Idle and Blessed

I both need and fear other people. I tend to skew towards the fear, though. My Myers-Briggs and Enneagram agree I'm "the most independent of all the types." I balk when people come too close. I get moody and feel stifled and tend to speed-walk in the other direction. When summer comes around, a hush settles over things. My noisy, peopled school year is on hold, friends leave town, and our clients at work do their yoga from the beaches or the rainforests. Just like that I can hear myself think again; I get out into the open air and start running longer distances. I plan hiking trips, and go home for once, and dream up ways to get out west. I have good friends. I love my people. But I was born 90% loner. A year ago I started training for my first ultra. There's nothing especially glamorous about running 50+ miles a week in the Georgia summer heat, except that being alone with yourself all those hours is a profoundly blissful experience. I learned more about myse...

Ethics without theology are rules without a foundation. I really believe that. Theology can't stop itself from telling us how to live, and we can't know how to live without listening to it. But I also believe, and this is a big deal coming from me, that ethics are not the point of religion . Morality is not the point of faith. Sometimes religion functions as a system of dos and don'ts. When that happens, our faith becomes a way to know we're ok. For those of us with weak stomachs, with overactive consciences, our faith hedges us in as protection from the storm of anxiety. We just want to know we're ok. There are probably people out there who can live their whole lives without the sinking feeling of guilt. There might be people who don't lay awake at night afraid they might be making mistakes, living in sin, saying the wrong words, singing the wrong songs, praising the wrong god. I am not those people. I am an ethicist, but it's deeper than that. ...

I don't know if everyone feels darkness roll in like a raincloud some days. But I do. Sometimes it's the tiniest thing that sets it off, a phrase someone uses or the song on the radio. Out of nowhere things get dark and I realize all is not well, and I am not who I should be, and the world is truly, hugely, desperately not right. Anxiety and dread sit on my lungs and in my stomach; they tell me "it will not be ok." My optimistic soul doesn't hear them often. Just the raincloud days. On some of those days I get lost in that darkness, drive around for hours, or run till my thoughts form a straight line and I can breathe again. On other days I let my best friend tell me "it will get better" and believe her, and I floss my teeth and go to bed. Because it's just rain, and tomorrow the sky may be sunny again.

I admire the people who don't feel a need to control things. The people who allow others the grace to be and the room to become. The people who let others say "this is who I am" and believe them, and affirm them, without expectation. I've never been that person. My childhood was filled with sibling time; we were homeschooled for a while, and there are four of us, and we did everything together. I was the oldest, and a perfectionist. My constant need for control usually meant being in charge of them, winning at all the games, like that mean kid on the playground in Nickelodeon shows. I didn't think I was mean. I was just right. I knew what games I wanted to play, and I knew it was Morgan's job to go get us snacks, for instance. I've grown out of some of that as I've learned to give myself grace. The need to control, for me, usually comes from a place of self-judgement. If I hold myself to a standard of perfection, I can't comprehend less in...

Lonely. Suffering is always so lonely. I say nothing, carry my cross alone, walk forward, feel the pain. There is nothing extraordinary about it. Suffering is so very human. Pain is the one thing that simultaneously alienates in its loneliness and unites in its commonness. There are two more crucified beside me today; there will be hundreds more this year. Humans suffer, and in their suffering they crucify each other. Pain is the common condition. Why do they crucify me? Because I bring a vision that is disruptive to power. Because my hope for the world is for it to be a place of justice and peace. Because in order to exalt the lowly, the powerful must relinquish their grip. But the strong are on the defensive; they protect themselves with their hate. They kill so they wont be killed, and they use violence to stop violence. They are afraid. As I walk I feel the sting of betrayal. I suffer in body but my soul is crushed. It is the betrayal that hurts the most, as ...

I went to Colorado to fill my lungs with better air. In the wide open spaces. The world tells me there are opposites. There is dark and light, easy and hard, good and evil. I don’t believe it. I know that really dark and light are different sides of the same coin, and that there are always points where they meet. I went to Colorado to see the meeting places. Dawn and dusk are night and day meeting. Dreams are wakefulness and sleep. Beaches are water and ground. Songs are laughter and tears. The mountains are land and sky. My soul holds opposites in tension. I want everything and nothing in this life. I dream big but live small. Academia awaits me, but so do the open spaces. I believe opposites have meeting places. When I’m in the mountains, I’m both land and sky.

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...