A Dedication.

 These words are for the artists and dreamers 

Who want a slippery God,

Not the stone one

nailed permanently to a cross

In old buildings,

tacked down in polity and institution.

These are letters to the distracted ones

Endlessly scrolling the glowing screen

Needing a word to help them look up

At the glimmering sky,

To awaken again to the world.

These are for the workers, the doers, 

Who never have time or energy enough,

The ones enduring the daily monotony 

Longing to escape the slow strangle

Of unending tasks and obligations.

These are for the weary mothers

Wondering if they are disappearing,

Drowning in the bottomless needs 

of their beautiful beloveds.

These are for you,

You gorgeous broken-hearted,

open-hearted ones.

You oh-so-overwhelmed ones.

You vibrant, silent ones.

You unnoticed, unsung ones.

 

A Dedication.

You treasure hunters,

Looking for words and incantations,

That will map a way to the 

Magic underneath everything

That too often hides or slips away.

You who wonder why

Religion hasn’t been spacious enough

To allow the mystical, the whimsical, the wild

Divine to slip in.

You who are parched and

Longing for a deeper well

Of more and more

and more.

You who don’t long for more dead words

On more dead pages,

But living words and musical balm.

You who recognize the dance of this life

with all its terrible and tender grace.

You who need a sacred place 

To hold what is real, and holy, and true.

This place, these pages,

This sanctuary of phrases

is for you.

out of egypt.

"An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.’ Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod." -Matthew 2:13-14

Out Of Egypt 
A Song of Grief and Hope for Mary and Joseph The world can be terrible.
It can steal everything: Safety. Livelyhoods. Breath. Hope. Sometimes there is Nothing left to do But flee. To run to A place that seems A fraction better. And try to make a life Stone by stone. Word by word. Day by day. And still the day comes When the child you Held tight against Your chest. The one You saved against All odds. Will hang Bloody and beaten Dying in front Of your tear-washed eyes And you will think You cannot feel a more excruciating pain than this. But you will be wrong. Because in the dark days after His death you fall into an Emptiness that swallows you whole. You wonder if you should Have stayed in Egypt. If you might have Been better off not listening To those damn angels. Even Wishing for a fraction of a second the wish you will never forgive yourself for: That he had never been born. Then he might have been spared This horrific pain. And you Might have been spared this Grief that cuts your heart So deeply you wonder how It keeps on beating. You want to run, Run away from this terrible Story that claimed you And your son. Run from The fathomless sorrow of it. You dream of going back to Egypt. The place where for a moment You were a family: happy and new. But you remember the old stories About people who were safe And enslaved there. And how They were called out into a wide wilderness. And how all the fear and death Led to dancing and new life. You cry out, not in holy prayer,
but in anguish and anger: “My God, My God, What kind of promised land Could there be in a tomb?” And in the distance you can Almost hear the sound of Stone scraping against Earth,
of light slicing open the darkness. And you remember how his tiny warm body felt Full of possibility, as you carried him, Squirming and crying, out of Egypt, Into the very land where graves open and the dead rise.

to the new year.

“Think of the year as a house:
door flung wide in welcome,
threshold swept and waiting,
a graced spaciousness
opening and offering itself
to you...

And may it be
in this house of a year
that the seasons will spin in beauty;
and may it be
in these turning days
that time will spiral with joy.
And may it be
that its rooms will fill
with ordinary grace
and light spill from every window
to welcome the stranger home.”
-Jan Richardson

Here’s to a year of more coffee and good books.
More crawling on the floor building pillow forts and slaying imaginary dragons.
More flickering candles and taking time to breathe.
More deep relationships and laughter.
More wine and chocolate and cheese.
More tears and honesty and love.
More risk and adventure.
More creativity and more hope.
More doing life together and making the world new.
More opening to the mystery and holiness in the cracks of ordinary life.

Here’s to you, 2019. May you be the best yet.

for all the saints.

"Sing with all the saints in glory, sing the resurrection song!
Death and sorrow, earth's dark story, to the former days belong.
All around the clouds are breaking,  soon the storms of time shall cease;
in God's likeness we, awaking, know the everlasting peace...
Life eternal! heaven rejoices; Jesus lives, who once was dead.
Join we now the deathless voices; child of God, lift up your head...

Life eternal! O what wonders crowd on faith; what joy unknown,
when, amidst earth's closing thunders, saints shall stand before the throne!"

-Sing with All the Saints in Glory by Willian J. Irons


a blessing for all saints.

May we gather up the treasures
scattered by those who
walked and worked before us.
May the depth of our grief reveal within it
the abundant gifts of memory and love.
May the darkness where we now linger
become the place where light finds and claims us.
May the shadowy windings
of these cavernous tombs
lead ever into resurrection.
May we draw near to the ones
who carved the paths we now walk
and celebrate their resurrection stories.
And may we too be resurrected
to become today's saints 
continuing the blessed work
of renewing and remaking the world.

the gift of years.

a poem for my 35th birthday

The gift of years.

Thirty-five journeys round the sun
on this beautiful spinning globe
of budding earth and swirling sea.
I have been, with you,
a part of the eternal dance
in this vast expanse
of unknown universes.

Here, on our little patch
of known time and space
each day is small, but holy
as we breathe together
this miracle of air,
and stare up together
at the impossibly wide
canvas of sky.

In my numbered days
I have felt deeply;
I have been swept up
in peels of laughter.
I have wept and pleaded and howled
with both delight and sorrow.
I’ve had my heart shattered,
and pieced the shards back together
again and again,
in the constant making
that is being alive.
Each year, each week, each moment,
we fumble to arrange the fragments
into something more beautiful
and somehow more whole.

This mosaic,
tenderly assembled
in the breaking and re-making,
is the lavish gift of years.

to be born.

For Gabriel

Your life until now
Has been all warmth and shadow,
As you float to the music
of distant muffled voices, and dance
to the rhythms of heart and breath.
You know nothing but the comfort
Of this perfect blanket of dark.
This cocoon of water and flesh
Is the only world you have known,
And it has been entirely beautiful.

When your world cracks open,
It will feel immense and terrifying.
All will seem too loud, too bright,
Too much to be grasped.
This life as you know it now
Will be over in an instant
As you slip from the only
place you have ever known,
Haunted by the terrible truth
already inscribed on your bones:
you will never be able to return here
to the ground of your making.

But, my darling, there is so much
Beauty on the other side:
Wonder upon wonder
You could never have dreamed of.
There is touch, light, sound,
Color, creativity, texture, hope,
And love, love, glorious love.

I wish I could tell you it will be easy,
That you will be safe as you
Step into the wide terrain of this world;
But there are too many sharp edges
And, tender as we are,
No one walks through unscathed.

What I can promise is you won't face
This looming future alone.
Arms are waiting to hold you.
Lips are longing to greet you with a kiss.
Eyes are yearning to behold you.
Hearts are flung wide open
Ready to adore you.

I suppose what I want to say is this:
It's okay to be scared,
It's okay to cry out in
Surprise and doubt and even terror.
Weep a thousand tears if you must,
As you face the unfamiliar landscape
Of a future you never would have chosen;
And grieve the great loss of what
You must leave behind.

But come anyway.
For your one wild, wondrous life
Is waiting for you;
And you are the only one capable of living it.
You already have all you need.
So even when you feel small
Be brave.
When you feel ready to turn back
Look ahead.
When you think all is lost
Trust the miracle of the next moment
And the next as they keep
tumbling toward you.
Greet them as the unwarranted
miracles that they are.

You were made for the adventure
Of all that is to to come.
You were made for this world
As stunning and frightening
And sharp-edged as it is.
Oh My Love,
You were made
to be born.

the hardest year.

Here is what I have learned this year: trying to bring life into this world is a warrior's task. And I am not entirely sure that I am a warrior.

In December of last year, I learned I was pregnant. I began the year with all the hope and joy that comes of dreaming. A new child fresh and new. Everything possible. I would be a mother again, my greatest role so far, the one I cherish most deeply.

But by the end of January the dream was gone. I was bleeding, my womb and heart empty, a grief cutting so deep I thought I might not survive. I was a changed woman.

In May, a new life was planted. I was pregnant again. At first, I felt the rejoicing... But things turned so quickly. But soon I was sick and tired. Feeling a weariness in my bones I had never known before. Every day I am sick. Every day I can barely keep food down. Every day I feel hopeless. Almost every day I debate if it is worth getting out of bed and I would stay if there wasn't a toddler, a husband, a job, a life making demands that cannot wait. Nearly 6 months in and I am still sick, losing what's in my stomach in the middle of the night or the tiny hours of the morning.

To be honest, it makes me feel inadequate. So many women I know love pregnancy. Even when they were sick and tired it didn't debilitate them. They were happy and hopeful. So every day I face my not-enoughness. My illness feels like a daily failing.

And at surprising moments the grief of the life lost still sneaks up on me. The thin skin I thought had developed over the wound of the miscarriage, peels away so easily. What should have been the birthdate passed in August. I should be holding a child now, I think. I should be celebrating. Instead, I am sad and sick. It makes me want to curl up and cry.

I feel strangely unattached to the child living inside me. He is a stranger. I wonder if he feels my distance. I, unreasonably, feel I am already failing him as a mother.

"You're absolutely glowing!" the well-meaners say, as if I am as new and shiny as a lucky penny, or a prized jewel. As if I am not sick and worn and just a slice, a shadow of who I know myself to be. It makes me feel completely unknown and unseen. Am I invisible, I wonder? Is my pain obsolete?

"I don't know how you do it?!" they cheerfully say, as though I am some kind of hero. As though "doing it" were a choice. I am not heroic, I want to tell them. I am barely surviving. I do it by spending time nearly every day crying about all that I am not doing. Grieving all the joy and strength I do not have.

For me, in the end, there is likely to be wonder worth the misery. In a few months I will hold a slippery, crying babe in my arms and I will whisper, "welcome to the world." I will fall in love again. I will sing lullabyes at 3am for an audience of one. I will feed him with my body. I will be awestruck by the curl of his lips, the flicker of his eyelids, the openness with which he takes in the world. And I will think: I made him. I brought him here. I was a vessel for a miracle.

But for now, I am still in the hardest year. And it is terribly exhausting and terribly lonely. Perhaps, you are there too. Perhaps you have felt grief and pain that made you numb to the joy everyone else expects you to carry. Perhaps you too have been isolated by a weariness you couldn't even put into words. Perhaps you have born the weight of not being okay for months or years, and having to breathe and smile and live through it because there is no way to the other side except through.

Perhaps, we all just need to know we are not walking this hard earth alone.

a simple guide to love

You can love anyone
if you really look at them.
Notice the delicacy
of their eyelids
the unique color
and texture
of their skin.
Listen
to the rhythm
of their breath,
hear the longings
of their heart.
Study them
like a poem
or painting.
Look long
enough to see
the layers and lines,
crevices and curves.
Human-beings are
breath-taking works of art.
Fleshy machines, both
beautiful and complicated.
When you really look
how could you not
fall in love?

the revealing.

"And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed." -Genesis 2:25

I love the idea that in the beginning we were naked and unencumbered before God. For me part of the Christian life, particularly in the wilderness season of Lent, is about dismantling the careful walls and masks we've created to protect ourselves. Allowing ourselves to be seen by the Holy and by one another can be terrifying and painful. Discipleship and authentic relationships demand that we let our scars, our limitations and our flaws show. The divine challenges us to stop playing the game of proving ourselves and pretending. We are invited to vulnerability, intimacy, wildness and freedom. 


The Revealing
It hurts--
this uncovering
this laying bare.
It would be easier
to stay contained,
comfortably covered.
But piece
by jagged piece,
you reveal me.
You ask me
to be seen.
You uncover all
I prefer to keep veiled.
I can almost hear
you greet my
vulnerable form:
There you are, darling.
Aren't you beautiful?

the furious beating of wings.

"They wheeled in a wide arc
with beating wings and then
they put their wings to sleep
And glided downward in a drift
of pure abandonment
Until they touched the surface of the lake
composed their wings, and settled
on the rippling water
as though it were a nest. " -Anne Porter, "Wild Geese Alighting on a Lake"

We are furiously beating
our wings, always gasping
for breath as we seek
some imaginary destination
always further and further,
higher and higher.
So desperate are we
to make it upwards,
we do not see
the sky we fly in,
or feel the wind
the brushes our
radiant faces.
We never stop
to rest our weary wings
until they break and crack
and we plummet like Icarus
toward the hard earth,
despairing and weeping
that it was all for nothing.
What would it be to
unfurl our heavy limbs,
and let the invisible
carry us; to glide
and drift with abandon;
to open our mouths to
drink in the sweet air
and our eyes to see
the wide expanse of
sky and possibility?

The Dark Blossoming

This January, I experienced a miscarriage. It has been a season of grief, sorrow and pain like none I have known before. An unpredictable storm of emotions has accompanied this loss. There are moments of empty numbness and others of anguished weeping. There are flurries of shame and guilt and anger. This is a loss so deep and intimate that it can at moments feel debilitating and isolating. But what has surprised me even more than the depth of pain, has been the abundance of blessings of this time. Love, comfort, hope and healing glimmer like stars in the wide darkness of my grief.

People I hadn’t seen in years sent kind messages sharing their love and their own journeys of pregnancy loss. Countless friends offered their love, prayers and support through texts, messages, e-mails, phone calls and cards. Some brought meals or sent flowers. My tribe (some of whom I know well, and others who until now have been mere acquaintances) have held me with such tenderness. Even if they could not fully understand my grief, they were attentive to it. In the midst of the darkness of my pain and sorrow, I have felt seen, treasured and loved.  I have been reminded again and again that I do not walk alone. With each kind word and thoughtful gesture these dear ones have been acting as midwives, guiding me through this dark season of pain, to find rebirth. When I thought I would be washed away entirely by the ocean of tears, you held me and kept me from being swept away.

One of the ways that I seek solace and healing is through creative practice, and these last few weeks have been an outpouring of writing and making in my life. In the coming weeks and months I hope to share some of it with you here. But the first thing I want to share is this collage piece, made primarily of the many beautiful sympathy cards we received and a black and white photo from photographer Dave Heath (his amazing work is currently on display at the Nelson-Atkins Museum in KC). 

This is my valentine to all of you, representing the ways that through your love, hope blossomed in the midst of my darkest days.

This is for all of you who poured out your love. Every word typed or written was like bread sustaining me when I was starving. Every prayer, every kindness, every touch, was a seed planted in a barren place. Your tender care helped me not only survive the wilderness of grief, but to find deep rivers of resurrection and renewal within its landscape. Thank you, thank you, thank you: for walking beside me during this shadowy season; for loving even when you didn’t understand; for holding onto hope when I couldn’t carry it myself. You will never know the difference it has made. You will never know the way your love grew blossoms in the darkness. You will never know the beauty you helped me find even in the breaking.

Blessing for Anyone

When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me.' -Matthew 11:2-6

Blessed is anyone
Who is not offended.
But who could not take
Offense? When you tell
Us so bluntly to change
Completely. To give
Unsparingly. To seek
Eternally. To forgive
Lavishly.  To love
Unconditionally.
We are offended.
Our sensibilities, our schedules,
Our bank accounts, our desires,
Our politeness, our sense of propriety,
Our sense of self.
All Offended.
All Disrupted.
This gospel,
This good news,
This revolution
Demands so much
more than we think
we can bear.
So rather than claim it,
We find excuses
to be offended.
To critique, analyze, judge.
And there you are,
Grinning like a prankster,
Still offering with open arms
A blessing to anyone--
Anyone at all-- willing
To uncross their arms
Long enough to receive it.

the art of mending.

the art of mending.
a post election poem

we are torn apart
as if we had forgotten
we are one fabric--
cut from the same cloth
of flesh, bone, and desire.
Separate as we are
we cry like children
ripped from
their mother's arms
or a limb wrenched
from the body,
uselessly flailing.
We must now
take up the art
of mending--
threading our lives
stitch by stitch,
seam by seam
until we are bound
by the frayed truth
that has always been:
we belong
to each other.

the great day.

This poem by Carl Dennis is a gentle reminder that the great day may never come. We may never compose our opus. We may never make a pilgrimage to the place of beauty we've painted in our minds. We may never achieve the mystery or passion or success that we've imagined for ourselves. But each day offers an invitation to enjoy the here and now, with such adoration and wonder that it becomes extraordinary. This poem beckons us to take the good china off the shelf and feast on the banquet of life just as it is.

The Great Day

What if the great day never comes
And your life doesn't shine with vivid blossoms,
Just the usual pale variety?
What if the best china never seems called for,
Those dishes reserved for the friends you love the most
On the day they return from their endless travels?
To use them now, for the only occasions available,
Would be to confuse the high realm with the low.
But not to use them, doesn't that seem wrong too,
To leave the best wine undrunk in the cellar
For the next owner of your house to open?
What then? Can you will yourself to see a common day
The way a saint might see it, as a gift from heaven,
Or the way it appears from the window of a hospital
On the first morning the patient feels strong enough
To edge across the room and look out?
There on the street an angel policeman
Is directing the flashing mosaic of traffic.
Or can you see the day as the dead might see it,
Not the ones who'd rather rest but those delighted
To abandon the gardens of Hell, however fragrant,
For a chance at crossing the sea again in a storm?
The day their ship, long given up for lost,
Steams into the harbor, all flags flying,
Would be a day to be toasted with rose champagne
In heirloom glasses. Down the gangway they come,
A little thinner, a little unsteady,
Eyes wide in wonder at their rare good fortune.
Can you see what they see as they look around
Or feel what their friends feel waiting on the dock
Must feel as they run forward?
"Let me look at you," they keep saying,
Suspending their formal speech of welcome.
"You look good. You look wonderful."
~ CARL DENNIS in *Ranking the Wishes* © 1997, Penguin

100,000 Versions of the Universe

At 3am I wake again to your crying;
piercing and insistent you urge me
from the warmth of bed into the familiar
darkness of the hallway. Your restlessness
pulls me forward down the now well-worn
path to the doorway of your nursery.

As soon as I lift your small form
from the crib, you lean into my body
and fall quiet; You burrow like an animal,
desperate only for my touch, as if my presence
were your air, your food, your water.
I hold you and we rock in the big gray chair
that was picked out when nights like these
were just a premonition and you were just
a dream growing in the dark soil of my body.

As we rock, you grasp at anything
you can grip in your tiny hand:
my hair, my finger, my ear.
You hold me tight, like a life preserver
as if the raft of one another is the only
thing keeping us from drifting away into oblivion.

Every now and again your eyes open
and you smile up at me with sheer
contentment and joy as if you can't
believe your luck; the same look of someone
who touches their fingers to their lips
after a first longed-for and unexpected kiss.

I think of the 100,000 versions of the universe
that do not contain this exact moment.
A universe where rational thinking compelled us
to wait a day, a month, a year to try to have children.
Another where I heard your cry, but chose
the lure of sleep instead, resting in the knowledge
that you would be fine until morning.
Another where my husband and I never met,
or loved, or chose this particular life and
are instead living in other houses, in other towns,
sleeping in other beds, next to people who are strangers.
Or the universe where you simply slept soundly
on this one night, unstirred by cutting teeth,
or cold toes, or shadows in the corner,
and we are both dreaming our separate
dreams on different sides of the wall.

And so I silently praise the monsters under the bed,
and the stoplights, and the floor plans, and the meaningless words
typed or exchanged over cups of too hot or too cold coffee, and
the hundred doors that opened or shut with such precision, and
the split second decisions and coincidences and happenstances
that all added up to this particular moment,
in this particular chair,
in this particular universe
with you.

the honest prayers of Christmas

This year one of the most powerful things about the Christmas story for me has been the reality of God entering a broken world through the incarnation. Through the gospels we get glimpses of an ancient world very much like our modern one: with corrupt religious institutions, oppressive governments, and flawed, brave, hopeful, loving, terrified, broken people. Too often at Christmas we sugar coat the gospel into something warm and fuzzy. I do it every year as I watch 100 Christmas movies, sing all the carols, buy and wrap all the presents, and almost convince myself that these activities are what the season is really about. But scripture doesn't tell a warm fuzzy story. It tells a story of a God becoming vulnerable to a violent, corrupt, beautifully broken world. What has struck me particularly this Christmas is that God doesn't need us to pretend to be okay. Christ enters an imperfect world. God doesn't need our lives to look like a picturesque scene in a snow globe. Christ enters into our fear, our doubt, our longing. In Jesus, God enters the world just as it is. Flaws and all. So this Christmas Eve at our 11pm worship, when we lit the candles for the last time, instead of a traditional pretty prayer, I wrote these honest prayers of Christmas, reflecting on the hurts and longings of people in the real world and how Jesus, God enfleshed among us, can still change everything.

Reading One - Hope

Another job interview, another rejection… and at home, another and another and another bill that has to paid. The pile just keeps getting bigger: mortgage payment, water bill, electric bill, car payment, insurance, student loans, credit cards. They just keep coming and I don’t know what I am going to do. I feel like I am letting everyone down. Maybe if I had made different choices we would be a different situation. Maybe if I had worked harder. But I can’t go back in time, here I am without a job, with all this credit card debt, with a family I am letting down. Sometimes it feels like I will never be enough, like I should just give up. I am at the end of my rope. God, if you can hear me, I just need to know there’s hope. I just need to know things could get better tomorrow. Could you please open a door? If you can come and redeem the whole world, you can redeem me right? You can help me and my family get back on our feet? God, if ever there was a time for you to show up, this is it. I need some money to help me get by. I need a job. I need a way forward. I need a little Hope. Most of all, I just need You.



Reading Two - Peace

I remember seeing fire and hearing loud noises. Booms and crashes and explosions, that made my ears ring like there was a bell inside my head. We had to pack everything we could carry and get out as quick as we could. Now we are living here in this crowded camp with all these other people, just waiting, trying to figure out when we can go home again. Mommy said to be brave, so I am trying. I miss my room and my nightlight. I miss my bed and my toys. Mom and Dad say home is wherever we are together, and most days I believe them. Home isn’t a place, it is the people you are with. Like when my silly sister tickles me until we are both laughing so hard we almost can’t breathe. Or when my Dad tells me the best stories where I am a hero who wears a cape and flies in the sky. Or when my mom sings me to sleep. I want everyone in the world to feel at home, to feel safe and loved like I do with my family. I guess that’s what it means to have peace. They say that when I grow up I can help make the world a better place, and I can’t wait. If all of us worked together, I know we could do it. We could make every place home. Tonight that’s what I want: peace, not just for my family, but for everybody in the whole world. Peace, so there’s no more bad guys. Peace, so one has to run away anymore. Peace, so no one ever feels alone.



Reading Three - Joy

Finally, here we are. Christmas Eve, the marathon of the last month is finally finished. Instead of feeling happy, I mostly just feel relieved that it’s over. We put up the lights and decorated the tree. Hundreds of cookies have been baked and frosted and eaten. I made the costumes for the Christmas play, we went to the kids concerts, we stopped by as many parties as we could fit in, we sang all the carols, and sent all the cards. We visited Santa, not once, not twice, but three times. I’ve bought and wrapped the gifts; And still it feels like everyone always wants one more thing. And my to do list keep getting longer and longer. Always more laundry to do, more food to buy, one more errand to run, one more thing to fit in the schedule. I love my family more than anything in the world. They are my life, but sometimes I feel so overwhelmed, so tired. When do we get to just sit and enjoy each other? I know this is supposed to be the most joyful time of the year, but sometimes I feel like I’m just going through the motions. In the midst of all this busy-ness, how am I supposed to find real joy? If I could ask for anything this year, that’s what it would be it. Enough time to stop and experience real rejoicing. So, Jesus, that’s what I’m asking for. Tonight, would you bring us the real joy of Christmas?



Reading Four - Love

This has been the hardest Christmas season of my life. The first one without my Betty. The kids have been wonderful, bringing me to all the family functions, trying to include me in the festivities. But at each happy event, it’s hard to smile, when all I feel is grief. Everything reminds me of her. Every song, every decoration, every place we go, and thing we do. After so many years with one person, they become an extension of yourself. What’s the point of any of this without her here? I miss her hand on mine, I miss her reading the paper in the morning and telling me the news, I miss sitting quietly together at the end of the day as we drank a cup of tea. I even miss the things I always thought I hated. Those terrible hard as a rock ginger snap cookies she would make every year, the way she sang Christmas Carols a little too loud and a lot off key, the way she’d nag me to put up the Christmas lights even when it was cold as death outside. I try to convince myself to be joyful. I know she is in a better place, singing with all her gusto in the heavenly choir. I know she’s looking down on me, telling me to just snap out of it already. This is the season of Love afterall. Time to remember the love of Jesus that is present all around us and all that. But, to be honest, it is all a lot harder than I thought it would be. God, I have to wonder how can I experience the season of love with a broken heart? Will you please come and heal this ache in my heart and just help it to hurt a little less? Will you teach me how to love this life again? Betty used to say “God is Love.” I could sure use some of that love right now.



Reading Five - Emmanuel, God with Us

O my beloveds, how amazing it is to see you through the eyes of a baby. You look so beautiful. I am so excited to be with you in this wonderful and broken world. I know this life can be so hard, sometimes it feels like more than you can bear. That’s why I’ve come. To bear it with you. To feel the hurt for you. To hold you when you feel alone. Look at me, my loves. I am here to heal your hurts, to bind up the broken-hearted, to give hope to the hopeless. I’ve come to be with you. No matter what. When you are lost, when you are afraid, when you are anxious. I am here. Even when you forget me, when your lives are too busy, and your minds are too full. I will wait for you. I want you to know that hope, peace, joy and love are possible. I’ve come so you can experience all that and more. I have come to love you, I have come to save you, I have come to light a candle in the darkness. I have come to change the world.

blessing for a mother-to-be.

A friend shared this beautiful blessing by John O'Donohue with me during my pregnancy and it became a prayer that I read almost daily as I lived into the truth of it.  I'm always so thankful when poems can provide a container for what I am experiencing, and for the words carefully crafted and sewn together by others that are somehow able to express something beyond words.

I share this with others, hoping it will be as much of a treasure for you as it has been for me:

"Nothing could have prepared
your heart to open like this.

From beyond the skies and the stars
This echo arrived inside of you and started to pulse with life
Each beat a tiny act of growth,
Traversing all our ancient shapes,
On its way home to itself.

 Once it began, you were no longer your own.
A new, more courageous you, offering itself
In a new way to a presence you can sense
But you have not seen or known.

It has made you feel alone
In a way you never knew before;
Everyone else sees only from the outside
What you feel and feed
with every fiber of your being.

Never have you traveled farther inward
Where words and thoughts become half-­light
unable to reach the fund of brightness
Strengthening inside the night of your womb.

Like some primeval moon,
Your soul brightens
The tides of essence
That flow to your child.

You know your life has changed forever,
For in all the days and years to come,
Distance will never be able to cut you off
From the one you now carry
For nine months under your heart.

May you be blessed with quiet confidence
That destiny will guide you and mind you.

May the emerging spirit of your child
Imbibe encouragement and joy
From the continuous music of your heart,
So that it can grow with ease,
Expectant of wonder and welcome
when its form is fully filled

And it makes it journey out
To see you and settle at last
Relieved and glad in your arms.

more than surviving.

There are about a thousand books, blogs and articles about having a newborn. Nearly all of them make the experience sound utterly terrible. They inform you about how much the baby will cry endlessly and poop and be in constant need. They tell you how you as a parent will likely feel angry, stressed, tired and depressed. They tell you about all the awful things your body has had to endure because of pregnancy and birth and how you are not likely to ever make a full recovery. They warn you that this time in your life may bring about distance or resentment between you and your spouse. Most of them offer well meaning tips and advice about how to get through this difficult time and survive being a parent to a young child.

But here is the thing: I want to do more than survive. I want to be fully present. I want to experience the fullness of this time in my life in all of its beauty and difficulty. I want to hold it, to treasure it, to drink it in. I want to translate the language of his gurgles, his cries, his laughter into poetry. I want to learn from these rich moments and carry the wisdom I gain into my future. I want motherhood to rub me raw, and then add new layers, and transform me into a new, better, deeper, more creative version of myself.

in the belly of the fish.

For Jonah.

We named you for a story about a man who tried to run from the One who we call God. I want you to know that you are allowed to doubt, to question, to struggle. That you are allowed to run. That this One who I call God will surely find you. You might call it Love or Wonder or Beauty or Mystery. God goes by many names, many of which I do not know yet. I'm sure you will discover your own names for the One. I don't mind if your names are different than the ones I use. But what I want you to know is that Divinity is persistent. Again and again bubbling up in unexpected places, saving us in the Depths, saving the bits and pieces we didn't know needed saving. The Divine is always taking up new forms, like a poem that keeps being rewritten and becoming better and better.

I want you to know that when you find yourself feeling like you are drowning, when you feel swallowed up by what is huge and frightening (as we all do from time to time), that there will always be a light in the darkness. And sometimes the darkness is just the the thing we needed so we could discover the light. And oddly, sometimes the darkness is richer than the light and has more to teach us.

There are rarely easy answers. Sometimes we are swallowed or saved or called for no reason at all, or no reason we can understand. Sometimes we don't understand the whys or hows until much much later, and sometimes never at all. Sometimes we need to get angry, to shout, to rebel, like the one in the story. But he is called a Prophet anyway. He was a part of bringing hope to the undeserving, even though he was quite undeserving himself. And his story keeps living on, making meaning for others as we tell it and retell it. I want you to live your own story. To know that your story is meaningful and has the power to transform others. So go aheaad and be stubborn like the reluctant prophet. Be passionate and angry and loving and loved and thoroughly alive. Be swallowed up and reborn again and again in a thousand different ways. There will be a lot of giant fish: places that scare you, challenge you, rescue you, change you. Emerge from the belly of the fish to claim anew the Land that we call life again and again and again.

.

Prayer in the Darkness

Sometimes when I turn on the news or open my computer, I'm bombarded with images of people hurting, and I don't even know how to begin to pray. In those moments, I'm thankful for the prayers of others who offer words when I have none.

This prayer comes from Tony Campolo:

"We pray for the kids on the streets--
even when they rob us...
We pray for the children who could be learning--
even when they sit in class like zombies.
We pray for the goodness that is buried in young druggies--
even when they are hustling people.
We pray for them all in the name of the light
that shines in the darkness-- because
we know that darkness cannot put it out.
We pray for them all in the name of the light
that lights everyone who comes into the world.
We pray for them all in the name of the light who
gives us substance of things hoped for
and is evidence of things not seen."

May images of violence and unrest inspire us toward prayer, rather than hopelessness. May we all lift prayers for the trouble-makers, the ones who seem hopeless, the ones who frustrate us and push us to our breaking points. May we pray for the criminals as much as we pray for the victims; may we love the ones who challenge us as much as we love the ones who encourage us. May we look for the light of God in all people.