Golden Ground

Over two months it has been since the school year started, and we're riding the coattails of fall.  The last of the trees are blushing as they take of their clothes, the air is dry and crispy as the leaves, and the people of Holland are sporting their flannel with newfound gusto.  Everything is golden, from the leaves to the drinks to the smiles on familiar faces.  Nature celebrates the end of a good year with fireworks and harvest before the coming cold.

Of all the seasons I think I underestimate Fall the most.  Perhaps it's because the water's too cold to swim and there's no snow to board on.  Yet every year I am surprised by how much I enjoy this season.  Chapel mornings find me waking up before the dawn to play music with the people I love.  The special hatred reserved solely for the morning alarm is short lived, and before long I'm riding down the street and through the sleepy campus.  I find my favorite part of the day over a yellow mug and fresh sunshine as it spills over the horizon, music still swelling in my chest.  I am in the best of company these days.

Yet in the midst of gold and gladness, I am reminded by the falling leaves of the fragility of these times.  Classes are getting harder.  I am learning more and more about who my friends are, their strengths, their foibles.  The giddiness of summer has faded, and some things that seemed so bright and green and alive have turned dry, only to fall to the wayside.  Indeed it is here in this season that we learn what's going to last, what's going to win through to Spring.  Fall teaches a lesson in permanence.  Our days are so precious.  All of Hope grieves yet another tragic loss of one of our own.  An early morning phone call throws me out of bed.  My dad passes out behind the wheel on his way to Holland, veering off the road and into the trees at highway speeds.  What shock!  What pain!  What heartbreak!  How crushing is the weight of grief!  What words can we speak?

I hold to but one hope, one blessed assurance, one unshakeable bastion of strength in the midst of fragility and brokenness.  It is the one who spoke into the silence, and even now speaks into ours.  It is the one who knows and loves.  I remember the words of Paul: "For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Ro 8: 38-39).  And this is not the love of some robed geezer looking down from a heavenly cloud.  This is the love of a God rich with thick, raw, incomparable goodness.  This God grieves with us, weeps with us, and longs for the day when we will see him face to face.  It is this God who saw my father safely home.  It is this God who embraces us as we mourn.  It is this God who guides us in the depths of darkness, and it is this God who in time brings us out of darkness and into the glory of a new dawn.  He is the one whose promises are sure and whose faithfulness never wavers.  He is the one who longs to bless us beyond our wildest dreams.

What joy!  What promise!  Frosty air and hot cider!  In these we can celebrate fall.  Goodness wins the day and I am shot through with it, giddy to the bones.

Waking

Holland Michigan has many faces.  In the fall the trees blush as people don hats and flannel.  Winter's drifts of snow promise to turn pulling out of a driveway into a game of chicken and a drive down the block into an adventure.  Parades march along eighth street in spring while the venders proffer various delicious methods of clogging your arteries, all in the name of the rows upon rows of the flowers that line the streets.  I've watched as Holland has worn these different masks for a few years, but the one I had never seen is the one she wears during the summer.  That is, until 2011.

Come June Holland sheds its mobs of tourists and street vendors as the delirium of Tulip Time fades with May, only to come back again with Independence Day.  Thursday sees 8th street closed down as magicians, musicians, and other performers flaunt their respective skills, winning the occasional dollar or fist of change.  Finding a secluded place on the beach (or parking, for that matter) becomes nigh impossible with the masses sporting their skin and swimwear.  Everywhere you look the trees stand full and proud, wrapped in the green of mature leaves.  The smell of the neighbors charcoal grill wafts through my window, a tease.  The sun shows his face with a gladness and generosity reserved only for these middling months.

Amidst these blessings however a profound change takes place.  Hope, this place that I adore, falls asleep.  Many students remain through May and June taking summer classes, some even to July.  Eventually even they leave, and Hope becomes silent.  Buildings dedicated to the arts, sciences, humanities, and even our beloved Dimnent become silent, empty save for the occasional professor or maintenance worker.  As I walked past them I realized that they have ceased to hold great meaning, becoming little more to me than blocks of stone, brick and glass.  This is Hope in slumber, a house whose curtains are drawn and whose family is gone.  There is a lesson in this.  Chapels of stone and groves of pine in and of themselves do not fill the soul.  Vast structures built for knowledge are not sources of learning.  Hope lives and breathes in the lives of its students, of its faculty and staff.  Hope is nothing without its people.

But now another change comes.  I can feel Hope's heartbeat again.  The sores and stiffness of long sleep are being stretched and smoothed away as buildings are readied for the coming year.  Every now and then I see new faces filling dorms, patrolling the sidewalks and sitting in the grove.  Music, fresh, strong, and life-giving rings out from the windows and open doors of Dimnent.  My soul grows eager for the chapel be filled again, to hear the chorus of my people.  There is a richness that God has grown in this place.  I feel it stirring in my guts.  My arms tremble with it, this gladness.  My lungs are full of lion's-breath.  Good is coming, good words and good work and good people.  May it come all the more swiftly.

Sunbath

A few days ago I sat with a dear friend on the corner of 9th and College.  We hadn't planned to meet.  It's summer, and LJ's grinds some good beans.  What other reason do you need?  So with mugs in hand we talked, surfed, and read to each other.  She and I have been good friends for a few years, so it didn't take very long before we opened our bags of dirt, both spoken and written.  Included was a journal of sorts she's been writing over the summer.  It was crass and it was awkward, but it was real.  Dirt is dirty after all.  She admitted that she was an idiot, that she mistreated her parents, that she had been stupid.  She had hurt people and it hurt her.  She hasn't told the whole truth.  She's afraid of life after Hope community.  She's afraid of what happens when people are people with people.  She's afraid of losing a friend.  The summer's been good and bad to her, just as she's been good and bad to those around her.  I laughed as I read.  I laughed because her dirt is my dirt.

Every once in a while I see a glimpse of how similar we all are.  My friend and I are different, just as everyone is different from everyone else, yet we are both human.  We share the same woes, the same fears, the same joys, the same hopes.  I don't deserve my family.  I disappoint my professors.  I am satisfied with mediocrity.  I keep terrible secrets.  I break the laws of my country and I grieve the Holy Spirit.  With my deeds I spit in the face of my God.  I am a crooked soul.

Yet, there is Grace.

And Mercy.

The mold that would bind us to wickedness was broken by an utterly selfless expression of these two things. Chipped and cracked as we are, Grace and Mercy are making us whole again.  We constantly fall short, but Grace and Mercy span the distance.  The dirt caked on our hands and on our feet and over our eyes threatens to soil everything we touch, yet Grace and Mercy wash us clean, and we can work to mend the brokenness around us.  This is the power of the Gospel.  Take heart, my friend.  Don't let the dirt mar the sight of the good that is being done in and through you.  Remember what we know to be true and make that knowledge your foundation, your bastion of strength.  Take in the beauty of these days with open eyes and open lungs, letting the sun bathe your skin, and let joy rule over your heart.

and down we go

Two days ago I sat at the community table in Lemonjello's coffee, sipping fresh Mind, Body and Soul from their trademark yellow mug.  My open macbook displayed the usual emails, facebook postings, and comic updates as my headphones played the tunes of Bon Iver, Bon Iver, barely out of the shrink wrap.  Eventually I found myself reading something that doesn't grace my screen often enough: a blog.  More specifically, the blog of a writer friend.  To be honest calling her work a blog leaves a funny taste in my mouth.  Her work seems more like a letter, a postcard from a fellow traveler for any and all who would read it.  She writes with sincerity and a big heart, doing so with clarity and grace that you would be hard-pressed to find among many our age.  Her prose is the sort of thing that makes your limbs feel light as a clean breeze on a day soaked with sunshine, or a cup spilling over with cool drink, waking you up to the infinite possibilities that a day brings.  After reading her latest entry I felt that draught stirring in my guts.  I found myself thinking "I really like this.  I want this.  I want this for other people.  I want to do this for people."  Whether or not I'm writing this blog simply as a response or as the awakening of a dormant desire to write for others, I don't know.  I've toyed with the idea of writing a one before, but the papers and projects and practice and concerts and all the other else that holds our attention during the school year shouted it down.  But two days ago was June, today is July, and today is as free as the sky is wide.

And so I give you the red wagon.  Why a wagon?  If you're a Calvin and Hobbes fan, you might get the reference.  More often than not, the longer philosophical discussions had between Calvin and his tiger friend take place in a little red wagon, careening down alarmingly steep hills at breakneck speeds, dodging trees and falling into the occasional gully, creek, or patch of sticker bushes.  As unlikely a place as it is, that little wagon is their platform, their forum, their vehicle for hearing and being heard.  This blog is my wagon.  Where will it take us?  Who knows?  Anything could be waiting behind the next tree, over the next hill, across the next creek.  We have only to step out and trust that whatever happens, it is for good.  So strap on your dungarees and grab your safari hats, 'cause we're going adventuring.