Tag Archives: family

May 13 2015
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learning to live, what they are teaching me

an end to preludes

boyond-preludes

There is a rumble of insistence for
an end to preludes without their symphonies.

Beyond announcements and proclamations,
beyond ceremonies and unveilings,
crowds of regular people gather
who are still working and sweating
to raise their families
to help their neighbors
to reimagine their surroundings
to dream their futures
and to build into their communities
into something a little more whole.

Beyond the prelude
the people are still waiting
for the movement to begin.

Beyond the prelude
we are waiting and clamoring,
we have become restless waiting and clamoring,
for the movement to begin.

There is no longer an acceptance of only preludes;
we’ve learned the movement is supposed to follow.

We don’t expect it to be played for us;
we’ve been learning to play for quite some time now.
We expect to add our own music to the work.
We don’t expect it to ring without error;
we’ve been learning from our errors for quite some time now.
We expect to mess up, tell the truth about it, and continue to play.
We don’t expect to hear it immediately;
we’ve been learning how long it takes for good music to be born.
We expect to see it both in small pieces and suddenly in finished products.

But let us be clear;
we will no longer accept the preludes without their symphonies.
If there is intent to impose again
an acceptance of the status quo
of all prelude and no movement
of all proclamation and no production
of all appeasing and no activity
of all explanation and no substance,
hear this:
We do not accept your offer.

We’ve waited.
We’ve traveled.
We’ve worked.
We’ve trained.
We’ve sweat.

You will not scare us into silence.
You will not threaten us into acceptance.
You will not bully us into appeasement.

We know that the prelude is only the prelude;
there’s music to be heard.
And we know that while terrifying,
it is the music of the kingdom.
And we will play it together.
And we will hear it together.

And whether or not you join us,
we will move beyond the preludes.
There’s music to be heard.

djordan
Chicago, IL

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Nov 02 2014
3 Comments
Series: Signs of the Kingdom, social work, the calendar, what they are teaching me

thickness of thin space

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Here I am in an empty church. In it, between the rows of pews, on the tile floor, under the silent cross, I walk along a boundary, a place in between heaven and earth. The Celts called it thin space….The church calendar calls into consciousness the existence of a world uninhabited by efficiency, a world filled with the excessiveness of saints, ashes, smoke, fire; it fills my heart with both dread and hope. It tells of journeys and mysteries, things “seen and unseen,” the world of the almost known. It dreams impossibilities: a sea divided in two, five thousand fed by a loaf and two fishes, a man raised from the dead. 

– Nora Gallagher
Things Seen and Unseen: A Year Lived in Faith

It seemed as though every few breaths had to be wrestled quietly to keep exhales from becoming tears. I don’t think tears of any kind of sadness, although some seem wrapped together with a letting go of things that no longer fit but were desperately and perfectly holy when they once did. Others pregnant with promises that are only clear today after all this time of begging for clarity. Others coated in laughter of flying monkeys and brave children.

After being on the road––or in the air––for nearly a month, I returned to the desks and sessions and meetings and paperwork and conference calls of the work week last Monday. With the promise of daylight savings time still a terribly long week away, I traveled back from exhilarating speaking and learning with stellar servants in Seattle and Memphis and the slow and holy days of the beach with lifelong and new friends, to the pounding of alarms in the still-dark mornings of my own still room.

The threat would be, of course, that the magic only happens when things are outside of the routine. Only with toes buried in the sand and waves ruining the back pages of novels do we cross into the thin spaces. Only with lecture halls and presentations and learning credits pending do we feel the rush of the practice and the theory. Only with the frantic boarding runs do we surmise that we are living something exciting.

But then, on a Monday morning as regular as any other, the shower makes us look a little more alive than we feel, the coffee makes us a little friendlier in a few short moments, and the first meeting, the first client, the first conference call reminds us that we love what we do and the people we get to do it with.

And the thin space becomes so thick we can taste it and name it and break it as if it were in itself that holy meal.

So today, a week later, with more travel on the edge of the next few days, I’m giving thanks for a week of clients, a week of paperwork, a week of surprise parties and the lies they require, a week of out of town guests and in town friends over drinks.

So today, a week later, I find myself at the altar, imagining that table that spreads all the way to family in Nicaragua and all the way to family in Cape Town, and all the way to family who have already moved a little closer to something better on the other side of time, and I was wrestling breaths in order to exhale without bursting into tears. Tears of letting go and holding on. Tears of the promise that I have no idea what I’m doing, but somehow I feel alive while I’m doing it and I feel loved getting to do it with such incredible people, and I feel honored doing in on behalf of those so often not welcomed at the table.

So today, a week later, I find myself at the altar recognizing that the thin space has become so thick at this particular moment in time, that I let it win and with the tears that hit the hands that hold the bread and the wine, I give thanks that he withholds no good thing from us.

Not a thing.

djordan
Pine Tree Dr.

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Oct 23 2014
1 Comment
learning to live, on, what they are teaching me

the era at hand

photo 2

At about a hundred miles an hour it came crashing into my chest this morning, moving up quickly to my throat where it stole my breath and then my eyes which began to pour. In the wind, behind sunglasses and under one of my grandfather’s many straw fishing hats, I was skimming quickly to our next drop in spot with three buddies as the sun was coming up over the gulf where we’ve been staying these last few days. The boat’s captain letting us know how far in to drop and what was likely on our line before it ever came into site was scouting out our next most likely location.

The four-word refrain came to mind. I followed it just under my breath to see what song it was connected to, and then, the crashing. First chest. Then throat. Then eyes.

sad fruitful broken true
sad fruitful broken true

I didn’t realize until this morning out there on the dramamine-calmed water that this is the first trip to the beach I’ve been on since losing both grandparents who taught me to love traveling here, feeding the birds, chasing the fish, eating out, cooking in, and laughing hard. As time passed, so did their health, but the beach would still happen. Moves from porch to den to restaurant  became slower and slower, but each still an important move worth taking the time to make.

This morning, out there on the water, still burning by the sun under his straw fishing hat, I realized that it has been the years and years of family and storytelling and value-passing that makes me fight, over and beyond fighting for meaningful work and meaningful impact, for meaningful friendship and meaningful experiences. To see and to feel and to taste the holiness in clinking glasses in my own home or half a world away. To honor and to savor the time spent with and the time spent where.

And in the hurricane of memories that stormed perfectly over and into me this morning, I was at once overwhelmingly grateful and overwhelmingly heartbroken. To have the privilege of three decades filled with enough love and honor and legacy to miss so deeply all at once left me exceedingly grateful and sad. The era of those kinds of gifts has passed. Forever. It’s almost too much to take in.

There is, however, the era at hand. It is in these days, then, that reveal the ways in which I choose to remember all these good things that have in no way been withheld from me. It is in this era that I will either wake up before the sun and meet my buddies to fish deep in the ocean, or I will only mourn the loss of the days that have already passed. To truly mourn, to truly grieve and to truly honor all that is lost must, in the truest of ways, involve making deep and rich meaning of all that is ahead.

And must acknowledge the ripe and possible realities of the present moment. Crashing in and all.

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The words I found after chasing the refrain are from the Sara Groves’ song This House are listed below:

it took me by surprise
this old house and these old feelings
walked round and looked inside
familiar walls and halls and ceilings

where I’d dream and plan
every moment of sunshine
this was my whole world
it was all I knew
like the hull of a seed
this old house cracked wide open
as I grew

hadn’t given it much thought
hadn’t been back here for a while
everything looks so small
seen through the memories of a child

who would dream and stare
from that second story window
that was my whole world
it was all I knew
like the hull the of a seed
this old house cracked wide open
and I flew

sad fruitful broken true
sad fruitful broken true

memories for miles and miles
summers falls winters and springs
Ruby you take it in
see he’s withheld no good thing

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djordan
723 Whiskey Bravo
Seagrove Beach, FL

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Feb 24 2014
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on, the calendar

the life of the party | remembering Mama 2

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The words below are those I had the privilege of sharing at my grandmother’s funeral this morning. To her legacy, and to life in all its fulness.

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“Howdy Do?!”

That’s the greeting that immediately comes to mind when I think about our grandmother. That’s how I remember her greeting others with this classy kind of wave that she taught us all to give…even my brother and me…and a gentle knod of the head.

Howdy Do?!
How wond-ah-ful to see ya.
Mah-ve-lus. Mah-ve-lus.”

You may have known her at Joyce Ann, or Joyce Laycook. We know her as our grandmother, or “Mama 2.” And when we think of southern class, charm, beauty, fashion, humor, celebration and the elegance of a woman of the Old South, we think of Mama 2. I suspect you do too. I suspect that’s part of why you’re here.

We heard stories of her as an only child that made her larger than life, and then, as we continued to grow up as her grandchildren, we watched her live largely into those stories. Our friends watched her live largely into those stories. I suspect you watched her live largely into those stories too.

We remember as children her taking us to the Johnsons’ swimming pool throughout the summer, and especially on the 4th of July. She was, of course, busy working the crowd if there was a party, but she always made time to show us off, make us feel special, and let us know how to be classy, charming, fashionable, and truly southern in the process.

She did love the idea of summer and parties and sun. We spent every summer with Dabo, or our granddad Donald Laycook, and Mama 2 at the beach. She insisted, with her huge and trendy sun hats and brand-new sunglasses on, that we all get “summer names,” or names that we would go by for the week only. Sometimes they were names she perhaps wished we had been given, even her daughters–whom she actually named herself–but still. Summer names. Every trip. I don’t remember my summer names as much as the notion that she was pushing us to live into a kind of wholeness of our imagination and sense of life.

Pick a name for the week. Your summer name. Anything.

It isn’t just summer names that remind us of what she taught us, her grandkids, about living into the fullness of life. We grew up seeing pictures of Mama 2 and Dabo traveling the world with friends and family, and that has pushed all four of us, Katie, Suzanne, James and myself, to do the same. In many ways, she and Dabo have made that both desirable as well as possible. As we grew up, we became the other people in those pictures with them as they traveled, enjoying the food and the scenes of other worlds that made our own worlds bigger and richer and more alive.
You have to travel.
And learn.
And see.
You must. If a week at the beach is worth an entirely new summer name, then life itself must be worth living into fully.

One year at the beach, in between her talking to the birds in what we once thought was a magical language (later learning it was only the effect of pieces of bread thrown in the air at the same time as saying “Click Click Click” which would result in a swarm of seagulls off the deck of the condo), we went shopping as we always did if Mama 2 was around. They were selling henna tattoos in the middle of the shopping plaza. After learning the tattoos were removable after several weeks, she decided to get one as a joke. A rose with “Don” written over it was tattooed high enough on her thigh that it would only be seen while at the beach in her swimsuit. She would not be beaten by Dabo, however, who returned one day from shopping with what we thought was a piercing but turned out to be a magnetic nose ring.

She and Dabo were, at their best, the life of the party with us or with anyone else. While she enjoyed travel for the shopping and Dabo enjoyed it for the food and sights (Dabo used to say that when he and Mama 2 died, he would go to hell and she would go to heaven but it would be okay because they would be together in Pigeon Forge), they could always be found laughing and story-telling anywhere, and living into the fullness of the moment and the reality of the place. Summer names, tattoos, piercings and all.

It wasn’t just trips and travel that this insistence of living was valued. Even in the regular day-to-day rhythm, she got into the practice of calling her granddaughters, Katie and Suzanne, whenever “Dance Party” was on. “Dance Party” is known to most of you as “Dancing with the Stars.” She would call them and talk about the dancers’ outfits, dances, and then whatever else was going on with Katie and Suzanne.

She was a big fan of pop culture. I remember the dilemma once when The Bachelor AND The Victoria Secret Fashion Show was on AT THE SAME TIME! “Horrah…” as Mama 2 would say. But don’t worry. She tuned into one on the TV in her bedroom and tuned into the other on the TV in the den. She wouldn’t let the TV networks’ faux pas be her problem. She caught both shows…don’t worry.

I was in Chicago with some of my best and oldest friends these last few days, getting in late just last night as a matter of fact. It was an incredible privilege as we toasted Mama2 with my friends who didn’t need an explanation about who she was. They knew her name and her nickname; they knew her stories and were part of them; they had traveled with her, laughed at her jokes, and learned from her style. They had grown up with her, on the edges of the way we all grew up with her.

At her best, she was the most fashionable, classy, and charming lady around. She would, of course, do a fashion show for us every Sunday after lunch at their house of the newest items she had bought throughout the week (tags and all because many of them would be returned).
At her best, she was the ultimate host, the life of the party. She had songs for at least one phrase per conversation, and would burst into them immediately. On the way to the beach, we would cross the South Carolina state line and she would sing, “Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina….” As I began traveling to Nicaragua, she started singing, “Oh, Managua, Nicaragua…dah dah dah dah dah dah dah dah.” She didn’t know the word, but that was clearly inconsequential. Even at our granddad’s funeral, she insisted, walker and all, that she be seated at the table during the after-funeral meal with “the Merry Makers” because the day had been sad enough and it was time to laugh.

Today is a horribly sad day as these last several days have been. But, in remembering Mama 2, and even while enjoying a long weekend getaway with incredible friends in downtown Chicago, just about every shop and every meal and every laugh made me think of her and give thanks for the legacy that she leaves us. The legacy that she leaves me.

At so many lovely dinners at their house, she would sit on one side of the dining room table and Dabo would sit on the other. Mama 2 would start a joke, but then she would start laughing so hard just remembering how funny she thought the joke was, she usually never got to the punch-line. It it didn’t matter, of course, because we were all laughing with tears in our eyes at her laughing by that time.

So today, even in its sadness, we know that Mama 2, or Joyce Ann, or Joyce…however you knew her…would, at her best, want a party. She would want to be with you, where the Merry Makers were, laughing with you, dancing with you, partying with you, eating a sliver, and another sliver, and then another sliver of cake with you, getting tattoos with you, and living life in all its fullness with you.

So if you intend, as her grandchildren do, to honor her life, go from here to lunch or from here to home, or from here back to work and make it a party.
Make it hilarious.
Make it fashionable.
Make it so fun you start can’t finish the joke for laughing.
Make it old-style southern.
Break into songs and give each other summer names, because, well, why not?!

And know that she wouldn’t have it any other way.

djordan
Pine Tree

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May 03 2013
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learning to live, Quotes, the calendar, what they are teaching me

an occupying generosity

occupying-generosity

“Grace is the occupying generosity of God that redefines the place.” – W. Brueggeman

I find myself in multiple conversations over this wedding weekend trip. This will be the only wedding of my brother I ever get to be a part of. Our family, those by blood and those by commitment, have gathered together as we are never really able to do in a spectacular city for an important moment.

And as in almost all holy gatherings like these, as all gatherings are likely holy but we only notice some, we find ourselves telling stories together of memories that have scaffolded our shared histories up to these moments. As many perspectives as wedding guests, stories are told over rich food and drink from years upon years of moments, all reminding us of how incredibly fortunate we are.

Children in diapers looking out windows.
Promises made and promises kept.
Phrases learned from repetition that stick years later.
Shared community homes.
Shared inside jokes.
Shared holy lives.

And in moments where we make our promises out loud in fanfare and flower-lined rooms, we are reminded that we have no ability to actually keep them even when we are acting out of our best.

And it’s in these moments, also, that we look back over shared histories from varying perspectives and realize that we have been living in an occupied place, filled with the sometimes subtle and sometimes breathtaking generosity of God. And in those moments, when we have to clench our jaws together to keep from crying out with joy because it will ruin our faces or our makeup, we own up to the holiness of grace filled lives, occupied by the generosity of God.

And we are redefined.

So we celebrate in promise and in party, knowing that a family occupied like ours is a glimpse of the kingdom breaking into earth.

Congratulations, Jamey and Emily. Looking forward to this one.

djordan
Chicago

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Jan 12 2013
2 Comments
what they are teaching me

when thirty was old

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There was a time, of course, when thirty was old.

It was not that long ago, and I remember it well. My parents were, then, in their late thirties, and were, of course, ancient. Then, as I grew older, the forties became cool, and thirties were early old-age. Then, I hit my twenties, and the fifties were prime, and the twenties were young, and the thirties were when I became an adult.

Now, of course, as I am pushing the hands of the thirty clock into their final destination, the sixties seem young, and the eighties seem old.

Until lately.

My grandfather died in his early eighties, and it seemed completely unfair. He had more traveling, more reading, more drinking, more laughing, more teaching and talking and leading to do. So suddenly, the eighties seemed like when people had it all together and could tell those of us who were young, (thirties) what choices to make that we would regret.

Tonight, I left my neighbor’s 80th birthday party before she did. I was sweating from laughing,  stuffed from eating, and thoughtful from conversation. As I walked the fifteen yards back to my front door, I realized how quickly time flies, how young eighty is, and how, at thirty, life is only beginning.

Cheers, Ms. Coleman, on hitting 80. And thanks for the reminder.

djordan
Pine Tree (one house over)

 

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Aug 19 2012
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from the archives

from the archives | a time for everything

 

In reflecting on the upcoming one-year anniversary of mosthopeful.com on August 23, I’m throwing some of the posts that readers have looked at the most back into the mix. Thanks for allowing me the space. It’s been a most humbling experience. This post is especially important to me, as it was a moment of honoring the pain and struggle of the year before, and then celebrating––in advance––what waited in the year ahead.

There were conversations that evening about how we would learn from the ridiculous pains and struggles of the year, and move toward the kingdom with new insight, and new scars, into the future.

A few weeks after that party (talked about below), I was sitting with in Stellenbosch with some of my favorite people in all the world, and I began talking with a friend from London, living and working in Cape Town, about how victories and happy memories are honored with parties thrown and anniversaries given, but the painful experiences and struggles are only valued once we come up with “reasons” for why they happened.

She mentioned, feet in the chilly water at a campsite in Stellenbosch, that we ought honor the painful landmarks in our history as well as the ones we naturally celebrate. The party thrown at the beginning of this year was an opportunity to celebrate and to mourn what had been, and to look with great expectation toward the future, knowing that God is working through his people in his world toward the kingdom.

So, another top-viewed post from the archives…

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View the original post and comments from January 8, 2012

 

a time for everything

 

It is with great joy that I enter 2012.

2011 was filled with pain, loss, struggle, sadness, anxiety, and anger.

The year overall was one of seeing the best of circumstances end up as the worst of possible outcomes.

And yet through each season and struggle, there has been tearful laughter, growing community, deeper honesty, brave introspection, and tenuous hope.

And it all feels a little closer to the truth. A little closer to telling the truth.

To others.

To myself.

To the part of all of us that tries to close our eyes to what we know the painful truth is sometimes.

There are times when everything in me wants to arrange my circumstances in ways that hope for the best; those same times, if I were being honest with myself and those around me, I would instead be anticipating the worst. Before this year, I think I’ve tried to push everything, no matter the truth, into a single season.

As if allowing ONLY a season for birth, and then trying to translate death into birth in order to make sense of it.

As if allowing ONLY a season for building, and then trying to add on to things that needed only to be torn all the way down.

As if allowing ONLY a season for embracing, and then awkwardly trying to embrace when I should have refrained from doing so.

As if allowing ONLY a season for speaking out, and then trying to explain why I couldn’t be silent if I had wanted to.

The pain of 2011 has made important room for fall and winter. There is a need and space for dying, for tearing down, for refraining from embrace, for remaining silent. A season for these things.

And in the spaces made from telling the truth about our winters, spring comes on the heels. The ground is made soft, the legs become limber, the imagination becomes ready, and things begin to take root, people begin to dance and build again.

And so here’s to the new year, filled with possibilities for both celebration and mourning. Life and death. Dancing and weeping. Building and tearing down.

And an insistence on the holiness of both––on telling the truth about both–to ourselves and others.

For everything there is season.

djordan
Pine Tree Dr.

 

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Aug 18 2012
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from the archives

from the archives | a little help from his friends

 

 

In reflecting on the upcoming one-year anniversary of mosthopeful.com on August 23, I’m throwing some of the posts that readers have looked at the most back into the mix. Thanks for allowing me the space. It’s been a most humbling experience.

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View the original post and comments from April 2, 2012

a little help from his friends | guest post by Rayna Bomar

 

rayna bomar guest posts

This is the first guest post here on mosthopeful.com, and I couldn’t be more convinced of its appropriateness. Hugh and Rayna Bomar have become friends of mine these last few years, and their ongoing journey of remembering their son Sam has had an impact in my own life. I hope you glean from Rayna’s words about what has helped and what has not helped as she has been on her own very personal journey with grief. 

In August 2009, as my son Sam started his senior year of high school, I happened upon an essay by a woman named Mimi Swartz entitled “Empty Nest: In a Week He’ll Be Gone – And I Can’t Stand It.”  Her son, also named Sam, was leaving for college a year before my Sam would leave, and I read her words to prepare for what, I thought, I would be experiencing the following August. And, the following August, I did share some of the life changes described by Swartz – dinner for three became dinner for two, my schedule no longer revolved around the school calendar, and the “mundane rituals of child rearing,” just as Swartz had predicted, were gone.  But my role as a mother changed for a reason not anticipated. My Sam didn’t leave for college. Instead, he died on May 4, 2010, ten days before graduation.

There are many things that I could say about the past almost 23 months, but what I would like to do now is share some of the ways that others have helped us get through those months – and a few things that have hindered us.

My husband Hugh and I quickly realized that all grief is personal. What you have experienced losing a loved one, even a child, is not the same as what I have experienced losing Sam. My experience is not the same as Hugh’s experience. Therefore, things that I mention that have helped (or hindered) us may not help (or hinder) you.  I am an expert only about my own grief.

We have been most touched by the kindnesses that have been shown by Sam’s friends. We are in awe of the young men and women who are so naturally compassionate and who have put aside their own grief to help us with ours. They have taken us out to eat on Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day, visited on holidays, designed t-shirts and bumper stickers in Sam’s memory, mowed our yard, shared stories about Sam (what we love the most), written letters and sent cards, laughed with us and cried with us, helped with chores, preserved Sam’s spot in the high school parking lot, invited us to their celebrations- I could go on and on.  We are greeted with open arms and a hug. Sometimes we get more than one hug. They tell us that they love us. They share their lives with us and allow us to be part of their future. Their actions are drops of water on parched ground.

What they don’t do is, perhaps, more important. They don’t tell us that it’s almost two years since the accident and it’s time to “move on.” They don’t give us any advice.  They understand that our world changed when Sam died and that we will never be the same. They don’t expect us to be the same because they will never be the same after losing their friend. They don’t try to “fix” us. They don’t make any demands on us. If we feel like a visit, that’s great. If we don’t, they understand, and they don’t take it personally.

Maybe because of their relatively young ages (late teens to early twenties) they don’t have any preconceived ideas about how we should act or feel. Therefore, they don’t think they know what’s best for us, and they don’t try to impose their own feelings on us or try to dictate what is appropriate behavior.

Instead of trying to make us be who they think we should be, they already know who we are. We are Sam’s parents, and we always will be. That’s good enough for them, and it’s good enough for us.

“Death ends a life, not a relationship.” Robert Benchley.

One of the upcoming ways you can join the Bomars in remembering Sam is by attending the 3rd annual Sam Bomar Night at the Jackson Generals. Half of each ticket pre-ordered with the promo codeSamBomar goes to the Sam Bomar Scholarship Fund. Click HERE to learn more, and to buy tickets for the event on June 23.  

For other most hopeful posts on grief, loss, trauma and resilience, CLICK HERE.

 

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Aug 17 2012
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from the archives

from the archives | when there’s nothing else to do

 

 

In reflecting on the upcoming one-year anniversary of mosthopeful.com on August 23, I’m throwing some of the posts that readers have looked at the most back into the mix. Thanks for allowing me the space. It’s been a most humbling experience.

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View original post from May 2, 2012

when there’s nothing else to do

 

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

 

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Aug 15 2012
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from the archives

approaching one year

 

This time last year, I noticed an acute struggle to remain honest about all the ugliness of all that was going on while fighting to remain, above all, most hopeful; I decided that writing would help hold me accountable.

The lens of passing time has no doubt created opportunities to be most hopeful, and trying to hold myself to processing difficulties through that very lens, almost one year later, has no doubt proven redemptive.

Next Wednesday will mark one year of http://www.mosthopeful.com, so over the next few days, I am going to celebrate a year of writing by posting the most read blog posts, as well as some of my favorite guest posts. It’s humbling experience to see what resonates that most…

Thanks for the accountability that community forces in trying to tell the truth about a world that goes not well, and the promise of a kingdom come. “We cannot walk alone…”

djordan
Pine Tree

Approaching one year: From the Archives

View original post from September 3, 2011

 

if you need anything, just call

 

Circa 1987

Birdie and Donald, circa 1987

Birdie came to our home every single Wednesday for as long as I can remember. She worked for my parents, my grandparents, my great-grandmother, my great aunt and uncle, and my great-great aunts in whose home I live today on Pine Tree.

Two days after finally seeing the movie The Help, I stopped by my grandmother’s house. Pulling a coke zero out of her fridge, I noticed this picture pinned to the side with a magnet. There is another picture of Birdie and my cousin Katie that has been on the front of the fridge for as long as I can remember, but I have never, ever, seen this picture before. I showed it to my grandmother who began to cry, me soon to follow.

My memories of Birdie include her delicious buttermilk biscuits which I was never allowed to request that she make unless I got mom’s permission first. (I assume that these instructions were due to my waiting for mom to be somewhere else in the house, and then my asking Birdie to make things for me that I didn’t need because I knew Birdie would hook me up.) Along the same lines, I also remember the days that I wouldn’t clean my room because I knew Birdie was coming. Mom would ask Birdie not to clean my room on those days, because it was not her job to pick up my mess. Birdie would agree, and then after washing my sheets, she would stack all my clutter from bedroom to closet in neat piles on the bed that had corresponding locations on the shelves or in the drawers. Afterward, she would wink and tell me that she couldn’t clean up my room because it wasn’t her job to pick up my mess. I would put away the stacks quickly, and we both made it below the radar.

She spoiled me for sure despite my parents’ best efforts otherwise.

What I remember the most, however, is the conversation we would have every Wednesday afternoon when dropping Birdie off for the day. I would be riding in the back of our old Toyota van, and as Birdie got out of the passenger seat, I would slide the huge back door open and call out, “Birdie! If you ever need anything just call!”

Every week, the same process. The same line.

I had no idea how much Birdie needed, and how much I had in comparison. I also didn’t know how much she had that I needed like my life depended on it. I remember riding with my parents out to Birdie’s house one night so Dad could fix her water heater, and I was struck with the old, country house. Its dark walls and hanging, exposed lightbulbs. All perfectly kept and cared for. Birdie did not live like I lived, but she never called to say she needed anything from me. Birdie became magical that evening.

I think about how often even still in my own life, I call out strikingly ignorant offers to help others from my buckled up seat in the back of the van. Birdie’s legacy lives on in our family as humble, gentle, strong and faithful. She gave all she had to her church and to her family. Even still, I sit writing this in a home she has worked to make a home more than I have in my seven years here.

Mom told me one day as Birdie was walking off and I pulled the heavy sliding door closed, “Birdie will be your boss in heaven, Donald. Don’t forget that.” That day, I did not understand that comment at all.

As mom and dad and I walked out of the movie this past week, it was that phrase that immediately came to mind.

I’m only beginning to understand.

djordan
Pine Tree

 

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