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To tell you the truth, Francis is one of my favorite saints. He was iconoclastic, deeply in love with God, and more than a little bit weird. He talked to rocks and wolves and worked for peace. He broke the mold.

Today, Shane Claiborne shared a wonderful primer on St. Francis that is well worth reading.

And if you haven't read about Francis's encounter with the Wolf Of Gubbio, I would recommend you spend some time reading and meditating on what God was doing through Francis, through the wolf, and, perhaps, through the wolves in your own life.

“Since my youth, I think that I have never lost the intuition that community life could be a sign that God is love, and love alone. Gradually the conviction took shape in me that it was essential to create a community with men determined to give their whole life and who would always try to understand one another and be reconciled, a community where kindness of heart and simplicity would be at the centre of everything.”

Brother Roger: “God is love alone”

In a small town on the border of France sits a once sleepy town called Taizé. The home of an ecumencial Christian community dedicated to simple prayer and song, the word Taizé has also come to represent a way of being with God in community that has attracted hundreds of thousands of pilgrims (most of them under the age of 30) over more than 70 years.

Taizé is a way of prayer that finds its foundation in meditative prayer and song. Taizé music is simple; usually no more than four phrases long, with sparse, easily memorized melodies. The point of Taizé is not to get to the end of the song or prayer, but for the song or prayer to get to the end of you. It is a method of moving the truths of the prayers from the head down to the heart.

Every few weeks or so, I find myself craving some Taizé music. So, I find a quiet place, center myself on God and let the musical prayers wash over me. Sometimes I sing, sometimes I sit and let the songs sing me.

If you've never experienced Taizé, I encourage you to find some of their music (also on iTunes), and explore their website. If there's a Taizé service somewhere in your town (and there may well be*), I encourage  you to make an effort to experience what it is like to practice silence, Scripture and song in community. I know that it will refresh your soul.

*If you live in Colorado Springs, Colorado College runs a Taizé service once a block at Shove Chapel. The next Taizé service with be on Monday, October 10 at 9 pm at Shove.

Sunset tonight, September 28, begins a new year in Jewish tradition. It is the start of Rosh Hashanah, a celebration of things being created by God, and the names of His people being written in the book of life. Whatever your faith tradition, tonight can seen as a thin place, a threshold between old and new. I love the mystery of the sunset and the sunrise, and the promises of the sweetness that is to come.

The sunset over Mt. Princeton, Colorado, on September 28, 2011 taken by nearby resident, Brad Rohrich.

Over at Pastors.com Jamin Goggin is beginning a series on spiritual direction and its place in the church. I'm always excited about spiritual direction getting greater exposure and explanation—the practice is often such a fuzzy concept for people used to really defined roles that an exploration of what spiritual direction is from different perspective is always helpful. Check it out. 

A good friend of mine recently gave birth to a little boy with whom I’m totally in love. Although I don’t get to see him as often as I’d like, given our schedules, this little guy has quickly become one of the favorite men in my life.

On a recent visit with him and his parents, I was holding and talking to him while he’s continuingly growing eyes attempted to focus first on me, then on the light streaming in from their big bay windows. I just marveled at how he was learning and experiencing the world for the first time—everything is fresh. He wiggled and wondered, and I grinned and wondered at his beautiful little body, his soon-to-be-discovered personality and his ten perfect toes that he insisted on poking out from his swaddling.

A few days later, I was sitting on the chair in my office, cross-legged. I don’t remember if I was reading or writing, but God gently turned my attention to my own toes. Slightly calloused and ragged, my toes are much flatter than the toes that I tickled earlier in the week, toes that have yet to press earth and bear the weight of his own life and, eventually, those he loves.

As I asked God why He’d turned my attention to the differences and similarities between my toes and those little toes I’d held preciously, I felt Him smile. He was inviting me to give my attention to something that I don’t normally think about, and in that attention-giving He was reminding me of His immense love. 

I sat with God in the silence and noticed that I don’t pay my attention to my feet, but they bear a lot of things. My toes allow balance and dexterity, they create stability and grounding for me in a literal physical way. I also noticed that my toes aren’t that different from baby Brandt’s toes—we each have ten toes that contract when we’re tickled and reach out when we stretch. There was a day once when my toes were held in the hands of those who wondered and awed over them, loving family who cooed over the miracle of a new life so fearfully and wonderfully made.

I was also reminded that God marvels and delights over me like a new parent each morning, that His new mercies also mean His new delight. That even a part of my body that take totally for granted—as one day this baby turned young man will take for granted his running, walking, dancing feet—is a part that God created deliberately and with love. And it’s a part of me that He holds tenderly, just as He holds the rest of me, each moment of each day.

It made me wonder wistfully if one of the reasons God asked Moses—and asks each of us—to take off our shoes when we are on holy ground isn’t so much to acknowledge His holiness, but so that He can have a good look at those little toes He made and loves.

When You Are Old

Weavings is a wonderful publication whose blog recently reminded me how easy it is to be allured away from simplicity into a life of discontent and restlessness. It's both easy and difficult to do—to choose the things that are needed, not those that are wanted. To choose for less, instead of more. To choose for enough, and trust God's provision. The struggle for simplicity is one of choosing for your interior peace, over exterior impulses.

Where are you invited to simplicity today?

Two weekends ago, I taught and led a weekend retreat for the beloved, holy mess that is my spiritual home. The verses that wrapped our time were these, quoted here from The Message, Romans 12:9-19:

 ^9-10Love from the center of who you are; don't fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply; practice playing second fiddle.

 ^11-13Don't burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don't quit in hard times; pray all the harder. Help needy Christians; be inventive in hospitality.

 ^14-16Bless your enemies; no cursing under your breath. Laugh with your happy friends when they're happy; share tears when they're down. Get along with each other; don't be stuck-up. Make friends with nobodies; don't be the great somebody.

 ^17-19Don't hit back; discover beauty in everyone. If you've got it in you, get along with everybody. Don't insist on getting even; that's not for you to do. "I'll do the judging," says God. "I'll take care of it."

There are quite a few lines that resonate here, for me and for those I journey alongside. But the first one still catches me up short, causes me to think, to breathe, to remember myself and my God.

"Love from the center of who you are; don't fake it."

How many of us fake it on a regular basis? Pretend in order to get someone to like us, or, alternately, pretend to like someone else in order to feel better about ourselves?

Loving from the center means finding that center and not just loving from there, but living there. That's a journey that only God can take me on, take you on. That center won't hold (apologies to Yeats) if we look for it anywhere else. We'll find ourselves spinning off, pulled by gravities that suck us toward orbits of insecurity, worthlessness and loneliness. It's in finding who is in the center of ourselves that we find who we are, and begin to live from that place truly, whole-heartedly.

I wonder what it would look like if, each day, we let go of the faking it a little more and received the gift of being ourselves just a little more fully.

What would it look like if you, if I, loved from the center of who we are just a little more tomorrow?

A poem needs understanding through the senses. The point of diving in a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore; it’s to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of water. You do not work the lake out. It is an experience beyond thought. Poetry soothes and emboldens the soul to accept mystery. – John Keats

I recently shared the quote above on my Anam Cara Facebook Page. Being a poet at heart, it makes immediate sense to me, resonating deep within. But poetry, like mystery, is something that can be difficult, even frustrating, to enter into the first, second, even third time. If you are a "thinker" in Myers-Briggs terms, or a body-centered person in Enneagram terms (Types 8, 9 or 1), poetry can seem inaccessible, or even frivolous. 

I believe that poetry, and the space that it creates, is an essential part of the spiritual life. That doesn't mean it has to be your heartbeat, or even something that you consume regularly, but reading or writing a poem every once in a while can open you to the Mystery of God and His heartbeat in a way that simple words can't capture. It's a dive into the lake, as Keats says above.

While I've yet to see the movie "Bright Star", John Keats has always been a favorite poet of mine. Here's one of his—one of the handful of poems that I've made the effort to memorize.

This Living Hand

This living hand, now warm and capable

Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold

And in the icy silence of the tomb,

So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights

That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood

So in my veins red life might stream again,

And thou be conscience-calmed—see here it is—

I hold it towards you.                                                   John Keats

Admittedly, that one is a bit dark, but it speaks to me of the way that poets—and God—communicate through the ages. It's no coincidence, I believe, that a large percentage of the Bible is written in poetic form.

Poetry can be dark, mysterious and thought-provoking, but it can also be playful—just as God is playful. One the other poems tucked in my memory is this tender and silly parable of forgiveness by Winnie The Pooh author A. A. Milne:

Forgiven

I found a little beetle; so that Beetle was his name,
And I called him Alexander and he answered just the same.
I put him in a match-box, and I kept him all the day …
And Nanny let my beetle out –
Yes, Nanny let my beetle out –
She went and let my beetle out –
And Beetle ran away.

She said she didn't mean it, and I never said she did,
She said she wanted matches and she just took off the lid,
She said that she was sorry, but it's difficult to catch
An excited sort of beetle you've mistaken for a match.

She said that she was sorry, and I really mustn't mind,
As there's lots and lots of beetles which she's certain we could find,
If we looked about the garden for the holes where beetles hid –
And we'd get another match-box and write BEETLE on the lid.

We went to all the places which a beetle might be near,
And we made the sort of noises which a beetle likes to hear,
And I saw a kind of something, and I gave a sort of shout:
"A beetle-house and Alexander Beetle coming out!"

It was Alexander Beetle I'm as certain as can be,
And he had a sort of look as if he thought it must be Me,
And he had a sort of look as if he thought he ought to say:
"I'm very very sorry that I tried to run away."

And Nanny's very sorry too for you-know-what-she-did,
And she's writing ALEXANDER very blackly on the lid,
So Nan and Me are friends, because it's difficult to catch
An excited Alexander you've mistaken for a match.

So, I encourage you—add some poetry to your life. See what it sparks, what God might be inviting you to. Find a poem that speaks to you, and dialogue with God and others about it.

I'd like to hear from you, too, on the subject of poetry.

Do you have a favorite poem?

How has poetry formed your soul?

Two weekends ago, my husband and I finally made it out to the Colorado Balloon Classic. We’ve been talking about going for three years, but every time the morning of our intended trek to the launch rolls around, we instead roll back over in bed. This year, though, we’d had our fill of good intentions and, bleary-eyed and less-than-bushy-tailed, we joined the throngs to watch what felt like hundreds of hot air balloons fill and take off into the bright blue sky.

We dragged our fingers along the quickly filling material of balloons on their sides, and watched handlers doggedly holding down the top ropes of balloons determined to buck their moorings and fly before time was right. But mostly we looked up. Up, up, and up.

If you’ve only seen hot air balloons at a distance, you are probably unaware of how completely massive they are. At least several stories high, these seemingly ephemeral aircraft cause you to crane your neck before they’ve ever taken off. And one they have, their quiet movement snags your attention precisely because it is so silent, and you watch them drift past above your head with rapt attention.

After the first three waves of balloons had launched, Bryan and I walked back into the car, hand in hand, content and feeling rewarded that we had made the effort of choosing beauty over comfort that day. And then, as we slipped into the car, another thought entered both of our minds: Ouch!

You see, as I mentioned, we’d spent most of the morning doing something that our bodies aren’t normally prepared to do—look up. Both of our low backs were aching, and would ache for days. We’d spent so much time (and, frankly, it wasn’t that much time at all) gazing skyward that the very things that rooted us to Earth were protesting. Loudly.

Now, it would be easy enough to leave that metaphor where it lies. You’d walk away knowing that we need to look up more, and that sometimes comfort needs to be sacrificed so that we can gain a greater perspective, see God more clearly.

But I think that’s too facile.

As someone who cares a great deal about bodies, and how God speaks through them, I don’t think that the only message of my aching lumbar region was that I’m lacking in spiritual high-mindedness. As I ached and dialogued with God about it over the next few days, He gently reminded me that life in the kingdom is about holding gently the tensions between what is and what is to come. The tensions between things like God’s sovereignty and our own free will, the tensions between grace and truth. And, that Sunday morning, the tensions between Earth and sky, between my dust-fashioned body, made so tenderly out of the earth that I am held to, charged to tend, and the spiritual reality of God, who is so much more, so transcendant and beautiful, so beyond what I could ever think or imagine.

God whispered to me that the ache in my back wasn’t wrong or an indication that I was missing out, but instead a reminder that Heaven and Earth meet and mingle in this too frail frame, that it aches with glory, and with the holy knowledge that I am made for the here and now, the temporal and immediate, and that I am also made, always, to look up, to dream, and to long for more.