i pictured myself walking down a very long hallway. there were many doors and light streamed through the window's rooms and filled the hallways. i did not want to check out all the rooms and I wasn't totally sure if i should look to the left or the right to begin. but instead of this orderly walk in and out of rooms, the walls began being knocked down, a bit explosively, like one minute they were there and the next they were slammed by a wrecking ball, and suddenly I was in a wide open space.

everytime i thought i knew what i might see but as i rubbed my eyes and reopened I was adjusting to an entirely new picture. it was not as i expected, it was not as i had known before, this space, this new construction, the expansiveness of it all was not familiar.

i could probably describe my whole journey thus far with The Seattle School this way, but most precisely I am describing my experience as an auditor if you will to my first Dan Allender workshop. Thursday through Sunday was The Story workshop and I attended all the teaching time as a way to begin to immerse myself into a Dan experience. I now see why it is mostly indescribable because most of us do not have the vocabulary in our tool shed of our brains and heart to unlock what ideas he may present. and when i say present, i should say exhort or lead or suggest... something that is not passive and is rather radical. almost entirely radical actually. im moved and dumbfounded. Available and terrified.

i heard of violence, lust, listening without advising, kindness, anger, play, shame, shalom, delight, shalom shattered, and so on and so forth. these incredibly large images of pain mashed up on the same wall in the same room that is light filled with God's glory revealing in us. i was just an auditor not even near brave enough to be a full workshop participant and my whole self is whirling.

Each day I work in this place i wait to be treated in ways I understand with vocabulary I know but it keeps not happening. I of course coming from a family of all pastors and counselors totally imagined that this jump would not be too extreme, that i would "get it" and share in the lingo. these are not looks, ways and words I know, much less in the workplace. i repeat, available thanks to God, nonetheless, a wee terrified of how this new expanse, this new spaciousness, this growing vocabulary will immigrate my heart and my home.