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.

Thankful: A Single Girl Needs Married Friends

Today, I am thankful for all my married friends.

I am finally at an age where most of my friends are wed. The shift came a year or two ago, when I realized that in a group of ten friends from church, I might be the only person unmarried. Now that I am in a job where most of my colleagues are married, it is even more clear that my minority position is most likely permanent.

My most recently-married friends. I wrote about their wedding here.

You might think that it has become more difficult to remain content as a single woman among so many married peers, but that hasn't been my experience. As an only child (in a world of siblings), an introvert (in a world of extroverts), and a general nonconformist, I've never really minded being the odd one out. Even more importantly, my married friends are all admirable, adorable, amazing people, and they use their marriages to bless everyone around them, including me. Consequently, the grace I am celebrating today includes all my married friends.

Here are some of the wonderful things they do....

1. They provide resources I don't have.

One of the most frightening things about being single (or, let's be honest: being an adult) is facing difficulties without help. Investigating creepy sounds from downstairs. Dealing with the steam pouring from the engine. Packing for a job interview when I am too sick to sit up. Married couples, simply by being two instead of one, often have twice as many practical resources to share. For example, my friend and neighbor Stephanie would send her husband (and also my friend) Jon to walk through my apartment for me when I was worried about mysterious sounds. This may seem like a little thing, but it had the power to make the world seem far less frightening.

Some of my favorite married people.  Jenn was with us but didn't make it into the picture. (Picture stolen from Stephanie Harris Trevor's Facebook page.

2. They keep me from idealizing marriage. 

My mother often says, "Being single is hard. Being married is hard. They're just hard in different ways." My temperament is more optimistic than my mother's, but I am thankful that my married friends do not hide the fact that marriage--like every good labor--has its difficult days. Recognizing that husbands and wives must practice patience, silence, humility, and submission in ways I can hardly fathom keeps me from pitying the burden of my own state.

3. They keep me from denigrating singleness. 

I have heard some single people complain about their married friends nagging them to date, or no longer hanging out with them.  Thankfully, my married friends do none of those things. In fact, some of the greatest affirmation I have had as a single woman have come from married men and women. They remind me that my state frees me to travel, study, explore, and serve in ways they cannot. I have often roused myself from discontent by saying, "If Julianna thinks my life is beautiful and full, who am I to scorn my own riches?"

4. They have children. 

Children only became interesting to me as my own friends began to bear and adopt them. As a child and teen, I was never particularly interested in younger children. For the last ten years or so, however, children have become marvelous to me. The fact that we can bring new people into the world still strikes me as a deep mystery, and I am thankful to witness this mystery in the lives of my friends. As I near thirty and begin to wonder if I will ever have children of my own, I am thankful for friends who allow me to love their children as a kind of unofficial aunt. I am thankful for little boys for whom I can make castles, little girls who want to play with the little cats I knit, and whole crops of babies to outfit in sweaters.

5. They provide a safe place for mixed-gender friendships. 

If I were to name my closest, share-my-deepest-secrets-wth sorts of friends, the list would be pretty equally divided between men and women. However, maintaining friendships between men and women is much more difficult at 28 than it was at 12, or even than it was at 20. While observers are likely to assume romantic interest in any male-female friendships, those assumptions are much more dangerous than they once were. If someone thought Mark and I were flirting in college, I could simply laugh it off. However, now that Mark is married, I am much more sensitive to how our friendship could look to outsiders. I would hesitate to spend large amounts of time with Mark alone -- not because I don't trust him, or myself--but because it might mislead others. Happily, Mark's wife, Moriah, has become a dear friend in her own right, and their marriage has allowed to me to stay friends with Mark by becoming friends with them both.  As I have discussed elsewhere, I'm not very interested in women-only-events, and I would mourn the loss of my close male friends.

6. They bring me into families. 

Whatever virtues a single life might have (and there are many), it can too easily lack any sense of belonging. Eating alone is nothing like being a part of a family, but then again, exchanging tepid courtesies and fleeting handshakes on Sunday morning isn't much better (in fact, I consider it far worse than honest solitude). However, over the years my married friends have been tenacious and creative in their willingness to invite me into their lives. They have used Skype, meals, guest rooms and houses to make a place for me. They didn't make me demand or beg entry; they invited and celebrated my coming.  These were not casual arrangements, not acts of pity, but decisions made from love. In these actions, my friends showed that they were committed to me--not in the same way they were committed to one another, but with bonds of Christian love that are real and lasting.

With Grant and Jenn at my graduation. May 2012

I've not done my friends justice with this post, but then gratitude, not justice, was my aim.  We all need to people in different stages and seasons of life to temper and challenge us. If I ever do marry, these friends will be my mentors and guides. Until then, or if I never marry, they will remain friends who baffle, humble, and delight me with their oh-so-different, oh-so-common lives.

If you are single, what do your married friends do that make you grateful? If you are married, how are you grateful for your single friends? 

A letter to one I wronged

Dear M.V.,

I never wanted to be your friend. During lunch hour in the schoolyard, I would notice you following me from a distance, waiting for a break in the circle I had formed with Ashley, Audrina, and Kirsten. Eventually you would stand just next to me, and we let you in kindly enough, shifting our conversation from girlhood gossip to the small-talk of sixth grade: Mr. B's homework, the opacity of pre-algebra, the agony of mandatory orange gym shirts. I knew, proper little Christian that I was, that I must be nice to you, talk to you, but in the evenings I would complain to my mother, "We can't talk about anything important while she's there! You can't just make someone be your friend!" I was more than content with a very small number of people I deemed worthy of friendship.  I still ranked these friends, with all the seriousness of childhood, into degrees and ranks. Only the year before, Elissa and I had, after two years of being "second-best friends," promoted one another to the status of "best friend." By sidling up to me day after day, you violated my rigid laws of affection and loyalty.

But Elissa was in China with her family that year, and I might have cast aside my petty rules if I had liked you. But I didn't like you. I didn't like you because you made me sad.

I was odd and awkward in my own ways at 12 years old, but I was clever enough and pretty enough to be liked in spite of my eccentricity. You wore sweat pants to school each day, you smelled strange, and your conversation moved in timid, fluttering circles. I remember you telling me again and again about your brother, and how you were going to give him new pajama pants for Christmas because he always had holes in the seat of his.  Your brother, I knew, was nearly 20, and for some reason the state of his pajamas struck me as a sign of sickness or dysfunction. I worried about your home--a home where no one was making sure people dressed properly, or washed regularly or taught you about things like bras and deodorant and schoolwork.

I remember a day when, in our English class, we picked texts for our book reports. I knew you loved the Little House on the Prairie, but someone claimed that book before you could. When it was your turn to choose, you sat blankly, biting your lip. I felt sick and cried for you as I walked home, but I never told you how sorry I was.
Your isolation hurt me, but I always kept a distance, never allowing kindness to grow into something that would connect me to your slattern life. Instead, I channeled my anxiety into trying to fix you.  What you needed, my friends and I decided, was Help. When you would join our circle, we would begin discussing, for example, how many times a week we washed our hair--never asking you directly, but hoping that you might think, "Ah! So one must wash the hair! How foolish of me to neglect this!"

When these subtle methods proved ineffectual, I addressed the problem more directly. I wrote you a note, as kindly (I thought) as possible, detailing a few of things you could to improve yourself.
The anger of your response shocked me. You wrote a note on grubby paper and addressed me throughout as "MISS BEAR," as though capital letters and formal language could assert your insulted dignity. You told me to mind my own business and to leave you alone.

I was wickedly relieved. I felt I had done my duty and, based on your response, I guessed that I would no longer have to make room for you in time, attention, or conversation.
This relief did not last long, and that was my own fault. Around seventh grade, I began praying that God would teach me what love meant. I felt myself growing sarcastic and self-satisfied; I began to worry that I "had not love," and I was right. God answered this prayer, as he often answers dangerous prayers, with tears. Soon my prim desire to improve those less fortunate gave way to something far more frightening and beautiful.

Unfortunately, by the time this transformation moved from my heart to my hands--about the time I entered high school-- you had vanished. Did you move? Drop out? Not even Facebook can tell me.
For years I have carried your face in my mind--your school picture from that sixth-grade year. You were wearing a new sweatshirt, one with the Lion King on the front, and you were smiling--a strange, confident smile I never saw on your everyday face.

Every autumn, when I remember Indiana and grade school, that image moves slowly forward, just as timidly and hopefully as you once walked up to me. And whenever it does, I say, "I am so sorry."
I am so sorry, M.V., for seeing you as a project instead of a person. I am sorry for offering superficial kindness instead of love. I am sorry for avoiding you at lunch, for never trusting you with one of my silly schoolgirl secrets. I am sorry for never asking why you loved Little House on the Prairie, for not inviting you to come to my house after school.
I am so sorry. Will you please forgive me?

Love,
Bethany

Flight to the Wedding Feast

Costa Rica, October 13, 2012 Photo by Larissa Smith 

I've been to at least 100 weddings in my 28 years. When I was a three-year-old flower girl, I was very excited about my basket of flowers, but I was not happy about all the people looking at me, and a bridesmaid had to carry me down the aisle. As an older child, I was most excited about eating cake and throwing rice.

As a teenager, all the weddings I attended were for college students I loved and admired. I celebrated these weddings with awe. I knew that in those solemn hours I was witnessing the culmination of countless cautious flirtations, late-night conversations, hard questions, daring adventures, and growing trust. I was curious but shy about the joy of these events. Once, when I refused to come up for the bouquet toss, pleading shyness, the bride commanded the groom to literally carry me from my chair to the dance floor. Their joy in that day was so great that they would suffer no excuses from bashful guests.

More recently, I have reveled in the weddings of many dear friends. Each and every one has had beautiful moments: praying with Mark before he took his place at the altar to await his bride; listening to Lindsay sing for her new husband's mother-son dance; watching Martin and Mary shine like a king and queen during their wedding mass.

The Bible says that one of the purposes of marriage is to give us a glimpse of the relationship between Christ and the Church (Ephesians 5.31-32), and Jesus uses images of wedding feasts again and again in his parables about the Kingdom of God.

Last week I flew to Costa Rica for the wedding of some of my dearest friends, and ever since, I've been thinking about what my five-score weddings have taught me about the way the world should be. I spent most of yesterday's Sabbath flying back to the US, and as I travelled, I used these pictures to pray for the world's redemption.

Costa Rica, October 12, 2012 

The Costa Rica wedding is still too recent for me to write about it in full -- it is too dear, too precious to become public just yet. But I will say that it has given me even better pictures of the way this world can and will be changed by love:

...And then the bride and her bridegroom will make a home for those they love in a strange and beautiful land. They will give them rooms that perch on the hillsides, with windows that look to the ocean. Together--bride and groom and guests--they will venture into the mountains, will feel the heat of volcanoes, will fly from tree to tree. They will feast for days, and when the wedding night comes, even those who are shy and sore and heavy-hearted will dance. They will send lanterns into the night sky like fledgling stars. Save your coins for this, save your days and lift up your heart. Make your best dress ready and find shoes for climbing. Don't miss your flight to the wedding feast. 

Costa Rica, October 13, 2012 Photo by Larissa Smith

To a friend who is estranged

Dear Friend,

Do you remember the stories I used to tell as we were drifting off to sleep? You would ask for tales about "Joyous Garde," our imaginary house hidden in the mountains.  We populated the rooms with our few favorite people, and I would tell of idyllic hikes, secret passages, and many other mild adventures. That ramshackle daydream still comes to mind whenever I think of you.

Those were children's tales, and I could be petulant like a child, too, when things didn't go my way. You taught me so much about what it means to be a generous, just, and affectionate friend, and eventually I realized Joyous Garde's fault: it was never built to house only four or five favorites, hidden away and self-satisfied.  The path should have been more clearly marked, the table set with an extra chair for pilgrims and wanderers and runaways.  As I've grown up, I've learned to mark the trail with colored pennants and well-lettered signs. As spring turns to summer, I've thrown all the windows open.  A crowd has gathered on the front porch, and someone is coaxing a hymn from the old piano in the front room.  The rooms are full, the meal ready.

But during this season--with its fierce storms and brilliant mornings--you have left Joyous Garde. After two years of silence I am still baffled. I tell myself that you are on a pilgrimage through the desert, with no chance to send messages home.  That is a happy illusion, a heart-suture.  There are so many here I would have you meet: Joyous Garde has become a hostel, studio, library, and cathedral.  We are content, and yet I hope: I hope that someday soon you'll be the welcome stranger who steps through our open doors.

Ever yours,
Bethany 
  

A Letter to all those who might have been my friends

Dear Brave, Beautiful, Mysterious People,

Over the next two months, I have many joyful, heart-breaking good-byes to share with friends I know and love and deeply.  But I owe you a word, too.  As I prepare to leave this wonderful, broken city and all its wonderful, broken people, I can't stop thinking about those of you who might have been my friends.

I say "might have been" without acrimony; I only mean that by chance or choice, we never knew one another well.  Perhaps we took a class together, sitting across the room and smiling at one another when our eyes met. We admired each other's comments, but we were never in class together again.

Maybe we have gone to church together.  We spent a long night laughing together at the women's retreat three years ago, and we still greet one another from across the sanctuary.  I've kept your children in the nursery, loving the games and graces you have taught them.

In other days, in other circumstances, we might have been friends. Had we been undergrads together, had we lived within walking distance, had we made more time, had we kept that coffee date, we might have been friends.

And yet, despite my tone of might-have-been, regret is not my theme.  I have not lacked friends, and I could not have invested so deeply and well in many more people.  Nor did you lack company; I took joy in the circle of love and society that seemed to gather around you.  It isn't regret that prompts this letter, but gratitude.  We may have only touched the margins of one another's lives, but there was grace in that touch, as when strangers hold hands for prayer before a meal.

In my small way, I have loved you.  You have carried the "lantern out of doors" that Gerard Manley Hopkins describes.  Sitting at a window, the speaker of his poem watches lights move through the darkness:

Sometimes a lantern moves along the night,
That interests our eyes. And who goes there?
I think; where from and bound, I wonder, where,
With, all down darkness wide, his wading light?

These lanterns, he sees, are carried by people God has made beautiful.  The speaker cannot call them by name, but he sees how they challenge the darkness and tedium of the despairing world:

Men go by me whom either beauty bright
In mould or mind or what not else makes rare:
They rain against our much-thick and marsh air
Rich beams, till death or distance buys them quite. 


And then, just as quickly as their light appeared through the darkness, they are gone.

Death or distance soon consumes them: wind
What most I may eye after, be in at the end
I cannot, and out of sight is out of mind.

Christ minds: Christ’s interest, what to avow or amend
There, éyes them, heart wánts, care haúnts, foot fóllows kínd,
Their ránsom, théir rescue, ánd first, fást, last friénd.

I share this hope: that you are not lost to me.  Our friendship, small and slight as it was here, has been hidden in Christ, the "first, fást, last friénd" of us both.  Thank you for letting your lantern flash through the windows of my busy days.  When the light fell upon me, I blessed it. 


Ever yours,
Bethany 

Lantern, "Aquaria Vattenmuseum", Stockholm, by m.prinkle

 

Why can't we be friends?

Lack of attention to friendship is an enormous gap in most evangelical discipleship.  I could build a very tall soapbox on this subject, but I have neither the time nor authority to offer a general sort of rant. Rather, I want to consider a question that becomes particularly troublesome for many young adults: the question of friendships between men and women.

I know that much of my joy and contentment as a single adult come from the fact that I have friends who are both men and women. I cannot assume that my experiences speak to general (much less biblical) truths.  However, I also know that these friendships can be complicated, and that some Christian leaders openly admonish Christians to avoid close friendships with members of the opposite sex. 

 I don't mean to minimize the real concerns many Christians have about these friendships, but I am convinced that in Christ, it is possible for men and women, whether married or unmarried, to be friends.  I also know that like most human endeavors after holiness, these friendships need a lot of grace to keep from going wrong. Today, I'm interested in naming that grace. To begin the conversation, here are a few of the principles I've derived from observing successful, even holy, male/female friendships:

* Like many strong friendships, they begin not with admiration of one another, but with some common interest or participation in a common work. Conversations and time together tend to strengthen these shared commitments.

* They are usually part of a larger friendship network consisting of both men and women, such as Sunday School classes or lifegroups.

* If one or both of the friends are married, spouses are integrated and welcomed into the friendship. 

Do you believe men and women can sustain strong friendships? How does the Bible guide us on this subject? How have you sustained opposite-gender friendships as an adult? 

Where distances don't matter

Google Hangout reunites old friends, February 2012

(Day 5 of Lent)

Love Makes Language Exact

"Desire for the future produces words that cannot be stood by. But love makes language exact, because one loves only what one knows" (Wendell Berry).

As I have drawn near the end of my doctoral work, so many people have been ministers of grace to me. This week, I received two gifts from two beautiful friends, Lindsay and Kt. They are not the only friends who have encouraged me during these days of relentless work, but their kindness, coming in the same week, made me realize how blessed I am to be known so well. Lindsay and Kt have proven, as all good friends prove, Wendell Berry's claims that "love makes language exact, because one loves only what one knows." Here are the words they sent me:

This may seem a bit strange, but I would like to give you a small gift today... I just have to trust you to take the gift and use it well since I can't actually enforce it. I want to give you the gift of a cup of sweetened tea: as sweet as you would like with any sweetener you want. I know you usually only have sweet tea on Sundays, but I think you should have one to celebrate your new deadline and because I want you to.


So go make yourself (another) cup of tea and sweeten it to your heart's desire. I know this is pretty random, but this idea got stuck in my head and it won't leave. So hopefully that means you'll enjoy it.
Much love and prayers to you, dear friend,

Kt Ruth

 ***

Did you know that sometimes I just watch what you listen to on Spotify and then go listen to the same things? :) It's not so much that I like the music (even though I do), it's more that it makes me feel like maybe, just maybe, one day we'll be sitting in the same room together with our cups of tea and writing or praying or whatever, just communing together. For now, I'm truly with you in Spirit, and I'm praying for you over these final weeks in your pursuit of this part of your dream. I love you, sister.

Lindsay 

 I am so grateful to be known and loved such friends. They remind me that home is a place where language is exact, capable of comforting and challenging with the same strong words.

Have words ever consoled you during a time of stress of grief? Have you ever received a gift that proves the giver knows you deeply and well?

Comforts, Quirks, and Company

Hoosier Winter

This Christmas is very much a working holiday. I'm striving to complete my final dissertation chapter by December 31, so I'm not indulging in nearly as many movies, walks, or visits as I normally do when visiting Indiana. However, even while racing toward my deadline, I have been able to appreciate many of the good things about being here, in my first of all homes:

1. Kind Inquiries from Federal Employees: As I stepped onto the porch to retrieve the mail on Tuesday, the postman stopped and shouted, "Well, how is Baby Bear? Get good grades this semester?"
2. Things that Do Not Change: For more years than I can remember, my mother has used the same wrapping paper to wrap my presents. I suppose when you save a certain paper for one person, it can last a long time.
3. Creature Comforts: Writing a dissertation is much more pleasant with a purring cat curled up on my lap (or, less conveniently, in front of my keyboard)
4. Other Things that Do Not Change: My parents' Christmas tree will always be, in my estimation, the best of all trees.  Every ornament has a story. I especially like the angels made from aluminum foil, which Mama made when she and Daddy were first married.

Grocery shopping with Mama

5. Deliciousness: On Wednesday, Mama made eight casserole dishes full of homemade party mix. As far as I am concerned, this is our Christmas feast.
6. Quirks I Did Not Realize Were Quirks until I Left Home: On our living room walls, my parents have maps of Narnia and Middle Earth, but there is not a single family portrait to be found on any wall in the house. 
7. New Delights: Daddy is reading Harry Potter for the first time (he's just started the sixth book), and I love hearing his first-time reactions to the stories.
8. Quotidian Grace: Mama and I spend quality time together by running errands.
9. Sartorial Redemption: The Helping Hands thrift store in West Terre Haute, Indiana yields many treasures.
10. Good Company: Miscellaneous college and international students are in and out of the house at all hours.
11.  Ties that Bind: I spent last night and most of today with Lennon, Amy, and Andrew--kin by so much more than blood. (Amy, by the way, is a fabulous baker and blogs her creations here. If you're in central/southern Indiana, you should hire her to bake you a cake!).

Lennon, Amy, and Andrew with "Aunt Bethany"

A more typical glimpse of our time together.

Where are you this Christmas? What are some of the good things about being there?

Waiting my Way Home

"Ben, you're my last hope," the station agent said into the phone. "You see, I've got this passenger who needs to get to Ft. Worth and--oh. You're in San Antonio? Oh, never mind, then."

After five hours of waiting for a train, this was not what I wanted to hear from the Amtrak station agent. My northbound coach, the Texas Eagle, was schedule to depart from McGregor at 11:50 AM on Sunday, but an accident north of Austin had led to a series of delays. All the passengers who had been on the train were loaded onto buses, and train service was to resume in Ft. Worth. After a series of frustrating conversations with operators, who seemed to know about as much as I did about what was happening, I finally learned that one of the five buses knew I was waiting in McGregor and would be coming to take me to Ft. Worth.

Waiting for another train, July 2007

By 5 o'clock, however, the station agent was beginning to worry that the bus had either forgotten me or was not going to arrive in time to get me to Ft. Worth.  Just before he called Ben, I had overheard him say as much to Maria, the station agent at Temple, Texas. "Do you know where he is?" my agent asked. "No, I can't hail Billings, either." The inability to "hail Billings"--the driver of the bus that was supposed to come for me--had become the last in long series of obstacles to my journey home for Christmas.

I should pause here to note that my wonderful, amazing, patient housemates had been waiting with me all afternoon, and when Jennifer realized that Billings-the-bus-driver was incommunicado, and that Ben-the-taxi-man was in San Antonio, she said, "Could we take her to Ft. Worth?"
"Could you?" the agent replied, relief visible on his face. "That would be best, because we just can't seem to hail Billings....and Amtrak could reimburse you for the gas."
"Okay. We'll do it. When would we need to leave?"
"Well, um, right now."

And so Grant and Jenn, who had originally planned to wait with me for fifteen minutes, drove me two hours to Ft. Worth, arriving about ten minutes before the northbound train pulled out of the station.  The generosity, patience, and love they exhibited was more than I could have asked for, and they, bless them, didn't even make me ask. They simply saw my need and met it without fuss or fear.

At the beginning of Advent, I wrote about how I have found it difficult to be faithful in waiting (read the full reflection here). Writing that entry humbled me because for most of my life I have thought of myself as being fairly good at waiting. In college, I liked to quip, "Delayed gratification is good for the soul," too often dismissing my friend Rachel's protest: "Yes, but it is hard on the heart."

My long day at the train station reminded me that waiting is much easier to bear with friends. This is hardly an original observation, but it is a truth that has come to dwell with me this year. Often, people describe life as a journey, and friends as our companions on the road. It is wonderful to have friends travel alongside me, but in some ways I am more encouraged when I realize that my friends are waiting with me as circumstances, sickness, or uncertainty stand in the way of progress.

And so tonight, safe and warm in my childhood home, I am thankful for Grant and Jenn, who waited with me all day, hugged me when it looked like I might not get home at all, then took action as soon as they saw a way to speed me on my journey.

I am also thankful for all the memories of other friends who have waited with me. I remember the spring I was preparing for my preliminary exams, when Adrienne would  come over and study with me, to help me stay calm and hopeful. Steph stayed up with me all night as I graded a mountain of essays and exams. And then there was that wonderful piece of pie Liz brought to the library during my second year of grad school. I was working frantically to finish a term paper, and she came and sat with me until the wee hours of the morning. In college, I once became sick on a night my friends and I had planned to cook dinner and watch a movie. They put me to bed upstairs, and whenever I would wake, one friend or another--first Rachel, then Keith, Mari, or Mark--would be sitting across the room, waiting quietly in case I might wake and need something.

As a single adult, I do not expect anyone to wait with me for a train to come or for a night to pass. No one is obligated to tend me if I am sick, to drive me to Ft. Worth, or to keep me company if I must work late into the night. Consequently, whenever a friend does wait with me, I know their waiting is a form of grace. When they wait, they say, "We believe this will end -- we believe you will get home, you will finish this essay, you will be well again."  But they also say--and this is such a gracious mystery--"This moment is good, too. "

At Advent, and during all our  seasons of waiting, we need such friends. Their presence reminds us that our savior's name is "Emmanuel"--God with us.

The Young Adult's Guide to an Awesome Thanksgiving

(compiled from four years of wonderful Waco celebrations)

My nook, Thanksgiving 2006

1. Stay where you are. If home is a place we go for holidays, be intentional about celebrating in the place where you live, work, or study.  Celebrations are one way to consecrate a place as home.

2. Be extravagant with your cooking. Buy the best and finest food, and prepare it with care and courage.

3. Invite anyone you can think of who might be alone or lonely. 

Thanksgiving 2011 Photo by Kt



4. Let the kitchen fill up with food and people and merry chaos.

Thanksgiving 2009

5. Serve sweet tea and tamales along with the turkey and dressing.

4. Try to celebrate with an equal number of family members and friends. Introduce your teenage cousins to your grad-school colleagues.  Recognize that the highest bonds of kinship are far above blood, nationality, or common interest.

5. Sing your prayer before eating. "For the Beauty of the Earth" makes a perfect Thanksgiving blessing. Don't be afraid to demand all four verses. 

Thanksgiving 2011 Photo by Kt

6. Go for a long walk after feasting and lingering at the table. Point out beautiful doors and interesting trees in the neighborhood. Say, "Happy Thanksgiving!" to everyone you see.

7. Try all the pies.

 Photo by Stephanie Harris Trevor

8. Give thanks for all the Thanksgivings past. Remember what it was like to sit at the kids' table. Try to name the songs Casey played when he came up from Ft. Hood for Thanksgiving in 2008.  Let Grant and Jenn know how much you appreciated being rescued from a solitary Thanksgiving last year. Laugh at the way Jon never let your wine glass go empty during that first holiday with friends.

Room for more, 2011. Photo by Kt

9. Let yourself be sad for all the miles, years, or hard conversations separating your from people you love. Cry a little if you must, but then imagine that your table is growing longer and longer, and that by the time dessert is served, every seat will be filled with some faraway friend.

10. Write letters to people you are thankful for. Name specific reasons you give thanks to God for them.

Thanksgiving 2008

11. Rest. Don't be ashamed to drift off to sleep as the room fills with low conversations or the buzz of a football game.

12. Don't fret about how or where or with whom you will celebrate next year.  Give thanks for the hope that God will bring you to some glad table, whether as host, guest, daughter, or friend.

Thanksgiving 2008

Thanksgiving 2008 My strangely pinched smile does not do justice to my very real joy at this meal.

Another Thanksgiving, another weird smile. The grad students, Thanksgiving 2011.

Thanksgiving 2011. All is well.

How did you celebrate Thanksgiving this year?

November Grace, Day 4

 We laughed, still holding hands and keeping our eyes closed.  Tiffany had not intended to make a joke during our prayer, but we couldn't help giggling along with her.  Had we been children, someone might have shushed us, but we are the adults now, and the laughter was too sweet to chide. If anything, it sounded our thanks and our hope in ways words alone could not. Still smiling, I listened as the women in our circle, and the men across the room, continued to lift heavy words into the light: "tests...sickness... essays... jobs....family."  When silence fell, I began the Lord's Prayer, and everyone joined in.

 Today, I am thankful for my lifegroup.  We are still a fairly new community, having only begun to meet in September (you can read about some of my past experiences with small groups here and here). However, the group is coming together--is being drawn together--in holy ways.

 Tonight, I heard that holiness in our laughter. If "the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words" (Romans 8.26), I wonder if that Holy Ghost ever teaches us to pray with a mirth that defies our heavy hearts and weary days.

November Grace

Photo by Gisela Francisco

Several years ago, I led a Bible study on grace.  Being a word person, I spent quite a while exploring the history and meaning of "grace" itself. One of my happiest discoveries was the link between the words "graceful" and "grateful."  Etymologically, the words are identical; both come from the Latin "gratia," meaning "beauty," and "favor, goodwill." In English, the words have evolved to articulate the symmetry of grace: to say one is "graceful" means she has received gifts of beauty, strength, or goodwill. To say she is "grateful" means she has acknowledged offered thanks for these gifts.

My favorite definition of grace is, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, obsolete.  For a time in English, "grace" referred to "the part in which the beauty of a thing consists." I think this definition is ready for renewal.  As fallen men and women, our beauty does consist only in the grace we have from God: the grace we have of being made in God's image; the grace of the Christ, who restores that image in us; the grace of love, which the Holy Spirit bestows so that we may love one another into beauty. 
For the past several years, I have come to see November as a season for remembering what it means to be full of grace. Thanksgiving is, more or less, a secular holiday, but I have come to celebrate it as the golden day in a holy season of gratitude. Along with many others, I have set aside November as a time to publish the reasons I am thankful.  For the next month, until ordinary time surrenders to the watchful hope of Advent, I will be posting short entries each day on the reasons I give thanks to God.  

I invite you to spend this month naming grace with me.  Only by looking carefully at the gifts we have received can we see how beautiful our lives really are. 

Today I am grateful for peculiar ways of showing love.  Last night, Jenn and I realized that we show love to one another with tea leaves. You see, we drink lots of tea in this house, and rather than tea bags, we usually brew our tea from loose leaves. One advantage to using loose-leaf tea is that you steep the tea more than once. The second infusion, however, is usually weaker than the first. It is a small but real act of service, then, when one of us gives the first-steeped cup to the other.  To someone who does not drink tea, this act of love might go unnoticed. But we notice. Not only I am grateful to live with people I can serve and accept service from, but I am grateful that as a household, as a peculiar little family, we have already developed our own unique ways of showing love. When Jenn offers me the first cup, I accept it with thanks, breathe in the fragrant steam, and take the first sip of grace.   


What are you grateful for today? What fills you with grace?

Home Sweet Homecoming

October 20. The window panes are cold. My fingers trace ridges and valleys across the dark glass, trying to remember the architecture of the mountains we saw yesterday. Tired and peaceful, I think that tonight could almost be a college night. After a long day on campus, we lingered over a late supper, and now I am working at the computer late at night, a marked-up manuscript on the desk beside me. Lauren and Charlie are just across the hall; Emily and Kevin could hear me if I called their names. Tomorrow we'll meet Eric at First Baptist for church, and Jeremy might join us for lunch afterward.

It could almost be home. The familiarity of this night, this place, is bewildering and consoling all at once because tonight is not, after all, a college night. We are all nearer twenty-eight than eighteen, and instead of a dorm, Kevin and Emily's house is our gathering place. Sharing a meal with these friends is no longer a common joy, but a rare event--it has been years since we were gathered around one table, and it may be years before it happens again. This is not home, but homecoming.

My dear friends Dave and Mandy live here in our college town, and on one wall of their living room, they have painted the words "Home is..." in large letters.  They and their friends have written other words and phrases to complete this sentence all around the wall, and Saturday was my turn. I contributed a curious line from George MacDonald's Lilith.  "Home," I wrote, "is ever so far away in the palm of your hand."

This is the paradox of homecoming. We return to a place and a time that was home, traveling across memory, miles, or both, but we know we have not come to stay.

 Walking in the shadows of familiar buildings on Saturday, I began to catalog all the friends I would need to see walking to the cafeteria, or perhaps headed towards the dorms, before I would feel that I had really come home. This was not mere nostalgia; I don't wish I were eighteen or twenty-two again, and I would not come home, even to my beloved college, to meet my friends unchanged. I want a more-than-Facebook vision of the people they have become, with real voices telling stories about work and ideas and families. I want hugs and handshakes and looking-in-the-eye. I imagined all these friends gathered around Kevin and Emily's dining room table, but even as I indulged in my fantasies of reunion, I could not ignore the distances that were keeping us apart.  For some of the friends who once made Carson-Newman home, finances, jobs, and miles prevented their pilgrimage to the east Tennessee foothills. And there are other kinds of distances that, I knew, would have followed even my dearest friends back to our alma mater.  We might gather, but there would be subjects tactfully avoided at dinner, questions left unasked as we recounted the recent news. Home, I often think, is ever so far away. 

I was prepared for these distances, braced against awkward conversations and tentative reunions. I had resigned myself to any number of tepid "remember whens?"  Instead, I spent all weekend overwhelmed to see the ways in which the virtues that first drew me to Carson-Newman had grown in the lives of my teachers and friends. As a high-school senior, I had my choice of full scholarships to several colleges and universities.  I chose Carson-Newman because everyone I met there invited me, in one way or another, to become the sort of person I longed to be. I was a shy, neurotic, self-absorbed teenager, and by the time I finished high school I was very nearly sick of myself. When I visited Carson-Newman, I met young men and women who were brilliant without pretension, kind without condescension, fun without stupidity. Their confidence, kindness, and service attracted me more than any number of brand-new residence halls or manicured flowerbeds. Returning as an alumna, I realized how remarkable and rare these virtues are. I came home, after all, to friends who plan October picnics of pumpkin stew and ginger tea; who wash up the supper dishes without being asked; who spend their days teaching high school students to love reading or math; who go out of their way to include others in a conversation; who stand up for their convictions about the environment; who train dancers; who raise children to love truth, beauty, and goodness. I came home to the faculty who inspired me to be a professor--wise, compassionate men and women who greet their students with eager questions and hugs after half a decade.

All weekend I found myself wanting to hold on to everyone I met, literally to wrap my fingers around their wrists and to touch their faces. I want to be among these people, I thought. I want to live my life with their courage, grace, and kindness. I felt the same rush of hope and longing that led me to this school. This, I realized, is the reason for homecomings: not to retire from daily strife, not to escape into nostalgia, but to witness and remember what it takes to establish a home. It takes Emily's curiosity. Shannon's enthusiasm. Kevin's steadiness. Jeremy's thoughtfulness. Eric's fidelity. Lauren and Charlie's merry kindness. Dave and Mandy's creativity and convictions. Mari's courage. Mark's lovingkindness. Keith's wit. Rachel's compassion.

 As a student, I always cried at the end of each semester, and my flight back to Texas could have been one of those bittersweet journeys from one home to another. My heart was heavy as a thousand miles unfolded between me and Carson-Newman, but some of that heaviness came from the weight of gratitude. The home I have made in Texas owes so much to what I learned in college. I have no idea where my next home will be, but I will be proud if it, like Carson-Newman, is a place where people become more than they knew they could be. When we find such places, we do not always have the privilege of staying for long, but somehow, our true homes have a way of following us. Through faith, hope, and love, through friendship and imagination and determination, you may be startled to discover that home is in the palm of your hand.
   

Eric, me, Lauren, Charlie, and Kevin. Home sweet homecoming, indeed.

With Emily, fall 2005

With Emily, fall 2011

You, Me, Light Inside

"You have a light," she said, pointing to the candle in my hand. "Like this, light inside. You, me, light inside. Life. Together."  The woman struggled for the right English words. She gestured to her heart, then her head, and said a word in Spanish. "A light inside," she repeated. "You a pretty girl. You, me, light inside. Some -- no light. Something wrong. They cry, need, need something. Life. Life, light, together."

Still smiling, the woman took the remaining candle and walked away. I turned, baffled. I had not expected to meet a Spanish-speaking mystic in the laundry aisle of the grocery store, but some mornings just turn out that way.

All day I have been full of such joy and such gratitude that if Waco had mountains I would climb one and shout the words I rather awkwardly called after my laundry-aisle prophet: "God bless you!"

Home should be a place that fills us with grace, and I am full, my friends, so grateful I can't go to sleep until I tell someone about this beautiful day.

Jenn and I left for the store shortly after seven this morning, blaring Mumford & Sons as we drove down Bosque Boulevard.  The fierce music rang like a prophecy for our golden Texas morning ("awake, my soul!"), and together we filled our cart full of good things: peppers, sweet potatoes, milk. We saw a mother with a small child and an elderly man, pushing his buggy in a suit and tie. His basket was filled with apples, peaches, bananas, and pears.

Returning home, I made a cup of tea, prayed, and wrote a letter to a friend. By nine I was at work on my dissertation, and I spent the rest of the morning reading, writing, pondering ideas about faith, literature, and nature. Jenn sat in the living room, hard at work on her wedding planning business. The morning was cool, and we kept the door open to the wind and the light.

This afternoon I met with my "dissertation club," which includes two fellow graduate students who are at a similar point in their writing. Steve, Jeff and I exchanged chapters last week, and we spent three hours providing questions, criticisms, suggestions, and connections for one another. Their comments for my chapter were insightful and practical, pointed and encouraging. We dwelt in one another's ideas, tested and pushed and sharpened the good we all found in each text.  What a privilege, I thought, to call these brilliant men my colleagues and friends. What a help, to receive their honest and thoughtful comments. What a comfort, to discuss the perils of the job search, the joys of our vocation, and the future of our discipline. In addition to our dissertations, we discussed job applications, cover letters, interviews, and bigger questions of higher education.  These things have driven me to stress and tears on many Friday nights, but the more we talked, the more I felt that light within me growing.

I left that good gathering for another--homemade pizza with a giddy group of friends--then went home to a house where people cared about my day and were glad to see me.

I don't know that words on a screen can communicate the deep and dazzling joy of this day--all the more dazzling because I expected none of it. I anticipated the gentle peace of an ordinary Friday, perhaps the satisfaction of a task or two completed. I did not expect a stranger to call out the light within me. I did not expect friends to name that light and to demand that I be brave because of it.

Perhaps they know that all too often, I forget.

I am writing this because I wonder if you, too, forget or do not know of such a light. I am writing because I overwhelmed by the grace of  food, music, friends, colleagues, work, rest. All today's good things have grown from my life in Christ, my participation in his body, the Church: the trip to the store with a friend-turned-housemate; the meeting with other young scholars who take their work--and mine--seriously; a dinner with friends whose laughter helps me forget myself.

I am writing this because I wonder if you, like me, have been sad and lonely. I want to tell you that lonely seasons can pass. They may linger for months or even years, but then, one day, the wind changes, the clouds scatter, and the light surprises your weary expectations.

I am writing this because I love this city and season of my life, yet I know that in the next year I may move to another city, state, or even country.  At this time next year, I may need this day to stand as an emblem of hope, a testament to grace.

This has been a good day, my friends. I pray it has been for you, too.

You, me, light inside. Life. Together.

In Praise of Harry Potter

More than a decade ago, I became a reluctant reader of Harry Potter. I was never worried about the supposedly diabolic effects of stories featuring "white magic" -- after all, on that charge, Narnia and Middle Earth should be pitched out as much as J.K. Rowling's world.  Rather, at the age of fourteen I was vehemently opposed to anything that seemed popular, and the Potter books were gaining enthusiastic fans quickly. Fortunately, a determined friend read the first chapter to me over the phone (and this in the days when someone actually had to pay for long-distance calls!), convincing me that the story was worth following.

Though I have said (surprisingly) little about literature on this blog, books and stories have always been part of my understanding of home, community, relationships, and all the other things I began this blog in order to explore.  Some of my earliest memories of home involve my parents reading to me, and I have chosen to pursue a PhD in literature because I believe that stories matter in our lifelong, faltering attempts to become fully human (The Gospel is a story, not an argument, after all). At its best, literature at has the power to disorient and reestablish, undermine and affirm, create good desires, instruct and delight.

Last week, as I reread the final book in the Harry Potter series, then watched the final film, I was particularly moved by two extraordinary virtues of these stories.  One is personal, the other general.  

First, the books demonstrate that stories create communities. The Potter books were one of the first things that made me feel a part of my own generation, rather than alienated from it. I loved to read long before Rowling published her first book, but until high school, I believed my interests should be entirely my own. This wasn't only because my thirteen-year-old peers weren't swooning over William Blake as I was, but because I felt that sharing something cheapened it. Having one or two friends was fine, but I wanted secret, special, and unique interests.  With the Potter books, however, my pride in precocious and hidden knowledge gave way to delight--delight too strong to be weakened by the fact that I shared it with millions of other people. Indeed, like many of my peers, I feel a kind of communal ownership of the Harry Potter saga. The first book was published in the US when I was fourteen, and now the last film has premiered when I am twenty-seven.  As the books were published, I was often only a few years older than the characters themselves, and according to the internal chronology of the series, Harry Potter and his friends were born in 1979/1980, making them all about four years older than I am.  I wouldn't say that Harry Potter defined my generation, but the stories--both in print and on screen--have certainly been companions for those of us who came of age since the late 1990s. As I watched the final Deathly Hallows movie, I thought about all the friends I've enjoyed sharing the books and films with.  I remembered seeing past films with friends from high school, college, and graduate school. I remembered Will reading that first chapter to me on the phone, and the letters I have shared with Emily, Julianna, Dave and Mandy. This year, I watched the film with one of the families from my recent China trip, glad to witness one more beautiful and powerful story with them.  

My second note of praise for Harry Potter is quite simple. J.K. Rowling has provided a series of books that glorify friendship, and such stories are badly needed.  I am increasingly convinced that friendship is the most important and neglected kind of relationship in adult life, and I want to cheer each time I read or watch Harry and his friends overcome evil with love.  The clip I've linked to (below) is from Part I of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and while this little scene was not actually in the book, it gives a picture of the kind of tenderness and courage that characterize all the best friendships in the series.  Harry, Ron, and Hermione are in the middle of the journey to defeat the dark wizard Voldemort. Like many of us, they have noble ambitions, but no idea where to go or what to do to. They are tired and wandering and heartsick. Ron, frustrated and impatient, has abandoned his friends, and in the scene below, Harry tries to remind Hermione that all is not lost.

Watch: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Scene

I nearly cry whenever I watch this. We need these pictures of friendship, pictures of friends who are not lovers, pictures of friends who are brave and honest and beautiful even in their awkwardness. We need stories to make as fierce rather than sentimental. Watching this film, I am overcome with gratitude for my own friends. More times than I can count they have offered their hands when I was lost and sad.

I would rather be a friend than a fangirl, but so long as the rest of the world is buzzing with news about "The Boy Who Lived," I wanted to offer a few thoughts of my own. They are our stories, after all.

Have you read any of the Harry Potter books? How have these or other stories shaped how you live your life alongside others?