I've been thinking about tent pegs for a few months now. Years maybe. A while for sure. Probably since I sat in a car with a friend in the spring of 2007. I cried and he challenged, unrelenting with his words: you are tied to an earth that is passing away, untie yourself or you will die with it. I am struck by the reality that we modern Christians laud stability and consistency, while the fathers of our faith were so transient that they were identified first by their name and then by their place of origin: Abraham of Ur, Jesus of Nazareth, etc.

They packed their whole house on the backs of camels and we fill our whole trunk with this week's groceries.

Jesus took it a step further: the Son of man has no place to lay his head. He didn't even carry a pillow.

The past few months I've been pushing away some things that have crowded my faith, finding that my faith lies mostly in practices and broken promises, and rarely in a God who never changes. The deeper down I've gone, the more I've realized that deep inside of me there is a pioneering heart that has indulged far too long in the stuff of this world. Part of the aim in me moving is to learn greater dependence on a God who supplies and not necessarily a bank account that can sustain.

One of the reasons I have set a cap on my time in Texas is not because I'm counting on it being a dismal failure and having to run home to Potsdam or because I'm counting on staying in Texas and I just want to make you all warm up to the idea. It's because I want to live a tent peg lifestyle. I want to live today with a pilgrimage heart, stopping when necessary, going when necessary. I want to live that way as a single person (because I can) and if someday I'm a married person, I want to continue to live that way. I want to be ready to leave at a moment's notice with no thought for what I'm leaving behind or what I've accumulated in the meantime.

I don't know if I can do it--it's hard to carry a knapsack and not much else in western society--but I want to pack light. I want to untie myself from stuff and this earth. I want to be known by my place of origin: the kingdom of God.

And how blessed all those in whom you live, whose lives become roads you travel; They wind through lonesome valleys, come upon brooks, discover cool springs and pools brimming with rain! God-traveled, these roads curve up the mountain, and at the last turn—Zion! God in full view! Psalm 84:5-7