i interrupt this silence with an important message… 15.November.2009

Church lasted half an hour today, and since we were fifteen minutes late, it lasted fifteen minutes for us.  Pastor Pete preached on love — the kind of love by which people will know we are disciples of Jesus.  We didn’t know it was coming, but at the end of his message, Pete asked our church to help fill the local food banks.  Metrocrest Food Pantry was full at the beginning of last week; today it is empty.  There is need.  And the body of Jesus Christ — we are the need-fillers. 

Ushers handed out a little paper, mapping out nearby grocery stores and a list of most needed items at the food bank.  We all huddled together and said, “Break!”  And then we were commissioned to storm the local grocery stores to shop for the people who can’t afford to shop for themselves. We’re taking food to an empty parking lot, where trucks are sitting until mid-afternoon today, being loaded up to take the food where it needs to go.

About ten area churches partnered with ours in this effort to feed the hungry.  It is not only our church, but the Church.  The hands and feet of Jesus do not keep themselves within the walls of a church building, or even within the walls of a denomination.  Tonight, we are praising Jesus together.

I just had to tell you because I had this surge of excitement to really be part of feeding the hungry right now.  Not next month, or next year, when I’ve gotten my act together and my theology on giving all straightened out.  But now, together with my brothers and sisters.

I wonder what it would look like for the Church in every city — big and small – to break out their wallets and feed the hungry, on the count of one… two… three.  Would it endanger hunger itself?

discovering snails 3.December.2008

We are gluttons for Fall.
We drink in the last days,
on lush carpets of leaves
among a tangle of branches.

*          *          *          *          *

I tied a scarf around my head in the style of Rambo — only it looked more feminine.  The tie-dyed material pooled on my shoulders and swung down my back, and dreadlocks peeked out from underneath.  I knew I either looked brave and completely stylish in my accessorizing, or else I looked completely clownish.

Five seconds at Arbor Hills, I realized it didn’t matter at all.  This outing was all about how everything else looked.  We escape here often, usually bypassing the monstrosity of a jungle gym for the “natural unpaved trails for pedestrians only.”  Isaiah has developed strong footing on the rooted paths.  He ambles down declines and doesn’t care too much if he falls down.

We twist in and out among the trees, finally settling down in a little clearing.  We come here — to nature — because Charlotte Mason says so, and she makes more sense to me regarding loving and educating my child than anyone else ever has.

Isaiah collects sticks, and I sit down with my book.  Isaiah shoves it away, and perhaps it’s his intuition that tells him nature is too big and full of life to have to read a book in it.  So we play in the dirt instead.  I find five snail shells – empty homes that now decorate the forest floor.  We talk about what all God made:  plants, dirt, and Elijah.  I search for more shells; Isaiah gets bored.  A dead tree trunk leans across the clearing where we play.  Isaiah rides it like an airplane, and I read my book again.  Isaiah wants me to stop again.  I show him what bark is.  We lift up pieces of the skin of trees, and there is more to discover.  Living snails cling to the cold, wet underside.  I lift one off and hold it in the sunlight before Isaiah’s face.  The snail stretches out of its home, pointing antennae into the air, trying to find its place again.  Its sticky face finds my thumb.  I return it to the wet bark.

There are snails everywhere.  I find myself as entralled with life as Isaiah has been the last two years.  I pick up more pieces of bark, finding the snails’ empty homes.  I collect the architecture in my palm.  I could find a thousand shells if I were here all day.  I climb the little hill and clear away the leaves to find the dirt of the forest floor.  Inspired by natural sculptor Andy Goldsworthy (Netflix subscribers, watch the documentary Rivers and Tides online for free, if you’re interested), I build a snowflake out of 58 empty snail shells.  It is my bit of graffiti art along the trail.  I leave it as tribute to the unobtrusive snail, and as a monument to God.

A whistle breaks through the quiet crackle of the trees.  I decide it must be a signal for twelve-o-clock, although I didn’t need the reminder.  We were hungry and tired anyway, and the sun was high enough that I knew it must be time to leave.

When we step back out onto the paved trail and drive home in an automobile, when I see the streets and buildings crushing out nature, everything in the forest seems like I dream.  I touch and feel plastic, concrete, manmade things, and it all feels like such a joke of a world.  I stop at the grocery store on the way home to get a candy thermometer.  I walk down a towering isle of boxes and jars and packaged, processed food, and I think: perhaps this is the dream.  When can I wake up from my mood being set by Christmas carols piped over the loudspeaker?  When will the snails raise their voices and say, “Here!  We are here by the millions, billions, trillions!  We scatter the forest floor everywhere! We are everywhere!  Won’t you look?”?

courage to create 15.November.2008

Today I’m taking inspiration from my husband, Kyle, who posted a collection of notes and reactions to Twyla Tharp’s book The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life.

I’ve never linked creativity to risk, but tonight it makes sense to me that taking risks may help me live more creatively.  It’s fear that keeps me from living life more creatively and passionately.

This year and probably next, we’re living in a rental house.  But if we ever end up in home we own again, I want to create an art wall.  I’m not talking about a wall where artwork is hung.  I want take a whole wall of our house, and let it be turned into whatever the members of our family want it to be turned into.  Everyone can and should contribute to the masterpiece.  Old things can be covered up (though I’d like to take pictures of the wall — maybe every night — to help me remember how the wall used to be), and any art medium can be used, including the writing of text and the posting of photographs.  Hopefully the wall would always be an artistic representation of what our family looks like at that moment.  It would be a way to relieve frustrations, celebrate joy, and commune as a family.

But it’s risky, you know?  It would mean you’d have to give up the idea that your house can look like a decorator’s dream.  Beige paint, begone!  And then you’d have to admit to yourself that it’s okay if the wall isn’t pretty.  And you’d have to be okay with visitors seeing all your struggles and ideas splashed up against the wall.  Yeah, it’s risky.  It’s scary.  But just think:  isn’t it scary to think that whatever beauty that could be expressed on that wall may never have a chance to be released unless it has a canvas?

A few weeks ago, a friend asked me if I had ever heard of relactation.  I hadn’t.  But I went home and scoured the internet for all the information I could find about it.  I discovered that I could train my stagnant breasts to produce milk again.  With enough regular demand for milk, the supply could be rebuilt.  I could actually breastfeed our adopted baby!  Though the process of training a baby to nurse when he has only been bottlefed may turn out to be grueling, the opportunity for bonding through breastfeeding is invaluable.  I imagine this is a little crazy to some people.  But even if I face failure, how can I not try to take advantage of something so perfect?

Today on NPR’s Studio 360, green architect William McDonough spoke of the inspiration he takes from nature.  He admits that humans have pretty lame design skills:

“I reflect on the fact that it took us 5000 years to put wheels on our luggage.  So we’re not that… smart as a design species.  But if you look at a tree and think of it as a design assignment, it would be like asking you to make something that makes oxygen, sequesters carbon, fixes nitrogen, distills water, provides habitat for hundreds of species, accrues solar energy as fuel, makes complex sugars and food, changes colors with the seasons, creates micro-climates, and self-replicates.”

Yeah, my God is creative.  He’s an artsy guy.

I grasp the scrap of paper that is my hope of relactating and breastfeeding our new baby.  It’s a small innovation, a small hope, a humble dream.  But it is my risk; it is my bit of innovation and creativity.  I’ll trudge through weeks of sitting at breast pumps and sopping up leaked milk.  I’ll remember what full, sore breasts feel like.  And I’ll take that scrap of paper and pray for it to be turned into art.  Dare I hope it could become something as complex and beautiful as… a tree?

a proverbs 31 wannabe 7.August.2008

I read Proverbs 31.10-31 as much as any chapter in the Bible.  Maybe it’s because that’s my lot in life right now — a homemaker, a home organizer, the female force of our family (nice alliteration, eh?).  And it motivates me to see the beauty that this woman makes of her family’s home.  The people around her are more whole because of her.

Tonight I read The Message version for the first time:

A good woman is hard to find,
and worth far more than diamonds.

Her husband trusts her without reserve,
and never has reason to regret it.
Never spiteful, she treats him generously all her life long.

She shops around for the best yarns and cottons,
and enjoys knitting and sewing.

She’s like a trading ship that sails to faraway places
and brings back exotic surprises.

She’s up before dawn,
preparing breakfast for her family
and organizing her day.

She looks over a field and buys it,
then, with money she’s put aside,
plants a garden.

First thing in the morning, she dresses for work,
rolls up her sleeves, eager to get started.

She senses the worth of her work,
is in no hurry to call it quits for the day.

She’s skilled in the crafts of home and hearth,
diligent in homemaking.

She’s quick to assist anyone in need,
reaches out to help the poor.

She doesn’t worry about her family when it snows;
their winter clothes are all mended and ready to wear.
She makes her own clothing,
and dresses in colorful linens and silks.

Her husband is greatly respected
when he deliberates with the city fathers.

She designs gowns and sells them,
brings the sweaters she knits to the dress shops.
Her clothes are well-made and elegant,
and she always faces tomorrow with a smile.

When she speaks she has something worthwhile to say,
and she always says it kindly.

She keeps an eye on everyone in her household,
and keeps them all busy and productive.

Her children respect and bless her;
her husband joins in with words of praise:
“Many women have done wonderful things,
but you’ve outclassed them all!”

Charm can mislead and beauty soon fades.
The woman to be admired and praised
is the woman who lives in the Fear-of-God.
Give her everything she deserves!
Festoon her life with praises!

Be silent, you feminists.  This is as high of a calling as they come.  Would I could be to my family what this woman is to hers.

The only problem is, I look at this portrait and think: Is she real?  Is this even possible? Shouldn’t I, as a daughter of the Almighty, a temple of the Spirit, be able to pull off a decent fraction of these qualities?  But instead, I get about one thing done a day.  I “make about a dollar” (to quote Donald Miller in Blue Like Jazz).

The time is swallowed up by some faceless behemoth, and I am left at 12.09a.m. in the darkness, typing, hoping that by some drizzle of grace, I can do better tomorrow.

three books 28.July.2008

Drowsiness pushes its heavy shroud over my head, but today I will fight it.  If there’s one thing I learned in reading Don’t Waste Your Life (John Piper), it is that work is not a curse, as I’ve often treated it.  In my work I will have pain and trouble because of the Eden curse, but even without work, pain and trouble will plague me.  They are unavoidable.  And so I try to not fight work anymore.  I’m doing my tasks with my eyes on Father-Creator-God, trying to see laundry and cleaning as neutral tasks that can be transformed into God-glorifying actions.

When I read Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology, I started to wonder if, at the root of things, the desire for more and more technology came because of man’s view of work being a curse.  In the book, Eric Brende discovers that in the Anabaptist community in which he’s living and working, socialization comes during the lulls between loading the wagon with hay, and meeting new neighbors comes with a barn raising.  Rejuvenation comes with the morning light, from a body fed with healthy foods and exercised through daily work.

Brende discovers that when driving a car, anxiety levels skyrocket even if the driver feels completely relaxed.  Driving horses and bicycling and walking, however, do not result in such unnatural stress.  This idea fascinates me.  How many things that I have invited into my life in the name of convenience are actually tearing me apart from the inside out?

I enjoyed Brende’s book.  Brende’s prose can get a little dull at times, but the ideas in the book were invigorating for me.  Yes, they do make me want to move to the country to farm with motorless machinery and eat the fruit of my own labors.  Yes, they make me want to get a horse in exchange for a car.  Hey, maybe the horse manure could be my main source of fuel for cooking!  I don’t think there’s anything innately wrong with technology; after all, the horse-drawn plow was once a new invention.  I do think that humans need to create with more ingenuity and thought.  Does our technology make us more holistic individuals?  Or does it take away from our person in the name of ease or comfort?

The third book I’ve recently read is The Creative Family by Amanda Blake Soule.  It was a natural sequel to Better Off, and it was a much more practical resource to boot.  I didn’t want the book to end.  It is chock-full of ideas to help you and your children be creative together.  Soule recommends using nature and natural materials in play.  Plastic toys need not apply.  Sewing, dressing up, creating art with the best quality materials possible, enjoying nature, journaling, gardening:  these are activities that I want to make thrive in my household.  Had I read this book before writing my post on gift-giving on the Crunchy Domestic Goddess blog, I think my list of ideas would have been twice as long.

Back to Don’t Waste Your Life:  This wasn’t an “ah-ha!” book for me, but Piper did help me direct my focus back to God.  He is constantly preaching that God is to be glorified, and that we are to be joyful in Him.  His sections on taking risks, letting go of materialism and riches, work, and spreading the message of the gospel were the ones that impacted me most.

These three books have been inspiring for me.  They make me want to face my day with energy and enthusiasm for work and creating.  I’m excited to teach my children the wonders of living.  My greatest fear is that through mere habit, my ideas will not be transformed into actions.

spreading my web wings 26.July.2008

I am honored to be guest blogging for Amy at Crunchy Domestic Goddess today. Come on over to visit!