when you can't go back to sleep

I've been waking up every morning at 3am, then again at 5, and then, finally, at 6:20 when I'm supposed to roll out of bed and open the day.But some mornings, I can't go back to sleep. I lie and look at the grey sky - the sun must be rising somewhere, I know, but I can't see it yet - and I stare up at the ceiling. I like to imagine that if I could read it right, my story would be written in neat and beautiful cursive above my head. I want to believe that if I looked for the clues to the mystery of who I am and what I am supposed to do, I could solve it.Solve the not-going-back-to-sleep, I mean, which is solving the I-don't-understand-God, which is solving the what-is-this-life, solving the find-your-place-in-the-world.When I can't go back to sleep I do math equations in my head, add and subtract and subdivide by unknown quantity "n" looking for a way out of the grey. I wrote them on a piece of paper once:Fear and hope about job - (trust in God / WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE) + a boy who must exist in the universe somewhere / messy relationships (people hurt! + people are wonderful!) ^ the power of deep friendship - how do any of us even know what friendship means! + N, unknown = the meaning of life. This problem, I think, should go on the secret mathematician's list of "the world's greatest unsolved problems." They call them the Millenium Prize Problems: P v. NP, Riemann hypothesis, Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness... and then me, with "The Life Problem."On Sunday a girl in our Sunday school asked about the word "mystery" as the teacher presented on the Eucharist. "You mean like Sherlock Holmes?" She asked. The teacher, moving the clay figure of Jesus to the middle of the table, his arms frozen in outstretched blessing over his clay disciples, paused. "Do we solve it?" The little girl asked. I nodded with her, me and my life."Actually, this isn't a mystery that we solve." The girl wasn't buying it, shot the teacher a knowing, I-bet-you-say-this-to-everyone look. I mimicked her. "This is a mystery we wonder about."We wonder about how Jesus in his outstretched embrace loves the world and moves in it. We wonder about our lives and the people we cherish and the people we hurt and the love that moves  freely. We wonder. And perhaps it is better unsolved.

Mysteries, Yesby Mary Oliver from Evidence (Beacon Press)Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelousto be understood.How grass can be nourishing in themouths of the lambs.How rivers and stones are foreverin allegiance with gravitywhile we ourselves dream of rising.How two hands touch and the bonds willnever be broken.How people come, from delight or thescars of damage,to the comfort of a poem.Let me keep my distance, always, from thosewho think they have the answers.Let me keep company always with those who say"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,and bow their heads.

Love,hilary

why love must be wild

I named this blog almost a year ago - the wild love.I imagined that we would, that I would, live that way. I remember finding the name as I sat at work on a Friday afternoon, in the middle of the ending, with only a few weeks left before everything changed. I remember trying it out, running the syllables over my tongue like water. The wild love. It sounded right.When I was born, my dad named me. I've heard the story told a thousand ways, and there is something precious and funny about it. My name, Hilary, means cheerful. My middle name, Joan, comes from John, and it means, God is gracious.When you ask my dad how he came up with this name, he'll tell you that Hilary just seemed right. He'd always loved the name - but it was decided almost like a lightning strike: this was what I was going to be called, and that was it. Joan is for a dear friend of my parents, and because, I think at the time, Hilary Joan sounded just right to them.Hilary Joan. Cheerful, God is gracious.If ever names might help us imagine who we are meant to become...And now, my blog is just shy of a year old, taking its baby steps into the world. There have been a few posts that have made their mark on me, perhaps on you, dear readers. There has been a lot of pondering. There was been a lot of asking God in the midst of this, the hard of 22, how and why things are as they are. There has been hunger, and fulfillment, a confirmation, a wedding. There has been the loud voice of the Holy Spirit across the waters and my own timid replies.But here I am, with this, the space that I have named, and I wanted to ask again - why must love be wild? Because we are a people too desperate to love only inside the conventional, accepted boundaries. We are a people too hungry, too alive, too beautiful, too broken.Love is wild because we are wild. Because we are made in the image of Someone Wild, Someone who sang out for freedom, who defied logic, who broke his Body and poured out his Blood and saved us once and every day.Love is wild because there is a bird sitting inside our ribcage, like Emily Dickinson said, the thing with feathers perched in us, and the only way to hear it sing is to start singing.I'm only just about a year into this blog and I named it something before I could have known how deeply I would want to become the very thing I had named.I want to live with a wild love: a wild love for words, for readers, for strangers who I pass on the sidewalk and dear friends who stay up late on Sunday nights just to make sure I'm okay. I want to live with a wild love that hopes and forgives and says that "no" is sometimes a beautiful word and that "wait" is sometimes a promise and that "why?" is sometimes the answer itself.I'm Hilary Joan - a name with meaning that still feels a little too big for me. And the blog still feels like that some days. But I want to link hands with you across these words, across these miles and time zones and ages, and love wild.Love,hilary