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

Unfastening the Tool Belt: Cease, Take Refuge (Psalm 34)

“I sought the Lord, and God answered me,
and delivered me from all my fears…
The poor soul cried, and was heard by the Lord,
and was saved from every trouble…
When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears,
and rescues them from all their troubles.
The Lord is near to the brokenhearted,
and saves the crushed in spirit.
Many are the afflictions o the righteous,
but the Lord rescues them from them all.
God keeps all their bones; not one of them will be broken.

The Lord redeems the life of his servants;
none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.”
– Psalm 34: 4, 6, 17-20, 22

“Silence the contending opinions you have within your heart… You do your best to call a halt to these noisy crosscurrents of personal feelings, opinions, and ideas. You start over… You center upon what God’s estimate of this person was in creation and is now in God’s redemptive wisdom and love… You choose to center down.” – Wayne E. Oates, Nurturing Silence in a Noisy Heart, 43.

Weary, I collapse. The tool belt hangs heavy and clumsily around my waist, creating a loud thump as I fall to the ground. The tools weigh me down and leave me grounded wherever I have fallen. Where I sit, there I am stuck. I lift my eyes towards where I wished I had landed instead – a cushioned seat, a place with a better vantage point, a spot in the company of friends. My body pulses and aches, and the distance between where I sit and where I wish I sat grows further and further.

Dedicating this Third Boy

Our words of dedication at Highland on October 29, 2017

On November 21 of last year, we welcomed our third boy. We brought him home to our sabbatical home nestled among the North Carolina pines, we nourished him among the Blue Ridge mountains, and now we have brought him here into this beloved sanctuary where we ask that you join us in being good stewards of the life that God has given to us.

Seven Years

Life dances its days before us, each day emerging, combusting, and evaporating into the next. PB&Js, sliced red peppers, zipped backpacks, seat belt “clicks,” “goodbye”s, “how was your day?”s, and “I love you, see you in the morning”s. Then, as if suddenly, it has been seven years.

How much have you taught me? How much more will you expand my rib cage to hold this heart? It is almost too much to fathom.

33: The Near End

“On my island off the coast of Maine, I lived with the sea. The whole ocean in its vastness I do not know. I never sailed the tropic ocean where the Orinoco and the Amazon pour out their floods; I never watched the Artic and Antarctic seas wash their ice packs. Wide areas of the oceans are to me unknown, but I still know the ocean. It has a near end. Its waters surround my island. I can sit beside it, bathe in it, sail over it, watch its storms, and be sung to rest by the music of it.” Harry Emerson Fosdick Continue reading

Holding a Father’s Hand

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For long stretches, the boys turned from bodies-in-motion to bodies-in-wonder as they stood out in the waves and watched the ocean water crashing in upon their legs. I’m sure they squealed at the wonder of it all, but their noises did not reach me as I sat on the sand. I marveled at the scene. The waves were powerful forces that represented equal parts wonder and danger. But the boys did not waver before the waves for they held their father’s hand. Continue reading

The Sojourner

Bobby,

Ten years since your passing, I devote my morning to you on this anniversary. Amidst getting the oldest to the bus stop, feeding the youngest, and “being with” the middle, I have tried to write you to somehow connect with you across time and space. The written word is insufficient. My memories are starting to show wear and tear. The distance from your family during this sabbatical year makes the time and space feel all the more insurmountable.

The reality of your death feels more comfortable than the memory of it. When the memory is fresh, then it feels like news – when your death was newly received or noteworthy; when it was not true and then when it suddenly was. Living in the space of time close to when it might not have been makes me remember the inherent hope that there could be some cosmic re-ordering of events in time that could right the wrong, fix the mortal problem, or resurrect the recently dead. Continue reading

Mother’s Day: The Promise

FullSizeRender 2 The oldest yearns for support, appreciation, and encouragement for his creativity. The middle yearns for constant presence and companionship. The youngest yearns for basic needs and safety. Ultimately, their hearts yearn for our God who covenants with God’s people to offer purpose, belonging, and refuge. They seek The Promise.

My world revolves around The Promise. I am its steward who dispenses The Promise. I am its agent who puts The Promise in action. I am its incarnation whose very physical being embodies The Promise. I am created in the image of The Promise. I am a mother. Continue reading

Bless the Beast

Sadao Watanabe, “Jacob Wrestles the Angel”

Like all seasons of life, this sabbatical year has been beautiful and brutal. It has been bitter and sweet. It has held great joys that I have relished and great griefs that I have lamented. There have been moments that have been good and moments that have been good for me.

Along the way, I have wrapped each negative feeling with a purpose. By God’s persistent grace, I have journaled my way from loneliness to self-reflection, from loss of career to personal re-stocking of wisdom, from loss of community to gained a connection with the common experience of living far from home. Though our return to Louisville is only a few months away, my endurance for resting and reframing has begun to run low. Continue reading

To Know Nothing

It makes such sense that we resort to eggs filled with candy, bunny rabbits, elaborate lunches, and our finest clothes. How else would we function without a few simple rituals while we immerse ourselves in the violence of Good Friday and the absurdity of Easter morning.

I read the Easter story to the boys last night. In place of our regular bedtime books, I told them of bitter weeping and swords and clubs, the crowds and the single kiss, provocation and condemnation, pointed fingers and shouts of rage, denial and silence, isolation and public execution.

The boys’ eyes grew wide and little bodies so still. They were captivated, confused, and even a bit scared. They kept pushing for me to turn the page and read one more story as if that next page might resolve the tension or provide some absolution to the violence. But I knew this wasn’t possible. The next page merely added another layer to the complex mystery whose miracle exists with wounds still fresh. I knew that the story of our resurrected Lord is one of a breathing but punctured body at the hands of human atrocity.

pause.give.thanks

the practice of paying attention