Writing a Feather

I sometimes don't write a blog post simply because I don't feel like I have anything worth writing.  Yet, to be obedient in exercising gifts, I will write.  I feel nothing heavy-  yet perhaps, to accurately monitor my life, I must occasionally write a feather, and seek to follow the Spirit in it.

I've fancied fireflies for a long time.  I never thought to crushed them, to paint with their bio-luminescing smear.  I trapped them, yes, and many died in my grandmother's mason jars.  But I didn't mean to-  usually I just forgot that they were there.  Which, I think, is quite apt in illuminating their importance to me in the past year.  In the midst of doubt and anxiety and fear, fireflies often brought me great comfort.  When I doubted my desire for simple beauty, when I feared I had lost all ability to find goodness, much less desire it, fireflies reminded me of truth.  I could look at them and remember joy, almost taste it.  I'd sit outside trying to pray, trying to feel anything, looking for something heavy, something tangible, something weighty, and would be feeling nothing.  Which often feels like doubt, or worse, abandonment. And then, outside of Parkwest, over the wild blackberries and behind the volleyball courts, a single firefly.  Or two, or a half dozen.  In the peak, maybe thirty at a time.  Flashing, blinking like eyes in the branches of the pine trees.

And now they have returned, flashing in the loblollies arching over my grandmother's driveway.  I don't catch them now, at least, not to keep.  Mostly I turn off my headlights and try to follow the deep ruts of Mimi's chalky driveway, looking up, waiting for them to reveal themselves.

Questions on my mind:

I am wrestling with community and leadership, what does it mean to be filled and to pour out?  Can they happen simultaneously?  Do they require different communities, one in which to receive and one in which to give? 

And seeking housing for next year.  Is it wrong to live more residents to a house than the law allows?  It's a silly brothel law, outdated and ignored.  Yet it still stands, with authority and right to punish.

Maturity:  What makes one ready to disciple others?

Disciples:  how do you call them in an environment in which no one is looking?

How can God use a program-centric church to His glory, blessing them profoundly, while still seemingly leading us back to a desperate reliance on the Spirit?

Why have no muskmellon's sprouted in my garden?

Some spontaneous poetry:

Don't look away.  The end is not yet here; I will show you more.
For the depths of relationship come in the looking, staring into anothers' eyes,
much more than staring at their hands or their feet,
and certainly more than staring at yours.
There is a dancing in the eyes that we cannot free into our words,
into our motions and movements.
The eyes cannot be measured or followed,
or challenged, or analyzed.
You can find in them no literature,
no lists or memorable quips.
They speak of very little certainty,
but of one looking back,
and there is hope.
Don't look away, for I see you,
and you are not far from me.