Dear Paris,

The first time I saw you, it was morning. We’d been on that plane for hours and then, boarded the train in the dark.

The sun came up smoothly between the windows and I saw, the way I’d hoped to all those years, the charcoal roofs of your suburbs. Mesmerizing.

We walked beneath the Eiffel Tower before anyone queued to go up. Before the world woke up, really. And I saw the city take a quiet breath, then release it, slowly. Releasing beauty and light.

I cried in the back pew of Notre Dame, felt her wrap me in centuries. The collective memory of a country in love with the life she’s been given. Drawing me into that love.

It was only six hours.

It was only a train. A tower. A church. A cafe.

But it was your soul.

I was not afraid then. And today, grieving you, grieving Beirut, grieving New York, grieving London, grieving Ankara, grieving all the attacks, in all the places, in all the world, I am lost for words,.

Except for these:

I won’t be afraid.

Jesus Wants Me to Be a Minimalist.

I am altogether consumed with this idea of consumption–

What is enough?

And, what do we need?  How does what we need fit into our desire for quality, sustainable things?  I have the hunch that maybe those aren’t so far apart, so irreconcilable.

We’re not minimalists–though I’ve wondered if Jesus wants us to be. We are, after fourteen Seoul-searching months, essentialists.

But how to decide what is essential when so many others have less.

Or nothing at all.

It’s true. In my lifetime, extreme poverty has decreased majorly. Less than 10% of the world will live on less than $2 a day in 2015, according to the World Bank. And while that statistic is breathtakingly lower than the 43% in 1990, it still means that over 1 billion people live in extreme poverty.

I know, and so do you, that something. is. wrong.

Really, what effect does this have on me? Maybe the fact that the answer is (in all caps) NOTHING, is the largest signifier.

1 billion people in extreme poverty and I haven’t felt a thing.

Jen Hatmaker says it like this:

While the richest people on earth pray to get richer, the rest of the world begs for intervention with their faces pressed to the window, watching us drink our coffee, unruffled by their suffering.

Y’all, I feel something.

What does it even mean to need things? I’ve never been without so I don’t know.

But I want to. I want to know what is necessary. I’m so afraid to even say that because I know what happens when we pray dangerous prayers. Prayers like, “Lord give me patience.” Or, “Lord, make brave.” “Lord, help me to be humble, kind, persevering.”

This is a “Lord, change my heart prayer.” A “Lord, teach me to be like you,” prayer. A “Lord, I’m LOST if you don’t help me out” prayer. I want to know what is enough.

As I set up a new home, how do I follow in the steps of my Savior, who had no place to lay his head?

I mean, really. Do I buy a bed? Is that taking this to extremes? It is. I know that. Don’t I?

I am full of questions, longings, a twisting stomach and this, again, from Hatmaker:

A stirring is happening within the Bride. God is awakening the church from her slumber, initiating a profound advancement of the kingdom. Please, don’t miss it because the American Dream seems a reasonable substitute, countering the apparent downside to living simply so others can live at all. Do not be fooled by the luxuries of this world; they cripple our faith. As Jesus explained, the right things have to die so the right things can live–we die to selfishness, greed, power, accumulation, prestige, and self-preservation, giving life to community, generosity, compassion, mercy, brotherhood, kindness, and love.

Lord, teach me what is essential.

A Return to Peaches

When the grocer tells her the peaches have no smell, she doesn’t believe him.

Peaches always have a smell, she says, and, when the language barrier persists as wide and strong as oceans around this peninsular country, she lifts one up for him to inhale.

He smiles, shakes his head. No smell, he insists and indicates the price tag.

She realizes that to him, peaches only smell when they’ve gone rotten. He doesn’t equate them, as she does, to something resisted, then accepted and now, savored.

Peaches fruited were the late nights wandering by the lake when he’d been gone, dodging arrows of doubt, drinking moonfuls of what might be’s.

Peaches ripened were the first time she said she loved him, the collective melding and anticipation of the things to come.

Peaches harvested were the long, slow learnings, the deepenings, the ripenings and the fufillings.

Peaches pitted were the bitterness, the sideswiping left-handed punch to the kidney, sending them spinning, running ragged through unbloomed vinyards and Galecian mountains.

Peaches bruised were the winter of her discontent, her brokenness met with his gentleness.

Peaches tasted were the ache for a place and a people she couldn’t wrap her arms around yet,  a man she couldn’t now imagine losing, and a God she didn’t understand.

It made sense that to the grocer, peaches smelled were rotten, a signal of their overripeness, over readiness to be tasted. But to her, peaches savored always equaled Persiad meteor showers and the last Indian summer weekend in November. Peaches swallowed were a Georgia that was real and true and hers.

And peaches inhaled were home.

This Is What We’d Call A Resurrection.

My friend Suzy would call what I’ve been on a “hiatus.” She’d spell it like hi-YAY-tuhs so you could see her saying it to you, emphasizing that YAY, because she’s glad to be back, but holy hell what a journey it was to get here.

I don’t know if I can even (hesitantly) put my feet in the YAY yet. I’m not sure I’m back. I’m not sure I’m a writer. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be writing this.

Whatever the hell this is anyway.

A lot can happen in four years. It’s been that long since I wrote here consistently, although I wouldn’t want you to think I’ve been idle that long. There have been other writings since then. Other places where I sunk my words like a spade in soil to see if they’d grow there.

For a time, they did. Mostly.

But somewhere in there I got confused between owning a pretty platform and writing anything that might mean something to someone. I forgot that the best conversations happen in a safe place, not necessarily a well-decorated one, although I guess for some people that can happen in cohesion. I couldn’t see how to make it pretty and safe.

Maybe there’s some psychology in that. Something about how the messy, undone, rawness of a place can bring out the messy, undone, rawness in me too.

Something about how I didn’t feel safe to be messy, undone, or raw in my own–very pretty–space. And I need a place to be messy, undone, and raw.

But I’ve always felt safe here. Safe enough to write poetry here and safe enough to write fiction and safe enough to say what I meant with the appropriate amount of profanity and prayers.

And I believe, wholly, in the power of safe spaces. In the power of a what a space can be, what it can mean, what it can change.

And I believe that there is nothing so secular than the sacred can’t touch it, so maybe I’m hoping that in this not-pretty, but astoundingly safe place, the sacred can touch me too.

With Love, H

Dear friends,

You’ve probably noticed that this blog is pretty stagnant.  Apologies, but don’t let it fool you: I haven’t been idle.

For the last few months, I’ve been spending lots of time working on a new blog. It’s called With Love, H and I’d love for you to join me there.

I’ve gotten a lot of questions about With Love, H.

About it’s purpose and what’s different about it from Things to Come. About why I stopped blogging last May and what in the blue heaven possessed me to take it up again.There are some very simple answers to these questions, but I haven’t (until tonight) found the words.

Because that’s kind of the trouble– until recently, I lost my words.

Oh they were hanging out there somewhere, probably between my left and right ventricle, since that’s where their sustenance comes from. But for the life of me, I couldn’t get to them. I couldn’t access that particular corner of my heart where they stood, not hiding, but stubbornly holding a grudge. They’d spent a long time waiting for me to come back.

But let’s be real, if you went to your door and the person there conveniently hadn’t remembered to come home to you for six months, would you be real inclined to let her through the door?

Yeah, me neither.

The truth of it though is that I’m still in a place where I don’t know what to tell you about the last six or seven months of my life except that they have been–by turns–magical and surprising and broken and lovely. And I have been more overwhelmed by grace and goodness than I’ve ever been. And I’ve experienced things–like wholeness and being loved wholly–that take time to understand, let alone explain.

But I suppose that’s the purpose for starting a new place–to explain it and in doing so, to understand it better myself. To make myself–who is such a poor visionary and often forgetful–keep track of the surprising joy this life is so apt to bring.

And in so doing, to recognize the God who gives good gifts and full life to the ones who come asking to see.

On With Love, H, you can expect the honest thoughts, heart, and challenges of a woman rescued by grace.

It’s a safe place, a selah place,  a place to work out things like faith, identity, and truth. It’s a place where the rescued become rescuers. It’s a kitchen table and a confidante with a mug of coffee.

And it’s for you.

Let’s share the journey together.

With love,

H

The One Who Got Away

Years after he’d left, she spent an afternoon wandering through a town in northern Georgia that was costumes to look like Bavarian Germany. She sat at a local resteraunt eating sauerbraten and spatzle, drinking Jacobs coffee with too much cream. He’d always taken his coffee the way he took everything: straight.

The mural on the wall was a scene familiar to every Bayrische square, a fresco of Deutsch milkmaid in derndals and butcher boys in lederhosen. It was a fresco painted in their own town, the one shed left her heart in while her body went to the UK. She’d spent a lot of months, even a lot of years, believing that she’d gotten it back from him when he left, that he didn’t still have her heart on a chain around his neck like a good luck charm. Or, more likely, left forgotten on his dresser among the spare change from various transactions and random foreign coins.

She doubted very much that he even thought of her anymore. And she could honestly say that the feeling was mutual, except for today, when it wasn’t. He was out there, somewhere in the world, alive and well and breathing.

But he wasn’t standing next to her the way she and everyone they’d known that summer thought would happen. And today, there was something unequivocally wrong with that.

Today she missed him and was furious with him and resented very much being the one who got away.

Islander.

There weren’t enough seats on the bus for them to sit together, so they’d split up.  He sat in the very last row next to an elderly woman with a pink visor.  She took the single seat in front of him.  The shadows in the fading sunshine pasted the shape of their heads onto the sand below.  She fiddled with her hair, pulling it into her usual loose bun on top of her head, then, with a twist, spun it out.  The curls fell down her back haphazardly, a mess of snarls and tangles from an afternoon spent as the wind’s plaything.  She felt beautiful this way, makeup-less, with sandals in hand and hair slinging around her face.

The bus turned around the corner and she saw that the strawberry plants were flowering, tiny white blooms springing up in patches that would soon turn into fields.  She’d spent her summers here, racing up the cliffs to search out the fruit.  She looked over her shoulder, meaning to tell him a story, but his eyes were serious.  Aviator sunglasses on top of his head and chin resting on his hand, he stared out the window.

She looked at him for one long moment, memorizing the laugh lines already–at age twenty-eight–beginning to embed themselves around his eyes and mouth and forehead.  She wished she could trace those lines with a pencil and then trace them onto her own face.  Would that take away the nagging sense of forewarning?

She put her fingers gently on his wrist. He smiled when he saw her and took her hand.  The uneasiness quieted.  She believed him again.

“Let’s get off here,” she said.  “I know this great place for strawberries.”

Southbound.

She doubted very much whether home was a place she could even get to by boat anymore.   The island itself was still full of the same people she’d grown up with, boys and girls turned into men and women by matters of life and love and God.  It was hard for her to decide to go back after all this time, especially with him. He’d wanted to see the lighthouse at the apex of the island.  She’d said nothing when he suggested it one morning over the now habitual breakfast they shared in her kitchen, only nodded and poured herself a second cup of coffee.

They sailed in the morning when tides were still good and then hiked up the rocky shore to get to it.  The lighthouse itself was a figure of some mid-nineteenth century genius.  Tall, stalwart and permanently whitewashed with a brilliant blue stripe just below the lantern, it spun slowly, almost wisely.

At the top, they sat with legs dangling through the bars of the balcony.  She’d sat this way every day with her father, waiting as he washed each window pane carefully.  Sometimes they sat there at night too, with the light whirling gentle around and around above their heads, waiting for the fishing boats to come in.

She couldn’t think of a time when she hadn’t loved the sea.  Looking at him now, dark hair blowing violently back in the wind, she knew he loved it too.  It was one of the funny things that had somehow begun to bind them together in a way that felt almost permanent.  She shook the thought away and looked out at the water.

He pointed to the left, across his chest.  “I didn’t think you’d see a Destroyer so far out of port.”

She looked.  There, on the horizon, was the familiar long, grey ship.  She nodded.  “It’s a little strange.  The closest big ship yard is over a hundred miles from here.”

“Have you ever been on one?”

She had, years and years ago, on an overnight Girl Scout trip in South Carolina.  The story poured out of her, as it most things—yes, only most—did with him.  She didn’t question the words that spilled out, laughing and remembering the one night on an ancient battleship when she’d told secrets and ghost stories and made MREs for the first time.  He laughed, understanding that this was a story about her father, rather than a battleship.   He was good at latching onto things like that.

It was always funny to think the no matter how close they’d been geographically, their upbringings couldn’t have been more different.  He himself was the product of home-grown parents, farmers who raised cows and corn in the western mountains.   She was first—and always—the lighthouse keeper’s daughter.

They stood and she braced her palms against the railing.  His arms were around her in a moment, chin resting on top her head.  She held onto him, afraid to hold too tightly.  Afraid to be too much or not enough.

“Where do you think it’s going?” He asked, but he wasn’t really asking about the ship.

She wished she could say that in that moment, she came home, but she didn’t.  Instead, she tipped her head back against his chest and shrugged.  “Somewhere warmer, I guess.”

The View from the Morning

a Palace Players piece (IV)

In the early morning, she brewed a cup of coffee and took it out onto the dock.  Hair piled into a lopsided bun on her head, she watched the fog whisper over the shoreline, gently receding as the morning took shape.  Since the breeze was warm enough, she slipped into the cool water, sinking beneath the waves to listen to the silence.  She emerged with dark red hair streaked across her forehead and the reticence she generally felt hanging around her neck slightly looser.  It was enough.

     She sat for a while on the dock, feet tapping on the surface of the lake.  The black coffee steamed beside her and in the distance, a small sailboat skimmed seamlessly along the water.  As she watched, the boat came closer until it was only a few hundred yards away.  There seemed to be only one passenger, a man with dark hair and eyes working a rope attached to the sail.  He wore a grey sweater and heavy work boots, which provided solid traction for working on the slippery bow.

     He raised his hand as he passed, greeting her in the age-old way of old friends and sometime acquaintances.  She smile and waved back, suddenly very aware of her mascara-less eyes underscored by puffy half moons.  The night before had been difficult in ways she didn’t feel equipped to explain.

     “Hi!”  He said.  “Feeling any better?”

    Confused, she squinted, wishing she’d put brought her glasses outside.  Something was unbelievably familiar about this man, something that brought up clove cigarette smoke and the feel of warm flannel against her cheek…

      “I…. I’m fine, thanks,” she said.  “Much better.”

     He looped the rope around a metal post on the side of the boat.  The wind had stopped and the boat, along with its captain, sat most contentedly in the water.  “Can I come ashore?”

     She laughed.  “So formal, Captain?”

     He smiled.  “I prefer old fashioned.  There are worse things, don’t you think?”

    Her smile faded.  It gave away more than she intended, so she switched topics.  “I have coffee in the house.  I suppose I kind of owe you a cup.”

    Inside, he sat at the counter, hands wrapped around a blue ceramic mug.  She stood at the stove, scrambling eggs with Gruyere cheese and chives.  Her hands shook nervously, so she pushed the eggs around more forcefully than necessary.  He was talking about his boat, the way the mist made it difficult to sail, how he wanted to get a foghorn or something to make it safer.  She listened with one ear, the other tuned to the hiss of the eggs as they cooked… Some secret part of her held back, silent and hesitant… The only open part ran forward, desperate to be wrong.

(you can read more Palace Players pieces at this blog and by checking out www.iminthemiddleofyourpicture.wordpress.com)

Palace Players: An Introduction

A Palace Players Piece

 

Mentally, she went over the menu again.  Step by step she built each dish, julienning red peppers, braising lamb shanks in olive oil with fennel and coriander, tossing a salad of blood oranges and roasted beets.  If she’d paid more attention, she wouldn’t have taken the corner of Scott Road so sharply or at such a speed.  The Camry wouldn’t have spun off the road, slipping halfway into the trees.  She wouldn’t have hit her head.

She came to with rain pouring over her face.  It took her moments to realize that she was moving, that someone bent over her to cover her from the storm.  The rain was suddenly blocked out completely.

“My car,” she said.  She was surprised at how clear her voice was, how unafraid.  Should she be afraid? She didn’t think so.  Maybe later she would be.

“It’s okay.  You ran off the road.  Damn near hit me too, which is probably the only reason I saw you.  The rain makes it hard to see.”  It was a man’s voice, loud above the downpour slamming against the pavement.  “We’ll need to call a tow truck.”

She nodded, turning her face into his jacket.  He was carrying her, she realized, like some kind of maiden in a fairy tale.  The Prince rescuing Sleeping Beauty.  Robin saving Marian.  The Beast coming after Belle.

He opened the door of a black Tundra and slipped her inside.  She looked up at him.

Well, he definitely didn’t look like the Beast, she thought.

His back was to her now, the breadth of his chest and shoulders covered by a puffy vest and plaid shirt, a black baseball cap on his head.  He might have been a homegrown farm boy about to harvest the corn, or the senior quarterback at the start of a victorious season.  There was a sense of ownership in his stance, a solidity to his feet that said “This is mine.”  He didn’t look much like a man who was used to getting told no.

She guessed that applied to the elements too, since the end of his cigarette was still burning, despite the rain.   She didn’t remember smelling smoke on him, but the clove was definitely there, sitting on the sideview mirror, unmoving but still smoking as rain pelted down.

He pulled out a cell phone and dialed, explained the situation, then hung up.  Climbing in the car, he flashed her a crooked kind of smile.  “You’ll only be stuck with me half an hour or so.  I guess they think the storm’ll let up soon.  They’ll be here after that.”

“Thanks for stopping.”

“My pleasure.”

She believed him.  For reasons unknown to her, she felt peaceful, safe.   Half an hour here didn’t sound terrible at all.  Instead, it felt very much like a beginning.

You can read another Palace Players piece–written by my dear friend JD–at iminthemiddleofyourpicture.wordpress.com.