Sticks and Stones (on Beauty that Speaks)

I woke up early on the morning I was scheduled to preach and drove to the spacious, wooded park a few blocks from our house.  In preparation for speaking on the story of Elijah’s widow, I wanted to gather enough sticks to spread across a make-shift altar space, creating a tableau of sorts with a children’s book I planned to read and a small tree.  

I was planning to speak about hope, but not the kind that soars.

 

I wanted to talk about the kind of hope that shows up among the sticks and stones of our lives, the few drops of oil and crumbs of flour; the kind of hope that dwells in the dried out, broken places and is only found in the looking.  

Pulling up and parking, though, I noticed a peculiar absence of branches, even in the most likely places, under the old stately trees at one end of the park.  But I got out anyway and started wandering around, my head bowed, scanning the ground for useable materials.  

Once I really started looking, I saw sticks everywhere and dressed in my Sunday best, I bent and gathered a good armful.  Arriving at church, I spread a table cloth on a long folding table and laid out my wares.  The Carrot Seed, by Ruth Krauss stood on a small wooden stand and behind it the avocado tree planted from a seed my husband salvaged from the compost bin.  

Taking the sticks out slowly I dropped them gently onto the table, making a good old mess and letting more than a few tumble to the ground.  Bits of bark scattered and clinging leaves drifted gently to the floor.  

There wasn’t anything beautiful about those sticks, not in a conventional sense.  

But there was a strange beauty in their brokenness, a beauty in the way they captured the way so many of us feel in hopeless times – dried up, broken and emptied of life. 

I imagined that for some in my congregation that day, hope was like a seed, small and expectant, and for others perhaps it was like a tree, sprouting and green.  But for others yet, I imagined that hope felt brittle and barren like it must have for Elijah’s widow who hunted and pecked along the ground, gathering just enough sticks to cook one last meal.  

I’m not sure if those sticks spoke to anyone that day, but they spoke to me.  

They reminded me that when words fail, beauty speaks, even the strange, stark beauty of broken, barren things.  Proclamation occurs, not just in the form of words and ideas, but also in images and icons, tangible expressions of our flesh and blood, bread and wine existence.  

So when I speak, I bring along my box of props.  I hand out colored play-doh and stones for writing on with permanent ink, I press a packet of wildflower seeds into every hand that reaches and leave piles of sleeping flower bulbs as images of resurrection on Easter morning.  

In this way I practice what I’ve learned and remind myself as well, that the word indeed was Word among us, but it also came in flesh and when words fail to find entry through fallow ears, then maybe some bit of truth wrapped in the form of beauty may still break in through hands and eyes and hearts.  

 This post is a reflection on the topic of "Creating Beauty at Work."  Interested in reading more?  Check out Shelly Miller's post An Apologetic on Beauty @ Redemption's Beauty.

Or visit The High Calling website to visit other posts on the topic: Other High Calling Posts on Creating Beauty at Work.

Also linking with Playdates With God.

For When You Need A Drink (of Love)

I've had a hard time finding words lately, or finding time for words perhaps. 

My husband says that what I need is some good old "normal," but I look at him wryly wondering what exactly normal might be.

Anyway, there are days, you know, when the words just don't come or they come but they're all so very wrong or they're simply lost in the stampede of everyone else's words. 

Yes, there are those days.

On days like that, then perhaps it's wise to borrow someone else's words.  This poem by Hafiz, a fourteenth century Persian poet, were sent to me by a friend and they seemed fitting to share on this weekend in which we all are made aware, again, of our deep, deep longing for love.  Enjoy!

(Maybe you were hoping for a Valentine's post?  If so, here's an oldie but goodie Love is Vertigo.)   

I Know The Way You Can Get

I know the way you can get
when you have not had a drink of Love:

your face hardens,
your sweet muscles cramp.
Children become concerned
about a strange look that appears in your eyes
which even begins to worry your own mirror
and nose.

Squirrels and birds sense your sadness
and call an important conference in a tall tree.
They decide which secret code to chant
to help your mind and soul.

Even angels fear that brand of madness
that arrays itself against the world
and throws sharp stones and spears into
the innocent
and into one's self.

O I know the way you can get
if you have not been drinking Love:

you might rip apart
every sentence your friends and teachers say,
looking for hidden clauses.

You might weigh every word on a scale
like a dead fish.

You might pull out a ruler to measure
from every angle in your darkness
the beautiful dimensions of a heart you once
trusted.

I know the way you can get
if you have not had a drink from Love's
hands.

That is why all the Great Ones speak of
the vital need
to keep remembering God,
so you will come to know and see Him
as being so Playful
and Wanting,
just Wanting to help.

That is why Hafiz says:
Bring your cup near me.
For all I care about
is quenching your thirst for freedom!

All a Sane man can ever care about
is giving Love!

~ Hafiz
From: 'I Heard God Laughing - Renderings of Hafiz'
Translated by Daniel Ladinsky 

Photo credit HERE.

Inheritance (Letting Go of Guilt)

 

We inherited several gallon-sized bags of blueberries when my in-laws sold their house and moved to Florida.  I like to think that they were handpicked by my mother-in-law some time ago, back before the brain tumor and multiple surgeries left her partially paralyzed, before we lost her without really losing her in so many ways.  She was a force to be reckoned with in the blueberry patch bringing them home by the bucket-full and urging them onto her grandchildren who wandered her house like a little Blue Man Group, stained with perpetually blue hands and faces.  

After helping his parents load their truck, John can back home with a few frozen roasts and the blueberries.  That was last March and if those berries were excavated from the depths of my in-laws’ deep-freezer, carbon-dating may be required to get their exact age.  

But here’s the thing – I don’t use a lot of frozen blueberries.  

So a lot of those berries sat in our freezer – like two of the three bags – and then got moved with us when we sold our house and moved this past summer.  And now, here we are, preparing to move again and I’m cleaning out our deep freezer and there isn’t room in our small freezer for everything.  So I was getting ready tonight to make some blueberry muffins because – God forbid I throw out my mother-in-law’s blueberries.  

I was planning to make muffins while my husband worked at a mountain of dishes and small children melted-down all around me; planning to make muffins after waiting for over two hours at the Dr with my daughter and getting pulled over on the way to the pharmacy; planning to make muffins I was pretty sure my kids wouldn’t eat.  

Why?

Because I wanted to honor my mother-in-law.  I didn’t want to feel guilty about throwing out all of that hard work and I didn’t want to lose one more connection to the woman she was - I wanted to do the right thing.

Sometime later, after the twins were to bed and the dishes done, after thawing and straining the dark purple juices into the sink, I realized that I don’t really have to make those muffins. 

“It’s ok, Kelly,” I thought, “Let it go.” 

I just don’t have a double-batch of muffins in me tonight, nor do I imagine I’ll have it in me sometime in this next harried month before me move.  And, oh my, I can’t imagine lugging them along with us to the new house like some big blue ball and chain.  So I’m cutting myself loose, cutting free of my own self-induced guilt. 

My mother-in-law’s will, her spirit – neither the essence of who she was or who she is – cannot be found in those old berries, it just can’t.  And my tossing them isn’t any more a betrayal of her than it is a betrayal of people all over the world who’d give their eye-tooth for those berries. 

It’s just a simple act of surrender, another form of letting-go and laying down the ideal self in favor of something more real which looks a lot more like a very tired, worn-out mother of four young children. 

My mother-in-law has four children – grown now – and my husband remembers picking blueberries as a child, bringing them home in buckets and eating more than he picked.  He wants to plant blueberries at the new house, who knows how many, but it’s part of his plan.  I look forward to walking out among them with my kids in tow, picking and eating and maybe even freezing a few and thinking of my mother-in-law from time to time. 

When their hands and faces are stained and their bellies popping, I’ll ask them if they remember how Bunia used to let them eat all the berries they wanted.  I’ll tell them how I dreaded changing their blueberry-filled diapers and how I tried to subtly curb their in-take.  I’ll tell them how much she loved them then and how she loves them now, only differently.   

And it will be enough.    

This post is linked with Playdates With God. 

Photo source HERE.

The Maternal Winter Olympics ( Right Now in a Town Near You)

(This morning I escorted four children over sheets of snow, sleet and ice so that two of them could attend school since it just happened to NOT BE CANCELED for once.  When I got back home, I felt like I deserved a medal and . . . thus was born the concept of The Maternal Winter Olympics.)

There are young, svelte athletes who train their whole lives for the Olympics and then, there's the rest of us.

While a small minority of the world's population participates, spectates and protests the Winter Olympics this year, there's no need to feel left out.  Every mother of young children can have the Olympic experience by participating in what I'm calling, "The Maternal Winter Olympics."

What is this, you ask?  Here's a sampling of the Events likely to appear in this year's extravaganza:

(The completion of these events is made more remarkable by the participants' total lack of stomach muscles due to multiple gestations and a general lack of exercise.  This condition requires that all maneuvers to be completed using only the muscles in the lower back.  Unfortunately, due to this factor, the incidence of injury among Maternal Athletes is quite high.  DO NOT attempt these feats on your own unless you are a similarly untrained mother of young and/or school age children.)

Slalom Descent: While Slalom skiing has been a long-standing event at the traditional winter Olympics, the addition of Slalom Snowboarding and the new Slopestyle events in which participants race down a slippery hill while attempting to avoid and/or perform stunts on obstacles has created quite a buzz.  In light of this, the Maternal Olympics will include a Slalom descent in which the participant can receive a score based on a combination of speed, weight carried and stunts.  

The course is set up to run on an open wooden staircase with participants starting at the top.  Participants then race down the coarse which may be littered with such obstacles as shoes, toys, and slippery rolling devices.  Extra points will be earned for near-falls, twists, turns and the ability to carry one or two small people while completing the course.  Needless to say, these races will be held in the middle of the night or early morning hours when participants are still groggy and without the benefit of caffeine. 

(She's Lost Her) Figure Skating:  This event takes place in three stages and is most loved by audiences because of the difficulty of the routines, the elaborate costumes and the likelihood of dangerous falls.

Stage 1: The Excursion Participants, dressed in stunning combinations of pajama bottoms and their husband's old winter coats, emerge breathless onto the rink.  The artistry of their appearance is accentuated by uncombed hair and wild-eyes.  During this stage, participants must navigate over an ice covered sidewalk and street to fetch a van which has been strategically parked in a huge snowy, icy pile.  Gunning the engine forward and back, the participant then slips and slides the vehicle to the sidewalk where it will be strategically placed for the next stage of the event.

Stage 2: Partners The participant now welcomes, one-by-one, several small skating partners into the event.  One at a time, she escorts them across the rink and into the waiting vehicle.  (Participants have been known to work with up to four partners for one event.)  Partners vary from actively resisting, to swan diving off of the porch.

Stage 3: Cognition Once in the van, the participant has the option of earning additional points IF she can remember that today is the day her five-year-old child is supposed to bring snack for his entire Kindergarten class.  Upon remembrance, the participant may then make one final life-threatening trek across the ice to fetch the nearly-forgotten snack.  

Luge: As in the traditional Olympics, this event focuses on speed.  Participants are timed as they maneuver a van with poor tires down a slippery slope toward a distant elementary school.  Focus and determination are required as passengers planted within the vehicle are likely to attempt to distract by dropping favorite toys into unreachable places, claiming to have forgotten their mittens and general whining and/or fussiness.  Those who reach the school in a timely manner are rewarded with the opportunity to disembark one or more of their passengers before starting off on the return course. 

A Word Concerning Sponsors and Medals:

Maternal Olympics participants are NOT awarded medals.  They are, however, occasionally allowed to go out in the evening to get groceries unaccompanied or to stay up late binging on episodes of Call the Midwife.  Being a Maternal Athlete is considered to be its own reward.

The Maternal Olympics are proudly sponsored by:
1. Anything with Caffeine in it.
2. Anything chocolate.
3. Three bites of dry toast and a sip of lukewarm coffee, which is also known by Maternal Athletes everywhere as the "Breakfast of Champions."


What Event would you add?

The Last Few Bees (the one-hundred-thousandth snow day)

In the morning, after the twins chug their milk and the heavy wet diapers of the night before are deposited in the already overflowing trash, I sit in the corner of the couch with Isaiah to look at a book.  We flip through the pages of a National Geographic pointing out choo-choos,  ho-hees and brooommmm-vrmmms. 

Just about the time he decides it’s safe to sink from his perch on the far edge of one knee into the middle of my lap, Levi climbs up, shouting in his little mega-phone voice.  Then the competition begins, with shouts and gestures, to see who will be first to name and claim the trains and horses, houses and cars on each and every page.

Their older brother appears on the stairs, sniffly and sleepy.  He bursts into tears after blowing his nose because he doesn’t want to be sick and I carry him off to the living room where he too wants to look at a book.  The twins, dispersed by the sudden appearance of their crying brother, now flock back, climbing on. 

Then, in that moment, I am done, already, surrounded and sinking among a swarming mass of need and desire.   

I saw a picture recently of the man who holds the world record for wearing the most bees at once and I feel like I imagine that man must feel as they’re putting on the last few bees - frozen, pushing down the panic, hoping to make it through until they can get. them. off.  

The pictures capture the way a moment feels sometimes, stretched wide and deep.  The bees gathered clinging, swarming for the time it took to capture them on film and then, I imagine, they were gone.  Time paused, like a butterfly alighting on a flower, long enough for the man to practice some deep breathing, long enough to feel the full weight of that particular moment.    

It's so much the same with these little bees of mine who climb and cling just long enough for the stress to rise, long enough for me to practice some deep breathing before they too are on their way - off and running, climbing, soaring.  So I take picture after picture, I inhale and exhale and each moment opens, one-by-one.  

I surrender to what is right here, right now on what feels like the one-hundred-thousandth snow day because this moment too will pass as each one before and after does until all that remains is the memory of this humming hive.   

This post is linked with Playdates With God. 

This Great Tenderness

We didn’t get around to Christmas cards this year, but come January, when the real depth and breadth of winter set it, I started making paper Cardinals.  They made me happy in the same tangible, heart-happy way playing the Ukulele does.  The crimson card stock, the white on black on red, the candy-cane striped twine tied just so – all of these fed my soul, fed my hope as I cut and pasted.  

I built the birds in batches and sent them out in flocks, tucked into brown envelopes the color of sandpaper. I imagined them winging their way through town, across state lines and landing, breathless and bright on the doorsteps of those my heart carries.  

I took one, by hand, to a friend who suffered a traumatic loss this past week.  Walking through her door I remembered that I am a Pastor to her.  I was her Pastor, for a brief year or so, but then I left the ministry to be home with my young sons and she and her husband left the church.  

Walking in to her house, though, I felt it, that she is still one of my flock.  

I spread my arms like wings and gathered her in, I sat and drank, listened and prayed, and did my best to provide a shelter for the darkness she is bearing.

//

I have been through a few months of darkness now, months of the deep pain of unknowing, the frightening disorientation of walking in the dark.  During prayer awhile back the word “brooding” arose within me.  Later I looked the word up in an online dictionary and found, among others, the following definitions: 

                  brooding v.

                        1. to protect (young) by or as if by covering with wings 

                        2. to hover envelopingly; loom.

I began to wonder whether the darkness I felt had something to do with the spirit of God brooding within me.  Maybe the darkness I was experiencing was not the distance of God, but rather the nearness – the overshadowing – of God. 

//

This week I came across the phrase “brooding tenderness” in a collection of writings by Howard Thurman.  Writing about his sense of being surrounded by the love of God, Thurman describes the brooding tenderness out of which all things arise. 

The more I make my home in this spacious place beneath God’s wide, warm wings, the more I feel my own wings stretched open wide.  The more I rest in this brooding tenderness, the more I feel a depth of tenderness being born in me.   Resting here in the darkness of waiting, I also become a place of rest for those who wait.

This post is linked with Playdates with God and Concrete Words.

When Love Visits

He stood on one side of the wide doorway, between the cafeteria and cafe, and I sat on the other with my twin boys.  An old man, he was drawn in by my little boys' antics, "Sweet," he called them.

Right there he opened the story of his life, his love, to me. 

"I can remember it like it was yesterday," he said. 

And it was. 

It was yesterday and it was 1948 when they first met and then also 1950 when she held his hand and said, "I love you so."  It was all of those moments at once because that's the way it is with love.

Love opens itself to us and, entering in, we embrace the moment and in it all of the moments of our lives.  

I listened, wide-eyed and smiling, because that's what you do when love shows up.

My boys must have felt it too, because after he left, they leaned into me pleading with great earnestness, "Me hug, me hug?" 

I gave my approval and one ran to the man, grasping his legs from behind in a bear-hug that I feared would topple them both.  The other clung to my hand, flirting, before diving in too. 

Because that's what you do when love arrives, you run, arms open wide to embrace it, you flirt before diving in too, embracing that moment that holds all moments as one. 

This post is linked with Five Minute Friday.