Now it is time to tell you how I like your misspellings, your bad grammar, in your texts.  All your words are spelled correctly when I hear your voice, and you are punctilious in your grammar and diction.  But you do mutter at times, and I give you the benefit of the doubt.  Can I mention that you are funny when you try and when you don't?  Can I tell you how excessively family-oriented that makes me feel?  I have failed to mention how I want to see you in my living room.  Neither are you aware of how much I would like to look into your beady eyes as you are looking into mine, and I especially remember that look of complete vulnerability in your eyes, tinged with surprise, pain, shame, and gratefulness.  I can't tell you that I want to listen to "On My Own" with you, and how good that will make me feel when it has always made me cry before, because "the hopes and fears of all the years are met" in me in that song.  Could you give me a hint?  I have a few things I would like to bring up, and one is an answer to a simple question you asked but I would not answer when I was home at Christmas and you were here.  How I've wondered what your prayers entail.  I want to read aloud with you, because I think you would be very good at it, and I know that I am, when I have a voice.  I want you to share my winter evenings with your homey face and have you help me set up my book shelves and advise me on furniture that would fit up the stairs.  I want you to move onto a boat so I can visit you, and so you can have an excuse to be at my place more often.  I want to serve other people with you.  I want to be outward-focused with you, to know that together we have not just enough, but more than enough, to meet internal and external needs.  I want to see that with you.  I want to ride in your vehicle with blankets and wool socks because the heater doesn't work.  And maybe someday I will want you to put your hand on my back. 

I want to get married for every reason in the book.  If you separate any one of the reasons from the fold and put it on display like a shorn sheep, it looks pathetic, cold, sappy, or utilitarian.  But combined, look at what a good thing marriage is, how utterly reasonable it is!  How healthful!  How simple!

exactly where you are

Once upon a time...

we received the good.

"Accept it all and let it be for good...

"This moment's pulse, this rhythm in your blood...  Stay with the music.  Words will come in time...

"And when the heart is full of quietness, begin the song exactly where you are."  Malcolm Guite

Amen, and thank you, Jesus.

Why has my flow of thankfulness been punctuated by cursing and anger?  Lament and desire for remittance?

That is where I begin-- exactly as and where I am.  I love you, and sorrow, and find myself in the middle of age-old friendships and betrayals.  I take my stand FOR the good.  Help me to embody that good, the kind that forgives and reconciles and tells the good truth.  God, make me salt water and fresh water.  Make me foam when I break against the rocks.  Make that breaking spectacular and salty like my language, fierce and proud, and ethereal and fluid.  Help me to retreat and regroup and re-assail.  Make me fresh water that receives from above and below the essential life giving liquids and reflects the clarity and light of the firmament.  Your ways are so, so good and wonderful and loving and beloved and clear and light and no darkness at all.  You tell us what will happen before it happens.  You give encouragement and warning.  You call for truth and justice, for those are your ways.  You delight in mercy and in unity, and you call us to persevere, to expend ourselves, towards those ends.

Thank you for late night talks with Rob, for his desire to understand the words I am not saying, for his love.  Thank you for the mercy it is to find comfort in him.  Thank you for how unity requires perseverance, and is able to open our eyes, and challenge us to challenge and repair the disunity all around us.  Help us to be unifying forces, and love you dreadfully.