late have i loved you
1. gungor on repeat. sometimes you hear a band and it sounds like what you imagine heaven could be, sets arteries on fire. especially after a church conference full of hope and possibility. i love the discovery that others are wrestling with questions and movement and wondering how to love more, how to be the church better. and i love that these people are intergenerational. church is so poetic sometimes with the way we talk across boundaries, how wisdom arches across the greatest of divides. something that seemed to be said over and over again is that we need more honesty and communication. we all have the hunger. now it’s a question of moving into it and filling each other with the good stuff. can’t open a door until you unlock your own.
this is a spoken word poem by derrick brown, “church of the broken axe handle.” subtract the drinking part. but listen to this. this is what i think god desires for us. can we open our arms like this. can we be a house for the broken. can we let mercy toll through our electric confession like this. i feel for derrick, because you can hear his cynicism towards church. but i have hope. god makes all things new, even the church.
2. what is beautiful? having a home. the dog eating teal playdoh off the floor. the mustard seed’s new housing unit slowly emerging from dreams into the air. the poets in my group fleshing out their words and coming so faithfully to every workshop. i am astounded by their capacity for wit and for feeling. i’m trying to get in contact with people for a reading. i can’t wait. i want this to happen.
3. quietness, even when fighting tears. solitude and that slow simmer of the moon and the night, a sliver of god. i write stories. my grandparents are fighters, they are warriers of history with one foot on the ground and a hand in the sky, they have given everything to keep the family tree growing through storms. i write stories to get to know them better. i try to hear them on the page.
4. i see more and more that jesus is so, so alive. i haven’t ever really truly doubted this. but i think he is closer than ever. no, i don’t think he is closer. maybe he is warmer, maybe his tune is more familiar to my ears. i remember times of vulnerability a few years ago with friends and how we split open our hearts to each other. we cried and prayed in the dark, the pressing intimacy of that. i think now of worship in terms of landscape. i look everywhere. i don’t always find but i look.
5. the old becoming new, like gungor singing st. augustine’s prayer. or reading about w.h. auden and his “vision of agape” when he was sitting with fellow schoolteachers in june 1933. he said that he suddenly realized he loved them for themselves, that “their existence had infinite value for him.” isn’t that beautiful? i love that. i often have crushes on dead poets.
