when I remember Canada

We crossed the border thirty-odd times on that trip. I know because we counted - that was part of our work, part of our questioning - and because of the hours I remember we sat bored in the van thinking about how long our customs conversation would be. It was a trip about borders, Jim told us, a trip about the liminal space between, this funny line that creates two nations instead of one wilderness. At the time, I had signed up for the trip because I was a bird on the wing, anxious to feel the air against my face. I wanted movement, change, a stepping outside myself. I also loved traveling with Jim and all of his rituals. I loved how we sat next to different people in the van every day, waited to eat until we all had our food at a restaurant, stopped to sketch and write, shared our journals, saved ticket stubs and matchbooks and rarely took pictures, but always talked to strangers.We started in the upper reaches of Vermont that June, while the mosquitos, early in their hatching, kissed our bare knees and skinny arms. One of the girls on the trip wanted us to insist on doing ab workouts every night. She would time us, thirty seconds on each side, in planks and crunches, in strange contortions of high school bodies already too worried about the wrong things. I collapsed every night we did this, exhausted with the fear that they'd figure out that I wasn't really an athlete.We drove through towns built with that invisible line drawn through the houses, along the streets - half in Canada, half in the US - and took a long ferry out to Campobello Island, owned by both countries. We walked along the beach for hours, picking up trash and scuffing our sandals against bits of driftwood. I caught a piece of seaweed on my shoe, and the sky rippled grey and it started to rain. We sat on benches to eat homemade sandwiches, ham and mustard on stale wheat bread, apples. I drank water out of the Gatorade bottle I had saved for the whole length of the trip, because we were supposed to bring water bottles with us and I didn't have a Nalgene.I remember lying in a dark basement bedroom in a home in New Brunswick one night. We were staying with someone who knew someone who knew Jim, the threads of kindness stretching tight over miles and friendships. The older couple we were with spoke French, and I tried mine on them, feeble though it was, making the noises with my mouth, the Parisian "r" perfected but not understood in their simpler Canadian lilt. I felt foolish, trying to sound French in their sweet yellow and green kitchen, as they fed us blueberry muffins and asked us about our hopes and dreams after high school. They didn't need impressing, only to hear the echo of their kindness coming back in our "bonne nuit" and "merci beaucoup, beaucoup." I lay in bed, looking at a small framed picture of the sweet faced Jesus with lambs and children. I looked at the outline of the girl lying in the bed next to mine, asleep in the strange room, and never before have I felt so sure that the lines between strangers and friends is line, dissolving ever andWhen I remember Canada, I hear myself reading Robert Frost's poem to the sweaty sun-kissed faces of my classmates who had not traveled, who had spent their time planting seeds and bike riding to Boston and sculpting or sewing or glass-blowing or putting on a play in three weeks.Something there is that does not love a wall,that wants it down. I hear myself and those words and think - what walls do we carry with us as we go, dear Frost? Where are those invisible lines between the country of our selves, between you and me, between all that we wonder about and all the questions it would take to learn it?Something there is in me, those long days and nights journeying between those countries, asking strangers and friends about border culture, eating sandy sandwiches and listening to Citizen Cope's "Son's Gonna Rise" on repeat, in the becoming of ten high schoolers, in the traveling and the return, that ceased to love a wall.Something there is in me that wonders, even now,must we have such walls?Love,hilary

dear hilary: on old flames

Dear Hilary,Do you think that it's a good idea to get back together with an ex? I'm wondering if it's a good idea, because while we fought, and it was hard, and a lot of us felt difficult and broken, there was a lot of good. And so now it feels like a real possibility, and I'm wondering if it's a good idea. What if we just hurt each other more? What if this is it, but we don't get back together and we leave it unfinished? Where do you even begin to go with that possibility?Love,Old FlamesDear Old Flames,Well, here is an interesting question, and an old one, and a good one. Do we step back into something that we left behind? Do we return to a landscape we have visited before? On the one hand, there is that warm call of familiarity. This person knows you, knew you in a moment in your life full of growth/change/becoming. They understand that habit you got into your 20s with folding your sheets or only ironing shirts the morning you wear them. This person knows your favorite movie when you were 5, what you think about taxes or the environment.On the other hand, there is that list of the things that fell apart - the way you couldn't fight fair, the misunderstandings that started over coffee and ended over listening and whether they cared at all about your feelings. The long nights of counting shadows on your bedroom wall thinking about everything else that might be out there, and could this be it? And the conversations where those thoughts slipped out and it felt like things broke all over again.So there you sit, with your old flame, who is wonderful and difficult and folds sheets weirdly and doesn't like Mexican food. There you sit, you who are wonderful and difficult and don't like parakeets and think James Bond is a total sap. You both come to this moment, and ask, do we go back?But that's not really the question. Relationships are only like places in that we live in them, that we make space in our hearts and minds for another. We cannot make the same space twice; because we are changing, and the person is changing. So you are never going back, if you and an old flame decide to pursue a relationship. You are going to build something new together, because you are meeting again as people weathered by the years or months apart. You are meeting, not as old flames, but as a possible fire.I can't tell you what to do - there isn't a universal rule about ex's and get togethers. Some work wonderfully; some don't. Some build back the patterns they had hoped to learn from; some build something entirely new. But always, I urge you to ask questions not from the perspective of wandering back into the past, but from the perspective of bringing all that you have learned from your past into your present. What did the first falling apart teach you both? What do you want it to teach you about this new possibility? Who have you each become in the time you were apart? Do those people fit together?Don't be anxious, sweetheart. These questions won't be checked off a mental to-do list before you make a decision; you'll ponder them lying awake in bed at night no matter what you do. Your gut will make the decision and you'll step into it, tentatively and boldly, with confidence and trembling. But ponder them with all your might, and listen closely to your heart. It will tell you whether to work out those questions alongside your former lover, or whether those questions are better pondered alone, in preparation for the next relationship.We do this work of love, whether with people we have just met or have known a ten thousand days, whether lovers or friends or teachers, by allowing our hearts to guide and be guided. By asking ourselves about the people we were, and are, and who we would dare to become, and letting those people point the way. In the great unfolding of your life, getting together with your ex is a sparkling silver thread; no matter what you choose, there is bound up in the choice itself such wonderful things to learn.The poet Robert Bly once wrote, "I love you with what in me is unfinished." Does it get more beautiful, Old Flames? Does it get more true?You are unfinished; your ex is unfinished. This choice will not finish or complete either of you or your life stories - it will only help you love with what is unfinished inside you.Love,hilary

the word is light

Last year, at the beginning of 2012, I gave myself the word "build." I promised it was a year to build - to build on the new person I wanted to become, to protect and grow a dream of writing, of loving other people in words, of advice offered in letters like Sugar, a dream of a bolder, freer Hilary. It was the beginning of it all, I stated boldly. Now build.And I find myself back at another beginning today. My hands are full of dreams, just like last year. They spill out around me like ribbons escaping their spools - looping and spinning, brightly colored, almost invisible in their lightness. They sound like England and graduate school and Starbucks coffee dates and maybe someday I'll write letters to strangers and pour out love to them even though we've never met. They sound like the quiet nights of practicing sign language and praying for my friends far away. They sound like that tattoo of an empty birdcage I always wanted, the one that whispers "from grace, freedom." They sound like drinking wine with the people I love, like laughter loud and echoing across a bar or an empty office or a path through the woods. My head is full of questions, just like last year. And this year, I have new answers.Why do our hearts have to break? I tell you the truth, that only in the breaking open do we find love sufficient enough to carry us forward. Only in the heart widened by pain and surprise and change (sudden or long-expected), can grace sound its sweetest chord.Why do we have to do awful obedient things? Because we belong to something bigger than ourselves, and sometimes it calls for putting aside what we want. It calls for us to set apart some of what we wish we could do or say or have, and instead tell the truth. Even when the truth means an ending. Even when it means a fight. Even when it means an unknown outcome.Why do we dream so big? Because we are a people caught up between the fleeting beauty of the snow that melts tomorrow morning and the eternity of the love that did the dishes for you last night. Because we are always torn between seeing everything we cherish dissolve before us, and knowing that all we love is never lost forever. Because in the big dreams, we love each other and this world better.What do you want to build? I want it to be a great unfolding, this next year: I want to build a nest for you. I want to spend 10,000 hours listening and another 10,000 growing wings next to you: in writing your stories and pondering questions together. In declaring that love is brave. In whispering that you are lovely, just because you are. In 10,000 hours of harvesting the light for each other and cupping it in our palms, 10,000 candles to mark our way forward. So this is the way to begin again: with 10,000 candles and a million questions and a big dream to love.And the word is light.Love,hilary

to the moms

Dear moms,I'm lying in bed sick with what feels suspiciously like strep throat - a raw ring of red across the back of my throat, a headache that wraps around the back on my neck... all the usual symptoms. I woke up this morning whimpering in a small voice for my mom, for a cup of tea and a hug. My eyes were full of tears, from the feverish dreams, from the tired, from the need to be taken care of. And my mom, she cracked open the door and smiled at me, the smile of understanding that promises a cup of pomegranate green tea and a long hug and a forever kind of love.I don't know how often you get a thank you note for what you do.I don't know if there are good words for it. You see, I want to be a mom. I drive through the long winter afternoons and I wonder about making a home and a family, of learning how to rock a baby to sleep with one song on repeat, how to color with a toddler and how to bake cookies with a seven year old girl who doesn't feel accepted by her friends at school. I dream about that unglamorous life. I imagine how it will weary my bones the way it has wearied you, and how beautiful it has made you.I see you as marvelously beautiful. My mom is, I know that. My mom makes room in her bed for me when I'm sick. She hugs and kisses me when I come home, makes me a cup of tea or a bit of toast, just because she knows that I am lying in my bed sick and sad. She tells me jokes, bad dating stories when I'm lonely. My mom surrounds me on every side with grace and courage.You do that, too. You in the unglamorous life, you are beautiful in your 1am new mom outfit. You are beautiful in bringing chicken noodle soup to your sick kids. You are beautiful folding laundry and watching cartoons and desperately coaxing gum out of someone's hair with peanut butter.I want to say thank you for pouring out so much love onto your kids. When it's difficult. When we yell. When we are ungrateful. When we push against you and demand too much and don't know how to be grown ups and when we do selfish, stupid things. Thank you for pouring so much love out on us that we are surrounded on every side by it.Thank you for holding us tight when we're sick. Thank you for building a nest for us. I am going to guess that the twenty-somethings I know and love, we all have complicated moments. We are grown ups and yet young. We are trying too hard and not hard enough. We don't know where the future will lead us, and we trip over ourselves sometimes.But as we have fumbled, I don't want you to think we forget. We don't forget that you make a nest for us. We don't forget that we are safe in your heart. We don't forget that, for all our fumbling, you trust us to become something wondrous.So thank you, from all of us, for the years and years you poured out love. Thank you, from all of us, for the sick days and the cranky days and the art projects and the road trips. Thank you, from all of us, for that wondrous love.I hope and pray that someday, we'll sit down and share stories about that wondrous love.Love,hilary

though you are small (Advent 4 and Christmas)

It's snowing here this morning. The flakes swirl just outside my window. It's a lull before the cooking begins in earnest. It's a quiet kind of snow. The kind that makes you quiet inside, listening to the Radiolab podcast while you bake peanut butter cookies for your family, while you give thanks. While you remember that Jesus is born today. The celebration is for something that un-theologically-complicated. For something that big contained within something so small.On Sunday we talked about the prophecy in Micah - "But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are of old, from ancient." (Micah 5.2)Though Bethlehem was small, though Mary was young, though the story was on its face all difficulty and pain and uncertain outcomes?Out of that small story comes one who will be ruler over Israel.As I looked at the small faces in the children's service last night, wandering up the center aisle carrying sheep and shepherds, carrying an angel, carrying a star to the manger, I heard it again:but to know me, Hilary, you must become like one of these little children. For it is in smallness that God sends might. In the lonely midst of winter that He sends life. And the children, in twirling reds and silvers, in matching shoes and headbands, in stiff collared shirts they want to trade for fuzzy pajamas - they lead the way to the manger. It is these children, squirming through the one hour service, who know Him in the unashamed deep ways we are so often afraid to know Him. They come to the stable unburdened by our shining theology, our complicated words and objections. They come, small ones to see another small one, in the small town in Israel.Oh, dear friends, have we become too big for this story, with our nuance, with our questioning, with our yes, but...? Have we forgotten that this story does not bring logic, but love?Because my small friends know. They know when they can't sit still while we light, finally, the white candle. They know when they carry breakable Mary and Jesus to the manger with their brother and sister. They know when they gather around to sing "O Come All Ye Faithful" loud and off-key in their parents' ears. They lead the way this Christmas, to the small town and the small baby, to the Love come down bright and everlasting.Don't be too big for the story this Christmas. For though Bethlehem was small among the clans of Judah, from that smallness comes the great miracle.Love, not logic, this Christmas. And the children lead me. Love, always, to bear you up and bring you nearer to the great story,hilary

dear hilary: on bringing sexy back

Dear Hilary,Right before Christmas I look at myself in the mirror and scold myself furiously for all the chocolate I've eaten. For the hours I didn't work out. For the way my stomach puffs out, and I lack good posture, and my eyes are an in-between color like my hair is and I never do anything to it and basically I'm just doomed to look like this. I want to change that. I hear people say it's possible, to love yourself, to think your own body is sexy. To think that your butt looks good in those jeans. To believe that, despite even the worst of worst hair days, out of me radiates a sexy, desirable glow.But no one tells you how to actually believe it. So I want to know.Love,Mirror, Mirror on the WallDear Brave Sexy Girl on Fire,I write this to you sitting on my unmade bed that is covered in approximately 5 shoes, a coat, a cell phone, a wool blanket, Christmas cards spilling out of their case, leftover work papers, ribbon and cough drops. I am wearing 4 inch high heels and orange running shorts and my sweaty white T-shirt, having just jumped around my room in said high heels to Usher's, "Scream" and P!nk's "Blow Me One Last Kiss" and the Glee mashup of "Rumor Has It" and "Somebody Like You". I jumped around my room. I shimmied. I swung my hips in what vaguely resembles a circle. I cha-chaed. I salsaed. I shook whatever could be shook. I put my hair down. I put my hands in the air. If there was sexy in the world, I brought it back.I changed your name when I wrote back to you, Brave Sexy Girl on Fire, because we don't get to see our heart's desire in the mirror when we call to it. We don't get to see the "fairest of them all". The problem with asking a mirror is that it will only show you what you already think. It will show you a snapshot of those nagging thoughts. It isn't a new voice; it's just an echo.But. What if you whispered, "I am a brave sexy girl on fire"?Just, what if you did that?What do you think would happen?I dare you to put on high heels and Usher. I dare you to jump around. I dare you to shout to your bedroom walls that you are a brave sexy girl on fire. I dare you to do it wearing a sweaty t-shirt, orange running shorts and four inch heels.It's cheesy, love, but it's true. We have to speak the truth out loud more often than we realize. We have to speak it out ahead of ourselves, so that when we wake up each morning and go to bed each night, it is already waiting for us. The truth about sexy isn't like logic. You can't commit it to memory. You can't plug yourself into one end of the equation and POOF! Out comes a belief on the other end.This is a truth that is three-dimensional, living, a heartbeat inside your heartbeat. This is a truth that you build, with every dance party. With every act of kindness, every smile to a stranger on the street, every dollar you pull out of your wallet to tip the girl at the coffee shop, every outfit that you rock in the morning (especially the ones with cowboy boots, neon pink, ruffles... you catch my drift). You build this belief in your own sexiness. In cupcakes and shimmying hips and three hours reading a good book and dreams about grad school and falling in love. You build it.So this letter ends with a dare. A dare to you, Brave Sexy Girl on Fire. I dare you to jump around dancing and saying, I am a brave sexy girl on fire over and over. I dare you to begin to build.Because you don't have to do a single thing different to glow like the French sky on Bastille Day. You don't need to do anything to your hair or your stomach or your eyes or your hair to have the glow. It is already so gut-wrenchingly radiating out from you I can see it, right now. I can see it in your letter. That's why I name you Brave Sexy Girl on Fire. Because I can see you, glowing, all the way from here.I dare you to revel in it.Love,hilary

dear hilary: on extraordinary gifts

Dear Hilary,How do you give gifts to people for Christmas, gifts that mean something, gifts that are treasures, and not just one more shiny wrapping paper token?Love,Confused by AdvertisingDear Confused by Advertising,This is what I imagine giving.I imagine wrapping up your red truck. I give it to you shyly, keys already in your pocket, Dunkin' Donuts cups in the cupholders waiting for us. I give it and we drive, miles on the tires and country on the radio, and some days it's quiet in our hearts and some days it's loud. But you make me this home, brother. You make me this space in your life, this space of welcome even in the late summer evenings and the long thunderstorms. So I give you the breakfasts at the Depot and the kids flying into your arms on your way back from Communion, your steady hug after once again, I've hurt my heart in longing and disappointment. I give you the forever love of a big sister who's in awe of you.I imagine holding out a cup of tea to you, no wrapping paper. We are only at the beginning of knowing each other, and it's only been a little while since we first sat in Starbucks and laughed about boys and swapped stories about our journeys at Gordon and our hopes for the future. But I give you this cup of tea, this promise, because even at the beginning of this friendship I can feel your care radiating out from you. I give you this cup of tea (and maybe a truffle, too) - with a small smile, knowing that we have so much to look forward to. Knowing that the beginning of the story of knowing you is more beautiful and more worthwhile than I could have dreamed.I imagine giving you a framed picture of us on your wedding day. It wasn't very long ago, you know, but that day, I remember giving a toast from a napkin hidden in my pocket and falling down the stairs and all the while I was overwhelmed  by the joy of watching you make those big promises. I want to tell you with this gift that we're always and forever family, and I will love you fierce through these new seasons and this new world that we've stepped into. I will tell you as I give you the gift, that no matter what, when I think about our room and NCIS and baking cookies and not finishing my books because you want to paint our nails, that I will rejoice. Because you are rare. Because the love of sisters is rare.I imagine I would give you a plane ticket to Michigan. It doesn't have a date on it, just the destination, but I'd hand it to you as part of a promise, that distance stretches us and grows us. I would give it to you with the long afternoons that stretch into evenings of macaroni and cheese and Entemann's raspberry danish and tea, and Searching for Bobby Fisher and dance movies, and always the moment when I reach for the blanket I love and look over, and know that you are still there. That no matter what, when I call or worry or doubt again, you hold all my questions next to me and laugh and somehow, the world brightens. I'd give you the plane ticket with that same laugh, the snow outside bright.You see, Confused by Advertising, our hearts know the gifts we must give better than we do - the gifts of the people we've been given to share this life with, these miraculous beautiful heartwrenching friends and family and mentors and inspirations who walk into our lives and transform us.Don't worry about the right iPod case. Don't worry about the better gadget or kitchen appliance or the newest Spiderman movie. Don't worry about homemade chocolate.Look at each of those people, the ones who hold you up when you fall apart, the ones who walk into your office and offer you a word of hope. Look at each of them, and with all of your heart, just say thank you.Because all of this is gift from another Giver. Because when we empty ourselves of the need to impress and dazzle, we find simply that we are thankful.So give thanks.Love,hilary

for me (Advent 3)

My heart crawls slowly to the manger.Friday afternoon, it feels like I can't breathe, for thinking about the children, thinking about the tragedy, thinking about how everything here is a thin veil, torn away, and the ugly and the wound is deep and raw, this world we wander through feels dark. I sip tea, cry in my office, look forlornly at my post-it notes, because how, O Jesus, can you come into a place with this much hurting?How can you come dwell with us, when you see us rip each other apart with words and deeds, a world violent and terrifying?Sunday again, and I hold my breath when I see them coming through the white door. Because these are the children, just this age, in their red ruffled coats and big boy sneakers. These are the children, sticky fingers from dipping them in the glue bowl and anxious to tell me that they have been driving to see all the Christmas lights in their neighborhood. These are the children. And I whisper to them to listen closer, and to sit down, all the while wanting to hold them next to me and fix their pink hairbow and listen to them tell me about Horsey and Emma the bear and give them kisses because I don't know what else to do, and I am 22 and helpless and in Sunday School.Where we talk about a God of big love. Where we pray to Him, our voices piping up and running over each other. And we light three candles on the Advent wreath."For to us a child is born, to us a Son is given." "What does this mean?"Miss Andrea asks. It means something about this violent terrifying world of hurting, but I don't know what. I whisper to myself, feeling Kate scooting her mat a little closer to mine. O Jesus, what are you doing? The glue bowls sit untouched, the candles flicker. The clock ticks towards closing time. From the room next door, we can hear singing about Jesus the life. Our three to six year olds sigh and shuffle, and the purple cloth on the prayer table holds the dancing shadows from the flames. I hear rain outside, shiver. Kate hands me her pink hair bow - a gift, and puts her head on my knee."Who do you think the child is for?" She asks. There. The real question - the why is all of this happening. The question I want to ask Jesus, when I sit in my office fearful for life and light. Afraid of the dark again.But Kate sits up straight, without her hairbow, and shouts to us on our mats, to the room, to the world - "FOR ME!"For me. This child comes into this broken, bleeding world, for her. For each of them in the circle, for the teachers, wide-eyed in wonder, for the congregation, crying and praying Collect after Collect, for the families who sit in desperate grief, for each of us, who grieve next to them. The child comes for this: that each of us might have life so abundantly that we remember He has undone death. That we might be so wrapped in His love that though we walk in the valley, we fear nothing. That we might, each of us, pink hairbows and winter boots and bare feet and hungry eyes, know, know, like Kate knows: that YHWH is our Shepherd, and He is born for me.My hearts makes it to the manger.Love,hilary

dear hilary: monsters in the closet

Dear Hilary,Have you ever been afraid of something? Afraid to ask yourself something honestly, for fear of what it would look like? Afraid to ask yourself "why" this was happening, because of what you thought you might say in response?What did you do?Love,AfraidDear Afraid,My closest friend and I, we have a saying: brave new shit. BNS. It stands for all the things we do that defy our fear. It stands for all the things we originally said were completely impossible, the conversations, confrontations, internal moments of honesty, risks. It stands for the believing work we do: believing in being beautiful in defiance of magazines or mirrors, believing we are capable in spite of the mountain of work, believing in descending into that murky pit of ourselves because we know that there is something good there.We are all afraid of the monsters in our closet. In polite conversations at dinner parties, they're not invited. They don't stand with us in our shiniest, brightest moments - they don't live in the open sipping a mint julep with you and your best friends on a sticky Southern afternoon. They live in the shadowier parts of us, and so we don't know them as well.You're afraid of what you think lurks behind your sadness or your frustration or your stories. You're afraid that it might be much bigger than it seems. You're afraid it might be much smaller. I wish I could tell you that it is one thing or another - but the truth is, I don't know. No one does. The closet belongs to you, so we can't peek inside for you and tell you that there's nothing to be afraid of.But you can tell yourself that. You can put on "It's Time" by Imagine Dragons and start journaling. Crack the door of that closet open, and yell - "Come out, come out, whoever you are!" And you can sit with yourself on a couch somewhere, alone or with people, and fling the door open, crying and smiling and laughing, and say, "Who are you, monsters in my closet?" You can do some brave new shit and offer yourself some time to ask nothing but, "why?" - no judgment. No self-condemnation. No guilt. Just curiosity. "Come out, come out, whoever you are."I can't tell you what those monsters are. But I can tell you that your monsters, big or small, are always welcome on the front porch of the people who love you. Those people who love you will love those monsters, love them fiercely and do battle with them next to you and hold you when you discover that they are not so fierce or frightening.I bet you all the monsters in your closet plus mine plus the thousands of people who stand alongside us, all the young and old, all the fearful and brave, all the wild and all the free: you will be loved even more deeply for opening that closet door. Not just by all of us in this big world. But by you, too. You will know yourself better, love yourself better, give yourself a bit more grace if you look at them honestly, lovingly, with grace. BNS isn't just about confronting the things you don't know, Afraid. It's about bringing grace to those confrontations, especially when they are inside you. It's about being careful with yourself, not harsh. Fling that door open, and look at everything inside you gently. It deserves your attention. It deserves your time.That's the real secret of meeting the monsters in your closet: you will grow in love.Love,hilary

I made this for you (Advent 2)

This Sunday a six year old made me cry. It was a gut-wrenching week. It was a week where you climb the three flights of stairs to your office again, and again, each time telling yourself you just can't do it anymore. You just can't, can't, can't hold anything else in your heart. You can't hold yourself. You can't hold other people. You can't breathe for all the work and worry, for the whispers about "if you were really truly a good worker and really truly a good person and really truly a good friend you'd try harder..."It was one of those weeks where I think really hard about whether I have forever failed at this work of my life.And one of those weeks where I couldn't face God. Not even slightly. Not even really think about it.But Sundays arrive whether you want them to or not, and with Sunday comes the children. With Sunday comes their presence, their hands sticky with glue stick and stray blonde curls in a frenzy around their forehead. When I got up with my weary heart on Sunday I put on jeans and a blue silk shirt (because it's Advent, and I wanted to pretend I was trying). I put on the shoes that remind me of peacock feathers. I put my hair in a bun secured with a rubber band because I've lost my hair elastics and I can't be bothered to buy new ones.It was a day in a different classroom, this time with 6-9 year olds. It was time to hear God's word to his people. We talked about how prophecies are promises from God to us, his people. I smiled sadly as the children squirmed on their mats, sang half-heartedly the chorus about Christ being the Light. Because when you are trapped in the lie that none of what you do is really good, it's hard to believe God's promises apply to you. In the wrongheaded math of my universe, I couldn't believe that I, in my jeans and blue silk shirt and hair in a rubber band, am the person that God makes promises to. That I'm the person He was thinking of when He thundered His messenger to the world to ask Mary to bear Christ to us.I sat there, but when Ms Kirsten said we should go to our coloring work, I sat with Lily. We cut out construction paper to make an Advent wreath. She was shy at first, and we sat in silence, gluing and arranging the yellow paper flames over the candles. But when she asked if I could pull out a piece of stained glass coloring book paper for her to color, I caught a glimpse of a smile.It lit her face, and mine, too. She had on a red and gold dress, the kind I used to love to wear, the kind that twirls. And I remember how extravagantly loved we can feel in those clothes, as if we are sparkling from head to toe, as if we are the most beautiful and beloved creature to be shining in Sunday school in a dress that we waited to wear. So I told her how much I loved it. And she smiled wide, reaching for a pink marker."Lily! This is so beautiful! Would you like to take it home?" It's the end of class, and we are putting everything away, and she has finished her coloring. But Lily shakes her head, smiles up at me. "It's for you! I made this for you."She giggles, twirls her red and gold skirt, and is off to the next thing. But I sit, my heart thudding out its beat against all the odds, because this girl has made me a picture to hold up against the cold winter light and see myself in it. She has given me the promise again - the very one I can't believe God has in store for me.I made this for you. God wants to give us a gift at Christmas. A promise. A fulfillment, a transformation. He wants to overcome our sin and wretchedness with love. With a stained glass paper picture, colored in greens and pinks. With the relentlessness of His arrival.Do you know what I heard Him whisper, as I sat there, holding my gift, near tears at her generosity and love?I'm not waiting for you to get it right. I'm not waiting for you to become good the way you think you should be able to be. I'm not waiting for you to clean up all the mess and all the worry and all the lies running around in your heart. I'm not waiting, because I love you. Because my love doesn't rely on your perfection, but on your being. Because my love is bigger than your fears about it. Because God so loves this world, and because He loves too much to wait for us to be ready.Lily? Thank you. I'm hanging that picture in the window above my bed - so Mary, Joseph, you and me, we can watch God's love arriving.Love,hilary

stay, American baby

"I brought this for you." "Oh." The blue plastic jewel case, the flecks of car dust from where it sat in the glove compartment, the smudged playlist taped to the front of the case. "I thought - I mean, I owed you one." He smiled, sheepish. My hands felt the edges of the kitchen table, tracing the chips and cracks from years of family and screeching joy and frustration at each other. He held it out to me, pushing the hair out of his eyes.They were such brown eyes. I'll never forget that - like all the things he hid from the world he stored up in that one, tender look. And I promised myself in my journals that year that I was the one he was saving those looks for, I was the one who caught the secrets hiding in his dilating pupils. So I held the CD case, suddenly more thoughtful than I wanted to be. I wanted to be anxious, heart racing inside its cage. I wanted to feel all that in-love-with-his-brown-eyes-and-secret-sweetness feeling. I wanted to be back to the girl of weeks before, who had declared in the girl's bathroom while poking at her eyelid with a pencil that I liked him. And I was going to tell him.The light was pink outside the window; it had rained earlier. And I sat, calm and quiet, holding his blue plastic CD case. I was still as we laughed about Carrie Underwood, played a song on my new iPod, sat on the fraying couch in the living room, as we pulled on spring coats and walked to the pond."It's not a real pond. I mean, it's just the second bridge from our house." We scuffed at the broken winter pavement, chasing the bits of asphalt with our eyes as we walked. "Yeah, no, that's cool." More silence, more strange calm. I asked him something about college; he asked me something about debate. We answered past each other, eyes fixed ahead. Past the horse farm - "I've always wanted to ride," I said. "Oh, really?" he looked at me - the sudden, sweet tenderness. "Yes." Past the houses of best friends and lost friends, of dogs who barked at bikes and the neighbors who refuse to take down Christmas decorations until March. Past the first bridge, the reeds waving at us from their hibernation. Past the Girl Scout camp, the hidden bend in the road where the cops hid their cars at night to catch speeding teenagers and the haggard father racing home."So this is it." We sat down, feet dangling, a bit of sun offering itself to us on the water. We squinted at it. We looked for the beavers, or a fish biting. "So, Hils..." and still, that calm. "I know what you want to say." "You do?" I did?"It's okay." This became the mantra, the refrain - it's okay. It's all okay. The prayer, the angry shout, the promise - "it's okay," I said. I nodded a lot, he nodded some, too - just to keep moving, to keep from being still enough to hear the world shifting between us. We threw sticks into the pond, catching them on the last bit of ice.We walked back to the house, to the world before it had shifted, before we had said nothing and too much, before the admission that this was it, the point beyond tenderness.He shrugged into his coat, tucked his hands into his sleeves to keep the cold out. I rubbed my arms, hopping up and down in the driveway as I waited for him to say goodbye. But he just looked at me, with that sweet tenderness I'd never see again, and said - "You'll like the first track. On the CD, I mean. It's DMB." And then he got into his car, smiled, and backed out the driveway.I put the CD on in silence, sat on my bed, closed my eyes. "Stay, beautiful, baby." I sounded the words in my head as Dave began to sing. "Stay, American baby." I let the world shift. This was his real secret, hidden in those brown eyes - that despite all of the things we imagine, we remain fixed as ourselves in a turning world. That, despite our wildness, the wonder is not in getting what we thought.It is in the gifts that go beyond the moment: the Dave Matthews song we played in the car and learned to love, apart from him. The gift of memory turned story, softened by time into something like beauty. The gift of silence in the midst of noise. The gift of holding fast and setting free.The gift of a CD on a March afternoon, a walk to the pond.Stay, American baby.Isn't it all gift?

dear hilary: your person

Dear Hilary,You know that thing about "Meredith and Cristina"? You know, the person who you go to with the weird problems that you don't want to tell anyone else about? The person who laughs at your not so funny stories? The person you trust with the secret from eighth grade and from eighty-eight? I want to know how you find someone like that. How do you create that kind of world for and with someone else?Love,Meredith?Dear Meredith,When I was in fifth grade I had a best friend. We drank tea together on picnic blankets in my backyard and played in the forbidden living room in her house with the real tea cups her mother collected from England. We made up games on the playground at recess - rode horses in our minds and saved the world. We swapped secrets, bad haircuts. I modeled my Anglican first communion after her Catholic one, and when she bought a bright white dress splashed with pink roses, I had to have one, too. I can't tell you how many years it was that we rode bikes or walked or begged for rides just down the street - how many times we both wished for a dog, how many boys we first began to like, how many things we imagined together. How we swore we'd be best friends forever.So in fifth grade, when I got onto the bus in October to ride home from school, and this best friend, her hair now in one of those sparkly silver scrunchies that the junior cheerleaders wore, and her tight jeans from the Limited Too or somewhere in the mall I didn't shop, she didn't sit with me? The world shook.She sat two seats behind me, with another girl. She looked at me when I looked back with a look of spite or satisfaction, seeing me in my homemade hat quaking at the sight of her in the back with the cheerleaders and junior football players. She laughed as the girl whispered in her ear. I turned around, bright red. Suddenly everything felt wrong: my hand-me-down sneakers and stirrup pants (yes, I still wore those), my homemade things, my old backpack, my lack of cheerleading, my recorder stuck into my backpack for the private lessons that I longed for and pretended not to want...And all because of that hope that lives inside us (inside you, too) that we will find kindred spirits and homes for our hearts in the people we love.So when you ask me how to find that person, I want to tell the oh-so-obvious-but-nonetheless-true thing: you must be that person. Not always in your daily living with them (you can't be a Cristina to everyone, nor can everyone be a Meredith to you) - but in making your heart a little deeper, your arms a little wider, the space around you an invitation. Don't be swayed by the people who are so dazzling and lovely sitting in the back of the bus. Don't be tempted by the promises of great pictures of you having such a fabulous time that everyone who sees them will wish they were you, having that fabulous time if those people aren't truly warm, loving, anxious to know you. Don't worry about hand-me-downs on you or on the girl two bus seats ahead of you.Instead, listen close to the people around you. Practice love in your conversations with them - practice courage in sharing with them. Let the whole of you be poured into creating space around you that is full of love (yes, that also means full of frustration and wonder and sadness and loneliness and sitting in the midst of crappy situations and not knowing answering but being asked anyway).Fill the space around you with deep love. And then, you'll find, what makes Cristina and Meredith special isn't rare like the AB- blood type: it's rare because it's not always practiced. It's not always chased after in friendship. But we could: and, in beautiful moments, we do.You sound like you want to chase after it, Meredith. I think you won't have to go too far before you find it.Love,hilary

the great light (Advent 1)

The most exciting moment of Sunday morning: Miss Hilary rolls the brown packing paper across the windows, and the sunlight disappears for a moment. They scramble to hold something for the procession: the wreath, the candles, the Bible, the beloved snuffer, the purple cloth. We wait, in the darkness, and then we begin to sing,The people who walked in darkness,have seen a great light. Just those words, in a melody I remember from a different song many years ago. The words last us through the small legged march to the other side of the room. We sit on our small woven mats as Miss Andrea lights the first candle on the wreath. This one bright candle - the one for hope - burns against the dim brightness of the packing paper.The darkness - that's the question for these wise young ones - what is the darkness like? How does it feel?They answer with the truth: "I don't like it.""It's hard to see.""But now we have a candle!"I catch myself almost laughing, but in an instant, I realize: theirs is the first hopeful answer I've heard in a long time. But now we have a candle. Now we have light. The simplest of answers, in some ways not even a direct answer to the question - but still, the hope. That beautiful, rich hope.Now we have a candle. The flame leaps and flickers shadows over the prayer card, the verse from Isaiah 9.2 - "The people walking in darkness have seen a great light. On those living in a land of deep darkness, a light has dawned."Oh, don't you see? This is the hope, the final, ultimate, gut-wrenching reality that we who spend so much time in shadow, cling to? The light has dawned. This deep darkness is overcome, flooded and filled. We have a candle, and more than a candle. We have the light.I wonder who that light is, Miss Andrea asks. And my heart twists and turns, because even though I long to hear it, even though I know in my heart there is an answer to this question, on Sunday I'm all torn apart with my own inability to say it. So Charlie says it for me. "I think the light is Jesus." The strap of one of his overalls is twisted, and I can see that his left shoe is coming untied. And then Lily adds to the beauty: "Do you see the brightest part of the candle? I think that is Jesus." And my heart is undone by these hopeful faces watching the brightest part of the candle, thanking Jesus for birthday parties and Christmas and presents.Because that's the answer sometimes we need a child to say for us. That Jesus is the light. That we are the people who have dwelt in deep darkness, and now have seen a great light. Between the packing paper over the windows, the procession to the prayer table, the lighting of this first candle of hope, and the small hands that find mine, the red coats that twirl outwards, the voices that sing out the truth, I find that Jesus has a surprise for me this Advent:"At that time, Jesus said, 'I thank you, Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned, and revealed them to little children." (Matthew 25)And with them to guide me, I journey towards the light.Love,hilary

the sisterhood

I wanted to be Lena. I didn't tell the other girls, who had already assigned themselves characters, and had been kind enough to include me in their imagining. One was most like Lena, because she had the hair and she was good at art. Bridget belonged to our own version of the tall soccer player, who waved her hands wildly as she ran and managed to score four goals in a game. And the third girl was Carmen, the writer, the one who kept the group together and built the home for their hearts and kept the secrets (most of the time) and always had the most beautiful things to say. But The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants has four characters, and they offered me one - Tibby - the mystery, the rebel, the girl with the camera who doesn't recognize herself, who loves fierce, but different. They offered it to me, one of my first invitations to be a part of them, to think of myself as belonging, even if for just the duration of the movie or the week when we cracked the orange cover open and raced through the third book.But I wanted to be Lena. I wanted the big love Kostos had for her - beaming out of the pages. How he radiated in her direction, how he took care of her, learned her quietness and her fear and her joy. I wanted her ability to see into the people she drew with her charcoal pencil. I wanted to be described with celery green eyes and effortless hair. I ached with it - this character I couldn't claim as my own - this fictional person who lived a life I thought I should have.When we drove across the country for the second time, in the darker green minivan, I reread all the books. My sister and I sat behind everyone else, each in the same world at different times. For eight hours, Tibby and Bridget and Lena and Carmen drove with us - stopping for Cokes and pretzels at the gas stations, poking our brothers and being smacked back with the plastic rifle from Wall Drug in South Dakota. We treated the books without care, assuming, like we almost always do, that they will wait for us to come back. That everything waits for us to come back.During those drives I reread the stories and wrapped my seat belt in strange loops around my waist so that I could have my torso free. My parents always told us not to do this. I ate Swedish fish out of a plastic bag stuffed into the cup holder. I was not yet fifteen, then, and I only had my top braces off, which made me self conscious when I smiled. My hair stuck to my head in sweaty summer clumps, and the pictures of that time remind me that I bought one pink shirt from American Eagle that said something about "bee-ing happy" with a picture of a bumblebee splashed across the front. I wore it as some kind of promise to myself that I could be one of the girls, who shopped at American Eagle and wore cute shirts and played soccer like Bridget and could write like Carmen and draw like Lena.I read, and we drove, and the country spilled out in front of us: an abundance of white in the sky, an emptiness on the roads. It must have been there that I gave up the dream of Lena. Somewhere in Nebraska or Iowa, staring at cornfields and hay that reached above my head, hearing nothing but wind through the bleached stalks and the bickering of my siblings and my parents debating buying ham at the next grocery store. I released the dream of her - her celery green eyes, her long effortless hair, her drawing, her love story. It floated out the window, between wishing I had a cowboy hat of my own and finding one in a Walmart in Colorado, and I turned fifteen later that summer.It must be that this is part of the way we learn about ourselves: that we release the dreams of who we might be, free ourselves of the clinging hope of someone else's beautiful self. We let the character we wanted to play float out the window under a Colorado sky, and we buy a cowboy hat and hug our brothers, and let our sister braid our non-effortless hair in two French braids when she asks. We reread the stories no longer anxious to fit ourselves into the small spaces of the words about Lena:because we know there she's only a dream.because we know that we are real.because we'd rather hug brothers and let someone french braid our hair and eat Swedish fish.because we'd rather turn fifteen as ourselves.

dear hilary: don't live in an abandoned house

Dear Hilary,What would you say to someone if they told you that they had trouble moving on after the end of something? What would you say, if, say, someone told you that they had trouble moving on after a breakup? What would you say, if, say, someone told you that they kept wondering if it was even possible to find what they're looking for, or if it just sailed away?Love,The someoneDear The someone,I'm so sorry that a beautiful thing ended for you. And I am so very sorry that one ended in your life, that it was one that made you happy or excited or terrified or all three. I'm sorry for the times it made you lie in bed awake wondering if you were absolutely the most unloveable thing to walk the earth. I'm sorry for how it made you narrow your eyes at the beautiful Ralph Lauren clad couples holding hands while drinking cappuccino out of tiny cups at Eastern Market. I'm sorry for what it made you think when you saw more engagement announcements or baby shower invitations or "generally taking the next socially approved step into adulthood!" posters plastered all over your friends' lives. I'm sorry for the small seeds of bitterness that it left behind.I was talking to a wise woman in my life the other day about just these things, and finally, after going around and around in circles, I finally blurted out - "Look! Doesn't it prove that I'm not worth it? If I put myself out there, if I risked it, if I was there, caring, and he didn't want it? ISN'T THAT THE FINAL MEASURE OF ME, AFTER ALL?"And that stopped me, Someone. It stopped me dead. Where had that self emerged from? Where was that voice whispering in my ear that all those Ralph Lauren couples and socially approved Facebook statuses and altogether enviable people in their gleaming kitchens and offices and parks throwing Frisbees with their beautiful children - they got it right, and me, well, where is the next open cat adoption agency and bottle of cheap wine?When a beautiful thing ends, we often do one of two things: we blame them or we blame us. Sometimes we blame both. We tell ourselves that if only we were cooler, groovier, more fabulous, they wouldn't have left. It's a flaw inside us. Or we tell ourselves that if only they weren't such a jerk, a tool, a massive loser, they wouldn't have left. It's a flaw inside them. Or we tell ourselves, as we sit in front of the mirror thinking, "there can't be anything worse" - we say it's just both of us in this mess: I'm not worthy, and you're a tool. And the cycle goes round and round until we can't breathe for all the lies in our heads.The beautiful thing ended because of both of you and because of neither of you. The beautiful thing ended because it was not what is. It ended because, well, it ended. Don't go too near that abandoned house just yet. Let it stand for a little while. Let it have its winter, and its summer, its falling leaves and its budding peonies. The beautiful thing that just ended is your abandoned house. Don't drive by it every day, sweetheart. Don't live in the abandoned house, wandering its hallways, telling yourself that this was where he said he loved me or this is where we kissed  or but if I had just... or if only he... You'll only drive yourself crazy looking for answers where you can't find them.What you must tell yourself, even if you don't believe it yet, is that this is not the end of your worth. This is not about your worth. This is not about your wonder. This is not about your gorgeous, glowing, terrible, messy, miracle self. This is just about two people who met, who loved, who fought, and who, ultimately, abandoned the house that was their relationship. Maybe forever, maybe just for a time.That's what this is: your beautiful self and their beautiful self, not living in that house anymore. There isn't an answer about your ultimate value in that house. There isn't an answer about what went wrong and who did what. There isn't an answer about whether someone will love you tomorrow or the next day.There is just you, bending beneath the weight of this new experience. There is just you, building something out of what has happened to you. There is just you, not living in the abandoned house anymore, but walking forward, into the world, into the light, into what lies ahead.I believe you'll wake up, many mornings from now, and find that you see the story a bit more like that: two people, who loved, and left, and who are transformed but not undone. I believe you will glow more because of it. I believe you'll be radiant walking forward, and you'll kiss the abandoned house goodbye. Because you're worth so much. And you'll know it.Love,hilary

King of kings (Christ the King Sunday)

They want to tell me why tornadoes are the best kind of storm. "They can lift cars!" "And houses!" "And skyscrapers!" ... a long pause. "And fire trucks!" The scribbling continues in earnest: yellow onto red, blue onto purple onto regular pencil, back to the green on the bottom of the page. I lean in, but I'm casting a shadow over his Jackson Pollock and so I return back to the girl and her world map.She is concentrating on a red dot stuck to her finger, trying to place it somewhere between the Atlantic and Jerusalem. Her tongue sticks out a little, and she hovers over her masterpiece. "There" she says, planting the dot firmly over the northern tip of Ireland. "There?" I say. "Yes, there. Jesus lives there." Somehow, I know she is right.And when the rain stick is held high and turned over and over, the children scramble off their mats, hastily put away wet glue brushes and trays of beads, and gather around the prayer table. They huddle together and we light the candle (fire is still marvelously exciting, as they tell us often). "What is this?" Miss Andrea asks, pointing to the gold crown drawn onto the prayer card. "A crown!" they giggle. "Who wears a crown?" We're told princesses, a girl at Halloween who was a princess, a prince, and finally, the four year old boy next to me says, "Kings." So then we begin to wonder, against the hum of a space heater and the clock ticking relentlessly towards 10:30 - what are kings like? What do they do? What does it mean to be king of kings?The boy next to me, oh, he knows. "He tells the other kings what to do." And when we ask them, who is this King of kings?Jesus, he says.The one who tells the other kings what to do. The one who comes into the world, not to rescue us out of it, but to rescue it with us, to save the whole. To tell the other kings what to do so that we might live in the fullness of His life. Do you ever feel like you forget, in the midst of our good emphasis on Jesus' love and grace, his servanthood, his teaching, his carpentry - that He is the King of Kings?And he shall reign forever and ever.I forgot, I realize as we begin to fold up mats, snuff out the candle, button Kate into her coat and find a stray shoe flung across the room. I forgot that Jesus is King of kings. I forgot that He tells the other kings what to do, that their life, our life, is from Him. That he saves us all, in the fullness of His coming, in the fullness of His time, and reigns forever and ever.Maybe this Advent, it's not about deep spiritual books or fasts. Maybe it's not about finding difficult theology, or wrestling with icons or prayers. Maybe this Advent we are meant to be with the little children who know Him without irony, without amusement, without worry.Maybe this Advent the answer to our big questions - of who and how, and why, and when?Jesus, he says. love,hilary

you are home to me

The house was always cold. British stone is like that - giving its heat and light back out to the wet lawns and sheep fields, welcoming the damp in return. When we woke up that morning, I felt the end of the heated blanket with my wriggling toes, daring to put my feet against the frozen edges of the sheet beyond. It was hard to believe that I was there - I always felt that in this house - and I hated mornings because they promised another day closer to leaving again. I squeezed my eyes shut against the patch of sunlight.The kettle sounded below, and I heard water running from the rickety tap in the bathroom. The bathroom was even colder than my bedroom at the end of the hall, and I knew my mom was chattering her teeth against her toothbrush as she sighed into the smudged mirror. I should join her, begin the day. But I didn't want to wake up from my dream, from being for a brief glorious moment a nine year old in England with carrot-colored hair and freckles, beautiful in her moongazing, climbing ladders and being kindred spirits.Mom poked her head around the heavy white door, the one with the handle lower than my hip. "It's time to get up - breakfast is almost ready. They're waiting for us." I sat up, the warmth from my back against the blankets immediately evaporating. I dressed in a purple sweater and jeans, pulled on socks and shoes. I was too young to brush my hair, so it hung in curtains on either side of my round cheeks.The stairs were my favorite part of the house. They were narrow and deep, covered in thick and dusty red carpet. The smell going up those stairs promised me every morning that it was real, that this was my grandparents' house in England. The smell - a combination of my grandmother's rose water, the dust and smoke from the downstairs fire, something like spring... I closed my eyes every morning, breathing it in, promising myself, someday.We ate eggs with their yolks running across the white china. We ate toast printed with small squares from the Aga griller. We ate orange marmalade, dripping off the crusts of our bread. I drank tea out of the fine china, holding the cup with both hands. It was silent, and I watched my grandmother bend low over the stove, her hands shaking as she lifted heaving pots of potatoes and carrots, making room for a turkey. I saw the carefully peeled apples in the sink. Granny never made apple pie, but it was Thanksgiving, and Mom and I were Americans, and she wanted to offer it to us. She wanted to bring home to us.I wanted to tell her she didn't need to bake an apple pie. Home was the smell of her staircase, the cold stones, the not-yet-blooming garden. Home was the hedges along the road. Home was the big tree in the front where I named snails, kneeling on the wet ground with my too-big black wellies stuck out behind me, my voice a high-pitched gleeful squeak. Home was the stamp collection we played with, Mom and I, at the table in the corner of the room, beneath the picture of Dad meeting President Clinton.I wanted to tell her, you are home. This house, tall Granddad and his pipe, his wink and the book he always bought me in the Castle Cary bookshop, no matter how old I was, all the Roald Dahl and their bright soft covers, the special illustrations by Quentin Blake. You are home, the pictures I sneak glimpses of in the parlor with the piano, the pictures of you with horses and with Granddad young and in love. You are home. You are home.I wanted to tell her those things, my heart bursting with them, but I ate the crusts of my toast instead. I drank two cups of tea in the kitchen while she baked the pie. At dinner that night, gathered around, I ate the first piece - let it slip down my throat and settle in my stomach. I drank more tea than Mom liked me to. I smiled, and smiled, and told her in the American accent that it was a wonderful Thanksgiving.That night, lying in my cold white sheets, waiting for the electric blanket heat, I closed my eyes and wished. But I didn't wish for Anne, for the heroes of my lopsided book pile. I didn't wish to be big like Abby. I didn't wish for more books at Christmas. I wish I could stay here forever. But wishes are thanksgivings, our hearts cut open by longing and love. I was nine years old, wishing for England, eating an apple pie and naming snails, my hair hanging like curtains around my face. All I wanted was to stay forever.And now, thirteen years later, that wish softened and bent with time, I close my eyes against the New England sun, and whisper, thank you. You are still home to me.

dear hilary: lights across the ocean

This week, dear readers, I want to really, truly, formally, in-the-oh-so-nerve-wracking-way, to journey with me for a bit. Would you think about a question, something you want to ponder with me? Something that you wonder about in your life, something you want to sit down and talk about over peppermint mochas? And would you think about sending it my way? I'm trying to practice this big dream of mine, and I would love your help.Dear Hilary,This note is long overdue and I would much prefer a conversation over coffee, but seeing that that isn't possible... I want to write, I do, someday maybe even teach, but I never know how much of my life to share and how much to keep private. Hilary, how much do people want to know? How do we make sense of past suffering when it is oh so private but oh so part of who we are today? I don't know.Love,Privacy Settings?Dear Privacy?,I've been thinking about your question this week. It came during a time in the week where I happened to be thinking about giving up talking about boys for Advent. In the weeks where we prepare for Christmas, I thought that it might be a good idea to fast from the long, wandering conversations I have with myself about my singleness and whether that boy likes me or whether I like them. I have shared it with too many people at this point anyway, I thought to myself as I drank orange juice at 10:15 while sitting at my office desk. Not everyone needs to know what you long for. Not everyone wants to know that you wonder whether you'll ever get married. It'd be better to keep it private.Those thoughts rolled around in my head, and then I got your beautiful question, and I wanted to write to you (and to me, since both of us are in this together), and in some way tell you (and me too) that we should share more.An immediate caveat: sharing doesn't mean that everyone needs every detail. This isn't all or nothing, where to open the door to a personal conversation means you are required to reveal everything that ever happened. You are allowed to choose how you tell this story.We are tempted to think that if we keep some details from some people, we have somehow cheated the system. Whether you draw a detailed penciled sketch of the story, or only a rough outline, is up to you. And you know the story best; you'll know the details that aren't needed and the ones that are. You'll practice this discernment each time you go to tell a story. You'll get better at it. When you are a teacher and a writer you will practice it with each word. You will ask yourself, "why do I want/need/feel in my gut that it is right to say this?" Let that voice be a guiding star. After all, you want to share the story for a bigger purpose than getting it off your chest. You want to share your suffering, your triumph, your loss and your gain, for the bigger purpose of sharing your self.  You want to give people a window into you. You ask me how much people want to know? I will tell you what I have found: people worth revealing yourself to are the people who care about the story because you're in it, not because it's juicy or difficult or there's a great twist at the end. The people who will love your story best will be eager to make as much space for your story as you want it to take up. They will be patient as you unfold it slowly before them. They will love what you share and what you keep private.But the bigger purpose of being known by others, of letting them in on how you have become who you are?That is always worth doing. We aren't here to keep the wonder of who we are hidden away. We aren't here to remain apart from each other. We aren't supposed to sail out onto a dark ocean utterly alone. No, Privacy, I think we're supposed to do the opposite. I think we are supposed to shine beacons of light to each other with our stories. You know that feeling, too? We can say to each other as we lament about our singleness or our lack of work or our student's inability to write a research paper. You aren't alone. I'm here, too. Together, sharing our selves, our lights will blink back and forth across this vast ocean of living: a promise, and a hope. Love,hilary

stop all the clocks

The bones of the poem are so fragile I'm afraid to speak. He read it too fast, almost breathless in trying to get it out of his voice box. I don't really like it anyway, he says, hearing all the words I'm not saying. He scuffs his feet, stares out the window at the brown patchwork hill. I stare at my hands, troubled. Because I don't think it's a good poem, because I'm mad at myself that I don't think it's a good poem, because he keeps staring at the brown grass and his poem sits in front of us like winter, endless and unrelenting.This class assignment might kill us both, I think. We're here for another twenty minutes, here to workshop each other's scattered verbs and nouns into something beautiful. We're here to write on burning houses and shoes, on W.H. Auden's death, on the conception of Christ (well, I'm the only one who thinks I should write a sonnet about that), on our first childhood memories. We're here to string words together and slice them apart, to fall in love with the sound of "essence" and "lithe" and the harsh consonants in "declaration" and "capture". I think I hate poetry, sitting next to him. He strung his words in careless stanzas, some things falling off the page, others so close together you can barely hear each word. I think I hate poetry, and he is silent, scuffing his feet. He wears a brown vest over a plaid shirt with a limp collar. His black corduroys have been washed so many times they are grey now, frayed at the seems. I see his hands itching for his backpack, for a sketchbook to doodle in, for the obscure band I never know the name of to pull him into a different world.I've never managed to be tactful when it comes to silence, so I plunge into it, my voice ringing against the cold winter windows. "Well, maybe we should read it out loud again. Maybe I'll read it out loud, so you can hear what it sounds like?" He nods. He doesn't care, really, and I don't know why I want him to. It's his poem, after all, not mine, and if he wants to throw it away, why should I care? I tell myself I don't care. I tell myself I hate poetry and I should sit in this twenty minute silence."Stop the clocks." That's how it begins, I think. An ode to Auden, to the poem which was in mourning of another. And now this poem mourns the death of that poet, who mourned the death of someone I don't know and might never know. I think I'm going to start crying, which makes even less sense than hating poetry, and so I keep reading.But it's there now: stop the clocks. The line, his line of poetry, the refrain. It's in my gut now, in this cold winter with the black-turned-grey corduroys and the brown hill. He wrote a poem he doesn't like, that is a mess on the page. He wrote a poem  he doesn't like that now sits inside me as permanent as even the most beautiful poem that any of them ever wrote. I hate poetry, I think. I can't fight it. I can't ignore it. He doesn't even love his poem, and here I am, loving it helplessly, loving it because of the one line that is the Auden line and not the Auden line, loving it as a part of me. Here I am, reading a poem the poet doesn't love, undone by his unloved poem.I must have finished reading. I must have said things about the poem that he didn't hear. We must have rejoined the group, said the usual things about poetry we weren't qualified to say. We must have been given homework and sent on our way, into math or science or art. We must have mostly forgotten everything the way that humans always forget.But now?"Stop the clocks."I'm still undone.

dear hilary: make something beautiful

Dear Hilary,I don't know what to do. I love people with this fierce love. I love their stories, coffee with them, wine with them, crying and laughing with them. I love how terrible they are, and how miraculous. But you can't make a career of that, can you? I don't think it's counseling, exactly. I don't think it's social work or psychology. I don't fit in the traditional higher education boxes. I'm not quite philosophical enough or theological enough to do that kind of work. When you ask me what I'm working on for 10,000 hours, ask me what I want to be an "expert" in - I tell you it's listening. It's watching. It's carving out spaces and times for others. I want to spend 100,000 hours listening. But who does that for a career? No one.Love,Out of the BoxDear Out of the Box,The other day I did something thoughtless. I pushed my way into a conversation where I very, very clearly did not belong. I did it because of a bunch of things that are only half relevant to the situation: jealousy and desire and insecurity and the laundry list we always list for each other and ourselves. And, so very graciously, I was reminded of that.But something miraculous happened when I did that. Something that I have to tell you, Out of the Box, makes me believe that you are in the right place, wherever you are, doing the right thing, whatever it is. The miraculous thing is that I learned something from it.Out of that awkward situation, and the careful grace of the people who reminded and called me to account, I learned something about boundaries. I learned about what my jealousy/desire/insecurity can yield. I saw lived out in front of me the reality of our careless movement in the world being chaos and hurt to others.It shook me up. It worried me. It gave me the knot in my stomach, the one I get when I fear that I am, after all, just a disappointment. But I learned. And this is the kind of miraculous, mysterious, beautiful alchemy that happens when we take what happens to and around us, and we build with it. We expand on the inside. We build bridges. We are opened wider and, as a consequence, we are filled with more. And, as a consequence of that, we pour out more.So. You say this is what you want to do? You say this is your 10,000 or 100,000 or 10 million hours. This listening. This alchemy. This making beautiful the things that happen to people. I say, Love, what are you afraid of? You are in the right place. Because that is a big freaking dream. Because it isn't a dream that you achieve by graduate schools or meetings or promotions or raises. It isn't a dream that has a ladder.You will only begin to realize that dream if you live out everything in front of you so forcefully, so laughingly, so achingly wrong and right and wrong again, that you learn from it. You will live inside this dream only if you expand on the inside. You will live inside this dream only if you make beautiful things of your stories.Spend 10,000 hours listening, yes. But spend it listening to yourself, alongside all those others. Spend it striking out in an attempt to write down these beautiful things and failing miserably. Spend it watching the world and telling us what you see. You have to practice this work inside yourself if you want to pour out for others. You must take that stupid thing you did and accept it inside yourself and listen to it. You must take that situation you refuse to acknowledge is happening and accept it into yourself and love it, and listen to it.To make a life of this (because it's a life you want, not a career), you must be willing to do it for yourself. To offer a candle to others, to share your vision of all that could be, of all that might be, you have to have that kind of vision for yourself. Stop worrying about the ladders and labels, the unknowing, the strikeouts of what you are and are not and what jobs and what cities and what barely-paying-the-rent stories you live. And go make something beautiful of it. When, and only when, you are willing to believe that this very story you are living in is right, because it is yours, because it is bigger than you: then you will live inside that dream. Oh, and how we will be blessed.Love,hilary