the edited version

you make me want to not coast and you see all these things in me that i kind of already hoped were true and truly in me. and you're so kind, gentle, thoughtful, and the people around you are so incredibly fond of you; i sort of wouldn't believe it if i hadn't seen it, how well you live. you're so gosh darn hopeful and i find it totally fascinating if a little bit scary because there's something overwhelmingly huge about all the positive energy - it won't fit in my head, not even close. but here you are and you're so very present, so impeccably sincere, and then at the same time just the tiniest bit delightfully insane.

upon reflection

dinner dates please.

developing images at the local store.

you're both really fun! now for some straight talking please.

My midnight

liminal spaces are more real, more realistic,
than those road-crossings announcing heres or theres.
beginnings and endings are pretty myths of hindsight,
a retrospective patterning of mess.
i do like this about sunny autumn days.
i like how these months point down while
springtime points inexorably up and up
(you can't wipe her smile off her face!).
the beautiful things i see are almost always dark,
greyed out like the knit on my back;
so, i guess, the in-betweens are mine -
mostly in a gorgeous fraying decay.
my mind is a racing one, a soft dark cave full
of abstractly-rendered projections and premonitions.
some passages are built up and round;
some narratives are threadbare loose.
this is ok.

Me too.

From my Sunday addiction.

i asked for you.

have you ever prayed a one-off prayer? one that you really feel and need to send out of your heart, but one that you won't repeat? because even though you really feel it you're scared to invest too much in it by making it a private liturgy.

it felt audacious but very right to tell God what i want. and now it feels right to leave it to him and to breathe. i have a beautiful freedom in Jesus - every freedom, in fact, except the freedom to deny righteousness. i feel more calm than i should about all the complicated tomorrows, and i have a funny feeling that this stillness might be the rest and repentance Jesus has been longing to give me. i hope he holds me to it.

oh - year's end.

love me love me.

update

7. i am newly clumsy.
6. i am a bursting balloon.
5. i am a disappointed future.
4. i am too far from thankful.
3. i am woefully self-indulgent.
2. i am an open bible and a closed mind.
1. i am without you.
0. i hate that that is my number 1.

Unintentionally suspended -

I'm waiting and it hurts a lot. Please hurry up.

Letters 2.

i'm looking forward to one day being able to answer 'good' when someone asks me how i am
but then again the last time i looked forward to one day it didn't work out so well

denial

a month spent in a big black cloud. so hazy i can't even think of an original metaphor.

i'm really scared, just quietly.

God says

That I have loved right.

i cannot

handle this.

a missed telephone call.

trust that as soon as it really comes to crunch time with my thesis, i look back to this neglected little interweb scrap.

the final lines of the title story in the collection i'm analysing for my thesis (or supposed to be analysing, right now) read:

"I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone's heart. I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark."

i'm having one of those hearing-heart days. the beating is conspicuous, and i can feel it - it's trapped and uptight. an ugly, tired feeling.

one unexpected offer that is as unsettling as it is exciting.
one hope for more guidance than i expect He'll give.
one hopeless wish; one love with a head full of hard and sad things that can't get out or over, and that i can't fix with all the beautiful words in the world.
one growing sense of panic at the largeness of this thing i've agreed to do.

too many ones. i know it's childish but i want you to decide and end all these, please. i'm not grown up enough for all these adult-sized dot to dots.

Obviously

We Should Always Be Together.

notes

there's room for you here
we'll work out the specifics as we go.

sleepy in the kitchen

feels like everything is tomorrow and the next day and the next and it's nice. days to look in the eye with a smile.

there is pasta cooking and it is making me excited.

Five Rules

i have made them and i am going to follow them. the rules are written with an expensive inky pen on a bright green post-it note, watching me from above my laptop screen. as of last weekend i am making myself both pupil and teacher. this is really hard for me, but that is ok. they are good for me and good for you too.

take this moment.

a kidnapping of minds from beyond our skies, a realm you refuse to recognise. you don’t know who you are or who you’re supposed to be. the light is out but you’re inside, shadow-dressed behind the curtains.

it’s a vast crowd of the missing and the blind take the lead. but i have inside a bright treasure and an invitation; i have a secret and a revolution. inside this fragile body, a jar of cracking clay. precious contents, an unfading light – the face of Christ.

i’ll take this moment and take your hand, lift the veil and show the truth. lift your eyes to the bright and unseen answers of eternity.

i’m full of exploding words, salty with the smell of promise. a plainly spoken truth for seated children and for adults tall with pride. i’ll hide myself, reveal Him, as conversation leaps to Always and Ever. this is the word of life you are desperate to hear, the secret you keep from yourself.

i'll write it down and affix a stamp, post grace to you in a white envelope. spell out the hope of life and the faith of mercy. and i’ll send some letters to busy strangers, glimpsed on trains and buses in a speedy now. a growing Kingdom through the postal system.

i’ll take this moment and take your hand, lift the veil and show the truth. lift your eyes to the bright and unseen answers of eternity.

glory dropped in a mailbox,
a forever destination.
2 corinthians 4.

speaking across the suburbs

I made a phone call to speed sleep.

Last week in history I learnt about liminality: a doorway, a threshold, an in-between space of both liberty and risk. Travelers are said to absent themselves from normal life; to step outside society and to thrust themselves into this unregulated, uncertain space.

I know that we are still just friends, and I will continue to know this until you tell me otherwise.

Some hand-written speech in my notebook, from around me today. Politely interrupting myself, shelving some errant thoughts in rough alphabetical order. I may borrow them out later.

Time? As slow as we make it, right now. A messy clock, almost marking the dates.