His Vigorous Heart

I don’t know what the heck is wrong with me. I’m currently on my  [technically]  second job since deciding to step down from a ministry position at my dream organization. (The first lasted exactly 2 nightmarish graveyard shifts at 3am for a corporate dystopian warehouse where I had been hired to fulfill a completely different position.) The second is a perfectly fine position at a grocery store deli, working 8 hours a day and making the biggest paycheck of my life, cutting meats and cheeses and being friendly to customers. And I hate it. Because I don’t give a flying fuck about any of it. (Sorry about the language. Fair warning: there's more of it.) When I worked at OneLife (or any of the ministries and non-profits I've been involved with for that matter), I was frustrated by the financial situation I was in. I had food and housing provided, which was an incredible gift that's easy to overlook, but apart from that I was making pennies in a monthly stipend. And like, I get i...

Hey friends! I have been hesitant to share an update on my life, because it involves a job, and a job ( for me ) has always involved a mixture of pride and identity and an unhealthy fixation on money, and announcing that on social media just adds a dangerous new spin on all of those things--all wrapped up in the fact that it’s a ministry position and I want to be sure I’m doing it for the right reasons and not just so that I “look cool” or whatever. That said, I also think it’s a bit disingenuous to not share about what God has been doing in my life and in the lives of others through me. In light of all the things I’ve been learning about grace the last few years, it seems a bit weird not to share what is perhaps the biggest example of grace that I’ve experienced in this whole process. And it begins with a story. One Friday morning in August I was sitting at my office desk stuffing envelopes and researching cheap plane tickets in my downtime. I had just come to terms with the ...

Hey! It’s been a while (yet again) since I’ve posted. So much for New Years’ Resolutions of staying on top of my blog game.  You might remember from last time that I had just moved into an exciting new community house in Roanoke, VA. I’m still here! Things are slowly shifting into place, and we’ve been hard at work making the house a functioning environment. We just welcomed our third member this weekend after he graduated from college, and we’re looking forward to a summer full of events to kick off the Aidan Community in style. (Come on out if you’re in town!) Some of you guys have asked me where I’m working, how life is going, etc. I’m fortunate enough to work right across the street from my house. (You might also remember that my car sort of...exploded...in November and so I was without a set of wheels for about 5 months.) It’s not a thrilling job -- I sit at a desk stuffing envelopes for most of the day -- but it provides my needs, it’s within walking distance, a...

There is a very thin crack between the worlds, and I always seem to find myself stuck at the bottom of it, wedged between its narrow walls, stuck between a rock and the proverbial hard place. Once again, the world has chewed me up and spit me out. Once again, its system has allowed me to somehow slip through the gaps and fall through the cracks, forgotten, unnoticed; The Crack Between the Worlds, my forever home. Maybe we all live here, or have at least visited it a couple of times. Maybe we don’t like to talk about it. Maybe we’re all too uncomfortable with the idea to even admit it to ourselves, even in the privacy of our own souls. Or maybe I’m just different. Unique. ...Broken. But from my vantage point in this chasm so often accompanied by loneliness and despair and the shadow of death, I can see the outlines of two very distinct cities on the clifftops above me. To one side is the world we’re all familiar with, full of jobs and cell phones and money and Netflix and...

Pictured below is the piece of art I made to commemorate my Yellow House experience, which was hung on the living room wall (slightly crookedly) just in time for our final house show/Goodbye Party last night. I’ve always wanted to be artistic, but I’ve never really experimented with it until my time here at the Yellow House. Since my most notable creative accomplishments this year have been my feeble attempts at string art, I chose to use that medium for this reflection piece. I should probably note that I see life as a journey and God as an ocean. I am a sailboat gliding across His sea, and His Spirit is the breath in my sails. Maybe it’s because of the small fisherman town I come from or the fact that my childhood home was right on the Bay; maybe it’s because I taught sailing for two joyful, magical summers and fell in love with the complex simplicity of it; maybe it’s because I resonate with the idea of a powerful, moving, deep, mysterious, and ever-changing yet ever-steady p...