Dear refuge of my weary soul,
On Thee, when sorrows rise
On Thee, when waves of trouble roll,
My fainting hope relies
To Thee I tell each rising grief,
For Thou alone canst heal
Thy Word can bring a sweet relief,
For every pain I feel

But oh! When gloomy doubts prevail,
I fear to call Thee mine
The springs of comfort seem to fail,
And all my hopes decline
Yet gracious God, where shall I flee?
Thou art my only trust
And still my soul would cleave to Thee
Though prostrate in the dust

Hast Thou not bid me seek Thy face,
And shall I seek in vain?
And can the ear of sovereign grace,
Be deaf when I complain?
No still the ear of sovereign grace,
Attends the mourner’s prayer
Oh may I ever find access,
To breathe my sorrows there

Thy mercy seat is open still,
Here let my soul retreat
With humble hope attend Thy will,
And wait beneath Thy feet,
Thy mercy seat is open still,
Here let my soul retreat
With humble hope attend Thy will,
And wait beneath Thy feet

I don't know how to pray anymore in a way that is true and real. None of it works, none of it means a thing and if I do it I am kidding myself and playing a silly game... except for this:

when there is absolutely nothing left for me to do and I am at my end, this is all I can do.

You came to save us

to re-create us (all things grow)

I'm all moved in to the new house! Eleanor and I share a lovely blue room with five windows and built-in book shelves. We have a front porch for outdoor community and a back porch for respite and reprieve. In the back there are daffodils planted under the clothesline and the yard is shaded by two lovely pecan trees.

Down the street about 5 blocks is our garden, shared with 6 other brothers and sisters. Ellie and I picked the first-fruit of our labor- a cucumber! we immediately snapped it in half and ate it.

On Wednesday, Ellie and I are building a chicken coop under the deck. On Thursday, TJ moves in! When I get back from India in June, we're having a party- a Party Attack, actually- and inviting all our friends and neighbors. get ready.

The three/four of us in the house are having conversations about and making efforts at establishing intentional community- any ideas or suggestions you have to help us enrich our living together would be extremely welcome.


Sunday was a big day- can I tell you about it? let's go from midnight to midnight:
12am on Sunday, I'm at a Great Gatsby party, dressed to kill in a flapper dress, drinking prohibition gin and tonics, and dancing like mad to Bridget Bardot, my new favorite French pop artist. All my favorite Great Texts majors were there and we celebrated the momentous occasion of their graduation from Baylor in high style. Near 3:30 Ellie and I meander back to the Bridgewaters to sleep and awoke at 8:00 for church.
At church we had a dedication ceremony for Jonas, Carrie and Fernando Arroyo's son. The Mennonites know how to do this right. It wasn't a mere dedication but a ceremony of blessing in which the mother and father and all the church spoke words of blessing over the baby and family. At the end, Fernando spoke a blessing to us, the greater family. It was beautifully moving and I cherish every bit I can remember of it.
The beautiful time of worship and communion closed with a children's sermon, delivered by me, on non-violence. My part was quite minor and insignificant when paired with the incredible thoughtfulness in the words of the kids. In their answers to the question, "why are people sometimes not friends with other people?" two said, "we aren't friends with people who are different from us," and "sometimes we just aren't nice." And to the question, "why do friends sometimes argue," they responded saying, "selfishness" and "not getting your way."
This place is so spiritually and emotionally rich that I sometimes know no other response than weeping at the beauty of these people.
I then went to a potluck lunch where Kombucha and water were the two beverages served. Only this place, only these people. As we left the potluck to go paint our new room, all the musical instruments came out and we were very sad to go.
After painting most of the afternoon away, we went back to the Bridgewaters to work on our own Kombucha batch. We bottled the old brew and made some new tea to ferment for the next one. Our mushroom pet is now happily stowed away in a dark closet, eating up caffeine and sugar until we're ready to drink him.
(this is delightful Kombucha)
After dinner with church friends, we headed back to our new house where we ate yogurt and looked at all the pictures in my big Sudan book by candlelight (we didn't have electricity yet). We slept on the floor of the dining room.

It was another lovely day


And now:

"May we be a sign of the Kingdom of God. May we be a sign of the presence of God in the world. May we be one as the Father and Son are one. May we be a community of forgiveness and celebration"

Shalom

Things are pretty much the same here:

always changing. But oh, there is nothing new under the sun!

Ellie and I dug, tilled, mixed, smoothed, and planted a garden at the new house. Thus far, baby tomato, pepper and cauliflower transplants thrive with many brothers and sisters soon to join them.

I retreat to the swing on the farm today reading from Wendell Berry's Sabbath Poems. The beloved cottonwood above me now blocks out most of my view of the sky with her recent spring plumage-- green buds ripen to bring a shower of feathery cotton in attempt to continue her kind after her death.

The ewes crowd to the mangers;
Their bellies widen, sag;
their udders tighten. Now
The little voices cry
In morning cold. And now
the garden must be worked,
Laid off in rows, the seed
Of life to come brought down
Into the dark to rest,
Abide a while alone,
And rise. Soon, soon again
the cropland must be plowed,
For the year's promise now
Answers the year's desire,
Its hunger and its hope.
This goes against the time
When food is bought, not grown.

When I am still and quiet enough, the patterns of life emerge. Continuous cyclical change characterizes the course of all created things. What is new will be old, what is born will die and take its Sabbath rest in the earth. Where there is death and decay, even destruction at the hand of us beasts, new life will come. All things die in ways large and small, actual and metaphoric. All things pass. This is sure and trustworthy. Am I to fear this inevitable passing? Surely the answer is no! This is great reason to rejoice and hope! All things come to pass, and all things pass to come.

Don't you see? Here we glimpse the future. That of which we have read, of which we hope, long, and for which we know we were made-- the anticipated, impending, glorious future, the Kingdom which is just beyond the horizon, is also at hand. At hand in these metaphors of God’s creation. All for which we wait is coming, is certain... is here.

Bring it to life- live it into existence.

The bud swells,
Opens, makes seed, falls, is well,
Being becoming what it is:
Miracle and parable
Exceeding thought, because it is

Immeasurable; the understander
Encloses the understanding, thus
Darkens the light. We can stand under
No ray that is not diminished by us.

The mind that comes to rest is tended
In ways that it cannot intend:
Is borne, preserved, and comprehended
By what it cannot comprehend.

Your Sabbath, Lord, thus keeps us by
Your will, not ours. And it is fit
Our only choice should be to die
Into that rest, or out of it.

Shabbat Shalom

All things come full circle

Pertinent observations in these transitional days (and what days aren't?):

1. Today's date, March 15th, marks spring planting here in this southern temperate zone.
2. All frost, in reasonable hypothesis, is waiting now until November.
3. The organic material remnants from last year's abundant harvest now enrich the earth in their decay. (Death smells so sweet when it is of plant life. Go for a walk in the woods, dig about 1/2 an inch below the surface debris to the first soft soil and tiny bits of leaves and scoop some up. Then smell it with your eyes closed. )
4. Growth has crept in so gradually and now I anticipate it's inevitable bursting forth upon God's ready ground.

A friend reminded me so gracefully in a recent time of painful self-discovery and spiritual development, that all things have their season.

Now I further that message of truth and hope:

For everything there is a season,
a time for every activity under heaven.
A time to be born and a time to die.
A time to plant and a time to harvest.
A time to kill and a time to heal.
A time to tear down and a time to build up.
A time to cry and a time to laugh.
A time to grieve and a time to dance.
A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones.
A time to embrace and a time to turn away.
A time to search and a time to quit searching.
A time to keep and a time to throw away.
A time to tear and a time to mend.
A time to be quiet and a time to speak.

All you saints, Shalom.

the meter marks 'okay'.

To those curious few of you who would like to know details of my life's current goings on, I shall grant you this small update:

• I have moved off of the World Hunger Farm.
• I live downtown in Waco in a beautiful historic house with a family of four. I know the Bridgewaters, my new family, from the Mennonite church I commune with. They are great.
• As told in a previous post, I have multipe jobs. My favorite one right now is running child care at the homeless shelter, but sadly that job comes to a close today.
• Monday comences my first professional, high pay, low excitement, perfect schedule, temporary job. I am nervous but this will be very good for me.
• Once upon a time I was denied fulfillment of a dream and calling which was very much within my grasp. Today is the one year mark of that sad time for me. So tonight I'm having a party.
• I have been quite hopefull for so long of a future in overseas kingdom work and was pursuing such through the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. I found out this week that this hope will not be fulfilled in my near future. So tonight I'm having a party.

In the past year, my hopes and plans regarding things big and small have been thwarted over and over again. I have struggled long and slow through many disappointments. Family and close friends say that surely I've paid my dues, that my time of suffering had better be over by now, that a season of mercy and grace is bound to be coming next.

In this season of lent, suffering is at the forefront of my mind. Suffering is terrible and also inevitable. But suffering is not holy. He who suffered is holy and worshiped not because of His suffering and death, but because of His power which overcame suffering and death. Suffering, mine, yours or Christ's, is dreadful and evil. To seek out suffering, or even to accept it while glorifying it as a tool for the attinment of personal piety is folly, is indeed self-love masked as self-abasement. Yet also, the mere acceptance of the suffering life brings has great potential to darken, harded and callous. This too is an evil of suffering. It is only by accident that we take suffering and turn it into the Father's glory. It is through humility and trying to trust and love God through pain that His glory dawns in this dark place. Today let my suffering serve as a reminder of another, more real residence, glorious and eternal, that is to come.

Shalom

Life (or God or maybe Satan)

has dealt me some disappointing blows. Some I have overcome with grace and dignity, Some I have yet to fully overcome, and still some have only just hit with a sickening thud.

well, shit.

Aside: You, boys in the desert, I commend you for the incredibly gracious spirit with which you are meeting your disappointments. I cannot seem to do so quite yet.

Here are some wise words from Wendell that are giving me a bit of consolation:



The Sycamore


In the place that is my own place, whose earth
I am shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing,
a sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself.
Fences have been tied to it, nails driven into it,
hacks and whittles cut into it, the lightning has burned it.
There is no year it has flourished in
that has not harmed it. There is a hollow in it
that is its death, though its living brims whitely
at the lip of the darkness and flows outward.
Over all its scars has come the seamless white
of the bark. It bears the gnarls of its history
healed over. It has risen to a strange perfection
in the warp and bending of its long growth.
It has gathered all accidents into its purpose.
It has become the intention and radiance of its dark fate.
It is a fact, sublime, mystical and unassailable.
In all the country there is no other like it.
I recognize in it a principle, an indwelling
the same as itself, and greater, that I would be ruled by.
I see that it stands in its place, and feeds upon it,
and is fed upon, and is native, and maker.


Amen. Shalom.

well, brothers, thank you.

I've long learned not to run from the darkness because He sometimes is found within it (check out how He comes in David's song #18, v 9 and 11: "'He bowed the heavens also, and came down with thick darkness under His feet...He made darkness His hiding place, His canopy around Him, darkness of waters, thick clouds of the skies." yikes).

For that very reason, I approach this with fear and trembling, for its danger and power is not foreign to me. But I don't want to run. It'd be silly any way- I know it/He would inevitably catch me.

Maybe I'm just in the middle of a reminder of where He has brought me from. Maybe so.

David wrote a song, # 27, and it's simply full of despair. His despair is laced with hope, though. He ends it in hope.
Read it and be hopeful.

With me.

Shalom