Beloved

I believe forgiveness looks like laughter. The sweetest laughter that rises from my heart. That tells my precious friend, there isn't a single thing you could do in this world that I wouldn't forgive you for, you are that close to my heart.

So go ahead, fail me! Try me out! And then come back and watch how we laugh. How that healing salve pours over your wounds and mine and calls us home.

Beloved, let's go home. We'll still be the best of friends there. You and I will bellow laughter when we see him. This is what we always hoped for! Beloved, there will be too much joy for us to handle.

And, I know you're away now, but you're coming home. You're just taking the scenic route. Just like me. One day, we'll be together again. Hugging and tearing, and laughing inspite of the tears.

Beloved, I know you. You are good.

the found the L-RD in the sunrise

i have met the L-RD in the sunrise. this week i woke up every morning before the dawn. looking out into the sky i can still see the stars. the mountains are just silhouettes in the background. when i am driving, the dawn breaks. darkness turns to light. the sky is blue and the sky is yellow and the mountains still live in their darkened mystery. and then i am working. grape by grape into the bucket. i work in silence since i am the foreigner of the group. i am the one who does not belong. in a work force full of aliens, i am the stranger. i begin to pray. and then the sun rises.

and this is when i tell him, i love! i love the mountains, and i love the pink florescent sky, and i love california, and i love this vineyard, still steaming from the morning dew. and, L-RD, i love you! i love you, i love you, i love you, and how long did it take for me to say that? and how long did it take for me to believe that you are good? but you are good and thank you for taking me here. the most beautiful of all places.

here, in this place, sweating in the sun, doing a job that no one wants, picking grapes. this place, exactly where i wanted to go, doing exactly what i wanted to do.

and then i cry out: give me a bigger heart! your love has stilled me, now move me with your love! give me more of you, sweet Jesus. You, like the gazelle, who leaped over the mountains just to be near me. You. Give me more of you. You who took me to the very place where I can love you again.

And six hot hours of manual labour goes by quickly in the silence, contemplation, prayer, and so much celebration.

i used to love the noon day sun, and i have always loved the sunset. but, i have found the L-RD in the sunrise.

So, papa G-D, moved me with your love so that I may love. So that I too may break forth like the dawn. So that my healing may come quickly.

five years in the making

When I first moved to New York City, I fought. With everything in me, I fought G-D. He said Go and when I got there, he said Stay. Every semester he said Stay. I did not want to go to college. Much more, I did not want to lead strategic institutions, and I did not care about classical philosophy, nor politics, nor economics. For the most part, this is all still true, except that, I am repenting.

When I moved to New York City, I had just come home from Europe. In Europe, life changed. There was the day that I got off the train in Paris, and fireworks went off in my heart, I was home like no where else I had ever been before. Then, there was the afternoon in Le Gault la Foret. It was the day that I told the L-RD he was worth more than all else. I wore his ring. I promised him my heart. That day was a sort of pivot. I wore his promise that I would know his love. I love his love.

This all came after the day a stranger told me my life would change in Paris. I scoffed, but in my heart, I waited.

I lived in New York City for four years, telling everyone who asked that I was going to move to Paris. I'm not sure I even believed myself. And then there was the terrible months last year, where I told Him I wanted nothing to do with building His Kingdom. I only wanted to be in the sunshine and pick flower and read poems.

I am here and I do not read nearly enough poems. Rather, my heart is coming out of its long hibernation. I waste my hours away day dreaming how good he is.

I often have looked at girls who get engaged with a kind of awe. How, I wonder, must they feel making such a final decision. How can they be prepared for such a settling? Are they giddy? What is it all like? I look at them as a kind of alien, walking a life I've never lived before.

But today, I wondered if this is how they might feel, when all of the pieces begin to come together. The realization that this is all finally happening. Since I moved to California, all of the pieces of Paris are finally coming together. There is no longer a question in my heart if this is possible, but rather, when is the best time?

I am giddy. For five years, I have had no other plan than to get there and stay forever. Relationships ended over this city. I could not get married if that meant giving up on this place, though I never knew if I was actually going to make it. Now, I am thinking timelines, visas, preparation, language, literature.

I had no idea the L-RD was this good. I had no idea that in telling to Go he was giving me tools for the thing I have prayed for more than anything else. (Lord, Give me Paris). I had no idea that he could lead me so perfectly. I thought he forgot.

So, here is my repentance: I am thankful for New York City. I am thankful for seasons of waiting. I am thankful for here. I am thankful, even, for college.

And now, as I am still waiting and praying and thinking in timelines rather than in future maybes, I feel like Mary, treasuring all of these things in my heart.

Jeremiah 6:16

This is what the LORD says: "Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.

Psalm 116:7

Be at rest once more, O my soul, for the LORD has been good to you.

Father

"I imagined that the right name might be Father, and I imagined all that that name would imply: the love, the compassion, the taking offense, the disappointment, the anger, the bearing of wounds, the weeping of tears, the forgiveness, the suffering unto death. If love could force my own thoughts over the edge of the world and out of time, then could I not see how even divine omnipotence might by the force of its love be swayed down into the world? Could I not see how it might, because it could know its creatures only by compassion, put on moral flesh, become a man, and walk among us, assume our nature and our fate, suffer our faults and our death?

"Yes. And I could imagine a Father who is yet like a mother hen spreading her wings before the storm or in the dusk before the dark night for the little ones of Port William to come in under, some of whom do, and some do not. I could imagine Port William riding its humble wave through time under the sky, its little flames of wakefulness lighting and going out, its lives passing through birth, pleasure, suffering, and death. I could imagine God looking down upon it, its lives living by His spirit, breathing by His breath, knowing by His light, but each life living also (inescapably) by its own will - His own body given to be broken."

-Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow

It seems often that there is too much to say and not enough words. Yesterday I went on a hike for several hours, then took a break to read Wendell Berry in an oak tree. These are the sorts of experiences I used to yearn for while living in New York City.

It is almost October. My heart tells me that it is so. Coming from Connecticut, I used to take the train home every autumn, waiting for what might be the peak weekend for foliage. Even just the drive home from the train station to my parent's house was magic - colours, colours. And then I'd be home. The night air would smell like fire and my home would be like cinnamon. I'd request a hike, just to see as many maple trees lit up as I could. This is what I miss about New England. We'd pick apples and drink cider and I think that perhaps there is no other place on earth of be than New England in Autumn.

California is changing too. I am learning to get over my belief that we are in a perpetual season of pleasant weather. I can smell it in the air, something has shifted. Harvest, too. We gather the grapes in the Autumn.

I find this to be a significant discovery, because I only know the L-RD as he relates to seasons. And, what is happening now? Roots are going deeper, though not in any specific place. I am still nomadic, my things are still stored in the trunk of my car. But, my heart is stretching. This season seems to be exactly what he told me he would give me. For that, I am thankful. For that, I trust him. Somethings are not so great, nightmares haunting me, and never knowing where I am sleeping next, or for how long.

But I am beginning to lose my fear.

I wonder how it is I came here. We didn't plan it or pick it out. We were just sitting on his couch one day and I saw a picture and then I felt at home. I do not know how often G-D works in my decisions, but in this one I can only see his hand in it after the fact. And, my retrospect is how I know to trust him. How good, how good.

In the spirit of Autumn I have begun to ask him what needs to be sacrificed. What can I give up? What can I burry? How can I be more free? He must become greater, I must become less. I need a bigger heart.

e.e. cummings

it may not always be so; and i say
that if your lips, which i have loved, should touch
another's, and your dear strong fingers clutch
his heart, as mine in time not far away;
if on another's face your sweet hair lay
in such a silence as i know, or such
great writhing words as, uttering overmuch,
stand helplessly before the spirit at bay;

if this should be, i say if this should be—
you of my heart, send me a little word;
that i may go unto him, and take his hands,
saying, Accept all happiness from me.
Then shall i turn my face, and hear one bird

sing terribly afar in the lost lands.

And this I feel, all the time.

You have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw—but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realise that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported . . . All the things that have deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it—tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest—if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself—you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say 'Here at last is the thing I was made for.' We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want . . . which we shall still desire on our deathbeds . . . Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it—made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand.

(the problem of pain, c.s. lewis)

sehnsucht.

How To Be Alone

My friend William sent me this.

I am glad I am learning.

i think my first recognition of god was in my father. it was a natural association and one that i do not regret now, though it took some time. god had no face except for dad's. and since dad spoke for god, god had no other voice except for dad's. i like my dad's face and voice, and i still think the two are very similar people.

and then i grew older and people talked about god as a lover. i had had some experiences with lovers and only knew them to be flightly and self interested. i did not want a jesus who used me. i shyed away from this image, feeling sour at the thought of it.

i am here now in california working through a lot of ideas i had in my head and testing whether they are true are not. this is not always something that i think about, sometimes it just comes on me. this morning, for example, thoughts of forgiveness came to me looking like freedom. i don't have to hold on to this. i am not required to have a grudge. peace, peace.

and there is more. jesus seems to be growing arms and legs like a tadpool in my heart. in all of the instability of my living, there is cement hardening in me. jesus is like a rock in place my hope on. he is growing arms and legs in me. and so, this morning i scrubbed some bathrooms and asked him to teach me to love. i am ready for his arms and legs to move for me. what does love look like?

cinderella

Once, while I was still important and he and I were still talking, he called me Cinderella. And, what a fitting nickname it was, extending back a year. For years, the most important work I can find in a day is cleaning another dish, checking in on the kitchen once more. He didn't call me that then.

It was only recently. We were going to talk and I needed to finish scrubbing the toilets. "I'll talk to you soon, Cinderella." And I imagined how fast I would have worked had there been any prince to meet. He was no prince to go looking for me and I was no woman to respond.

I do not follow trends very regularly anymore. I do not own a T.V. and I do not read the news and I do not live in any epicenter of culture. I simply go about the days. But, I do know what silly bands are and I find them true to their name.

I clean toilets day in and day out. Today, at the winery, a guest gave me a silly band in the shape of a white shoe. And I thought, Cinderella; I'll wait for a love big enough to find me. I have been preparing my whole life to be a wife anyway, without me even knowing it.

i must forgive because i rejoice.

and what room is there for bitterness in a heart full of praise?

in eyes that seek out your holiness?

i must forgive because i do not have time for such nonsense, wastes of time.

the L-RD is love and he loves me and he brought me here to live and i am living.

oh, i am living in deep rich ways deeper than ever before.

and so what time to i have for bitterness?

i forgive you.

Go, and it will go well for you.

I know that I did not understand the significance of leaving when I left. I am not even sure that I understood that I was leaving. I only got on a train and left my home of four years. We didn’t expect that day. It was routine, forever engrained in my mind as the perfect way to say goodbye. By that time we were a pair, and so we cleaned my apartment together. I ate a salad, alone, of course. We fought. I won $800. Such luck. Our lives had been routine and we lived in it still. I stalled leaving for as long as I could. Those last few hours, we told each other all that we had meant. Roots deep and fast. I didn’t understand how fast leaving would pull them out. And then the goodbye. I was always the stoic one, and so, I expected to board and forget it all. We stood on the track, was it eleven or nineteen?, and we held on. I was not the first one to start crying, I am not sure who was the last.

Two days later, I was in Ohio, visiting my family. There is not much to say except for the first time I realized that I did not have a home or a job in California. I was riding on a simple word spoken from God, “go”. I imagine now that he said “Go, and it will go well for you.” But, that’s only my imagination. I poured over the story of Abraham that week: “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.” And later, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.” I was afraid. I only hoped that G-D could repeat himself 3,000 years later. That's what I prayed, anyway.

I did not stop being afraid. I only came home, packed everything I might need in my beat up car. I stepped into my father’s sanctuary the day before I left. Again, distant friends came up to me and assured me, “The L-RD says you do not know why you are going, but he knows. You are going to find something, and when you find it this will make sense.” In my innermost heart I hoped that it was love.

A second goodbye. This time my parents and brother Michael stood in a line. First I hugged Michael, thinking to myself, you have no idea how much I admire you. And then my father. Is there a more tender word than father? Those two stoic men are among my favorite in the whole world. And finally, momma. What a beautiful woman, transformed into my closest friend. We said goodbye as I moved for the third time, only, this time had no end date. I drove off, playing Joni Mitchell’s Blue album on my way to pick darling girl up.

She was more than a travel companion. We needed a sister when we met. And in this way, we grew up together. In two short years, we grew up together. At the beginning, we used to wonder if anyone knew how lucky we were to have bosom buddies. We were eight when we met. Two years later, we were grown.

It wasn’t until Tennessee we noticed the L-RD joined us. She noticed first, of course. We fought the first two days; it had been a long time since we lived together. We finally asked him, please take us into the mountains. Please show us this place, please give us more time. And then we found that detour that took up a mountain into the Smokeys. But first, we traveled through Appalachia. We hiked and escaped a thunderstorm and then we gained an hour crossing into Nashville. I am convinced the Holy Spirit lives deep in the mountains in Tennessee. I am equally convinced that he loves to travel. It was only then that I started to believe that he might have actually meant what he said. That’s what I’ve always wanted from G-D, to know that he really means what he says.

"serve God, love me, and mend"

i choose to continue to tell this story. this is for my own benefit as well as anyone else's. there is a story of G-D in this year. This is the truth. Write it down.

The day I decided to leave, three people came up to tell me that I needed to rest after graduation. I shook from the fear that I might need to prove something more worthwhile to G-D. Was there not some country that needed my saving? Was there not some destiny that I owed him to fulfill? In the freedom to rest, I remember crying at random. I remember asking G-D to let me be human. I remember asking G-D to show me that he was good. I began to seek him in poetry and in philosophy. I remember learning that I could learn. This was all a break from my misguided understanding that there were tasks to accomplish for the L-RD.

I'm not sure anyone else knew how much I cried that semester. How often I shook in my sleep or prayed so deeply for relief. At the winery we talk about bottleshock. I am only learning that this refers to the time after first bottling when the wine is still getting rid of sulfur and CO2. Apparently, after a few months, all of this dissipates after time. Perhaps I too was going through bottle shock. I had met someone who saw me clearer than anyone in the whole world, and then it was gone. Bottleshock. All of a sudden, I was in a new surrounding that I could not comprehend. Though I had been there for years, everything felt foreign and unnatural. I moved stiff for months.

I don't remember much of Christmas that year. Except, that I fought a lot with one of my closest friends, and I escaped into the friendship of another. Both of these routes turned out to be wrong. The truest thing I remember is that I was afraid of the L-RD by then. "Don't get too close," I often whispered. I could not be transparent without the fear of collapsing.

And then there was the season of preparation. It was a sweet six months. We speak of it now with regret, though my heart holds none. It was like a detour. Not mine to hold, but mine to remember. That season makes everything harder now, of course, but I am not ashamed. We sowed roots deep and fast. We laughed. I like to think that when we left that season we promised each other to keep those memories locked in a chest for protection. I'm not sure what a good job we've done of it, but, I think we try.

At the end of that season, the season of sweetness, of learning, of experience, I nicknamed this year the 'year of forgiveness'. Four years of being in a place that i did not fit into, i was so tired of walking and nursing my bitterness. I needed to forgive my surroundings, I needed forgive my enemies, my resentments, my pain. I think most significantly, I needed to forgive the L-RD.

I have discovered a whole new facet of forgiveness since being here. G-D loves me. It is the first thing he tells me every time we meet. In being here, I have stormed with anger, fought demons in my memories, failed in my loneliness. I am lonely here. Moving here was not as magical as I had daydreamed. Life is still the same. I still wear my favorite jeans that have a broken zipper and don't fit and I still only touch reality a few times a day, and I still don't own a hairbrush. Life is the same, but I left so many things I loved. I left so many friends and even, I left love. It was not an easy move.

Forgiveness right now looks like bitterness displaced by love. It looks like evaluating the damage, and believing his promise that he works it together for my good. It looks like going through anger only to one day realize that I do not have to be. It is beginning to look like expecting G-D to give me what I plead for in men. A transition of sorts. And in it I am realizing why I left everything. Perhaps I found a treasure in a field somewhere, and sold everything to buy it. Perhaps a piece of my heart still believes somewhere that the L-RD is really worth all of this. And so I cling to all of the promises and mystery that surrounds him. I tell him, I forgive you, come back and come close. And what that really means is, I kneel down at his feet and wonder, how could I have ever lived without you?

"O God, I have tasted Thy goodness and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need of further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune god, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, so that I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, "Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away." Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long."

-- a. w. tozer

testing sugar: some photos & thoughts

today we went to dan's to test the sugar level in the grapes. first we picked, then we crushed, then we tested. this is just the beginning.

i want to badly to put together all the meaning and magic in this adventure. but, like life, it is still life. i am still in my other world-thoughts, i am working out my emotions distant. but dan's vineyard is my favorite place to be in all of san luis. i am more here than i used to be.

i keep asking, what is the L-RD doing? what is the L-RD doing? picking grapes led to no prophetic revelation. we just played in the grapevines. but, he's doing something. i know this from the things that i want: holiness, his presence, a home. i so consistently live in the dichotomy of hopes and actions, but i crave to be whole, to be righteous. i think this can only happen from touching the fringes of the holy spirit, and i have. and, he keeps coming back. i think this because for so many years i have loved rebellion. now that i am free to do what i please, i want to be under his wings, in his right. what will a year do? what will a year do? these new thoughts may take a year to transfer into action.

this goes through my mind almost everyday: he works all things together for my good. this is my hope for the season.

(these are pictures and i don't know how to move them. dan testing the sugar, johnny picking, the vines under nets, and me sipping sweet grape juice.)

Eternal Structures - Kevin Patrick Sullivan (a poem about my home)

Driving the coast road

my head breaks through

the morning fog

like one of the seven sisters

I feel like I belong here

home among the old mountains

the coastal range

their feminine form

all my life

I've lived among women

friends and lovers

sisters and mothers.

Ready for the harvest.

Tonight was the last night of every other friday night volleyball. Ranger Dan owns a few acres in Edna Valley and invites everyone who's ever met him to come play in his field until sunset. I'm not much of an athlete, but there's so much about this evening that I enjoy.

The first thing that I noticed about Ranger Dan and John Salisbury (my other vineyard boss) was their humility. There is something profoundly self sacrificing about working with the earth. When I met Dan, he invited me to work with him all year in the vines. I will be harvesting, crushing, producing, bottling, enjoying... I know nothing about Dan's accomplishments. I only know about his mistakes with the vines. I have noticed this in the men I meet who respect the earth. They don't want me to know what they have done, because, they have not done much of it. I have needed to meet men like this after four years of rising towers in New York.

And then there is all of the scenery. I watch volleyball from atop of a hill. Below me in San Luis. It is nestled in between ranges of hills and mountains. We are a protected town. Just before sunset, the fog rolls in. This is what I want you to imagine. The fog is like nothing other than cotton balls. Thousands of cotton balls rolling over San Luis heading toward us. They block the sunset, but their holes leak orange. We are a covered town. And then it stops, and the sun stops setting. And, just for a moment, everything is golden. The hills, the leaves, the cotton ball fog. and then, the fog hovers in the valley waiting for the next sunlight. And we lay on the picnic table until the stars come out. More stars that we've ever seen in town. The sky is glittered. And we lay there until we are too cold to stay. And then we go home, thankful for a friend who lives hidden in the hills. Ready for the harvest and ready for the sunset fog and ready for the stars.

But Mine Own Vineyards I Have Not Kept

This is the story of how I came back.

Early in August, I flew East. My first night home I drove into the city, seeing its skyline in full panorama. That night, in Harlem, I sobbed until I slept. I was home, but my heart was not with me. Late in September, I grieved a quieter kind of grief. I fell in love in California. Now that that was over, I walked around the city determined to pay attention. The mornings were the hardest, waking up short of breath with sorrow's heavy hand pressing down on my chest.

The nights were hard too, but, in a different way. That's when the anger came in reckless storms. There was no stopping the anger, though all my reason told me that to forgive was to love, and I wanted to be able to love. I never cried after the first night. I only felt weak. All my love, like blood, had drained out of me. The nights went long with rage, cycling through the same reasons why everything had gone wrong. After the rage came the longing, missing someone who could recognize me. Then loss, and anger again that I had lost. This is how it always went.

One night, tired and scared that this was how it was always going to be, I turned to him. 'Papa,' (this is what I always call him), 'I need you to take me somewhere where I can be healthy again. Somewhere I can love you again. I have been tired for such a long time.' His reply was a month long. There were pictures of flowers, rows of vineyards, promises of rest, and finally he sang to me from the Song of all songs. "They made me the keeper of vineyards; but mine own vineyard I have not kept."

And from there we went, to tend to the vines together. To catch the foxes that kept my lover and I away. To forgive, to love again.

California, Take Two

The last time I was in California, I was in love. Now, I am not. There are thousands of things that happen in one years time.

I came back. Not to relive that rose bloom summer, but to regain the pieces of me I scattered along the Pacific. There is a story of how I got here. And, there will be stories to follow; stories of California, of the L-RD, of wine, friends, longing, learning, reading. As to not forget, I will write.

This is The Year of Forgiveness.