Back to School Shopping (A Mother's Gaze)

She stands, arms outstretched, 
under fluorescent lights.
She holds up empty shorts,
t-shirts, and tanks.

Her mother-eyes focus
on what is not there,
gauging the cloth's
ability to hold, to hug,
the ones she loves.

Her gaze is fixed just past 
the things she holds, imagining 
the shape of belly, thigh,
chest, and shoulders,
practicing the maternal art
of reconstruction.

We cannot see
the child she sees,
we do not know his dimensions.
All we can see is her love-struck gaze
that brings someone into being
out of nothing. 

To Be A Pastor

To be a pastor

is to return, every

week, to face the hungry

crowds. To offer, in outstretched

and shaking hands, two loaves

and five fishes, knowing full well

it will never be enough.

You are not the one

who multiplies. You

are Elijah’s widow,

scraping handfuls of meal

from a nearly empty jar,

praying as the oil slips out

in slow and shining droplets.

To be a pastor,

you must brave the humility

of not enough, bringing what

has been given – no more,

no less – and waiting, weekly,

for the miracle of God’s

blessing, breaking,

presence.

- K. Chripczuk

* I wrote this poem several weeks ago and have been pondering it ever since.  In one sense, I believe it's true - accurate - and, in another sense, it's not.  There are times when there's more than enough.  I think my main intention was to get at my belief that ministry (in particular preaching) is less about me and what I bring, and more about obedience to God, especially when that obedience means intentional restraint and the discipline of always pointing beyond my self to something/someone more. This phrase, "You are not the one who multiples," is essential.

Reading through again, I see also how this poem might apply to parenting - the acceptance that what we have will never be enough, not completely, combine with the faithfulness of offering it anyway day-in and day-out. Perhaps the poem was written with pastoring (preaching) in mind, but it articulates a faith posture that's more widespread. 

What do you think?  Pastor or not, I'd love to hear your impression. 

Just Beyond (on Spring Snow and the Kingdom of God)

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

If the weather-watchers are correct, we’re due for snow tomorrow and possibly more on Sunday.  Snow in March isn’t unusual, but it’s definitely unwelcome.  Arriving just as the world starts to sing its wake-up song, spring snow often feels like the last straw. 

I’m doing my best not to check and double-check my weather app, though I’m anxious to know how the snowfall will impact my work-life and the kids’ school schedule.  Friends online are sharing weather predictions with accompanying proclamations of despair and dismay.  The more time I spend online, the easier it is to believe spring will never arrive.

But the songbirds, the ones who now make daily inspections of potential nesting places sheltered beneath our window awnings, tell a different story.  Something in them seems certain of spring’s promise, despite the cold-again nights, the frost-filled mornings.  Intrigued by their perseverance, I’ve been listening to them almost as much as I’ve been looking online.  I wonder what it is the birds sense, something just a hairsbreadth away from my bumbling human perception.

The songbirds, of course, are not alone.  The hens are laying like gangbusters, the dog and cat have begun they’re annual shedding extravaganza (Lord have mercy), and the tree branches bear red buds ready to burst at the slightest provocation. 

This week I remembered something my Spiritual Director told me several years back, when my kids were much younger and we were cramped in a small apartment together all the dark winter long.  There was snow on the ground then too, spring seemed like a fairytale – a nice idea, but nothing to stake your hopes on. 

“Do you hear the birds?” she asked, as we sat together in her sunlit meeting space.  “They only start to sing when they’re getting ready to build nests and mate.”

I took her word for it.  I allowed the birds to sing hope into my weary-with-waiting heart and I too started to live like spring was just around the corner. 

Maybe it shouldn’t be news to me that our hope, our faith, our love, are so easily influenced by the voices around us.  But most years I need reminders, just the same. 

Being a person of faith means living in light of a reality that may be just a hairsbreadth beyond our bumbling human perception and allowing that reality to shape the songs we sing, the nests we build, the future we work to bring to fruition.  And when we grow weary in faith it helps to tune into the lives and voices of those around us who seem to hear and live a bit more clearly.  

This week, Father Gregory Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries, was one of those voices for me.  Quoting from the prophet Habakkuk, regarding the coming kingdom of God, Boyle says, “The vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment, and it will not disappoint; and if it delays, wait for it.  What we all want to create and form is a community of kinship such that God might recognize it . . .  It shouldn’t surprise us that God’s own dream come true for us – that we be one – just happens to be our own deepest longing for ourselves.  It turns out, it’s mutual.”

If you find yourself also near despair - due to snow or otherwise - why not take 20 minutes to hear what Boyle has to say.  His words point to realities just beyond perception and his life's work continues to bring the kingdom into fulfillment. 

Honey Bees in Advent

Each bee senses that her one obligation is to give the smallest motion of her flight muscles to the collective work of keeping the queen and the colony’s honey stores warm.  The whole hive knows they survive only if they shiver together. 

Some of them in the shivering cluster will die of old age.  Had they hatched in the flowering season, their labor for the hive’s survival – harvesting nectar and pollen from as many as two thousand flowers a day – would have killed them in four weeks or less, their wings worn to nubbins.  But hatched on the cusp of winter, they may live six months.  They will know only the dark hive, the press of their sisters’ bodies.  They will never fly, never fall into a flower.  They give their lives to shivering together in the dark, the tiny repetitive gestures of each, added together, a music beyond our hearing, sustaining a future for the community.

- from “Honey Bee” in All Creation Waits: The Advent Mystery of New Beginnings by Gayle Boss

My kids buzzed around the dining room table covered with a crowd of mismatched candles.  Darkness deepened outside the window and the wood stove breathed its warm breath in the far corner as we read Gayle Boss’s description of how honey bees endure winter. 

The bees, huddled in the hive, ‘shiver’ their tiny flight muscles, located just above their wings, to create life-saving warmth. 

“One honey bee shivering her flight muscles does not make much heat.  But twenty thousand, huddled together, shivering, can keep the queen and the colony’s honey supply at their core a tropical ninety-two degrees Fahrenheit, even as blizzard winds, inches away, flail. . .”

Wow.  This was impressive, we all agreed.  But then, Boss went on to describe the bees, “hatched on the cusp of winter” who will, quite possibly, never see the outside of the hive.  Those bees that “give their lives shivering together in the dark.”

“What?!” we said.  “Can you even imagine?” we asked. 

Then we prayed and argued (as always) about who would get to blow out the candles.

//

This past week – between an ailing car, a dying washing machine, and some questionable medical results - we had our own little season of stress.  It felt like winter was here and, with it, darkness both deep and wide.  My husband and I wondered how to keep our hope, our faith, from freezing over while the ordinary blizzards of life beat against our little hive. 

Messaging with our Pastor, he mentioned the passages for Sunday’s sermon spanned five hundred years between Isaiah’s prediction of salvation and John the Baptist’s proclamation. “God delivers,” he wrote, “just as promised . . . five hundred years earlier . . .”   

//

This is what I thought of when we read about the winter bees – all those people, shivering together in darkness, keeping faith alive in the hope that someday hope would become reality.  Five hundred years of generations lighting candles, telling stories, waiting, watching for the moment when the world would tilt toward new rays of light and life.

I thought about my own faith, so quick to cool when the waiting is long, so short-sighted and dependent on knowing in the here and now.  What can I learn from those bees, made for spring breezes and blossoms?  Does the dream of a future they cannot even imagine and will never taste keep them alive?  And, just as important, who is shivering still, in the darkness now?  How can I partner with those still waiting, working, for light and life that has come and is still yet to come?

//

Our winter passed fairly quickly – a friend delivered a washing machine this Monday and I did up the waiting piles of laundry with a welcome sigh of relief.  John’s sister and father worked together to gift us with a new-to-us car, one much newer and nicer than any we’ve ever owned. 

Crisis averted, thanks be to God.

Still, I think about those bees, and the reply I sent my Pastor last week.  “I’ve been thinking,” I wrote, “that faith is something like the belief that everything will turn out better than you thought it could, but different than you expected, coupled with the acceptance that the thing you have been longing for, the thing you hoped for most, may not happen in your own lifetime."  

I imagine there were times (and are times still) when this description of faith would not sit well with me. As an intellectual prospect, it seems both valid (biblical) and also terribly unsettling.  But faith is rarely warmed by intellectual assent.  When I wrote those words to my Pastor, I knew them to be true, by the golden glow of something deep in my heart.  Like the bees, I know now this is my job, to give my life to keeping that golden center warm and soft, no matter what the weather may bring.

The Year of Failure

“I’m tempted to declare 2017, The Year of Failure.” 

This is what I messaged to a friend minutes after opening a long-awaited email informing me I was no longer in the running for a coveted job.  My emotions were high; melodrama rose with ease. Looking back over the year, I identified a series of significant failures that lined up month after month in a neat and tidy row: 

• the book proposal and draft I spent months writing and was rejected.

• the library job I thought would be a good long-term fit, but wasn’t.

• the chaplaincy job I spent two months applying to and interviewing for and didn’t get.

The longer and harder I looked, the more failures I found.  Each failure represented energy spent without any easily identifiable reward; each failure was followed by a significant period of disorientation.  Why not chalk it all up as a miserable, frustrating disappointment?

Slapping a label on the entire year offered a tempting satisfaction, and the word ‘failure’ simmered with an oddly appealing blend of self-pity and shame. 

I’m not accustomed to failure. 

Partly because I’m amazing (wink wink), but mostly because I avoid significant risk like the plague.  If you only ever attempt what you know you can accomplish, failure is rarely an issue.  But, then again, neither are surprising successes or the experience of being comforted and carried by those who love you anyway after a difficult fall from glory. 

My friend replied, “Oh, I’m sorry.  That is so hard.”

She didn’t push back.  Her response left space for me to move around a bit, and I quickly realized other names might apply to this year as well.  Like, The Year of Risk-Taking, for one.   Opening myself to the possibility that other labels might just as easily apply helped me identify my real struggle:  I wanted to understand what had happened and to know whether my energies had been misdirected.  If I could figure those things out, then maybe I could make 2018 The Year that I Finally Do Everything Right (or something like that, only with a little more finesse).

I wonder whether, in all of this, it might be better in the long run (although, perhaps more intensely uncomfortable) to just say, “I don’t know what happened or why things happened as they did, but I’m committed to continuing to show up, to ask the hard questions, to look and lean and leap.” 

Still, sometimes, I feel that label – Year of Failure – hovering like a shadow in the periphery of my vision.   I sense it most when I feel uncertain and insecure.  But, for the most part, I’m resisting pinning it to my lapel or scrawling it across the front of my now-almost-finished 2017 planner. 

Even now, as I’m writing, other possible labels continue to present themselves.  Like, The Year of Withholding Judgment or perhaps, best yet, The Year of Believing There is More Happening Than I Can See, by which I mean, of course, The Year of Faith.  

That has a better ring to it, don’t you think?

Discipline & Struggle

We go up to heaven and down to hell a dozen times a day - at least, I do. And the discipline of work provides an exercise bar, so that the wild, irrational motions of the soul become formal and creative. 
- May Sarton in Journal of a Solitude

Seated in the corner of my office, I close the internet window on my laptop and hunker down to write.  With just a half hour left before I leave to meet a friend for lunch, I ought to have enough time to squeeze in my goal of 500 words for the day. 

I need to write something for the week’s blog post and, hopefully, for my newsletter too.  Neither need to be very long.  The problem, though, as I begin, is that, well, I don’t know where to begin.  I don’t have a story to tell, not even the faintest glimmer of an idea to explore.  I had a couple of ideas flitting around last week, but failed to capture them and now one is stale, like bread left out overnight, and the other is shrouded in fog too dense to be explored in this limited amount of time.

Still, I close the internet, sit in my chair, and begin. . . . (pop over to author and editor, Andi Cumbo-Floyd's place to read the rest of this piece).  Leave me a message there, then take a few minutes to look around at all the lovely tools and supports for writers Andi has going on. 

A Painter Stopped By, Out of the Blue

I started painting three years ago because our new-old farm house had large wall spaces; wide, paneled surfaces. 

I started painting because we couldn’t afford to buy art to hang. 

Driving home from the grocery store one day with the twins buckled in to their car seats in the middle of the van, I eased around a corner, down a steep hill in a wooded stretch of road and saw several large framed paintings and prints in a stand of overgrown brush, leaning against a tree.  I quickly pulled over to the side of the road, popped the trunk, and pulled the paintings inside.  Two, in wood frames with glass, showed hunting scenes, ducks rising out of wooded brush.   Another was a large print of a white wicker basket overflowing with pink, teal and baby blue flowers, something your grandmother might have hung over her couch in the eighties. 

I bought magenta paint, turquoise and midnight blue and started painting over top of the prints and on other found canvases.  I borrowed more colors from a friend.

I started painting because the bright colors made me happy.  The slick movement of spreading paint across a surface was calming, like coloring with crayons, like trailing your fingers through fine sand.

I painted words because I didn’t believe I could paint images and because the words in my head and heart needed space, needed a place to land, to become incarnate, objects of permanence.  I painted words because I saw a tutorial online about how to do it well with sticker stencils. 

I painted words and hung them on the walls of our house like tattoos.

//

Last week, a real painter stopped by our farm house.  He paints in oils, sells his work in galleries.  He wanted to know if he could take pictures of our chickens, our polish rooster in particular.

“I paint,” I said, “I just started this fall.” 

“It’s always nice to meet another artist,” I said.  

He showed me pictures of his oil paintings, scrolling through the images of landscapes and farm scenes on his phone. I didn’t show him my paintings, which suddenly felt like child’s play. 

“I paint words.  I’m a word person,” I said.

Later, after he left me with his business card in hand, I looked him up online.  His website is outdated.  I found grammatical and spelling errors and was pleased.  He, at least, is not a word person. 

//

I wondered if his visit was the encouragement I had prayed for fervently that morning; prayers filled with longing, prayers beyond words.  But after he left I looked at my own work with a cutting eye.  It’s hard to write when you’re discouraged, hard to create when you don’t believe. 

When I returned to my studio, my computer, I saw that a friend had sent a message about a job opening – an opening for a position I have kept an eye on for years.  I looked it up.  The job is full time, in my field.   It would leave no time for painting, for writing, for working at the library.  But, in exchange, there would be money, status, a title and many other things I image are more substantial, more valuable, than words tattooed on walls with stencils and acrylic, words strung across pages, hung like spiders’ webs, simultaneously sturdy and insubstantial. 

//

I had asked the painter whether he retired before painting full time.  He smiled and said, “In a way.”  Then, he explained that they live off of his wife’s job.  I told him about my husband who works for the state. 

“It’s a good steady job,” I said, “but we’re not getting rich.”  I didn’t say what I meant, which is that we’re not making ends meet. 

I told him about working part time at the library, about adding a tab on my website for design services.  “But how much can I do?” I asked myself aloud and him, because he was standing there.  “How much can I do and still be able to write?”

He didn’t have an answer.  But he said he’d stop by sometime to take pictures of the chickens, the view of the fields, the distant mountains across the street.  I told him if he was going to take pictures of the hens, he’d want some of our handsome black cat too.  Maybe he will set up his easel here sometime and paint plein air.  The kids would love that, I would too.

//

A letter came in the mail recently, notifying us that the farm land across the street is in the process of being rezoned; if the local vote passes, it will be protected farmland, unable to be sold or divvied up for development.  We never expected to buy a house like this with its view of open fields and rolling hills in the distance.  We’ve often assumed it would someday be sold for development like so many of the surrounding fields. 

I mentioned the rezoning to my Dad the other day, over lunch.  “It’s good for us,” I said. “Value-wise,” I added.

I don’t know why I said that, though.  Maybe because that’s the way he thinks, the way he talks, in dollars and cents.  But, the truth is, we don’t want to lose the view to progress and development because we love it.  It's something like the way I don’t want to lose my life with words and paint to a paycheck and a title: I love it.

I started painting and writing because I needed to. 

I’ll keep painting and writing because it’s still true.

Fear is a Fox (#SmallWonder Link-Up)

(This isn't the fox I drew, but rather one I found online to work from - isn't it charming delightful?)

Last week I started work on a painting I planned to give to a friend.  Standing at the old sink in the Little House (where my office is) I covered a small, square, wooden canvas with a mixture of turquoise and dark purple paint and left it to dry.  The next day I added one or two more layers of the same colors.  I liked the combination and was happy, so far, with my little project. 

(This, often, is the beginning of the problem.)   

Next I played with some tulle netting, painting over it like a stencil to add layers of texture and depth.  Now I liked the painting even more and the more I liked it, the more my progress slowed.  

Love for what was made me hesitant to move toward what might be. 

But the painting was nowhere near complete.  With the background finished, it was time to add an image and words.  I already had words in mind and thought a fox would be a fitting image, so I looked online for a few samples to work from.  With luck, I easily found a sketch I loved.  I printed it and prepped my canvas board with a glossy gel layer that would preserve and protect the background while also allowing me to ‘erase’ my drawing at any point if I made a mistake.

Then my progress stalled for several days.  I loved the background, loved the fox, but I was afraid to mess up either one.  I was afraid to start, afraid to try, even though the gel coating meant I could begin again at any time.

I hemmed and hawed, I set my work aside and did not look the sly fox in the eye.

//

Maybe it wouldn’t be worth writing about if it wasn’t such a common occurrence – the way fear creeps in, cloaked in perfectionism and I, a creature of habit and instinct, caught between fight and flight, freeze like a deer in headlights. 

Again, maybe it wouldn’t be much if it hadn’t happened also last week when it came to updating my book files, and if success updating the print files had (as it should have) given way to confidence to deal with the e-book files.  Instead, each step ran up against (and temporarily stalled out in the face of) its own wall of fear.

I see this pattern again and again in my creativity and, if I’m honest, in my life.  I prefer the known to the unknown, even when the known is not particularly good, but especially if the known is good and filled with delight. 

How much time, how much energy, do I waste in this fearful pause? 

Why do I fail to believe that the grace of one step might carry over into the next? 

Maybe I need to become like the desert monk, Abba Paul, who worked all year long weaving baskets only to burn them and begin again each year - maybe I need to learn again and again the art of detachment, the gift of faith beyond sight.

//

I talked with a college student about this the other night, one who’s currently taking a drawing class.  We trotted together across the cold, dark campus on our way to a Bible study and I confessed how fear had me frozen.

“It’s ridiculous,” I said. “What am I so afraid of?  Especially when I could just erase it, just paint over it and start the whole thing over?”

She offered no answer, but confessed to witnessing the same tendency in herself and we continued through the crisp winter night together until we reached our destination – a small house aglow with warmth and light.

//

The next day, having voiced my fears aloud into the frigid night air, I pulled the fox from its lair beneath a stack of papers on the kitchen counter and looked it in the eye.  With a white gel pen, I sketched the outline on my canvas first, then filled in the fur.  I kept a bowl of water and q-tips nearby for erasing mistakes, but truth be told, I got it on the first try and barely erased a line.  Then, emboldened by success, I added low-lights in midnight blue to bring the fox alive. 

I was happy with the drawing, happy with my success.

Yet, I stopped, again, frozen in the face of the next step - hand lettering the words.  How would I space them?  What fonts should I employ?

I set the work aside, because now I was even more invested, had even more to risk, even more to lose.  Against the purple and blue background, the white fox sparkled silver and fixed me with its shining eye.  

//

Every wall of fear has a door.  The door cracks open, for me, when I recognize fear as an invitation to examine my own intrinsic attachment and perfectionism.  

Now, when the wall rises up in front of me, I imagine stretching out my empty hand and opening the door.  On the other side stands the fox, staring.  Then, in a flash of beauty, she turns and runs off into the night. 

Every day that I create something, I bump up against fear’s wall.  And, faster now, I hear the fox's sly whisper, “Look for the door.”   

How do you experience and deal with fear in your creative life?  In your faith life?

*   *   *

Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.  

What if we chose to deliberately look for 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.  Thanks for being part of our community!  

Faith For A New Year

What We Need Is Here

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.

- Wendell Berry

After a few weeks of quiet here on the blog, I find myself carrying these words into the new year.  What words do you carry to remind you of that which is essential?  

#SmallWonder will be back next Sunday/Monday and I hope to have some exciting news to share.  Want to keep up to date on changes and receive great exclusive content?  Subscribe to my newsletter via the sign-up box on the top right hand column of my blog.   

Un-Disciplines: Do Something Foolish (#SmallWonder Link-Up)

I loaded three cartons of eggs and three ice blocks into our straight-out-of-the-eighties rolling cooler this morning.  We inherited the cooler from a friend because she didn’t need it anymore and we didn’t want to spend $20 on a cooler for eggs that might not sell.  Once the eggs were tucked in, I hauled the cooler out the front door to the little farm stand in front of our house. 

My husband built the stand, out of an old door and leftover lumber, at the end of June and we've kept it stocked with garden surplus ever since.  The hope was to keep from wasting the abundance of our little corner of Eden and make some spare change in the process.  We live on a fairly busy state road and I thought a farm stand would do well here. 

This morning I was surprised to find a dollar sealed inside a plastic bag at the stand.  I had left the Ziploc bag there with instructions for anyone who bought cherry tomatoes to “leave the container,” implying (I thought) they could use the bag to corral the tomatoes.  But someone bought tomatoes and left the money – a crisp dollar bill – in the bag instead.  

I'm happy to report that this new development doubled our year-to-date farm stand income.  That’s right, doubled it.  As in, we've made two dollars over the course of a month.  I quickly sent my husband a text with the heady news and started dreaming of a spending spree . . .

Not really.  

But I did feel a small spark of hope, which is no small thing when most days I feel like abandoning the stand completely.  

A few weeks back a woman stopped by the house unannounced and asked whether the stand itself was for sale – she thought it quite clever and said it would look amazing standing outside her store.  I told her no, the stand isn’t for sale, but took her number saying my husband could build her one of her own.    

We’ve yet to call her back, but in the weeks since her visit I’ve done the math - we could surely make more by selling the stand itself than we hope to make keeping it stocked by the road all summer long.  I thought about that math this morning as I loaded the eggs.  Maybe we should just be done.

But then there was the dollar and when I came inside carrying the overripe zucchini that didn’t sell, the tomatoes that aged beyond use in the carton, I found myself sorting more tomatoes for the stand and wondering what else I could set out.  Even now, I want to go cut fresh Zinnia bouquets to sell and gather some of our just-picked violet potatoes into a carton too.

 

I feel foolish most days, tending the stand while cars speed by.  There is, for me, a naked vulnerability in selling things along-side the road.  And, minor income aside, that’s why I persist in doing it. 

When I become aware of feeling foolish and vulnerable my tendency is to want to draw back and hide.  I'm not much of a risk taker by nature, not much of a let's-see-what-happens kinda gal.  But lately, when I feel foolish, some wisdom inside me awakens.  

//

"Ah," wisdom says, "what's this?"  

"I don't want to cut flowers that won't sell, don't want to pack and haul eggs fifty feet to sit all day by the side of the road," I snap.  

"Why?" wisdom asks, curious and eager. 

"It feels too much like waiting to be picked in gym class," I say, "I don't like the risk, the uncontrolled exposure.  I feel foolish."

"Oh, now that's good," wisdom says, fully awake now and delighted with my predicament, "that's something we can work with."  

I don't want to listen, but curious now, I do.  

"This stand is giving you something invaluable," wisdom continues after a moment of thought, "the opportunity to feel foolish."

//

What wisdom knows is that things like hope and faithfulness often feel foolish.  They aren't, but they feel that way quite often.  By practicing the ability to endure negative sensations, like foolishness or vulnerability, we forge a deep resilience that can translate to other areas of our lives as well, areas where the risk and reward are much greater.  

Somehow I know that voice is right.  I load the eggs, cut my lovely flowers, gather the red and orange tomatoes and offer them to the world.  Not because I want to get rich, but because I want to be enriched.  

*   *   *

Author, Shawn Smucker and I are offering a one-day retreat this coming October 15 in Carlisle, PA.  Titled, Writing As Witness, we will explore the ways writing can position us to witness the presence of God in our own lives and in the world.  Visit link to learn more.  

*   *   *

Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.  

What if we chose to deliberately look for 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.  Thanks for being part of our community!  

Privilege: They Didn't Ask and I Didn't Tell

*Photo Source: Unknown

Sunday morning our pastor read the names of last week’s shooting victims, law enforcement and civilian, aloud during morning prayers.  The brick-walled room was quiet, sunlight streamed in through wide windows and I wondered what my oldest kids, seated at a table with us, would think about those names.  

Our older kids, just eight and ten, home for the entirety of summer vacation, are ensconced in a semi-rural white bubble.  John and I get most of our news online and, without the evening news hour on TV, our kids are sheltered from much of the world’s news save for occasions where we decide to intentionally break the bubble. 

We did so with the church shooting in South Carolina last summer, explaining about the shooting and its racist motivations over dinner.  Then we made a quilt square to send to a group in the south who were piecing a quilt for those impacted by the crime.  Still, we haven’t talked with our kids about the events of last week.  And they remained oblivious to our pastor's prayer, wrapped up in seeing their Sunday morning friends, doodling and folding paper airplanes.  

They didn't ask and I didn't tell.   

Monday morning I thought about it again as I worked to add yet another layer of paint to the dark wood paneling in our laundry room.  Would we tell the kids and when and how would we navigate the complexity of the discussions?  A new thought flickered in my mind like a light bulb - this is white privilege.  I get to choose when and where and if I talk with my kids about the complexities of racism because I believe it doesn't impact them and, more importantly, not telling them doesn't put them at risk.    

There are mothers across America who don’t have that choice.  To not talk about these deaths with their sons and daughters is to expose them to risk.  Information that feels optional for my kids is essential for theirs.  The idea that I don't have to address these issues and they do is a privilege born of the color of my skin, a burden born of the color of theirs. 

Later in the morning I read these posts by Lisha Epperson at Give Me Grace and Regina Stoltzfus at The Mennonite, both mothers to teenage boys wrestling with similar questions of when and where and how to talk about racism, but entering into the discussions with wisdom, bravery and fear because they cannot afford not to.  

I am a white woman raising three white sons along a stretch of road where pickup trucks of all shapes and sizes drive by with confederate flags proudly flying from the bed of the truck.  These aren’t unobtrusive confederate flag stickers pasted to a windshield, but a large 3x5 foot banners flying on a pole, statement sized flags.  I am a white woman who believes placing a #Blacklivesmatter sign in our yard would have real repercussions, so I don't.  
   

I want to preserve that bubble, to keep my kids safe.  But I understand now that doing so only keeps us all at risk.  No bubble that includes some and excludes others by reason of the color of their skin can ever be truly safe for anyone.  What appeared optional – talking with my kids about the realities of racism in our country – is, I now see, essential.  I cannot afford to say nothing.  

//

I wrote this post on Monday and have sat with it since largely because I am afraid to say something wrong.  I now realize this hesitancy and the desire to "get it right" and not expose myself to possible ridicule or argument is another layer of privilege.  

//

I turned on the evening news while driving home with the kids Tuesday night.  They were wiped out from a day of swimming and sat quietly listening.  We listened for five minutes before the questions began.  I turned off the news and we cleared up confusion and I turned it back on again.  Eventually, as we pulled in the driveway, my oldest son caught wind of the shootings in Dallas.  

"What are they talking about?" he asked.  "Was that another shooting?"

I asked him to wait while the twins went inside.  Standing in the driveway, I told him quietly about the events of the past week and he filed it away like kids his age do.  

//

The conversation begins, it continues and we have no choice but to enter in for the sake of all our children.  

Please do take a moment to read the posts I've linked to above, both women share important perspectives.  Thank you. 

Palm Sunday: The First Day of Spring (#SmallWonder Link-up)

This post is loosely based on Luke 19:28-40, the gospel story of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem.  In preparing to preach on the passage this Sunday, I decided to spend some time inside the passage, imagining what it might have been like.  This story is told from the perspective of Simon the Zealot who I imagine being, along with Philip, asked to walk into town to fetch the colt for Jesus.  I can't overestimate how very helpful this practice was for me.  I hope you might also find some time this week to wander around inside of the gospel stories.

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It felt like the first day of spring. Like everything we waited for was so close we could almost taste it.

We were close to Jerusalem. The closer we got, the edgier we were. Jesus was quiet. When we reached the Mount of Olives, Jesus turned to me and Philip. He chose us, and told us to go and look for a colt in the next village, it would be tied to a post and we were supposed to just walk up and take it.

How did he know this?

We didn’t ask. He chose us, that was all that ever mattered.  Jesus and the rest stayed resting under the shade of the olive trees. Philip and I walked alone.

When you were with him, walking beside him, it was like feeling the sun on your back – faith rose and blossomed. But with every step we took away from him, faith dimmed. Clouds of doubt rolled in.  Our confidence wilted as we walked toward the village.

We hardly dared to think, much less talk about what might happen when we reached Jerusalem.  Instead, his stories ran through my head. Everywhere we went he spun stories, painting pictures with words. I tried to make sense of them, but I couldn’t. Maybe I didn’t want to.

Bethany was small and dirty, like every other village, nothing special. The smells and sounds nearly knocked me out after the quiet walk through the countryside. It was hot, the sun was unbearable. I envied the disciples left behind, resting under the trees. The village seemed to go on forever. Women stared as we passed. Children ran up to touch our robes, then scrambled away laughing. We weren’t used to this feeling of travel, of being strange and out of place.

The further we walked, the more foolish we felt. Reason raised its head - why this village? Why a colt? And where? Where was it?

At the far edge of town, we heard it. A donkey brayed. I stopped mid-thought, put my hand out to stop Philip in his tracks. Again, we heard it, the screeching sound like metal grinding against metal. It came from somewhere to the right. We followed a small path through a thicket. Our steps slowed, nervously. Then we came to the edge of a clearing. An ancient stone house stood silent, a fire smoldered in a pit. Chickens pecked the ground. Off to one side stood a young donkey tied, just as he had said.

My heart leapt. Philip grabbed my arm and squeezed tight. Our eyes met wide with surprise and glee. It was all we could do to keep from laughing. Never before has the sight of a donkey been cause for such joy.

Giddiness propelled me. I rushed toward the colt. It skidded sideways, stretching the rope taunt. The colt erupted in a string of screeches, its lips pulled back, teeth exposed. I lunged for the rope, ready for a fight, when Philip again grabbed my arm.

“Simon,” he said.

I followed his eyes toward the house. A small man slowly emerged from the shadows. I pulled my hand back from the colt immediately. Behind him a woman and a small child peaked out of the doorway. Chickens squawked and scattered as he crossed the open yard.

I have never seen such a short man, he would’ve made Zaccheaus look like a giant. He had a grave and wrinkled face. He seemed coated with a lifetime of hard work and dirt. My heart sank. He would never let us have this animal. I thought of the sword at my side, it wouldn’t take much. But the woman and child, watched from the doorway.

Philip bowed in greeting and I followed. The little man bowed.

Braced for anger, his simple question disarmed me. “Why are you untying the colt?”

Why.

Why not, I thought. Why should we not take whatever we needed to overthrow the Romans? Why try to explain the unexplainable to this dirty man in his dark hut?

Philip’s hand was still on my arm. I stared at the little man, so solidly rooted to the ground and remembered Jesus’ words, “if they ask why, tell them ‘the Lord needs it.’”

Everything was always so unbelievably simple with Jesus, the simplicity itself was confusing.

“The Lord needs it,” I said.

The little man caught my eyes with his own and held them. I watched him measure the truthfulness of my words. I knew he likely guessed my thoughts about my sword, my urgency, and frustration.

Something in my eyes satisfied and he turned to the colt. He reached out and patted the animal, murmuring into its long ears. “Take it,” he said simply, then turned and walked away.

Our excitement grew with every step back through the village. We marched into the olive grove like victors returning from battle. The donkey brayed and bucked at the rope. Everyone gathered around shouting questions, slapping us on the back, startling the colt. “How? Where?” they asked.

“It was just like he said, just like it,” I repeated, grinning and proud forgetting the doubt I’d carried across town.

Then Jesus pushed in to the circle. He smiled at our surprise and delight. His tired eyes crinkled in the corners. His robe was wrinkled and dusty from resting on the ground.

“You did well, Simon,” he said, clamping his hand on my shoulder and fixing his eyes on mine. “You too, Philip,” he added. Like I said, he was like the sun, you know? And when he shone on you, it was something you never forgot.

Jesus took the rope and leaned in quietly toward the donkey. He patted it, whispered in its twitchy ears like the little man had. I think in that moment, the colt felt just as loved as we did, just as happy and full of hope and excitement. It stamped a foot and brayed flicking Jesus’ face with its ears and we all burst out laughing.

Peter pulled off his cloak and laid it on the donkey’s back. Nathan too, and Andrew, until the poor animal was draped with a rainbow of dirty robes.

It was time for Jerusalem.

I knelt right there in the dust and made a step with my hands. Jesus stepped and leaned while Andrew tried to steady the donkey. But the animal sidestepped and I teetered, pitching Jesus forward. His stomach landed with a thud on the donkey’s back, knocking the wind out of his lungs. I was so embarrassed, but Jesus pulled himself up laughing again and swung his leg over the side.

When he laughed, it unleashed something inside of us. We were like boys again, free and happy. Here we were, in the biggest adventure of our lives, with Jesus at our side and the wonder of it carried us all along.

Jesus led the colt toward Jerusalem, leaning to whisper again in its ear, scratching the coarse hair where the rope hung around its neck. Moving forward, a nervousness settled over the crowd of us again. Then we followed and with each step our excitement grew.

Thomas started the singing. His deep voice rose and the others joined in following the words of the psalm we all knew. The psalm of victory. I heard the words entirely new as we sang them there in the dusty streets out under the open sky.

I wanted, waited, all of my life for a King.

Here he was and here we were together, marching into Jerusalem. But not marching, nearly dancing. As much as I wanted it to be different, as much as I remembered the sword at my side and my dreams of a mighty king on horseback leading me into battle, I was happy. Happy with this fool of a man plodding along on a donkey’s back, this man who loved me.

I felt my love for him surge in my chest as we repeated again and again the chorus of the Psalm, “Give thanks to the Lord for he is good, his steadfast love endures forever.”

I wasn’t the only one off pitch. Philip had no rhythm, not an ounce of tune, and we were an ugly bunch weaving our way into town, drunk on good news and friendship and the love we all needed. They heard us first (probably smelled us second) and women and children wandered out to watch us.

Such a strange parade. We sang at the top of our lungs, jostling each other, slapping shoulders and backs. Peter reached out and grabbed a boy in the crowd, swung him on his shoulders and Andrew jumped to reach a palm branch. Breaking it, he placed it in the boy’s hand and the boy cheered and waved like mad.

There’s something about a people, so beaten down with sorrow and fear, there’s little left to lose. Maybe this is what made them join us, welcome us, break branches of their own and join the singing, the dancing and shouting. Some stripped off their robes and laid them in the street and Jesus was there in the middle of it all, steady and solid as the sky.

Things got a little out of hand.

But that never seemed to bother Jesus. He got tired sometimes, needed rest and space, but he didn’t try to control us. He let us be however we were, welcomed us and that day we were happy and he didn’t bother to contradict.

But the Pharisees did.

It was one of the things they hated the most about him, the way he refused to control us. He didn’t seem to need to control anyone and therefore refused himself to be controlled. It bothered me too, if I’m honest. I couldn’t figure out how he might overthrow the Romans without taking for himself some measure of the power and control they exerted over us. But it bothered me less when I was with him, then it felt like I could believe anything and, if I’m honest, I thought he would change when we got to Jerusalem.

To the Pharisees, it was blasphemy, all of it. The way we sang and danced in the street, the image of Jesus on the donkey like some kind of street urchin playing king, it was all offensive. But mostly it smacked of disorder and freedom, two things they feared and fought tooth and nail.

“Rabbi, tell them to stop, make them stop!” they shouted.

Jesus turned from watching the dancing children, the singing men. I watched him meet the Pharisees’ eyes. My hand involuntarily drifted to the hilt of my sword. Jesus held the donkey still while all around him the crowd rose and swelled. There was amusement in his eyes and he smiled a sad smile.

“If I tell them to stop,” he said, “the stones you walk on will rise up singing and dancing. You cannot stop joy, my friends, cannot stop praise that flows like a river. Heaven and earth are being un-damned. We will sing and dance while we can.”

If we ever needed permission, we had it. We cheered and sang all the louder, “Give thanks to the lord for he is good, his steadfast love endures forever!”

It felt like the first day of spring, I tell you. Like everything we waited for was so close we could almost taste it. It was glorious.

//

It’s harder now, to talk about the rest. When we reached the inner edge of the Jerusalem, Jesus burst into tears and the words he spoke terrified and confused us. Confusion and fear followed us everywhere that week; it hunted us, hounded us.

For a long time, when I remembered Palm Sunday, I felt regret, embarrassment, how little we really understood.

But Jesus, he loved it. Now I know he carried our praise with him through the darkness that lay ahead. He focused on the memory of our singing when the crowds cried out for his death.

Jesus’ first desire wasn’t to change us. It was to be with us.

And his being with us, changed us, slowly into something closer to who he was, what he was.

I like to think of it like that – he carried us with him, our joy, our love, to the cross and we carry him with us, his joy, his love through every week ahead, singing and dancing or weeping in sorrow, we carry him, he carries us.

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We finally have a #SmallWonder button!  If you want to use it, simply copy the image, then add it to your post or sidebar with a link to www.afieldofwildflowers.blogspot.com.  

Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.  

What if we chose to deliberately look for 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.