back!

guys! well, it's been. . . a while. a long, good while. in fact, most of us have seen each other since and had holidays and babies (go richies!) and good new years and stuff.

here at the academy, things have been incredible and busy. i've played hymns with francis collins, hung out with os guinness, taught class on gilead, and, saving the best for last, played music with jen. i also bought a plane ticket for keith's wedding, so anybody involved in that, i can't wait to see you.

the real push to post again has sprung out of the lavish love (i thought about just saying loveish, but it didn't sound right) shown to me on (and around) my birthday by my friends here and abroad. yall are unbelievable.

this description won't quite cover it, but i just have to try. (and no, i will not compare this to a surprise party at homewood park. not gonna do it.)

well, it all started with the traditional birthday blessing at matins by two other guys in the group, picking out verses either appropriately descriptive or encouraging. one of them was Ecclesiastes 9:7 "Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favors what you do." ha ha, spot on. but seriously it was pretty great.

then we had breakfast with who else but os guinness, great (x 1 or 2) grandson of the guinnesses and severely smart Christian thinker. after that was a scheduling meeting (that's not part of it but still very important (business time anybody?)). interspersed throughout the day were phone calls from friends and fam. the highlights of those were john and kristen. i talked to john for an hour and it cost him about 7 peanuts; i talked to kristen for about 5 minutes and it probably cost her 7 meals. but thanks for calling and facebooking everybody, it was awesome.


so the real party started at 3:30. we all piled into the 15-passenger family van on the way to a mystery location. where would we go for my birthday but to a winery! so we had wine and cheese and a tour, and it was fun.

but the real killer part of the whole day came with dinner. oh dang. my friends miriam and hannah made a meal worth freaking royalty, that was sensitive to my carb-free preferences. there were something like 11 or 12 courses, i dunno i lost count. but here's what i remember:



why, yes, that is a portobello pizza with pesto, freshly grated mozzarella, roasted red peppers and a basil leaf! and, yes, that is a roasted vegetable salad (complete with one of my new favorites, parsnip) on a bed of spinach with some wonderful carvings of plump, juicy turkey, all rounded off with a generous helping of acorn squash.
and no, i still don't know how to appropriately respond. next were oysters (of course; no photo though). and i think there was one other thing before the carb-killing dessert:


haha, yes, that's a fancy cheese plate, complete with havarti, fontina, goat, gouda, manchego and a garnish of dried cranberries (what is this world i live in?) add some cab sav (just enough, mind you) and a LOT of dove dark chocolate (actually legit on the diet), and you're done, right? right? wrong.


oh yea. honey, brie, and an oh-so-beautifully-arranged pear slice, on homemade puff pastry. you gotta be kidding me. wow.

so if i can't have my birthday with the family (memphial or alma material), i can't think of any better way this could have gone than it did, with all 15 of us around the table for two hours of talking and laughing, and maybe a little singing. priceless.

well, to end my multimedia birthday blog (exciting!), i leave you all with a photo of the group.

oh yea, and i really, really love you guys. and miss you, actively, with prayer and pain and joyful hope in God's direction (and reintersection!) of our futures. as our old country music station might put it, "cryin', lovin', leavin', or laughin'." hmm, that hits the spot.

back in khaki!

(i got new pants on friday. they are flannel-lined.)

wow, it's been so long since i had anything good to say, or at least any good way to say it. i hope someone still comes across this even though it's been inactive for so long.

so how's everybody doin? i hope well, and i can't wait for hope to become reality when we (a lot of us) see each other at ryan and kara's wedding.

so the biggest situation since the last post was the trip to northern ireland. awesome. brian and i met up in newark and flew over for a week or so to see john, erin, dwight, and emily. if i've gotta miss family thanksgiving, that's the way to do it, and i think the interns felt similarly. it was an incredible week and i think mutually encouraging for all involved.it's one of those situations where the vague notion you have of what someone's new life looks like becomes finally more real. we went to dublin and the coast, and the weather, whether (ha) crappy or great, was just right, in its own way.

the rest of events here are too numerous to try and outline, as with anyone's life, but suffice it to say that the fellowship is great, challenging, affirming, and fun.

i miss you guys.

journal:

True Lies (starring Zhe Gubernator!)

(Just kidding about the title. And if you have no idea what I’m talking about, don’t worry about it.) I’ve lived a large portion of my life based largely on the large idea that Truth can be found in the lies of authors, screenwriters (playwrights, a little), and songwriters. In countless moments and ways, God has proven able to utter this often-unpronounceable Truth to me through these unwitting preachers – enter Ryan Adams, Ray LaMontagne, and Walt Whitman, among plenty of others. I wish I could write a letter to each of these people and tell them how they’ve ministered to me these past few years, helping me mourn the loss of all the girls I never had. I use the issue of relationships just because there haven’t been any compelling songs written on jelly donuts, internet stupidity, comfortable couches, or any of the other things I struggle with. As G. K. Chesterton says, “The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.”

But somewhere in the midst of my loving to hurt with these mournful brethren (and sistren, Patty can come along, too), I began to let my regard for the Truth meld with my regard for its media. The beauty of the music and the nearly prophetic resonance of the words mystified me into stopping there. I became somewhat convinced that soaking up, studying, and poring over the Truth I saw in these works functioned as a kind of substitute for feasting on the real Truth, the real Prophet, the real Word. I think I may have had a ratio system of sorts where, say, seven “Slow Motion”s equaled one psalm, or maybe three “Missed My Chance”s, just because Griffin House is a Christian and David Gray’s not.

The reality, though, is that meditation on the best, most beautifully composed, most deeply evocative creation doesn’t itself fit into setting my mind on the “things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God” or “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable…any excellence…anything worthy of praise.” Now don’t get me wrong, when it’s between a Shane Barnard song and “The Shadowlands,” I’ll pick Ryan Adams 98 times out of a hundred, and often enough for spiritual reasons. But for all the good these pointers can do in sending me to the Source, they can never speak to save me. For every affirming groan they deserve, they cannot themselves win my deepest parts. Those places must be reserved for Christ alone.

All of that being said, my life still stands as a “Yeah, but…” to this whole idea.

wilmore: takin it to the skreets

title? i dunno, we're trying to think up ideas for an album. any input is greatly appreciated. anyway, merry beth morris came in town this weekend to see jen and me; it was really great. we hung out in dc friday night, and then they came out to see the op on saturday. we went out to dinner with some of the fellas (all of whom where girls), and i think mb got a better feel for what the heck this place is about. at any rate, it was great to spend time together as a band and really hone our skills (right). we played music all night saturday, like from 8 or 9 till 2ish (i think). it was incredible, a little slice of northern ireland (the real thing in 11 days! minus everyone else, though).

so now it's monday, and things are picking up at the lodge and with class again. so if you have a little time, pray about my QRE (our like big research thing) and discernment about next year (which it seems like most all of us need).

here's the journal from this week; i wrote it at 4am last night, so i haven't been too pumped about it. but everybody thought it was kinda funny at least. it's about the director's kids, noah (4) and asher (2). they're hilarious, and you should come meet them. love you guys.


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"Do It Again!"

Who in the world could have guessed it, but one of my favorite pastimes here has become taking care of the two small children who live in the barn. Noah and Asher have me hooked, I think, and particularly so after having reread “The Ethics of Elfland” in Chesterton’s Orthodoxy. On Thursday Hannah and I babysat the kids again and spent copious amounts of time just proving this chapter true. “It is supposed that if a thing goes on repeating itself it is probably dead; a piece of clockwork,” he writes. Of course, he immediately dismisses this supposition, “for the variation in human affairs is generally brought into them, not by life, but by death…The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction…The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy…Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again!’; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.”

Ok, enough quotes. Noah and Asher love hide-and-seek like I love my Larrivée. It’s amazing. For seventeen minutes straight on Thursday, Asher would make me count to ten and then find him. He was in the closet every time. He never changed anything about the routine. The counting to ten part took, well, about ten seconds (wild guess); finding Asher took no time at all. It took maybe three seconds for him to exclaim, “You found me!” each time, followed by “My hide; you count.” So 17 minutes divided by 15ish seconds is 68. Ish. I played an identical game of hide-and-seek 68 times. And Chesterton’s right; as sad as I am to admit after reading about elfland, I quit way before Asher showed any signs of slowing.

Hide-and-seek is one of those areas of human existence where “the variation …[was] brought in…by death,” when “they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden” and “hid themselves from the presence of the Lord” (Gen 3:8). Death has robbed from us the glee of being found and replaced it with fear of being found in our sin. Asher hasn’t felt this Death yet, or at least he doesn’t know it as such. But the reversal in this is that “God is strong enough to exalt in monotony.” He never tires of searching us out even when we’re always wallowing in the same places. His smile at the finding never fades, and our delight at finding him faithful shouldn’t either.

No Work!

hey guys. i'm off at the lodge until sunday, so this could be a really chill and productive week. (what? the word 'productive' used in a positive sense? who is this mysterious blog writer and what have you done with will weir?!?) i just got off of a very short but encouraging phone call with kristen; she's still rocking. i'm gonna see if the peace corps has any other openings because it really kind of sounds fun. sort of. yea.

well, we got back to journals this week, and here's what's been kind of consuming my mind for the last week or so. hope it finds you well and that you find it encouraging, interesting, or at least pleasantly dull. just kidding. if you, the person reading this, and i aren't caught up with each other, let's talk, yea? yall take care now.

ps - ryan adams with jen tomorrow. boo-yah. (obstructed view. snap.)

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It Started as a Prayer

(So I’ll keep it that way; this is all what I wrote in my brand new legal pad Monday.) Right now, what seems to be a source of some stress (maybe more perceived than real) in my relationships with the community is this issue that you do all things to your glory, that your glory is the utmost cause and quality of your existence. I also believe that, because of your nature – that you are love, and that you’re kind, beautiful, good, and strong – your glory is congruent with “the good of those who love [you], who are called according to [your] purpose.”

I readily confess my propensity to get behind a cause, an argument, and to leave that somehow removed from the fact that you are Person (!); you are not proposition. So take me off of my soapboxes that would merely defend me, my past, and my mind, and help me come to know the truth directly from you and from your Scripture. Because I do believe it’s true. I believe in your love and goodness enough that your hunger, your ownership of your glory doesn’t scare me. But sensitize me even greater to this love and goodness. Help me understand your heart for the nations, your heart for the Church, your heart for individuals, and your heart for me.
Please protect me from serving myself by having a lens on the text from Piper or Edwards.

Isaiah 43:6-7 – “…bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory…”

Isaiah 48:9,11 – For my name’s sake I defer my anger, for the sake of my praise I
restrain it for you that I may not cut you off…For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.

2 Cor 3:7-9 – Now if the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses’ face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end, will not the ministry of the Spirit have even more glory? For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory.

Throughout all of human history, God works to his own glory by redeeming/loving his people to himself. In the Old Testament, the means is the Law’s revelation, condemnation, and conviction of sin with the hope of a Messiah. Paul calls this “the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone,” which still “came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses’ face because of its glory.” But this glory was “being brought to an end (v. 11),” making way for the new, beautiful glory of the “ministry of the Spirit.” And all of this is accomplished through the surest definition of love we have: Romans 5:8 – “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us;” 1 John 4:7 – “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins;” 1 John 3:16 – “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us…”. So how else are we to know love other than by God’s seeking and displaying his glory in our salvation? As John tells us earlier in this epistle, “your sins are forgiven for his name’s sake (v 12)”. And how great this God is, who is more glorified in the strength of his love than in the strength of his hand.

woohoo!

nope, no good reason for the celebratory title, none particular anyway. today's the first straight up cold, gray day we've had. it's kind of strangely cheerful; maybe it just feels like it's getting ready to inaugurate the Christmas season or something. i'm at this independent, locally owned, small coffee shop (that was for pat) in st. michael's, about fifteen minutes from our place. this is the first time in my life, i think, that i've gone to a place consistently enough to finish off one of those cards where they punch a hole every time you get something, so you get a free drink or whatever. i gotta tell ya, it's a really good feeling.

well, there weren't any journals for class this week because we had kind of a crazy weekend, and we're in the middle of life stories. i gave mine in class yesterday. the problem with life stories is that they're an hour and a half long, so the whole time you feel like you've got tons of time left, until the last minute. and what happened last in my life? you. i got to the family, well, senior year, with like 12 minutes left, and that's just not justice, not at all. so i hoped to repair it a little here, and just say some things ya know?


the overarching narrative of my life up to this point takes an incredible turn in you. here's what i mean: life since i can remember has been some sort of self-preserving, self-serving caution that flees the danger of real relationship for the familiarity of friendship that requires no real interdependence. that's a simplistic statement, kind of, and one that doesn't do complete justice to some really significant and close relationships from high school and early college, and the best of these friendships have continued to grow into more complete ones, so they're part of this, too. but it's true overall, and in my former safe isolation my heart was ice, i mean rock-hard ice.

and then God introduced us all to each other, or rather re-introduced us, as brothers and sisters, and i wanted to tell them yesterday all of the warmth you brought me (i wanted to use the phrase 'the bunsen burner of love,' but that's just weird right?). in you, in the substance of our community that welcomed, loved, encouraged and appreciated (though with its share of deficiencies, i admit), i was melted of (a lot of) my hardness. all of the biblical imagery of hearts of stone being turned into hearts of flesh became reality in my tears (which were rare till then anyway), tears that i could finally cry for the pain (and joy!) of others, not just for my own. after striving so hard for my own gain, my own satisfaction, after treating people as means and not as family, God gives us that joy in striving for the joy of those around us, of the Church, particularly. "for i felt sure of you all, that my joy would be the joy of you all." - 2 cor 2:3.

i love you guys; hope to see you soon.

how yall durrin?

it's sunday night here at the OP. all is well, and quieted down since the guests have all been gone for a little bit. dawn, our super intense chef at the lodge gave me two A's for my shifts on Friday, so i'm pretty much on cloud nine. i was convinced she hated me, at least professionally. but now things are looking up.

i'm feeling now more and more like i'm doing a poor job at keeping up with everyone, and i feel bad about it. but i don't feel bad about it in a way that assumes that people need to hear from me in order to be ok or something like that; i know that's not true. i feel bad about in a way that feels like ingratitude and cutting myself out of a community that i need. because it's true, i do need you and i am thankful for you, and to you.

anyway, here's my journal for the week if anybody still stops by here. i love ya

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The Answer to Everything in the Universe (or something)

After class the other day (as most days), I was thinking about how ridiculous it might seem for someone who was just sitting in. It might look like we just talk and talk for an hour and a half and end with bigger questions than when we began, because I don’t know if I’ve ever left class with an “answer” to the day’s topic, a new sentence or phrase to use as a response in the “real world.” But that’s ok: Gilead to the rescue again. At the end of a discussion similar to those in class (though this one on a topic perhaps even more convoluted: predestination (aaahh!!)), the wise (Presbyterian) minister Boughton, crooked with arthritis and bent with the weight of old pain is asked for his conclusions on the issue: “[No conclusions] that I can remember,” he says. “To conclude is not in the nature of the enterprise.”

I think he’s right. We can’t come to the table in class, or anywhere really, and expect to leave with a tidy position on things. In fact, after having my presuppositions unsettled in discussion, I often leave class feeling frustrated and exhausted from trying to wrap my arms around nothing more than a dense fog. But it’s not just fog; there’s something irresistibly More there. I think it’s Spirit, which is even more elusive than the fog and a thousand times more real.

The reality and singularity of this Spirit doesn’t make him any easier to pin down. I’m reminded of Augustine’s string of God-exalting paradoxes: “most merciful and most just, deeply hidden yet most intimately present…immutable and yet changing all things, never new, never old…always active, always in repose, gathering to yourself but not in need…you cancel debts and incur no loss” (5). God really is all of these things, but he is not only any one. As soon as I’ve labeled him “just,” I’m reminded of the mercy of sunshine and friendship and, above all, the canceling of my debt, none of which I deserve. As soon as I try to enclose him in “mercy,” he’s tearing my ears open to the whole creation, “subjected to futility…groaning together in the pains of childbirth” as he floods my city or my friend’s biopsy comes back with terrible news.

So you can’t cage a Spirit, but you can’t ignore him either. All of this round-table grappling, this searching for that Person in the middle of the paradoxes, might never get us closer to an “answer,” but that’s “not in the nature of the enterprise.” We aren’t merely resigning ourselves to some vain pursuit of articulating the inexplicable; we’re being enthralled by the one great Question into a life of losing ourselves in that Mystery. We’re not trying to catch a butterfly in a net; we’re moths trying to break into the light bulb.

i don't even know what to say

man, last week was exhausting in as many ways as i can even think of. as always, class and conversation here have been heavy, in a good way usually, just heavy. i've had a lot of fun, more than i deserve, and i've been in and out of the city more times than i really ever want to be in such a short time. honestly, events all kind of blur.

what really sits kind of above everything else is the kristen going to ethiopia fiasco. yup, it's an official fiasco. kind of like jen junior, a mini version of their goodbye; that's probably a good way to put it, maybe. anyway a tough farewell, but remarkably good.

ok so i really just wrote everything before now to have something to put above my journal for this week which is really about the same thing anyway (saying goodbye again, on saturday) because i'm just so tired of thinking that only one thing can be on my mind at any particular time. 

but man i miss you guys, so bad.

Romans 2:4 

It’s amazing the kinds of things in life that can lead you to repentance. Usually it’s a tragedy or some other sort of pain that awakens you to your contribution to the plague that sin is in the world. The pastor in Gilead says that even the word “transgression” is legalism in itself; “Transgression is an open wound on the heart of humanity” (very roughly quoted, Ali’s got my copy). That may be a bit strong, but his point is made. A single sin is only the symptom of the disease, the cough of a lung cancer patient. But it’s not always trauma or mourning that can lead you there, to where you feel conviction. Sometimes it’s something incredibly good; sometimes blessing works to open our eyes to sin.

In case you hadn’t noticed, I had a friend move to Ethiopia on Saturday (she’s the one who was over here because she was on the way to Ethiopia; I might have mentioned her). And so this week, kind of the whole week, included the ordeal of saying goodbye to her, which was made particularly difficult because there’s just no frame of reference for two years. I mean, you can’t just let “I’ll see you in two years” be the last thing you say to somebody, right?

But goodbye makes you face some things, too. Sometimes you try to think of people in terms of the sum of what they’ve meant to you for the whole time you’ve known them, but that never works. Then maybe you try working through some sort of highlight reel in your head, memories and such, but eventually that falls kind of short too. So maybe you’re left with this kind of beaming sense of gratitude and love and some sadness and really nothing to do with it. You kind of become overwhelmed with the significance of the moment and the person and try (fruitlessly) to find some fitting way to explain and mirror the immense blessing that the person’s been to you.

And if that weren’t enough, when she comes to visit you in your new life, your new place, the thirteen friends you’ve only just made embrace her like a sister. They show interest and sensitivity and kindness. They include and offer and invite. They bear the weight of the distance between close friends. And then they surround her at sunset, after feeding her like an honored guest, and pray for her, the closest thing to a sending church. Every single hand on her shoulder I felt on mine; every single hug after going together to the Father, I received too.

If for even the tiniest measurement of time I accidentally thought I’d done something to deserve this, the cross flashed in my mind bearing my due penalty. To receive community in life instead of loneliness, family instead of isolation, and love instead of banishment – this is gift, not reward. And it applies a soothing balm to that wound we keep ripping open.