like precious oil

"Important in any community of faith is an ever-renewed expectation in what God is doing with our brothers and sisters in the faith. We refuse to label the others as one thing or another. We refuse to predict our brother's behavior, our sister's growth. Each person in the community is unique; each is specially loved and particularly led by the Spirit of God. How can I presume to make conclusions about anyone? How can I pretend to know your worth or your place?
...A community of faith flourishes when we view each other with this expectancy, wondering what God will do today in this one, in that one."

{Eugene Peterson A Long Obedience in the Same Direction}

love shows up

It's National Coming Out Day. Ben Moberg is sharing his story and shedding the anonymity he'd blogged under until this point, which is pretty freakin' bold.

Another friend, Kate Jones, had these words that I wanted to share, too:

If someone comes out to you and you do not affirm their gayness, please refrain from expressing that judgement. Those words will leave the worst scars. Try these words instead: "Thank you for being honest with me. I love you."

Vulnerability and honesty are gifts to honor. Love shows up, incarnate in what we do.

The stakes are too high to extend anything less.

fish out of water {guest post Misty Green}

Misty is the very first friend I made through blogging, back when I was a new mama finding my voice and my footing. I am so grateful to host her words here, particularly now that she keeps them farther from screens and closer to her heart. This piece on beauty, shame, and mortality is something I'll be meditating on for a while. Enjoy, friends.

We’re told we hover, clothed from a thousand fig leaves, ashamed of our figures and functions and dying an eve’s death; today is just one more day of our mortality, bought with the price of a bite in forbidden fruit.

And yes, fig leaves cover (is this our multitude of sins? hiding from the God we walked with?).

And yes, many of us lie naked and ashamed (and not, in fact, because we wish to dominate Adam’s sons).

Have you read C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces? It’s a terror-ific (not to be read terrific, which it certainly is, also) manuscript full of holy and misguided theology, the kind that wears thistles to betray our fear. It is a myth that tells a truth, and it’s my favorite novel. I won’t waste words here on how it’s a book of faith and mercy but will simply quote a passage:

I felt ashamed.
But, of what? Psyche, they hadn’t stripped you naked or anything?
No, no, Maia. Ashamed of looking like a mortal—of being a mortal.
But how could you help that?
Don’t you think the things people are most ashamed of are the things they can’t help? 

This passage gets at something crucial—that we humans are wearing skin that is improbably ours. That we are mortal in the face of God who can’t but look on our skin as what it is: mud weaved with grace-breath. And instead of choosing Psyche’s fear (to look like our skin), we fear our skin itself or rather, its loss, decay, disease and frailty, the constant breakdown of something that is on borrowed time.

Herein is faith: we wear a transient gift over our eternal parts. And defeat? That we mock our Maker by hating and fearing our outer selves. It takes faith to see that a True Self extends beyond our bodies, but there is faith, too, in beholding each other and ourselves as Lovely in the interim.

We long for Beauty; this is in our nature, divined in the image of One who creates. We lust after beauty, create things of beauty or images we persuade each other are beautiful, and all too soon we see only fog in mirrors and shadows instead of sunsets. We can deride constructs and tropes and counterfeit beauty (camouflage), or we can run to the shield of the inner beauty and raise her flag, and in both scenarios, we might often return to our tear-soaked pillows, afraid of our own un-loveliness.

I know I have. I know I do. And I tell myself I know better, that external beauty is skin deep, and I think that’s exactly part of the problem.

We were never meant to have beautiful skin, but we chase the elusive idea of perfection, or we shy away from being un-fully-known. This skin of ours is a wet suit designed to get us through “finitism.”

Like a fish out of water, we long always to get out of the temporal and back to eternity. And faith is trusting the journey there. Trusting that being a ‘mere mortal’ is part process, part gift, and part dying a hundred deaths to self.

After all,

It takes faith for a husband to love his wife, though she’s been abused and she still suffers with intimacy sometimes.

It takes faith for a woman to trust her husband’s words: You are altogether beautiful, my darling; there is no flaw in you.

It takes faith for a broken mother to draw her children closer when her mind is screaming for space to be herself again.

It takes faith for a battle-worn couple to face the front doors of that church, to enter a place of worship, afraid the smell of sin and stagnancy clings to them like smoke.

This skin? Kind of expensive for a bite of fruit. Cheap in the face of grace that weeps bitter 'til we can see our Father face-to-face.

misty is mama to four boys, wife to a man she calls home. homeschooling one year at a time. God-believer. An introvert who talks a lot and is terribly awkward at ending phone calls. an ex-blogger (also awkwardly ended). lover of words, wearer of grace.

where kindness leads

The heat kicks on, housed closed up tight,

kettle whistling. We've traded tanks for woolen
scarves, wardrobes and worlds away from
Sunday's sandy toes, sticky cheeks, and
bare legged babes 'midst the mums.

October is a fickle mistress. My heart's
a warmer, steadier hand's, but autumn
glow has childlike charms, enchanting me 

with glittering tides, a sun-kissed nose.

The leaves turn, and so do we. Harvest
skies keep watch over castles of sand,
and a sapphire mermaid finds her legs,
sweet summer's curtain call.

the naked ask {guest post Aaron Smith}

Aaron is a writer of courage and candor. He blogs at Cultural Savage, and I am grateful to share his words here on physical need and faith in God who provides through flesh-and-blood hands.

Asking is hard.

It is difficult to admit my own need, to admit I can't do it, to admit I need help. Maybe it's American society, maybe it's how I am broken and bent by the fall. Either way, there is something that brings a visceral reaction to having to ask for something I need.

First, there is the pit. It sits square in my belly, a gaping hole leaving me with sick feelings and gasping to catch my breath. Then come the reticulating thoughts, obsessively circling around this thing I have to ask for, this need that I have. These thoughts are always accompanied with agitation, the restlessness, the fidgeting and pacing. It's as if my body has too much energy to be contained, but I keep cranking out more. This is the heart of worry, the fighting with my self to figure out a solution without having to swallow my pride and do the hard work of asking someone else.

I know I have a mood disorder; I know I am mentally ill. I have to believe that my reaction to having to ask for the big help isn't just about my condition. I can't be the only one who dreads asking for help with rent, with moving, with paying bills, buying groceries, caring for my family. It is a hard thing to ask.

It's hard to trust. I have to place my hope in someone else, and they may let me down. They may not be able to help. They may not want to. They may say no. In the face to a big ask, I am left feeling the truth that trusting does not guarantee that something will happen.

So God, how the hell do I trust you when I have to ask?

I already feel like you let me down because I am in the place where I need to ask. I have already been asking you to save, to deliver, to help. Now, I have to open my chest up and ask other human beings for what I can't do on my own. I have to ask other people to take care of me and my family.

How is this faith? It feels like uncertainty and begging.

Is there something to having faith in my begging, of trusting you when I face these fears? When I put down my physiological aversion to need and ask people to help us pay rent, am I really throwing my self on your mercy?

If I stop, slow down, and take a few breaths, I can almost hear that it is.

When I force my self into your holy hands, giving myself over to your provision, it is far from a passive thing. I don't just let go of all worry and doubt, fear and anxiety. Siting with my fear of being let down, doubting that you care, being anxious about tomorrow: these things live close to my heart when I lean over the edge, praying you will catch this falling child.

This is me living in trusting you. Even though I doubt, I still ask. I do the work of asking because I believe that you provide, and often times it is through the hands, feet, and mouths of my fellow human beings. I ask, physically speaking the words because I believe you want to free me from the silence of shame as part of your healing in my life. I type out messages of need and push the send key because I want to believe that people love me, that people care about my family, and that in the love and care we find we may catch a hint of the agape love you have for us.

So, I ask, and I receive with a grateful heart. I still worry, fret, hide, and doubt, but I ask.

I ask and trust that you hear, trust that you care, trust that you will provide. I ask and I trust, even as I doubt and fear. I ask, and with my admission of need, of lack, of fear, and of shame, I put feet to my faith, action to my trust, and deeds to my hope.

Those who love me, I will deliver; I will protect those who know my name. When they call to me, I will answer them; I will be with them in trouble, I will rescue them and honor them. With long life I will satisfy them, and show them my salvation. (Psalm 91.14-16)

Husband, father, believer, writer, nerd, coffee chugger. Just a typical Jesus obsessed, question everything, bipolar, poet-punk. I'm a bad Christian.

shabbat shalom

On the seventh day He rested.

(Did it take a toll, the 
crafting of creation
universe-shaping
calling forth Something
out of Nothing?

Did You rest to show us
How, or was it Why?)

To pause. Selah.

To revel in the work of Your Hands,
delighting in what's Good indeed.

On the seventh day we rest as well.

Babies and garden need tending still,
but many hands make such care light.
We revel in the work of our hands,

and Yours. Co-laborers, we

pause. Selah.

Tarrying over breakfast:
eggs fresh, jam sweet, coffee hot.

Loading bags and bikes, we country-drive.
The day is cool, path straight through 

bridges high and forest green. Rain falls 

softy, misting skin 'neath canopy of trees.

Listen. Baby giggles, silly songs,
"Faster, Daddy, faster!" Wheels spin, 

pedals push and river rushes, muffling 

rafters' lively cheers below.

Look. Four wide eyes peer from trailer 

window, sibling smiles spread fast to 

passers-by. Mushrooms spiral trees and 

tiny frogs play hopscotch through our path.

Breathe. Rhododendron and rain perfume 

the air. Inhale the quiet, drink deeply from

fountains of Rest. This re-creation is good 

indeed, the very Shalom of God.

Another throwback post, this one from three summers past. Happy Sabbath, friends. Rest ye well.

the practice of "no"

"Honoring our bodies day by day, offering attention, praying with regularity--no matter how appealing these activities sound, they are also costly. They take time. The question is, which time? Time from sleep, time from work, time from what? Discerning renewed and renewing patterns for our days will cause us to look at them with fresh eyes, asking not only what we need to add but also what we need to take away.

Indeed, it may be that choosing what not to do will disclose the radical implications of this practice most vividly. The point is not simply to clear the decks for honor, attention, and prayer; the point is to identify the impediments, even the idols, that have shut them out of each particular life in the past. When you know what these are, you know what renunciations may open you to encounter each day's rhythms of grace and blessing."

(Dorothy C. Bass, Receiving the Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time)

{image source}

God gives to his beloved sleep

I've been sick all week, in a fog of partial wakefulness. My house is a disaster of half-done chores and piles of clutter I can't bring myself to focus hard enough to tackle.

My coughing fits could wake a village, so Jim's been sleeping on the couch. He had the plague before me, and the quarantine has made housemates of us.

Achy and weak, my body feels outside of my control, and I remember it is, even for the most disciplined among us. We can nourish our bodies and exercise and rest, but we still can't stop the sick.

(I'm not so great at any of those three, if we're being honest. I've subsisted this week on toast and something called Biscoff spread.)

I lie there coughing and remember that Welcome Wagon (and the psalmist's) refrain:

God gives to his beloved sleep.

Sleep is a gift I've taken for granted since the children began sleeping through the night. But they didn't for about four years, and life was foggy then, too. I remember keeping a night watch as I breastfed James, praying particularly for the grieving and longing mamas with empty arms.

I turn on the light and find my copy of The Night Offices. If I weren't alone tonight, I wouldn't read this liturgy now, and I try to receive this, too, as a gift.

O God, come to my assistance.
O Lord, make haste to help me.

Two lines turn my sunken, inward gaze a few degrees.

Darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day; darkness and light to you are both alike.

Before we married, Jim and I were long-distance for our entire relationship. I remember getting on plane to leave him, again. The rain beat down angrily, and the sky was so dark it looked much later than it was. My eyes blurred with tears as the engine roared and picked up speed, getting farther and farther from the only place I wanted to be.

The plane lifted off the runway and into the grey, climbing fast through the clouds which quickly obscured the airport and city below. The was nothing to see but thick clouds and water.

But then we broke through the clouds and into the pink sunset, an ethereal wonderland of light, texture, and dazzling color so bright my breath caught.

Darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day; darkness and light to you are both alike.

The litany leads me to pray for the Church, for friends and enemies, forgiveness and grace.

Lord, in your mercy, hear my prayer.

I am reading a book that tells me Trappist monks greet the day and the Lord together at three every morning. I pray alone, but there are others keeping watch (and they won't go back to sleep!). They are far more faithful and practiced, and somehow their prayers buoy me, these unseen pilgrims along a shared way.

Now guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping; that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep, we may rest in peace.

{image source}