Until you bless me

Under my pillow. Inside the blue teapot. On the porch windows.  Above the doorway. Between the couch cushions. Within the folds of a bathroom towel. 

These are just a few of the places I found benedictions today. In a sense, these serendipities are of my own devising. On Sunday, I invited friends, baked bread, set the table, and then demanded a blessing. Go into each room, I said, and pen a prayer. Inscribe my walls and tuck your blessings into the smallest corners of my house. Speak peace over this place. 

In a sense, these blessings were superfluous. The friends who came--students, colleagues, children, mentors--have already blessed this house with their presence. They have stood in the yard, offered compost for the garden. They have brought their children to gallop across the wood floors. They have come to cradle my new puppy. They have sat at the table and planned trips across the seas. They have been here with me. 

Even so, I begged them for their prayers. Gently enough, of course, but still cringing a little. Is it selfish to demand a blessing? Audacious to expect them to write words over my house, when I have yet to do as much for them? Superstitious to want their handwriting to cover the house from floor ceiling, yard to Spare Oom? 

Yes. Yea, verily. Even so, I asked. 

And they gave. They gave me their prayers with all the generosity and abandon of the saints. They prayed that friends would be familiar with all the doors, that the table would be full, that no harm would come to the house or its inhabitants, that even the lean days would call me back to the heart of Christ. Some wrote formal poems--staggering prayers for comfort, laughter, mystery. 

As they did this thing for me, it seemed that  they were kin to the one with whom Jacob wrestled: "I will not let you go unless you bless me." But of course, they are kind and image of that one who blesses and wounds, and I felt a strange reverence for each of them: children of God, Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve, glorious and fallen, strong in the harrowing love of Christ. 

When they left, I felt the weight of what I had done. I had called upon the Lord, demanding a blessing, and he had delivered me through the prayers of his people. The weight and rhythm of their love settled on me, and I slept.

When I woke, I let myself read one or two of the blessings I could see, but most I have left, intending to savor them slowly.   Every day since, I have woken to find some new mercy waiting. 

Spare Oom

In C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, the marvelous, soul-shaping adventures of the Pevensie children begin when the youngest of them, Lucy, enters the spare room of a large country house. The only item in the room is a large wardrobe, and it is through this wardrobe that Lucy finds her way into Narnia. As she explains this to her first friend in Narnia, Mr. Tumnus, he mistakenly thinks she is from a country called "Spare Oom."

When I was a little child, first hearing these stories, our house had no spare room, and I suspected that my inability to find Narnia had to do with this lack. When I was twelve, my father turned our unfinished attic into a precious garret-bedroom for me, a second bathroom, and a spare room. It had considerably more furniture in it than the room Lewis made famous, but it was a spare room nonetheless. 

I never found a portal to a magic world, but once we had our own Spare Oom, curious things began to happen. Once, an Kenyan student who arrived at the university and found she had no housing stayed with us for a week, filling our house with her warm, cadenced laughter and insisting on braiding my long hair into a network of intricate braids. Then Lennon moved in. We had been friends since we were twelve, but in the months he inhabited Spare Oom, I learned what it meant to have a brother. When we made a space that was open to the needs of others, we found ourselves tumbling into stories we would not have imagined for ourselves. 

When my friends Grant and Jenn bought their house in Texas, they sought a house big enough to share -- a house with rooms to spare for whomever God would bring them. I was the first person to benefit from that beautiful generosity, and during our year together I experienced what it meant to live in common and in accord. Many in my generation will talk about the idea of Christian community, but they made physical space for a radical way of living, and that year bore fruit in ways I am only beginning to understand. 

And so, with Narnia and Waco in mind, I have kept one room of my house empty, spare of furniture, wares, or sundries. I have vowed to keep it free from things so that it will be ready when the Lord calls for it. I will not let it become a place to store excess clothes or books or boxes. I have room enough for my wealth in the other rooms of the house, and I tithe my money, so why not my house as well? 

One day, I think this room will be full, but I don't think I will be the one to fill it. Sometimes I pray pictures of how this might be: wayfarers stopping along their road to Elsewhere; a friend fallen on hard times; a young prophet painting banners for God's revolution; someone who wants to plant a garden with me.

Most days, however, I simply rest in the knowledge of this room. On days when my desk is piled with bills to pay, papers to grade, tickets to book, lessons to prepare, meals to cook--in the midst of so much tending, Spare Oom stands apart. Uncluttered. Unhurried. Demanding nothing from me (nothing to dust, nothing to buy, nothing to do). Waiting. Simply knowing that it is in my home, open and waiting, settles me. 

My Spare Oom holds none of the things that make a place recognizably "mine," but in a sense, it is the heart of this house--a reminder that even if the property is in my name, the home belongs to the Lord, and I fill, tend, cook, welcome, work, and rest here at His good pleasure. My Spare Oom has no wardrobe, but my prayer is that in this room, we will build doors to other worlds: the realm of the redeemed, the new heaven and new earth, home. 

Listening and hospitality

"Listening," says servant-scholar Henri Nouwen, "is a form of spiritual hospitality."* Listening has never been one of my strengths. I spent much of my childhood alone, amusing myself during my parents' many meetings and events, or sitting in classrooms where I mastered a concept long before the teacher had finished explaining it. Consequently, I learned to read, to ponder, to make lists, to doodle, and to work ahead, but not to attend closely to the words around me. 

More problematically, I have a wicked instinct for turning a everything to myself. I leave many conversations angry with myself for telling one of my own stories when I should have asked a question, annoyed that I missed a chance to listen to someone I want to know better.  Sometimes a story is the beautiful and best way to talk with someone, but too often I speak only because I want to make a good impression or draw out laughter or remind everyone, "This is me. I am here. You should care." 

For Lent several years ago, I fasted from sharing my own stories, opinions, or feelings unless someone directly asked me about them. I committed to asking questions, rather than telling, in my conversations with others. 

This fast changed not merely my language, but my attitudes and postures toward others. When telling my own story was not a possibility, I grew more careful and patient, no longer simply waiting for a gap into which I could insert my own tale. I found myself studying the faces of my friends, pondering how much untold joy, sorrow, hope, and uncertainty could lie behind the most familiar eyes. 

Lent has given way to Easter, yet moving into my new house has renewed my desire to listen well. At home, I know who I am. At home, I choose the pictures on the wall and I shape the bread on the table, so I have no need to prove myself. I am present and secure, and that security allows me to forget myself. To ask you questions. To smile in silence and notice the color of your eyes. To listen. 

If you come to my house and I spend our time talking only about myself, then I have not welcomed you. I have put myself on display, perhaps, but I have not invited you to make this place your home. When you speak and stay, however, you take ownership of this house with me -- if only for an hour, you belong in that chair by the window or at this place at the table. 

Since Friday alone, I have had nearly twenty different friends and students come here for a meal or a moment, and I have tried very hard to listen to them. Now when I walk through my dining room, my kitchen, or my yard, I hear their voices. Reminding me to listen, they are well come. 

Do you listen well? What circumstances or practices help you become a better listener? How do you know when someone is listening to you?

* from Bread for the Journey

Walking is good for the soul

Today I must finish responding to a student's 50-page thesis draft; plan two medieval dances to teach a group of honors students; research hotels in Venice and catacomb tours for Rome; reckon my tax returns, read Book 8 of Middlemarch, and prepare lessons on Paradise Lost. 

Some Saturdays, this ambitious list would have me burrowing into my pillow for an extra hour, reluctant to begin a non-stop day, especially after a month of Saturdays filled with moving plans, preparation, and labor. This morning, however, I did far better thing: I went for a walk.

After sleeping, walking is one of my Favorite Things. For my first nine years of school, I walked between home and school nearly every day, and and we almost always walked to church, as well. In college, when I did not own a car, I walked not only to class, but to church, for errands, and for recreation. I would spend hours wandering the neighborhoods around campus, or making wide circuits on the walking and biking trail by the railroad tracks. During grad school, I took advantage of a beautiful riverside walking trail that ran behind Baylor's Law School and athletic facilities. I paced that trail while chewing on thesis statements, praying, laughing with friends, wondering if I could be in love, listening to new music, dreaming of life after the dissertation.

Here in Alabama, our campus is beautiful for walking, but my apartment, dear in so many ways, did not encourage wandering. Venture beyond the fence of the complex itself, and you stumble onto a very busy road. My new neighborhood, however, invites walks, strolls, strides, and many other forms of perambulation. In fact, the older parts of the city were actually designed to be pedestrian communities, so the architectural front of my house faces a sidewalk, not a drive-able street.

From my house (my house!) I can easily walk to several general stores, to the library, the park, to Baptist, Methodist, Episcopalian, and Catholic churches. I can walk to the homes of several friends. Today, I walked to a community yard sale. Here are some of the reasons I believe walking is so good for the soul:

* Walking changes my sense of time. I become eager for the hopeful twilight of morning hours, so I will rise early in order to walk. I expect walking to take time, much more time than a car, and so I set aside all hurrying instincts. If someone invites me to step inside for a few minutes, I am much more likely to say 'yes' if I have walked there.

* Walking encourages me to pray. Without the distractions of work or internet at hand, my mind settles into a rhythm of watchfulness. If I pray at home in the mornings, I nearly always fall asleep or find my mind wandering. With my body occupied by walking, my mind regains its simplicity, and if I notice something--a child's swing, a house needing repair, a church--my attention carries it into prayer as if it were part of my breathing. Prayer-walking is a spiritual discipline I have loved since my teens, and after so many years, walking nearly always feels like a form of listening, thanksgiving, confession, or intercession.

* Walking keeps me aware of and wise for my body. Too much sitting produces half-formed appetites and unwise cravings. Fresh air, light, and movement make me deeply and properly hungry for good food.

* Walking enriches both solitude and community. I never mind going for a walk by myself. Indeed, when living in community, walks often become my best recourse for much-needed solitude. At the same time, some of the best conversations I have had with friends have come while walking. Today, I walked to the yard sale, met my friend Grace and one of her daughters, and then walked back home with Grace to help her carry the fabric she had purchased. Had we been in cars, we would have bid one another farewell and parted ways, but instead we chatted about sewing plans, about the university, about the children, the students. Little Alathea sang us a song about polka dots.

* Walking teaches me to love a place. For my first two years in Texas, I walked to church nearly every Sunday. I meditated on those walks in one of my first blog entries (read it here), realizing that without them, I would not have come to love Waco nearly so deeply or so well. May the same be true for Alabama.

This week, I challenge you to walk somewhere you would normally drive--the grocery store, school, a friend's home. Come back and share what you notice! 

Setting out for a morning walk along Grant Street

Through the park.....

...and across the bridge.

Yard sale! 

Headed home from Grace's house. This is the "street" my house is on. 

I notice more when walking. 

Learning to love the way home. 

One Week

One week in my new house.
One week to learn how home feels under new trees, with new birds at the window, new angles of light across the floor.
One week to find homes for this book, the loom, the icon, and the iron skillet.
One week to ponder the tension between housekeeping and Holy Week.
One week for friends who come to carry furniture, share cookies, put handles on cabinet doors, dream of pets, invite me to Easter egg hunts.
One week to listen to the sounds of clocks ticking, children playing, trains running down their tracks.
One week to receive letters from Mama, from Lauren, from Dave, from Amanda.
One week to sit on the porch and wonder how this home will look to friends I have not yet met.
One week to give thanks. One week to pray for all that is to come.

In praise of letters

Handwritten letters are one of my favorite things. Like hot tea and pearl earrings, they lend a tangible grace to an ordinary day. One of my first posts on this blog was a letter-writing challenge, and I have also ruminated on the importance of Christmas letters, or habits for enjoying a letter from a friend. However, I'm not sure I have spoken well enough or deeply enough about why letters can serve a friendship.

Yesterday and today have brought letters from three dear friends and faithful correspondents. Their letters were as different as one could imagine: Amanda used a fountain pen on her creamy textured stationery; Josh compacted a small dissertation onto six pages of notebook paper; and Kt's envelope contained both a Muppets notecard and several pages of vintage floral notepaper. Their words and news were just as varied, but each one made me sit up, catch my breath, cry, laugh.

Different as they are, why have they renewed my love for my friends in the midst of such a strange and hectic day?

Perhaps because letters imply trust. Some call words cheap, but as a writing teacher, I know that writing always costs us something. Students would not feel so self-conscious about writing if they did not sense that by writing, even on a mundane classroom exercise, they reveal themselves--their intelligence, or their values, or their uncertain voice. I only write letters to someone I am willing to trust with the intimate, evening-sun sort of questions that rise when I step away from my computer.

Certainly a letter can show care. Even the conventional epistolary courtesies  ("Dear friend....) are more intimate than our everyday, spoken greetings. Letters sustain a sort of distance--it is a piece of paper, after all, and not a face or hand--but that distance can give us the courage to speak with love.

Letters also let us hear the hidden voices of our friends: not necessarily the tones they take in a crowd, or face to face, or in class, or in whatever other context you may know them. For some, the relative privacy of a letter makes them more candid. For others, the commitment of putting words on a page makes them more circumspect and thoughtful. Letters can deepen and even challenge our knowledge of who a person is.

And of course, letters remind us why we loved our friends first, and renew our vision of them. This week, I have caught my breath to see how in everything--everything--Amanda's eyes and heart remain fixed on Christ. I have been delighted and impressed to see how Josh manages to pick a postage stamp, featuring American jazz musicians, that ties perfectly to his insightful comments on medieval exegesis. And I have remembered that Kt's whimsy springs from the same source as her deep, humbling compassion, so that when she writes "There are teeny, tiny sprouts in the garden that may eventually be lettuce," I burst into tears and then find myself laughing with hope all at once.

Friends should write one another letters. Even friends who live in the same city or the same house or the same room. Because you can know a person, you can have class with them or cook with them or even pray with them, but when they commit themselves to words and pen and paper, it is possible that some hidden grace of soul will emerge, and they will become more than you could have known or imagined.

Clarence Jordan

Heritage is the ground upon which many families build their homes. Although modern life glorifies mobility, many people still define "home" in terms of where they came from.

This definition-by-heritage works as powerfully in our spiritual ideas about home as it does in our reckonings of blood kin.

My religious heritage is resoundingly Baptist: born to two seminary students; raised in the middle of Baptist ministry to college students; enthusiastic Mission Friend, GA, and Acteen; student of two Baptist universities and now faculty member at a third. Ridgecrest houses my earliest memories, and I spent my teens rambling through Glorieta.

Like any open-eyed child, I recognize that my heritage is both a blessing and a burden, and like any religious tradition, Baptist history is a cause for both gratitude and sorrow. I am not always proud of what my fellow Baptists have said or done. However, these are family quarrels, and I'm not writing this blog to voice my opinion on contentious issues.

I am writing to share the story of one of my Baptist heroes, Clarence Jordan. The life and writings of Dr. Jordan have encouraged me since I was a child, and recently I have developed an even deeper gratitude for his place in Baptist history.

Photo from Koinonia Partners

Jordan, a Georgia native, earned a bachelor's degree in agriculture, then headed north to the Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, where he graduated with a PhD in Greek in 1936. Rather than take a prominent position as the pastor of a large church, Jordan felt called to put the Sermon on the Mount into practice. To this end, he and his friend Martin England, who had been a missionary to Burma, founded Koinonia Farm in the early 1940s.

From its birth, Koinonia was a place where the Jordans, the Englands, and their community could submit their lives to Christ. Their dedication to racial equality and pacifism provoked violent hostilities from their neighbors. For the first twenty years of their existence, the community endured bombings, shootings, harassment, boycotts, and even judicial inquiry into their supposedly "un-American" activities.

Jordan also wrote and preached extensively. He used his expertise in biblical languages to write the remarkable Cotton Patch Gospels. In these works, Jordan imagines how the Gospels and Epistles might have been written if the events of the New Testament had taken place in the American South, instead of the ancient near-east. The Pharisees become white church people; Samaria is a black ghetto; Jesus is lynched.

I first learned about Jordan through a stage adaptation of The Cotton Patch Gospel. In turns hilarious and heart-wrenching, the stage production stays true to the spirit of Jordan's own work. I watch it every Christmas and Easter, and it still has the power to move and challenge me. 




Jordan himself died in 1969, but Koinonia Farm has continued to thrive in the years since. Millard Fuller, founder of Habitat for Humanity, lived on the farm and was inspired by Jordan's ideas for making good housing a community responsibility. President Jimmy Carter and Mrs. Rosalyn Carter were honorary chairs of  the 2012 Clarence Jordan Symposium, celebrating Koinonia Farm's 70th Anniversary. Many writers in the "New Monasticism" movement, such as Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, have listed Jordan among their inspirations.

If you'd like to learn more, you should visit the webpage of Koinonia Farm. They offer resources, information, and opportunities to participate. 

The biographical sketch I offered above comes from Joyce Hollyday's introduction to Clarence Jordan: Essential Writings. This book was my spring-break treat, and it made me proud to be Baptist, calling me to consider whether I am willing to claim Christ in truly radical ways. I will leave you with some of Jordan's own words. Thanks to his legacy, home will always mean a place where people root their faith to the strong words of the gospel and rise to challenge the world's understanding of property, wealth, race, and community. 

The following passages from Clarence Jordan: Essential Writings (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2003). 

In response to suggestions that Koinonia should relocate to a less hostile part of the nation, Jordan said, "If there is any balm in Gilead; if there is any healing in God's wings; if there is any hope-- shall we go off and leave people without hope? We have too many enemies to leave them. The redemptive love of God must somehow break through. If it costs us our lives, if we must be hung on a cross to redeem our brothers and sisters in the flesh, so let it be. It will be well worth it. To move away would be to deny the redemptive processes of God" (26). 

A Northern pastor, giving Jordan a tour of his new church building, boasted that the church's cross had cost $10, 000. "Brother," Jordan said, "you got gypped. The time was you could get them for nothing" (32). 

"It just burns me up that we Christians with the word of God in our hearts have to be forced to sit around Woolworth's table and that we still segregate Christ's table. The sit-ins would never have been necessary if the Christians had been sitting down together in church and at Christ's table these many years."  (153)

"I don't think we have a right to bear witness to that which we do not experience. The incarnation, then, is the announcement of the Good News as fact." (142)

"God's plan of making peace is not merely to bring about an outward settlement between evil people, but to create people of goodwill" (117).

"Faith is not belief in spite of the evidence but a life in scorn of the consequences" (143).