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?

Blank Walls, Empty Space (and An Announcement)

It began with open space. 

Maybe, that’s how all things begin.  All good things, that is. 

And, it began with need which, so often, provides fertile ground for creativity to take root. 

This is what I remembered as I sifted back through layers of memory and experience, this is the conclusion I reached when someone asked, “How did you begin painting?”

I never intended to paint, that was not the point.  But when we moved to this enormous, old farm house three years ago, I found myself with rooms full of empty wall space and nothing to hang.  Need (or was it desire?) knocked and I answered.  I splurged on one large print from Ikea and two empty frames which I filled with fabric in a color scheme I adored.  But our budget would not allow for more. 

I kept my eyes open, though, and found ornate and tacky old paintings abandoned along back woods roads and languishing in thrift store bins.  I bought acrylic paints in magenta, teal, and tangerine.  I, like generations of women before me, decided I would ‘make-do’ and I did.

In the process of making-do, though, I discovered that painting felt like prayer – calm, clear, and filled with listening.  Painting, also, felt like writing, and I listened as I painted and learned about myself as a writer, as a creative, as an artist. 

All of this, from blank walls, empty space.

//

What open spaces mark your life today?  

What invitation might these spaces hold?  

What opportunity, adventure, unanticipated discovery?

//

I never intended to paint. 

But now I know that words on wood, in color, is part of who I am.  Those empty walls called forth some part of me long buried like a seed, causing the artist in me to sprout and blossom.

Now I continue to watch and wait, like a gardener eyeing empty soil.  What open spaces are here, now and what abundance might be sleeping in the rich, dark emptiness?  

//

Good news, friends, I now have an Etsy shop where you can order prints of my original paintings.  Visit The Broody Hen Shop to see current offerings.  

We All Shine Like the Sun (SmallWonder Link-Up)

I returned home from the God's Whisper Writing Retreat in Virginia last Sunday, driving my husband's rattly old pickup truck through four hours of heat and humidity.  The truck lacks AC and I swear it was hotter inside the cab than out.  By the time I hit our driveway I was spent.  I was also greeted by the usual signs of my absence - an empty refrigerator and mountains of laundry.  So I dove back in to home and put off reflecting on the weekend away until now.    

It's always a gift to be among other writers and more and more, three years into this writing life, I find myself thinking, "These are my kind of people."  Friday night 20+ writers gathered in the barn before dinner, mingling awkwardly like sixth graders at a dance.  Dinner helped us shake off our nerves and then, after introductions, we took turns reading at the open Mic.  

Writers, at their heart, long to connect, to be known.  So, one-by-one we stood and read from finished and unfinished pieces, each person revealing a small square of their heart to a roomful of strangers who waited and welcomed with awe.  

Saturday was long, lovely and exhausting in all the best ways, full of connection and reflection.  I re-discovered my fear in Shawn Smucker's workshop and others rediscovered their bodies in Andi's.  Some writers became unstuck, others learned how to write safely about vulnerability.  In the evening we were all captivated by the only woman I know whose reading can compete with a flash-flood. Author, Sharon Morgan, drew us in with stories of life and love in Paris, she reminded us how good storytelling can bridge continents and help us connect like strangers gathered for a moment in time around a shared meal.  

Sunday morning, as many as wanted, started the day with silent meditation.  Then we welcomed a presentation by Jane Friedman on publishing.  I sat in the back because I have "issues" with discussions of publishing - I'm just not there yet and not willing to get myself tangled in knots before I even have a manuscript to submit.  

But, Sunday morning as 20+ writers in every stage of the game sat listening and calmly asking questions I realized the weekend had accomplished exactly what Shawn, Andi and I hoped it would.  The writers in attendance asked good, solid questions in voices that revealed a healthy awareness of their own location in the greater scheme of things.  I didn't hear a whisper of panic, a breath of anxiety.  I heard writers who, through the course of two days of balancing words and silence, were deeply in touch with the truth of their own situation.  

Did most of us have a lot of work to do?  Yes.  

Did current publishing trends leave us with more options and less clarity than ever before?  Mostly, yes.      

But I sensed in myself and in those around me a deeper connection to their own abilities and desire - two tools that equip every writer to move forward even when the way is not quite clear.  

We closed the retreat with a sharing circle and I was so grateful to hear how each participant would take some small piece from the weekend with them.  Over the course of the weekend I marveled at the beauty of human beings and how we open so beautifully to each other when time and circumstances allow.  

Sitting in that circle, I remembered Merton's famous vision,  

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”  

For a few days last weekend in a barn in the mountains of Virginia, a handful of writers came together and found that we're not so separate as we imagine and for a few moments we all shone like the sun.  

*   *   *

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.   

 

The Last Day of Summer

At the end of the day two cats sit in the window, sunset facing, while my husband walks the trash to the curb.  Two fresh bodies are tucked into bed.  Two still-dirty ones stretch the last minutes of daylight in the yard. 

There was some discussion this morning of knocking out a wall in the upstairs of our house.  Common sense prevailed though (No new projects right now, thank you very much!) and the cool blue sky drew us outside. 

We moved a pile of wood, cleared up a patch of land under the big pine tree.  The kids built a fort, tag-teaming lumber from the garage to the very space we were clearing, under the big pine tree. 

The dog found a toad, who became a pet. 

Lucky, he was rescued from the dog. 

Unlucky, he will spend the night in an old fish tank. 

Dead flies, worms, pieces of fruit, the lid of a peanut butter jar filled with water, all of these served as offerings for the toad.  Still, he seemed to be without appetite.

I chopped some wood, throwing the axe out over my shoulder, missing half the time, aware of the vulnerability of my toes exposed in sandals.  Every once in a while I hit home and the wood snapped with a satisfying crack – worth the effort it took.

The wood pile behind the garage grew slowly, a long stretch of Lincoln Logs strung together, wobbly.  I hammered nails in the kids’ fort.  Hooks for the hatch-door.  My daughter knelt on the ground with wire cutters snipping chicken wire which became a window. 

By the end of the day, the oldest boy built a zip-line which, failing to zip, turned into a log-launcher.  And we all left the dinner table, measuring tape in hand, and stood staring at the old wooden stairway that runs through the heart of our house.

“Could we turn it into a slide?” someone asked.

My husband turned to me, a light shining in his eyes. 

"It’s 14 feet," he said.  "You can buy a 2x12x16 ft. board for about $30."

“Will we? Will we?” the kids clamored. 

"Maybe," we said, "it'll be a winter project."

Happy Labor Day!

How did you celebrate?

A Stone Well-Placed (#SmallWonder Link-Up)

Wherever there is stillness there is the still small voice, God’s speaking from the whirlwind, nature’s old song and dance . . . - Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Speak

Five months pregnant with twins, I waddled up a narrow, rocky path.  I was looking – listening – for something in nature that might speak to me. 

This was the culmination of a retreat day oriented around nature as a source of revelation.  Having read an excerpt from Annie Dillard’s Teaching a Stone to Speak, we went outside, tasked with the mission of listening for the voice of God in the midst of the natural world.  Our assignment was to bring back the object that spoke to us for sharing within the larger group.

 

Twenty of us wandered through the gravel parking lot, then split off in different directions, uphill and down, into meadows and woods.  I didn’t stray far, my body shouting clearly that heavily pregnant women ought not go wandering the woods alone. 

I surveyed the grassy edges of the parking area. 

In the sea of green, a dark stone stood out.  I leaned awkwardly with my arm outstretched and plucked it from the grass where it nestled.

In my hand, though, it was just a stone.  Bending again, I put it back.  

Further up the hill, near the edge of the leafy woods I saw another stone.  This one was white, surrounded by smaller, darker stones.  It stood out bright in contrast. 

Bending to pick it up I realized it also stood out because of its surroundings.  I hesitated and left it unmoved.

 

Every rock, leaf, branch that caught my eye was the same.  In its place, it spoke, but in my hand, it was reduced.  It was probably the third of fourth sighting before I heard what the stones were saying, “I’m happy where I am.” 

They whispered contentment, half-buried on the rocky trail or sleeping in the bright green grass.  Not only were they happy where they were, but their placement was what made them special. 

Tears sprang to my eyes. 

I was not content with where I was or where I was going.  I didn’t want to be pregnant with twins, dreaded leaving my job in a few months’ time, and couldn’t imaging, much less accept, being a mother of four.

 

I left all of the stones in the woods that day and returned to the meeting room with their words in my heart.  The rocks had no say in their placement and yet, they thrived.  They were well placed right where they were.

Fast forward four years and a few months, through seasons of grief and fear, longing and hope, and I now find myself like those stones, happy in the place where I am. 

In Psalm 16, the author puts it this way:

Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup; you make my lot secure.  The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance (v.5-6).  

The psalmist here is a stone well placed and I think of his words often when I glimpse the gift of this place we've been given; when I think about the paths I would have taken had I made my own way. 

When have you found yourself unexpectedly well-placed?  When has nature spoken to you?

*   *   *

Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.

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

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

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

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

A Spacious Place: Memorial Day and Freedom (#SmallWonder Link-Up)

O the deep, deep love of Jesus, vast, unmeasured, boundless, free! - hymn by Samuel Trevor Francis

We had a gathering of new faces here at the old farmhouse Saturday.  Vans packed with kids started pulling in at six o'clock and little people unloaded and scattered across the yard faster than the chickens they chased.  

The porch of a house always feels like a warm space to me and the way this one wraps around makes me think of a wide smile.  We set two picnic tables out in the space of that smile and ate meals in the up-and-down shifts of young parents - standing and sitting, stopping and starting as kids ran out of, refused, or spilled food.  Later, when the sun was waning and a chill settled into the air, parents gathered kids from all corners of the house and yard.  One girl was found a good thirty feet up in a pine tree, just sitting on a branch refusing to come down. 

Kids take to this spacious place like it's their native home, running wide and far while the grown-ups tend to hover close to the house.  Often, leaving my work for a while, I find the twins off in some far corner of the yard, running knee-deep in cut grass or playing a secret game on one of the many wood piles.  

Somewhere along the path we call "growing up" many of us forget how to live in - by which I mean not just to own, but to enjoy to its fullest - a good and spacious place.  We build walls - or life builds them for us - hemming ourselves in to little plots of work and responsibility.  A small plot of life offers the advantage of perceived control and yet something within the very heart of us is lost - a soul that was meant to soar in freedom lives out its days with wings clipped.  

This is not what God intends for us.  God's love is "deep and wide" as the children's song reminds us, "vast, unmeasured, boundless, free" as the hymn declares.  This love is the spacious place in which we live and move and have our being (Acts 17).

This Memorial Day I'm remembering my Grandfathers who fought in WWII to maintain some measure of freedom - to ensure that their children and grandchildren would live in both physical and intellectual freedom, un-penned-in by tyranny and oppression.  As I remember, I wonder how many of us have forgotten how to live in the freedom that was and is won and maintained at such great cost?  How many of us have exchanged our freedom for the yoke of some new ideology or economic stability?

Our earthly freedom, of course, is a dim shadow of the freedom we have in Christ - freedom also bought and maintained at a great cost and yet bestowed on us as a free gift.  The biblical story, though, is one of a people continually giving up their freedom, handing over the keys to prisons built of law and perceived safety.  

"For freedom Christ has set us free.  Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery," Paul tells the Galatians (5:1).

A good many people will spend this day gathered around picnic tables discussing the state of the world and arguing on behalf of their own dimly perceived solutions - more law, more war, more walls.  We are right to be concerned and yet, I want to suggest we look elsewhere for solutions today.

Maybe we could follow the lead of our children and live in freedom for a few minutes or hours.  Join them splashing in the water, building moats and dams out of sand, catch a worm, build an imaginary kingdom, run yelling across a wide field or simply lay down in the grass and watch the clouds for a while as though nothing is riding on us.  

We have to practice living in freedom to best know how to maintain it.  

I will do my best to leave the house today, to set aside the work and venture into the far corners of our yard.  Maybe I'll climb the pine tree, maybe I'll ride the rope swing and feel my stomach drop or catch a chicken and sit with it for a while soaking in the sun.  

May you also find yourself captured by and living in the wonder of the freedom that is yours today.  Happy Memorial Day, friends.  

*   *   *

Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.

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

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

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

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

Still (#SmallWonder Link-up)

Friends, I waited and watched and listened yesterday but by the time I slipped between the sheets last night, I had no words to offer you.  Instead, this morning, as I am recovering from a long, intense week, I want to offer you the stillness of Psalm 131.  May you find yourself be blessed with some small moment of wonder this week.

"O Lord, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; 
I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.  

But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.  

O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time on and forever more." 

*   *   *   

Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.

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

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

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

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

The Humming Hive: Life-giving Work (#Small Wonder Link-up)

Last night as I was sleeping,

I dreamt - marvelous error!-

that I had a beehive

here inside my heart.

- from Last Night as I Was Sleeping, by Antonio Machado

Two batches of oatmeal-peanut butter-chocolate chip cookies.

One box of brownies.

A double-batch of Zuppa Tuscana and another double of Lentil- Spinach Soup.

Cleaning the yard, cleaning the house and mopping for the first time in (gulp) “a while.”

These are the things my husband and I did on Thursday and Friday as we prepared for this weekend’s two writing events.

It was a lot of work.

//

Thursday morning the twins’ preschool hours – the time in which I usually write – were filled with activity.  Late into the afternoon I scooped teaspoonful’s of cookie dough onto well-greased pans.  Into the oven they went, then onto the stovetop to cool, off the pan and into a large Tupperware container. 

I chopped a bagful of potatoes and several onions.  I sautéed and simmered, while washing an endless stream of dishes.  We had frozen pizza for dinner because I was so busy cooking ahead.  The twins were relieved to know all of that soup was not meant for them.

The entire afternoon and on into the evening I spent spinning from counter to stove, sink and oven in that small corner of the kitchen.  At some point, on one of those rounds of cutting and sliding things into a pot, in the midst of washing and rinsing I felt it – something like a happy hive of humming bees buzzing inside my chest. 

“I love this," I thought.

The feeling continued on into the next day – through scooping up the piles of “dog dirt” scattered around the yard, cleaning the toilets and plotting the arrangement of chairs and tables. 

Then the people came.

First Andi – the writer/editor I met last summer.  Andi, who inspired our search for a dream house with the vulnerable sharing of her own dreams.  Andi, who showed me last summer how simple a retreat could be. 

Next came the kids – eleven total.    

The kids were off-the-wall with Friday night fever and a little dose of sass, but when they started writing things grew quiet for a few splendid minutes while colored pencils scratched ideas to life.  

Later, with shinning faces they shared their stories.  My son came to me, leaned in close and whispered his in my ear. 

After they left, silence crept into the corners of the house.  We tucked the folding table and chairs away and slept in the unfamiliar stillness that is a house not filled with children. 

Saturday, more people came, new faces and familiar ones, published authors and people wondering what they were doing here.  Everyone carried hope and doubt, everyone had placed a stake in the ground by the simple act of arrival.

Seated in a large circle in the living room, I was grateful.  I was not stressed. I was not anxious.  I marveled at the gift of presence shared among a group for a few short hours.  I wondered at the way people, when given a chance, open and blossom like bright flowers; how we are all more beautiful, more gifted, and more broken than we might ever dare imagine or admit. 

Afterward, when the grownups left and our kids came home from a friend’s house, the peacefulness prevailed.  There was a calm in our house, a quiet buzz of contentment.  And I wondered if it wasn’t because we’d spent it all, and spent it well in a way that fit just right for us. 

//

For each of us there's work that leads to death and work that leads to life – work that depletes and work that replenishes.  While we cannot always chose between the two – life unfortunately demands both – finding and settling in to work which gives life even as it is spent is a gift beyond measure.  Something sweet like honey.

Frederich Beuchner calls it, “The place where our own deep gladness meets the world’s deep needs.”  Others, like Parker Palmer, call it Vocation – or – “the thing that we cannot not do.”  

However you put it, however long it takes you to find it, no matter how much must be lost in the process, do not forget my friends - 

There is a hive inside your heart, 

golden and still.  It whispers 

in the quiet of the night, 

in the stillness before wakefulness.  

It is no dream.  It is the gift 

of who you are, the seed, 

the soil and sunlight, 

the sticky sweet pollen 

that spreads and changes

into golden light.  Listen,

if you can, and you will 

hear its happy hum.      

*   *   *   *

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.   

Pause

 

This morning the world was cloaked,

white on white, as snow fell and the mountains

shied behind a sheet of fog.  The cornfield 

stretched between, like a wide sheet of paper,

empty. 

Lighting the fire, I feel the way

these two days between Thanksgiving

and Advent stretch silent and open.

I want to fall into these days,

to lay down in the great white expanse

of them amidst the absence of color, of noise,

of need. 

This is the moment between satisfaction

and desire when we turn our hearts

from training to see what is,

to longing for that which is to come.  


There's still time to sign-up to receive weekly poems and good links to deepen your journey through advent this year.  Visit this link to subscribe or visit Quiet Lights: Advent Wonder for Your Inbox to find out more.