light, one

Light dancing, that's what fall looks like. The light through the trees fills this strange house with bits of glory. I glide out of the four walls to somehow be closer, to commune with it, to touch it. I don't understand it.

Light pours through my windows, erasing shadows in the oddly proportioned corners of my room. 
I rub sleep from my drooping eyes and pretend that my body doesn't hurt from chasing light to the fullest the entire weekend. The pungent balsam wafting from a pillow at the foot of my bed won't let me stay asleep for long, and I pad to the other side of the room to lift the yoga mat moonlighting as a window shade. Darkness scatters, the room bathed with warm, moving light. The day begins.

I climbed to the top of Looking Glass Rock on Sunday simply to see the light play with the mountains of Pisgah at dusk. My Nikon couldn't really capture it. My face did, with a summery glow hovering about me when I pulled back into the driveway of our homesteady house.

Tonight, the hills glow purple in the feast of fall, reds and yellows and oranges overshadowing greens and browns, the reflection magical on the waters of my chosen haven. My heart is full, but not satisfied. It should be, I think. My favorite hills hem me in, mirrored in the stillness, hazy with beauty. A smile tugs at my mouth. This is the place I've dreamed about, the stage every girl hopes for.

I love A with my whole heart. I knew this weighty thing this time last year, and before that when light played with clouds and colors sealed our afternoon spent lazily paddling in Mills River two summers ago. If you ever see this, A, it's true. I knew I'd never be the same when I climbed into your dad's truck so you could give me a ride back to my stranded car, so struck by you that I couldn't even comment on the rainbow without sounding nervous.  A year and some change later, I am still apt to enjoy being in your presence without saying so, certain my voice might shake.

The story builds slowly at first and then all at once. We laugh now about the miscommunications that kept us both from being honest with one another-and perhaps ourselves-and kept us apart for more than a year. I relish it, though, because through it I see marks of my Father's goodness to me. Truly in tenderness He sought me, and somehow A does the same. When I am closed off to Him, He visits anyway. When I run from Him, He does not force but runs after me. When I prefer to wallow in guilt and sadness, He offers light to dance in the shadows. A, you imitate these things. Thank you. Falling for you and watching you exercise strength in tenderness has been the most beautiful redemption of my life.

And yet, even in the beauty, in the joy, in the sheer fun of being in love, choosing to love, and working beside the one I love, my heart still clamors. I still strive for the approval of others. I still sink when I realize that I'm not enough according to my own efforts. I want desperately to not mess up. The wonder of this stage sometimes fades, leaving me scared that I need more.

And I am pointed to a greater Reality.

death by text

It is late. I almost did not open my computer, and just let sweet sleep engulf. Normally I do not rant about things that make me mad on any form of social media (unless it's for the Tonight Show). But I have something to say. I hope that I can articulate it in a way that is calls it like it is without smacking of female resentment. I do not know who reads this thing and I don't know why you do, but clearly you do because it's getting pageviews. Thanks...I guess.

My sister hates to talk on the phone as a regular thing. So, we keep a near-daily connection going by text. But that's my sister, someone whom I know intimately and have a very established relationship with. Inside jokes in the form of memes and GIFs abound. But when we have something important, something real, to talk about, we talk. We use our vocal chords, our eardrums, our intellects to digest what the other is saying.

Here's my rant. And it is for both guys and girls. Guys, you first. Do not text girls to get to know them. We are living, breathing people who are capable of communicating a lot without words (for better or for worse). It is a full sensory experience to sit across the table from a person-man or woman-whose eyes light up when they are excited, whose mouth does funny things when they are upset, whose whole face contorts when they don't understand what is said. Perhaps that is what is scary, what makes texting more appealing. But if that is true, that texting is more appealing because it does not require focused attention in the way that face-to-face time (I can't say face time, because Apple) does, then something else is also true. That's cowardly.

Guys, you would not text a potential employer to get a job you really, really, wanted. You would not simply email your resume and hope that you hear back. You'd follow it up with a phone call or a personal visit. Or perhaps the other way around-a visit and then follow up. Getting to know a girl is very different than applying for a great job, but what's the same is that you would put effort into making sure you had a chance. You would not waste a chance by communicating indifference about the company because you didn't follow through. Do not waste a chance to get to know a person-forget gender for a moment and think only of personhood, which includes a soul and a mind and a heart-by channeling your cowardice into word bubbles.

Spend real, face-to-face time with this person who happens to be the opposite but same as you in a myriad of ways. If you're interested but not ready to be alone with this opposite-but-same sensory experience, and your circumstances permit, be in groups. Observe. Ask questions. That's a big one...ask questions. While that may communicate more interest than you mean to at the time, if the person (girl or guy) can handle themselves they will take it at face value. Ask them to do something you enjoy with you, or if you're more intent, ask them to do something you think they would enjoy.

Girls, do not settle your affections on a guy whose texts go nowhere. Texting in the beginning should lead to action. Yeah, that's a hard line to draw. But what's the alternative? Months of messaging or texting that dances around flirtation but doesn't require that you both risk something? You are worth more than that. You are not a princess, you are not to be worshipped, but you are worth the risk of time and effort. Do not make excuses for him any more..."He's shy", "He needs to feel that I'm interested", "It's fun". What is fun is to realize that a guy is respecting your worth as person and your time by putting forth effort, and not simply when it is convenient and he can do his laundry too.


This means your expectations of a guy should not include a relationship after the first time you spend time together. The reason, I was told, that many guys go for texting is that girls think that coffee-or a date, if I am allowed to call it that-means that he's ready to commit to you and only you. Not true. Let him watch you, get to know you, and treat you without expecting that he's committed to you. If he's mature, he'll take the next step when its evident that you're both ready. If not, let him go. But PLEASE, for the sake of the rest of us girls who want to be asked out, do not make a date into something it is not.

Christian subculture has this weird way of viewing dating that somehow it is wrong to spend time with someone if it's not "intentional" and headed toward "pursuit". Give that up. What's wrong is aimless dating around to find yourself without care for the other person. Hopefully you know how to avoid that kind of guy. But you will make yourself unreachable if every guy gets the vibe that he has to marry you to get to know you. Taking a date at face value is how we can do our part to help quell this ridiculous phenomenon of cowardly attention-which is what texting without action is. Know that you're worth someone's effort.

Death by text. It's what's happening to our social skills. Let's be alive.

O for the P, or On the Billy Bubble 2.0

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I was born into the world of wealth when I look at it from a global viewpoint.  I cannot change that.  I can’t live my life burdened by white guilt. I’m not called (at least not at this moment) to live seeking to eschew every comfort because I desire to live in solidarity with the poorest of the poor. Suppose I could change my life though, not out of white guilt but out of true response to Jesus’ call to follow, out of solidarity, out of my own conviction?  To live with the purest of motives among the poor, the disadvantaged, the social rejects. Is that possible to do with pure motivation?

I am reading Mountains Beyond Mountains for the first time all the way through. I began it in college right before going to Africa or right after, I’m not sure which. I don’t know why I didn’t finish it, except that college got in the way. I don’t know if I would have wrestled with it then as I am now. Paul Farmer is achingly compelling.  Partners in Health is radically motivating. But to what lifestyle? What the hell am I supposed to do with this? is what I have been asking myself. 

I’m losing sleep because I can’t get the image of the Namibian aid worker sitting in a cargo-turned- Red Cross building, leaning forward in his chair with hands folded, asking our group of students why we were there. What did we hope to accomplish, he asked, by coming to his country and touring around the poorest places? What were we going to do about it when we went home? His questions probed at the very reason I was getting an education. To have a skill set to be able to use for good. And what now? His questions still leave me wondering. They seem transcendent, not tied to that particular place in northern Namibia but rather capable of sweeping away borders.

There are a few people in my life or that were in my life who are answering those questions with actions. Ali, Shelley, Laura, Katie, Caitlin and Joe, Sara and David, Jessica and Rahj…they’ve all chosen action answers that are beyond the normal for most. One of the reasons I wanted to go to FU was the passion I saw in Ali for justice, for the ones least preferred. If there are other people like her that can teach me something, I remember thinking, then I want it. Still there are others who’ve chosen less disruptive ways of working through this call—but not less worthy. Emily, Shealy, Drew, Lee, Jordan…each of these precious friends push me to figure out what this looks like right here, wherever that is. 

“This” is the palpable discomfort I recognize as I think about the next five years of my life. I graduated from a great school with a great degree. I have a full-time job with benefits that has allowed me to nearly pay off my student loans, save some, and have some fun money. I want to go back to school. The cost of a Masters degree is high but not ridiculous (like undergrad). I want to wield it well.  As in, if I spend 2.5 years of my life to add some more skills and acquire some letters behind my name, then I want to spend the next 25 years cultivating something good with those skills. And I want out of the bubble.

I have this weird feeling that Paul Farmer via Tracy Kidder is helping me pave a path through the bubble. The way that he keeps the goal in sight challenges me, makes me lose sleep wishing for the guts to put action behind my imagination. Maybe that sounds naïve, or cliché, or like I’m slow to wake up to something my mentioned friends knew for years now. I don’t care. I own it now, and there is nothing cliché about that.

Calling. Preferential option for the poor. While keeping the Gospel the heart of it. Self serving motives. Desire for pure motives. Bursting the bubble. Loving the Lord my God with all my heart, and my neighbor as myself. Here it is, this the bundle of thoughts.

On the Billy Bubble 1.0

I’ve decided to stop writing with the hope of saying insightful things in creative ways—there are plenty of people who are better at that than I am—and begin writing merely to process. I have things to say, but I am insufferably tired of reading the blogs of young twentysomethings steeped either in Christian culture or the backlash against it. I find culture and subculture fascinating, and have been lost in my mind examining which one I have found myself a part of.  I used the singular of those words because I have realized that I live in essentially a singular culture…or more accurately subculture.  And it’s keeping me awake at night.

I am sitting in the Drip peering out the old glass windows and notice road bikes, semi-new VW wagons, Jeeps, and lots of Yakima roof racks. A young couple chatters softly behind me, the lovely woman nursing an infant with a cloth draped over her shoulder. The very attractive baristas make shop talk, and the older hippies that never grew up study the local outdoor magazines, free for the taking in racks by the door. The racks are almost empty.

I love this place. It is small, local, friendly, and I nearly always see someone I know. I loved walking around Lake Tomahawk earlier, surrounded by families and an oddly high number of pure breed dogs. Both places are comforting, safe. Both places help me feel anchored here, like I am a part of a community and like I am connected to a bigger picture.  I realized today coming home from church in downtown Asheville, as I drove through the winding city streets overflowing with pedestrians and culinary delights, that I live in a town driven by tourism and the outdoor recreation industry. That combined with the number of resorts and B&Bs in a smallish radius essentially makes Asheville and Black Mountain resort towns.

Not all parts of either place are overwhelmingly affluent.  I live on the outskirts of the ghetto, or what might be a ghetto if Asheville had one. I guess what makes it nearly a ghetto is the proximity of public housing and the number of bus stops and “food stores” dotting the corners. But even the public housing is nicely maintained, and though it is small, is very “Asheville” in construction: corrugated aluminum roofs, wood siding and large trim around the windows, both painted in earth tones. Which is why I can’t say it is a ghetto…because regardless of the races represented there, it is still nicer than most public housing places where I’m from, where I went to school, or just about any city bigger than 200,000 people.  

As I wandered around the ‘Boro with Jordan over Christmas, we both commented that it seems like the amount of people begging has increased. Rarely do I see beggars in Asheville.  Happy, who sits outside of Doc Chey’s nearly every day, and has for years now, almost doesn’t count. He has a roof to go home to and a network of support through the VA and ABCCM.  I have tried to be more observant, taking note of the places where I have seen people.  I do not see the tent cities like there were under the bridges in Greenville, or the droves of falling down houses that comprise the south side of Greensboro. Nor do I see herds of women, children, and older people hanging out around the rescue mission, or ABCCM, like I did at Urban Ministry, Triune, or Labor Finders.

The landscape is different here, with the solid middle class dominating the horizon. Our nook in the neighborhood seems to me to be what my mom calls “Chapel Hill” style: older homes, some restored but most not, with mangy yards, some turned into gardens or chicken pens (or my favorite, which is a garden, hen house, and goat pasture all in one), with nicer cars like Subarus, older Audis, or Saabs occupying the dirt driveways. Mostly a mix of academics, retirees, and people with joby-jobs to pay the rent. And a few of us young guns to keep things interesting.  And yet over and over people refer to my area as “a place with colorful people”, “the ghetto”, or  “a place you wouldn’t want to walk through alone”. I have a good friend who is a cop. He routinely tells me he worries about me. 

So where are they? Where are the people I have been conditioned to be wary of? Where are the big, scary black men? Where are the Latinos? Where are the migrant families that I know do much of the physical labor here, because I hear of their stories from McKay? I don’t see them. Why don’t I see them? Because I live in a bubble. A bubble that I am realizing is not a representation of the way that the Kingdom works.

My whole life has been a bubble in some sense. I cannot help that I have white skin, was born to parents who pursued and still value education, that I was born in an area of the country and world that affords me opportunities, that I was raised in a culture that values networking and social skills and etiquette and advancement. I grew up solidly middle class, with parents who sacrificed (ahem, are still sacrificing?) to make things happen. I grew up hearing “no” more often than not. I was only allowed to shop at Kohl’s for most of my middle school years. My mom was and still is a single mom. My broken family was always on the outside of the perceived private school in-crowd, and we never belonged to a country club. We never drove an SUV until my senior year of high school when my mom’s 14 year-old car gave out, and the SUV was used. So, relatively speaking, I did not experience the standard upper crust privileges. But I went on from an entirely private-schooled growing up to a private university, noted for being highly selective, with fairly high expectations of what was the social norm. Oh yeah, and an insanely high price tag. I can never tell if the clear physical reaction people have when I tell them where I went to school is because they respect the academics or because they judge the price tag. I had scholarships, I usually qualify when I get The Look.

My longest-standing association outside of those things is with an organization that has created what we half-affectionately, half-sarcastically refer to as the Billy Bubble.  Squeaky clean in reputation, neat in appearance, no dirt available for the public eye, socially acceptable and well-respected, a sort of International Standards Committee for the world of Protestant ministry. I am tired of the bubble. The bubble is isolating and keeps me longing to know what it is like to live among and not above the rest of the world.

I believe that camp is good, that it has a place in the work God is doing, that it can be life-altering. I believe it is an effective way to communicate the love of Christ to kids. But I don’t believe that camp is for the squeaky clean, the socially acceptable, the well respected. I believe that when Jesus said, “Let the little children come unto me”, he meant all of them, not simply the ones that were presentable. In fact, looking at Jesus’ track record, he was probably gathering into his arms the messy child that reeked and was hopelessly incapable of passing the test of social acceptability.

I am increasingly struck by the words of Scripture, found in the prophet Isaiah’s book:

“Is this not the fast I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily’ your righteousness shall go before you, and the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry, and he will say, ‘Here I am’. If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness, and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness, and your gloom be as the noonday. And the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail. And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in.” 58:6-12

This passage is full of actual physical acts, of instructions for physical freedom, as well as spiritual. At the time of Isaiah’s prophecy, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah were physically suffering. God’s divided people were stuck in cycles of physical and spiritual sin, were physically oppressed, or would be at some not-far-off point. Isaiah was not suggesting the care of the oppressed, he commanded it.

I read the words of the prophets and the word of Jesus when he says things like, “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor”, quoting the prophet Isaiah in Luke 4. He did indeed come to bring a kingdom not of this world, but while he was walking through the world he healed blind men, associated with the poor, and freed captives (remember the slave girl, the demon possessed man?).  The whole fully God, fully man thing didn’t allow him to overlook his fellow friends with skin on.  I look at that precedent, that standard, and I look at my life. I look at who and what I associate myself with. I look at what I do in the bigger picture of the Kingdom, and I wonder if we’ve missed something up there in the Billy Bubble. 

Jesus loved rich people too, people with connections and status and influence.

 Mary, Martha, and Lazarus were wealthy. Joseph who buried him was wealthy and probably well respected. But the ones he called to follow him, that he hand-selected, that were in his most intimate circle (from what we know of Scripture, at least) were not chosen because they were squeaky clean in reputation, neat in appearance, they probably had some dirt available for the public eye, weren’t necessarily socially acceptable or well-respected.  They were most likely the opposite of those things, fishermen and troublemakers, artisans and tax collectors. I think it is a mistake when our ministries skip over these details.

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