Poets of People

A friend told me that he and I are farmers at heart, driven by seasons and weather, but that right now we're called to cultivate people instead of earth. I cried when he said that because people are made of earth too, but it's hard to tell with all the concrete around. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

A few weeks ago I met with one of my pastors who stared incredulously at me when I listed all the things I'm doing and how spent by it all I am.

"Lore," he said, "that's because you're a poet. You need time for reflection and perfection. And all this doesn't seem conductive to that. You need time to sow."

I nearly wept right there. It has been a long time since someone said those words to me and I had forgotten.

"You are a poet."

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Mondays are roommate nights in our house. We finish whatever chores are in our envelopes, cook dinner, set the table, sit in our respective chairs, and spend the next few hours being together. There is no agenda apart from that. We sow into one another with laughter, knowledge, prayer, questions.

The candles drip wax on our tablecloth, proof that dinner goes long and we are in no rush.

After the meal is finished we read the bible aloud. Last night we add some poetry (Walt Whitman) and the birth of Cain as told by Madeleine L'Engle. Then one pulls out her guitar and we sing. Not spiritual songs and hymns, but whatever comes to mind. We end the night going to separate rooms, but not before saying, "I love you," to every one. Because in this home we are working the ground of Already and Not Yet.

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I've been reading in Genesis this week, the creation account. Thinking about design and flaw, disobedience and animal skin, craftiness and provision. God gave his people what they needed, even after they chose exactly what they didn't need. But before all that, he blessed them and gave them something to cultivate.

And God blessed them.

And God said to them, “Be fruitful multiply

fill the earth subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea over the birds of the heavens

over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

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It was Friedrich Nietzsche who said, "The essential thing ‘in heaven and earth’ is that there should be a long obedience in the same direction," and I think of rows of tilled soil whenever I think of that quote. Eugene Peterson used it as a title for his book on discipleship. What is discipleship if not cultivating the earth by cultivating people? And how do we cultivate people if we do not do the slow work of farming, working in proper seasons and times? Perhaps discipleship is the work of poets, those "holding onto the mystery of faith with clear consciences?" Poets are the the seers, the nuance holders, and the farmers.

"God, make me a poet of people."

A Two-Part Invention

I have forgotten how to imagine. This year snuffed out my belief in the possible, brought me face to face with reality and it stung, over and over and over again. I believe, help my unbelief.

I wake this morning in our new home, my bedroom at the back of the house cool, still dark, and quiet. The sound of a closing door, feet padding across carpet, the smell of coffee. These will be our morning rhythms now, the same, but different.

I believe.

Plans have changed and I find myself planted for another year in Texas. I'm grateful to have people wiser than I, and with better counsel, in my life, but cannot deny the panic I woke with yesterday, on moving day. I think I love our new home already, but want to imagine that imagination hasn't gone the way of hope this year.

Help my unbelief.

Jesus is better than we imagine, but if we imagine nothing, then what is He better than? I feel soul-sucked and dry, that is the honest truth. Lonely and thirsting for things I love that he hasn't promised me, not ever. But I want to imagine he's better than all the mountains and seasons and people and clear air I ache for.

I believe.

The thing about mountains I love the most is not standing on top of them, though it is beautiful, to see so far, so deep. What I love more is standing beneath them. When the clouds part and the peaks show and I gasp. Who can imagine the time and folding and faulting that brings them to their full glory? I cannot. There is scope on the mountain top, bringing with it a grandeur. Here at the bottom, though, I am only small and inconsequential. Unimportant.

Help my unbelief.

He must increase, I must decrease.

I believe.

Jubilee

I was 13 when I knew I would be a writer even though definitions of verbs and adverbs and gerunds were still a bit hazy in my mind, not to mention my atrocious spelling. I came of age in the coming of age of spell-check which ruined it for us all. No idea how to spell anxious or brevity or volatile or naive? No problem. I wonder what will become of us now that most digital devices anticipate our words before we can spell out even their first few letters. We are already less than literate, now will we be less than half?

I'm no opponent of modernity, nor am I antagonistic to those who spend their resources grabbing up every new resource as it comes. I am writing this on a 15inch MacBook Pro, on which I spent more to get the anti-glare screen and super impressive pixel ratio. I wake up every morning to the alarm on my iPhone which gets me to work on time so I can learn and earn more so I can buy gadgets such as these. Praise God for GPS without which I'll bet cities wouldn't grow so fast so quickly.

Stepping back from the whole of it, though, the writing, the spell-check, the convenience, the anti-glare screen, (everything except the alarm), causes a kind of built-in pause, as it is meant to, and this morning I think about the year of jubilee.

Rightly understanding the law's place is one of the gospel's great benefits, but sometimes I lament that He who set us free indeed didn't keep a few of the more beneficial laws around for good measure. The Year of Jubilee would be one I'd have kept because I'm very bad at resting and my guess is you are too. Because we can do everything faster, better, and more efficiently, we can do more and more and more until we've lost sight of why we're doing it at all.

What are we doing anyway?

There's much talk of obscurity and the normal and going about our business, minding it in light of the Gospel and little else, and this resonates deep in me. But I wonder sometimes if the reason we have this conversation at all is because minding other people's business is so tres chic these days. "All up in your bizniss" in the street lingo. Sharing it all brings this strange delight, a false sense of togetherness and a true sense of coolness.

I used to think the word community was derived from common and unity, or together and altogether. But it's not. Com: together and Munus: gift.

Gift, together.

In the Year of Jubilee, God's people would return to their own land, and return the land they'd inhabited to its original owners. They would set free captives and slaves and servants. They would forgive debts. They would celebrate all year long the gift of God to them. They would community: gift, together. A long year of gifting.

When I set myself down and rest my mind and eyes and ears from all that which threatens to steal my joy, I think it's the stuff of it all that steals it most quickly. Instead of feeling gifted to by what modernity has brought, I feel stolen from. It steals my time and my energy, my opinion and my coolness. Apart from all that I do or have, I am not cool after all.

But it turns out things don't steal my joy, my need for them does

What is beautiful about Sabbath and Jubilee and rest, is when I'm set apart from what I do or have, I am nothing—and nothing is what I bring to the cross. Nothing enables me to gift everything and come, trembling and grateful, empty-handed, atrocious spelling, without GPS or alarm, come. Quiet and aware. Stilled and stayed. Comforted by nothing but His grace and love toward me.

Some Observations on Tone of Voice.

A few weeks ago I tweeted, "In my home we don't shout. This is our home & the rules are No Shouting. If you want to shout, you can, but not in my home." It was said in reference (and perhaps defense) of blogs which do not have open comments. I removed comments two years ago and have only looked back wistfully a time or two. All it takes is a quick glance at some other blogs with similar content, though, for me to remember it was the right decision for me. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I think of Sayable in much the same way as I think of my home. My home has four outside walls, keeping out the wind and elements, a front door which is often open to passers-by, and often closed to afford us some time home as a family. In our home we do not yell at one another and if there is some disagreement it is talked out in quiet, gracious voices. There have been occasions where words have been flung carelessly and trust has been broken, but that is not the modus operandi of our home. That is not the norm.

I grew up in a home with a good amount of yelling. Excuses for it were common, as well as prefaces or follow-ups. What I learned early on is there are levels of yelling, there is also tone of voice, there is not enough coffee, too much Irish in our bloodline, and too short a fuse. I learned yelling was the expected response and apologies came later, if at all. And I learned, most of all, that what is yelling to me, was not the universal decibel level of yelling.

Everyone has their own barometer of what constitutes yelling and when it is appropriate. 

Because I'm a sinner and we're not in the new earth yet, I still find myself sensitive to the tones of voices around me, to how words are phrased and flung, and what excuses are given for anger. I am rarely offended, but if you yell at me, I'll be looking for the nearest closet. Fear of man is alive and well in this soul on this issue.

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What does this have to do with blog comments? In our day to day life, we're face to face, tone of voice is heard, body language is seen. On the web, though, and social media, we are left without those necessary cues. If a person uses coarse or aggressive language in a post/comment, and defends their words with, "I just want to have a conversation," they should understand words that sound conversational to them may sound abusive to someone else. And likewise, someone like me who feels any slight pushback is a personal affront to my character, my spirituality, my soul, and my personhood needs to take a step back and assume a charitable posture.

The longer it's been since I lived in a home with yelling, the more I realize yelling or raising your voice in anger is not functional, not ever. If you are a parent, there is no excuse for yelling at your child. Ever. If you are a child, there is no excuse for yelling at your parent. Ever. If you are a friend, you should never yell at another friend. And the same goes for blog and blog comments. If you find yourself typing furiously using a tone of voice in your head that you reserve for moments of anger, frustration, or even defensiveness, stop typing and step away.

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I got spanked more than any child in my home, sometimes multiple times a day (mostly for being the resident smart-aleck), so many times that I have no recollection of any time save one when I was about nine or ten. I had disobeyed one of my parents after them repeated telling me to stop, they were getting angry and I could see it. Just one last time I pushed the envelope and it sent them over the edge. But, for the only time I can remember, they looked right at me, took a deep breath, told me they were going to spank me, but needed to go calm down first. In those twenty minutes of waiting for the coming walloping, I had a few minutes to think about my actions and my disobedience, and they had a few minutes to calm down. I'll never forget that spanking. It may have the first time I was actually repentant before they put me over their knee.

It is never in our favor to dash off responses, use the internet equivalent of raising our voices, or react in anger. And, which is more, it is never in the favor of anyone else. It is not loving or long-suffering, kind or hopeful.

Questions for personal consideration: What is your tone online? What are you known for? Do those who may disagree with you find you approachable and generous? Are you aware that what is simply aggressive conversation to you may be abusive to someone else?

Holding the Mystery

I live in a neighborhood where all the houses look the same. Our floorplans are swapped or switched a bit, but generally, we are like a row of Japanese diplomats, all bowing our heads to the Suburban Man.

The names of the roads are Springaire and Winter Park and Summerwind and Autumn Breeze—a nod, perhaps, to what the city planners wish would be instead of what is. People keep warning me about the Long Winter (they say, with capitalized letters) up north. I keep reminding them of their long summer, but neither of us can agree which is better. We always want what we can't have, right?

I live on Summerwind in a house just like my neighbors. We express our individuality with paint colors and shrubbery. A yellow wreath on my door, a terracotta pot with flowers that cannot withstand the heat. As they say, if you can't stand the heat, something, something.

I stop mid-run tonight in a rare open space of sky. The sky here is lavender at night, clouded or clear. The city lights create a cover of light that covers the light. I can't stop thinking about how manufactured light crowds out natural light.

We've been on a steady diet of Vermeer this week at my house so we are obsessed with color and light and mirrors and mysteries. I can't stop thinking about how betrayed I feel by recent discoveries on Vermeer and simultaneously how wonderful it seems to know he was more than an artist, but a genius.

The poet Levertov said, "Days pass when I forget the mystery," and I think of this line often in these neighborhoods and days that pass so seamlessly into one another. I forget the mystery of nuance and life, of curiosity and wonder. It becomes only a perpetual plod toward tomorrow.

But tomorrow is a gift, and the only one of its kind, and God help me to remember that in our matching houses and macchiatos and yoga pants and yearning.

I am reading in 1 Timothy this morning, the qualifications of an overseer, and nestled there in verse 9 these words: "They must hold the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience."

How we love and laud the matching, the simple, the clear, the found-out, the known. But how we must hold the mystery of the faith with our consciences clear: the gift of mystery. The gift of the unplanned. The gift of the unknown.

Do you have an unknown before you? A path not clearly defined? A choice which seems impossible? A God you do not fully understand? That is a gift, friend. You can trust the mystery of it all with a complete clear conscience.

Eat the Words

I cut my teeth on L'Engle and Dillard, mulled over O'Connor and Greene, struggled though four semesters of Shakespeare, found myself in the pages of Berry and Kingsolver. Good writing has carried me along. Good writing taught me more theology than six semesters ever did.

In the attention deficit world of the blogosphere, it can be easy to subsist on the crumbs. Comments back and forth, public discussion and debate, he saids/she saids, commentary on every public event that happens and quickly dissipates. This is the oil that keeps the machine running, greasy stories and grimy bits that catch our fancy for a moment and flee just as quickly.

I want the slow meal. The feast prepared with wooden cutting boards and whole foods, the juices of meats flavoring the whole. The spice. The wine. The tablecloth and the candles. Shoulder to shoulder, leaving the dishes for later, much later. The slow food.

Spotlights, whether by association or viral fame, do not a good writer make. Good writing is made in the kitchen, with the dashes and pinches, the taste-testing and stirring, ruminating and storing, aging and serving. Good writing sits and satisfies from the first bite to the last. It is a chocolate cake with a dollop of homemade ice-cream, from which only one bite is needed—because it satisfies.

When I lived in Central America the close of the meal was signaled by the head of the home saying, "Satisfecho." It was a statement. I am satisfied. He would lean back in his chair, push back his plate, and we would sit there still, until all were satisfecho.

This is the writing I want to read. The kind that satisfies, that isn't clamoring for more attention, for commenting, for debate, for the spotlight. It simply is. And is beautiful.

Moving

When I first moved to Texas, it was hot. It was 100 degrees the mid-September day I crossed into the metroplex of Dallas-Fort Worth. I was on a mission. The church I knew I'd be calling home was holding a quarterly event we call Group Connect and I knew if I wanted to make this place home, I'd need a group. I drove ten hours that day and got there late, didn't find a group, but talked to a person who put me in touch with Jen Wilkin who taught Women's Bible Study. I only wanted to know one thing: is this the kind of women's bible study where weepy women cry and complain and take prayer requests that sound like gossip? I was assured it wasn't and so I went.

And God, that hidden man, the monster of my heart, the one I feared, at times hated, and rarely trusted, split the veil in two. This temple, for the first time maybe ever, knew what it was like to approach the throne with confidence, to be full of the Holy Spirit, to cease sacrificing the lamb of self and to trust Him. I was home.

It was a new kind of home for me, the vagabond pilgrim. I've always been the girl who moved a lot. Comfortable with risk and averse to complacency, I'll nomad my way through life if it means more treasure in heaven and less on earth. But this kind of home, in Christ, in the gospel, it was new and different. It fit. I never liked Texas, but I was home. Inside the doors of my church I found a people who became my family.

This past week my pastor had a few of us stand during Elder Led Prayer (a once a month prayer meeting at my church, mostly attended by covenant members and staff) and receive prayer. I didn't see all those who had hands on me, but I felt them. I felt the hands of my family and the prayers of the saints. I left that night and felt so full and so at home.

But, dear reader, all has not been right in this temple-home of mine. Some of you know all the details, some of you have suspected, some of you guessed, but this year has been hard. Hard in hard ways. Ways that make me wonder daily what I'm doing wrong, or what God is doing right.

I have known since I moved here that Texas wasn't the long-term plan. I moved here with the intention of staying six months. Six months has turned into four years and they have been four good years. But it has become increasingly clear to me that my heart is back in the northeast, that my soul yearns for four seasons, for the darkness of winter, the light of spring, the death of fall, and the life of summer. Even more than that, my heart yearns for the people of the north. I love those people. I love their wild eclecticness, their independence, their fierce can-do-itiveness. I love their ideas and philosophies. I love how hard they are, and how soft, how welcoming and how hard to win they are. I can't get the northeast out of my blood, out of my soul. I get them because I am part of them.

When I moved here four years ago it was a fluke. Texas was nowhere on my list or mind. A certain mid-sized city in New York was my aim and then one day I knew it wasn't, couldn't be. I have never regretted that decision. He brought beauty out of the ashes. He taught the pilgrim how to pilgrimage.

Blessed are those whose strength is in you, whose hearts are set on pilgrimage. As they pass through the Valley of Baka (Valley of Weeping), they make it a place of springs; the autumn rains also cover it with pools. They go from strength to strength, till each appears before God in Zion.

That was the verse God gave me to meditate on before I moved to Texas and I have seen how he has taken my weeping and turned it to joy, a dry land and made it bear fruit. He has given me strength after strength, given me men and women who have pushed on those strengths and called me to deeper and stronger places. Everything he has done with the gifts he has given me, has surprised me. He has shown me his character in a fullness I never knew possible, he has put a new song in my heart, a song of praise to our God. That is a blessing I know I will never understand fully. All I can do is be grateful.

And I am.

And yet I am leaving, heading back up to the northeast, to the people who I love with my whole heart, to lilacs, rivers, lakes, and mountains, small churches with great needs, to gospel-dry places with gospel-rich people.

Will I be home there? I don't know. But I know for sure He is at home in me.

Men as Trees Walking, and being honest about the blurry things

If you are a Villager, or you podcast The Village's sermons, this weekend Matt is preaching from II Corinthians 5. If you struggle with doubt, I encourage you to listen. One of the things I love about my church is that it is a safe place to wrestle with sin and the brokenness that sin brings into our lives. As I've been reading Spiritual Depression by Martyn Lloyd Jones, I've been so freshly encouraged to be honest not only about my sin, but also the brokenness that trickles down as a result of it. Note: if you haven't read Spiritual Depression, I cannot recommend it more highly.

From Chapter III:

What is the cure for [spiritual depression]? For the moment I shall give principles only. The first principle is evident: above everything else avoid making premature claim that your blindness is cured. It must have been a great temptation to this man to do that. Here is a man who has been blind. Our Lord puts spittle upon his eyes and says to him: 'Do you see?' The man says: 'I see.' What a temptation it must have been to him to take to his heels and announce to the whole world: 'I can see!' The man, in a sense, could see, but so far his sight was incomplete and imperfect, and it was most vital that he should not testify before he had seen clearly.It is a great temptation and I can well understand it, but it is a fatal thing to do. How many are doing that at the present time (and are pressed and urged to do so), proclaiming that they see, when it is so patent to many that they do not see very clearly and are really still in a state of confusion. What harm such people do. They describe men to others as trees, walking. How misleading to the others!

The second thing is the exact opposite of the first. The temptation to the first is to run and to proclaim that they can see, before they see clearly; but the temptation to the second is to feel absolutely hopeless and to say: 'There is no point in going on. You have put spittle on my eyes and you have touched me. In a sense I see, but I am simply seeing men as if they were trees walking.' Such people often come to me and say that they cannot see the truth clearly. in their confusion they become desperate and ask: 'Why cannot I see? The whole thing is hopeless.' They stop reading their bible, they stop praying. The devil has discouraged many with lies. Do not listen to him.

What then is the cure? What is the right way? It is to be honest and to answer our Lord's question truthfully and honest. That is the whole secret of this matter. He turned to this man and asked: 'Do you see ought?' And the man said, absolutely honestly: 'I do see, but I am seeing men as if they were trees walking.' What saved this man was his absolutely honesty.

Now the question is, where do we stand? The whole purpose of this sermon is just to ask that question—where do we stand? What exactly do we see? Have we got things clearly? Are we happy? Do we really see? We either do or we do not, and we must know exactly where we are. Do we know God? Do we know Jesus Christ? Not only as our Saviour but do we know Him? Are we 'rejoicing with joy unspeakable and full of glory?' That is the New Testament Christian. Do we see? Let us be honest; let us face the questions, let us face them with absolute honesty.

May Sabbath

It was after writing this post through tears in the early morning hours that I remembered it was almost May. May means Sayable Sabbath month. Usually I feel ready for that 12th month Sabbath; I feel I've earned it, worked hard at my craft, swallowed pride, written my heart out for 11 months. But all I feel this year is guilty for how much I've hated writing for six months.

In November of last fall I began feeling like I'd lost my voice. I wasn't sure where it had gone, all I knew was this was a different writer's block than I'd ever felt before. Usually I press through, write anyway, exercise that muscle, and the words eventually come. But this wasn't missing words, this was a missing voice.

I was asking the question, "Who am I?" in a way I never have before. I'm not a person who struggles with identity. I know my strengths, my weaknesses, and my proclivities. Every writer has to know a few things before writing a term paper or book: who am I and who is my audience? I'd perfected the answer to those two questions, but suddenly neither of them seemed right anymore. I didn't know who I was and I certainly had no idea who my audience was.

When we lose our voices I wonder if this is simply God's grace to us after all—since we are His and He is our only audience.

I think of Isaiah in chapter 6, standing before the throne of God, the seraphim around Him singing one refrain, "Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is full of his glory." I think of Isaiah standing there with his head bent down, saying the words, "Woe is me, I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips."

Do you feel the uncleanliness of your lips sometimes? Whether you are a pastor or a blogger or a mother or a son, do you feel the clutter and grime that spews from your mouth and your fingers? The realization again and again of how selfish and prideful and arrogant you are and how you cannot clean yourself up enough to stand before the Holiness of God?

I feel it. Oh, how I feel it.

It was a burning coal that cleansed Isaiah's mouth but we are all looking for the nectar and sweet juice to cleanse ours. The affirmation of friends, the compliments of strangers. We want the feel good way to feeling good, not the burning coal, God, not the burning coal.

I have felt the burning coal these last months. Learning the hard way that I am a person of unclean lips and all around me are others with unclean lips. We who are being sanctified and being transformed are still so not. Look, and not too far, you will be undone too.

We do not Sabbath to give God his due, His 10%. We are not tithing our time, giving of our first-fruits. We Sabbath to remember we need Him. We do not need rest or stillness or peace or comfort. We need Him. We need a vision of Him and His holiness. We need a burning coal. We need to be undone. We need to be touched and sent. But only through Him, Lord of the Sabbath.

Normally I have guest writers for the month of May, but somehow that seemed cheap to me this year. I want Sayable to be still all this month, to Sabbath, and to offer to you readers the blessing of one less thing to read. I know that doesn't make a lot of sense, especially for sponsors, but I'm willing to lose here. I want to lose here. I want to feel the burning of the coal on my mouth, my voice, my "platform," and my pulpit. I want to stand before the throne undone.

Meditating On

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. (I Corinthians 2:1-5) It's so easy to get caught up in the words, right? There are so many words, competing messages, and directions for our hearts and minds to take. We gobble them up, feed on them, sustain ourselves with them, and oh how hungry we go to bed every night. Don't you? I do.

But Paul, truthful Paul, he drops those lofty words and sweet wisdom in the mud, crushes them with his heel, and says, "No, friends, I decide, I purpose, I war with my flesh, to know nothing, nothing, among you, except Christ."

Oh, how my prideful, boasting, self-righteous, independent heart needs to hear the apostle say those words: it's not of me, it's of Christ and for Christ and about Christ.

The Keeper of the Peace

There are all sorts of opportunities to doubt God's faithfulness and His sustaining goodness to us. Financial difficulties, marriage or roommate difficulties, church difficulties—everywhere we look in life we can see reasons the world would give us for not trusting God in the midst of difficult circumstances or fearful endeavors.

In my life right now it seems in every direction there are opportunities for the enemy to whisper or shout, "You will not have peace!" Our home bears the weight of that threat, my relationships bear the weight of it, my mind bears the weight of it, even my heart bears it. It has been a hard year. I'm not complaining, I'm just confessing that I look around me right now and say with Job, "I am not at ease, nor am I quiet; I have no rest, but trouble comes (Job 3:26)."

When I feel the lack of peace I tend to go hunting for it. I'll turn over every rock and stone until I find it, but Isaiah 26:3 says that it is GOD who keeps me in peace. In all my grappling and grasping for it, He's the keeper of it. All I do is keep my eyes fixed on Him, the author and finisher of my faith (Heb. 12:2).

Choosing today to fix my eyes on Him, not my circumstances or fears. Trusting today that He'll keep me in perfect peace, like a good father keeps his children in clothing and food, keeps his home in order—this is the way God keeps me clothed and sustained in peace.

Make Myself at Home

For reasons better left to your imagination, I have never felt at home in this house. Moving away from my last house was wrought with too many lasts to count. Every meal felt like mourning and I cried, hard, when I went back alone one last time to close every cabinet door and sweep every corner. So much living happened in that house, so much loving.

We moved into this house in the dead of summer, sweat pooling down our backs, and a piano to make space for. No one thinks they have that much stuff, but when every worldly possession (and a few of your old roommates 'to store') is jengaed inside a UHaul, you realize how tied to earth you are. Books, tablecloths, chairs, and that piano. I stopped counting boxes.

All our living stacked in a UHaul and hauled thirty-five minutes north.

I spent a day at my old workplace this week, driving on familiar roads to get there, greeted by hugs and exclamations when I walked in the door. Thirty-five minutes north doesn't feel far until you haven't driven it in two months.

I have never settled into this place. There are many reasons for it and I have no regrets, but the fact remains that when I wake up, I wake up to strange walls and strange sounds. I am homesick for something that doesn't exist anymore. My three roommates are building new homes with their husbands. Three years is the longest I've lived with anyone and they three are the deepest I've loved anyone yet.

Six months later may seem a pregnant amount of time for me to just be mourning it now, to just be settling into this home now, but I have my reasons, I do. And those reasons aren't really important to most of you.

This morning I made breakfast and coffee, washed a few dishes, lit candles while we ate. These are the exact motions of our every days, and I hope someday soon they will be the motions of one who loves her home. For now, though, they are the work of love—the tilling, the sowing, the planting that comes before the reaping.

All it really takes to love a home is to live in it, to work in it, and to do it well. All of love is work. It is piling every energy, resource, and belonging into one place, counting it with joy, and unpacking it, box by box until the work of love is natural and full.

Pot, Meet Kettle

My first blog was on a Live Journal domain (remember those?). I took its name from a Burlap to Cashmere song that, to this day, I still don't really understand the full meaning behind. I just knew I loved the three words strung together. The year was 2000 and my family was turned upside down in about a year. You name it, we experienced it in that year. I didn't know where to turn, or to whom, and so I turned to anonymity. I became a blogger.

In 2000 a blogger was either Jason Kottke, posting links to interesting content on the rising web, or it was an angsty teenager ranting about life. I wrote voraciously. Sometimes three posts a day. I didn't care who read, or if anyone did, but I began to find a community of other bloggers. There was this brotherhood among us of sorts, people from all over the United States who stumbled on words not their own but which could be. I don't have other words for it but divine. It was divine in the sense that it was almost otherworldly at that point. There were no dating sites, chat rooms were still a little strange, actually meeting someone in real life was rare and coated with suspicion. But it was also divine in the sense that it was a timely gift from God.

I spent years working out my salvation on the pages of the internet. By the time Sayable was birthed in 2008, I was one of the seasoned bloggers. My readership was still small by comparison, but in the annals of history, I was nearing mid-life at least. Every thought I've had about God has somehow been worked out on Sayable, or its younger siblings.

Writing is sanctification, if you'll let it be.

This morning I opened my feed reader and read, as I do every morning. I find more and more often, I am just skimming. I open the posts with catchy titles or intriguing photos, so I am guilty of that which I complain of, I know. But I am so weary of the noise of blogging: the effort to churn out content instead of cherish the conviction.

One of my favorite quotes is by Lindford Detweiler, and I'll never forget it. I love it so much that I screen printed it and it is the welcoming art as you walk into our home:

Music and art and writing: extravagant, essential, the act of spilling something, a cup running over...The simultaneous cry of 'you must change your life, and welcome home.' I've been trying to write songs again, and I've been hitting a maze of dead ends. I want the songs to reveal something to me, teach me something. It's slow going. I'm not sure where I'm going. Uncertainty abounds. But the writing works on me little by little and begins to change me. That's why I would recommend not putting off writing if it's something you feel called to: if you put it off, then the writing can't do the work that it needs to do to you. Yes, I think there's something there. If you don't do the work, the work can't change you. (No one expects to change overnight.)

I'm weeping even now, as I read over that quote again by one of the finest lyricists I know. Here is a man who lets the writing do the work in himself. And I want that, friend and fellow writer, I want that for us. No matter what work it is that we put our hands to, I want it to do the deep work in us. The hard work, the cleansing work, the sanctifying work.

Blogging is hard work, I would never tell anyone otherwise, don't make it easy by simply building a platform or gaining readers. That is not the point of blogging, and it is not the point of writing. We write to do the work in us, and God willing, in others. The publishers will use those big words about marketing and growth, but at the end of the day, those things will steal the soul of the writing you need to do.

Writing is sanctification and writing is God's blessed gift to only a few of us. If you are a writer, don't sell that sanctification for a contract or a deal. Turn your palms up, slow your mind, and do the upside-down work of the kingdom: your name always decreasing, ever increasing His.

Sleeping Through a Year

My word for 2013 was rest and it wasn't until yesterday that I saw the humor in it. I came into 2013 sleep deprived and exhausted. By the time I finished the year long theological training program in May (in which I needed to rise by 4:30am to make it to class on time), I wanted to swear off middle of the nights for the rest of time. This year sleep has been my elusive friend and favorite companion. In other years I'd have said I was depressed, but this year was different. I honestly was tired. I was soul tired, heart tired, mind tired. I wanted emotional rest, yes, but really, I just wanted to rest.

There were so many times this year when I resented the sleep I craved. "What is wrong with me," I'd ask myself. I've never been a snooze-button pusher and I would press it three, four, five times every morning. I'd keep myself up later than I needed, simply because the thought of more than seven hours of sleep sounded lazy, unnecessary, and entitled.

I know there are some of you who may roll your eyes at the luxury of being able to press the snooze button at all; your alarm clocks cry themselves awake intermittently through the night and early into the morning. It's okay, there are other things you get that I don't that are much nicer, so we're even-steven.

As I reviewed my year, asking myself a dozen questions I ask every January 1st, I realized I've been given exactly what I asked for, rest, but I hadn't seen it for what it was. God gives his beloved rest and sometimes that's just plain shut eye. Sometimes what we seek is a haven, a quietness, a trust, and strength, thinking that will bring us rest, and rightfully so:

In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength. Isaiah 30:15

But sometimes we just need to trust the times and sunlight and darkness, and just go to sleep.

I'm grateful I slept through 2013. It wasn't the rest I thought I wanted, or craved, but at the end of the year it was the rest I needed. I can trust that because God never sleeps, never slumbers, always keeps watch over His children.

He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade on your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. Psalm 121

My word for 2014 is work. Let's see how this one turns out ;)

Righteousness and Peace

I was reading Psalm 85 this morning and it spoke of how righteousness and peace kiss each other and I thought, "How beautiful." Under the reign of God, justice and peace join together, are for one another, perfectly complementing one another. There is no hierarchy of one over the other. They simply are, and then they meet, and they join in intimacy.

God, help there be more evidence of that in my life.