Even the tinniest of birds
in the most remote of places
on the earliest of mornings
in a distant land
with their unfamiliar chirping
remind us
at our best, when we allow ourselves to be reminded
that the world is enormous
and deep
and complicated
and is still in its adolescence
as are we
as are we
djordan
León, Nicaragua
It’s surprising, really
the way it rattles the ribcage
and then leaps into the lungs.
missing.
missing and needing.
especially on days like today
the missing and needing arrive
when face to face again.
the miles and miles made it easier
to forget the ways they make up my world
to forget that it was them who began to teach me
who I was
who I was not
what the world could be
what the world actually was
how the kingdom insists on bursting through
how the kingdom waits to be released.
but today, this morning
on the edge of the literal sunrise
on the bumpy, muddy roads
on the way to school
when seeing your faces
and hearing your giggles
and feeling your faces
the way we feel faces when it has been so long
I was reminded that you are a part of me as I carry you inside me
and the only words are thank you
thank you to the kiddos who keep growing
growing in their shrinking sandals
growing in their brilliant brains
growing in my heart as they expand my world
expanding the spaces inside me that
had closed in a little too tightly.
And all is well once again.
And the world grows bigger once again.
And the kingdom protests once again.
djordan
León, Nicaragua
+ F. Buechner, Telling the Truth
And of course the reality is that we are, all of us, lugging around who we are and how we have become who we are everywhere we go. We carry it, the whole world of it, as Buechner says, “the way a snail carries his shell.”
We aren’t only carrying our shell of a world on our backs as we give big speeches or as we propose or as we write. We aren’t only carrying our shell of a world on our backs as we dream about the future and give testimony to the past.
We do, of course, carry it on our backs in those moments.
But it is in the more unsuspecting ways and places that we carry the weight of our worlds with us––for all the delight and all the pain with which they’re made–– that the influence of our shell is often and easily felt to be crushing or protecting us without our noticing the simple presence of it.
As if slowing down time, we begin to gain insight into the hidden parts of our worlds when we begin to observe the luggage on our back
in the humanity of conversations with those on the other side of counters at businesses.
in the tones that dogs are asked, yet again, not to chase down the neighbor’s stroller.
in the way we fill out paperwork at the jobs we were once nervous we wouldn’t be able to find.
in the faces or phrases we make when we are the recipients of ignorant words.
in the emotions we show those who cut us off, or who honk when we (accidentally) cut them off.
in the things we wish upon those who harm us, help us, love us or misunderstand us.
And the temptation is to freeze under the weight of our shells when we realize all that is at play every time we interact with another human being. But there’s an opportunity for compassion, on ourselves and others, hidden in the weight of the reality as well, much like the weight of the reality itself is hidden.
We have, in those moments, the opportunity to take another step in the direction of our choosing toward being the person we have hoped we were made to be, the person who is able to respond and receive compassionately, humbly, and gracefully.
The person who allows the weight of the shells we carry to tell us the truth about how messy our worlds are, how impossible some days feel, but how we come out the other side almost every time.
The person who recognizes, in his or her own business, restlessness, exhaustedness, selfishness, that others are stumbling around in the day trying to hold all the same things while keeping their hair and faces on straight.
In the moments we begin, piece by piece, to accept the reality, that we, all of us, do not just live in a world but that a world lives in us, we begin to act and live in more human ways. And it will likely be terrifying.
djordan
Atlanta, GA
My thoughts today are with yesterday’s graduates for some reason. And not just yesterday’s from college, but those who graduated last weekend from high school as well. These are students I’ve become friends with whether through church, through teaching, through internships or through other friends. You have spent your time working or laughing at my house, working and laughing around the world, and working and laughing in the classroom. We have met for late-night meetings, early morning meetings, lunch meetings, last-minute meetings.
And you fill me with great expectations!
More so than I remember other groups in the past, you are a group who is asking good questions to bad answers, and who are reading beyond the first page of other people’s thoughts and lives and situations. You are eagerly looking into what else it means for you to be a Christian in the world besides living a certain-kind-of-looking life in the middle of an otherwise chase for the American Dream. You are hesitant to gate yourselves in, block yourselves off, and cover your eyes and ears from the world in which you have been placed. You will argue and laugh with one another in the same breath. You will take off on a whim to aid one another. You will stand up to yourselves when one of you is standing on top of another.
And you fill me with great expectations!
Now that you’ve graduated, you will be challenged to move quickly into certain kinds of worlds.
You will be challenged to quickly move into worlds where money and perception and privilege and status quo are fought for, killed for, lied for, settled for.
You will be challenged to quickly move into world where it’s better off not trying and not being disappointed than seeking justice while, of course, being burned in the process as he told us we would be.
You will be challenged to quickly move into worlds where it is, of course, the best thing to do to challenge the status quo, the powers-that-be, the way it’s always been, but reminded that now is not the time, this is not the place, and not if you know what’s good for you and the future of your career.
You will be challenged to quickly move into worlds where you do not associate with that kind of person in those kinds of places with those kinds of thoughts because it’s something of which to be very afraid.
You will be challenged to quickly move into worlds where you read the first page, find a word or name that scares you because you are not familiar with it, and therefore are urged to close your eyes and ears and repeat what you have been told before.
But you fill me with great expectations!
Whether in the classroom, at dinner, in church or at work, I have already seen you move.
I’ve already seen you care nothing about money and perception and privilege and status quo; I’ve even seen you be willing to do lay down your life so that someone else can have something more.
I’ve already seen you choose to join the long defeat because you have decided that it is better to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly in obedience rather than fight for great ambitions or personal success.
I’ve already seen you suggest that now must be the time to pursue justice while challenging the powers-that-be and the status quo, because you know that it is never the right time for those on top to work for the best interests with and for those on the bottom.
I’ve already seen you enter into deep and honest relationships with the wrong kinds of people in the wrong kinds of places, and I’ve already seen God honor your choices by making you and them more like himself in the process.
I’ve already seen you read widely and thoughtfully, ask broad and dangerous questions, and engage in thoughtful and humble dialogue for the sake of seeking the truth. I’ve already seen a God––who needs not be protected––honor your search as you together discover him newly.
Because of what you have already shown yourselves to be, how you have already shown yourselves to move and breath in the world, I am filled with a new kind of courage as to where you will take us, where we will go together, what we will ask together, what we will learn together and what we will see God do together as we seek first his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.
You make me incredibly proud, and fill me with great expectations.
Well done.
djordan
Pine Tree
I’ve just returned from a four-hour party that is still making its way into the evening. It was a welcoming party for a new neighbor on my street, Pine Tree Dr.
I live in the home of my great, great aunts. They were the sisters of my great-grandfather whom I never met. They were born in the first decade of the twentieth century, and lived as graduates of Vanderbilt, single women who taught students from high school to University in the town I now live and teach in. I live in their home much changed since they were here; there is new paint, a new floor plan, newly-purposed rooms, but still their home nonetheless.
As I walked home tonight from my neighbors’ house around the corner, the magic of this place struck me again. I remember several years ago when I thought I was moving; I would turn out the lights in this Pine Tree house room by room, struck with a certain kind of grief and loss at every flick. It’s the building, yes, but not completely.
I love the home, no doubt. I love the old wooden, creaking floors and chandeliers. I love the plaster walls and sturdy fireplaces. I love the interesting nooks and odd architecture.
But what I love more is what tonight made perfectly clear. I sat around a swimming pool with friends and neighbors I went to middle school with, and friends and neighbors that my grandparents went to middle school with. I’m proud to say that I’m Donald Laycook’s grandson, the Etheridge’s great, great-nephew. I like that my neighbors know parts of my own history better than I myself do.
There’s an interesting honor and value in knowing that as our motley crew sat around the swimming pool eating and laughing this evening––the party lingers on with my neighbors who are older than I even now as I write this––is joined together less by job, income, or history, and more by a shared value of a place. we sit in places that those who came before us sat and enjoyed evenings by candlelight. A value of this particular Pine Tree Drive that is home to childhoods, early adulthood, retirement, loss, grief, joy, childbirth, dating, graduation, and the future of God knows what.
So I walked back home this evening grateful that I know my neighbors’ names, grateful that my neighbors can tell me about my grandparents, grateful that we recognize each other in coffee shops and business meetings, and grateful that we share a legacy as old as my lost grandfather and as young as my middle school classmates.
There’s a magic to this place, a place that is clearly home. A street that is clearly home.
djordan
Pine Tree
There’s a fear of what we do not know.
We stand here, looking at what is behind us.
We know clearly what we hope carries into the days ahead,
and what we hope can be left here, in what has already been.
We can speak clearly and eloquently about
what does not belong in the way things should be,
But our tongue becomes tired and slurred with
what it is we hope for in the world and ways ahead.
And it is here
that we realize
we are afraid of what we do not know
we are afraid of where we have not been
we are afraid of what we cannot imagine
And yet, in our deepest gut on our best days
we know that where we are comfortable
is not where we have been called
we know that where we are safe
is not where we engage as we have been made to engage
So we find ourselves praying for courage
So we find ourselves hoping for vision
So we find ourselves putting down ambition
And we hope to find ourselves courageous
And we hope to find ourselves imaginative
And we hope to find ourselves obedient
And we take one step at a time
into the new world
we fear because it is made of things we do not know
“…Let us turn our thoughts today
to Martin Luther King.
And recognize that there are ties between us
All men and women
Living on the earth
Ties of hope and love
Sister and brotherhood…”
I’ve been grading papers and cleaning up the house today, enjoying an almost-full day at home which is rare and therefore celebrated.
I had headphones on listening to James Taylor because the day felt right for it, and I froze the moment I heard the above lyrics.
They are from a song of JT’s, someone whose music I was raised on and therefore have ingrained somewhere deeply in my subconscious, called “Shed a Little Light.”
What made me freeze, I think, was the memory that the song immediately brought to the surface in the ways only music can. Frozen, trash bag in hand, I could see it crisply.
We would drive to the beach every year in the summer as a family, grandparents, cousins, everybody. And whenever the four of us, Dad and Mom up front and Jamey and me in the back seat, I remember when this song would come up on the tape player. We immediately split into parts, and sang the whole song through. Maybe it’s just the beauty of remembering, but I think we were pretty good too.
“…We are bound together
By the task that stands before us
And the road that lies ahead
We are bound, and we are bound…”
In my frozen state today, it became clear to me the power of shared values that make themselves at home somewhere deep within us, and as we grow, they influence all we do for better or for worse, and sometimes without our even knowing what is happening.
I stood frozen, headphones on, dogs staring, singing my part at the top of my lungs. Those lyrics came out from somewhere deep within me, and I was amazed at how they continue to reflect what I value most deeply, or at least what I want to value most deeply on the days where I’m more the person I hope to be.
“…There is a feeling like the clenching of a fist
There is a hunger in the center of the chest
There is a passage through the darkness and the mist
And though the body sleeps the heart will never rest..
Shed a little light, oh Lord.”
Here’s to childhood road trips, to family, and to the things we’ve forgotten we will always remember.
djordan
Pine Tree Dr.
RELATED POSTS | In Remembering and In Hoping | Whoever You Are
We were standing in a huddle, sixty people maybe, I can’t do numbers. The room is a room I spent many evenings in as a teenager, the church building of friends. We have misbehaved in that room, giggled, sung, prayed, pretended to pray, cried, married, listened, pretended to listen.
Tonight, no longer teenagers but many with children of our own, our parents not as young as they used to be, other new and old faces, tonight we huddled together in that room.
Prayer was being offered about one issue for one family tonight, but from the little I know of others’ lives in the room, I know that the room itself was heavy with issues that seem impossible to figure out or fix. And there we were, heavy, huddled.
Our hands feel best when we are fixing something, and our minds feel most productive when we are figuring something out, but there are many times––in fact it would probably be most times if we told the truth to ourselves––that our hands don’t know how to fix it and our minds can’t figure anything out.
We know too, however, that our hearts are telling us things are heavy and unsure and something must be done to help us move closer to the kind of shalom our brittle little hearts were made for in the first place. We don’t know what to do, but we know that something is not right.
And so we huddle together and do the only thing we know to do to give purpose to our hands and minds.
We pray.
We own up to the fact that we can’t figure out how to fix it, and we don’t know what to even think about it. We own up to the fact that our hearts can’t lie even if they wanted to when they are breaking open.
And prayer, in a huddle of people who have been there with us and seen us at our best and worst, becomes the only thing we can do.
So we pray. And we confess that we have joined the long defeat regardless of any promise of the outcome. We confess that our goal is obedience of seeking what is best for our own and our community and our children, but the goal seems out of reach, too massive, too complicated.
But something in us, perhaps the glimmer of the kingdom in us that shines when everything feels dark, something says that when nothing can be done and nothing can be said the only thing, by God, to do and say is to huddle together and pray that the kingdom would come on earth as it is in heaven.
And we resign to the fact that the huddle and the prayer and the messy people who are forming both are who and what we have been given as we hurt and hope and long together for the shalom our brittle little hearts were made for in the first place.
djordan
Pine Tree
RELATED POSTS | The Long Defeat | It’s Been a While | Time for Everything
Choosing a paint color is one thing; seeking the truth is another.
One of my favorite lines of Madeleine L’Engle’s is, not in quotations because I can’t remember where it was, that God does not need our protection, and welcomes as many questions as we can dream up.
And I’ve noticed in the meantime that we are at risk not only of taking other people’s answers for truth, but also of taking other people’s advice on what the questions are to be asking in the first place. When our questions are guided, we are of course lead to certain answers from certain narrowed voices.
When we narrow the voices, we weaken our ability to discern at all. In thinking throughout history of all the situations and all those power and all those in the church, even, who have been led in obedience because they trust that someone else is doing the discerning, it is horrifying. We mistake proclaimed expertise for due diligence, and we are left unthinkingly joining in protection of the status quo.
Stifled questions means stifled dialogue, and it is in dialogue that progress is born and we get a little closer to the truth we are all of us after. Dialogue requires broad voices rather than a single voice, and there is perhaps no doubt in the promise that where two or more are gathered, there is something more true and holy present and happening.
I’ve been reading, this time by choice, the book that we long ago read in high school by mandate: Fahrenheit 451. I remembered thinking at the time that how ridiculous the notion was that people would be told what to read and what not to read, and that reading and thinking off of an approved list could result in death.
Book burning followed driven by those in charge, under the guise of protecting humanity from dangerous thought. Children then came up into families never knowing the art of book reading, thinking, questioning, debating, creating and imagining.
I thought it foolish then, but it doesn’t seem so foolish now. In fear of discerning many voices, we seek to narrow them down to the ones we know, or the ones we have been told to agree with: the approved book list. To read past the first page of another voice becomes treacherous and intimidating, because we wont know what to do with another line of thought. And so, as encouraged, we don’t think anymore. We ask the questions we’ve been told to ask and take the answers we’ve been given.
If we idolize those speaking or writing, or simply take their words, we aren’t able to listen to multiple voices because we have challenged the ability for the spirit to work in community, and given authority to some single voice.
With broad voices, however, we learn the art of listening and asking, hearing and being heard. With broad voices we learn how experience shapes understanding, and how injustice and power breed certain lines of thought. We learn where we are blind, and where we are gifted. With broad voices, we think enough to welcome for dinner a Boo Radley or a Hester Prynne. With broad voices, the combination of these truly human acts yields compassion and humility.
I’ve been in meetings where a million voices made it impossible to choose a paint color, and it has indeed been a nightmare.
I’ve also been in meetings where power is used to beg discussion, criticism, thoughtfulness, ideas, questions, dreams and disagreement…none of which should be mistaken for disunity…and it has been a beautiful and community-affirming endeavor.
There’s a difference between choosing a paint color and seeking the truth.
And what have we to fear if it’s the truth we’re after together.
djordan
Pine Tree
OTHER RELATED POSTS | BECAUSE YOU DID NOT ASK, FEAR OF THE WEAK AMONG US
Just after a hard rain, the chairs dried but the red brick still slippery wet, we just spent the last few hours out there. Sitting on the front porch, pipe in my hand, cigar in a newer friend’s hand, I was reminded again of the courage it takes to speak about ourselves in the hearing of others, and to trust that our humanity will be shared rather than used against us.
Words come tumbling out of my own mouth, and I wonder if they will be met with an appreciation for both their ambiguity and honesty, or if they will be the nail in the coffin of my once-perceived sanity and standing.
And as they come tumbling out, as they did tonight, time seemed to move slowly, Matrix-like, as if I could see the words themselves passing over the cigar cutter, the lighter, the pulsing citronella candle inside its orange ceramic shell, making it finally to the hearer. In that slowness of time, the notion that vulnerability is our biggest fear and our only hope seemed to float on top those words.
And they were heard. And affirmed. And shared.
Then words come back. Heard. Affirmed. Shared.
As many times as these kinds of moments happen, I’m always amazed at the palpable fear in daring to speak. But beyond the fear, the daring and the speaking are the only ways to honestly offer the invitation for anyone else to find in themselves the courage to speak back.
Otherwise, we all remain silent and unhearing.
djordan
Pine Tree
most hopeful 