about invisibility and goodness

Ever since I wrote about unsearchable things a few days ago, I've been thinking about invisibility.  It's funny, isn't it, how so many things in our lives are actually unseen: our moods, our thoughts, our emotions, love, the future.  There's so much we can't anticipate, so much we can't pull out physically and dissect and research.  We live in a world of lots of invisibility. 

A couple of years ago, I went volcano boarding during a trip to Nicaragua.  It was simultaneously the most amazing and frightening thing I'd done up to that point -- you hike on super narrow trails to the tippy top of a volcano and then get on a tiny wooden board and go 4798435 MPH flying to the bottom.   The day that I went was really overcast; the volcano was completely covered in fog and only occassionally could we see the landscape or how high we'd actually climbed.  The world below became invisible, and still we had to climb, still we had to board down.  It was the only option available.

At the time, my mind was mostly preoccupied with not plummeting to my death, but in retrospect, the experience seems pretty true to our real lives:  sometimes you've just gotta move forward and trust that what you can't see quite yet is good.  

Here's some thoughts in the form of a short poem :)
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The Invisible 

We reach the top and are hemmed in by clouds.
The soil is warm and humming beneath us,
small, soft pellets of ash that grow hotter
under the surface. Our truck, once at eye-level,
has vanished like a magic trick.

To slow the speed of my pulse I rest at the edge
and think of invisible, good things:

          the wind in warmer seasons,
          smells that remind you of someone,
          faces unknown that I will love
          and each day ahead that has not been
          written down by me.

It's in the birth of this list that I begin to feel
that I am free, that there is no pressure to execute
the architecture of my dreams. 

I think of how even my hopes are in themselves,
unseen.  And the things too foggy to hope yet,
that might one day grow clear to me. 

about unsearchable things

Do you ever just get obsessed with a word?

Maybe it only happens to writer-type language-geeks like me, but sometimes when I'm reading something it'll just happen - Word Crush (I may have just added to my geek status by coining that phrase...).  One particular word choice will just seem so unique and curious that I cannot stop thinking about it. Words are powerful things; for every one you choose, there are thousands more you could've used instead.

A few days ago, one of my most insightful and wise friends was telling me about the things she's learning, and she mentioned a verse in the book of Job.  Wanting to be equally as insightful and wise, I flipped it open, and almost instantly it happened: Word Crush.

"As for me, I would seek God, and to God would I commit my cause, who does great things and unsearchable, marvelous things without number." (5:8-9)

Unsearchable.

All day today, that word has been ping-ponging around my brain.  Unsearchable: unable to be clearly understood.  Why is it that the author of Job would pick that term to describe the works of God?

I did a little digging on this word.  Unless you're a nerd like me, you probably didn't know that Google has this neat ability to track the number of mentions of a specific word overtime in a wide reach of literature.  Well, it's super neat.  And this specific word (as you can see in the chart above), has dropped steadily in number of mentions since the 1800s.

Basically, "unsearchable" isn't very popular these days.
And it makes sense.

We live in a culture where EVERYTHING is searchable.  If there is anything at all that we don't fully understand, we whip out our phones and look it up as quickly as we can. We cling to Google for dear life.  We have so much access to so much information that the sheer volume of knowledge at our fingertips is overwhelming.  It's cool to be informed, to be well-read, to have opinions we feel entitled to post on social media.  It's unheard of to buy something or think something or decide something without doing tons of background research in advance.  We are on this constant quest to know it all, and we often imagine that we do.

I think I'm obsessed with this "unsearchable" thing because, like so much I come across in the Bible, it goes against everything that the world tells me is important.  The author of Job describes the works of God as something we simply do not have the capacity to understand.  All our searching will go unfounded.

This means that I simply cannot know - I cannot know what job I'll have in five years; I cannot know which people will make surprise entrances into my life, shaking up everything; I cannot know where I'll live when I'm old or how much money I'll have when I retire; I cannot know what plans there are for me or how those plans will alter eternity.

All I can know is that there simply are plans.  There are plans without number, and they are marvelous.  And I cannot Google-search them right now.  That humbles me down into dust.  In a world where I feel pressured to know everything all the time, it brings me the strangest refreshment and relief.

Unsearchable, marvelous things beyond number.
Bring them on.

about 20-something girl haikus

I have no explanation for this, other than that it seemed like a fun idea to spend 30 minutes on a Friday afternoon writing haikus for all my fellow 20-something ladies to relate to.  That's all.  Happy weekend.
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Take-Out

I could cook dinner

But that sounds like lots of work.

Thai food it is then.

Buzzfeed Prophecies

Quiz on who I’ll wed

Says perfect match is pizza.

Getting a cat now

In Case I Forget I'm Single

Mom e-mailed a link

I open at 6 A.M. –

Engagement ring. Cool.

Trader Joe’s Romance

Check-out guy at store

Was cute and maybe flirting-

But I bought tampons.

Snapchatting at Work

It is really hard

To look professional and

Take a selfie, too

Katy Perry

Was dancing alone

To “Teenage Dream” by Katy –

Neighbor in window. 

Life is hard

When you're twenty-four

sometimes only sandwiches

seem to understand. 

about Charlottesville

I'm really loving writing poems about places lately - places new to me and places so familiar and old that I feel I belong to them.

This one is for Charlottesville, a place that will always be dear to me for the things it gave me and for what it forced me to discover and for who I became after a few years of calling it home.
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For Charlottesville, Virginia

I gave myself to a city once,

and learned there that the giving

is more like a surrender, the process

of discovering your own name.

Sometimes against the backdrop

of blue mountain ridges and white columns

I wept from a lie that I was alone,

and sometimes I wept knowing,

in sudden bursts of miracles, that I

was loved. 

Once or so I knew

what it was to return them.

Sometimes in my city I’d walk for miles,

letting everything be new for me,

sometimes I’d follow, sometimes I’d

remember how the streets could sound

in the summer, wearing shades

of quiet and peace.

Sometimes I’d get lost, and sometimes

things looked so familiar that my bones

would fill my skin, tight enough to feel

I could not become more of this.

Leaving my city was a moment

like when you’ve been laughing,

so filled up with love,

and suddenly stumble into

earnest silence,

like a few seconds into slow dancing,

when you realize your connection

of fingertips, and his nose

brushing your forehead, how

your cheek gives up and falls

and he moves you so carefully

that you uncover every importance

inside you, and in a beautiful way
take yourself very seriously. 

about the cost of hidden treasure

I know pretty much nothing about money.

Well, I manage to survive and stuff, and I know when I need to make my car payment and send in rent, but other than that I'm a little bit naive.  Financial information all just goes above my head and beyond my interest.  My hope and prayer is that someday I'll get married to a wonderful man who will make me happy, and who I'll raise a family with, and also who will do my taxes.  I'm planning on slipping the pastor a twenty and asking him to say "Repeat after me -- I take you, Emily, to be my lawfully wedded wife, and I promise from this day forward to take care of all of our financial responsibilities for forever and forever, like paying bills which is really boring, and all other bank related things that confuse you. And I'll never make you do any math of any sort."  

"I do." 

Basically, what I know about money is that you should save it.  And I still seem to live by the rule you learn as a kid when your parents hand you your weekly allowance - "don't spend it all in one place".  

Because that would be irresponsible, right? 

Which is why it's crazy and challenging to me, reading this little bit in Matthew 13 that says "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field." (v44)

He goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.  

Also, before that statement -- "...in his joy".  

We live in a space where we are told to hoard up treasures of our own designs -- to take take claim over our money, our talents, our resources, our time.  We are told to build storage space for these things in our hearts, because we might need them as defense someday, or maybe because they'll allow us never to depend on anyone else.

This is what our culture tells us -- but what Jesus says is different in every regard.

The cost of the gospel is everything we have.  That was the cost of the field - everything.  The man couldn't have claimed the treasure if he'd sold 1/4 of his things, or even 99.9%. He had to give it all.

I imagine that in doing this, that man recognized the relative insignificance of everything else compared to that treasure.  And I imagine that he learned the magic of surrender, that it leads you to depend on what is mightier and holier than you.

Paying with everything we have doesn't sound like a picnic.  Actually, it sounds scary as hell.  If we want to experience the goodness that is following Jesus, we will have to give things we likely want to hold onto, like our money or our reputations or our gifts.

But it is for TREASURE - the type we simply do not have the capacity to dream up.  And to do this, to give it all up for that, is joy.