Finding God in the Appliance Section of Lowes

 

It seems
a little scarier and

the sky may

be falling. But 

even we can

change

when

we discover

kindness and compassion.

- K. Chripczuk (found poetry)

As I mentioned in a recent video on my fb page, our washing machine died over the weekend. It was the last straw in a series of frustrating, flummoxing events. Although we have the money to replace it (thank you, thank you) it's not an easy fix and certainly not a project we would choose to tackle this week.  

All I wanted to do Monday morning was nestle into the Little House - to read, pray, practice yoga and return to my own sweet center. But what I needed to do was pick up my son's negative Covid test, drop him at school, and then look at our laundry closet and make decisions about stacking or not, used or new, and (because we live in an old, old house) which walls or outlets or plaster we might want to move or replace in the near or distant future. 

These were not conversations I wanted to be having, not decisions I wanted to be making. I didn't want to be googling "best dryer brands" or messaging people on fb marketplace for the dimensions of their used washing machines. And, even though a new washing machine is a miracle in itself, I really didn't want to be riding in the old red pickup truck to Home Depot (where everything was on back order) or Lowes. 

I struggled to see how God or spirituality might be part of the day I found myself in. But I tried to stay present. I tried to have patience with the sales woman who could not get us what we wanted when we wanted it. I tried to remember her humanity as well as my own. 

I tried, again, to find patience for the salesman at Lowes, who was a bit of a talker ,when all I wanted to know is which items were in stock. Looking back, I can see that it's hard to connect with people, hard to look them in the eye, when you don't want to be where you are, don't want to connect with your own circumstances or yourself.

I'm sure we seemed worried and stressed, but we lightened up a bit once a decision was made. The salesman got chattier still when he found out where we live and he somehow rambled on to the topic of pets, cats in particular. In the end, holding our receipt hostage, he told us a story about "the best cat we ever had," a small cat name Pickles. 

Pickles, he told us, was procured one year when he and his wife went to pick out a tree at a local Christmas tree farm. "There was a little girl wearing a long prairie-like dress," he said, gesturing with his hands as if to paint the dress before our eyes. "She had a little basket with a kitten in it." 

Again, he gestured with his working-man hands, creating an imaginary basket. Then, he placed one hand, palm up, in the center of his chest, just where someone would hold a wee kitten. 

"She was this little," he marveled. "She fit right in the palm of my hand. Except for her tail, hanging over the side. Except for her tail, she was just that big." Again, he gestured, showing with his other hand how the sweet little tail would have draped out over his wrist. Pickles lived to be 17 years old and, finally, just stopped eating. The vet told them to let her be, it was "just her time." 

Isn't it something, how that cat story showed up so unexpectedly right in the middle of our day? Our salesman went to a farm looking for a Christmas tree and came home with a kitten. We went to Lowes looking for a washing machine and came home with a love story. 

I watched the salesman's hands eyes as he wove his tale, they were cinnamon brown with gold flecks. Even though the day was harder than I wanted and, in some ways, the sky did feel like it was falling, this man and his story helped me find what I was looking for all along. Sometimes all it takes is a story and a stranger's eyes, to lead our hearts back home. 

Everything You Need

Photo by Eric Han on Unsplash

This morning, I overheard my daughter reassuring our highly anxious indoor cat. "You have everything you need, Perfect," she said.

Due to her anxiety, Perfect mostly lives in my bedroom - napping on the bed and birdwatching through the glass of eight large windows. She rarely meows, refuses to sit in a lap, and keeps to herself most days. But she does get quite communicative sometimes, at the beginning or end of the day. 

If you happen to be upstairs at such a time, she'll catch you in the hallway with a wide-mouthed but nearly silent, "eh." Hardly loud enough to hear, this is her most urgent cry. If you respond by making eye contact, she will lead you down the hallway, looking back frequently, urgently checking to be sure you're following, until she reaches my bedroom where her water and food bowls sit. 

"Eh!" she declares, when you reach her bowls. She looks up to be sure you see what she means and rubs against your legs and the doorframe with her tail on high alert. Most often she already has food and water, plenty. 

I don't know why she leads us there, so urgently, like Lassie leading Timmy's parents to the well where Timmy has once again fallen in and is in danger of drowning. I often hold extended conversations with Perfect there in the doorway, with her food and water bowl nearby.

"What?" I ask. "What do you need?"

"Eh," she says in reply. Sometimes she just opens her mouth in the shape of a meow and not a single sound comes out. 

This, I know, is what happened with my daughter this morning. Perfect found her in the hallway, getting ready for school, and led her urgently to the bowls, which we already full. 

"You have everything you need, Perfect," my daughter assured her. 

The compassion in those words, the reassurance touched me deeply. I was reminded of the well-known Wendell Berry poem, The Wild Geese, in which geese seen flying overhead invite the poet and reader to return to trust; to return to the "ancient faith" in which it is known that "what we need is here."

I have seen this poem, or excerpts of it, shared so frequently online and at retreats. It offers a reassurance we so often need. It offers an invitation to trust and, somehow, manages to convince us that such trust (as is so often exhibited in the natural world) is not foolhardy. 

Those words are a comfort to me, but I wonder how they might sit with those who truly lack basic needs. What if, say, Perfect's food bowl was empty, her water bowl bone dry? 

Wendell's words don't hit me, though, as a pat response to urgent need. His words invite us, unmet needs and all, to a trust that runs deeper and wider than our current abundance or lack. Maybe he's hinting at something like those familiar marriage vows - for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health - offering an affirmation that there is a current of love that runs deeper than any current circumstance. 

Maybe that's something of what I read into my daughter's words this morning - a comment, not just on the Perfect's current situation, but on the truth of her life. "You have everything you need, Perfect." 

Everything you need. 

May it be so. 

This Cat's Purr

 

Cats purr … with a consistent pattern and frequency between 25 and 150 Hertz. Various investigators have shown that sound frequencies in this range can improve bone density and promote healing. . . in bones and muscles. - Scientific America, “Why do cats purr?” April 2006

After a good cry,  

I pick up the cat, 

who's sprawled

across my office floor, 

limp and heavy

with sleep. I curl

his body against my heart, 

where he settles and purrs 

himself back into unconsciousness. 

Did five-year-old me know, 

when she begged to own a kitten, 

that even this need would be met? 

No, of course not. 

This cat’s purr, 

radiating healing, 

is pure grace – a combination 

of creation’s wisdom and a little 

girl’s intuition, to hold what is 

soft and healing to her 

gentle, loving heart. 

Me, age 5, holding two of my very first kittens.

God & Grace in the Garden & Coop

"Hen Party"

I try to make it a habit to walk around our yard most days after work.  I circle the house, then head down to the garden where yellow and red Zinnias occupy one row and red-and-white striped ones form another. The heads of the sunflowers hang heavy, drooping and brown, and the yellow finches are happy to pilfer their drying seeds.  Our tomatoes grow nearby, dark and dense as a forest, with heavy fruit twice the size of my hand hanging like red water balloons on nearly every vine.

Our garden is a riot, an explosion of weedy chaos that cannot, in our current tropical conditions, be tamed. But, we try. We summon strength and courage to weed one bed, then another. Hidden, we find the small watermelons the grew from last year's seeds, the pale winter squash growing in inexplicable abundance.

This year, with our hens no longer free-ranging, we're freed the alarm of their endless infiltration of the garden gate. No more pecked-at tomatoes. No more chasing five, six harried hens, trying to shuttle them out through the narrow gate.

This year, the hens are confined to a large fenced yard attached to their coop and they've managed to peck the ground there bare of any sign of life. Noticing their sparse conditions this summer,  it dawned on me that our garden’s endless supply of weeds might be a welcome addition to their otherwise bleak landscape.

We started taking weeds to them by wheelbarrow and wagon-load, tossing the leggy green plants over the fence handfuls at a time.  The hens were elated.  They ran, pushing and shoving, to scour the windfall of succulent greens.  Our rooster, Joker, puffed out his chest, making several announcements to his girls, waiting until they set-in before taking his own. Within minutes, the stems were bare, stripped to frail, skeletal forms. 

What a grace this is, what a miracle: our chickens take our garden’s accidents and turn them into eggs.

There’s more, though.  Standing in the kitchen, on any given night, I’m frequently confronted with routine kitchen scraps (the peels, the cores, the wilted ends) as well as bowls of mystery food left too long in the refrigerator.  These too, the hens down enthusiastically, clucking and tutting.  When I feel weighted by the guilt of chili left too long in the back of the fridge, the knowledge that this too can feed to hens gives me solace.  These hens are teaching me grace again, reminding of the power of redemption, the truth that our mistakes are never the dead end we imagine them to be. 

Richard Rohr sums it up this way: God writes with crooked lines.  By which he means, God connects all the dots of our lives, the much-intended ones AND the ink blots that splatter accidentally on nearly every page.  God writes the story of our lives with a view so broad, so imaginative, even hens turning old tomatoes into eggs ought not to come as a surprise.

What I Wish I'd Said

“What’s with the bracelet?” he asked. 

The cuff in question, made of brightly colored fabric and secured with two snaps, circled my left wrist.  Across the top, the word, ‘joy’ was written on a piece of frayed ivory canvas.  I was making my rounds at physical therapy - moving from arm bike, to squats and leg lifts – when the young therapist posed his question. 

“I made it,” I said – an honest answer, but short of the full truth. 

“Oh,” he said, “do you make jewelry?”

The conversation moved on and did not circle back around, the moment was lost.  I was left mulling my reticent reply and wishing I’d been clearer.

//

Have you ever lost something and, when you found it again, you wanted to do everything you could to keep from losing it again?  That's how it is for me and joy.  So, I made a bracelet in all the brightest colors, the happy, vibrant ones, and wrote the word “joy” on it.  I wear it to remember to hold on to joy.    

//

I don’t know what that young man would have said had I unloaded my frightfully serious reasoning on him that day.  But, I wish I had, because it was the truth and sharing truth with others often helps solidify it in the deepest parts of ourselves.  

This summer, as I prepare to transition from working at home to working at a church again, I’ve been looking over these past seven years of life and taking an inventory of sorts.  What have I been given in this time that I want to carry with me for the work ahead?

One these gifts is joy - the reminder to cultivate and choose it, to recognize it not as an optional add-on to the spiritual life, but as a fruit of the spirit, an essential marker of the presence (or absence) of God in each of our lives.  To remind myself of this truth, I made a small painting to hang in my new office, a painting filled with gorgeous colors, patterns and textures and one simple word: joy.

   

Some Days, We Nap Together (What Tragedy Demands of Us)

Some days, after working in my office all morning and eating a quick lunch at my desk, my body grows heavy and slow and my thoughts turn to molasses.  With just an hour left before the first child arrives back home, before I leave to work an evening shift at the library, I close my laptop, grab my phone and head for my office door.  My dog, Coco, half-sleeping in her corner chair, lifts her head, then jumps down and follows me outside across the blacktop soaked with sunlight, up the back steps, and into the big house. 

Inside, I pause while we each get a drink of water – her at her metal bowl and me at the vintage water fountain near our kitchen door.  Then, I grab a blanket or beach towel – whichever is warm enough and near at hand – and head into the winter room where the wood stove sits heavy in the corner, squat and round, a cast iron Buddha.  Coco follows at my heels and watches patiently as I hunt one room, then another, in search of our sole throw pillow. 

Pillow in hand, I lay down in the same position, always.  Pressing the pillow into one end of our old, leather love seat, I lay down on my right side, curling my long legs to fit on the too-short sofa.  Coco watches with patience and focus as I spread the blanket or towel over myself, then stick my legs out straight off of the couch, offering a pathway to the pocket of empty space at the far end. 

I pat the leather with my hand, twice.  Coco pauses, very still, and looks me in the eye, double-checking her permission.  “Come on, Coco,” I say and up she jumps, then turns and settles in the corner.  I bend my legs again and tuck in around her, careful to keep from bumping her muzzle with my feet.  The warmth of her soft, sweet body adds to my own and we sleep, tucked together, her head resting on my ankles. 

Her presence, as I rest, is pure gift.  The gift of quiet, undemanding companionship; the gift of with-ness that cannot be measured save for the way it softens and steadies the human heart. 

She wakes, when I wake and shift.  Or, sometimes, too warm and close for comfort, she hops down before the nap gets under way.  Some days, if I'm lucky, our handsome black cat notices our napping nest and jumps down from his solitary leather chair and comes purring along into my arms.  On those days, the cat settles opposite the dog, in the space in front of my chest.  Together, we form a sort of yin-yang arrangement of fur and flesh, the cat in front of me, the dog behind.  

//

I experience a profound goodness during these naps, which may seem a small thing amidst all the world’s evils and sorrows, not to mention my own small entanglements.  But I am wondering whether tragedy really demands the trivializing of such moments of beauty, wonder, and grace – moments when the human soul stretches and softens, relaxed and at ease?

Perhaps tragedy and sorrow, worry and fear, require instead, that we linger and luxuriate in these moments.  Maybe Love itself invites us to spread them out wide for the world to see or to tuck them in somewhere safe, like a golden leaf in fall noticed, gathered, and pressed between the pages of a book where it can be rediscovered time and again in the long winter months ahead. 

I love these moments with the dog, the cat; they are precious to me and I cannot pass them off as something less than mercy and grace.  Evil is never defeat by casting what is precious aside.  Evil is defeated when we gently welcome, gather and share what is good and holy and true.  In this way light and life and love are born and borne and multiplied in our midst. 

The world is a heavy and troubled place.  It is also riddled through with mercy, grace and love.  In these days of naming darkness, let us remember also to gather and spread the Light we're given, casting it high and wide, like a million stars lighting up the night.

 Coco and I sharing a little pre-nap love. 

Where are you finding Mercy, Grace and Love these days??

Turn, and Be Saved

Photo by Simon Hesthaven on Unsplash

Sometimes, all it takes

is the slight movement of your eye,

a tilt of your head, your heart, to admit

a new angle, to see the way out, the way through

that was always there, but just out of sight, like God is. 

This can happen in the smallest pauses, like the rest

between inhale and exhale, or the moment just before

the words you will always regret find their way out

of your mouth.  This is the salvation we’ve been waiting for,

the one thing that's always given, if only we would turn and

receive. 

- K. Chripczuk

Miss. Ann's Zinnia's (The Kingdom of God is Like . . . )

Sunday afternoon I left my husband with seed packets of Zinnias and Dahlias and walked up, across the yard, to look for a spade in our overflowing garage.  The planting of those flowers, four packets, was what I requested for Mother’s Day this year. 

I don’t know why planting seems, for me, an impossible task.  Maybe it’s that simple act of letting go and watching the impossible seed fall into darkness; maybe it’s the familiar struggle of facing an unknown future.  Whatever it is, my husband plants the garden each year and I, in time, tend it. 

Walking up from the garden, across the green expanse of lawn, I looked over at our neighbor’s yard.  They have a small, fenced in, vegetable garden and the wife, Ann, has a separate flower garden.  Their garden, like most in early spring, is a miracle waiting to happen – a tilled expanse of soil, a pregnant pause.  My eyes saw the emptiness there, the open waiting space, but in my mind I remembered the Zinnias. 

During our first summer here, we planted a good-sized vegetable garden filled with the practical means of nutrition.  Our neighbors did the same in their fenced-in plot, but around the outside edge of the fence grew large, splashy, red, purple and pink flowers – a fiesta of color that started blooming in late summer and stood strong into the fall. 

Oh how I envied Miss. Ann's Zinnias.  I eyed her flowers hungrily and finally, in September as the flowers were beginning to fade, asked if I might over and cut a bunch.  From that moment on, I was hooked. 

The following summer, I bought a packet of seeds and grew my own riot of reds and pinks.  I cut them and filled our house with vases.  I carried them to friends’ houses.  Everyone loved the Zinnias.

Then, last year, we made a farm stand for selling fresh, free-range chicken eggs.  I again planted my Zinnias (or rather, my husband did) and, when they grew and bloomed, I started cutting large happy bunches of purples and pinks, oranges and yellows and selling them in old tin cans at the farm stand for $1 each. 

It was a real steal for fresh cut flowers and they flew off of the farm stand’s two tilted shelves.  A friend suggested I should charge more.  But I refrained. 

I was already making a profit, but, what’s more, I know what it’s like to not be able to afford fresh flowers.  I know, also, how beauty feeds the soul.  I also know the feeling of finding a wonderful deal, how it opens our hearts and minds, makes us feel the expansive mystery of goodness and provision in the world that’s so often buried in layer after layer of unmet need. 

I wanted people to feel what I felt in my garden, the sensation of wonder and delight, the absurdity of so much color available for mere ornamentation.  

Returning to the garden with the trowel in hand that Sunday afternoon, I thought, the kingdom of God is like those Zinnias.  The Kingdom of God – heaven in our midst – blazes and waves in the place where it is planted.  It attracts the eye, captures the heart, fills those who are awake enough to notice, with longing.  The Kingdom of God is like a packet of seeds, bought for $1.49, that yields one hundred fold.  The kingdom of God is color cut and watered in an old tin can, bright joy on the side of the road bought with a handful of change – a deal too good to be true.   

Slow Down (an invitation)

(I call this picture "Converse in the Wild")

slow down,
just be

be still
be present

listen to, and dwell in, what is
here, now, this moment

what love?
what fear?
and what possible doorway
between the two?

(grace, always, is the door)

This is What God is Like

Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone?  Or if the child asks for fish, will give a snake?  If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!   - Matthew 7:9-11 

Our kitchen has a drawer we refer to as “The Snack Drawer.”  Unlike “The Weapons Drawer” – which is a thing of my five-year-old’s making and does not actually hold weapons, but instead holds things that could potentially be used for weapons – The Snack Drawer, as its name would imply, does hold snacks. 

Each of my four kids are allowed to have a snack during the day at school, so each of them reaches their hand into The Snack Drawer once every morning or two to grab something to stash in their backpack for later in the day.  Some things in the snack drawer (like Cheezits or Goldfish crackers) are considered to be top notch, and these go first.  Mid-level snacks (like pretzels and granola bars) go next.  Last resort snacks include, but are not limited to, boxes of raisins and things they claim to be allergic to.    

On a recent morning, a murmuring and rumble of discontent arose in the kitchen as three of four kids stood peering into the snack drawer.  From where I stood, near the kitchen sink, I could see the drawer wasn’t empty.  But still, they complained.  I moved in for a closer look and the children split like the sea and lifted their gaze from the near-empty drawer to me.   

It was, indeed, time to replenish.  

“Hold on,” I said.

I went to the pantry in the laundry room and pulled out the box I’d been saving.  I carried it into the kitchen, with the twins trailing behind me, and held it high over the open drawer.  I tipped the box, dramatically, and assorted snacks in red packages, orange and green, poured down like rain.  The kids circled and pawed at the pile, as though I’d cracked open a piñata. 

My one son, the one with the Weapons Drawer, grabbed an off-brand peanut butter granola bar.  

“Mom!” he said, in a deep voice he puts on when he feels the moment demands, “I LOVE THESE!”

Everyone’s hand found something good.  

Isaiah, exuberant in the face of so many good choices, eager to hoard the things he loves best, announced that he was going to take four or five snacks to school with him that day.  I quickly restated our one snack a day limit.    

That moment, with its flash of color and exclamations of delight hangs, like a snapshot in the corner of my mind.  That's what God's like, I think.  God - the giver of good gifts, the filler of drawers we once thought too empty or sparse to satisfy.  

* I'm well aware that too often 'the drawer' of life is empty, sparse, or filled with things we'd rather avoid.  But, scripture is clear that there may not always be a direct correlation between the circumstances of our lives and the character of God.  So, rather than drawing conclusions about God based on what we find in life's drawer, we might be better served to see the good things as signs of God's presence because, even in the midst of life's struggles, we can still be certain of the God's character.   

Communion (A Seminarian's Perspective)

During Seminary, another student and I, interned at a tiny, historic, Methodist church in New Jersey.  She was Methodist, I was not; but we were both welcomed into the fold in equal measure. 

The congregation was small and aged and the thing they appreciated most about the few sermons I gave was how well they could hear my voice and how clearly I enunciated.  The thing I appreciated most about preaching there was how the cleric’s robe covered me from head to toe, obscuring my feminine figure, rearranging me into a blank slate of black polyester.  Only my flat, tan shoes and the bottom of my dress pants showed and only then when I stepped out away from the pulpit, which was not often. 

My fellow intern, a heavyset single girl, shorter than me and rounder, also wore the robe while speaking.  On other Sundays, though, she dressed to the nines in strappy dresses with tight waists and full skirts like the ones housewives are pictured wearing in magazine ads from the 1950's.  She completed the look by pairing the dresses with impossibly high heeled shoes, the height and skinniness of which, caused her to teeter and totter precariously.

She didn’t seem at home in those dresses and matching shoes and I wondered why she wore them.  But I also probably didn’t seem at home in my drab business-casual attire that I’d purchased specially for the internship and possible future interviews.  Neither of us, I guess, were entirely at home in ourselves or our pastoral positions, which I suppose is the plight of many an intern.   

The small church was traditionally built, with old wooden pews and a long center aisle that led to a kneeling rail and altar.  Each service began with a processional from the narthex, down the center aisle, to the altar where candles were lit while the organist played. 

One of my most distinct memories of that church is of watching my fellow intern make her wobbly way down the carpeted center aisle with a plate of communion bread in hand.  The plate was wide, flat and loaded with bits of bread and she was so precariously perched in her heels that I felt for sure she was going to wipe out at any moment, scattering the body of Christ across the dense carpet.  I held my breath as she mounted the altar’s two steps and exhaled when she finally set the plate down. 

Having grown up Baptist and turned Anabaptist, the rituals of the Methodist church were foreign to me and struck me as overly formal.  I longed for something more personal, less prescribed.  I imagined with equal measures of horror and delight, what it would be like if she simply dropped the whole plate.  Some part of me longed for the broken body to spill, even just once; for us all to have to deal with the sudden beauty, the surprise of Christ spread among us in such an earthy, unscripted way.  

My colleague never dropped the host, but crumbs did often fall as we handed the bread to the congregants kneeling along the rail.  No matter how rigidly we try to contain him, Christ is always breaking through.  Mercy and grace scatter everywhere like crumbs, and who we are and who God is, is always being revealed.  Christ is always spreading out in our midst, disrupting our scripted ways, like the beige shoes and dress pants of a young woman sticking out beneath her robe, like a young woman in a flared out dress and heels making her wobbly way up the aisle, truth that cannot be hidden or disguised. 

Communion (A Five-year-old's Perspective)

The Communion with God is simple, so we will not be dazzled; so we can eat and drink His love and still go about our lives; so our souls will burn slowly rather than blaze.  . . . the Last Supper did not take place on one night in one room, and to eat God's love, we do not have to even open our mouths; we can be walking, sorrowful and confused, with a friend; or working on whatever our boat is, fishing whatever it is we fish for; or we can be running naked, alone in the dark.  The Eucharist is with us, and it is ordinary.  To me, that is its essential beauty: we receive it with wandering minds, and distracted flesh, in the same way that we receive the sun and sky, the moon and earth, and breathing.  

                   - Andre Dubus in Meditations from a Movable Chair

Five-year-old Isaiah loves bread almost as much as he loves his Mama, which is to say, quite a lot.  He also loves juice.  When there's no Sunday school and he's forced to endure the long church service upstairs in the pews, communion - with its tempting combination of both bread and juice - offers a bright respite in the midst of the otherwise boring service. 

Seated during prayer at the service’s beginning on Easter Sunday, he bobs and weaves his head from side to side, searching out the low table at the front of the church.  Then, he exclaims, “I see bread and juice!”

His brother, Levi, sees it too.  “Mom,” Levi says, like someone who’s just discovered cake and ice cream is on the menu for breakfast, “We’re dippin' bread!”

I turn to them, scandalized by their outdoor voices, and stretch my neck forward, my eyes wide, one finger pressed to my lips.  I silently tap my finger to my closed lips.

They settle back in the hard pew to wait.

My boys love communion and my hunch is it’s because they love to eat.  Sometimes this strikes me as sacrilegious, but, mostly, something in their enthusiasm - the way simple appetite and desire breed longing and consummation - also feels right to me.  They're happy to be part, to take part, and receive something good and nourishing.  

When the time comes, at last, I send Levi under his father’s guidance and push Isaiah along ahead of me.  I wonder again, as we exit the end of the pew, about the rightness of allowing children so young to participate in communion, but they’re so happy, so eager, I can’t see holding them back.  We move slowly toward the altar in two lines that bulge and clot the aisle as adults shepherd groups of children.  Seeing my older son behind me, I push him forward too, intending to lean over he and Isaiah both and orchestrate, regulate, their reception of grace.  

Isaiah reaches the half loaf of Italian bread first.  It sits on a plate outstretched in front of his face, level with his big brown eyes.  He reaches for it two-handed, manhandling the loaf which slides forward precariously the slanted plate and the server and I both lunge to stop the fall.  In my mind, Isaiah’s hands are everywhere (germs!) and I grab the loaf to steady it, tearing off a small piece of soft white dough while he wrestles with the dry, flaky crust.  He peels back a sturdy piece as big as his forearm and we turn to the dipping, then back to our seats.  

While the rest of us have quickly dipped and swallowed our own crumbs, he sits in the pew tearing off bite after bite of flaky crust.  When his twin brother asks about the size of his serving, Isaiah replies, with deep contentment, “I didn’t try to get it so big, but it came off, so I kept it.”  

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!  

Doing It Scared (#SmallWonder Link-up)

Thursday morning I printed off a how to manual for formatting the inside of a book and sat outside highlighting the parts I thought would apply to the job ahead of me that afternoon.  It was a beautiful fall day, enough to warrant (in my mind) printing the 70 plus page manual.  Looking up, I caught this picture of our rooster, Joker silhouetted by the sun.  You can see the farm stand in the background.  

I started formatting around noon and by three o'clock I really wanted to go into the house for a drink of water or cup of coffee, but I made myself stay put in the Ikea chair in my office.  If I pushed, I could finish formatting the inside layout of my forthcoming book before the kids’ bus rolled over the hill to drop them off, and I really wanted to be done.

Thirty more minutes and I had done it.  All eighteen sections of my book were copied, pasted and formatted into the layout template I purchased online.  I felt like my eyes were going to fall out of my head and I had spent the last four hours struggling to breathe for fear one finger-stroke would blow the whole book out of the water.

//

This is how a lot of self-publishing has been.  I was scared and overwhelmed by websites like Createspace and Canva (Never heard of them?  I hadn’t either.) but I found them and set up accounts.  I didn’t understand book formatting lingo and the specifications necessary for designing a cover layout, but I googled instructions, read them, and did it.  Every week brought a new skill to learn, a new figurative blank page that terrified me to the core. 

Making dinner in the kitchen while the kids watched TV in the afternoons, I would sense my fear and anxiety.  Why am I so anxious?  I wondered.  

Because I don’t know what I’m doing, came the reply.

It turns out, I don’t like not knowing what I’m doing. 

But I also tried to find perspective, You didn’t know what you were doing a week ago when you designed the cover, but you figured it out.  You can do this too.

I thought of all the times I’ve walked blind into new challenges, and although I don’t like it at all, I kept on groping my way along the path of self-publishing.  I think this is what some people call, “doing it scared.”  The idea of doing something despite your fear and not allowing fear to be the boss.  Maybe “doing it scared” is the secular version of “walking by faith, not by sight.”

// 

This is one side of my self-publishing story - I've done it scared. (Although I think the term 'terrified' would be a more accurate descriptor.)  There’s been value in the challenge of learning new skills and overcoming hurdles.  But it’s also been exhausting.  

  

Friday night, I finally submitted all of my files to Create Space (Amazon’s self-publishing site).  This was the one step I was most nervous about.  After submitting, I felt a breath of relief.  Then, I laid down on the couch and fell asleep at 7:00 pm and slept straight through until the following morning. 

I think it’s important for others to be aware that there’s a real cost to doing it scared.  And, because of that, I’m not sure it’s a value I altogether promote.  It’s ok to be scared and important to not let fear be your master, but sometimes our fear and stress are telling us important things too. 

“Doing it scared” can only take us so far without things like, “doing it together” and “doing it with grace and a heaping dose of help.”  Although I’m proud of myself for the work I’ve done these past two months, I’m not unaware of the cost.  

Also, I’ve not, by any measure, done it alone.  I’m grateful for those who’ve come alongside of me to offer advice, encouragement and support.  I hope my experience will help me remember to take notice when others around me are doing it scared.  Those are the times when we need to lean in and offer  help and support.  

What have you "done scared"?  What was it like for you?  

*   *   *

It's official!  My book, Chicken Scratch: Stories of Love, Risk & Poultry is coming on November 7th!  Feel free to share this image on social media and stay tuned next week for more info one ways you can help get the word out.  

One advance reader gave me a great compliment today.  "It felt like sitting down with you over a cup of coffee and listening to you tell stories.  I didn't know how much I needed it."  

*   *   *

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!  

To Know Your Own Heart #SmallWonder LinkUp

My church’s interim pastor, Jay McDermond, spoke on the life of Peter last Sunday, spending much of his time focusing on Peter’s less admirable qualities. (I believe the words “bone head” may have been employed.)  By human standards, Peter probably wasn’t the best candidate for Jesus to build his church on, but Jesus called him anyway.  

  

After highlighting Peter’s commitment and betrayal, our pastor focused on the conversation between Jesus and Peter found in John 21.  Jesus asks Peter three times, “Do you love me?”  Peter responds each time, “Yes, Lord, you know I love you.”  According to Pastor Jay, the nuance of the conversation is a bit clearer in the Greek where two different words for ‘love’ are used. 

Jesus: Peter, do you ‘agape me?’

Peter: Yes Lord, ‘phileo se.’

Jesus is talking about one kind of love, Peter is talking about another.  Jesus uses the Greek word “agape” referring to divine love.  “Peter,” Jesus is asking, “do you love me like God loves you?” 

Peter responds with ‘phileo se,’ “I love you like a brother, Jesus.” 

This exact exchange is then repeated with Jesus again asking whether Peter loves him with divine love and Peter responding, “I love you like a brother.”  The third time, though, Jesus changes his wording to match Peter’s ability.

“Peter,” he finally says in verse 17, “do you love me like a brother?” 

“Yes,” Peter says again, “I love you like a brother.” 

Jesus responds to Peter’s humanity by lowering the bar.  It’s as though Jesus sees Peter’s true condition and decides, “Yeah, I can work with that.”  This is good news – the same grace extended to Peter extends to all of us.    

It’s also important to note a change in Peter.  By the time we get to this final conversation near the end of the book of John, Peter, for once, doesn’t try to pretend he’s capable of more than he knows to be true.  Maybe he learned that lesson during the long, dark night of his betrayal.  When Peter heard Jesus’ prediction of suffering and death, Peter promised to be faithful to the bitter end.  Jesus, never the fool, told him, “Before the rooster crows three times, Peter, you will betray me.”  In other words, Jesus says, “Peter, you don’t even know your own heart.”

For Peter, the realization of his own capacity for betrayal (ie. his capacity for sin) was devastating.  When the rooster crowed for the third time, Peter ran out and “wept bitterly.”  That night in the courtyard and later through the still, silent night of fishing without success, Peter came face to face with his own humanity.  It’s not that he lost his tendency to bluster and bluff, but that he became painfully aware of it.  By the time he talks with Jesus again, Peter is certain of who he is – fully human, flawed, and yet willing to love the best he can. 

If I were Peter standing on the shoreline held in place by Jesus’ direct line of questioning, I can’t help but think I would’ve been tempted to claim I’m capable of more than I am.  This seems to be the sin I’m most prone to commit over and over again.

But Peter discovered a bedrock truth about himself, about his limitations and abilities and that discovery gives him solid footing in the face of Jesus’ questioning.  The good news is that Jesus doesn’t reject Peter for his limitations, in fact, I wonder if it wasn’t Peter’s certainty about his own limits that helped Jesus decide he was the right person for the job. 

*   *   *

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!