if we were having coffee

I sometimes think about the girls I don't know. I think about their upturned faces against a May sky, their heavy backpacks and sense of responsibility. I think about everything that's hidden in their hearts (treasures and dangers alike). I think about the way we begin to become ourselves.

I want to take you all out to coffee. I want to buy you something with a lot of sugar in it, take the table by the window with the sunlight streaming through it something fierce. I want to ask you some advice about boys, about being a true friend, about how to swim in the water of who you are when everyone else seems like they have a better idea. (I know, by the way, that you know a lot about all these things.) I want to lean in close, smile at you with a little hint of rebellion and tell you that there is more to you than meets the eye.

Maybe you would ask me how I know this. Maybe you would lean back in your chair and drain your cup, look out the window at the striped tee shirts and cutoff jean shorts passing by, at the busy cars and the haggard shopkeeper sweeping outside her polished blue door. Maybe you would lock eyes with me, and tell me in your most honest voice that you're not so sure, some days.

Me too. Because I've heard a lot lately about the question of "enough." Are we, how could we be, what if my blog isn't, or is, what if my leadership isn't, my co-curricular extra-curricular, award-seeking-or-receiving or my friendships... I'd get serious right about here, push my glasses on top of my head, bend my whole posture forward, across the table, across the divide of what we believe about ourselves and this world - and say:

Enough of the word enough.

I don't know how to tell this any other way. I don't know how to bullet point it for you in logical argument, how to write you a story that carries this message like a pearl inside its oyster shell. I don't know how to cajole you or argue with you or do much of anything, but sound the same old few lines as often as possible here, and where you are, at coffee and at lunch and always, always, when I get on my knees for you: hearts are too beautiful to spend on a word like enough, on a measurement, on a tangled illusion.

I spent high school and college being enough which wasn't enough which was never good or beautiful or sexy or gracious or holy or poised or funny... enough. I did the ache in my closet among my mismatched shoes. I did the late nights skipping dinner, the later night disappointments. I did the look of dismay at myself over a less than perfect grade or comment or conversation.

And I say, enough of that.

If we were having coffee, you and I, I'd want to tell you that. I want to shore it up in us. I want to wedge it so firmly our ribcages that we walk around singing a freedom-song so loud we can't catch our breath. Free of the worry that comes with enough. Free of the fear. So gloriously free.

I come back here and I write to you and I write to us and I write to all the people who never hear me, and all the ones who do, that hearts are too extraordinary to be measured. Yours is beyond enough. It is bigger than enough. It is so much more than enough.

Maybe at the end of the coffee, when we've each had a brownie or three and it's time to go, I will hang on just one second longer, and catch your eye one more time. And I would lean in (because I always do) and I would smile. Your heart is far too extraordinary to live trapped in a word like enough.

I'm right here. I'm singing next to you. Together, we'll have done with enough.

Love,
hilary

dear hilary: this is called delight

Dear Hilary,So I'm reading the chapter "Artists, Mystics, and Clowns" in Brennan Manning's Ruthless Trust and wondering: why do we act the way that we do, and how does this reflect God? What's so great about efficiency? Gravitas? Breast-beating? Sobriety? Somewhere along the line I leaned that these were more holy than extravagance, art, and levity. Somewhere alone the line I learned I must stifle effulgent passions, had no time for interruptions, mustn't laugh when there's so much suffering in the world and so much work to be done, must put away childish playfulness. Somewhere along the line I learned that God is begrudging and exasperated. What is God's disposition, anyways?Sincerely,Can't-Lighten-Up Dear Can't-Lighten-Up,In my high school, French was the only foreign language offered. We learned it playing "Tour du Monde" with vocabulary, drawing pictures of "fromage" and "papillon" for each other on the chalkboards in the House, wandering the streets of Angers and Paris and Aix ordering our first café au lait and pain au chocolat in giddy tones. I remember vividly one day after we had gotten out of class, I walked around the corner with my friend and we ducked our heads inside a patisserie, and we ordered in a rush two "religeuses." The woman behind the counter didn't look at my ratty hair in its pigtail braids and my very American purple winter coat (a hand-me-down from my sister, I think) and make a noise that meant, "American." She simply smiled and put the pastry in a small bag with a piece of tissue paper. "Bonne soirée" she called out after us. And I felt the rush of what the French call "joie" - joy.I was a junior the year that we sang Gabriel Fauré's "Cantique de Jean Racine." We used to rehearse the song in its delicate French in a crowded room with uneven and overly polished floorboards. I sat in a grey folding chair, tucked my feet under me, pushed that still-ratty hair behind my ears with my fingernails coated with blue sparkle. The song hushes in its final line to this - "Et de tes dons qu'il retourne comblé." And may our praises return filled with Your gifts. It isn't the exact translation - I'm not even sure I could translate it well, if I'm honest - but the last, hushed line, has the word, "comblé" which, whether or not I understood the line right, is a French word for "overjoyed." The verb "combler" is about filling, being filled.I tell you these stories because you are asking something about who God is, and what His attitude is about us. And I learned this from singing "Cantique de Jean Racine," from the woman in the patisserie by the Lycée David d'Angers, from my years of unkempt hair and hand-me-down winter coats: God is delighted.Delighted, overjoyed - we so often mistake those words for happy, or, more honestly, for naively cheerful or optimistic. We think that if we name those adjectives, we're making it sound like we (or God or both) aren't taking hurt seriously. That we have missed suffering. That we have lost sight of the ache of the world and are applying a pink band-aid to the gaping wounds.But it is the work of delight and joy to come close to suffering, even closer than the so-called serious realism. It is through joy, not cynicism, that we approach the unspeakably difficult.Because joy and delight are not happy feelings: they are the choices to let love win. They are the choice to trust love triumphant. Joy is a choice to believe God when He calls what He has made very good, and a choice to draw near to that very good world in its ache and terror and sadness.If you do not practice laughter, you cannot know this joy. If you do not practice the playfulness, the levity, the extravagant gestures without reason, the shrieks of hide-and-seek games, you cannot walk with us to the places where love is most needed and most difficult.God is overjoyed with us. God is delighted. Because He is these things, because He is delighted in my moment in the patisserie, eating something truly good and laughing with my friend, and wishing the woman kneading bread a "bonne soirée" - He can enact such an extravagant and mysterious story of love triumphant. Because God is delighted, because His delight is not some blithe or silly perpetual good mood, but the serious weight of everlasting love, He is able to save us.This is the story we are going to tell the world. The story of love triumphant over darkness. The story of joy and reuniting, of harmony and whole, of laughter and extravagance. But to tell it, and to tell it in the places most needed, we must practice those things in ourselves.So, dear one, this is the work of delight. It will take everything you've got, to live the blurred lines between sorrow and weeping and joy and splitting your sides laughing. It will take your whole self and a self transformed to banish the categories we've so carefully constructed around what counts as "serious" and what counts as "light," to sing while we cry and rage while we laugh.But I think it can be done. I think it must be done. So that, in the mystery of love triumphant, we can sing:Répands sur nous le feu de ta grâce puissante;Que tout l'enfer fuie au son de ta voix;Pour on us the fire of your powerful grace, O Lord,That all hell flees at the sound of Your voice.Love,hilary

pray with me (on being confirmed)

I arrived to class late, having spilled the church lunch on both sleeves of my jacket, tried to listen to my favorite fifth grader tell me about her first day of school, and failed miserably at appearing elegant and refined to the three young girls sitting around me (all of whom managed not to spill lunch on themselves). I was looking forward to this class in particular, because I knew that it was the day for Anglican theology.I imagined we'd get into the detailed difficulties, the philosophical nuances, the dusty corners of complicated problems. What does it mean, really, to say that God is and is from the beginning without beginning? Is it possible for us to believe in a God who is all-knowing and yet who allows free will? What is the Eucharist, exactly?These are the problems that feed me. I want to sit in a pub somewhere in England and talk someone's ear off about the possibility that God's involvement with time is perhaps one of His most merciful and mysterious acts. I want to live in theological reflection, in the words about God and the systems of understanding how very little we can know about Him. And of course, I must confess - I love theological arguments. I love sitting in the same pub and fighting what feels like a fight to the death over the interpretation of Jesus' phrase, "I am the Truth." I like the heat and thrill of fighting. "If you want to know what we believe, pray with us."I looked up as Fr. Brian spoke, my eyes widening in surprise. A drop of ink splotched onto my journal page. He smiled at the group gathered at the same small table, books and papers strewn across our laps. "Theology is worked out best in prayer." I gulped. What about the arguments? What about the long academic papers I spent all that time writing? What about the rush of winning a point? What about all of that?I could feel my stomach twist and turn as we turned to the Thirty Nine Articles (a historical document in the Anglican Church outlining some points of faith), as we followed the old language down the twisted paths of election and free will and grace, as we sorted out where we believe church authority comes from and what we think of the sufficiency of Scripture for teaching about salvation. Even as we read, I couldn't get that first phrase out of my mind. "If you want to know what we believe, pray with us."To know what we claim as true, you have to listen to us talk to the Truth. To know our doctrines, listen to our pleading, to our thanksgiving, to our intercession. All my beautiful arguments, the long maze of points and subpoints, of countering, and modifying go out the window if the heart of my belief is in how I pray.Because if you pray with me, it's not with arguments. I don't prove God to Himself in five points, or neatly weave together two distinct definitions of the word "sufficient" to reveal the true mean of Christ on the cross.No, I ramble. I pray in the car on the way to work and interrupt myself with a second thought and a wistful remembering. I pray for people and two seconds in I'm asking about whether He will let me have what I want. I pray while I run, my palms skyward, and over and over I repeat the simplicity: I love you, Lord. Will you stay with me?To know what I believe, you have to pray with me. To know the heart of the Church, you have to get on your knees with her. We are so ready to stay safe in our books, in our academic critiques, in our theological possibilities - when all along, He is calling us to the more radical theology revealed in the rain and wind of prayer.So I pray: I love you, Jesus. Your Name is salvation. Can I stay near you?Love,hilary

all loves excelling (on being confirmed)

Jesus, Thou art all compassion, pure, unbounded love thou art; visit us with Thy salvation, enter every trembling heart.I love the hymn. The sound swells over His name, and the melody - something called Hyfrydol, trips lightly through the sanctuary, playing with our voices. I love the music, the sweetness in it, the tenderness.But, still. Enter every trembling heart. I know what that means, I think to myself. That means hard.It means forgiving the unkind words.It means keeping my mouth shut when I really want to say exactly what I think about that.It means giving up the things I want to spend an era in a desert, wandering around with no water.I list these to God this Sunday, heaving a pious sigh. Well, alright then. Let's get this over with - I'm getting confirmed after all. I guess the hardship begins now. God laughs. I can feel Him laughing at me and my idea of piety: a long face set towards a hard road, the assumption that if I'm confused and in agony over something, I must be seeking harder, waiting more carefully, discerning with more wisdom. If I look like I am really struggling, I tell myself, people will think I'm really deep.There it is. People will think I'm really deep.In the midst of my confirmation journey, I find myself stuck on this. I want you to think I'm deep. I want you to think that I walk near to Him, that I listen close, that I love with a big wild love. And there are so many foolish things about that. It isn't about what anyone else thinks, first of all. It never is. I can't convince any of you by anything I write or say or do that I love Him - because my love for Him is only really visible when I'm not rushing around trying to prove it to anyone. Love is like that - the harder we try to prove it, the more it slips away, to be made known outside our efforts.But the most foolish (and maybe the funniest) is this: that I thought to be deep, I had to be gut-wrenching. There is depth there. There is depth in the gut-wrenchingly difficult things we face. There is a unique kind of life there, a well of wisdom... But, still. God laughs at my feeble attempts to show off to Him, and to you. Look, look at how hard I'm making this! Look, look! I'm walking the difficult way! God answers me with the words of Elder Prophyrios. In Wounded By Love, he wrote: "There are two paths that lead to God: the hard and debilitating path with fierce assaults against evil and the easy path with love. There are many who chose the hard path and "shed blood in order to receive the Spirit" until they attained great virtue. I find that the shorter and safer route is the path with love."Oh, how I have devoted myself to the hard path, all while the easier path has been at my feet. "That is, you can make a different kind of effort: to study and pray and have as your aim to advance in the love of God and of the Church. Do not fight to expel the darkness from the chamber of your soul. Open a tiny aperture for light to enter, and the darkness will disappear. The same holds for our passions and our weaknesses."We reach the end of the hymn, and a smile brighter than any I have worn this long week spreads over my face. God keeps laughing, as He offers the easier way: the way of love. Open a tiny aperture for light, and the darkness begins to disappear.I drive home singing. Love,hilary