Idle and Blessed

The rain is falling steady, slow, gray. It's a Friday and I listen to music about resurrection and I think about what I make life into. I race and fight, I pound my feet into the ground, running and running and always running. At my best I run towards things, toward Spirit and grace and passion and the things that make my soul & heart & body all work together in time-forgetting joy. At my worst I run away from the things that hurt me, always fleeing from demons and self and the moments that rub me raw. It is the running that makes me who I am, chaser of justice, seeker of deep hearts, lover of learning, exceeder of goals. It's the running and competing and pushing that make me work for great things. But it's the running -- the fleeing kind -- that gets me pinned into corners of comfort and escape from fear. Escape from mess and ugly and wrong. In the corners I judge each moment, stamping with approval or not-good-enough. "Fear is like this piano wire cutting...

Summer has come to Nashville. Summer and not Spring, because you know how it is. 55 degrees one day and 85 the next. But it's beauty-filled and and running over, greenest grass and tallest trees and the flowers all bow down in the wind. It makes me glad to live here, grateful to live here, and I think it helps me take hold of the moments better. It helps me live in each moment, singularly, noticing. I notice there's beauty because there's a newness to it. Suddenly, it smells like cut grass. Suddenly, it smells like the color yellow. Suddenly there's not winter in the air. Suddenly. We learn best by contrasts. We notice change more than continuity. It's a point of noticing for us. This summer my prayer is that when the fall comes, when change comes to me in big and real ways, it will be a point of noticing. A learning time. An exploring time. I know myself enough to know I won't like Atlanta at first. But I'm praying for a sense of wonder and open eyes to...

Most days I go through life from the inside of the pages, writing each letter of each word as it comes, scripting the hours of my life into days as the pages turn. Big things happen, and get written in bold black ink, so that when I look back over the story they are easily recalled. But even the sweet things, the big things, the things that give me goosebumps and remind me of sunshine in June, can get put into lines that quickly give way to the ones after them. Not this week. This week I have lived life holding the whole book in my hands, looking down at it and seeing it all at once. And I have realized how fleeting it is, but how pretty and full and green. It's one of the rare times when I step back and notice the significance of the place I'm in and how far I have come. And I really truly believe everything belongs , the sorrow and struggle and failure and doubt, the determination and motivation and epiphany. It's integrated, it makes the picture believable. And relat...

I ran a marathon last week. 26.2 miles of steady rain, cold fingers, cheering spectators, and the hills of the streets I know so well. It was a last hurrah, a celebration of Nashville, a celebration of running and training and dedication, and it took a lot of guts. It takes a lot of guts to run a marathon. It starts with the winter. The days and weeks and months of putting miles on shoes on snow, on frozen ground, watching your fast breath swirl the air. It starts on those days when you run anyway and don’t skip it. It continues with speed work and sprints and long Sunday runs. And it builds, as the months go by, and you get tougher and somewhere along the way you get the guts it takes to run a marathon. My favorite thing about the 26.2 is that you can’t just wake up one day and say, “I think I’ll run a marathon today.” No. You either give time and life and pain to the sport for months on end, or you don’t run it. You have to wake up and say, “I’ll run a mara...

What happens when we suck at it? Being like Christ. What happens when they can't tell us apart from the rest of the world? Or worse, they can tell us apart because we're even more incorrigible than the rest. I've read enough books and heard enough sermons. I know the answers and I know the Greek, but I still couldn't tell you the mystery of this thing called being like Christ, or really why I'm not getting there. Some days it bothers me more than others. We're supposed to be the body of Christ but I know very few who look like him. I don't. I just look like myself. For me this is fleshed out in how I focus my mind on Christ, in classes like Moral Vision of the Bible , yet continue to live for myself. Live for running, for sunny days, for the friends I like and the plans I make. Live for worrying, being anxious, avoiding the things that threaten me. I live for the future, I live in the past, I hold onto my things so I remember how to name myself...

Burdens aren't permanent. They're meant to be let go. They're made to be let go. They're made to be released. What are you carrying around with you today, that no longer serves you? When you let go of it, you create space for new life. You are shouldering a lot of weight not meant for you. Do not burden yourselves again with the yoke of slavery. Carrying your cross does not mean living under all that. It means dying so you can be alive to life. Free.

"He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life." -Genesis 3:24 I don't pretend to be acquainted with suffering the way most people are. I've grown up safe and well, my problems small and my community bright. I've been blessed with comfort, freedom, family, and education. I've both traveled far and put down deep roots. Even by America's standards my situation is enviable. I'm graduating from a private university just north of one of the richest counties in the USA, for instance. And still I am not blind to pain. In fact, privilege makes it extremely difficult to reconcile the pain I do experience, not to mention the pain I see outside my world. Going to Russia and being submerged in life there was my first real picture of deep pain. Pain without easy answers, without a near end. Going to Israel where the realitie...