Abundance (Among the Raspberries and Cucumbers)

I stood on a steep, wooded trail eating raspberries by the handful.  In that moment I was only my outstretched arm, greedy fingers prying plump berries from large clusters.  I was eyes trained on the color red hiding beneath green leaves; I was only a gaping mouth, consuming.  

Eventually my eyes lifted and I realized the berries covered the mountainside – I could never eat them all.  Then I slowed and began to taste again, the abundance, the red juice a communion connecting me again to the grace and mercy that dwells among us.  

This morning I took my kids hiking.  We walked around the edges of soybean fields, through cool shaded woods.  All along the trail berries hung, bright jewels singing their siren songs of sweetness.  Again we were all arms, reaching, grabbing, mouths consuming.  

Isaiah dove into the woods like a hound on the hunt, throwing poison ivy caution to the wind.  Finally, satisfied, he lifted his shirt and rubbed his soft, round belly, “Me full, Mommy.”   

After lunch (fresh berries on yogurt) we ended up in the garden.  We clambered about, hunter gatherers careful to keep our feet from the vines and leaves.  The garden is a sea of green layered on top of green and our eyes played tricks on us – how to tell the green of a cucumber from its vine, the dark emerald of a melon from the leaf that shades it.  Cucumbers hid, giant ones nestled in among the zucchini bushes.  The harvest was too great for five pairs of hands to bear, so we filled the red wagon and pulled it up to the house.  

Wherever Jesus shows up in the Bible, there is abundance – great vats of wine that refuse to run out, bread that rises to the occasion of feeding a crowd, catches of fish that nearly sink the boats.  I am not a fisherman and the bread we took to the lake last night to feed the ducks lasted about as long as I thought it should.  But right now there’s a strainer of blood-red raspberries in my kitchen sink and somehow I know that grace and mercy dwell still in the woods, the garden, in the abundance of the earth giving and giving, as it does.  

Photo source here.  Linking with Sandra and Unforced Rhythms.

An Opening that Leads (On Writing, Retreats and Regular Life)

 (this is the view out the front of our house, the old garage I'm writing about is out back)

My oldest son runs shouting into the house, eyes round like dinner plates.  “We found an opening that leads underground!” he exclaims and I picture a doorway leading to another world.

“Where?” I ask. 

“In the last garage, it’s creepy in there!  We found a pipe and when you put your hand inside it feels cool.”  Breathless, he turns and runs out of the house, headed back to the garage.

The older two are exploring, rooting through the yard and garage for lost bits of treasure that they plan to display in a museum of their own making.  Admission is rumored to be set at twenty-five cents.  I’m cleaning in the house, trying to make some order out of chaos when they run in again, one just a few steps behind the other.   

“We found bones!” they cry, their voices conveying the combined excitement and creepiness of the discovery. 

“Where?” I ask, again.

“In the furnace!” they shout.

I follow them this time, out across the lawn and driveway, into the cool, dark cave of the last garage.  My son pulls the skeleton of some small animal out of an old brick oven.   

After close examination, he declares it to be the remains of a baby bird and it isn’t long before they find a whole nest of skeletons, the mama and several babies.  Based on their location, I imagine they may be rats rather than birds, but given my reluctance to examine the remains, I let my son's conclusion stand.   

They wash the bones in a plastic storage bin and leave them to dry in the sun.

//

I returned yesterday from a weekend-long writer’s retreat at God's Whisper Farm.  I wrote while I was there, just a little, listened to the music of a fine musician, and thought about the place of writing in my life.  Before returning home I set a modest writing goal.

But then I returned to swirling chaos of family life and because I stepped away for a time, I'm now feeling very behind - behind in the laundry, dishes, cooking, shopping, sleep and, ironically enough, behind in my writing.  Now even the small goal I set feels like a millstone hung around the neck of a woman already drowning.

//

“We found an opening . . ." he said, and I realize that’s what I’m looking for too, some way in and through this crazy sinking mess, an avenue to something more life-giving than simply managing the chaos.  I want a way to excavate my life, a way of reaching through to a place of earthy coolness and what strikes me as my children root through the old furnace’s ashes is that this is what writing is for me.

Writing is digging under, inside-of, behind the surface of things; writing uproots the skeletal remains of what was, re-imagining its place in the wider scope of things. Writing is the cool water that washes off the bones of the daily, revealing the very structure of life as I lay it all out here on the page to dry.

//

By lunch time I’ve managed to mop the kitchen floor – a feat which has not been performed here for a month or more.  The kids are filthy from ashes and soot, their feet stained black from rummaging in the old garage. 

Mindful of my now-clean floors, I fill another bin with soapy water and gather them all around me at the back step.  They sit there while I wash their feet, one set at a time.  Lunch is buttered noodles and left-over hot dogs, not a vegetable in sight, and then it’s time for quiet time.  Off to their rooms they go, clean-footed, to build with Legos.

In the silence, in the space made by their absence I remember, there is an opening that leads, and I open the lap top and begin to write, feeling the coolness of what lies beneath as it spreads across the page.     

This post is linked with Playdates with God and Unforced Rhythms.

What the Bud Feels

What does the bud feel

the day before its opening?

Deep desire for the light

and the anticipation of dancing

in the wind.

And what of the bud

that fails to open, standing

closed along-side its

star-burst sisters?

Maybe she sleeps still,

content with the dream

of another year. 

This post is linked with Five Minute Friday.

(Photo Credit)

Silence (of headaches, libraries and boats)

 (one of the reading rooms at Dickinson College Library)

Today I'm re-posting this piece from the "archives" which was written back in 2012, right when I first began blogging.  The twins were not quite one then and my older two were four and six. It's helpful for me sometimes to look back and see how very hard those days were, to see how far we've come even though there's so much that still feels the same.  Enjoy!  

//

“There is a castle on a cloud, I like to go there in my sleep . . . 

Nobody shouts or talks too loud, not in my castle on a cloud.” 

from Les Miserables

Today is a headache day.   

 

It’s there from the moment I wake up - pressure in my forehead and sinuses that extends around to the back of my head into my neck and shoulders. 

When the babysitter comes I’m sitting on the floor surrounded by wiggling people.  I’m trying to wrestle a onesie onto a baby as my pre-schooler performs gymnastics half-on/ half-off of the couch.  The oldest is bopping back and forth on the rocking chair as another baby teeters trying to hold onto it.  My head's pounding and I can’t think straight, can’t make a plan. 

When someone asks where I’m going, I have no reply because I haven’t thought that far ahead.  I only have about an hour and a half before I need to round everyone up for swim lessons.  I grab the laptop and my journal and make a quick exit, stammering instructions as I leave.  No one even gets a hug.  Mommy has got to go, NOW. 

I picture neighbors or the drivers of passing cars looking up to see me flying out the door, hair frizzed-out from the heat, clutching my gear as the twins crawl after me and Solomon stands at the screen door calling a cheery, “Bye bye Mamma.  Bye!”  I imagine I look like someone fleeing a burning building as I throw my things into the van, pop it into drive and squeal-out not yet knowing where I’m going. 

I head to the local college library, not more than a few blocks from our house.  I can maximize my time this way, by not driving across town to Panera or a local coffee shop.  Every second counts. 

I find a nice parking spot right in front of the library.  It’s beautiful here.  Tall, old trees, fully leafed out for summer.  A fresh green lawn and the beautiful library full of windows and light and silence. 

I feel better even as I open the door to walk in.  It’s cool and quiet with the humming of the air conditioner providing a steady pulse under it all.  I head past the café where a sign explains that turning left will lead to a “semi-quiet” area, while turning right leads to pure silence.  I turn right and follow signs toward the quiet area like a starving person follows a path of crumbs. 

The headache is still there, but the effect of the silence is immediate.  It’s like aloe on sunburn, cool and smooth, calming.  It’s as though some part of me that’s been holding its breath relaxes and lets out a long, heavy sigh. 

 

//

 

I’ve always needed this sort of retreat, always felt this way about libraries, academia and books, using them as a refuge from the intensity and volume of life.  I remember meeting with a professor when I was in graduate school.  His office was on the top floor of an old brick home on the edge of campus that was used for faculty offices.  I climbed narrow stairs covered by faded and decidedly un-prestigious old carpet to a large attic-like room.  Two more stairs and through the door and there sat his desk with a large window behind it filled with the leafy green branches of a tree.  I imagined myself sitting there – reading, writing, pausing to peer out at the world below – and I loved it. 

Not long ago a seminar revealed that my personality type uses cognitive activity as a way to recharge and regroup.  An observant friend noted the same thing after listening to my life story, “You retreat into your mind when life gets overwhelming.”  Suddenly I saw the Sudoku and crossword puzzles, the endless reading, the love of libraries and their contents in a new light. 

I used to feel very torn between academia and the nitty-gritty of everyday life.  The ivory tower is much maligned by those working in the trenches and I’ve often found myself vacillating between the two.  I don’t believe in the value of what some would call pure academia cut off from the ebb and flow, the flux and tumult of everyday life.  I refuse to climb the staircase of my mind expecting to find there the answer to all life’s questions.  And yet, I love, enjoy, crave the retreat it offers.  The space it gives to look at life, to sort through the onslaught of thoughts and feelings that accumulate as I race along through the day. 

I’ve often felt guilty about this, even ashamed.  I was teased as a child about “hiding my nose in a book” and my need to spend long hours quietly making order of my little room in our house on a hill in the leafy woods.  But more than all of that, somewhere along the way I believed the lie that to be holy meant to be busy, to be fully immersed in the hustle and bustle, the suffering and relief of life without flinching or pausing to look away for even a second. 

I can see now that I will constantly straddle two worlds.  I’m not content to sit in my tower day in and day out thinking deep thoughts – too many people need me in more ways than I can count.  But I’m also beginning to understand that times of retreat are essential to my ability to provide a real presence when I engage with the “crowds,” whoever they may be.   

Jesus did this, of course.  Retreating to a garden or hill or even, if need be, to a small boat in the middle of a lake.  Luke tells us that “Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed (5:16).”  Surely no one’s time and presence has been or ever will be more in demand than the son of God. 

//
 

It occurs to me that I cannot steer my little ship full of children safely or wisely when I’m constantly drowning.  So, with much grace, I re-imagine my departure from the house.   

 

I’m not a woman fleeing in desperation, shaking off children and tripping on scattered toys as I lunge for the door.  Instead I try to see myself as Christ, edging his way toward the shore and stepping with purpose into a small fishing boat.  Pushing off even as the crowd presses in, hardly waiting for Thomas or Peter to climb in as the bottom of the boat breaks free from the sand.  Leaving the chaos of the crowds for the chaos of the sea, but finding in the tiny boat the space to simultaneously disconnect and reconnect. 

The van is my boat and the curb is the shore.  The library is my “secluded place” and this writing is my prayer.  This retreat takes me not out of the world, but deeper into it to the place beneath the wave tossed surface where love and joy and grace reside.  I paddle out deeper into the cool dark waters to the place where I might find, we all might find, the one thing that’s needed. 

 

I wonder, where do you go to retreat, where do you find the space to both disconnect and reconnect?

 

This post is linked with Playdates with God and the Unforced Rhythms community.