Muddy water morning
June 28, 2015 § Leave a comment
Summer is so much intensity. Heat, people, pouring sunshine, gardens demanding water and weeding, animals thirsty and shade-seeking.
There is great fun in summer – brightness, discovery, and a raucous kind of play, play, play outside! But it also comes with a push that, for some of us, needs to be ducked away from now and again.
Sunday mornings become the place to find cool and quiet.
This one was a slow walk in tall boots, a slight breeze, moss and muddy water at the lake’s edge.
Sometimes you have to look for what you need, to remember your right to it, to find the space and the time somewhere in the week for a place beautiful and damp and cool and still.
Having a jar of coffee in hand doesn’t hurt. A companion happy to splash in the water doesn’t, either.
This Sunday prayer seems to be hanging in the air around me. A Creator’s creation offering what I need: trees bending in the breeze, scattered sun over the water, and the soaking-wet, frolicking gladness of a good dog.
So you carry on
January 1, 2014 § 4 Comments
When your father dies out of the blue, in the darkness of a cold barn during a late-April ice storm – when he is found in the hay meant for the cow and calf, and when no one can say for sure what even happened – then you might curl into what remains of your family and stop reaching out in trust toward the world. (It was a hesitant trust to begin with.)
You might go in secret to the desperate places of grief. You might stop writing the happy stories of life for fear of the ultimate sadness that must come along and scribble itself into them. You might decide to not have feelings at all and give it a real go (you might fail). You might ask a million questions to and of and about God, and when that does nothing you might stop talking to Him completely — unless someone else can offer you their words to use instead. You might turn to liturgies and the prayers of saints and hope that’s enough.
Sometimes you might be so angry you are seconds away from throwing a tantrum, full-fledged arms and legs kicking, like any competent two-year-old.
You might create some kind of strong outer self that still acknowledges what is worth being grateful for, that greets and welcomes people, that manages to laugh out loud and love much of what happens all around. You won’t understand how this outer self goes along with the unsightly mess that is inside, but it doesn’t seem entirely fake, and you decide to go with it because, after all, what is the alternative?
The days keep happening, as they must. Emptier than they should be. More things ache in different ways. But as the months spread themselves out you might, more than once, come across something that makes you pause, that makes your chest swell in that old real wonderful-world way, that tricks a smile into place and stirs the idealist you can’t completely tamp down. A meteor shower in the middle of summer, while you lie on a tarp spread over the wet grass. Lively delicious dinners with friends (even if it takes jump-starting two trucks to get there). A jog through the woods and a chat on a footbridge. A plot of purple carrots and children who practically hop up-and-down in the discovery of them. Fires snapping and glowing. A beautiful painting, unexpected. Riding a chestnut horse in the hour before dusk. A hidden swamp for you and the dog and decent muck boots. Babies and giggles and dimples and freckles. Little gifts handmade and hand-selected, surprises that say, gently, you matter to me.
So you carry on. Nothing will be the same, of course. You will have to cling to the memory of the sound of your father’s voice, the crinkles around his eyes when he smiled, the knowledge that the nose you are not-so-thrilled to have inherited came, actually, from him, along with your long legs and your need to be close to the dirt oftener than not. You will have to imagine rather than see him walking through the pasture with you and when you have a question about livestock or trucks or gardens you will not have his answer, unless you can find it in one of his books. Your family will seem small and split and only heaven will make it completely right again after a very long time. But you can feel the prodding of whatever good has shot through this broken world, the good that wants you to fight for it and be a part of it and hold it and increase it.
And you might reach out.
Joel 2:21-24, 26a
March 15, 2013 § Leave a comment
“Do not fear, O soil; be glad and rejoice, for the Lord has done great things! Do not fear, you animals of the field, for the pastures of the wilderness are green; the tree bears its fruit, the fig tree and vine give their full yield. O children of Zion, be glad and rejoice in the Lord your God; for he has given the early rain for your vindication, he has poured down for you abundant rain, the early and the later rain, as before. The threshing floors shall be full of grain, the vats shall overflow with wine and oil. . . . You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied.”
A passage to ponder while on my knees in the dirt on these cool/warm, sunny/rainy, almost-spring days. Can gardening be a part of bringing heaven down to earth? I have to think yes.
Advent 2
December 10, 2012 § Leave a comment
The second candle is the candle of preparation, or the Bethlehem Candle.
(Clearly I am not prepared, as I am one day behind again, and still without an advent wreath. Sigh.)
But more importantly, at least, here is my time for reflection. And so I’m thinking: how do I prepare my heart for a King? I have been planning many events lately, and spending much time making spaces open and warm and inviting. I want to welcome people into a place that was carefully prepared for them. This is too easy an analogy, and I’m almost laughing to myself – I have read so many devotionals, growing up well-churched, and I know where this is going. Still, I’m going to say it. If our hearts/spirits are where the Holy One ultimately dwells, then what sort of place do we want them to be, that He might be welcome there?
And yet. I remember a baby born in a stable. A stable! In a not-very-noteworthy town called Bethlehem. Why of all things should this be a part of the story? Those of you who know me are well aware that I love animals and barns, straw, hay, horses. I like hanging out in these places. But I don’t know that I want to sleep there, at least not outside of an emergency. Even when they are tidy, stables are rough and often dirty and smelly. They are not perfect. So it makes me think: that even as we want to prepare our hearts, we don’t have to have them be perfect and pristine so much as open. We might be a bit rough around the edges, but He will reside anywhere He is welcome. And He will become the light in that space.
Luke 2:1-15
In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. 2 (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3 And everyone went to their own town to register.
4 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. 5 He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, 7 and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.
8 And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”
13 Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”
15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”
Heaven’s Colors
November 11, 2012 § Leave a comment
Looking back you will see that every step was planned. Leave all to Me. Each stone in the mosaic fits into the perfect pattern, designed by the Master Artist.
It is all so wonderful!
But the colors are of Heaven’s hues, so that your eyes could not bear to gaze on the whole, until you are beyond the veil.
So, stone by stone, you see, and trust the pattern to the Designer.
–God Calling, November 11
Bouts of Rain
November 10, 2012 § 2 Comments
I woke to heavy rain in the middle of the night. Well, early morning, really. The late evening hours had dragged into midnight and when at last I stumbled upstairs I lay in my bed surrounded by all the dark of loneliness. My poor dog, my faithful companion, is getting arthritic in the evenings, so I hadn’t urged her to walk up the stairs. I didn’t want to hear her whimper. It is always odd not having her there, though, the warm body of a creature who cares for me. My gratitude for dogs really cannot be expressed. Dogs love so willingly.
The rain wasn’t falling then, in the minutes of thought on my pillow, imaginings of another life with more people in it, more dogs, perhaps, and a horse or two. Daydreams can be a solace but at the times when they collide with the very reality of reality they can be horrid, a painful contrast, a look at what can’t be compared with what is. We all have these times, don’t we? When what’s good in our lives fades, and can’t be seen in the pressing gray of disappointments, and we are too tired to fight against the way we feel, and part of it is that we want the right to feel this way, after all.
In between sleeping and waking the rain started, pushed by wind, seemingly in fits and starts, heavy and light. The dog whined at the bottom of the stairs, so I went and got her, and felt glad for her. She snuggled up next to me and then, warm in the fleece and down, I wondered if the rabbits were sheltered enough. I dreamed of one of them chewing through his cage and escaping. I woke and thought perhaps they really ought to have more to protect them from the rain, but it was late/early and that rain fell heavy. I thought about it and then the rain subsided a little and feeling like a guilty, lazy person I pulled on muck boots over my pajamas, strapped on a headlamp, and went out into the eery blue. My plucky rabbits stood up on their hind legs to see me, and the two I had worried about were more damp than they should be. I propped wood against and over their cages and gave them little strokes on the forehead. “Poor darlings.” Though it wasn’t that cold. Thank goodness.
Back upstairs. Back to bed. In the slow morning the neighbor dog came over with her joyful wriggle of being. I started a fire. Put on the coffee. Watched the dogs play in their mouthy way. Decided I would write, because that is part of who I am, a part I can have some level of control over, no matter where I live or what I do or how I feel.
So then. So it is. Almost always, when I make the space to write, I can feel my very self start to settle, to orient itself within the tumble of this world. Writing, before it became a discipline, a major, a career move – before all that, writing came from a little girl’s instinct, a sort of unspoken and unidentified sense that this was something I could and must do. Pen in hand, fingertips on a keyboard, images becoming words becoming story – here is one of the ways that I remember who I am. Here is a partial fulfillment of the person a Very Good Creator made me to be. Yet without pressure; pressure gets pushed aside, and perfection is not the point, or the goal, or the reason why. Here I find my old, hopeful self. Reminding me: Do your gift. And keep dreaming. Bring as many dreams into reality as you can.
I rest me in the thought
March 13, 2012 § Leave a comment
This is my Father’s world,
and to my listening ears
All nature sings, and round me rings
the music of the spheres.
This is my Father’s world:
I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas;
His hand the wonders wrought.
-Maltbie Davenport Babcock, This Is My Father’s World, 1901
Resolution
January 1, 2012 § 4 Comments
Isn’t it a funny word? I find it interesting how many definitions the word resolve has. What fascinates me particularly is how resolve can be synonymous with determination (“He stepped forward with resolve”) yet it also can mean to move from dissonance to consonance – most directly in music, but the idea extends to matters of opinion, problem-solving, working through an issue – ending the tension to reach a resolution. And yet – and yet – the word can also mean to separate. What?
Language is so strange. English, especially.
My conclusion, as I’m inclined towards peacemaking, is that resolutions might be built on this handful of definitions. As we make lists of what we want to do or not do this upcoming year, can we move with determination towards things that will bring us together into pleasing consonance? This doesn’t mean we all have to operate on the exact same opinions, beliefs, and perspectives – we can remain our separate, unique selves, like notes in a chord. And yet as we consider who we are and who others are and who we want to be, perhaps we can learn how to live together in harmony.
On that thought, here is my 2012 resolution list:
1. Be generous. Even when I have little. Generosity needn’t be expressed only by the giving of material things. Time, work, kind words, a small note in the mail – these count, too.
2. Be frugal. Don’t spend on unnecessary things, and get what I owe paid off. (All right, that’s a bit lofty for a year, but make significant advancements in this direction.) Debt creates discord, in one’s spirit as well as in relationships, even purely financial ones.
3. Be healthy. That means being healthy personally as well as promoting health in my environment – physically, ecologically, and economically. If my body is forced to operate on poor fuel and/or my actions contribute to degradation and toxicity around me, that puts me (and others) in a state of disrepair. True, we all age, but let’s age well. And let’s have land and water that go on being clean and fertile beyond our lifespans. Good health tends to foster happiness! And happiness tends to foster harmony.
4. Be optimistic. I must confess I have been a bit of a negative Nancy this year. Part of me wants to defend myself by saying that I feel everything strongly and express it openly so y’all get to go on the ups-and-downs with me. But the truth is that I have caught complaints coming out of my mouth far too often and have gotten into a habit of tampering my eager, rosy hopes with the dim glasses of criticism and self-doubt. (It doesn’t all get on this blog – but my friends and family have heard it more than once.) And the worst part? It drags the people around me down with me. Aiyaiyai. So optimism. Looking for good, holding onto truths, closing the door on regret and shoving aside fear and self-deprecation.
5. Be faithful. For me, this goal directs itself towards two closely related realms. First and foremost I seek to be faithful to my Father God, His saving Son, and the amazingly wildly loving Holy Spirit. Second, I will be faithful to my loved ones. This means to stand up for them. To step in for them. To be there when needed. Even to put them before myself. Because faithfulness is the fruit of the kind of love that is more than just a feeling.
Can I do it? Will I do it? The good thing is that these are not deadline goals. They are lifelong goals. (And I am a lifelong learner! Yay!) The next steps for me are to (a) remain conscious of these goals – maybe put a list on the mirror or refrigerator or nightstand, and (b) map out what changes I might make – big and small – to foster and further these things in my little old life.
I am not one of those who is afraid of resolutions! No, sir. I am resolved. Resolved to resolve.
What are your goals this year? Do you like or dislike New Year’s resolutions? Do you have any suggestions for me regarding mine?
The second candle of advent: Preparation
December 4, 2011 § Leave a comment
The second candle is the Candle of Preparation, or the Bethlehem Candle. It symbolizes the preparations made in Bethlehem in expectation of Christ’s birth. Christians consider how they might prepare their hearts, lives, and communities to welcome a Savior.
“As is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet: ‘A voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him. Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low. The crooked roads shall become straight, the rough ways smooth. And all mankind will see God’s salvation.'” Luke 3:4-6
Kinds of Honey 