On Boundaries and the Necessary Magic of the Word, 'No!'

no

is a necessary magic

no

draws a circle around you

with chalk

and says

i have given enough

- boundaries

(anonymous)

//

I was walking down to the garden the other morning, when a line from Maurice Sendak’s, Where the Wild Things Are ran through my mind. A friend had texted, asking if I might bring flowers in to work. I had paused before replying – I didn’t know if we had flowers left in the garden or not.  More importantly, though, I didn’t know if I had it in me to bring flowers or not.

I texted back, “Lemme see . . .”

After the boys got on the bus, I did a quick internal scan. Did I have it in me to bring in flowers? Yes, I did. Plus, the act of walking through the early morning dew, scanning stems for suitable blossoms, and arranging them in a vase would be good for me.

//

I am someone who grows and cuts flowers to bring into the office. I am someone who spreads poetry in the world, who writes, who tells jokes, and listens, and gives, and gives, and gives.

Most of the time, people like this about me. “We appreciate you,” they say. “You bring something we need.”

Most of the time, I like being liked.

Maybe you do too?

//

Liking being liked can be a problem.

Needing to be liked can be a more serious problem still.

It can lead to a giving that depletes so completely that the giver is left with an empty shell of self.

//

“. . . we’ll eat you up – we love you so!”

This the line I recalled from Sendak’s book. It’s what the wild things say to Max when he’s feeling lonely and longing for “someone who loves him best of all.”

I thought of that line and recognized something in it about the way church work can be; about the way parenting or teaching or any other form of service that involves deep self-giving and sacrifice can be. Caring for young children, tending a sick loved one, feeding a hungry church – all of these have the potential to eat us up, especially if we're looking to them to replace "someone who loves us best of all."

//

I went back and re-read Where the Wild Things Are a few days later.  I read how it’s Max’s realization of his loneliness and need for love that causes him to give up his position as “king” of where the wild things are. Aware of his own needs, Max prepares to leave. This is when the wild things cry, “Oh please don’t go – we’ll eat you up – we love you so!”

Then, a wonderful, magical thing happens in the story: Max says, ‘No!’

Of course, the wild things don’t like this one bit. In response, they “roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws.

But Max stepped into his private boat and waved good-bye . . .”

//

I hope you know the power of the word ‘no.’

I hope you see how every ‘no’ is also a ‘yes’ and that choosing self care is sometimes the best gift you can give to the wild things who love you so.

I hope you don’t give in to the “terrible roars” and “gnashing teeth” and “terrible claws;” I hope you have the wisdom to see they love you so and they're just afraid you won’t return.

Go ahead, step into your boat and sail away, “in and out of weeks and through a day” and find yourself home, again, in “your own room” where Someone who loves you best can care for you for a while.

Don’t worry. We know you’ll be back. We know you’ll bring flowers and, probably, a poem or two. We know. Because that’s who you are. 

But that's only part of why we love you so. We love you also for your ability to say, and to help us to learn to say, that magic word, 'no.' 

The Marooner's Stone (#SmallWonder Link-up)

(Welcome to #SmallWonder.  I'm happy you're here. This week I'm re-sharing an old post as I put my time and energy into preparing for a retreat this weekend, co-led with Laura Boggess, "As a Little Child.")  

Wendy knew the story of Marooner's Rock. It was named by evil captains who abandoned sailors there. They would drown when the rising tide covered them.  

*   *   *

Soon after the dinghy was gone, two feeble cries drifted over the lagoon. "Help! Help!" Peter and Wendy lay on top of the rock. Peter was wounded, and Wendy was tired and weak. . . .

"We have to get off the rock," Peter said. "The tide is rising. Soon we will be covered."  

"I am too tired to swim or to fly," Wendy said weakly. 

"And I don't have the strength to carry both of us," Peter moaned.  

"Then we will drown," Wendy said.

They put their hands over their eyes to shut out the horrible thought.

Something touched Peter's cheek. He opened his eyes. A kite hovered over the rock. Its lone tail had brushed Peter's face. "Michael's kite!" Peter exclaimed. "He lost it the other day, but here it is!" He pulled the kite toward him. "We shall use it to carry us home."

                                                        - from Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie

It's only Monday, but, already, I feel the water rising.

There’s too little time, too little money, too little of me to go around and I’m stacking sandbags in my mind, guarding against the scarcity of my own limitations.

There are days when it feels like I live on Marooners' Rock, days when it feels that the tide is constantly rising, slowly licking at the small space I've secured.

But at least I'm in good company, because so many of us live this way, don't we?

Believing the lie of too little, we hold our breath, shrinking back from the shrinking shore, moving from crisis to crisis as, surely, the water rises.

Like Peter and Wendy, we are tired, we are weak and many of us are wounded.

"We will drown," I say with certainty as I seal the envelopes that carry the checks to the electric company, the phone and natural gas.

"I am too tired," I say as I climb the stairs again to face the fussy child who will. not. sleep.

"I don't have the strength to carry both of us," I think, as I look at the long and weary face of my tired husband whose head aches nearly every night of the week.

Isn't it illuminating that deliverance for Peter and Wendy comes not in the form of increased strength or personal exertion, but rather in the playful and gentle nudge of Michael’s kite?   

Most often, when I grow weary of my self-imposed exile on Marooner’s Rock and finally, at last, lay my head down in surrender, grace and deliverance arrives disguised as the gentle voice of playfulness, the invitation to imagination and creativity.   

The more I tend playfulness through prayer and creativity, the more I’m able to reject the lie of Marooner’s Rock.  The truth is we're not abandoned, we're not alone, there's always Someone waiting to carry us home. 

Playfulness requires trust and surrender, a willingness to live openly and unabashedly hopeful in the sheer goodness of the moment and it’s here that we find deliverance, here that we find a wind strong enough, gentle enough to carry us home.

Is there a practice of playfulness or creativity that helps you find your way home?  I'd love to hear about it in the comments . . .

*   *   *

Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.

What if we chose to deliberately look for the small moments of wonder, the small sparks of presence, of delight or sorrow, of true humanity in which we meet God? 

That's my proposal - that we gather here each week to share one moment of Wonder from each of our days.  

You're invited to link-up a brief post about a small moment of wonder.  Don't worry if your post is too long, too short, or not just right - you're welcome to come as you are.  

While you're here, please do take a look around and encourage at least one other blogger with a comment.  

Growing Season (#SmallWonder Link-up)

(The field of soybeans coming in across the street from our house.)

Late, I arrived at a recent Pastoral Development Day on the tail-end of opening worship.  I slipped quietly into a single stuffed chair down low in the back of the room, curling my legs and feet up tight beneath me.  I was never once late when I returned to work five weeks after my daughter, my oldest, was born.  Waking at 4:30 in the morning I nursed, then showered and drove the hour to work with her in the car seat, then nursed again in a bathroom before joining the rest of the staff with my infant in tow at 8:00.  That was nine years ago and I was not late once the whole summer that I worked with her at my side. 

This Thursday, though, was her field day at school and just as the bus pulled up we realized her lunch – the packed one she needed – was sitting still inside on the kitchen counter.  “Go,” I said, “I’ll bring it to school.”

After the babysitter came early so I could be on time, I gathered my things and hers and made the out-of-the-way trip to her school.  I got there just as the buses were loading and watched her walk out with her class. 

I was late that morning and frazzled, but happy too.  As I described it later to a friend, “My daughter forgot her lunch and I had to drop it off at school,” then, pumping my fist in the air I added, “Mommy, for the WIN!”

When the singing ended a friend of mine invited me to take his seat closer to the middle of the room – he would stand.  I gathered my things and moved for a few minutes, but eventually I turned and whispered, “I need to sit in the back to unwind.”  Then I got up and returned again to my single chair way down low in the back of the room. 

It’s been a year or two since I attended a Pastoral Development day put on by my local denominational conference and even longer since I resigned my pastoral position.  In the past I’ve felt the need and desire – the pressure – to mingle and fit in at these gatherings, to be both visible and vocal.  But this past Thursday I listened to my own heart, which was jangled and tired from rushing out the door and performing the emergency lunch delivery.  I needed to sit in the back and unwind and so I did. 

Seated in the back I watched several pastors working on their phones during the presentation or getting up and leaving the room to field phone calls.  This was one of the hardest things for me to give up when I left the pastorate – the feeling of importance.  It used to be routine for me to receive upwards of twenty emails a day and now I’m lucky to receive three or so a week other than twitter updates and notifications from my kids’ schools. 

Watching them I heard my spirit say, “I’m so grateful to be unimportant.”  It was such an unexpected thought that I wrote it down.  Having struggled so much with feeling unimportant,  I never expected to find myself grateful for it.  I thought immediately of John the Baptist’s words, “He must increase, but I must decrease (John 3:30)” and understood them in a new light. 

The initial presenter shared his story of incredible success followed by a stripping of all he valued as God called him back to his “first love,” back to the relationship at the heart of all things.  Much of what he said resonated with me – the invitation to love, the unknowingness of God’s leading – and the fact that he spoke from a time and place in his story that is as yet unresolved were all encouraging. 

I could have told his story, as it is also my own, except for the great success part.  God has kept me from that – a fact over which I am often frustrated, bordering on bitter.  It’s one thing to have great success and be called away from it – it is another altogether to never have arrived.  And yet, listening, I felt my spirit say, “God loves me very much.”  This also, I wrote down. 

In that moment the love of God sank down from head to heart, from abstract idea to incarnate reality as I pondered my life and the word-made-flesh love of God within it.  Who knew that the sorrow of my own professional stuck-ness could also hold within it a revelation of such joy – “God loves me very much.”

This all took place on Thursday and, halfway through Friday I pulled a muscle in my back while trying to maneuver a free coffee table into the back of the van.  I knew it was bad, but I’d promised my son I would attend his field day so, without resting, I made lunch and showered up before carting myself and the twins over to the park. 

By the time we got home I was in excruciating pain, the likes of which I haven’t known in a long time.  I could barely get myself onto the floor and sitting filled my core with sharp spasms.  With the pain came fear – laying on the floor, helpless, reminded me of last summer’s panic attacks and the tension caused anxiety to rise within me until I felt close to drowning. 

I loaded up on pain medicine, ice and restricted myself to the floor.  Relaxing, I felt a sense of peace and gratitude wash over me.  My back still hurt, as it does also today, but in the midst of the pain I knew also that it will get better.  The reality of the pain was inescapable, yet I now know that the reality of change is also inescapable.  Nothing in life is stagnant, no one fear or hurt has the power to cancel out the possibility of change and healing in the future. 

//

I took joy in meeting my daughter's needs where once I felt such great pressure to conform her needs to my own.

I tended to my own need to unwind in a spacious place rather than seeking to fit in with the expectations of others.

I felt gratitude in my un-importance where once I envied the importance of others.

I felt the love of God in what has not been given me, rather than resentment.

I felt pain, but also knew peace at the possibility of its passing. 

//

I read a children’s book by Ruth Krauss not long ago called “The Growing Story.” In it, a young boy puts away his winter clothes only to find that by next season they are too small.  Trying on the now-too-little clothes he exclaims in wonder, “I’m growing too!”

This is the wonder I want to share with you this week – the grace that time passes and we change.  Time away from my ministry context formed these changes in me and in returning I am able to see them and celebrate.  Like the little boy, this post is my own shout of wonder, “I’m growing too!” and I am so very grateful.

There is one last thing I wrote down on Thursday, which is this - “It is all gift.” 

May you be blessed, friends, with grace and wonder in each and every one of your growing seasons.   

*   *   *

Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.

What if we chose to deliberately look for the small moments of wonder, the small sparks of presence, of delight or sorrow, of true humanity in which we meet God? 

That's my proposal - that we gather here each week to share one moment of Wonder from each of our days.  

You're invited to link-up a brief post about a small moment of wonder.  Don't worry if your post is too long, too short, or not just right - you're welcome to come as you are. 

While you're here, please do take a look around and encourage at least one other blogger with a comment.      

Six Children's Books that Deepen My Faith

Sitting on the old leather couch or rocking slowly in a rickety glider, I’m surrounded by my children as we read together.  I feed my little ones on stories morning, noon and night.  Serving up Harry the Dirty Dog for breakfast, The Magic Tree House becomes an after nap snack, and the evening ends quite often with the quiet words of Goodnight Moon, lulling them off to sleep like sips of warm chamomile tea.  

Once children starting filling our house my own books – the ones from a bachelor’s degree in Biblical Studies and the others from a Master’s of Divinity – were packed away to make room for cribs and changing tables and piles upon piles of children’s clothes and books.  A voracious reader, my appetite was now sated by short stories set on colorful pages and, much to my surprise, those books began to speak to me in all kinds of surprising ways.    

The Carrot Seed taught me about simple faith and perseverance in the face of discouragement as I watched the little boy tend with care and conviction that which was being formed in places he could not see.  The Runaway Bunny gave me new images for and insight into the story of the prodigal son and God’s great mothering, fathering, loving pursuit of the ones who belong to him.  

When I’m tempted to trade the truth of who I am for something the world wants me to be, The Story of Ferdinand, that peaceful little bull who’s carted off to the bull fights in Madrid reminds me about the truth of identity.  Refusing to fight despite the expectations of the taunting and teasing crowd, Ferdinand helps me find the freedom and resolve to make my own quiet but firm stand rooted in the truth of my identity as a beloved daughter of God.  

Tempted to judge the wilderness within myself and my children, I remember the little wild thing Max from Where the Wild Things Are.  When the wildest parts of me “roar their terrible roars and gnash their terrible teeth” I’m learning to, on occasion at least, join in with the “wild rumpus.”  Then, when I’ve had enough I, like Max, return home tired and spent to the place of truth where I am loved just as I am.  

I Love You Just the Way You Are, the simple board book about the little bear Ba and his caretaker George, reminds of the truth that sometimes love is the only thing that can pull us out of a “grumpy, frumpy, stumpy” sort of day; love is the trump card that breaks through every time.

And The Lotus Seed, the story of a refugee from Vietnam who carried a lotus seed half way around the world, affirms for me the truth that beauty and life can come even from great darkness, 

                           It [the lotus] is the flower of life and hope, my grandmother said, 

                           no matter how ugly the mud or how long the seed lays dormant, 

                           the bloom will be beautiful . . . (Sherry Garland)

In times when I’ve been unable to search and study scripture as I once did, the themes of the gospel continue to find me as I sit reading with my children perhaps because my heart is open and listening like a little child.  Now, as time and space open up around me and I return to the ministry of spiritual direction, writing and preaching, it's no surprise that I carry these books with me, replacing my church's usual movie clip sermon intro with a reading of The Runaway Bunny or The Carrot Seed. These books, through the grace and mercy of God, have influenced my "business"  and faith as much or more than any others. 

Are there any children’s books that influence your faith? 

Curious about these books? Here are the full titles and authors:

The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss
The Runaway Bunny, by Margaret Wise Brown
The Story of Ferdinand, by Munro Leaf
Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
I Love You Just the Way You Are, by Virginia Miller
The Lotus Seed, by Sherry Garland
also check out The Curious Garden by Peter Brown which offers such a beautiful analogy for the way the kingdom of God can be tended and spread among us.  

This post is linked with the High Calling community linkup around the prompt Best Books for Business.  Click over to find more takes on the topic.

Taming the Little Beasties

(How does an introverted mother make it through the long, cabin-fevered months of winter with four wild and wiley children underfoot?  Why, she reads to them, of course.)

This is the scene every morning and night at my house: me in sinking into a well-worn hollow of the couch, my lap filled with boys and a blanket and the older two perched along-side. 

They are my lions and tigers and bears, running and roaring restless and I tame them, still and silent, with the power of words.

They are hungry birds squawking and screeching until I build a little nest and fill their ears with stories. 

They are the snakes I charm with the hypnotic notes of "once upon a time" and "happily ever after."

They are my crowd, my captive audience, the flies trapped in this mama spider's web of words. 

This post if linked with Five Minute Friday, click over to read more posts on the prompt "crowd."

The Marooner's Stone

Wendy knew the story of Marooner's Rock. It was named by evil captains who abandoned sailors there. They would drown when the rising tide covered them.  

*   *   *

Soon after the dinghy was gone, two feeble cries drifted over the lagoon. "Help! Help!" Peter and Wendy lay on top of the rock. Peter was wounded, and Wendy was tired and weak. . . .

"We have to get off the rock," Peter said. "The tide is rising. Soon we will be covered."  

"I am too tired to swim or to fly," Wendy said weakly. 

"And I don't have the strength to carry both of us," Peter moaned.  

"Then we will drown," Wendy said.

They put their hands over their eyes to shut out the horrible thought.

Something touched Peter's cheek. He opened his eyes. A kite hovered over the rock. Its lone tail had brushed Peter's face. "Michael's kite!" Peter exclaimed. "He lost it the other day, but here it is!" He pulled the kite toward him. "We shall use it to carry us home."

                                                                                    - from Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie

It's only Monday, but, already, I feel the water rising.

There’s too little time, too little money, too little of me to go around and I’m stacking sandbags in my mind, guarding against the scarcity of my own limitations.

There are days when it feels like I live on Marooners' Rock, days when it feels that the tide is constantly rising, slowly licking at the small space I've secured.

But at least I'm in good company, because so many of us live this way, don't we?

Believing the lie of too little, we hold our breath, shrinking back from the shrinking shore, moving from crisis to crisis as, surely, the water rises.

Like Peter and Wendy, we are tired, we are weak and many of us are wounded.

"We will drown," I say with certainty as I seal the envelopes that carry the checks to the electric company, the phone and natural gas.

"I am too tired," I say as I climb the stairs again to face the fussy child who will. not. sleep.

"I don't have the strength to carry both of us," I think, as I look at the long and weary face of my tired husband whose head aches nearly every night of the week.

Isn't it illuminating that deliverance for Peter and Wendy comes not in the form of increased strength or personal exertion, but rather in the playful and gentle nudge of Michael’s kite?   

Most often, when I grow weary of my self-imposed exile on Marooner’s Rock and finally, at last, lay my head down in surrender, grace and deliverance arrives disguised as the gentle voice of playfulness, the invitation to imagination and creativity.   

The more I tend playfulness through prayer and creativity, the more I’m able to reject the lie of Marooner’s Rock.  The truth is we're not abandoned, we're not alone, there's always Someone waiting to carry us home. 

Playfulness requires trust and surrender, a willingness to live openly and unabashedly hopeful in the sheer goodness of the moment and it’s here that we find deliverance, here that we find a wind strong enough, gentle enough to carry us home.

Is there a practice of playfulness or creativity that helps you find your way home?  I'd love to hear about it in the comments section . . .

This post is linked with Playdates With God. 

 

A Story With Dragons In It

He walks out from behind the tall stacks in the children's library, holding each book like an offering.  His brown eyes turn up to meet mine, searching for a verdict.

 

"Can we get this one?" he asks. 

 

Somehow, despite being unable to read, he finds them tucked in among hundreds or thousands of books, the ones filled with dragons and swords, monsters and pirates.  He pulls them randomly from the shelves, chapter books two or three inches thick and I receive each request with dread. 

 

As resident bibliophile, I'm also the literary gatekeeper at our house and somehow the job seems so much more difficult, so much more complicated when it comes to my five-year-old son.  He wants to read about adventure and conflict and I am worried about violence and magic and things beyond his understanding.   I don't want to shame his natural curiosity, but I want to be careful too.

 

He holds up a thick burgundy book with a heavily embossed cover.   A fire-breathing dragon flies menacingly over a mountainous village.  The title, "Dragonology: The Complete Book of Dragons" is scrolled in medieval script beneath the dragon's wings. There are gem stones embedded in the cover and each page is filled with elaborate illustrations of maps, dragon lore, and even a detailed dragon "life cycle."  The well-made pages look aged and weathered and there are pull-out booklets filled with secret writing and spells.

 

I look at the book and I look at my son. 

 

I see his longing and curiosity, he will absorb this book like a sponge.

 

"Yes," I say, "we can get it." 

 

He responds immediately, roping his sister into reading aloud right there in the library. 

 

During the two week borrowing window, he pours over the pictures and we print page after page of dragon coloring pages from the internet for him to color.  He practices drawing dragons of every shape and size.  My husband and I discuss the book and the difficulty of choosing boys' toys and books that are interesting but wholesome.  We consider the fact that we both loved "The Hobbit," which centers around a quest to slay a dragon and wonder whether it's too early to introduce the "Chronicles of Narnia."

 

Mostly I wonder if I should have said no, if other parents, more Christian ones perhaps, would've said no.  I think about the fact that my yes came from a desire to bless, not the dragons and spells, but the curiosity and hunger for adventure the dwells so naturally within each of my boys.   

 

Then, one Sunday at church, the older kids sit drawing while the adults sing and I look down to see my son drawing the outlines of dragons on his plain white paper.  I wonder what the people around us will think; I wonder what I would think if it was someone else's son. 

 

Pushing my worries aside I sing and pray.  Looking down I catch him watching the man to my right who's singing with gusto.  His open face absorbs the man's singing in the same way he absorbed the dragon book, then he bows his head again to his drawing.  

 

When the singing stops I sit and he eagerly pushes his paper toward me.

 

There are two dragons, one on each side of the page. They stand with their heads raised to the sky, toothy mouths gaping as fire pours out and up. One boasts a pair of jagged wings and both are covered in scales, surrounded by piles of jewels. 

 

"Are they dragons," I ask, "and are these their gems?"

 

"Yes," he says with pride, "They're singing their songs to God and giving him their gems." 

 

*   *   *

 

We watch and wait and worry our way through parenting, like poorly trained refs working a Championship Game.  Convinced that every call we make matters in some way, we wait and wonder how it will all add up.    

 

In her book, The Cloister Walk, Kathleen Norris, a poet, describes the book of Revelation as "A Story With Dragons in It" and says the following, 

"Dragons within, dragons without. Evil so pervasive that only the poetry of apocalypse can imagine its defeat. And to do that it takes us to the limits of metaphor, of human sense, the limits of imagining and understanding. It pushes us against all our boundaries and suggests that the end of our control--our ideologies our plans, our competence, our expertise, our professionalism, our power--is the beginning of God's reign. It asks us to believe that only the good remains, at the end, and directs us toward carefully tending it here and now. We will sing a new song. Singing and praise will be all that remains. As a poet, that's a vision, and I promise, I can live with." (emphasis mine)

In Norris' words, apocalypse sounds a lot like parenting to me - a challenge so extreme that it pushes us beyond all knowing to a place of trust.  Trusting and tending, we nurture the good and bless it and in so doing, we write the song across our hearts, across our lives that we will all one day sing. 

 

And, who knows, maybe the dragons will be singing too.  

 

 

This post is linked with Jennifer Dukes Lee and Imperfect Prose.

Where the Wild Things Are

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God . . . John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Mark 1:1-4 adapted

I met my friend in the wilderness the other night. Well, it wasn't exactly the wilderness, but it was a bar of sorts, which for me still qualifies as a real and somewhat alarming wilderness, being the good Christian girl I was raised to be. She was late and I sat there in the dim light trying to appear busy on my phone and constructing to-do lists on the white placemat in front of me.

She arrived full of unnecessary apologizes which I quickly brushed aside and we dove in head first. Between us there's little need for small talk and right there in the middle of that noisy wilderness we each pulled open the layers of our lives and sat back, listening through tears as our hearts talked for awhile.

This is the friend who tells me how her marriage really is, tenuous and struggling, and shares how she slapped her son in a moment of exasperated rage that has melted now into a messy pile of regret. She is the one I can tell how I yelled at my own son, threw a royal tantrum of rage that scared him and me and how we all ended up on the couch in tears trying to figure out how that day could be redeemed.

* * *

I have to admit that I never really liked Maurice Sendak's book, Where the Wild Things Are. I tend to like books that are warm and pretty, books that affirm my need for a world that's safe, orderly, and predictable. But, it’s possible that the fact that I don’t particularly like the book is an indication that I do get it, a little bit at least. What I do understand is that Max is struggling with the wilderness, with all that is wild and untamed both inside and outside of himself.

Something about the unrelenting, all-humbling job of parenting leaves me too familiar with this wilderness. If my life were a children's book, then one might notice a forest of sorts growing in my house most days right around four pm or any other time that happens to be about an hour before my husband is due home and a half-hour before I lose it.

Too often by that point the day is been played out - patience is gone. I'm wresting dinner onto the table while kids are whining, fighting, hanging and swinging off of my legs like the little wild things they are. By then we're all wearing our wolf suits and if the windows are open the whole neighborhood can hear the roaring, gnashing of teeth and rumpus that ensues.

As a parent, as a human, I'm well acquainted with wilderness and wild things, within and without, but it doesn't mean I like it.

* * *

It's significant that the gospel of Mark places the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ right smack in the middle of the wilderness. This gospel has no time for angels, places no stock in genealogies or other such small-talk as a means of introducing the striking, challenging figure of Christ who emerges in the pages that follows. Mark begins like my friend and I do, by peeling back the layers and starting not in the skies full of stars and angel choirs, but on the bare, dusty, rocky ground of the wilderness.

Something about this gives me heart, gives me hope.  Something about it resonates with the prophecies of Christ and the prophets who spoke them, those craggy ill-kept men and women who lived on the edges of civilized life and thereby lived and spoke that much closer to the heart of things.

The good news begins in the wilderness. What a challenge, what a hope.

* * *

The friend I met with told me how she'd shared with her counselor that she has few real, close relationships, few relationships where anything beyond the bright cheery small-talk of this season might be appropriate. Her counselor said, "Yes, but what about this Kelly? It seems like you have a real relationship with her, why do you think that is?"

My friend, God bless her, said, "Kelly's real. I mean, she told me shethrew an apple peel at her children, for goodness sake, so I feel like I can be my real self with her."

After telling this story she looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, "Why is it so hard to believe that our humanity is what's most attractive about us?"

* * *

Oh, my friends. How deep and wild is the wilderness within you? Who do you have who's willing to meet you there?

* * *

This is the beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ - the One who came and dwelt among us, who meets us in the fullness of humanity. Christ, who "sailed off through night and day and in and out of weeks and almost over a year" to meet us here, "where the wild things are."


I'm so grateful for my friend who gave me permission to share from our conversation - she's one of the flowers in this beautiful field.

Reposting this from December in honor of Maurice Sendak's 85th birthday and is linked with Playdates with God and Hear it on Sunday, Use it on Monday.