[baby it’s hot outside]
listening to: rilo kiley and jenny lewis & the watson twins
looking forward to: dinner this eve at texas french bread

statue of saint francis in the guesthouse courtyard at christ in the desert monastery

psalm of the season: o the deaths we would have known if you had not been with us

if you had not been with us
if you had not been with us
they would have swallowed us alive

the waters tried to engulf us
their fury broke against us

we were overwhelmed
and we surely would have drowned

if you had not been with us
if you had not been with us
they would have swallowed us alive

blessed be the lord
who did not leave us to be torn by their fangs

oh blessed be the lord, who does not leave us to be torn by their fangs.

last eve's grocery list from wheatsville food co-op: antioxidant-al treats
-dark chocolate
-chilean wine
-fair trade, organic coffee beans
i’ll justify this triple decadence by saying, those antioxidants are so good for you, of course you need it in threes.

a word from ms. annie dillard:
“i know only enough of God to want to worship him, by any means ready to hand. there is an anomalous specificity to all our experience in space, a scandal of particularity, by which God burgeons up or showers down into the shabbiest occasions, and leaves his creation’s dealing with him into the hands of purblind and clumsy amateurs. this is all we are and all we ever were; God kann nicht anders. this process in times is history; in space, at such shocking random, it is mystery.

a blur of romance clings to notions of “publicans,” “sinners,” “the poor,” “the people in the marketplace,” “our neighbors,” as though of course God should reveal himself, if at all, to these simple people, these Sunday school watercolor figures, who are so purely themselves in their tattered robes, who are single in themselves, while we now are various, complex and full at heart. we are busy. so I see now, were they. who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place? there is no one but us. there is no one to send, nor a clean hand, nor a pure heart on the face of the earth, nor in the earth, but only us, a generation comforting ourselves with the notion that we have come at an awkward time, that our innocent fathers are all dead –as if innocence has ever been – and our children busy and troubled, and we ourselves unfit, not yet ready, having each of us chosen wrongly, made a false start, failed, yielded to impulse and the tangled comfort of pleasures, and grown exhausted, unable to seek the thread, weak, and involved. but there is no one but us. there never has been. ”

[neighborly*]
art which is inspiring: charley harper
literature which is filling: the time quintet by madeline l'engle
fabric of choice: linen or cotton [too sweltering for anything more]

something rooted and sweet in learning the texture, feel and sounds of the chesnut neighborhood. something of familiar, familial knowness-- not strangers, but not quite family. interesting how to navigate these in-between, single-yet-very-much-whole years which seem to grow longer &longer, older &older in our generation.

my friend c. noted how alive this part of austin feels with constant movement, sibling sounds, radio's blaring, grass being cut, dirt dug, people walking by foot in torn shoes, children sliding down the playground, hollers of "hello" from vintage bicyles and soccer balls being kicked.

it's not all simple and 2-dimensional, but has a depth that can only be uncovered, looked into, and perhaps even appreciated with time. stay here. stay here for a while. then you shall see & be & share & receive the gifts of this land. being neighborly. yes, neighborly, that's it.

a walk at sunset noticing an old grain silo erected in the alleyway behind coleto. morning cup of coffee on the porch and being privy to watching our neighbor walking through contractions which announce their first babes' birth, and i only bow my head to whisper a hopeful prayer for what shall come this day. meeting susan, an artisan who works the ways of aluminum into lovely organic-shaped doorways just one block over. a couple trimming their beaver tail cactus and let us freely transplant a few tails to grow in our lawn. a text message simply reading "you coming to dinner?" from a 'neighb' [that's short for neighbor]. i have yet to know the name of the older gentleman two blocks down who waters his plants and herbs so consistently each morning-- but he outstreches his hand to greet me every time i pass.

and so it goes. we're in the now, now-- then shall come soon enough.

*who knew it is really a word?!

[early summer: turn the darkness with a spade]

sweaty birthday picnics in the park with cupcakes;
snowwhite skin which has yet to feel the sun's rays; and
new bilingual gringa babes are born with winsome names.

amongst these rhythmic days begun with a french press of coffee and end with a cuppa tea,
there are wet swimsuits, mosquito bits covering my toes,
old vintage desks with peeling white paint, found on craigslist.

community theater gathers us on a hillside with white wine,
an imperative weaving together of threads [from all corners of time],
we say farewell, stay and await a welcome which is too long in coming.

we absorb radio shows on the soul in depression,
walk in the contours of grief:
--do not be invasive of the mystery, nor evasive of the suffering--
continue in counseling as we all become more whole.

relishing friend’s musical compositions recorded in their kitchen,
long walks along urban trails,
and squeals of delight on the buttercup at mueller playground.

pilgrimage southward to la tierra de el salvador,
second garden plot to be dug,
and considerings of a return to the halls of academia for an l.c.s.w.

a pair of cardinals, buddy & milagro, have made their home in coleto's trees;
a small fox suns itself outside my office window--
feels like i'm in a wendell berry or saint francis of assisi poem.

[morsels in these days]

porch-sitting and kite flying are lost arts.

in community, acquire few needs.

setting boundaries is a natural, perfectly healthy, and quite necessary thing to do.

"do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. do justly, now. love mercy, now. walk humbly, now. you are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. "

-rabbi tarfon

[tales from coleto]

moving into a home where friends lived previously lends itself to finding delights in the corners of the fridge, the utility closet, or the movie bin-- you know, those treasures they loved so much they left behind, just for you. um, hum. like the ever classic movie "lord of war," an antique stove top, a half-eaten container of greek yogurt, and a pickle jar full of juice and only three pickles.

yesterday eve n, j, and i were cleaning out the fridge and discovered the last two items in that list. j was content to enjoy eating the greek yogurt, but the pickles looked a bit funny so we decided to chunk 'em.

rancid pickles probably aren't the best for a newly started compost pile. our kitchen trash would reek to high heaven if we dumped them in there--i mean, you have to recycle the glass jar they come in. so j pipes up that before having a compost she would just throw organic food scraps into the empty lot across the street from us. seemed to make sense, though i was a bit hesitant on the morality of dumping our pickles into some poor, unsuspecting lot...

but when's the last time you've chucked pickles into an empty lot in your neighborhood? yeah, me neither, so j convinced me, saying something like "come'on mama, let's go chunk some pickles."

as we reached the lot across the street, a couple stray alley cats woke up from their nap, some squirrels were running amuck in the branches and it felt like something would eat these pickles. so with a huge ONE, TWO, THREE, HEAVE-HO i threw those pickles out of their jar, flying skyward like a lark.

and right at that moment a huge gust of wind came up, and BLEW ALL THE PICKLE JUICE BACK ONTO J AND I.

we

were

COVERED

in

a

DELUGE

of

pickle

juice

!

lawdy, we both screeched so loud and doubled over in laughter. j had a meeting to go to, so she went in to change her shirt and headed out. i was content to wash my arms off, having no plans for the evening. and popped in the movie the constant gardener.

a little while later, i had a hankering for blue bell ice cream, and didn't give much thought to changing clothes-- i was just running up to the grocery to fetch ONE thing.

while there, meandering through the multitude of yummy ice cream selections a young boy about 7- or 8-years-old walked by with his mom and loudly exclaimed:

"WOW, mom it sure smells like PICKLES in here."

rules.

and that's all the news from coleto, my friends.

[cartographers, carpentry, weasels, and sharing other’s words: on leading lives that matter]

my mother went to graduate school for geography—specifically in cartography. her stories of those days are filled with tales of long hours poured over a drafting table, the exact detail and precision needed for the craft and how sad it is that “they just don’t make a good map like they used to.” patience, a steady hand, wise teachers, and a sense diligence to the task were the traits one seemed to need. to this day, she has the tidiest, small cursive handwriting i have ever seen.

my own experiences with maps is mixed— i have a heckuva good directional memory and can get you from point a to point f, even if i’ve only been there once five years ago. i remember fondly looking at the maps in the front of the jrr tolkien’s series on the lord of the rings and found them so beautiful. i also remember faking the aptitude test in 8th grade that was supposed to tell us the job road-map for our life. at the time i was thoroughly convinced i was to be an architect, so i just answered all the questions as i thought an architect should. Hah. what do you know, the results came back saying i should be an architect.

well, i'm now 25, decidely not an architect and still wondering if i'm leaning into what the divine might be calling me to.

for better or for worse, or perhaps because most of us are in the 20-40-year-age range, this community of mosaic is also struggling with a sense of vocation—the translation of our gifts and passions into meaningful expression, and what we’re supposed to do to make money—both individually and corporately. and tonight we’re gathering for what has been dubbed a map-making meeting… charting a course through new waters which is under girded by the weavings of the body of christ corporate, a sense of place rooted here in austin, the experiences of wise shepherds, and a deep faith in the patience of the spirit's movements in all of us. it feels so Good, True, and Beautiful.

there is no end in sight, no idea of where we shall all end up or at or in, following this invitation to dilligently and intentionality create some maps-- but these are our two hopes:

1. to help mosaic be the church christ has called us to be.
who are we?
who is God calling us to be?
what are our corporate gifts and passions as a church?
how are we to love austin and the world?

2. to assist the individual "parts"/people of mosaic to discover their gifts, passions, and vocation.
to enter into a process.
to ask the right questions.
to affirm those gifts, passions, and vocation.

if feels like a sifting, shifting, integrating process-- and these threads have sifted to the surface. i don't have the energy to weave them into a single coherent piece, so i'll leave them in their rawness.

ONE: CARPENTRY
“the church’s approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him not to be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours, and to come to church on sundays. what the church should be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables…
the only christian work is good work well done. ”
-dorothy sayers in her essay ::why work::

TWO: WEASELS
"We could, you know. We can live any way we want. People take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience--even of silence--by choice. The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse. This is yielding, not fighting. A weasel doesn't 'attack' anything; a weasel lives as he's meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity. "
-annie dillard in her essay :: living like weasels::

THREE: SHARING WORDS OF ANOTHER
”They say the spiritual life is like gardening. But how do you hold prayers in your hand like you hold clods of dirt?

This fall we planted baby lettuce, wild kale and purple-crowned broccoli. We planted seeds. We plunged our fingers, slender probing shovels, into dark glistening dirt. We patted the earth as if it were the belly of a baby. We looked. We waited. We waited some more. We poured water from a yellow-green hose over the 4'X8' square that is our suburban garden.

But how do you hold your prayers like you hold your clods of dirt?

With gardening there is waiting. There is attending. There is listening and nursing and pruning and protecting. And more waiting. And all the vocabulary of Wendell Berry. And Jesus. And it works. You persevere in the daily work of visitations. You visit your garden and look. Here you pluck a worm. Here you loose a truculent weed. There you grapple tomato vines to chicken wire that rises to heaven like an oblation, like an inverted obelisk of prayer: Here, Lord, take our humble offering of tomato vines and cause it to bear fruit. Please.

But gardening is not like prayer. Gardening is material. You can touch it, you can taste it. Our bodies are material and we are at home and strong in our ability to live as a material, physical, skin, bone, joints, movable-appendages creature. Using the muscles of our body to walk to the garden requires no mental effort.

The physical effort expended to traverse the twenty yards from back door to boxed garden is kinetic pocket change we can afford to throw away.

But prayer is hard work and living in our spiritual bodies is hard work. These things fight against us like strangers that frighten us if we look at them too closely. Prayer is frightening because we really have no control over it.

We cannot see prayer with our physical eyes. We cannot hold it and feel safe with it and not threatened by it like we feel unthreatened by a clod of dirt. We know what to do with bad dirt. We know what to do with dirt that is full of worms. But we do not know what to do with prayers that do not get answered. We do not know what to do with prayers that have been prayed a thousand times and turn into irritating, distasteful cliches.

We understand what the preacher means when he talks about a calling that God has upon our lives. But it is not easy to live into it. It is easier to close our ears to that calling. "It is impossible." We prefer to do things that we know we are good at and that we can control: laundry (whites only), utility bills, lesson plans, blog entries, chocolate and cold cereal, our Netflix cue, computer code, getting the kids to school on time, lunch appointments, reading our Bible. But it's not easy to read our Bible and to incline our ears to listen to God. Just read the Bible and get on with your day. Just read. But don't let your heart ache again to sense--spiritually? actually?--the nearness of God.

A calling is a wild and frightful thing. And powerful, very powerful. It entails dominion over the earth. God offers us real, powerful, earth-altering dominion. That is why it scares us so often. That is why it's not given to us, en toto, without a humility that suffuses and governs every molecule of our body and soul. It would destroy us otherwise. A calling comes into being one day at a time. It unfolds through the baptismal cycle of death and resurrection: we die with Christ, we rise with Christ, day after day after day. A day that is not given over to God in humble, listening dependence is a day that will not open up to us the fruit and power of our calling. It cannot.

Gardens grow from one day to the next. Our mustard greens grow continuously. They do not grow capriciously. They do not grow when they feel like it. Growing is demanding work. Our calling is demanding work.

Prayer is demanding work.

But our mustard greens do not grow on their own. They have help: the earthly community of the faithful: sun, rain, dirt, air, an occasional grace of all-natural fertilizer, and God. All working together. All working, in their own way, daily. So too our calling and prayer, it is daily work. It is the daily work of the spiritual community of the faithful: family, a friend, a pastor, books, beauty, the occasional grace of a really good day brimming with really happy news, and God.

I told [my wife] last night that I'm struggling to put the worth of my identity on the right things. So much of what I am doing feels intangible. Some days I restlessly and recklessly crave more: more affirmation, more achievement, more attention, more and better than. It embarrasses me. It is a dark thing that tempts me to assert my worth over against God. My terms. My rights. Over against the way of Jesus in a way that excuses me from being wholly dependent on him. It is diabolical and it is nothing new.

So I have to pray for deliverance. "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." Today. And again tomorrow. And I hope, Lord, you do not tire of hearing us say these same words over and over as much as we sometimes tire of saying them. The spiritual life is a confessional life, lived confessionally day after day after day. Like our daily bread.

The worst thing that could happen to us is if we had to figure out our calling on our own. The weight of that work is too great and we will give up before long. We will give up hope. That is the worst thing to lose: hope.

The spiritual life, they say, is like gardening.

You cannot hold prayers in your hand like you can clods of dirt.

But you can choose to let others help you. You can choose, day after day after plodding day, to give yourself to living, breathing, mutually dependent relationship with others who walk the pilgrimage with you.

You are not alone. There is hope. Juntos podemos. ”

FOUR: ANNIE DILLARD
"there is no such thing as a solitary polar explorer, fine as the conception is."

[life together]

mosaic folk have this website, sorta like craigslist, called mosaic community share. instead of everyone standing up at the end of liturgy and announcing what one has extra of, or are in need of [be it employment, a place to lay your head for a month or two, a bicycle or some seedlings]--one can drop a quick line on the community share. as much as i'm hesitant of relying too heavily on the invisible pages of web-based networking, the community share page has yielded a glorious fruit this weekend.

the end of last week i saw a posting that s and his wife, j, had extra swiss chard and kale in their garden. our dear coleto is about 90% veggie household [i'm the exception with my every 6 week quarter-pounder with cheese from mcdonald's... i know, i know...] so i knew these fresh greens would be a swell treat.

s and i emailed back and forth a few times, debating when the leafy goodness should be picked as 90F+ highs each day were wrecking the tender giants. i trusted his judgement and we agreed to do the hand-off sunday at liturgy.

saturday i received the following email:
"Amber,

I picked the chard and kale this morning; after a midweek watering, they stood up to the heat fairly well. (They wilt pretty bad at the peak of the afternoon, but recover during the evening and overnight once they get shelter from the sun).

I feel like this is a sponsor-a-foreign/disadvantaged-child sort of thing, where I need to send you updates and even pictures. See attached. (These were your plants before I harvested, rinsed and "packaged" them).

Kind regards,

S"

attached to his email where these glimpses:

the whole row of lovelies

close up of the swiss chard

and last but not least, the hearty, nutritious kale gets a glamour shot

... honestly, this was the best email i'd received all month and i could not stop chuckling at my eagerness to meet these vegetables. quite glad to say these emerald beauties are now in the coleto house fridge. two bags of swiss chard and a whole bag of kale: to be cooked up promptly.

here's to life together in community, urban organic gardens, and the kindness in folk sharing the work of their hands/fruit of the earth!
blessed be.

[on german words, a victorian painting, and simone weil]

i stumbled upon this word a few days ago: weltschmerz [german(n) meaning:: "the sorrow of the world," "world-pain," or "world weariness"] and it felt like a strange bedfellow that i'm not sure i want to lie down with-- but seems to be part of my fabric. long have i wrestled with how to live in and what to make of my own ability to feel so deeply. i've gone back & forth feeling like it's an achilles heel and yet often it's the intricate, sole thing i'm able to offer: feeling it all.

this painting strikes something deep in my being... and still george frederic watts has the audacity to entitle it :: hope.

"in order to come to us, god passes through infinite thickness of time and space; his grace changes nothing in the play of those blind forces of necessity and chance which guide the world; it penetrates into our souls as a drop of water makes its way through geological strata without affecting their structure, and there it waits in silence until we consent to become god again...

whereas gravity is the work of creation, the work of grace is consists of "decreating" us. god consented through love to cease to be everything so that we might be something; we must consent through love to cease to be anything so that god may become everything again.

... we must be ready to endure all the wounds of life, exposing ourselves as naked and defenseless to its fangs; we must accept emptiness, an unequal balance; we must never seek compensations, and above all we must suspend the work of our imagination, 'which perpetually tends to stop up the cracks through which grace flows.' every sin is an attempt to fly from emptiness. we must also renounce the past and the future, for the self is nothing but a coagulation of past and future around a present which is always falling away. memory and hope destroy the wholesome effect of affliction by providing an unlimited field where we can be lifted up in imagination (i used to be, i shall be...), but faithfulness to the passing moment reduces man truly to nothing and thus opens to him the gates of eternity."
-gustave thibon's introduction to ::gravity and grace:: by simone weil

[h]eart[h]

happy mayday, today!
a different sort of solidarity this year,
with cardboard boxes
[cajas de cartón]
moving south fifteen blocks
and east a few...
instead of downtown songs, speeches and marching.

back to the neighborhood
that birthed this austin home.

an invitation to shift, sift;
an intentional giving & receiving of
love.
i welcome these movements of G-d.

wash the years from the cracked wooden chairs,
sweat tumbling down my brow, rain drip-dropping
sticky limbs covered by cut-off jeans
pax christo at poquito, and coleto,
and ulit
and highland mall
and el salvador
and burnet

and you.

cultivate this womb of soil.

first firefly of the summer.

[my day at the state legislature :: a mathematical equation in photos]

...a typical romp in austin for amber... notice the footwear...

+

...the texas state capital on a fine spring day... where they are currently hearing testimony in the state legislature on all manner of affairs...

when you combine my feet with a request to testify on domestic violence issues in the immigrant community... you just might have...

=

[do my chaco tan lines give me away that i feel like i'm just playing dress-up in all this politicos conversation?]

[hold onto your affliction]

chipped mason jar full of iced coffee,
april's cool breezes massaging through the trees,
knee-high scratchy grass,
thrifting an old leather suitcase,
tears stream down my face,
dissolution of bonds and a tragic loss,
action and contemplation:
"talitha koumi, little one."

summer's dresses over jeans,
smooth river stones that fit in your hand,
painting,
reading,
writing,
creating once more,
tiny maple seeds waiting to helicopter down,
the scent of new gardenias and ripe tomatoes,
awkward lunch, to which i could not say no,
blood-of-my-blood shipped back to cali- paid to shoot a gun:
"talitha koumi, amber."

the smallest detail of the jade plants' leaf tinged with fire,
three hour walk on the eastside and a sun-scorched nose,
porch-sitting into the evening night,
sweet reunion and mysterious re-membering,
bike riders perservering till the finish,
all the littlest birds waking me up in song
shod your feet, pack your things into boxes,
this battle is not over,
coleto street house shall soon be my home:
"talitha koumi", indeed.

" ...how we waste our afflictions!

we study them, stare out beyond them into bleak continuance,

hoping to glimpse some end. Whereas they're really

our wintering foliage, our dark greens of meaning, one

of the seasons of the clandestine year– not only

a season– they're site, settlement, shelter, soil, abode. "

-rilke :: duino elegies

[freedom hangs like heaven over everyone]
listening to: takk by sigur rós

" "...aslan is a lion--the lion, the great lion."

"ooh!" said susan, "i'd thought he was a man. is he--quite safe? i shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion."

"that you will, dearie, and no mistake," said mrs. beaver, "if there's anyone who can appear before aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly."

"then he isn't safe?" said lucy.

"safe?" said Mr. Beaver. "don't you hear what mrs. beaver tells you? who said anything about safe? 'course he isn't safe. but he's good. he's the king I tell you." "
--c.s. lewis :: the lion, the witch and the wardrobe


"we take the sky, as if red is something we could own,
something we might find in the stillest moments,
as if the earth is humane and wouldn't break
our bones. (None of His were broken. Not one.)

Red is in the land too, is in the way we look at each other, the hardness
of our sleep, the need to fall down, to tell of the pox that swept Aunt Jess,
the drink that ushers Father, the path that never leads to wealth or rest
or health—but the one we always take. Shalom, we say. Buena Suerte.

We always take the sky, fold it over ourselves,
the soil, run it across our skin and cling to it,
savoring the tart of a lemon, palming a bar of soap
even when our hands are clean, naming the insects

that fly across the white bulb of moon late at night,
rakishly loving the one who knows our smell,
saying (as if they are not questions), Isn't this how
we stay alive and Why shouldn't I burrow here.

This is how we drum on, cold and ungrowing—
what more to be than alive? It all hums: so we die in small bits,
so the egg-shaped hollow that sits behind our stomachs,
so He died and rose again on the third day, so (what).

We take the sky, we scatter on the land. We fall down,
grab the everythings, the tiniest cures, fall down again,
wash ourselves in red and know, unwittingly, it is not enough.
More certain than anything: it will never be,

and then here, in the stillest moments, the story rushes again
(veil splitting, stone rolling, Mary, Peter, John, running,
linen and spices like a limp cocoon, the blur of angels, the one red
splash of a second—like a rose breaking open—when we know),

and somewhere inside us a small green seed pricks the dirt,
coiling for air. He soothes and stirs, fingertip-sized holes in His
hands, roaming the soil and the sky for our broken bones.
And the shaking on earth is our brand new lives:

Alleluia, we say, feeling even the empty oval of our stomachs rise."
-susanna childress

art by phaedra jean taylor

::freedom hangs like heaven over everyone::

[loss.]

"Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good. "
-w.h. auden

[crux enim fiasco est :: the fiasco of the cross]
"to know christ sacramentally only in terms of bread and wine is to know him only partially, in the dining room as host and guest. it is valid enough knowledge but it's ultimate weakness when isolated is that it is perhaps too civil...
however elegant the knowledge of the dining room may be, it begins in the soil, in the barnyard, in the slaughterhouse, amid the quiet violence of the garden, strangled cries and fat spitting in the pain. table manners depend on something's having been grabbed by the throat. a knowledge that ignores these dark and muderous human gestes is losing it's grip on the human condition."
-aiden kavanagh

"he who hung the earth in its place hangs there,

he who fixed the heavens is fixed there,

he who made all things fast is made fast upon the tree.

the master has been insulted,

god has been murdered,

the king of israel has been slain by an israelite hand.

o strange murder, strange crime!

the master has been treated in unseemly fashion, his body naked;

not even deemed worthy of covering that his nakedness might not be seen. there

the lights of heaven turned away,

and the day darkened,

that it might hide him who was stripped upon the cross."

-melito of sardis

painting by marc chagall

::white crucifixion::

[mandatum :: love. ]

the desert has sopped up my tears and imposed it's ashes on my forehead as the Triduum begins. these three days coincide with my middle brother's arrival to austin, post-graduation from u.s. marine corps bootcamp. i anticipate much sitting with him and listening to who he has become, and how he has been shaped in these past 90 days.

i expected the pilgrimage to the monastery to be the space within which to process through the traumatic threads of march-- instead i was swaddled tight in a balanced rhythm of G-d in life. knowing my youngest brother as an adult sibling who holds his coffee mug the exact way i and my mother do. long walks along snowy red-rocked boulders, stolen conversations with brothers and priors and ground-keepers, and silence deeper than the darkest night. the peace of wild things, poured into my inmost being.

it has been so strange to return to the city. so much noise, so much busied hurriedness, so much-- just as it was when i departed. all the threads are where i left them, some thrown about my bedroom floor or still one end held in the hands of a friend-- waiting to be unwound, processed through, wrestled with, sewn back together [?] and woven into the now. oh, may we carry on dear friends, carry on into these days in Hope.

"the dark around us, come,

let us meet here together,
members one of another,
here in our holy room,

here on our little floor,
here in the daylit sky,
rejoicing mind and eye,
rejoining known and knower,

light, leaf, foot, hand, and wing,
such order as we know,
one household, high and low,
and all the earth shall sing. "

-w. berry

art by phaedra jean taylor
:: bearing funerals of white I: on the day you were born ::

"we know that joy is the sweetness of contact with the love of God, that affliction is the wound of this same contact when it is painful, and that only the contact matters, not the manner of it. it is the same as when we see someone very dear to us after a long absence, the words we exchange with her do not matter, but only the sound of her voice, which assures us of her presence. the knowledge of the presence of God does not afford consolation; it takes nothing from the fearful bitterness of affliction, nor does it heal the mutilation of the soul. but we know quite certainly that God's love for us is the very substance of this bitterness and this mutilation."
-simone weil

[via negativa...]
...is a tradition in Christian spirituality that rejects all analogies of God as ultimately inadequate: G-d is greater than any language we might ever use to speak of YHWH.

vulnerably only a few porous, lean images are used in via negativa—paradoxically to challenge the very use of grasping or making sense of:
desert. mountain. cloud.
these images question the overconfidence in words that commonly characterizes theology and simultaneously suggests the deepest, virtually indescribable human experiences of pain and joy.

the desert landscape in the chama river canyon is not noticeably easy for human habitat—it’s far from cozy. there are bare rock faces larger than the eiffel tower, purposely and delicately set above us. the life blood of mother earth seems to have risen to the surface, as the sheer cliffs are cut into by biting winds, dug into by scarce precipitation, and threatened by erosion at every moment. they are not in control of their form, shape, longevity or direction.

plants must fight for roots to find ground soft enough to hold steady their trunks and branches. there is little, if no assurance of nurture or comfort, or welcoming. at any moment the sleeping G-d might wake and we will all be blown to smithereens.

dust we are and to dust we shall return.

the emptiness is vast. hazard from winter’s last blizzard is as real as the small, sputtering gas stove which warms our toes through the eve. it is not tame. nothing here explains why planes fall out of the sky and permanently scar the faces of young girls. there is no reason in these mountains why women are raped or drug addiction continues through generations upon generation. the cactus and sand don't put broken hearts back together again. and the craggy cliffs are unable to change capitalism, the military-industrial-complex or famine.

all is wild, all is silent.
[divine mercy must suffice]

and yet this place is immeasurably important for all that is not here--precisely because of the bareness, isolation, the lacking of answers and raw exposure.

strangely, healing silently begins to seep in. exactly into the cracks of this fierce desert landscape... here in this very landscape is life.

"the whole valley is flooded with moonlight and i can count the southern hills beyond the water tank, and almost number the trees of the forest to the north. now the huge chorus of living beings rises up out of the world beneath my feet: life singing in the water courses, throbbing in the creeks and the fields and the trees, choirs of millions and millions of jumping and flying and creeping things. and far above me the cool sky opens upon the frozen distance of the stars."
-thomas merton

[ __________ ]

reading: the solace of fierce landscapes by belden lane; and
holy the firm by annie dillard
planning for: pilgrimage to the monastery of christ in the desert
departing: sunday, the 29th of march for a week

It is hard to have hope
It is harder as you grow old
For hope does not depend on feeling good
And there is the dream of loneliness at absolute midnight
You also have withdrawn the leaf and the present reality of the future
But surely will surprise us
And hope is harder when it cannot come by prediction any more than wishing

But stop dithering
The young ask the old to hope
What do you tell them?
Tell them at least what you say to yourself
Because we have not made our lives to fit our places,
The forests are ruined
The fields eroded
The streams polluted
The mountains overturned

Hope then to belong to your place
By your own knowledge of what it is that no other place is
And by your caring for it as you care for no other place
This place that you belong to though you do not own it
For it is from the beginning and will be to the end
Belong to your place by knowledge of others
Who are your neighbors in it
The old man sick and poor
Who comes like a heron to fish in the creek
And the heron who man-like fishes
For the fish in the creek
And the birds who sing in the trees
In the silence of the fisherman and the heron
And the trees that keep the land they stand upon
As we too must keep it or die.

This knowledge cannot be taken from you by power or by wealth
It will stop your ears to the powerful when they ask for your faith
And to the wealthy when they ask for your land and your work
Answer with knowledge for the others who are here
And of how to be here with them
By this knowledge make the sense you need to make
By it stand in the dignity of good sense whatever may follow
Speak to your fellow humans as your place has taught you to speak
As it has spoken to you
Speak its dialect as your old compatriots spoke it
Before they had heard a radio
Speak publicly what cannot be taught or learned in public
Listen privately and silently to the voices that rise up
From the pages of books and your own heart
Be still and listen to the voices that belong
To the stream banks and the trees and the open fields.

There are songs and sayings that belong to this place
By which it speaks for itself and no other
Found your hope then on the ground under your feet
Your hope of heaven, let it rest on the ground underfoot
Be lighted by the light that falls freely upon it
After the darkness of the nights
And the darkness of our ignorance and madness

Let it be lighted also by the light that is within you
Which is the light of the imagination
By it you see the likeness of people in other places
To yourself in your place
It lights invariably the need for care toward other people
Other creatures in other places
As you would ask them to care for your place and you
No place, at last, is better than the world
The world is no better than its places
Its places, at last, are no better than their people
When the people have made dark the light within them
The world darkens.

:: an untitled sabbath poem :: by w. berry

[bright sadness]

the eastern orthodox folk speak of lent in terms of a “bright sadness.” these wise souls are able to articulate the tension of the major chord of hope and the minor chord of sorrow which punctuate these forty days.

i’m one who needs “elpizo” [“Hope” in greek] inked into my wrist to remind me of the tangible, palatable work Hope, herself, has done in re-membering me. the days can become quite dark and despairing with a confluence of content. it’s in this heavy place that lent has found me. i feel like a birch tree: raw, exposed, layers pulled back just to see what lies beneath.

this year, in this context, it’s seemed urgently necessary to slow my steps and to be still. much being unearthed, disturbed, and moved... my friend m. says that these things are “for life / to life being different / for life changing, with life-gifts yet to be seen.” it is taking quite a bit of intentionality to find the brightness the eastern orthodox, and m. speak of.

thus far, these are the two coppers of brightness i’ve stumbled upon:

one.
sitting with our legs criss-crossed like applesauce on the wooden floor of ballet Austin’s main practice room. floor-to-ceiling windows face onto the dark cold of 3rd street as familiar face and familiar face line up to join us inside. free fat tire and coffee for all, as we squeeze in to make a bit more room for no one to be left out.

balmorhea’s feet begin to tap, finding the steady beat for the opening notes of ::all is wild, all is silent:: and i find myself bowing my head in hopeful expectation. a baby grand piano, the upright bass, banjo, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, violin, cello, wordless vocals, and hand claps layer into a complex unity of differing parts. this new album, shared with us live for a full hour, feels like it’s plucked from a deep, seldom spoken of place inside all of us--painfully vulnerable, robust in some moments and contemplative in others, bold in joy, raw in remembrance and haunting with it’s life-giving quality. stirring, encouraging, holding space for light.

two.
begun with a hastily scrawled note on a white-washed door letting us know we’d entered the land of the irish--and might we all kindly kick off our shoes before sharing a pint. a mandolin, two guitars, a penny whistle and a tambourine set the stage. babe in shamrock-laden tights, siblings grinning fiercely in suspenders and newsboy caps, revelry and shouts of “top of the eve to you.”

there were witty limericks about the economy, the fine hospitality we were experiencing, and outright silliness proclaimed from the top of the kitchen stool. soda bread which filled our bellies, and songs from the old country of dead sailors and the love of irish lads & lasses. laughter abounding. the simple, small cottage house filled to the brim with an epic celebration of good cheer, guinness beer, kindly introductions, and satisfying conversations.

with the midnight hour upon us, the music turned to dancedance tunes as the lights dimmed and those with more energy than i moved their bodies in the most incredible ways. the more low-key of us scattered to the back porch for secrets to be shared, a bit of teasing of our humanness, and a genuine joy of sharing each other's company. though the clock was stricking two in the dark, cold morn as we went our ways back to our beds, it all felt quite bright, bright indeed.

[lenten days: all is wild, all is silent]

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
-w. berry

reading: the gardener's year by karel capek
listening to: all is wild, all is silent by balmorhea
building: an end table for my bedroom, out of antique cabinet doors

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the budand the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which growshigher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

-ee cummings

[Wounded Healers Are We All]
Epiphany 6B :: February 15th, 2009

The Lord be with you
R: And also with you

Beginning last summer, the humble reality has been Mosaic's to be joined by a community of folks who call the underneath of 2222’s overpass home. Bob and John were the first to come through our doors—lending a hand to lay tile work in the bathroom and helping re-build Kim’s home, genuinely intrigued by this group of us who met in a re-modeled pharmacy once a week for this thing called liturgy.

There are so many reasons why “they” are different than “us.” Often our culture, and our theologies, tell us that “we” should be ‘ministering’ to “them,” but thankfully and stubbornly this just isn’t the way of thinking any of us are on board with. We are family—all of us both separate and same, isolated and yet connected to one another as we integrate, shift, and grow into this Body, learning much of what and how and why.

During Mosaic’s potluck liturgy in September, my friend and I happened to be here a bit early—helping to fill water jugs and such. Bob and John came through the doors with some new friends, and one of the gentlemen shyly yet directly asked my friend if he could please fill his plate. “Yes, yes,” he assured her—“we plan on staying for the service… Ma’am, I’m just really hungry.”

“Of course!” my friend replied, “It doesn’t matter if you stay, that’s what we’re doing here tonight—eating together. If you are hungry, please go, fill your plate.”

As more and more folks were coming in and taking seats, the gentleman boldly crossed in front of us all, over to the potluck table by the children’s room and took a plate. I’ve never seen a plastic plate filled a good two or three inches over the brim—but his was, he was hungry, and so he took what his belly craved.

In his focus, he crossed back in front of all of us—spread out on blankets in the middle of the room. He paused, back turned to over a hundred of us, to look at this strange wooden table that held a large, warm loaf of French bread, and some small cups of purple liquid.

The liturgy itself was just begun, so Nicolette was finishing the welcome and Justin and B. Sterling were playing music. The children were fumbling around on the blankets, and all of us were seated watching, waiting…

And then he, taking one sniff at what the cups held, smiled wide, tore off a chunk of bread, and took a cup of grape juice and went to sit down.

My breathe caught in my throat, as I desperately hoped that no one would stop this man’s honest response. No, no, it wasn’t officially the time for communion—but yet it was. I glanced to Don and Sam, and saw them mouth to each other, “Yes, I really think Jesus would have been cool with all this.”

Today’s Gospel reading comes from the book of Luke, chapter one, verse forty:

A Leper came to [Jesus] begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you
choose, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand
and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean.”
Immediately
the leprosy left him, and he was made clean.

Leviticus clearly states the fate of the leper. “The person who has the leprous disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head be disheveled; and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, Unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease; He is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.” [Leviticus 13:45-46] These instructions make lepers the ultimate outsiders. They are symbols of those whom no on can help, of those without hope. A leper who was left alone to face the deteriorating future must have experienced excruciating isolation—as with a growing awareness that no one cares, the Rabbinic tradition considered the leper as dead.

This inner world of the leper is revealed in his request. He has heard of Jesus’ power to heal. More importantly, he has heard that Jesus cares about those whom no one else cares about. He includes the excluded. This reputation of Jesus emboldens the leper to come forward. He does not keep his distance. His faith is that Jesus has the power to make him clean. His hesitancy is that Jesus might be disposed to do it. The leper’s self-image is that he is beyond human and divine concern. His unclean woundedness means that God and people remove themselves from him. However, Jesus’ inner compassion for this isolated human being moves him to reach out and touch him, welcoming him back into the circle of the human.

Mark’s gospel continues at verse forty-three:

After sternly warning him [Jesus] sent him away at once, saying to him, “See
that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer
for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to
them.”

But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to
spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed
out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.

Here ends the Gospel reading.

Jesus gave the leper what he requested, healing his wounds. The leper does not return the favor. Jesus’ compassionate outstretch was intended, at least in part, to restore the leper to community. So Jesus commands him to show himself to the priests and make ritual offerings. This is the way back into the community. The story does not tell us whether he obeys this command. But it does tell us he disobeys the command to say nothing to anyone.

The cleansed leper tells everyone everything. The ironic result is that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly. Is the reason that Jesus is now ceremonially unclean and wounded? Having touched the leper he falls under the Leviticus sentence of exclusion. The cleansed leper can now enter the town, but the one who cleansed him must keep his distance. This is the social consequence of the cleansed leper’s “freely proclaiming it.” But whether Jesus is in the town or country, people find him. What he is saying, doing, and being are what people want to hear, see and be present with. By Jesus wounds, all are being made into wounded healers.


Why do I recount the moment in our communities’ story of Bob, John, and how they and their friends are changing us here at Mosaic? I think that what we saw highlighted that day in September was not only economic and social barriers but so many different kinds of barriers that separate us as human beings--fear, mistrust, misunderstanding, anger, loneliness, the inability to communicate with each other, even with those we love most. In so many ways, we move through our lives like lepers, the wounded ones, the untouchable ones, afraid to touch other people’s lives and let our lives be touched by other people, ashamed of our uncleanness, suspicious of other people.

And when one from our midst, who is chronically homeless, chose to come in these doors and risk to partake, we saw that no one is untouchable, not even ourselves. His wounds became our wounds, joined to Jesus’ wounds. Henri Nouwen in his book The Wounded Healer writes,

“A Christian community is therefore a healing community not because wounds are cured and pains are alleviated, but because wounds and pains become openings or occasions for a new vision. Mutual confession then becomes a deepening of hope, and sharing weakness becomes a reminder to one and all of the coming strength.” [94]

“Even when we know that we are called to be wounded healers, it is still very difficult to acknowledge that healing has to take place today. Because we are living in days when our wounds have become all too visible. Our loneliness and isolation has become so much a part of our daily experience, that we cry out for a Liberator who will take us away from our misery and bring us justice and peace.

To announce, however, that the Liberator is sitting among the poor and that the wounds are signs of hope and that today is the day of liberation, is a step very few can take. But this is exactly the announcement of the wounded healer: “The master is coming—not tomorrow, but today,
not next year, but this year,
not after all our misery is passed, but in the middle of it,
not in another place but right here where we are standing. [Nouwen, 95]”

Our gathering together, is not called Christian because it is permeated with optimism against all the odds of life, but because it is grounded in the historic Christ-event which is understood as the definitive breach in the deterministic chain of human trial and error, and as a dramatic affirmation that there is light on the other side of darkness.

Christian community makes visible the first rays of light of the coming Messiah, as we bear witness to the living truth that the wound, which causes us to suffer now, will be revealed to us later as the place where God intimated his new creation.

Like lepers, we are cleansed by the love of God working among us and within us. It is in an intentional commitment to one another of gathering to wrestle, to weep, to embark on common searches, shared risks, and sharing the Eucharistic table that we, who are wounded and unclean, are re-membered to Christ himself, to be bread crumbs leading back to this table—where we are all welcomed by Christ’s proclamation, “I do choose. Be made clean.”



[footnote: along with nouwen, the writtings of fredrick buechner and john [jack] shea heavily influenced my thinking]

[to ireland, for the morn]

last eve, while freezing rain was decorating the bare trees, and icing in my car, it seemed like a good time to do some baking and warm up our casita.

a dear family of friends treasure their irish roots, and introduced me to the deliciousness that is irish soda bread—the “spotted dog” variety. the bread is quite rustic and hearty with a base of whole wheat flour and rolled oats, studded with plump raisins for a bit of sweetness. it is the perfect compliment for brisk mornings and a cup of black coffee or irish breakfast tea. to ireland we go!


irish soda bread :: spotted dog variety
2 ½ cups whole wheat flour
½ cup oats
1 cup unbleached white flour
1/3 cup sugar
1 ½ tsp baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 ½ ish cup buttermilk
1 cup raisins, pecans or a combo of both

1. combine all dry ingredients into a large bowl. mix thoroughly.
2. stir in raisins or pecans
3. add buttermilk and stir with a wooden spoon until the flour sticks together. DO NOT KNEAD
4. lightly press the mixture into bottom of bowl.
5. flip bowl and place onto greased cookie sheet
6. bake 55-60 minutes at 350F

yum. perhaps i’ll begin speaking with a bit of brogue and doing a jig.

[gritty]


The Wire is rocking my world. The creator, writer, producer David Simon hoped to portray the epic downfall of American society set in urban Baltimore—how we live together, how institutions affect individuals “and how ... whether you're a cop, a longshoreman, a drug dealer, a politician, a judge [or] lawyer, you are ultimately compromised and must contend with whatever institution you've committed to.”

A large portion of the actors are natives from Baltimore, the show never won any huge awards, and nothing is ever black-and-white: complex humanity in its rawest form. The police are motivated not by a desire to protect and serve, but oftentimes by intellectual vanity… And the criminals are not simply motivated by profit or a desire to harm others, but are trapped in systemic cycles and lack of options. But and even still, the show does not shy away from portraying the horrific effects of all sides’ actions.

Each of The Wire’s five seasons uses surveillance and wiretap technologies to provide the police access to the underground activity, metaphorically so does the show as a whole grant viewer’s access to this gritty thread of American life.

Season One centers on a close-up of the interactions between the Baltimore Police Department and a drug dealing organization. Season Two moves to the ports, and looks into the life of blue-collar longshoremen, and the death of the capitalistic dream of hard work = success. Season Three reflects “on the nature of reform and reformers, and whether there is any possibility that political processes, long calcified, can mitigate against the forces currently arrayed against individuals." Season Four moves into the porous educational system—both in the formal classroom and the strong informal lessons learned on the street. Season Five wraps up with a focus on the media and the deep ties between media consumption and a quest for profit.

Admittedly The Wire is quite cynical about institutions and unrelentingly empathic with the human characters therein, but that’s my personal bias, too. I am addicted to it’s intensity as I’m forced to examine my participation in all the intersections of politics, working class needs, poverty, informal economies, racism, and law enforcement here in my home of Austin. I just watched all of season one in six days, and most decidedly need a bit of space to rest my brain. While I’m glad the show strays from cheap victories or wrapping up things in a neat package, the dire lack of hope leaves me feeling quite raw and exposed.

Let me know if you’re up for beginning season two with me…maybe in a week or two, that is.

"my prayer is for lightheartedness. and for things to be lighthearted about. i ask the same for you." -dearing davis

since we're past the deep midwinter, i can finally appreciate sister winter's greyish light...with crystal blue skies, the sun warm enough to shed a layer and the bare pecan branches reaching heavenward.

i am a firm believer in the value of prone yoga [thanks anne lamott]. practiced by laying in the soccer field with a friend and her playful pup-pup... or walking five minutes down the road to the park on your lunch break, just to swing... or up & lying down in the middle of your office floor because the computer is too unrelentingly impersonal and mechanical some days.

home is...

...a simple text saying, "parcel on your doorstep"...

...a dear friend's car unexpectedly in your driveway, when you arrive home at 5:32pm on a friday....

...bicycling down to the farmer's market earlyearly on saturday morns, buying vegetables and fruits from familiar faces and hands...

...and driving an hour out of the city, to breathe the country air, romp around with dear one's on forrest trails and humbly stand beneath pine trees who are as tall as mythological giants.

[we are the ones we’ve been waiting for:
as my friend t.g.h. said, "si, se hell yeah!"]

Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each others'
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.

All about us is noise. All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem, darning
a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky;
A teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin."

We encounter each other in words,
words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed;
words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark
the will of someone and then others who said,
"I need to see what's on the other side;

I know there's something better down the road."
We need to find a place where we are safe;
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,

picked the cotton and the lettuce, built
brick by brick the glittering edifices
they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign;
The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by "Love thy neighbor as thy self."
Others by first do no harm, or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national.
Love that casts a widening pool of light.
Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air,
anything can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp.

praise song for walking forward in that light.

praise song for the day by Elizabeth Alexander
presented at President Obama's Inauguration
January 20th, 2009

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

Question from The Times to Mrs. Alexander:
How did it feel to be asked by Obama to play such an important role in the Inauguration?

A: Overwhelming, humbling, joyful. So many of my poet friends and I were hoping that he would decide to have a poem at the Inaugural, because we felt that it would be a signal of his own evident value of the possibilities of language. What we have is his understanding that the arts do have a place in day-to-day life, that poetry can still us — that is, let us pause for a moment and, as we contemplate that careful, careful language, hopefully see situations anew, from a different angle. That's so much of what art and poetry offer. I think that he is showing that moments of pause and contemplation in the midst of grand occasion and everyday life are necessary.

[peaceful potentiality]

The word discernment keeps coming up in my mind & heart these last few days. I pulled some of the theology books off my shelf that we read at Valpo-- one on pastoral care & counseling, one on the compassionate pastor, and a few memoirs of pastor's lives. This quote really jumped out at me, from an Episcopal priest, Carr Holland,

"Often we are afraid to ask for what we want or desire, but the way of discernment is to lay out our desire and then come back to it with the Word of God, openness, seeking the wisdom of examination and prayer. Is this a call? Is there a deeper call? Is Jesus' reign foreshadowed here? ... [we must] be very careful of slopiness, sentimentality, or jumping to conclusions out of impatience or fear."

There are many questions that I have let lay to the side for a long while, and it seems this might be an opportunity to lay them before the Lord, joined with others in this community, to discern. Let us gather to pray, listen, wait, and ask. I must acknowledge my roots & heritage and not simply dismiss anatomy. It shall probably do me well, do us well, to intentionally examine women's ordination--historically, biblically, and theologically.

mmm.

[glimpses dear]

back in the autumn my middle brother & i went to my most favorite event in Austin: the East.Austin.Studio.Tour. literally two hundred artists open up their homes and studios for a weekend of free viewing of the work of their hands. such delightful imagination and inspiration to meander the streets on our bicycles. two friends of mine set up a secret studio in this back alley. it was a crisp, cloudy day yet j. brought out her paints and we all just began to paint this part of their fence. paintpaintpaint. create beauty. freedom, indeed.

december first brought a new job, where after three days of training i was sitting at the same table as Mexico's Secretary of Health discussing the creation of a border health clinic that my co-worker & i would coordinate. egads! professional growth indeed. what is an m.o.u., again?

christmas was painful. all three of us kids returned to the bayou city to spend time with our parents, who's divorce is now official. the pull of blood runs deep, inspite of addictions and trauma. i cooked a simple meal of stuffed acorn squash and asparagus... it seemed remarkable to snap a photo of this table, lighten our darkness.

the new year, new job brought our annual staff retreat. car-pooling with co-workers out to the lost pines resort was the plan, and bella [the jetta] was a mess. i made the mistake of telling the folks at the carwash that i'd never been to one before, and 3.5 hours later i walked away with a fully detailed car that i only paid $20 for. [i really think the gentleman at the counter wanted a date. opps]

a small bouquet i created from the organic treasures i gathered from the woods around bastrop. it now sits alongside some curling willow in the reading nook of my room.

lastly, one of the migrant farmworking communities i work with sent me a tin ladden with biscochos [which are delicious mexican holiday cookies]. she calls me "fina ambar lainey": "fine, lovely amber lainey..." which is incredibly hilarious to me, because i have no idea how she learned my middle name! this is the tin, almost empty, after two full days of grazing on it's goodness.

[RootsHome, etc.]
reflecting homiletically on 2008
:: shared jan. 4th with mosaic austin as part of the new year's liturgy

When 2008 began I was living and working in a homeless shelter for immigrant women and their children in east Austin. My days were filled with offering hospitality, case management, and services to folks recently released from immigration detention centers.

After two years of working at Casa Marianella, and intentionally choosing to live below the poverty line, I needed a rest and hoped to learn a more sustainable lifestyle that balanced the values I hold dear with a healthy boundary between work and play. So I applied and was invited to the Peace Corps to live in Ethiopia for 27 months. My departure date was November 4th, 2008.

But as you can see, it’s January and I’m still here.

I don’t really remember how I stumbled into Mosaic last April. It was an inkling and an intuitiveness that didn't make much sense.

I had just watched my addicted parents decide to officially divorce on Valentine’s Day. And my youngest brother was four months into his recovery from cocaine. I felt incredibly raw. But somehow, strange faces soon became familiar ones and new friends slowly became close ones.

Simply enough, it began with rising at 6am to join the small and sometimes faithful group of us that pray the Lauds every Friday morning. Seth invited me to join the book club on Simone Weil, and Wednesday evenings were thus spent poured over a book with these new friends. It suited me well.

A meal of vegetables garnished with herbs from their garden out back was shared in the restored hard-wood floored house of Tim & Dee Brosnan. Dee and I figured out we were musical soul mates and we sat there, all three of us wrestling through what it means to love the Lord and love our neighbors as ourselves. I felt genuinely inspired and hopeful to listen to their stories of walking humbly through the [marginalized, multi-cultural] St. John’s neighborhood, acting justly, loving mercy, and playing all the way.

During the early days of summer I started sketching and dreaming through the lens of roots—realizing that I wasn’t quite ready to leave Austin yet. It felt like such a brokenness of our generation of mid-twenty/thirty-year-olds how quickly we up and leave our communities, homes, and cities for reasons of work, school or a whim that elsewhere might satisfy more than here. All these motivations are not ignoble reasons in and of themselves… but goodness, at what cost do they come?

For once, I, who love foreign lands, decided to intentionally stay and let these roots deepen and spread organically. I realized Austin had become a grown-up home, and that it was not less noble to stay and love and be loved by the community here… then to go to Africa.

Re-charting the course was bruisingly difficult. There were “no-go’s” on many fronts, trying once more, being laid off, and many hard questions asked. My car broke down three times, and I had to wonder if that was a sign that I’d be better off in Ethiopia, then Austin.

Yet, in the form of late night games of Mexican Train Dominoes at the Coleto Street house, bicycle gang rides, and night swims in Barton Springs, grace upon grace was being poured out onto my feeble hands, feet and into my heart.

Early autumn brought the theme of “At the Table” focusing on the harvest, the host, and the hungry. A few of you came over to my house, as a long held dream of mine was realized—digging, tending, and eating from an urban organic garden. And ever so aptly Meredith & Jeremiah graciously opened their home and their table to our dinner group. We met on Tuesday evenings, and I sat transfixed--completely humbled and thankful to be in such company: surrounded by four couples and Kayti, who all were asking similar questions of justice, hospitality, simplicity, and Jesus in the midst. Having traveled the globe, everyone had roots and homes here: commitment to the people, space, and place of Mosaic Austin. We were imperfect and messy—but of our own doing and choosing we bore physical witness to the literal work required in building community and putting roots down.

And not just was this a community and home that I was finding myself in, but my brothers, too, were welcomed into our dinner group—as my youngest brother celebrated a year of sobriety on December 12th, while my middle brother decided to enlist in the United States Marines corps and shipped out this afternoon at 2pm.

Dorothy Day writes, “[And] the final word is love. At times it has been, in the words of Father Zossima, a harsh & dreadful thing, and our very faith in love has been tried through the fire.

We cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love we must know each other. We know Him in the breaking of the bread, and we know each other in the breaking of the bread, and we are not alone any more. Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust, where there is companionship.

We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.”

I’ve never had a home before—a safe, healthy, non-toxic, forgiving, honest place, space and people to continually return to, be grounded be, and journey with. Blessedly I’ve been apart of some phenomenal communities through the years, that have held me in the folds of love. But I think there’s a difference between a community and a home. Rawly and honestly, you all here at Mosaic are a large portion of what is making Austin my home.

In hopeful glances to 2009, I am thankful for the rhythmic, coherent sort of stability that a home brings-- and love, and how each of these informs the other. I’ve never articulated a commitment—either internally or verbally—to a community before. And it feels a bit radical for a 25-year-old to say, that I want to stay here… stay here with Mosaic Austin for a very long while. But I do. So, hello.

[perhaps the most radical thing you can do is to stay home]

listening to: bon iver
reading: still soaking in the art of the commonplace by wendell berry
sipping on: Celestial Seasonings Bengal Spice Tea, another fine tea to pickup at the grocery

fireworks are launched up into the night's sky all around me, like a snowglobe of sorts. shouts of glee are coming from the neighbors. my room-mates hurried off on their bicycles to ring in the new year with a bit more mayhem then i'm up for-- so as 2008 is put to rest, i'm curled up with a cup of hot tea and the words of mr. berry.

never really been one to reflect on the cycle of the chronological year, but as sam's asked me to speak on sunday it's forced a good thing on me. what does it look like for a community of faith to offer last rites for the old year, and greet the new one with welcome, hope, faith and joy? i don't really know any of those answers... but a thread of 2008 was learning that perhaps the most radical for me to do is to make a home, put roots down, and stay here.

below is an article that my dear sister kati sent me a while back that pulls together some of these threads-- aptly tying in the [forced] migration of our southern brothers & sisters, a critique of western vapid and rampant consumptionism, and offers a bit of hopeful prophetic imagination for how things might be.

tally-ho to two thousand and nine!


The Most Radical Thing You Can Do:
Staying home as a necessity and a right
by Rebecca Solnit

LONG AGO the poet and bioregionalist Gary Snyder said, “The most radical thing you can do is stay home,” a phrase that has itself stayed with me for the many years since I first heard it. Some or all of its meaning was present then, in the bioregional 1970s, when going back to the land and consuming less was how the task was framed. The task has only become more urgent as climate change in particular underscores that we need to consume a lot less. It’s curious, in the chaos of conversations about what we ought to do to save the world, how seldom sheer modesty comes up—living smaller, staying closer, having less—especially for us in the ranks of the privileged. Not just having a fuel-efficient car, but maybe leaving it parked and taking the bus, or living a lot closer to work in the first place, or not having a car at all. A third of carbon-dioxide emissions nationwide are from the restless movements of goods and people.

We are going to have to stay home a lot more in the future. For us that’s about giving things up. But the situation looks quite different from the other side of all our divides. The indigenous central Mexicans who are driven by poverty to migrate have begun to insist that among the human rights that matter is the right to stay home. So reports David Bacon, who through photographs and words has become one of the great chroniclers of the plight of migrant labor in our time. “Today the right to travel to seek work is a matter of survival,” he writes. “But this June in Juxtlahuaca, in the heart of Oaxaca’s Mixteca region, dozens of farmers left their fields, and women weavers their looms, to talk about another right, the right to stay home. . . . In Spanish, Mixteco, and Triqui, people repeated one phrase over and over: the derecho de no migrar—the right to not migrate. Asserting this right challenges not just inequality and exploitation facing migrants, but the very reasons why people have to migrate to begin with.” Seldom mentioned in all the furor over undocumented immigrants in this country is the fact that most of these indigenous and mestizo people would be quite happy not to emigrate if they could earn a decent living at home; many of them are just working until they earn enough to lay the foundations for a decent life in their place of origin, or to support the rest of a family that remains behind.

From outer space, the privileged of this world must look like ants in an anthill that’s been stirred with a stick: everyone constantly rushing around in cars and planes for work and pleasure, for meetings, jobs, conferences, vacations, and more. This is bad for the planet, but it’s not so good for us either. Most of the people I know regard with bemusement or even chagrin the harried, scattered lives they lead. Last summer I found myself having the same conversation with many different people, about our craving for a life with daily rites; with a sense of time like a well-appointed landscape with its landmarks and harmonies; and with a sense of measure and proportion, as opposed to a formless and unending scramble to go places and get things and do more. I think of my mother’s lower-middle-class childhood vacations, which consisted of going to a lake somewhere not far from Queens and sitting still for a few weeks—a lot different from jetting off to heli-ski in the great unknown and all the other models of hectic and exotic travel urged upon us now.

For the privileged, the pleasure of staying home means being reunited with, or finally getting to know, or finally settling down to make the beloved place that home can and should be, and it means getting out of the limbo of nowheres that transnational corporate products and their natural habitats—malls, chains, airports, asphalt wastelands—occupy. It means reclaiming home as a rhythmic, coherent kind of time. Which seems to be what Bacon’s Oaxacans want as well, although their version of being uprooted and out of place is much grimmer than ours.

At some point last summer I started to feel as if the future had arrived, the future I’ve always expected, the one where conventional expectations start to crack and fall apart—kind of like arctic ice nowadays, maybe—and we rush toward an uncertain, unstable world. Of course the old vision of the future was of all hell breaking loose, but what’s breaking loose now is a strange mix of blessings and hardships. Petroleum prices have begun doing what climate-change alarms haven’t: pushing Americans to alter their habits. For people in the Northeast who heat with oil, the crisis had already arrived a few years back, but for a lot of Americans across the country, it wasn’t until filling up the tank cost three times as much as it had less than a decade ago that all the rushing around began to seem questionable, unaffordable, and maybe unnecessary. Petroleum consumption actually went down 4 percent in the first quarter of the year, and miles driven nationally also declined for the first time in decades. These were small things in themselves, but they are a sign of big changes coming. The strange postwar bubble of affluence with its frenzy of building, destroying, shipping, and traveling seems to be deflating at last. The price of petroleum even put a dent in globalization; a piece headlined “Shipping Costs Start to Crimp Globalization” in the New York Times mentioned several manufacturers who decided that cheaper labor no longer outweighed long-distance shipping rates. The localized world, the one we need to embrace to survive, seems to be on the horizon.

But a localized world must address the unwilling and exploited emigrés as well as the joy riders and their gratuitously mobile goods. For the Oaxacans, the right to stay home will involve social and economic change in Mexico. Other factors pushing them to migrate come from our side of the border, though—notably the cheap corn emigrating south to bankrupt farm families and communities. The changing petroleum economy could reduce the economic advantage to midwestern corporate farmers growing corn and maybe make shipping it more expensive too. What’s really needed, of course, is a change of the policy that makes Mexico a dumping ground for this stuff, whether that means canceling NAFTA or some other insurrection against “free trade.” Another thing rarely mentioned in the conversations about immigration is what American agriculture would look like without below-minimum-wage immigrant workers, because we have gotten used to food whose cheapness comes in part from appalling labor conditions. It is because we have broken out of the frame of our own civility that undocumented immigrants are forced out of theirs.

Will the world reorganize for the better? Will Oaxaca’s farmers get to stay home and practice their traditional agriculture and culture? Will we stay home and grow more of our own food with dignity, humanity, a little sweat off our own brows, and far fewer container ships and refrigerated trucks zooming across the planet? Will we recover a more stately, settled, secure way of living as the logic of ricocheting like free electrons withers in the shifting climate? Some of these changes must come out of the necessity to reduce carbon emissions, the unaffordability of endlessly moving people and things around. But some of it will have to come by choice. To choose it we will have to desire it—desire to stay home, own less, do less getting and spending, to see a richness that lies not in goods and powers but in the depth of connections. The Oaxacans are ahead of us in this regard. They know what is gained by staying home, and most of them have deeper roots in home to begin with. And they know what to do outside the global economy, how to return to a local realm that is extraordinarily rich in food and agriculture and culture.

The word radical comes from the Latin word for root. Perhaps the most radical thing you can do in our time is to start turning over the soil, loosening it up for the crops to settle in, and then stay home to tend them.

published in the Nov/Dec 2008 issues of Orion Magazine: http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/3628/

[shipwrecked at the stable door]

we live in a world where hope is dangerous
and where waiting is painful

where too many pregnancies end with stillbirth
and every promise seems fated with despair.

we know it’s better to have no hope than false hope,
so this Christmas, God,
may we ask of you nothing you cannot do:

give us courage to wait in the darkest places,
and hold faith for us that love might be born there again.

not all anticipation is hopeful,
and not all waiting is good;
so we pray for those for whom this season brings only despair.

we pray with those divorced, widowed, and orphaned who long
for a community
for a shared meal
for a phone call from a loved one that never comes:

God of the waiting, turn anxiety into peace.

we pray with those we know who long
for a diagnosis and healing
for death
for life:

God of the waiting, turn fear into joy.

we pray with those in the world who long
for bombs to stop
for gunfire to cease
for wars to end:

God of the waiting, turn hatred into peace.

we pray with all who long
for arguments to be stilled
for a new way to be made clear
for justice to be made real:

God of the waiting, turn dread into love.

and we pray for those of us who no longer wait,
because our dreams have been shredded by the depression, addiction, betrayal and poverty that surround us,
hopes lying crumpled under the weight of systems and structures,
and our courage has been mocked by the reality of life:

God of the waiting, can you wait for us?
in this Christmas, turn our despair into hope.
amen.

the story tells us
that it’s those who wait in the world’s shadows
who are the first to know the story of the Christ-child
born into darkness,
bringing great light.

so leave here today-
you who know shadows
and trust the promise of light -
to be carriers of the rumor of peace
and the truth of love.

pray for the justice another is waiting for,
and speak of the hope another needs to breathe.

and may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ
the love of God
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit
be with us all

amen.

[adapted from this community, for the things present this christmas day]