Idle and Blessed

The nature of hope is this: we move forward in the dark.   There are few moments of closure in life. Last night was not one of them. Often emotions settle down deep and refuse to leave the premises. They await the end, but the end won't come soon, because we're fighting a system with too many moving parts. Broken. We can articulate our pain, our anger and strongest determination, only in half-sentences.   We went to Jackson. Our prayers for mercy were answered in a way did not expect, and it was late, and it was dark and rainy and cold, and there was never a moment of victory that I could point to. There was no moment of relief to sink into. There was just tension and waiting, hope and worry, laughter and pink candles.   I realized very slowly that Kelly would not die last night.   I think I was just so ready for it to be over that I didn't stop to think she might live. And the living Kelly has seemed like a dream to me. It's the bitterest of sweet things, and the sw...

I am Kelly Gissendaner. I, too, have been angry and bitter. I, too, have wished harm on others. I have been found guilty. I have been sentenced to death. I have found grace in my guilt, and become someone new. I have found hope in dark places. I am Kelly’s executioner. I am complicit in her death. The state kills on my behalf. I have not done all I could do; I have failed to recognize redemption where it is breaking into the world. I have looked on others with eyes that see only their sin. I believe in a system where you are what you do, on your worst days. I distance myself from compassion. I am Gregory Owen . I have broken the law. I have implicated others in my sin. I have gotten a better deal than the people I love. I am voiceless and guilty. I am Kelly’s lawyer. I am fighting for her life. I am nearly powerless; still, moving. I believe my work ends only when I see justice. This story is mine; this story is ours. With the growing media attenti...

I want the things that make me come alive. I know that means not-Atlanta. It means not-church-ministry, and not-Baptist. It means not-office, not-sitting, not-idling. What does it mean? I’m really introverted most days, and that forces me to live with heightened awareness of my energy. Where it goes and when it returns, what things drain it and what things sustain it. I have to choose where I invest it, because when it gets down to the bottom of the barrel, everything else must wait. My energy drains in the city. My energy drains in traditional ministry. I cannot be sustained in an office or cubicle, or in a life of being still. I’ve been watching how my energy surges in academia done right, in rooms of people with ideas and solutions. Bioethics meetings. Management meetings. The days when I go in and out of yoga classes, ethics classes, running trails, and important work. I am drained by monotony and jobs that don’t matter. I am drai...

All of the real things are born out of darkness. The whole earth began as darkness hovering on the face of the deep. From it the light was formed, and the rocks and the trees, and then the more lively loud things like elephants, and human beings. Our common origin was deep darkness, something we instinctually fear but remember. Babies enter the world through darkness. Rain falls through dark clouds. We wake up every morning from darkness, a new awakening. A new birth. A tiny creation story. All of the true things are spoken out of silence. First there was silence, "then God said," and it was so. We know God speaks this way, sending voices to cry out in the wilderness. God is one who speaks from the stillness, and we know it when we get still enough to hear, to give up our own unceasing loudness. I know this: real things are born into my life through darkness. Nothing valuable has ever come to me without pain. And true things are spoken to me in the silence of selfle...

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.