Freedom to Be In the Dark, Filled with Grace and Power

Inspired by…

Re-reading Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief and thinking about all that children are capable of enduring and surviving.

“He came in every night and sat with her. The first couple of times, he simply stayed – a stranger to kill the aloneness. A few nights after that, he whispered, ‘Shhhhh, I’m here, it’s all right.’ After three weeks, he held her. Trust was accumulated quickly, due primarily to the brute strength of the man’s gentleness, his thereness. The girl knew from the outset that Hans Hubermann would always appear midscream, and he would not leave.”

Acts 6-7: Stephen described as “filled with grace and power”

This season of “healthy at home” when some children are home but not surrounded by health.

To all the Liesels living through this pandemic with silent suffering and a small hope still burning within you: Continue reading

Given the Choice

With the Coronavirus, we face fewer choices. But there remains this choice: to panic or to hope. Given the choice of giving up or doubling down, God always seems to choose the latter. Continue reading

There is an ache in God’s Glory

There are mornings when my quiet time pushes me to the limits of my imagination. It is not every morning. It is not every season. But when it comes, I can see God alive in all of creation – in every creak of steps as boys come down in the morning, in the birds whose songs fill the room through a cracked window, in the heart that still beats in my chest after all these years.

My chest fills with an awareness of the divine-saturated beauty of all things and of the human ignorance of its participation within it. I feel surrounded, overwhelmed, saturated in the Divine Life. Yesterday morning, I continued reading Richard Rohr’s latest, The Universal Christ, and I was struck again by the glory of God – an understanding of the ridiculously extravagant presence of the divine that is just within reach enough to knock me to my knees.

If life really is this rich, it is nearly too decadent. The glory of God can feel like a decadent chocolate cake that cannot be consumed in one sitting. Continue reading

The Branches

Quietly as I can, I turn off all the lights in the kitchen, leaving only the candle’s flame to light the way, giddy and erratic. I turn the chair around, slowly and methodically, to face out the window. I breathe in the state of the world – the sleeping boys, the snoring dog, the rising world.

For a moment, the only important thing to do is to see the branches.

Taller than the window allows me to see, the trees hold last night’s snow. The heaviness cannot defy their slender frames. Subtle at first, the branches move. The stiller I become, the more I realize that they are in constant movement. I recognize the persistent winds that blow across the top of our house on a still morning.

How still do you have to become to notice the branches move?
How dark does it have to become to witness its shape in the morning light?

Centered Hearts, Swelling Gratitude, Abundant Grace. How?

With busy lives (tasks with deadlines; needs with accompanying cries, whimpers, and whines; minutes that tick by without permission), how can we live with centered hearts (the kind that focuses our caring labor on the long-game care of humanity; not the kind we assume comes from the labels that people use to define our personhood), swelling gratitude (the kind that is born from the “enough” around us; not the painted calligraphy kind that is purchased at craft stores), and abundant grace (the kind that comes from the wells of forgiveness for perpetual imperfection; not the kind from ballerinas or naive optimism)?

If not for the Divine Parent who loves our busy lives, forgives our imperfect attempts, and redeems our busyness, I know not how. Continue reading

An Eternal Feast on Valentine’s Day

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“Who loves you more than me?” I asked as we pulled up to the bus stop.

“Daddy?” he asked.

“No. Even more than Daddy.”

“Jesus!”

“Yes, God loves you so much – more than even Daddy and I can. And God loves every single person the most – each person who sits at your table in school, the ones who walk down the hallway next to you, your teachers, and the people holding signs by the interstate entrances. Can you imagine loving everyone so much?” Continue reading

On the Eve of the Inauguration: What I Know, What I Feel, What I Believe

Last year when I had to walk youth through some difficult moments, I grabbed a dry-erase marker and created three columns… what we know, what we feel, and what we say we believe (and must remind ourselves in hard times). As the inauguration looms, I find myself employing the same strategy for the future that looms before us. Continue reading

Repentance Begins on Your First Day

To the baby cradled in his mother’s arms,

Feel the warmth. Soak in the affection. Nurture your belonging in this beautiful world. Gaze in her eyes and receive her fierce devotion. This is your birthright. This moment is your true identity as beloved divine creation.

I dream for you a world where all others embrace you the same way your mother does now.
I dream for you a world where you may flourish in freedom of body, soul, and mind.
I dream for you a time and place where others may perceive your tender heart and your endless potential, just by the sight of you.

Even as your mother gazes upon you today, she is preparing for the talk. She will one day have to sit you down on the porch and speak to you about the world as it is. Her heart will twist and turn in her chest as she places a new identity over this first one – black male in America.

Sending Him Into The Bull’s-Eye

I was in the ninth grade when Columbine happened. No longer the name of just a school, it represents the beginning of what has become the persistent violent anger taken out on the culture’s most vulnerable. Other than jail, schools are the only other place where people, based on age or life stage, are required to be. Don’t show up and face legal ramifications. And it is in this place – where futures are bright, opportunities abound, and parents’ hearts beat outside of their chest – that has become the bull’s-eye of violence.

Politicians debate and social media is polarized.
24-hour media cycles go on and on, running footage repeatedly AS IF that is helpful.
People dig down into their perspective and philosophies, choosing principles over people.

It is what it is.

Generally, politics fuel so much of my righteous anger that I find it best not to talk about it with others. However, as I approach the time when I have to send our oldest to kindergarten, it feels way more personal.

The Framework that Remains

The two men carefully bend sticks and tie them in place. Held together with scraps of clothing and rags, the sticks create a frame for a tent in the midst of the Gourougou Mountain. Random pieces of tarp tied onto the frame transform into a shelter. Meticulously, with patience to execute it well and urgency because their well-being depended on it, they turn nature’s leftovers and human leftovers into a home. The Land Between, a documentary we’re showing at Highland on Sunday as part of our Moroccan partnership, tells the stories of those who are stuck between the home they have fled and a future they cannot grasp.

I sat in my office as I previewed the film and I marveled at their survival skills, ingenuity, and teamwork. Then I marveled at their suffering and resiliency when the journalist takes us back a few days later to see the bare bones of the shelter. The sticks stand but the tarps so carefully tied have vanished. The men share the story of how the authorities chased them out of the camp and burned all their things.

The journalist leaves the camera unnervingly on the framework of sticks. Hollow. Empty. Bare to the bone. It tells of the death chasing after them AND the life enduring despite it. Continue reading

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the practice of paying attention

Loving the World