come with me to the dangerous places?

The beloved series, Conversations with Ourselves, shall return next Thursday. Today, something else to share. A week ago, I took a much-needed break from the Internet and the politics of the blogging community.

I spent the time in silence, reading the words of other writers with whom my soul finds nourishment.

I walked the longer paths on my way home, baked more bread than I normally do each week, and when I passed strangers on the path, I offered them halves of these extra loaves. When they would ask why, I'd shrug slightly and say something about it being an idea that flitted by my mind in prayer that morning.

(Is it miraculous that no one pushed me to explain more than that? I think so, in the ordinary sense of miracles.)

I prayed about this space, what it should look like in the days to come, the vision I am trying to build.

I rested, hours on end, in the words of beloved Sarah Bessey, that creating is the most significant thing we do.

I turned those words over in my petitions and asked God what it was supposed to look like, lived out, in this digital garden of hopes and wonders.

It's All Saints Day. The sun splits the heavens midmorning and I taste the apple crisp of the wind. Walking to the grocer---do I even dare try and explain that this is a kind of sacrament to me, part of the preparation of holy work?---I turn over the wondering again: what is this to be? What is it that needs saying?

November is going to be an experiment. I am going to try out two mingling ideas.

The first: for the whole of this month, I shall not write a post in negative reaction to anyone or anything.

Bear with me, here, as the definition of negative reaction can be difficult to discern sometimes. The general hope is that what is presented in this space shall be devoted to constructive work. We'll see what all that means in time, but that kind of grace is the underlying principle.

The second: I am going to be venturing into dangerous waters a bit more candidly with you all.

There are things I've been turning over for a few months, a few years, that I want to leap into wondering alongside you all. Hence, I want to stress that these shall be wondering things, not infallible things. Please journey with me and don't write me off if I say one thing out of turn.

I want to dig hands into some hard areas, like how I don't know how to save the children when I get overwhelmed by my clothes, my non-fair trade food, the endless ways in which I hurt the world just by going about my daily life and the struggle to find the space of grace and action; about how a form of purgatory, even the thought that we dare hope none are in hell, of post-mortem salvation, of an almost Trinitarian universalism, is one I have often; the post about reading the apocrypha; what I think it really means to be pro-life ... to name a few.

I want to go to these places.

The dangerous places.

The places I think are beautiful in a way that sometimes frightens us.

I'm extending the invitation for you to come along, because these words mean little without you.

Will you journey, with me, to the dangerous (beautiful) places and wonder along beside me?

See you Monday, when the dangerous work begins.

then i like being naive

Today. Today, I want to take you by the hand. I want to guide you through the willow grove and down the cobbled path. When we reach the slanted fence, wooden beams showing old whispered rain shower stains, I'll show you where the ivy grows thin and the lily first flowered, where the door with the copper handle never quite shuts.

I'll push that never-shut door open, but let you walk through first. When you look back to ask if the wild fields can be trusted, I'll slowly make the sign of the cross between us and say, "Trust. There is no other way."

Or, perhaps, you won't see me make the sign, but you'll feel me reach forward to embrace, to whisper the same against your ear. Or, still, perhaps you only see me smile and the line is wordless but clear.

We'll make our way through the fields in song or silence, or perhaps in conversation. You'll mention the waning light and the sky that seems fixed indigo and I'll only nod slowly as if this were as ordinary as the way the wind seems to whisper in hymnody when it parts the tall grass around us.

The trees will sway overhead and you'll more than once stop to try and listen to what they are saying. I'll tell you they don't speak a language we yet know, but I have learned that if they are listened to long enough, something of their meaning can be felt within.

Perhaps you'll look up so long you won't look down again until we've reached the table in the center, in a clearing rounded by white candles. When we step into the circle, they will light, but they will burn without melting the wax. You'll not notice them long when you look to the table, when you can see all the people whom you've met in those lives remembered and forgotten.

Perhaps the one you hated shall be there, the one you loved as well.

Perhaps they shall not be your people, but mine.

Perhaps they shall be ours in common.

But the table will be full, for it is always full, and you'll be placed in the midst of the guests and given a plate---thous hast prepared a table before me---you'll be poured wine or, perhaps, water, or a nectar so sweet that you should wish to never drink anything else.

The person to your right has loved you more than you could ever understand; the person to your left you have sometimes hated, though you'll find it hard now to remember why.

Everyone here speaks in soft words, though some are in disagreement. The older woman with the drooping eyes is quoting the Prayer Book while the German man with the stern mouth recites The Institutes. The smaller woman between them, who holds a staff of wheat and with eyes that seem moons, says something very brief and all three of them laugh. They raise their glasses to one another, they toast God, ruler of them all, and when they start to disagree again, it sounds as a sort of fugue, fractured only by starting point, not by meaning.

You'll have your chance, too, to sort out your grievances.

It's why I've brought you along to this place behind the door that is never shut with the handle of copper.

You are here at this table to say all the things you need to say, until every loud word becomes soft and every angry solid thing melts into peaceful air.

A faithful page brings the books and songs and paintings you require so that you may cite your points. You are given leave to break, to eat, to speak to that one that loves you so beside you before you take up the argument again.

Perhaps we're arguing.

Perhaps it's you and the old woman or the German man.

Perhaps it's you and someone who has not yet come to the table, but you have the thing that needs saying and it's time to let you say it.

So you're encouraged, asked, met on your own terms.

And when you are at long last done, when it has all been said, when we are all around the table free to have changed our minds or to have disagreed or to have nodded at the old and true things---this is miracle of Holy Ghost, who's to say what shall come of it?---then it is nearly time to leave the table.

Though, not before the sacrifice.

Though, do you hear Eucharist? Memorial? Supper?

Do you see a bowl of bread and a cup of grape juice?

Do you see a silver dish of wafer and a chalice of wine?

Do you see a man holding them forth or a woman?

Or Christ Himself?

Do you see a chancel, a forest, a mission church with adobe walls?

Do you hear in remembrance or the Body of Christ or take, eat?

Do you see, for this brief moment, how that does not matter, how this is the whole Body of Christ, even in division?

When you look around, you shall see that we have all shared in the same Body and Blood, all around the same table.

We have gathered here in this wild place to say the things that have needed saying and, at the close, have blessed the Lord and received of His mysteries.

We shall leave the table under the proclamation of the peace of Christ, and I shall lead you back through the wild grown fields to the old door that is never quite shut with the copper handle.

I shall send you on, for now, and hold back awhile myself to tarry among the overgrowth.

You will be told that you are always welcome back.

You will be told that the table is always a place to be fed.

You will be told that this table was made, in part, for you.

Today.

Today, I want to take you by the hand.

I'll show you where the ivy grows thin and the lily first flowered, where the door with the copper handle never quite shuts.

The door with the copper handle never quite shuts.

The door to my heart.

Perhaps this is why I seem so surprised by the tone of some of our conversations concerning Faith.

Perhaps this is why I can be so upset when what people say is simply mean or uninformed or caricature.

Perhaps if it is naive to believe that the way forward in these conversations is around a table where we respect one another and then share in the communion of Christ, then I like being naive.

Because the door with the copper handle---where the lily first flowered---never quite shuts.

to my future daughters [in honour of Rachel Held Evans]

There's something very special happening today over at Deeper Story ... My dear daughters,

Someday, little ones. That's the promise your Father made while he was still living at the end of the world, casting stones into the North Sea and whispering prayers woven with midmorning lark feathers, sent flying out over the blue.

Someday. It was repeated in meter and rhyme, a refrain in the litany of a better world longed for, a world that you do not know was dreamt for you. Dreamt for you, tangle of foreign but bonded sisters, interwoven fibers of biology and circumstance, some mine by form and some mine by reception, but all mine by Child.

Keep reading and see what's up over at Deeper Story?