Gathering Bread, Gathering Images

 

 

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. Luke 13:34

 

Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head. Luke 9:58

 

 

 

And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. Matthew 6:28-9

We're waist-deep into Lent now, slogging through this dry and dusty wilderness.  In the beginning there was a burst of buzz about it, but now this journey, started with a sense of vision and purpose, has somehow morphed into what feels like aimless wandering. 

Forty days really is a long time for our restless hearts to hold steady.  The anxious disciples couldn’t stay awake and pray for even a few short hours, so how can we expect any better from our own weary, prone-to-wander souls?

For forty days, though, Jesus stayed; forty days of peeling back and grinding down until his real identity shone through like a diamond in the rough. 

For forty years the Israelites wandered; forty years of stooping to gather manna day-in and day-out.   

As I looked through Stanley Spencer's beautiful series of paintings on Christ in the Wilderness I realized that so many of the images Jesus used later in his ministry must have originated from his time in the wilderness.  As he waited, fasting and praying, Jesus watched and observed the foxes and wolves, the flitting birds, the dancing flowers and as he spoke he would return to these images again and again.  Images gained while waiting there in that seemingly empty place, images gathered like manna in the desert.  

This gives me hope as I wander my own way through these last tearful days of winter.  Maybe these long, dry days are actually filled with the things that will sustain me in the days ahead.  Maybe gathering the bread that falls daily is enough to change everything, not only because it fills me today, but because of the way these repeated gestures, the bending and gathering, shape my soul. 

Time spent in the wilderness of Lent, the wilderness of life, shapes us as we shed, ever so slowly, that which encumbers.  The eyes of our hearts are awakened to the small stones, the crumbs of vision that we will carry with us when we emerge from these dark and empty days, when we come forth, living, like One rising from a tomb. 

This post is linked with Imperfect Prose, click on the button to the right to visit the site.

The Fallow Field (for everything there is a season)

The Fallow Field

I wonder whether
the field
that lies fallow
for a season,
envies
a neighboring field’s
productivity?

Or whether it simply lies there
resting,
drinking in
the warm sunshine
as it is restored,
grateful.


I'm coming into yet another week tired and empty. Imagine my relief and gratitude at finding this poem waiting, resting, in my blog drafts. For every time there is a season, and if this is your season to rest and be restored, may you find the grace to embrace it.

Linking with Playdates with God, and A Dare to Love Yourself.

Sarah's Laughter

I wrote an essay recently in which I described laughter as a form of prayer and this got me thinking about Sarah's laughter at the news that she was going to bear a son.  The following story is based, loosely on the story of God visiting Abraham and Sarah found in Genesis 18:1-15. I know that infertility is a very difficult and painful experience for many women and please know that my thoughts here are meant to reflect the overall arch of the story of Sarah and Abraham and in no way reflect an opinion about the reasons for or experience of infertility.

*   *   *   *   *

It came out sudden and sharp, more like a bark or a cough, surprising her as she knelt, crouched at the entrance to the tent.  Unwilled, unwelcome, the laughter split her dry lips open, cracking them, like parched ground. 

She felt a wave of shame at the sound as it escaped and the visitors turned in surprise.  Her husband turned too, that old fool, and she looked at him, helpless, feeling again powerless over her own body, unable to stop the sound once it broke free. 

She was afraid when she saw the visitor look toward the tent and her breath caught in her throat when she heard him question Abraham about the sound, “Why did Sarah laugh?” 

Again, as if by instinct, the denial rose and slithered out like a snake between her teeth, "I did not laugh." 

Her hand flew to her mouth, as if to catch her words and shove them back inside, but she was too slow and they shot out, arching through the air like an arrow aimed directly at the place where the man sat. 
 

He turned then and looked at her, full on, his eyes piercing despite the distance between them and Sarah felt a shiver of fear run down her spine.  She felt the flour and dough that clung to the under-side of her finger-nails, the dirt and dust that lined her sandaled feet. 

Under his gaze, she became aware of how dead she felt, how the life had drained slowly from her face and chest over the years as she crumbled inward upon herself like some craven creature.  Looking into those eyes she felt her own dryness and thirst, her bones that crackled and clicked with each movement, she felt the emptiness of her body, of her soul, as though nothing was left of her but a walking corpse.

This was her fear, of course, but as the man held her gaze the fire in his eyes softened until the gentleness there came to resemble something like the look of love she’d seen in Abraham’s eyes during those early hopeful years.  The softness there, the love, both heightened and quenched her thirst as it crossed the distance between them.   The love circled her and fell like a heavy rain, sudden and fierce, washing over her empty body.  His gaze was like a heavy downpour in the desert that runs in rivulets over the dry ground, seeking entrance into the depths of the earth.   

When she saw the love in his eyes her mouth opened involuntarily and something like a little gasp, a small rush of air escaped and at that moment his love entered in.  Pouring in past her lips and teeth and tongue where just moments before the lie had slithered out.  Love entered like summer rain and settled deep inside in the small crack the laugh had hollowed out. 

Sarah shut her mouth tight, quickly, when she realized what had happened, but the man’s eyes only softened further until they crinkled at the corners and twinkled with humor.  Then his mouth cracked too into a wide and generous smile like the sun as he said, “Oh yes, you did laugh.”        

She denied the laugh, but she couldn’t deny its effect, the way it opened her, split something deep within.  It started as a derisive sound, a reflexive rejection that rose from deep within her dried-up body at the mention of a child. But even that small hacking, choking sound broke something free within her. The laughter moved inside her like a fault-line as it made its way through, dividing and realigning as it took hold of her body.

When she would tell the story, years later, of their son and his long time coming, people would accept it all without so much as a blink until she came to the part where he smiled.  There was no question that God might walk up out of the blue for lunch, might open the womb of an old woman, but the part where the face of God cracked wide open, split in two by a smile, that, was more than they could accept and, so, over time, it was dropped from her story. 

Though it took years to come to pass, Sarah secretly credited the laugh for opening her womb, at least the smallest bit.  But who's to say whether it was the laughter that grew steadily over weeks and years or the tears that followed, springing from the same deep riven place within, either way life had come and it dwelt now within her.  After all, if the world can be created through words, then surely a womb can be opened through laughter, split wide like a seed when the sprout of new life unfurls. 

I Stopped Hugging My Son (the doorway of our need)

He wasn’t quite three when we told him we were expecting twins.  I still carried him on my hip into the daycare he attended twice a week; I hung his coat and put on his shoes and treated him like the baby he wasn’t until I found out the twins were coming.  Then I changed course, and quickly, encouraging him to do for himself what I’d done for so long both to foster independence and because I could no longer do them.

At almost three he shed his soft toddler curves and grew into the gangly, boyish body of a preschooler.  My little boy who’d been so snugly and sweet was suddenly all corners and sharp edges.  When I sat on the couch the twins’ two bodies wrapped tight in mine jutted out in front of me like a dangerously exposed beach ball, ready to pop at the slightest pressure.  After one too many leaping, lunging hugs from my son with knees and elbows knocking, I learned to lean forward setting my arms like a protective scaffolding that surrounded my womb.  

I had to stop lifting him for the last two-thirds of the pregnancy and my lap slowly disappeared, vanishing inch by inch with each passing month.  He struggled to find a way to be near me and eventually took to perching on my shoulders while I read, mussing my hair and wrapping his little arms and legs around my neck in his desperate need to find a some part of me to call his own.

After the birth my stomach shrank back, but my arms and hands were perpetually full and my lap too as I sat nursing two for hours and days and weeks on end.  Whether the hormones were to blame or the sheer difficulty of managing two flailing bodies, I simply couldn’t bear to have my son sitting on the couch with me as I nursed.  I couldn’t stand the bouncing, jouncing presence, couldn’t handle one more person touching me.  The further away he sat, the better, and I was relieved when he took to watching me from a chair on the other side of the room, keeping up a constant stream of chatter – anything to stay connected. 

All of that is past now, my arms are more often empty as the twins are toddling along, but it occurred to me the other day that the distance between my son and I remains. 

I was standing in the kitchen, feeling lonely and blue, needing a hug, when I saw my son, so tall and thin, standing on a chair at the dining room table.  My own need for a hug awakened me to the fact that I had, at some point along the way, stopped hugging him. 

Oh, I hugged him at bedtime and coming and going on the days I left the house, but I’d stopped randomly grabbing him and wrapping him in an embrace, stopped seeing him as a potential source of affection, stopped feeding his body with the food of physical touch.

I crossed the room immediately and asked for a hug and he gave it, wrapping those spindly arms around me and holding tight.  I told him I needed a hug and in so doing I affirmed his need too, that had gone unmet for so long.

Since then I’ve noticed a change in him.  He snuggles up beside me again while I’m reading, twining his little arm through mine, and he dares to fight the twins, those territorial little beasts, for lap-space which causes no end of fighting. 

I hug him more now, every time I think of it, and I’m noticing he lets me hug him when he gets hurts whereas, for a long time, he would just run off to his room. 

It’s such a terrible thing for a mother to say, isn’t it, “I stopped hugging my son.”  I think of the little ways we starve ourselves and each other and the many countless ways we can be fed – physically, spiritually, emotionally – and I pray for the grace of awareness that I might not withhold that which I have to give.  

I’m grateful for the way my own need awakened me to his.  

I'm grateful, too, for this season of Lent that so deftly peels back the layers of comfort and compulsion that often hide our deepest needs.  For needs are a doorway, always, an invitation into deeper relationship with ourselves and others and God. 

May our longing, uncovered, awaken in us desire and may we have the grace to bend low, entering through desire's arched doorway into the deepest parts of our souls where the spirit of God dwells.   

This post is shared with PlayDates With God and Hear it on Sunday, Use it on Monday and A Dare to Love Yourself.

The Merry-Go-Round (we all fall down)

"Where we stumble and fall is where we find pure gold." Carl Jung

My husband and I were talking the other night about life and winter with four kids, about parents in transition and crisis, about waiting on pins and needles and credit-cards for our much needed tax refund. 

“You know what it feels like?” I asked.  “Remember playing on a merry-go-round when you were a kid?  Hanging on to those metal bars, pushing and running with all your might and then, suddenly your foot slipped out and you fell, but your friends kept running?  How you tried to hang on, to pull yourself up, but you couldn’t get your feet back under you fast enough?”

I can remember the under-side of the merry-go-round so clearly, the center post around which it all spun, the way the ground sloped out away from the post to the ditch worn by running feet.  You never lost your footing all at once, but instead started leaning hard, too hard.  Soon your upper body was too far out in front of your legs and when you finally fell your shoulder slammed into dirt, old leaves, and mud.  The kids behind and in front of you kept running and it took a few seconds that felt like minutes for your brain to send the message to your hands that right about now would be a good time to let go.    

“Yes,” he said, “that’s exactly what it feels like.” 

We felt a little better then, having named the feeling and paired it with a picture.  Nothing was solved, no weight lifted, but at least we had another angle, an image between us, that gave expression to the experience. 

There’s a certain kind of grace, I guess, in knowing where you stand or, rather, lay.  There’s some comfort too in solid ground, if you can manage to not get trampled; comfort in lying there, still, as your breathing slows. 

As you press your back into the ground you're held by that to which we shall all one day return.  Looking up, the sky opens, wide. 

(image credit: www.lismorgan.com)

The Home of Your Soul on the Earth (in which I take up drinking for Lent)

"The body is a sacrament . . . a visible sign of invisible grace  . . . The body is the mirror where the secret world of the soul comes to expression.” – John O’Donohue in Anam Cara

The weekend before Lent started, I noticed that I’d fallen into an old habit of not eating, getting by on half a piece of dry peanut-butter toast in the morning, for lack of time and focus, and often skipping lunch too. I had stopped getting groceries – really getting groceries – aside from dribs and drabs of necessities.  Meal preparation fell by the way-side as well, so that dinner was a continual mad-scramble as I pulled things together for one more meal. 

Soda consumption – my Achilles heel – was up too.  Back in seminary a daily diet coke poured over ice and served with a slice of lemon was a treat, a symbol, if you will, of self-care in some deluded sense.  But lately I was up to two-a-day and I’d given up using glasses.  In a moment of stress or frustration or simple thirst I would grab for the trusty can, no longer even hearing the satisfying crack and snap of the tab-top lifting, no longer tasting the welcome bite.  

I stood behind the refrigerator door gulping and placed the open can on the shelf, returning at-will for a short, bracing nip of caffeine and carbonation.  Drinking soda like that is like drinking wine straight from a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag – sly and empty, pure need and no delight.  Give that woman a glass, I thought, as I saw myself in a rare moment of self-awareness. 

There were many years where I wouldn’t have noticed these things.  I’ve always had a tendency to neglect my body, to live in the lofty penthouse of my mind, conveniently removed from the dust and dirt, the tumult of daily, embodied, life.  I turned a deaf ear to my body for a long time and I’m lucky I’ve not paid a higher price for my neglect.  Something about three pregnancies, though, and the long-haul commitment of nursing four little bodies into strength and health, forced me to listen more closely to my own body, if only for the sake of those little ones it grew. 

I’ve never been a good friend to my body, never been a lover of it, but this year I’m sensing the invitation to listen more closely, to care more deeply for the gift of this frail tent that houses my soul.  My “one word” for 2013, as best as I can tell, is “embodied” and rather than mortifying the flesh as I have for these many years this Lent I’m embracing the call to care for my body as an extension of the body of Christ. 

This year I’m subtracting nothing other than my own disdain for the needs of the flesh.  I’m listening more closely to this dwelling place, this home for my soul as O’Donohue calls it, this sacrament of flesh and blood.  And, as a symbol of all of this, I’m drinking water. 

I’m learning to observe the dryness of my mouth, the signs of thirst that were among the first things I knew as an infant and, perhaps, among the first I put aside when I thought I was old enough to outgrow the needs of the flesh. 

Standing in the kitchen, where the sunlight pours through these old double windows lighting up floral-fielded blinds, I reach for a glass.  I lift the handle on the faucet and watch the water flowing like a stream of glistening light as it dances in the sun’s illumination.  I catch the dance in my cup and watch as it is filled, wait as my hand bears the weight. 

Turning off the tap I lift the glass, clear now, but weighted with light and life.  Then, placing my lips to the glass, I swallow down this dancing stream of life.  I gulp, pressing myself to embrace what is necessary but doesn’t necessarily come naturally. 

Looking out through the bottom of the glass as this small, shining river flows into me, I see a world sparkling and shining with refracted light.   As I drink, I think of Christ in the desert and the thirst he bore, both there and on the cross, and I know that I’m somehow more present to him as I become more present to my own body. 

This post is shared with Playdates With God and Hear it on Sunday, Use it on Monday.

Cut Flowers (vol1) (words around the web)

I don't think I'd ever read a single blog post before I started blogging, but since then, I've developed quite a list that I follow and read regularly.  Every once in awhile I'd like to share some of my favorite posts with you.  Simply click on the link provided to visit the site.  Enjoy!

For when you need to laugh: "After three months of negotiations, you have still failed to comply with what I feel are very basic rules when it comes to what you are to feed me. Since you show no indication of falling into line, I have been forced to strike until this matter is resolved."  10 Rules for Feeding a Picky Baby

For when you need hope: "My son now stands on that hill between resignation and acceptance, wrestling with God and self. Afraid." Ready for Spring 

For when your life needs a soundtrack: Emily Wierenga I completely stopped listening to music at home after we had kids - I simply couldn't stand the extra stimulation.  Recently, though, I started listening again but didn' have a lot of time to look for music I liked.  Then I stumbled across Emily Wierenga's blog where she has her own playlist.  Simply scroll down the page and look for the little player box on the right, click play and voila!  awesome hipster playlist at your fingertips.  Emily adds new music over time. 

For when you need to remember the beauty of loss: "He sits with his mother in room 710 . . ."  Absolute Sway 

For when you want to know more about the tree this apple fell from: "At the beginning of 2013 I believe God is telling me LIVE, really live, live fully, so that I might praise him through my life." Live Fully

For when you can't stand the noise any more: "Those ants know the value of a season of silence. They understand the importance of waiting. There is a time for scurrying and working and gnawing, a time for digging and eating and moving.  But there is also a time for stillness. A time for silence. A time for waiting." Why the Church Should Quiet Down

Have you read any great posts this week?  Did you like any of these?  I'd love to hear from you in the comment section below!