The Deeper things...

There are things floating around me lately that defy words...

Lyrics from an as yet unrecorded song by Jacob and Lily that I heard at a couple of their shows a few months back... "...I heard that if I sold it all and bought a field I'd find myself a treasure..."

Lyrics from Jason Upton's song "You Decide What's Beautiful": "...You live in the tension, live in the tension, live in the tension of creation... you decide what's beautiful, you decide what's glorious... you're funny like that, you will not be controlled... way beyond men, way beyond our ideas... you live in the tension... you come to the broken, you live with the broken..."

Thoughts from an invitation I received this week, and from posts on Kirk's blog this last week or two...

A growing sense of expectation, coupled with a growing desire to spend time in quiet waiting.

A growing need to engage in the world - to engage in issues of justice, to care for the environment, to love on those in the "gutters" of the world.

A desire to make pilgrimage. To walk and pray and listen at various places around the globe.

A need to spend time with those people who make me most myself, most free to walk in the things of depth that God has placed in me.

A need to be in the mountains. I have tentative plans for two separate weekends over the course of this month. One on my own, staying with some friends, time for retreating, hiking, reading, and refocusing. One as a part of a gathering of people who pray.

A fascination with engagement with culture and politics, but from a place of separation. Engagement and separation...hmmm.... (see this post and particularly the article it links to, from earlier this week.)

I find myself very glad for a week away from the concerns of the office, the politics, the tension. A week to allow myself to once again rest and breathe. To spend time with family, and time at a conference for leadership development. To celebrate my birthday, and the birthdays of some others. To think and pray, and wait and wonder... That's where I'm at on this Friday morning.