an ode to hard things (poetic friday/saturday, week three)

Poetic Friday/Saturday means I must put different words to my thoughts - words carefully chosen, weeded out from their neighbors, words that sit in a strange order and meet each other in an unexpected rhythm. Poetry is the wondrous music of loving words. Won't you share your poetry too (I'd love to read it)?an ode to the hard things (by Hilary Sherratt)I love you:hearts I can’t understanddoors that lock and boltocean of time and separationwind shattering a window in a storm.It is winter,rain lashes at my face in early morning.My boots drip onto the new pavement.I carry youe questions in my wide eyes.Then I bless you: the hard things no one wishes for –you with your achesand bruises, with your wonderingand missingand cryingand forfeitingand defeat.You are the oyster shells of the world:I see your pearl.And one from a favorite poet of mine:

The Thing Is

by Ellen Bass

to love life, to love it evenwhen you have no stomach for itand everything you've held dearcrumbles like burnt paper in your hands,your throat filled with the silt of it.When grief sits with you, its tropical heatthickening the air, heavy as watermore fit for gills than lungs;when grief weights you like your own fleshonly more of it, an obesity of grief,you think, How can a body withstand this?Then you hold life like a facebetween your palms, a plain face,no charming smile, no violet eyes,and you say, yes, I will take youI will love you, again.

Love, hilary

around the best table, a letter to Preston

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, Preston and I write letters back and forth. We share our journey with grace and mystery, bits of Gossip Girl, and the wonder of fumbling our way through. We would love it if you'd join us. You can read his last letter to me here.Dear Preston,I am typing this on a very small iPhone screen, sitting in a house in Washington DC. I don't quite know how to type quickly, my thumbs pressed together, so each letter seems more like a choice, something deliberate and with purpose. I am sure I am exaggerating how the iPhone has deep meaning for the poet in me- but then, I'm prone to hyperbole and I like the idea that this small device might make us think twice about how we form words. How beautiful they are.You wrote in your letter that though you bake bread, you are not the host. I think this is perhaps the thing we forget most often in our deep hope to love others, to make a space for them, to feed them with good food and compassion and grace. We think it's our compassion or our grace or our food. But if it's truest, as you say, we are feeding them not from our richness (what do we have?) but from His.You ask a good question, though, about how we find a harmony between our bread baking and His table. I believe there is harmony - that He is delighted to make this a potluck. You bring bread, and I bring the apple pie I am famous for and someone else brings the snap peas and the carrots and we offer all the work of our hands back into His table. He loves that we do that. I am sure of it.But we go wrong when we more sincerely desire that others see us as filled, the richer, the wiser. We want to be bravest and best. We want our food to be what really satisfies.I want this so often. My metaphor is not yours- you bake bread and I build rooms- but the problem is the same. We search for our worth in another's need of us. We labor to fill others so that we can feel full. And the cycle is a beautiful train wreck that repeats: they are hungry, we try harder, they are still hungry, we fear and panic and worry.So we are not the host and we are not the bread of life or the one preparing a room for in the Father's house. We are knee to knee with the least of these. We are laughing and gathering His abundance at the same table.Perhaps it is always and only the lesson to receive grace: poured out around us and everywhere flowing.Love,Hilary

dear hilary: some days it is only you

dear hilary,

before i graduated from college, i knew i needed to prepare myself for loneliness. i saw it coming amidst the goodbyes and graduation pictures and hours of packing my things acquired over four years of dorm life. but now it's here, this loneliness, and i think it's here to stay for awhile. so i'm wondering what is the purpose of loneliness? are we meant to experience it and learn from it -- or try desperately to avoid it?

sincerely,

reluctantly lonely

Dear reluctantly lonely,

When I left my semester in Washington, DC and packed up my small, cramped room that I had shared with two roommates, and fretted over whether to mail things home by UPS or USPS, I pretended to everyone that I would not be lonely. That we would not be lonely. I promised Skype dates and March break visits and a heart full of memories. I denied everything about loneliness.

But not long after I left on my early bus to my hometown, lonely caught up to me. I sobbed hysterically through the plane ride. I cried for those hearts now at home in my heart. I cried for those who really left. I cried for no reason and for every reason and the truth is that I could not help but cry. No one can- because loneliness is about love. Because longing for someone or something and being lonely is a part of love.We don't talk about it. Instead we make those wild promises and worry ourselves sick with how we will manage everything and keep it all just as it was. Perhaps we should embrace lonely as a part of love. We tie ourselves in knots around the gut wrenching reality that people do leave. Departure, and arrival. We cannot control our way around them: and pretending we aren't missing those who have left is like pretending that you only "sort of" love the book that changed your life or that you just "kind of" want your deepest dream to come true. Don't pretend not to be lonely, sweetheart. Let the lonely be a new shape of love.Sometimes it is only you. Sometimes it is just you and the songs on the playlist and the questions. Sometimes it is you doing the hard daily work of building your life. Sometimes you will go home and sit in the stillness and wonder- how long will I feel lonely? and there won't be anything to do but wait and trust.I promise, love, that those days which are only you, those days of lonely? They expand your heart most. And that is the real hope.Love,Hilary

I get it!

I stand in front of the mirror, water dripping behind my ears, plastering bits of my hair to my neck. I cradle the phone to my ear, laughing and smiling so much I can barely get the words out. "I get it!" I can picture her sitting at her kitchen table, or leaning against her clean counters, her chin in her hand as she shakes her head in amusement and joy.This isn't the first time that I have called her with news. She's gotten frantic phone calls about everything - new jobs, new boys, bad habits, fights, something someone said about me, my inability to hear God's voice, my impatience. She can trace the pattern of my hurricanes with seasoned accuracy. When I had to tell her goodbye last year, I told her that she could read the weather of my heart.I trip over my words, scattering water across my mother's dresser surface as I shake my head in disbelief. "It's about my relationship with Him! All of this, isn't it? It's about learning to trust Him. It's not being mad that He is in control of something that already belongs to Him!"We both laugh. I can hear her push her red glasses onto the top of her head, her eyes crinkling in recognition. She knows the hurricanes and the harvests. I perch on the end of my parents' bed, close my eyes, listening to her remind me to record this somehow, to build an altar of remembrance. It won't always be like this, she says. I imagine her swirling a spoon in her coffee cup as she says this, then taking a careful sip. Find a way to remember the harvest so that if a drought comes, you remember that you were joyful about this realization.We are a thousand miles apart and, somehow, it's just as if we were two feet apart. "You're the first person I wanted to tell," I whisper as I feel the conversation coming to its end. "I love you, Julie.""I love you too, Hil." I hear the familiar nickname, hear the promise tucked inside that there is a life full of these conversations, lemonade and sweet tea on our porches. There is a lifetime of building altars of remembrance to His goodness.I lie in bed after hanging up the phone and as my eyes close, I whisper one more: Thank you for the beautiful ones, who read the weather of our hearts. Might I be one, to her and to others?Love, hilary

He builds the house, 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 write this to you while you are on retreat, away from iPhones, computers, the incessant buzz and hum of another notification. You're away to think, and to pray, to draw near to the well and draw water. I hope it is full to overflowing, that well, this weekend. I hope that you draw near only to find that He always and already there.I called this post, "He builds the house." I know it's technically true - Psalm 127 tells us that He does. He builds the house, and if we build it without Him, we labor in vain. Sometimes this means I don't get to build a house.I picture myself with a blueprint, staring at my handiwork. The perfect job will go here, the boyfriend here, the right amount of distance between me and my parents will go here. I will make just this much money, have this kind of monthly budget that allows for all of this coffee drinking and friendship building. I will put in a special room just for all the letter writing I will do, to all the people I love.It starts to rain. It's rained here for a week without stopping. And it's not the pretty rain that comes after a drought and cools the air. No, this is the steady, incessant, plodding rain. The rain that drips out of the sky. It's halted day trips and walks to the pond, it's halted running in the early morning light. I hold my blueprint up against the sky and watch as it starts to bleed, the heavy raindrops crashing into those perfectly laid plans, those big ideas of what it would be, and how. Unless the Lord builds the house...I am mad about it. I can tell because I keep having frantic dreams right before I wake up, dreams where I'm always running around, looking for someone or something. I wake up near tears with worry, and have to tell myself over and over again that it wasn't real, that person wasn't looking for me, that I didn't lose something precious, that her mother wasn't actually giving a science presentation at my school to which I walked in twenty minutes late and had to sit in shame in the front row (the dreams are strange, let me tell you). I'm angry at God for making me wait, angry that I'm angry, impatient with my lack of patience.I'm mad at myself for not wanting to count 1,000 gifts again, for not reminding myself of the story of how He wildly blessed and even more wildly promised. But I'm mad at Him too, for giving me a pen and a heart that dreams and for this blueprint I keep showing Him that He says, "Unless the Lord builds the house." Why did you give me this pen? I want to scream. Why do you let us dream anyway, if all you're going to say when I show you what I've made is that You must build the house?And while I'm crumpling up my paper in frustration, I'm reminded that somewhere else, Jesus talks about building houses.

²⁴ “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. ²⁵ The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. ²⁶ But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.²⁷ The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”

Unless the Lord builds the house.Unless knowing Jesus is the hope and reassurance and terrifying reality and ultimate promise.Unless I let the rain come down and bleed my beautiful blue pen into the smudges and uncertainties again of trusting that He who builds the real house? He is good.Love, and grace and peace to you to trust Him who builds houses and draws water from the well and loves us with everlasting love,hilary

It slows down

My imagination is a runaway train. I've said this before, in journals from high school and middle school, even all the way back to my new pink penned, third grade scrawl. An idea floats across my mind, and I begin to toss it back and forth, watching as it blossoms and takes shape. I daydream. I make pictures in my heart of possibilities.I've already told you this, I think as I find myself reaching for the keyboard after a long day. I curl into my sheets, glancing over at the pictures of my grandparents on the nightstand, at the pile of clothes in a heap from Sunday morning frenzy, at the cold cup of tea left over from last night.I keep writing about it, because the lesson tonight feels like a cold shower. Your imagination ran away with you. The words don't come from a mentor tonight, or a friend, or even the many books I have that warn us about letting loose our minds after the love of outward things (John Woolman is first among them). The brakes on a car screech at the intersection just outside our house. My heart thuds in my chest and I put my hand over it, a small gesture of calm. I close my eyes, feel the stale bedroom air fill my lungs and shake my head.Sometimes slowing down hurts. I don't want to be reminded that my imagination can spin out of control, or that sometimes, the pictures and the possibilities have to be loved, and put away. But tonight I'm reminded that I must slow down.The steady thump of my heart is loud in my ears against the quiet night. Why is this lesson so hard for me, I wonder. Why is it so hard to go slow, ask only the questions that are right in front of me? Why is it so hard to believe that I'll know what to do when it's time to do it?It slows down, I whisper. It's about slowing down. It's about gentleness. It's about trust.Tonight, though? Tonight, I keep my hand on my heart, close my eyes and burrow further in the blankets. I'll slow down, I try to promise myself. I'll stop the runaway train.I fall asleep, the promise muffled in the sheets. Maybe tomorrow I'll begin.Love,hilary

when I couldn't write the post

"A fierce post." My insides churn as I sit, staring at the computer, my fingers poised over the familiar "e" and "s" keys. "You're an opinionated person. You have tough and gritty things to share with the world." My stomach won't sit still. I stand up, go to the bathroom, look into the mirror. My freckles stare me down. I blink back a few tears. "You can do this. You can do this!" I wash my hands a third or fourth time, scrubbing away at my cuticles like I can scrub off the insecurity. I go back to the computer, flex my fingers again.I can't get Anne and Jo out of my head. Those rich, aching-with-life conversations - Friedrich and Gilbert and their true, challenging words: "Jo, there is nothing in this of the woman I am privileged to know." or "Maybe if you just let your character speak everyday English, instead of all that highfaluting mumbo-jumbo." or "There is more to you than this. If you have the courage to write it."And I hear those voices too. The wise and fierce voices, who read my writing and push me. Tell us the other stories, the ones where you're pissed off, they say. The ones where you feel that women and men are equal, all bearing God's image, all preachers and teachers and sinners and it makes you mad to think we've baptized cultural stereotypes as the truth. The ones where you believe in the Clean Air Act, in driving a hybrid car, in solar power and healthcare and the need to reform education. And yes, even the ones where you sometimes think about whether universal salvation could be the right thing to hope for - to hope that Hell is real, and empty.But my screen is still blank. I hover, type a word, delete it. I flip through the Switchfoot album that's playing - listen to that same verse seared in my mind from the last week of school... But I'm not sentimental, this skin and bones is a rental, and no one makes it out alive... which I don't even know if I believe. But I sing anyway.I can't write the edgy post. Maybe it means I'm a coward. Maybe it means that I'm here looking for sweetness and acceptance and all flowers and turtles in a pond, hiding from the days when I'm in a foul mood and I yell at my mother for no reason or doubt whether love's real or possible or even worthwhile.I can't write it. If it's either all sweetness or all edge, if I'm searching for a voice to fall pleasantly or harshly, I'm still searching for a voice instead of speaking with one. I keep holding this space up to the light, worried. Type, delete. Type, delete. The words about women in ministry don't appear. The words about this election. The words about what I studied in college, and what it made me think about (the history of dating, for example, the history of birth control, plays about plagiarism or that paper I read about nanoparticles). Words for any of it.So I write this post instead. I confess it: I can't write it yet. The rain splashes through the edge of the open window, and I look at the sentence again. Not yet.Not fierce or wild, but true. And that's the most I have.all my wild love, hilary

where did you go (poetic friday, week two)

I want to send you off to the weekend in the joy of good words, and the better silence before and between and after them. I want to send you off with some of the sounds that paint the world in consonants and vowels. So on Fridays, I'll ramble a bit, and share a poem I've found and loved throughout the week.So, my rambling:Where did you go? Russia, in summer.I drank and prayed against cool marble, tattered flags rippled like ghosts.Kentucky in late May,stung by bees and swarmed by banjos.Antarctica in the heat of a broken heart,sweetly cold and quiet.A thousand places, and none.I am always and never here,flung through life, set freeto wander, lost, away.But if you asked, Russiaor Kentucky or Antarctica with my bleeding heartwere the same:here.And a poem for your weekend, from Theodore Roethke:

In a Dark Time

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;I hear my echo in the echoing wood--A lord of nature weeping to a tree,I live between the heron and the wren,Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.What's madness but nobility of soulAt odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!I know the purity of pure despair,My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,That place among the rocks--is it a cave,Or winding path? The edge is what I have.A steady storm of correspondences!A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,And in broad day the midnight come again!A man goes far to find out what he is--Death of the self in a long, tearless night,All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.Dark,dark my light, and darker my desire.My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.The mind enters itself, and God the mind,And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

we are called to praise, a letter to preston

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, Preston and I write letters back and forth. We write about life, and laughter, grace and mystery, Gossip Girl and how we stumble through faith. Won't you join us, and share your stories too? You can read Preston's last letter to me here.Dear Preston,I can't lie - today, my morning run sucked. It was humid already at 7:30, I was tired and my feet didn't want to move. I barely trudged up the hills past my house. I cut the run short at a random street corner where a flock of third graders with thick plastic lunchboxes twittered to each other about summer.I don't know why today it was so hard to be thankful for nature, why I had to force myself to name things that are beautiful: lavender growing wild by a mailbox, the splash of a turtle slipping into the pond, the cheerful gossip of the birds. I usually know how to name those things, how to count those one thousand gifts. I usually know how to run with hands outstretched in joy.I'm glad that it was hard this morning.Maybe that makes me crazy - after all, who wishes for praise to be more difficult? - and I admit, I don't really know why I think it's such a good thing. But as someone who wants to spend her life holding beauty up to others as an offering? I think I have to learn how when the running is uphill and my mood is foul and nothing seems worth praising.We are called to praise, Preston. All of us. Some of us praise by what we build in words and with two by four planks of wood. Some of us praise by the proofs we discover and the dinner parties we host. Some of us praise by sitting next to the seven year old while they throw up or solve division problems and some of us by prayer in a monastery in rural Kentucky.It is not optional.I believe that more now, having run down a street filled with beauty and wanted nothing to do with it. I felt for the first time the real tug of resistance, the tug of, "Oh, come on, it's just a flower and a mailbox, it's just birds, it's just the morning, and who cares, really." I wanted to say that to God this morning, to laugh that He spends His delight on something as un-spectacular as turtles in a pond.But what I will miss if I disobey His call to delight! I'm going to miss turtles in a pond and lavender by a mailbox and mismatched stones catching the sun in Italy. I'm going to miss sitting at my kitchen table drinking good coffee, singing praise for the world.It was good for me to forget how to sing praise for a morning. It was good to resent it, if only to feel more the call to love what He has made. Maybe it is G.K. Chesterton, after all, Preston:

“But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun.; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic monotony that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never gotten tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”

Today, may the delight of God in this world overwhelm you with the desire to put words to your praises.Love, hilary 

dear hilary: miscellaneous treasures

(I gotta tell you, I'm not really an advice columnist. But I started this tradition over in my old space, where I wrote letters to myself, looking for the wiser part of me. But as we journey together, if you have a question? Email me [hilary.sherratt@gmail.com]. I'd love to fumble through towards wisdom with you.)Dear Hilary,I'm 21. I have been reading a lot of advice for college grads: here, and here, and here. I've read beautiful speeches and cried a bit at them. And then I wanted to know - what would you write in a speech like that? What advice would go on your list?Love, Reading Too Much?Dear Reading too much,I'd almost rather ask you to turn the question on yourself today, love. We go looking for advice often when it's our own voices we need to hear. You read these speeches and letters to graduates, advice columns, but really in all of them you're looking for something that resonates as true. I don't know if my list will resonate with you, and I'd encourage you to make your own list, and throw away all the advice you've scribbled down on post-it notes from other people until you're ready to listen to your own heart.But, still. The list.1. Never forget how to handwrite a letter.2. Real love, you will discover as you walk forward, is mostly about keeping your heart open, letting the open sea and time and long runs in the woods heal and restore you when you're hurt, and then holding it out again to the world. Real love bends us. It should.3. The mornings burrowing under sheets and sharing your heart with your roommate are treasures.4. So are the dance parties. And the family dinners. And the walks where you only took right turns.5. Grace does not look like being a doormat. I know you think it does because it's always been that way. You like that habit, it feels safe. But sometimes you have to tell the harder truth. And sometimes, you have to go.6. Do not, do not, believe that lie you want to believe about what makes you beautiful. You're beautiful because you are. It's connected to being, not appearing. It's connected to standing inside your own skin, not that blue dress in your closet.7. Keep watch over the world. Keep watch over your heart. But don't overthink. This is contradictory, somehow, and yet it can be done. I think you'll learn how to do this, this watchful, loving protection that also waits for things to unfold.8. Rambling Man. Poison and Wine. Holocene. More than Life. The Pearl. We Don't Eat. Listen, and repeat.9. East of Eden. Letters to a Young Poet. Dear Sugar. The Elegance of the Hedgehog. In the Time of the Butterflies. Read, and repeat.10. Live with a wild love.Love, Hilary

It's not just a song

"It's just the Civil Wars," I tell myself as the song ticks out of my computer. "It's just a song. Just a rhythm touching a melody." I make my bed, folding ten year old sheets with none of their stretchiness over my college room memory foam pad, laugh at the soft hills and valleys. "It's not anything to cry about." I keep folding the same corner, feet glued to the ground, swaying back and forth. I put my hand to my mouth to stem the tears. "Come on, Hilary. It's just a song!" I'm harsh with myself now, willing myself not to cry. Just a song. Just leaving. Just a wild and uncertain future. But the tears come faster, and I drop my hands, still holding the top sheet, standing in the scattered piles of books and papers and old photos of my parents' wedding.The song plays endlessly - I've left it on repeat from hours of rocking Saylor and Emmaline to sleep while their mamas work during the long afternoons. I hear the words again, and again. I wish you'd hold me when I turn my back. I wish they'd hold me, all these faces that have left. I wish they'd hold me, the gifts I forgot to hug an extra time at graduation in their billowing black robes. I wish they'd come storming into this room and catch me in their arms and remind me that this is the ache of leaving and it's okay to stand in your home and be homesick. I don't have a choice but I still choose you. I still choose you. In the rhythm of the rain and the piano and the guitar. In the unmade bed and scattered shoeboxes. In the piles of letters I didn't have the courage to write to you yet. In the small weeping.It's not just a song, I tell myself as I sit on the bed, smooth out a lump or two. The rain drips through the open window onto a pile of books, but I don't hurry to fix it. The house has gone still. Outside, a car alarm begins to sound, but somehow it adds to the silence. I lace my fingers through each other, watch my knuckles turning white. I wipe the rest of my face with a corner of the sheet. It's not just a song. 

to my children (poetic friday, week one)

I think some of you might know how I love poetry. I love to sound it out, read it out loud in empty rooms, sit with it when sentences and paragraphs don't quite fit. so on Fridays around here, I'm going to write and share poetry with you. It will be poetry that's messy and raw, but the only way to be a poet is to listen close to poetry.First, a poem for your weekend:In the Month of May (Robert Bly)In the month of May when all leaves open,I see when I walk how well all thingslean on each other, how the bees work,the fish make their living the first day.Monarchs fly high; then I understandI love you with what in me is unfinished.I love you with what in me is stillchanging, what has no head or armsor legs, what has not found its body.And why shouldn't the miraculous,caught on this earth, visitthe old man alone in his hut?And why shouldn't Gabriel, who loves honey,be fed with our own radishes and walnuts?And lovers, tough ones, how many there arewhose holy bodies are not yet born.Along the roads, I see so many placesI would like us to spend the night.And a poem from me, "to my children"I don't believe in you yet.You live in my fierce fever of love,and waiting.I imagine your faces upturned to mine,all eyes, all need.You terrify me.Some days I don’t want you.I’d rather the other dreams – the ones that float bylike jellyfish or balloons.But I see you, tear-streaked and soft,your shadow kicks against my skin.I don't know you yet, but stillI've named you a thousand times,when everything is departure and arrival and unknowing.Even from this great distance,you are the bright ones, the comets.The gifts.

He is more than glorious, a letter to preston

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, Preston and I write letters back and forth. We write about life, and laughter, grace and mystery, Gossip Girl and how we stumble through faith. Won't you join us, and share your stories too? You can read Preston's last letter to me here.Dear Preston,I write this to you a little later than I wish, in the strange new world of wordpress (I need a tutoring session about how to use it), sitting in a coffee shop as a post-graduate. It's a strange thing to call myself, but somehow the title also fits. We came to the end at the right time, didn't we? Even when we wish it wasn't the end, or we'd like to gather everyone together and keep them in our hearts and our backyards... there is something to this ending that feels sweet and true.I keep wanting to write to you about these wild gifts I was given at the end - time with good people, time with good words, Rilke and vacuuming to The Civil Wars and dancing in the car to "Shake it Out" by Florence and the Machine. I want to tell you about how I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the blessings to end, or for the bitterness, the sadness, the other side of blessing that is ache to appear.And there was ache, but even the ache was beautiful. Even the ache was blessing. I am convinced that God is more than glorious, Preston. I am convinced His glory can't fit into our small words for it, that when we try to make consonants and vowels spell out His glory He laughs in a delighted way, and shatters our certainty with a new revelation. More than glorious. More than good.I went on a run a little over a week ago. I do this often, as you know. And I forced myself on this run to pray out loud. As I rounded the corner to enter the woods, I told myself out loud, "It's time to talk to Jesus, Hilary." And so I began to pray, not sure what to tell Him, not sure if there was anything to say except, "Lord, what next? What's going to happen to all of this? Where will all this blessing go next week, when these people and this place and all this beauty is changed?"It started to rain softly, and I kicked up pebbles and mud as I got frantic, my voice growing louder and my footsteps more urgent. And then I stumbled upon the water, and stopped short. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. And the Lord said, What are you doing here, Hilary?And Preston, before the God who is more than glorious, more than good, I got on my knees. On the road. In the gravel. In front of dog walkers and other runners and a fly fisherman trying to hook something out of the water early in the morning. I got on my knees and flung my arms out to Heaven and I answered Him: I am here to give You my life, Jesus. I am here to give You myself. I wish for better words, Preston. But for now, I offer you this: He is more than glorious.all my wild love,hilary

and so we begin.

Welcome to this space, dear ones. It's strange and new for me, coming from over here. It's a beautiful thing, and I'm sure of its timeliness. But there is a strangeness to imagining blogging here instead of where I've always been.So for my first post (my first real, live, I'm-only-blogging-here-now post, anyway), I want to share a poem that I've been pondering for the past few days. I found it as I was reading my "A Year with Rainer Maria Rilke" entry for May 18. The excerpt is from the Ninth Duino Elegy ...A hunger drives us.We want to contain it all in our naked hands,our brimming senses, our speechless hearts.We want to become it, or offer it—but to whom?We could hold it forever—but, after all,what can we keep? Not the beholding,so slow to learn. Not anything that has happened here.Nothing. There are the hurts. And, always, the hardships.And there's the long knowing of love—all of itunsayable. Later, amidst the stars, we will see:these are better unsaid.I'm not good at what is unsaid, to tell the truth. I love my scaffolding of words. I love to trace the shapes of letters and hear the clicking of the keys, to know that somehow I can share what's inside my heart through these small shapes and sounds. But tonight, as I settle into bed at home, taking a deep breath, realizing that I'm embarking on a new journey and I have no idea what it will contain, or where it will bring me, or who I will become, I see what Rilke meant. All of this beginning is unsayable - the hurts and hardships, the love and the trial of loving - and so it must simply be lived.Perhaps this year I will learn how to trust what is unsayable. Perhaps this is a year to learn how to let the silence between words be as powerful as the words themselves.I hope that as you begin this week, dear friends, you trust what is unsaid. I hope that you will hold what is in your hands and love it in the long knowing of love, and trust in it all.all my wild love,hilary

know him and make him known, a letter to preston

On Tuesdays and Thursdays around these parts, Preston and I write letters back and forth. We share the wonder of mystery, grace and our encounters with mercy. We hope to hear from you in the comments and imagine with you about this walking out in faith. Read the letter I'm responding to here.Dear Preston,By now you know that I'm ending my time on this blog. I don't know if we got to talk about that, somewhere between theology of the arts and teaching, between moleskines and meditations on Blair and Chuck and Serena (she needs some serious character development, that one), but it's true. I'm leaving this space on Sunday and I'm starting to write out the wild love. It's so strange to think about, leaving a blogging space I feel so comfortable with, leaving behind the 320 posts, the five minutes of last spring, the first post that got a serious number of hits or someone retweeted or commented on...But somehow in all of this leaving I felt the tug in my heart towards this new wild love space. The title even came to me as I was sitting, thinking about whether or not I would really like blogging somewhere else. And I thought to myself, what would I even call it? And then the name. The wild love. Because that is what we are called to live. 

That's what these last four weeks of living have taught me, Preston. That love should be wild and free and given away. That we should share ourselves. That we should not waste time pretending to be self-sufficient, but smile as we offer our neediness and recognize it in each other, laugh that we are helpless and small and dependent, and then hold each other's hearts.So I'm going to make a new space over there, and journey along in the new, post-grad world, and I really hope that you come along, too. I'm so excited about the new space, but also so nervous and unsure of what it will be and how it will be different. So much change, and so much the same. I think that balance is where the beauty is revealed.

In a devotional that the whole student body received this week, they offered the prayer of general thanksgiving from the BCP. I love those old words. And I read it with eyes towards next year and wild love. The prayer begins,"Accept, O Lord, our thanks and praise for all that you have done for us.

We thank you for the splendor of the whole creation, for the beauty of this world,

for the wonder of life, and for the mystery of love."

Give thanks for the mystery of love. Can you imagine? Giving thanks for all that we don't understand about love, for all that defies reason and expectation, for everything it demands in the dark and without explanation? The beauty, and the wonder, and the mystery. 

And then it ends,

"Grant us the gift of your Spirit, that we may know him and

make him known; and through him, at all times and in all places, may give thanks to you in all things.

Amen."

That we might know him and make him known. The prayer of thanksgiving becomes the prayer of transformation. Because we give thanks for the mystery and beauty, we can pray also that He would live in us, and we in Him, that we would know Him and make Him known. We give thanks that we might know Him. 

As it all ends here, it all seems more beautiful and more fleeting. As I walk across the Quad, around the pond, pack sheets and towels and clothes into duffel bags, as I type out the last few posts into this blogger window - I want to give thanks for the beauty, the wonder and the mystery.

I want to know him and make him known.

Perhaps that's the wild love of next year. And all our years beyond it. Perhaps that's the command and the hope. Perhaps, after all, that's the real work.

(wild) love, and grace and peace to wonder, and rejoice,

hilary

dear hilary, love hilary: only a glimpse

Dear Hilary,I hit a wall in a friendship with someone not long ago. I wanted to connect, to reach out beyond myself and towards them. I wanted to make them feel at home in my heart, and I wanted to know the real answer, the messy and uncertain answer, that lies beyond what they say to just anyone. But they didn't let me in. They held me at arm's length, kept me at a distance. They were quiet. And now I'm at a loss - I want to know them, really know them. I want to be a part of their beautiful story. But I don't know how to enter that space. Can you help me, Hilary? How do you coax someone out from behind their walls?Love,Eager to be friendsDear Eager to be friends,The short answer to your question is: you wait. The long answer to your question is: you wait. The middle sized answer is, yes, you know this - wait. It's that simple, and that difficult. Since we've done the simple, maybe we should talk for a brief, fleeting moment about the difficult. What's difficult about this waiting, this sitting outside someone's heart and wondering if they're going to emerge, or if the doors and windows are locked tight? What makes the "no" they gave you sting so much?I think there are probably a thousand answers to this dilemma of yours, and I can't pretend that mine are the wisest or the most beautiful, the most elegant or the gentlest. But I empathize with you, with our hearts and minds colliding with other people's locked doors and windows, with an eagerness to be near to someone meeting a hesitation on the other side. It's difficult because you're eager, sweetheart. It's difficult because what you're impatient for is a good thing.You've recognized something in them, something beautiful, something true. You've been compelled by their mind or their heart or both, you went on a walk around Coy Pond and imagined being friends - really, truly friends - with them and holding their stories in your suitcase heart. You caught a glimpse of their glow and you want to be close to them. That's a good thing, love. It means you're paying attention to what is miraculous about people. Your eager heart is anxious to invite everyone inside. It's wild love. It's good. But at the same time it is good, it might not be time. And in love, timing is everything.I don't mean timing as in - can you stay friends long distance, or you just met three seconds ago and you're leaving so it's all over, or you're moving to Antarctica or something. No, I mean the timing of our hearts. When we're ready to be vulnerable, to draw near to each other. When we feel the tug together. When we are willing and able to unlock doors and windows, to let our glow, well... glow.You can't rush people into being ready to share their glow with you. You can't demand that they reveal the hidden treasures of their heart. You can't force someone you care deeply about to care at the same time, in the same way, in the same place... The "no" and the distance is difficult because your heart is hanging on the end of the line. The "no" is difficult because you see what it lovely in them and you want to rejoice in it. The "no" is difficult because you worry that it means you're not worthy enough or deep enough to contain the glow they carry inside them.But can I tell you something, Eager? It is not a question of whether you could carry their heart. It is a question of whether or not you are meant to carry their heart right now. And you can't force or rush the answer to that question. The answer is "wait." Let the glow emerge in its own time, in the time that is right for who you are and who you want to become. Don't try to persuade or sweet talk them into letting those walls down - let time and wind and rain and laughter bring them down all on their own. Concentrate on loving what you do know about them, enjoying the wild gift of them... and make your heart warmer.Wait, love. And while you're waiting to discover what you're going to be, whether you are going to be friends or lovers or simply two strangers who smile at each other? Give thanks for the glimpses of the glow.Always, give thanks for the glimpses.Love,hilary

the wild love.

What's going on?I want to ask myself as I type in the new wordpress dashboard, my fingers clicking nervously over the keys and my heart thumping in my chest. What am I doing here, in a new space, trying to understand why I'm not blogging the way I was just a few weeks ago.But you see, my old blog - Sittin' There on Capitol, Hil - was for my beautiful, messy, college self. It was a blog for the city sidewalks and the night walks to the Capitol building. It was for the journey towards fullness in college. In classes and young love and questions about the future, and all that late night emptiness and hearts breaking open. And oh, it was good for the soul to be there.And so then you wonder, why am I here now, blogging somewhere else? Why not just keep the old space, and live in it? You see, I'm graduating in a few days. And with graduation comes the joy and the uncertainty of a new phase of life. It's a phase for new questions, new adventures, new hearts that break and mend and break again. I want to take you on this journey with me, and I want to remind myself that I'm beginning again. So I want to share a new space with you. I want to fling my heart open here, and invite you all over for some sweet tea on the porch.Why the title? I pondered and pondered about the title. And I couldn't find one I loved for weeks. But this morning, as I began to think about what's next, I heard it. We are called to wild love. We are called to live with hearts that are full and overflowing, to stretch ourselves to carry each other. We are called to see, and seek, beauty around us. We are called to honor one another with a fierce loyalty and love.This is the wild love I want to live now.And so, I name this space the wild love, to remind me.I love you already, readers, journeyers, lovers of leaving and arriving. I can't wait to begin again with you.love, hilary