practice

All The Emotions

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

-Louis MacNeice

i. The Housemate who is no longer My Housemate is getting married on Saturday, and I am Feeling Many Things: happy, and nostalgic, and wistful, and anxious. Happy because that relationship is so good, & that marriage will be too. Nostalgic because E & J were such a huge part of my life at EMU, and it is strange and hard to think of things changing, to think of growing up. Wistful because I want a relationship like that, and I feel impatient. Anxious, because I am reading a poem in their wedding, and -- well. I feel like that is self-explanatory.

ii. A boy from the church I grew up in is dying. It is unfair. It is terrifying. He will be the fourth person I know from my high school to have died of cancer before the age of 23. He is one year older than my brother. It isn't fair. It isn't right.

iii. I had coffee yesterday with one of my wandering kindred spirits who I hadn't seen in months and months. We talked for two and a half hours, walked through the city, sat in a garden, recited poetry; how good it is to be seen, to be known. 

the soul reaches, yearns

for the ungraspable, I

leaning into You. 

~~~

Marriage is like a garden, someone told me once,

years ago, before I knew anything about either one.

I am still learning, but I think it’s true; look,

watch how we take the seeds and plant them

without knowing what the summer will bring.

Maybe rain, maybe sun, maybe long stretches

of drought or even hail, who can say? No one knows

but God, and yet we plant the beans and corn and peas

in straight lines and trust that they will grow.

And each summer, somehow, they do. The green stalks

burst out of the ground as if the very earth wishes

always to be generous. It is mystery and magic.

It is faith. It is faithfulness, for the new growth now

demands work. The work feels endless:

first the weeding, then the watering, now

tying up the squash vines, now back again to weed –

and all this done in hope. We cannot see

the harvest at the start. We work in hope.

It is like this with love. We take our affection,

our desire, our dreams, all our gifts, all our faults,

and plant them in the shared ground of marriage,

trusting that new life will grow; that in some far-off

future day, after all the endless rainstorms, the countless

sunny days, the hard winters, the hot summers, we will find

that we have grown towards each other,

that our roots are entwined, that the harvest

is abundant. That there is more than enough.

more music

national poetry month: day 2

GUESS WHAT TIME OF YEAR IT IS AGAIN

that's right -- National Poetry Month!!!

i've been thinking about what i want to do for national poetry month this year, and i decided that where last year i practiced reading poems aloud, this year i should try to SING them. i'm not at all sure that i will be able to learn 30 songs that make me think of sung poetry by the end of the month, but i'm going to do as many as i can. :)

here's my first attempt:

being mennonite in baltimore

over the past few months i've heard no less than three of my close friends pause in a conversation about dating and say something like:

"... but also part of me just really wants to date a mennonite."

which is a little bit funny, because none of them were exactly raised as mennonites, and all have been or are currently in romantic relationships with non-mennonites. what is it about these mennonite boys, seriously... (someone suggested, once, that they've internalized enough messages about peace that they just seem nicer than your random american man. this may be true.)

last weekend on our way back from harrisonburg, Meg & I were talking about  the demographics of EMU and the rapidly falling % of students from an Anabaptist background. i was being a little bit alarmist but when i tried to admit that, Meg shook her head. "but i am alarmed," she said. "now i'm like, 'i have to be mennonite!'"

~

it's so difficult to explain mennonite-ness to people outside of this tiny community. i was looking up the numbers recently: in the US, there are 76 million catholics and some 150 million protestants of various denominations.

number of mennonites? 110,000, give or take a few thousand.

Meg and one of the girls in the apartment downstairs were listening to a TED talk about dating not too long ago, and she was telling me that this one computer-programmer lady had analyzed online dating sites and then written an algorithm to figure out how many compatible people she would be able to find in her city. it was some ridiculously low number, like five people in half a million, or something like that.

sometimes, living outside of the mennonite enclaves, i feel like there is no chance i will ever meet someone i'm compatible with.

~

there are things that matter more to me than 'being mennonite,' but...

but: i would really love to be in a relationship where i don't have to explain rook, or dutch blitz, or the few vestiges of pennsylvania dutch that have made it into my vocabulary. where i don't have to explain the last names; the abundance of 'yoders,' 'swartzendrubers,' 'herrs,' 'hostetlers,' 'kreiders.' where i can use the acronyms -- MCC, EMM, MDS, EMU -- without spelling them out. where i can speak in shorthand that's easily understood, the quick reference to the conferences that people grew up in as explanation for their understanding of scripture or their political leanings, for example, or the meaning behind names like Dirk Willems. or John Ruth, even, the way i've seen his book in more houses than anyone could reasonably expect. Rudy Weibe. Julia Spicher Kasdorf. all the cultural connotations buzzing around each of these names.

it's more than just a specific way of being christian, is the thing (although i will be very surprised if i end up marrying a man who doesn't consider himself a pacifist). it's a small, specific culture that i belong to, and that i want to give to the generation that follows me: knowing the harmonies to the hymnals, the mennonite game, houses with a copy of the martyr's mirror stashed away somewhere, pork and sauerkraut on new year's day,

potlucks that vary in what food is present but not in how it feels to sit around the tables with a group of people who know you and your parents and  your grandparents and quite possibly your second or third or fourth cousins. all the mennonite jokes. the cookbooks. dutch blitz tournaments with the youth group kids. church retreats where you might play a dozen games of rook in a row.

~

"so have you found a young man yet?" my grandpa asked me over christmas break.

"no," i laughed. "no, i don't have time for that." and that's true, for sure -- i don't have time to do all the things that i want to do on my own at the moment; it's impossible to imagine placing more demands on my time right now. 

but also ... part of me just really wants to date a mennonite. so it might have to wait until i move, either back to the 'burg or to lancaster; back to my mennonite enclave. ;)

Things I Am Grateful For At The End Of 2014

that I made it through another year

that I am making this “being an adult” thing work

my guitar callouses

family

that I figured out what I don’t want to spend my life doing

those apple cranberry pies I made

the Early Church email list

that that church still feels like home

games of six-handed Rook (even when I’m not dealt any trump)

the new soles on my favorite pair of boots

my plants

my housemates

hockey games

the stories I told

new friends

old friends

friends who got engaged

late afternoon sunlight

I-83 N

Christmas trees

Christmas stockings

two full popcorn tins of ornaments

Jesus ~ the reason for Christmas

the hand-knit socks I got in the mail

the letter I got in the mail signed by Wendell Berry

the blue streaks I dyed in my hair

the hour of quiet at the Quaker meeting

watching those twins grow up via facebook

my experiment with OKCupid

my singleness

the trip to the West Coast

that I survived that plane trip

attending my first academic conference

the fireplace at my parents’ place

that I have so many homes

the chance to march with protesters

people who listened to me process that march

the fleece sheets I got for Christmas

the tentative roadtripping plans for next summer

that even after four years we are still friends

that even after a lifetime we are still friends

that I have a plan

that I tried new things

that I didn’t give up

all those second chances

80s music

laughter