tonight: i keep thinking

I forget the last time I felt brave
I just recall an insecurity
-Tidal Wave, Owl City

“Always do what you are afraid to do.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

i keep thinking about all the possible outcomes
and then we don’t take any steps
instead staring at what could be
as if something horrible is guaranteed
by changing you or changing me
or changing you and changing me
this is not stagnant water
but murky, yes, we can’t really see
so at this standstill we stand staunch
sure we want something
not sure we want everything
and maybe that something is nothing
so i shrug shoulders
you cross arms
i step backwards
and no one is harmed
but i keep thinking a slow steady movement
might take us somewhere
that tiny thought does not relent
this, i doubt, is happenstance
so we musn’t define circumstance
on fear
lest we circumvent
a better way set out for us
a better way might be joyous
we stare only at the cost
and may never see the wake of our loss

i keep thinking that
but i don’t know and the moment will pass

today: 42 days

“I’ll lead you out of your own trap.”
-I Have Loved You Wrong, the Swell Season

Today while I sorted and packed shoeboxes and bantered with Debbie and Robin as we performed the various tasks we do at church, I counted out 42 days until my job is done. They’ll be 42 fast days, because we have Thanksgiving and Christmas and a trip to Mexico. We have Advent and readings and songs to sing. We have much to celebrate.

And then a four-year chapter will be finished. Forty-two days is tangibly small. I kept thinking about it, wavering between excitement and fear, sadness and elation. Good endings ought to coax such emotional duplicity, and held in tension, that duplicity goes taut and steadies the heart.

I found myself wanting to peer into what happens next and give it magnitude and direction, so that life can function as a force, making an impact. I found myself cautioned to stay on the page I am on right now. And I found myself with this thought. I will always be a girl who goes.

And I. so. want. to go.

The duplicity steadied me again, though, because though I so want to go, right here and right now, I get to stay these last 42 days. But I will always be a girl who goes.

tonight: the wait of redemption is the weight of redemption

“…dead men don’t see clearly…”

“God does not love some future version of you.”
-Matt Chandler

watch the meteor shower and see the poetry of it all
wondering about the world crumbling within a universe so glorious
while hearing mysteries whispered in the wind, cold and flushing color onto
the face of a girl staring upward considering the weight of it all
(i am)
so the hope that turns the light just so
is eyes seeing the broken bits of this world (overwhemling)
with hints of beauty
with hints of grace
with hints of love
and now what is not yet places some hunger into longing bellies
for within a universe so glorious
a story echoes and resounds
we wait. eager. wanting. tirelessly and tired beyond relief.
the wait for redemption is the weight of redemption
to be picked up and carried; if with effort, still hope.

today: dear november, we will become a happy ending

now he’s one of us
plays the tambourine
breaks the bread for us
and sings
will you wait for us
will you stay for us
will you grace us everything…
…so we will become a happy ending
-Chariot, Page France (please go listen and thank you)

Dear November,

Typically you bring insomnia and insanity and stress, stress, stress. At least, that has been my November story for the last four years. And November, I think I missed the boat on you a year or two. This year you have me utterly enchanted.

You have brought fall, vibrantly.

And family, from afar, in proximity.

You have allowed me music, live, and how I love live music. (Note to self: go to more shows.)

You’ve allowed me photographs, oh so many photographs of people in my life.

You have allowed a birthday or two, which forces, wonderfully, the celebration of a person or people in my life.

Dearest November, it’s not that I am trying to be overtly optimistic. I prefer pragmatism. Pragmatism gives me, then, this thought as I consider you, at your midpoint today. Where one sees an abundance of goodness, the right response is thank you, thank you, thank you, to One kind enough to give a November that looks entirely different from the last few years. Pragmatism sometimes cloaks itself in what appears to be optimism, November, for we are becomming a happy ending indeed.

today: Aunt Bridget, you are missed.

Love this shot. Reminds me of my favorite Fly shot.

It’s been a busy few days in Kentucky, which means that sometimes you get in the car, and this is what happens:

Our family share friends. It’s what we do. For the last few days, I’ve been with some of Bridget’s best friends. She is missed, so we made her belated birthday cards. Good times were had by all. Wanted to share they merriment for Aunt Bridget.

Leslie was very enthusiastic…

And Lucy wanted in on the action too. She required a bit of assistance.

Though Aunt Bridget has been missed, Uncle Erin has had a blast. These travel photo ops are making my year.

tonight: substantial, hope.

Well I’m heading out
to pack a bag
to head out on the road
to take away what I know is mine
-Feeling the Pull, Swell Season

(You should know I shot this image while swinging with my new friend Zoe who belongs to my old friend Cheryl, and I love it.)

What I think I know
I often don’t know at all
and hope, the idea, I love most of all
shifts and transforms the more I think I know it
it is not inconsequential, albeit positive vibes, towards a desired outcome
it is more than desire
it is substantial, the feeling of a child’s hand in your grip
it moves in a direction uncontrolled by fate
personal and bold and courageous and real
hope does not disappoint
the most famished of hearts finds itself
utterly replenished with just one glimmer, one tiny glimmer
of something more and truer and better
than imagination allows
hope is knowing that that something is Someone

Real.

today: uncle erin

If my intentions stray I’ll wrench them away
then I’ll take my leave, and I won’t even look back.
-Cave In, Owl City (oh Adam Young, I do love you.)

Tomorrow I will be responding to “Uncle Erin,” thank you very much. That’s what Leslie calls me, and I get to go visit her and her family for a few days of fun and photos.

Here’s Leslie last year:

She concluded that I was Uncle Erin, because she already has an Aunt Erin. Plus, I am her Aunt Bridget’s sister. Logically that makes me, err, Uncle Erin. Proudly. Lovingly.

This kid loves me for reasons unknown to me. I showed up at her house to do her photos back in the day when I still thought seminary was my next step. It turned out photography was my next step. We met at a fork in the road, as that trip, the one where I became Leslie’s Uncle Erin, was when I stopped being shy about calling myself a photographer. It’ll probably be good to revisit the place where that happened. Confidence, long feigned, emerged. That’s all well and good, but tomorrow, I’m mostly looking forward to seeing my little friend and her family.

It still amazes me that this is my life.

today: pages and pages and pages of books and books and books

“Books are humanity in print.”
-Barbara W. Tuckman

This was my Saturday morning. So was this:

Today, Sunday, was one of those days I’ll remember as significant. The Sunday morning routine generally means I wake up too late and rush to be at church on time for whatever meeting I need to attend before the service starts. True to form, that’s how my morning went. And it seemed normal enough as I went through some scheduling details with a few people and met with my boss and reviewed our roles for the morning.

And then church started.
And then the day was songs and prayers and a message.
And then we were gathered at the end of the service to consider some words that had been spoken.
And then I was standing with an awareness: God was there.
And then I was a mess of tears and hope.
And then, two kisses on the cheek and some words that are permission to move on to whatever what’s next looks like.
And then it was time to go home.

Tonight I am sitting here with an awareness: God is here. The contours and shapes that are life right now are about to shift gears so that Saturday looks more like my norm than today. And like Rob Bell in the book I read while waiting on a client on Saturday, I am considering things I’ve seen forever in ways I’d never seen them before. We have so much to see and love and do in these lives of ours. May we run hard after the things that matter and find our lives utterly defined by reality in a world where God is here.

today: this i hope

Dumbed down and numbed by time and age
Your dreams to catch the world, the cage
The highway sets the traveler’s stage
All exits look the same

Three words that became hard to say
I and love and you
-I and Love and You, the Avett Brothers
(Go watch the video. You won’t regret it. Cello? Yes, please.)

Please excuse me while I go a little sappy…

…because Bridget took these photos of me and Pie yesterday, and I looked at them tonight. My eyes watered. This time of year is so busy, and I start thinking about all that needs to be done, particularly with shoeboxes for kids in Mexico. I struggle with trusting that it will all get done. But it does. Every year.

I digress.

My eyes watered, because I love the images. But they also watered, because (cue cheesy music): I hope I am becoming the kind of person who will always stop to dance in an alley with a little girl. Just because. I hope/want/need to learn to slow down enough to choose to be present in these fleeting moments. They are so. worth. it.

Pie and I haven’t hung out much lately, because I work with her mom, and we are busy. But I so love that little girl. And I so love these photographs. And you can so make fun of me for crying about them. That’s all.

today: first, bridget

We wrote a prelude
to our own fairy tale…
-Hot Air Balloon, Owl City

Bridget would be quick to tell you we did not start out as friends, she and I. When our family was just the two of us and Mom and Dad, she made sure the world knew she did not intend to be pleasant about sharing her world with a baby sister. I retaliated by being stubborn and grouchy for the next, oh, eighteen years. We got off to a rocky start.

We did not start out as friends, but we have landed there. Bridget had a birthday yesterday, and Sunday when we gathered as a family, we celebrated the bookends of our family. Bridget is smart and loyal and beautiful. She spends a lot of time- lavishes it, really- on the people she loves. Especially the little people.

When I think about Bridget I think about a fierce belief that everyone should have someone to come alongside them if injustice is knocking at their door. And she will be that person if you have no one else, thank you very much. That’s why she makes a good lawyer. That’s also why it is not a good idea to argue with her.

Bridget loves books more than me, and she can make a mean, well anything-she-sets-her-mind-to, in the kitchen. Her taste in music is, er, different than mine. Her thoughts on Harry Potter match mine. She and I are not the funniest members of our family, but we know how to laugh at? with? the ones who are. Bridget is good at being a big sister.

In the last few years, as our conversations have turned to faith and what matters to us, Bridget and I have found common ground in asking questions around what it means to follow Jesus. Neither of us would say we have it figured out, but both of us would say we have benefited from talking things out. When we disagree, we are learning to do it more lovingly and with (hopefully) more grace.

When families are super-sized, someone could fall through the cracks, I suppose. That may happen occasionally in our family, but it does not happen habitually. Bridget is probably to blame for that. Not only does she somehow manage to be involved in all of our lives, but she’s incredibly adept at inviting others in as well. And that, I think, is amazing. (I could add an assortment of photos of representative faces here, but Amber, as the other half of the photography duo that is ours, gets the honor…)

The world is a better place with Bridget in it. And mine is exponentially better because the force of family relegated us to working it out and finding our way to not only loving but also quite liking each other, thank you very much. Happy birthday, Bridget. Hope this year is the best yet.