all things.

You got going before any of us could say a word. Not a terrible thing, by any means, but a little preparation is usually of some value. If at no other time than when we look back and miss it. Easier to say, “I did all that I could” when we know it is true. But since when is peace in the efforts? Heaven help us if it is.

There was once a woman who had five husbands. Impressive. In the sort of way that we don’t really want to be ourselves. She was thirsty. Sometimes in the getting, we believe we need more, I suppose. He asked her for water and she asked Him who on earth He was. She had heard One would come to tell them all things. He told her, “I who speak to you am He.” There is a knowing that cannot be returned from. And when she went running off without her empty waterpot, she cried, “Come, see a Man who told me all things…” There is a finding that saves us from lostness. What a gift, to be able to trade in empty pots for such saving. Never to thirst again. [1]

You didn’t figure you’d be here now. I know. But it is good. Say it, until you believe it.

The nice thing is that the dawn comes whether we are ready for it or not, and whether it feels nice or not, it just happens, and we can depend on it. Steadfastness, a quality so rarely found in any of us, is all around in the things we don’t control. And there is great gratitude to be had for that.

We cannot tell you, disheartened one, where you will end up. So sorry. But that absence of certainty is your very hope. He who tells all things would have you come. Bring the waterpot if you want—we all know it’s empty—but leave it there when you return. You won’t want it by the end.

If you wrap your arms around yourself it feels a little like someone is holding you. Almost. Not sure if that is nice, or lonely. But it is true. And maybe it is up to us how much comfort we get from it. There is, if we’ll admit it, an ongoing tug-of-war in our minds, and even in our hearts. Who will win? You or you? Losing is okay as well. Just so long as you know the fight is happening, strength needs to be exerted in it, and lessons learned from it. Don’t walk away ignorant.

Run. Knowing that you know someone who knows all things.

---

[1] John 4:1-29

so this is christmas.

“So this is Christmas.”[1] So it is. And we can laugh about the rushing, slide comfortably into the busy. Because.

Lights slapped up all over the places we didn’t even know were dark before—‘tis the season. Season for warm drinks on the inside, warm scarves on the out, and every manner of thought on the in-between. To feel overwhelmed? Or thankful? To feel at all? Yes, please. Even if it has a sour taste in it, feel. How could we not, with magic strung onto trees and love wrapped into gifts and joy to the world? Feel.

“What have you done?”[2] Well, what have you? After another year (always faster than the last). Made friends? Enemies? Accomplished goals? Unavoidable tasks? Lived alive at all, perhaps? Some breathing, some interacting, and a lot of work. Good, good.

So this is Christmas? And little children dance in onesies to rip into tangible love. How we love them, loved being them. Not so very long ago. Rejoice, rejoice. Like angels to shepherds, filling skies with glory and peace.[3] Always a favorite, those watchers of the flock by night. Maybe because they were living, working. The night shift no less. And grace, in the best sort of explosion, just interrupted the mundane. Like that sensation during a fire drill—something out of the ordinary, praise God!—but loads better.

It is forever, you know. The peace. And ‘tis the season to feel all calm, all bright, in remembering it. This is Christmas. It is life too. So it is. May we be merry.

---

[1] Happy Xmas (War is Over), 1971, Yoko Ono & John Lennon

[2] Ibid.

[3] Luke 2:8-15

let it be.

“For the Lord does not cast off forever. Though He causes grief, yet He will show compassion according to the multitude of His mercies. For He does not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men.” –Lamentations 3:31-33

There are not many words. Just a loud sort of silence that hurts to hear. We prefer it to noise, but we still scream things inside. Or we did… how we hated pain and suffering before we faced it. Near defiant anger raged throughout the approaching hours.

But then we saw and felt, and ignorance ran like a rabbit to its hole. We knew then, we are unarmed and will break.

Strength feels more a theory than anything. Weakness, though so unattractively unhelpful on our faces, is what our selfishness needs. Or maybe our bare souls require. To let heart-rain run down from eyes to hands to shame and admit—I won’t be brave here.

And maybe that is okay?

I turn this idea around in my swollen brain. Are we allowed to tremble? Particularly when it is not followed by notable courage? They say we are; “It is okay” is a common theme here. But “okay” is not the “it” before us now. And I falter in every way I hate to. God help me, I want to help. I want to walk away from this with a sliver of dignity, or at least a sense of usefulness. I get neither. Because it is not, especially now, about me… not in any way.

Funny, how in our eagerness to help, to comfort, to be strong for others, we can still be selfish.

Let it be.

That is what the faint voice of Wisdom taught in those moments. And how hard a thing—to just feel and show it. To let tasks and words be. To love simply, truthfully, even in the end, when under pressure to say and do grandiosely.

No, grieving one, let it be.

We love superfluously, it seems, when love threatens to deny us. When it says cruelly, “What you love won’t be here long.” We fling our hearts before it in passions brought on by fear and possessiveness.

Let it be.

Be quiet, instead. And for the sake of He who came before and gave us love, cry. This is the strength, if you can manage to bear it, that you are called to.

“And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom… I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling.”[1]

Can we say, “we look heavenward”, rather than, “we are strong”?

Is it us, or Christ, we know best in these seemingly endless minutes of shaking and sobbing? Perhaps our weakness is a way, even if we hate it, to learn His heart more intimately.

I see a Shepherd that cries, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful…”[2] A Man and Lord who walked amongst all those of weakness. Who saw loved ones weeping and “groaned in the spirit and was troubled.”[3] A Savior who cried to His people, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem… How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings...!”[4] A God who wept, “saying, ‘If you had known… the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.’”[5]

He is here. In sorrow. With us.

It is His assurance we cling to in this—what is so hard before us—“You will weep and lament… but your sorrow will be turned to joy… I will see you again and your heart will rejoice,” and then, oh grieving ones, “your joy no one will take from you.”[6]

Let it be.

---

[1] 1 Corinthians 2:1&3

[2] Matthew 26:38

[3] John 11:33

[4] Matthew 23:37

[5] Luke 19:41-42

[6] John 16:20&22

"do not go gentle."

“Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

                  -Dylan Thomas

It is time to fight. The little goslings are clearly intimidated by the unknown waters before them, but they venture out upon the lake regardless. I did not want this work, not in the way it came, but I am assigned to the horrid tasks before me anyway. Fainting is not in my blood. So I will be strong to the last.

And they explore new worlds of glories and waves—uncertainty turns into bubbles about them, for they have stepped out. They now know. We can all know, if we are brave. That point when you look down and find—I am no longer afraid as I once was.

When they ask you, “can you climb this?” and, “can you run through that?”, you will think, “no”, but say, “yes.” Don’t worry about succeeding. Focus on trying. We are only as courageous as we are. Well, how much is that?—well, don’t ask, just imagine daring beyond imagination. And when the light dies, you can rage against it.

Blood determines nothing. But tell yourself it does—that you are descended from Scottish Chieftains. It will boil you up for battle. Just remember, battles are often fought in suffocating rooms at keyboards and dish sinks, under instruction and impossible demands. Remember to press on, even when the victory cannot be yours. And when you breathe free air at the end of long days, let your heart go wild with war cries.

The little birds will grow fast and lakes will be but a stop on their journey home.

Rage on.

up on a mountain.

Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado. Photo credit: author.

"It is because they have so much to give and give it so lavishly... that men love the mountains and go back to them again and again." -Francis Younghusband

The mountains get into you. Down in your deepness. Can’t get them out. Got to get out to them. Oh, how big. Oh, how high. There is no resisting. There is only dreaming of days on the heights, and some reality of it, if you are persistent.

There can be adventure anywhere. There can be up-high, epic adventure, only in the mountains. How inexplicable. Yet you know, you ache for it.

There is a smell of pines, there is a taste of freshness, there is a feeling—how glorious it is!—of freedom. And you will run after it, if you are brave, and maybe careless. Once you are there, soak it up for me. Lay in the grass up high, where hundreds of elk run and skies have no man-made picture frame. Look at it, every bit of it, and then look again. You turn and turn and it is all somehow endless. Feel small. It is good for the soul.

That tired-feet, burnt-face sensation is a token of accomplishment. And the downhill will be fine. But now, you are in heaven’s foothills. You will sit and be blown wild by wind, and think how you could never leave. Not if someone dragged you. And you want to dote on an artist, because a maker of this—he must be thanked silly and then some. But you can’t come up with words that are good enough, nor a gift near equal to what you have from him.

Isaac Watts said it in an old hymn—“Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were an offering far too small.”

Far too small. And there is some perspective. Don’t lose it when you go back down. But I won’t make you leave. Stay in the clouds for a while if you like.

ready.

"At a certain point you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world, Now I am ready.” –Annie Dillard

The trail did not have her full attention. Work had a way of bugging her brain before and after hours. Was it not enough, she wondered, that they got her mind during? But she hated those ad-like phrases, encouraging outdoor-lovers to “leave life behind” and come adventure. Irresponsibility. That is what they were selling.

No, she thought, she had a job. She had to keep at it. Surely there was life that gave fresh-air freedom too. Maybe she needed to work for it. Most good things, you do.

When spring came she was ready. Boots unlaced at the door and hair braided for the hike. If the frogs were singing, she would be out there listening. If only she could leak out the other thoughts. If only the frogs were her only sound in those minutes.

And mountains never seemed so far as they did this time of year. Birds were the envy of her heart—to have wings, to go flapping into landscapes that made Hallmark cards cry. As a little girl she ran after them yelling, “don’t leave me behind!” As a woman she looked long and tried not to think the same thing.

She thought it.

Some do not hear the hills sing or streams whisper. Some hear but don’t have time to listen better. Some do though.

She would be one of the last some. Oh yes. Sure enough she’d work. But she’d work for the chance to listen—that was her decision. She’d work for time. Time to taste wind and to expedition. For the love of it, not the glory. Please.

And she would learn to silence the other sounds. She must.

The trail asked for more attention, for her own good. The trees agreed—let go. This was her finest adventure at present, if she could just enjoy it. She should be prepared, she mused, to revel in any quest before her—for life, it is now—and live ready to love it.

an ode to march.

There is something inviting about March. The warmth and the spring peepers, on a good year, tell us to sit still. Or run softly, if we must run. Listening is essential. Taking in, irresistible.

Geese float proudly across the lake and the dog ignores nature’s decree for silence. Now he startles the birds to the sky. Could it be endless—this peace? Not for the geese, I suppose. But if only it could remain still for us. I will it to be endless.

There is something in the smell of March that brings back childhood. I wrote then too. The worst sort of poems. But I imagine the trees appreciated the amateur effort I made on their behalf. No, on another thought, not even the kindness of trees could approve such misplaced words. Oh well. At least I tried.

I had all the intention of being accomplished, and none of the discipline for it.

We like the flowers best. But they have not come yet. The waiting is good too. And maybe the peace will last. There is always that chance.

Our wills play little, or no, role in the progressions of the world. But I find it builds stamina to will things, nonetheless. I am sure the geese appreciate my efforts.

There is something promising about March. Feels as though we could start over here.

Perhaps it will be endless.