They are Eating My Prayers (the hungry are filled with good things)

I stand over the small wooden table gazing at the meal, my eyes taking in its beautiful simplicity.  The host ladles me a generous scoop of steaming, creamy soup and I shuffle slowly around the table in silence with my fellow retreat participants.  I fill my plate with a simple fresh salad, top it with nuts, and move on toward the bread.  Reaching my hand out to pick up a slice I notice that each piece is generously buttered.  It's enough to make me want to weep.

To me, that butter is love and I see immediately how buttering bread can be an act of love - generous, simple and true.  With the sweep of a knife and the smooth gliding-on of glistening yellow goodness that bread became a sacrament, a means of grace, that butter yet another expression of the love of God in the world. 

*   *   * 

James Martin’s book, Becoming Who You Are, includes a discussion about Andre Dubus, an author who became a paraplegic in mid-life: 

In his essay, Dubus, a devout Catholic, describes the laborious process of making sandwiches for his young daughters to carry with them to school. As he maneuvers his large, bulky wheelchair around his cramped kitchen, as he reaches for the utensils, as he tries to open cabinet doors from his awkward position, and as he cuts the sandwiches, he realizes what he is doing for his children.

             Each moment is a sacrament, this holding of plastic bags, of knives, of bread,
             of cutting board, this pushing of the chair, this spreading of mustard on bread,
             this trimming of liverwurst, of ham. All sacraments . . .

Dubus wrote about this in an essay entitled “Sacraments,” where he also says the following, 

A sacrament is physical, and within it is God's love; as a sandwich is physical, and nutritious and pleasurable, and within it is love, if someone makes it for you and gives it to you with love; even harried or tired or impatient love, but with love's direction and concern, love's again and again wavering and distorted focus on goodness; then God's love too is in the sandwich.  (Meditations from a Movable Chair)

*   *   *

There are so many days when I feel it to be true – the fact that I simply don’t have enough to do this job of mothering well.  Not enough patience, not enough compassion and curiosity, not enough LOVE.  I am so busy.  I am so tired.  I am running on empty.

But still, I feed them, even if that feeding only consists in the tearing open of a bag full of salty, fatty carbohydrates; even if the meal was bought with money we didn’t have because for once I just wanted to sit down and relax together, gathered around these few moments of guilty pleasure. 

I chop, I peel, I dice and slice.  I sauté, bake, simmer and spread every day, three times a day or more.  I ladle, scoop, and dish it out.  These rituals I perform day in and day out, like a liturgy of love, each stroke of the spoon a prayer, each flip of the spatula an amen. 

These days, when feel I don't have enough, I trust, I hope and pray that these simple acts of love, these sacraments coming as they always do in broken ways will be transformed as they’re consumed.  Sunbutter and jelly sandwiches, gold fish and juice-filled sippy cups transfigured into love so that even on the days in which I have so little to give, they are being filled with good things. 

These children of mine, they are eating my prayers, being filled, bite after bite, with love. 


How to Use a Runaway Truck Ramp (An Excerpt and A Review)

 

I was only a few weeks in to blogging when I stumbled across Shawn Smucker's blog via a friend's site.  His was one of the first blogs I ever followed, probably the first I commented on, and I continue to look forward to his posts each day.  Shawn's newest book, How to Use a Runaway Truck Ramp, came out this week and is available in multiple formats on Amazon and at Shawn's website, shawnsmucker.com. 

The book follows Shawn and his family of six on a four month cross-country adventure.  Having dreamed of traveling the country in an RV "someday" Shawn and his wife Maile move their plans up by a few decades as they find themselves faced with a failing business and a simultaneous call to move into writing as a full time career.

 

Maile is also a writer and blogger and both contribute to the book that's both funny and reflective.  Shawn and Maile capture the excitement and anxiety of adventure while continuously giving glimpses into the deeper workings of God and grace in their lives. 

 

I'm please to share an excerpt from the book below and encourage you to check it out on Amazon or click over to Shawn's blog to find more reading.  This excerpt is a little more serious than much of the book, but is a prime example of the depth of insight with which Shawn and Maile explore life.   

 

*   *   *   *   *

 

One night I called my mom. Within a few seconds of hearing her voice on the other end of the line, I knew something was wrong.
 

“Shawn, I have some not-so-good news,” she said in a quivery voice reserved for funerals and personal catastrophes.

 

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

 

“Your aunt has cancer,” she said.

 

It’s rather shocking, actually, to discover something like this. It felt like discovering there was a traitor in our midst. I found myself wondering which nearly invisible cells in my own body were planning a revolt. Which tree was going to fall on our bus. I started seeing death behind every oncoming car, or hiding in every shadow.

 

Then a few weeks later I found out that some very close friends of ours were miscarrying their baby. I didn’t know the details. But the sadness was recognizable and reminded me of standing next to Maile at a routine doctor’s visit when she was pregnant with our third child. The doctor looked up at us with pursed lips and confused eyebrows.

 

“I’m really sorry to tell you this,” she had said. “But something isn’t right.”  A few weeks later, Maile miscarried. Friends hugged us. We walked around our house quiet and empty.
 

There is something devastating about hope unattained. The unexpected diagnosis. The bright candle that turns into a smoldering wick. The “something isn’t right” speech. Sometimes, just sometimes, it makes me wonder if hope is worth it. Makes me want to live a life where I always expect the worst, keep my hands closed, my eyes on the ground in front of me. Too much looking out at horizons exposes one to the possibility of disappointment.

 

Then on a Tuesday evening during our time in Nashville, I went outside to help Maile’s brother till his garden. He and I took turns pushing the rototiller around, pushing all the old dead grass and hay under the rich brown soil. Then I raked out the dead stuff to the edges and piled it all into the wheelbarrow. The soil went from looking barren and rather unwilling to expectant. Open.

 

It takes a lot of turning over to reach that point. A lot of pounding and tearing and grinding of the soil. The rototiller grasped at the ground like giant claws. Our shovels bit into the ground and formed the edge of the garden.

 

As I worked the soil and the sun dropped behind those Tennessee hills, I thought of my aunt with cancer. My friends losing their baby. They were being tilled. They were being churned up.

 

But I know them, and I know their hearts. And while it will not diminish the pain they feel now, I marvel at what rich soil they will become.

*   *   *   *   *

 

Shawn Smucker is the author of How to Use a Runaway Truck Ramp and Building a Life Out of Words. He lives in Lancaster County, PA with his wife Maile and their four children. You can find him on Twitter and Facebook, and he blogs (almost) daily at http://shawnsmucker.com/  Maile blogs at mailesmucker.blogspot.com.   

Nothing Will Be Impossible (Where Mary Meets Us)

"For nothing will be impossible with God." Luke 1:37

I can't do this.
I am doing this.
Both. And.

This is where we live,
where Mary meets us.
And we all cry out together
to the angel and the blinding light,
"How can this be?"

Then comes the reply,
"The spirit of God, my friend,
the spirit of God."

And we all cry out together,

and we all cry.
Both. And.

*   *   *   *   *

 

I wander around the house these days, treading water, trying to stay afloat while crunching layers of cheerios under my feet and endlessly ferrying dirty glass bowls from one room to another.

 

I tell myself I’m the least likely candidate to be in charge of what feels like a small daycare. I think to myself, “This is not me. This is not possible. How can I be a mother of four kids?” 

 

Click here to cotinue reading this post titled: Impossible.

*   *   *   *   *



What impossible thing are you facing today?  May Mary's question and the angel's answer be a guide and a comfort to you.     

Where the Wild Things Are (and where Good News begins)

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God . . . John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Mark 1:1-4 adapted

I met my friend in the wilderness the other night. Well, it wasn't exactly the wilderness, but it was a bar of sorts, which for me still qualifies as a real and somewhat alarming wilderness, being the good Christian girl I was raised to be. She was late and I sat there in the dim light trying to appear busy on my phone and constructing to-do lists on the white placemat in front of me.

She arrived full of unnecessary apologizes which I quickly brushed aside and we dove in head first. Between us there's little need for small talk and right there in the middle of that noisy wilderness we each pulled open the layers of our lives and sat back, listening through tears as our hearts talked for awhile.

This is the friend who tells me how her marriage really is, tenuous and struggling, and shares how she slapped her son in a moment of exasperated rage that has melted now into a messy pile of regret. She is the one I can tell how I yelled at my own son, threw a royal tantrum of rage that scared him and me and how we all ended up on the couch in tears trying to figure out how that day could be redeemed.

*   *   *
 

I have to admit that I never really liked Maurice Sendak's book, Where the Wild Things Are.  I tend to like books that are warm and pretty, books that affirm my need for a world that's safe, orderly, and predictable. But, it’s possible that the fact that I don’t particularly like the book is an indication that I do get it, a little bit at least. What I do understand is that Max is struggling with the wilderness, with all that is wild and untamed both inside and outside of himself.

Something about the unrelenting, all-humbling job of parenting leaves me all too familiar with this wilderness. If my life were a children's book, then one might notice a forest of sorts growing in my house most days right around four pm or any other time that happens to be about an hour before my husband is due home and a half-hour before I lose it.

Too often by that point the day is been played out - patience is gone. I'm wresting dinner onto the table while kids are whining, fighting, hanging and swinging off of my legs like the little wild things they are. By then we're all wearing our wolf suits and if the windows are open the whole neighborhood can hear the roaring, gnashing of teeth and rumpus that ensues. As a parent, as a human, I'm well acquainted with wilderness and wild things, within and without, but it doesn't mean I like it.

*   *   *

It's significant that the gospel of Mark places the advent of the good news of Jesus Christ right smack in the middle of the wilderness. This gospel has no time for angels, places no stock in genealogies or other such small-talk as a means of introducing the striking, challenging figure of Christ who emerges in the pages that follows. Mark begins like my friend and I do, by peeling back the layers and starting not in the skies full of stars and angel choirs, but on the bare, dusty, rocky ground of the wilderness.

Something about this gives me heart, gives me hope, as this first week of advent is designed to do. Something about it resonates with the prophecies of Christ and the prophets who spoke them, those craggy ill-kempt men and women who lived on the edges and thereby lived and spoke that much closer to the heart of things.

The good news begins in the wilderness. What a challenge, what a hope.

*   *   *
 

The friend I met with told me how she'd shared with her counselor that she has few real, close relationships, few relationships where anything beyond the bright cheery small-talk of this season might be appropriate. Her counselor said, "Yes, but what about this Kelly? It seems like you have a real relationship with her, why do you think that is?"

My friend, God bless her, said, "Kelly's real. I mean, she told me she threw an apple peel at her children, for goodness sake, so I feel like I can be my real self with her."

After telling this story she looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, "Why is it so hard to believe that our humanity is what's most attractive about us?"

*   *   *
 

Oh, my friends. How deep and wild is the wilderness within you? Who do you have who's willing to meet you there?

*   *   *
 

This is the beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ - the One who came and dwelt among us, who meets us in the fullness of humanity. Christ, who "sailed off through night and day and in and out of weeks and almost over a year" to meet us here, "where the wild things are."

 
I'm so grateful for my friend who gave me permission to share from our conversation - she's one of the flowers in this beautiful field.

Dostoevsky 's Cook (An Angel, an Onion, and a Pair of Boots)



It's only a story, but it's a nice story.  I used to hear it when I was a child from Matryona, my cook, who is still with me.  It's like this.  Once upon a time there was a peasant woman and a very wicked woman she was.  And she died and did not leave a single good deed behind.  The devils caught her and plunged her into the lake of fire.  So her guardian angel stood and wondered what good deed of hers he could remember to tell God; "She once pulled up an onion in her garden," said he, "And gave it to a beggar woman." And God answered, "You take that onion then, hold it out to her in the lake, and let her take hold and be pulled out.  And if you can pull her out of the lake, let her come to Paradise, but if the onion breaks, then the woman must stay where she is."  The angel ran to the woman and held out the onion to her.  "Come," said he, "catch hold and I'll pull you out."  And he began cautiously pulling her out.  He had just pulled her right out, when the other sinners in the lake, seeing how she was being drawn out, began catching hold of her so as to be pulled out with her.  But she was a very wicked woman and she began kicking them.  "I'm to be pulled out, not you.  It's my onion, not yours."  As soon as she said that, the onion broke.  And the woman fell into the lake and she is burning there to this day.  So the angel wept and went away.  - Fyodor Dostoevsky

*   *   *

There was a time about eight months after the twins were born that I felt like I really needed (ie. wanted) a pair of rain boots.  I scoured the internet for weeks on end, I watched e-bay like a hawk and finally I bought a beautiful pair of lime green boots - they're the happiest boots I've ever seen. 

When they arrived my children swarmed the door as they do any time the UPS man approaches.  I grabbed the box, declared it MINE and quickly set it aside to open later. When I finally opened them I was greeted by their heavy rubbery smell and marveled at their beauty as my children stood by, their eyes glowing with excitement and anticipation.  I looked the boots over and set them aside. 

My children gasped in astonishment, "You're not going to wear them!?"  They immediately clamored around my precious new boots and began man-handling them in a wide variety of ways. 

In that moment something rose up in me and I blurted out, "No, these are MY boots.  You MAY NOT touch them."  My children looked heartbroken, confused, as I gathered those boots and hauled them off to my room where they stood in line like soldiers awaiting the call of duty, waiting until I was good and ready to enjoy them. 

*   *   *



It's strange, I know, but I rather like Dostoevsky's onion story.  I like the way it captures the impulse of human greed in such a recognizable way, how cleverly and simply it reveals the way that greed hurts not only the greedy, but all involved.

I love this story in the same way I love the story of Jonah for it too is a story of greed and jealousy to the point of hatred and Jonah too is willing to die rather than let go of his righteous anger.  These stories catch me and I glimpse myself in them as one does in walking by a mirror or store window; in a flash something is revealed in me that I know to be true but am not often willing to recognize. 

I value this story for the way it catches me unawares and raises questions about my possessiveness, the way I protect me and mine and the cost of the things I keep.  No one could truly be as "wicked" as the woman was said to be, but that impulse is something we all know. 

I'm a giving person, as a mother of four one could argue that I give of myself all day every day and it's good and right that a few things should be saved for just me alone.  I would say you're probably right on most accounts, but the next time my husband reaches over into my bowl of chips and I slap his hand away with a snappy, "Get your own bowl," maybe I'll remember this woman and her onion. 

When the words "It's mine, not yours," rise so easily, so reflexively, and in such contrast to the mercy and joy and grace of the moment, I want to notice them, to sit awhile and consider their source, to notice the cost they bring to bear on my own soul and the souls of those around me. 

Help me to remember, God, with grace, the cost of MINE.  Help me to discern what to hold tightly lest I be held, imprisoned by that which I hold. 



*   *   *   *   *

 



I read this story last month in preparation for a retreat on Giving and Receiving.  It stayed with me, captured me, and rolled me around in its images and irony, its extremes and it's still not finished with me yet.  So here I am, sharing it with you.  What do you think? 

Playing the Love Card (a cure for grumpy bears and grumpier mothers)

One day Bartholomew was grumpy . . . His ears were cold.
"Wrap your scarf around your ears to keep them warm, " said George.

But Bartholomew was still grumpy. His legs felt too stumpy.
"I'll carry you," said George.

At home, Bartholomew's porridge was too lumpy,
his tummy too plumpy, and he was too small.
"I'll feed you," said George.

At bath time, Bartholomew hid. He did not like anything at all.
"What a day," said George. "You've been so grumpy, your legs have
felt stumpy, your porridge was too lumpy, your tummy too plumpy but,
Ba . . . I love you just the way you are."

Bartholomew felt better.
He kissed George and he brushed his teeth all by himself.

"Time for bed, Ba," said George. "We both need a little rest."
"Nah," said Bartholomew.

*   *   *   *   *



My husband and I worked at a personal care home for about two years when we first got married.  When the time came for us to leave one elderly woman told me how much she would miss us.  She said how much she liked and admired my gentle, soft-spoken husband and then she said, "But you, you could be a little grumpy at times."

I let the sting of her well-meaning comment settle a little, then looked her straight in the eye and said, "You're right, I can be a little grumpy sometimes." 

I guess maybe something like that could go on my tombstone, "Here lies a beloved wife and mother who could be a little grumpy sometimes."  It's true after all, there are days when I simply feel far from myself, out of sorts with the world and everything in it.  Days when there's an itch in my soul that I can't scratch, the feeling of something chaffing away at me so that the day itself leaves me fit to be tied no matter how good or bad or in-between it is.  Just ask my kids or my husband, they could tell you about it for sure.

I'm aware enough now at the ripe old age of thirty-five, to know when it's happening, to feel it coming or be able to step back in the middle of everything and see myself with an objective eye.  I know enough to recognize that it usually comes over me because of some rigid unspoken rule I've placed on the day or the moment.  There's nothing wrong with hopes and standards, but when the whole day is conspiring against you (as today happens to be, if you hadn't already guessed) it's best to somehow let yourself and those you love off the hook in some way or another. 

The only way I know to escape this is to surrender to the small grains of love and grace that surround me, to take my eyes off of my goals or dissatisfactions long enough to see something more and to open myself to the love that is True no matter what, whether I'm able to get out of the mood or mess I'm in or not.

You'll forgive me, won't you, if there are days, weeks, months when I play the "love card" with my grumpy old self, when I play it over and over like a favorite worn out record for my kids and my spouse?  Don't we all have days when we and the world we live in are just too "lumpy, plumpy and stumpy" to bear?     

I'll admit that there's something about playing the love card that seems a little weak, like maybe I'm getting too soft on myself, letting my standards slide a bit too far.  Love, really?  Like gratitude, it seems so ineffective, so unproductive, to people who're sold on the likes of power and control and self-improvement. 

Maybe, though, love is the best card we have to play, the only card that can bring us out, set us free from our wretched state of sin and sorrow and, perhaps even grumpiness.  I'm convinced it was one of Jesus' favorite tricks, which of course made plenty of those around him madder than all heck and drew others to him like all grace draws a sin-heavy soul. 

I have to wonder, too, if this isn't what Christmas and the cross that follows are all about, God playing a big 'ol grand love card on our behalf, freeing us to be better than we know ourselves to be.  "I love you, just the way you are," says the manger and the star, the sky full of angels and light.  "I love you," says God, "I love you."

Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, Love Divine,
Love was born at Christmas,
Star and Angels gave the sign.

- Christina Rosetti         

     

I Would Like to Buy $3 Worth of God, Please (vol.3)

This is my response to the following quote, the last in a series of three:

I would like to buy $3.00 worth of God, please. Not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine. I don't want enough of Him to make me love a black man or pick beets with a migrant. I want ecstasy, not transformation; I want the warmth of the womb, not a new birth. I want a pound of the Eternal in a paper sack. I would like to buy $3.00 worth of God, please. - Tim Hansel on most Christians' priorities. 

*   *   *   *   *

 

I understand what Tim Hansel is trying to say here - that too often we want only what's comfortable or convenient of God, which is true.  I have a problem, though, knowing what to do with this observation.  It somehow seems to send me veering off into guilt (well, I guess I'm really not good enough after all) and subsequent striving (because I'm not good enough, I will take on self-improvement projects and thereby transform myself). 

 

This is old, old thinking for me, you see, I'm naturally a bit of an extremist, black and white to a fault, do or die, all or nothing. When I was a teenager at a youth rally in a stadium filled with my peers, I responded to the call to be a “martyr” for Christ, a call that naively predated our current era of terroristic martyrdom. I sat with my friends in our high seats with my heart pounding and hands sweating as the altar call came with the instructions to stand and yell, “I want to give my life away,” then make your way with speed down to the front.

I did it; I stood and shouted and ran like the devil was on my tail, as though one more act of courage might finally get me over that fearful line in the sand that I always felt existed between me and the God I longed for. When the choice comes between hot or cold, I’ve always pushed hard toward hot, fanning the flames of faith and devotion, laying on wood until the fire raged pulsing with a life all its own. But over time a fire like that consumes too much and burns those who wander too close to its light.

At the same time, though, I, like the apostle Paul before me, am the chief of sinners, the foremost hypocrite, a real standout in the crowd of double-speaking, fork-tongued followers most of us know ourselves to be. Giving my life away in that stadium packed with sweaty, hormonal teens may have been the easy choice; easier to give my uncertain life away than to embrace it with all of its ambiguity and freedom and potential for disaster or glory.

That simple act of faith was nothing when compared to the taste of daily surrender, daily trust, daily openness to the abiding call of love that I’ve learned in the many years since. Every day now I sit, metaphorically, in that stadium seat, each moment offering choices both false and true, and my heart pounds and my hands grow sweaty as I face the same choice again and again and again.

Yet what I now know to be true is that I was no closer to the love of God when my voice cried out and my feet made their thundering, pounding run toward the stadium’s ground level, than I was the moment before when I sat hunched amidst my friends who’s hearts surely were pounding too. I now know that there’s no falling or running or sinning my way out of the love of God, no surrender of a life that isn’t mine to begin with. 

We don’t need more martyrs, more striving, try-harder sorts of people and God doesn’t need them either. What we do need are people who’re willing to embrace and be embraced by the presence of God in whatever guise it comes – even in the $3 bag if that’s what’s offered or what our hearts can bare.  I think of people like Paul and Moses who counted themselves lucky to have seen less of God; a blinding light or a heavy cloud passing over a mountain’s crevasse was more than enough for them. God appears most often in the small, the whisper, the enigmatic response and blessed are those humble enough to recognize him there. 

I don't have many opportunities for grand gestures of faith these days, but moment by moment I'm choosing surrender.  I'm seeking out the small scraps of God, the hem of his garment, the crumbs that fall from the breaking bread of communion. These I can gather by the handful, feasting on the tiny morsels, spreading them around and sharing what I find.

I know now that I don’t have to “sell out” to God, because God has already “sold out” for me; I know that the answer to a faith of passive resignation isn't  greater self-control.   Though I spend a lifetime trying, I’ll never gather up all there is to be had of the One who gathers us all.

God, in this season when we await the One who comes to us in the tiny, frail package of human flesh, help us to be willing to receive you as you are. Teach us the art of surrender to the you and may the words of our hearts ever be as faithful and willing as Mary, "Let it be unto me."