open homes and shared tables

Somewhere I learned that it is better to be invincible, to skip meals and stay up late and pray only on Sundays. I found it hard to be served by those I thought I ought to serve, and harder still to draw close to anyone for fear my humanity may show.
Slowly, this place is unbuilding those walls and softening my soul. This poem is a prayer, a letter, a stepping stone to a place of rest.

i do not always want to stand so far away from you

as though the charge carried in proximity would be a sort of poison and perhaps

it would destroy what little left i know of myself
to be given over to such an involved association

but perhaps the self that is brought to death will have been 
the only barrier to building life


forgive me

for the length of an arm often feels presumptuous

and the disruptions across the distance of a shout ruffle something
invasive and intimate

so if one hand stays in contact with another for a moment past utility

and the relaxation overwhelms the recoil

please, remind me that i once said
whispering hope i barely understood

that i do not
that is, i do not always
want to stand so far

away from
you

The power of open homes and shared tables overwhelms our carefully cultivated reticence. In sharing a home, meals, and prayer together as a volunteer community, we are immediately immersed in the most human, frail, and intimate aspects of each other’s lives. We are no longer simply the entertaining friends or the dependable coworkers, but real people who need to rest from work in order to eat, to pause from conversational agility in order to rest in shared silence, to step off the pedestal of self-sufficiency in order to pray to the one whose hands are stronger. We share these moments of restoration and delight in a fundamental humanity, nurturing a family of surprising resilience and fierce loyalty.

Our elderly participants invite us into a similar intimacy. It is difficult to admit that the home you take pride in providing is beyond your capacity to fix, and even more so to invite a stranger into the parts that are most in need of repair. I am honored when we are invited to dine with the people we are serving. In their invitation to enter their homes as a guest and not simply a worker, to rest a while, be nurtured by their food, and be uplifted by their prayers, we are sharing in their life as they offer it to us, not as we tell them it should be. They are allowing themselves to be seen, we are allowing ourselves time away from haste and production, and we are all able to be more human and more aware of God dwelling richly among us and in each other.

a dwelling place

home is the place where, in the dark hallway, the doorknob is right where you remember it.

two months is the longest I’ve stayed anywhere continuously in this calendar year. and with the prospect of another ten to twenty-two ahead, the question is no longer how to begin, but how to continue to dwell, to settle, to plant gardens and stay a time, allowing the work of tending to be patient and expansive, until the fruit is borne, and to seek the peace and prosperity of a land where each spoken word marks me an outsider.

unnamed


in trying to tell the Big Stories of the last two months, i have found myself drawn instead to the moments. i have a distinct memory of standing on the porch of a 100 year old home hit hard by the august floods. i had been talking with the eighty-nine year old resident between puffs on his nebulizer, an aid to breathing through his coal-black lungs. this man lives alone and has no deeper desire than to welcome us ragtag carpenters as guests in his home, to show us the love of the god who has been steadfast in the trials and abundant in the blessings.

i clasped the knife in my pocket, realizing most fundamental tool of man’s orchestration is an instrument of separation. man has always taken pride in the ability to cut away, to compartmentalize, to separate cleanly and without emotion.

this denies the work of a god who brought all things together, and then dwelt in his good work, never abandoning it, never allowing it to fall into disrepair.



the grand train of Progress built herself a waystation in these resource-rich hills, promising to one day connect with the grander Scheme of Civilization, promising that it would be worthwhile to abandon the Old Ways, the Traditions, that the bigger boxes could subsume the local business without cost, and that the golden arches could nourish far better than the pot of soup beans. but She was not committed to a long sustenance, her vision did not extend past profit, she was not patient enough for the mutually beneficial work of dwelling together. and when partnership was no longer convenient, the land and people no longer useful, she set her course for novelty and bustle and movement, creating a cold line of separation, and a people aching to see life in an abandoned train station.

creation is synthesis. but any observer of the natural world will tell you the ingredients are often disparate and suprising, and the processes more involved than we want them to be. a house, once built, must be cared for with the utmost love and attentiveness. the work of staying and caring for a place is just as vital as the burst of energy which initally Brings Together. we cannot carve out separate niches for our home, our work, and our soul, as though it were possible to move in one without impacting the others. and my heart cannot live divided between the two glorious mountain ranges it has learned to call home.

a weekend indulgence in academic and city life and music and food, filled with heightened conversations about home and place and vital connections, made more tangible the anxious walls between outsiders and insiders, between those who are pushing forward, and those who are left behind. those who do not have the luxury of choosing to participate in these conversations, for whom a weekend in the city is just as fanciful as an overnight in buckingham palace. these are the ones who are yet to receive their invitation to shape their communities beyond shoulds and imitations, to reach for the same echelons of beauty outside the confines of high society culture. these are the ones to whom we must learn to listen.


these months have been rich with the rambling sweetness of our finitude, the pungent, holy, audacity of grace in the ordinary, which speaks the love of the Father stronger than any cleverly crafted turn of phrase. i am being pared down over and over again, separated from certainty and invincibility and exceptionalism.

a fear of how far this paring down could shape me, how far this quest to shed the dragon’s scales could go, moves me away from words and reading and writing and talking and i play the same. four. chords. because at least i know the shapes and the structure provides freedom to dance without fear of creating something unsavory.

for there have been far too many phrases of poetic urgency dancing ‘cross my mind to be able to make space to do any of them justice. the ground we dig is rich with coal, a thin vein of vibrant resource; so, too, are these mountains rich with stories. each aching to be seen and known, told and cherished. i hope to create space for some of the stories that have been entrusted to me, and to tell my own stories with as much richness and honesty.

the heart of an artist is relentlessly invitational, beating with a resonant fury that seeks to draw the other into the beauty and truth of one’s own experience. “come, taste, and see – all that is good, all that is holy, all that is beautiful.” this soul is not content to keep quiet about it’s dance with the great mystery – artists are perhaps the first and most relentless evangelicals – they desire to show the world through their work a better, truer vision of it’s own self.

may this be a season where bandages are finally removed, so that what has been healed can be seen and celebrated. may this be a time where disparate pieces are brought together, where we no longer feel compelled to live along divided lines of clean separations, defined by ins and outs. may our restless hearts learn to dwell in rhythms of grace towards ourselves and towards each other, and may we find them to be free and unforced.

send me your light and your faithful care,
let them lead me;
let them bring me to your holy mountain,
to the place where you dwell.

the journey is the goal

my name is taylor. i’m a twenty-three year old with a background in theatrical scenic design and production, a love for liturgy and the local church, and a passion for banjo jams and folk music. born and raised in colorado, this august marked the beginning of a new adventure as a volunteer carpenter in appalachian eastern kentucky. i have committed to a year of service in these mountains, and to living in community with other volunteers. i’m supported by americorps and working with the christian appalachian project, but all views here are my own, writing as a seeker of grace and peace.


in the weeks leading up to the move, there were, it seemed, an infinite number of steps to be taken.
appointments and visits, packing and selling and condensing, emailing and confirming, managing and checking off lists.
far less space than i would have liked to write and process and pray.

at moments, it was more than i’d ever thought to handle.
because i’ve always been the one who stayed.
in the whirlwind i’ll acknowledge that i could never quite say what i meant to say.
the letters and blogs went unwritten, and many words went unsaid, and there was grace in every part of that.

five years in fort collins was much too brief a season with folks I’d grown to love so deeply, who had taken me in and shaped my heart and created families that defied categorization. i’m thankful for each of you every day, and continue to be amazed to have been given so many rich and beautiful relationships. it was the hardest part of it all, leaving you. but a break in a story is not the same as the end of a story. and so, i look forward to continuing to be surprised by the intersections in our lives as god weaves our stories together in his tapestry of grace.

Camp AJ, Johnson County KY, August 2014

finally at rest from a season of traveling and goodbyes, i’m glad to say i’m finding my footing again in this once-familiar land. the fog on the hills is every bit as breathtaking, the summer heat and humidity are just as deep and muggy and overbearing, the lifestyle is equally simple and generous with time and space as i remember from the summer i spent here three years ago as a camp counselor.

in these past few weeks, i’ve filled out scores of paperwork and been immersed in presentations and meetings. i’ve dirtied my boots digging through mud to replace the underpinning on the trailer home of our first elderly participant. our volunteer jam band rewrote “country roads” to be eastern ky relevant and performed it at the local arts center. we won tickets to a theatrical performance presented as part of hatfield-mccoy heritage days, recounting a story from the famous feud.
i’ve begun building relationships with my four new housemates – stargazing on the dock, abstracting our theoretical discussions, making a nightly habit of jeopardy, and spending a day making salsa because we’ve been given a crate of tomatoes . i’ve joined in a contemporay methodist service, attended mass, and visited the local church of the nazarene. and i finally made it back to pig in a poke barbeque and their delicious sweet potato fries served with soft sugared butter. life here is a celebration of the abundance of simplicity, the audacity to claim that what we’ve been given is enough, and that it will be better if we share it with each other.


 

life decisions like this come with their share of questions – mostly wanting assurance that this choice was good, right, the best possible, most effective use of my time and gifts. a passage from the wisdom teacher in ecclesiastes resonated against these questions while i was on retreat with the other new volunteers this past week:

“as you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything. in the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good.”

it’s tempting to say that now i’ve arrived, now the life i’ve been anticipating for three years can finally begin.
but as my father always told me, “the journey is the goal”. and so i’ll try to withhold my judgments of what is valuable work, how this new season of sowing will come to bear fruit, and simply continue to plant in the mornings and tend in the evenings, choosing joy over cynicism and hope over fear, as the road goes ever on.

i’d love to answer specific questions about my time here as future posts, as well as begin to share specific stories- please leave any ideas in the comments!