“The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come. ”
Passage home? Never.
I've decided that year one of this MFA program is like going through self-administered therapy. The memoir essays we produce require excavating our past and trying to make meaning of what we sift from the dirt. Ideally, the work becomes edifying to us as well as to our (eventual) readers. We read other memoirists to see examples of how to do this right, and reading their work is like applying balm or a generous lens to our own errors and hurts. Thank God for the writers brave enough to get their humanity and messiness down on paper; for their sin and transparency and failures and irreverence; and for the redemption that seeps through even still.
I finished Mary Karr's Lit last weekend. Geez. Karr’s writing made me grateful all over again to be a writer, a woman, a sinner, and a Christian. It reminded me that God is not tame or saccharine, because there’s no way an outlaw like her could fall for a domesticated god. And with her reminder I came to love Him a bit more, too. However unalike our personalities and upbringings may be, I felt a fierce identification and resonance with Karr. She made me feel ready to own my flaws. (See what I mean? Therapy.) My insistent bent on soliciting approval from anyone and everyone ebbed slightly in the wake of her bucking, reluctant movement toward an eventual faith.
Lit’s opening epigraph—a tiny line lifted from Homer’s The Odyssey—does a good job of summing up what I’m learning lately. It’s just three words: Passage home? Never. Here is what I’m realizing: there is no such thing as arriving. I keep catching myself thinking "this year" (meaning a rough and relentless year of darkness and anxiety) is over. But is anything ever really over? More likely we move along a spectrum, through varying shades of gray. More likely I keep forging toward the light and unearthing more of my scabbiness, letting God shine a light on the sin I couldn't see. As another writer puts it, "Increasingly, I understand I don't get to go back. Increasingly, I don't want to."
Today, I am dredging myself upward—that is, God is dredging me up—from a year of fearful inwardness. For so long I was in self-protection mode, noticing only my own needs. Let's be real, most days I still operate that way. But I'm becoming hungry for a more outward and generous way of living. Karr puts words to this hunger: "I was made ... not to prove myself worthy but to refine the worth I'm formed from, acknowledge it, own it, spend it on others." There it is. Our full potential lights up when we let His light pass through us and onto others. When we're outward-facing and okay with all our flaws and all the gray.
Passage home? Never.
“There are thoughts which are prayers. There are moments when, whatever the posture of the body, the soul is on its knees.”
eunoia
eunoia: u-NO-ya. beautiful thinking; a well mind.
I believe in the power of the written word. I wrote that in an essay for admission into my MFA program, and I think it will always hold true.
The word eunoia is the shortest English word to contain all five vowels (though if you want to get picky, the OED doesn't actually recognize it as a word). Such a small thing to hold so much. I like this word for two reasons. First, because of the meaning. A well mind is one of the greatest gifts we can receive (take it from the girl whose mind goes racing like a pro far too often), but a well mind also requires effort. It requires corralling damaging thoughts and resting on true things--beautiful thinking, in other words.
Secondly, I like eunoia for its brevity and capacity. This first year in the program we are focusing on memoir--reading it, analyzing it, writing it. I am already steeling myself against the thought that I have no business meddling in memoir. It feels like a joke to write memoir when you're 24. I keep batting away this thought like a fly: you don't have anything to say. It's not true. Something small can contain a wealth of meaning. My past two years alone may not look like much from the outside, but I know how I've been scraped and bolstered and cleaned and bandaged and pushed forward into light. I know God's done some major work and that any story I tell is ultimately a story of God's movement in me.
Our stories are inexhaustible if we remain curious and humble, and if we tell about the power of God in us, the God who can do wonders and is likely at work on you now, on me.
sad things untrue
Recently my friend Christina shared this Henri Nouwen quote:
“Optimism and hope are radically different attitudes. Optimism is the expectation that things –the weather, human relationships, the economy, the political situation, and so on – will get better. Hope is the trust that God will fulfill God’s promises to us in a way that leads us to true freedom. The optimist speaks about concrete changes in the future. The person of hope lives in the moment with the knowledge and trust that all of life is in good hands.”
I’m a perpetual optimist; always looking up and forward to something, be it a change in seasons or the weekend (…or morning coffee). While optimism can coax us away from the present moment and contentment, for the most part it’s served me well. Until now. I’ve come to the uncomfortable and embarrassing conclusion that I’ve been an optimist only because my life has been relatively charmed. I’m optimistic about the future because things have gone according to plan. This undergirding confidence stemmed from a pattern: I envisioned something, I worked hard for it, and the dream materialized.
That was the formula, until the formula stopped working. As disappointment and brokenness crop up around me – in my own life, in the lives of friends, in this chaotic world – optimism appears increasingly naïve. It’s dangerous to be an optimist in a world where things go very wrong. It’s disappointing to assume things will work themselves out for the best, because they don’t. Just look at 2014.
The line between optimism and cynicism is thin and unsteady as a tightrope: tread one step too far and you might land in a very disillusioned place. If optimism is your answer, too many disappointments will make you the hardest cynic. And before you stop reading because this is such a downer post, wait! Optimism disappoints, yes. I’ve been disappointed lately. But here’s the thing: hope doesn’t. Knowing this distinction now, I will choose hope over optimism every last time.
Back to Nouwen’s quote, and why it feels like the answer to a riddle. I found it so relieving to accept things don’t have to go my way in order to maintain huge hope. “To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness,” writes Flannery O’Connor. (That woman!) She’s on to something. Optimism can be a foolish sentimentality, morphing so quickly into cynicism or bitterness. Hope, conversely, is nearly synonymous with trust – an active choice to lean on God’s good promises, immaterial as they may be.
Hope is hard to feel. It’s not a natural, emotional upwelling brought on by promising circumstances. But it’s bedrock and sure in a wild and scary life. And because I wouldn’t be using my Input skillz if I didn’t wedge too many quotes in a single post, here’s one more:
“The resurrection of Christ means everything sad is going to come untrue and it will somehow be greater for having once been broken and lost.” - Tim Keller
I can’t wait for all our sad pieces to somehow coalesce and become untrue; I can’t wait for when everything good and whole is not just true but our reality. It’s coming–that’s a promise. Hope doesn’t disappoint.
Catharsis
I wanted so badly not to write about this until it was over. I was sooo excited to package up a tidy post about anxiety and being brave and fighting through your doubts. Sorry, guys. Pride gets in the way. Surprise of all surprises, this phase has haunted me for longer than I bargained, and I don’t have the clarity of retrospection. But I might need to write through it anyway.
I used to toss the word ‘anxiety’ around casually, never knowing how heavy it really is. I used it as a synonym for stress. I thought people who got truly anxious were…weak. Well. I know now how unfair that is. We’re all weak, all walking around with chinks in our armor. And anxiety is so much more than stress; it’s paralyzing and frightening and infuriating.
Without going into gory or boring detail, I haven’t been well. For about 98% of my life I’ve felt strong, capable, and high-achieving. I got what I worked for. I would see something materialize in the future and then I would move toward it steadily, never doubting my trajectory or losing footing. Certainty in my own control built up like plaque in my veins, fortifying the illusion that I was strong and frankly, without need. (A misperception so extreme that it might be funny, if it didn't make me feel so shitty.) Not believing in your own need is a dangerous thing when you follow Christ. And if there’s anything that’s grown out of these past 4-plus months (and, um, still counting) it’s the truth that I am SO FAR from self-sufficient.
I would like to say, friends, be careful what you pray for. Because about six months ago I prayed this: God, let me desire You and not Your comfort. I had been scraping and searching for the comfiest circumstances, which left me feeling vaguely dull. So I sat down and asked God very seriously to teach me about Himself so that I wouldn’t just chase a comfortable life. Should I be surprised that He answered? (And would you be surprised to learn I’m starting to regret my prayer?)
For you who have felt anxiety or fear or doubt, I GET IT. And it’s been the biggest comfort of all to hear people say to me, I get it too. What I might be learning right now – still too early to tell for sure – is that God hears the prayers I keep flinging skyward, hoping something will stick. He’s inviting me into a way deeper trust than I’ve ever had, because I never knew my own need. My reliance on Him actually feels as essential as it is. From the trenches I just want to confirm that yes, this is painful place to be. But I’m starting to know God in a way I never have. This hasn’t quite equipped me to feel joyful in these circumstances. But I know Him better. Maybe the joy will follow.
I heard a quote last night that shook me. Peter Rollins writes, “What if Christ does not fill the empty cup we bring to Him but rather smashes it to pieces, bringing freedom not from our darkness and dissatisfaction but freedom from our felt need to escape it?”
What if? What if during our times of war we need freedom from our own selves that tell us endlessly we need to flee the pain? What if, in dissatisfying situations, we might still find freedom? Even in a job you hate. Even in the uncertainty of a lonely year. Even when you feel trapped and misunderstood and broken. Maybe there's still freedom.
May I suggest a few things to keep your head on straight when you feel frantic? These have been deep breaths to me lately:
- This post, to remind you that darkness ALWAYS PASSES and your darkness is no different. Dawn breaks, people. That hope will keep you afloat.
- Tow’rs music. For the heavy hearted, this music is healing and the lyrics are just straight poetry (“We’ll wear your grace like skin, taking us where veils are thin.” I meaaaan c’mon. So good.)
- That lovely majestic place called the outdoors also known as put down your phone and your Instagram and your computer screen and leave the house. Running outside has been my fix lately (because it’s January and I no longer live in New England, holla!) but any time you get off a screen and outside heals the soul a bit, in my opinion.
This is an ongoing catharsis. There will more posts in this vein. And I would love to engage with you if you’re reading and resonating. Leave a comment, shoot me an email. xo
Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
Wendell Berry's prose & poetry is forever worth re-reading.
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
Status During Supermoon
Our little casita is quiet minus traffic humming from the I-5 and music streaming from the dark kitchen. Tonight was a good one: full kitchen, full deck, laughter and the melding of different friends. But last night was straight magic.
Like the incandescent ones usually are, it was a spur-of-the-moment night without expectations. Davis had mentioned wanting to see Iron & Wine play at Humphrey's as an early birthday celebration. A little context: Iron & Wine was THE band for me back in high school. His music colors that entire era in my memory, but I hadn't given it a good listen in years. When we were lucky enough to find a kayak to borrow the day of the show, there was no excuse not to go. And so we grabbed California burritos and slid off into the water toward the sound of an acoustic guitar and a Southern drawl.
For the next few hours, we joined the flotilla of rafts anchored outside Humphrey's. I gotta say, after all this time Iron & Wine was still stunning. Especially on the water, under the stars, beneath a supermoon. We floated and looked up at palms, blue stage lights, and that giant orb. It felt like we could have been anywhere. When we paddled back, the moon had pulled the tide so high that we had to lay down to slip under the bridges lowered across the harbor.
As I hold routine in one hand and the ever-elusive contentment in the other, moments like this anchor me (no nautical pun intended). Last night was a rock solid reminders of the magnitude of life right here, exactly now.
Cheers, Henry
Summer afternoon, summer afternoon. To me these have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.
- Henry James
These words will forever and always remind me of Molly, who kept them in a small frame that circulated from college dorm rooms to the walls of our tiny apartment during college.
I'm with Henry. Three cheers for summer's glories:
1. For air travel that makes weekends with brothers and best friends possible
2. For a 6' x 12' patch of deck to hold long dinners, evenings of wine-tasting,
and morning bare feet
3. For rooftops with city views in late bronze light
words I want to carry around in my pocket
"I like beginnings because they’re so full of promise. The first page of a book, the first day of a job, the first time you buy yourself flowers, the first date with a new man, the first touch, the first kiss, the first kick of a good liquor, the first moment you hold your own baby. I like beginnings because I know there’s always more to come."
Shyma Perera, Bitter Sweet Symphony