Idle and Blessed

Kels and I have this thing where we pick a word for each new year. I think it's actually a thing for lots of people, but we keep ours on the DL. So little-known fact: I have a word for 2015, and it's a positive uplifting idea that makes a lot of sense for where I am in life right now. But you want to know something? If I had to describe this year so far in one word, it would not be that one. It would be "overwhelmed." I started 2015 by taking an intensive seminar course on immigration and the American church. 43 hours of class time in the first week of January is a very interesting concept. It was a fantastic course, but after being immersed in the complexities of American immigration and its effect on the church, "overwhelming" is the only word I have to describe it. I take on the problems and the sadness of certain issues, and immigration is one of them. Last Sunday, the second weekend of 2015, I was received into the Episcopal Church by Bishop Wrigh...

I was there with the first mythmakers and monks who made up your stories, traced your runes. But now I see you: wind, woods, and water, roaring at the rim of Christendom -- you, land, to be left in darkness. I want to utter you. I want to portray you not with lapis or gold, but with colors made of apple  bark. There is no image I could invent that your presence would not eclipse. I want, then, simply to say the names of things. I'll leave aside kings and their lineages, their deeds and battles. For you are the ground. The ages to you are only seasons. from Rilke's Book of Hours

There is a lot I'm afraid of. There's a lot that makes my heart race when I sit still enough to notice. Sometimes I have the sun to make me brave, on the days when it can shine strong enough through the clouds. Other times I have the trails. There's sometimes the liturgy, which makes a home-feeling settle me down. I can be brave for a day after that. The stars, too, or the silence of winter, or the right song through my headphones on a Monday. And then sometimes none of that finds me and I forget I was ever free at all. But that was yesterday, and today I feel hope, because there are one or two people in my life who remind me about freedom, which is the Spirit of God in me, even when I am afraid. Even when the sun can't shine strong enough through the clouds. Maybe even more so then.

I like to be prepared for things. I like to know I'll be good at them before I try. When I was little my sport was soccer (well, first it was tee ball, but I'm not sure that's a sport in itself). I remember doing drills in my front yard over and over with Dad, making sure I'd be able to stop that ball when it came at me from the feet of another team. The games mattered so much. The technique mattered so much. But it was the practice that mattered the most. When I learned Russian I didn't speak much until I knew complete sentences. At the end of my first 3 month trip, Slavik said, "How did you go from knowing 3 words to saying everything? I've never seen anything like it." I like to know I'll be good at things before I try. It doesn't mean I don't love a good challenge. A marathon in the driving rain, 50k of Appalachian terrain, getting a Masters degree, living in Russia…I thrive on challenges, but these are my cha...

There's always a foreground and a background in life, and most of the time we pull only the biggest events to the front, like on our Instagram feeds. The noise and the laughter and the glitter jump forward, and we ignore the rest. Do you remember the 20 minutes you spent in the car going home last night? Of course not. We forget the spaces in our days, if we ever noticed them at all. Yoga teaches that we should pay attention. That we should pull the spaces to the foreground and let some of the busy things fade. There are downward dogs and warrior 2's but there are also the transitions between them, and they're harder. It also teaches us to notice the spaces between the breaths we take. We know there's an inhale. We know there's an exhale. But there are also spaces in between, where we're all empty or all full, and maybe we don't ever notice that, but we should. Because in our frantic hurry, our raging consumerism, our constant need for stimulation, we a...

What if the best things in life are quiet? There's a current running through life that pulls us when we let it. It doesn't talk about goodness, it just goes there. I think a lot of our angst would cease if we let our feet lose ground and go with it. There are times for revolution. There are revolutionary times. There are times when the protesters must march and the preaching must start and the mourners must grow loud, but there is a time to be moved by the current. We are pulled along. The birds and the dirt, the faithful growing of the trees, the mountains' celebratory stance say "from Eden to Eden" and go. They know the earth's cycles. They know their purpose is small. They know the simple goodness of being what you are, and they go with it. They're quiet. My generation has a lot to say. We don't know how much there is to hear, when we stop our chatter. The first question is, "what do you know for sure?" and I say, "the incar...

I think partly I’m homesick. I miss my town. My places and my people, the hills and valleys and the landscape of Familiar. Really familiar. Like, simplistically meaningful. Unassuming and raw and quiet the way Tennessee is. I want that surrounding me again. And Jenny, who turns 24 tomorrow in Thailand, who won’t be home for years. The girl who has seen my soul unedited and loves me still. I’m homesick for her and the other people who grew me. Partly it’s this time of year. November. Two Novembers ago my heart was broken enough to re-chart my course and change my life. The way it gets dark early, the sun fleeing fast each day, like it’s not quite brave enough to stick around; the way the leaves all change colors and die so fast; the way my breath makes clouds when I run long miles…it all brings me back to a profound memory of trying to get out of bed every day, trying to ask God questions with no answers. It could also be the halfway point of my Master...