dorset

...in due time photos from this week in Dorset will emerge on the facebook, and even then I don't believe it really happened. It was a gift of weather, space and landscape, of sea, music and night skies, of wine, hills and castles, of Place, polaroids, and sketches, of steamtrains, cider and communion that made room to process the grief of departures. Those absent were missed, every dilapidated farm was a Dorset L'Abri in waiting, every meal served to increase a longing that this might be how we might always be.

(Image: Drew's)

who did you meet at l'abri this fall?

who did you meet at l'abri this fall?
itinerant teachers and a volleyball?
speed-scrabblers and tolly's drawl?
a post-evangelical's emergent gall?
mf's sweater-vest and mike's 'y'all'?

d'you atleast meet jesus at l'abri this fall?
was he hiding in the old chapel?
did he sit quietly at your lunch table?
and whisper out of lewis, schaeffer and l'engle?
or speak through sweat down at the wood store?

what did you get from l'abri this fall?
a sermon against suburban sprawl?
memories seeing your breath in the hall?
never-fading pictures on your facebook wall?
or a never again and nothing at all?

and will you remember l'abri next fall?
when you're tucked away, flights away, somewhere warm,
with gathered candlelights arrayed, thom will say, something small,
a spitting image, deadringing 'pression of us all,
and steven'll play of nights spoons splayed across the floor.

you are missed more than i can say,

all you who were l'abri last fall.