Gems like the one above are what made Godric a redeeming reading experience for me. The medieval language was rather difficult for me to wade through but every once in awhile, I’d hit some turn of phrase or beautiful truth bearing sentence like the one above.

Friendship is such a complex thing. There are friends that indeed only fill a certain season of our lives, and others that endure and last through time. I remember once when visiting a friend in Mongolia, she commented on how we were both living in other countries and spent more time talking about our past than anything else. And sure enough, if it weren’t for Facebook, I’d have no idea what was going on in her life right now.

I’ve been thinking about friendship and the shifting nature of relationships a lot lately. How necessary they are for living, how hard they can be to sustain when life takes a turn. How hard it can be to make amends when trust is broken. How our changing self-perception and chosen memory impacts our clumsy attempts to build bridges and know one another.

But oh how sweet it can be when it goes right.

I do think I have a tendency to pile on work in order to avoid too MUCH self-examination…I say this only because my to-do list of non-essential things has remained almost identical to what it was before I went away.

In reading through the various posts of people’s experience at Hutchmoot and how much we all loved the feeling of community and what community means and how to find it, etc., I found tears streaming down my face during one particularly beautiful one. It felt like grief and I couldn’t really figure out why I was grieving. And then it occurred to me…I have had a loss of community this year…one that has impacted and affected me more than I realized until that moment.

Why or how it happened I can’t really say in any certain terms, but I can say that is has changed a lot of how I view what I do. I think it’s been a silent shaping force I didn’t even realize was there. And I think it’s stolen from me and I’m not even sure that I want back what it’s taken. Is that cynicism? Maybe or maybe it’s just growing up and moving on.

I can be slow to realize things, like this. But I can say there’s a certain power in naming the things you’ve lost, even if you didn’t realize before just how sharp the loss was. There’s power I say, because I feel a rebuilding of what’s left begin to take form. I feel the life after start to move in its own direction, no longer a prisoner to the unnamed loss.

…I believe hope is quite possibly the most dangerous thing a human can ever embrace. After all it is only hope–yet it can become the very reason to keep breathing. The stakes are always frighteningly high. But hope is, by definition, based on wish or feeling or want–chance. One thing hope is not: it isn’t certain.

Hope is one of the main ingredients of faith, and faith finds its basis in being certain of the illogical and intangible. It is a very strange thing, hope. It can draw you in, but it can mangle you in the process. It certainly is not safe–of this, I can be sure. It is not always alluring. No, to the contrary, it is sometimes revolting.

Desperate Hope by Candi Pearson Shelton

These words came to mind as I read something a friend wrote about the struggle to believe or maybe more accurately wrestling with how a faith community fits in with belief. When I first read Shelton’s memoir earlier this year, I was really struck by these words, because hope is a concept often made to seem like a light and sweet thing, rather than something, well, revolting.

I can remember when I first really understood what hope was. I was recovering from an emotionally damaging relationship and learning how to function in normal social situations again. I was so lucky at this time to have a church group that really embraced me. I was working a job I didn’t love but that paid the bills and going to counseling for the first time. And one day out of the wastelands of my heart, I realized that I would be able to become myself again and that my life could be something different than I ever imagined. I felt something come alive in my heart that I didn’t recognize, but eventually realized was hope.

Hope can feel like a soothing balm or an exhilarating shot to the soul. It can also be the very lifeline we dig our fingers into and won’t let go of…it can hurt and cut and make us bleed and yet we hold on.

I think at times people label hope as being superficial and scoff at hope unfounded. But since that day so long ago when hope first shot through the hardened soil of my heart, I know nothing more beautiful than the deep river of hope and there’s nothing I’d fight harder to protect.

And I guess it’s a bit of a relief that hope has no clear sight. It moves us forward into the unknown, the something we think must be better, and yet it gives no shape to that vision, allowing the future to build and form itself. Hope is the fuel upon which our hearts run, but it does not guide our steps.

It is the thing I cannot live without.

Gratitude for a special weekend with like-minded people, gratitude for the new friends I’d met and for the artists I love caring enough to even do something like Hutchmoot. Gratitude for stories and the different roles they serve in our lives. Gratitude that there’s still enough softness in my heart to be so deeply moved.

It’s a funny thing, gratitude, because it tips the scales. It spurs one on towards wanting to do good things. It makes you hungry to give something good and worthwhile and meaningful to the world. That’s how I feel today after a weekend where my brain and heart were stuffed full. I want to dig a little deeper, give a little more.

Earlier this summer and even this weekend, I was talking to friends about the big event I coordinate (I’m sure you can guess what it is) and how I had lost my heart for it. I felt like I was going through the motions and I wondered if there was any point. As I recalled that conversation and the way I’m feeling today so peaceful and full of gratitude, I remembered why I had started it to begin with and what it meant to me at the time. It sprang from a place of gratitude in my heart.

Things have changed a lot since that time in my life, but remembering that has helped me refocus on what’s important in the things I do. I want to work out of gratitude.

As I’m letting the many conversations of the weekend sink in, the many things I heard and want to mull over and digest over the next few days, as I consider what it all means to the person I am ever striving to be, I want to return to the work I already do and take joy in being able to give something to the world and do the very best I can.

I’m thinking of this as I prepare to go to Nashville this weekend. It’s been maybe five years since I’ve been there.

Nashville is significant to me in different ways, I often think of it as a place that marks different chapters in my life. From thinking the Opryland Hotel was the most glamorous place on earth when I was young, it was also the halfway point between my home and my college on the long drive between the two, it’s the place others in my life went and made decisions that impacted me greatly, and it has also often been a place where I sought healing in unlikely times. I used to want to live there, and now I’m surprised in many ways to go back.

You see I’ve been in Southern California so long I know the culture of it is deep in me now. For all of its superficiality, materialism, and individuality, it’s home and those are the devils I know and live with now. There’s something that grates inside of me at the thought of that Bible belt culture I once found comfort in. It’s odd and I’ll be interested to see how the reality is different from what I remember.

But place…place holds memories, too. I realized this when I visited my hometown a few years ago. I was surprised by the way memories swept over me when we turned down a certain street. Like smell or music, it’s a key that unlocks the memories deep inside of us. Not necessarily significant ones, just fragments of the lives we’ve lived. Tiny pieces we thought were gone forever. A conversation, a night out with a friend, a stinging word. I’m interested to see if Nashville will beam its light on these places in my mind and heart I forget are there.

But mostly I’m looking forward to a good weekend of fellowship and friends.

I’m on the brink of wrapping up a few big projects and I could feel it today (so could all my twitter followers as I tweeted about pretty much everything that popped in my head) and I was able to breathe a little bit. And read a post by an Andrew Peterson fan about the new album. Throwing caution to the wind, I immediately purchased an option that would allow me to download it right away. (the CD doesn’t come out until the end of July but for extra bucks they’ll let you download it now)

There’s no way to really describe the grounding effect certain artists have for me…it’s the sort of thing I feel I gush too much about. Some people in this life…whether they be musicians, authors, even bloggers have an ability to capture life in their words in a way that makes sense to me. In a way that feels like home.

So today…listening to the new Andrew Peterson album..it was calming. It was like being reminded of the deeper beauty in the world. Hope formed from the burning fires of life, love emerging from the darkest nights of the soul…peace. Something more.

I needed it more than I can say.

(I have this same feeling when I read Beth Kephart’s books, too. The feeling that I’ve opened up, exposed, and stitched back together with sweet aching hope.)

Hope has a way of turning its face to you just when you least expect it
You walk in a room, you look out a window and something there leaves you breathless
You say to yourself, “It’s been awhile since I’ve felt this but it feels like it might be…..hope” Sara Groves “It Might Be Hope”

Memories are faulty. They are so strongly shaped by who we are in that moment, and of course, what we choose to remember and what impacts us as people. One of my favorite lines in Beth Kephart’s Nothing but Ghosts, is “history is never absolute.” Memory is such an odd function of our humanity and it is imperfect.

Have you ever had a conversation with someone and they recall something you were there for through TOTALLY DIFFERENT EYES? Or have you ever learned something later on that sheds a new light and alters the entire way you saw something to begin with?

I’ve also been thinking about this in regards to what can only be called a relationship split that I recently experienced. (not a romantic relationship–a friendship) I’ve gone through many phases in processing this…hurt, anger, self-righteousness…but there’s this part of me that knows that while I see things from one angle, this other person is looking at it in a different light. In a way, this helps me to be at peace with things. (I’ve already tried to dialogue in an open and honest way and didn’t succeed, so I have to come to some measure of peace) There are probably wrongs I’ve committed that I can’t see from my limited perspective, and completely different ways of interpreting events from my own. And the truth…the truth is probably somewhere in between.

I guess only God has the truth…He sees into the depths of our hearts and knows our intentions. And while He doesn’t share this knowledge with us, it’s kind of comforting to think someone out there does, in fact, know.

And that one day we will know, just as we are known.

There’s a level of excitement with the introduction of forthcoming titles. So often we think of only the finished product and for those of you who are reading this who are book bloggers, we go through books so fast. I chatted with an author the other day who rewrote each chapter of her book ten times. A well written book is the ultimate labor of love. Each book whispers of the possibility…brimming over with promise to be the next book to change our lives, the next story to impact our culture.

BEA is the ultimate place of excitement, where a beleaguered industry tries to make the best of it…burns the fuel of hope by the very act of keeping on. For me, it’s the chance to see friends, friends as dear to me as those in my every day face to face to life. For me, it’s a place of renewal, of refreshment, of inspiration.

When it’s over, and I’ve come home and collapsed, I have jury duty. Can you believe it?

In any case, I’ve had so many posts I’ve wanted to write here, but just not the time. So many fragmented thoughts that need a space to come together and become something. I hope after BEA to return a little more attention here.

Some of you…I will see you very soon.