Maybe we'll take the porch swing with us.

Rough surfaces of worn off finish replace what used to be a glossy luster. The chains are starting to show signs of rust around the edges. Tiny spider webs have multiplied in the corners. But this front porch swing is still one of my favorite places in the world. That weeping cherry tree was tiny when we moved here in August of 2000, now it completely blocks the view to the road from where I sit. I love the shade that keeps this spot ten degrees cooler. And I love feeling like I'm alone. Of course it's not really private at all. I am sitting in my front yard and I know my next door neighbor Tony is right behind me tending to his banana trees.

Tony's trees are from Puerto Rico, his homeland. Every Fall when the weather turns cool he bundles them in burlap and puts them in the basement. Every Spring, after the last frost, he brings them back out again and plants them in the sun. They are a few inches bigger than last year. Sometimes I come out and work in the yard just because Tony is working in his. Everybody loves that guy. Tony is the one who always has some new family or friends living with him. A few months ago our across-the-street neighbor from Columbia (the country, not CTown) lost his job. Tony helped him make the house payment for several months but the house got repossessed anyway and they moved out while I was in Africa. I wish I had been here to help.

The guy behind us-he's new since I left for school, and I don't know his name-always mows our back yard. I can't figure out if he really likes to mow or if he's just a nice guy. He mows it like three times a week though, so he's probably OCD and can't stand things to be uneven. He never mows the Tobin's yard, which seems strange since he can actually see more of their yard than ours from his back deck. The Tobin's are the only neighbors who have lived here longer than we have. She teaches with my mom at Zion and both of their girls went to school there. I remember when the girls were still in middle school and they would have slumber parties and try to roll our yard. It usually only took about five minutes to clean up the toilet paper.

Good memories from this front porch swing. I love having my quiet time here; there's something about being outside in the world God created, it's easier to be with him. I've discovered amazing things about him from this very spot at sunrise, midday and after the stars have taken over the sky. Almost breaks my heart to see this house go. Almost.

This house is the longest my family has lived anywhere. By the time my parents move out at the end of the month it will have been almost exactly ten years. To most people in Columbia, TN that seems like nothing. But I've moved 18 times so it matters to me. If I were to call any place on this earth home, this would be it. Funny thing about home though, it moves with you. All the memories from here will come with me after the last box is packed in the truck and the keys have been handed over to the new owners. I haven't just lived here, I've lived here. The experiences we truly live come with us, they become part of us. And I've become who I am because of the experiences and the people of this place, because of the times on this front porch swing.

Things Are Sweeter in Tennessee

Since moving to Virginia, I have not been homesick...until now.

Just a few short weeks ago while home on Spring Break I drove the streets of Nashville, soaking in the city that has been my home since I was five years old. I drove the back roads from Columbia, Spring Hill and Thompson Station where I've lived since 2001, to Dickson, Kingston Springs, Pegram, and Bellevue where I spent most of my childhood. I drove through Belle Meade, West End, by Belmont, my alma mater and all around downtown Nashville. I ate dinner at Opryland.

Here, was the feeling of home. I've lived in Hendersonville, Bellevue, Ashland City and Columbia...almost every side of the city. I've gone to school in Whites Creek, Columbia and Nashville. I've been part of churches in Goodlettsville, Bellevue, Franklin, Thompson Station and Columbia. I have friends and family members in every part of Middle Tennessee, from Springfield to Pulaski, Smithville to Centerville. This is my city. These are my family.

As I drove a certain, unexplainable sensation arose in me, as though this time of driving the city, reliving the memories of my past was something important. Something I'd never be able to get back. How was I to know how real that would prove to be?

Many of these places now sit under feet of water. Many of them will never be recovered. Many of them are relegated forever to the halls of memory. But there is one thing, the most important thing, that rises to the surface of the water and stands as proudly and as firmly as it ever has...the spirit of Nashville herself.

Nashville is a community of Faith, and of family. The "small town, big city" opens her doors to everyone. She is the city where people with dreams too big for anywhere else come to fit in. Here country music stars, college students, and down home boys sit in the same Starbucks on Friday night and the same pew on Sunday morning. Here everybody knows "somebody" because everybody is somebody.

There are things we know as a city.
You don't talk bad about anybody because the guy sitting behind you probably knows that guy. You don't chase down celebrities for their autograph, they're just people.
We have the best music shows anywhere, hands down. Because let's face it, a show in Nashville is like jamming with friends.
The Loveless Cafe still has the best biscuits in town.
One day our Titans will win a Super Bowl.
You wave to people as you drive past them, hold open doors, ask people how they're doing, look people in the eye when you give them a firm handshake, say "yes ma'am", and you always drive like a crazy person during rush hour.

There's one more thing we know: we take care of our own. So it is not surprising to those of us from Music City to see each other banding together, unconcerned whether the outside world pays any mind to our trials (But we sure do appreciate y'all who have. Welcome to the family.) We are each other's Good Samaritans. We are our brother's keepers. By God's grace, like a Phoenix from the ashes "The Athens of the South" will rise as a testimony of love for one another. So, while I am stranded miles away, missing you, unable yet to put my hands to work for my city I will lift my voice and my prayers in solidarity with my fellow Nashvillians.

WE ARE NASHVILLE.

To the men...and the ladies.

There is one thing I have come to deeply value over the past few months: the men who aren't afraid to kick life in the face for me. I have brothers and friends who have fought for me in prayer over some of the most heartbreaking months of my life this past semester. Some of you have made a point to call and check up on me. Some of you have emphatically stressed that you want to be there to fight on my side. Some of you have offered to give a beat down on my behalf. And some of you have given incredible spiritual advice and encouragement. I think I would have given way to the terrible feeling of being in this battle alone if not for you.

Seminary is full of people looking to get married. And honestly, who can blame them? For those of us with very firm and specific belief systems it can seem a daunting task to find someone compatible to share life with in an increasingly pluralistic and globalized society. Why not move your hunt from singles groups or eharmony to a place where you have this in common?

I made peace with my singleness a long time ago. First out of necessity, but then because I realized: life happens in the waiting. We are always becoming someone. Who we live our life for defines and shapes us. If all (or most) of life revolves around a search for someone to marry we are defined by our expectations of that person long before we ever meet him or her. Is this who we want to become? People who think only of a checklist or of trying to gain the attention of others?

Here is my point. My brothers, you may not have a wife or girlfriend, but plenty of your single sisters (who you will never marry) need you to offer your strength. We are not weak or inferior, but we are NOT the same as you, and we do need you in our lives. Ladies, we have a way of approaching the world that our guy friends could use access to as well. We've unfairly demanded too much and too little of them at the same time. It is time for us to allow them to be who we need them to be and stop getting so offended or threatened when they step up.

So there you go. My long overdue thanks, and long unspoken thoughts. Love.

Anna G.

The Lion and the Light.

You will be safe in His arms. You will be safe in his arms.

When in South Africa we had several encounters with lions. In Sun City's Lion Park we got up close and personal, even holding cubs. They were by no means gentle, yet there was an irresistible quality to the little guys that made you wish they were just a bit more cuddly than they actually were. Later during our trip we went on a game drive that began in late afternoon and lasted through the first hours of darkness. Early in our drive we came across part of a pride lounging on the side of the road. Two females, a male and some cubs sat watching us, watching them. They began to walk around our vehicles. In and out, in and out and around. It's a little unsettling having a giant, wild lion walking around you without the least bit of fear.

There is nothing quite so incredible as night on the African plains. It is mysterious and grand, and draws you into it. Hours can pass without the realization of their coming or going. And there is a voice on the wind that compels you to enter the depths of the night and discover the adventure you've been aching for . . . Such were my thoughts as I stood on the edges of light created by the giant fire at our braai (barbecue) in the middle of the Pilanesburg Game Park. All my common sense and education on such things knows better than to be on the edge of that untamed darkness, and yet there I was, lingering at an unsafe distance from the fire, wishing to be further immersed in the night . . . until I was pulled back to reality by our protective guide who gently reminded me the fire was the safest place to be. "There are lions out there and they are not afraid of you. Stay in the light." I still remember the feeling of moving from the cool African night to the overwhelming warmth of the fire.

Let light and love come rushing through the door.

Later that night, on our drive back through the park, we came upon a lion with a fresh kill. The best Discovery Channel documentary simply can't do justice to the sight of a male lion ripping into its prey. The creature who just a few hours earlier was close enough to touch was now shredding a springbok as though it were tissue paper.

Tonight, on the edges of my own personal spiritual darkness, this memory pushed to the forefront of my mind and replayed itself in vivid color. I felt the message in the core of my soul: You are safe in the Light. Stay there. Don't flirt with the line between light and darkness. The enemy is a roaring lion, prowling about, seeking whom he may devour. He is not afraid of you, he wants to destroy you. But he fears the light.

You will reign in brilliant light.

Countless times in Scripture God identifies Himself with the Light (1 Jn 1:5, Is. 10:17, 1 Peter 2:9, Rev. 21:23). And Satan is called a lion bent on our destruction (1 Peter 5:8). No doubt the Lion is dangerously powerful. But the Light holds the power of life and death. Not the Lion. Run to the Light and don't stray into the darkness.

You will be safe in His arms. You will be safe in His arms.

~ Anna

lovers, art, science and movie analogies.

Jesus wrecked my life. If not for Him I could be safely tucked away in the tender arms of apathy. But He came in, He crushed all my expectation and filled it with something far beyond my comprehension. And in beautiful and agonizing ways He continues to do so. I still feel the product of this initial destruction. I feel it every day in his further demolition of my life, and in the rebuilding. It gives me sorrow and fills me with joy.

If I were to list the things that have gone immensely wrong in my world over the past few months we would be able to tally them alongside the things that have gone wondrously right and perhaps conclude, with Herald Crick, that my life is in a dead heat between tragedy and comedy. But life, you know, is Stranger Than Fiction.

Love often destroys. Like Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, Helen and Achilles. The more arduous the love the more potential it has to destroy you. But lovers immersed in such passion never regret the destruction. There is a certain sweetness to the bitterness. Something about being embroiled in the saga awakens you in a way you have never been awakened. Excruciating pain ensures that the senses are not dulled, not lulled to sleep by apathy. And if you can endure intense pain without accepting a drug to numb it, you are capable of experiencing its antithesis, immense, overpowering and almost unbearable joy.

There's a reason artists, poets and musicians often live such schizophrenic lives of high highs and low lows. Because to create art that makes people feel something, you must live that emotion more intensely than you are capable of communicating through your art. The best art is but a failed attempt to express the inexpressible. And the inability to ever fully express, coupled with the insatiable need to experience more, so perhaps to find the key to expression, can make you crazy.

But there is powerful truth to be discovered in that which can never fully be communicated. Maybe here in our mortal world those things which are most true are those which are least explainable. Those things which overwhelm us, which overpower us, which annihilate us and yet leave us begging for more are the very things which are MOST true. They beg to be experienced, to be contrasted with each other and to find a voice to quantify and qualify them. But it is "like trying to catch a wave upon the sand." You simply cannot. Even science proves this to us. How many times have you found a "verifiable fact" for each side of the case? Does this mean that one or the other is false? Perhaps. Perhaps one method is flawed. Or perhaps you simply don't have all the information you need to understand the facts and see fully how they fit together.

We are, as Stuart in Kate and Leopold so vividly puts it, like a dog who sees a rainbow, but none of the other dogs believe him, because none of the other dogs can see in color. The color exists, the potential of expression exists, but the comprehension never fully does. If we ourselves could perfectly comprehend it we could no doubt adequately express it so that others could also fully comprehend. But full comprehension of something so outside ourselves is impossible. But we try. And we try to comprehend through further experience and we destroy ourselves in the trying. And this is what we call living life to the fullest.

The point I am making, I suppose, is that humanity has a history of embracing that which destroys us because what destroys us redefines us and constant redefinition is essential to rational life. [Here I might insert that by merely thinking we are taking in information, synthesizing it and rationally redefining ourselves, so to cognizantly live and not merely biologically live perhaps there must indeed be an equation between "thinking" and "being"] We give ourselves for a love or a cause. We surrender ourselves to the flames so to rise from the ashes like a Phoenix. And so we must. If ever we are to become a Phoenix, we must first be reduced to ashes.

I choose the flames of faith in Jesus Christ. I choose it because out of rational thought and emotional experience I think it is the best and right option. And I continue to verify that decision through the experiences of my life. I continue to try to communicate it as I have attempted (and most certainly failed) to here. It is destroying me and rebuilding me, but looking back it has always done so in a way consistent with that which it has claimed.

And that, my friends, is the great irony of life. It is unexplainable, and so we must try to explain, and with each explanation we get closer to a more full understanding of the truth we can never fully understand, for to fully understand, to ever fully judge the rightness of, we must know all and that (thank you Renaissance, Age of Enlightenment, and Age of Technology for reminding us) is simply an impossibility.

Chasing the Teumessian Fox

When the winter sky is clear, find the three stars that comprise the belt of the constellation Orion. Follow the angle of Orion's downward belt (opposite of the side that holds his shield) and the next very bright star you will come to is Sirius (yep, like the satellite radio mogul). Sirius is the primary star of the constellation Canis Major, the Big Dog. Up and to the left of Sirius is Procyon, the primary star of the constellation Canis Minor, the Little Dog.


In Greek mythology, the city of Thebes committed a terrible crime. As punishment, the gods sent a giant beast called the Teumessian Fox to prey upon their children. Now the Teumessian Fox had a mystical power, he was uncatchable. He endlessly terrorized the city until the Theban general, Amphitryon, devised a brilliant plan. He set the magical dog Laelaps loose in the city to chase the fox down. Laelaps was destined to always catch his prey. Zeus was troubled by the dilemma of an uncatchable fox being chased by an inescapable dog and so resolved it by tossing them both into the sky setting their contest to play out forever in the heavens. Voila! Canis Major and Canis Minor.

This, it seems, could be a metaphor for my life. Destined to catch what cannot be caught and so to chase forever the Teumessian Fox. Perhaps it would be easier if I could roundly define what is my Teumessian Fox, my uncatchable prey. After much wrestling with this idea and grappling with the question, "what is it that I'm chasing?" I come, I think, to at least one answer: perfect completion.

There is always another deadline. Time is a cruel taskmaster with little respite for the weary or the grace for those who flounder under her weight.

There is always another expectation. The more you accomplish, the higher your level of performance the more that is expected of you in subsequent efforts.

There is always another need. If every hurt of the world today were met another would greet the dawn of tomorrow.

There is always more to know. There is always more to experience. There is always more to have.

This is what makes existence life, right? It's the American dream. Strike that. It's the world dream, the pursuit of happiness. Even in chasing we ourselves are pursued by a relentless sense that we ought to be able to catch and hold what we chase.

Tonight I am tired of myself and my own inability to measure up. If I could outrun myself and be alone without myself for a few blissful moments I would revel in the delight of purely, simply being. How disheartening to find that even in sleep I dream and am there as complex and dynamic a character as ever in waking. There at least I seem to know my lines, but life is an improv.

And so I wonder, am I Laelaps or the Teumessian Fox? The pursuer or the prey? And will this dead heat chase ever end or is it only in being flung into the vastness of eternity that completion is achievable?

to mourn is to sing.

A simple research paper and a little life has begun a revolution in the way I think about a passage of Scripture. The paper I refer to was on Jewish funeral and burial customs in the New Testament world. I won't go into a lot of detail, you can always read the paper :)

In Jewish culture mourning was overt. It was no holds barred. You were expected to look and act and speak like someone in mourning. In fact, culture mandated that you participate in active mourning by such things as restraining from certain social events, entering through a particular temple gate, and dressing in a certain manner. Everyone knew your world had been turned upside down and your heart was breaking, and they were expected to treat you accordingly. What's more, it was in your hands. Those who would offer comfort and condolences to a grieving person were forbidden to speak to the bereaved until they first spoke. (it makes sense why Job's friends did not speak for so long. And it makes even more sense why they should have continued to keep their mouths shut.) Interestingly enough though, after a year of overt grieving broken into a step down process from more intense levels of grief to the less intense, the season of mourning was concluded with a ceremony, and a lifestyle of mourning was no longer permitted. ("For everything there is a season...a time to mourn, and a time to laugh.")

All of this to say, mourning is necessary, and even wonderful. "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted." To admit heartbreak was to open oneself up to comfort and facilitate healing. To be forced, in a sense, by the cultural norms to continue mourning for a defined season was to be refused the ability to hide from or suppress the hurt and instead to find a way to work through it, with the help of the community.

There is so much that each of us face that is cause for mourning. Drinking the cup of sorrow to the last drop (to paraphrase Henry Nouwen) is the only way to be able to taste fully the cup of joy.

I could regale you with the number of things that have happened in my personal life, family, church family, and in the world that touches me that have been causes for heartbreak in my life over the past few months. I have felt so many times as though I was in mourning, literally and spiritually, sometimes to the point of physical sickness. Some of this is the nature of existence in this world. Some of it is the Enemy's way of battering my soul and trying to discouraging me and make me abandon the path I am on.

But dear ones, we must take comfort in the fact that we are mourning, for we are recognizing and admitting that all is not well in this world, and that there is nothing we can do to raise what is dead back to life. But we know the One who can, who has, and who does. He longs to bring us comfort, but he cannot bring comfort where there is no embracing of pain.