in the half-light of our love

One of my favorite songwriters is Bill Deasy, party because his work reveals a sort of incarnational bent toward life and love. He is (was?) Catholic, and I suspect that Catholicism has something to teach the rest of us about how faith is embodied.

In vain I tried to find a video to share with you of one of my favorite songs of his. There are clips here and here, but you should probably just go ahead pick up his whole catalog. (And his fiction while you're at it.)

So no melody for you. Pretend it's a poem. Which, of course, it is.

Naked

8 years old and running with a pounding in my chest
Hard to say how often, almost every day I guess
Me and little Nancy from across the neighborhood
Taking all our clothes of in a clearing in the woods
Until one day the sun broke through the trees
And suddenly I saw that we were

Naked - dancing near the devil's flame
Naked - I ran home carrying my shame
All great big and heavy 

16 years later I was 24
I would awaken to the slamming of an unfamiliar door
I'd take in my surroundings by nothing'd ring a bell
Oh it was really kind of boring, my little sideshow hell
Steam covered mirrors did not lie
And suddenly I saw that I was 

Naked - pencil thin and paper dry
Naked - I didn't leave a note goodbye 

Time takes time
Change goes slow
Love comes hard
To folks I know 

Now here I'm standing, got this baggage at my feet
Yeah it's the usual assortment of forgetful memories
Ain't it funny how you saw it all and didn't run away?
Yeah it's funny how in showing you I knew I was okay
Here in the half-light of our love
Your body fits me like a glove 

Naked - what you see is who I am
Naked - I finally found the strength to stand
Naked - who we are is all I am yeah
Naked - I finally found the guts to stand here naked

{Bill Deasy, from Chasing Down a Spark}

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an act of faith in time itself

I have spent a lifetime learning to believe in things that can never burn down. I can invest my heart's desire and the work of my hands in things that will outlive me. Although it grieves me that houses are burning, I have fallen in love with a river that runs through a desert, a rain forest at the edge of night, the right of a species to persist in its own wild place, and the words I might assemble to tell their stories. I've fallen in love with freedom regardless, and the entitlement of a woman to get a move on, equipped with boots that fit and opinions that might matter. The treasures I carry closest to my heart are things I can't own: the curve of a five-year-old's forehead in profile, and the vulnerable expectation in the hand that reaches for mine as we cross the street... 

I can clear the brush from a neglected part of the garden, working slowly until it comes to me that here is one small place I can make right for my family. I can plant something as an act of faith in itself, a vow that we will, sure enough, have a fall and a winter this year, to be followed again by spring. This is not an end in itself, but a beginning...Small change, small wonders--these are the currency of my endurance and ultimately of my life. It's a workable economy. 

{Barbara Kingsolver, Small Wonder}

embodied {guest post Seth Haines}

In a world of steel-eyed death and men who are fighting to be warm, Seth Haines' writing is a shelter from the storm. I'm grateful to host his words here today.

1.

We move first through the rail thin hope of light,
potential coming through the needle’s eye
and into the growing, breaking, blinding dawn
of the first day.
From water to air, pushed or pulled
I do not know which, we come
to the great magnet that is this living,
this undulating of ocean tides
and carnal impulse.

2.

We learn to climb, breathless,
to roll down sand dunes
and into the shell beds
at the bottoms of every hill
just there, at the foot of the ocean.
If we are still, we feel the pull into sand,
the calling of dust to dust, tide to tide.
Overhead, the gulls fly against the trade winds
in a V. Cutting against the invisible,
do they look down and envy
our oneness with dust?

3.

Elders, we keep watch for the narrowing,
closing golden gate. Dusk thinning,
the light becomes again rail-thin
or invisible, and the gentle call
brings us to the best memories of sand dunes
and shell beds, the switch grass that stands
at the edges of the tides.
Here the gulls fly north again for the last winter.
Here, sweet envy turns the eye upward
to longing for oneness with the eternal sky.
There is again the pushing and pulling of tides
as ears press finally against the fighting conch
that was the best of life.

Seth Haines is a working stiff from the Ozark mountains. He and his wife Amber Haines have four boys and a dog named Lucy. Seth enjoys good sentences, good music, good food, good fly fishing, and a good book every now and then. You can find him on a regular basis at sethhaines.com.

on waiting {guest post Catherine Hawkins}

Catherine is a new-to-me blogger, and I am so honored to share her vulnerable post 
with you. It fits our series perfectly, and I really appreciate her honest words. Enjoy, 
friends.

     His hazel eyes are wide and his mouth hangs open just slightly, the beginnings of a grin. The booth is wide and he seems far away across the dark wood table.

     So, I’ve never had sex.

     There it is, in one, too-short sentence.

~     ~     ~

     I am 24-years-old, and I have experienced for the first time what it’s like to tell a non-Christian that I am a virgin. 
“Wait, so you’ve never had sex? Ever?” he said, and I shook my head, biting the inside of my lip because I didn’t trust my words.

     A back and forth, a pendulum between two worldviews, a desire to comprehend.

     “I don’t understand,” he leaned back against the leather booth, “Why are you doing this? You don’t even seem to want to. Do you flog yourself, too?”

     It seems like a flogging, this choice not to take what I want. It seems like a holier-than-thou, the asceticism of squashed desire.
     And there is my problem: I don’t know how to answer him.

     Why are you doing this?

     In college, sex is the hot topic, and you talk circles around it until you feel more confused and tired than when you started. There’s no question that the Church teaches abstinence, but there are tons of questions about Why?, How?, and For how long? My Christian girlfriends and I have bemoaned our sexless plight for years, longing and not-longing for the freedom we see in others’ lives.

     But this is the choice we’ve made.

     We’re just not so sure now why we’ve made it.

~     ~     ~

     The answers I give him are flat, rehearsed, sounding better in the confines of my mind or the safety of girl-talk than they do in a fire-lit bar over whiskey. I mention love and unity and God and order, but I realize mid-sentence that I don’t even believe what I’m saying. Or, I don’t believe it all the time.

     “I want it to be love,” I say, but this isn’t the answer.

     “So you’ve never loved someone? You can’t just wait for some perfect man to come around. What if he never comes?”

     What if he never comes?

     The potential for that hangs between us and I have nothing to say.

     When I start to cry – from sadness, from desire, from embarrassment, who can parse emotion? – he hugs me and whispers, “There is nothing wrong with you. It doesn’t make sense to me, but it’s okay. There is nothing wrong with you.”
     But I feel all-wrong. I feel 24 and inexperienced and childish. I feel pigeon-holed in a place of Victorian piety and un-liberation. I feel tricked by the Church because nowhere in the Bible does it say, “Wait! Just wait! When you get married, sex will be AWESOME!”, and all I’m left with is this man’s arms around me but no answer to the question:

     Why are you doing this?

~     ~     ~

     I have moments of clarity. They happen most often in three places: sitting in the pew at church, lying in my bed at night, and driving alone in my car along roads that are too familiar. In these moments of clear thought, I begin to see why I have chosen this. I feel God’s presence. I know in just a flash why sex was created with these restrictions, and I breathe.

     These moments are too few and they never last.

     I can’t put the thoughts into words, but they are there, the times when I say, Okay, Lord, here it is. I do not understand it. I do not always want to do this. But I want to please You more than I want what I want.

     He may never understand this, the waiting, the “flogging,” as he said. He thinks I’m waiting for a fairytale romance because that is the only context in which he’s heard “I’m waiting for marriage.” Maybe someday I’ll be able to explain that it’s not about fairytales or good sex or perfection.

     It’s about ____________________.

Catherine Hawkins lives in northeastern Massachusetts where she pursues writing and the romantic idea of small-scale farming. She holds a degree in English and Music from Gordon College, and she currently teaches Latin to eager and not-so-eager 3-12 graders. When she isn’t writing or teaching, she’s most likely singing, drinking coffee, or selling honey and eggs at the local farmers’ market. You can follow her on twitter and read her blog at neither here nor there.

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fold your hands {on teaching consent to pre-schoolers}

“The boys kiss me on the bus every day even though I tell them not to.”

WHAT.

I’ve never been what you might call a helicopter parent. Last month after yoga, when a stranger asked me how I was handling my daughter’s transition to kindergarten, I made the mistake of not being appropriately mournful. She looked horrified, and I was forced to backtrack: “I mean, I get to spend more time with my other kid. Which is great!”

After a long summer, we were all ready for the rhythms of autumn and school. Dylan was practically born school-ready; the only thing I was remotely concerned about was the bus. See, I remember the bus. I remember a particularly nasty fifth grader who called me an asshole and made fun of the knock-off pink Chucks I wore in first grade. I remember an inexplicable corn fight, brawls in the aisle, and setting my backpack down in a pool of loogie. We won’t even talk about P.D.A. on the high school bus.

A public school bus can be something of a study in anarchy, and recent news stories and bullying exposés hardly engender renewed confidence in the wheeled, yellow free-for-all. But Dylan was so excited to ride it, counting down the days ever since she started pre-school. I figured we’d give it a shot, and see what happened.

What happened is that boys kissed my five-year-old.

–

When they get rowdy or grabby, we tell our kids, “Fold your hands.” It applies when we’re headed into a store, but more often than not it’s about how we don’t touch people without their permission. We use our hands to help, or we keep them to ourselves. Consent to touch is not implied.

Conversations about personal boundaries and “No means no” don’t start in middle school; we have them now, every day. My kids aren’t tiny extensions of my husband and me. They are their own people who bear the Imago Dei, and their bodily autonomy ought to be honored.

–

I contact her teacher. She tells the boys to refrain, but the unwanted kissing continues. My husband informs the bus driver, but they persist, and we learn it’s been happening on the playground, too. Are consent and touch part of school policy, classroom conversations, and discipline? I ask in follow-up email. Could a teacher please end this right now?

I don’t hear anything right away, but the next afternoon Dylan bounds off the bus grinning.

“There was NO kissing today. I saw the principal talk to the boys at school.”

I was pleasantly surprised and grateful with how decisively the school finally handled it. There haven’t been any incidents since.

–

We don’t make our children kiss relatives or tickle anyone after “Stop.” We talk a lot about being gentle with our hands and heeding other people’s “No.” We talk about respecting privacy, honoring boundaries, and not touching people without their permission. Love is more than words or feelings; it encompasses what we do with our bodies–and how we refrain.

We don’t get it right all the time. The kids still push and fight. I don’t leave enough time exiting a play date and have to wrangle an unwilling three year into his car seat. We’re not perfect, but we’re trying.

We help with our hands. Or we fold them together, a symbol of self-restraint. And possibly prayer.

let's lay down arms, love

I was on-fire all right, and I've got a stack of earnest prayer journals to prove it. Christian concerts, youth groups, Jesus camp, the whole nine yards. I was all in and got the tee-shirt--or rather the tank top, signed by one of the razor-haired blonds from DC Talk.

But I've been thinking a lot lately of how I landed on this side of evangelicalism without the catastrophic crash-and-burn that turned so many of my peers into spiritual refugees. I keep wondering, What was different for me? and I think there was a light and a darkness that cut a different path.

I grew up in a Christian home and an angry home. I was a "good kid" who followed the rules, but my mother and I fought to the teeth, and I couldn't wait to graduate and get the hell out of Dodge.

I knew there was more peace in the homes of my friends who did not follow Jesus, and it killed me that my family loved Jesus so much and treated each other so terribly. It killed me that I loved Jesus so much and treated my family so terribly. I tried and I prayed and I cried and I wrestled, but I could not curb my anger or control my tongue.

I never was the perfect Christian kid, and my house never was the perfect Christian home. I knew I needed grace as much as anyone, and I never had any illusions that being a Christian meant having your shit together. I knew for a fact it didn't.

The lighter side was that the Christian communities to which I belonged (including my family) loved me fiercely, and faith never was tied to legalism or shame. They introduced me to a Jesus who loved and forgave and not a set of rules to follow, and today I can trace a path from there to here that reveals God's faithfulness all along.

the Church {a love letter}


You never were cool, but I liked your style:
flannel graphs, butter cookie tins, and junior choir
solos less about perfection than presence.
Gifts offered a King (enthusiasm counted)
Love served warm and strange as potluck,
rhythms generous, comfortable, and
radical in their simplicity

Deep and wide, Deep and wide, There's a fountain flowing deep and wiiiiiiiiide

Wasn't there, though?
A grace-well as big as our Lord

We're many kinds of people With many kinds of faces
All colors and all ages too From all times and places

That truth (along with the joy! joy! joy! joy!)
burrowed heart-deep and took root

The church is not a building The church is not a steeple
The church is not a resting place The church is a people 

presbyterian, baptist, non-denominational, emergent, episcopal,
In barn or basement, chapel or church
at summer camp in the woods or atop the city,
we worshiped with the Body beautiful.
Your raiment varied and vibrant,
colorful as the members who shared our first Love

I am the Church You are the Church We are the Church together
All who follow Jesus All around the world
Yes we're the Church together

I'm not naïve: you are as damaged as you are lovely
Your sharp accusations stung, left me
gasping for breath. Conditional
love at times stained my cheeks
But I'm no innocent, I know that.
My words wielded like daggers and
I've withheld grace, too
Unforgiveness is an ugly mistress
God, we're a wretched lot

But our imperfect love is velveteen real
surpassing what-if, should-have, and didn't-you every day of the week

Community is hard. Love is harder
--and easier, too, somehow. Half is showing up

At our best, you pointed me to the One who
holds us together, reconciling to
a Father who loves, the
creation that groans, and
one another, that we may be healed

You knew my heart,
the hard and wounded places, too,
and loved me all the more

Our Love lights the darkness
never so hot or bright as when our gaze turns outward
Let's lay down arms, love
Take my hand and remember
the Hope to which we are called

My friend Addie Zierman's book is out today: When We Were on Fire: A Memoir of Consuming Faith, Tangled Love, and Starting Over. It is resonating with and healing so many, and if you grew up "on-fire"--or know someone who burned out along the way or is longing to start over--you're gonna want to get your hands on her lovely first effort, which is honest about the hard stuff and ultimately hopeful.

Spend some time on her site, How To Talk Evangelical, read the rest of the synchroblog, and get her book. Proud of you, Addie!

unless the Lord builds the house

It's been a full few days around here. I dropped James off at preschool this morning and ended up back in bed until stress dreams woke me up five minutes before pick-up.

Staying up late to spin words here seems like foolishness. I'm ready to breathe deeply the rhythms of rest.

Unless the Lord builds the house,
    the builders labor in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city,
    the guards stand watch in vain.
In vain you rise early
    and stay up late,
toiling for food to eat—
    for he grants sleep to those he loves.

Children are a heritage from the Lord,
    offspring a reward from him.
Like arrows in the hands of a warrior
    are children born in one’s youth.
Blessed is the man
    whose quiver is full of them.
They will not be put to shame
    when they contend with their opponents in court. (Psalm 127)

 

 

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your loves sake. Amen.

 

Good night, friends.

 

 

let us breathe deeply

So let us remember the Sabbath. Let us breathe deeply in the rhythms of life, of the earth, of action and rest. Traditionally, Sabbath is honored by lighting candles, gathering in worship and prayers, blessing children, singing songs, keeping silence, walking, reading scripture, making love, sharing a meal. Just as we must wait until the darkness falls before we can see the stars, so does the Sabbath quietly wait for us. As darkness falls, as the light of the world fades and disappears, we light the inner lights, the lights of home and refuge. Our steps take us home, and the light draws us in.

{Wayne Muller Sabbath}