eucharisteo: day four. //

{taking to the road.}

for the past few days, wanderlust has been striking me hard.

I feel like someone with a terminal disease, given a month to live. I feel like there are a million places I want to see, a million grounds I want to walk on, a million pictures I want to take. maybe it's the summer air, the fresh smell every morning that beckons... whispering in my ear that this free time, this ability to just get in my car and drive, will be gone soon enough. in two short months, I'll be back to the books, chained once again to a Latin book and a brick school building and the million and a half commitments that September will bring.

that beckoning, the sudden realization that the everlasting summer may just be waning, is all I need. I turn the key in the ignition and pull out of my driveway. I pick someplace within reasonable distance, sacrificing my gas money to the hungry gods of the highway and the river and the coffee shops I've never been to.

there is nothing quite like spontaneously going somewhere different and interesting. I thrive on the feeling that I'm somewhere I've never been before. somehow, I manage to be both a creature of habit and a creature that eats up new experiences, new terrain, new memories. maybe it really is mostly about the memories- the feeling that I am doing something, right now, that I will remember, that's not something I've done a million times. I'm not at Bucer's again. I'm standing in the calm ebb and flow of the shallows of this lake. I'm driving through a canyon. I wouldn't remember another cup of coffee. but I'll probably remember this.

I guess the thanksgiving is for a lot of things. first, for the time to do these things. time is precious, it really is, and I take it for granted too often.

second, for the places themselves: God grants scenery, and cool towns, and nature. the world could all just be one boring, uniform place where everything looks the same, but it's not. by His Grace, it's full of things to be seen and touched and done.

third, and perhaps most importantly, for the very joy of wandering. for the pleasure we get when we take a turn in the road and see something we've never seen before. for the way it feels to do something different, and not even see it coming.

God gives us a life full of surprises, of twists in the road, of a sense of freedom and a sense of urgency, sometimes both at once. He gives us new eyes and hungry eyes that want to see His world, and that want to see it now, because maybe we can do it tomorrow, and maybe we can't, and memories have to be made.

eucharisteo: day three. //

 

{Bucer's. Late June. 8 PM.}

This is specific, yes, but that's because it needs to be. Bucer's exists in two different spheres, alternately filled with two completely different crowds. There's the August-May crowd. The school crowd. The studious stressers, the procrastinators, the true believers who refuse to acknowledge the fact that Bucer's & legitimate studying are mutually exclusive. You can walk in with the best of intentions, of course. Laptop in one hand, Calvin in the other, determined to "sit at a table in the back" and "hunker down" and "just tell people I'm here to study and I can't talk." I admire these people for their self-confidence, but it just doesn't happen. And that's okay. It's the charm of the school-year sphere of Bucer's- the fact that you can't walk in without seeing 12 million of your classmates and friends around every corner.

In the summer, this place slips into a different dimension. Tonight, there's music. And there are people here, but they're of a completely different ilk. These are townies, the type of people I've become accustomed to growing up here. In fact, when it comes right down to it, I'm a townie myself.

In many ways, I feel left behind. The fact that I no longer see countless beloved faces every time I walk into Bucer's is mildly sad. I miss the daily little interactions, the busyness, the chatter that resounds within these cozy brick walls.

But on the other hand, I relish this little secret I have all to myself. I am one of the lucky few who knows the sweetness of sitting at the long table on a warm June night, sipping Americanos & savoring Key Lime Pie in the heart of summer. I see Bucer's in both its worlds, as a student-haven and as a midsummer's gathering place. I walk through it in hurried stress and in relaxed, sun-induced peace of mind. My experiences in this place are widely varied. I ate Bucer's famous old Giant Cookies as a seven-year-old, and I sit here now, sipping iced tea, as a grown-up. I've seen twelve Moscow summers, and, year after year, I walk the sun-soaked streets of this town long after everyone else has left.

cheers to this unique perspective I've been gifted with, this firsthand knowledge of the good & the bad of this town, year around. cheers to many more summer days spent in this place, missing the faces of the migrators I love, but relishing the flair of the ones who stick around, the ones like me.

cheers to being one of the few in Bucer's at 8 PM in late June. I wouldn't trade it.

 

eucharisteo: day 2. //

{the Indian Hills.}

I take this view for granted often. I wake up in the morning, yawning as I pass the French doors that look out to the south. I glance at the hills, at the green and the gold and the trees that stipple them, and I glance away. This is home, 12 years at the edge of civilization, 12 years looking out at crests of wheat & peas & ridges that stretch to the horizon. By now, this is commonplace.

And yet, it really isn't. And sometimes, my stupor of blind eyes & ungratefulness is interrupted. My eyes open, truly, and I see the glory. The stretches of hills that Lewis and Clark saw with virgin eyes two centuries ago, witnessing for the first time the terrain of the Nez Perce, rolling expanses unlike anything else they had ever seen. They came, saw, & marveled. And so I do, on occasion. I pass the French doors, do a double-take, snap a picture.

May my taking-for-granted cease, and true wonder at what my eyes behold take its place, filling me daily with the happiness that comes with looking at something unnecessarily, gratuitously beautiful.

eucharisteo: day one. //

{dusk.}

Tonight, 9:00 PM. I walk outside, into the summer cool of the air, smelling the dryness of the fields and the dampness of the grass. I patter down the steps leading from the back deck down to the yard, relishing the feel of the bottoms of my feet against the rough steps, and then the bricks of the pathway, and then the sharp bark. Only a little bit of light remains: it dusts the horizon to my left gold and pink, only an afterthought of the bright afternoon retiring to the west. Sole occidente. A heavy, zoom-lensed camera swings against my chest as I tiptoe, because I find stark depth-of-field soul-satisfying. I spot the bush of blush-pink peonies growing on the stone wall in front of me. I lift, put the view-finder to my right eye, rotate my fingers on the cylinder of the manual focus. Squint. Balance the weight of the camera against my arm, shooting into the disappearing sun, lens yearning for the last drops of light. Blur is the deadliest casualty of shooting without flash at night, but I'll take what I can get. The dusk is gracious, giving its last bits of gold to me, in my white pajamas, standing in the grass, smelling the peonies, smelling of them. The light fades as it always does, in an instant, the blush-pink of the flowers enveloped into the summer night.

thanks be to God for the simplicity of dusk, the peaceful ending of the day that reminds us that darkness fades in and out; that because Christ conquered death and made it His, it does not last, and it is always tempered with a beauty all its own.

eucharisteo.

I'm three and a half chapters into Ann Voskamp's 1000 Gifts. I started it yesterday, eager for something new and challenging to sink my teeth into. As a person who, probably like most on the planet, struggles daily to maintain an attitude of thankfulness and contentment, I thought this might hold some valuable wisdom for me.

I was right.

In a nutshell, her challenge is to chronicle every little thing you realize you love, daily. To see what God has given, to appreciate it, and to thank Him for it. She calls it a "dare," and it is. The truest love dare there is. A dare to see the love God bestows, every minute, seemingly inconsequential detail of it, and love it back, and give thanks. Eucharisteo.

I've thought a lot about what it means to live a sacramental life, to bleed the love and joy of my salvation just as Christ did for me, and here- a very real, visceral way of demonstrating it, of bleeding it in thanksgiving. 

I want to bleed beautifully. He spoke beauty into being in poetry and song, and He calls us to do as He does: to use the words He has given to magnify His gifts, to "give them back to God."

So here I go. I hope to magnify through my meager speech, as much as I can, what God bestows daily. The small. The taken-for-granted. Because it is when we start to acknowledge that they mean something, something truly incredible and unimaginable, that we become overwhelmed by their significance, washed over by their beauty and import.

Here's to being overwhelmed, over and over again, day after day, year after year.

Soli gratias deo.

the silent lover. //

 

"A silent lover is one who doesn't know his job."

-Father Robert Farrar Capon

 

there are many things we learn to do as we get older.

we receive different responsibilities, we take on different challenges, and we change, or are changed, by a constantly maturing worldview.

 

in the case of Christians, sanctification is responsible for all of that.

as Christ shapes our hearts for Him, we grow up.

we receive callings, and passions, and roles.

 

but perhaps most importantly, we receive new eyes.

we begin to see the world the way He wants us to see it.

like little children experiencing everything for the first time,

He removes the scales from our eyes,

and we look around in wonder, new wonder,

at everything.

 

this is one of God's most magnificent graces:

this ability to look around us and see the world, His world,

as our world,

our gift.

 

there are two possible responses to this gift.

we can deny it, or simply fail to see it.

we can go on living our lives as "Christians" with no passion-

no joyous sense of being not just receivers, but loved children.

we can passively see the world through glazed-over eyes,

repeating the Apostle's Creed dully to ourselves,

but not truly acknowledging that Christ is our Maker and our Father.

 

or,

we can take our greatest joy, our greatest passion,

in looking at the world through new eyes,

children's eyes,

and seeing with every new morning what our Father has done for us.

we can say the Apostle's Creed

and truly understand that Christ is Maker of Heaven and Earth:

this earth.

the one with roses and green grass

and light, warm winds that rustle oak leaves.

the earth with so many beautiful things

that don't need to be here, that aren't crucial to our life-form in any way,

but that He gives to us

simply because He wants to.

 

this is our gift of sanctification.

it is the ability to see the world the way He sees it.

to love it the way He loves it,

and to love it loudly and exuberantly.

 

we cannot be silent lovers

because He is not a silent God.

through everything around us,

every simple unnecessary mercy,

He proclaims

"Look."

and so we, with our new eyes,

look indeed.

within sight of the finish line. //

 

On a hot day last August, in the midst of the insane death-match of freshman orientation known as Prologus,

the newborn NSA freshman class sat in the uncomfortably warm Nuart Theatre,

our freshman advisor standing on the stage in front of us.

We were utterly terrified.

 

We had just been given our first assignment of the year,

and the 200 page book we had been told to read for our first lecture the following Tuesday stared at us like a bad omen.

I can almost guarantee that every single freshman, while furiously (but ineffectively) speed-reading was wondering what the heck they had gotten themselves into.

 

So there we sat, next to people who seemed weird and whom we never thought we'd learn the names of, let alone like.

Our freshman advisor, pacing back and forth on the stage, told us this:

 

Freshman Year is like a race.

It will be long and hard, and there will be many, many times when you want to give up.

There will be days when you feel like you can't do it any more.

 

Callings aren't easy to follow.

But if this is your calling, 

run the race,

and run it well.  

 

We're now two weeks away from the finish line.

 

We've been through four terms,

almost four finals weeks,

eight term papers

and more books than we care to count.

 

Nearing the end of the race,

we can look back on where we've been

and how far we've come,

and laugh and smile (and maybe cry) about everything that's happened.

 

That stage, the one our advisor stood on when he told us how hard it was going to be?

Each of us has gotten up there 27 separate times

and given stupid, funny, embarrassing, awkward speeches to our classmates,

speeches that turned us from classmates into friends

(sometimes friends that know more about each other than we'd like).

 

That freshman advisor, who also happens to be our Theology professor?

We know that he raises his eyebrows when he makes a point,

and that he loves cough drops,

and that he sees the love of God in everything,

and that he will throw students out of his office for not knowing

the bibliography format in Turabian.

 

The funny thing is,

at the beginning of the race,

we had no idea where we were going.

The path ahead of us was dark,

and filled with obstacles that we weren't sure we'd be able to overcome.

 

Thankfully, as we ran,

the Lord lit our way.

He lit lanterns for us late at night

while we read big books

and struggled through Latin.

 

In His grace,

He gave us respite,

and downhill slopes,

and time to breathe and appreciate the view.

 

There's one more slope ahead. Just one. And so much beauty and sweat and joy behind

that I almost want to run it all over again.

Almost.

 

"Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus,

 the Author & Finisher of our faith."

-Hebrews 12:1-2