truth | most hopeful

Feb 12 2013

to those people, and you know who you are

to those people
and you know who you are
who offer homes and spaces
of safety and honesty and freedom

to those people
who make it okay to stumble out in the morning
with hair twisted in all the wrong ways
eyes stuck together
and thoughts jumbled up
still to say, “good morning.”

to those people
who have encouraged me when
I’ve been at my best
and put up with me when
I’ve been at my worst
and who’ve allowed me to be
both my best and worst
most of the times…

to those people
who have become the safe, honest and free places
to make it clear who I am not yet
and also who I desperately hope to be
until all is said and done
you will offer the clearest notion
of what it means to be loved well.

so to those people
and you know who you are
who offer homes and spaces of
safety and honesty and freedom,

thank you.

djordan
Pine Tree Dr.

Tagged communion, community, friends, friendship, honesty, life, party, safety, together, truth

Feb 11 2013

2 Comments

learning to live

the threat of ambition, the need for obedience

while there’s nothing we’ve been taught to avoid like disobedience
there’s nothing we’ve been taught to value blindly like ambition.
and we assume that our ambitions result in our best
and that our best results in the best of those around us
but our ambitions are challenged by all the things which pull us away
from simple, longstanding obedient commitment
to be who we are and where we are and why we are in the world.

there are always shinier places
and loftier goals
and fancier titles
there are always more noble causes
and more remarkable feats
and more impressive benchmarks

but there is nothing like long and simple obedience
proving to be anything but simple
proving to require a holy trust and an unwavering commitment
even when the story is over but the people carry on.

so there is nothing like long and simple obedience
which challenges great ambitions like nothing else.
so there is nothing like long and simple obedience
to family
to vocation
to community
to justice
to beauty
to freedom
for others and therefore for ourselves
that drives a dagger through the lying heart of great ambitions
to show the selfish, insecure desires which so often create them.

djordan
Pine Tree Dr.

Tagged ambition, arrogance, commitment, God, good, lies, obedience, truth, untruth

Feb 07 2013

1 Comment

learning to live, poems, Quotes, what they are teaching me

small circles

small-circles

I sincerely hope for good results,
but I have become a good deal disillusioned
over ‘big’ conferences and large gatherings.
I pin my hopes to quiet processes and small circles,
in which vital and transforming events take place.
+ Rufus Jones

Over the last few weeks, I’ve found myself in small circles,
I’ve been sitting around high-top tables and around piles of plastic bottles and stickers.
I’ve been sitting around conference room tables and around coworkers’ offices.
I’ve been kneeled around communion rails and sitting around workshop training rooms.

There has been good intention in planing and good work in presenting
There has been insight and growth

But the magic happens after
in the conversations we find ourselves stuck in
the new acquaintances who will become our partners in the work
the faces paired with names who will become our collaborators
the other small circles on whom our small circles will become dependent.

And in this magic
there’s the promise of
the upside-down kingdom
lights out
curtain closed
microphones off
ties undone
shirts untucked
shoes kicked off
clinking of glasses and
laughter that steals our breath

And in this magic
there’s the promise of
the upside-down kingdom
and what has
always been done like only God does
when the small circles take on
the principalities and powers
the systems and the injustices
the sicknesses and the ignorances
in ourselves and in others
and we see
a little bit clearer
the reflection in the mirror of who we’ve been made to be.

In the small circles and quiet processes
we pin our hopes.
This is what we’ve always done.

djordan
Pine Tree Dr.

Tagged advocacy, alone, change, Circle, communitas, community, conferences, God, lost and found, Magic, meetings, planning, truth, truth telling, work

Feb 01 2013

1 Comment

grief and trauma, learning to live, Quotes, social work, what they are teaching me

and once again we sing

Throughout my last two jobs, I’ve had the same folded-up xerox copy of the first page of a memoir which has the following lines attributed to an anonymous Vietnamese poem taped to the wall above my desk:

We fill the craters left by the bombs
And once again we sing
And once again we sow
Because life never surrenders.

These words struck me when reading the memoir, but these days I don’t remember why. Over the last three years, I’ve thought a great deal about trauma and grief. First motivated to begin understanding it more while working with the survivors of homicide-loss, and then through my own personal journey through difficult work days, and now in the context of the lives of my individual clients as well as communities in which we work for transformation and development.

The notion that suffering and pain, while seen to be inherently private and uber-personal, is in reality communal and fundamentally social, the words are becoming more and more haunting.

As the church moves into communities of violence, systemic injustice, stigma, poverty, materialism, greed, addiction and isolation, we are often afraid to sing songs that the people waiting for the kingdom have sung for hundreds upon hundred of years…

By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
    when we remembered Zion.
²There on the poplars
    we hung our harps,
³for there our captors asked us for songs,
    our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
    they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
(from Psalm 137)

As a people waiting and working for transformation, before we fill the craters, before we take on life again, we must tell the dirty truth about our loss and despair and all that is wrong and evil and messy and undone in the world, in our private and personal worlds, and in our communal and social worlds. If we, those who hold the promise that life never surrenders, can’t tell the truth about the mess of it all, then we aren’t yet ready, aren’t yet brave enough, to sing and sow once again.

djordan
Summar Dr.

Tagged death, grief, Grief Loss and Bereavement, honesty, hope, hopefulness, Israel, Jerusalem, justice, loss, pain, Psalm, psalm 137, Singing, truth, truthtelling, War

Oct 22 2012

in our honest hours

in our honest hours
of anxiety
of unsureness
of exhaustion
of insecurity
of restlessness
of loneliness
of misunderstanding
of arrogance
of boredom
of transition
of self-righteousness
of worry
of confusion
of isolation
in our honest hours
where we are altogether not our best

we come face to face
even when through a dim mirror
with the promise of how things will be
and we feel our souls
lift
weightless
weightlessly
to the sky
with the promise of how all things will be
when all things are as they should be

and then, we live more musically
in our honest hours

djordan
Pine Tree

Tagged float, floating, Health, hoping, joy, listen, listening, live more musically, musically, pain, sorrow, through a dim mirror, through a mirror, through dark glass, truth

Sep 15 2012

3 Comments

learning to live, poems

silence drips into pure gold

in those moments where it takes all we are
to keep our mouths closed
to keep our eyes forward
to keep our tongues tamed

in those scenarios where we are eager to speak
eager to tell
eager to explain
eager to defend
eager to debate

in those moments where it takes all we are
because we are so eager
to trust the truth to be known with or without our insistence

our silence drips into pure gold
and we learn to be confident in the truth
rather than our defense of the truth

djordan
Pine Tree

Tagged eager, listening, quiet, silence, silences, truth

Sep 08 2012

give us courage.

djordan
Pine Tree

Tagged answering, asking, bravery, Christianity, church, community, Courage, hope, hoping, justice, kingdom, learning, questions, stories, strength, strong, truth

Jun 03 2012

1 Comment

poems

in the shadows of great ambitions

Tagged ambition, arrogance, faith, faithfulness, humility, little, morning, obedience, psalm 120, simple, small, truth

May 31 2012

1 Comment

learning to live

the way a snail carries his shell

You can kiss your family and friends goodbye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live a world, but a world lives in you.

+ 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

Tagged buechner, comedy and fairy tale, frederick buechner, gospel as tragedy, Shell, Snail, snails, stories, telling the truth, truth, worlds

Apr 26 2012

1 Comment

learning to live

daring to speak

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

Tagged Cigar, Cigar cutter, conversation, friends, guys, honesty, new friends, silence, smokes, speaking, telling the truth, the guys, Tobacco, truth, vulnerability

most hopeful

choosing to be most hopeful

Tag Archives: truth

to those people, and you know who you are

the threat of ambition, the need for obedience

small circles

in our honest hours

silence drips into pure gold

give us courage.

in the shadows of great ambitions

the way a snail carries his shell

You can kiss your family and friends goodbye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live a world, but a world lives in you.

daring to speak