Idle and Blessed

Dr. Allen has been the second most helpful professor to me here so far. We all know who the first is. I'm still doing a good job not stalking him though, by the way. So anyway, Dr. Allen is really earning my trust, which is the only reason I would listen to someone talk about calling God by feminine terms at this particular time of my life. We were in class talking about the names we use for God while praying. I said I wasn't comfortable calling God feminine names like 'Mother' and I don't do it. It's not that my theology prevents it. I know God is neither male nor female. I know God is masculine and feminine together. I just can't pray to my God as She. He affirmed me by saying we can have all the right theology about how God isn't masculine and still have a hard time not picturing God as a man. Right? I mean, I don't care how theologically progressive you are, if you pray to the Christian God as 'Mother' you're in the minority. ...

Running down Henderson Mill yesterday I started thinking about how running is prayer. Prayer has been defined (by Richard Rohr maybe? Robert Benson?) as what happens in the moment when your body, mind, and spirit are all in accord and working toward a singular purpose. When I run and running is good, or even when it's really super hard, there are split seconds when I feel what I feel in prayer. Body, mind, spirit dwelling intently on one reality. I think running, done well, can be prayer. And while I was thinking this, a parallel conversation was happening in another part of my brain. It was debating how heretical it is to call running prayer. I have this parallel conversation at least once a day as a seminary student. At least 38% of the time I conclude what I'm hearing, saying, or thinking in class is heretical. But I've decided that most of us are silently heretical, and if I'm going to be a heretic, I want to at least know why. Like Martin Luther, I want...

Because Nashville and its people make me smile bigger and laugh harder than I knew I could. Because there's nothing more soothing than 32 miles as the sun rises in Leiper's Fork. Because these are days I'll never get back. "I'm gonna raise my sail; God knows what I'm headed towards."

How are you going to provide? Here is my need. Here is my fear. Here is the space for a miracle. How are you going to redeem this into my "best?" How are you going to make my story more beautiful because of these three years? Here is my heart's ache and confusion, its sadness and brokenness over the lack of visible good. Here is the space for you to rewrite it. Here is the space for a miracle. How are you going to create a dream with me for my future? How are you going to use McAfee to give me a vision of vocation and ministry in the next step? Here is my full attention. Here are my time, my efforts, my resources. Here is the space for a miracle.

"Hope" is the thing with feathers - That perches in the soul - It's maybe the only Emily Dickinson poem I like, but I have a special affinity for it. It could be because I identify with all things related to birds, a fact only my best friends know about me. Or it could be because it so succinctly and profoundly gives a visual for the illusive idea of hope. Hope. I've been mulling over the concept for a few days now because things are going so badly and life is so hard that my hope in the goodness of the Lord's plan for me is weakening. My own running definition of hope has always been, "the confidence that God has not forsaken me." These days it's not enough to keep me going. God may not have forsaken me, but is his presence good , and is it good enough to make the end worth it ? Today my hope is looking a lot more like this: "This will not destroy me." "I am not being destroyed," right up to the very end. "One ...