most hopeful
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thickness of thin space
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.
the era at hand
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.
+++
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
+++
djordan
723 Whiskey Bravo
Seagrove Beach, FL
us and them
At the moment it becomes
“us” and “them”
we’ve lost.
we’ve thrown in the towel.
we’ve waived the white flag.
we’ve thrown the grenade.
we’ve waged the war.
we’ve fired the shot.
we’ve sold our sole.
we’ve eaten the fruit.
At the moment it becomes
“us” and “them”
we’ve allowed ourselves
the illusion that we aren’t all connected
the illusion that we aren’t all the same
the illusion that we aren’t all both Cain and Abel
the illusion that we aren’t all both perpetrator and victim
the illusion that we aren’t all,
ultimately,
the best and the worst of ourselves.
So at the moment that we choose
to buy into the lie
that it’s “us” and “them”
we buy into the lie
that we can treat others in ways
we would never allow our own to be treated.
that we can make choices for us that have consequences
we would never allow ourselves to be the recipient of.
that we can speak in ways that objectify others to an extent
we would never allow for those we love.
So at the moment that we choose
to buy into the lie
that it’s “us” and “them”
whether defined
by race
by income
by status
by guilt
by geography
by belief
by doctrine
by ideology
by education
by gender
by any of the other illusions of separateness that have
proven to be crutches since we
stabbed each other in the back when it all began
it is in that moment that
the very “us” we are hoping to protect
is lost to a state of
otherness that we thought
we were guarding against all the while.
At that moment,
we lose what we thought we were fighting for.
djordan
Pine Tree
in hitting bottom
signs of the kingdom: returning to the courtroom
There’s poetry of space. And poetry of context. And poetry of memory.
Sitting in the City’s courtroom, where one of my Drug Treatment Court clients reminded me is where the District Attorney’s table is usually placed, I sensed a strong push to remember that holiness shows up in the places we forget to look. And when it shows up, it reminds us that we often look for truth and good gospel news in places that, while religious, are dry and sterile and only shadows of the actual good news. And then there are these other places, where we anticipate the bad news and the emptiness, that we discover the thick and sticky good news that we couldn’t not notice even were that our intention from the beginning.
And in that poetry of space and context and memory, I sit eating a meal and celebrating process and progress with those at all stages of recovery from addiction. Recent drug dealer sitting next to the city mayor. New addition to the Drug Treatment Court program sitting next to the judge that made an offer to seek treatment in lieu of jail.
I find myself sitting next to program participants, grateful for their insight, their courage and the ways they push the truth of the church into my own heart and head through their recovery-minded honesty, acceptance and perseverance.
And the poetry of space and context and memory seems to be ringing louder and louder every time I scan the room. The poetry of people landing themselves in the courtroom after committing a crime in the wake of substance abuse. The poetry of other people, long on the road to recovery linking hands and holding out hope for a future of clarity that seems impossible at that dark time. The poetry of sitting in the very place where you were once sentenced and forced to stare, maybe for the first time, the ugly truth and lies of addiction and powerlessness and unmanageability in the face, now sitting in that very place to celebrate your sobriety and recovery with those ahead of you and those walking in the path left a little more believable in your wake.
And you breath it in deeply because it’s easy to forget when the music isn’t as loud and the poetry isn’t as bold. The day to day and the task to task and the decision to decision doesn’t feel like it’s actually saddling up next to transformation of whole persons with the whole of the good news. For the clients, for the families, for the therapists, for the attorneys, for the judge. The one step at a time mentality feels like it’s actually leading absolutely nowhere.
And then you sit in the room where people were once on trial, convicted of a crime, and watch them now celebrate their newfound strength and resilience, sharing a meal with the ones who made the arrest and the sentence as they cheer for each other.
It’s a sign of the kingdom, no doubt. A sign of the hard work and tested patience of transformation of whole people in communities with the church finding them rather than waiting for them to show up to building. A reminder that we find Christ all over again when we do life with each other because we find him when we look the truths and the lies in the face. The sign of the kingdom stands as a reminder that the presence of the church better be in every crack and cranny of every need in every community before we rest, because there are great opportunities and great stories to be told and great poetry to be created. In our own lives and the lives of those in the margins. Even in the courtroom.
djordan
Pine Tree Dr.
the it of it all
I’ve had the conversation with others before
proud of myself, of course,
that I might have arrived at such brilliance
and yet I don’t seem to take it in actually
which suggests I’ve actually arrived at nothing.
It’s only in evening in the cold in the rain
finally driving home
that the reality actually strikes me
leaving a kind of embarrassing ignorance
looking back at me in the rear-view mirror
having been my guide far too long.
The “it” of it all,
I’ve said proudly to others before
isn’t only in the everything-working-out-ness
isn’t only in the everything-happening-right-ness
isn’t only in the everyone-getting-along-ness
The “it” of it all
is actually in the middle of
the things-struggling-to-work-out-ness
the things-not-really-happening-right-ness
the people-not-completely-getting-along-ness
and in that push and pull
and in those ups and downs
we see our true selves
and we see their true selves
and we find deep effort
and we discover true longing
and we stare our own confusion and frustration and struggle in the face
while staring our own humanity and the humanity of others in the face
and we decide
against all odds
to seek first his kingdom anyway
in the things-struggling-to-work-out-ness
in the things-not-really-happening-right-ness
in the people-not-completely-getting-along-ness
because so much more than the places
where all works out and
where all happens right and
where everyone gets along
we are likely to find the truth of the kingdom
and the “it” of it all
in the mess and the muck
in the paperwork and the policy
in the everything but the “it”
of the day to day
the fuss
the finance
the meetings
the schedules
the people
the stuff
that we’ve been thinking all this time
only gets us to the “it”
when in fact,
it is the “it” of it all.
djordan
Pine Tree Dr.
he loves the justice
I got an email yesterday afternoon from a friend and coworker in Nicaragua. She is fighting for justice in a case of child abuse, and has seen this thing from the very beginning to where it currently stands. We’ve been praying together via email and Skype conversation. We’ve been spreading the word and asking others to pray who hold the child and the situation close to their hearts and minds.
We pray, of course, when we don’t know what the hell to do.
She arranged for many bodies to be seated in the courtroom when the case was heard to make it clear that we are watching, the eyes of many from around the world are watching, and we seek justice. And we demand it.
I received an email from her yesterday afternoon that brought me to tears.
We correspond often, and I speak horrible Spanish and she speaks incredible English, but one can only imagine the wrestle of trying to make sure we understand what is being said and what is not being said.
Her email, however, made it perfectly clear. In a kind of correct English from the words of a highly-educated Nicaraguan spoken in a way a native English speaker never would have spoken, I have been repeating her phrase both in my mind and out loud since.
We’ve been waiting, you see, for news from the trial. Will those who’ve committed abuse against children be held accountable? Will reasonable measures be taken to ensure that they are no longer able to perpetrate violence against other women and children?
Her email had this phrase buried in with many other words, but it is this phrase in particular that has been on my mind ever since.
“Thank you for praying. Our God he hears our prayer. And he loves the justice.”
Words from an attorney, among many other things, who is working tirelessly toward kingdom come on the ground in Nicaragua where justice doesn’t have the luxury of being a theological issue; where the luxury of whether or not or even how to talk about the kingdom of heaven is not a conversation, but rather a life and death issue. Words from her speak so clearly about the heart of God in the middle of seeking the kingdom where all points to hopelessness and loss.
“Thank you for praying. Our God he hears our prayer. And he loves the justice.”
The perpetrator of violence was found guilty in the courtroom that morning.
The story is not over and the work is not done, but the anthem of his people remains:
Our God, he loves the justice.
djordan
Salt Lake City, Utah
most hopeful 