Brick Laying

Recently written, just now posted.....now that we are out of hibernation...

Hello dear person. I hope this finds you well. 

Today life is a written letter.  More like a letter than most days, and I don't know why. 

Maybe it's because despite life and the living of it, I'm learning things in the quiet, outside of recent storms.   I cannot seem to get away from a faraway feeling that is healthy, good, boxing me in.  That this is what introverts do well, and an extrovert like me takes longer to learn.  

God is talking to me about life in feeling far away, and also in conversation with people I know best.

I'm reading a lot, writing a lot, praying a lot, stepping back, getting the good feeling of 'impression' on my life.  Like something good is being pressed onto the shape of my life. 
I think this is called heart work.   I find it lately in me. 

But, reader, before that whole 'reading a lot, writing a lot, praying a lot' vibe gets anywhere close too lofty and abstract to you, let me just say this.  

It has brought me to the end of myself. 



And when I face the story of Jesus before anything else, I feel this stronger than ever in my heartbeat and breath and bones.  I'd call it the joy-filled, sometimes pain-filled, radical, 'I die daily' kind of lens Christians are called to have about the world.  

'Glorious ruin', once really really believed, means quite a lot.  I am a 'glorious ruin', which means it's not about me, and there's more to everything than I first think.  It makes me softer and less vile and rude and horrible in a lateral way.  It shows me my sin, which at first, let's be honest, really sucks but in the end is really good.

All week long I've been listening to the Head and the Heart, specifically my favorite, their quintessential 'Lost in My Mind'.  I've written the lyrics to the chorus down on paper in my own handwriting to remind me of this in a very personal way. And I have put this paper on my desk.  Ever close in the working hours. 

How's that brick laying coming?   
How's your engine running?
Is that bridge getting built? 
Are your hands getting filled?

Won't you tell me my brother?
Cause there are stars up above. 
We can start moving forward. 

Sometimes the things I have to do in my daily life, as a 'glorious ruin' kind of a person, feels like laying bricks.  Sometimes that's all that middle school seems to be.  Or maybe the 20s? 

So I seem to be changing, and living much much closer to this.

But the question, the feeling, the change, comes most often through (no surprise here) words.  Words like 'refashioned' and 'rebuilt' come to mind.  I MYSELF am being refashioned and rebuilt.  My scattered mind, my astonished heart, my new pace for each day of life has been evidence of this for a while now.  I write about this today because it's the lens through which I see everything these days.  Change.  Inside and outside of circumstance and the living of my daily life. 

What words are settling around you?