on post holes and academic discipline

digging post holes…this isn’t the part I expected to miss

breaking down rocks with the metal bar, clawing out loose gravel with your bare hands, measuring to find there are always a few more inches to go

sweat dripping off your face, mingling with the coal and clay and rock (always rock, always rock…) as your neck acquires that particular shade of Kentucky red and your arms grow sore (they’re growing strong)

there is  nothing glamorous about this work, and some would say “leave it to the men, their shoulders are broader their backs are stronger they’re better suited to this sort of labor”

but the discipline bred a fierceness in the women (and men) of our crew
strength, confidence, determination
a willingness to dig deep, to break down and remove the biggest rocks, to fight frost and rain and mud and snow

knowing that the strength of the foundation matters

if we want the ramp to last

---

if we want the church to last

the strength of the foundation matters

the discipline of study breeds both a fierceness and a tenderness in women (and men)
strength, confidence, tenacity
a willingness to dig deep, to confront and work past the obstacles in our hearts, to fight resignation and fear and sloth and busyness

there is nothing immediately glamorous or instantly rewarding about this work
and some would say “leave it to the men, their minds are sharper their backs are stronger they’re better suited to lead”

but you dig in, sitting for hours at a time, uniting your heart with theologians and missiologists and Jesus (always Jesus, always Jesus…) as your tan fades to a fluorescent glow and your mind is stretched by a constant string of hurdles (it’s growing strong)

breaking down sacred texts systematically and inductively, shaking loose the accumulated debris of history, checking your syllabus to find there are always a few more chapters to go

this is faith seeking understanding

may twelfth//leroy’s day

this is my day. may twelfth. this is leroy’s day. 

on may twelfth we were delivering furniture, a departure from our usual routine. one of our elderly caseworkers asked us to come along to visit leroy, a man just past eighty who had been with the program for years. we were there to drive the truck and haul the coffee table and locking metal cabinet up stairs.

leroy is wiry and agile, hunched at the shoulders. soft-spoken and direct, he is in constant conversation with himself. he is bald, meticulous in appearance, and fastidious about dates and times. he opened the door and pointed directly to where the new cabinet would go.

i’m not complaining, now,
I just didn’t think it would be so big.

the apartment was stunningly spare. next to the large window which provided most of the light was a dining room chair with a tattered Bible laying open on the seat, acting as the end table for the only armchair. a single sofa anchored the wall opposite the window. there was a small table with a single kitchen chair. all the rest of the floors and walls were bare, absent of any excess or ornamentation. no family photos, treasured knick-knacks, or dollar-store supplies. a cd/radio boombox was the only concession to entertainment – no television or bookshelf or even a cd collection in sight.

back in the days of paper food stamps, he would use only what he needed and return the rest to the office. he’d never accepted offers of furniture before. he isn’t one to take a stitch more than he knows he needs and is able to use. nothing in the room is superfluous.

the half-size black locking cabinet overwhelmed the room, and after a bit of back-and-forth we moved it under his careful direction to the back bedroom. the full size mattress and boxspring sat close to the floor, one corner housed two pairs of cowboy boots and three old-fashioned suitcases. we found a place for the cabinet where the open door wouldn’t hit the wall.

the HUD housing inspector, they’re so particular.

he told us about the struggle to keep the place maintained to standards, to not scuff the walls or put in the wrong lightbulb. he had also been worried that the workers who were frequently in and out might notice his record collection. the locking cabinet had been a special request.

now i’ve got a place to keep my records. and these snap-front shirts,
they’re just so handy, they’ll go in there too.
when you go to the bank, you can keep your things right there…

a few, these very few treasured possessions. his record collection – what a luxury to preserve. especially when he told us he’d given his record player away more than a decade ago, to a pastor who’d needed one to listen to old praise and teaching records. a life of measured, patient, faithfulness.

oh, i’ve got to sit down…my ticker can’t take any more.
it’s getting too hot, i’ve got to go change my shirt. 

the excitement of the new coffee table, the locking cabinet (both donations from our warehouse) prompted Leroy to change from a snap-front shirt and jacket into a sweater vest which hung loosely on his spindley frame. as he eased into the recliner, he noticed the box on the sofa.

what have you got there?

oh my, oh no, oh my. 

am i allowed to ask how much it cost? (no, no you’re not.) jensen.
that’s the best brand, that’s always been the best brand,
oh, i didn’t know they still made these. 

it was christmas morning, twenty five years of christmas mornings as he retrieved his penknife and delicately unboxed the record player. the new coffee table was the perfect place of honor for this treasure. Leroy was transfixed by the radio dial, the volume knob, the arm and needle and turntable. the return of familiarity in a world that was growing so foreign.

i’ve never listened to this one before.
oh, that’s a good one. that’s a good one.

he retrieved a record from the bedroom, one of several that he’d gathered after he’d given away his record player. it was an old family gospel record, and we joined him in hearing it for the first time. as the needle crackled across the surface, his toes began tapping and he smiled in spite of himself.

you’re so fine, you’re so fine // you’re mine, you’re mine // i walk, and i talk, about you

every time his caseworker took him on errands, he asked her to use her phone to play “you’re so fine” by the falcons. that was his very favorite song. he didn’t have it on record, so he only go to hear it when she visited twice a month. one of our coworkers heard about the song, and tracked down the cd as one more gift for Leroy today.

i didn’t know they had recordings this old. oh, merry christmas, happy birthday,
and tell her i hope she never gets a visit from the tooth fairy like me.

he was incredulous. he just kept repeating a litany of holidays. Leroy deftly navigated to track seventeen, and played it over, and over, and over. dancing, singing along, snapping fingers and tapping toes recalling a place and time that were all of a sudden resurrected. she took a video of him dancing, unselfconscious in his sweater vest.

you’re going to have to go to the store by yourself today.

we could have left him there for a month or two or twelve, content to immerse himself in the music. this was peace, and joy all at once.

you know, the fonzie, he said heaven is going to be 1957 forever.
that’s just fine by me, that’s just fine.

he changed back into his snap front shirt and walked us to the door. heaven was here, today too, you know. something too beautiful to name, which had us all on the brink of tears. holiness, an outpouring of honor, and a grand dash of 1959.

this is my day, may twelfth. this is leroy’s day. 

Leroy glanced at the calendar on the way out, marking a day that could easily have faded into obscurity. may twelfth. this is my day, he said. this is Leroy’s day.

thank you ever so much. 

You’re my first cup of coffee
( my last cup of tea) 
You’re so fine, you’re so fine
You’re mine, you’re mine
I walk, and I talk, about you

 

come as you are

i have half a post drafted out, covering advent and christmas and new year’s eve, but the story crowding my heart today doesn’t belong to me. it belongs to Sandy*.

i spent the day after christmas in a remarkable place. the day after the momentum has crested, the food has been eaten, the family has been visited is also often the day before we are expected to dive back into normal rhythms. this year, it was an in-between place. a holy saturday.

back in my hometown (read: large city) for the holidays, i found my rural-acclimated self a bit jarred by gated communities and suburban nativities. on christmas day, i received an invitation to spend the following evening playing the banjo for a church that meets in a half-remodeled building in the less refined part of town. nothing sounded more beautiful.

the walls were inscribed with verses scrawled in sharpie. (the lord is my shepherd, i shall not want // the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it // praise god from whom all blessings flow.) they would be covered as the drywall was installed, but no less a source of strength to this place than the metal framing and concrete floor.

my long-time friend and musical collaborator laid out the chord charts as his fellow worship leader stepped out for a smoke break. we rehearsed a bit, learning each other’s rhythms and navigating transitions as folks began to gather.

Sandy sat near the front, enthralled. as folks around her made small talk, she listened to us practice with her eyes closed and her arms up. when we finished, i found her eyes and saw that though her cheeks had caught a few tears, her whole heart was smiling. she shook my hand and thanked me. i told her it’s not often i get to play for someone who brings their whole heart to the song, and that i was honored to meet her.

as was the practice in this community, the 30 or souls gathered together shared a meal before worship. a stranger there myself, i collected a plate and sat across from Sandy and began to listen. at the table, where we draw essential nourishment, no weakness is obscured for long. her story quickly moved from small talk to the difficulties of the past and of the present- a struggle with alcohol, a child in and out of jail, a long and fierce loneliness. she apologized for the tears, for sharing so much. i reminded her that it’s an honor to be given these stories and to be able to give thanks for god’s grace running through them.

as I shared a bit of my story – carpentry, kentucky, banjosity – she leaned in close, looked me straight in the eyes and said

“god loves you. i can see it”

not knowing, of course not knowing, that in my blinding self-sufficiency and relational unsteadiness, in a time when i could only feel the space longing to be filled, that those were the words that would shake my soul awake. in that moment, she was Christ the stranger with skin on. for all my grand notions of serving that community that night, the greatest act of love happened that moment, in eyes locked across a table. i thanked her deeply, reminding us both that there was nothing more we needed to hear.

as we moved into worship, a ten minute sermon delivered with great immediacy was book-ended by a smattering of worship tunes. i delighted in lending a banjo line to simple songs, chorus-driven, come-holy-spirit songs, that brought great joy and presence to this place filled with others. in their midst, i heard this last song as if for the first time. it was Sandy’s story, and she savored every line.

“come out of sadness, from wherever you’ve been
come brokenhearted, let rescue begin
come find your mercy, oh sinner come kneel
earth has no sorrow that heaven can’t heal

so lay down your burdens, lay down your shame
all who are broken, lift up your face
oh wanderer come home, you’re not too far
so lay down your hurt, lay down your heart
come as you are.”

come as you are. amen.

“goodbye red, from kentucky!” Sandy said, as we hugged and thanked each other for the gift of presence that evening. she then prepared to board the van which would take her to the overnight shelter. temperatures were expected to be in the low teens that night and she had no home to return to.

after she left, i couldn’t stop thinking about what i would have done had i met her on the street. like any good white middle-class twenty-something female, i would have most likely rushed by, eyes averted, scared that she would demand something of me. like anyone accustomed to a life unnoticed, she may have been fearful to speak.

in holding ourselves back, we would have missed the opportunity to see Christ in each other, to give glory to the presence which had so strengthened and encouraged us. in rejecting the incarnational presence & immediacy of the poor, the stranger, the other, we lose our great freedom, granted by our christmas refugee who spent his first night in a stable.

i was stunned by the faithfulness of the volunteers who prepared food, taught, led, and cared for this congregation every week, and even more so by the folks who kept coming, willing to be seen in their hour of need and to meet their savior there. neither party operated under any great pretense of competency – the invitation was “come as you are. we will be there together, exactly as we are. and somehow this gathering together will prepare us to receive him, exactly as he is.”

maranatha. amen.

*names changed

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.

---

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.

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!