looking forward to next Thursday.
Crying in our office.
But not alone.
Believing with only small glimpses of hope.
But hope that feels, for the first time in a very long time,
Possible.

We are possible.

This is not much to you, but to me, to me it is much.

I'm not sure how to start this. I suppose, in a million ways, I've started it a million times over. Small leaves, bitter smatterings, hopeful batterings, and still voices, the beginnings of essays that never were are scattered throughout my draft folder. I'm trying, I told myself for weeks and then I just stopped trying altogether.

And now I am here. Not trying any longer. Not at all.

Someone asks me today if I feel like my faith is getting stronger. No, I answer. Not at all. My faith is smaller today than it's ever been before. But somehow, left with this small trickle of faith, I am beginning to see a bigger God.

I thought that when I finally returned to this page it would be with hurrahs and long, magnificent testimonies of what God did in me. But the truth is that the truth is just the uncovering of one rock after another, building a footpath to somewhere. I don't know where. And, for the first time in my life, I'm really unconcerned about that. Like I said, I've stopped trying.

Correct me if you must, challenge me if you will, but somewhere in the past five months of dark, dark doubts and hard, hard questions, somewhere at the end of my rope, at the end of my spiritual strength, somewhere, maybe in the middle of new death and old death, new doubts and old certainties, somewhere in all that I have begun to see that it is not my efforts that change God's mind. In fact, my efforts have very little to do with God's mind at all.

I have not seen yet, but I have begun to see.

I am not awake yet, but I am awakening

For you and you alone
Awake my soul, Awake my soul and sing,
For the world you love,
Your will be done, Your will be done in me.

Along this footpath these stones are helping me:

Preaching the Gospel to the Dechurched
The Reason for God
Dug Down Deep
This song
This song
and This song
This passage

Update your bookmarks:

lore.unskewed.com
is now sayable.net

Subscribe here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From my sent box:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I wish I had enough money to:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Things I'm grateful for:

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

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

Thank you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

So could my car.

I practice my Spanish grammar, rolling words over my tongue, la nieve se fundirá, la nieve se funde, la nieve se has fundido: the snow will melt, the snow is melting, the snow has melted because I wish for it to be so.

It still sprawls over hills and low slung valleys, but we who are looking see last Summer's leftovers ringing around tree bottoms and lining the roads. We see cupfuls of salt left in the streets, brought to the floor by its melting adversary. We see it because we are looking for it, and because we are discontent with leftovers of last year, because we are looking for the real thing. We don't want to get caught calling our Lord a mere gardener.

"Why are you weeping and Whom do you seek?"

Mary is me and I am she. Both of us looking desperately for some sign of life, some evidence of a promise spoken, both blinded by our expectations and what we do see. It's hard to see past the sprawling snow and the weak blades of brown grass right now. It's hard to feel Spring in the air and to not check the status of frozen, regressing river water. It's hard to see past the ratted clothes of a grounds-keeper and see the One we're looking for.

Because sometimes promises feel void, because three days feel like an eternity, and because stone tombs and winter blues feel like impossibilities.

But it doesn't change the promise--and that is what we cling to. We wait, like Mary, to hear our names with exclamation points at the end. We wait, like Mary, to hear His words and not just His voice. Because His voice feels crowded sometimes, pedestrian and plain. His voice sounds hollow sometimes, rhetorical and placating. But His words, speaking our names, this is how we know.

"Mary!"
"Rabboni!"

And we answer, in spite of it all. Because we who are looking see past.

Reposted from March 2008.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bullet Point Biography:

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

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

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

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

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

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

chris rice--welcome to our world

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

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

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

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

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

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