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

on holocene (and growing wings)

They played "Perth" first. We are almost as a second thought, as they look out at the thousands of plaid shirts and skinny jeans gathered under the white tent, almost surprised to see us there. They turn their heads back to drums, guitar, close their eyes to everything but this miraculous emerging sound.I hear the music, but I'm lost somewhere inside myself, inside my preppy clothes and self-consciousness. I scuff at the pavement, rub my hands up and down my striped cotton sweater, wish I had studied the lyrics or knew how to stand in the crowd with the music and the people and the cheap wine smell. Somewhere behind me I hear a couple giggle as they share a cigarette.Then they play "Beth/Rest", the song I love but don't really understand. The words wash over the crowd and the strobe lights ricochet off the white faces, the instruments, the water to our left. I can't see the moon but in the song, somehow, I hear the night, the landscape, the horizon line.I sway my hips from side to side, conscious, still a bit out of place. I can't quite shake the idea that I shouldn't be here. This music is for the cool kids - the ones who knew this band years ago and followed Justin Vernon before Bon Iver. This is for people who live braver, more on the edge, who can actually play a guitar and who can sit on the beach in late summer humming "Calgary" while drinking espresso.But then? Then they play Holocene.The pavilion of thousands empties. All I can hear is Justin singing, and the drums battering my ribcage. The people behind me are still smoking, whispering that this song is "so good" but they seem hundreds of miles away. I close my eyes. He sings that line, the one that always gets me: And at once, I knew, I was not magnificent.This is the song I played while I drove down side roads the night of graduation day, after all the leaving, before all the arriving.This is the song I played to wake up on cold February mornings.This is the song I played to sway babies to sleep in my apartment in the haze of the afternoon.This is the song I played to make promises, and, sometimes, when they are broken.He sings Holocene and I come back to myself. The guitar repeats its wandering journey up to that top note, the drums roll, and the night suddenly, wildly, is about growing wings.We all have a Holocene. Isn't that part of the reason we keep making music, even when we sing only to mirrors and each other, even when we try to hide our voices in the bigger swelling sound of a church choir, even when we only know how to play three chords on the guitar and the cello isn't yet a part of our body, but an awkward dance partner?We make music to remember the sounds of all the things we can't put words to. We make music to imprint ourselves, to make snow angels across history, to grow wings. Yes, that. We make (and hear) music to grow wings.Last Thursday I went to the Bon Iver concert. He played Holocene, and I grew wings. I stepped for a moment inside a bigger self, inside a self unafraid to be her self.Dear readers, could I ask you something? Could you play your Holocene today? Could you let it repeat itself over, and over, growing your courage? I keep dreaming that with all these small gifts of brave things, someday we'll all take flight together.all my wild and winged love,hilaryPS. Another one of those songs? This ("I Will Wait" by Mumford and Sons)

to the brave voice

Dear Hilary's-brave-voice,This isn't a normal letter. It's partly to yourself, because you are part of me. You're the part of me I wait for - the free, wild, winged part. You are me now, but also me someday. You're already, and not quite. Some weeks you sing out, strong and brave, and some weeks you hibernate. I want to live my way towards you. I want your voice to be my voice all the time: the voice that speaks truth, not condemnation. The voice that says, "it is enough," instead of "why couldn't you do more?"This is one of the weeks where you are singing, so I write to say thank you.Thank you for telling me that my hair doesn't have to flip perfectly across my shoulders in the morning.Thank you for telling me that dancing Zumba with a youtube video of a British man is worth it, simply because it brings me joy.Thank you for giving other people their own emotional freedom. For insisting that I let things belong to other people - their own emotional decisions, their own choices, their own journeys. Thank you for asking me to keep quiet sometimes.Thank you for the delight you have in the world, how everything you see is bursting with possibility. Thank you for being so earnest in everything you do.Thank you for promising me that in the tangled web of loving other people there is room for mystery, for people doing inexplicable things, for putting up a good fight and losing, for setting each other free. Thank you for asking that I love deeper.Thank you for the time that you sat on the couch in the counselor's office and said that you believe I am beautiful. I'm beginning to believe it.Thank you for the advice columns you poured out all those weeks this past year, in the old space.You are the brave voice inside me. You are the voice I reach out towards in the midst of these long weeks when I think nothing I do is good enough and everything I do falls short and I'm asking everyone if they'll tell me that I'm good enough, and you reply, "But you don't need them to tell you that." You turn my detailed plan for affirmation upside down and spin it away from me. You refuse to let me be okay just because someone says I am.I am asking you to stay here. I love you. I love how brightly you smile, how you stand up straighter and laugh more. I love how you are strong and soft. I love how your heart is open. I love how you put on clothes in the morning and march out to the car, bleary-eyed before the first cup of coffee but beautiful. And how you just know it in your bones. I love how you run to feel the muscles working, not to lose the weight. I love how you paint your nails and watch Mad Men.I love how much grace you can give others because you're finally willing to offer it to yourself.Hilary - this Hilary, brave and bold and growing - I'm asking you to keep singing. Sing louder.I'm leaning in closer. I'm listening with all my heart.Love,hilary (the still growing part)

my own path (a guest post by fiona)

Oh, I'm so, so, SO excited to share Fiona's words with you today. She's one of the many talented writers out there that I enjoyed from afar for a while before braving the first email. Since then, it's been even more wonderful to get to know her a little bit. Today, she writes over here rich, beautiful words about the paths that stretch out before us.  You are my competition.I stood beside you, on that starting line and we started racinglimbs still chubby with baby fat, pigtails flying you with the prettiest hair clips and the enviable my little pony collectionyou with the neatest handwriting and the most gold starsyou with all the words and the right dance moves to the newest pop song. We run and run and I push every ounce of energy into theseyoung legs just to keep up with you the one who the boys want to hang around near, jostling for attentionyou with the perfect style perfectly poised between trendy and quirkyyou with the easy straight A’s, the assurance of an Oxbridge offer. We run on, my heart beating fast now, breath coming shorterharder, but I must keep pace with you the one dating the CU president and whispers of a ringyou the tutor’s favourite, the job offers already arrivingyou with the perfect smile in church and the easy way of praying out loud. We run and we run and we run until the sweatdrips into my eyes and my chest feels likeit will explodebut I must keep up, must keep pace, must prove I can do it until The path divides and I stumble to a stopin confusion. There you run ahead on my left, a new partner to run with, baby in the sling.And there you go on my right, career reaching new heights, another promotion on the horizon.And you, heading further away, with your church speaking schedule and the book contract signed. My chest heaves with the weight of exertion and competitiona tightness creeping with the promise of tearsmy breath comes fast and shallow.Which of you am I supposed to keep up with?How can I keep pace with you all?How am I supposed to know which path to take? And then a voiceunruffled and unworriedA word spoken over my shoulderin my ear This is the way, this is your wayWalk this wayRun this pathYou will run and not grow wearyyou will walk and not be faint. I lift my tired head and see a path stretchingforward from my worn out feetan empty path, my own pathno one to jostle with compete with keep up withthis is not a racetrack, nothis is a run to enjoyevery step ofthe way. And so I take that first step. A little bit about Fiona: I'm a British woman living in Luxembourg with my Danish husband. I love celebrating, gathering people together, seeing the new friendships and plans that emerge. I love seeing people find their role in God’s big story and I'm still trying to find mine. My one word for the year is “brave,” because I don’t want to let fear be the reason I miss out on all God has for me. I blog at fionalynne.com/blog and tweet at @fiona_lynne.

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

the wild gifts

It's late on a Saturday night. Our bare toes trace the wood, listening to the tide come in. She puts her hand on my knee. "Do you remember what you said before? That people are wild gifts?"I nod, my hands linking and unlinking, making knots of each other in my lap. If you spend time with me, you'll soon discover that my hands reveal almost as much about my heart as my eyes do, these small windows our bodies offer inside ourselves. I can't help it - the harder I try to hide, bury myself inside sweaters and stiff posture, the more my heart flashes across my face, my hands, my eyes. Our bodies carry messages for us, and tonight, mine whispers, "Yeah, I remember. What about it?""Hil. It isn't that you couldn't. It isn't that you're less, not enough, none of that." I nod, still squirming. "It's just that I know you. And I know that you care. That heart of yours cares even when you don't notice it. But you don't get to keep a wild gift forever."I put my hand on top of her hand. "I know. I know, I do that." She smiles, and through the dark I can see her eyes twinkling back the porch lights. I sigh, put my head on her shoulder. "I just so wanted to give that kind of care and attention. Is that wrong?"She settles into our shared posture, sighing herself. "No, love. It's not wrong. But you said yourself, it isn't what the story holds." She lets those words hang there, between the laughter next door and the cello humming in the house. We sit like that, silent, our eyes on the ocean.People are gifts. Oh, they are difficult gifts. They come with no instructions, all fragile and beautiful and broken. They come alive with questions and possibilities. People change their minds, send a thousand messages, tug at our roots and stretch us.But I hear it again: People are gifts. I sometimes want to hold onto these wonderful, wild gifts. We want to keep things just as they are. We want to write the story so that they always stay just as they are, just as we are, just as it is. I know how to welcome them, but I don't know how to give them back.But if people are gifts, if they arrive in our lives in unexpected ways, and transform us, if they bring us right to the edge of who we are, if they leave us and burn bridges and make promises and seek us... if they are gifts, we must not pretend they belong to us. We must not act as though we know best what they need, who they are, where they should go and what they should do. We must not try to write their stories according to what we wish they'd do.For people are wild gifts from a God with wildly good purposes.And the story belongs to Him.Love,hilary

to the girl in the pew ahead

Dear girl in the pew in front of me two Sundays ago,

I caught a glimpse of your face looking forlornly at that boy an aisle over. He's got a mop of brown hair that falls into his face when he bends over to pray, folding in at the waist, into prayer, into comfortable Anglican words. I looked over at him, eyes scrunched shut, the Prayers of the People echoing around the room, and then I looked back at you.

You wore that look of teenage tenderness, the special kind that exists just before the world overwhelms you, before you begin to feel the spider web of relationships as complicated, and people as these miraculous, difficult gifts. You wore that look at him during the prayers of the people.

I caught my breath. That tenderness? Don't lose it.

I don't know if he will ever look up at you. I don't know if he will sit next to you, sweaty-palmed and fidgeting, as you pray in the wide space of these familiar words. I don't know your story, your name, how you spend your Saturday mornings or your late Thursday nights.

But I caught that glimpse of you two Sundays ago, in that pew ahead of me, your shoulders leaning into the prayer, your face alive with that tenderness. And I saw in you something I want to ask you to protect and cherish in yourself. That tenderness is one of the first things I regretted about my heart when I sat in a pew years ago and looked forlornly at a boy across the aisle. That tenderness will haunt and follow you, a ghost you try to banish, a softness and sweetness that you wish desperately to avoid.

But please keep it. I'd offer you hours at a kitchen table journaling, runs for months in the woods wondering, the occasional shard of glass that hurts as you heal. I'd offer to walk through the story next to you, if you would promise not to condemn that look you give him when he isn't looking back at you.

I told myself this summer that tenderness was a problem. That caring, having a stake in it, wanting things to work out... that was weakness and worry and it was safer to be controlled, to be calm, to not let it touch me.

But then I saw you, and that tenderness, and how you weren't bent over in prayer but were looking at that mop of brown hair across the aisle, and I remembered that it isn't weakness. It's strength. Don't lose it in condemnation. Stories begin and end for a million reasons beyond our understanding. Maybe this one will end. Maybe it will begin again. Maybe it will be something in between. But the tenderness isn't the reason it ends, if it ends. Your care isn't the problem.

At the moment I saw you, we prayed, "Bless all whose lives are closely linked with ours, and grant that we may serve Christ in them, and love one another as he loves us."

And I wanted to lean in and whisper - this is the tenderhearted prayer. This is the prayer we pray after that forlorn, caring look.

Instead, I bent my head again to the back of the pew in front of me, felt the cool wood and my own heart beating. And I prayed.

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

to my mentor

I walked on the waterfront this weekend. My footsteps were slow, measured, taking in the new feeling of clarity, of answers after the long summer of questions and hopes. I walked, and thought of you. I thought about how it has been a while since we sat here, cups of passion tea lemonade all but abandoned at our feet, my hair flying behind me as my hands act like windmills to illustrate my point. It's been a while since I've seen you laugh and tell me to get a grip on reality.But when I called you on Friday night, curled up in my bed, and heard your, "Hey," I knew that not much had really changed, even if it's been months since that encounter with Mary in that church in Mississippi. I knew that nothing important had changed, nothing of who we are, and how we are. Maybe we're softened a little by life, certainly by grace. Maybe we both grew up a little bit, scrambled over mountains and out onto open plains. I know we had deserts and I know we had hurricanes (we both know if God didn't send them to me, I was sure as heck going to make some of my own). I also know we had rainfall and manna and provision.I walked on the boardwalk in complete silence. I went into the Book Rack and browsed for an hour, because I knew I was lonely and needed to be with words. I bought this funny book called, The Lover's Dictionary, that's a love story told as entries in a dictionary. Alphabetical and everything. It's brilliant, and it felt at home with me. I bought two cupcakes - this hazelnut one I'd never seen before, and the raspberry vanilla one that's always been my favorite. I carried the pink box back to my car like a silent promise that I'd be brave and give my heart back to God, like you told me to.I don't know how to say thank you, and these words are reaching out trying to tell a story that is better told through other things - like beaches and waterfronts and cupcakes, like humidity and fear and courage and wine - but you know that sometimes I write to remember, or to say thank you, or just to remind me that I am me. Today is a little bit of all three.I hope that carpet glue story STILL makes you laugh because it's so epically Hilary that if it was the only story you heard this year you would know it was me.I hope you don't ever forget that hard conversation we had over pad thai my freshman year where you said, "so quit," and gave me the courage to be truthful. And now God has so covered all of the journey in grace that I'm being confirmed in a few weeks and going to confession for the first time soon. And it's still all a mystery.I hope you soak in those highlands and lakes and the rich air of Scotland. I hope you let it feed you. I hope you come back full to overflowing.I don't think wisdom is about the things you know anymore. I think wisdom is how you dwell with what you have been given. How you understand it, learn from it, cherish it, release it - how the one life you have becomes the bottomless well from which you give life to others.You taught me that.Next time I see you, let's go for a walk on that boardwalk with those cupcakes. I can't wait to discover what else you have to teach me.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

to the newlyweds

While Preston and I are on sabbatical for the summer in our letter writing, I thought I would keep up with letters. These, though, are letters with a bit more of my imagined, someday life, and a little bit less of the every day. I wanted to store them up, these daydreams, because even though we should live in the present, there is something to every once in a while glancing out and imagining the horizon.Dear newlyweds,I saw your pictures on Facebook the other day, pictures of rings against flowers and book pages, pictures of you staring in amazement at each other, pictures of pinwheels and cakes and dances between you and the hundreds of people who gathered around you to love you.I saw your pictures and I thought about you. About the work that this is. About the wonder that this is. About how you might be wondering and fearing and rejoicing all at once. I don't know very much about the world, not now, probably not for many years. I don't know a thing about marriage except that it is beautiful and difficult and rich with blessings.Sometimes the blessings feel heavy. Sometimes we don't know how to be ourselves. We don't know how to be ourselves AND be one with another person. We don't know if we can surrender that much, trust that much, stay faithful when we desperately wish to run away. We don't know what the big step was, exactly, only that together there is more than when we are alone, and together you are something new. Between the showers and the barbeques, between standing in line at the DMV to change your name, between hoping you don't trip down the aisle or lose the rings or forget the dance steps you both practiced diligently... I wanted to say that what we see, from our pews and from walking down the aisle in borrowed shoes and stiff hair?We see miraculous love.We see promises made right on the edge, the edge of who we are and who we are called to become.We don't worry about whether your napkins are the right shade of coral or if you missed the double spin. We don't second guess your choice of cake or how you made the seating chart. We are too caught up in rejoicing that you love this boldly. That you live with a wild love for each other. I wanted to tell you this because maybe after it all settled down, you still feel the strange surreal heaviness of this new life you're making together. Maybe after you came home to your apartment or your house, to your boxes and leftover spaghetti, you wondered what we all witnessed, what it is that happened.We saw the joy, raw, palpable, spilling out of you. My friends and I sometimes joke that there is a flood on facebook of weddings, of matching dresses and clinking glasses. Sometimes we are jealous of you, jealous of what we worry we won't find, hopeful and fearful all at once. But the secret is that even in that we recognize the heart of what you have done. We love it. We feel the raw joy spilling out over the megapixels and crackling phone lines and from pew to pew.I am touched and changed because I get to see how you love.I learn about love because I get to celebrate with you.Your new marriage, the baby bird of it, helps us remember the feeling of leaping into the unknown and being caught in the wonder of it.So I pause in my day, in between emails and grant proposals and puzzling out the new work before me to whisper to you: remember that your baby bird marriage is a beacon of love. You shine bright.Be unafraid of the big work ahead. There is more grace than you can imagine in store for you. Be unafraid of where you go, what you eat, how you burn brownies and fight over jobs or church or money. Be unafraid of it all.The secret of that big leap is that grace always catches us.Love,hilary

dear hilary: when it isn't okay, it still is

Dear Hilary,My question is silly, maybe, but real. I read you and I'm wondering, where does wisdom come from?Love,just curiousDear just curious,To answer your lovely question:From God. From the woods after a long day. From aching with laughter and with pain in the same night. From a brother who asked me to bake with him last night and whose sweet smile brought me out of myself. From the moment when you say, "Jesus?" in the trembling voice and He says, "Yes."From getting on your knees in the dirt.From the millionth mistake in the same direction.From everything you learn you cannot do.From being forgiven.From sitting on your bed reading Rilke and then curling up and crying silently because you want to be that wise and you know you aren't, you want to accept sadness and you keep trying to force it out, you want to begin and be vast and write poetry and love earnestly and all of the rest... but you're small and still and you spilled carpet glue on yourself and you can't seem to make heads or tails of this new brave world.From trusting people when they say they love you.From waiting.From unrequited love.From writing letters to yourself on Wednesdays and more from the wiser people who whisper to you that it's okay not to know the answer.Where does wisdom come from, sweetheart? From a heart overwhelmed with love for the One who makes all things new. From asking Him hard questions. From waiting for Him - more than watchmen for the morning. Love,Hilary

when you tell your abs you love them

"You're good to me, abs." I pant around the corner of the lane, 4 miles from home. The sun doesn't seem to move across the sky at all, and I run in and out of the shadows of the trees lining the sidewalk. They're gnarled and old, full of stories, branches climbed by eager children. They've shed thousands of leaves in the few seasons I have been alive, and there is a steadiness to them I wish I had. Perhaps they have their own small jealousies, seedlings wishing they could become trees faster, a maple that wants nothing more than to be a cherry tree or a redwood. Perhaps oak trees are jealous of the cool white birches, and some days all trees want to burst into the fiery flames of tiger lilies. But in the midst of the quiet afternoon, I somehow doubt that these steady limbs and leaves long to be something else.But I do. In miles one and two I told my body it should be smaller, easier to carry around, more like a gazelle than a zebra. When I hit mile three, I got quiet for a little bit, but the voice in my head said that all of it would be easier if I just ate less and ran more, that I could solve all the disappointment on this earth if I wasn't a disappointment (that they wouldn't leave if I was something else). And the good girl in me, the one who believes in grace for the rest but not for her, felt the sun on her sweaty neck and said, "if you were more beautiful, Hilary, you'd know more, love more, be more graceful, less impatient... if only you were all those things. You'd even run faster."In these moments I usually resign myself, agree with the voice. After all, she talks so matter-of-factly, so practically. She tells me that I could just stretch my arms a bit father and I would be there, I would make it, I could become all those many things I wish I was. She gives me what I hear as good advice.But on this Sabbath day, I hear my voice creep out of my mouth, right out into the street where those long limbs cast their shadows, where I can hear pool filters running and the squeals of children chasing the late afternoon. "I love you, feet." A strange silence as I hear my words caught by the wind and then gone again. I exhale, push my way up the hill. "I love you, knees and hamstring muscles. I love you, abs. I love you, arms. I love you, I love you, I love you."My voice grows louder, my footsteps clanging on the pavement. This is not the day where I tell my body one more time that it should be better than it is. This is not the day where I ask it to run faster or farther, to go without, to have brighter skin and bluer eyes and curlier hair. This is not the day when I accept that cool, matter-of-fact voice in my head that whispers to push just a little bit more and things would heal."I love you, abs." Now I'm laughing at how ridiculous I must look, all sweat and hair falling out from its bobby-pinned obedience, limbs waving in the breeze and lungs gulping air. "I love you, body."On this day I won't ask it to be anything else. I won't demand the stride of the gazelle. I won't say, "be smaller, be taller, be more beautiful.""I love you."I will feed it those rare, sweet words of satisfaction, and hold it out before the world: one among the many miracles that sing His praise.Love, hilary

to the photographers

While Preston and I are on sabbatical for the summer in our letter writing, I thought I would keep up with letters. These, though, are letters with a bit more of my imagined, someday life, and a little bit less of the every day. And sometimes, like today, I just want to say thank you.Dear photographers,I don't think I understood that old line, "a picture is worth a thousand words" until I saw you and your camera. You were laughing and gesturing to us to squeeze closer together under the big Colorado sky. You were coaxing  a worried three year old to pose with her brother in a vintage car. You were wandering the streets of DC with me catching me mid-laugh, staring out a window or pondering life with my chin cupped in my hands. You were reminding the bride that she was exceptionally gorgeous as we drove to the courthouse for the wedding. You were pulling yet another black lens from a hidden pocket in your bag as you laughed, almost tripping over the low lying wall behind you, anxious to capture the surprise and the nearly bursting with excitement of the unexpected engagement. You were in a studio loft in New York City with the afternoon sun with a senior in high school, asking her to tell the world her story.But a picture of yours is worth so many thousands of words. In one still frame, you teach us the look of love, how it laughs, how it gazes, how it feels under the bright sun. You teach us to see the little girl walking down the beach holding her mother's hand as the very expression of hopefulness.How do you do it? It isn't the fancy camera you have, the lenses, the sleek black bag. It isn't the extra flash or the HD-enabled something I can't pronounce.No, you see - it's the beautiful way you see the world. It's the stories you discover behind the camera. You know the ones I mean - the way he holds her hand is a story about their wild promise of love. The way she hugs the yellow monkey to her chest is a story about how to feel safe. The way I look at my sister while I begin to cry during my toast to her and her husband is a story of sisterhood and love and how we must give the ones we love away sometimes.Thank you. Thank you for the way you coax us out of our shells, the way you hold up a mirror to all that is miraculous about human faces and trees silhouetted against the sunrise and a seashell cupped in your hand in late summer. Thank you for telling me I am lovely without using words. Thank you for giving my friends the image of their joy on their wedding day. Thank you for running down a path in front of the Rocky Mountains. Thank you for teaching me to see light and shadow.Thank you for teaching me to be speechless.You make art with our faces and our lives. You give back to us a promise that this mess we make of things is also the beginning of what is truly beautiful. Promise me that today, you'll pause and hold your camera in your hands, and smile at everything the two of you can create.Your work is worth ten thousand words: I only offer mine to begin to say thank you.Love,hilary

dear hilary: only a glimpse

Every once in a while, I want to share with you something from my former blog (you can visit it over here). Today this letter to myself struck me, and I wanted to share it with you, and remember together the long kind of patience.

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 friends

Dear 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

when what is lost is found

Why do I always decide to deep clean the boxes under my bed when it's humid? I shuffle papers aside, pausing to reread the titles of my academic rambling - The Fractured Definition of Motherhood, Jacques Maritain and the Crisis of Europe, a paper on Reinhold Niebuhr and another still on the theology of knowledge in St. Thomas Aquinas. I stroke their pages now speckled with dust, and add them to the growing pile next to me.

All I really want is to find extra picture frames, books, things to litter on the shelves in my new office at work. I hit repeat on the new Maroon 5 song, feel the sweat slide its way from my hairline down my neck. I'm sore and tired, and my heart is sore and tired, too. As I push the last box back under the bed, another, smaller box falls out. I look at it. It's the box my poetry teacher gave to me when I saw him three or four Christmases ago, when he was back from his travels. He brought the box to me as a gift, a reminder. I can't really remember the conversation we had, our lattes getting cold while I felt the edges of the box with the palm of my hand, traced the carvings and the delicate small stone at the top. "Keep something special in here," he had told me.

I'm trembling, trying to remember what I kept in here. Is this where I put the note from my best friend, the one she hid in between stones in a random archway in Arles, France, that I found a year later using only a piece of Moleskin notebook paper with scribbled directions? Is this where I kept the locket I lost in third grade, and found again when I left elementary school? Is this where I hid my fearless, brave self?

I open the box and the ring winks at me. I scream. It's the ring my grandmother gave me on my eighteenth birthday. It's the ring that my grandfather gave her on their fortieth wedding anniversary. It's my birthstone. "I've been saving this one for you, Hilary" she told me four years ago when she pressed it into my hand. "It's yours." I slip it back on my finger, feel it glide into place. My skin welcomes it back, this part of me that I had tucked so carefully away.

Sometimes when we try to protect things we lose them.

Sometimes we hide the most precious things when we could wear them.

Sometimes we treat each other like thieves who are only hoping to hurt, instead of like friends who are only hoping to love.

And a worry rises in me sitting on the floor with grandmother's ring on my finger and the fan humming and Maroon 5 playing. What if when I hide my heart I forget where it is? What if when I try to stay safe, I get lost?

And then I remember: what we hide is also what we rediscover. What is lost is also what is found. And oh, the rejoicing when we find it.

grace, and peace, and love to find again those things which are lost,

hilary

to my someday friend

While Preston and I are on sabbatical for the summer in our letter writing, I thought I would keep up with letters. These, though, are letters with a bit more of my imagined, someday life, and a little bit less of the every day. I wanted to store them up, these daydreams, because even though we should live in the present, there is something to every once in a while glancing out and imagining the horizon.Dear friend,I'm writing this to you while Misty May-Treanor and Kerry Walsh-Jennings are trying to win their third gold medal in Olympic beach volleyball. This isn't the same kind of letter that I've written on Thursdays before on the blog - to a daughter and a son and a husband I don't know yet. I'm going to guess that I already know you, or at least I have caught a glimpse of the wonder of you and I wanted to be friends. But this is a letter for the future us, the us of more years and (hopefully) more wisdom and more love.My guess is that I was shy about it at first. I so often long to share a table and a coffee mug and a long walk with someone but I don't say anything. I'm afraid that you'll be overwhelmed by my enthusiasm or think that I'm insane or you'll tell me that you already have the perfect friends, and you don't need any more.But I'm also stubborn, and so I asked you, shy and quiet, for that first coffee and confessed how much I admire you and respect you, and how I was hoping that maybe we could be friends. We laugh now, of course, because you know me as the bold, tripping-and-falling, always has more to think about than she has time to think it girl. You remember the random wine-and-cheese picnics I proposed and my absolute adoration of the public benches by the water in Beverly; I remember marveling that you sat on those same benches with wine and cheese and let me be angry and confused and yet you still pushed me towards the truth.I haven't said thank you enough over the years. I haven't thanked you for the Rilke you snuck into my inbox. I haven't thanked you for listening to me on the phone when I called in a sobbing mess because I realized that it was over with me and him, and I felt it settle into my gut. I haven't remembered to marvel at the years that fly by between us, how we stood next to each other during the fierce promises of marriage and the heartaches about children and stuck their finger paintings on each other's refrigerators.I've spent so much time asking God where my so-called significant other is that I forget to thank Him for you. I'm sorry for all the years of agony I have probably put you through, what with my heart racing around without patience or peace. And you've had so much grace for me, my sweet friend. You've kept your light on and your porch open. You've brewed sweet tea. You've let me sit alone in your study when you aren't using it to try and finish writing something, even if it's just a grocery list.You believed in the counseling dream. You believed in the writing dream. You kept those dreams safe for me while I chased other things. I know that you probably wondered when I would just get it, but you only offered an extra hug when it was wrong. And while I know that we've had our hard seasons, the traveling back and forth, the letters that are full and empty, the marriages at different times and the aches and pulls of life, I also know that you take care of me.Years from now, when I find this blog again, or maybe when I'm still here, writing about wild love, I will print this letter and give it to you. I will cry and tell you, as you mix the lemonade and I chop fruit for the salad we're sharing, that you teach me grace and strength. I will mumble to the blueberries as I slide the paper towards you that in the years of wine and waiting, of promises broken and kept and transcended: you carry my heart.I love you, friend.Love,hilary 

dear hilary: while we're young, love wild

Today I'm linking up with some folks over at Preston's space to write about the voice we have as young people. So the letter today asks a simple question, and I offer my rambling, here-and-there thoughts. I hope you'll head over there and read what others are sharing!Dear Hilary,People tell me that I'll understand things better when I'm older. That I will learn the ways of the world after I've been in the world longer, that I should just give it time, and then things will become clearer. Not to be too blunt, but is this really true? What about the young ones? What about me - I'm 22, and I want to protest that I know something of love and loss and living, even if I only have a glimpse, even if I'm at the beginning. What do you think?Love,young oneDear young one,We have long been obsessed with time, from the Ice Age to the Babylonians to the Egyptians and beyond. We've wanted to measure ourselves, our crops, our pregnancies. We have used cycles of the moon, the sun, the journey of constellations. We have used water clocks and sundials. We scratched lines in cave walls.We know that we live in time. We know the sun rises and sets, that gravity pulls tides to the moon and back (though I still imagine some days that the moon and the water long for each other, and we are simply watching their love story). We know special and general relativity and the concept of time in multi-dimensional calculus. All this good knowledge, all this wonder, all this learning.We want to put it to use everywhere we go. But the one place perhaps it is not useful is here: in the measurement of our mysterious selves, in the measurement of a wise spirit and a humble, wide-open heart. You see, young one, hearts do not learn according to calendar time. This is of the utmost importance. The time it takes to learn a lesson about letting someone walk away from you freely (like I wrote about last week) takes some people a year in high school, others a gut-wrenching breakup at thirty, still others much later in life. Some of us learn the ache of unrequited love in seventh grade. Some of us learn it teaching seventh grade.I don't know how wisdom really works, young one. But I know it does not arrive because you reach a magical threshold called "old enough." I know it comes to the heart that welcomes it. I know it comes to those who are patient, peace-loving, quick to love and learn, willing to forgive and be forgiven. You do not get wiser because you got older.It is true that in the grace of time, we are allowed to relearn and learn deeper the lessons we most need. It is true that the older ones among us have lived more stories (maybe ten to each one of ours) and can show us the shape of love and hurt and anger and reconciliation in many stories, not just the few we know. But we who are young must offer our stories too - because we alone have lived them inside and out, because in each story, however young, is the thumbprint of Love Himself, come down in mystery and grace and nearness to teach us. We all know nothing in the face of our Teacher. So while you're young and beautiful I urge you to love wild. When we get older, we often shrink back into the shadows of what seems safe. We cling to the familiar. We look for patterns and habits, gentle fences to keep our lives just as they are. So you who are not yet afraid of changes and new spaces? Spread your wisdom to your elders. Remind them that with Love, nothing is to be feared. Remind them that to be new again really does mean to be wild in grace and rich in compassion. Remind them that we are all little children drawing water from a dazzling stream.And while you're young, teach this world to trust.Love,Hilary 

oh my stars (the terribly funny day)

I have never felt more like myself than today.It started with the bright pink skirt. When I wonder about beauty and attraction and whether or not I am, will be... all of that, I put on the bright pink skirt. It makes me brave. I wear it proudly to the office, make my early morning splash in all my exuberance. I decided, today's the day I'll work in my new office. Perfect. I scampered up the stairs, settled in, laughed a little as I answered emails from my very own desk...But today is the day they were putting new carpet down in the hallway. And at 10am, just as I'm feeling the coffee wear off, I remember that it's time for a meeting. I rush out of my office... and step straight into carpet glue. Yes, I am serious. I skid, and leap to safety on the other side, just as the guy says, "No! Don't touch the carpet!" Oh no! I'm touching the carpet, I think to myself.And so I try to get back to the other side of the hallway... but you see, my legs aren't long enough to span the space. And so instead my other foot lands in the glue, trips me, and I fall flat on my face into carpet glue. I am not even slightly kidding.I stand up, looking sheepish, and look down. The beautiful bright pink skirt, the symbol of my brave, I-believe-in-beauty-and-life! skirt? Covered in the stickiest glue known to man. The guy runs off for mineral spirits, which I have to mix with water while standing with my skirt on backwards in the ladies' room on the first floor. I was late to the meeting, and I arrived smelling strongly of nasty, poisonous chemicals. I had to wear that skirt backwards to another staff meeting, and halfway through that? I realized that crossing on leg over the other meant that my legs were stuck together. I had to rip them apart in utter embarassment.My brother came to the rescue with a couple different substitute dresses. aha! I thought. Things are looking up.But this afternoon, after scrambling to run an errand during lunch and parking in a forbidden spot on campus, I looked down at my substitute dress number one, and realized... I had spilled a mysterious substance on it. I don't know what it is, but it looked terrible and so in my car, praying nobody could see me, I changed again. Outfit number three had spaghetti straps, and I had lost my cute sweater, so yours truly had to run up the stairs before anyone could see me and question my professional attire. I hid in my office, consoling myself with very quiet country music, attempting to put a fan together, and drinking iced coffee.And you know? I felt like me. I am the girl who trips in high heels, who is about as elegant as a duckling learning to walk, who manages to fall into carpet glue and down stairs at a wedding and into a puddle in public and who walks into a revolving door... I am that girl, who stands in the bathroom bemoaning her fate, wiping her skirt with mineral spirits. Jo March and Anne of Green Gables, and Lizzy Bennet, and all the rest - these heroines are clumsy too, running through fields, their hems in mud, chasing cows or picking wildflowers.Maybe today was a funny showing of grace - that I'll get to be like those girls who I love in more ways than one.And maybe it was about time I had a good laugh at myself (promise me that if you read this, you'll laugh too? Because I really did fall into carpet glue today).Love,hilary

conversations with ourselves (guest post at See Preston Blog)

It's just a brief moment, as I lean towards home, after we celebrated my sister's marriage to a wonderful man, after we danced to "Baby" by Justin Bieber and "Ain't No Mountain High" ... after the vows and the tears and the heart-stopping beauty of it all... but I wanted to share my guest post from earlier this week with you. 

Y'all know Preston already (and I hope you read him, too) from the letters we write on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I got a chance to share my thoughts in his space on Thursday. Won't you take a second and join me over there? It's a conversation, a letter, to myself. 

Dear Younger Self, 

Four years from where you are, you will be a college graduate. You will have lived in the warm and safe space of good friends and you will have made space for them in your heart, too. You will not know what you want, but you will know what you dream of. You will know what you love. This will take some gut-wrenching talks and some fights with yourself. Let Italy inspire you. Let ambition take a backseat to joy. I promise you the doors open wide and surprising and suddenly the Lord, He is with you and quick to bless you. Wait for that moment - wait for Him. 

I write this to you because I need to tell you something: I forgive you.

Keep reading, over at Preston's? 

Love, hilary