a certain lightness

there's a certain lightness in me these days
maybe its something to do with love
in all the shapes its taking
and all the ways it is coming out to play

in the fingering of generational fabrics in cedar chests
and the laughter of family over the dinner table
in the 12-hour nights asleep in my childhood bedroom
and the removal of gunk-covered glasses so i can see at face value
in the incongruity of meyer lemons grown in a house on the west side
and the coziness of gathering around the wood stove with adoptive family
in the swelling sounds of folk music mixes filling my bedroom
and the savoring of the cadence of his voice across the phone lines
in the permission to be messy and scattered incompleteness
and the grace of godly people to embrace me when i've been hurt
in the spaces of hope, dreams, and joy widening inside me

yes, there's a certain lightness
and this is the laughing dancing time (Ecc 3:4)

Don't be deceived, my dear brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. (James 1:16-17)

Christmas with my SBR family

laying in bed with friends

i don't know what it is about me and laying in bed with friends, but it seems to be something i like to do in increasing measure.

to me, it marks sisterhood to be cuddled under blankets, near together, sharing secret places of the heart and talking talking talking, stroking hair and holding hands. and this sort of nearness of bodies and spirits seems exactly like the sort of thing female human beings should do. how we are comforted in these moments, how we come to rest, how we are no longer alone with ourselves.

so i think of spending the night in a bed and breakfast bed with jane and her sister the night before her wedding last summer. and the weightiness of those last moments of singleness with her, as she talked about lars and recalled what it is in him that resonates in her and we joyfully reflected on the goodness of the marriage that would take place the next day. until our eyelids were heavy and we drifted into a deep and unstirring sleep, three little pigs all in a row.

and i think of the times that my married friends have invited me to stay with them for a night when their husbands have been out of town, and we sleep in the same bed because they've become used to sharing by now and they don't like that giant empty space. and for those moments, we can remember back to high school sleepover parties, only now the "boy talk" has matured and is about marriage and sex and big adult decisions, while on the inside we are still in some ways those giggly girls of years gone by.

and i think of the times, when visiting my childhood home in Grand Ledge, i have climbed into bed with my mom and how one never really gets too old to find comfort in that maternal presence as one falls into sleep. it reminds me of the times she would come to me in my own small bed when i was crying, and she would lay beside me and rub my back and comfort me until sleep mercifully came.

and i think of the times when the girls in this house have all piled into my bed (or sometimes chelsea's) together because one of us has a heart that needs some spilling, or because we are just needing the nearness of one another. and there's something about getting into that soft, comforting, close space that brings us more quickly to emotional vulnerability, that communicates that we are in this thing together. we are sisters.

and i think of just last night when W came by and there was girl-talk to be had, so like conspiring sisters we got under the down covers of my bed, and laying there face to face we told our joyful secrets, bisected with laughter, marveled at the dreams of God, and then sent one another off with prayers and hugs.

i'm thankful that God made us this way as women.

my two nines

to you my hands are open. i love what God does.

goodbye sweet friend of mine. i will miss you so.

are and will be

the other day in the car on the way to the the thai restaurant, our pilgrim friend holly from traverse city read aloud from isaiah 54:10 about God's promise that His love is less shakeable than mountains and his covenant of peace is no sooner removed than the largest hills. and then i thought about what that means. to me it means that when it comes to us and God, we are two nations who will not [ever] go to war. you can bank on it.

then at toast the other night i had 1 john 3:2 on my mind:
(1) we are children of God
(2) what we will be has not yet been made known

i love God for being a God who holds the tension of both of these things being true at once: the surety of what already is (beloved children in a covenant of peace) and what has yet to be revealed (what'll we look like once all this grime has been sloughed off?). i love him for this paradox.

and i want to live out of that position of security and hope.

order my joy rightly

can this joy
(rising up in my fluttering belly
a glee glowing on shining upturned face)
also be Your divine joy?
are You to be found here, YHWH
in this fleshly human happy thing?
merge this temporal joy into Your eternal joy
this gift of ordinary emotion with the sacredness of sacrament
let it be part of the tapestry of my Love Story with Jesus
so that in loving him, I am loving Him
in receiving him, I am receiving Him
in touching him, I am touching Him
order my joy rightly, God

this day traversing

maybe it comes from having people praying
unceasingly in the garage in your back yard
this shalom that wraps itself around the house
like a thick blanket on a cold winter day
(of course, the cold winter day is not merely metaphor, but actuality)
most of today i sat on that one chair
the stuttery-rocker one from ikea
with my blanket over my legs and
my bible books journal pen in my lap
and i was sunk-down and present and tender
and for moments of this sitting time
there were others there
(at one point all five of the housemates; rare)
and other times people passing through
to and from their prayer slots out back
and there was luis here and for him i had
a word from thomas merton about hermits
which led to some repentance (who would have thought?)
chip and i went out for thai and dove into
one of those gloriously healing brother-sister
conversations that he and i sometimes have
that remind me of how ironic God is by
who He puts in our paths to heal us
then jenn came by with her lovely journal
and from it she read some words that
God had given to her that morning for me
and which were perfect in love
and today i felt alive strong free clear
(like horses and the color green)
chelsea and michael and i had ginger-lemon-honey tea
in tiny mugs with the gluten-free cookies
michael baked because i guess he loves me
before we went into the garage at 8 pm where
i was seeing visions fresh of where i'm positioned
in relation to jesus and to others so that it set things straight in me
and then one friend brought a long-held secret
out into the light and she humbled herself and asked for help
and i know that she will be healed
so now i'm going to sleep with
a peace in my spirit that has deepened as the day's gone by
and i say thank you, Jesus, you're my Love

some things on my overactive mind

i think that it is a great idea to have discipleship group in bed, as sarah jayne, chelsea and i did this week (see above). nothing sweeter than a couple hours cuddling and sharing hearts in the middle of the afternoon.

for me, being playful with others is an act of vulnerability. it is easier for me to let you see me serious and smart and soulful, than playful.

i wonder about having the word joy tattooed behind my right ear. because to me that word sums up a great deal of what repentance has looked like as i cooperate with God in my personal transformation.

today, for the first time in a long time, i wanted to read poetry. i gorged myself on e. e. cummings and rainer maria rilke mostly. it was good for my soul, though i had to remain vigilant about the longings and melancholy poetry often evokes in me.

people are really generous. yesterday when i came home, i was greeted by two people who were donating things (1) 10 boxes full of brand new hats, blankets, jackets, etc. and (2) leftover goulash and a commitment to hosting one Love Feast per month!

been thinking a lot lately about the prophetic voice and its appropriate exercise. thinking about it alongside pastoral hearts. there are people i know who are more strongly prophetic and others more strongly pastoral and i think that we need both, deeply. sometimes they don't do real well at appreciating one another, however. but i think we're supposed to be each other's checks and balances and to trust that what God's putting in the hearts of his pastors is just as weighty as what he's putting in the hearts of his prophets. i saw this lived out well the other night at our tri-community prayer meeting with the bridge street house, the gold ave house, and the boiler room. ryan is prophetic, tony is pastoral, and i saw them honoring one another in their giftedness, allowing themselves to be influenced by one another. balancing.

jenn said, "brooke, you are someone who throws around the word 'thrice' without even blinking. seriously!" this using of extravagant words is what i get teased for a lot around here.

chelsea said that she sees my relationship with tony like we're sitting down in a library drinking expensive beverages and saying "shit." she said its the combination of intellectualism and crassness that we both exhibit. very funny!

the Big Lake is not enough to prevent warmth and connection from growing between two people. and now this one is one of my favorite ones, a greenhouse, and a kindred spirit.

"kingdom-building is sexy." is what it said on the t-shirt i made. it's an inside joke and we are not entirely sure how to briefly explain it, particularly to people outside our particular subculture. but trust you me, it sure cracks us up!

we moved morning prayer to 7 am for the winter months because this is what bodies do when they are in step with the seasons: they are earlier to bed and later to rise.

i deleted my facbook account this week in a moment of clarity and conviction. this small obedience of behavioral change i hope will set into motion a whole sequence of sin-revealing and freedom-bestowing work in me. the end goal: throw off what hinders and come out on the other side with MORE of Him.

there is a friend whom i really miss. but the trail between us is overgrown with so much brush and thistle that i can't see the way through at present.

i realized today that i've been practicing submission and not minding it a bit! also, i get it now. i get what it means and i see what it looks like in practice. it feels surprisingly freeing, and very loving.

the men in this house have been loving me so well and by that love i am being healed. thank you chip, danny, michael, and tony. i love yous!

a pretty something

i got this note today from someone i love and to me it was very beautiful. because it touched me, i've reproduced it here, with names changed so you will not guess from whence it came.

our dear family friend, sam sorensen died today. he battled brain cancer and believed he would be healed by our savior, christ. dan talks about feeling numb while he eats, drinks, sleeps, and breathes in iraq. i keep hearing the word rejoice. there is abundant hope and love in christ.

i feel heavy... i feel joy

and if you could see the beautiful piece art on the back of which this message was written, you would love it even more.

holding

how we hold these words in our throats
tender and most deep of all the deeply true
but there is for everything a time
a time to speak and a time to remain quiet
while in the span of the unspeaking time
we enter a thickening of knowing as
a weightiness develops in the secret place
outside there is a ripening of time in
a fragile greenhouse of relationship
so we hold these words there,
roll them around on our tongues a bit
and wait for their release
into the space between us
so when they are at last freed
(and mark my words, they shall be)
they are sweet like honey on the lips
for having been so long inside us

the migratory patterns of dishes

'round here there's dishes from downstairs showing up upstairs, and dishes from across the alley at Jenn and Tony's house appearing on the shelves downstairs, and dishes from Love Feast hosts getting mixed in with our own, and dishes from the upstairs found around the prayer garage.

and i got to thinking today about what a cool thing this is, even if it means that there's not a complete, matching set of dishes in any of the three kitchens in our community.

follow this favorite mug of mine, for instance. i think its original home was upstairs in the girls' apartment, but often, because i like to drink from it so much, i'll take it downstairs with me in the morning and fill it with coffee from the fresh French press, then it'll stay downstairs a while, by my side as i read the bible on the couch. or maybe danmike will bring it to me in the prayer garage at 6 am prayer so that i won't fall asleep. there are also these small little teacup plates that chelsea likes to eat her apple slices and peanut butter on because she likes baby-size things. even though those little plates technically belong downstairs, they can be found stacking up beside the sink upstairs because she wanders up there with it to spend some time alone with jesus in her room. and in the tupperware cabinet there is mis-matched tupperware from the homes of many people across the city who have at some point or another brought us food for love feasts or just because and so now there's no telling which tupperware belongs where and no one really cares. and jenn has these smallish mugs from her house -- the ones we have our coffee in at intern breakfast on fridays -- and when she comes across the alley to disciple us, she'll carry one with her and sometimes she'll leave it. occasionally she'll send max or tony across the alley to borrow a cup of something or another (coffee beans, butter) and so he'll take it back home in one of our little plastic bowls, which may or may not ever return.

so the reason the migratory patterns of these dishes warms my heart is because in following them, you can start to piece together the pathways between houses and hearts that are part of living in a sharing community.

i don't want to be impressive or interesting
i want to be lovable

here

this day the snow has been falling silent and feathery
and my soles slip over the slippery-ed cement
as i briskly walk with pinked cheeks down these city sidewalks
past decrepit houses (condemned, land-contract, burned)
i am wondering at this experience of
knowing a thing deep in my bones
and how it was about this time last year that
i knew that sort of knowing for the first time
and how that knowing is what landed me here
in this unkempt and drama-ridden city-scape
where there has been more joy than i've ever known
so that now i'm a believer in deep-in-the-bones knowing
the bones don't lie and they don't often speak
so when the bones say they know, heed it, my soul
there is yes and there is hallelujah
here

Breath

Breath from Phillip Palacios on Vimeo.v

a little film about prayer, as it surrounds the Stockbridge Boiler Room.

mad in the kitchen

she says that i am a warm and comfy place for people,
especially when i'm mad in the kitchen (this happens sometimes).
she says she likes me best when i'm at my worst,
because then there is nothing missing.

it feels freeing to be loved, enjoyed even, in my rough places

open up those receivers!

seems like God you are
trying to teach me a thing or two about receiving -
how to do that thing gracefully and
how to be comfortable expecting to receive from you
because your heart for me is like
the dad who runs from the front porch to meet me
like the shepherd who leaves the 99 to seek out the lost one (me)

so the other day when my bank account was on empty
and the credit card reader at the gas station rejected it
which meant i couldn't get the oil for my gas-burning engine
before my road trip to detroit...
then He put this woman there (her name was jamie)
and she held out a $5 bill and she said she could get me one of 'em
and you know what i did?
i said "no, that's okay, thank you"
(because i knew i had a check in my wallet waiting to be deposited)
and you know what she said?
she said, "for future reference, you should never
turn down a blessing when it's offered."
she explained that we have to be able to receive if
we're gonna learn to be givers at all
she was so correct, and she was a messenger (did she know?)
and as she embraced me and said "be blessed,"
i knew my daddy had been at work
just driving home the point
again

so then jenn gives me this as a parable
for a situation in my life at present:
it's a story about a girl who wanted a car
and she'd been shopping with her dad for one
the one she really really wanted was
far too expensive and far too wonderful (convertible!)
so that she didn't even dare come right out and ask for it
(though probably he could see it her eyes)
but then her dad called her the next day and said
"meet me at 5 in the parking lot,
i've got a surprise for you."
she simply couldn't believe it would be THAT car,
so she assumed it'd be the crappy old taurus,
which she knew she couldn't get adequately excited about
and her dad would be disappointed because
he thought he was doing her a favor
so she worked herself into a frenzy over this,
at the heart of it the disbelieving
that THE car was possibly the one she'd find
in the parking lot, with her dad, at 5 o'clock
so she called him up and tried to warn him that
she might not be as excited as he was hoping
(she wanted to let him down easy)
and he was offended because didn't she trust him?
you better believe that when she got to
the parking lot at 5 o'clock
that gorgeous, too-much car was there
and her daddy was beaming
and she was thrilled, but slightly ashamed
because she hadn't believed him for it

God, i want to believe you for
the convertible
that you would really do that
extravagant as it may be
and i won't protest if when
i show up in the parking lot at 5
there it is