The past three weekends have taken me on short jaunts to local places. We have traversed on foreign soil, neighboring states, mountains, valleys and magnificent waterfalls. We have packed Nalgenes, dried fruit and good conversation into hours of driving. These are snapshots of a long story and I'm telling you a little of mine now.

We are walking on redemption's road, the highways and byways of heaven and the gospel. We are putting first things first and considering all the parts as a whole--life may be summed in single words, but it cannot be lived so. We are living it so.

I am saying to my roommate tonight that things are too tender to write about right now--that living it is one thing, but telling it is another. I have learned from hindsight and embarrassment that to tell a thing too soon is to touch a fragile thing with a harsh hand: the world is not ready for our trembled telling. So we talk about it on roadtrips, in late night driving with tears and touch, around small tables in small Greek restaurants, and in hushed tones in hallways.

It is the processing that does the work in us, but it is the telling that does the work for us. We tell in actions and we tell in conversations and we tell in time. To rush the process is a shame, but to rush the saying is a sadness. Perhaps, like Rilke said, we are here just to say, but perhaps we ought to wait a bit more to do what we're here for. There's no harm in that.

I am talking to a few these days, writing less, but thinking more than ever. I am planting a garden with deep roots and sturdy theology, I am tending it with the gospel, and I am harvesting redemption. Full bodied, lush redemption.

Post this at all the intersections, dear friends:
Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue,
and let anger straggle along in the rear.
God's righteousness doesn't grow from human anger.
So throw all spoiled virtue and cancerous evil in the garbage.
In simple humility, let our gardener, God,
landscape you with the Word,
making a salvation-garden of your life.

James 1:19-21