You would have wept for joy too...

"Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away;
for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.

The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come,
and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.

The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom;
they give forth fragrance.

Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

~ Song of Songs 2:10-13

New Creations

The sting of cold metal and I have never been the same since.

"Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come." 2 Corinthians 5:17 (NASB)

I appreciate the NASB's translation of this: a new creature. There is something primal about that which, to me, seems to reflect just how deep the change goes. I try to be wary of my sentimental tendencies but there was something tangible that took place when she slid the steel ring upon my barren yet anxious finger. And I have utter conviction that this was a moment "in Christ," there doing what the Christ does best.

While shadows of the old life flicker, there is still transformation breaking through, like the determined sapling cracking through the frosted ground. We both commented as we drove back through town for the first time, it is really a different town altogether now, even if the buildings and the faces all look the same. It is, indeed, something new. Newer than I could have dreamed.

Another line. I wonder what happened to this poor place.

Waves massaged the aching shore.
Clouds bruised the skies.
Rain wrinkled the surface of the water
while the city burned.

Tending the Garden

The deeply insightful novel by Jamie Langston Turner entitled "A Garden to Keep" is the journalings of a woman who discovered that her husband has been unfaithful. The entire book is her working through the process of anger, grief and the discovery about who she really is. It has a very "stream-of-consciousness" feel but the threads weave together beautifully to create the tapestry of her journey.

The main character is deeply in love with poetry and often the side-trails of her journey took her into writing poems of her own. She would have a line of poetry capture her attention and she would write it down. Then she would begin writing a poem backwards, adding a line that would precede the original one and then add another line before that, careful chiseling the words and phrases until she had a completed picture. A handful of entries back, I wrote a line that captured my imagination and yesterday, I thought of a line to work into it. I also reworked the original to get away from the passive voice. As a friend from college once said, "Alliterated for your listening pleasure."

Clouds bruised the skies and
rain wrinkled the surface of the water
while the city burned.

Again, I have no idea why this is so grim! It is like the way I love symphonic works in minor keys. Maybe more will come to me on this poetic journey too.

At my bachelor party over a week ago, we sat around the campfire, each of the men offering a nugget of wisdom on married life. My uncle offered the analogy that a marriage is like a garden, always in need of tending, weeding, pruning, watering, etc. I've always felt the tug to start a literal garden. It is a metaphor that applies so deeply to ministry as well (as many astute scholars and Jesus have pointed out). And considering both marriage and ministry are matters deeply important to God, maybe I should start gardening just to learn more about both and the God who institutes them.

Small bites

Another line for another unwritten book:

As the door opened, the chill autumn-wind crashed into him, causing the skin on his face to crawl for warmth.


And I realized last night that when I experience her respect, I am invincible.

Cleaning House

"I sorta like how all of our stuff is becoming one..." she said as she combined the dregs of her bottle of Kikkoman's soy sauce with my own. Merging all of our stuff is tedious work, deciding which spatula stays and which one goes to charity. Especially when condensing two kitchens worth of rarely-used knick-knacks and single-purpose utensils into one kitchen with little cabinet space. But it is a good work.

Our pastor said that one of the convictions of Christian marriage was a matter of discovering a "new center of loyalty." That notion is intrinsically 'Gospel' as really the whole of the Christ-life is a de-centering from self and a reordering on the Creator. That makes sense to me since marriage is designed to be testimony before it is matrimony (and not the other way around).

It seems the word, 'mystery', can have the connotation both of a sense of bewilderment and a state of wonder. And it seems that the specific version of mystery that is marriage hugs both. And the work of combining the soy sauce and vinegar bottles demonstrates that.

He said it is very much like moving into a house: you carry the boxes of your life into the space that you live. Then you work together to decide which pictures/treasures/furniture becomes part of every day life and what goes into storage. But most importantly, the arranging doesn't end once you've 'settled in.' Rather you periodically bring down another box from the attic, open it up and together decide what becomes part of the home, what goes back into storage for a later time or what bits of our baggage that needs throwing out altogether.

Moving into a house is cluttering work. First you have boxes piled in major walking areas. Then as that box gets unpacked, contents spill into every last available space. It actually gets messier before things find their place in the order of daily house-life.

Letting go is also a Gospel work.

Campaigning for Justice

Does no one else think there is something profoundly wrong that presidential candidates are already raising $20+ million for an election over a year away? We already know what they believe. So our "most capable" pundits are the ones who can swindle the most money? We are so willing to dump money into people who parrot our ideals and yet we pinch greedily the $20 that would feed a child for a month. What difference does money given to potential politicians do when the budget of just one such candidate could give clean water to an entire nation?

Book Opening

Not that I'm writing one. I just thought it would be a "grab your attention" sort of beginning (even though it is rather dark):

The water was wrinkled with rain while the city burned.

Some other lines that have been sloshing around in my brain:

I live in my head
but it's more like house arrest.
Won't You evict me?

Hmm... it became a haiku...

E-mail Articulation

Just e-mailed this to the officiating minister of our wedding, who was checking in. There, I found some words I needed to say.

We do have to remind ourselves often of what the running around is for so as not to be overcome by the details. But really, it is the issue of perspective, expectations and trust that continues to threaten our joy most. With moving boxes and setting up house, I’ve been reminded that we are much like college roommates, still discovering the boundaries and style of our shared and individual living space. And we bump corners there more often than we agree. For all the joy of such a union, there is still the inherent (not necessarily negative) culture shock of adjusting to new space (both literal and figurative). And when both of us come into it having spent a lot of emotional energy chiseling exactly what it is suppose to look and feel like, those bumps can start feeling bigger than they really are. Even when I know my expectations are out of whack, my heart (where I dwell most comfortably) cannot be bullied into awareness; it still wants to feel slighted and irritated. The prayers have been for perspective: to realize that which shelf we put the plates and cups really doesn’t matter at all. The reminder of healthier perspective comes when we’re with someone else and our attention is diverted from self-circumspection and other-suspicion. It’s like we’re sacramentally transformed into union when we stop thinking about it. Why can’t we just choose to not take it so seriously?? :)

Sayings Worth Remembering

"An educated people are
... easy to lead
... difficult to enslave...
... and a joy to govern." ~ origin unknown


"A man may carry the whole scheme of Christian truth in his mind from boyhood to old age without the slightest effect upon his character and aims. It has had less influence than the multiplication table." ~ J. G. Holland (1819-1881)


"We spend our lives, not enjoying the things we've bought, but paying for them."
~ a colleague in ministry