about asking questions

Sometimes when I'm not being a completly self-focused human (which, to be honest, isn't as often as I'd like), I think about ways that I can be a better lover of people. 

And today I thought about how powerful it is, how loving it is, to ask questions. 

Tonight I flipped through the gospels and skimmed some interactions Jesus has with the disciples.  After five minutes of doing this (I know, not exactly a scholarly search, but still) I was unable to find a single interaction in which Jesus does not ask a question. 

Asking questions is meaningful for a lot of reasons.  One big one, I think, is that it takes the focus away from yourself.  When we ask questions, we stop being wholly concerned with telling people things that we're about and become more concerned with listening to the things other people are about.  We give people our time.  We give people our focus, which, in our culture, is not that common of an occurrence. 

And moreover, we give people value. By asking people questions, we communicate that they are worth being known - their responses are worth being shared, and their opinions really mean something.  

Another side-effect of questions, and a purely selfish one, is that it forces us to become more than what we currently are.

There are so many perspectives I never would've considered, so many ideas I never would've known, and so many lives I never would've participated in if I failed to ask a few key questions.  Granting people that opportunity to really share themselves with you means that people actually share things with you -- you get to take part in it!

There is beauty, I truly believe, in relationships where questions are asked and we actually listen to the answers. 

And I want more of that, don't you?

about surprising gray mornings

mornings without sunrise

I wake early, two days in a row,

to walk with bare feet the hundred steps

down toward the water.  Each time I grow

slightly irritated at what I can’t control:

a grayness of sky, feeling owed some show

after stirring myself from sleep. 

Gathering disappointments from the dock,

I pull my body back toward the house

and run into a vastly-spun spider’s web,

thin lines and slivers stuck against my skin.

I surprise myself with sadness –

to have destroyed something so complete

with the thoughtlessness of my body,

to uncreate what was made despite me. 

Peeling the web from my arm, I study

each detail; I think of every individual thread

cast out to the wind, drawn to each other

by a threat of brokenness, longing to be whole. 

With closed-eyes I imagine it complete,

imagine sunlight sneaking through its fragile holes. 

For two mornings, instead of taking in colors

I did not create, I pray little

silver prayers, delicate and fine,

prayers asking for rawness of courage:

to cast out my loves like webbing,

mostly just to take the risk.  

about loving story

One of the greatest sensations is to listen to a song, or watch a movie, or read a poem or novel and think -- this is a story that gets me. 

I love stories, and I think most others do also, because they validate our lives and give us purpose.  We love stories because they draw out the longings and hurts of our hearts, and in doing so they makes us feel known because they name them.

Maybe this is a silly and overly simple revelation, but I was reading those words pictured from the book of Job out-loud to my roommates tonight (because they were too beautiful to keep to myself), and it hit me: this is my story. This bible.  These gorgeous words and lives and events and thoughts and truths written down so long ago.

This is the greatest story. It just is.

This is the story that every other story seeks to tell, whether it knows it or not.

Every desire I have, every longing for justice, for peace, for beauty -- all of it finds creation inside this book.  These words are the echoing, lovely, bird-call response to those parts of my soul that whisper out for answer.  These words are the end all, be all; they are conflict resolution; they are character development and monsters being defeated and plot twists that leave my heart soaring from victory.  All of it is there.  It is my story.  Those pages, they are as good as flesh and bone for me.  They are as active as pulse, they are as vital as air.

This story gets me, in a way nothing else can.

And it is wholly privilege to read those words, to love them, and to find even my tiny life folded into the story that is there.

about pop star haikus

I'm into haikus these days.
And tonight I thought about pop stars, and how sad it is that no one ever writes them haikus, and how somebody had to, and how that somebody should be me.
It just made sense.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kesha

To my glitter friend,

Where did your dollar sign go?

I demand it back.

Justin Timberlake

My 6^th grade locker

Was covered in your pictures.

Please divorce J.Biel. 

S Club 7

Is it sorta cool

that I love “S Club Party”

and listen daily?

Brian McKnight

You killed it singing

“Four, repeat steps one thru three”

(Do you have more songs?)

Nelly

I’m still mad at you

For singing with Tim McGraw

And for that band aid

Taylor Swift

Here’s a confession:

I would run screaming from you

If I were a boy.

Lindsay Lohan

Normal folks forget

Your hit pop classic “Rumors”,

But I’m not normal.

Willow Smith

I think you’re too young

To whip your hair like that, but

Please tell your dad hi

Lady GaGa

I dislike your clothes
Of meat; tragic wasting so
Many hamburgers. 

about gratitude, again.

I have a confession.  I've been failing at gratitude lately.

Just like, really really failing.  On the first day of 2013 I started a Good Things Jar that truly transformed me.  I began it during a season of loneliness and pain, and it moved me into a season of freedom and joy.  Sometimes it can be easier to remember what's actually important when you find yourself in a desert.

The first year of the Good Thing Jar was good.  Intentionally living with gratitude gave me courage to be a part of the world in a way that I hadn't.  I stopped thinking about my fears and started thinking about my joys - I learned how beautiful it was to have my eyes open to good things, and then to receive them gently, like fragile heirlooms I could place on my shelf and care for and give respect to.  I filled that jar to bursting with every big and small moment I wanted to thank.

Living with gratitude was beautiful.  But then I started forgetting to be grateful. 

After gratitude pushed me through anxiety and heartbreak, life started to feel normal again.  My days became happy and predictable and routine.  So many blessings came into my life unthanked and unacknowledged, and my jar sat empty. I started feeling that all those good things were owed to me.  I started to expect them instead of be amazed by them.

This weekend I looked at my empty Good Things Jar and my thought was stern and honest - how dare I.  How dare I think that I am beyond gratitude.  How dare I let others care for me and not make much of it. How dare I receive one thing from the Lord and act as if it was not done with the most intentional thought and love.

To be honest, I'm embarrassed and I'm disappointed at myself.  But the good news is that it's never too late to begin living with gratitude all over again.

And so I'm sitting on my couch, surrounded by blank pieces of paper that I intend to cover with thanks and slip into the jar, because I have to do it.  Gratitude is not a creative project that I invest in for a few weeks and then forget.  It is something I must defend, it is something important. We should never ever miss the opportunity to be thankful for any dose of love afforded us.  We should never ever come to believe that we are owed the best.

We should always always take the time to thank the pieces of our lives for falling where they do. 

Here's to being grateful - everyday, all over again.

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(a kind of weird stream-of-consciousness list poem about some random things I'm grateful for from the past few days, to restart my life of thankfulness)

I love

I love the shade of July sun

because it isn’t heat, but color

and I love the way I can miss someone

physically, deep in my gut as if they

were made of the same stuff

and took some. I love how Carole King

playing in my car makes me forget

to care about pride, and I love how

singing makes me more ethereal

than anything else. 

I love how the world keeps going

outside my window when I ache

with sleep, and I love having zero

power to make time stop,

or to silence the motion

of everything out there that I love.