when galaxies overwhelm you

They said thank you for outer space. For stars in their many explosive elements, for the chaos of the cosmos. They said thank you, and then asked what the stain was on the table cloth - a white bit of wax from a candle as equally compelling as the rapidly expanding universe.She told me that the we can map things on DNA. That from Shakespeare to binary code to the ATGC of our beings and back, and it's perfect. Someday, maybe, scientists will figure out how to store information inside DNA and synthesize it. More flexible than computer chips, more durable, evolved over the billions of years to be something that lasts.I read that the galaxies are racing apart at rates we can't understand. That equations are the only way we can describe those first few moments of universe ignition, where a hair of difference at a fraction of a fraction of a millisecond holds the potential for life. I read and read, all these stories about how vast it is. I close my computer. Because our bones are calcium carbonate which is what makes shells and the white cliffs of Dover, because we are water and so is the ocean, because we are material, and so is this world, and yet it is a thumbprint among billions of others.When we are overwhelmed by our smallness, we rush to extravagant declarations of our importance. We whisper that we have been singled out as a people. We hug ourselves in the dark and proclaim that we are unique, particular, singular being with singular purpose. We often pray prayers loud and defiant, hoping that our voices will drown out the startling recognition that we do not know the purposes of our God in the other corners of His world. That we do not know why he made a world at once intelligible and elusive, what he is working in the far-flung hiding places in galaxy NGC 6872. It bothers us not to know, doesn't it? It bothers us to imagine that God has mysterious and infinite purposes outside our understanding. What if that means we will not know everything? What if that means we are not the center of the universe?And God laughs at these flares of our temper and continues to delight in His laws and their mysterious, glorious revelations. And the whole heavens declare His glory, while we stare up at them and still wonder if we can chase down the knowledge, outrun God's creativity, gain control for ourselves.But the children are right, aren't they? We should instead say thank you. We should fling prayers of gratitude out from ourselves into this vastness, wing a prayer in praise of NGC 6872 and all that we cannot know about it.  Because in the moments we doubt our significance we must be caught up in Him who made all things, and all things good.When galaxies overwhelm you, give thanks. Because He is that infinitely creative. Because He is that beautiful, that real, that present. Stand under His sky. Sing out with all your being. Echo all the wonder you hear.Where can I go from Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence? And echo back the wonder.Love,hilary

the light is gentle

The morning light is sweet but I am not. It's 8:58. Exactly 12 minutes from start time in Sunday School, and I am 20 minutes and a full change of clothes and teeth-brushing away from church. I whisper something about being foolish, throw on the only things that I can find in a bleary eyed haze. I run out the door, spit my mouthwash on the side of the steps that have been breaking since I can remember. My car is cold. It shudders and groans as I lurch out the driveway.Tears prick at my eyes. I'm late, late, late. I speed up through the yellow light at an intersection on Route 1. It's been a long weekend, I tell myself, maybe it's okay to just be a little tired. Maybe it's okay to just be a little scattered. My hair is falling out the braids I slept it, and I can feel bits of it tickling my neck. There is a blue stain on my coat. There is mud on my shoes, and I should have worn socks but I forgot. But my protestations about "having a little grace for myself" (even when I say it as the car rounds the curve to 97), they aren't a match for the steady, familiar rhythm of scolding.And all you good girls who read this, I know you know what I mean - how even in the midst of a big smile and a bright laugh, we're usually thinking about something that wasn't quite right, something that fell a little short. Sometimes we joke about this - call it "the curse of perfectionism" or even pray that we might have a little real grace thrown into our life. But most of the time, I'm still counting the number of missed cues. I'm still thinking about an unsent email or text or visit. I'm still thinking about what might have been better. I'm still resolving not to mess it up again.I run into the classroom. They're already at work, and I get nothing but smiles. No scolding, no "where were you?" And my profuse apologies are quickly put aside, as they want to tell me about the good monster they are making with paper, who only eats flowers, about the colors of the liturgical year and the song we sing about them.And a three year old girl stops in the middle of her puzzle and proclaims, "I WAS WAITING ON YOU". She throws herself into my arms, purple and pink fuzzy socks pulled up past her small knees.I am going to come apart at the seams. Instead I trace shapes and cut them out. I straighten. I use small pieces of Scotch tape to fasten a little identification card to each compartment where we keep the elements of the altar work. When we sit in the circle to sing, and to tell Jesus about our birthday parties, about aunts having babies soon, about dads who paint the basement, the boys squirm and fidget.But then the teacher asks, "This word on our prayer table is praise. When I think about giving praise to God, I think about giving thanks. What are some of the things we are thankful for?"They name bunny rabbits and dogs. They name winter and snowball fights. And then that three year old, she looks at me and she says, "Thank you Jesus for you."The light is that gentle and that fierce.I didn't stay to church. I didn't think I could bear it, encountering any more of this story about me and God in the midst of His people (even though that's good and we should).I drove weeping onto the highway. I drove weeping for being 22 and in the midst of such richness, feeling so paralyzed. For my hair falling out of its braids and my bare feet in their shoes. For all of the things that her prayer reveals in its gentle light: that God would rather sit with me weeping in my car in the back of the Starbucks parking lot. That nothing matters more to Him than this strange chapter of the story where I spend most of my time oscillating between fingerspelling words to practice ASL in my car to dreaming about someday I will be wise to wrestling with the answer "not now". God would rather nothing better than me and Him in the Starbucks parking lot. God would rather nothing better than the light creeping in through my shuttered heart. So He sends His children to teach me what I once imagined I would be teaching them.But when it comes to grace, I have everything to learn.And the light is gentle. Love,hilary

He made you this promise

Feet shuffle quietly in the pews around me as I walk towards the lectern. I can feel my the soles of my feet touching the carpet through my thin shoes, and as I walk, I suddenly pray, desperate: O Lord don't let me mess this up. This is Your word. Please don't let me mess up. I'm reading for Lessons and Carols, a service where we journey through the story of God's redemptive love in nine Scripture readings and choir music and old hymns. It's the kind of service where you want to leave your mouth hanging open, that God teaches us His story through words, and music, through sound and light and air waves moving back and forth. And somehow, He's given us the chance to tell each other the story again. He's letting His Word go forth from human hands and human mouths and human minds. Because He loves what He has made. Because He became incarnate to live among us. Because He, too, was a human who wrote and thought and spoke.My passage is Isaiah 11. The peace that Christ will bring is foreshown. I stand at the lectern, look at the page, look up at the faces twinkling from the candles lining the aisles.I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and suddenly, I hear His reminder: I make these promises to all my people. You, tonight, are my people. You, tonight, are the messenger for this promise. Won't you tell these bright faces what I have promised them? I begin to read. I feel my voice grow inside my chest as I hear the words echo around and around the wide sanctuary. The candles dance on the altar. Someone opens the back door and I feel the rush of winter wind on my face. And I am struck by this sudden richness, this service of festival and prayer, this journeying even again to Bethlehem at the beginning of Epiphany, the feast of light, to meet the Light.His promises are to all His people. To His people who heard the words of the prophet crying in the wilderness and on the streets and in the temple. To His people in the pew in front of me, with their blue and tan coats and weary faces. To His people who have been scattered across the globe - in poverty and fear, in hunger and thirst, in injustice, in need. To His people who have been grieving. To His people who have lonely hearts. To His people who I know and don't know, who I see every morning in Starbucks but never recognize, and to His people who I have yet to know.These promises I read tonight - these are the light He shines on our path as we journey towards Him. These promises, that one day no one shall kill or destroy on all His holy mountain, that the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the seas:these are for you.He made this promise for you, in this singular, remarkable, irreplaceable way.This is what I hear as I tremble back towards my parents in our pew. This is what I hear as we bend knees and hearts.He made you this promise.Isn't it miraculous, that a love so vast as to cover the earth with the knowledge of the Lord, is also the love that makes you promises of peace and life everlasting?I cry a little on the long drive home. For the bright faces, and the brighter promise.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

when there are no words (a letter to preston)

Some of you know that last year, my friend Preston and I started pondering theology out loud in letters. He writes on Tuesdays, I write on Thursdays, and we wander through Gossip Girl and workloads and grace and mystery and espresso. Won't you join us? You can read his last letter to me here.Dear Preston,I think not long ago we were talking about writing, why we do it, and I rambled off something to you about silence - that we write to get to the better, fuller silence. I can't remember exactly what I wrote you, only that I kept wondering the question, turning it over in my mind.Why do we do this, this gut wrenching work, this turning our selves inside out and displaying it? I freeze every time I hover over the publish button. I think about being too revealing and being too closed off. I wonder if books are safer (are they?) because they're bound beautiful and the words have chapters and categories, instead of spilling out all over the same website in no real order. Why do you, Preston? Why do you write?Rilke keeps asking me this week: must you? Is it the thing you cannot live without? And this week my answer is such a tentative, restless yes. It's a yes of impatience, a yes with a no lurking under it, and then a deeper, more reluctant yes lurking under that. I must write. I can't help writing.Some days I wish I could stop. Some days, when I close my eyes and think about the weight of this world, the ruins of St. Mary's Cathedral you mentioned before, that one sculpture I'm desperate to see again in the Musée Rodin, the passage in Atonement that makes me cry when I read it (and I read to help myself cry in my real life sometimes, too) - I just want to stop all the words.I want to sit in silence. I want a small punctuation mark, the comma or period, and then, that lingering space.The pause,The pause.I am tired of seeing how little I'm really capable of saying well. I am tired of the tug of words on my hands, saying, "come, write the world, everything you see, never cease your amazement and sorrow and awe." Sometimes I want to stop feeling amazed and sorrowful and awed and just feel that silence.Do you feel that too, sitting in front of your blog or your books, wondering about the way you see the world and how much you see in it? Your post from yesterday - about the old sadness, and the hope, and the Light that breaks forth? It made me want to stop all the words, except for Pablo Neruda and Rainer Maria Rilke (because in the midst of my silence I hear, not their words, but the space their words create), and have the world sit in silence.The pause before the storm resumes. The pause when even the wind will cease howling for a moment and listen to the greater stillness that hovers over the land.Maybe the purpose of all these words is just to reach for that silence. Maybe we are supposed to write our way there, and people everywhere sing or paint or train for marathons or bake bread or build homes or families in the unsteady journey to the greater stillness I can almost hear hovering over the land.I'm going to leave us both with Neruda, and the deep space of his words and the swell of the ocean I imagine lived in his heart, whether he could taste and see it every day or not. I imagine that we'll someday, somehow, live inside the stillness.

Let us look for secret thingssomewhere in the world,on the blue shore of silenceor where the storm has passed,rampaging like a train.There the faint signs are left,coins of time and water,debris, celestial ashand the irreplaceable raptureof sharing in the labourof solitude and the sand. - Pablo Neruda, from On the Blue Shore of Silence

Love,hilary

a new anointing (on being confirmed)

On Sunday I learned why I need Sacraments.Not why we have them, exactly. I know that story, the richness of worship, the liturgical work of the people of God, the long history of Orthodox and Roman Catholic and Anglican and these visible signs of invisible grace. I could trace a history through books I still need to read, walk around in the Oxford History of Christian Worship or write a long academic sounding paper about it.But on Sunday, I learned why I need them.I need the Sacrament because I get lost.I got lost all through college in the rambling halls of beautiful ideas and bigger questions, lost in the big ache of the world, lost in the small ache of my own heart.I got lost in high school in the race to be thinner, prettier, something more than what I was.I get lost in the work of growing up, dazzled by ambition, tempted by every conceivable thing I could want and don't have.And so Jesus offers me the liturgical life: a life of daily reminders of Him, a life of prayer at morning and evening, a life of meditation and silence, of gestures to seal the Gospel in my mind and in my heart and on my lips, to cover myself in the Cross of Him who died so that I might not die.I need to be confirmed because kneeling before the Bishop, a shepherd who follows the Good Shepherd, who prays powerful in the Spirit and lifts high the Cross, this work brings me home again. He cried as he prayed over me, and his words, simple, still, echo forever in my heart: "This is a new anointing, a refreshment, my daughter. We release this your daughter into your care, Lord Jesus."I need the Sacraments to help me stop all my running around, butting my head against the fence. I need the Sacraments to be a signpost and an emptying of myself and a moment to feel the rush of the Spirit move.This is a new anointing.This is a deepening, a widening, a pouring out.I need the Sacraments to insist that the Lord builds this house, and He is the sure foundation. And this Sunday, not tripping, but crying, the Sunday of St. Michael and All Angels, I received a new anointing.And my heart is forever changed.Love,hilary

i make you a promise (on being confirmed)

Tomorrow is the making of promises. The candidates stand before the Bishop, and he says: You stand in the presence of God and his Church; with your own mouth and from your own heart you must declare your allegiance to Christ and your rejection of all that is evil. Therefore I ask these questions:I'm getting confirmed tomorrow.That means promises. That's what confirmation is, this promise-making moment, myself in front of the Bishop and the Church and in the presence of Christ, and the words will flow and my knees will knock together and I'm one hundred percent sure I'll almost trip somewhere in the service.But I'm getting confirmed tomorrow.Therefore I ask these questions:Do you turn to Christ? I turn to Christ.Do you repent of all your sins? I repent of all my sins.Do you renounce Satan, his works and all the evil powers of this world? I renounce them all. Do you renounce the desires of your sinful nature and all forms of idolatry? I renounce them all.It isn't the same as when I first felt God move. It isn't the moment when I fell head over heels in love with Him in Italy looking at Fra Angelico's fresco and realizing that God loves art and music and beauty enough to let us make it. It's not that sweetness of prayer with a friend in a parking lot. It is me, out on a limb of  a promise to God. A promise that I see Him, His Cross, His story. A promise that I will stand up from the middle of the pigsty and come home to Him. A promise to name evil as evil, and not hide behind anything that's "cultural" or "philosophical" or "complicated."I now call upon you to declare before God and his Church that you accept the Christian faith into which you were baptized, and in which you live, grow and serve.Do you believe and trust in God the Father, who made this world? I believe and trust in him.Do you believe and trust in his Son Jesus Christ who redeemed humankind? I believe and trust in him.Do you believe and trust in his Holy Spirit who gives life to the people of God? I believe and trust in him.Tomorrow I will make a promise to trust. Tomorrow I will make a promise to believe, a promise that I do believe, to live and grow and serve out this one life as a long obedience and a wild journey and a joyful acceptance of grace.I make you a promise tomorrow, Jesus, that all I am and have and hope for, all of it, belongs to You. I make you a promise tomorrow, Jesus, in the better silence after my words, that I am bound up in You, and all is grace, and all is love.Tomorrow I make a promise to love the Truth. To belong to Him. Love,hilary

on math homework and mystery (a letter to preston)

Some of you know that last year, my friend Preston and I started pondering theology out loud in letters. He writes on Tuesdays, I write on Thursdays, and we wander through Gossip Girl and workloads and grace and mystery and espresso. Won't you join us? You can read his last letter to me here.Dear Preston,First of all: MUMFORD. Mumford. MUMFORD.Second of all: I'm still not over that Bon Iver concert. I can still hear Holocene echoing in corners of my day. I think it might be one of those concerts that changes you so deeply that you never shake it. It's something about Holocene. The ache and the insistence.You ask how we know we're right, and we both know this: we don't know. There isn't a knowing. Not really. Not the way we wish, the way of tight logic or empirical plot points.We know in all the ways you can't quantify, the ways of songs that burst your ribcage open with singing, sign language that makes you miss a friend living far away, the sign of the Cross made on a Sunday morning in the ordinary way, and the violent grace of Friday night movies and solitude and wondering. We know the story by living inside it.Tonight I remembered why I'd rather that - the uncertainty of living inside this story, the pull of doubt and the rush of reassurance, the twists and turns that makes us wonder if randomness and purpose really can collide. Tonight I helped my youngest brother with his math homework.I haven't done algebra in years, Preston. Most of this feels completely foreign to me, like a country I haven't seen in years, whose language I can't speak. I pick my way through letters attached to numbers and symbols, erased half of our family calendar on the whiteboard in my anxious left-handed scribbling.I did it standing barefoot in the kitchen in yoga shorts. My brother stared into the book, eyes wide with fear. Math is never easy. Math is mystery. It's things that mean other things and relationships described so carefully and precisely that one mistake, a simple one, and it's suddenly ten steps later and your number is negative and six times what it should be. I think I cried before or after every math test in high school, convinced it was the end of me. I loved it and feared it. I wanted to be naturally good at it, like those people who could look at numbers and tell you how they are related and if you multiply numbers three and five by number 7 and square root and something... and something else... and see? They all mean this.But tonight it wasn't about my strange love/hate relationship with math. It wasn't about whether I understood the logical precision. It wasn't even about whether my numbers fit neatly into their prescribed boxes.It was just about love.It was just me in my yoga shorts and my brother with his wide eyes and tightly gripped pencil. Just a family whiteboard, smudged left handed scribble, the mysterious meaning of functions, and the knowledge that I was not supposed to go anywhere, do anything, be anything, but my sister to my brother. I wasn't supposed to work on a blog post or read an intellectual sounding article. My whole self was supposed to stand in the kitchen doing math with my brother. Because this is the world God has made: where meaning is mystery, where we make families and live in them, where music breaks us open and sews us back up. Where you walk to the water listening to Mumford and I stand in the kitchen doing algebra.And through it all is the story we can't prove except by our hearts, which pour out love.Grace, and peace to pour out more than you think you have,hilary

come to me (on being confirmed)

The morning bursts into my bedroom too soon, and I feel my muscles groan and burrow under the comforter. I'm getting up early to help in the Atrium, the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd space at my church. I hide, just for a few extra moments, store the vivid dream away for pondering, and sit up. I pull on corduroys and wriggle my toes in their silver Toms. I close my eyes and wing a prayer out for the children I'm going to meet, and the hearts they have and their arms rushing towards God.They won't sit still, I whisper to myself as we wrangle six boys between 3 and 6 onto a small red fleece blanket. They escape our soft voices and our laughter, and our repeated requests to, "Come watch Miss Hilary show you how to do this." They laugh and squeal.But then one boy, bright blond and curious, stomps across the blanket and puts his warm small self next to me, and declares, "I want to do that." And I lean in and tell him, and the two girls in their bright pinks and purples, that if they watch close, they can learn how to do this, too. And their eyes grow round and they hold their breath as I carefully scoop a small pile of white beans from one jar to another.We walk slowly into the room, measuring our steps. We trade our shoes for fuzzy socks, speak in sweeter whispers, and even the squealing boys find themselves tracing candles and crosses, sweeping and pouring, setting a prayer table and folding their hands together to talk to God.I shiver, look down at my bare feet and chipping teal nail polish, and I wonder - when was the last time I ran to God like those hurricane boys and threw myself onto the floor and scrunched my eyes shut and burst with things to tell him - bee stings and scraped elbows and pulled hair?Friends - can I ask us a hard question? Are we too proud to get that close to Him? Are we pleased that we can be so composed in church, so calm and elegant, so lovely and presentable? Are we glad for our semblances of patience and performance, of how we do each step right? Whether we be Anglicans or Presbyterians or Evangelical Free, whether ours is a house church or a great cathedral, whether it's French or Portuguese or English, have we become so concerned to approach in just this way, with just these words, these gestures, this pretty prayer, that we can't look foolish throwing leaves in the air and holding up our scraped selves for healing?"This is a special place where we get to meet with God." Ms. Allie tells the wide-eyed, upturned faces. One girl picks at her fuzzy socks, a boy rocks back and forth, close to meltdown. They pray for their small wounds, sitting cross legged on wooden mats, a candle lit and an icon of the Good Shepherd watching over us.Jesus said, "let the little children come to me." I didn't realize He meant to teach us through their unbounded, delighted half-skip, half-run, always tumbling race into His arms. I didn't realize that sometimes their crashing, hurricane love for God is the fastest way to Him.Love,hilary

we are all the lost sheep (a letter to preston)

Some of you know that last year, my friend Preston and I started pondering theology out loud in letters. He writes on Tuesdays, I write on Thursdays, and we wander through Gossip Girl and workloads and grace and mystery and espresso. Won't you join us? You can read his last letter to me here.Dear Preston,It was the warmth of the night as I walked to my car that got me. It's late September now, the month winding its way to a close, and the nights are usually cool, crisped with fall. But we were supposed to get rain, and so there was a warm wind rushing past me as I trudged, three bags and three inch heels, towards my car alone in the parking lot.It was warm, and the air had that late summer sweetness to it as I breathed in, and out. And I paused for a second. Just a second - put my bags down and closed my eyes and took a deep breath of that sweet oxygen - and that fragile wall, those bits of glass I had glued together to protect my heart through smiling and being overwhelmed and getting fifteen emails in ten minutes - that fragile wall crumpled.It is in these moments that I get a step closer to understanding why God blessed us with physicality, with bodies that cry and hyperventilate and crumple in the front seat of the car in the empty parking lot. He gives them to us so that we can recognize when we are in need. If we always stayed lovely, perfectly calm and collected, if we didn't feel aches in muscles or turn red from tears and sweat, I wonder if we would be able to recognize how deeply we are in need. Our bodies keep us humble.As I drove home, I finally, finally prayed what I couldn't pray before this humbling moment of warm wind and just a second to catch my breath: Jesus I know I'm supposed to believe you love me, even if it aches and is lonely. I know you have me here in this place and I have to trust when it's the desert and when it's silence. But I need you to say it again. Will you tell me again that you love me? I can't hear you anymore. I can't believe it. The words hovered in the car as I drove, silent, expectant. I thought it, over and over, Will you tell me again? And He spoke."I will leave 99 to find you."More silence.And oh, the grace of what followed. "Hilary, you belong to me. I will always leave 99 to find you. And I will hold you in my arms stretched out on this cross if you were the only one to ever live. Because I love you. Because I love you, I will always come find you. I will never lose you, Hilary. Because I know my sheep, and my sheep know me. And I will always come find you."Whoever we are, wherever we are? We are that one sheep. This is the miracle of grace: it doesn't matter if you grew up in the church or became a believer yesterday. It doesn't matter if you pray ten times a day or only once, or none at all, or where you live or who you marry or if you have children or if you volunteer at a soup kitchen.We are all the lost sheep. We are all the one running into the fence, into the wolf, hungry and afraid and trembling before the world. We are the one sheep that He chases after. Each one of us is loved so mysteriously and extravagantly that He comes looking for us and does not rest until He finds us and holds us and brings us home, rejoicing.Maybe this can make us more joyful when we meet others returning: because in every moment He pours out love and blessing on a brother or sister we can realize that we are all the lost sheep, brought home again by grace. Maybe we can stop being the older, accusing brother in the story, the 99 jealous sheep, when we realize that we are all that lavishly loved.We are all the lost sheep.He loses no one.Love, and grace upon grace be poured out for you this week from the Good Shepherd,hilary

and humbly confess your sins (on being confirmed)

"The Lord be in your heart and upon your lips that you may truly and humbly confess your sins: In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.Oh no. I have to say something. This is the part where I say something. This is the part where I have to make words come out of my mouth. He is waiting for me, sitting in the rocking chair in the small prayer room. Oh, no. Why did I promise to do this? What do I even have to confess? What's this for, anyway? "I confess to Almighty God, to his Church, and to you, that I have sinned by my own fault in thought, word and deed, in things done and left undone; especially _______."That's all we are given in the small red book. Only that thin frame, those few words. What am I going to say? How do you begin to tell the God who already knows everything you've done and everything you've left undone anything? Why does He want me to do this? I mean, what have I done that's that bad, really? The priest waits, time left outside the door. It's only us and the rocking chairs and the cross hanging on the wall. I have to say something. I reach a hand out for my journal, clear my throat. I flip a few pages over, wondering if this was a terribly foolish idea."I have been jealous." That's the first one, and the words slip out like water from a pitcher, spilling over the room, over the sanctified silence. I have been angry at God, and resentful. I have been... Words pool around my hands as I talk to the ground, then to the ceiling, close my eyes and leave the journal pages unread. I catch my breath a few minutes later, look back at the cross hanging on the wall, bow my head again."For these and all other sins which I cannot now remember, I am truly sorry. I pray God to have mercy on me."The sacrament of confession is not popular. I see why, now. We are so used to giving justifications for things. We were so mad that night because... we lied to that person because... it wasn't really that bad. We hide behind these carefully sculpted excuses, reasons, our logic turned in to defend our hearts from the truth.In confession there isn't any space for those rationalizations. It isn't about the great reasons you have for everything you do; it's laying your life in front of God and whispering that most of it has been mess and much of it has been sin and all of it needs His love. In all that silence, the choir singing scales behind me, I pool my words, my life, my faults, at the feet of Christ. And I admit, for the first time in a long time, that I need Jesus to put away my sins. In the Anglican church (and in most liturgical traditions) we say that the sacraments are an visible sign of an invisible grace. They aren't magic, wish-fulfilling, emotionally-satisfying, problem-solving rituals. They are the heartbeat of the people of God who are saved by grace. They are reminders, bells that ring out, signposts on the road, lighthouses amid the tossing sea.The sacraments don't save us. But in every gesture, every word, every silent meditation, every blank space, they remind us of the One who did.I don't go to confession, I realize as we near the end of the Rite of the Penitent, because I believe it will make all things right with God. I don't go because it has special favor in the Kingdom. I don't go because good Christians do it. I don't go because it "works."I go to meet again the Son of Man who has already done the work for me. I go to hear Jesus say that already He has put my sin as far away as East is from West. I go because in the steady words and the sign of the cross, I mark in my heart His promise:Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.And I scuff my heels on the floor and wipe a tear or two from eyes at this marvelous grace poured out in old words and new buildings, in strangers who are pilgrims together, in heads bowed and fingertips bent in prayer."The Lord has put away all your sins." He says, strong and clear.Thanks be to God. 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

be alert (I am getting confirmed)

I am in church, halfway through a sermon about Solomon and wisdom. It's a sight to behold, me and my long face, secretly hating being there, tapping my feet against the floor, imagining I am in Italy walking along the corso at night with beautiful flowing hair. In my head, I'm finishing a lemon gelato and watching the stars as I swing hands with an unidentifiable but very handsome man. I am complaining to God that all this is boring, I know it already, and when will church be glamorous again? The man and I ride a tandem bicycle through the streets of Rome. Much more interesting, isn't it?"Get confirmed."What? The day dream dissolves and I'm looking into the face of Christ in the icon of the Mother and Child to the left of the crucifix."Get confirmed."I can't. I can't get confirmed- I am still exploring orthodoxy. I am still only 22! I am still young in faith and I still only really want to be with Jesus some of the time!"Hilary Joan."It's his voice from Italy, his voice from the museum with Botticelli and Mary and the lion's roar of love and desire for me, me, who now sits in church complaining. I go silent. This is not the Italy of the bicycle and the gelato and the swinging hands and the stars. This is the Italy of self given over to God almost without even realizing it, a promise made sitting on a bench in the Uffizzi, heart bursting, the rest of the group scattered through the long hallways. I think the priest is still talking, something about Solomon and wisdom, but all I can hear is his voice."I want you to get confirmed."I start to cry, my resistant self trying to make it a conversation, an argument, my heart already saying yes and knowing that this must be. For how could it be otherwise?It's the next Sunday. I thought about skipping confirmation class. I thought about hiding. Or being sick. Or just not having time. But I slide onto the edge of the chair and whisper a prayer - why am I here again, Lord? and write the date in my notebook.He answers me with the Kenyan Book of Common Prayer: "Will you be alert and watchful, and firmly resist your enemy the devil?"Fr. Brian asks us which will be the hardest promise - the ones about justice and feeding the hungry and preaching Christ to our neighbors and loving others and seeking reconciliation?In a tremulous voice, I say - "That last one - be alert and watchful, and firmly resist your enemy the devil. That one will be hardest for me."Be alert, it says in 1 Peter. Your adversary the devil prowls outside your door like a lion. He waits for us to become lazy, to start daydreaming about mysterious boys on bicycles in Italy, about how boring everything is, about how we have the short end of the stick in almost everything. He waits for us to forget who God is, who we are... He has his own kind of patience, this enemy who prowls like a lion. Suddenly I understand - how this confirmation, this moment of commissioning and prayer, the hands of the bishop on my head with prayers for the Spirit to come upon me?This is the grace to be alert.This is the preparation to keep these big promises.This is asking for a heart to hear the Lord, to watch for Him.So I journey these next four weeks, deeper into the grace of renewed baptismal promises, deeper into prayer for the Holy Spirit's presence, deeper into watchfulness. Perhaps you'll come with me, as I reflect on this new path I'm trembling down?Be alert, I whisper to my heart. Be alert, for He will do marvelous things. Love,Hilary

some mornings you wake up wondering

beep. beep, beep, BEEEEEEEEEP. I jolt upright, panting. My fingers sleepwalk towards my cell phone, sliding it silent again. I look around. I've kicked my comforter into a heap at the foot of the bed, scattered pillows across the floor in my dreaming. I feel my arms, goosebumped and cold.I know the dog is downstairs, waiting for my father to feed him. I can hear my mother in the next room clinking hangers together as she decides what to wear for the morning. I know my brother is sprawled on the old couch under our one air conditioner, and the other brother (the red truck driving brother) is eating a bowl of cereal before his work day begins.Everything is in its place, all the people, all the animals, even the flowers that bend their petals towards the sun that hasn't quite finished rising. And then there is me: sitting in a pile of leaf-printed sheets, hair in a messy red-blond halo, wearing a T-shirt from my days in an elementary school play and an old pair of soccer shorts, and my heart is spinning.What if I have been wrong this whole time, Jesus? What if when I thought you said, "This is important," you didn't mean what I thought you meant? What if you meant for me to move to DC, to move to teaching, to move to France? What if you wanted me to go to grad school after all, and if I was there instead of here I wouldn't face this heart-and-gut-wrenching situation, this worry, this falling and failing? I dreamed I had gotten it wrong, I realize cup my chin in my hands and draw my knees up towards my chest. I dreamed he had wanted something else from me, something brighter and braver.I hear the water running for toothbrushes. I hear the coffee gurgle and drip, and somewhere in the ordinary morning below these three hundred year old floorboards, the world is moving.I swing my legs over the bed, trip over a stray book, and fall to my knees. This isn't funny, Jesus! I'm already late! I roll my eyes, but then I close them.

¹ Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord;²     Lord, hear my voice.Let your ears be attentiveto my cry for mercy.

³ If you, Lord, kept a record of sins,Lord, who could stand?⁴ But with you there is forgiveness,so that we can, with reverence, serve you.

⁵ I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits,and in his word I put my hope.⁶ I wait for the Lordmore than watchmen wait for the morning,more than watchmen wait for the morning.

⁷ Israel, put your hope in the Lord,for with the Lord is unfailing loveand with him is full redemption.⁸ He himself will redeem Israelfrom all their sins.

Today, I will wait. More than watchmen for the morning. The coffee will be almost gone if I don't hurry - and I race through the rest of the room, gathering shoes and glasses, putting an earring in while I try to brush my hair. Even here, though? More than watchmen for the morning. Love,hilary

God is, and is from the beginning, a letter to preston

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, Preston and I write letters back and forth. We share about mystery, wonder about faith and the long walk of obedience, tell stories about Gossip Girl and God's grace. We would love for you to join us in the comments. You can read his last letter to me here.Dear Preston,I'm in floundering between getting home late from work, trying to find time to run, eat dinner with my family, and watch installment 2 of LOTR with my youngest brother, Joe. I decided that it was time I immersed myself in those stories again. And they are rich, and I grab his arm compulsively as I watch, fearful for Frodo and Sam, hopeful in the wild goodness of Aragorn and I am reminded that this is a good story because it reminds us to be overjoyed at the triumph of good, and fearful of the power of evil.I've been wondering about this business of trusting God every day. It is cheap and trite and silly to tell you that when I made that big promise, in the dirt of the road next to the pond, when I held my hands up against the cool May rain and gave my life to Him, I didn't realize it would be so hard.I didn't realize it, though. I didn't realize I would come home and be angry that things are still unclear. I don't know what I thought - if I pray the magic prayer of surrender, the heavens opened and the mystery of my life is explained - but I pull on my running shoes every evening and race off down the road, pissed off that the world is still uncertain, still broken and bleeding, and my own small heart is still just as fickle as it ever was. I promised to trust Him and now He is asking me to trust Him. I wrote blog posts about how good it is to trust in Jesus, and now I am confessing that it is hard and I don't like it.In a conversation with a friend the other day, they suggested that our philosophy about God should begin from "God is, and is from the beginning without beginning." I want to stray down the paths of Heidegger's non-being vs. being debate, or question what the word, "beginning" means. I want the rabbit holes of the academic. I want to keep my mind humming with the knots of theology and philosophy, ask with Bonhoeffer about those first three chapters of Genesis. I think if I ask enough questions about who God is, and how He is, I might keep myself too busy to do the work of trusting Him. If I tangle myself up in working out what any of this means, I will not have to live out the meaning that has already been given to me.But that is the work before us, isn't it? To resist the temptation to hide behind our towers of books and papers, to trust that God is, and is from the beginning without beginning, and to believe in His Name. The work before me is that daily run where I yell and God reminds and I grow quiet in the reality of His presence. The work before me is the long day that I choose to end with love for my brother and the Lord of the Rings. The work before me is to open the old, beautiful Book of Common Prayer my mentor gave me, its leather cover sweetened and cracked with age, and pray.So in this season, of the small, daily work, let's take a rest from letters. A small sabbatical for you and me, to do our daily work. To put our hearts and minds to the work before us, where we each are. Let's pause, in the midst of asking, "Who is God?" and "What is this life of faith?" and listen to Him answer us.And then, when this season has passed and we are each settled into the difficult and the daily, write to me and tell me what He's told you.Love, and grace and peace for the next season, and may the joy of Almighty God go before you.Love,HilarySo, dear readers of these letters, we are going on sabbatical for a little while, to rest in our work and ponder new things. Keep visiting Preston's space, if you haven't become a regular reader yet... His space is full of good things to wonder and read.