February 2012
3 posts
Vice Vs. Us
We’re sitting in a room with bad carpet and cold air telling our secrets to one another. In the beginning it feels unsafe like a raft without any lifejackets or oars. My turn hasn’t come yet, my telling hasn’t been told; and so all I want is for it to be lunch time so we can call it a day. Unfortunately the world doesn’t revolve around me so I carry on as...
Man on Fire: A Story About Grace
He sits across from her in an orange jumpsuit, smiling big and goofy, unrestrained. There’s a sense of undeserved joy on the man’s face. He shouldn’t look so happy, given the setting, given the very framework for her visit. Nonetheless, they can both tell it’s going to be a good visit. Not like the last one where he asked her to leave on account of her asking too many...
Mike & Ike
She was standing in line at Wal-Mart when she thought of him. Or perhaps she was out of line, in a small town full of nothing flashy wearing snake-skin ballet flats and too many bangles to count. Nonetheless, the little boy, the chubby one with the unibrow standing in front of her grabbed at a pack of Mike & Ikes and begged with hideous puppy eyes and an unpleasant voice.
“Please can...
January 2012
1 post
“The way of Jesus cannot be imposed or mapped — it requires an active...”
– Eugene H. Peterson
November 2011
3 posts
kickstarter, y'all
I started a kickstarter campaign… check it out here :)
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1904401335/mckenzie-writes-a-book
When We Don't (Know If We) Believe
I’m driving over the speed limit with the windows down and my hair is blowing wild like some kind of untamed animal. I’m not driving too, too fast, just fast enough to be the in the left lane but slow enough to not get pulled over. It’s something you’ve got to master, takes a few speeding tickets to work itself out. Mostly my head is in the clouds where it often...
the gardens we meant to plant
sometimes i need a helicopter to hover over my head, send down a rope and get me out of all this choppy, clustered water. because sometimes the days get weak and trudge with too many excuses, the sun seems to set on every lingering hope and i can’t seem to tug at my bootstraps anymore can’t stand the sight of my cliche knuckles, too white, too cracked and there are days when all my...
October 2011
1 post
all hands on deck
if you were a sinking ship in the story that you’re living, some kind of broken vessel among the fleet of masses, i would gather all the birds of the sky so they could string you to safety they’d lift you out of the misery of the untamed sea and onto the shore just beyond your reach. you’d be out of the tide of a nasty grasp, the waves of no compromise and if the birds...
September 2011
5 posts
The Theology of Trust
We’re sitting at a cheap Mexican place eating cheap Mexican food and there’s bad lighting all around. A football game between lord knows who is playing with the volume set too loud. My roommate sits across from me and toys with small talk for about thirty seconds before asking a difficult question. It’s the question that I’ve been waiting for, but have been hoping...
strong threads
when my heart is cotton web dry and a thousand gallons thirsty when the devil’s dealing in smash and everything feels forged i take a telescope to my ears and see the paper universe in my head, that’s where i’m working on a brilliant display, made of duck tape dreams and fractured constellations a parallel intersection of everything confused— telescope to my ears and i...
the prophet gets the last word
the cynic:
ten thousand raging bulls reside in this coffin chest inside there is a dying death to hope for better days and from my megaphone comes a sweet shamed chorus a heavy grain of triumphant accusation says, “you can’t do this.” so i’m sitting at the table, creating behind the sewing machine of disaster and i see the world all wrong; all black, all white, all...
mine is yours
i keep wondering what kind of scenery i’ll have to walk through for the truth to jar me out of such despondent disposition, because when we talk about the geography of poverty i shut the door and reduce it to a setting too far from my bed i’m complacent and my eyes are fixed on the mess of material that retires in fields of decay.
and no matter how many times i see the portrait of...
cotton galaxy: how to dance with the angels
i’m trying to dance with the angels but my feet are so messy and tired and loud with excuses, and my arms, the ones that are weak and not so coordinated, they can’t reach to heaven even though i ask them to.
i’d like to quit all the nonsense that floods my heavy head, so i can focus on what it means to be human. and inch towards the better lived life, and walk closer to the...
August 2011
1 post
Like Teen Spirit
I smell everything too much. My nostrils have limbs and every room, every person, every thing has a smell that I can’t seem to miss. The strongest of associates, smell resurrects memory. Light and heavy, there is no choosing what will be brought back to life.
Palmolive smells like being 9 again. It smells like standing next to my Grandma on a thick mahogany chair that’s...
July 2011
1 post
An Open Letter To The Cool Club:
Whether you’re camping out in Williamsburg or Winter Park, you know who you are. You’re the cool ones; the ones who are dying in denim mid-July and choking on PBR until the taste of bad club soda gets gone. You’re the ones still sitting at the imaginary lunch table that everyone wants to be at.
The reality is, is that there’s some of “the cool club” in all of us. There are the moments...
June 2011
7 posts
Yogurtland Diaries
We’re on our way to Yogurtland to eat dessert instead of dinner for the second night in a row. The night is humid and the city is neon. Shannon is driving and Claire is in the passenger seat. I used to hate frozen yogurt. All the hype. All the cold plastic, modern decor. But then something switched and I decided it was a viable option for meal replacement and best-friend bonding time.
The...
Turntables of Grace
this was written to be read at status. it’s from the perspective of God speaking to us. when i’m thinking clearly it’s how i envision His love.
————
i’ve got cosmic turntables of grace that have been spinning since before the dinosaurs and i’m playing this story on repeat:
my love strings from venus to your heart and i’ll go miles...
An Open Letter To Rap:
Trust me, I like for my car to feel like an earthquake as much as the next white girl who grew up in suburbia. And I can (not so proudly) note that I know every word to Ludacris’ first album. But as I’ve grown up, Cash Money turned to Young Money, Weezy became the most explosive thing on the scene, and my taste changed. I like the same beats, I like the...
First Love: A Story of First Things First
We’re driving in the car and I’ve nearly reached my word quota. That’s the point I get to when I’ve said enough words and heard enough words and just want to listen to music. But Janae is next to me and she just keeps talking over the speakers. It’s not that she talks too much, it’s just that we have different quotas. And she isn’t even talking about garbage like gossip or what she ate for...
Neon Dreams
i would like a double cheeseburger, medium fries, and a coke made with love and served on a tray that will never decompose i would like a range rover, all blacked out made with luxury and rolled off all the best belts and that’s all i want, right now
but tomorrow, tomorrow i’ll sell everything for bigger dreams, for a kingdom that shakes the earth- for dreams that don’t leave me swollen and...
Summer Reading List
People often ask me what I’m reading or to recommend books for them. If you are looking for some books to grab this Summer check out these:
Nonfiction
An American Childhood by Annie Dillard Love and Living by Thomas Merton A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence The Wounded Healer...
This I know to be true: He sees us through the valley. More and more I am believing the reality that the Father loves us, holds us, and fights for us, even (perhaps especially) when we can’t see it or feel it. Reality is greater than perception. Subsequently, it’s also greater than feeling. The songs that speak of his faithfulness are true. The stories of his goodness are real.
I’m...
May 2011
2 posts
Marrying Your Friends
I’m trying to cover my mouth, my face, my every seeping-out-emotion so my roommate Mijanne can’t hear me cry. The sobs are loud like ambulances; they’re unforgiving at best. The three feet of space that separates our beds isn’t enough distance to distract her.
“Mac, are you okay?” “I don’t know.”
I get out of bed and get in the shower and hope to wash off whatever it is that I...
rest in the wake of american modernity
*this was written as a spoken word piece.
most of the time i don’t know how to say “no” until my body does it for me- with a fever or a cough, with achy bones and a cranky voice the reality is, is that though i’m failing to slow myself, i need rest more than i’d like to believe
but i can’t not go, do, be; it’s in my thread, my culture-altered DNA i’m american and...
April 2011
1 post
Neon Bible: A Story About Lent
Forty days ago things were different. My heart was cold like too much winter. My days were selfish like too much free time. I was mad at God and the Church and everything I had ever shaped my life around. In many ways it felt as though things were breaking down; all the moving parts of my mind and heart didn’t work anymore. The synapses kept misfiring. My relationship with God felt...
March 2011
4 posts
Room of Life
This was written at church.
Life is found here. In these man made walls of concrete and conflict. Walls that contain a room of worship; a room of prose echoed back to God. This is a room beaming with what is real and true and all the things I’ve ever wanted. Everything. Anything. All the collected desires and voids I’ve ever had are found here. Here, being a catalyst not a place. A...
An Open Letter to Rob Bell:
Thank you.
Thank you for helping me not walk away. The last year has been a hard one; a doubt defeating desire one. And I’ve often thought about whether or not following Jesus is worth the cost. (My whole life. My whole everything. Can I do that? Can I give that much?) I’ve sat with my fears and my questions and I’ve wondered if I’m alone. I’ve wondered if I’m the only...
The City Beautiful [Conduit]
What makes a city beautiful anyways?
Is it the trees or the buildings? The sidewalks or the neighborhoods? The parks or the sports teams? The politicians or the preachers? Is a city only worth the best venues and most brilliant streets? What makes it worth anything at all?
Mostly, I want to know what makes a city worth calling yours? (We can go anywhere. New York, LA, Boston, yet still...
Hollaback Girl [Where My Ladies At?]
What does woman mean anyways? It means a waist that’s small like Barbie’s, like not ever eating what I want. Give me what is green and nothing else. My stomach will be empty and flat and always hungry. It means tan skin that you have to buy. Bring me the bulbs, the lotion, the color I didn’t get from God. And eyes, eyes that stick out black, black, black. Baby girl, we don’t...
February 2011
2 posts
The Kind of Life I Want:
(Free write)
I’d like to wake up in the morning and be grateful for the newness of each day. I want a life that’s full of days that aren’t too too busy, there’s no need for rush. Days that are bigger than me, bigger than my own small hands.
I want a life where I sit on porches and listen to something other than my own voice. Where I am quiet enough and still enough to talk with my God. ...
where the kingdom is
*sorry for the terrible formatting. tumblr made me do it.
the problem is this:
most of my days are spent distracted
my mind is a snowglobe
and like the sea i keep choking on salty waves
most of my life is for me,
i don’t know how to stop buying when my closet is full and stop eating when my appetite is gone.
i don’t know how to only put my hands to what is good; all the plows i’m holding seem to...
January 2011
1 post
An Open Letter to Taylor Swift:
Taylor (or T. Swift, Tay Tay, etc.),
First off, I’d like to give you a huge round of applause for your 2010 explosion. Girl, you’re dynamite, some kind of wildfire. It must feel like 4th of July everyday in your world. You are everywhere and girls across the world are pleased that you’re letting them sing along to the intimate details of your diary. Vulnerability is at its peak with you and...
December 2010
1 post
Love Your Family as Yourself
This is the truth about my life:
I sit at the kitchen table and eat tofu and hummus. I’m staring out the window at skyscraper trees, at mountains like postcards, at a land I rarely see. I can’t see any concrete from where I’m sitting and I like it. It’s December 23rd and my Grandpa just came back upstairs after smoking a joint, is high as a kite, is back at Woodstock or Santa...
November 2010
4 posts
Hands to the Plow: Thoughts on Not Giving Up
I’m standing at my bookshelf doing it again, going back and forth in my head between what I should read and what I want to read. I’m in a story of so much should vs. so much want. I should read the Bible, but I’ve always been the stubborn kind, the do what I want kind. I’m going for the fiction, the classics, the good stuff. I’m going for anything except the Bible. “Archaic and...
Speaking of Silence
I splash water out of the pool and onto the concrete. The ants scurry as I watch them with my god-like eyes that hover overhead. Within seconds I’ve ruined their small lives; destroyed some sort of a lesser kingdom. I decide it’s good that I’m not the real God, the one who is capable of ruining everything, but out of some sort of kindness chooses not to. I know it’s cruel but I’m sort of okay...
How We Lost Him
High School:
I feel my phone against my arm sometime between the moon and the morning. I told him to call anytime he needed a ride. I just didn’t know I would be crawling out of bed and wandering around parties every Friday night.
I pass the bonfire and the keg, the sad concrete looking Freshman girls and the open tailgates.
“Have you seen Ryan?” I ask everyone.
His body is long and limp, heavy...
Sadness, Whatever.
I can’t explain sad, I can only feel it. Can only wear it like an ugly sweater that won’t go away, and drink it like sour water, and feel it like a million bee stings to the heart.
I can only push it into a room and say, “this is sadness.” I cannot define it or make sense of it, cannot tell you what it is or how it got here. “Here” being in me, with me, around me. Sometimes sadness inches...
September 2010
1 post
Melt
Every Tuesday and Thursday I take the sad, rusted-on-the-edges yellow cart to the museum. Over cracked concrete and slivers of grass I roll; park myself under shady trees and listen to the hundreds of stories that whisper my way. My uncle owns at least fifteen ice cream carts; all rusty, all yellow, all like crooked bones about to break. They keep the ice cream cold and that’s all that...
July 2010
3 posts
The Individual is the Collective
“She said her favorite color was black and I knew she was lying.” said Kestae.
“And that’s why you got in a fight?” I asked.
“Well yeah, I sort of just exploded on her for copying me. I don’t care what her favorite color is. I just want it to be her favorite color.” replied the 9-year-old.
There’s a significant part of me that resonates with Kestae- that desperately wants people to...
Unbroken Eyes: Seeing Ourselves as God Does.
I’ve always been a fan of statement pieces. A strong piece of furniture, an oversized clock, a work of art that stretches to the ceiling. Not all at once though, just one or two pieces per room. You don’t want your house to look like a costume shop or a yard sale. And so, that mirror, that-bigger-than-me, edged with mahogany mirror was my statement piece. There might have been a few...
Hands Behind Your Back
We sit in a circle and answer questions laid out by a nine year old. Kestae, the one with the questions, made a poster for us to look at; even drew our pictures on it. My hair is four months ago short but I’m not mentioning it. Only Samia, my friend who also has short hair, who savors every inch would understand. The questions Kestae asks are hard in a good way, in a make you think about your...
June 2010
5 posts
The Quiet Surgery
A story from recent days:
I’m not being careful and my elbow hits the tin jar ever so slightly. Still, it’s strong enough to send it crashing to the ground. The landing is harsh to the ears and coins land every-which-a-way across my room. The house is empty, there will be no, “You okay in there?”
In my head, “I’m okay.”
I move slowly, tempted to leave the coins on the ground. It...
The Death of Christianese
We sat on couches in a room with green walls and prayed. Heaps of run-on sentences and scattered thoughts fell from gaping mouths. Pablo Neruda spoke and for a few small seconds I was Carl Jung. Snap, back to reality. The harder I listened the less I heard. The more I wanted to identify with what was being prayed, the less I understood. It was a bunch of jargon. Borrowed phrases and...
As soon as we are alone…inner chaos opens up in us. This chaos can be so disturbing and so confusing that we can hardly wait to get busy again. Entering a private room and shutting the door, therefore, does not mean that we immediately shut out all our inner doubts, anxieties, fears, bad memories, unresolved conflicts, angry feelings and impulsive desires. On the contrary, when we have removed our...
What Friendship Requires
Buzzards fly overhead and I stare to the sky with half-open eyes. There isn’t anything dead here, at least not anything I can see right now. The sun is hot, sticky on my skin and makes my chest feel heavy. I can’t decide if I want to stay here, skin boiling practically, or get up and walk over to the shore break. It’s a mixed bag really, there’s the enjoyable warmth that the sun brings to my...
For Holding Things
“Want some cake?” I look at the clock to make sure it’s still 7am.
“No thanks.” I say. She’s gone mad, is off her rocker.
“Is that what you’re having for breakfast?” I ask.
“I like cake in the morning. Well, I like it anytime really.”
I guess that’s what happens when you’re 78. You eat cake for breakfast. You’ve spent so much time worrying and fretting- so much time...
May 2010
4 posts
We willingly enslave ourselves everyday. To our masks and our mirrors, to our “not being good enough”, to the constant comparison of those around us. We are working so hard, killing ourselves even, all to appease a material concept so shallow the Father cries out on our behalf.
“Child, do not believe the lies. Do not believe who the world says you are.”
And even when our...
Ten Thousand Days on Cayo Hueso
I had been paddling for at least two hours before I stopped. Two hours that seemed to last forever. In my head, ten thousand days unaccompanied at sea. Even on this calm afternoon the mouthwash-blue ocean wrestled my small boat on all sides. I set my tired oars beneath my feet and slowly let my lungs fill with salty air. I hadn’t brought anything with me,...
Hand-Holding and Urbanization
This is rough and barely edited- scattered, not smooth.
The Subway:
The subway is crowded because it’s Friday night. The Kanye look-a-like, tries to get a number, says we’re on “da foreva train, shoulda’ brought some snacks.” I would have brought fruit snacks. Shannon and I are supposed to stay in Chelsea but somehow we manage to venture to Harlem at two in the morning.
I’m okay with...
To Have It All
It’s a thick table, wide too, hard for me to inch my itsy pint-sized hands to the middle. She lays down a book and a baking sheet. “Choose.”
___________________________________________________________
It smells like hotdogs, even in the bathroom- where I hide so I can read, read, read and not be disturbed. Ryan is playing baseball, hitting homeruns, throwing strikeouts, and I am...