Speak My Name

“Upon the infant’s arrival, the parents do
one of the most important and dangerous things
that will happen to the child:
in wonder and with risk they name him.”
– Martin Marty

It always feels a bit odd at first to hear the name in others’ mouths. For nine months, it has been spoken of in hypotheticals while the child still claims primary home within me; no need for a name for he is so deep within and with me that he was subsumed by my own being.

But the moment he emerges, the name comes from our lips and lands upon him – a blessing which, once spoken, is his to grow into for all the days he is given. It is now his name and his alone.

HOPE: The Field of Life Wide Open

Hope means that I don’t need to know. I only need to yearn.

I only need to recognize how often I am asleep when I live today based on yesterday’s experience, when I interpret the next hour based on the knowledge I gained from the last one, when I let (what I have understood of) what has been dictate the form and shape of what will be.

This first Sunday of Advent, I light no purple candle in a sanctuary. In between feedings, with boys wrestling around behind me and a husband graciously holding a sleeping six-day-old boy, I light a candle in our front room and find times for the scriptures and Rohr’s Advent thoughts. I trust that something is there in those ancient words of scripture and contemplative words of a Franciscan friar that God can bring to the weary and wounded.

“Keep awake for you do not know,” Matthew says.

To Linger in The Threshold

I prepare now to enter into the liminal space where created life moves from the divine unknown into the worn, faulty hands of flesh. They say that you cannot see the face of God and live. To welcome the newly born might be just like that. Just as this baby boy will emerge from this divine-human threshold, we will perish and be born anew. A new me will emerge – born of death and resurrection and heeding the call to go out and embark on a whole new world.

For the ones who receive the newborn into our care, standing in the threshold is a risky place to be. The only way to the threshold is through pregnancy pains or adoption anxieties. The pressure weighs heavy, distorts our very physical bodies, and leaves us trembling before the mystery.

What Time Is It?

To discern what time it is has become seemingly my primary task. Having undertaken Duke’s Doctor of Ministry program amidst my sabbatical year, I am constantly asking myself – What time is it? Is it time to read, think, write, or edit? Is it time to close my computer and work on a puzzle with the younger one tugging at my side? Is it time to insert myself into the quibbles and squabbles of two brothers acting out the day’s exhaustion upon each other? Is it time to persist in cleaning up the day’s mess? Is it time to surrender to the fatigue of carrying this nearly-grown human life?

Is it time for productivity?
Is it time for presence?

Preparing for the Heart to Take the Lead

As my frame grows, the aches and pains increase. I can’t help but let out small verbal outbursts daily routines demand me to bend and stretch these small bodies of ours – mine (32 years) and yours (33 weeks). The growing pains are reminders of all the aches and pains still yet to come. It is as if my Body is remembering the physical suffering and stretching and making room to come. It is as if my very physical frame has its own memories stored within that require their own processing in preparation of upcoming transitions.

The Body’s memory triggers the Mind’s. I begin looking at the calendar to prepare me for the long December nights that will bring the long December days to follow. My Mind sees the rounder face in the mirror and struggles to resign to its shape, knowing that this face will remain for many months to come before I can climb out of the valley created by pregnancy’s manipulations. It is not simply vanity or selfishness that the Mind triggers. It is the naming of time before I truly recognize myself in the mirror, before I feel the runner’s high after letting my feet fly on the trail, before I feel the fabrics and see the sights of my clothes packed away this past spring, before I remember fully who I am.

The Hymnal that Holds Us Together

Empty Sanctuary

I swear that the stones sing. During the week, I used to walk in Highland’s sanctuary and in the quiet, even with no other voice present with me, I swear I could hear the congregation singing. From the worn stones, from the tattered wooden pews, from the high rafters, the hymns pour forth as if in a continuous stream. Even now, I can walk into the sanctuary in my mind. If I am still long enough, I can hear the particular voices and faces from the Cloud of Witnesses, present and past.

Now during this sabbatical year, so far away from the stones that sing and the communal worship with the Cloud of Witnesses, a hymnal has become the sacrament that leads me home, grounds my feet, centers my being, and remembers me. In this exile space where I worship away from the land I call home and the people who call me home, hymns are the great time-and-space connectors that hold us together.

The Pilgrimage to the Curb

Day 4 of kindergarten and we keep going. We sleep at night and then rise to try again the next day. Perhaps life’s greatest gift: the chance to do it again the next day; the chance it might be different; the chance something will happen that will leave us more alive at day’s end.

Last night after a long day, we got to hymn #19 from our new nightly ritual of singing from the hymnal. I lay beside him in bed and I close the day with these words sung to my tired-from-courage boy…

Everywhere that we can be, Thou, God art present there.

Life in the Pregnant Pause

The life is known: baby brother, boy #3. The name is close to being known. The items have all been retrieved from storage. He moves and kicks, perhaps even practicing prenatal yoga. And yet now is still the waiting time. 13 more weeks. It is too early for him to burst forth, breathe this common air, and join this human pilgrimage . His presence may be growing more pronounced every day, but we are still living in the pregnant pause.

The life is known: a return to Louisville for the next chapter. The jobs are secured. Our home will return to our possession next summer. Our minds leap and jump and stretch. We imagine the ways our life will return to “normal” and the ways it will feel as an all new beginning. The year cannot be rushed nor the days counted down. The days prescribed have too much to teach us. We are living in the pregnant pause.

To Brothers, On the Eve of Change

To the Brothers in Our Home,

Your dad and I sit in a special spot. We get to be with you, observe you, and guide you for these years that you will not remember perfectly but will be affected by greatly. As I watched you play the other day, I couldn’t help but want your future selves to be able to see these present moments as we see them.

Life is about to change. A new baby brother is due in a few months. Older brother begins kindergarten in a few weeks. Your world is expanding. The insular world of brotherhood is about to be renovated for a whole new wing that includes another brother, as well as wider relational and cultural influence upon you all.

On the eve of this change, I want to make sure to remember for you how important your brotherhood has been. Continue reading

Steadfast Love

Words shared at Lone Oak First Baptist in celebration of my grandfather’s life.

My grandfather was one for whom we could never have enough time to enjoy. Even after 90 full years, there could never have been enough days with him for us to be satisfied, easily accepting his absence from us.

There could never have been enough time but there has always been enough love.

pause.give.thanks

the practice of paying attention