dear jackson: you show me Jesus

Dear Jackson,You're in six month pajamas tonight, and I can see that the feet are far too big for you, the little husky puppy faces on the ends dangling helplessly where your toes can't quite reach. You're growing so much, buddy, that I can't really believe that we were in the NICU all those weeks ago. I just wrote down "months" and erased it, because this is the truth - time has changed for us. Hours are days and months are minutes. I think this is what they try to tell you when you become a parent - time reshapes itself in the midst of you.You'll know this yourself someday, I imagine. For now, you've been out in this wild world with us for 10 weeks, and you're sleeping, hands up by your face the way you always seemed to sleep those long months on the inside. I looked at those ultrasounds again (do you remember any of that? The echoes of strange voices talking to me and Dad about you? Did you ever shake your head, at how little we all knew of the mighty person you already were?) yesterday.There is no picture of you I do not find remarkably beautiful.--In those days, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus. All the world, to be registered. This is one of the beginnings of the story of Jesus.There are many, though. There is the beginning with Mary and Gabriel, the Holy Shadow, the be it unto me. There is the beginning with prophets who cried out in wilderness and desert to make straight a highway for God. There is the beginning song of creation, the Word by which everything was made. This is the season where we begin the story, where we prepare, where we make ourselves ready--I want to tell you something about Jesus, Jack. But who am I to tell you anything about Him? You know Him. You know Him in a way I have forgotten, with your one eye scanning the world, always looking for Him, always eager, always anxious for another sighting, another glimpse.And then there you are, in the midst of the world where you are looking for the answer to your being here and the world being its beautiful self, and everyone who looks at you sees Jesus. You show Him to us.Oh, how you show Him to me. Every minute.Someone might think it's because you show me something about weakness or vulnerability. Someone else might think it's because you needed a trach and a feeding tube and it was so hard and I had to believe that God had good plans in spite of or even in the midst of.But you, Jack, you show me Jesus risen in glory and power. Jesus whose love is wild and unyielding. Jesus who walks the hallway of the NICU. Jesus who reigns in operating rooms and who comes in the might of other children who kneel the afternoon of your surgery to pray.You show me that Jesus is King and always has been.--What can I say to you about Jesus? In those days, a decree went out. An annunciation was made, and a visitation. There was a leaping for joy by John, after whom you're named (your names mean God has been gracious. But you already know this).When you open your eye in the mornings and smile at me, creasing your NAM tape, when you kick your feet up in the crib and toss your body back and forth as you reach for the toy fox, for your reflection in the mirror above your head on the play mat - you show me Jesus.In those days, God announced that He was sending you to us. In those days, God announced that you had been formed differently, that what nature often does it hadn't done the same way in you. In those days we walked, you and me, down many of the streets of downtown Waco, and in those days we caught glimpses of you - black and white, three-dimensional, printed on computer paper and clutched on the long ride home - and in those glimpses we knew. I know you, I would whisper over and over when I passed the fridge where your pictures hung. I know you, I would shout in my heart when the technicians swirled the ultrasound wand around my belly, looking for what makes you different, looking for a diagnosis. I know you. You show me Jesus, Jacks. Risen in glory and power, coming to us palms open, scars lit by the same glory, wound open so that we too can put a hand inside and touch the wonder of His work and rescue. You show me Jesus who comes in those days when the decree goes out.You show me Jesus, who holds you in those glorious scars and pours His love through them over you, and through you over others.In those days a decree went out. This is the season where we remember, where we tell the story, where we prepare for Him who is coming to live with us. And you, Jacks, you are leading me.Love,mom

tonight, welcome the wonder

Dear friend,There is a scene in Marilynne Robinson's Gilead I want to remember with you.

After a while the baby cupped her hands and poured water on her mother's arm and laughed, so her mother cupped her hands and poured water on the baby's belly, and the baby laughed... The baby made a conversational sound and her mother said, 'That's a leaf. A leaf off a tree. Leaf,' and gave it into the baby's hand. And the sun was shining as well as it could onto that shadowy river, a good part of the shine being caught in the trees...After a while we went on back to the car and came home. Glory said, 'I do not understand one thing in this world. Not one.'

I can't read this without tearing up. That sunshine and the shadowy river, the baby laughing, the leaf and the ordinary unconscious teaching of the wonder of the world, in a muddy bit of a river in Iowa. How can I not cry? That sunshine. That teaching. That wonder.--It's the day before Christmas, and I am caught up in the ordinary wonder of today. There is sunshine through trees, and my father-in-law and I spent a morning drinking coffee and looking out big bay windows and talking, our minds wandering new and familiar paths and it is that, the making of memories of laughter and wisdom shared and questions asked, in the unhurried way of daily life - that is the wonder of Christmas. That is the wonder we are welcoming in this moment, in this night. We welcome the wonder of new life, Heaven colliding irrevocably with earth. We welcome a baby, who bears our flesh, our ordinary, who is now in the midst of us and among us and in us.How can I not cry? We welcome the wonder of all wonders. Not apart from the ordinary, but entering the heart of it.--I sing Christmas carols around the house when I clean these days. I don't notice it all the time, but then suddenly I do: the same wonder, the rhythm of the cleaning of the floors and of my heart, too. I sing Christmas carols loudly and without worrying about managing all the right notes in the original key. I sing these stories loud. Something about the soapy water and the quiet and the ordinary work that never ceases: this is the work of wonder. The task of it, to repeat it in the midst of everything.--Tonight, we welcome the wonder of all wonders, the Lord of Heaven come to earth. We do this work of welcome in the middle of being so very much ourselves. I am myself, 24 years old, young in marriage and love and wisdom, me, the desperate seeker of a wilder love. I am welcoming Jesus as me, because Jesus comes for me. I am welcoming Jesus in the midst of my ordinary, singing Christmas carols with the Swiffer in hand. I am welcoming Jesus crying over Gilead. In the heart of the ordinary, the extraordinary enters in.Come with me even unto Bethlehem? Bring your ordinary, your uncertainty, your wearied heart and hands and self? Even unto Bethlehem?Tonight, the wonder of all wonders is born. Come with me, and greet Him?Love,hilary

when I choose the economy of God

"So, I guess you're going to have to figure out three things."This is my husband, in the still, dark room where we sit and write with the rain outside and the quiet inside. He's talking about gratitude, something I'm resisting, and I don't have a good reason, I should tell you that right now.Actually, I should tell you that I have some bad reasons.In the economy of an anxious heart, your minus columns are always outlasting your positive ones. In the economy of a perfectionist heart, a minor dip in expected performance is the 1929 crash of Wall Street. A lower grade than you expected of yourself or a missed opportunity to make friends with someone or some nice thing you can't quite put your finger on but you're sure you failed to do. You name it for yourself and suddenly it is another thing you've forgotten, and you work and live on an ever steepening incline of failure, and somewhere along the way you're also drowning in your own misunderstanding of yourself, and you've mixed your metaphors together so you are a drowning person climbing a mountain with a top you can't reach, pushing a rock maybe, like Sisyphus, or maybe just pushing yourself, hauling yourself up and up and up and already you are sure you have been defeated.That's me sometimes. I don't know if it's ever you, but it is me. It is me when the grades and the papers and the research ideas come back with critique or comment or areas for improvement. It is me in the quiet fights and the loud ones. It is me lying in bed on a random Saturday morning cataloguing the friends I haven't caught up with lately or the places I have not brought peace or the way I should have and could have and would have been a better me.--The economy of God looks nothing like the economy of my anxious heart.The economy of God is God coming towards us, promising abundant generosity for the laborers who work an hour and those who work a full day. It is a strange, terrifying generosity, the kind that makes my neat columns of deserving and undeserving and the weight and sift of my measurements look foolish. The kind that puts us to shame in our race to merit and earn, but rescues us in the midst of it too. God laughs, I imagine, and sets us free.--Once my counselor asked me what the big bad was that would happen if I didn't win. If I didn't get perfect grades or perfect GRE scores or a perfect record of performances. I still don't know the answer to that question. I think that was her point.--I want the economy of God. I want the economy of generosity, the economy of grace. I want the rescue from drowning my way up a mountain I can't ever finish climbing, the setting free. I want the economy that will force me to give up my pride in making each and every thing perfect, my disappointment at myself when things aren't just as I would like them. I want Jesus, in the end, whatever it might cost me and my well-worn anxious heartbeat.And so I do have to figure out three things, write a story that is full of the richness of a generosity I didn't earn, full of receiving blessing where I can't say my goodness or my rightness is the reason, but the only reason is the sufficient reason is that God loves. That's the new story. God loves, and the richness of the story is there. I'm caught up into it, and set free by it, and this is the better story.Preston asked me for three things. I won't tell you what they are, but I'm thinking I might keep a journal somewhere, and start writing them down.And so in a little way, widen my welcome of the most wondrous love.Love,hilary

dear hilary: if the impossible is true

Dear Hilary,I'm learning a lot about probabilities right now, and how to apply them. I'm learning that there are high probabilities for some things and low ones for others, based on evidence, based on prior ideas or beliefs, based on... you name it.What if there is no probability for something? What if there is no probability that God is real, the way you talk about God? Is trusting in something that isn't really trustworthy is a bad idea?Love,ProbablyDear Probably,I have a high probability for believing that I am sitting in my apartment typing this to you. I have a low probability for believing I am a brain in a vat, or secretly a monkey typing on a typewriter into infinity. I suppose lots of things are possible, but they have low probability.Honestly, though, what a curious idea - that you would measure belief by something like probability, up and weigh and judge things by how rational they are and seem. It's not a bad way of going on for some things, but it isn't the only way we measure belief. It isn't the only way we measure familiarity or trustworthiness.So maybe I wonder whether the probability of me being a brain in a vat or being a monkey typing on a typewriter to achieve Shakespeare's Hamlet is really in the end the best way to think about your questions about God.The Incarnation kind of messes around with all our probability.What is that line, from the L'Engle poem? Had Mary been filled with reason, there'd have been no room for the Child.Probability is a way of filling the room, the paper, the equation, with reason. And sometimes, when you're filled up with reason, there is no room for the Child. There is no room for the Incarnation in its particular, improbable, unyieldingly unlikely way, to live in your heart.I'm just now learning a lot about probability and probability calculus. I'm learning about how much we trust something based on what appears to us to be true or on what an authority says versus what we see, or think we see...There is a beauty to what it can show you about how you think. There is a goodness and a truth to it, too. But there is this resistant, stubborn part of my heart, or maybe the whole of my heart, that says even when it is good and helpful, it's not everything.The improbable is sometimes remarkably true. And our measure of believing in that improbable truth can't be contained in the neat lines of a pencil on a calculus problem on graph paper.Had Mary been filled with reason. Maybe this is a post about reasonable-ness, that elusive thing we so often want to defend us. We want to be justified in being angry and hurt and confused when something happens, or being elated and grateful and full of joy. We want reasonableness to keep us on the straight and narrow, give us the right opinions, protect us from being fools or from being in error. We want a hedge of protection around the happenings of the world.There'd had been no room for the Child.And isn't it the Child, after all, that we should stretch enough to make room for?And isn't it the Child, after all, that makes room for us?I want to tell you, young philosopher in the making, you who seek the probability, the justified and justifiable reasons, and even you, who might be reading this, who think that the best thing is the most probable thing -Welcome the wonder of the impossible: the Lord, come among us as a child.Let us make room.Love,hilary

Jesus is journeying toward us

It's hard to believe it's already the second week of Advent, isn't it?Hard to believe that we're already such a ways along in the journey towards Bethlehem, towards Jesus.This year I realized something new: Jesus is coming for me. Jesus, the King, is coming into the world, into the mess and beauty and hope of the world, for me. For my heart, for my always anxious always joyful heart, for my whole self. Jesus is coming towards me.We spend a lot of time in Advent talking about our journey to the manger. We're like the wise men following a star, we're like the shepherds following the words of an angel, we're like Mary and Joseph, even, riding on the back of a donkey and walking beside it, when the whole land is to be registered.But have we forgotten, in our Advent calendars and moving wooden animals and counting down days and lighting candles that it is Jesus who is coming to us?I so often want to cast myself in the role of the person in the story who climbed up the tree to get a better look, who declared allegiance well before it was popular or easy, who stayed faithful to the end, who went out looking for the Savior and who found him.But the truth is, most of the time, I am standing still, and it is God who comes out looking for me. It is God who leaves behind everything to catch everything back up into Himself. It is God who promises salvation and then comes to us bringing it. One of my favorite eucharistic hymns - and with blessing in his hands, Christ our God to earth, descendeth, our full homage to demand. We cry out, Come, Lord Jesus but sometimes we are so anxious to be seen as the ones running towards him that we forget our helplessness, our wandering in darkness, our on us light has shined. Not our own light, not light we went out and found and sought and made for ourselves, but the light that comes from beyond us is the light that is coming. That is the light that we have been gifted this Advent.I am standing still, in the thousand thousand winds of God's coming, and I wish I was one of the angels one of the shepherds one of the wise men one of the righteous one of the wisest one of the enlightened. I wish to be the one who recognizes the movement in the air and who goes after God running.But I couldn't, and the stories should be told no less honestly than this: when I could not move at all, Jesus came. When I couldn't take off running for God, Jesus came running for me.And when even my bones did not know how to cry out, yet even then did God say, behold my Son. And even in those moments when I get out of the boat, when I see Jesus, when I whisper and hope and pray - then I fear I am sinking, and even then, Jesus immediately - immediately - reaches out to catch me and whispers, you of little faith, why did you doubt? This Advent, can we remember together, the wonder that God is coming for us? That we are the receivers of the light, of the hope, of the great news, that the angels and shepherds and wise men and the sheep and oxen and calves and goats and everything that is in heaven and on earth leaps together in rejoicing -because Jesus is journeying toward us.Love,hilary

advent 4 (how to delight)

The lights dim just as the couple and their two boys, bedecked in Fair Isle sweaters and tiny yellow rimmed glasses, settled next to us. The boys can't be over four or five years old, and they beam out their excitement when the first tiny dancers, the street urchins, appear onstage. The costumes are new this year, the set is new, the people, perhaps, are new too. Somehow, in this matinée theater, we are all being made new, made children again by this familiar music.I love the ballet for a thousand reasons. I love the delicacy and the strength it requires. I love how joy is captured in movement, but perhaps it is a gift of joy as much as the joy for the dancer, the knowledge that the audience behind the lights is receiving something from the watching. I love the way that the story is ours to imagine with the music, with those onstage. I love the way this story in particular is about so much and yet is so simple. I love how ballet reminds me about the truth of balance:everything pulling in the right direction, tension that produces harmony unlike any other, a stillness that, underneath, is held by tremendous strengthand how to desire it.And in this matinée, the day before the final Sunday in Advent, when the word is joy, when Christ is near to us, when we are anxious with the anticipation of what will come, I sit with  my mother and celebrate what it means to be childlike in our unabashed delight: the costumes, the Arabian section of the second act, the costumes, the Snow Queen and King, the Sugar Plum Fairy. We lean forward in our seats, marveling, and the boys next to us, our faces are mirrors of each other. We wonder what it would be like to be at the Boston Ballet School. We lose ourselves in the setting and the thousand pairs of shoes that the dancers go through each performance. We almost float out of the theater, humming and singing the melodies, now well-worn in our minds, but somehow, again, new.And isn't this the promise and work of Advent? That we must be ever more familiar with the coming of Jesus, and yet be as delighted as the first time we heard such news? We must learn the rhythms of a life lived before the Lord, and yet we must discover that such a life will make us as free to wonder and delight as the first time we ever hear God say, "I know you."And so I dance my way out of the Opera House, marveling at the ballet, making my posture straighter to mirror those dancers, moving a bit lighter on my feet all the way back to the car, and next to me, my mother does the same.What is truly good and beautiful must always make us new.Love,hilary

advent 3 (the glorious music)

My brother and I love the Messiah. We sang the Hallelujah Chorus in high school together, our voices beaming out those waves of joy, our faces alive in the light that shines in the midst of the darkness of winter. Later, in February or March, when the snow was melting, I'd find myself humming it as I went along the winding roads towards school. There was something in the music, I said.So a few years ago, when I realized that the music was beloved by many more than just me and my brother, I bought us tickets. We dressed up, took a train in the freezing cold to Symphony Hall. It was a 3pm performance, that first time, I think, and the first Sunday in Advent. Our seats were student rush seats, nothing special, but somehow the feeling that we were grown ups, going into the city to see something, walking up the cool steps with ladies in fur coats and men in tweed jackets with elbow patches, meant something. We were learning to be us, we were learning to love the us that we were.And then the music began, and over and over again the words and sounds crashed around our ears, Comfort, comfort ye my people, saith your God. The tenor that first year was beaming, I remember, and though his body was calm, it was as if his voice left his body, to come to each of us, tapping us on the shoulder. Did you hear me? It whispered. I am singing to you, thus saith your God. I have loved choral music ever since I sang Rudolph and Holly Jolly Christmas in my elementary school gym/cafeteria/auditorium/multi-purpose room. I have loved to sing. But then, in that first Sunday, when the waiting had just begun? Then I loved music for the first time.We went back this year. A new night, a new concert hall, a new choir, a new tenor opening God's words to us and proclaiming the comfort of God's people, the coming of the Messiah. A new feeling, sitting in what I think was the same outfit I had worn two years ago, leaning forward in my seat for two hours while I cling to each word like the manna God once sent to the unruly people Israel.And I heard, again and again, not just that we are comforted, but that line from the Hallelujah chorus I sang all those years ago -the kingdom of this world, is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ, and of his Christ. I have been unruly this Advent, anxious for God's coming but perhaps not for what it will bring to me. Anxious to celebrate, but not to prepare. I have been hungry for the good news but when it begins, as it must begin, in the reminder that we are a people hindered by our sins, in the knowledge of how we have wronged each other and this world, how we have gone astray, how we have fallen apart from God - then I do not want to know the good news. Then I do not want to face the manger, the angels in that field, the Christ child.But the kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ. And of his Christ.And he shall reign.However unruly our hearts, however we fear the goodness of the news, the light it shines on us - can there be better music than this? That he shall reign forever and ever.Love,hilary

advent 2 (maranatha)

I only know the word as an Advent word. I only hear it as a crying out, a prayer, desperate and true -Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus.There is a holy impatience in the word. Perhaps, a holy impatience in Advent altogether. It is the impatience of a people who, though not ready, want to be made ready, a people who cry out prepare the way even as our hearts falter and fumble. Even as we still say the unkind or ungenerous thing (oh, how many of those I have said and thought), even as we still forget to open our homes, even as we treat each other without the care of a people walking in the light, even then -we want Jesus to come.Maranatha. Lord Jesus, I long for you.I used to ache to light the second candle on the Advent wreath. I used to long for nothing but to be old enough to read out to the congregation - "Today we light the second candle of Advent," - I used to bounce around these old walls and floors with the knowledge that we were closer to Christmas. My child self knows how to be impatient for the wonder of Jesus better than I do. And though perhaps the impatience was mingled with a few hopeful glances at my stocking (I have it still, decorated with my name in felt and a bear holding a present), though perhaps I was easily caught in the swirl of the season -even then, I was longing for him.Maranatha, maranatha.Is it so soon that I have forgotten how words are whole prayers? I have sat here this afternoon wondering about whether I can, or should, or even know how to write in this space anymore. I have asked God, didn't I know how to pray here, once?But only the word is sometimes the widest prayer. A clatter of syllables on a thirsty, impatient heart.Maranatha.Come, Lord Jesus.Pray it with me?Love,hilary

all that christmas music

Preston and I were driving to the airport this week (the not fun kind of drive, where we know it'll be a little while before we can see each other again), and he was playing a CD of Advent and Christmas music. It doesn't surprise me that much anymore to discover the things that this man knows and loves are close to my heart - old hymns set to new sound, simple melodies that whisper through the cold drive that we are waiting for the Messiah, that we are anxious for him, that we are hopeful, that we are preparing the way.But since that drive, I've been listening to all that Christmas music - the kind that plays in the Gap and on the Michael Buble Holiday Pandora station, the music that surrounds us with dancing sugarplums and dreams of warm fires and friends and falling in love.And a dear friend was talking on Wednesday about how couple-y Christmas can feel. How that can be hard.All those images of ice-skating on Frog Pond, you know? And the way that the TV seems to tell us Christmas is really about love, and love is really about romantic love, and romantic love is really about Kay Jewelry, and the logic twists and turns around us and we feel trapped in a story we were never writing ourselves, left to ourselves.Last winter I wrote this post for Lisa-Jo, about how I wondered if my skinny jeans would still fit while I ate my way through a bag of peppermint bark looking at all the heart shaped icons on Facebook. How I felt sitting in those jeans and how I didn't believe it would happen, how I told God that it would not happen, how God said, "I have named your life beautiful," and how desperately and deeply that has changed me.This year is the first year I'll have ever had someone to call mine on Christmas.The first year I'll have the chance of kissing anyone under any kind of hanging plant at a holiday party, or clinking champagne glasses with. And I sing along with the holiday stations thinking about love, how to keep it safe from too many commercials telling stories to us in our skinny jeans or our pjs eating our peppermint bark watching hearts pop up on Facebook or another rerun of the holiday love movies.And while I love the Christmas music, the warmth and familiarity of it, while I play the Pandora stations and you might even catch me swaying my hips in time to Lady Antebellum in a store this weekend -I want to tell you that the love I love most this Christmas is the love of the man who took me to Panera and to see Frozen because he knew I would like it. The way he catches my eye and does the dishes and tucks my feet under the blanket on the couch because he knows I get cold. The way he kisses my forehead, just because.And the love I love most is not less than this: the love of my mother, who laughs with me as we curl up under the covers. The love of my father, who wraps me tight in hugs sometimes for no apparent reason, other than he loves me and wants to remind me, right there in front of the stove. The love of my brothers, with their fiercely handsome hearts, the way that they teach me to give more of myself, to listen better, to drink Dunkin' Donuts and watch Despicable Me. The love of my sister, our FaceTimes with the baby nephew, the love of my brother-in-law and laughter over sausage pizza and the quiet of the family gathered together. The love of the friends that call and text and write and give of themselves in the way that teaches me how - the love that teaches me how to love.That's the love I want to sing about, in between Justin Bieber's "Mistletoe" and Michael's "Cold December Night" and someone else's something else that tells us Christmas is only one picture of love.Because Love comes down this Christmas, because Jesus becomes known in the hugs and laughter and making space for each other, passing around the peppermint bark.Because I want the fullness of love for us this Christmas.Love,hilary

when I crawl back into the word

"What do I possibly have to say about that." - my response to a thoughtful prompt by my ever-thoughtful fiance when I complained I had nothing to write about.He is too patient with me to say anything to my complaining, to the whine he must hear in my voice through the typed messages. He reminds me that I could write nothing. But how do I explain that I want to be writing, that my heart is restless and I must do something, put something on paper to feel again the way that I feel most alive, that after being quiet here I want to be loud, even if just for a moment? That I want to have something to say.Maybe that's what we all want, scattered in our various lives. We want to have something to say - to the post office lady or the checker in the long grocery store line, to the question over coffee and the quizzical look in passing the peace in church. If I say nothing, how do I know I still have a voice? If I say nothing, am I still here?So I open this blank screen and I start to type and it sounds furious because a part of me is furious, furious that words are what the are, furious that you cannot control them and sometimes you have nothing to say and furious even more because the voice that I haven't been listening to is telling me, "You haven't been listening."I already know it. I haven't  been. I haven't found God in prayer and I haven't sought God in church and I haven't gone into God's word like the woman I am, the one who was at the well, her thirst wrapping around her like a veil.Because wasn't it the Word that was water to her soul? And didn't he say to us, meditate on this day and night?So when she prays in her email that the word would be bound to my forehead and around my wrists,when he is patient with my raging about how little I have to say,when the only thing I hear in church is that I have not been in Word, and Hilary? That's why you feel apart from me,then, I crawl back into it.I open Isaiah and read, slow, deliberate, and the words are loud with God's wild anger and desolation over the beloved chosen people, who have all gone astray, and how there is nothing anymore that gives honor and glory, and Isaiah asks, at the very end, "How long, O Lord?"I crawl closer.I want to hear God's answer.Love,hilary

advent 1 (turn to light)

I once heard that Christmas was celebrated at the time it was because it was the time that pagans celebrated the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. It was the time when people ran after candles and lampposts and fires, tried to beat back the darkness for the sake of the wild light that illumines, keeps safe, anchors. It was the time when the dark  was long and the sunlight raced across the sky and it feels, it always feels, like light is a scarcity we must hoard for ourselves and keep close until summer comes again.I'm not sure if that's the entire reason Christmas is celebrated in December, or if there is something beyond that, but perhaps it isn't as important as this word, light.And all the poets who have used the word seem to take a step toward me in my quiet non-writing life these weeks, all the lines of poetry that echo through the hallways of other years:somewhere overhead, the geese are turning into light again  - David WhyteFor the child at the bright pane surrounded bySuch warmth, such light, such love, and so much fear. - Richard WilburShe is awake and stars at scars of light - Mark Strandhe fixes a funnel of mirrors, a trap for light. - May SwensonI think of the word, "light" the way it cuts us off even as we want it to go on forever, sounding the promise of seeing. I think of the way that we hunger and wonder for the light, the way it moves, the way it must move, beyond us.And you and I today are the people who have walked in this great darkness, these lengthening shadows, and today we are the people who must, who must always, turn our hearts in Advent towards the coming of the light.And on us, who have dwelled in a land of deep darkness, on us the light has dawned.Can you see it now, the shimmers of it on each other's faces? Can you see how it begins to warm us, color our eyes bright with its beams? Can you feel, just softly at first, how even the promise that we have been walking in darkness, even the word light, stops our hearts short with its certainty?Might we be the people who turn to light again.Love,hilary

though you are small (Advent 4 and Christmas)

It's snowing here this morning. The flakes swirl just outside my window. It's a lull before the cooking begins in earnest. It's a quiet kind of snow. The kind that makes you quiet inside, listening to the Radiolab podcast while you bake peanut butter cookies for your family, while you give thanks. While you remember that Jesus is born today. The celebration is for something that un-theologically-complicated. For something that big contained within something so small.On Sunday we talked about the prophecy in Micah - "But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are of old, from ancient." (Micah 5.2)Though Bethlehem was small, though Mary was young, though the story was on its face all difficulty and pain and uncertain outcomes?Out of that small story comes one who will be ruler over Israel.As I looked at the small faces in the children's service last night, wandering up the center aisle carrying sheep and shepherds, carrying an angel, carrying a star to the manger, I heard it again:but to know me, Hilary, you must become like one of these little children. For it is in smallness that God sends might. In the lonely midst of winter that He sends life. And the children, in twirling reds and silvers, in matching shoes and headbands, in stiff collared shirts they want to trade for fuzzy pajamas - they lead the way to the manger. It is these children, squirming through the one hour service, who know Him in the unashamed deep ways we are so often afraid to know Him. They come to the stable unburdened by our shining theology, our complicated words and objections. They come, small ones to see another small one, in the small town in Israel.Oh, dear friends, have we become too big for this story, with our nuance, with our questioning, with our yes, but...? Have we forgotten that this story does not bring logic, but love?Because my small friends know. They know when they can't sit still while we light, finally, the white candle. They know when they carry breakable Mary and Jesus to the manger with their brother and sister. They know when they gather around to sing "O Come All Ye Faithful" loud and off-key in their parents' ears. They lead the way this Christmas, to the small town and the small baby, to the Love come down bright and everlasting.Don't be too big for the story this Christmas. For though Bethlehem was small among the clans of Judah, from that smallness comes the great miracle.Love, not logic, this Christmas. And the children lead me. Love, always, to bear you up and bring you nearer to the great story,hilary

dear hilary: on extraordinary gifts

Dear Hilary,How do you give gifts to people for Christmas, gifts that mean something, gifts that are treasures, and not just one more shiny wrapping paper token?Love,Confused by AdvertisingDear Confused by Advertising,This is what I imagine giving.I imagine wrapping up your red truck. I give it to you shyly, keys already in your pocket, Dunkin' Donuts cups in the cupholders waiting for us. I give it and we drive, miles on the tires and country on the radio, and some days it's quiet in our hearts and some days it's loud. But you make me this home, brother. You make me this space in your life, this space of welcome even in the late summer evenings and the long thunderstorms. So I give you the breakfasts at the Depot and the kids flying into your arms on your way back from Communion, your steady hug after once again, I've hurt my heart in longing and disappointment. I give you the forever love of a big sister who's in awe of you.I imagine holding out a cup of tea to you, no wrapping paper. We are only at the beginning of knowing each other, and it's only been a little while since we first sat in Starbucks and laughed about boys and swapped stories about our journeys at Gordon and our hopes for the future. But I give you this cup of tea, this promise, because even at the beginning of this friendship I can feel your care radiating out from you. I give you this cup of tea (and maybe a truffle, too) - with a small smile, knowing that we have so much to look forward to. Knowing that the beginning of the story of knowing you is more beautiful and more worthwhile than I could have dreamed.I imagine giving you a framed picture of us on your wedding day. It wasn't very long ago, you know, but that day, I remember giving a toast from a napkin hidden in my pocket and falling down the stairs and all the while I was overwhelmed  by the joy of watching you make those big promises. I want to tell you with this gift that we're always and forever family, and I will love you fierce through these new seasons and this new world that we've stepped into. I will tell you as I give you the gift, that no matter what, when I think about our room and NCIS and baking cookies and not finishing my books because you want to paint our nails, that I will rejoice. Because you are rare. Because the love of sisters is rare.I imagine I would give you a plane ticket to Michigan. It doesn't have a date on it, just the destination, but I'd hand it to you as part of a promise, that distance stretches us and grows us. I would give it to you with the long afternoons that stretch into evenings of macaroni and cheese and Entemann's raspberry danish and tea, and Searching for Bobby Fisher and dance movies, and always the moment when I reach for the blanket I love and look over, and know that you are still there. That no matter what, when I call or worry or doubt again, you hold all my questions next to me and laugh and somehow, the world brightens. I'd give you the plane ticket with that same laugh, the snow outside bright.You see, Confused by Advertising, our hearts know the gifts we must give better than we do - the gifts of the people we've been given to share this life with, these miraculous beautiful heartwrenching friends and family and mentors and inspirations who walk into our lives and transform us.Don't worry about the right iPod case. Don't worry about the better gadget or kitchen appliance or the newest Spiderman movie. Don't worry about homemade chocolate.Look at each of those people, the ones who hold you up when you fall apart, the ones who walk into your office and offer you a word of hope. Look at each of them, and with all of your heart, just say thank you.Because all of this is gift from another Giver. Because when we empty ourselves of the need to impress and dazzle, we find simply that we are thankful.So give thanks.Love,hilary

for me (Advent 3)

My heart crawls slowly to the manger.Friday afternoon, it feels like I can't breathe, for thinking about the children, thinking about the tragedy, thinking about how everything here is a thin veil, torn away, and the ugly and the wound is deep and raw, this world we wander through feels dark. I sip tea, cry in my office, look forlornly at my post-it notes, because how, O Jesus, can you come into a place with this much hurting?How can you come dwell with us, when you see us rip each other apart with words and deeds, a world violent and terrifying?Sunday again, and I hold my breath when I see them coming through the white door. Because these are the children, just this age, in their red ruffled coats and big boy sneakers. These are the children, sticky fingers from dipping them in the glue bowl and anxious to tell me that they have been driving to see all the Christmas lights in their neighborhood. These are the children. And I whisper to them to listen closer, and to sit down, all the while wanting to hold them next to me and fix their pink hairbow and listen to them tell me about Horsey and Emma the bear and give them kisses because I don't know what else to do, and I am 22 and helpless and in Sunday School.Where we talk about a God of big love. Where we pray to Him, our voices piping up and running over each other. And we light three candles on the Advent wreath."For to us a child is born, to us a Son is given." "What does this mean?"Miss Andrea asks. It means something about this violent terrifying world of hurting, but I don't know what. I whisper to myself, feeling Kate scooting her mat a little closer to mine. O Jesus, what are you doing? The glue bowls sit untouched, the candles flicker. The clock ticks towards closing time. From the room next door, we can hear singing about Jesus the life. Our three to six year olds sigh and shuffle, and the purple cloth on the prayer table holds the dancing shadows from the flames. I hear rain outside, shiver. Kate hands me her pink hair bow - a gift, and puts her head on my knee."Who do you think the child is for?" She asks. There. The real question - the why is all of this happening. The question I want to ask Jesus, when I sit in my office fearful for life and light. Afraid of the dark again.But Kate sits up straight, without her hairbow, and shouts to us on our mats, to the room, to the world - "FOR ME!"For me. This child comes into this broken, bleeding world, for her. For each of them in the circle, for the teachers, wide-eyed in wonder, for the congregation, crying and praying Collect after Collect, for the families who sit in desperate grief, for each of us, who grieve next to them. The child comes for this: that each of us might have life so abundantly that we remember He has undone death. That we might be so wrapped in His love that though we walk in the valley, we fear nothing. That we might, each of us, pink hairbows and winter boots and bare feet and hungry eyes, know, know, like Kate knows: that YHWH is our Shepherd, and He is born for me.My hearts makes it to the manger.Love,hilary

I made this for you (Advent 2)

This Sunday a six year old made me cry. It was a gut-wrenching week. It was a week where you climb the three flights of stairs to your office again, and again, each time telling yourself you just can't do it anymore. You just can't, can't, can't hold anything else in your heart. You can't hold yourself. You can't hold other people. You can't breathe for all the work and worry, for the whispers about "if you were really truly a good worker and really truly a good person and really truly a good friend you'd try harder..."It was one of those weeks where I think really hard about whether I have forever failed at this work of my life.And one of those weeks where I couldn't face God. Not even slightly. Not even really think about it.But Sundays arrive whether you want them to or not, and with Sunday comes the children. With Sunday comes their presence, their hands sticky with glue stick and stray blonde curls in a frenzy around their forehead. When I got up with my weary heart on Sunday I put on jeans and a blue silk shirt (because it's Advent, and I wanted to pretend I was trying). I put on the shoes that remind me of peacock feathers. I put my hair in a bun secured with a rubber band because I've lost my hair elastics and I can't be bothered to buy new ones.It was a day in a different classroom, this time with 6-9 year olds. It was time to hear God's word to his people. We talked about how prophecies are promises from God to us, his people. I smiled sadly as the children squirmed on their mats, sang half-heartedly the chorus about Christ being the Light. Because when you are trapped in the lie that none of what you do is really good, it's hard to believe God's promises apply to you. In the wrongheaded math of my universe, I couldn't believe that I, in my jeans and blue silk shirt and hair in a rubber band, am the person that God makes promises to. That I'm the person He was thinking of when He thundered His messenger to the world to ask Mary to bear Christ to us.I sat there, but when Ms Kirsten said we should go to our coloring work, I sat with Lily. We cut out construction paper to make an Advent wreath. She was shy at first, and we sat in silence, gluing and arranging the yellow paper flames over the candles. But when she asked if I could pull out a piece of stained glass coloring book paper for her to color, I caught a glimpse of a smile.It lit her face, and mine, too. She had on a red and gold dress, the kind I used to love to wear, the kind that twirls. And I remember how extravagantly loved we can feel in those clothes, as if we are sparkling from head to toe, as if we are the most beautiful and beloved creature to be shining in Sunday school in a dress that we waited to wear. So I told her how much I loved it. And she smiled wide, reaching for a pink marker."Lily! This is so beautiful! Would you like to take it home?" It's the end of class, and we are putting everything away, and she has finished her coloring. But Lily shakes her head, smiles up at me. "It's for you! I made this for you."She giggles, twirls her red and gold skirt, and is off to the next thing. But I sit, my heart thudding out its beat against all the odds, because this girl has made me a picture to hold up against the cold winter light and see myself in it. She has given me the promise again - the very one I can't believe God has in store for me.I made this for you. God wants to give us a gift at Christmas. A promise. A fulfillment, a transformation. He wants to overcome our sin and wretchedness with love. With a stained glass paper picture, colored in greens and pinks. With the relentlessness of His arrival.Do you know what I heard Him whisper, as I sat there, holding my gift, near tears at her generosity and love?I'm not waiting for you to get it right. I'm not waiting for you to become good the way you think you should be able to be. I'm not waiting for you to clean up all the mess and all the worry and all the lies running around in your heart. I'm not waiting, because I love you. Because my love doesn't rely on your perfection, but on your being. Because my love is bigger than your fears about it. Because God so loves this world, and because He loves too much to wait for us to be ready.Lily? Thank you. I'm hanging that picture in the window above my bed - so Mary, Joseph, you and me, we can watch God's love arriving.Love,hilary

the great light (Advent 1)

The most exciting moment of Sunday morning: Miss Hilary rolls the brown packing paper across the windows, and the sunlight disappears for a moment. They scramble to hold something for the procession: the wreath, the candles, the Bible, the beloved snuffer, the purple cloth. We wait, in the darkness, and then we begin to sing,The people who walked in darkness,have seen a great light. Just those words, in a melody I remember from a different song many years ago. The words last us through the small legged march to the other side of the room. We sit on our small woven mats as Miss Andrea lights the first candle on the wreath. This one bright candle - the one for hope - burns against the dim brightness of the packing paper.The darkness - that's the question for these wise young ones - what is the darkness like? How does it feel?They answer with the truth: "I don't like it.""It's hard to see.""But now we have a candle!"I catch myself almost laughing, but in an instant, I realize: theirs is the first hopeful answer I've heard in a long time. But now we have a candle. Now we have light. The simplest of answers, in some ways not even a direct answer to the question - but still, the hope. That beautiful, rich hope.Now we have a candle. The flame leaps and flickers shadows over the prayer card, the verse from Isaiah 9.2 - "The people walking in darkness have seen a great light. On those living in a land of deep darkness, a light has dawned."Oh, don't you see? This is the hope, the final, ultimate, gut-wrenching reality that we who spend so much time in shadow, cling to? The light has dawned. This deep darkness is overcome, flooded and filled. We have a candle, and more than a candle. We have the light.I wonder who that light is, Miss Andrea asks. And my heart twists and turns, because even though I long to hear it, even though I know in my heart there is an answer to this question, on Sunday I'm all torn apart with my own inability to say it. So Charlie says it for me. "I think the light is Jesus." The strap of one of his overalls is twisted, and I can see that his left shoe is coming untied. And then Lily adds to the beauty: "Do you see the brightest part of the candle? I think that is Jesus." And my heart is undone by these hopeful faces watching the brightest part of the candle, thanking Jesus for birthday parties and Christmas and presents.Because that's the answer sometimes we need a child to say for us. That Jesus is the light. That we are the people who have dwelt in deep darkness, and now have seen a great light. Between the packing paper over the windows, the procession to the prayer table, the lighting of this first candle of hope, and the small hands that find mine, the red coats that twirl outwards, the voices that sing out the truth, I find that Jesus has a surprise for me this Advent:"At that time, Jesus said, 'I thank you, Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned, and revealed them to little children." (Matthew 25)And with them to guide me, I journey towards the light.Love,hilary

King of kings (Christ the King Sunday)

They want to tell me why tornadoes are the best kind of storm. "They can lift cars!" "And houses!" "And skyscrapers!" ... a long pause. "And fire trucks!" The scribbling continues in earnest: yellow onto red, blue onto purple onto regular pencil, back to the green on the bottom of the page. I lean in, but I'm casting a shadow over his Jackson Pollock and so I return back to the girl and her world map.She is concentrating on a red dot stuck to her finger, trying to place it somewhere between the Atlantic and Jerusalem. Her tongue sticks out a little, and she hovers over her masterpiece. "There" she says, planting the dot firmly over the northern tip of Ireland. "There?" I say. "Yes, there. Jesus lives there." Somehow, I know she is right.And when the rain stick is held high and turned over and over, the children scramble off their mats, hastily put away wet glue brushes and trays of beads, and gather around the prayer table. They huddle together and we light the candle (fire is still marvelously exciting, as they tell us often). "What is this?" Miss Andrea asks, pointing to the gold crown drawn onto the prayer card. "A crown!" they giggle. "Who wears a crown?" We're told princesses, a girl at Halloween who was a princess, a prince, and finally, the four year old boy next to me says, "Kings." So then we begin to wonder, against the hum of a space heater and the clock ticking relentlessly towards 10:30 - what are kings like? What do they do? What does it mean to be king of kings?The boy next to me, oh, he knows. "He tells the other kings what to do." And when we ask them, who is this King of kings?Jesus, he says.The one who tells the other kings what to do. The one who comes into the world, not to rescue us out of it, but to rescue it with us, to save the whole. To tell the other kings what to do so that we might live in the fullness of His life. Do you ever feel like you forget, in the midst of our good emphasis on Jesus' love and grace, his servanthood, his teaching, his carpentry - that He is the King of Kings?And he shall reign forever and ever.I forgot, I realize as we begin to fold up mats, snuff out the candle, button Kate into her coat and find a stray shoe flung across the room. I forgot that Jesus is King of kings. I forgot that He tells the other kings what to do, that their life, our life, is from Him. That he saves us all, in the fullness of His coming, in the fullness of His time, and reigns forever and ever.Maybe this Advent, it's not about deep spiritual books or fasts. Maybe it's not about finding difficult theology, or wrestling with icons or prayers. Maybe this Advent we are meant to be with the little children who know Him without irony, without amusement, without worry.Maybe this Advent the answer to our big questions - of who and how, and why, and when?Jesus, he says. love,hilary