Mara's Story

But Ruth said,

“Do not press me to leave you
or to turn back from following you!
Where you go, I will go;
where you lodge, I will lodge;
your people shall be my people,
and your God my God.
Where you die, I will die—
there will I be buried.
May the Lord do thus and so to me,
and more as well,
if even death parts me from you!”

When Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more to her.

So the two of them went on until they came to Bethlehem. When they came to Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them; and the women said, “Is this Naomi?” She said to them,

“Call me no longer Naomi,
call me Mara,
for the Almighty has dealt bitterly with me.
I went away full,
but the LORD has brought me back empty;
why call me Naomi
when the LORD has dealt harshly with me,
and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?”

So Naomi returned together with Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, who came back with her from the country of Moab. They came to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.

-Ruth 1:16-22

I don't think that God sends calamity. I'm not always sure where the blame lies or if we can even talk about blame when disaster and disease and death strike, but I know I don't blame God. God wants life for us, life abundant, and God opposes those things that bring pain and illness and death. I don't know that that brings me all that much comfort, but I do know that it calls me to action. If I can oppose those things that bring pain and illness and death, I know that I'm doing something right and I want so deeply to be doing something right. A little shift in responsibility, a little bit of pneumatology, a dash of a revealed-but-not-yet-realized eschatology, and I've got the closest thing to an answer that I think I'm going to get about what to do about evil. 

None of that is Naomi's concern, though. She is hurting and a debate about the origin of her hurt is not what she's here for. She's lost her husband and both of her sons in a famine. Her whole world was taken from her and now she's left wandering back home with this lost puppy of a daughter-in-law. Even better, they're headed from this place of famine and disaster to a town whose name literally means "House of Bread". It's בֵּית לֶחֶם or Bet Lehem, which we know as Bethlehem. So yeah, if I had just suffered some terrible losses because of a famine and came back home to the House of Bread, just at the time of the harvest, and got greeted with "Oh, hey, Naomi, is that you?" I'd sass off too. Naomi means pleasant and Mara means bitter, so her response to these people who are greeting her is, "I am so far from Pleasant, you may as well call me Bitter. And you know why? Because God is a vindictive fuck."

And I think that's great.

Like I said before, I don't think God causes calamity. I think that humans do enough of that on our own and so we have some power, in some, maybe many, situations, to mitigate that calamity, but Naomi isn't in a place the challenge systemic injustice that leads to man-made famines. She's hurting and she's angry and she feels zero need to hide it. I love it.

I love it because it's honest, but I also love it because that's where I'm at right now. I am bitter and I don't want anyone telling me to be pleasant. I have, over the course of my life, spent copious amounts of time pretending to be Naomi when my real name was Mara and I am over that. I will feel how I feel, thank you very much, and you don't get a say in it. I will not smile when you tell me to smile. I will not dance if I don't feel like dancing. I will mourn when I need to mourn and you do not get to take this away from me.

But bless your heart for trying.

I think that, as a good southern woman who's also an overachieving people-pleasing middle child who found herself on the road to pastoral ministry, I'm not really allowed to be bitter. I should end any bout of mourning or even complaining with a "But I know it'll all be alright!" because anything less is displaying distrust. Distrust of the system, distrust of "the way things are," or distrust of God, they're all the same thing in some circles, and they're dangerous.

But see, I've always thought the system was a little wonky, from the moment that my pastor told me to be quiet and stop talking about things I didn't understand when I challenged unfair dress codes at youth group, and probably before then too. I've always had that idea needling at the back of my brain that things aren't the way they should be and that we should be trying to fix it, not cover it up. Sadness unmourned is sadness perpetuated. Pain demands to be felt. And so when Mara comes to town and demands to be seen as herself, I want to stand up and applaud. At least we've named what's happened.

I never imagined that this is where I would be as I went into my last month of seminary. I never in a thousand years would have thought that I would allow myself to feel this much pain, to acknowledge this much pain in my life. My names mean happiness in two different languages and my blood type is B+. Naming pain is not something that's in my nature. And yet, I've found it to be the most important thing I could have learned over these past three years. Let Naomi be Mara because Mara is what life has made her. Pain demands to be felt and it will be, whether we name it now or ten years from now. The important thing is to be where you are and not where someone else thinks you should be.

But, what I'm seeing, as I go on with life, is that while pain is real and shouldn't be ignored or set aside, pain is also not the whole story. And maybe that's what people have saying all along and I just missed the message, but there's something much more profound about having lived with your monsters and deciding that yes, in fact, there is something more than that. The Gospel, in the full light of our electric suns, turns into so many platitudes, but when you've been plunged into darkness, you realize it was the light you needed all along.

The book of Ruth isn't really about Ruth's story. Sure, Ruth makes this promise, and Ruth travels to a land that is foreign to her, and Ruth does the work of gathering food and gathering a husband, but the person who's redeemed at the end of the story is Naomi. She's the one who holds the baby Obed, whose life has been restored to her at the end of all this struggle. And I find it beautiful that this story that we've wrapped up in romantic love, that we read at weddings and quote to each other in moments of devotion, has nothing really to do with romance. It has to do with restoration. It has to do with naming the bitterness we feel and, at the end of the ordeal, naming the new life that has come out of our struggles.

Now, I'm not there yet. I'm still bitter and any restoration in my spirit is a work in progress. But I have to tell myself that that's okay, because it is. It's not a moral failing and it's not something to hide. I might not be pleasant, but at least I'm me.

And that's something beautiful, and something worth sticking around for. 

Opening the Box

Content warning: This post is a reflection on my experience being triggered by the nation-wide conversation around sexual abuse and assault, which took off with the #MeToo movement and has come back into attention as Dr. Christine Blasey Ford prepares to testify against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. While I don't directly reference anything that would trigger me as a survivor, if you know that this is not content you should be reading right now, close this window and go take care of yourself. 

In some ways, this is a reflection inspired by this article on Slate. It does offer a little bit more hope than I'm able to right now. Still, at the end of the day, I long to live in a world where sexual misconduct is universally condemned and where survivors don't have to relive some of the most difficult times in their lives in order to make a change. If you have the energy to read it, that's what the post below is trying to express. 

---

Listen, I had put my demons in a box. Sure, they had carried with them safety and intimacy and a whole host of emotions, but at least they were gone. I had locked all of this away as a matter of survival and on the whole, I wasn't all that upset with my life. I had good friends, I had aspirations, I had opportunities for travel. My world was sufficient.

And then I went to a training on preventing child abuse, both physical and sexual, and I couldn't understand why all I could do was stare at the table as the statistics were read and the presenter tried hard to get the people in the room to understand how widespread the problem was and how urgent the need to address it. My hands clenched into fists under the table, grasping tight to the lid of my demons' box, but by the end of the training, I had resources and I had plans for action and I grasped those as tight as I could. By the end of the year, I would be pushing for an update on my church's Safe Sanctuary policy and running a short training on the policy and on recognizing abuse. The demons might have rattled the box, but I took courage from it. I chose to confront as much of my past as I was able to at the time and it galvanized me. I made a difference.

From time to time over the next few years, the box would shake, but never burst. There would be tremors, but the world would always right itself again after. Sometimes, I'd walk over to the box, because I knew that I had locked away good, important things in there too, things that I needed, but anytime the chance came to open it, I ran away. I'm very good at running away.

Up until the day that I wasn't. That day, I felt secure in myself and buoyed by the possibility of new and good and exciting things, and I walked up to the box and opened it up, standing still and strong in the face of what might come. My demons, hungry for fresh air, rushed out and away and I could gather the good things from my box and close it back up, empty. For a time, I waited for my demons to come home, but days and weeks passed and it seemed like maybe I was free.

And then #MeToo happened. Then everything was story after story after story of abuse and assault, affirmation upon affirmation that women should be believed, that all survivors regardless of gender should be believed, article after article of the horrors of surviving, reporting, being disbelieved, being retraumatized, putting yourself back together and getting torn apart again and again. The conversation around sexual abuse and assault was everywhere and it was important and I felt that I had to participate, so I did. And as I did, my demons came home to roost.

Now, I'm strong. I know this. I know that I am loved and that I am valuable and that I did not cause my demons. I know that I am worthy of feeling powerful emotions, of safety, of intimacy. I know that I can't box all this back up again. But the demons go after these strengths. The demons use old lies and speak them again in new ways. The demons take the breath out of my lungs and the thoughts out of my head and leave me trapped in this vacuum chamber with no light, no sound, no life. They're only in my head but somehow they paralyze me. They are ancient and have worked against stronger people than me. To fight them seems impossible. Better to let them do what they're going to do and hope there's something of me left when the air comes back. So far, there has been.

But I don't have time to be fighting demons. I have so much else that I need to do. I want to hear the stories of survivors who explain #WhyIDidntReport, want to sit with them in their grief and pain, the pain that I know so well, but I can't. I want to pay attention to Dr. Ford's testimony on Thursday, but I can't. I want to share posts that say that I stand with survivors, but I can't. Every time I turn my attention to this conversation, my demons pound at my door, at the barriers I've put up, and they tear at me until I can't stand being in my own head anymore. Demons are fed by this world we're living in right now. They are strong and they do not keep to the shadows. And I do not have much hope that that will change anytime soon.

God, how long will we have to do this? How long will people take another's body and use it the way they want, whenever they want, without consequence? How long will this fight continue? How long will I have to stand against the guilt and shame and fear that should never have been mine? God, why do you let us live like this? God, why do you let this hurt me?

Jesus, Lord, we need a change.

Those Who Mourn

This week on the blog, I'd like to bring you the sermon I preached on July 15 as a part of a sermon series on the Beatitudes, the opening verses of the Sermon on the Mount found in Matthew 5-7. This sermon is the second in the series, based around the verse, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted." The other scriptures for the morning were from Genesis 16, Psalm 42, and Revelation 21. 

I love the Beatitudes, and I especially love them given the role they play in Jesus' teaching. The Sermon on the Mount is presented in Matthew like Jesus just sat down and spoke it, but it’s more likely that the author of the gospel of Matthew was collecting together common teachings of Jesus, things he always used to say. Jesus was always saying things like, 

“Blessed are the peacemakers.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Blessed are those who mourn.

You are the salt of the earth.

You are the light of the world.

A city on a hill cannot be hidden.”

I think it’s especially important that these were things that Jesus was always saying given that our beatitude for this morning is, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted,” and I think remembering what people always used to say is a way that we comfort ourselves and mourn all at the same time. My friend Jessica, who died earlier this year, she was always saying, “It’s never too late to follow your dreams.” She had left a career and gone back to school to major in voice because she her dream was to be an opera singer. I believe she would have done it too, if she had been given more time. 

So as we focus ourselves for the sermon, I want you to think of something that someone who is no longer with us was always saying, some story that you tell to your friends or your children or your grandchildren. Hold that memory of who that person was in your mind and your heart for just a moment.

And would you pray with me?

God, you have told us that we are blessed. Help us see that. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

Now, what I usually like to do in a sermon is give some historical context, look at where the passage we’re focused on is in respect to the verses before and after it, maybe throw some Greek in there, all so that we have a better understanding of this book that is sacred to us.

I don’t feel the need to do that with the beatitude for today. I don't feel the need to do that because grief is a universal human experience. We come into this world crying and our pain only gets deeper from there. I know many people in this room have experience deep grief in their lives, and so have deep experience with both mourning and comfort. There are many places in the Bible where Jesus's lived experience differs from ours. Grief is not one of them.

We know that Jesus mourns. We see him mourning over Jerusalem. We see him try to take time for himself after the death of John the Baptist. We see him crying at the death of his friend Lazarus.

In fact, the Bible itself is no stranger to mourning. It is full of stories of people who are mourning and who are seen by God. Take this psalm for this morning for example, or the story of Hagar, Sarai's handmaiden, her slave. Hagar is so moved that God comes to her in her time of deep pain and grief that changes what she calls God. She calls God the one who sees me. The Bible tells us that God sees grief.

And that is what this beatitude is telling us as well. Jesus sees the mourning that is happening all around him, that still happens today. He sees the pain. And he turns to those in pain and he says, you are blessed. I see you. I have not forgotten about you. You are blessed.

It is a miraculous thing that Jesus says here, because we do not think that those who mourn are blessed. I would offer up to you the fact that the world around us thinks that those who mourn are weak. We see this in the amount of time we allow people to mourn, the time they are allowed to take away from work in order to mourn, and the services that are available to those who have suffered a great loss. It is insufficient. And so many of us walk around wounded, limping for so long that it becomes part of our gait. We tell ourselves that we have to be OK, we tell others that we're fine, we allow everyone to tell us how strong we are, and all the while there is an ache inside us that is never really going to go away.

Because we think that those who mourn are weak, we walk around unhealed, uncomforted. We see that this is true when we look at those who suffered a loss early in life. Those who had a traumatic event in childhood, such as abuse, an illness, or losing or being separated from a parent or parents, bear the marks of that trauma for the rest of their lives. The brain struggles to develop, the immune system flounders, and the body fails to become all that it could be, all because the body is trying to handle the stress that the child has encountered.

We see similar effects in adults too. The stress associated with grief can literally break your heart, causing a condition that makes it more difficult for your heart to function. Stress, when left untreated and unchecked, can cause your body to become less able to heal itself. As we hold in our pain, our muscles react, tensing up and knotting themselves together until it can become difficult to move. Pain and loss put a weight on us that can be too much to bear, and we so often go about our days as if we have already set it down.

But that is not what Jesus tells us to do here. Jesus tells us to mourn, because those who mourn are blessed. If Jesus sees our pain, we should too. Why should we mourn? Because those who mourn will be comforted.

I think many of us have experienced that comfort after a loss, when our family and friends and community and church come together and wrap us up in support. We get this beatitude intuitively because we know that when grief visits our doorstep and we cry out to those around us, we will be comforted. This is a great and good thing that we as members of the body of Christ try to do for each other, and it is a great and good grace when it happens in the world.

But what about when we mourn and are not comforted? What about the people around the world who mourn the loss of their loved ones because of war or famine or poverty? What about the people who mourn the loss of the lives they once had before disaster rolled into town? What about those who have suffered a tragedy that left a wound no amount of comfort could heal? How long are we to wait for comfort? How long does anyone have to live with this blessed mourning?

Thankfully, not forever. We might be blessed when we mourn now, but we have been promised that in whatever world comes after this one, there will be no more mourning. There will be no more pain. All things will be made new and every tear will be wiped away by the God who loved us too much to stay apart from us. This is the picture painted by the end of Revelation, when there is a new heaven and a new earth. I'm not one to spend time lingering on eschatological fantasies, but I think one of the most beautiful promises in the Bible is that the tears of grief that are beyond comfort in this world will be wiped away in the next. Jesus has promised us that. He has blessed us with it.

So, what do we take away from our beatitude for this week? Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted? Well, I think the first thing we have to remember is that we are blessed when we mourn. Life brings pain to each of us and we need to allow ourselves to feel it, to mourn all our loses whenever they come, to be open to mourning whenever it comes to us again. Blessed are those who mourn does not apply to only those living in the space between death and burial.

The second takeaway is those who mourn will be comforted, but that comfort may not come in the ways we expect. It may be the comfort of our loved ones or our community surrounding us. It may be the comfort of our faith, as the psalmist writes. It may be comfort that comes to us straight from God in this life, as Hagar experienced. Or it may be the comfort that can only be given when deep no longer has to call to deep but when we are reunited with the great Love of the universe which made us and longs to hold us, to wipe away each unconsoled tear from our eyes, and to offer us the comfort that will last for all eternity. Blessed are those who mourn, our Lord tells us, because they will be comforted. Amen. 

Done

I want to come at the world with wisdom. Now that I've got (yet) another year of higher education under my belt, I want to speak thoughtfully and carefully and do that slow and steady work of changing minds and hearts through information and thought structures (because that's how I change my heart and mind). I want to be so zen about everything and be willing to let people make the mistakes they need to make because at the ripe old age of twenty-eight, I've seen most of all there is to see and I know most of the kinds of problems people will face and I know things. I also know that I don't know anything close to one percent of all the things there are to know and that the ripe old age of twenty-eight is just as young and naïve as seventeen was, but the point is that I want to rest confident in the knowledge that I have and proceed with the strength that Knowing How to Learn gives you.

I also want to come at the world with emotion, with openness and vulnerability. I want to see people, to get to know them, to open up the parts of my heart and soul that I've squirreled away, not unlike Gollum, hidden in a deep and dark cave for fear that what I hold precious will be stolen. As a spoiler alert for those who cling to their deepest selves, retreating through tunnels and caverns to the places that they hide from the light, what you've got is not so bad or so important. I mean, it is. It matters a whole lot to you, which means that it matters. But you will find, when you bring the hidden things out into the light, that other humans, humans you know, have hidden the same kinds of things away, sequestered similar parts of their souls, and even though your secrecy is fundamental to you right now, your deepest darkest secrets are much easier to handle in the daylight, where the very real shadows they cast are better defined. This is a horrifying thought. Emotions are scary and squishy and problematic and terrifying. I've also been told they're important, so I want my world to include them.

I want to know everything.

I want to know nothing.

I want to have a solution.

I want to still be figuring things out.

I want everything to make sense.

I want to be comfortable with paradox.

I want to be able to say the exact right thing.

I want to be able to sit in silence and to express my confusion as needed.

I want to be hopeful.

We have been living in the opposite of hope. We are breathing in a low level of stress every day, brought about by the uncertainty of tomorrow, the worry over stability that we're all experiencing in some way or other. I know that the stress that I've been feeling has been related to the seven classes and two jobs and the strain on relationships and pages upon pages of writing and reading that I've been needing to do, but I also know that there's something beyond those localized concerns, a global rumbling that breaks through to the surface more frequently than it should. And I have these big bold questions and I've experienced so many life-giving things over the past year and I want to reflect on all of that, but there are bigger, bolder questions that need to be asked about who we want to be as a people, as nations, as a world, and how we want to be led and what kind of dream for society we want hold and what narratives we want to pursue. Does the circle grow ever wider? Do we trust that expansion of heart as the norm for humanity? Or do we believe in the swings from acceptance to isolation and back to acceptance? Is there a purpose or goal to be found at all in this existence we're all presumably participating in?

I'm coming down off a mountain of sleep deprivation and caffeine, so who knows how I'll really settle with any of these thoughts. I'm processing an eye-opening year in terms of the importance of friendships and relationships and just people in general and who knows how that will impact how I see the world around me. The stress since November has stretched time, tricked me into counting days like I should have counted weeks, and every action seems more significant now, like a twitch in the fabric that could one day form a galaxy. I know that can't be right, that on the whole each decade in humanity has felt to those who lived it like the most significant while that's just not statistically possible, but when life proceeds at a breakneck pace, every breath feels important. It's hard to get any kind of distance to see what's really going on.

I feel more at peace. I feel more right.

I just thought I'd feel calmer than this.

My Beloved Monster and Me

Sometimes I wish I could take a situation in my life and make it into something. I'd pull the stress it brings me out of my body, gentling disentangling it from my spine and shoulders and neck and jaw until it sat in front of me, a pile of dark grey ribbons and coarse fabric. I'd breathe out the life it's been taking from me, bright and white and sparkling, and it'd settle, effervescent, among the grey. I'd sit with the emotions it causes, letting them bubble and brew until they seeped out of the palms of my hands, the middle of my chest, the depths of my gut, vibrant red and viscous. These I'd gather too, and drip from my fingertips onto the gathered light and dark. Then I'd pace around with these understandable things, with Stress, the embodiment of a problem, and Life, the potential that it saps, and Emotion, the reaction it brings about in my being, and I'd let my insides writhe with frustration at this thing that is not yet fully the monster that this situation is in my life.

Then I'd get to work.

I would see what the skeleton for the monster needs to be, what bones it must have if it is to stand and take on a recognizable shape. Ribs of oppression, fibula and tibia and femur and radius and ulna and humerus of aggression, vertebrae of inertia, clavicle of vanity, skull of arrogance, and metacarpus and metatarsus and phalanges of unkindness, uncaring. It would hunch, of course. It would lumber, of course. But it would also tower and strike with surprising alacrity, a gleefulness all its terrible own, and so I'd need to think about the ribbons of stress and how they'd cover and connect the bones, dark grey enveloping a deep ink black. I'd need to think about the emotions that truly make up the monster, that will comprise its veins and organs and circulate through it, and how they can be both healthy and diseased like a liver before and after drink. I'd place them so that the monster could live and breathe and move and I'd spend hours wondering about the monster's nerves and whether I'd give it the grace of feeling and pain. Sometimes I think I could face my monsters more easily if they were numb. They are made of me and so I know that the question is moot. Then, after the husk was assembled, I'd color in the details, green and blue and a sickly striping yellow covering all eight feet of the monster's height, adding horns and claws, spindly and spikey, as needed.

And when the monster stands in front of me and I have the full measure of its power, I'd siphon into it a little of the life it took from me, coaxing the ephemeral past its fangs and into the lively bits I'd shaped as best I could for it. I'd stand back and watch as the monster woke and began to flex its digits and open its eyes. I'd wait for it to focus on me, innocent as new things are, and then I'd act.

I would take my monster by the hand and walk it down the hall and sit it down beside me, scaly knee resting against fleshy. I'd sit and wait as it acclimated itself to the world, to the stories it carries inside of it, to the being it inherited. I'd let it take as long as it needed. And then I expect, as the air rustles its lungs and the spark of thought danced along from its brain to its mouth, the first thing my dear monster would say to me, in a rasp unused to voice, would be, "Why?"

And then we'd talk, my monstrous love and I. We would sit and stand, bound and bounce, pace and ponder while the events leading up to its formation flowed between us. The horns and barbs and claws would grow as we dug deeper, talking through the day and long into the night, and I'd be scared when he stood and I could see the full strength of this being made of the pain I had been carrying. I'd like to think that at that moment, I'd remember that this was my monster, something I'd made. If I could remember that, if I could only remember the hours before, maybe then I'd be able to calm the monster down, shrink it with kind words and self-understanding. After all, it's only my monster and I care for it so. Otherwise I would have let the problem fly over my head like so many birds, never letting it nest in my heart. But we always love our demons more than we ought, never sending them back out into the world when they could curl up beside us and sleep. I am not at all sure that I know how to deal with my beloved monster as I ought.

Sometimes I wish I could take a situation in my life and make it into something. It's a wish born out of a desire to do something, anything, with my sense of powerlessness. (Never mind that the powerlessness is sometimes self-imposed.) The flesh and bone would give me something to stand in front of, to hurl accusations and abuse at as needed. I think that's maybe what I was trying to do this Lent. I could name the monster, sure, and its name would sound like Loneliness or Rejection or Uncertainty. I confessed to one of my classmates the other day that being ordained, being allowed to dedicate my life to serving the Body of Christ, that's the first thing in my life that I've wanted. I wasn't prepared for the highs and lows of this kind of journey, one that could end in devastation or elation. I'm never prepared to care about something because caring opens you up to hurt and I... I don't do hurt. I'm cheerfully apathetic and I think that on some level, I stepped away so that I could stay that way. I stepped away so that I wouldn't have to shape the monster to begin with.

But see, that's not what God does. That's not what Love does. When Love creates, Love makes something new. Love makes something and calls it good and very good. And when Love sees a situation in Life, Love, too, wishes for incarnation. It's just that Love has actual power and so when Love faces demons, Love can come down to Earth and set things to rights. Love names our monsters alongside us and shows us how to redeem them. Love shows us how to be love for others and for ourselves.

As we approach this Holy Week, moving ever closer to Friday, we would do well to remember that Love came down to Earth. Love came down to Earth and was made of flesh and bone and we stood in front of him and hurled accusations and abuse at him. We have made a monster out of Love and day by day, we crucify him anew in the myriad ways we deny love to each other, neighbors near and far. We need to sit with this, scream and shout and be with this, until Love can calm us down with kindness and understanding born out of the great love being given to us. We are called and claimed, friends. That is what Love does. When we see this, when we can believe it, then we can truly live into the Resurrection we've been waiting for, living forty days in the desert preparing for, longing for. Everything I want to put into my monster is taken from me on Friday and I am left with a void where what I thought I was used to be.

And then comes Sunday.

Provided For

I was just thinking that my heartache needed some balm. The Avett Brothers came on shuffle. 

I was just thinking that I needed money for tires on my car. Extra hours at work and two tutoring jobs came through. 

I was just thinking that I needed more time. All of my professors have pushed back deadlines this week. 

I was just thinking that I needed someone who knew me. I got three hours of texts and phone calls and a pile of emails.

I was just thinking that time away from the city would do my heart some good. I got half an hour of a gorgeous drive out to Barnesville Road. 

I was just thinking that I could use some people-time for a change. I got four people gathered around a television, talking about life and living.

I was just thinking that I needed a win. I got a national championship. 

Remember

Remember.

Remember that we all have different eyes, different minds, different hearts, at least at first, and so the things that seem obvious to you, the things that you see first, the things that jump from the world outside of you or the page in front of you, the things that walk in through the open windows and doors of your eyes and mind and settle in your heart, those things may not be the same for anyone else you meet. You are unique. Your way of interacting with the world is unique. And while it is unlikely that you will see or think something that is completely different from what every other human has thought, it is equally certain that your perspective will bring something new to those around you. Do not be afraid to share what you see.

Remember.

Remember that you are living your journey while others are living theirs. Even when you travel alongside each other, every other person on the road is as concerned with their own journey as you are with yours. The secret loves and fears that you carry, the tiny obsessions that you let dig at you, little foxes running in the vineyard, others have their own, tails flicking past branches that they too wish would grow. It is not easy to be a human, no matter where you are, and our own difficulty blinds us to the difficulty of others. We hold in common not only our problems but also the shame with which we hide them until we can bear our self-imposed loneliness no longer. But because you know that your heart is full-to-bursting, look for the fullness in the hearts of others. Look to their loneliness just as you wish someone would look to yours.

Remember.

Remember that you can split your heart, that it will be in multiple places at once if you've been loving properly and that you have, indeed, loved properly, no matter how much you're afraid that you haven't. That is the way to combat the loneliness, by the way, to repeat the ever-growing litany of people that you've loved or who have loved you or both, and to remember that love comes in a wide variety of forms. It is beautiful, in a way, that English only has one word for this kind of affection, that we elide fraternal and passionate and self-giving love into one word, requiring you to uncomfortably grapple with the depth of your admiration for any given individual while affirming the self-sacrificial nature of the very act of caring about anyone at all. The people that you pray for, the people you have affection for, the people you invest in, all those people hold an ever-increasing bit of your heart and this is not a bad thing. I know you feel the emptiness beside you at night deep down in your gut, but remember, remember, love, that it is not a true reflection of the love you have waiting for you out in the wide world.

Remember the myriad of places you have been. Celebrate the absurd amount of travel you have done, the sheer number of beds (and couches and futons and planes and trains and patches of ground) that you have slept on over the course of your life. You've been incredibly welcomed and accepted everywhere you've gone and that has been a wonderful privilege. You have filled the years of your life with such activity merely by saying yes to the embarrassment of opportunities that walked you way. You've suited yourself to the travel, to be sure, and worn out the bottoms of suitcases and shoes, but it would not do to forget this concrete representation of the blessing laid upon your life. There is something to be said for letting your feet acquaint themselves with a diversity of soil.

Remember the arms that have held you. I know you like to dwell on those moments that felt like they could have lasted past the crumbling of the Earth, because we all like to dwell on those moments when we become the sole focus of another's caring embrace, but those were not the only arms to ever hold you. You've now spent enough time with a tiny one to know that you must have tired out your parents' and grandparents' and aunts' arms when you were small yourself. You've passed the peace enough times to lose count of the number of strangers whose arms encircled you. You've been a part of enough groups to know that a hug is an act that anchors you, makes you be here, makes you share space you'd rather have kept for yourself. Man, I bet Jesus gave great hugs, arms stretched wide enough to bring in every human in time and space but wrapped around each individual with the kind of intense, knowing love that only an infinite God could lavish on the beloved. Remember the arms that have held you and know that even the most wonderful moments only dimly speak of a greater love yet to be, and somehow now.

Remember you are loved.

Remember you are claimed.

Remember you belong.

Remember you're forgiven.

Remember you are freed.

Remember you are loved.

A Snow Day (Internal) Conversation

Nobody's going to notice if you don't post on time. Also, you have a lot of other work to be doing. Go do that work.

Yeah, but it's a commitment I've made to myself and with so many other promises I've made falling to the wayside, shouldn't I at least make a small effort to be the person that I want myself to be?

No one said not writing a post had anything to do with your moral character.

Yeah, but nobody didn't say it, either.

You know what does say something about your moral character? The fact that this paper that you're meant to be working on was due at noon and seven hours later, it still hasn't been turned in.

I didn't know it was due at noon! I found that out at 11:45am!

Because you didn't read the syllabus.

Because I had this professor last semester and I thought I knew what was going on and also-

Also because you were talking on facebook chat as the professor was reviewing the syllabus rather than listening?

Again, I thought I knew what was going on.

It's an easy mistake to make and it's not the end of the world.

...Notice the lack of forgiveness for being on facebook in class?

I did, actually. Let's just throw it along with all the other things that I've explained away rather than repented of. It's a big pile. What's one more item?

An item like the paper you have due tomorrow morning that you have yet to start?

That's, like, two pages. I have time. And thoughts about how it's going to go. And besides, I need a brain break. I've been up to my eyeballs in books about Charles Wesley for hours now.

You've spent more of those hours doing anything but actually researching and writing.

Time spent investing in relationships is not wasted!

Time spent investing in relationships is not wasted.

Well, ill-timed then.

God and humans do not show up according to our invented schedules.

Which implies that more time should be spent in preparation. We've known about all of these assignments since January. There's no excuse--

Yes, but there is room for self-compassion. This is not an easy time.

That's not an excuse.

Only to be kind to yourself.

It's not a kindness I feel like I've earned.

No one has. That doesn't mean it isn't necessary, especially for you.

Okay. That sounds fake, but okay.

When will you learn?

Oh.

Probably after the next paper.

And the next?

And the next.

A Dragon's Tale

Once upon a time, there was a dragon, and I’ll remind you from the beginning of this story that dragon is not necessarily a derogatory term. There are good dragons and there are bad dragons across folk tales and other literature, just like every other kind of being, except for maybe orcs, who I think are maybe all bad (by definition, right?). Point being, once upon a time there was a dragon and identifying her as a dragon does not make any pre-existing claim about the morality of her overarching character.

Now, this dragon knew she wanted to be different than she was. She was quite happy with some parts of herself: her chestnut and silver and gold scales (shut up, you imagine your dragons how you want and I’ll imagine mine and mine has chestnut scales, okay? They glow kinda red in the sunset and they’re lovely), the strength of her wings, the agility of her mind. She worried over her claws, though, and the way she’d swing her tail without thinking, and how dangerous the combination of the strength of her jaw and the sharpness of her teeth could be when she went on the attack. As a rule, she didn’t want to hurt anyone. She wanted to be one of those kind and wise old dragons that were sought out for their knowledge and advice and sometimes protection.

So she went on a journey to learn how to be kind and wise. She flew away from her places of comfort and sought out the places where the wise lived with their castles and libraries and extinct volcanoes. She spent many borrowed gold coins (not all dragons have hoards) and gained knowledge, a new way of knowing, and the conviction that the best progress might simply be asking better questions. But for all she learned, it didn’t seem that wisdom followed directly from knowledge and anyway, she knew she needed to learn how to be kind. She winced at the claw marks she left.

She flew away again and after a few days settled in another new land. There she folded her wings and made a home because she knew that kindness did not come easily to her and that her search for wisdom had only sharpened her claws and made her more careless with her tail. But no matter how much she worked at kindness, no matter how many words she heard from those of great kindness, she still found her knowledge coming out of her mouth like her flame: such potential to be useful and life-giving but mostly harmful undirected burning, like an out-of-control forest fire, until maybe one day she hypothetically finds herself pacing in beer aisle of the grocery store, rehashing her thoughts about baptism loudly on the phone to a dragon friend, convinced of her rightness as she stalks up and down past the bottles until she sweeps through the checkout and actually starts listening to what’s being said. That’s just an example of what might could have happened. And after that, she might find herself discouraged in spite of all the kindness that had been shown to her and walking into the woods, looking for a cave to settle into until her heart cools.

But the dragon had missed something fundamental all along: kindness and wisdom are not easy for any dragon. All dragons are born with claws and tails and teeth and it takes practice to be aware of the space you occupy and to control the way the fire escapes from your mouth. Every dragon stumbles along the way because dragon feet are not used to walking it and the wind makes flying impossible, at least at first. There’s not much use in screeching at yourself because you’ve fallen. You’re a dragon. You’re simply going to fall from time to time. Stock up on aloe, burn ointment, and bandages for others, but don’t forget that those talons on the end of your feet can cut you too, so be kind and understanding with yourself as you pick yourself back up.

I would love to tell you that the dragon preserved on the path in spite of it all, that she learned the self-control that leads to wisdom and kindness and was able to master the mindset that enables her to use her powers for good, not evil, but unfortunately, the dragon is still figuring things out. She asks, though, that you be patient with her, as best as you can, and pray for her as she learns how to walk through and fly and finally soar on the winds that enliven and push her through every step of her journey. Hopefully that patience and prayer will be enough.

Is Your Heart Right?

Allow me a couple of minutes of unapologetically Christian-centric discourse.

John Wesley said in a sermon one time, "Every wise man, therefore, will allow others the same liberty of thinking which he desires they should allow him; and will no more insist on their embracing his opinions, than he would have them to insist on his embracing theirs. He bears with those who differ from him, and only asks him with whom he desires to unite in love that single question, 'Is thy heart right, as my heart is with thy heart?'"

It strikes me here that the question assumes that you know your heart is right. To be generous, the situation is not that you simply know with an untested conviction that your heart is right, but that you have explored the motivations of your heart and are striving to align it with God's heart for us and for the world. In making your own heart right with God's heart, you make your heart right with the other's. And so, in a moment of reconciliation, but not necessarily agreement, you come to your sister or brother (in Christ) and ask, "Is your heart right, as my heart is with your heart?"

That question is a quote from 2 Kings 10:15, which the NRSV renders "Is your heart as true to mine as mine is to yours?" (The difference in wording comes from using the Hebrew text rather than the Greek Septuagint translation.) It's a little ironic that a plea for peacemaking should come out of this section of the Bible-- Jehu, the speaker in this quote, has just recently taken over control of the northern kingdom of Israel after a coup in which the former king, Ahab, and his family have been killed, including his wife, Jezebel, who was thrown from her window in her full royal attire. Two verses after this exchange with a supporter of his, Jehu wipes out the rest of Ahab's supporters in Samaria. Peacemaking in this period of Israel's history involves more war than introspection. And with that context in mind, the NRSV reading makes more sense. It's not so much "Are we united in righteousness?" as it is "Are you backing me up? Because we're about to cause some people some trouble."

Still, the interaction has value. "'Is your heart as true to mine as mine is to yours?' Jehonadab answered, 'It is.' Jehu said, 'If it is, give me your hand.' So he gave him his hand." Jehu does not ask for Jehonadab's thoughts or detailed policy plans. He asks about his heart in relation to his own heart. Do you hold the same ideals I do? Do you care for what I care for? Are we united in purpose? Once the answer comes, it is embodied; it takes an action. He gives him his hand along with his word.

This should all speak an uncomfortable word to us. We have forgotten how to unite. We have forgotten to see the trueness, the rightness in another's heart. And we have neglected the importance of embodied relationships; our digital discourses are often the only conversations we have (and we all know that the way we act online is not how we act out in the world). Our interaction often stops without finding its way to actions we can take together. We have forgotten, or we have radically and negatively changed, how to be together. Church, we have long forgotten how to be together. Nation, we have perhaps more recently and heartbreakingly forgotten how to be together. Our world has changed and we, in our distraction, have not remembered who we should be. We should be people who desire to unite in love.

Tomorrow, we start Lent. We start this time where we remember who we are and work on how we are, in preparation for the remembrance and celebration of whose we are and how we became that way. I can't highlight for you the ways you have lost your desire to unite with others in love. I can't show you the moments when you have insisted on your own way rather than asking after the heart of another. I can't bring to your attention every moment of unkindness or boastfulness or irritation or resentfulness. I can only tell you that I am abundantly aware of the unloving moments in my life and that my plan is to allow a work to be done in me during this season so that when Easter comes around, I'll be better able to see the renewed world as I should, as a place that is abundantly loved and redeemed from its brokenness.

For me, this work is going to mean stepping away from most social media, primarily facebook, because I know that I don't use it properly and because I know that it hasn't helped me be where I physically am. I really do think that now more than ever is a time to be where you are, to see and engage with the people around you and build community in order to help heal people and the nation, so that's what I'll be doing. I'll still be posting here-- it was actually giving up facebook for Lent eight years ago that got me to start a blog in the first place, so maybe similarly fruitful project will come out of this Lent-- but I won't be sharing it to facebook, so if you want to keep up with me, sign up for emails in the sidebar. I'm pretty sure it'll only send you an email when I post so you know to check in at your leisure.

Okay, that was that. For those of you who scrolled down to see where the Jesus-talk ended, know that I'm taking a break from social media between now and April 16th, so if you want to keep up with posts, sign up for the emails. I'd also ask that you join me in taking the next month and a half or so to really think about the heart of the other, to try to empathize with everyone who crosses your path or newsfeed or timeline. It's the exhausting but necessary work of community building and I'd love your help with it. It's hard because humans (including ourselves) are frustrating and irritating individuals, but I believe in us.

We got this.

Claimed

Listen, I just don't know what to do about me.

Some days I am astounded at how self-absorbed I am. I'll look back at a journal entry or a blog post or a message I've sent and be struck by how the only thing that I have considered (and I'll have considered it at length) is myself. I'll walk away from a conversation realizing that I turned it into something about me when there was a real living, breathing human being across from me that I should have been listening to and caring for and loving properly. I make decisions taking only my own problems into account and even actions that I meant for good were done with self-preservation in the back of my mind. I care only my problems, my pain, my worries, and any pain that isn't felt by me or problem that isn't experienced by me isn't real to me.

Some days I surprise myself with just how hateful I can be to me. I'll let the endless litany of irredeemable faults continue long after I should have stopped it in its tracks. I'm sure parts of it are familiar to some of you: I'm so useless, so lazy, too fat, too poor, too dumb, too loud too loud too loud, too harsh, incapable, unlovable, unworthy, and, my personal favorite, too ugly to be valuable in anyone's eyes. Those days, the litany days, those are the days when I know that everyone else knows that I've never earned a seat at any table I've sat at, have never really contributed anything, could never really contribute anything, and am just a waste of oxygen and space. And even on the non-litany days, on the days when I'm buoyed by my friends and my family, I still find that self-hatred has been at the root of some of my struggles, an absolute unwillingness to forgive myself for human mistakes, a chorus of stupidstupidstupid playing in the background of every memory I bring to mind.

I wallow in the muck and mire of the twin sins of self-obsession and self-rejection. They feed each other, I think, or at least work together, two drainage pipes emptying into this pit I'm stuck in, that I choose to be in, and it's so hard to see clearly from down here.

But listen, friends, we were not made for life in mire. We were never destined for the muck.

We end up there, sure. I don't want to downplay the severity of our fall-- the litany of lies that I let play sinks deep down into my heart to places that I've never explored and bubbles up after every conversation or interaction and in the quiet moments before the decision to act. It stains everything, just as my inward turn to see only my own pain is writ large in our society, depriving us of the empathy that would inhibit our many and myriad unjust actions. Sin is real, individual and societal, and we don't like to hear it and we don't like to see it, not only because of the deep pain it causes us and others, but also because it reminds us over and over again that we cannot fix ourselves and we so desperately want to be fixed. But we do not live as those without hope, because we were never meant to be sin's.

I know that I am loved beyond measure. (Apparently Martin Luther, when he was being tempted, would yell, "I am baptized!" and I like that, that the memory of that claim on his life was what he needed to get through a trial.) I know that for all my faults and all my turnings-away, I live as one redeemed (as are you). The weighty pull of the muck and the mire, chain-like though it may feel, has been cancelled by a first-century Jew from Palestine. The only claim it has on our lives is the one we let it have when we forget who and whose we are. Though I daily need to watch out for and work against selfishness in its many forms, I can silence the voices that take away my worth. I know my value and where it comes from. Anyone else's opinion, including my own, doesn't matter.

Valentine's Day 2017

It is Valentine’s Day and for the first time in years, I’ve realized that I need a man. 

Let me explain.

I do not need a man to change a flat tire for me. I don’t need a man to help me carry a heavy box up the stairs. I don’t need a man to catch and release a spider for me, help me jump my car, move my furniture, build my bookcase, fix my computer, fix my internet, show me how to grill a steak, or walk me home at night. I don’t need a man to teach me how to be strong or smart or authoritative or brave. I’ve seen Hidden Figures. I now know how to be all of those things and how to run in heels and put an astronaut into orbit and bring them back.

Even though I swing that way, I don’t need a man to hold me as I fall asleep at night or wake up beside me in the morning. Though Lord knows how much I’d like to hear it, I don’t need a man to tell me how intelligent or funny or beautiful or valuable I am. I know the measure of my worth.  I don’t need to be homesick for a man’s arms or cared for by a man. There is such an astounding amount of love in my life from my friends, family, and community that romantic love is, as a matter of fact, superfluous in my life. I imagine it’d be so nice but I am not incomplete because I lack it. A life without love is terrible but I do not live without love. 

Just to be brutally, plainly clear, I do not need any mortal man to step into the role of headship in my life. I am not lost waiting on a husband to find me and give me purpose. No matter how internally conflicted I may be around my inherited ideas of motherhood and legacy, there is not a man currently on Earth that I find myself in need of. 

Phew. Can we all just take a minute to acknowledge the backflips I had to do to avoid the Incarnation just then? 

Because of course the man I’m in need of is Jesus. 

No, no, before you run away screaming from this post, thinking that I’ve gone crazy at seminary, talking about Jesus on Valentine’s Day, let me remind you that it’s a central tenant of the Christian faith that we all need Jesus and also that the reason we even have Valentine’s Day is because there was once upon a time a St. Valentine who loved Jesus so much he died for him and/or the faith that bears his name.

And this is his skull. Supposedly. Does that help? It was meant to help.

But listen, listen, I am in need of a man who can teach me how to love my neighbor past the point of comfort (and so are you). I am in need of a man who can turn me away from the damaging things in this world (and so are you). I am, truly and genuinely, in need of a man who can affirm my worth through his love of me, because Christ died for us while we were yet sinners and that proves God’s love for us and what other ground is there for my hope besides the promise that I am loved past the point of death by the Almighty (and so. are. you.)? We are all in need of Jesus, especially now.

And not just the Jesus of the Beatitudes or the Golden Rule or the story of the Good Samaritan. You cannot limit Jesus to just being a moral figure. This is Jesus, the Logos of God, the Word Made Flesh, the organizing principle of the universe made physical in our world. The organizing principle of the universe came to the Earth to show/speak/tell us what’s most important in the world and how to love each other, came to break into our existence and change it forever and we killed him.  The Love that we desperately need, that was so fundamental to the universe that it spoke everything that we see into existence, that Love came to seek us, to find us, and we were frightened of it, frightened to death. We killed that Love in what may be the worst way imaginable, hanging that Love on an instrument of torture, leaving it there to suffocate under the weight of our unworthiness.

But praise be to God that this is a Love that did not forever die.

Listen, I know that I need this man Jesus because there is a homeless man who sits daily at the entrance to the Farragut North metro stop and I’ve never given him anything kinder than a half-hearted smile. I know that I need this man Jesus because one of my best friends moved out a couple of years ago and I can’t find it in me to forgive her for the hurt she caused me. I know that I need this man Jesus because when a good man asked me to dance, I was so concerned with preserving myself that I never even looked at his face. I need Jesus because I need to be shown how to love and trust, to be re-formed in the image of Love and sent out into a hurting world. I need my rough places to be made plain and my valleys to be exalted. These are things that only Love can fix. And if Jesus had come to us as a woman, I would be here saying that I stand in need of the woman Jesus who breaks the power of cancelled sin and sets me free for joyful obedience. It doesn't matter. I need Love.

Love is a many splendored thing. Love lifts us up where we belong. All we need is Love. Love rises above our material needs, above our hurts and our fears, and shows us a more perfect way. But Love does not keep us there. Love sends us back out to be Love for the world.

Happy Valentine’s Day, y’all.

Bottle Stream of Consciousness

...can't believe that confirmation...

Well hello! Look who's awake! Oh, I see that face. You're hungry, aren't you? Knew that was coming. Here, let's try the sling... Okay, okay, the sling isn't going to be our thing right now. But it worked so well earlier! Okay, hey, hey, here's the bottle. Hey hey, little buddy, bottle. That's it.

Shame about the sling, because I got such good work done earlier. Still, I just gotta put in a couple of quotes about the sovereignty of God and revelation in scripture and that paper's done. Then we can dig into that Bonhoeffer reading for Thursday... Maybe I can pull that up now. His Christology just seems so important to--

Hang on, hang on, we need to burp you. Yeah we do. Come on. Whatcha think, little guy? Is it the bouncing or the back patting that does more for your digestive system? There we are. Solid burp, my man. Here you go.

You know, maybe there is something to that idea of original sin being an epigenetic phenomena. I mean, if it's a condition of being "in the flesh"... Where did that idea come from? Did I make that up? That's certainly outside of the realm of what I've studied. It sounds made up. Maybe I'll bounce it off of--

Oops, hold on, little bro, I gotta shift positions here. There you are.

Just astoundingly unqualified. I mean, it's debatable exactly what the position allows her to do, so reports of the death of public education are mostly likely greatly exaggerated, but still, it's not like it's a hopeful sign, you know? All those phone calls...

Are you done? You look almost done. Yeah ya do. Yeah ya do.

To be and not to seem, Senator Burr. To be and not to seem.

Okay, up and burp one more time! Let's see what you got. Let's see what you got. Dum da dum dum, dum da dum. Dum da dum dum, dum da dum dum dum! Dum da dum dum, dum da dum-- Good job! How ya feeling? Ya feeling a nap again? Maybe a look out at the trees?

That walk was really nice this afternoon. It's a shame that 70 degrees in February can't just be enjoyed as a fluke of nature or something. And a good breeze! I wonder if he's ever felt wind on his face like that before. Looked pretty happy. Well, let him be.

Hey, look, it's a cardinal! Look look, that little red bird over there! They say it's a sign of good luck! Yeah they do. Who knows. Stranger things, right? And we could all use some luck sometimes, right? Just a little bit. Just a little bit. That's right.

I Didn't Know

Y’all, I had no idea. I had no idea what it’s like.

I mean, maybe you do. Maybe you know what it’s like to have a baby fall asleep in your arms, confident in the reliability of your support, snuggled into the skin of your chest like it’s the only pillow to ever exist. Maybe you’ve lived into the sweet peace of that moment when the bouncing and the comforting and the rocking can cease and a tiny person grants you the grace of trust and quiet. But if you haven’t, goodness, what a difference holding a baby makes.

I hadn’t seen what it’s like to watch a baby watch the world. I mean, maybe you have, maybe you’ve seen those gigantic eyes as they follow birds and squirrels and dogs from down the street out in nature, how they squint against the still-too-bright sunlight when they try to see the sky, the newness of the outside world still surprising the sensitivity of their tiny, growing body. It’s an inspiration to watch a baby watch snow, endlessly fascinated by the swirling flakes even though years from now he won’t remember whose arms held him while he learned how the whiteness falling from above blankets the ground in rest. I’ve watched more people than I can count see the Earth from space or the shape of a galaxy for the first time and I guard those moments jealously, like a wedding attendee sneaking a peek at the groom just as the bride begins to walk down the aisle, but man, what a difference the newness of a baby makes.

I just had no clue how many songs I would sing to this child in the past week. Maybe you’re familiar with the quiet hum that sometimes settles a tiny one when they’re fussy, but I have pulled out all the stops for this kid, even with my throat scratchy from leading chants as we marched down Constitution Avenue. I sang Dear Theodosia and Summertime and Go to Sleep and Do You Hear the People Sing and A Father’s First Spring and I know-oh-oh a Change is Gonna Come. I hummed Star Wars and Indiana Jones and Harry Potter and ET and the waltz from Sleeping Beauty. I got in a few snatches of Jupiter and bits of melody that I couldn’t place or name. I never imagined the natural comfort and ease with which I would give my voice to another. Then again, it is astounding the difference a baby makes.

And I just don’t know. I don’t understand the self-sacrificial love of a parent. I don’t grasp the incredible hope that bringing a child into this world entails. I don’t feel in my gut the worry for the future that this infant must engender in his mother and father, no matter how many times I hear about it in songs and movies. I’ve never had to adjust my sleeping schedule, my eating schedule, my free time around someone else, much less around a little bundle of helplessness that can’t express to me in words what he wants. I’m just a nanny so I change his diapers and rinse formula out of my sweater and stretch before I walk in the house in case the baby can only conceive of quiet if he’s being held and count each precious second of this little life in formation that I get to be a part of. I am floored at the difference eight hours a day with a baby makes.

Every human life starts off as this tiny little miracle, this little being that hasn’t heard the lie of self-sufficiency or mastered the delusion of control and possession. They give their faith so freely. How do I get back to this? How do I rest with such confidence? How do I look around with such joy? How do I listen with patience to the songs around me?

Maybe I start with naming the grace upon grace that’s been given to me this week through this child, through my classes and professors, through my friends, through strangers. I can be reminded and renewed. Strength has given, even when all I had were sighs that begged for it. And maybe the next thing I do is to pour back out all that kindness and goodness and mercy and strength given to me. Maybe the trust, the rest, the joy, the patience comes in both the receiving and the giving.

Because, man. I wasn't ready for the way a baby's smile can knock you out. One of the finest gifts a tiny one can give and they give it away for a song.

Forward, Always

Progress isn’t inevitable.

In fact, if thermodynamics is any indication, progress isn’t even likely. Think about kids playing with blocks. There are million ways those blocks can be scattered about the space, red and green and blue squares and triangles and rectangles and cylinders piled up in happy chaotic heaps or blanketing the carpet, but there are only a few ways that the blocks can be made into a house or a tower or a castle. It’s much more likely, just because there are so many ways that the blocks can be scattered, that you’re going to find them in a mess underfoot. That’s entropy at work—because there are so many more ways to make disorder than order, everything tends toward disorder.

But we as humans tend to buck universal tendencies, don’t we? We like bringing order out of chaos so much that many of our creation myths are based around a powerful being who does just that. And we’ve had some minor success organizing ourselves over the long arc of history. In fits and starts, maybe, with ideas spread across the continents and civilizations, we’ve found our way to ever more complex societies, or, at least, financial systems. We’ve expanded our horizons and with that expansion has come something like control over the world around us. In this one corner of the universe, on this temporary manifestation of particles in the shape of a globe, we’ve found a way to shape and mold the disorder into something new.

Again here, though, we shouldn’t take a historic tendency as a rule that will be followed regardless of our action, nor should we think too highly of our ability and action. It is difficult to find the balance in our thought between “things will work out” and “the universe is ours to control” because neither is exactly true. Forward motion doesn’t happen without a force, so we must always be in the state of perfecting our union or shaping our souls or doing good works for the benefit of those around us, tasks which are best done in humility and with the understanding that they will never be completely accomplished. We are not powerless in the wide sweep of history. For good or bad, the future is shaped at least in part by us. Our actions matter, especially in times of transition and reshaping. Complacency needs to be guarded against in times like these.

Nor do we have control over all the forces that shape our world. We did not teach the Earth how to spin or the tides to rise and fall. When storms roll in, we are at their mercy. When the ground shakes, we are faced with the precariousness of the things we have built. Even our systems, the ways we think and interact and govern, can have unintended or unexpected consequences outside of an individual or a community’s ability to correct or redirect. There is a deep question about the efficacy of human endeavors and the source of human power that I have found life-changing, but its main consequence in my daily life and thought is that I can no longer affirm with Enlightenment zeal that we can do anything. That new understanding is a good thing, I think. It makes me appreciate what we can do, the astounding things we’ve been able to achieve, and to think more critically about the undertakings we place before ourselves.

Calls to thoughtful action don’t ring as loud as they should. They’re not as loud as chants or bullhorns or the mics on press conference podiums. Thoughtfulness comes across as hesitancy, as weakness. And I know it doesn’t help that I haven’t changed my tone or my choice in words for this post, or that I talked about entropy, which sounds like some random science thing that a teacher maybe mentioned to you one time back in high school. I talked about systems and overarching historical forces and all of those terms are shorthand for bigger ideas that changed the way I think and that I want others to know about and think about. I worry that I’ve fallen into the trap of using elite and out-of-reach language without thinking carefully enough about how the reader will take it.

But I also believe in my readers, in all readers, and in all listeners, too. I believe in humans and our abilities. I have faith in the American people as a whole and having that faith means that I can’t sit still. It means that I have to do something. I have to ask questions and encourage people to take a step back and consider all the options. We can all elevate our kindness game and that is a simple enough call. In every situation, we can begin by asking how we can do that. There’s so much more to be done, but that’s a place to start.

And then let’s dig in. Let’s get complex. Let’s think about ideas so big we eventually need to come up with code words for them just so that we can see a clearer picture of the world around us. It’s a journey we can all take together, that we can all agree to take together.

It’ll be some kind of progress.

Pursuing Love

I get the feeling that I'm approaching a season in my life when I should talk less. Actually, most seasons in my life have probably been seasons when I could have spoken less, but I've got a conviction about this one in particular. It comes from an awareness that in many cases and for far too long, I've been a just clanging cymbal. The realization that I really would learn better if I would just listen has been a long time coming, but I think it had to wait until a real desire to learn swept away years of false modesty about my knowledge and ushered in a quieter, more patient heart. It is odd and humbling to watch yourself being built back up, all the sharp edges and disregarded shards of self being made fit for a new creation. This is not to say that it's easy. I hang onto my words, both the ones I write and the ones I choose to speak, like Icarus clutching at feathers and wax. They have been breathtakingly precious to me, but they are not the proper way to fly. I should know this. More often than not, my words have left me helpless as I grasp at the pieces of me, slicing my hands and cutting into others as I attempt again and again a construction project I should know I could never complete on my own.

That's a confession, if you like. There's pride and self-sufficiency wrapped up in a lack of trust that has left me over the course of a lifetime in a perpetual state of affection falling just short of love in even the best of my interactions with others. More often than not, my care for my neighbor has been a vague societal politeness, and even that is more a reflection of the kind people who have surrounded and upheld me throughout my life than any kind of real conviction. Despite all the wonderful things that have come into my life and everything I can be said to have accomplished, through hardness of heart or isolation of mind, I missed out on the most important and life-giving lesson a person can learn. I do not know how to love others as I ought.

I have a suspicion that that might be true for most of us. We may stumble into love in our relationships and friendships and may even succeed in offering love to strangers as we move about the world in our daily lives, but real, intentional, continual love offered to our neighbors (and let me be clear: every human is your neighbor) is something with which we all struggle, I think. And in this season of transition and uncertainty and concern, we could all love better. So this year, in addition to talking less (and I do realize the irony of that statement when I'm three paragraphs into a weekly blog post), I'm going to reflect each day on how I loved those around me. I'm going to use that chapter from 1 Corinthians that everyone uses at weddings because it's surprisingly cutting when you turn each verse into a question.

So, if you want to join me, plan a few minutes at the end of each day to ask yourself:

• Were you patient with everyone you met today? Were you kind?
• Or were you envious, boastful, arrogant, or rude? Did you insist on your own way? Were you irritable or resentful today? 
• Did you rejoice in any instance of wrongdoing today, or did you rejoice in the truth?
• What did you bear today? What did you believe today? What did you hope for today? What did you endure today?
• Did you pursue love today?

It might take a lifetime, but I look forward to the day when I am given grace enough to answer each one of those questions rightly before I go to sleep. It's a goal to work towards, a level of accountability in action to strive toward. It is a clear mirror we can hold up to ourselves and our leaders, both the ones that have been elected and the ones we've inherited, as we seek to build up our people and this nation we've made. Paul wrote those words a couple thousand years ago to a church struggling with disunity and questions of principle. It might be that those cheesy Bible verses hold real power for our lives today.

But wherever you are in your walk or in your lives, whatever you've come to believe, let me implore you to love better, friends.

It might be the only way we make it out of this.

Science and Religion Blog: conversation starters

I promise I'll get back to regular posting next week. Between the holidays, a particularly persnickety stomach bug, and prepping for the new semester, I've been a little drained and more contemplative than expository. But for your reading pleasure this week, I want to introduce you to a new project that my friend, Melanie Dzugan, and I have started for this spring semester: conversation starters. Our first post went live this morning and we plan to post every other week, discussing the best questions to ask when engaging in the science and religion conversation. Finally, the science and religion content for which you have all been clamoring!

One final note: since the conversation starters posts will go up on Wednesdays, I'll be switching my posts here to Tuesdays. The tag for my main blog posts has been Blog Wednesday but this semester, they'll be Blog Wednesday on a Tuesday. I'll continue to share the posts on facebook, so that should catch most of you, but for anyone who follows me and blessedly isn't on that particular social media platform, Blog Wednesday on a Tuesday is the tag you want to look for if you just want to keep up with me.

Cheers, y'all! As a parting gift, allow me to direct your attention to this gorgeous picture of the Sunflower Galaxy, captured by Hubble and featured on APOD:

I could stare at this all day long. Click on the link for even more gloriousness.