city block dreaming

a few months ago, my husband and i were taking a walk before dinner at the avenue bar on the city’s eastside. we strolled past the recently closed fyfe’s corner bistro, peeking inside the windows to catch a glimpse of the restaurant we’d heard so much about but would never get to enjoy. and that’s when i caught the reflection of the building for lease across the ave.

i wish i had a picture to upload now but it’s essentially a block and a half of old warehouse/office space (if you have adobe flash player, you can see the street view here). the mullins group purchased it 5-6 years ago, but it’s been sitting relatively empty since then, with just their business using it as needed.

okay, so there’s no beating around the bush. i want it.

i wasn’t around when my home church chose to purchase property on the city’s westside and build 120,000 square feet of classroom, large group, and worship space. the building affords us lots of opportunity to invite people into our building, hear great sermons, and connect with a pretty excellent community of spiritually-engaged folks. but it’s this other building on east wash that has captured my attention, and - if i dwell on it long enough - might take my heart as well.

it’s in the perfect spot. not quite a mile and a half from the capitol, it sits along a very busy street in an area that seems ripe with possibility. it doesn’t hurt that my favorite city restaurant is a mere 4 blocks away either.

the description given by the mullins group reads “Exceptional 200,000 SF flex-space facility. Fully updated. Adaptable to large scale office and manufacturing uses. On-site parking. Highly visible, easy access to airport and interstate. Convenient for public transportation or biking. Close to shops and dining on Williamson Street.”

can you even imagine what you could do with 200,000 square feet of space? i can. but only because lawndale community church shaped a lot of how i envision the church reaching out to the “least of these.”

you can read more about the history of the church on their website, but don’t miss reading about their ministry affiliates (including Lawndale Christian Health Center, a community-based nonprofit organization, providing quality primary care services without regard for a patient’s ability to pay and serves as a community resource for eliminating health disparities, and the Lawndale Christian Development Corporation, bringing holistic revitalization to the lives and environments of Lawndale residents through economic empowerment, housing improvements, educational enrichments and community advocacy) or their Hope House, or the Firehouse Community Arts Center.

i resonate with that vision. just to think of all the things that are possible when you pray for god to show you how to love your community … wow.

so, while i’m dreaming, here’s what i’d welcome into the space at 1255-1345 east washington:

a worship space
a free medical facility, including dental services
a community kitchen (see SAME cafe or One World Cafe)
retail space for orgs like hope united
affordable community living space
and a pub/concert/gathering space.

now, if i just had $9,000,000 to purchase the building …

and maybe it won’t be this building, but why not pray for big things? maybe god wants to turn this city block dreaming into a city block reality.

mega-church: the game.

i know it’s been out for awhile, but it’s only just caught my eye now.

imagine if you could create the church you wanted, any way you wanted. wow! think of all the possibilties:
hire and fire staff
deal with idiots, naive volunteers, and denominational egos
earn points with god by winning souls for christ.
write a mission statement
choose a logo
hire a professional musician.

PLUS, you can deal with real-life scenarious, including:
elderly donor who wants to buy a new organ
troublesome board members
the city starts construction in front of your building

but perhaps the best selling point is the last line:
“do it all without a degree, license or even the Bible! Just like Joel Osteen.”

thanks to church marketing sucks for another winner.

the missional church

this morning, i tuned into my first-ever webinar featuring rick mckinley, the pastor at imago dei. the topic was the externally-focused church: breaking into the kingdom. i’m so grateful i took part in it.

two colleagues joined me, and between the three of us, we cried and laughed and threw out some “amens,” though not one of the other 240 online attendees could hear. it’s incredible to me that we were so engaged that even with a mute button pushed on the speaker phone, we’d be provoked to respond with such fervor.

essentially, the focus of the talk was the missional church - what it is and how we become a part of it. early on, the moderator shared that we (the church) can’t measure effectiveness merely by weekend attendance, but by the transformational effect we have on our communities. he took a look at the relationship between attraction and mission, citing matthew 22:2-5 and luke 14:18-20, before inviting rick mckinley to share a few of the paradigm shifts he considers essential to becoming a missional church:

1. from how-to to want-to
2. from coming to going
3. from protection to proclamation
4. from relevance to influence

i won’t write up the entire talk here because i’d really rather have you watch it and then dialogue in person with you about it over a drink. i’ll put out the link to it when it’s finally up online.

essentially, it lights my fire. i don’t know if i’ll get a chance to participate in the envisioning process at my own church, but at the very least, i feel so grateful to be soaking all of this up. i dream of what this place could look like, what madison would be like if we confessed our lack of desire to love our community, to love our neighbors, and declared our willingness to be interrupted in our routines, to radically alter everything we’ve set up so nicely to accommodate our lives.

last tuesday at our church family meeting, my heart broke (in a good way) to look around the room and wonder who god was prompting to serve him creatively, who in the room was ready & willing to allow the spirit of god to employ them in proclamation, in creative missional works that no one has ever dreamed about. that’s powerful.

i am so excited. and whether or not i get to go to the externally-focused church conference in may (though i admit i would be psyched out of my mind to attend), i am part of the missional church. and i am thankful to be serving a god who keeps coming around, who doesn’t give up on us, and who keeps prompting us to respond to his love for us and for the whole world.

This is what the kingdom of God looks like.
Christians blaze through this dark world and set it on fire with their love.
It is contagious and spreads like wildfire.
We are people who shine, who burn up the darkness of this old world with the light that dwells within us. And perhaps the world will ask
what in the world passed through here …
We are not just called to be candles.
Candles make for nice Christmas services and for a nice peace vigil. They can remind us taht God’s light dwells within us and that we are to shine that light in this dark world.
But we are not just called to be candles. We are called to be fire.
Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution

sites you must see.

with the server still down, and the extent of what i can accomplish today sans email quite limited, i’ve resorted to list-making. enjoy today’s highlights.

1. my friend erin forwarded me a 20-minute video called the story of stuff, which discusses the relationships between extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal of, duh, stuff. it’s an excellent short with a hearty list of resources on how to go green, consume less, and work together to create a more sustainable and just world. check it out.

2. an alum of the school where i used to work was recently featured in an award-winning documentary called facing sudan. a young college student, alice worked with mtvu to get disposable cameras in the hands of sundanese refugee children living in chad so we could all see pictures of refugee life from their eyes. you can check out the 5 minute youtube clip here. it thrills me to witness her care for and commitment to her global neighbors.

3. my husband forwarded me this link last week and we laughed all weekend about how spot-on it is. you can check out the full list of stuff white people like here where you’ll see that it includes, but is not limited to: outdoor performance clothes, hating corporations, threatening to move to canada, kitchen gadgets, public radio, david sedaris, microbreweries, and barack obama. it seems even “barack obama” himself has visited the site, commenting there that “white people love all the vacuous things i say.” because my husband and i own too many north face-esque jackets, i enjoyed the entry on that one:

The main reason why white people like these clothes is that it allows them to believe that at any moment they could find themselves with a Thule rack on top of their car headed to a national park. It could be 4:00 p.m. on a Saturday when they might get a call “hey man, you know what we need to do? Kayak then camping, right now. I’m on my way to get you, there is no time to change clothes.”

Though it is unlikely that they will receive this call, White people hate the idea of missing an opportunity to enjoy outdoor activities because they weren’t wearing the right clothes.

HI-larious. I love it.

4. speaking of barack obama, did anyone happen to catch saturday night live this past weekend? tracy morgan’s guest appearance on weekend update was memorable. every time i see hilary on the news now, all i can think is “bitch may be the new black, but black is the new president, bitch.” check it out here.

i guess that’s all i’ve got for now. happy surfing.

my e-mail is down.

so i guess that’s why i’m writing. not that i wasn’t looking for an excuse to detach from work today. i’m feeling pretty exhausted from a full day yesterday - early morning corporate prayer, work, and a baby shower. i ended the night with a thick slice of banana bread, several scoops of chocolate almond ice cream and a sizable glass of red wine.

okay, so maybe i am pms-ing.

this morning, jon & i met up with anne and her daughter, dena, who were in town for spring break on their way up to the dells for a waterpark vacation. we met at lazy jane’s, because there’s really no better restaurant “fit” for anne than this one. lazy jane’s has a hippie, old-school (as in, antique-y old school), laid back (duh, it is LAZY jane’s), come-as-you-are vibe. minus the old-school descriptor, the place kind of describes anne. you’d never guess to meet her that she grew up in the chicago ‘burbs and now works for a prominent, shi-shi private day school.

it had been nearly 2 years since we’d seen each other, and even dena had to ask her mom before we got there what i looked like (i suppose 2nd grade does seem like eons ago to a 4th grader). i loved having breakfast with them, but i’d have loved to sit and talk with anne all day about her life. she’s one of the more thoughtful & welcoming people i’ve ever met. i miss her again already.

actually, i’ve been missing regular people a lot lately. in my pms-y mindset last night, i wondered aloud to jon if church - as in, the sunday celebration worship time definition of church - is really supposed to be a glimpse of heaven. because just one day of it makes me really tired. i want to hole up by myself for a long time afterwards, glass of wine in one hand, the bottle in the other.

wow, that sounds more dramatic than even i intended. sorry.

anyway, i wonder why people come on sundays so often. maybe i’m the only person who wouldn’t come to church every week if it weren’t mandated by her job. i mean, i know there are some people who LOVE sundays. just yesterday afternoon before the 4:30 service, one 4th grader whose family i know well, was talking about palm sunday with me.

leah: “i know [palm sunday] is supposed to be a sad day, but i don’t think i can feel sad today.”
me: “what do you mean?”
leah: “well, like, in the morning, everything is good because jesus is on his way to jerusalem, but then at the end of the day, things get really sad when he arrives. and i just don’t feel like i can be sad, because i always feel happy when we go to church.”

ugh. i am turning into a glass-half-empty person. gross. i mean, i just deleted an amnesty international email with the subject heading, “stop possible execution of an innocent man.” seriously, do i even have a heart??

(okay, so as soon as i deleted it, i actually removed it from my trash and signed the petition, which you, too, can do here.)

i guess i’m tired of celebration. because what are we even celebrating? okay, christ died for our sins. but the weekly celebration feels so self-indulgent, like we come because we like singing, we like hearing a good speaker, we like seeing our friends. but where’s the storytelling? where are the people who weekly are out sharing the good news, bringing justice to wicked places, moving towards reconciliation where there is only hurt and anger, caring for the widow and the orphan?

i’m tired of the do-nothing. in fact, i think it may come to quitting our small group. i don’t really want a weekly activity where we hang out for dinner before reviewing the highs and lows of the past sunday’s sermon.

lo and behold! it’s no joke that this quote from erwin mcmanus on why churches are in decline just popped up on my screen:

“My primary assessment would be because American Christians tend to be incredibly self-indulgent so they see the church as a place there for them to meet their needs and to express faith in a way that is meaningful for them … I think the bottom line really is our own spiritual narcissism. There are methods and you can talk about style, structure and music, but in the end it really comes down to your heart and what you care about.”

boo-yah. spiritual narcissism. so what would the church really look like then? would we celebrate weekly? probably. but what would our celebration look like? are we taught how to celebrate? i mean, when we’re kids, we learn how to celebrate a birthday. but are we taught how to celebrate christ’s death & resurrection? do we know how to focus on Him when we gather together?

imagine being invited to a surprise birthday party held in your honor and then no one brings presents or hugs you or offers a birthday cake or sings to you? instead, they all gather with you in the same room and talk amongst each other, every now and then nodding in your direction, talking about you, but never to you.

is that what our worship services look like from god’s perspective? are we so self-indulgent?

this morning at breakfast, anne and dena told us all about celebrating purim at their synagogue (a venue they share with their good friends, the presbyterians). purim, for those of you who don’t know, is the jewish celebration of the liberation of the jews from near execution by the persians; it was through the bravery of queen esther that the jewish people were saved.

so anyway, it’s traditional for jewish children to dress up as characters from the book of esther, but, nowadays, many families choose to celebrate purim as a jewish alternative to halloween. so anne and dena, along with the rest of the community, donned all sorts of outfits - including a family who arrived at the synagogue dressed as a mexican mariachi band, singing jewish songs in spanish. later, during the service, all were asked to shake their cans of dry foods (which they were asked to bring to donate to a local food agency) and cry out, “Boo Haman!” whenever the evil Haman appeared on the scene.

the community foundation for jewish educationwrites that, ultimately, purim has a distinctly religious purpose - “to celebrate the unseen presence of God who saved the Jewish community in Persia thousands of years ago.”

weekly, as christians, we gather to celebrate god’s victory over sin & death. but is this the celebration god intended? could we learn something from our jewish friends? can we celebrate, too? or are we stuck in our self-indulgent ways, committed to our own ideas of heaven?

i just wonder if the church is missing out.

a note to God

Jesus, I want to be with You. Working for church is maybe the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I feel like I’m failing all the time, like I’m not good enough or welcoming enough. Like I goof up every conversation and overstep my boundaries. For every step forward, I feel like I’m taking three gigantic ones backwards. God, how in the world am I supposed to keep doing this? 

But I confess this to You because I know it’s not all about me. If You can use me in the slightest way, please use me to Your pleasure. I know You are good above all things. And like Lisa and I talked about this morning, we need to look for where You’re moving, and – by the power of Your Spirit living inside of us – join in Your kingdom work.

Help me to reflect Your perfect love. 

I know that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 

Help me to look for You. Help me to celebrate who You are and what You’re doing. All else is meaningless. 

I long for what Eugene Peterson wrote in Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: “from deep in our lungs – our lives! – we sing and play to the glory of God.”

For Your glory, God, be all things forever & ever.

a list

Let me just get all the thoughts I’ve been thinking out of my head for a bit:

1.    It’s snowed like crazy this year! It’s brilliantly white outside right now with the sun peeking out of the clouds, reflecting the light off of every possible inch of snow-covered street and sidewalk, rooftop and car, blinding me, and little snowflakes flying around in the gusty winds, no hurry to be or go anywhere. Church was cancelled yesterday because the streets were coated with 2/10ths of an inch of ice. Jon shoveled the 8” of heavy, wet snow off the ice yesterday afternoon after I gave up, frustrated with my little muscles and bad attitude. It was still beautiful yesterday, but I’ve really had enough of shoveling this winter. What a welcome to home ownership, right?

2.    I miss hanging out with people who aren’t Christians. It makes me miss my old job if only for that. It makes me second-guess my reasons for being here at BH. I like messed up people. In some sense, it reminds me of Jesus’ words in Matthew, when the Pharisees ask his disciples why Jesus is eating with tax collectors and sinners. His reply? “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” Sometimes I fear BH is too attractive for Christians, and then they just want to fully immerse themselves in this thing, without fully understanding that they should be MORE focused on spreading the good news about Jesus’ work on the cross and his resurrection. We make it a popular club. Ugh. I just don’t like that. And I’m guilty of it. But I don’t it. Again, God, I wish you would help me understand how to be faithful to you, and to what you’ve called me to …

3.    I just got an email from a co-worker about our Wednesday lunchtime showings of “The Office.” He wants us to sign off on acknowledging that some things that the character Michael says or does can make people uncomfortable; he doesn’t want to be responsible for the corruption of the staff team. I wonder where this email came from – it makes me wonder who made a stink about it that we’d all have to say, yes, this TV show makes fun of people and I’m okay with it. Seriously … it’s like how I wanted to put magazines in Volunteer Central, but then Paste & Rolling Stone were turned down by some in the office who felt their content might offend. For real? Dear Jesus, maybe you’d like to recommend a happy little bubble we can all live in somewhere? Far from the world that sinners inhabit? Could we be exiled somewhere that’s safe for the whole family?

4.    Gag.

5.    My favorite things about working at church are what I’m learning in classes and through books and resources I never would have picked up otherwise. I love the theology class. It makes me want to start offering classes for other people. A new kind of DTS, like Mad City once upon a time did. I’d love to be a part of something like that. I’m going through the Judges commentary for the NIV and I love it! It’s so interesting to read that stuff. It makes Gideon, for example, seem real in a way I never got from just reading it plainly. To learn some of the Hebrew and follow the rhetorical devices of the author is awesome!

6.    I missed celebrating ALL 4 of the birthdays I wanted to celebrate last week: Hans, Alison, Erin, and Anne Hobbs. I stink. I also haven’t hung out with or talked to Erin K, Kat H or Shelly in ages. I know they’re Christians; they’re just not BH Christians and I miss that.

7.    I want to try something new. I want to create something on a smaller scale. I don’t want to be part of such a large, massive staff structure. I miss my old department of 8 people. We were left alone. We didn’t plan events every week. I miss Alumni Week, and all the work I got do on the bulletin board. Although, I AM excited about having a new bulletin board up in Volunteer Central. Even if it is cheesy and kind of dumb, it makes me feel crafty; it seems like a pretty small church way to love our Sunday teams.

8.    I’m sad I have little else to talk about except church. I need to take a class. I need to do something NOT church related. I need to get outside of this place. Maybe I should take a class at MATC or join a volunteer network through UW hospitals.

9.    I saw this incredible short video last night. It may be the best thing I’ve seen in a long time. Enjoy: http://youtube.com/watch?v=th6Njr-qkq0.

10.    I think that’s all I’ve got to say. I’ve got a lot of reading to do for my class tomorrow. And Sarah, Chris, and Jack should all be arriving shortly. I want to give my full attention to them ☺

are there any ordinary radicals in the church?

i talk about craving the freedom to fail, but i hate failing. i second guess everything that i’ve done, wonder if it’s all intended for failure, and deliberate what the consequences of my choices will be.

like today. our staff christmas outing was to the theatre to see the documentary, “what would jesus do?” but i heard rumblings hours prior to caravaning out to the movie: it’s not a party if we’re not connecting, why aren’t they providing lunch?, this is how we’re celebrating christmas?

so maybe the movie idea bombed. i thought it represented certain people well; and jon agreed that it represented the revolutionaries on staff. that’s probably true. and some people would rather have been at a 3-hour no-alcohol cocktail party. that’s not me.

okay, so i got my voice loud enough in that room to do something that fit me. do i feel guilty? no, i actually feel frustrated. watching that movie may very well be the most christmas-y thing i’ll do all season. i wanted someone to say, “amen! let’s be about this together!” but we walked out laughing, people casually mentioning how glad they were they had already finished their shopping so they couldn’t feel guilty. my heart plummeted.

i want the church to respond to this. reverend billy and the stop shopping choir are just 30 or so people who are so dedicated to a cause that they’ll spend their entire christmas season on a bio-diesel bus traveling across the country to chant in malls and sing in small churches about the threat a consumerist lifestyle has on our local economy and our global family. what is the church doing?
sometimes i wonder if i shouldn’t have worked at sojourners instead. i want to be with people who get arrested for doing crazy things because they’re so dedicated to a cause.  but there are so many things i want to stand for, so many things i want to preach because i believe there’s damage being done to this creation of His, and what do i do about it? nothing. i organize hundreds of volunteers to welcome suburbanites into an airport terminal church where they can get free coffee (though they have plenty of money to stop a local coffeeshop on the way in and buy their own), sit in cushy seats and drive away in their SUVs.

oh, Lord, i just wish i could dedicate myself to You in a way that confessed i’m devoted to You in every way. i get erin’s emails about human trafficking and sexual exploitation being propagated on craig’s list and i want to jump into action. or i find out about the numbers of homeless kids in the madison school districts alone and want to get our life group in on what we could possibly do to care for the kids in our neighborhoods. how do you pick what to get involved in? do we focus on going green? building a compost? developing community with our neighbors? spending time in solitude to get away from the frenzy of life?

if jesus is our pattern for life, then, like stanley grenz writes,  living requires community with God, others, and creation.

sometimes, Lord, i wonder that you didn’t get overwhelmed by living. i look to your prayer in john 17 when you prayed for yourself, your disciples, and then all believers. weren’t you overwhelmed by living? did it seem possible to you that we would screw everything up so much? how can i live by micah’s words? to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with my God? how can i be a part of the justice martin luther king, jr described as “love correcting all that stands against love”?

Father, i believe you have something for us. Help me be part of it. Help me pray the prayers of St. Francis, St. Henri Nouwen, and all the saints of the church who cry out for justice, for righteous living, for peace and joy. God, give me an opportunity to participate in your kingdom, empowered by Your Spirit to live out the love you invested in me.

if following Him is potential failure …

Group dynamics intrigue me. Just this morning, I read about new research in group studies that reject the assumption that decisions made in groups are the most well-rounded because they develop out of a variety of opinions and perspectives. The research actually shows that groups rarely invite individuals to bring unique perspectives because of the desire to avoid debating and just land on a quick decision.

I’m experiencing it right now with the fun team. We call ourselves fundercover kids, united (f.u.c.k.u. for short) because we don’t want to publically be knows as the fun team. The fun team implies that we are, in fact, not fun. So fundercover kids we are. Anyway, it’s our responsibility to figure out how our organization values fun and how we celebrate the staff as a whole (i.e. christmas parties, staff coffee breaks, etc). We had our first f.u.c.k.u. meeting last week and there was lots of “i feel this way, but i could be swayed either way” and “but whatever’s best for everyone else is good for me.” ugh. someone have an opinion please! If it fails, it fails and next time we try something new.

i hunger for the freedom to fail. not just in “fun” activities, but on a larger scale, on a day-to-day basis. if i’m going to have the opportunity to develop my gifts and skills and passions, if any of us who work for a living are going to have that opportunity, we need to work for organizations that commit to investing in failure.

it’s not that i want to put money, people, time or resources into ideas that are clearly destined to fail - ideas that have no support and are not well thought out; it’s that i want encouragement and backing for those ideas which have creative potential to reflect God’s heart for His creation.

Eugene Peterson writes in his book, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places (which I’m sure I will be referencing for months yet, till I am through this meaty book):

A primary but often shirked task of the Christian in our society and culture is to notice, to see in detail, the sacredness of creation. The marks of God’s creative work are all around and in us. We live surrounded by cherubim singing Holy, Holy, Holy.

It is easy to miss it. Sin-graffiti disfigure both land and people. Death is a frequent visitor. Blasphemies assault our ears. And our sin-blurred eyes and sin-dulled ears miss the glory that is right before us. But no excuses. We have a huge responsibility and an enormous privilege to live daily in such a way that we give witness to the immense and sacred gifts of time and place. It is far too common in our fast-paced and technologically depersonalized society, impatient and zealous to get out the gospel message, to skip the Genesis context and slap together something improvisatory so that we can quickly get on with our urgent mission. More often than not these improvisations are dismissive of the intricacies and beauties of God’s gifts of time and place. But the good news entrusted to God’s people is the good news of Jesus Christ, the firstborn of, yes, creation. Jesus’ life and work, crucifixion and resurrection, are thoroughly established and worked out in the creation gifts of time and place. We dare not put asunder what he joined together.

God created us to reflect His glory. And yet, often, we just want to make it, we want to survive, we want to get by. We want an easy route where no one feels annoyed or bothered with one more thing. Because there are already too many things. We can’t do a few things well anymore, we have to do hundreds of things well. We have to be great employees, excellent spouses, good dressers; we have to be well-read, committed to local, national, and international issues, involved in worthy volunteer pursuits.

I’d like a lesson on capacity. I’d like someone to agree with me that maybe multi-tasking ISN’T a “must-have” on a resume. Or maybe I’m the only one who thinks living as though the world depended on me and my job is absurd.

When we sing “Better is one day in Your house, Lord, than thousands elsewhere,” I wonder if we interpret that as, “Better is relaxing and resting in the presence of the Lord up there in heaven than running this rat race down here on earth.” Do we give ourselves permission to stay busy because we think God intends heaven as a final destination where we’re received onto islands of pillows, encouraged to recline and feed from grapes offered by angels? I don’t think so!

Shouldn’t we put into practice the kinds of lives that reflect the goodness and beauty and holiness of our God? Micah 6:8 spells it out for us: What does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. Do any of those things scream out, “Run!”? To act justly commands that we consider the issues; to love mercy instructs that we have compassion, responding to sin and failure by coming alongside a person to carry their burdens; to walk humbly with your God implies that we acknowledge our own capacity and revere Him who can do more than we ever asked for, dreamed or imagined. Even where the Bible reads “Run!” as in Hebrews 12:1, it tells us how, and that’s with perseverance. No one who runs with perseverance is running a sprint. This is a long race, a race that takes us from cradle to grave.

If we don’t see Him here, if we aren’t interacting with Him in His creation, are we in the wrong race?

I guess my question really is, if I see Him moving over there or over here, do I have the freedom to follow Him? And if following Him is potential failure … well, if following Him is potential failure, I’ll count the costs.

praise the lord.

i needed a place to write. in the time i’ve been away from writing, i could have conceived and given birth to a seven pound, three ounce baby girl with curly blonde hair . i didn’t, but i could have. instead, i found a new job, moved out of my apartment, bought a house, and got married. not that any of that is what i’m going to talk about here. now.

i’m getting nervous. i haven’t done this in awhile, so i’ve forgotten what to write. should i have an introduction? or can i just cut to the chase?

my husband just turned 30. jon turning 30 doesn’t scare me. to be honest, 30 has never scared me because turning 30 will mean i’m finally getting to celebrate my golden birthday. and i love birthdays, so having the big 3-0 on the big 3-0 is big. but i DO think about more than the celebration. in fact, i think very little about that actual day, and more about the 3 years leading up to that time.

if these are my last three years on earth, what am i going to do with them? the thought alone offers me an opportunity to consider the weight of responsibility on these next years. sometimes, it causes me to cry. actually, most of the time it causes me to cry: the tears may carry different meanings, but i cry none the less.

if i have three years to live, i want to give everything i have to fully living.

the poet and priest Gerard Manley Hopkins writes:

I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is -
Christ. For Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

so play i will. it’s my idea #21. over the rhine sings that idea 21 is the answer to “how long ….?”:

Too late
I know it’s not too late
To wrestle with this angel
Higher and higher
Don’t let go
Higher and higher
Before we know
How does it end
How does it end
We’re all riding on the last train
Trying to find our way home again

my idea #21 is play, the answer to the question, “what will i do with these next three years?” i’ll play, Lord. i’ll play to mark this life when it is “lived beyond necessity, beyond mere survival.” I’ll play through “words and sounds and actions that are ‘played’ for another, intentional and meaningful renderings of beauty or truth or goodness.” i’ll play, God. it’s not too late.