February 2010
31 posts
lent || an update
I live in LA now and it hit me just about two weeks ago that maybe this will be home, for a long time. This was a scary moment for me. When I left Grand Rapids I had this sense that I was just saying, ‘later on’ or ‘see you wednesday’… something like that. If we had coffee together this summer you probably picked up on this. It may have sounded like I was going to see...
lent || numb hands
I was in a hotel recovering from a bout with hypothermia. It can sneak up on you and I was certainly surprised. I knew it was bad news when I could barley zip my jacket let alone feel my hands. I was in a cloud coming out of the mountains and my mind was cloudy too. How did I get here? How did I get in this set of circumstances? And where is the nearest spot to get some sleep? The last thing you...
lent || free spirit
I was driving into the mountains on two separate occasions with two different friends and experienced a singular epiphany. Driving out of Denver into the massive Rockies can evoke a kind of honest fear that is not allotted words. My friend had never seen these towering mounds and was quietly looking to the horizon trying to remember to breath. I had a similar thing going on but was looking for...
lent || we vow again
There is something about being in a place where you feel strong enough to voice your concern and safe enough to be angry. You feel safe because there is transcendent understanding, that the one you are angry with loves you and is not only excepting you but has vowed to work with the you that stumbles and is, exposingly weak at times. You and they have an understand that is understood in covenant-a...
lent || roads & ridges
I was about to get up from my short little lunch stop but then I took of my shoes and began to listen to the waterfall behind me and the stream in front of me. And so now I sit. As if pacing like there was something on my mind. There is a thought of a mountain lion lunging at my neck, but looking over just now I see a chickadee. It isn’t making its sound, perhaps allowing me this quiet space...
lent || cardboard sex & catchy arcs
I am currently listening to Karen O-worried shoes. And it is morning too. The coffee that I just picked up has not quite taken its effect and I am left wondering if it will. On my way back from the coffee shop I found a trash pile full of cardboard, something I have been looking for a few days now. I chose a healthy size piece of cardboard, probably from IKEA, now I am about ready to work. The...
lent || storytellers
Most birthdays begin with a heightened awareness of time slipping away. And historically—since I started drinking coffee a few years ago, I post up in a coffee shop for a few hours to write a ‘life statement’. These are free-for-alls as I write and describe vocation, passion and retell the story of the past year. They get really long as I ramble and let the words flood a few pages. The usual theme...
lent || impromptu
It happens once and a while because it is part of its nature. It knows only the rules of jazz and the shape of the rivers. It is a flow that is ordered by where it is going-its resolve is the only honest knowing it has. It begins trusting that an end is possible while yet unseen. It embraces journey and the trails that guide mostly north. So indirect is its posturing that it is able to swim in the...
lent || dark days
I’m writing in a journal today and just a year ago this day I was doing the same thing, writing thoughts down hoping they might hit the ground. The difference between these days being, last year I was sitting on a broken stool deep in the recesses of the Grandville mall just before the place flooded with middle-aged moms on their daily quest for more shoes. It was a dark day.
Not only had I...
lent || scarves & stars
The other night I was going to go to this concert but felt this nagging that perhaps a get-a-way was in order. I had been going all week and giving away thoughts as I typed at a computer, giving away energy all the while not feeling to great. And so I panicked feeling trapped by the ticket I had purchased and perhaps lamenting the feeling afterwards when everyone would be talking about how great...
homemaking
nights with you run me through, cause the days never quite grew
long enough for an ending, toes on the edge of spending
summers lost with you, spent fall falling too
winter but a brisk ride, near springs calm tides
chased by a ghost wishing it was dangerous, wondering is something contagious
when you breathe deep enough to ache, eyes as wide like a watery lake
its puddles reflect the...
“God has not promised us safty, but rather participation in an adventure called...”
– stanley hauerwas
i gave myself till 11am to do something besides...
you are fascinating
I took a test today that the Gallup folks have created for organizations to choose leaders better. These tests are fun because they get me asking question about how and why I do things and then that in turn gets me thinking about how and why other people do things. Then, because I know well how and why many dudes do things this leads me to why and how women do things. This may expose my...
“No one has been confronted by a tree of life, a tree of the knowledge of good...”
– gowan
single eye
So lately I have been sleeping in my sleeping bag. It reminds me not only of being on a trail off who knows where but this kind of thing reminds me of college. I showed up at college as a kid who didn’t feel like he fit in. I was going to a bible college but didn’t want to be a pastor, I thought it would be fun to put roadkill on my RA’s car and I liked to sleep outside. One...
a lament
God your good enough to give and create with a breath,
and your faithful enough to sustain this world through our lives.
The worth of your history with us is beyond us.
But you led me away from home in a vaccum,
without love with no story to tell, without.
I’m searching for cover stripped of friends and family,
and I am exposed in this dessert where the sun burns.
I’m crying...
old poems
I read some old poems and then a few journal entries the other day. First, the poems I felt as if I could say and still know to be true except for just a few lines in each of the three I read right near the end where they would resolve. I think when I wrote them a girl had just broken up with me and so they were reaching poems that found comfort outside real life, it was like they were looking...
feet first
The abstract lacks the kind of holy integrity that is the stuff of honesty and I don’t want to be in the lofty so Ill say it softly- beginning with the feet…
Toes dig just a bit below the surface enough to get dirty while grounded and sturdy. The transferance of energy in those paws is what keeps you going without knowing what holds you up and balanced while you have only a clue of...
regardless
I was in a class years ago that was focused on spirituality. The idea that a class can be taught on spirituality is kind weird to begin with but with a historical and practical approach it was very life giving to understand how different cultures and peoples from different time periods engaged the same God. The class met in the morning and one of those mornings a musician was invited to the class...
pillars of love