Hunger

For some reason, I was never hungry for lunch yesterday. (This. Never. Happens.) I went out to Starbucks with a coworker and picked up an iced green tea; I threw back some cinnamon almonds because I figured I should eat something. And, predictably, by the time I got home I was ready to start gnawing on my purse strap. It's not often, I suppose, that I am actively hungry.

But that got me thinking this morning about hunger. Because I don't have much experience with real hunger--participating in a 30 Hour Famine with my teens a few years ago is the closest I've been--I find that I hunger for other things...

I am hungry for knowledge. If it had been financially possible to just stay in college for another 5 or 10 years, I probably would have. I love learning knew things (the things that interest me, anyway) and puzzling them out. I love reading and organizing my notes and formulating thoughts into pages of writing. I love knowing things--my best friend accurately calls me an intellectual snob. I find myself getting a little antsy to soak up new facts, new ideas, new learning.

I am hungry for experience. I'm devouring a book for Speakeasy right now that covers a man's travels around the continent as he works toward and develops a sustenance farm in partnership with his church, discovering permaculture and composting, monastic life and Central American social politics. I open Google Maps to look up something for my real life, but find myself dragging and zooming to corners of the world--Baffin Island, Indonesia, the Azores--that I have no foreseeable plans to get to.

I am hungry for stillness. This seems silly, coming from a woman who lives alone--why is this not everyday?--but I hunger for a different breed of silence: a purposeful, chosen, dedicated stillness. The kind of stillness that finds you as you sit on the porch in the early morning cool with hot coffee resting in hand, the vastness of an unlived day hanging invitingly in front of you like steam from the mug.

I am hungry for community. I spent Sunday morning with some church friends giving out free lunch at Willard Beach, and I found myself amazed at how quickly we fell into community with passersby. Much to my surprise, there was no suspicion, no circumspection. There were single moms and elderly men and teenagers, all of them talking and laughing in the speckled shade of a perfect day, content--eager!--to share time with strangers. I am hungry for this: for family to be found in neighbors and acquaintances, for us to remove ourselves from relational bomb shelters and share life.

And why am I hungry? Because I settle for slacking off. I settle for rewatching and rehashing and keeping to myself. I settle for sleeping in and wasting time on things that do not--cannot--matter. Instead of living with eagerness and energy and expectation, I curl into the corner and hold my breath and wait.

When I think back to the 30 Hour Famine, I don't remember the hunger of those two days, so much; but I remember the meal we shared at the end: a bite of bread and juice for Communion, and then simple beans and grains--food so much of the world would be tearfully grateful for. I remember laughing with my kids as we shamelessly scraped our bowls clean with our fingers.

There will be a day when all of this is memory, and I don't want to remember the hunger.

Five-Minute Friday: Last

Back in the saddle with 5MF = happy Channy. If you like a little writing exercise, you should check it out. The rules are simple, the people are nice, and how much more energy do any of us have by Friday, anyway?


GO


There is so much ELSE, so much OTHER. So many distractions and excess parts that have no place. But in the quiet, when I can bring my brain to a place away from emails and deadlines, this is what I see:

Us. Simply us. Doing simple things: reading a story from one of our childhoods or making dinner. Looking out into the night sky or flying down a highway with the radio on. Passing the phone when a relative calls and debating repainting the kitchen. Romantical ideas, maybe, but no romance is complete without them, and these are the things I bring my brain to when life is mundane or when the waiting gets painful. Because one day, like Adam, you and I will say, "At last--this is the one my soul loves." And isn't that what covenant love is? That at the last--at the last piece of the day, at the last breath of life, there we will be: palm to palm, dust to dust. At last, Ella sings, life is like a song. At last.


STOP

Little Revivals

"Imagine a woman has her money all arranged, and somehow loses some--doesn't she tear through her wallet, her desk, the laundry piled on the floor in search of it? And when she finds it, doesn't she text a friend or post a photo on Facebook: 'Check it out--I really DID find five dollars!' In the same way, a veritable dance party is thrown in heaven for a single broken heart turning back into the path of God."
Luke 15:8-10, Channy Paraphrase


Life has just been a little meh lately. In several instances over the last few months, people have eagerly asked me what's new, and I have replied with brevity, with apathy, with silence. This isn't to say things are bad, just that there is nothing remarkable--literally nothing worth remark--in my life lately. "That's good," replied one friend a couple weeks ago. "It means things are stable. Stability is good." Well, yes. But there's stable, and then there's stagnation.

And that's what I've been feeling lately: stagnant. Things have been fine--got a nice letter from the CEO celebrating my 5-year mark at work, ministry is trucking along like never before, I've had lots of good friend times lately, I've been in the Word every day for [checks helpful app] 43 days. So what's missing?

I puzzled on it for a bit, and frankly, it didn't take long. A few months ago, there was balance in my life--lots of busy-ness and filled work days, lots to do for ministry as idea after idea fizzled, trips out of town and fitting in as much time with friends around that as possible. But over the summer, everything sort of screeches to a halt, and that time that was my needed rest and downtime (Netflix + couch + mildly healthy snack food) became my all-the-time. And it's stunning how habit-forming that it, and how sneaky--I knew that I was wasting hours each day doing nothing but watching TV shows I don't care about... and yet I didn't care.

So today--roll up sleeves--I made myself a little resolution. (Perhaps I've mentioned my general loathing for New Year's resolutions... so hello, August 22!) It began with waking up early--and rather than hitting snooze for a third time, getting up early--grabbing my journal, and starting my day with Jesus, writing out some thoughts and petitions of prayer. And it's continued with working hard--not just getting the minimums done, but getting a jump start on future projects at work, punctuated by a visit to our gym. And it's continued with--drumroll, please--me canceling my Netflix account.

I should give you a minute here.

While I love Netflix, it continues to be too great a temptation to flop, to turn off the brain, to watch things that, at best, are mildly entertaining and shift from that to emotionally/spiritually unhealthy surprisingly quickly. So I'm spending tonight blogging (shock!), reading my book for Speakeasy, and going out with a friend*.

These are all teeny, pretty insignificant things. But as I ate my dinner (and listened to my Hillsong United Pandora station and had myself a little dance party that may or may not result in heartburn soon), I found myself noticing how small shifts bring about a total change. (For more cookie fortunes, turn to Chapter 7.) I've done very little, but I feel very different. And I got to thinking that I wonder if we don't limit the idea of Luke 15 up there by only quoting it in reference to those utterly blind to God who are found. Because my life, while defined by some major repentances, is more commonly shaped by little revivals, bits and pieces that fall back into place after weeks or years of restlessness and disorder.

So I'm simplifying. More books and less screen time. More writing and less Words With Friends. More prayer and less prattle. More relationships and less... all the crap I pretend is relational. Little changes. Simple things. Almost too small to make a difference. Almost.


*Because we aim to bring you the whole truth on this little program, I shall confess: said friend and I went out... to watch a movie. But it was SOCIAL. And we went out--grabbed blankets and pillows and ice cream and pizza and flopped on the grass under the moon by a lighthouse and my beautiful bay and laughed at the movie and the kids quoting the movie around us. This beats Netflix a million to one.

Five-Minute "Friday" : Story

I missed the real Five Minute Friday (I was on vacation! ...Away from my phone... Yes...), but I love the FMF concept in general--and this week's word--too much to skip for the teeny little reason of being three days late to the party...

GO

When I think of "story," she's who I see: a little blondy-ginger two-year-old, gleefully toddling through grass and pavement, mindless of the sidewalks, then slamming on child brakes to hunch down on the bank, so desperate to not only witness but take part and immerse herself in--

--Well, they're just ducks. Any adult can see that. They aren't numerous or particularly pretty. They're sort of milling around in the water, doing their duck thing, but Story is fascinated, caught up, ensorcelled.

She's an actual, real girl, too--this isn't a metaphor. The niece of a friend, and my companion for one afternoon a couple years ago in Centennial Park in Nashville. And my friend's sister named her Story.

I loved this, loved it from the first time Lauren told me--I may have even insisted on meeting this child with The Best Name Ever. I love that this girl will live with this word swept in loopy script over her head every day: You are writing a story, right now, right here, in this. You are your own character, nobody else's. You are making something new, something lasting--but also something fragile and easily remade. There will be clumsy missteps, but they only lead to more interesting paths; there will be crushing mistakes, but redemption is always the better story. 

STOP 

Five-Minute Friday: Broken

So, it's Friday. Which means I'm blogging. (This is only one in a flurry of recent examples where I'm learning to appreciate rules I adopt for myself. After years of embracing freedom and "grace," which in addition to its truth can be a euphemism for tolerating or even embracing my lack of self-control, I'm starting to fully get what Paul meant in Galatians about the Law being a guardian for us.)

So even if I have nothing else to say am too lazy to blog the rest of the week, I suddenly seem to have blogging ambition on Friday. I typically go over and see what my buddy Ruth wrote, and then head over to Lisa-Jo Baker's blog to make it official.

[Drafter's Note: I cheated a little this week, and this is more like Six-and-a-Half-Minute Friday... I am presently typing on an iPad, on a train, and so I allowed myself some extra time to counteract the autocorrect- and turbulence-related backing-and-filling...]

GO

In feeling my own throat, in considering that TV show I was watching involving a serial killer who strangles women, I find myself wondering why this sacred place, this passage for voice and breath, should be so scandalously vulnerable. Just skin and a thin veil of muscle, poorly guarded, an undefended keep.

The heart, too--Ingrid Michaelson's voice warbles in my wonderings--so vaguely enshrined in thin ribs, too easily accessed, punctured, broken, lost. It's tempting--unavoidable, inevitable--to second-guess the craftsmanship. Where are the plates of heavy bone, layered like marble slabs to keep us safe? 

In short, why are we breakable? Did He not consider all that we might lose in an instant, a sudden sacrifice to misstep or violence? But He chose to make us fragile, to let us be broken, whether it's a stubbed toe, bent and bruised, or a fractured heart, murmuring and fading. He designed us this way, and encourages us through every means available to leave ourselves that way: easy to accessed, effortless to hurt, but open to a world of wild emotion, compassionate even in the face of darkness.

It's possible, to some degree, to choose the other path. To become hard-hearted. But it's preferable to fracture and then be mended; to break, and be remade unbroken.

STOP

Belonging, continued.

On a different vein from my post earlier tonight, I'm going back to where I grew up next weekend. I don't say, "going back home," because home is my apartment, and the other "home" is where my mother is. (More on this back in March of 2012.) But I'm going back, and I have surprised myself and others when I say that I don't really have many plans for my brief visit. (I keep using "brief visit" as an excuse... We'll leave unturned the rock that asks whether I'd feel differently with a longer trip.)

I have long been connected to certain places, as they in turn connect me to certain moments or phases or feelings. And it's not that New Jersey doesn't have those places, but, I think, that those places are closed off to me now, and shy of significantly violating basic trespassing law or using a TARDIS, I can't revisit them. This is part of life, of time, of change: that while I would love to walk down the stone steps, tracing my hand over the sphinx statues and peeling-bark trees that guarded my childhood play area*, I cannot. That while I miss the feeling of possibility and joyful unknown I knew as a teenager waiting under trees in the back acreage of my childhood church, I cannot recreate it by revisiting them--I have tried. In every case, either the place or I have changed too much to summon what was.

This is a mood I find myself in occasionally: melancholic, which is not to say sad or depressed or regretful. You can miss things without really wanting them back, especially because with all these pieces of selective memory, there are shadows, too: watching friends fade, feeling hope revert to resignation. I don't actually want to be 7 again, or 17. In fact--and I do hesitate to say this, but--as I approach 30 at the end of this year, I find myself, if not entirely content, more content than I have been... maybe ever. There's nothing specific about this contentedness, which is maybe why it's remarkable: it's not based on circumstance. (To quote C. S. Lewis, "don't let your happiness depend on something you may lose."*)

I still love returning to certain places that bring the past back to life--to my mother's kitchen (wherever it may be), to the farthest-out sand flat at Kingsbury Beach on Cape Cod, to the orchard of my grandparents (now my cousin's) house--but for whatever reason, the idea of belonging, of home has shifted away from where I'll be next weekend.

This, here, where I am, is home. And while there are pieces of the past that still resound with fluctuating emotions, this is where I belong.

* Never have I typed a phrase that so thoroughly screamed, "this girl went to private school." Dang.

** Clive Staples, paraphrasing St. Augustine, in his The Four Loves: "This is what comes... of giving one's heart to anything but God. All human beings pass away. Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose. If love is to be a blessing, not a misery, it must be for the only Beloved who will never pass away." [Note: that same love funnels to people, too. No hate.]

Post script: I feel like I frequently end with a song, so why break a pattern? This.

Five-Minute Friday: Belong

A word of warning: this will initially be a five-minute Friday challenge (yay for Ruth Ayres & Lisa Jo Baker), but as this has been on my brain lately, I may go on after the 5 minutes...

GO

I had imagined belonging to be easier. Aided by TV shows that demonstrated moving only involved a scene change, and that all your friends (with the occasional instant new one or guest star from the old show) came with you. Moving to Portland was going to be like that: an artsy, foodie, bookish town on the coast where I would blend seamlessly into a group of intellectual, funny, compassionate people who would love me instantly as we shared microbrews and Shakespeare.

It will be seven years in October, and I've had this community I was aching for... for about four. I didn't see it then, and couldn't see it as it was happening, but moving is easy; meeting people is unavoidable; belonging is hard. It was two years before I had someone local who I felt like I could call in the middle of the night with a broken heart. It was longer before I had a local family I now spend Christmas with. It was only recently that I caught myself, stopping for a moment in the midst of a church picnic, being thoroughly submersed in a place of laughter, of acceptance, of imperfection, but most of all of belonging.

And that's the rub we want to skip over: belonging is being known--and that means being real. No masks, no pretending, no faking it. Real community, real belonging comes from vulnerability.

STOP

I'll write the other bit separately, I suppose, to avoid novel-lengths... :)

Thanks for visiting!