Hope for Louisville: Unplanned Return

The fourth day of my second summer as a member of the Hope for Louisville team...I did not think, a year ago, that I would once again participate in training and be preparing to serve in Louisville. Truth is, God always knew. When I take time to consider how He prepared me for last summer, and will not leave me unprepared this summer, I am amazed. Unplanned by human eyes does not mean unprepared. I recognize that this summer will be difficult. At times, I will be in tears due to exhaustion, frustration, or sorrow. At other times, it will be more evident that the team's toil is not in vain. I trust that our Lord knows what He is doing, and that He will sustain.

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The formal training for the ‘new’ Hope team is nearly complete–with training has come many moments of questioning my reasons for being in Louisville. At first, I was struck once again by the commitment required for this summer. And the Louisville heat. And the stretching of resources. And the struggles of living in community. And the apparent lack of women to whom the women’s team can minister. But let me tell you what God is showing me….
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I am in Louisville because of God’s love for me, and His love for the people of Louisville. The brokenness I see around me is the human condition without Christ. I, too, am part of this brokenness (this is part of the ‘already but not yet’ of the Apostle Paul). My neighbor here in Louisville needs to know Christ’s love. How better to show her but by being here, again, for the second summer in a row, and explaining why I do so? And if there are no women to whom we can minister at the shelter…perhaps our purpose lies in finding women in the community and telling them of what JSBC has to offer. Perhaps our purpose lies in supporting the men’s team. Perhaps our purpose lies in exhorting one another to love and good works, knowing that although this summer may be more planning and less action (in a sense), we are where God would have us. Let us keep diligently seeking His counsel and revealed will in Scripture, that we may press on to know the Lord.

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I am in Louisville because, as of yet, not everyone is a worshiper of the Creator of the universe. I am in Louisville because, in the days of Adam and Eve, the human race began to rebel against a holy God. Our foolish hearts were darkened, and yet, God demonstrates his own love toward us in this–in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. In His death, taking the penalty of our sin upon Himself for everyone who believes, we are made dead to our sin. And in His resurrection, we too are raised to newness of life, that we may live for Him. Glory be to our great God! This is why I am in Louisville.

truth

A man pointed to a robin saying 'look
at that fat one.'
I kept a smile in my head wondering
if he knew all robins are that size.

Don't Give Up

"Your restless heart won't win, 'cause you take but you don't give/
and you'll keep moving on until you learn what love is" Sanctus Real, Don't Give Up


hm. I need rest.

For your Easter.

Sisters, brothers, fathers, mothers, body of Christ, this is for you. That you remember what our brother, Savior, Lord has done, and that death has no victory.

Seven Stanzas at Easter

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

—John Updike, “Seven Stanzas At Easter,” 1964

Rough

Jacob wrestling with God.
Common concept.
But maybe we get it wrong.
Do we see the trembling fiber, in arm and thigh,
as in one who has too long held
a heavy child?
The sweat drip, the unending night.
No sleep.
I do not try to conjure thought of sport.
Think of the man who sold all possessions
for a field and pearl.
He would have wrestled the man of God for blessing.

We have chosen ease.
Faith-become-ultimatum,
If the dollars do not sum
the difference between have and need,
do not call me your messenger.

Too costly.
A forever drooping limb would be too much reminder
of my weakness.

The 2010 Homicide-Loss Survivors' Walk

The other night, I was told to remember. To pull as one would a tooth the memories of good in a loved one’s eyes, Christmas morning, Saturday’s yard work, hands.

Pulling a tooth. You are one of two kinds of people.

Yank it, or wriggle for a week.

I yank. Give me sharp pain, fierce tears, hard grief. For the time it takes tos ay

One Mississippi.

This week, I could not avoid. This was the longest Mississippi I’ve ever said.

Remember your loved one. Not the courtroom. Not the faces of the jury. Not the day it happened.

I am not a homicide-loss survivor, but I am a victim of memories.

One

I was sitting in the wooden desk with the little groove for a pencil worn into it. That orange-flower scented candle on the computer desk to my right, school book in front of me. The phone rang. I was eleven and home alone. My neighbor cried into the phone not to leave the house.

…I still don’t understand why men would kill themselves to kill thousands in a tower, city far from home and that it should put fear in an eleven-year-old.

Miss

I was waking to my phone ringing before the sun had risen. A friend I’ve never seen cry was crying in the dark on the other side of the phone line. His dad had, not hours before, died of a heart attack.

iss

I was working on a paper about “Good Love” and how weak we are to portray it rightly. I received a text from a friend I’d not seen in four years.

“I’ve changed,” he said.

“I smoke everything, now. I do acid. I drink like it was nothing”

ippi

How strong, these people-survivors- are.

To see the moment framed by horror and yet choose the room, that’s full of good. Maybe if you were to wriggle a tooth, you would begin to appreciate all teeth a bit more. Appreciate its tenacity. Understand its reluctance.

from "Letters to Malcolm" by C.S. Lewis

"If the imagination were obedient, the appetites would give us very little trouble."