Dear Jesus,

If I ask you to take me in, will you? If I ask you what it means to be taken in, will you tell me? If I ask you why I even care so much, what will be your response? With the help of a couple close friends I've decided it's time to communicate with you again. It will look like a discipline at first, I'm sure, but that's how many things begin. Just as it's time to stay in one place and allow myself the opportunity to realize that freedom might come just as fully in the form of solidity and assurance as it does in movement. That being said, last night as I ran into the darkness, past abundant fields and houses warm with light, the dampness of evening turning to night coating my skin, I was aware of how still my soul was. It was similar to the night I finished the sodus house. I walked into E's place and he held me and all was calm, which reminds me of the days I sprawl in the grass as far from people as I can get and stare at the sky or close my eyes and hear only the air as it brushes over my mind, cleanses my heart. There's a sense of calm that my insides notice as something unnecessarily rare, something powerful, something needed. I've found that stillness in different ways since I first met you. I've found it in the almost imperceptible pat of my feet along the ground as the miles tick behind me, I've found it in merging my days, nights, thoughts, ideas and desires with those of another individual, and I've found it in putting all thoughts of life aside and asking you to take me in.
People want proof. And you know God, I want to be able to give it to them. I want to be able to explain who you are, how I know you're the real deal, how it is that I'm certain that the power you hold can't be explained by something as obvious as the power that appears when any group of people join together to do anything at all. There is power in a group of people believing in something whether it's weight loss, environmental conservation, inner-city development, or God. People create movements. But I'm not looking for a movement. Not anymore. I'm looking for something real that I can carry with me into my real life filled with real people who do real things and laugh at real moments and struggle with real issues. I've tried yoga. I love it. But that point it brings me to is the same point I get to on a long solo-run, the same point I hit when I sense myself meshing seamlessly with another individual. I find myself muttering in another language, aware of every natural sound around me, unaware of traffic, unidentifiable people, tomorrows events or the structure I'm inside. The other things that set me free, they bring me back to you.
Yesterday Amy took my hand and dragged me to the top of a set of stairs leading to a church somewhere in South Wedge. She told me to pray. I couldn't do it. Not because I don't know how, but because I know how far too well. I could pray all day without stumbling or stuttering or pausing once. I don't want to know how to do this anymore, I want to be this. I don't want to read the right books, listen to the right music, say amen at the right times. I want to see you in my life in all your TRUTH with all the reality of who you are and what that can look like in THIS world. Maybe I've made so many mistakes I can't be forgiven and won't ever find myself on the same road I once sought. Or maybe I'm about to arrive at something even less understood than what I knew before. Maybe I'm about to be more me, more you, more alive than I ever have been before. That's what I want. But Jesus, I also want to be clean. So whatever that means, you have my permission: wash me, and please, please take me in.