You Will Keep Him in Perfect Peace

You ask for a story tonight, just like you did last night and those nights four weeks ago, and so I close my eyes and lean back (which I have found is the posture best suited for the weaving of words). Three heads find a place to nestle, and their soft weight grounds me as I tell of rivers running through rooms and recreate yet another fictional variation of light beating dark and love undoing the machinations of hate. My voice is unused to breaking the quiet that envelops me at this time of night, undoubtedly a side effect of living alone. Somehow, though, the tracks it winds down slow, soft, and sleepy seem familiar. As the glow from the strand of Christmas lights hanging in the archway hits your faces and I hear the sound of breathing that has crossed over from wakefulness to slumber, a wave of love washes over.

I sometimes feel daunted by your experience. I am weak in the face of your inescapable repeating griefs, but God gives words and grace and love. When I see in your face and hear in your words the faith of a child, I know what Jesus was talking about. 

"Of course I choose God." 

Of course you do. 

Why should I doubt?

You are children, you are held, you are kept, you will learn to cry "Abba, Father." You are learning the peace that passes understanding, and I am learning with you.

Worth Loving

I used to think life was simple.

When I was a child, I skimmed over the surface of life never suspecting the tragedies that lay beneath it. I was unaware of the fact that houses were splitting open with chaos until one parent went left and the other went right and children were left standing in the wreckage. I never knew that sharp edge meeting flesh was the guilty ache--the one release--that some of those my age had found. I was ignorant of the cuts that went past the flesh and into the soul, the aches that throbbed harder in the night than in the day, the bruises that marred not skin but self.

I am an adult now, and I am aware. 

And today I am aware of you, boy. So painfully aware. I see your lips struggling to remember that M and N follow L, and that a string of letters still come after that, that P plus E plus T equals "pet," that life can have any sort of surety when you feel like a balloon cut loose in a charcoal sky. You hear the thunder.

What's more, I am aware of your shame as you tear the envelope bearing your father's name in the first line of the return address into tiny pieces, afraid someone might see that it also says "Inmate Correspondence." You can't read, but you know that much. 

They found the letter that was inside on the bus, boy. It must have slipped out. I have never read so much heartbreak, so much pain, so much raw and hungry love. And the grief of it? I know that you can't read a word of what he's saying to you.

"Boy, you keep that safe. Put it in your pocket. You're going to want that letter when you grow up. Read it with Grandma, boy."

There is no shame, child. Pick your head up. 

You are worth loving.

Glass

This one's for you, friend who's far away (and perhaps for me, too). 

<<>> <<>> <<>> <<>> <<>> <<>>

She slips like a silver-finned swimmer

between words and expressions, 

secrets and confessions, 

threads the needle of doubt

with the barely heard 

and the scarcely seen,

 sews her own soul tight 

with the knowledge that 

change is going to come, 

always for the the ones 

that her hands clasp softly

as they smile and move away

 never sure if it will come for her someday.

 <<>> <<>> <<>> <<>> <<>> <<>>

Skeptic

You said the colors fell out of the rainbow,

the rivers have flowed themselves dry,

the mothers have loved themselves empty,

and the flowers just bloom and then die.

You say more with your eyes than your tongue now,
all the things with no words and no names.
You've lost all your hope without knowing how,
 and the dark's stolen more than it claims.

The canyons inside were born from just cracks,
untended they grew till they gape.
You think there's no remedy for all your soul lacks,
No living without constant escape.

Time moves like an insomniac lover,
frenetic paralysis of mind.
You think it's a sickness from which to recover--
your body's ahead and your spirit's behind.

You're swathed in the fear of unassailable truths;
you cover your eyes and stand still.
The inside of your mind is graffitied with proofs
of the uneasily known, the hidden by will.

Infallible Him and fallible he
stand wrapped in a tangled embrace.
In violence you wrestle--you long to be free
and never once look up at His face.

Tomorrow, Tomorrow (You're Only Twenty Minutes Away)

I should be sleeping.

But--as is my wont--when I have much on my mind, I tend to stay up late to ponder.

Tomorrow is the first day of a new school year. My fifth school year as a teacher, in fact. I never expected to teach for this long, to be honest. Yet here I am at the edge of another year with only God knows what waiting in it. I certainly never expected last year to hold some of the things it held. I am glad I didn't know the days before they happened then, and perhaps I'm glad I don't know now. Each day God gives has the exact measure of mercy, of joy, of pain, of laughter that it ought. I don't need to have them all strung out in front of me to scrutinize in advance.

Teaching is humbling. I have so much I want to share with my children, but I can never live up to the vision I have in my head. I am broken, they are broken. But we can care for each other, and we do. The world is so large and so full of things I don't know. I can't teach things I don't know, and so I sometimes grow impatient with my own ignorance. I come up short against my own faults and failings. Gandhi--who I know virtually nothing about, by the way, yet from whom I have the gall to borrow this quote--said, "Be the change you want to see in the world." These words are so overused they have become cliche. But when I think about them, I freeze. What do I want for my students? How do I want them to understand their own humanity? Am I living full enough to teach them the sliver that God has given me to teach?

You know what? Teaching has so little to do with content. Or Common Core. Or state tests, or being smart. It's about all of the invisible things.

God help me to get the invisible things right, tomorrow and all of the days after that.

Housekeeping

These three pictures don't really belong anywhere (but they were on my camera), so here! Have a hodge-podge post...

Grape-twins. What a find.

King of the Mountain.

When Summer Begins to Wane...

...you should take your sister and her passel of wonderful children on a picnic (preferably at a park with a creek).

What a fine brood, yes?

It seemed like every time I turned around, James was morphing into a Chip Monster and asking me to take a picture. Audra wasn't too scared of him, though. I agree, Audra--every monster needs bunny ears to take him down a notch.

Nick was awfully sweet playing the protective older brother.

After lunch we headed down to the creek, which is more a collection of puddles than a true creek at this point. We could use some rain. Thomas started us off by catching a minnow ["with his bare hands," no less].

Such a little, little fish...

...deserves a little, little grin.

We grow children in the creeks around these parts. They start climbing up out of the mud during the dry spells.

Cassie, second mother extraordinaire. (She's a good big sister.)

I loved watching Candida with arms and legs all akimbo, determined to catch some fish.

Thomas sat on a rock above the creek watching all of the creature-catching going on below. He looks like he's about to unleash some major kung fu moves, but really he's just hiding from my camera.

Note the position of Thomas' hand. He was gleefully throwing rocks at the spots where his siblings were trying so earnestly to catch creek animals. He's just your average big brother.

I told you he was gleeful (especially when he heard his sisters emitting exasperated squeals).

"Abby, Abby, I mean, Debbie. Can you help me catch a fish? A medium fish..."

"This is where they like to go."

Note Nick's expression.

Finest creature-catching implement in all the land.

I love James' posture. It takes some intense concentration to keep a cup still when a salamander has just taken up residence.

The frog didn't have a chance with so many hands poking about.

"We caught a lobster! A lobster!" I was almost sad when Nick realized they were called crayfish.

I told him to give me his I just caught a crayfish look. Evidently this requires a great deal of manliness as well as having one's hand on one's hip.

Jessica-munchkin.

Candida the Fish Catcher.

She had the most mesmerizing way of moving the cup underwater. It was like a dance.

Hannah-boo. I love to see her smile. 

I like to call this piece Lobster, Salamander, Grape.

Fossil study.

After a full couple of hours, we older ones sat and chatted. It was a fairly serious conversation, until Thomas attempted to sit down with us, that is. His lanky six feet and four-ish inches settled onto the picnic table only to tip it over and send the soda and cups sitting on top of it flying.

Ha. Caught you red-handed, Tom.

I'm a pretty rich girl, you know it? God gave good, good gifts when he gave me my family. Thanks for a lovely day, Becky and Co.!