my small span of ardent life (guest post at christie purifoy's)

Today I have the huge privilege of sharing a bit of my writing at Christie Purifoy's blog. Christie has been a favorite writer of mine since I discovered her writing a few years ago, and I'm honored to share this post - talking about wisdom, the architecture of our hearts, becoming who we are... I hope you hop on over! 

When I was in high school I was once described by a new friend as doing a kind of “butterflying” – from person to person, subject to subject, leaving conversations half-finished or always to be continued. I had, in the thoughtlessness of a fifteen year-old experiencing peer acceptance, jumped from lunches to free periods and neglected her. I hadn’t realized that she moved more carefully, finishing each thing before taking up the next one. I apologized profusely, and we went on to build a friendship in chemistry classes and after school theater. But I vowed to myself that I would change, I would abandon my butterfly ways. I would be slow, I told myself. I would be wise.Have you ever kept a promise too well? Have you ever been so good at becoming more like someone else that you left yourself behind?Keep reading over at Christie's - and if you want to read a bit more of my writing, you can learn more about my first book, Forgiving God: A Story of Faith over here and even order a copy from your favorite retailer!Love,hilary

dear hilary: make something beautiful

Dear Hilary,I don't know what to do. I love people with this fierce love. I love their stories, coffee with them, wine with them, crying and laughing with them. I love how terrible they are, and how miraculous. But you can't make a career of that, can you? I don't think it's counseling, exactly. I don't think it's social work or psychology. I don't fit in the traditional higher education boxes. I'm not quite philosophical enough or theological enough to do that kind of work. When you ask me what I'm working on for 10,000 hours, ask me what I want to be an "expert" in - I tell you it's listening. It's watching. It's carving out spaces and times for others. I want to spend 100,000 hours listening. But who does that for a career? No one.Love,Out of the BoxDear Out of the Box,The other day I did something thoughtless. I pushed my way into a conversation where I very, very clearly did not belong. I did it because of a bunch of things that are only half relevant to the situation: jealousy and desire and insecurity and the laundry list we always list for each other and ourselves. And, so very graciously, I was reminded of that.But something miraculous happened when I did that. Something that I have to tell you, Out of the Box, makes me believe that you are in the right place, wherever you are, doing the right thing, whatever it is. The miraculous thing is that I learned something from it.Out of that awkward situation, and the careful grace of the people who reminded and called me to account, I learned something about boundaries. I learned about what my jealousy/desire/insecurity can yield. I saw lived out in front of me the reality of our careless movement in the world being chaos and hurt to others.It shook me up. It worried me. It gave me the knot in my stomach, the one I get when I fear that I am, after all, just a disappointment. But I learned. And this is the kind of miraculous, mysterious, beautiful alchemy that happens when we take what happens to and around us, and we build with it. We expand on the inside. We build bridges. We are opened wider and, as a consequence, we are filled with more. And, as a consequence of that, we pour out more.So. You say this is what you want to do? You say this is your 10,000 or 100,000 or 10 million hours. This listening. This alchemy. This making beautiful the things that happen to people. I say, Love, what are you afraid of? You are in the right place. Because that is a big freaking dream. Because it isn't a dream that you achieve by graduate schools or meetings or promotions or raises. It isn't a dream that has a ladder.You will only begin to realize that dream if you live out everything in front of you so forcefully, so laughingly, so achingly wrong and right and wrong again, that you learn from it. You will live inside this dream only if you expand on the inside. You will live inside this dream only if you make beautiful things of your stories.Spend 10,000 hours listening, yes. But spend it listening to yourself, alongside all those others. Spend it striking out in an attempt to write down these beautiful things and failing miserably. Spend it watching the world and telling us what you see. You have to practice this work inside yourself if you want to pour out for others. You must take that stupid thing you did and accept it inside yourself and listen to it. You must take that situation you refuse to acknowledge is happening and accept it into yourself and love it, and listen to it.To make a life of this (because it's a life you want, not a career), you must be willing to do it for yourself. To offer a candle to others, to share your vision of all that could be, of all that might be, you have to have that kind of vision for yourself. Stop worrying about the ladders and labels, the unknowing, the strikeouts of what you are and are not and what jobs and what cities and what barely-paying-the-rent stories you live. And go make something beautiful of it. When, and only when, you are willing to believe that this very story you are living in is right, because it is yours, because it is bigger than you: then you will live inside that dream. Oh, and how we will be blessed.Love,hilary

dear hilary: the tuning fork

Dear Hilary,I want to please other people. I want to do whatever will make them happy. You want 100 photocopies in 3 minutes? Done. You want a strategic plan for the future of an organization at this college? Done. You want me to be there, run this errand, listen to this problem? I would love to. But then I run headlong into this wall. I really want to be a writer. I really want to be a counselor, of some kind. I really want to put writing and counseling together in some strange beautiful combination, and I don't want to lose threads of theology, or of my love of French, or my love of theater... When I ask people what I should do, they tell me that I would be a great PhD student, of history or political science or philosophy. They tell me I could run an organization, a school even. I want to please them, and I don't want to disappoint anyone's dreams. Help?Love,Afraid to DisappointDear Afraid to Disappoint,Our piano is out of tune at home. The keys clink strange half-tones, and I swear I can hear it groaning when someone asks it to sing one more rendition of "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming." Have you ever watched someone tune an instrument? They take that strange fork instrument and hit it against something - your knee, or a piece of plastic or wood, the door frame, or something. And then they hold it up to their ear to hear it ringing. The air moves between the two tines of the fork and the note - a middle C, or an A - becomes the foundation for the rest.I have been thinking in these last few months that certain loves in our lives are like a tuning fork. They give us the foundation for the rest, a measure against which we can understand how other things might fit into our lives.Sometimes it's terrifyingly clear that they don't sound the same. I do not love everything in the magnitude that I love writing. I do not breathe, and ache and live in biology; I do not yearn for one more hour with a potter's wheel or a linoleum block printing press. And why should we be afraid of this? We will never be able to do everything, anyway. In the small amount of time we are gifted, why shouldn't our hearts be caught up in the work we love most?I think you ache to write. I think your body physically feels the need to put words on paper. Why else would you write? I think you are beginning to tune the piano of your life by the writing tuning fork. So strike it and listen. Does counseling sound like that? Does teaching? Does directing plays or traveling to France? Does politics, or philosophy, or history?You write to me that you don't want to disappoint others in their ideas of what you should do. I can understand that. You don't want to say no to a career in history or political science or philosophy, partly because you love these professors and mentors. You want to honor their work, affirm the value of their field. That's admirable. But, Afraid to Disappoint, I have to tell you that the only sure disappointment in this life is living less of you. You are the unlikely combination of counseling, writing, French, history, politics, philosophy, and faith. You are the unlikely wedding planner meets chemical engineer. You are the unlike-everything-else musician turned playwright turned nanny turned environmental advocate...Being that, that strange impossible combination, takes everything you've got. It will cost you the security of pleasing others. It will cost you the comfort of a plan. It will cost you a life characterized by steps and guidelines and directions and each thing done right.It will pay you back with a heart that hurts so much sometimes you think that the person just stabbed you. It will give you back failed attempts to plan weddings and failed attempts to get a second interview and failed attempts to move to France. It will give you back uncertainty and breakups at two in the morning when it isn't said but unsaid, and you leave and lie on your bed thinking that for sure you are dead and there is no more and what else could there be, and you'll play country music and read Dear Sugar and throw the book across the room because this life will be so damn mysterious.But isn't that what you really want? To throw books across the room because of the damn mystery of it all, the deep love that roars, the brilliant failure, the moment of singular compassion, the breakup at 2am and the return flight from France and everything it teaches you?Strike the tuning fork. There isn't anything to be afraid of.Love,Hilary

dear hilary: homeward bound

Dear Hilary,I was listening to a Sarah McLachlan song the other day - "World on Fire." Do you know it? Do you know that line, "Hearts break, hearts bend, love still hurts"? I'm wondering about this as it applies to my decision to stay home after graduation. I moved back, back to familiar people and places, back to what feels like an older self. I feel out of place, bent out of shape. And I look at the people who traveled, who journeyed across oceans or continents, who sit in university classes and write theses, who work in labs or in non-profits on K St or who teach for America... and I stayed here. Why does it hurt?Love,Homeward BoundDear Homeward Bound,Isn't it funny how easily envious we are? If we are dating, we are jealous for unattached freedom. If we are single, we pine over red wine for a relationship. When we are in school all we think is, "get me OUT" and when we are at work all we think is, "Remember that awesome paper I got to write about hermeneutics?" (Okay, not everyone says that).And when we return home, to our old rooms, our rickety bookcases, our messy kitchens, all the things we already know, we can think of nothing else but moving away. We plan elaborate apartments furnished by Anthropologie. We imagine long walks through Lincoln Park, along the Seine with fresh bread, in London, in Portugal. We tell ourselves there we'd find the self we're longing to be: fun and outgoing, breezy and yet thoughtful, maybe with a cool but understated piercing to differentiate the new season of our life and almost certainly with a whole new outlook on life.Ironic, love, isn't it, that the people who moved far away feel almost the same way. We imagine getting a Starbucks in the neighborhood we know, high-fiving the barista. We imagine using our native currency/language/music tastes. We imagine walking through the city knowing exactly where the used poetry bookshop is. We imagine ourselves, confident in the familiarity of things, on a long run around the pond that looks impossibly effortless. We're probably wearing the cutest possible running outfit in said effortless run.We are easily jealous of the lives and gifts we don't have. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: these things can always be your becoming. It matters tremendously that you are, as you say, "homeward bound" - part of your becoming gets to be grappling with the older self, the one you think you've left behind. Your becoming doesn't involve a new presentation or a new start in a strange place. Your becoming involves a mud pit wrestling match with the expectations of who you are and what you do. Most of these are your expectations, sweet heart - and it'll be a tough fight. But your becoming involves this tough fight.You've got a lovely, pining letter here. Hearts do break and bend, love does hurt. It will do that next door to you and 10,000 miles away and inside you. You know what that song is really about, though, right?World's on fire, it's more than I can handle, tap into the water, try to bring my share. I try to bring more, more than I can handle, bring it to the table, bring what I am able... Bring more than you can handle. Bring your share. Bring what you are able. The point of singing this isn't to throw a pity party that you're back in your old neighborhood and others are somewhere else. The point of singing this isn't to collapse because sometimes we suck and are beautiful and stupid and other people are so very mysterious and we want things we can't have and we're restless and... and... and...Give to the table in front of you more than you are able. This is nothing less than your great task. You are homeward bound. Bound there, giving your whole heart, I think, you will be amazed at what you become.Love,Hilary

dear hilary: anonymous love

Dear Hilary,I'm ambitious. I have plans in my head for my life, plans for travel and degrees and books published. I kind of want to be famous. But I wonder if it's really that worth it? What do you think?Love,CelebrityDear Celebrity,I think the best answer to your question is to ask myself what I think I'm here for. I was pondering your question drinking a caffeine free Diet Coke watching the newest episode of Castle. I was thinking about it as I smeared avocado clay mask on my face in a vain attempt to do something productive to my pores. It even crossed my mind as I reread old letters from dear friends. Do I want to be famous? Is it worth it? What do I think about that? I thought it over and over. And this is what I came up with.I am not here to be famous.Famous is a cheap kind of knowing. Every one of us can do better than a name on a billboard when it comes to being known. Every last one of us is already loved more intimately than that. I'd rather run up the stairs to my best friend's room soaking wet from the rain and stand in front of her, dripping wet with disappointment and regret and anger and naked, raw, rain-soaked life than ever publish a Pulitzer.I am not here to be famous.Imagine this, Celebrity: you could do an act of radical, unbelievable, earth-shattering love and never get credit for it. Or you could do a smaller act, of love and warmth, sure, but smaller, and become really famous. I urge you to always pick the earth-shattering love option. It's there. When you calculate graduate schools and Sunday school volunteering and living at home and becoming a top notch politician. The option for earth-shattering love is always present. Sometimes that will shove you sideways into fame. Sometimes it will put you up on a stage to accept a prize or a prestigious job or a movie contract. Sometimes it will mean you become "famous" whether you wanted it or not. But we are here to do the brave thing whether it brings fame or a $1.99 hallmark card. We aren't here to climb ladders but to leap off cliffs into trust and grace without any promise of ever getting any kind of credit for it.We are not here to be famous.A wise man once told me, "Imagine, Hilary, what amazing things we could do if we didn't care who got the credit." This man, he lives it out. He works harder than almost anyone I've met, dreams and imagines constantly, builds programs and mentors students. This man doesn't care if anyone ever knows that it was his idea. He doesn't care if he gets paid less than everyone else. He doesn't care if he looks ridiculous or could have been promoted at a different institution or might have had this illustrious career in...When I get all knotted up in ambition I think about him. I think about standing rain-soaked in my best friend's bedroom. I think about buying a cup of coffee for a homeless man in DC who doesn't know me. I think about all the words I write that get me no closer to being a celebrity, but one person reads them and feels loved, and that breaks my heart right open.I'm here, you're here, we're all here to give more than we take. To live towards the light. To hold out our hands to empty ones. To stand rain-soaked in bedrooms and believe in the beautiful and the good.We are called to bigger things than ambition can offer us. We are called to anonymous, wild, love.Love,hilary

come to me (on being confirmed)

The morning bursts into my bedroom too soon, and I feel my muscles groan and burrow under the comforter. I'm getting up early to help in the Atrium, the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd space at my church. I hide, just for a few extra moments, store the vivid dream away for pondering, and sit up. I pull on corduroys and wriggle my toes in their silver Toms. I close my eyes and wing a prayer out for the children I'm going to meet, and the hearts they have and their arms rushing towards God.They won't sit still, I whisper to myself as we wrangle six boys between 3 and 6 onto a small red fleece blanket. They escape our soft voices and our laughter, and our repeated requests to, "Come watch Miss Hilary show you how to do this." They laugh and squeal.But then one boy, bright blond and curious, stomps across the blanket and puts his warm small self next to me, and declares, "I want to do that." And I lean in and tell him, and the two girls in their bright pinks and purples, that if they watch close, they can learn how to do this, too. And their eyes grow round and they hold their breath as I carefully scoop a small pile of white beans from one jar to another.We walk slowly into the room, measuring our steps. We trade our shoes for fuzzy socks, speak in sweeter whispers, and even the squealing boys find themselves tracing candles and crosses, sweeping and pouring, setting a prayer table and folding their hands together to talk to God.I shiver, look down at my bare feet and chipping teal nail polish, and I wonder - when was the last time I ran to God like those hurricane boys and threw myself onto the floor and scrunched my eyes shut and burst with things to tell him - bee stings and scraped elbows and pulled hair?Friends - can I ask us a hard question? Are we too proud to get that close to Him? Are we pleased that we can be so composed in church, so calm and elegant, so lovely and presentable? Are we glad for our semblances of patience and performance, of how we do each step right? Whether we be Anglicans or Presbyterians or Evangelical Free, whether ours is a house church or a great cathedral, whether it's French or Portuguese or English, have we become so concerned to approach in just this way, with just these words, these gestures, this pretty prayer, that we can't look foolish throwing leaves in the air and holding up our scraped selves for healing?"This is a special place where we get to meet with God." Ms. Allie tells the wide-eyed, upturned faces. One girl picks at her fuzzy socks, a boy rocks back and forth, close to meltdown. They pray for their small wounds, sitting cross legged on wooden mats, a candle lit and an icon of the Good Shepherd watching over us.Jesus said, "let the little children come to me." I didn't realize He meant to teach us through their unbounded, delighted half-skip, half-run, always tumbling race into His arms. I didn't realize that sometimes their crashing, hurricane love for God is the fastest way to Him.Love,hilary

to my mentor

I walked on the waterfront this weekend. My footsteps were slow, measured, taking in the new feeling of clarity, of answers after the long summer of questions and hopes. I walked, and thought of you. I thought about how it has been a while since we sat here, cups of passion tea lemonade all but abandoned at our feet, my hair flying behind me as my hands act like windmills to illustrate my point. It's been a while since I've seen you laugh and tell me to get a grip on reality.But when I called you on Friday night, curled up in my bed, and heard your, "Hey," I knew that not much had really changed, even if it's been months since that encounter with Mary in that church in Mississippi. I knew that nothing important had changed, nothing of who we are, and how we are. Maybe we're softened a little by life, certainly by grace. Maybe we both grew up a little bit, scrambled over mountains and out onto open plains. I know we had deserts and I know we had hurricanes (we both know if God didn't send them to me, I was sure as heck going to make some of my own). I also know we had rainfall and manna and provision.I walked on the boardwalk in complete silence. I went into the Book Rack and browsed for an hour, because I knew I was lonely and needed to be with words. I bought this funny book called, The Lover's Dictionary, that's a love story told as entries in a dictionary. Alphabetical and everything. It's brilliant, and it felt at home with me. I bought two cupcakes - this hazelnut one I'd never seen before, and the raspberry vanilla one that's always been my favorite. I carried the pink box back to my car like a silent promise that I'd be brave and give my heart back to God, like you told me to.I don't know how to say thank you, and these words are reaching out trying to tell a story that is better told through other things - like beaches and waterfronts and cupcakes, like humidity and fear and courage and wine - but you know that sometimes I write to remember, or to say thank you, or just to remind me that I am me. Today is a little bit of all three.I hope that carpet glue story STILL makes you laugh because it's so epically Hilary that if it was the only story you heard this year you would know it was me.I hope you don't ever forget that hard conversation we had over pad thai my freshman year where you said, "so quit," and gave me the courage to be truthful. And now God has so covered all of the journey in grace that I'm being confirmed in a few weeks and going to confession for the first time soon. And it's still all a mystery.I hope you soak in those highlands and lakes and the rich air of Scotland. I hope you let it feed you. I hope you come back full to overflowing.I don't think wisdom is about the things you know anymore. I think wisdom is how you dwell with what you have been given. How you understand it, learn from it, cherish it, release it - how the one life you have becomes the bottomless well from which you give life to others.You taught me that.Next time I see you, let's go for a walk on that boardwalk with those cupcakes. I can't wait to discover what else you have to teach me.Love,hilary

dear hilary: when it isn't okay, it still is

Dear Hilary,My question is silly, maybe, but real. I read you and I'm wondering, where does wisdom come from?Love,just curiousDear just curious,To answer your lovely question:From God. From the woods after a long day. From aching with laughter and with pain in the same night. From a brother who asked me to bake with him last night and whose sweet smile brought me out of myself. From the moment when you say, "Jesus?" in the trembling voice and He says, "Yes."From getting on your knees in the dirt.From the millionth mistake in the same direction.From everything you learn you cannot do.From being forgiven.From sitting on your bed reading Rilke and then curling up and crying silently because you want to be that wise and you know you aren't, you want to accept sadness and you keep trying to force it out, you want to begin and be vast and write poetry and love earnestly and all of the rest... but you're small and still and you spilled carpet glue on yourself and you can't seem to make heads or tails of this new brave world.From trusting people when they say they love you.From waiting.From unrequited love.From writing letters to yourself on Wednesdays and more from the wiser people who whisper to you that it's okay not to know the answer.Where does wisdom come from, sweetheart? From a heart overwhelmed with love for the One who makes all things new. From asking Him hard questions. From waiting for Him - more than watchmen for the morning. Love,Hilary