All I want

It is my flesh that rears its ugly head and makes me loud and opinionated and out to prove something. The tongue is that little rudder that steers the whole ship into the iceburg. But I asked to be humbled and it usually means saying I am sorry. I am beginning to understand why people talk about being “caught” in grace, or swept in an avalanche of grace. It is because my flesh supplies a neverending stream of new sin that I must constantly repent from. I know that Paul talks about moving away from the elementary teachings of repentance from sins and on to spiritually mature things, but I think that we have to keep repenting all the time. It is my flesh that does all the things I don’t want to do. It is my flesh I want to kill. It is my flesh that keeps me from moving passed grace. If I ever think I am moving forward, I get caught back up in grace. I think sometimes we are obsessed with progress in a way that is too linear. The catching means falling and I go deeper. My sin looks nastier, God looks bigger, my need gets greater, His love gets personal. I am tempted to say that I am a mess, but I don’t know how true that is. Am I really a mess or am I just human? My sin has kept me up all night again guilty, ashamed, turning to coping mechanisms, insecure.

I just want Jesus.

Who hopes for what he can see?

On Sunday I jumped into the Atlantic Ocean. It was the first time I had ever done that and it was so so salty. I kept laughing and licking my lips and the sun and sand and everything made me feel so small. I love to be overwhelmed. I love to be cleansed. Bring on the metaphors, ocean. I love it all.

Intellectually, I am growing so much. I am learning about ethics, environment, hunger, rights, humans, animals, and prayer. I trust that all of the things I read and learn will eventually find a way to work out in my hands. I want to be a doer and hearer, and lover and listener. This comes through faithfulness to what is on my plate for today. So today I talked to my philosophy class about the beauty and symbolism of coconut oil. I told them what I had read about it and now I will tell you: it is medicine in a bottle. Some people cover their skin head to toe in coconut oil before they go outside. Some people anoint themselves before they dance. Sometimes it symbolizes virginity.

Oil is a beautiful thing. It is a healing, aromatic, mysterious thing. It is one of those wonderful tools of prayer along with candles and rugs and hats and flowers. I like oil because it creates a culture of prayer. A beautiful smell in the physical. A comforting sensation. It seems ancient and foreign in our mechanical world. There is no scientific purpose for covering my hands and head in oil. The same way there is no reason to talk to the clouds. Unless you know that the clouds are full of Glory and guiding you through the wilderness. I am choosing to see the world on the terms of the unseen. All of it.

Summer

There are no words for the longings of summer

they wrap around me like the skin of a peach, freckled, fuzzy

unappealing to some, delicious to others, always eventually bitten.

No, I cannot name these longings

Rather, I shove each one toward my center, so that the desires I swallow become strange notes in my throat or midday songs or misunderstandings between friends.

I can hold my breath when I see the moon for the first time. I can pretend to be fourteen, hearing secrets from the cicadas I now know have no souls and tell no secrets. I am assuredly less superstisious than I used to be, but still a soft peach.

Liminality is the word of the day. It is a fancy way to say in-between.

An extended metaphor.

When Angela pressed her thumbs over my eyes,

olive oil dripped down my face like thick tears.

The Spirit came like a river born of typhoon rain

surging through ancient suburban flower beds

swallowing the ghosts playing in the street

smashing the leaking cisterns in the backyard.

I opened my mouth to drink,

and I was the roots of the surrounding Willow trees

beginning to weep and crack and push through the dirt

groaning for just one moment to taste the deep unnameable rush

just beyond my reach, just beyond the honeycombs

and still invisible.

Ripe

I was a hand-me-down sweater and skinny legs, the only second grader that couldn’t ride a two-wheeler without training wheels.

My father was a briefcase; leather-bound and locked, stashed behind the tomato plants. He was crisp dress shoes on stale summer mornings and a lonely green bathrobe after nine o’clock. He was the mustache that scratched my face before bed on holidays. He was the creases between my mother’s eyebrows and silent at the table.

My father was the sweat that dripped in the basement behind hammer and nail.

He was a blue saxophone solo slipping through open windows when he thought the neighborhood was sleeping.

So I finally just taught myself how to ride the purple big-girl bike one afternoon with sunshine beating on my neck. I learned to balance and turn, to roll passed font yard maple trees without looking back.

I have been riding alone ever since.

I was pink floyd t shirts and no hips, the only thirteen year old without a birthday crush or kiss.

My mother was a curling iron and a manicure set; tweezers, clippers, tiny scissors and red polish. She was the slamming of the screen door against the porch. She was maple seed helicopters in fall. She was the pop fizz clink of beer poured into old glasses. She was the twisting cigarette smoke that was rumored to kill me and she was the cold side of the pillow.

My mother was blankets of sparkling white november snow, cold and wet.

She was the cordless telephone left beneath the bed.

So I finally just taught myself how to put on lipstick one night with the bathroom light illuminating my wet eyes. I learned to pout and pretend, to demand an ear with lust-drenched whispers.

I have been demanding ever since.

I left one spring in the middle of the night

I left to dance in some wild sanctuary

I dug into dry soil to plant a mustard seed

I stood on my tip toes just to touch holy broken hands and feet.

Today

I am arriving home

to let sleeping orchards rot.

Unexpected Friends

Today I crossed paths with a

huge

green

juicy

caterpillar.

We rendezvoused

at the corner by the chinese restaurant

He danced a clumsy twenty-footed foxtrot

I wrinkled my nose

and smiled

watched him scrunch on by in green jelly waves

towards an unknown leafy paradise

Well…

I had the flu for a while, but I am doing much better now.

Let’s never stop asking why

I can feel my brain inside my skull.

It feels a lot like a map.

And as I sit in class,

I can feel my thoughts speeding through highways previously abandoned.

I can feel the streetlights turning on and lighting up new circuits.

And I’ve found the strength I can only find in not knowing.

It’s going to be a good year.

I have a lot to learn.

 

My imagination has been my favorite place to be lately besides my new home.  I love my fresh orange walls and the vanilla sugar smells of our kitchen. I love the child inside me, I love the Holy Spirit that guides seven crazy girls to one crazy house. I am excited to see what will happen this semester in our little church we have going here.

MICHIGAN

It can always be the right time

Today I mended three holes in three dresses. There was a symbolism I enjoyed in taking out the safety pins that had been holding my clothes together for a while.

I leave for my last big travel of the summer tomorrow at five am. Back to my hometown in Michigan. According to a billboard by the bagel shop, St. Joseph is voted the most romantic town in the Great Lakes State.

Today I practiced the guitar.

The world continues to spin.

Philippians Chapter 3

 ⁷But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. ⁸What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ ⁹and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. ¹⁰I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, ¹¹and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. ¹²Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. ¹³Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, ¹⁴I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus