What Remains in the Wake of Loss

I recently listened as a colleague ticked off a long list of losses. Each loss felt, to me, like an autumn leaf, brown and shriveled, dropping from a tree, from his lips, one by one. I could see the leaves falling, piling at his feet. I could feel loss upon loss gathered there, at the feet of the three of us, gathered virtually to listen. 

In his poem, Fighting the Instrument, Mark Nepo speaks of the opening that often follows in the wake of loss. He is careful, however, to avoid minimizing the pain of loss. Two-thirds of the way through the poem, he makes it clear: choosing to value the openings created over the desire to fight or bemoan the often cruel agents of change, is never an easy choice.

"This is very difficult to accept," the poem says. The line is so brief and clear, it would be easy to overlook. But, I have stayed in that place of difficulty that precedes acceptance for weeks, months, and occasionally years at a time. Sometimes I think that staying, that willingness to breathe through each painful loss, is what leads to acceptance, is what creates the opening and the courage needed to live into it. 

My colleague listed his losses and they fell like leaves gathered into a growing pile. We listened and affirmed the losses. But, even still, as the leaves were falling, I remembered the way barren branches reveal so much more of a winter-blue sky. I glimpsed, for a moment, the opening being made, and it gave me hope that there would be revealed, again, a "jewel in the center of the stone." 

This post is a reflection on Mark Nepo's poem, "Fighting the Instrument." Visit Spirituality and Health to read the poem and the poet's own reflections on it. 

Gratitude and Our Most Painful Losses

Occasionally, it's possible to catch a glimpse of gratitude bubbling up on the periphery of life's most painful experiences. This gratitude is bashful, hovering just to the side of things, small and round, like a spot of light, refracted. This gratitude invites a turning in those who want to truly embrace it. 

This is not gratitude for the loss itself, but for the path it opened, for the spacious place in which you find yourself now - days or weeks or months later. It is a sliver of light, a glimmer in deep darkness. Such gratitude is best captured by peripheral vision - look too closely at it, slide it under the microscope of quantity, quality or necessary identification, and it dissolves like fog in the morning sun. But, abide with it, welcome it in passing; extend your hand, your heart, to it, as one might do with a skittish cat and maybe, perhaps, one day, when you least expect it, it will walk right over and curl up to sleep in your lap. 

This post is a reflection on Mark Nepo's poem, "Fighting the Instrument." Visit Spirituality and Health to read the poem and the poet's own reflections on it. 

What's A Pastor to Do?

But what’s a pastor to do when [she’s] got no people to pastor?*

 

I slipped an extra egg

under the broody hen

and marked the eggs

already gathered there

with a permanent marker’s

red x.

 

The hen settled down,

welcoming new eggs and old.

She puffed wide, her feather-bare

chest, radiating one hundred

and one degrees.

 

I picked five cucumbers

and weeded around the late-started

zinnias. I asked after zucchini

and green beans, peering between

large green leaves, but the answer was,

“not yet.”

 

I hung wet clothes on the line,

washed and dried over thirty-five

t-shirts. I went to the store for milk.

I cooked a chicken and helped

my son bake a two-layer chocolate

cake.

 

This is what I did

when I had no people to

pastor.

*This question, posed by a pastor in Winn Collier's novel, "Love Big, Be Well: Letters to a Small-Town Church," got caught in my soul and sits there still. It's a good question, because asking (and answering it) well raises all sorts of other questions. Sometimes a good question can shed more light than even the best of answers.

 

The Compost Heap: Both/And

A Purification by Wendell Berry

At the start of spring I open a trench

in the ground. I put into it

the winter’s accumulation of paper,

pages I do not want to read

again, useless words, fragments,

errors. And I put into it

the contents of the outhouse:

light of the sun, growth of the ground,

finished with one of their journeys.

To the sky, to the wind, then,

and to the faithful trees, I confess

my sins: that I have not been happy

enough, considering my good luck;

have listened to too much noise;

have been inattentive to wonders;

have lusted after praise.

And then upon the gathered refuse

of mind and body, I close the trench,

folding shut again the dark,

the deathless earth. Beneath that seal

the old escapes into the new.

//

We were nearing the end of our time together when my spiritual director posed a question, "Are you familiar with a Wendell Berry poem where he digs a compost heap?" 

"Yes," I said, "I am." I thought back to the poem I'd printed and posted in the church's prayer room one spring, laying it next to a print of a painting of blurred greens and browns. 

"Maybe that's an image you could work with, a kind of ritual to provide closure," she suggested. "What, from your time at the church would could you put into that pile?"

We had been discussing my complicated, raw feelings about the pastorate I left suddenly at the beginning of March. It was a complicated leaving shaped by trauma and followed closely by the trauma of Covid-19.  I thought about her question for a few minutes, picturing the brown soil of Berry's trench cut in the ground. 

"I don't know yet," I said, at last. "It's all still so co-mingled together." 

She nodded, offering simple acceptance of my appraisal, but the image of compost has stayed with me.

//

Maybe this is what we need to know in this time and space, not the clarity and comfort of the either/or, but the difficult acceptance of both/and. The truth that there are no easy answers and that much of our experience is co-mingled - joy and sorrow, laughter and tears, love and hate, hope and despair.

Without this truth, we'll wear ourselves thin in the endless need to part and parcel out every answer and, in declaring one side of any debate a winner, we will create countless unnecessary losers. 

Both/and invites us to dwell in a place of creative tension - irresolution, if you will. It requires effort of a different sort, a willingness to remain open, a commitment to do the work of turning over ideas, emotions and view points. What if our fear and uncertainty might be transformed by the kind of creative alchemy we find in the compost heap? And what if we were to wait together, unified in faith, hope, and love, to see what emerges?

I am writing, of course, about my own recent experiences, but also about the uneasily resolved tensions we find ourselves in as we grapple with the Covid-19 pandemic. The thing we ought to fear is not the tensions of our divergent viewpoints, but our inability to hold them well, our unwillingness to recognize the creative possibilities of our current situations. 

//

This past Sunday morning, I asked my kids how they felt about using the liturgy from the church where I recently pastored. Despite visiting a few other churches after my resignation, we'd returned to using aspects of this church's liturgy once lockdown began. It was familiar, it was easy, but I was beginning to be certain it was time to move on and I wanted to find out what my kids were feeling.

"What do you think about using this?" I asked. 

The younger boys, age 8, said, echoing each other, "We like it."

Then, one quickly added, with a sly grin, "But we're supposed to hate them now."

His brother chimed in in agreement. 

They were trying to show loyalty to me, for the hurt I experienced. They were reflecting their mixed emotions. They were voicing the creative tensions we all feel, the desire to stay with what's familiar but painful and the need to create distance that will facilitate healing. 

"Well," I said, "you don't need to hate anybody. But Dad and I feel it's time to try something new." 

We joined another local church service online. We didn't know the songs and I cried quietly through the first ten minutes or so. Sensing my sadness, our cat, Blackie, came and sat with his paws on my chest, massaging my heart with his comforting purr. 

I hate the pain we are experiencing, the pain of unresolved endings, the pain of moving into something new, but undesired. It's all so co-mingled right now. But we're holding the tension, believing in the power of creation that makes all things new, the old seeping into the new in unexpectedly beautiful and amazing ways.

What co-mingled thoughts and feelings are you experiencing in this season? How are you holding tension creatively within yourself and with others?

Open Heart : A Sneak Peak and a Giveaway (#SmallWonder link-up)

This is it, friends, Monday, Nov. 7 "Chicken Scratch: Stories of Love, Risk & Poultry" officially launches into the world.  It's exciting and a little bit scary and so, in honor of that, I want to share an excerpt from the book - a story about love and risk, pain and joy.  Enjoy and when you're done reading scroll down to see my free launch-day giveaways.

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Cold winds and thunderstorms settled into the area over the weekend.  Saturday came and went in a fog of post-birthday-party exhaustion, and the sunny morning turned dark and windy by late afternoon.  In the morning, our sleepy kids stayed inside playing on the Wii, and I walked down to the fence, hoping to talk awhile with our neighbor Ann. 

I spotted her husband, Don, in the yard first, closer to the fence.  Based on two years of over-the-fence observation, I’ve reached the conclusion that Ann and Don’s yard is governed by a neat division of labor – Ann tends her teaming flowerbeds and Don putters in his vegetable garden.  Both the beds and the garden put ours to shame, but John and I comfort ourselves by remembering that the Ann and Don are retired and not raising four young children. 

I’ve noticed a similar division of labor in their approach to the neighborly business of fence-side small-talk – Ann engages freely in extended conversation over a wide range of topics, and Don does not.  Drawing Don to the fence to even ask a question is like pulling teeth.  Attempt more and he’s clearly uncomfortable.  

One day last summer, when we were integrating our second round of chicks into our well established flock, the twins discovered one of the chicks named America, trapped tight in the far corner of the run.  “She’s dead!  America’s dead!” they cried, running into the house and pulling me out into the yard.  Bending down to examine the chick I discovered a large bloody gash in her neck.  It looked, in fact, like she’d been decapitated.  I wasn’t sure what to do, and, more importantly, I didn’t want to deal with the dead bird alone while Isaiah and Levi ran enthusiastic circles around me. 

Standing up, I looked down toward Ann and Don’s yard hoping for help.  I caught a glimpse of Don and approached casually under the guise of commiserating but seriously hoping to convince him to take care of the dead bird.  Don, however, proved resilient in the face of my woman-in-distress ploy. 

“Oh,” he said, “that’s too bad.”  He didn’t offer to help, and, knowing it wasn’t his responsibility, I couldn’t bring myself to ask.  I would deal with the bird myself. 

When I got back to the chicken tractor I bent down again for a closer examination.  The twins, bored already with death, had wandered off and in their absence, I noticed the rise and fall the chick’s fluffy feathers.  She was still breathing, a clear sign she had not, in fact, been decapitated.  I walked into the run and reached into the far back corner where she was huddled.  Pulling her out and tucking her to my chest, I realized she was pecked up pretty badly but likely to survive.  After a few days of isolation and over-the-counter antibiotic ointment, she was on the mend, and I had learned not to expect Don to play the Knight in Shining Armor.   

So I wasn’t looking to talk to Don Saturday morning, I was looking for Ann.  I spotted her on the far side of their yard wearing shorts and tall black polka-dotted rain boots.  Easily forgetting she’s close to 70 years old, I watched as she pushed a wheelbarrow full of mulch around to her flower beds.  Seeing my approach, she made a bee-line to the fence, and we chatted about summer and the gigantic addition being added to a house on the hill behind our house.  While we talked, Isaiah and Levi ran over yelling, “Miss. Ann!  Miss. Ann!”  They climbed briefly up and down the fence, lapping up her attention, then trotted off to play again. 

The reason I walked down to the fence was that I needed someone to talk to.  The night before John and I had found out that dear friends of ours were separating, and our hearts were broken.  When our chit-chat wound down, I told Ann about it.  She affirmed the real pain of a marriage ending and how sad it is for everyone involved, sharing stories from her experience with the divorces of people she knows. 

So many of the married friends John and I share got married at the same time we did.  We knew, even then, that the odds were high that many of us would not stay married.  And yet now, some 15 years later, it still seemed impossible that some of our friends were entering into a post-marriage stage of life.

“Maybe we’re naïve,” I said, “I’m almost 40.  I don’t understand how these things still catch me by surprise.”  What I really couldn’t understand was why it hurt so badly – hurt to see our friends in such complete and utter pain, hurt to be unable to fix it for them, to only be able to stand by watching, listening, and praying. 

Turning back to face our yard, I noticed the Polish hens and asked Ann if she’d seen them.  She said she had but couldn’t really tell much about them since they were penned up in the run on the far side of our yard.   “Do you see the fluff-headed ones?” I asked, my eyes following the Polish hens as they pecked along the perimeter of the netting. 

“Yeah, kinda,” she said, “but not very well.” 

I described them for her in detail, painting a picture of their fluffy white pom-pom heads and lacy gray-black feathers.  As I talked, I felt love for them rise in my chest despite the distance between us. 

Later in the day, I told John about my conversation with Ann, about how I thought maybe we were just naive.  But I also told him something I had realized while standing at the fence watching those baby hens from a distance.  “I loved them,” I said, “even from all the way across the yard, and I guess if you’re the kind of person who can fall in love with a Polish hen, then life’s gonna hurt.” 

“What do you mean?” he asked. 

“There’s no separating the two,” I said.  “It’s like the words on that painting hanging in the upstairs hallway, “Love wide; make your way with an open heart.”  Loving a Polish hen is loving with an open heart, and an open heart’s gonna get hurt.  But an open heart also has access to the kind of joy that helps in the middle of the hurt.”

Some days, I think that’s the most we can hope for – enough joy to carry us through the hurt.  Maybe also, if we’re lucky, we might find a sturdy fence to lean on and a neighbor willing to listen for a few minutes or more.

(Like this story?  Want to read more?  Pop over now to order a copy!)

*   *   *

Today, I'm giving away two Prize Packages.  Two lucky winners will receive a signed copy of "Chicken Scratch" AND a "Chicken Poop" lip balm.  (For the record, the lip balm contains NO poop and only natural ingredients like avocado oil, beeswax and jojoba oil.)  Check out the Rafflecopter below to enter to win.  Winners will be announced next Sunday.  

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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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!  

My Grandmother's Lap (#SmallWonder Link-up)

Easter weekend I made my favorite icing, tinted it pink and worked with a wide butter knife to spread it across the gentle curves of lemon cupcakes.  It was my Grandmother's recipe, the only icing I've ever really liked.  The recipe got me thinking again about my relationship with my Grandmother who died this past summer.  Later in the week, as I thought about my relationship with her, I felt God lean in close and whisper, "It was a gift."  So, with gratitude, I return to the memories and feel them for what they are and were - pure grace.  

I sat in my grandmother’s lap

in a long, wooden pew

in her old, ornate Methodist

Church.  The shiny pipe organ

breathed in and out and a man stood

up front in a long robe.

Sometimes we children 

made our way also to the front

and sat gathered at the feet

of the man in the long robe,

like ducks, heads tipped

up waiting for the hand that

scatters bread. 

Returning to the pew, to my

Grandmother’s lap, I felt the summer’s

heat rise in the old building.  Light

poured in through stained glass windows

and my long brown hair clung to the back

of my neck.

My Grandmother’s small hands, always

cool, lifted my hair, gently gathering it

up and to the side.  Then she blew her own

breath onto my exposed neck and air,

cool like a fresh spring, trickled across.

'Man cannot live on bread alone,'

Jesus said and those hands, that breath,

were grace to my love-parched skin,

the simple act of comfort-given and received

while I sat in the church, in the worn wooden pew,

balanced on the shore of my Grandmother’s lap.

Photo Source.

*   *   *   *

Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.

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

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

You're invited to link-up a brief post of about five hundred words or less 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.    

The Night Will Hold You

(This picture was taken by my husband - the night sky over the corn field 
across the street from us - isn't he amazing?) 

When the grief you carry 
wears your face into a thousand 
heavy lines, when the sadness 
feels like a knife splitting 
your very body in two, 
night will come at last. 

With the children tucked safe 
in their beds, you will stand 
in the doorway of your own 
darkened room and the night 
will welcome you with its wide, 
and gentle embrace.  

How can I explain that this 
is what you need, what you 
have waited for, this knowing 
that the darkness is nothing 
to fear?  You will lie down 
on your bed, half curled 
around the old, old wound, 
with your face turned toward 
the windows.  Weeping, 
your eyes will search 
outlines of trees, the few 
bright stars captured in your 
window’s frame.  

Now that you are no longer afraid, 
the night will hold you with its velvet 
love, the emptiness of the darkness 
sidling up against you as the well 
of grief pours out. 

“There's something comforting 
about the darkness,” you will tell 
your husband when he finds you there. 
Instinctively, like the night, he will curl 
himself around you offering not words, 
but himself to hold you, his flesh 
echoing in physicality the sweet 
silent night that draws you close.   

This post is linked with Playdates with God and Unforced Rhythms.

Harvest (I want to be home when the combine comes)

Photo Source: HERE.

The neighbor’s dog killed

our kitten.  He’s an old

speckled hunting hound

who hobbles painfully

through a large fenced yard.

Our kids feed him handfuls

of bone shaped biscuits

through the fence

and run back and forth

calling his name. 

The kitten, slender and spry,

climbed the fence, curious,

and the old dog found

youth coursing through his

veins.  It was quick, they said, 
she didn’t comprehend the threat, 
he acted on training and instinct. 

The daycare children who played

nearby watched it all go down.

Crying, they were hurried

inside, to where the classroom bunny

sat safe in its cage. 

We weren’t home at the time. 

Later, when I sat in the grass snacking

with my boys, the neighbor called me

over to break the news.  We stood there

on opposite sides talking for a long time, 
our conversation divided by the fence.

He was apologetic, I was trying to figure

out what to tell the kids. 

“I didn’t think he still had it

in him,” my elderly neighbor observed.

We talked, as usual, about the woman

who owned this house before us - 
born here and died here at the age of ninety-seven -

and about the neighbor's own twin brother, a monk

in his seventies still making plans to teach overseas. 

The cat was handed back

over the fence, stiff and oddly heavy

in a plastic bag.  I put her in a box,

then went to wait for the school bus

to crest the hill, delivering

my happy children back home to me. 

//

The farmer has started cutting down

the dried brown corn that shines golden

when the sun hits just right.  Any day now

the field across the street will be empty

again.  The harvest feels like an inevitable 
end, the cutting down of it all and already 
I feel a sense of anticipatory loss.

I want to be home when the combine comes,

to witness the transformation.  Then 
there will be the long wait of winter
before seeds are sown in the quiet earth
and green shoots break through again. 

This is our sweet Tiger who loved to curl up and nap in my Asparagus fern.

Linking with Jennifer Dukes Lee for #TellHisStory.

Zucchini Bread (Honoring my Grandmother's Passing)

That night I baked Zucchini bread from her recipe, four small loaves, and lit a green candle in the top of one.

“Are we having a party because she died?” my six year old son asks.

“We’re lighting a candle to honor her life,” I said.

“Oh,” he adds, “that’s what I meant.”

Isaiah, at three, wants to know if I am still friends with her even though she’s dead. 

“Yes,” I tell him, “she’s still my friend.”

Levi, also three, is confused about exactly who has died and where she is now and how she’ll get back to us.  He asked me the day before as we lay in the grass under the canopy of blue, “How does things die, Mommy?” 

I told him about hearts and lungs and strokes.

He understands that dead things stop moving and that’s enough to know for now. 

My daughter suggests that the person most closely related to my grandma should get the first slice of bread.

“That’s me,” I said.

She smiles, “I thought so.”

My grandmother never put chocolate chips in her zucchini bread like I do, but she often added nuts.  At the bottom of the shakily written recipe she wrote, “may add nuts or raisins.” 

I smiled when I read this, she knew how I hate nuts and raisins in baked goods.  I wished I could pick up the phone and call her, tease her a little about how No One In Their Right Mind puts nuts or raisins in their bread or cookies.  It’s hard for me still to believe she’s not there to answer, that the envelope with three recipes that came in the mail weeks ago is the last I’ll ever receive from her.

Someday, soon maybe, I’ll write about how I lived next door to her when I was little.  I was her strawberry girl and she blew cool breezes down the back of my dress during long, hot, Sunday morning services and lifted the sweaty hair off of my neck with her always cool hands. 

For now, though, we made the bread, we lit a candle and prayed.

The next morning I wrapped two loaves in saran wrap and tin foil, labeled them with a permanent marker, and put them in the freezer, just like she always did.

“Us saving them for winter time?” Levi asks. 

“Yes,” I say, “for winter.”    

This post is linked with the #TellHisStory community.

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