worshipping in between times

it's important to worship with other people, people that we know well, whose stories we have heard and whose hands we have held as they've walked and sometimes stumbled in the path of Jesus. it's important because these people can usher us in the presence of God, and into worship, deeply. at times in my life when things are on a plateau or even seem to be headed downwards, i can look around the room filled with my friends, and i can remember God's faithfulness to them, how He has healed and delivered and answered them, and that gives me something to say thanks for. that picks me up out of my small mind and plops me down in front of the throne of a God who can do (and does do and is doing) all manner of miraculous things in and through his kids. i think it's wise to worship with the ones you do life with.

for the last year i've been doing life with the people of the stockbridge boiler room. not just the folks who live here, but also the homeless friends who frequent our spaces, the neighbors, and the friends from church and the wider community who have locked arms with us in prayer and meals and fellowship. lots of those folks were together last night for Love Feast and for the party marking the end of Chip's internship season.

i've noticed that when you know a change is coming, you begin to see your current situation/environment with fresh eyes. that's why i've been wanting to take photographs of ordinary objects in my life here lately. because part of me knows that i won't be here much longer. and, oddly, after tim was here and i got to see my life/community through his eyes and hear his feedback on it, i suddenly have this fresh surge of affection for it all. i'm seeing it again. and it's so beautiful.

these people i've been doing life with are so beautiful. they are integral to my worship, partners in my walk, shepherds of my intimacy with Jesus.

i'm being released, in small increments, from my covenanted season with the stockbridge boiler room, at about the same pace as a corresponding divine knitting is happening between my heart and tim's. i'm being released from and released to. i'm being drawn and being sent. and a lot of this has to do with what and who i'll call Home.

it's that liminal space. again.

i want to do this well. i want to be fully present here in this life-giving family and its missional work until the last moment. i also want to fall wholly and trustingly into the embrace of this amazing man God is leading me home to. and because doing both of those things at once is difficult, if not impossible, there's frustration and discomfort a lot of the time.

i'm messy in this sometimes, which i dislike enormously. i was messy in it yesterday, when i sat crying on the couch to jenn over a cup of tea because i'm not sure i'm doing a very good job inhabiting this space. i'm like a small girl crumpled down in the threshold of the door way between two equally inviting rooms, sobbing into her knees, desiring but unable to take up a more comfortable position on the couches in either room.

for now.

luckily, liminal space is, by its very definition, transitional.

meantime, i'm learning how to carry a grief and a joy simultaneously. maybe this is worship, too.

a few photographic treats

1. me and tim had five blissful days together in madison this week. when it comes to our relationship, we just keep uncovering more layers of YES. i could brag him up here in the public sphere, because there is MUCH to brag about, but maybe you should just ask me what's so great about him next time you see me. ;) for now, suffice it to say that i am one very lucky girl to have snagged this one!

2. i found a couple old rolls of film in my desk drawer and took them in to get developed. they were from last summer. this one is of my little buddy luke at his house by the pond. i think it's wonderful to see such a summer-infused image in the middle of our michigan deep freeze.

3. our friend kiersty creates beautiful art with water colors and acryllics. they're magical. she's just starting to look into creating cards to be sold in local art shops in madison and etsy.com. i'm so proud of her.

intercession, sky bedrooms, and first sight

1

i have some fear in this, God, and so much uncertainty about what will be. so I surrender my impulse to create and grasp onto certainty before you give it. i only want to step out on what is certain from YOU (no lifeless wood, stone, or ideologies; only You, the Living One). often lift my eyes from the particulars of circumstances and the worries therein; move my eyes to Your face (beauty, kindness, strength, love), which is unseen but eternal (most true of all). i know that i only ever see correctly in your presence. i let go of my management attempts and i take your hand, Jesus, to walk with You. i give up my urgent time table and i submit to Your leadership. You hold and sustain me by the word of your mouth. today, God, will you give to me a thickness of your presence and a deeply intimate fellowship with You? let there be nothing on my wish list except wanting You. remind me of my foundations. amen.

2

chelsea's room is like a little sky of her own,
walls or a cooling, open blue and a fluff of cloud for a bed
(plus a zebra that shares her bed)
and she descends from it's clouds
pulls out tubes from which vibrant colors come
spreads them around on a board on an easel
and what emerges is undeniably art

3

intercession
so i'm already paid to pray, in a sense
how am i using that time?
what if i took that seriously and
wasted less time praying about my precious little life
and wasted more of my life wrestling with God on behalf of
neighbors gathered at Love Feasts
my girls at The Other Way
our territory (4th - 7th, Alpine to Davis)
the Boiler Room and each member therein
the families targeted on our Muffin Mission
women in my Daniel study
the nations He's putting in my heart
my family and other friends
i wonder what would happen to my world
i wonder what would happen to me
so i say God you can go right ahead and
wake me up (literally, in the night, also spiritually)
and put your Spirit in me to pray pray pray
just your words flowing through these lips that
really don't know the first thing about how to pray this way
so teach me how to be an intercessor
i don't want to read a million books,
i want you to show me how to do this thing
and i want it with my SBR family
i want to see us on our knees together
intentionally
interceding
because this is work you've given us to do
and i hope we'll be found faithful

4

these are the things you confess to one another after you've started to call a thing what it is:

we liked one another almost instantly as it turns out: from that first kitchen moment in Grand Rapids, solidified by moments on cushy rugs and another kitchen in Madison. we were telling confidants within days that we were smitten with the other, while all the while remaining rather surprised at ourselves, and keeping a poker face with one another.

it's wonderful when good starts turn into something even better, when gut instincts line up with the actuality of a thing. when you just keep liking someone more all the time.

He (Tim)

This one swept me off my feet,

blew me away
bowled me over

WE LIKE EACH OTHER! WE ARE HAVING SO MUCH FUN!
(can you see it in my face just how much i like him? i'm unabashedly nutty about him)
We are choosing to actively participate with God in this really cool thing He's doing between us.

the stories of three men

so mark came to the door today and,
as he put it,
he was sorta wrecked

over and over he kept saying
i can't i can't i can't
turn my life around
i'm a hardcore drunk
and i don't care if i die tonight

he said, what's a girl like you
doing in a neighborhood like this?
don't you know that you can't change a thing?
don't you know that you could be -
and deserve to be -
anywhere but here?
the west side, he said,
the west side isn't good

yes, i said, but
there is joy
and i'm happier than
i've ever been
and the difference is
obedience
and why wouldn't i
choose His way?
i said

you're sincere
you're a sweet heart
you're a good girl
he said

he says most people don't
take the time to ask the questions
to care about the plight of
folks like him
but yet here you are
and this seemed to amaze him

so then he came to church
in the prayer garage
with me, tony, michael, chip, kristen, & lily
and it was probably the first time
that man has set foot in a church
so he didn't know the script
and besides that he was drunk
but he stayed through the worship
and part of the discussion on luke 12
when we got to the part about
"fear him who after the killing of the body
can throw you into hell"
he said
we can stop reading right there
i'm going to hell
i'm going south

when we sang he said,
that's almost enough to
make me turn my life around

but for tonight he walked out
as yet unchanged but
he said after he's
gotten drunk and high again tonight
he'll wake up tomorrow thinking about
these conversations we had
and he will think on it

for tonight that will have to be
enough

-----

also today when i stopped by the new laundry/computer ministry called Matthew's House a couple blocks from here, i heard the story of a thieving, cheating, adulterous, alcoholic man who is celebrating his 9th birthday as a child of God. he was born on the day that a gentle breeze passed through his house and enveloped him in a blanket of peace, after a month of sitting glued to the word weeping and crying out to God, which he was doing in the first place because the holy spirit had a word for him through the mouth of an unsuspecting pastor at a church he went to only because he felt too ashamed not to. so i guess Jesus had his number. he was rescued. he is new. i needed to hear that story today.

-----
and also today chip started school. at age 40 he is a freshman at kuyper college, where he will be taking new testament survey, among other things, and is headed toward a degree in social work. we are so proud. of chip and jesus, both.(i should probably mention that i made him put on the backpack, carry the lunch pail, and take a First Day of School picture)

speechless

i don't know how to write about love
without sounding absurdly cliche
so i won't even try

He directs hearts

do you know that
God can rearrange a person's insides
in one fell swoop
over the course of one night
unsought-after and unbidden
but in response to intercession
or sometimes just because He sees fit

and He holds
the hearts of kings
in His hands (prov 21:1)
to direct it as He pleases
and if kings then
also fathers
and lovers

and i have seen Him do this
even just this week
i have seen him break a father
to the point of burning idols
i have seen him bolster a lover
to the point of audacious risk

when the Lord directs
the course of a man's heart
(and he submits)
the daughters and beloveds of that man
are ushered into freedom
there is joy and peace in their wake

only the Spirit of God can do a thing like this
He alone is God and beside Him there is
none other (Isaiah 45:6)

to be named

we're deep into the genesis story in our God Story sessions. this idea of naming a thing keeps coming up. in scripture there are no random names, no names chosen merely because they sound cool rolling off the tongue or possess some lyrical desirability, but names are chosen because they mean something. names in the old testament are telling a story about a people finding their faith. which is why it seems to matter to God that people are named in alignment with what he's called them out to be in his plot line. like abram/abraham whose name got expanded, both phonetically and conceptually, from an Important Dad to a Father of Multitudes.

it's funny that this topic came up in our conversation today because it was only yesterday that we were all laughing our way through a game that involves allowing yourself to be renamed by your friends. we were creative, sometimes way out there, in choosing these names for one another. and we ourselves had no say in the naming. we don't get to make names for ourselves.

my name was determined to be Brita Mose Stone, with Mose being short for Mosaic. and perhaps it was chosen mostly because it sounded cool and, on some gut level, seemed to "fit" me, but as tim (now linus lincoln grahm) pointed out, it implies a few things:
1) brita is a water filtration system, so there's the idea of purity and purification
2) mosaic is a multi-faceted art, celebrating my eclecticism
3) stone is something sturdy and still
he thinks all of this fits quite nicely, is a name that one could carry with some pride.

about a year ago i was given another name by two friends. it came out of game in which we decided to create native american names for one another. and they settled on Rising Tigress for me. that's a powerful name and i was uncomfortable with it for it didn't seem to fit. i think this is a name i'm growing into. but i love the strength, sleekness, and femininity of a tigress coupled with the possibility and promise of arising. and i would be okay with having that become an apt description for who i am.

my given, legal name Brooke is of English origin and refers to a body of water (steam). just today when i looked it up on another source, it says that it literally means "one who lives by the stream." Nicole is a feminine form of nicholas, which means "victory of the people." and so just now it is hitting me that my name is actually really significant in meaning!
- he lead beside quiet waters (psalm 23:2)
- victory rests with the Lord (proverbs 21:31)
- in repentance and rest is salvation (isaiah 30:15)
perhaps the meaning in my name that my parents didn't even consider is this: "one who by resting beside the stream participates in the victory of God's people." this link between rest and victory (which we might call surrender and trust) is exactly what the Lord has been teaching me to be defined by.

thank you for naming me, God. my name(s), some known and some yet to be made known, are engraved on the palms of your hands. you do not forget me.

kristin's wedding

my friend kristin got married today.
back in high school she and i were part of the same group of friends who every year would take a picture together by the 15 Minute Parking Sign outside our school. it's so great to look back at those photos, how we changed from year to year. so today, her wedding day, we took another shot together.
there we all are: Brooke the photographer, Aryn the impromptu personal assistant, Kristin the bride, and Shannon the matron of honor.

i'll be putting more photos of her special day on my photography blog and flickr site within the week.