Snippets of Quiet

in

Next Wednesday, February 14th is not only Valentine’s Day and the birthday of one of our very favorite people, but it is also Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Lenten season.

It’s no surprise to y’all that I love a seasonal rhythm. Moving with the seasons has been one of the chief disciplines of my Spirit-life in these 10 years in Memphis, and the church seasons for Advent and Lent are some of my favorite spaces to settle in for some quiet and reflection.

Quiet and reflection are two things which have been exceedingly hard to come by in the last few years, so where as I would have set aside several hours a day to think/pray/read in seasons past, this year my intentional quiet is going to look like small little chunks of time.

I think I’m going to steal back some time by taking a little break from my personal social media accounts for the season. That’ll give me some small chunks of time to journal or just let my mind have space to wander—one of my favorite past times. I’m also going to try to be intentional about going outside by myself for just a few minutes each day. The Spirit has always had a lot to say when she speaks through the wind in the trees (and when I am paying attention), so I’ll go outside to listen.

Birth and death and resurrection are some of the deepest wells of redemption and wonder I can fathom. I’m hopeful that as I take some small pauses and make space, I’ll be met there with revelation, newness, and maybe some beautiful old things, too.

May you find the rhythms for your Lenten season, whatever they may be, and may you walk in them with joy and peace. Amen.

Rings on the Tree

I’ve been thinking about the big Mother Tree in our backyard. She lost a few limbs the dry summer that Danny was born. They came down while we were away from home, visiting Grandma Claire for her birthday. They fell in a place that didn’t make sense…heavy limbs placed carefully in places that seemed to defy the laws of physics. Betsy came to help Micah move the pieces of limb after he got the chainsaw going. I held newborn Danny in my tired arms.

It’s no surprise that I have a soft spot for trees. Aside from my intense love of plants in general, I was, definitely and completely, indoctrinated in the love of trees by my tree-loving parents. We planted them, watered them when necessary, raked their leaves or smelled the sweet pine-y-ness of their needles. We stopped to admire them on long walks while camping underneath their canopies.

Dad planted a bunch of evergreens along the south side of their acreage the year I turned two. They were so small I could step over them. They tower over us now, strong breaks against the wintertime winds.

Note the toddler, for scale.

This year has been one of telescoping backwards and forwards. As the present rushes by in days that look pretty similar: three meals fed, books read, bedtime songs sung, etc., my spirit’s eye has wondered, what will it be like when he’s a teenager, a grown man, and maybe a dad someday? What things will he remember and hold dear from these early years? And in the same breath I reach back—-to my little days, but also to my imagination beyond what I know.

I remember the feeling in the room when, one afternoon, my sister and I stood by the window with our Great Grandmother watching the pine trees she’d planted with her husband fall in the straight-line winds that raged. A landmark she had nurtured fell in the saturated soil and the gusts. The tips of the tree-tops brushed the window panes as we stood silent.

I wonder: who planted the cedar trees that flank the driveway of the old place, the house down the road from my Mom and Dad’s farm, the place I’d like to move our little household into someday. There aren’t cedar trees anywhere nearby. They were someone’s idea, someone’s hope, and here they stand, gnarled barked and many-branched.

I suppose this year of moving my way slowly through grief has been one where I’ve seen myself in the middle: a ring of a Great Tree. My little slice is unique, marked by the conditions of my life, but one of the whole. And I wonder, when those who come after Danny look backward, what they will see and what will be remembered.

If I’m doing it right, I hope they’ll look back with gratitude and look forward with hope. That’s what I’ve been doing.

May we know our place in this long, circle of time. May grace smooth over the rough patches and tie up the ends we drop. May Jesus be near as we look forward with hope and backward with thanks. Amen.

Thankful.

in

Today was kind of a chaotic day, and by chaotic, mostly I mean busy.

Our HVAC install began at last (Merry Christmas to us!), so by tomorrow we should have a heated house once again. They arrived as I was getting Danny’s lunch together (pick up hangry toddler so he can’t create chaos elsewhere, answer door, hear intro talk from HVAC folks, direct them to HVAC stuff, go back to lunch making, new HVAC person arrives, repeat…), and they really started making all the noise right as Danny went down for his nap (miraculously, he managed an hour of sleep!). The folks finished for the day as we were sitting down to supper, and then I helped them jump their truck battery as Micah started Danny’s bath. Nothing about today was bad, it was just a constant juggle, and that wears me out.

Grief season has worn me out, too, as has the constant swirl of hard news from Gaza, and the tough stuff in the lives of the ones I love most. I have no solutions, no easy answers but to somehow love and keep on loving. It seems that’s how the Prince of Peace would manage.

And tonight I’m also throwing in gratitude to help my own little insides find some rest. There is something about naming the things/people/realities I’m thankful for that literally allows me to exhale, to release the breath I’ve been holding while I worry about all the hard things. My body-mind-spirit self needs that exhale to keep going, so tonight I’m taking a few minutes to write down those bright spots. We need the light in this coming week—the darkest of the year before Winter Solstice and the coming Light.

I’m thankful for all of you. We’re meant to do this life and the one to come together, I think. There is no other way worth imagining. May we be people who pause to say thank you and then, people who keep on loving.

The Stories

in

I’ve spent the year reading romance novels.

They’ve never featured prominently on my book lists for the year (click over to Bookshelf for the annual lists), and I think part of that is my English major training…most professors didn’t say it outright, but there was always a little bit of disdain for '“popular fiction” in those hallowed English Building halls. I found myself reading a few in 2022, in those early days of breastfeeding my brand new baby all day long. I was stuck in the rocking chair, exhausted, and with an audible subscription and a Libby app loaded with holds from the local library. The modern romances I read were entertaining. The writing was good, the characters book-ish and delightful. The stories reliably ended happy.

In 2023, I found my way back to those happy stories, almost without realizing what I was doing. I’ve had plenty of thoughtful literary fiction on my shelf, tons of nonfiction full of ideas I’d like to explore, but I found myself returning again and again to those cheerful covers with heroines doing their self-discovery work and falling for the friend/enemy/boy next door in the process. And here we are beginning December, and I’d venture a guess that this new-to-me genre was probably my most-read of 2023.

I think it was because of Claire. The year began with losing her, and for me it has been a year of finding her in all kinds of small, regular moments. I’ll hear her voice in my head while I’m cutting up veggies for salad (she preferred TINY chunks of celery and carrots). I’ll feel her chuckle when Danny does something particularly funny. I’ve even found her in the pages of these books. Romance was her favorite genre. I never understood it before, but I think I do more now than ever: sometimes we read for comfort. We need an old reliable story to remind us that things can and do end well, albeit with some bumps along the way. There are plenty of hardships and horrors to face (she knew it better than anyone), but a brief step into a happy tale can give us the strength to get up and do the work again the next day and the next.

It matters what stories we’re telling.

That’s what I’m thinking about, as we get ready to start the advent season: What story am I reading? Which one am I living? Is there ample others-oriented love? Does my heart need to believe again in a God who loves endlessly, who moves into the neighborhood to make friends with a stranger? Will there be peace in the end, even though it seems so opposite to what I hear and see?

May we be motivated by Love, through and through, until it makes all things new.

Switching Gears

I’m a person who loves a system. I streamline and organize and improve processes by nature. I’ve done it since I was little (just ask my Marge, who still has nightmares about me re-organizing her kitchen drawers!). In my pre-motherhood life, I had the household chores assigned to a day of the week:


Mondays: Grocery Shopping
Tuesdays: Admin things (bill paying, phone calls, appointment making, etc)
Wednesdays: Cleaning & houseplant watering
ETC

Here we are in the Motherhood days, though, and my systems and schedules are often dictated by the needs of a small human who has been teething nonstop since 6 months old. Intense teething weeks are hard. Nothing extra happens. The Wednesday house cleaning gets pushed to Friday, then to Sunday, then maybe, sometimes til the following Wednesday (how long can she stand a dirty house?). It was maddening in the beginning, but I think, by now, I’ve learned to re-use my to-do list until the things are accomplished or just set aside. I don’t cross nearly as many items off of my lists. My systems aren’t the boss of me; they’re simply a tool I use.

I say all this to say: Systems aren’t everything.

We can follow as system to the letter and end up exhausted, angsty, or, as Micah says sometimes, “dead wrong,” which is to say: Technically correct, but dead on the inside, devoid of Love.

Whether it’s a roommate situation, a marriage, or a church family, the ‘way we’ve always done it,” the prior expectations, the rules we’ve made up for ourselves in the name of flourishing, at some point, fail, and then what do we do?

I was talking to a friend this week who is partnered to a person with a chronic mental health challenge. It isn’t the partnership they envisioned when they entered it. The way the terms of the partnership were defined before no longer fit, and that’s painful for all parties. When we find ourselves in a spot like this, do we disengage, or do we do the mourning work we need to and then get curious?

If we choose curiosity, I think we’re opening ourselves up to be governed, not by the systems that have worked in the past, not by broader societal expectations, but by Love. We start to ask ourselves questions like:

What’s the most generous interpretation of this situation?
What does this moment of life require of me that’s different? How do I meet this moment?
How can I honor my own feelings while being open to the changing needs of others?
What situations are mine to worry about, and which are best released?
How can I try to see myself and other folks the way God sees all of us?

These days I’m trying to be a person who switches gears graciously and relatively quickly. If I’m walking in step with Love, I trust that nothing is wasted in the midst of that change, and maybe, just maybe, there’ll be more life in the process, too.

May you be met in the midst of your systems this week by the Love that is there when you need an alternative. Amen.

Grief Season

in

When October rolls around and the nights are dark so quick that it takes me by surprise, I know to watch for the signs. Grief season in our household can begin early some years. October is the earliest it has begun-sometimes it’s as late as December-but with the changing of the season, our bodies start reminding us that they’re keeping the score. Deep losses leave behind pretty loud echoes. Bodies get extra tired, have a little less bandwidth, crave comfort over challenge. It’s a time for settling in for the journey. The only way out is through.

This holiday season we remember a mother and two grandmothers, gone 8 years, 12 years, and 1 year, respectively. No matter how long it has been since we hugged them last, there is still a remembrance that we feel bodily.

There’s always a dissonance when your loss-anniversaries fall near holidays. There are so many reasons to jump into the cozy, fun, and beautiful, joyful parts of the season, but there is always the undercurrent of grief.

I wish, sometimes, that I’d inherited a tradition of remembrance like Day of the Dead-a way to bring to the forefront the losses we’ve experienced in the community of our families, a structure to help us move through the mourning. Those practices of grief help, I think, and serve as markers in a journey that lasts a lifetime. They are a part of the stories we live inside of, the ones that allow us to look at grief safely and look ahead with hope and courage.

And so, I suppose this year I’m acknowledging our need for that kind of practice. I’m not sure what it looks like just yet, but I do think it would help. Until we figure out at least the edges of those rhythms, we’ll stick to the basics: prioritizing sleep, exercise, rest, journaling (for me), and connection. We’ll take care of these bodies as they help our hearts remember the ones we loved the most. We’ll tell their stories, even if they make us cry.

May we move with the Prince of Peace through the deep waters. May we move through the deep waters with Love as our Remembrance.

October 12, 2023: An Introduction

As we start out on this little Thursday evening writing adventure, I wanted to preface all the things to come by saying: These little bits will be just that sometimes: bits of thought, things unfinished, ideas that are working their way through my insides in the slow and stretching way they usually do. Y’all know: I’m not fully-formed, no work has been completed in me…I am, always, a person in process. So here’s a bit of that process, I suppose. Thanks for coming along on the journey.

I have felt heartsick this week. It happens every time such suffering happens. I’m not sure what you’ve needed this week, but I’ve needed space for grief, and then, also, I’ve needed a few minutes to look toward what Love does in situations that are hopeless. It hasn’t eased the awful feeling in the pit of my stomach when I think of the mothers without their children. It hasn’t given me any answers to recommend as solutions, but I think it’s reminded me what I’m to be about in the midst of injustice, and at least for today, that bit of centering has helped.

About a month ago, I opened up an email from the Center for Action and Contemplation, and read through the summary of that week’s devotional writings. I do this every Saturday, and there’s always something that makes me think, even in those short summaries. This particular week, it was a blip added in near the end of the email: “St. Bonaventure describes justice as “the returning to its original beauty that which has been deformed.””

In light of all that’s happened this past week (and let’s be real, all that happens, always, around the globe), I thought I’d leave you with that little, provocative thought alongside this song that’s been swirling around in my mind lately, too.

I think our Jesus is always in the messy business of justice, the long work of returning people to their original beauty, the making of enemies into brothers, in the smallest conflicts and on the largest of world stages. May we join him wholeheartedly in our own little ways. We are all branches of this vine. Every little bit helps. May we be people of peace.

Lenten Reflections from the Garden: Ecosystem

in

My gardening ethic has changed pretty drastically since I first set out to grow something as an adult.

In those early days in Memphis, I knew nothing about the native soil, season-timing, or plants that thrive here. I had to make a study of what belongs in this place in order to figure out how to use my Iowa-garden-instincts to grow something in this Midsouth environment.

In addition to my garden know-how, my ideas about ‘taming the yard’ have changed, too. I think that’s a pretty common way to think about gardening or yard maintance: conquering something formidable and wild…taming something, domesticating it for our enjoyment. These days, though, I think less about conquering and more about partnership.

I’ve been influenced by so many people along this journey. First, Wendell Berry, then Mary Reynolds, and more recently the work and thinking of Robin Wall Kimmerer. There’s an important thread through all their work: We are not here to master the environment. We are, in fact, members of it.

Being a member of a community means I have a role to play. My role, while important, is not the end-all-be-all. The plants in the space of earth I call my garden have an intelligence I do not. (They make food from the sun!) The creatures that have called my garden home will make it such long after I’m gone (or their descendants will, at least).

There is something both humbling and empowering about being a member and not a master, about conquering giving way to partnering. I have work to do, but I am beholden to the other members of the community. I care-take, certainly, but I do so aware not just of what I would like from the garden, but of what it might need. There is an understanding in me that grows each year I participate with this garden: we are woven together in some way that I barely grasp with my human-ness. Perhaps I am unlearning my way into something.

So, too, we are branches of one vine. Jesus talked about it, as I’m sure you know, in John 15. When I’ve thought about that passage before, I suppose my focus has always been on the me, the single branch, connected to Jesus, the Vine Himself, and I think that’s the way we’re often taught to think about God-relationships in the West. I, thou, etc. One on one.

But a vine hardly ever has one branch! If it’s a healthy vine, like my native honeysuckle growing out on the arbor, it’s made up of many, many branches. Some wander up, curling their way across the top of the arch, others twirl around the main vine in a curly strand, while still others head back down to the base of the arch, circling the base of the old tree that the archway is built around. All these beautiful branches make up the vine itself. It’s all of them together that makes it a truly impressive plant and a food source for the pollinators.

So here we are, branches connected to the life-giving vine. We head different directions sometimes, finding our own way to travel as we flower in season, making food for the pollinators and delighting the hummingbirds. We are one, even in our differences.

May we learn to embrace this interconnected life-filled belonging of the Vine.

Lenten Reflections from the Garden: Growing Seasons

in

The official start of spring is just around the corner: March 20th marks the beginning.

With that, many people REALLY start to think about the garden or their pending yard work. This year in Memphis, we’ve gotten a big head start on springtime weather, with such a warm winter and some really warm early days, the plants have woken up extra early. Our own yard has been no different: The cherry tree and dogwood, usually in bloom at the very end of March, began blooming a few weeks ago. The azaleas, undeterred by the cold winter conditions we had, are blooming though they’ve lost most of their leaves!

When you’ve been gardening in one space for any amount of time, having lived through several years’ worth of seasons, you begin to mark time by the blooming and arrival of springtime plants. The flowering trees and shrubs in our yard have been constant markers for me since we’ve been on Rosehaven, but this year, the timing is throwing me off. It’s still quite early, and, as we had this last week, frost and a hard freeze is still a real possibility.

A few years ago, my mantra for the year from the Lord was to live in step with the season. Those words were something I clung to as I made some big life decisions: quitting my job at SCS, starting a new venture and getting my hands dirty at a much more hands-on, physical job than I’d had for quite some time. That year had other unexpected changes, too…the light finally dawned on Micah, and a month and a half later, we were married! The seasons were wildly-shifting and changing much faster than I knew they could or dreamed they would!

Just as our springtime (and let’s be real, a lot of our Memphis weather) has been a bit chaotic and unexpected, I think our life seasons can be equally topsy-turvy. Maybe all the things you were waiting for happen did, but much earlier or later. Maybe the order you thought life would take isn’t how it’s worked out, and you’re reconciling yourself to what is in place of what you thought would be.

I’ve had a bit of that myself this spring. I’d always pictured myself having two children, I suppose because I’m one of two and really love my family-of-origin. After learning a bit more about what happened during and after Danny’s birth, though, I think it’s likely that we’ll be an only-child family. That’s not at all bad, it’s just not what I ever pictured for our family life. A change in the season: A shorter length of the baby years for our family, one fewer place setting than I thought we’d have at our big table.

When the seasons of life leaving us feeling a bit uncertain or when unfamiliar territory, wilderness, seems all around us, I hope we reach for the One who walks beside us. I hope we turn in dependence toward the love that is constant in the midst of bewilderment.

May we have the grace to mark the seasons, not as we wish they were, but as they actually are. When the trees bloom early and the late freezes come, may we have the sense to turn ourselves toward Jesus in the midst of wilderness ground, finding that it, too, is holy.

Lenten Reflections from the Garden: Compost

in

I grew up composting, but it wasn’t in the eco-friendly, environmentally conscious sort of way. It was practical, a means of waste disposal. And it worked! A simple compost pile out behind the wood shed was a place where raccoons foraged for scraps and good soil was made.

As an adult, I started composting when I started gardening in a more intense manner. I got into the proper mixture of brown and green materials, I bought a compost thermometer and experimented with worms in the compost heap (have you ever ordered worms in the mail?!).

Now, in this baby phase, composting is once again purely practical. I have no extra time to devote to soil production—-I barely have time to garden as it is! We’re starting soild foods, and this baby of ours loves to try things, but also loves to drop perfectly good food on the floor to hear it splat. Kiwi, avocado, corn on the cobb, berries, sweet potatoes…you name it, it’s gone on the ground with only a few bites taken out of it. These beginning stages of eating are all about trying and testing, so there’s nothing wrong with the process, but the waste can be a little disheartening.

And then I remember it’ll all get composted. That perfect kiwi, the avocado I watched ripen to peak avocado-ness for Danny to sample, the sweet potato I roasted in the oven and mashed, all of it can go into the compost heap.

It won’t get turned, the ration of brown to green material will definitely be a little skewed, but you know what? Despite my negligence, it’ll still decompose. It’ll still be out there in the backyard gradually becoming something nourishing.

So it goes with all our waste I think. The situations we don’t know how to handle, the things left undone because there isn’t time in this season of life, maybe the things we’ve let go during a pruning because they no longer serve Love. All in the heap. They break down, and as they do, they change from waste and leftovers to something life-giving. This is the resurrection story running all the way through. The place, people, and stories that society cast aside becoming the vehicles for blessing for all people. The eternity-altering story being woven into the ordinary leftover materials of life.

If there are things you’ve set aside, pruned, or lost, perhaps think about putting them into that spiritual compost heap. Let the Spirit do the decomposition work, wait, and eventually, life will come from it all. That’s the work of Love. May we have eyes to see it.

Lenten Reflections from the Garden: Pruning

in

This past weekend, I started the lengthy process of catching up on garden cleanup. Catch-up, because, as it turns out, having a baby meant my gardening ceased for awhile—-I’d planned on that, to some extent, but it still surprised me how wild things got over the long, hot summer when left unattended. A few months ago, I tackled the front garden over a long weekend, and now there’s just the backyard gardens and the gully garden left in a state of disarray. Haha—I’ve got a long way to go!

One task I’d be doing anyway this time of year is pruning, though, arguably there’s way more this year than most because of my summer & fall of neglectful gardening. Pruning is one of those jobs that, if left un-done, won’t necessarily always be harmful. Many plants will still continue to grow and flower and produce fruit without pruning. The thing is that they won’t be quite as full of fruit, as full of flower, or their fruits and flowers will be less than they would be if the plants were given a hard prune at the right time.

An experienced gardener knows her plants. She knows which ones respond well to pruning and which to leave alone. She knows what time of year is best for the pruning that does need to be done (For example, all those not-so-knowledgeable landscapers who go around pruning folks’ azaleas this time of year into little boxy hedges! They’re cutting off all the blossoms before they have a chance to bloom! The correct time for azalea pruning is right after they’ve bloomed—-this way you can shape them without losing future blooms!), and she knows how intensely to prune the plant: Is it just a trim? Does the plant respond best to a hard prune, cutting 1/3 of the plant down? etc.

Last summer, in my pregnant-get-everything-done state, I forgot a few crucial jobs. Pruning my rambling rose was one of those things. We inherited the rose with our house, and while I’m sure the area it was planted in originally had more sun, when I found it, it was struggling along in mostly shade. I moved it to a sunnier spot, gave it a trellis, and it took off! I was rewarded with a beautiful show of fluffy pink blooms the first few years. Then came last year: We had a very wet spring, and powdery mildew set it, stressing the plant and ruining most of the blooms. Had I pruned, opening up the plant for more airflow, I probably could have avoided the powdery mildew all together.

This year, I wanted to make sure we didn’t miss out on the rambling rose. When I marched outside in my rose-pruning gear (leather gloves included!), I laughed at what I was dealing with:

The rose had completely eaten the trellis I thought would contain it, and, as you can see, was spilling out into the garden in every direction. There were even rose canes headed over the fence into the gully garden! I’ll admit, there’s a beauty to something that’s growing so intensely, but I also know the damp spring and powdery mildew is just around the corner…So I set out on my pruning adventure.

I’d read an article in a gardening magazine about a British gardener who weaves her rambling and climbing rose canes into fences, creating embankments of woven plant material that then makes a wall of bloom during the bloom season. I loved that idea, so I decided to give it a try. I knew it’d be a pretty serious prune, but then, also, I know this particular plant is nothing if not good at growing! There were some dead canes to get rid of, so I did that part first, and then there was the big chop. So I went for it. Several hours later, the rose had lost all of this:

And after I’d spent a bit of time figuring out how to weave the canes so that they’d stand up by themselves, the rose was looking like this:

I’m belaboring the point a bit, I know, but all of this description of my pruning of one plant I share to say: Pruning is a deliberate, careful act by a gardener. When done well, it’s something that’s the result of thought and care, always with the very best outcome for the plant’s long term health in mind.

I’m sure, by now, John 15 is ringing in our ears: “I am the true grapevine, and my Father is the gardener.  He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more.  You have already been pruned and purified by the message I have given you.  Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me.

Something that I find interesting about this passage is the way Jesus says the disciples have already been pruned and purified by the message he’s given them. What is it about this message that clips away the deadened parts and prunes the living shoots so that they can reach their full growth potential? Love has a way of doing that, I think—-the old things, the ones that don’t really serve us, become less necessary, fall away, and the parts of us that are meant to take off are trained in the direction of love, pruned along the way to reach their full glory.

Pruning seems severe sometimes. Maybe you’ve just exited a season that felt like a hard prune. Is there new growth already developing in you a result, or does it still seem stark and bare? Maybe you feel a shift in this season of life: Is there a pruning coming? Areas that you know will grow if you submit them to Love’s skillful shears?

May we all have grace in the seasons of pruning, knowing the fruits of the Spirit are growing stronger in and through us. May we have eyes to see the blooms that will surely come. Amen.

Lenten Reflections from the Garden: Seeds

in

We start the Lenten season with the beginning of the end: darkness, a seed, a life that seems to be over before it’s had a chance to begin. Ash Wednesday is a reminder that we are the sort of creatures who begin from the earth and return to it someday. There is the tomb before there is the rising.

There’s a beauty to the life of the Spirit that I think is written everywhere in the natural world (of which we are members!), and it is this: “I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone. But its death will produce many new kernels—a plentiful harvest of new lives.” [John 12:24]

The thing that has always struck me about this verse is mostly that seeds, though they appear lifeless, are anything but. They are packages of life-potential, waiting for the right conditions to sprout! Every seed needs a few basic conditions before it begins the process of germination. Some seeds germinate after periods of cold stratification (cold cycles), others need intensive heat to sprout. It’s honestly kind of wild, the act of planting seeds: every year I do it, I’m a little suspicious. Will this actually work? More often than not, it does! I mean, look at this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDBX2gCXxYw

You can’t watch that process of germination and think of seeds the same way again. They’re definitely not dead…they’re just waiting for the right moment.

So the question on my mind this week, as we enter the Lenten season is this: What seeds that we’ve sown in our lives are sprouting right now? What has been down in the dark earth coming to life as we waited? What seeds are we still waiting to sprout? What are you planting in hope right this very minute?

May that Spirit of Life give us eyes to see the new shoots of growing things hoped for & faith to plant our longings into good soil.

Lenten Reflections from the Garden

in

We’re jumping into a little Lenten reflection series at Bread & Wine, and I thought I’d jot down a few thoughts here on the interwebs for church-folk following along at home or just for revisiting throughout the weeks of Lent.

I think Lent presents us with a time for some deep reflection and maybe even provides us with a season of discernment. In the space of 40 days of thoughtfulness there’s a chance to take a minute to get the lay of the land of our lives and hearts. That’s what my hope for these questions is, truly—-just a jumping off point for your personal discernment with that Holy Ghost and also a way for us to move through the Lenten season together, too, in whatever parts of this process you’d like to share as a group.

The stories and rhythms of the natural world feel like home to me, and so when I was thinking through a thematic grouping for our reflection, plants and their growth immediately came to mind. (No one is surprised.) So, all that to say, we’ll be using some very basic gardening information to guide our questions!

There is something here for us in this season, I think. The writing will most definitely not be eloquent (hello, mom brain), but I hope these weekly thoughts might stir some conversation internally and amongst us that leads to life more abundantly for all of us.

Five Years in Memphis

You were 23 when you moved to a foreign place. You were on an adventure. You were full of dreams and sunny expectations. You had such a brave face, afraid to let the ones you loved worry. You were so lonely that spring.

Do you remember that day at your secretary desk? You were making a call to follow up on an order you placed with Gopher Sports, a sporting goods company in Minnesota. You called the customer service line, and a cheerful northern voice answered on the other end, a voice from a place that sounded like home. You nearly cried for the joy of something familiar. The order issue was quickly resolved, and you actually told the lady on the other end that her northern accent made your day. Bless your heart. You were so sad, but you didn’t have words for the way you felt. You were caught between the beauty of a well-loved place, and the making of a new one. Those were the hardest days of forging a new home, the days when every morning, joy felt like a new battle to fight.

Those were also the days of you deciding: you deciding home was worth the effort. Those were the days you bought a lawn mower to take care of the front yard, a lawn mower without an engine, because it just felt right to handle it in your own strength. Those were the days of wearing yourself out gardening until the sun went down, of eating big salads for dinner, because lettuce was cheap, and of welcoming friends and travelers almost every summer weekend. Those were the days of learning the freedom of giving what you have honestly, no facades or play-acting. Those were the days of loving and of being loved in the stickiest, messiest places.

That was the beginning.


November 18th, 2017

Wedding Preach

A little over a year ago, someone dear to me lost her person. They were married for 68 years & were very much in love. After her dear one’s funeral, we talked about what it was like those last days together. Their family was gathered, and they practiced the ministry of presence: showing up, being there, loving in whatever way they could. On their last night on earth together, this woman leaned over to kiss her husband goodnight, as she was in the habit of doing. He woke up and said, “I love you.” When she reflected on that moment, she told me, “It was a small thing, but that time mattered a great deal to him, and it mattered a great deal to me, too.” She turned to me and said, “Make sure you find someone like that. Any other kind wouldn’t be the same.”

I have often been inspired by the love stories in my circle of friends and family. They are filled with beauty, with struggle, and with a continual choosing of one another. They are made up of strong personalities and real obstacles, but so very much real love, too. They are marriages full of friendship, of two separate people deciding to be one another’s person, not because they have to, but because they want to.

When Micah and I were very new friends, I stumbled upon this quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson:

“Friendship requires that rare mean betwixt likeness and unlikeness. Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo. There must be very two, before there can be very one. Let it be an alliance of two large, formidable natures, mutually beheld, mutually feared, before yet they recognize the deep identity which beneath these disparities unites them.”

When I stumbled upon that quote, I had no idea what beauty and struggle would be ahead in my friendship with Micah. Over the past 3+ years, we’ve encountered more joy and deep sorrow than I would have thought was possible. We’ve celebrated with one another: birthdays, new jobs, discoveries of calling, exciting opportunities. We’ve grieved with one another: the loss of loved ones to death too soon, old pain circling back at odd moments, challenges that seemed too much to bear. Through all of this, we’ve chosen one another, practicing the ministry of presence and entering into the other’s experience of life. We’ve tried (and let’s be honest, often failed) to love one another with incarnational love, the kind of love that dear husband and wife practiced in his last hours.

Jesus is our picture of incarnational love.

The season of Advent is just around the corner: the season where, in church tradition, we wait for and anticipate the coming of Christ in the form of a baby: a helpless little one come to save us all from the power of sin and death. Every year the story of Emmanuel gets me. Philippians says: though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. A friend & mentor puts it this way: God came to earth: undressing all the way.

Jesus is the ultimate picture of incarnational love: He brings all of himself to us, humbly, in a way we can begin to grasp and know, see and touch. He enters into the context of our lives; he moves into our neighborhood with grace and truth, giving all that He is so we can become all we’re meant to be: Sons & Daughters of God Most High: people who believe they’re known & deeply loved.

We love because He first loved us.

And so today, I choose to love Micah. We are those two “large, formidable natures” Emerson talked about. We’re so very different, but there is a likeness underneath all of that, and deep trust that has grown through all the challenges we’ve encountered together, from all the incarnational love that’s been put into practice.

We’re obviously at the very beginning of knowing anything about marriage. We have no idea what’s ahead in this life together. But I have a hunch a lot of what matters in the end is the ministry of presence: seeing one another, truly & honestly, and showing up with grace & truth, following the example of our Jesus who is always saying, “Can I join you here? Can I love you in this moment & then in the next?” That’s the kind of love that transforms and builds a life. That’s the kind of humble love we remember.

Let Him love you, Friends, and let that love spill out.

Prism

When I was small she had a prism hung on a cord in front of her kitchen window. Sunlight filtered through and shone rainbows on the rectangle-pattern linoleum floor. My sister and I danced back and forth, catching the light with our small feet, hearts light. She laughed, clearly delighted. 

Every human woman is a complicated creature. I knew her when I was young and she was old, a great grandmother. I'm certain she had her flaws, but then, I only saw her as I did the prism: full of magical light. 

Risk-rambles

Sometimes when I think about faith, it's in a completely un-spiritual sounding way. 

I've taken some risks in this little life of mine: traveling solo across the globe to meet up with some new-to-me friends, switching schools half-way through college to go on a church-planting adventure, signing up to join a wild tribe of Jesus people (and having no idea what came afterwards) in Spain, moving to Memphis without a real job or a real idea of what life in the South meant, etc, etc, etc. 

All of the above could probably be counted as acts of faith, and they were, but they were also decisions I made, choices I put into motion with the will of this life I've been given discretion and stewardship of while I have breath. Faith has historically, for me, involved risk. It's been a pattern of:

a.) a notion & a question: "Lord, is this a possibility?"
b.) a consideration: "What could happen if I...?"
c.) a choice: "I'm going to do/believe/start ________."
d.) a million acts of will & the power of God through the Holy Ghost: "Since I made this choice/took this risk/decided this thing, I will do/believe/start ______________ today; Jesus, help me." 

This pattern has followed me through all the threads of life thus far, and I've learned something along the way: Though it seems the initial choice is the risk, the faith-filled decision, it's actually the last step that takes the faith, that carries the risk. The choice is usually easy for me. It's the gut-decision, the feeling in my bones and in my knower. The acts of will are the hard part. They're the part where I learn what it is to give my life. 

Here's the real, hard truth: Yes, it takes faith to make a leap in a grand gesture, to change the course of your life in one fell swoop, but, Dear Reader, I would argue it takes a lot more faith, or perhaps a deeper sort, to be your real, honest self in the choices you've already made [your marriage, your friendships, your work, your calling, your church]. 

I've heard the phrase, "discernment through motion" before, and I think it's very descriptive of what this kind of faith/risk feels like: It's the one-foot-in-front-of-the-other-oh-there-you-are-Jesus kind of faith. It's awkward and fumbling. It's real tired sometimes. It wavers. It depends completely on the faithfulness of our Jesus and the life he's tucked inside of us: the hope of glory and a seal. It's the work of growing up into Christ [and it is hard work, don't let anyone tell you otherwise! ]. As Andrew Shearman says, "Jesus you get for free, Christ will cost you everything."

What a gift, to spend all we have, right, Dear Reader? 

Make a choice, take a risk, live the everyday by faith. 

A Few of My Favorites

in