The People Who Waited in Darkness Have Seen a Great Light

its not about the fixing of people at all. at least not in the way people have tried to fix me before. the strange pushing away of the abandonment or confusion or whatever the great deal of hurt is inside. because what if we, in the fixing, in the immediate reaction to a loss for words or fear or perhaps the sudden connection to our own deep hurt, do not allow our friends to grieve whatever it is that they are grieving. then we have not loved them as broken. not loved who they are in their great deal of hurt and who they will be once refined and bent by it. if we only try to fix and push and speak, we have only loved our hope of what they will be once they have mended. and we rarely, in our visions of our mended friends, take account of the scars that might be left or honor the different person who might altogether take the place of who they were before. to slow our fear of a changed friend or quicken the awkward silence of not knowing just what to say, we push them to be bright and shiny and new. but i have mended many things before and know the sweaters and the shoes always are a bit different after the mending. with more marks of care and more stories for the telling, but always a bit different. so. in our broken friends, i find a challenge of letting them grieve whatever it is they have lost, or never found, or found too often. of allowing their great deal of hurt not to make its home in them but at least to make its mark in its terribly important way. to allow the tragedy before the redemption. if i am to try anything at all, it is not to fix the hurting people so dear to me, but to love them greatly and directly in the middle of it all.

*photograph by marc davies, torment

But the Ground Remembers Her

"if youre gonna go, take the ones you gave to me", istanbul, turkey, ashley brown

holidays are not always sweet. you notice the changes in your home. the ones your parents make after the children have moved out and show their stories and the child you only used to be. ive been waking up late, but not to the wild, untamed light and cathedral shapes against my sheets and walls, but to the pale glow of cold days and weeded flower beds. ive been missing home, but the not the one i visit during the holidays. more,perhap, i am missing the feeling of home, also found in things like first loves and last ones, old treehouses,and abandoned candlelit church rooms. i mourn the loss of past homes. the one with the yellow swingset and hole iwth red dirt i thought would lead me across the world. the one in the one i love, weaved graciously with many conversations a few words. the one watched over by an angel tree 4 stories high, at least that. the one with the scars on its wooden floors. and i am filled with the anxious and expected coming of new homes. of ones with new scars to find and to be made. of one that doesn't build up from the earth, but down from somewhere north of here. and of ones that might someday remember my passing from the familiar weight i left on their grounds and bodies.

and angels everywhere were in my midst, the ones i loved and the ones i had kissed

You're The Reason I'm Traveling on

the approaching of this holiday season means a good many things other than just the roasting of turkeys and the lighting of furnaces because. i find myself in a completely different place altogether. it means the i have pulled out my coat earlier and laced my boots many more times. it means that fall has come and nearly gone as i make my way to the airport towards home. its making new soup recipes and discovering new pathways when the old ones are covered in leaves. its watching the children at work finding the absence of family in their little lives more terribly conspicuous. its being proud to tell my dad which bob dylan songs ive learned since last time i was home. its pilgrims and corn and bad jokes about corn. its laughing at the time i was in paris for thanksgiving and the turkey was stolen out of the oven when the power went out in my apartment. its putting cinnamon in my coffee so it smells like christmas in the house. its greeting new boyfriends and children that have come into the family with as little social awkwardness as possible. its allowing these things to create new memories and new landscapes of my life to be written down or sung about or just for the remembering.

when i woke up in paris. when i watched old women mend clothing in nicaragua. when i left home for philadelphia. when i work with kids that leave us, and there is weighted unsurity whether we will see them again. with families of their own or maybe in jail. when i woke up in another city with its own struggles and social gaps and poverty and hurt, too great for one, or many...this thought from romero stays, alway nearby, so that i will not forget...

Prayer of Archbishop Romero

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fractionof the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of sayingthat the kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church's mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about.We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted,knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberationin realizing that.
This enables us to do something,and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete,but it is a beginning, a step along the way,an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the differencebetween the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.

schooled by a six year old

yesterday i got to experience a little kid's aggression and hurt up close and personal. to be more specific, i got pegged in the face by a Smarties pack and a cherry flavored Jolly Rancher. (six year olds can do some damage when throwing from 2 feet). though i have gotten pretty good at dodging flying objects this time they hit me square on the nose and in the eye. to be honest, i hated my job for about 3 minutes as i put the ice pack on my eye and counseled the kid on anger managment. but it made me think about how many of these kids have noone that loves them very much at all. and how they know it. how the adults in their lives have walked away from them because they are "bad kids". and how they know it. how abandoned they must feel and unable to cope with so much emotion in their little bodies. so. i let this kid know that my eye hurt and it was wrong but that didn't mean i was going anywhere. despite hopes for a black eye and a really great story about how "you should have seen the other guy", its healing up with little after effects except some redness in the eye and a bump on my nose.

All the Glory that the Lord has Made, and the Complications you could Do Without, When I Kissed You on the Mouth

no. haven't been kissed on the mouth recently but i thought sufjan stevens (http://www.sufjan.com/) put it nicely. as i settle into days and walk in more weighted ways here, there's always a pull to be busier and more productive and more grown up. to trade my mocassins and mended clothing for power suits with pen stripes and the long, wooded way from work to home for the more efficient highway.so ive decided to ignore this pull and stick with what i have learned to love about where i live now. to make it a point to step out onto my porch when the kids at school across the street have recess and send their laughter and shouting my direction. to make it a point to notice people. to listen more to my bb king record and sing along to it. to allowing the missing of things like mountains and southern accents and the evening hours when most people are getting off work and settling into their dinner conversations. to always take the long way home. where i am right now is not a bad place to be so much at all.