Tag: miska

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Foxy Lady

My wife Miska met a friend for coffee this week. They sat at a cafe table outside while a man in a white fedora passed them, back and forth, multiple times. He would go into the barber shop next door, only to exit a few minutes later and cruise near the ladies, giving them a smile or word. The fedora man would then repeat. He was working it.

On a final pass, he paused to slide Miska a note on a yellow post-it, a note addressed to "Foxy Lady."

I'd like to punch the guy in the face. I'd also like to shake his hand.

While I suggest he raise his fedora enough to clear his vision for a good look at things such as wedding rings, I appreciate his brazen courage. I of all men understand the beauty he encountered. The poor fellow didn't stand a chance.

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Turtle Walking

Turtle has just one plan
at a time, and every cell
buys into it
                  {Kooser and Harrison}

This morning, I grabbed Miska tight and wished her happy anniversary. We've been married 5,280 days. We've navigated rough waters. We've know love's rapture but also love's weight. We've had to fight for one another, to keep reaching through the haze and disappointment. We've had to resist hiding — and other times we've had to pull the other out of hiding. It's not lost on me that 5,280 is the number of feet in a mile. Our marriage has walked a mile now. A slow and steady road, one foot in front of the other. 5,280 times. 

And with each step, the one thing is love. We've taken our cue from the turtle.

I believe that most things in life, things worth anything at least, require this steady plodding. I can't say who I'll be or where I'll be a decade from now, but I'll find myself getting there after a mile of steps. As I give myself to each step, I'll find that moment — that very moment, not one future or one past — containing life, the life that is now, the life that the entire mile previous has led me to. I want to give myself, every cell, to that moment. To that person walking with me.

 

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Here Now

Since I’ve moved into my new digital home, I’ve asked a few friends to come by and offer me a house warming gift. Over the next week or two, we’ll have a few posts that come as gifts to me, and I’ll share them with you. The first arrives from my best friend in this world, though she’s so much more. Miska is my wife and soulmate, the one person I’d want with me if ever I were shipwrecked – and the one person who has most helped my soul not be shipwrecked.

 

{Here Now}

In that liminal space between day and evening
When the mysteries flame forth,
catch fire with the blaze of the dying sun,
then burn down into a smoldering blue light,
I was walking the circuitous, ancient path of the prayer labyrinth,
Soul-deep in silence and offering my heart’s prayer to God
with the fervor of one who is seeking yet has already been found,
when I heard the voices; sadly, not of angels
but of humans.

I looked up at the noise and saw them
coming along the bamboo-lined path.
The little boy broke away from his mother and
Ran out onto the stones of the labyrinth with me.
Irritation surged up,
My agenda altered and
My centering meditation fractured.

But remembering the enticing words I’d heard earlier—
The call to walk through my moments and days with
Uncharacteristic leisure, relaxed, unhurried,
present—I was chastened. . .
And reminded of my life back home with two young boys
Who disrupt my quiet, prayerful spaces
With uncanny regularity.

“Aha, a metaphor of my life,” I smiled to myself
as I watched the child trying to navigate
his way to the center of this unicursal path,
and I, reluctantly, let go of my original purpose
for being in this space.
I have been asked to love whatever comes,
To take it all “with great trust” in the words of Rilke.

My soul’s labyrinth toward divine union,
The perpetual enchantment, the persistent invitation,
Is to see and touch and taste God in the ordinary
Everydayness of all things and in all places,
And to lay down my solitary visions and my ecstasies,
To find the Sacred
Here, now.

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Words: Yours. And Mine.

For the first time, I’ve boarded the word for the year train. These sorts of things have to show up at your door unannounced, and for whatever reason, my bell never rang.

For a while, Miska’s had these annual encounters where a word arrives, vivid and undeniable. Given that I’ve married a mystic, I’ve found myself imagining what these moments are like for her. I’m sure she appreciates that. I imagine my mystic wife walking over the knoll of one of Ireland’s green hills (where else would such a fantasy be?). The grey mist knits a silky silhouette of her lovely shape. There’s always music, haunting Irish music. Then the word appears. The word may be aflame or carved into a rock. My favorite is when the word arrives from the voice of a man who has (of course) a strong Irish lilt, a man who is (of course) St. Patrick.

This year, I love Miska’s word. A future year, I could imagine it being mine. But it’s not – and that’s the crucial revelation. You can’t snag another person’s word. You can’t even snag another person’s conviction that you need to have a word. You can’t steal another’s word and you can’t steal another’s life and you can’t steal another’s voice or opportunity or physique. You have to find your own — find your own way, find your own self.

You’ll never meet your surprise guest so long as you’re waiting at everyone else’s front door.

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She Said Yes

Fourteen years ago (yesterday), Miska said yes. I giggled my way through most of the ceremony, an annoying (and quite manly, I might add) nervous response. The first few minutes, Miska thought my giggles were endearing. Ten minutes later, not so much.

We had a morning wedding and couldn’t wait to get on the road. Off on our honeymoon. It’s been a long road from there to here. I’ve been surprised by some of the detours and cul-de-sacs. But I’m thankful for every mile, even the hard ones.

Fourteen years later, the moments I most crave are our Fridays together. Just the two of us, thanks to the City of Charlottesville’s generosity (via the public school system) in watching our boys. We walk. We talk. Some Fridays, we grab Naan bread from the local bakery. We may watch a movie or take a nap. The day is a prayer. I love those Friday sabbaths, and I love the evenings on our balcony, after the boys are in bed. Tea in hand, Carter Mountain in full view. Sunlight fades, and love blooms.

There isn’t a person in this world I love more. There isn’t a person on this wide globe I respect more or believe in more. This I’m certain of: if you don’t know her, you are missing out on one of God’s good and beautiful gifts.

Over these years, we’ve had several stretches where love was hard, not easy. We had to say yes again and again. I plan on speaking that simple, powerful word ’til death do us part.

 

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For Those Who Mourn {a hillside sermon}

Blessings on the mourners. {Jesus}

I live with a woman who’s made friends with tears. And I tell you, Miska’s tears are one of the most powerful and beautiful things about her. When Miska and I first married, she rarely cried. I do remember that night during our first month in our first apartment, when we were still sleeping on a twenty-year-old hand-me-down mattress and box springs plopped on the floor. So many emotions, so raw. The tears came, but that was rare.

A couple years later, Miska began her grad program in counseling. She started to pay attention to her story; and she learned to pay attention to other’s stories. Miska is one of those rare people who truly listens, who hears you. Her tears signal strength, not frailty. A courageous woman, this wife of mine. She bears other’s sorrows and has become well acquainted with grief. She takes in other’s joy and weeps for all the beauty she sees. If you’ve never told your story to another and felt the sheer presence of someone’s tears over you, with you – well, I pray someday you receive that gift.

Of course, tears aren’t the only way to mourn (or express gratitude for beauty). But however one mourns, the mourner is not one we’d think of as blessed. The mourner is the one who knows the weight of things, the one who’s mistakes have brought him low, the one who can’t get over the loss, the one who carries another’s pain. The mourner lives with acute awareness of all the things we’ve lost in our world, all the places where we’ve gone wrong.

Some might call the mourners sentimental. Some might hurry them along the “stages of grief.” The mourners are the people we learn to work around, to acknowledge but keep on the edges where they won’t bother anyone.

But when Jesus announces the kingdom of God, he throws his arms open wide and speaks these words. Blessed. Blessings on you who mourn, on you who know the sting of grief. To you who can never escape the tears, for you or for others. God is here. And you are blessed.

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Upon the Birthday of a Most Amazing Woman

Many waters cannot quench love, the wise Solomon said. But, oh how they try. The waters of disappointment and fatigue and loss. The swell of years and arguments and learning that the other is not all we might have imagined. 

The tides rise with kids and careers, homes and travels. And, of course, the tides recede with stretches of time where we’ve lost our bearings, where we feel like strangers and wonder if we’ll ever find our way back. In fact, I’m not sure if Solomon tells the whole story. I’ve seen more than a few marriages drown in a deluge. It’s a sorrowful sight – and when I encounter it, particularly with friends, it’s always a punch in the gut.

But I know a most amazing woman, one who has weathered many waves with me. And our love has not been quenched. Far, far from it. Today, I celebrate a woman I admire and adore with my whole heart. The world has been graced with her beauty for thirty-eight years now, and she has left the mark of love wherever she has wandered.

She loves intently, speaks solidly. She’s truly one of the most courageous people I know. She’s brave enough to own the power of her tears in a world where tears often invite scorn. She has the strength to say no and the grace to oh-so-often say yes. I’m thankful she said yes to me.

Happy birthday, amazing woman. Happy birthday, Miska.

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Heart-sick Tears {into the story}

O that my head were a spring of water,
           and my eyes a fountain of tears,
so that I might weep day and night
           for the slain of my poor people!
{Old Testament reading for the 20th Sunday after Pentecost, Jeremiah 8:18-9:1}

Jeremiah, known as the weeping prophet, did not stand distant from his people. Jeremiah was immersed in their story, their life, their tragedies. Have you ever encountered a man quick with tears? It’s a powerful thing, genuine tears  – and most of us are uncomfortable with this raw, unmasked power. We admire it from a distance, but usually we don’t want it up close. Tears make us shifty, our eyes desperate to find a safe way to look away. We want to make the moment better, make the tears stop, fix something.

But Jeremiah just wept. Jeremiah cried because what he saw, what he experienced, demanded tears. This world is not as it should be, and the awake soul does not force a smile but rather echoes Jermiah’s words: “My heart is sick.”

My wife Miska is a weeping prophet. If a conversation strikes deep, as Miska always hopes it will, chances are that tears will soon follow. These tears are one of the burdens she bears in this world. At times, tears make her feel alone. They always make her vulnerable. It’s wrenchingly hard to feel the weight of other’s pain. But Miska’s tears are also gift; her tears heal. One of my favorite experiences is watching Miska’s powerful presence, coupled with her powerful tears, touch a wounded place in another’s soul.

Sometimes, tears speak for themselves, communicating truths that words would only diminish. I think there is a reason that the shortest verse in the Bible says, only, “Jesus wept.”

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The Challenge of Easter {4}

The Light of the World

{miska collier}

On this fourth Monday of Easter, our guide for the fourth chapter of The Challenge of Easter is Miska Collier. You can read the series introduction or read more about our writers. And you can catch up on the first chapter discussion here; second here and the third here.

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Theology of Gender is a six week class I’ve led a number of times over the past eight years. I adore this topic, mostly because the redemption of my own femininity is a huge theme in my story. During our six weeks together, we look at Genesis 1-3 and discuss the creation of gender, the true design of the masculine and feminine, the Fall and the way the curses are still playing out in our hearts and lives. We close by talking about the journey of redemption and what it means to reclaim what has been lost.

I love sitting in Genesis 1 and 2 and talking about how God created this world—light and dark, stars, water, living plants and living creatures, the masculine and the feminine—and how all is as it should be. All of creation is living out its true design in a lovely harmony. There is beauty, wholeness, perfect intimacy. Adam and Eve were naked body and soul and were unashamed. No shame! Can you even imagine?

However, moving from Genesis 2 into Genesis 3 (the fall and the curse) is agonizing. A heaviness settles on us as we encounter the deep sorrow of loss, the fracturing of God’s great dream and of our very souls, and the separation (from God, each other, our world and even ourselves) that we wrestle with this very day, this very hour.

Chesterton wrote that “according to Christianity, we were indeed the survivors of a wreck, the crew of a golden ship that had gone down before the beginning of the world.” Genesis 3 details that shipwreck, and we are silenced with the heart-breaking and poignant picture of God walking through the wreckage, uttering his cry of lament: “Adam, where are you?”

But we are not left with desolation. There is another picture we have now, thanks to the “unique, climactic, decisive” act of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

It’s the picture of a different garden on “the first day of the week” (conjuring up images of “in the beginning”), and a woman named Mary who thinks she is talking to the gardener. . .which, in fact, she is. It is the resurrected Jesus, and something new, something cataclysmic, is taking place.

Wright says, “Just as in Genesis, so now in the new Genesis, the new creation, God breathes into human nostrils his own breath, and we become living stewards, looking after the garden, shaping God’s world as his obedient image-bearers.”

So our first garden–and the experience there—has been and is being redeemed.

And our new vocation, as Wright notes, is to bear the image of God in this world, which means participating in the “redemptive reshaping” of His creation.

And just how to we do this, you might wonder. Well, who can really say? It’s messy and mysterious and is, to borrow a phrase from another of my favorite theologians, a long obedience in the same direction. But the essence of bearing God’s image–and the high call of Christianity–is love, and Jesus is our teacher.

In the words of Thomas Merton: “To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that love is the reason for my existence, for God is love. Love is my true identity. . .Love is my name.”

Miska is married to the best man she knows (which just happens to be the owner of this blog) and is the mom of two crazy and winsome boys. She also serves as a spiritual director at All Souls C’ville. She’s a sucker for a good story, loves motherhood even though sometimes it makes her want to gouge her eyes out, and can consume vast quantities of Diet Coke and chocolate in a single bound. Miska blogs on a very irregular basis at forthesweetloveofgod.
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Let us Welcome the New Year

And now let us welcome the new year – full of new things that have never been ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Another fresh start. The Christian year began with Advent, and now the calendar tells us of still another beginning.  We’ve purchased a new calendar for the wall – our old one finished, filled with scribbles and reminders and names, each mark reminding us of birthdays and evenings out and family deaths and dinners with friends. Reasons to celebrate and reasons for sorrow, but mostly celebrate.

And we begin again. This is one of the things I am most thankful about in the Christian way of seeing the world – we are always beginning again. The night never stays; the morning is always new – in fact I think one of the psalmists pretty much said just that. Whatever has been, good or ill – newness comes. Recently, in a distressful moment, I told Miska of my fear of an upcoming experience, fearful because of how miserably I had traversed just such an experience a few years ago. Miska looked at me with that light smile she offers to counter my overblown heaviness. “Oh,” Miska said, “isn’t it great – you get a do-over.”

Another year to see what grace holds for us. Another year of new things that have yet to be.

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