Anne Lamott says that if you want to be a writer, you need to sit down each day, and regardless of whether or not you are crazy or mentally dead or narcissistic, try and write at least a paragraph.  Get one paragraph down of something, and let that stand, and aim to do it again the next day.  That is how a writer develops- by writing.

I have had about 5 or so topics run through my head tonight about what I could or should write about, and of course, I press pause on each of them because a post has to be meaty, it has to have iron to it, and make the reader want to go out and surf on top of a bus or something.  All of the ideas are good starters, but they don’t go anywhere. They are nice thoughts with no legs.  Or, by the time I developed one of them, it would be 2:30 in the morning, and already tired from a long day, I would extend my weariness deeper into tomorrow.  No, I can’t do that.

So I will just write about a big part of life that some people struggle with (hand raised), and that others don’t.

When it comes down to it, life is really supposed to be about coming in together, and however we can, drawing close- to one another, to the time that flows around us, to the pulse that beats through our veins, to the smells of spaghetti and meatballs and fajitas and blooming roses and a freshly cut lawn, and a hot dog at the ballpark, and popcorn at the theater.  I think the point is that in whatever we do, or whatever experience we face, or whatever person we meet, we were designed to get close to them, and to be washed by them.  We are supposed to come in to those things and draw close to them because that is where life is found with them- in our plunging into them, and accepting them for what they are, and allowing ourselves to be tested and tempered by them.

Some people have a great capacity to do this, to enter into wherever they go, engaging whoever they meet along the way. I suspect they can do this because they have learned the special art of forgetting themselves.

Life has a way of encouraging us to cover ourselves with so many protective layers that we are coaxed into thinking that life is about avoiding anything unpleasant or uncomfortable.  We armor ourselves with so many layers of padding, thinking that we are protecting ourselves from life by making ourselves unapproachable by pain, and then we wake up years later realizing that by wearing all of this stuff, we cut ourselves off from feeling anything. From taking risks.  From discovering friendships and passions and dreams.  And we cut ourselves off from a beautiful life that we thought our caution would cultivate.

I think Jesus was all about coming in and drawing close to others, because that’s really what he spent his ministry doing.  Wandering around the countryside, he soaked up each day, feeling his sweat, smelling the sea, hearing the gulls shriek and camels bleat, listening to the men wandering with him, and to the throngs that appeared and sought and harkened for him.  And regularly he would see one or two here and there that needed what they couldn’t seem to get from others in their lives, and he would go and spend time with these.  A demonic running naked in a cemetery, deranged and dominated.  A barely tolerated tax collector who made money his friend when no one else was there.  Anxious adulterers and polluted prostitutes and lesser-than lepers.

He would peel off and hang with these people because they the most needed someone with whom they could be close to and who would come in to their lives. Jesus knew that these, among all people, damaged and distraught, needed someone to be close to them.  God is like that. And he made us originally to be like that as well.

Live hard.  Live stark.  Live raw. God made us to draw the marrow out of our days.  But to do so, we must be willing to go out of ourselves, to chuck our swaddles and swaths and snowsuits and leave our bunkers and bomb shelters and, with Him, come in to every moment and in whatever we do, or whatever we sense, or whomever we talk to, draw close.