know Him and make Him known, letter thirty-five, hilary to preston

On Tuesdays and Thursdays around these parts, Preston and I write letters back and forth. We share the wonder of mystery, grace and our encounters with mercy. We hope to hear from you in the comments and imagine with you about this walking out in faith. Read the letter I'm responding to here.

Dear Preston,

By now you know that I'm ending my time on this blog. I don't know if we got to talk about that, somewhere between theology of the arts and teaching, between moleskines and meditations on Blair and Chuck and Serena (she needs some serious character development, that one), but it's true. I'm leaving this space on Sunday and I'm starting to write out the wild love. It's so strange to think about, leaving a blogging space I feel so comfortable with, leaving behind the 320 posts, the five minutes of last spring, the first post that got a serious number of hits or someone retweeted or commented on...

But somehow in all of this leaving I felt the tug in my heart towards this new wild love space. The title even came to me as I was sitting, thinking about whether or not I would really like blogging somewhere else. And I thought to myself, what would I even call it? And then the name. The wild love. Because that is what we are called to live. 

That's what these last four weeks of living have taught me, Preston. That love should be wild and free and given away. That we should share ourselves. That we should not waste time pretending to be self-sufficient, but smile as we offer our neediness and recognize it in each other, laugh that we are helpless and small and dependent, and then hold each other's hearts.

So I'm going to make a new space over there, and journey along in the new, post-grad world, and I really hope that you come along, too. I'm so excited about the new space, but also so nervous and unsure of what it will be and how it will be different. So much change, and so much the same. I think that balance is where the beauty is revealed.

In a devotional that the whole student body received this week, they offered the prayer of general thanksgiving from the BCP. I love those old words. And I read it with eyes towards next year and wild love. The prayer begins,

"Accept, O Lord, our thanks and praise for all that you have done for us.

We thank you for the splendor of the whole creation, for the beauty of this world,

for the wonder of life, and for the mystery of love."

Give thanks for the mystery of love. Can you imagine? Giving thanks for all that we don't understand about love, for all that defies reason and expectation, for everything it demands in the dark and without explanation? The beauty, and the wonder, and the mystery. 

And then it ends, 

"Grant us the gift of your Spirit, that we may know him and

make him known; and through him, at all times and in all places, may give thanks to you in all things.

Amen."

That we might know him and make him known. The prayer of thanksgiving becomes the prayer of transformation. Because we give thanks for the mystery and beauty, we can pray also that He would live in us, and we in Him, that we would know Him and make Him known. We give thanks that we might know Him. 

As it all ends here, it all seems more beautiful and more fleeting. As I walk across the Quad, around the pond, pack sheets and towels and clothes into duffel bags, as I type out the last few posts into this blogger window - I want to give thanks for the beauty, the wonder and the mystery. 

I want to know him and make him known. 

Perhaps that's the wild love of next year. And all our years beyond it. Perhaps that's the command and the hope. Perhaps, after all, that's the real work. 

(wild) love, and grace and peace to wonder, and rejoice, 

hilary

we will hear what we are, letter thirty-three, hilary to preston

On Tuesdays and Thursdays around these parts, Preston and I write letters back and forth. We share the wonder of mystery, grace and our encounters with mercy. We hope to hear from you in the comments and imagine with you about this walking out in faith. Read the letter I'm responding to here.

Dear Preston,

Isn't it strange, this ache we feel for the departure we must have known was coming? I graduate in nine days - you in just two - and I'm sitting on my bed angry at the idea of leaving, as if it was a surprise tucked into my acceptance letter, a clause I didn't read. You're going to have to go from this place, it says, and I want to rebel, insist that no, we can always be here where it is safe and familiar, where it is challenging and messy, where hearts have emptied and overflowed.

But then the thunderclap, as you put it, and the sweeping in of departure. And we'll never come back here, will we? Never as we are now, and the place which seems so familiar will bend with the seasons and look different when we happen upon it in ten years. Among the great and varied changes of this life, it's places changing we forget about most. Baylor and Gordon will change; the green of the quad and the presence of the coffee shop on campus and the feel of the chapel pews and the long sidewalks leading past the baseball field to the track - they will weather new conversations and new feet, new adventures and heartbreaks. These places we love most will not stand still just to watch us move. They, too, will journey on towards their fullness. The places, too, will become more fully His.

I'm deep in Rilke, deep in the goodness of those words. After all this, it is Rilke who reminds me, in his gentle way, to trust and behold and marvel. Can I share just one small thing with you, because it's too beautiful to leave on a page in a book?

"Orchard and Road" (Collected French Poems)

In the traffic of our days
may we attend to each thing
so that patterns are revealed
amidst the offerings of chance.

All things want to be heard,
so let us listen to what they say.
In the end we will hear what we are:
the orchard or the road leading past.

All things want to be heard. I wish I had learned this four years ago, when the stars clamored from the night sky, when the trees whispered, when the people I passed on the sidewalk looked longingly at me, waiting to be recognized. I wish I had learned to listen to what they were saying. I missed them. There are a thousand images I might have captured, rendered permanent in words or in the silence between words; a thousand people I might have loved, a thousand books I might have read, a thousand cool rainy nights I might have walked and prayed and thought.

But in the end we will hear what we are. What does he mean by this? By listening to the world, we will hear what we are. We who are so in-between, who yearn beyond the world but root ourselves in the world - how can we know what we are?

We are leaving, Preston, and the departure aches in places I didn't know existed. In the traffic of my days I attend to that ache. I listen to what it says: it says I have loved. It says I have given my heart away. It says what I am is human, and to be human is to ache and love.

Today and tomorrow, I'm praying that you would hear what you are in the traffic of your day: that you would hear about how you loved, and rejoiced, and ached. That you would hear how you belong to Him. That you would hear the orchard, and the road leading past.

Love, and every grace,
Hilary

i pray for peace of heart, letter thirty-one, hilary to preston

On Tuesdays and Thursdays around these parts, Preston and I write letters back and forth. We share the wonder of mystery, grace and our encounters with mercy. We hope to hear from you in the comments and imagine with you about this walking out in faith. Read the letter I'm responding to here.

Dear Preston,

When I woke up late this morning, only fifteen short minutes to race through clothes and shoes and coats, water splashed across my eyelids and books hastily gathered, I remembered this prayer. I found it years ago when I was convinced God meant me to be Catholic, and I wanted to verify that there was beauty in the Catholic Church - the beauty of prayer life, of meditation, of slowness.

Almighty and Eternal God,
Give me, I beseech You,
the great gift of inward peace.
Command the winds and storms
of my unruly passions.
Subdue, by Your grace, 
my proneness to love 
created things too much.
Give me a love of suffering for Your sake.
make me forbearing and kind to others,
that I may avoid quarrels and contentions.
And teach me constantly to seek after
and to acquire that perfect resignation
to Your Holy Will
which alone brings interior peace.
Amen. 

The prayer is for "peace of heart." Isn't that beautiful? How rarely do we think of peace as the great gift? How rarely do we beg God for it?

I have to confess to you, these last few weeks of school feel anything but peaceful. They are swelling with urgency and with ending, with the harsh tick of the clock, with the insistent reminders of countdowns and "senior formal" dress shopping and plans for reading day. I'm swimming through the hours wondering how there could ever be peace amid these last few weeks.

And to confess even more, I don't know how to want to pray for peace. My whole life I've loved the hurricane. I love the passionate, intense, everything-is-caught-up-in-everything feeling. I love the rush of feeling you get when you start to consider, and wonder about, everything that's going on inside your heart and head.

But it's not by harshness that our God subdues my proneness to choose His creation over Him. It's not be strict, unloving commandments, or by anger or wrath. He subdues what is unhealthy in us by grace. He offers us Himself and His love as the answer to our winds and storms.

I don't know if there is anything more beautiful than this kind of grace. The grace that teaches and leads. The grace that walks onto the water and rebukes it. This, this is the One who teaches us peace. 


And a windstorm came down on the lake, and they were filling with water, and were in jeopardy. And they came to Him and awoke Him, saying, “Master, Master, we are perishing!”

Then He arose and rebuked the wind and the raging of the water. And they ceased, and there was a calm. But He said to them, “Where is your faith?”

And they were afraid, and marveled, saying to one another, “Who can this be? For He commands even the winds and water, and they obey Him!”

I know His name, Preston. I'm only at the very beginning of knowing who this is who commands the winds and storms of my unruly passions, but I can hear Him command them. I can hear His grace rebuke the wind and the raging water. 

And today, I pray for you. I pray that God would give you the great gift of inward peace. I pray that His grace would command your winds and storms. I pray that the love of Christ Jesus would astound you with its depth and breadth and height. I pray for peace of heart. 

Love,

Hilary

Dear Hilary, Love, Hilary: Lean Closer

Dear Hilary,

I grew up as a Christian. I love it. I love the church I go to. I love the people, and the way they recognize me and show me grace. I love the winks from the moms who knew me in pink and white sundresses talking into a gourd as if it was a phone, and have watched me grow into the person I am now. But as I head out into the world, as college ends, I wonder how to stay with this. I guess from reading your blog that you are a Christian, and that you love the Lord. How do you stay with Jesus, Hilary?

Love,

A bit adrift

Dear “A bit adrift”,

I wrote on this here blog once about my quiet story. A story about grace, and obedience, and the long hard road of walking towards Christ. I wrote that story because I wanted to remind myself how I’m in love with God. I wrote it so that when I wanted to stray most, I would stay near to Him.

I write to stay near to God. I get on my knees in strange spontaneous moments in my room at 6:30 in the evening and clench my fists hard as I pray. I lie in bed, trying to fall asleep, and ask God all sorts of questions about my day, about the people who have touched my life, about the things I love most. I talk to the ceiling and then to the wall, and then to the inside of my pillow. I ramble. I listen to music.

And I think you must lean hard into the wind and the rain of your life, instead of away from it. When you sit through difficult conversations – the ones where people are hurting and angry and your words don’t really heal them – and say, “Where is God?” I think you are asking a good question. When you look around you at the pain of the people you love, the pain in your own heart, and ask God, "Why?" it's a good question. When you're tired and frustrated and angry, and you ask God, "Who are you?" you are asking a good question. But when you ask, love, lean towards an answer, not away from one. Ask, “Where are you, God?” and believe that He is going to answer you.

I don’t think there is anything really miraculous about staying with Jesus as you leave old places and enter new ones. It’s always and ever only a story about grace, in the end. How He gives you the privilege of knowing His people, and journeying with them. How He comes close to you in the agonizing moments of disappointment and the fullest moments of joy. How you know His name because He called yours first.

As we head out towards the world, sweetheart, I think we stay with Jesus by letting His grace keep us close. I think we stay with Jesus by falling a little in love. This is a story about wind, and rain, about strange new things and beautiful hard things. This life of yours is gorgeous and full of grace.

We stay with Jesus by leaning closer.

Love,

Hilary

He keeps me tender, letter twenty-seven, hilary to preston

On Tuesdays and Thursdays around these parts, Preston and I write letters back and forth. We share the wonder of mystery, grace and our encounters with mercy. We hope to hear from you in the comments and imagine with you about this walking out in faith. Read the letter I'm responding to here.

Dear Preston,

I prayed for you yesterday, wet hair flying behind me as I part scurried, part meandered, towards work and the long afternoon. I prayed that you would be unselfconscious, just as Madeleine L'Engle says we should we when we are truly in our art. I prayed that your words would flow freely and that you would speak only, and always, the good words that never return void or empty.

I was thinking as I fell asleep last night about this one time that I helped my mother in Sunday School. At our church the 3-6 year olds are together for the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, a wonderful Montessori-style, contemplative, independent working room with things to touch and smell, work that requires hands as open as our hearts. There is one of the Good Shepherd and the sheep, with real carved wooden sheep in all different sheep colors, and a man carrying a sheep on his shoulders.

This particular week, I had been rubbed raw by difficult conversations and too much thinking. I'd been inside my head, trying to reason my way out of a problem, trying to fix my feelings, talk myself into being happy again.

And a hand, sticky with bits of glue and purple construction paper, found mine. "Let's see the Good Shepherd!" she proclaimed to me, pointing towards the small table. I let her take my hand and lead me to the small table where she could sit on her knees and I scrunched down, sitting cross-legged. She opened the small wooden gate and began to parade the thin wooden sheep in and out. They bounded over each other and frolicked, a few of them tripped as they came leaping out of their sheep pen. I read to her the simple words from John. How the sheep know his voice. How they follow the Good Shepherd. She paraded her sheep in and out, and they talked to each other a bit. The Good Shepherd and his small smile, lamb on his shoulders, finally led them all back inside.

And because the atrium (that's what they call the classroom) is a place where work becomes prayer, and the Holy Spirit inspires answers from the littlest ones, I asked a last question, "Who is the Good Shepherd?"

She looked at me, almost disbelieving I would ask her. "JESUS!" she shouted back. "Jesus is the Good Shepherd!" Oh. My heart, all raw and aching, stopped. What a sight it must have been: a four year old girl walking wooden sheep around a table, and an eighteen year old girl, hand on heart, who can't catch her breath at that answer. Oh. Jesus is the Good Shepherd. 


He keeps me tender this way, Preston, through the simple answer I so often avoid. He keeps my heart in the palm of His hand. Jesus is the Good Shepherd, who carries the sheep. That day, looking at all those wooden sheep in their parade, I realized that sometimes I'm the one on his shoulders.

He is strong enough to carry us. I forget that. He is strong enough to keep us tender in our raw moments, tender in our sadnesses and joys and singing.

He carries me on His shoulders. 

And behold, He makes all things new, and He lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, for ever and ever and unto the ages of ages, Amen.

Love (and prayers for the presence of the Good Shepherd),
Hilary

Dear Hilary, Love, Hilary: Resist the Chaos

Dear Hilary,

I have this story about me and the Eastern Orthodox church. It's a story about impatience and eagerness and rebellion and love. It's a story about Mary, and icons and mercy. It's a beautiful story - hard to tell in some places, but good. And I felt a pull for the first time over the weekend back towards Orthodoxy. I don't know what it means. I'm scared of returning but I want to run forward. I want to become the right thing. I want to understand if this is what I'm supposed to do, if this is what God is calling me to do. But I don't want to mess it up again and rush in and out or think I know what I'm doing when I don't. What should I do, Hilary?

Love,
A sort of catechumen

Dear Sort Of Catechumen,

Some day I want you to write a book about your story. It sounds like what Dear Sugar calls your second beating heart - the thing inside you that calls out and demands to be recognized. The thing you cannot escape, however much you try. Orthodoxy entered your life; it changed you. It's okay to let the change be a beautiful and real part of your story. It is right that your story about Mary and eagerness and impatience and mercy and rebellion and icons and love is the story you're longing to tell us. And, sweet girl, that is the story I want you to tell us. 


But you aren't really writing to ask permission to tell the world the aching and beautiful story of your journey with Orthodoxy. You're asking what to do if a journey you thought was over isn't. You're asking, "What happens if I was done, but God was not?" The pull back towards Orthodoxy is the collision of your spirit with a beckoning from Him. And you want to know how to move forward.

Resist the chaos.


I hope that doesn't sound too harsh, love. I don't mean it to. But I do mean to speak freely and fully here, and I do mean what I say. Now is the time to be still. Now is the time to resist that delicious internal chaos we all love to make when a new possibility presents itself to us. That chaos will make it impossible for any real movement.

I'm willing to guess that a part of what happened in the first part of your journey with Orthodoxy is that you were not quiet. You let that delicious internal chaos run rampant over your decisions, your eagerness first toward and then away, over your conversations and longings and prayers. And that is the story you must tell yourself now, as a reminder that sometimes the only way forward is to stand still and let something else move inside you.

You do not need to worry about making it clear all on your own. Your anxious questions about "messing it up" or wanting to "become the right thing" are trying to take over the clarifying work that God already is doing and is capable of doing. He doesn't need you to tell Him if it's clear enough that you should be Orthodox. He doesn't need you to decide if you should be. He doesn't need you to hesitate because of your story. He doesn't want a chaotic heart.

He just needs you to keep still.

The "right thing" to become is one of Christ's sheep. The "right thing" to be running towards is the Son of God. The real pull behind every smaller one is a pull towards God. He loves you, Catechumen. That's the beginning and end and middle of the story.

In the Orthodox Church they pray for the catechumens during liturgy. Among the prayers they offer to God, they say: Save them, have mercy upon them, preserve them, and protect them, O God, by Thy grace.


Let His grace pull you forward. Let His voice be still, and small, and clear.

Resist that delicious chaos, Catechumen, and again and again in peace keep praying.

Love,
Hilary

The Miraculous Naming (Pascha, Easter Sunday)

At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

  He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”

   Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”

  Jesus said to her, “Mary.”

   She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).

 Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

 Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her. - John 20.14 - 17

Today, the Risen One appears, glorious in the Resurrected Life. Today, He tramples down death by death  and wins for us the victory over the grave. Today, dear friends, He brings us new life!

And as we sit in our pews and around our dinner tables, as we smooth our ties and skirts, as we shuffle feet in their new sandals and clink our wine glasses - He calls us each by name. Today, as we celebrate, the Good Shepherd whispers into our hearts that He knows us. That He recognizes us in this bright new life. He names us - and the naming is the life.

Mary did not recognize Jesus when he found her. And it is a finding - he meets her, he encounters her. She is weeping for the loss, for the promise she believes has been broken by death. Where have they taken him? She wonders to the angels. I imagine her searching, anxious, looking in every direction while tears stream down her face and her hands knead into each other. Where have they taken him? Where is Jesus? 

And He comes to her. In that deep moment, the mystery shakes the universe. Just when we most believe that he is gone, he comes to us. Just at the moment I bring my eyes to the icon of Christ in blessing at the right side of the altar, in McComb, Mississippi, in the small Orthodox church? Just at the moment when I most believe I will never belong, He looks back at me. He comes to us. 

Jesus said to her, Mary. Jesus says to me, Hilary. 

And we turn, Mary and I, crying, "Rabboni!" "Teacher!" And we cry out in joy and fear and trembling. We fall to our knees at the sight of him. Because He names us. Because He knows us. Because He comes to us. 

And today, with Mary, I cry out to you: I have seen the Lord! 

And He has given me life. 

And the most blessed Pascha to you. 

Love,

Hilary

I am the bread, letter six, hilary to preston

On Thursdays Preston and I write letters to each other, to share the wonder of talking theology and grace and mystery together, across the blogs and emails and tweets. I hope you visit his space for At the Lord's Table: A Blog Conversation, and that you find the words there refreshing. I'm learning so much from spending time reading those incredible writers. Today I'm responding to Preston's letter from Tuesday.

Dear Preston, 

Your letter rang out like a gong on Tuesday night, when I finally exhaled long enough to read it carefully. I heard in it the same self-knowing that I feel sometimes blessed and sometimes cursed with; when at the end of a day you can see how you walked through it covered in the dust of fallenness. How you didn't speak the words of love, but instead spoke the quick ones of anger. How you let resentment build up, and trust falter. And your word for the year - trust - seems to be difficult in these times. 

But I am learning it in a strange and graceful way through thinking about the Eucharist. I know we've talked before about what Eucharist is, and you said in your letter you hoped we'd get there - and my way might be a roundabout one, but maybe it's a beginning. 

I feel like a fool when I say that I believe something deep is happening when the priest prays over the bread. I feel presumptuous, and nervous, and unsure. I don't know what's going on. I don't know if it's acceptable to believe that He is Present there in a new way after we've prayed for it. 

But when He said I am the bread of life, unless you eat of Me and drink of Me you cannot have life in you? I believe Him. 

And every week I go to the altar and I meet Christ there. I kneel, knees knocking together on the soft red velvet, hands cupped up, empty. And He fills me. I don't know if I've told you this, but I fast before Eucharist on Sundays. I don't eat anything, and by the time I walk towards the altar rail I feel hunger clawing my insides. But I take this thin wafer, and I hear the priest tell me, "The Body of Christ, the Bread of Heaven, take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on Him in your heart with thanksgiving." And then the cup comes, and I hear, "The Blood of Christ, the Cup of Salvation." And I take both. And He fills me. I walk back to my seat with something else in my heart besides my troubles and anxieties and small sorrows. I walk back with Him inside me. 

I don't really think I believe in Thomas' transubstantiation explanation. It seems too neat, too crisp, for the mystery that I encounter. I would much rather the mystery of the Orthodox way: we do not understand how, but we trust. And Alexander Schmemann says it best: "The purpose of the Eucharist lies not in the change of the bread and wine, but in our partaking of Christ, who has become our food, our life, the manifestation of the Church as the Body of Christ." 

So perhaps there isn't the kind of certainty that I imagined I could have, about whether it is Real Presence or memorial, whether as the Anglicans say, it is consubstantiation or Thomas is right after all. But He is our life, our bread. When we try to feed and nourish ourselves with anything else, we stumble. 


And He said: "I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world." (John 6.51)


Maybe it is more about trust than I thought. Trust that this is the bread of life. Trust that He fills my hunger. Trust that even in the difficult teaching, He comes to dwell in us. 


Grace and peace to you. 


Love,
Hilary

He is Immanuel, letter two, hilary to preston

So in this space, where the word is build, something new is beginning over here on Thursdays. My good friend (it seems like we met and became friends much longer than a few months ago) Preston and I are writing to each other. We already write, and ramble, our way to Theology so often in our Facebook messages and Skype conversations that we thought we should bring it our spaces, too. So Preston writes a letter to me in his space on Tuesdays, and I respond over here on Thursdays. This is how we really talk to each other, raw and mixed up with poetry and wonder and Gossip Girl episodes and Flannery O'Connor and Mystery. We hope you'll come join us, as we ask and wonder with each other and with you.


Dear Preston,


I'm biased towards Advent. Can one be biased towards a particular time of the Church year? Maybe I shouldn't be, but I am. I love the newness of it, how our hearts relearn their own beginning, how we are brought up short, gasping, at the wonder made real once again. Because He doesn't ever seem to tire of telling us this story about Himself - how He is Immanuel. God with us. 


I've been thinking about that - it has such implications for our bodies. You said it so well - "The Jews with Elijah and the valley of dry bones and the awaited resurrection and a soul that could not exist without the body and a body that could not exist without a soul—they knew." Oh yes, this being remade has everything to do with the mystery of souls that meet bodies and dwell together in such a way that I don't know how to know one without the other. 

And He blessed it. He blessed our limitations, blessed this humanness that we are. He saved us through it, by becoming one with it. Do you ever just sit there, at your kitchen table, paints and brushes still, and think about how much He must love you? How particularly He must love us all, to do that? How He must marvel at what He's woven together? 

I was at Lessons and Carols this year and the choir sang this piece by Lloyd Pfautsch called "A Wondrous Mystery." They split into two smaller choirs, on opposite sides of the church, and began to sing in dissonance, fighting with each other musically, singing about the Fall, and this separation, chasm, between man and God. 

And then the choirs bridged, resounding, and this sound filled the place and I started crying because the bridge is this - God became man. 


Immanuel. You've said it to me before - He tabernacles with us. This is, I wrote to someone once, the biggest reason I trust Christianity, hard as it is. Because He is God with us. Because He built the bridge in a body, with flesh and blood and sweat and the making of all the cosmos is found in the fingertips, in the wailing, in the fists that flail against Mary deep in the night. 


They say, you know, that the universe is expanding at a rate that our minds can't contemplate. It's too many orders of magnitude high, too much to understand. My friend once explained to me how they found the newest sub-sub-atomic particle, and I think I nodded, and tried to understand it, and I'd like to really understand it... but all I can remember is thinking of that Baby. She waved her arms in a complex three dimensional drawing, and all I could think was, "What about that Baby?"


Our hope as we live among this rate of expansion, the cold potential meaninglessness of it all, the indifference of 8,000 billion galaxies, is in nothing less than the bridge He builds with a body. Nothing less than that Baby. It seems so absurd, sometimes. I feel like I'm standing out in a field in the middle of winter, shouting to that cold blue sky - "I'm staking my life on that Baby!" 


Makes you wonder, doesn't it? What do we call wisdom, what do we call foolishness, if that is what we're going to shout to the sky?


I hope you're well. And when I found this, it seemed right -  "Perhaps what we are called to do may not seem like much, but the butterfly is a small creature to affect galaxies thousands of light-years away." (Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time)


Love,
Hilary

our second beating hearts (the second week)

The only way to be a poet is to write. The only way to know good words is to find them, and use them, and love them. So I'm starting a series here on Mondays, where I share some of the good words I've found throughout the week, and I share my scribbles, too. Together, we write the contours of our second beating hearts.

Good words I've read:

Emily at Chatting at the Sky (from over at incourage): For When Your Future Keeps Changing
Preston at See Preston Blog: Back to Manna
Kate at The Sexy Celibate: What Single People Wish Married People Knew
Chris at From the Smallest: Beauteous Buteo / Why I Love Poetry
Anna at Goannatree: A naked theologian
Joy at Joy in this Journey: I'm in a hopeless place but...

A poem to hear sounding through your week:

The Widening Sky
Edward Hirsch

I am so small walking on the beach
at night under the widening sky.
The wet sand quickens beneath my feet
and the waves thunder against the shore.

I am moving away from the boardwalk
with its colorful streamers of people
and the hotels with their blinking lights.
The wind sighs for hundreds of miles.

I am disappearing so far into the dark
I have vanished from sight.
I am a tiny seashell
that has secretly drifted ashore

and carries the sound of the ocean
surging through its body.
I am so small now no one can see me.
How can I be filled with such a vast love?

And a poem from me:

The Road to Nowhere

The ancient birches wave.
Shadows fall across the ground,
venetian blinds in a big, white room.

They've seen it before.
The sky is cold, scraped by branches.
Just a thousand years ahead of here, it turns blue.

This is the road frosted, well-traveled.
The horizon doesn't want us,
so it keeps moving.

It edges nearer the endless.
Our footprints and tire tracks plow
the way, red faces stroked by fading light.

Love,

Hilary

our second beating hearts: the first week

The only way to be a poet is to write. The only way to know good words is to find them, and use them, and love them. So I'm starting a series here on Mondays, where I share some of the good words I've found throughout the week, and I share my scribbles, too. Together, we write the contours of our second beating hearts.


Good words I've read:

The Gypsy Mama: Be careful which mirrors you choose to believe
Dear Sugar: How the Real Work is Done
Joy over at Deeper Story: A Revealing Lecture
Emerging Mummy: In which [love looks like] a real marriage
Billy Coffey (found through Joy): Writing Naked

A poem to hear sounding through your week:

IV
Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus (trans. Stephen Mitchell)

O you tender ones, walk now and then
into the breath that blows coldly past.
Upon your cheeks let it tremble and part;
behind you it will tremble together again.

O you blessèd ones, you who are whole,
you who seem the beginning of hearts,
bows for the arrows and arrows' targets -
tear-bright, your lips more eternally smile.

Don't be afraid to suffer; return
that heaviness to the earth's own weight;
heavy are the mountains, heavy the seas.

Even the small trees you planted as children
have long since become too heavy; you could not
carry them now. But the winds... But the spaces...

And a poem from me:


Forgetfulness

The coffee is cold,
the morning already more than half
done. See, there, the light
drips through the shades, leaning
towards night?

It's not her friend's lateness
or the lukewarm porcelain
the straw like a periscope in her ice water
even the salt between the cracks of the table.

It's the realization (and we all have it)
that this moment is always over
before we get our fingers around it,

that we barely blink, and the sun has kissed us
and crept away -

before we remembered to see it.

Love,

Hilary

Even Unto Bethlehem (Reflections on Christmas Day)

Beloved in Christ, be it this Christmas our care and delight to prepare ourselves to hear again the message of the angels, in heart and mind to go even unto Bethlehem and see this thing which is come to pass, and the Babe lying in a manger. ~ The Bidding Prayer of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols 


Is there any other news to tell this world? But to come, come with us, even unto Bethlehem? Because out of Bethlehem comes Life. Out of Bethlehem comes the glorious redemption! Come with me?

Come farther than our church doors. Come farther than your dinner table. Come farther than your questions and doubts. Come laden and burdened and anxious. Come with the smallest of smiles and the widest of them. 


We trail and traipse after the shepherds, straining our ears for just a glimmer of the angel song, just a hint of that star. We trip over ourselves in haste, and we lag behind, unsure of what we will find there. The journey is long, some years, and the dry desert sand cuts at our feet. Our hearts ache with the swelling promise and the wild call of hope. We stop, catch our breath. This night, the sky is scattered with stars, and the wind slices at our cheeks. Is this worth it, we whisper to each other as we trudge on.


We crest over the hill, and the star hovers above us. 


He has been expecting us. He waits, helpless, for our hands to unclench and reach out for Him. He watches in delight as we discover that this thing which is come to pass is the Redemption of the world. He who is without sin becomes sin so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. He who is from everlasting to everlasting comes to us, to live under our brief hours and weeks, our poor broken measurements of time. He who authored this world dwells in it. 


We are the beloved He descends to love. 


We are the sheep He comes to raise up on the last day. 


We are the broken battered world He gives Himself up to save. 


We are the sought out; the city not forsaken. 


Come, even unto Bethlehem? 

Love,
Hilary

Room for the Child (Reflections on the Fourth Sunday of Advent)

This is the irrational season

where love blooms bright and wild

had Mary been filled with reason, 

there'd have been no room for the Child. - Madaleine L'Engle

Advent is the excavation of our hearts. We begin to clean, dust off the cobwebs of the year, the words we collected, the stories we've been harboring, the sorrows and wild joys. In Advent we are making ourselves ready for the coming of Emmanuel. God with us. This Advent season, I want to offer a few reflections every week, to excavate my own heart and to prepare for Him with you. 
---


Fourth Sunday of Advent

We beseech thee, Almighty God, to purify our consciences by 
thy daily visitation, that when thy Son Jesus Christ cometh he
may find in us a mansion prepared for himself; through the
same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with 
thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for 
ever. Amen. 


I first encountered Mary in Sacré Coeur, Paris, France, on a hot June afternoon. We had been hefting our too-full schoolbags all afternoon. The sweat beaded on our foreheads and my grey striped shirt felt sticky in the late afternoon sun. My classmates wandered around the cathedral with the strict admonition to watch out for pickpockets and not to be drawn in by the men selling colorful scarves and trinkets (all they want to do, they told us, is rip off American tourists). All I could think about was how much better it would have been to sit outside in the sun with my friends' digital cameras and café au lait, rather than walking through one more echoing marble building.

I met Mary the way you meet a friend who slips in to share the pew with you on a Sunday morning. Her presence slipped in next to me as I stood, reluctantly and skeptically, in front of flickering candles and a statue of her presenting her Child. It was as if she stood next to me, this woman who was nothing more to me than the blue dress I had always coveted in the church Christmas pageant. Mary, who had been just one more person in a big story, stood next to me. And as I stood there, I could almost hear her chiding me. "Is there room for Him in you, Hilary?" 

We empty ourselves to make room for Him in Advent. We clear out the lies we have told ourselves, the excuses, the thoughts we think He can't hear. We scrub down the walls from the splattered paint and crayon stains. We vacuum. We wipe windows and open doors to let the air in.

I realized that afternoon that my heart was not ready for the Gift. I did not have room. Oh, I was full of things - questions about beauty and truth, secrets about crushes and plans for college, the things I had heard and the other things I had done, the good words of Til We Have Faces and my first encounter with Flannery O'Connor. I was full to the brim with opinions and ideas and feelings.

But I did not have room for Him.

That day, among the cheap white votives and the wisps of incense, standing in front of a statue of Mary and Jesus, I heard her ask me this question. I can almost picture her - her hand on her belly, steadying herself in the delicate balance of pregnancy, looking at me looking for Him. Is there room for Him in you? This is the question I have been asking all Advent. How do I make room for Him? How do I make myself a mansion prepared?

Making room for the Child and the bright, wild, blooming love is not an algebra problem. It is not a set of mandates we follow. It is not a packet of assembly instructions. It is not closing our eyes and wishing hard or lighting twenty three candles instead of twenty two.

Like Mary, we need only to say that first, messy, nervous, yes. I, like Mary, need to hear that nothing will be impossible with God and respond, "Behold, I am the handmaiden of the Lord. Let it be unto me according to Thy word."

"Is there room for Him in you, Hilary?" She asked me in June five years ago. And this Sunday I stand next to her, turn my eyes to Him, and whisper, "Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus." 

Love,

Hilary

You are not invisible (I come back inside)

Blessed are you, O Lord our God, ruler of the universe. 

Your prophets spoke of a day when the desert would blossom

and waters break forth in the wilderness. 

Bless us as we light the candles on this wreath. 

Strengthen our hearts

as we prepare for the coming of the Lord. 

May he give water to all who thirst,

for he is our light and our salvation. 

Blessed be God forever. Amen.  (from Come, Lord Jesus: Devotions for the Home)

Today I was wondering how hearts heal. I know they do. I know that time and Advent and lighting a fire in the wood stove and typing next to a sleeping black lab build up the muscle, restore the blood flow, remind our tired selves that indeed, all shall be well. But how does that happen? How long does it take, to wade through and wonder and reassemble the jigsaw puzzle of yourself? How do our hearts get put back together? 

(mandie sodoma, sindisiwe photography)

I was having lunch today with one of my mentors when the beginning of an answer sprang up in front of me, unbidden. She asked, "How are you?" and I said, "I'm good, Dr. Phillips. He is so faithful." Internally I paused. Wait. What did I just say? That He is that faithful? Me, who's been hammering down the doors and throwing up the prayers and impatiently telling myself that He is not faithful, that He does not notice, that I am invisible? 

She smiled at me, a knowing and gentle smile. "How do you know that? How do you keep that in front of you in what is a horribly stressful time of year?" A few seconds of silence, and I glanced out the window at the pond and the last few leaves scuttling across the pavement. 

"Because I am not invisible. Because He has me on a short leash. Because every time I want to run, and I try to run, He calls out to me. And when I hear Him, Dr. Phillips, I come home again. Because I can't not be in love with Him."

We let those words linger above us as we kept talking, weaving our conversation through Isaiah and God's sovereignty, love, and will, wondering about where I'll go next and how good it is to learn things. But that's the answer: I am not invisible. He calls out to me. 

And if you are like me, there are always these moments, these seasons or years, where you think you're invisible. That He doesn't care about you. That His love isn't for you. That His goodness doesn't reach you where you are and maybe He forgot and maybe He gave up and maybe He left you in the desert to thirst forever. 

But you are not invisible. You are not invisible. The deserts blossom. The water breaks forth in the wilderness. And I keep hearing Him call out to us, to come inside, to remember that He is always with us. To remember that all He has is ours. 

This wild and miraculous love puts our hearts back together by living inside us. 

We are not invisible. We are so visible He sent Himself to live with us. We are so visible, and so impossibly loved, that He is Immanuel. God with us. And He is coming to make the deserts blossom.  

Love,

Hilary

The Gift is Bigger than the World (Reflections on the Third Sunday in Advent)

This is the irrational season

where love blooms bright and wild

had Mary been filled with reason, 

there'd have been no room for the Child. - Madaleine L'Engle

Advent is the excavation of our hearts. We begin to clean, dust off the cobwebs of the year, the words we collected, the stories we've been harboring, the sorrows and wild joys. In Advent we are making ourselves ready for the coming of Emmanuel. God with us. This Advent season, I want to offer a few reflections every week, to excavate my own heart and to prepare for Him with you. 
---


Third Sunday of Advent

Stir up thy power, O Lord, and with great might come 
among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, 
let thy bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver 
us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with thee and 
the Holy Ghost, be honor and glory, world without end. 
Amen.

The third Sunday in Advent is always the Sunday of paradox. Great might comes among us in the baby born in a manger in a no-name town to an unmarried woman, in the middle of the night, surrounded by cattle. Can you imagine it? The God who is YHWH, who is un-Nameable, who parts the Red Sea and sends manna - He sends a child.

Some days I think that gift isn't big enough for the world. 

I look at my own heartbreak and say, "The child's not big enough." I look at the sorrow overflowing in homes and say, "He can't fix it." I look out at the world that bleeds and bends with poverty, and thirst, and hunger, with injustice and war and anger, and I look up at heaven and say: "You sent... A BABY?"

Have you ever wondered about this radical story we call Christmas? How we pin our hope of redemption, our hope in love, our hope in all that is beautiful and true and good, inside the womb of a young girl? Sometimes it feels like foolishness. What can this Child do? What injustice can he make right? What world can he make new? What great might does he have?

But this is the bountiful, overflowing grace of it all. The Child in the manger is the stirred up power of the Almighty. He chooses this way - the way of helplessness to save us who are helpless. He chooses humility to conquer. He chooses to trust the humans who have proven themselves untrustworthy. He chooses to send Love to us, when we have rejected it a thousand, thousand times.

The Child isn't too small for this world; we are too small for the Child. Our hearts are not wide enough yet to hold Him. It's us, dear readers, not the gift. The gift is bigger than my broken heart. The gift is bigger than your chaotic, unending week of frustration. The gift is bigger than the injustices we cry out against. The gift is bigger than the hunger and thirst and war and devastation.

This gift, that shatters metaphysics and epistemology and ethics, the gift remakes the meaning of Love. And if we let it, the gift will remake us. It will open us until we are big enough to hold Him.

May the gift of this Child fling wide your heart this week. 

Love,

Hilary

My Winter Song To You: Sara, Ingrid and Love

This is my wintersong to you. 
The storm is coming soon
it rolls in from the sea

The storm is coming soon. A year ago I sat in my living room on 8th St and listened to the heartbeat of the piano, Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson. I listened to them keep time to my own departure, to the hours slipping by before I had to take the 5am bus to Baltimore, before the hard truth of departure. In so many ways, the storm is always coming: this world is not easy. It is not always simple, it is not convenient. The winter song remembers that some days the storm rolls in from the sea. The piano keeps time with our hearts as we watch the waves, as we hear the wind.


My voice a beacon in the night
my words will be your light
to carry you to me

I wonder this some days. If my voice here, my words here, are light to carry you closer. You, the reader, who live so far away, between the typewriter keys and the telephone wires and the tables in Starbucks where I wish I could sit with you for hours, and tell you about how much you surprise me with your joy and life and story. This Advent, we need to carry each other. We need to be beacons in the night, the words that remember how the light is coming. I hope some of these words here carry you closer to me. But more than that I hope they are beacons to the Light born in that manger.

Is love alive? 
Is love alive? 
Is love

Isn't this the question we're always asking - if any of this is more than a shadow, more than wishful thinking, more than one more daydream? Love is alive. He is moving inside Mary. He is waiting, preparing, so patient with us it almost looks like He has given up. But Love is alive. And because He is, our love lives too. The love among us, that connects and deepens and builds, the love that breaks hearts open and makes you vulnerable. That love is alive. That love is worth it. 


this is my winter song
December never felt so wrong
'cause you're not where you belong
inside my arms.

So I sing to you. I sing in my car from three Decembers ago, when I first heard this song. I sing from the long run between 22nd St and the Capitol. I sing for any and all of you because I don't have the answers but I have hope. I have the hope that someone will hold you close to their hearts and answer that question about love and remind you that you belong in their arms.

I'll be your harvester of light
and send it out tonight
so we can start again.

A year ago I wrote about my soul waking up - about that fickle heart and Mumford & Sons. A year ago I wrote about a song to help prepare the way. And so now, the piano sounds in the office and I turn back the pages of the year. I'll harvest the light for you, Hilary, He seems to tell me. I'll send it out to you. We can start again. I watch Him gathering the blog posts, the advice columns, the letters, the too-tired mornings, the runs around Coy Pond, the questions, the cupcakes, the laughter. I watch Him make them into light. Because Advent is about making our lives lights. Because He's choosing our hearts as dwelling places. Because the winter song is love. 

(mandie sodoma, sindisiwe photography)

And all of mine to you, to carry you closer,
Hilary

The ache of Advent

I sprained or strained something yesterday. A sharp pain pulls at my ankle when I run, and so this morning when the cool air beckoned and the woods sang out for me, I couldn't go. I started to run, feeling the ache, thinking I could just power through, ignore it, move anyway. 

It stopped me at twenty yards and turned me around. Back to ice, back to rest, back to being still on the couch. I muttered angrily to myself about "Injuries!" and their inconvenience, and looked out at the water rippling across the pond, and it hit me.

Did I forget that Advent reveals the ache? 

Did I forget that Advent, the season of preparation, shows us where we are most broken? We await the coming of long-expected Jesus. We cry out for His light. We cry out for His joy. But why would we be crying out if there wasn't something in us that aches? If our muscles and bones weren't cracking and straining from the weight, from the falling down and falling apart? 

Isn't what makes Advent its own miracle is how the Light we wait for already shows us how much we need Him? When we light the Advent wreath, or pray a weekly prayer, or read a devotional, we are making ourselves ready for Him. We are clearing the field, resting the broken bones, taking time to be still and feel the ache for Him.

That's the point of Advent. It isn't to look busy when Jesus comes. It isn't to look pious when others come. It isn't to power through one more season or one more Christmas party or one more morning run. The point of Advent is the ache for the long-expected one. It is to let the ache fill you up so that when He comes, we know who He is. The point of Advent is to make space in your heart that aches for Jesus. 

How can we remember this? Pray with me, from a Catholic Advent Prayer?


Come, long-expected Jesus. 
Excite in me a wonder at the wisdom and power of Your 
Father and ours. 
Receive my prayer as part of my service of the Lord 
who enlists me in God's own work for justice. 

Come, long-expected Jesus. 
Excite in me a hunger for peace: peace in the world, 
peace in my home, peace in myself. 

Come, long-expected Jesus. 
Excite in me a joy responsive to the Father's joy. 
I seek His will so I can serve with gladness, singing and 
love. 

Come, long-expected Jesus. 
Excite in me the joy and love and peace 
it is right to bring to the manger of my Lord. 
Raise in me, too, 
sober reverence for the God who acted there, 
hearty gratitude for the life begun there, 
and spirited resolution to serve the Father and Son. 

I pray in the name of Jesus Christ, 
whose advent I hail.

Amen. 


Today, may the ache of Advent fill you with the hope of His coming. 

Love,
Hilary