Little House Updates and Virtual Photo Tour

My husband and I made some renovations to the Little House this past winter. My goals were to make the building more functional, spacious, and welcoming for myself and those who meet and gather here. This past week I returned to meeting with Directees in-person and it was such a joy to welcome people to this space again. 

If you live in Central PA and are interested in exploring Spiritual Direction, I'd love to have you stop by for a conversation. I also meet virtually with individuals from all over the world. Interested? Email me or comment below to begin your journey. (Chripczuk.Kelly@gmail.com)  

Virtual Tour:

This is the Little House, my private office and meeting space. It's situated just off our driveway, between our main house and garage. This spring, my husband built this bench and planters to make the entrance more welcoming. 

We were able to make a new seating area (see photo at beginning of post) by removing this old cooktop stove and the cabinet. For now, the wall and fan vent hole have been covered with plywood and painted one of my favorite shades of blue. The whole project was briefly stalled when we got distracted by the idea of placing a little round porthole window in that vent hole. My husband also built the ladder bookshelf (see photo above) that allows me to keep my hoard of papers and books near but not on top of my desk at all times. 

Another big space-saving change included removing a built-in desk that stuck out of this closet (below) and installing a closet door. The closet still offers storage for books and files, but removing the unused desktop bought me several square feet of floor space. It's hard to explain in pictures, but one dream I have for the future is removing this corner entirely and installing a loft bed for over-night guests. 

One of my favorite updates is the new writing desk my husband built (below). After using a child-sized desk for the past seven years, this spacious desk (with my own real office chair) comes as a welcome relief. Plus, I was able to paint it one of my favorite colors: Magenta!

I was planning to sell my old desk to cover the cost of some of these updates, but when I turned it around to move it out of the Little House, I noticed it makes a perfect little altar-table (see below). Now it's just right for a candle, glass of water, and poem or two. 

I also invested in new seating, finally updating my old, oversized Ikea chairs with these spiffy blue Mid-Century modern chairs (below) found on Facebook Marketplace. I'm still on the look-out for new-to-me seating that will be more comfortable than these current chairs. Currently, the Little House comfortably accommodates small groups of about 5-6 adults (message me for details about reserving the space for your group to use). 

This little corner (below) is the last thing visitors see when leaving the Little House and the painting sums up my heart completely. I love having this space for reading, writing, and praying. But most of all, I love offering a space of peace, joy, love, and rest in the midst of this busy overwhelming world. I hope you'll visit some day - in person or online. 

Questions to carry:

What kind of space does your heart long for? How do you reflect the spirit of God in the spaces you've been given?

Pastor

 

How does she

become

what is

not

allowed?

How do gifts

grow;

gifts she is

not

allowed

to have,

much less,

God forbid,

use?

 

Where

is the model,

the mirror,

for her

becoming?

 

What energy

will be wasted,

what creativity

squandered,

in the effort

to prove

her right

to be

 

in the room?

 

I see you

daughter.

I call you

by your name:

Pastor.

 

Come forth,

dear one,

come into

every gift

that is yours

from birth.

You are the mirror.

You are the model.

Come forth.

 

Without

your faithful

presence,

we see

only a sliver

of the divine.

* for all of the female pastors I know, still struggling to gain access to the rooms of power, still sitting through professional conversations in which the validity of their ministry is questioned, still wondering if it's ok to be who you are. I see you, we need you.

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.

 

Enough (a poem)

Some days, I would
sell my own soul for thirty
pieces of silver, just
to hear the coins,
solid and real, clinking
in my pocket.

Some days, I too
would sell my birthright
for a steaming bowl of stew,
because hunger is here
and now.

I would throw myself
from the highest cliff;
I would light myself on fire,

if it were not for the voice
that whispers, “That
is not what I ask of you.”

 //

Some days, that voice
is enough.

- K. Chripczuk

* I've spent weeks thinking about whether and how to explain this poem, feeling it needed an explanation to soften it. For now, though, I'm letting it stand as is. I'm curious, what do you hear in it? How does it speak to you? Thanks, as always, for reading and sharing.

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.

   

Turn Toward the Light (Do Not Be Afraid)

How did the rose

ever open its heart

and give to this world 

all its beauty?

It felt the encouragement of light

against its being.

Otherwise,

we all remain 

too frightened. 

- Hafiz

The world needs us all; every heart open, fragrant, bright with the gift of pure being.  

May the light of Love rest upon you this day.  

May the light of your own beautiful soul be an encouragement to all who cross your path today.

*   *   *

Things have been quiet on the blog for some time now.  Be sure to sign up for my newsletter and stay tuned later this week for an update on all the new things happening behind the scenes here at This Contemplative Life.    

Origami and God (Fold, Unfold, Refold Again)

Each of my boys has discovered origami sometime between their sixth and seventh year of life.  It always begins with fortune tellers and airplanes, then progresses to boats and paper hats.  Soon, every surface of the house is littered with folded scraps of white copy paper.  Eventually, familiar patterns lose their thrill and we head to the library searching for new patterns to master.  
  

Harder patterns, though, require adult assistance.  Inevitably, I’m called to assist a frustrated child in deciphering vague diagrams and tricky folds.  This, I do, kneeling on the floor by the wood stove with an anxious, eager child peering over my shoulder. 

“Mom!  I don’t understand what I’m supposed to do,” they cry.

“Ok, let me see,” I say.

They want me to be able to look at the picture once and tell them what to do.  But, I need to begin at the beginning, to feel the paper moving through its motions beneath my fingers.    

I follow the patterns step-by-step: fold, unfold, refold again.  Even though I know the desired outcome, the path to completion’s often far from direct.  Jumping ahead is not advisable, so I stay in the moment working slowly, one fold at a time.

Some patterns begin with several steps of folds and creases that are then, one by one, undone.  These folds are preparatory, lining the page with creases that serve as landmarks for the steps ahead.  It would be a tempting but misleading to mistake one of these preparatory folds for a final fold. 

Sometimes I think this may be how God works in our lives – not that our lives are paper, manipulated by God into an unforeseen shape – but every life is filled with folds, some relating directly to the final goal, others only serving as markers along the path.  So much suffering comes from mistaking one from the other – pegging our lives, our identity on something that will, shortly, be unfolded to make way for something else. 

The problem is, from my human perspective, I can’t readily tell the difference between final folds and preparatory folds.  Even the final outcome remains unclear – what are we working toward here, God? A jumping frog? A peaceful crane?

The truth is, I'm not sure God cares nearly as much as I do about the difference between unfolds and final folds, about final outcomes and destinations.  God may be something more like a child, thrilled with the feel of pliable paper, delighting in the joy of shared discovery.

Knowing this, maybe we can learn to move lightly and freely through life, turning and folding, shaped in each moment by what is, rooted in the humility of not knowing, and a deep trust in the goodness of the One in whose hands we rest.  We are being turned, crease by crease, into works of beauty and wonder beyond what we could ever imagine.  This is what redemption means, this folding and unfolding, moving forward, always, toward wholeness.  

Slow (adjective)

Slow (adjective) : moving or operating, or designed to do so, only at a low speed; not quick or fast. synonyms: unhurried, leisurely, steady, sedate, poky, sluggish

Every year, January 1st brings a wave of declarations and intentions splashing across my facebook page.  I've hardly started purging the house of Christmas clutter and somehow it seems everyone else has already shaken off the dust of the old year and moved headlong into the new.  

In the face of it, I find myself feeling out of pace.  Here I am spinning my wheels while the rest of the world races ahead.  

Pining my slowness earlier this week, I thought of my paternal Grandma.  She never did anything fast, as far as I can remember.  She ate slow, walked slow, talked slow.  She buttered bread slow and somehow managed to make large dinners that were ready right-on-time while working at a snail's pace.  

Recalling her slow ways, I remembered the comfort she gave even in the midst of (or perhaps because of) her predictable slowness.  I remember her lamenting once, during a visit to an Amish farm in Lancaster PA, how she missed the slowness of the old days, how everything was so hurried now, she felt she couldn't keep up.

Remembering my Grandma's slowness, I felt less alone, more able to accept my own, often poky, pace. 

//

Slow isn't sexy.  A poky puppy is cute, but doesn't hold our attention span for long when the rest of the world is racing by.  And, though we offer lip-service to the value of 'slowing down' or embracing an 'unhurried' life, we're quick to defend our productivity lest we somehow be deemed lazy or, worse, slow.  

I guess it's one thing to choose slow.  Another to be slow, by nature.  

//

This morning, while pushing myself to get ahead and make up for my slow, I remembered a conversation my husband had with my mother-in-law when he first told her we were dating.  

His mom asked, among other things, "If she fast?  Can she get things done?" 

It's was a funny question to ask, because my husband lives on the slow side of things as well.  Maybe she thought he needed someone to kick-up the pace and keep things moving along?  

Whatever she had in mind, it was not to be.  My husband answered immediately and with certainty, "No, I've never seen her do anything fast."

Remembering his reply, I smiled, and felt another layer of self-imposed judgement about the pace at which I live, slide off, like an ill-fitting skin.  

//

I think there are a lot of people who miss slow, but most of us feel we can't really afford it.  Here, I guess, is where the slow people (like me) have something to offer.  Hitching along at our leisurely pace we seem to stand out as a symbol that slow is not lost and, what's more, slow is sustainable.  Slow may even be the only sustainable speed in a world committed to fast without pause.  

What struck me most in the online definition of slow quoted above, is the phrase "designed to do so."  Maybe that's what I am - designed to move slowly, to offer steady in a world off-kilter.  I like the way that phrase hints at the intentionality of making something (or someone) slow.  Almost like slow itself has a purpose or is a gift.  

Who needs the gift of your slow today?  What practices help you live more in tune with your own natural pace?   

Mistaken Identity, Poetry and a Secret

Twenty years ago, Naomi Shihab Nye’s poetry collection, Red Suitcase, came across the check-in desk at the library where I worked.  Captivated by the cover, the title, I flipped through, checked the book out, and wrote down two poems I’ve carried in my head and heart ever since.  One was, Shoulders, which I comeback to time and time again; the other was Valentine for Ernest Man, in which Nye tells a secret.  

“Poems hide,” she says:

In the bottoms of our shoes,

they are sleeping.  They are the shadows

drifting across our ceilings the moment

before we wake up.  What we have to do

is live in a way that lets us find them. 

The poem goes on to tell the story of a man who gave his wife two skunks for Valentine’s day.  His wife is upset at and he is at a loss to understand her tears.  The poem continues, offering the reasoning behind his strange gift.    

“I thought they had such beautiful eyes.”

And he was serious.  He was a serious man

who lived in a serious way.  Nothing was ugly

just because the world said so.  He really

liked those skunks.  So, he re-invented them

as valentines and they became beautiful.

At least, to him.  And the poems that had been hiding

In the eyes of the skunks for centuries

crawled out and curled up at his feet.

//

I also want to tell you a secret, not that you asked, but here you are: Poets hide too.

//

After college, I attended what my professors told me was one of the best seminaries in the country.  I got good grades – great grades, in fact.  I even got an A in theology.  But, in our weekly precept gatherings, I had an often repeated, strange experience. 

Ten or so students sat in a circle.  Led by a sleepy doctoral student, we discussed the week’s readings.  Questions were asked, comments made, and time passed in a smooth flow of conversational give-and-take. 

I read the texts (mostly, I mean, skimming is, in my book, completely acceptable when it comes to several hundred pages of Calvin and Barth).  I commented too, I raised my hand, opened my mouth, and spoke.  Often, without fail, while I talked, the room turned oddly silent.  Students stared.  I felt I must be speaking a foreign language.  I became self-conscious and my comments withered on the vine.  After I finished speaking, the room held a weighted pause.  Then, a grunt, or someone’s shifting in their chair cleared the air and conversation resumed, often in another direction completely, as if I’d never spoke at all.

Maybe I’m over-dramatizing for effect? 

That could be true, but all I can say is, that’s how it felt to me.  

Back at our little apartment in the evening, navigating the slim hallway of our kitchen, I explained the experience to my husband.  “It’s like my words are lead balloons.”  Gesturing with my hands, I clarified, “I launch them up, out, and into the room.  They should float, like butterflies or leaves, but instead they land in the middle of the circle with a thud.  Then everyone looks around awkwardly before moving on.”

We laughed and let it go.

Fifteen years later, I repeated the story for a friend.  “I didn’t quite fit in,” I said. 

“Oh, my gosh, of course you didn’t fit in,” he said.  “You were a poet among mathematicians.”

A bell went off in my head, my heart, it rang all the way down to my shoes.  He was right.  I was speaking a different language. 

//

I’m sure I wasn’t the only poet at Princeton Theological Seminary, in fact I’ve met a handful in the years since graduating.  Thankfully, the experience wasn’t scaring since my grades helped counter-weight the sense of not fitting in; what I was left with was more of a sense of a question mark hovering over my head.  What I was experiencing – me, a serious woman, who lived in a serious way – was a case of mistaken identity. 

//

Some time ago, I fell in love with The Story of Ferdinand. The story of Ferdinand is a story of mistaken identity – because of his great size, and an unfortunately timed bee sting, everyone is convinced that Ferdinand is a prize fighter.  Ferdinand is carted off to the bull fight ring in Madrid, but his actions there give everyone – from the Benderilleros to the Picadors and Matador – pause.  Ferdinand, who has always loved sitting quietly, smelling the flowers, sits down in the middle of the bull fight ring, completely absorbed in smelling the flowers that have fallen from the lovely ladies’ hair.  The crowd is disappointed, the fighters are disappointed, and Ferdinand is taken back home where he sits quietly, smelling flowers, and “he is very happy.”

In this analogy, I suppose, seminary is the bull fighting ring and I led myself there and did my best to fight in the circle I was given, but, still, when I thought no one would hold it against me, I made handbound books with watercolor illustrations, I wrote creative nonfiction, I colored outside the lines.

I’ve grown less and less fond of labels over the years, because of the way they so often restrict and confine rather than opening and inviting.  But for some time now, I’ve been trying ‘poet’ on for size and, when I need to find permission to bring all of me to the task at hand, I slip the title “Preaching Poet” or “Artist” on for size. 

//

This week, as I launch my first little poetry book out into the clear, blue, winter air, I’m thinking of the man who gave his wife skunks for Valentines, the way he saw that “nothing was ugly, just because the world says so.”  I’m thinking of the courage it takes to be who you are, in a world where fighting is more valuable than smelling the flowers.  I’m thinking poets, like poems, hide and present themselves in strange guises and all it takes is the patience, the willingness, the nerve, to live in a way that lets us find them.

________________________________________________________________________________

Hot off the presses!  My poetry book is available now, just $9.99 on Amazon.  Stop by, check out the reviews, and order one or two for Christmas.  

"A poetry book for people who don't read poetry."

Because (Mysticism and Math)

Photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash

Because my husband and I reached a moment of clarity when his truck, again, needed extensive repairs we couldn't afford.  "Something needs to change,” we said, together, and the words set like concrete, solid and steady beneath our feet. 

  

Because, the job opening was posted online within a day or two of our decision.  

Because, it had been six months or more since I looked for any kind of job and this kind of job only appears once in a blue moon.  What are the chances we would reach this decision, that I would start looking for a job, the day after my dream job was posted?

Because, my references all said, "Yes, of course, we think you'd be great."  

Because, the timing is perfect, with the kids ready steady in a new school year. 

Because I want it to be so. 

Because, because. 

//

I ticked these signs off one by one in my Spiritual Director's office, laying them out like bread crumbs I've gathered amidst the wilderness of my life, crumbs I hope might form a trail.  

“I want these things to add up,” I said.  “I want them to mean I will get this job.  But I know, it’s one thing to know what is – to be aware – and a much more difficult thing to know what it means.”  

Here, she nodded, knowingly.  

“I want to be able to say these signs mean God is doing this," I continued, "but I know God too well by now to place God in that kind of box."  "I’m not sure where God is in this,” I concluded.

“It seems to me,” she said, “that you’re being invited into a more mystical way of being.  Invited to dwell, not in the meaning of things, but in what you know to be true in each moment.”

//

In high school, I always did my math homework first.  For the most part, for me, it was easy.  More importantly, though, it was solid, clear, concrete.  There was only one answer and when you found it and checked it, you were done. 

Writing homework, though, was another beast.  Writing an essay is so open-ended.  There are so many words to choose from, so many ways to shape a sentence, a paragraph, a thought.  There is no clear ending; there are many was to frame a correct answer, so many ways to sculpt ideas across a page.  I never finished my writing assignments until just before they were due.  

//

Mysticism is not math.  It is the homework I have saved for last.

//

I immediately recognized the truth in my Spiritual Director’s words and, inwardly, I sighed.  Giving up my clumsy attempts to discern the meaning of things felt like a loss – a loss of knowing, to be exact.  

What do we have if we can't add events of our lives up one after the other, if we cannot trace a simple path through the woods of where we are to where we think we want to be?   We are left only with the present in all of its fullness and fragility.  

I told my director this, how I value the easy math of knowing, nailing down, what God is or is not doing.  How letting it go feels like a loss.  But, I realized even as I spoke, that by letting go of what is not, we enter, more fully, into what is.  We are free to stop hoarding and trying to find our path via the breadcrumbs of our lives.  Free to enjoy each crumb as the much-needed manna it is.  

What do we have if we only live in the present?

We have nothing.  We have everything.

We have God.

    

Sidewalk Flowers: Carry, Gather, Spread

I had the joy of speaking at our little church this past Sunday and, because I got to choose the text, I focused on 1 John 4:7-19.  I talked about the love of God that we are made from and for - the love of God that abides in us and invites us to abide in it.  

Before all of that, though, I shared the video below of the children's book, "Sidewalk Flowers," by JonArno Lawson.  I told the congregation how flowers - particularly wildflowers - are a symbol, for me, of God's love.  I told them to pay attention to the use of color in the book, to pay attention to the flowers.  I told them we can be like that little girl - carrying, gathering and sharing the love of God.  

Maybe you need a gentle reminder?  

You are loved by God - this is who you are - God's loved child.  God's love is in you, like a seed, just waiting to unfurl, to sink roots down deep, to grow you up into your one and only vocation as one who loves and is loved.  

May you carry love with you today.  

May you gather and spread the love of God wherever you go.   

A Painter Stopped By, Out of the Blue

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

//

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

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

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

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

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

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

//

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

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

//

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

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

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

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

//

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

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

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

I started painting and writing because I needed to. 

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

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. 

Goodbye, Hello (An Announcement)

Cliff notes Version: Friends, this is a rather long post - the short version is this: Hey, look, I have a new web address! To celebrate the new address and Valentine's Day, I'll be posting a short poem or story each day this week around the theme of love.  Check back frequently - next week I'll return to my usual posting schedule.  

A Field of Wild Flowers grew out of a vision that arrived in early 2011 as I sat praying in the calm, white, spacious place of my Spiritual Director’s office.  It came at a time when life as I knew it (i.e. planned it) seemed to have ended.  It came when, for reasons deep and wide, I could no longer see a clear path laid out ahead of me; my sense of destination as well as my means of travel appeared to be irreparably lost. 

Which is all a fancy way to say that my life was upended by the arrival of twins, by a departure from my job as an Associate Pastor, and by the slow surrender of my long-held dream of attaining a PhD in Biblical Studies.  Before the twins’ arrival, I lived cloistered in our culture’s fantastical illusion that life is a highway – a long, sometimes winding, but steady road toward a distant destination which, most often, goes by the name ‘success.’  And, although we may each define it differently, the successful among us all agree that steady and determined movement toward it is key.

But, like Dante, “Midway on our life’s journey, I found myself in dark woods, the right road lost.  To tell about those woods is hard – so tangled and rough.”  I worked through those tangled, rough woods for months before I was free enough to embrace a new vision – to accept my placement somewhat “off of the main road” and commit to really exploring it.  What came to me, in the wake of acceptance, was the image of a field of wild flowers – a place with many paths, a space for wandering and discovery, a place of being rather than going. 

Thus was born, A Field of Wild Flowers.  Words became the lens through which I explored the daily looking for signs of life in the middle of this wide open space on the side of the road.  For five years, now, I’ve lived and written from that field, finding God in everything from housework to hens.  The more I explored the field of my life, the more I realized what I feared most wasn’t my failure to reach life’s highway’s destination, but the idea that God was somehow waiting for me in that imagined destination - the idea that the love and acceptance, the presence I longed for, was tied up in success' illusory arrival.  Imagine, then, my continual surprise and delight, at discovering again and again that God is right here with me on the side of the road, picking flowers, tending house and home, incarnate in each moment as it comes. 

Now, five years in, I find myself again in a place of transition, though less lost and less afraid.  I’ve learned to make my home here in the field of God’s goodness and grace and discovered that this is, in fact, my destination.  Writing has been the means of both discovering and exploring this destination.  Over the past several months I've found a new sense of clarity around my intentions as I continue to nurture and expand this site.  

I want to create and hold spaces where others can consider the possibilities of God’s presence in all aspects of their one precious life.  I want to help others learn to live in and listen beyond the surface of their days, to begin to discover the heartbeat of God that rolls like a steady drum beneath the peaks and valleys of daily life.  I want to tell stories that explore the possibilities of God’s presence, that illuminate the incarnational realities of God’s dwelling in our midst.  As such, I want to open and share with you the joys, sorrows, hopes and heartaches of This Contemplative Life. 

My hope is that this new site will allow me to both broaden and deepen my reach online and through in-person events.  I plan to continue to post here once or twice a week and will also add a newsletter that will go out twice a month.  This site will continue to boast a wide array of stories, thoughts and reflections; my hope isn’t to narrow my content but rather broaden my audience.  

My newsletter, Quiet Lights, will, offer short, simple reflections, images or poems to serve as an invitation to contemplation.  The newsletter will also feature updates on upcoming events. 

While I’m a little sad to move away from the image of wild flowers, which continues to ground me in the present, I’m excited to move into This Contemplative Life.  This Contemplative Life will continue to be a space that focuses on the small, day-to-day stories of my own life, but my hope is that my practice of attending to the intricacies of my own life will inspire you to attend to the details of your own life – for, contrary to popular opinion it’s God, not the devil, who’s found in the details. 

As always, I'm grateful for the quiet, faithful readership that has grown up around A Field of Wild Flowers.  A change to a new web address is a bit scary and I'd love your continued support and help as I move forward.  Here are three simple ways you can help me grow this space:   

* Please share this webpage, help me build a growing audience.  

* Like my Facebook page (still working to update the name there!). 

* Sign up for the bi-monthly newsletter, Quiet Lights, and feel free to share that and the resources therein with others too.

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