NaBloPoMo 14: FMF: Still

Check out the Five-Minute Friday community... Good people!

Also, I was all prepared to purposefully focus away from the more traditional takes on "still"--namely, tell an old family story about a woman and an illegal still out back--but after a lovely, relaxing evening of community and family and worship tonight, I can't get away from this:

GO

It's the verse that hits everyone, the one we all know the first third of: "Be still and know that I am God." We use it in the name of slowing ourselves down, of excusing ourselves from responsibility, but tonight I found myself wondering if we overcomplicate even this.

Is the reason we are called to be still simply the fact that He is still? He is unmoving, unchanging, entirely reliable and entirely faithful. "There is no shadow in him," breathes another psalmist. When I am racing from one well-intentioned distraction to another, I'm going a hundred different ways, while He waits for me to remember--or exhaust myself.

Because He is still, and waiting. He has not changed, in spite of every other ground being shaky, every other view shrouded in fog. He is still, and He does not invite me to run to Him--not yet. The first step is just stillness.

Tonight, coming back from my family's house, a halved moon hung impossibly monstrous just on the rim of the hill. All a trick of the eye, I've been told, but my eyes cried truth that it was that big, that there. Wonder like that demands stillness, demands the catching of breath and the backburnering of every other thing.

Be still, He says, and I try. I push the brakes on my racing mind, my beating heart. I remember that the One who is speaking is more impressive even than this beloved moon of mine, and far more dependable.

Stillness is hard, it is work, but it is the only way to peace.

STOP

"'Be still, be calm, see, and understand I am the True God.

I am honored among all the nations.

I am honored all over the earth.'"

Psalm 46:10, The Voice translation

NaBloPoMo 13: Reflections on "Without Running Away"

I was wondering what to write about today, watching the dark fly past my bus window on my way to dinner. I was feeling a little empty on the writing thing, but I'm twelve days in and DANG IT if I'm not going to get to thirteen. Maybe I'll write about a song, I thought half-heartedly, and really, honestly, the next song on Spotify shuffle was this one. It mirrors so much of where I am these days that it needed to happen--but that said, I'm aware that this might be one of those posts that's just for me. (I hope not, but I'm prepared.)

If you want to listen, Jason Gray's "Without Running Away" is easily found on ye olde YouTube.
If you want to just browse the lyrics, see here.

I'll open with saying that I'm not looking for a length of rope--though those days are carefully bookmarked in my past, so I don't make the disclaimer too loudly. But just don't take this as a cry for help or anything. We're okay. Promise.

My attention tonight was snagged by that simple line: "It's not like I'm trying to be optimistic / If the truth be told, I'd rather dismiss it." Some who share life with me will smirk at that based on some recent conversations, but it's very much where I am these days. Traditionally, I've been a reasonably positive person, but for the last several months it's been a struggle-filled search for that feeling and yes, if the truth be told, dismissing "it"--whatever the it of the moment is--is pretty tempting. I'm hesitant to talk about seasons of life (insofar as emotional states are concerned), because I tend to use that as a justification for various not-great mindframes and behaviors. But this is just where I am these days. Maybe it'll last for another eight or nine months; maybe it will close out before the week does. But I don't think I limit myself or my God when I say life has been less than shiny, and it's been wearing me out.

My natural leaning, then--and Jason's, too, apparently--is to close down. Not dramatically, not in a huff, not with slamming doors and paintings falling to the floor in a froth of glass. Slowly. Gently. Like falling asleep in the sunshine, a gradual numbing and closing and softening into gray. Because hurting and pressing on with the effort of living, of loving, is hard. I don't say this to sound a pity party for myself at all--we've all been here, at the bottom of our own particular barrel, and we've all made it out again at some point. I don't suppose these are the darkest days I've seen--I know they aren't, not when I really sit back and grasp perspective--but immediacy is quite a magnifier.

"Jesus is speaking but it's so hard to hear / When disciples with swords are cutting off ears." I love that line to the moon and back, have since the first time I heard it. I love it because I hear it at first about other people, so quick am I to point out splinters, but before I've completed the thought I'm usually noticing the plank that's all mine.* I also love it because of the mindset behind Peter's swordplay. Yes, he was defensive and angry and violent, but all of that was stemming from love, from an overwhelming knowledge of injustice and unfairness. He wasn't right, but he wasn't unjustified. I am so quick to list out the injustices against me--and Jesus, awesome as He is, counts them out in His hand with me. But that can't be the end of the story. We have to keep going, because I could spend the rest of my life listing off injustices or I can do something about them--even if it's just loving people in spite of them.

The still small Voice 

that calls like the rising sun, "Come, 

bring your heart to everyday 

and run the risk of fearlessly loving

without running away."

That's almost my favorite part, but the refrain that catches in my head most often, most consistently, no matter the circumstance, is, right now, more a prayer than a reality. And I think that's why I love this song, too: that it's not just "poor, pitiful me." It's not a litany of what's wrong. It's a progression. It's the problem and the solution. Because the more that I seek out and listen to and follow that still small voice, the voice that makes mountains and moves them, the more this will be true. And I can believe that, even if I don't feel it.

My heart is not lifted up.

My eyes are not lifted up.

But calm and quiet is my soul--

like a child with its mother is my soul.

The injustices will stick around. I was never promised otherwise. It seems, lately, that every time I open my Bible there is another reminder that, to quote the oh-so-sacred text of Battlestar Galactica, "All this has happened before, and all this will happen again."

Jesus got exhausted, too. At times along this road over the last several months, I've felt that very clearly: that He is exhausted, is hurt, is worn out with me. (Yes, He's God and can't actually be, but I think you track with what I mean.) But when Jesus got worn out, His response never varied: He got out, He retreated into His Father, and from there He could bear every exhaustion, every hurt--even death.

This process has worn me down, and I'm not feeling too pretty these days. When Paul talked about completing the race, I hope he meant on hands and knees, covered in mud and blood and worse, because I'm pretty sure that's how it's going to go. But while I may not be able to raise my hands or even my eyes, calm and quiet will be my soul.

Like a child with its mother will be my soul.



*Sorry for my casual references here--two awesome moments when Jesus shows ludicrous, otherworldly poetry and justice:
- splinters and planks: in pointing out the hypocrisy of his own followers, Jesus uses the metaphor of one pointing out a splinter in his neighbor's eye while not noticing the plank in his own. We are so quick to detail what is wrong with everyone else, even--especially--those we are closest to. (Matthew 7)
- Jason's line references the arrest of Jesus, immediately before his death, when a very well-meaning but ultimately misguided Peter (my homeboy forever) defends Jesus by lashing out with a sword, likely not his. His love for Jesus emboldens him, but he puts that boldness into the wrong response. How do we know it's wrong? Because Jesus puts the man's ear back on. (John 18)

NaBloPoMo 12: Not Counting

Each silver line
in the brown field
is a tally mark,
a score kept in a game
I thought was just for fun.
But in and through this
fun there are rules,
there are numbers hard
and inflexible.
Years that do not grow longer.
Days that do not ask permission to fly.

Even without counting them,
the light lifts each
silvered hair in the mirror,
reminding me that there is
nothing certain
but this: a fading, a loss
of color and life, a score
that will one day
be settled.

NaBloPoMo 11: Leave Them Laughing

I don't know when I learned to be funny. I don't have a moment of clarity where I heard the silver tinkling of someone laugh and knew this was what it meant to feel alive or anything like that. I understand, from comparing notes with others, that this isn't an uncommon trait among children of divorce--that we learn to be funny as a way to keep you entertained, to ensure our value, to keep you from leaving. That's a sad reson to be funny, but it makes sense in my head. It wouldn't be the first time that tragedy fueled comedy.

I've gotten a little overdiagnostic with myself in the past, wanting to shake off this humor dependency like a bad psychosis, but more recently I've come back around to embracing it. Because, yes, sometimes it's just a knee-jerk reaction: I have nothing else to say, or the conversation's getting a little heavy. But there are times I use my power for good: times when it breaks the tension, or when it stems tears. Times when it puts someone at their ease and lets them breathe, lets them be.

It's that last one I love best: another form of hospitality. I will do just about anything to make someone comfortable: welcome you, cook for you, make you laugh. I will give you home in whatever small doses and reasonable bites I can manage until you are full and happy and your ribs hurt (from eating or laughing, who can say). Until you are nothing else in the world but you.

NaBloPoMo 10: Meetings on Microblog Monday

I have an honest question for anyone who cares to answer it: Do you know anyone who likes meetings?

I've sort of been waiting for myself to arrive at a place of adulthood where I take some degree of enjoyment from meetings, but it just hasn't happened yet. For someone who loves to talk and loves to listen, loves to trade ideas and sharpen brainstorms with other people, as soon as it turns into a meeting I have a firm ball of loathing that rolls around in me like a stone on a slanty floor.

Of course, there's no escape from them. And they're a necessary evil, I get that. But I just hate them. And I'm pretty sure I have approximately 47 scheduled for this week. Yee haw.


Just discovered Microblog Monday and was in the perfect headspace for it. Done and done. (These three sentences don't count...)

NaBloPoMo 9: Adding Love to Food

This won't be the first time I've written about food, especially cooking, on this here blog of mine. But as I've been gone for ten days, my hands are itching to cook while my brain has still been fiddling with my post about Problematically Attractive from the other day, and I got to wondering how those are linked.

I've always been bothered by the touchy-feely-ness of food tasting better because it was made with love. Yada, yada, yada, sounds like a load of hooey to me. Even when I've written about nearly the very thing, I've not been terrifically comfortable with it. I'm the sort of person who doesn't understand the science, but I'm comfortably certain it's there. So how do the same basic variables combine differently dependent on the presence of love?

Well, attraction is an aspect of love, isn't it? And this is what got me thinking.

I don't mean to take away the magic, from Gretchen's cooking or my own, but I got to wondering about this. Problematically Attractive is attractive not because of some mysterious something in the air, not because his eyes are imbued with love, but because of the particular, particulate attention he pays to every piece of what you say and do.

Isn't it the same with food?

When I am tired, when I am cooking so that I can eat something so that I can continue with my day (or crash in a heap with the couch and Netflix), I pay only enough attention to keep my fingers uncut and unburned (most of the time). The onions are rough-shod, the meat is cooked unevenly, the spices are unbalanced. It's just food, sustenance. It's not bad, but it wouldn't bring anyone back for lukewarm seconds.

But when I am cooking for therapy, or for people I want to love or take care of, it's an entirely different thing. Like Problematically Attractive, I consider and ponder and weigh and embrace each element. The onions are cut to thirds and then shaved paper-thin, their water soaking into skin and bamboo board. The pan is heated well, just slicked with oil, and the meat is timed by its shifting sizzling, not a mental timer. The spices are combined in my little glass bowl, saturated with olive oil to meld them better. The wooden spoon corrals the contents like a gentle hand instead of a handy stick, and in so doing the pieces are folded in but not broken, combined but not mashed.

This isn't really magic, not at the end of the day. It's practiced skill and basic culinary knowledge, but more than either it is attention. It's watching, it's giving care, it's listening. Just like purposeful flirting, it's making the food important even if it wouldn't be otherwise. The commonplace carrot is turned sweet and perfectly forkable; the unremarkable chicken breast is crisp but still juicy, swaddled in just enough spice. Each finds its place on the plate, and the spoon is tucked in carefully so as not to break the spell.

Because maybe there's a little magic mixed up in there somewhere, too. Who's to say that wooden spoon isn't part magic wand? That magic that floats across the table from an attentive man is the same magic (or a close cousin) steams up from the plate, curls around your tongue and tells you that this wasn't assembled but made, not for just anyone, just for you.

NaBloPoMo 8: FMF: Turn

It's been a long conference, and a lovely long day with my Nashville friends, and I am nearly zapped. So, though it's a day late, I'm jumping the Five-Minute Friday train, which I haven't ridden in some eons (why??) to fulfill my NaBloPoMo duties. Cheap shot? Maybe. But writing is writing, posting is posting, Day 8 is Day 8!

ALSO, fifty-nine page views yesterday?? I believe that is a daily record, my friends! Thank you soooo much for visiting, for reading, for referring! (You should comment and say hi.)

For those who aren't familiar with Five-Minute Friday, you should check it out! It's the perfect end-of-the-week, scrape-the-last-of-the-creative-juices-from-the-baseboards-of-your-brain exercise, and it's good people, too.

BEGIN: turn

Children waiting in lines, in circles, in desk chairs with arms stretched taut learn the lesson early, and I learned it well: you wait your turn. But don't misunderstand: you don't wait to learn patience, or to glory in other people's turns, or to reach an epiphany and find that what you were waiting for wasn't what you really needed. You wait because your turn will come, like physical development, like multiplication tables, like gravity. It isn't important that you understand how, only that you bear with the waiting in order to receive your turn. Your hand can fall as you eagerly speak. You can stand and take your place. 

What we don't learn--what it would be cruel to teach children--is that some turns don't come. You can be patient and quiet, can celebrate others' time in sun, can do every ounce of preparation and still be skipped, like just another duck in the circle. You legs can tremble with readiness, your arm can ache as muscles atrophy, and still you can wait uncalled upon. I don't know if this is true of me, but I know it's possible. I've realized, only recently, in that gut-level, full-awareness means of realizing, that my turn might not come. Not because the world is dark and cruel, not because God is mean or forgetful, not because I wasn't good enough--just because. Unexplainable, but unavoidable. 

I watch a man show off cool science on a TV show: he floats an aluminum foil boat on nothing, bobbing on waves of pure air. The eyes squirm and insist it isn't possible, but it's right there in front of them. No amount of wishing will make it less real--even without understanding the whys (it's resting on a gas that's denser than oxygen, just like it would on water), it's irrevocably true. 

My arm is tired. My crossed legs are ready to spring me into motion and give chase. But it's not my turn yet. C'est la vie, childhood Chandra. C'est la vie.

STOP