When Words Falter

Thoughts on finding a foundation that remains

This last week has been a perpetual tug-of-war between me wanting to run away to an imaginary cabin in the woods of northern Sweden to pick berries and feeling like I should be sharing my many thoughts from the proverbial internet mountaintops.

This picture is probably as close to northern Sweden as I’ll get for the foreseeable future. So let’s take a moment to breathe in the cold, frosty pixels.

by Hans Ott

As for sharing my thoughts… this last week has hit particularly close to home, and I have a lot of them.

Before you banish me to your email trash bin, I’m oversaturated with current events too. It’s exhausting. Relentless.

This is not a reaction piece or deep dive into any one event.

If you are interested in that kind of content I will be writing more on my other occasional, completely unpaywalled substack here…

But for us here, I simply want to share a few things I’ve noticed through a heavy week that might help, paired with a story.

I know the undercurrents and power dynamics happening in the US right now well because I spent 20 years working in and around the corners of American evangelicalism that has given rise to them.

Possible commentary and explainer pieces have been running through my head all week long.

But, instead, today, I sat on my couch and cried yet again.

Somehow, for me personally, tears of lament felt like a more genuine starting place to respond to the litany of tragedies filling our newsfeeds.

• For the violence that ripped 2 lawmakers from their homes and families in MN… and wounded 2 more.

• For the violence that makes little children carry bulletproof body armor in bags once meant for books.

• For the bloodshed that took a father away from his family last week in Utah.

• For a generation of children that is being wiped out in multiple places overseas.

• For the rhetoric that turns our words into weapons against one another.

Here’s the thing…

When we speak words shaped like knives, we wind up wounding and lacerating our own souls as well as all those in earshot.

I long to find the place where we can beat our sharpened words into ploughshares so we can use them to plant seeds that nourish repair instead of promoting further rupture.

Wonder doesn’t exist in a vacuum. There is always a context around its appearing. I believe staying aware of that context is incredibly important.

Fun fact about me that I’ve never told anyone about online. I seriously considered becoming a lay Franciscan in college.

There was this house a few blocks from my campus that was turned into a neighborhood cafe serving scrumptious, often scratch-made, free, home-cooked meals on real china with real metal utensils. Where no one sat alone. Ever.

Community leaders. Professors. Pastors. The unhoused. Baylor students. The disabled. The struggling. Volunteers. Literally everyone and their cousin. A messy tangle of humanity all gathered eating together around communal tables.

It was called the Gospel Cafe. And it really was a picture of what good news could look like. I looked them up yesterday, and they are still going strong some 25 years later. That is remarkable to me.

The community running it introduced teenage me in her undergraduate days to the likes of Henri Nouwen, Brother Lawrence, and Richard Rohr. To what practicing contemplative community could look like. To silent retreats and wordless prayer.

They also challenged my many assumptions and stretched my understandings.

While I was busy trying to shoehorn my soul into a theology I never fully fit into, they offered something profoundly simpler and more expansive.

So expansive it has taken a few decades of discovery and dismantling to grow into.

For me the last decade since leaving professionalized, ordained ministry has been a returning to center. Whoever lives in love lives in God and God in them.

That’s it. That’s my life goal that took root under bridges and over bowls of soup 20+ years ago.

To live inside of Love and have Love live inside of me.

The kind of love that even loves the people in my world whose points of view I vehemently disagree with.

Some days I’m better at that than others.

The kind of love that loves my neighbors… full stop. All my neighbors.

This last week has found me reaching into the liturgical tradition in which I was raised.

We used to sing the Peace Prayer, that is often attributed to St. Francis.

It actually was written in France in 1912. And spread more broadly during the world wars. But it certainly carries the heart of St. Francis.

This last week especially, it has given me an anchor in turbulence that has been helpful.

I share it here in case it might offer words or phrases to hold on to.

Make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Really… I wish I could just cook a gigantic pot soup with fresh baked bread like my dad used to make in the outdoor fire place. And have all of you come over and hang out.

That we could sit out in the garden or talk over steaming cups of tea served from my mom’s china.

That might be a smidge beyond reach, but we can continue to gather here around courage and kindness and tell the stories that help us feel less alone.

We can share the wonder and good things waiting in the tiniest of moments. That doesn’t just feed our souls, it tunes our nervous systems.

We can meet over essays and practices to help us thrive.

We can dive into creative prompts and opportunities to share beauty and joy.

This is a safe place to be who you are. You are welcome here just as you are.

I believe more firmly than ever that wonder is a solid path back to ourselves and out to a kinder future we build together.

And I’m beyond grateful to be journeying with you on it.

Thank you for being here. And being you.

If you this post was helpful, please consider sharing it.

You are loved,