The Heart of the Matter

I have several writing irons in the fire at the moment besides the weekly blog. Keeping all the plates spinning is an inexact science, complicated by the fact that I’m feeling a sense of urgency to finish one of those projects now. In discussing that with some of my fellow travelers on this writing journey I was asked: “Where is that urgency coming from? Whose voice is telling you to finish this now?”

That’s an excellent question. One that goes beyond me and my writing projects and applies to all of us.

There’s no shortage of voices clamoring for our attention these days. There are so. many. words. A million different people say a million different things every single day, claiming to have the answer to every question, the solution to every problem, the fulfillment of our every need: Whiter teeth. Fresher breath. Cleaner clothes. Better tasting pizza. Happier pets. Batteries that just “keep going and going.” Odor free everything.

WalMart says it straight up. Shop there and you will not only “save money”, you will “live better.”

They make it all sound so important. We don’t just need insurance; according to Allstate, we need to be “protected from Mayhem of every sort.” Wear Lancome perfume so you – and your life – will be as beautiful as Julia Roberts. With a Capital One Credit Card in your wallet, you’ll be just like Samuel L. Jackson, Spike Lee, and Charles Barkley. And no home is complete without a Nespresso coffee machine because, well, George Clooney!!!!! (Or Penelope Cruz).

Underneath that is the oh, so thinly veiled implication that we don’t just need this stuff, we deserve it. And L’Oreal says that straight up: “you’re worth it.”

Yeah, I’m being a bit snarky, melodramatic, hyperbolic, sarcastic, and all those other “ics”, but there’s something important here we need to pay attention to.

The world’s siren song is so seductive, so subtle, we can get sucked into believing the hype, buying the party line, drinking the Kool-Aid; before we realize what’s happening, we’re letting everyone else on the planet – Hollywood, Madison Avenue, politicians, the media – tell us who we are, what to do, what to think, how to be, what matters and what doesn’t.

With so many voices vying for our attention it’s tricky to sort out out which ones to pay attention to.

One of the things I do is ask, “what does my heart say?” Discerning what’s in my heart helps me get to the heart of the subject at hand, ferret out what’s important, see more clearly. My mind can go off on tangents; is prone to rationalizing and justifying. Perceptions can be faulty; conclusions inaccurate.

What comes from deep within me – intuition, gut reactions – is born from the wisdom of learned experience, informed by trusted relationships with those who love me and with the Holy.

I ask the Holy too. “Is this You, or is it me?” Sometimes it is just me. But not always.   

In the case of my book project, I haven’t figured out yet whose voice is nudging me to finish it but part of me wonders if it is my husband. For the last five years of his life he kept badgering me – in the nicest possible way, of course – “when are you going to quit your day job and write?” It wouldn’t surprise me at all if, now that I’ve started, he was the one encouraging me to keep going and get it done.

Maybe it isn’t him. Perhaps the Holy One has something else in mind for me to do – something else for me to write – and is clearing the way.

Or it may be someone – or something else – entirely. In the meantime, I’m going to keep looking and listening and asking questions to get to the heart of the matter.

How do you sort out all those voices that vie for your attention and get to the heart of what really matters? 

Just one more thing: Happy Birthday, Mr. Clark!

Memory Lane

March has been one long waltz down Memory Lane for me; a mashup of relived events generating a roller coaster of emotions.  Memories begat other memories, bumping up against each other and spiraling off in a multitude of directions. By this week I was feeling a bit fragmented and frayed by it all.

Then I happened onto a quote.

In a chapter about Celtic Christians and their practices in her book In the Sanctuary of Women, Jan Richardson says that “perhaps the invitation they offer is to see the past as clearly as we can and to draw from it with integrity, not replicating it but rather letting its treasures inspire us as we create new patterns of prayer and worship for our own day and time.”  (Emphasis mine). (For more about Jan’s work, click here.)

Curious about what “drawing from the past with integrity” might mean and whether the quote applied to areas of my life beyond spiritual practices, I went to the dictionary.

“Integrity” is defined as “the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles”; “the state of being whole and undivided”; “the condition of being unified or sound in construction”; and referring to “internal consistency”.

Applying those concepts to the quote, if we “see the past as clearly as we can and draw from it with integrity”, that means looking back with honesty, clarity, and with a focus of/on/toward wholeness.

Wholeness. That word grabbed my heart.

It’s what I’ve been searching for since those two words “brain tumors” shattered my life.

With genealogy as one of my vices – I mean hobbies – I’m used to poking around in the past and understand the importance of knowing as much as possible about the whole story of our lives. But as the quote and its implications sunk in, I realized simply looking back isn’t enough. How we look back matters as well.

This March, my view hasn’t been the clearest.

Looking at things in the narrow, one-dimensional way I was viewing them – out of context and as stand-alone events in isolated slivers of time – I got caught up and distracted by every. little. thing. There were lots of little things. And every one of those mole hills became a mountain that blotted out everything else. The only clear picture I had was of whatever peak happened to be towering in front of me at the time.

The only other thing I noticed were the stretches – they seemed like years, but I know it was only a day or so – where nothing went right. (Don’t even ask about my refrigerator. It’s still not right, and the parts that are supposed to make it right won’t be here until April 17).

But the hope I saw and heard and felt in that quote nudged me to look again, and when I considered that waltz down Memory Lane with as much clarity and honesty as I could muster, I got a completely different picture. I saw grace.

There were, of course, things I could have done differently or better. There always are.

The truth is, I did the best I could, and that is enough.

“My grace is sufficient.” II Corinthians 12:9

 Just one more thing: Happy Birthday, Little Red-Haired Girl!

Worth a Thousand Words

There is great debate about where the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words” originated. Where it came from isn’t what’s important - at least not to me. It’s true. And I experienced it this week.

This past Monday was my mom’s birthday. I thought a fitting way to mark the day would be to finally drag the box of old black and white 120 size film negatives from her side of the family off the closet shelf, set up the scanner, and see what was there.

What I found was a view of my mother I never knew existed – photos of her childhood, teenage years, and young adulthood. (My parents had both been married before and lived half their lives before they met, married, and had me. I knew next to nothing about my mother’s pre-1950s existence).

In last week’s blog I shared how my maternal grandmother painstakingly filled in detail after detail of her family’s lives in between the lines in her Bible, for which I am most grateful. But to now have images of my mother in those moments to go along with those facts – what she was wearing, where she was, what she was doing – is stunning. To see her young and carefree, (wearing makeup, jewelry, and a two-piece swimsuit!), without the weight of the world on her shoulders (yet) is a complete 180 from the mature, tempered by experience, no-frills, do-what-you-need-to-do mom I knew in the second half of her life.

I’m still processing this, and right now I have a million questions.

Born in 1911, she died just one week shy of her 86th birthday in 1997. I’ve tried – with limited success – to wrap my head around what it was like for her to experience all the innovations and changes that took place during the arc of her lifetime: Electricity. Telephones. Automobiles. Agriculture’s move from horses and hand labor to tractors and combines. Women being granted the right to vote. The Great Depression. World War I. Pearl Harbor. World War II. Antibiotics. Television. Space travel. Computers. Rock and Roll. Disco. And more.

What was it like for her personally to move from oil lamps – I still have some of hers – to electricity? How important was it to her to be a member of the first generation of women who were allowed to vote? How did all of the technology shifts she witnessed impact the rest of her life – the part that included me?

I wonder – especially after seeing her in her youth – what her hopes and dreams were. What did she want to be or do when she grew up? Where did she want to go in life? Did she ever get to do any of those things?

I want to ask her, “How did you do it?”. She never talked about them, but I know there were a string of painful losses in her life before I was born. Especially now, as I process my own loss, I’d love to hear how she dealt with hers. And I wish she was here to hug me and tell me I’m going to be okay.

I’m curious about the timing. I had no idea these images existed. What I expected to find was negatives of photos I already had. To instead be given a glimpse of the part of my mom’s life I knew nothing about – and never expected to see – was pure gift. I’m wondering about the significance of finding these particular pictures at this particular time in my life and what the Holy has in mind with this act of grace. 

While I sort all this out, I’m hanging onto my initial reaction: gratitude. I was grateful to find them, and these images of my mom also prompted memories and gratitude for all the things I was blessed to receive from her. There isn’t time or space to list them all; here are the most important ones: her legacy of faith; her insistence on integrity, responsibility and determination; taking the time to teach me to cook and sew; instilling in me an appreciation for beautiful things. Thanks, Mom. For everything. And Happy Birthday in heaven.

Who in your life do you need to give thanks for today? If it’s possible, tell them.

And what unexpected gifts of grace have you received recently?

Between the Lines

One of my most cherished possessions is my maternal grandmother’s Bible. Not only because it is a tangible symbol of her faith, and my mother’s – the Bible was a Christmas gift from my mom in 1943 – but also because it is filled with handwritten notes chronicling the history of my grandmother’s side of the family.

The original entries – the presentation page and my grandparents’ marriage record – were penned in my mother’s looping, elegant script. Later, things got added by others. Regardless of who wrote what, grandma always went back and slipped in additional details here and there: baptism dates and officiants; locations; ages, relationships; birth order, who was in attendance at various family events, and more.    

There is a wealth of information in that Bible, but it isn’t recorded in linear fashion. If you want to know the whole story of my grandmother’s family you have to hopscotch from page to page, entry to entry, and read between the lines.

The same is true for each of us as well. We human creatures are both breath of Heaven and dust of the earth; a cumulative expression of the generations who have gone before us, further shaped and impacted by our own lived experience. The events of our lives spiral through the days and years, not always moving forward in straight, ordered lines. In order to understand the whole story of our lives, all of the things that make us us – not just bits and pieces here and there, not just the “good stuff” or what others deem important – we have to mine the depths of all those experiences, to look for what’s etched between the lines of the narrative of our life.

It takes patience, diligence, and time, just like digging through all the extra details my grandmother added to the pages of her Bible. It takes discernment to sort out what’s important to hang onto and what we need to let go. It takes trust to continue to move forward, knowing that as finite, earthbound human creatures we see “through a glass, dimly” and will never have all the answers this side of eternity.  

It’s complicated. But it is so, so important. Because even though we were each created as unique, one-of-a-kind individuals – “we’re all unicorns!” as my friend Jen says – we humans were also created for connection.   

The more we know and understand about what makes us who we are, the better able we are to engage with others in ways that are genuine; compassionate; understanding; authentic; whole. If we don’t understand ourselves – if we haven’t been able to figure out what makes us tick – we’ll be hard-pressed to understand anyone else; one of the things our world needs more than anything these days is understanding.

To some, introspection of this sort may smack of self-centeredness. It isn’t. Think of it as the relational equivalent of putting on our own oxygen mask before attempting to assist others.

Even though I titled this post “Between the Lines”, the word I’ve been coming back to all week is “compassion”. One of the ways I conceptualize and understand it is as “making room for”. If you have compassion for someone, you want to welcome, embrace, and include them. Without compassion, it’s easy to ignore, wall out, turn away.

I doubt she named it that way, but that’s what my grandmother was doing with her Bible. She didn’t want to leave anyone – or any details – out; she welcomed, embraced, and included everything she could about everyone.

It’s what we’re called to as well – for ourselves, and for one another.  

How much of the whole story of your life do you know?

Are there gaps in the narrative? Places where you may need to look between the lines to see what else is there?

Where do you most need compassion today?

And to whom might you most need to show compassion?

Happy Birthday, Blog!!!

The blog is a year old this week!!! March 9, 2018 was the day my website went live and my first post went out into the blogosphere.

Where has a whole year gone?  And how did I get here?

I have no idea how the last twelve months slipped by so quickly; I just know they did. As far as how I got here, as I pondered that this week, I noticed the answer to that question is deeply rooted in another question: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

It isn’t a rhetorical question. And it isn’t just for third graders.

There’s more to this than how we earn a paycheck or what we enjoy in our spare time. It’s about knowing and following what’s in our heart, honoring our dreams, truly living the days we’ve been given. It’s about who and Whose we are, an ongoing process of growing, maturing, of living into and fully becoming the person we were created to be.

It’s the way my husband lived, and the way he died. With an open heart, a curious mind, a seeking spirit. Life, for him, was always about the adventure of trying the next new thing. When people asked what he did, he joked that he “hadn’t decided what he wanted to be when he grew up”, then rattled off the four or five things that were occupying his interest at the moment.

And when the end came, he was more than ready to move on, with no regrets, to the next new thing – for him, Resurrection.

I’m convinced that the Holy is in all things and uses all things, including what’s in our hearts – the hopes and dreams, the interests and fascinations, even the sackcloth and ashes – to craft the arc of our lives. That presence may at times be imperceptible; what we hoped and dreamed may not play out in a traditional way, but the Sacred is part of it all.

What did I want to be when I grew up?

I wanted to be a writer.

But life happened before I got a chance to pursue that. I met the love of my life; we got married, had kids, farmed. We became lay pastors. I got an M.A., taught college. The writing dream got shelved, tucked away in the recesses of my heart with all the other things I thought, once upon a time, that I would do, but never got around to.

But all those years, even though I wasn’t writing a book, everything I did involved writing: process papers during my lay pastor training; research papers, projects, and a thesis for my M.A. Lecture notes and course outlines when I was teaching. Sermons, worship and liturgy, newsletters, committee reports, meeting minutes and more for the nearly twenty-five years I was in ministry and active in presbytery.

In and through all those other things I was doing, God held and nurtured that writing dream in ways I wasn’t even aware of. When the time was right, I was given the opportunity to do what I’ve always wanted to do.

And here we are, celebrating a whole year of blogging.

Thank you, dear reader, for sharing this epic journey with me. Your encouragement and support, your affirmations and thoughtful comments, your presence and companionship are life and breath to me. I’m looking forward to sharing another year together. And I’m wondering…

What about you?

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Is there some hope, some dream you’ve carried in your heart for as long as you can remember?

How might the Holy be calling you, through those hopes and dreams, in the desires of your heart, to fill some niche in the world – to bring beauty and joy; to encourage and affirm; to pray with and for; to companion and collaborate; to guide and lead; to nurture and tend; to blaze the trail and light the way; to be eyes and ears and helping hands; to show love and mercy?

Raw Material

Sometimes life goes smoothly; sometimes it is a train wreck. I make mistakes. Or someone else does. Or stuff just happens. Or doesn’t. Some things do turn out perfectly: our wedding day was one; the surprise 84th birthday party we threw for my dad; Alaska, Amsterdam, and our 40th anniversary road trip; our 2014 family reunion at Disney World. Other things, like Bill’s illness, don’t, and there is nothing we can do to change them.

My first instinct when life derails, when despite my best efforts I find myself in the midst of broken things, broken dreams, broken people – especially when I or those I love are the broken ones – is to fix it. To clean up, to repair, to – as the Servpro people put it – somehow make it “like it never even happened.”

We can’t always do that.

Physical things like houses and cars can be returned to their pre-disaster condition, but for us human creatures, loss, trauma and pain weave themselves into the fabric of our lives; become part of who we are. They can’t be undone, erased, plastered over, or otherwise made to disappear. 

But, offered to the Holy One, they can be built on.

In the brokenness of our lives – the pain, the flaws, the shards of what’s left – is opportunity. An invitation to pick up the pieces and, like the Japanese art of Kintsugi and the age-old craft of quilting, to use them as raw material for rebuilding our lives.  “These pieces give us something to work with,” Jan Richardson says in a reflection on Eve from her book In the Sanctuary of Women, “something from which a world can be made.” (For more about Jan and her work, click here.)

Bill’s illness and death tore my life and world asunder and the process of making my way forward without him was agonizing. Some days still are. The idea that those broken pieces – the shattered remains of my life – could be something positive and constructive rather than the overwhelming negative I perceived them to be was a revelation, a reminder I am especially grateful for this week, when there are several things breaking my heart.

The United Methodist Church – the church of my childhood and one of the first churches I served as a Lay Pastor – is deeply divided, and for that I am deeply grieved. Those I knew and loved and ministered to have been on my mind all week, the photo of my mother and her fellow United Methodist Women on my desktop display a constant reminder of those connections. My heart hurts for all of them.

And by the time you read this, it will be March 1. Although he said nothing to me for another two weeks, that was the day Bill first noticed the vague singular symptom that would eventually lead to his terminal diagnosis and death just months later.

These are tender days for me; it was a comfort to find Jan’s words and be reminded that our brokenness, our pain, our flaws are not singularly negative, nor do they put the Sacred off. Rather, they flame the desire of the One who made us and loves us without end to draw us close, and are the raw material from which the Holy One can fashion our redemption, re-creation, restoration, our Resurrection.

For all who are heartbroken and grieving, as I am, I offer this prayer:

Creator of all, whose love transcends all things,

You welcome us as we are.

Grateful for your Presence,

with open hands and hearts,

we bring our pain, our grief, our brokenness,

our very lives,

and place them as an offering

on the altar of your grace.

From them, Holy One,

re-create us anew in your image.

Bless and heal us,

bind up our broken hearts,

and grant us your peace. Amen.

The Right Click

Just as my husband was a techno-geek of the highest order, I am a complete and total techno-idiot. I can be taught, but it takes a lot of repetition. I lost count of how long it took me – how many gazillion games of Solitaire and Mahjong I played – before I managed to master dragging and clicking the mouse.

Learning to drag and click was epic, but only the tip of the virtual iceberg. One also needs to know what to click, and where. And because all software companies have their own way of doing things, (bless their hearts), every program works differently.

A lot of the time, I’m lost. The icons and symbols and the choices in the drop-down menus don’t always mean what I think they mean. If there was a live human being behind that “tell me what you want to do” box at the top of the Microsoft Word task bar, we’d be BFFs. I spend more time interacting with that some days than I do my kids and grandkids.

There are tricks; you just have to know them. My husband’s favorite – the one he most often reminded me of when I was frustrated and didn’t understand either what my computer (read: I) had done, or how to make it do what I wanted it to do is to right click the mouse.

Left clicking is what we’re taught – “the way we’ve always done it.” But that doesn’t always get us where we want to go or let us do everything we want to do. (It doesn’t me, anyway.) Right clicking the mouse opens a new window that offers you all kinds of other options that you didn’t even know existed. (I didn’t, anyway). Cut! Copy! Paste! Synonyms! Translate! Rename! Delete! The choices vary depending on the program and the application, but when I remember to do it, right clicking can be absolutely magical.

I know what you’re thinking; I’m thinking it too. And I’m sure my husband is up there laughing his you-know-what off at the idea of me, the techno-idiot, offering my readers a tech tip. And yes, it has occurred to me that if you don’t use a computer or a mouse, or if your machine uses an operating system other than Windows, everything I’ve said up to this point is meaningless to you. You’ve gotten this far; “You’ve all done very well!” as Young Mr. Grace of Are You Being Served? would say, so humor me for just a little longer. There may be something here for you after all.

Just like I get lost in the maze of icons and task bars in Quickbooks, Excel, and Word, we humans get stuck all the time. We’re often in the middle of conundrums, dilemmas, catch-22s, Big Decisions, indecision, misunderstandings, disagreements, thorny questions, what ifs, maybes, yes – buts, both/ands, choices, exclusions, additions, red tape, fine print, curve balls, That Thing that Came Out of Left Field, and a million other difficulties. It can be challenging to sort it all out. 

Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to just “right click” our lives and find options for all of that stuff?

We can.

We may not think of them that way – and the results aren’t always as instantaneous as a mouse click, (although they can be) – but that’s what our spiritual practices are and what they do. We may call them prayer, centering, meditation, worship, confession, refocusing, the Examen, silence, breathing, fasting, art, music, discernment, mindfulness, journaling, walking, taking a time out, or any number of other things, but they function the same way the “right click” of the mouse does in Windows.

As we practice them, they afford us a deeper connection to the Holy and open up options for dealing with the stuff of life that so regularly confounds us: A way forward where we couldn’t see one; flashes of insight or understanding; an alternative or compromise; peace in the midst of chaos; a new way of being or doing; confirmation that we’re on the right track and just need to keep moving; a nudge to change direction or tactics.

What do you need to “right click” today? How will you do that?

Love: A Conversation

“Valentine’s Day is this week. You should write about love,” came the prompt.

“What should I say?” asked the one who no longer has one.

“Say that love is stronger than death.”

“Yes. I can say that. Death physically separates us from those we love, but the connection is still there. We feel it down in our bones; it remains a powerful part of our lives. What else should I say?”

“Say that love is free.”

“Yes. Freedom is one of the hallmarks by which we can discern when love is true: when it is unconditionally offered as a gift without strings or coercion. What else should I say?”

“Say that love is not singular.”

“Hmmm. That’s true. Some of the most visible and easily discernible expressions of love are those found in community, communion, connection, relationship. In hospitality, reciprocity, generosity, collaboration, accommodation. What else should I say?”

“Say that love is open.”

“Open? Yes, I see. Love is willing to risk; to be vulnerable. Love always welcomes, includes, always looks for ways to nurture and expand the circle. And once we open our heart and receive love, the doors swing ever wider; acceptance becomes deeper and more gracious. What else should I say?”

“Say that love is not romance.”

“Yes. Well… Okay, yes. Romance is a beautiful part of love; love letters and hearts and flowers and chocolate (ooooh! Chocolate!!!) are lovely and the giving and receiving of those tokens from those we care most deeply about creates cherished memories, but love is so much more than just that. What else should I say?”   

“Say that love goes by many names, and appears in many guises.”

“It does. Love is not just a feeling, but also a decision, a choice, an act of the will.

Love is, and love does.

Love is expressing care and concern: a casserole or a pot of chicken soup. A text or note or email, a call or visit. A prayer. A helping hand. Being present to, walking alongside, waiting with, serving as an advocate for.

Love is being responsible for one’s actions, and caring enough to ask others to be responsible for theirs.

Love is holding someone while they weep; it is trusting someone with your tears.

Love shows up as honesty, integrity, dedication, loyalty, commitment, patience, mercy, gratitude, equality, beauty, service, hope, trust, humility, justice, courage, sacrifice, truth, joy.

Love is being a cheerleader: sharing encouragement, support, affirmation, assurance.

Love picks up the pieces, mops up the spills, binds the wounds. It clears the out cobwebs, battens the hatches, faces the storm, stays the course.

Love asks forgiveness, offers forgiveness, makes amends, brings release and restoration.

We encounter love in praise and worship, in sacrament and song.

Love prepares the table, offers a cup of cold water, washes the feet, breaks the bread.   

Love draws out, invites in, challenges us to do and be our best, celebrates effort, works for transformation...”

…And love is in the sweet memories of the love of my life, who showed me all of this and more, every single day.

What would you add to the list?

Missing Pieces, The Sequel

Last week’s blog generated lots of conversation. Several people requested that I post photos of those hand-written recipes from the 1930s I wrote about; even more wanted to know how the pie turned out.

“As you wish,” as Westley of The Princess Bride would say.

Below are photos of the recipes and the women they came from, my maternal grandmother and her sister. They were gritty, independent, no-nonsense women who followed their hearts and their own drummer regardless of what “conventional wisdom” said, and were as capable and comfortable working outside the house as they were inside.

As for the pie, well, I didn’t make the pie.

Just like I was come lately to Mary Oliver’s poetry, my daughter Lisa came lately to cooking from scratch. Early on, with a physically demanding factory job and a small child, there wasn’t time and energy for that. Things are different now. She works retail, not the paint line, and the toddler is a teenager.   

She texted me out of the blue last Friday (an unexpected day off for her) to ask if I needed anything from the store or wanted to come with her, since she was going grocery shopping. I made an executive decision to forego cleaning and went. I can clean house anytime (or not); we rarely have the chance to do things together during the work week.

I told her about the blog and wanting to try making Aunt Mary’s chocolate pie, and she thought we should go for it. We got groceries, came home, and consulted all the chocolate pie recipes we could find to ballpark the ingredient amounts – my daughter-in-law Deborah’s mom’s legendary Fudgey Chocolate Pie recipe; The Fanny Farmer Cookbook; the 1935 Mason County Home Bureau Cookbook, the 1952 edition of Meta Givens’ Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking, and The Pioneer Woman.

When we figured out the proportions, I made another executive decision and suggested she make the pie. I talked her through the pie crust and the filling and gave suggestions as needed, but she really didn’t need that much help.

It was So. Much. Fun. to spend the day hanging out, learning the ins and outs of Aunt Mary's chocolate pie together, and sharing family stories and pictures with Lisa so she could learn not just how to bake a pie from scratch, but also who she was and where and who she came from. (She has, we discovered, a lot of Aunt Mary in her).

The day was such a gift. And I am so grateful and blessed.

My friend @kpatt5 captured what I experienced perfectly in the opening line of her Wednesday morning Instagram post: “Joy is hidden in what are simple daily tasks, and appreciation or gratitude is the light that makes it shine.”

In the simple daily tasks of grocery shopping, cooking, and talking with my daughter, I found pure joy. What was an even bigger deal for me was being able to experience that joy in the moment.

When loss of the magnitude I suffered when Bill died becomes part of your life, joy can be hard to come by. All those experiences that would normally be joyful ones wind up first being filtered through the (often painful) reminder that the one you love is no longer physically present with you to share them. You have to wade through all of that before you can feel anything else.

Last Friday I felt joy and gratitude first.

That doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten Bill or miss him any less. It means that healing is ever so gradually taking place and The Holy One, through the gift of my friend’s words, gave me “eyes to see and ears to hear” it.

Since this is a sequel, I want to hear the rest of your story too. I asked at the end of last week’s post what next step you were going to take. I’m curious. What did you do?

Oh, and the pie? The pie was amazing and fabulous, and we will definitely be making it again.

Missing Pieces

I still have the torn sheet of notebook paper on which, in the early 1930s, my maternal grandmother Ethel (Olive) Oliver wrote her recipe for Pecan Pie, supposedly famous in some parts, and at least in her estimation, the best pecan pie ever.  FROM ARKCANSAW, she’d scrawled across the top of the page, and underneath that were the words “Cotton King Pecan Pie”.  (Grandma wasn’t much for spelling and had her very own version of shorthand.  Instead of “before”, she would write “B-4”; rather than write out the word “can”, she simply drew a picture of what was supposed to be a tin can.)

Underneath the title were the ingredients, proportions, the instructions for assembling the pie and the temperature for baking it.  What she neglected to mention was how long to bake the pie, a rather necessary detail for something as important (at least to me) as pecan pie. 

Her sister Mary’s chocolate pie recipe is even vaguer.  “Mary Hudson Chocolate Pie” the sheet of paper says, so there’s no mistaking where the recipe came from, but the rest of it is clear as mud.  It calls for “2 squares of chocolate” but doesn’t say what kind (unsweetened?  semisweet?  bittersweet?) or what size the squares should be (one ounce? More? Less?), a “dash” of salt (not a pinch), and “lump butter”. 

I have no idea what that means, and there’s no one left to ask. So even though I’ve eaten Aunt Mary’s chocolate pie, and it is amazing, I’ve always been too afraid to try making it. There are too many missing pieces.

Stuff like that drives me crazy. I want answers. Details. I think it would be an awesome idea to have a AAA Trip-Tik for every day that had every inch of the route - including speed traps and construction zones - mapped out, and came complete with a time of arrival and turn-by-turn directions.

While I might think that sounds awesome, that isn’t how life works.

That’s why I’m telling the pie stories.  I need reminding every now and then that while it is prudent to gather the facts and plan carefully when there are decisions to be made – to “study our lesson” as my father-in-law always put it - we human creatures “see through a glass, dimly.” We will never have all the answers this side of eternity, and at a certain point we need to just take that next step or we’ll never get anywhere or get anything done.  

Ivan Turgenev says, “If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is perfect, we shall never begin.” Lemony Snicket put it this way: “If we wait until we’re ready, we’ll be waiting for the rest of our lives.”

 Nike is even more direct and to the point. “Just do it.”

I’m going to make Aunt Mary’s chocolate pie. 

 What next step are you going to take today?

Wild and Precious

I came lately to the poetry of Mary Oliver–much too lately–and it is with great sadness that I mark her death. Her words will live on and I rejoice in that, yet it grieves me that I’ve missed experiencing the power those words wield for most of my life.

I love poetry but don’t often write it.  I find it supremely challenging to pare ideas and conversations down to such small handfuls of words, and am in awe of how others can do so, honing truths to points so sharp it is impossible to ignore or dismiss them.

That’s what Mary’s poetry did for me.  Her seemingly simple words about seemingly simple things forced me to stop and notice both what she was describing as well as its further implications for my life and world. Her poems contained such raw honesty, entertained such deep questions, and yet did so with such overwhelming grace that I always felt welcomed and loved even as I engaged those probing inquiries and complex issues.  

When I heard she’d died I kept going back to what is probably her most quoted line, from her poem The Summer Day:

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?”

What usually captures my attention is the first half of that line-the “Tell me, what is it you plan to do” part. But as I sat with those words over several days, I found myself pulled even deeper into that dialogue. I realized that planning -while important-is not the most important thing.

What matters most–and drastically affects what we ultimately choose to do–is the place from which we start. Even more important than naming what we intend to do with our lives is claiming who and what we are before we ever give a single thought toward those plans, whatever they might be.

That turn of phrase Mary uses, (and no, I can’t think of her in the past tense), “your one wild and precious life”, is the language of love. Whatever else we are, what other labels we wear, our lives are - we are –precious; read: “of great value, greatly loved and treasured; beloved.” Created by the Holy, in the image of the Holy, we are loved without question and without end.

I need that reminder at times. As Jean Valjean says at the end of Les Mis, “To love another person is to see the face of God.” When I lost Bill that tangible reflection of the Holy disappeared from my daily life.  Without that constant reminder, even though I know the unconditional love of the Divine is always there, it can be difficult for me to perceive and feel embraced by that love.  

So thank you, Mary Oliver, for your words of reassurance.

Regardless of the season of life you’re presently in, no matter your career path, your job title, your daily responsibilities, your plans, the labels and descriptors that have been assigned to you by others (or yourself), you are, above all things, precious and loved.

And whatever you do this day, may you engage life from a place of love.

“…You are precious to me, and honored, and I love you…”  Isaiah 43:4

Intention

In last week’s post I talked about the idea of using a single word as a guide or focus for your life during the course of the year, a practice I’ve done since 2014.

The words I’ve received aren’t exotic, complicated Scripps National Spelling Bee words I cannot pronounce, define, or spell.  They are common, everyday words.  But every year, even though I *think* I know exactly what my word means, when I look up its definitions and usage, when I spend time with it, I find nuances and shades of meaning I hadn’t considered before.  Like Vizzini in The Princess Bride, about whom Inigo Montoya observed, “You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means,” I always find there is way more to my word than what I *thought* I knew.

My word for this year, “quiet”, is no different.

“Quiet” is the word we often choose to indicate the absence of sound, and that was the first thing I thought of. Silence. Silent. Stillness. Still.  Hushed. Noiseless. Soundless.

But when I started exploring the ways it is defined and used and read through the list of synonyms, I noticed that “quiet” does not always or automatically mean “silent” or “silence”.

It can mean peaceful. Tranquil. Calm. Undisturbed. Untroubled. Restful.

It can also refer to that which is private. Confidential. Unofficial. “Discreetly, secretly, or with moderation”, or it can mean restrained, as in “unobtrusive, not bright or showy.”

I’ve heard thunder described as a “quiet rumbling.”

There are quiet breezes; quiet waters. Quiet music. Quiet voices.

In I Kings 19 the Holy One speaks to Elijah not in the howling wind that shattered the rocks, not in the earthquake that followed, not in the fire that ensued, but in a “still, small voice;” a “gentle whisper.”

When I got a sense of the width and depth and breadth of that one small word and how narrowly I categorize and use it, it made me wonder: how many other things do I *think* I know, but don’t, really (or don’t fully comprehend)?  To take that question even further, what might I have missed because I *thought* I knew the story, the answer, the situation, the whatever and didn’t bother to look any further or consider another point of view?

The act of taking a closer look at that everyday, unassuming word “quiet” (which I *thought* I already knew the meaning of) turned into a powerful reminder of how important it is to live with intention.  To pay attention to what is happening both within and around me.  To be mindful of who and what is there and how I feel about it. To be present and engaged, not paying lip-service and mailing it in. To seek the Holy in every circumstance.

Maybe that’s the most important piece of the Star Word practice – at least for me, at least for now: the fact that it prompts me to stop and notice–even those small things I *thought* I already knew.

I needed the reminder. I don’t always stop and notice.  At times (especially after Bill’s death) I’ve worked really hard at not noticing. I’ve actively avoided; put on emotional blinders. Ignored.  Dismissed. Run screaming in the opposite direction. Tried to pretend it didn’t exist or didn’t matter. None of that got me anywhere except more miserable. Noticing, paying attention to, facing what was there – looking it in the eye and calling it by its real name, intentionally acknowledging and owning it - was my first step on the path toward healing.

Are there things you *thought* you knew that you’ve found new twists on recently? What was that like for you?  

Has that led you to regard areas of your life with more intention?

For those of you who have a word for 2019, how is that going?  What does your word seem to be saying to you?  What insights have you gained so far? What glimpses of the Holy have you seen?

“So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart.” Psalm 90:12, NRSV

Give Me a Word...

The idea of using a singular thought, idea, or word as a focus or guiding principle for one’s life has been around for centuries. 

After the exodus of many European religious to the Egyptian desert in the fourth century, pilgrims and seekers would approach the Abbas and Ammas, (the desert Fathers and Mothers), in search of knowledge and wisdom and ask them to “give me a word!” 

Practitioners in the helping professions sometimes ask clients to describe their situation or how they feel in just one word as a means of getting to the heart of the matter and discerning what’s most important at the moment.

I happened onto the Star Word version of this during my last year as a pastor when I was looking for a special way of marking Epiphany, the story of the Magi journeying to visit the Christ Child.  (For more about that, click here to visit the blog of my colleague Rev. Marci Glass.) 

Using the star the Wise Ones followed as a tangible symbol I got cardstock stars, printed words on them and placed them in a basket at the front of the sanctuary.  During worship on Epiphany (January 6, or the Sunday closest thereto) I had each person bring their offering forward, then draw a Star Word from the basket.

I invited them to spend time thinking about their word over the course of the year, to investigate its usage and definitions, see where it turned up in the scriptures, pray over it, pay attention to what the word itself prompted in them when they read it and what if anything the Holy One might be speaking to them through their word. 

I’ve gotten a Star Word every year since. I’ve been skeptical at times (and even unhappy!) with some of my words, and yet it’s always been a thought-provoking, enlightening, instructional, and deeply meaningful spiritual exercise.

My word for 2019 is “quiet”.

I laughed out loud when I saw it.

I found it amusing, hilarious even, that I - the person who’s just spent the last year “putting myself out there” on social media with a website, blog, Facebook, and Instagram - would receive the word “quiet”.  (Who says the Universe doesn’t have a sense of humor??)

It’s even more curious because of my circumstances. As a widow, I’m alone a great deal of the time; almost all of my days are spent in solitude and quiet. Does receiving “quiet” as my word this year mean I need even more quiet? 

Or might it mean I need to focus on the quiet that is already there in a more intentional way, and be more mindful of what I allow to fill that time and space?

Eating alone is one of the hardest things for me about being widowed so I usually have the TV on at mealtime.  Hearing human voices, (even if it’s only the TV), makes the process of preparing and eating meals seem less lonely. But after having a few days to reflect on my word and the questions it’s already prompted, I am rethinking that practice, particularly in the mornings. I want to stay informed and engaged in the world; it’s a responsibility I take seriously. But I’m not sure the news - with its seemingly endless litany of what blew up, burned down, or crashed, who got shot, stabbed, or robbed, and where in the metro area I live in traffic is jammed (which is pretty much everywhere) – is the best way to do that.

These are the questions occupying my mind at the moment, but I have a whole list of others. There’s lots more to come on this!

What about you?  Have you ever used this idea and had a focus word for the year?

What was that like?   

Just curious: If “quiet” were your word for this year, what questions would that word prompt for you?

If you have a word for 2019, I’d love to hear your first impressions and what (if anything) you’re seeing, hearing and experiencing in your first few days with it.  

And if you don’t have a word for 2019 and would like one, just ask, and I’ll draw one for you.

Unresolved

I have a love/hate relationship with New Year’s Resolutions. 

I adore planners and lists, and making New Year’s Resolutions – planning an entire year, the big picture, the whole enchilada – is just a grander and more glorious version of the daily to-do list.   I started each January with excruciatingly detailed plans for all the things in my life I wanted to do, do better, undo, not do in the first place, tweak, organize, reorganize, and/or change completely.  I loved that part. 

But I hated the feeling of failure those lists produced when I realized on day three or four that I hadn’t made it to consistently do all (or even some) of those things, and if I was honest about it, I wasn’t going to. 

I finally just quit.  Starting every year doing something that made me feel like a failure did more harm than good.  And these days making New Year’s resolutions is just a painful reminder that what I most want to change about my life is the one thing that is totally inaccessible to me.  There are no plans or resolutions I can make that will undo Bill’s illness or bring him back.  That single circumstance – losing him – changed everything.  I don’t need to reinvent the wheel and create To Do, To Be, and To Change lists each January first; change is where I live every day and my “new normal” – if there even is such a thing - is still evolving. 

At a certain level, regardless of our specific circumstances - even if you haven’t experienced the upheaval I did – that’s true for all of us.  Life isn’t static.  Time passes.  Stuff happens. Things both big and small impact who we are, how we feel, what we think, and what we do.  Just one good night’s sleep (or a bad one) can significantly alter our perception, mood, mindset, creativity, energy, activity level, and schedule.  Some traits – the core essence of who we are – remain constant throughout our lifetime, but we’re not exactly the same people we were last year or last month or even last week: we learn, we grow, we mature, we evolve, we adapt, and at times the things we do and the way we do them have to adapt and change as well. 

That’s where I was at the end of 2018.  Because my life is yet such a work in progress, I felt the need to take stock of where and who I am as I move forward into 2019, but I needed a different way of doing that than making resolutions. So I tried this:

I got out my planners and my journals, went over everything that happened last year, what I’d accomplished, and where I am now, then I asked myself three questions:

What brought me life? 

What gave me joy, made me feel most alive, left me with a sense of meaning, accomplishment, gratitude, and connection?  Are there ways to incorporate more of those things into my daily round?

What didn’t?

What did I find challenging? What did I struggle with? What was hard and painful?

What do I need to do about those things?

Is there something I need to continue to ponder?  Something I need to tend?  Something I need to quit messing with and hand over to the Holy One?  Or do I need to kiss it good-bye, give it a decent burial, and just let it go? 

(I know what you’re thinking here, and, yes, I am aware that, technically, there are more than three questions in the preceding paragraphs.  My apologies if that bothers you; this is not a math blog.)

I’m going into the new year “unresolved” – without resolution(s) – but I’m taking those questions (however many there happen to be) with me into each day, and will adjust accordingly as I continue to live into what my life is now. 

We’ll see how it goes. 

If New Year’s resolutions work for you, Yay, you!!  Keep making them.  If they don’t, or if, like me, you’re in a place where you need to try a different approach, I hereby give you permission to experiment with all manner of new things until you find a practice that is life-giving and doable for you.

“…Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart…” 

Luke 2:19, NIV

Starry Nights

I have always loved starry nights in all their various appearances and incarnations.

The Starry Night is my favorite Van Gogh painting, and Don Mclean’s “Vincent” (most often identified by its opening line “Starry, Starry Night”) is one of my favorite songs. 

Among my most cherished memories of the years Bill and I spent on the farm were those summer nights on the patio where we sat and watched the stars come out and then, as darkness blanketed the landscape, saw the scene mirrored at ground level as the fireflies blinked and danced over the lush fields of corn and soybeans.

And this time of year, my mind is captivated by the starry imagery of the Christmas story.  I can close my eyes and imagine the shepherds gazing upward into a sparkling starlit sky, transfixed at the joyous news that heavenly host is proclaiming, as well as visualize the stunning radiance of that one star that guided the Magi to the Holy Child.

It wasn’t always so.  When I lost Bill, the stars – and all the other lights in my life - seemed to go out; everything was dark, murky, shrouded in mist.  It took a long time for color and light to creep back into my life.  (For the past three years my Christmas tree has been oh-so-symbolically decorated in gold, silver, and blue.  This year it is gold, silver, and red.)

In the first chapter of John’s gospel, he insists in his very grown-up take on the Christmas story (no angels, no shepherds, no infant), that “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:5) The stars still shine, independent of my ability to see them, created and hung in the heavens by the One who “heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds, [who] determines the number of the stars and calls them by name.” (Psalm 147:3-4)

I was grateful for those words of hope and grace.  This season is at the same time joyous and celebratory, yet still bittersweet and challenging for me.  The truth is, though, that’s true in some measure for everybody and it always has been.  It’s “the most wonderful time of the year”, but it isn’t always all wonderful.  To borrow a pun from my friend Jen, (you can find her work on Facebook or on Instagram @cobbleworks), some of it is “awe-full”; some of it is just plain awful, and it was that way for Mary and Joseph too. 

“Awe” doesn’t even begin to encompass things like being visited by angels, birthing the Holy, having wealthy strangers from the East travel a great distance to pay homage to your newborn.  Much of the rest of it was beyond horrible.  Those angelic visits came with a lot of baggage and wagging tongues.  I can’t imagine how difficult the trek from Nazareth to Bethlehem had to be when one is “great with child”, not to mention things like Herod’s decree and the flight to Egypt.

For us, it is short days and long, dark nights, overcrowded schedules, cold and flu season, bad weather (there are tornado warnings in my county as I type this), sensory overload, the bane of expectations, and more. Even if we’ve been intentional about focusing on the reason for the season and preparing our hearts for the coming of Christ, we can find ourselves blindsided by events and emotions beyond our control that leave us fried and frazzled, not merry and bright.

For you, for me, for all of us this Christmas, however the season finds you – starry-eyed or lost in a fog, whether your heart is broken, mended, full to bursting, or various incarnations of those - this is my prayer:

May hope be born in you anew this Holy season.

May wisdom travel with you, illuminating your path.

May joy lighten your step and brighten your days.

May tears, when they come, wash away weariness, sadness, and fear, healing your spirit and cleansing your soul.

May the light of God’s love burn brightly in your heart, this day, and always.

And may the promise of peace on earth and goodwill to all become reality, now and forever.

Scheduling note:  I’ll be taking a break from the blog over the holidays.  I’ll see you back here in January.

Other Travelers

I encountered Jan Richardson’s Blessing on a Strange Road at the end of last Sunday’s reflection in her online Advent retreat Illuminated, and those words have stayed with me all week. (For more about Jan and her work, her website can be accessed here).

The first stanza reads: 

“If this blessing could have found you

on its own, it would have.

As it happened, it had to depend

on the mercy of other travelers

willing to bring it here.”

The first thing I thought of when I read those words were all those “other travelers” who walked alongside us during the two and a half months between Bill’s terminal diagnosis and his death - angels of mercy sent by the Holy One, gifting us with grace and blessing in a multitude of ways.

They brought meals. They scrubbed my kitchen floor, loaded the dishwasher, took out the trash. They sat with Bill so I could run errands. They helped him bathe, get to and from the bathroom, in and out of bed. They mowed the lawn and weeded my flower beds. They removed doors and moved furniture to accommodate the walker, then the wheelchair, then the hospital bed. They tried valiantly (but unsuccessfully) to remove the bat—mammal, not baseball—from the basement. They sent cards and flowers, wrote notes, called to check on us, prayed for us. They came to visit and brought movies to watch and treats to snack on. They listened while Bill tried to talk, and did their best to try to understand him. They helped me get him up off the floor when he fell. They changed the bedsheets.  They slept on the couch near his hospital bed in case he needed pain meds during the night, giving me a chance to sleep. And during those last ten days they came, one by one, to the inpatient Hospice unit keeping vigil with me and bearing witness to his life.

We do not travel alone.

I needed the reminder and the reassurance Jan’s words prompted because that feeling of aloneness is something I struggle mightily with and have since before Bill’s death, when the disease process began systematically and (nearly) instantaneously robbing him of cognitive function and the ability to communicate. 

Yet despite how solitary and singular our existence may seem or be, we are companioned and influenced not only by those “other travelers” we can point to and name, but also by those who are not physically part of our day to day existence, some of whom we do not, cannot, will not ever know: the generations who have gone before us whose genetics and experiences deeply influence ours; mothers and fathers of faith whose witness continues to shape us; chance encounters we thought nothing of at the time, but which planted seeds that bore fruit months or years or decades later.

We do not travel alone.

That realization caused me to wonder if my highest and truest calling, and yours - beyond all the labels we wear and the things we do - is be to be one of those “other travelers” willing to reach out, pour a cup of cold water, sit with, listen to, hold space for, acknowledge, affirm.  One who is willing to offer mercy and be blessing wherever and whenever they can, in whatever way they can.

We do not travel alone.

“Be strong and courageous.  Do not be afraid or terrified, for the Lord your God goes with you; God will never leave you or forsake you.”  Deuteronomy 31:6

Take a moment and think back over your life. Can you name some of those “other travelers” who have brought grace and mercy and blessing to you?  How and when were you visited by them?

Where and to whom might you have the opportunity to be one of those “other travelers”?

Grace. It's more, and in more places than I thought.

With a Theater major among us, our family has been tuned in to all things entertainment for years.  Our conversations are laced with one-liners from cinema, Broadway, and TV, and we have by now a not-so-short list of all-time favorite movies, one of which is National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.

It’s impossible for me to name just one favorite scene from that movie, but in my top ten is the Christmas Eve dinner scene where Clark asks Aunt Bethany to offer grace before the meal.  She doesn’t understand.  Clark’s mother tries to help, turning to face Aunt Bethany and shouting “GRACE!”

“Grace?” Aunt Bethany asks.  “She passed away thirty years ago.” 

I’ve been in a similar place this week; I didn’t fully comprehend grace either. 

In my faith tradition, grace is understood as “the free, unmerited favor of God, as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowal of blessings.”  Which is fine, as far as it goes, but after reading pastor, writer, and artist Jan Richardson’s reflection on grace in her online retreat Illuminated this week, I don’t think it goes far enough.  (For more about Jan, work, and her online Advent retreat, her website can be accessed here).

According to Jan, “Grace enters also into the painful gaps that open up when [things] do not go as we’d hoped.”  When I read those words, it dawned on me that what I name as grace is things that are overwhelmingly positive, not the “painful gaps”.  But grace is present and available in all times, places and incarnations, not all of them warm and fuzzy.   

The most painful period in my life has been the time since Bill’s illness and death.  Especially early on, I wasn’t thinking about or looking for grace there. I was too busy looking for the exit.  I was overwhelmed by how difficult and complicated things were without him, how sad and lonely I was.  My heart wasn’t just broken; it was shattered.  All I wanted to do was find a way out of the misery as quickly as possible. (Spoiler alert: there isn’t one. There’s no express lane or timetable for grieving).

Look backing over my journey through the “valley of the shadow” today, through the lens of Jan’s words, it’s clear that grace was there all the time, woven into and around and through that experience, sustaining me when I didn’t even recognize it was there, in ways I can’t even articulate. 

Grace - the “free, unmerited favor of God”– is a gift of the Holy. I can’t do anything to earn it or conjure it up on my own; it is completely independent of me, just as many of the circumstances of my life are out of my direct control. The part that is up to me is the decision to trust (or not) that grace is there whether I can perceive and name it as such or not.  

Trusting where I cannot see is a growing edge for me. I prefer lists, road maps that clearly delineate the path from point A to point B, and large doses of Holy Certainty.  But that’s not what I have.  The Holy One’s “thoughts are not our thoughts, neither are our ways God’s ways”, as the prophet Isaiah so aptly put it, and often the only part of the path in front of me I can see with any clarity at all is the next step.   

It’s scary, but I’m leaning into the mystery this Advent, taking that next baby step, trusting that grace is there, in all things, regardless of whether I can see evidence of it in the moment or not.

How about you?  Have you had any moments lately when you realized your understanding of something needed to shift?   

If that’s been part of your experience, what was it like for you?  Invigorating?  Frightening?  Did it make you feel angry?  Relieved?  Excited?  Anxious? 

Where are you now?  Leaning in?  Taking baby steps?  Still pondering?  Starting over? Well on your way?

Wherever you are, wherever you are going, grace is there, and the Holy One is with you.

Call Me Crazy...

Last weekend I had some free time to sew and I did something new I’ve been wanting to try for over a year.  Crazy quilt blocks.  I had so. much. fun. piecing those squares and choosing the stitches to embellish them with.  As is usually the case when I get involved in some creative process, I relax, something in my brain clicks, and I get all kinds of ideas about all kinds of things. That word “crazy” has been on my mind ever since.  It’s bandied about in a multitude of forms these days, but unlike the stunningly creative and beautiful artistry displayed in crazy quilts, most of the ways we apply the term and the things we apply it to are considerably less than flattering.

Like the stuff going on in our world.  It seems to get crazier, more hateful, uglier by the minute and just when we think we’ve seen it all, when we don’t think things could possibly get any more horrible, something else happens that is, to quote Weird Al Yankovic’s spoof of Michael Jackson’s Bad album, Even Worse.

Those painful, ugly things rattle us.  Frighten us. Make us doubt the sanity and question the goodness of humankind. They make us want to run and hide. Disengage. Turn our attention inward rather than reaching out, cocooning ourselves in the safety of the known and the familiar. 

There are times when things are so horrible and unthinkable, when we’re so wounded that’s all we’re capable of doing. Since losing the love of my life I’ve had many of those days.  And there are times when I feel like quitting; in fact, I just went through one of those. But disengaging completely is not in my DNA. Woven deep into my almost exclusively Scots, Irish and British heritage is a dogged determination.  In my family, no matter what happened, you just kept going; “quit” was a four-letter word that was never used unless one was referring to smoking or nail-biting.  Because of the way I’m hardwired, completely withdrawing, to me, feels like I’m bailing and letting the hateful and ugly win, and I just can’t do that. 

I’m sad about all of the hateful, ugly craziness out there, scared by much of it, not sure what I personally can do about some of it, but I am absolutely not ready to give up on the world just yet.  I’m thinking that now more than ever we need to reclaim that word “crazy”; to intentionally choose, each time we see or hear a negative incarnation of that term, to offer something positive back in whatever way we can.

Anything that’s crazy good. Creative, beautiful things like crazy quilts, artwork, music, well-crafted words. Being crazy in love. Random, crazy acts of kindness like deciding on a whim to pay it forward the next time you’re at Starbuck’s or Dairy Queen or wherever or making the effort to offer someone a smile or a kind word when you’re exhausted and feel like you’re dying on the inside.  Doing crazy, scary things like reaching out and walking with others in their suffering and pain, holding space for the wounded and broken.   

Please.  Call me crazy. 

I want to be crazy enough to keep trying, to keep putting one foot in front of the other even when the path is not clear.

…crazy enough to keep looking for beauty in the ashes; searching for signs of Resurrection, rebirth, and new life.

…crazy enough to hope even when things look utterly hopeless.

…crazy enough to trust, when nothing seems like a sure thing anymore.

…crazy enough to keep praying, even when I don’t always get the answers I want, when I want them.

…crazy enough to cling to the promise that the Light “shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it”, and to share that Light.

…crazy enough to keep choosing to believe that Love is stronger than death; stronger than hate.

How about you?  Can I call you crazy too??

Balance... and Rhythm... and Blues

Maintaining a healthy balance in life has gotten a lot of press in recent years.  Experts in multiple fields including business, mental health, productivity, spirituality, and medicine have weighed in on the discussion.  Google the phrase “work-life balance” and you’ll get more than seven hundred million hits. (785,000,000 when I clicked on it this morning, but who’s counting?)  

I understand the concept – and the need – but that word “balance” is problematic for me. When I hear it, the image that comes to mind is Lady Justice holding her perfectly aligned scale. That vision sends me scurrying into micromanagement mode, making endless lists and manipulating tasks and time slots in order to fit everything in and make sure it all gets done and everything comes out “even” at the end of the day.  It usually doesn’t.     

The truth is, I can’t control everything.  No matter how carefully I schedule and plan, life happens anyway and has to be dealt with. Circumstances change; plans fall apart; unexpected events occur and not all of those things can be wedged into a time slot or contained within a certain day of the week or month of the year. Losing my “better half” left everything in my life feeling out of balance and no system of time management that can alter that reality.

I can’t control what happens, but I can control how I respond to what life dishes out and what has been more hopeful and helpful to me is to take a longer view - to step back from the minute-by-minute and pay attention to and honor the overall rhythms of my existence.

Life is not static; there is an ebb and flow to the interior times and seasons of our lives that mirrors the rhythms we see in the external world: waves lapping the shore, the rise and fall of the tide, sunrise and sunset, the turning of the seasons from one to the next. 

Viewing things from that broader perspective has helped me to be present to what is rather than get swept away in the minutia of what isn’t or what might have been or what should have been, none of which I can do anything about now.  When I stop trying to micromanage every detail of my life, the Spirit has more freedom to work in me, which allows things to unfold in their own time, at their own pace.  The way Solomon tells the story – and he’s long been held out as one of the wise ones - there is a “time and a season” for all of it: birth and death, weeping and laughter, embrace and solitude, mourning and dancing, silence and speech, love and hate, war and peace, and everything else under the sun.

Ferris Bueller was right too: “Life moves pretty fast.  If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Those words – both Solomon’s and Ferris’s – have helped me loosen my grip on the planner and the pen and live into that longer view.  They are especially important now.  With the tender emotions, heightened anticipation and expectations and extra activities of the holidays, it’s easy for me to fall back into micromanagement mode and succumb to the pressure of the calendar and the clock.  I’m reminding myself to slow down- to stop even – and look around so I don’t miss anything.  To remember that there is a time and a place for everything. 

I’ve already discovered this: I’m aware that for me there will be blue moments scattered through the shiny golden ones. By being mindful of that particular rhythm in my life I (hopefully) won’t be blindsided by those moments, better able to truly celebrate the beauty and promise of the season, to savor all the memories and the love that forged them, acknowledging the loss but not becoming overwhelmed by it.

Wherever this holiday season finds you at the moment – still enjoying Thanksgiving, in the middle of Black Friday mania, decking the halls, or resting and regrouping before another week begins - may grace and peace be part of the rhythm of your days.

A Litany of Thanksgiving

We’ll celebrate Thanksgiving Day in the US next week, but it is never too early (or too late) to offer gratitude.  Giving thanks is never out of season, and rather than a once a year or occasional practice, it is (or should be) a way of life, woven into and embedded in the fabric of our moment-by-moment existence.  The Litany of Thanksgiving that follows is what I am most grateful for at the moment.  As you read, I invite you to use my words and thoughts as prompts for creating your own.

A Litany of Thanksgiving

For music and singing,

joyful noises and rhythmic beats,

harmony and melody, praise and lament…

… and for the musicians whose gifts of song

personally touch my heart, bring me joy,

and transport me into the presence of the Holy.

For the glory of nature:

stunning vistas, earth’s bounty,

crunching leaves, gentle rain,

rolling waves, spectacular sunsets,

blinking fireflies, crystal snowflakes…

…and for the photographers who capture

and share all these images and more.  You feed my soul.

For light that shines in the darkness and illumines our days:

the pink edge of dawn, cloudless sunny skies,

glowing candles, silver moonbeams, starlit nights…

 …and for those who offer their light to me and to our world.

For simple pleasures: morning coffee, afternoon tea,

walks on the beach, clean, cool water,

good books, creating and crafting…

…and time to enjoy them.

For life and all that infuses it with meaning:

holidays and Holy days, first cries and last breaths,

compassion and care, laughter and story-telling,

history and heritage, anticipation and memory,

companionship and communion…

…especially Sunday breakfasts, Thursday lunches,

and Friday night dinners.

For those who share my life and share their gifts:

family and friends, artists and poets,

writers and readers, comics and muses…

…especially my companions on this writing journey

and our Wednesday calls and Saturday afternoon gatherings.

For raw beauty, fierce determination,

brazen hope, defiant faith, relentless trust,

unbridled joy, cleansing tears.

For those who also walk “the valley of the shadow”,

whose shared experience binds my life to theirs. 

Your encouragement, love and support offer me visions

of possibility and life,

even in the face of death.

For redemption, reconciliation,

restoration, resolution, Resurrection.

For Sacred mystery,

unlimited grace, unparalleled peace;

for Love that will not let us go

and which companions us in all things

and through all things.

To each one of you and for each one of you, dear readers,

I offer my deepest thanks

for your companionship on this grand adventure! 

May your days be filled with blessing and gratitude,

grace and peace.