Annie Said, I had yet to write. So this is my post. A little something I've been working on. 

Holy Ruckus

I live in the days of doing and redoing.

I begin on my hands and knees, spraying the cool smell of cedar and sage on tile, and wiping up thick, dried Greek yogurt with a paper towel. I play giant, kill ants, crush them between my forefinger and thumb, sweep them away. I wipe down the faucet, the inside of the sink for water spots. I make everything dry. I fold a colored towel just so, place it on the rim where the sink meets the counter. I turn off the overhead light, sweep the crumbs and food out from underneath the cabinets, the highchair. I shake out the small southwestern style wool rug on the back deck, then sweep it over with a broom. I light a candle, light balsam fir incense. The kitchen is clean. For a minute or two, this space clean, might be a holy place, calm, quiet, ready to receive the children of the morning.

This doing, this making things straight, this order, this wiping away spots, this is what must be done.

            1. Children of the morning

2. Clean kitchen as refuge, as delight

3. writing again

I wear a pendant around my neck, smooth silver soft on my thumb; engraved upon it is a bush burning, a holy reminder delicately scored by a monk’s steady hand at a place named Christ in The Desert, a monastic refuge sequestered in the hills of New Mexico’s rugged high desert, sacred thing from a sacred place, chiseled by another Maker, one with a vaster stroke. Sacred place, sparse place, dry to the bone, high on a hill, maybe much like place where a bush once burned, a place where reluctant hearts might dwell, might open, might say yes.

To this quiet place there is only one road, long and unpaved, impossible to meander with speed. Rocks and uneven rifts line this fourteen-mile driveway. Few signs mark its existence, just one at the first turn off the two-lane highway, and then no markers for miles. No lighted path, no arrows to reassure. Just road. Road that doesn’t look like road, but arroyo, sculpted by flash floods from summer monsoons.  Road that commands windows down, neck craned out following only the path of sparseness—where the desert sage and brush lacks, there appears a winding lane; what has been removed, the only indicator of direction. This road demands a slow feeling-in.

So I begin. Feeling in. Reluctant, like Moses, whispering, but suppose they will not believe me or listen to my voice, a voice that shook and said, Please send by the hand of whomever else you may send.  These, today and most days are the words of my heart to a call to help the Kingdom come beautiful through words strung together, all I know I can do that might matter. Words are the only thing that come easy—even though I wrestle them back and forth on the page, like God and Jacob, it is a holy ruckus, and I invite God in, to help me to stay in the struggle,  just in case—fingers on keys, scribbles on pads yellow, might be my listening. Just in case these words might prayer—holy conversation.

4. Feeling our way in

5. hope that writing might matter

6. words strung together

7. the phrase "kingdom come beautiful"

8. fingers on keys

9. pads yellow

10. a holy ruckus in my heart

In this story, like in the telling of many stories, the call to beginning looms, keep us away. Beginnings intimidate, hover and are heavy. Who wants to begin, blind battling slow-starts, and figuring-outs. Who goes barefoot into murky water?

Ten now in. I have begun.