First

An excerpt from A Diary of Private Prayer:

"Eternal Father of my soul,

let my first thought today be of You,

let my first impulse be to worship You,

let my first speech be Your name,

let my first action be to kneel before You in prayer....

Yet let me not, when this morning prayer is said,

think my worship ended

and spend the day in forgetfulness of You."

~John Baillie

Stop Signs

I think it was because my window was rolled down a few inches that he bothered to yell at me.

Otherwise, he may have just left it at that disgusted frown and shake of his head. But his driver’s window was cranked down too, us both looking for the relief of breezes from that sun blazing down. So when he turned north off the 4th line, down at Knapp’s corner, our dusty van barely paused there at the intersection, he didn’t even have to lean over when he hollered at me.

“There’s a stop sign there, you know!”

Color, shame, floods my cheeks. But before I can nod, mumble an apology, he and his diesel pick-up rumble off.

“That wasn’t very nice of him. You had stopped, Mom.” Joshua’s passenger seat defense tries to soothe.

“Why did that man yell that?” Hope’s turns back after the truck’s dust cloud, looking for answers.

Flustered, I carefully scan to the west, then east, then west again, before creeping forward through the intersection. And then manage a feeble explanation.

“He was concerned I wasn’t going to brake in time. That I hadn’t seen the stop sign. It scared him. And that’s fair.”

The wind blows through our open windows, our hair. In the rush of spring, I wonder if each of us replay his words again, the scene, reading his anger as fear. But maybe they don’t, their young faces silently watching the meadow slip close to the road with its petticoat of white trilliums. Maybe it’s just me thinking about stop signs nearly missed.

I’m like that. Always rushing, hardly braking in time, off again. In a hurry. So much to be done. Or so I think.

What hard stops in my life have I been driving through---or hardly pausing for?

How often am I mindfully slowing to intersect my time with God? Early, throughout, and late. Or do I barely make meaningful time at anytime in my day to commune in lingering, unhurried ways with God? Somedays, yes. Somedays, no. There are too many rolling stops.

The meadow retreats and waving fields of greening wheat lap up along the roadside. The children, hands pointing and voices sure, debate whether that farmer is planting corn way off in a field on the horizon, or if he’s drilling in beans. And it’s just me thinking about stop signs nearly missed and slowing to meet with God.

I’m listening to the prophet in a pick-up: There are stop signs here, you know. So I’ll stop and linger long in prayer.

To avoid life crashes.

Lord, if life is crashing... have I been running stop signs?
Today, it's all speeding by so fast, I simply have to stop and pray.

Part of this week's series on prayer...

Related: John Piper on Be Devoted in Prayer
Read an excerpt of Praying with the Church, Following Jesus, daily, hourly, today
Et-Tu: Schedules and Hard Stops and Permanence
Praying the Hours

When Lost...

and in the midst of the fray, and all seems a little off kilter (or is that me?), O heart, remember to whisper the prayer of St. Augustine's:

"I know that where I was and am and should be is

in the shadow of His wings."

Lord, remind me that I always know where I am to be. Home in You.

Peace Rock

It is an entirely unremarkable moment, one I repeat every day at noon, all throughout the fall and winter. I am cutting squash, chopping, scooping, dicing. But today, as I scoop out the tangly pulp, seeds scattering and falling on the countertop, I scoop deep into me and feel the wrapped tendrils of who I am.

I am startled. Scraping out that pulp, I face my own insides. I am taken aback at what twists and knots within me. I test again. Yes. Raw, messy fear. Can it be that is, right now, what snarls and writhes around my soul, strangling me? Yes, that is what I feel in this moment of time. I can feel it, as real as those squash strings between my fingers.

Funny. I never have named this feeling before. Not this name. Perhaps “wound.” Or “stressed.” But today, fleshy pulp in the palm of my hand, I can simply say it. I am afraid.

Am I enough? Loving enough, gentle enough, giving enough? Can I do, BE, enough today? Will I be able to stay ahead of the mushrooming laundry, the army of hungry stomachs, the endless waterfall of questions, the tsunami of needs today that will overwhelm? Do I have enough inner resources today to ride the pounding surf? I don’t want to fail.

I know this feeling. It’s the same squeezing panic that wrung me when I’d swim too far from shore and my feet couldn’t find a slippery, algae covered rock to cling to. In the murky depths, currents relentlessly tugging and dragging, I’d flail and feel about, looking for a toehold.

Like every mother, I am in way over my head. The depths plunge deep and dark, and I am a helpless cork bobbing about the smashing waves, breathlessly trying not to panic. It is like my soul cannot touch bottom.

I lay down my knife and quarter of squash. I am stunned by the naming of this tangle of feelings inside of me. I think that I multi-task. I juggle. I orchestrate, co-ordinate, manage, one eye on the clock, one eye thinking of what comes next: change over the laundry, check on Hope and grammar lesson, switch Shalom from puzzles to legos, call the butcher shop to place an order, set the table with bowls for the steaming lentil soup, mark Levi’s math exercises. But I have named the beast that lurks just below the waters, with gleaming eyes waiting to spring: fear.

Five-year-old Malakai, still learning to decipher the puzzle of phonics, wanders through the kitchen, his church kid’s club booklet in hand, pretending to read his Bible verse for the week. He lilts the words from memory, eyes fixed to the page as he walks: “Then He arose and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace, be still!” (Mark 4:39.)

And directly, something within me stills. I cease to flail. I almost want to laugh at the surprising aptness of it all. (But, really, is it surprising?)

He rebukes my winds. His word, alive, relevant, sovereign, from the lips of an illiterate child, calms my waters. “Peace, be still.”

And underneath, my foot feels an anchor, a verse from my Bible reading in the dark still of coming day, a verse that I nearly skimmed over, but now revisits me, knowing it is a lifeline meant for this very moment:

“No, there is no other Rock. I know not one” (Isa. 44:8).

I pick up a spoon to finish scooping squash pulp. The tangled part of me unknots. Floats. My insides have loosened. For I have found it. When fears, even nameless, cloaked ones, sinisterly drag, there is a Rock who cries through the waters, “Here… I am your home in these seas. Place your foot here, your heart here. Stand on me. And live.” These fears diminish, cut down to size.

How to hold to the Rock in the midst of everyday storms? “Prayer is the most concrete way to make our home in God,” writes Henri Nouwen. When I pray, I intimately know the crevices of the Rock, the texture of its surface, the immensity of its steadfast character.



I lay the squash halves in to the enamel dishes, and slip them into the oven. Turning to the sink to wash the last remnants of squash strings from my hands, I hear the sea as the water runs over my fingers.

My fears are washed away with a prayer of three simple words, a lullaby on the waves.

Peace, be still.

Lord, today, always, be my Peace Rock. No matter how deep and writhing the waters.

Photos: squash from the garden to the plate, and the Peace Dove that soars in the corner kitchen light, a gift from a kind friend....

Run the River

He is five, a hooded smudge of color trudging through the deep, vast white. I watch from the window, watch the golden lab spring behind him, ahead of him, beside. Malakai turns sharp to the north, tromping out into the field’s markerless sea of white. His hood turns to see: is Boaz following? Then a sharp turn to the west, and a glance to see if canine is tracking. Together the two zigzag across winter and I am happily mesmerized, warm inside, watching my boy with his dog out in the quiet wonder of it all.

Life flushes his nose, cheeks, with flaming warmth when he slips back inside, to rub his hands by the fire. Words, fragments of stories, tumble out of him, and I nod, trying to etch him in my mind like this (do all mothers do this? Memorize moments?) For some reason, I don’t trust ink and paper, computerized sensors of cameras. I carve it down in synapses and neurons— in heart fibers-- - before he, who he is now, is gone, mellow voice turned deep, untried hands grown long and deeply lined, trenched with days.

I wrap up this flashing instant in knitted afghan, he and his little sister with her cloud of blonde, and pull them close to read Richard Scary before the flickering hearth. On illustrated page, Huckle the Cat, is dreaming of what he will be when he grows up: a pilot? A farmer? An apple-pie tester? Malakai thumps my arm, words surging, “Mom, Mom, I’d like to be an apple-pie tester when I grow up. But I can’t, because I am going to be a farmer. But I am not going to be a farmer, because know what? I am not going to get any bigger ‘cause I just want to be your little kid, and you can be the big Mama. Shalom, will you stay the baby for Mama?”

The sweet pain of love wells, a smile breaking through its aching blur. How did he know how time stings a mother’s heart? How I keep reaching through its relentless current to pluck out a moment, to hold, to own, now, bringing it close to lips, to breathe life into it, to keep the now forever alive, refusing to let it become but a memory, stiff and lifeless. But all is wet, slippery, elusive….gone and carried on. Malakai and Shalom slide off the couch and chatter away into imaginary places. I catch nothing. Ever. Foaming, roaring, racing, the torrent sweeps all away, and I am left with river stones, memorials worn smooth by all that once rushed by.

Come night, embryonic man growing in little boy’s body lays head on pillow, pulling quilts tight under chin. I press lips and heart to his forehead, and Malakai whispers, “Remember, I am not going to get much bigger? Just a bit, but I am staying little, so I can be your boy. And you can be my big Mama.” He snuggles into night and dreams.

I sit in the dark, watching him breathe, and how a whorl wisps at his temple, a tendril of his initial halo of curls. Out his window, the moon bulges like a luminous woman, full with child. I wonder if I can forever stay Big Mama, netting, capturing time.

In the gray blue of next dawn, we rouse boys for barn chores, turning on lights, gently calling names. Like disoriented moths drawn to light, they stumble into the kitchen, eyes squinting, hands stuffed in jean pockets. I tousle a sleepyhead, teasing, “I think you grew an inch in the night, Levi. And your brother caught it too---look how long and lean he is.” Darryl playfully pokes Caleb, Joshua, handing them their coats for the run to the barn.

And I grab a river stone.

“Remember, Darryl? When we’d wake up those babies and prop them beside the heat register, bundle them up in snowsuits, pulling their boots and hats on? Then make that dash through the drifts and cold to the barn, to begin. And you'd set those two little boys in a feed cart, to play, while we chored?” Their figures stretch in the doorway. “Just look at them now.”

Caleb extends to Darryl’s shoulder, Joshua up to his chest. That baby and toddler are molting, emerging, growing into near men. Darryl shakes his head, chuckling dismay. I feel his worn workhand rest on my shoulder, steadying me in the rushing current.

I ease down into the water. And let go. Malakai can grow up. Big Mama can become Old Mama. God who is the spring of the river of life, He has plans, places, purposes that time’s current will carry these young persons to --- off to destinations, to new skin, to kingdom dreams. The water cycle streams: from Him, through Him and to Him are all things. If I dammed up the river, froze time solid, wouldn’t these becoming people become mortuary specimens, icy, petrified, set?

Malakai wanders sleepily from the dark hallway into the kitchen light. I embrace his slender frame, feeling ribs, warm skin, little chest pressed close. Am I dreaming or does he smell aquatic, like a newborn wrinkled from the waters?

And I whisper...

Run with the river, son. She’s flowing us Home.

Father? I let go. Flow us Home.

Lord of The Rings

Sun splashes in, creamy buttermilk waking me. I stir, bare toes finding islands of cool under the sheets. I think of toes slipping out to the floor, into the day. And then I feel it. Tight, crushing. Relentlessly, today presses down. I remember. Mattress springs, sharp and hard, dig deep into my back.

No, the day is not forecasted to hold any particular deadlines or appointments, no remarkable spikes of unusual activity. But I clearly see the usual activity of the day. This bearing down heaviness is simply quotidian weight. The weight a mother carries: raising up of children, teaching, guiding, disciplining.

Daily, this mama is scheduled to perform open heart surgery. Countless times, over and over again, bent over a child, tenderly doing concentrated heart work. I bury my head into the pillow, escaping. I am not ready yet today to begin the deeply focused task of mindfully shaping, molding the hearts of half a dozen creative, individual, deeply valued persons. The big stuff of my day. Around which the gritty little stuff is packed in: cooking, baking, planning, cleaning, washing, laundry, lessons, phone calls, emails, doorbells, errands. I grab quilt’s edge and pull dark up over, comforting and quiet. My fists are clenched tight: I will not give up blanket to the tugging day.

In the stuffy dark under covers, I think I almost feel God by this bedside, soundlessly unfurling, prying back my fingers. Didn’t I do the same the night before, hanging over Shalom’s crib?

My fingers were on the last light switch to be flicked off, hushing the house into its night sleep, when I realized it was gone. There, by the bedroom doorway, I had, inexplicably, instincitvely felt unclothed. My thumb reflexively felt about for the band. Only bare skin. Where had I misplaced my wedding ring? I scanned my desk. Sometimes, deep into foreign thought lands, turning, turning my ring, I unconsciously slip it off. But no, no wreath of gold about books and journals. I knelt to check under the desk. Only an errant lego and a dust bunny stare back at me. I shove the lego into my pocket and pause, envisioning the evening’s choreography.

I had read stories to sleepy heads on the couch. A nubby pencil was all that turned up under the cushions. Then the brushing of teeth, and an offering of the last rites: a drink of water to lingering little ones. Nothing on the bathroom floor but an abandoned towel. Hadn’t Shalom wandered out for a last snuggle? Had I thoughtlessly acquiesced when she had asked for the gleaming, gilded circle, as she often did? If Shalom had my ring, it, literally, could be anywhere. The toy basket and old puzzle box yielded … toys and puzzles. Perhaps it was best just to turn out the lights and hope that it turned up in the morning?

A crazy thought meandered through the cerebellum. What was there to lose? And everyone was sleeping. No one would witness my crazy notion. I creaked open the door at the end of the hall and stepped into the still. Heavy breathing filled the dark. I found a clenched fist tucked under a pillow. Peeling back warm fingers, like unfurling fragile petals of a moonflower, I felt a slip of worn metal. Dangling too large off an index finger, a ring glinted in the shadows. I couldn’t help smile. I slipped it off Shalom’s slender finger and onto mine. At my bedroom door, I fingered the ring, and switched off the light. All was right with the world.

But now morning has come, like a vise squeezing me, and nothing feels right. I grip the blanket, my bastion of escape. And yet I can feel Him, hear Him. “Let me have the rings, child of mine. Unfurl all that you hold on to and entrust it to me. Open your hand and give me all that you count precious.” The night scene that had transpired between Shalom and I, now replays again in the morning light, between Father and I.

I let go. Let go of blanket’s hem, let go of all my pressing concerns, let go of all I cherish: these children, these dreams for their hearts, these hounding hopes for their futures. I acquiesce the day. It is morning and I release the rings to Lord of the rings. For aren’t they all actually Father’s rings? And are we not all His precious jewels? They are His to wear. This glorious day, His.

My toes find the floor. I am ready. Father wears the rings.

And all is right with the world.

Father? Encircle round about me today. I release this day, this ring, to You. You can be trusted You with all that is precious... For isn't it all better in Your hands than mine?...

Rhythms

I catch a shadow of them through the through the side porch’s windows. The slant of the November sun reflecting off the glass panes mirrors the chicken coop on the other side of the lane, the hanging boughs of the spruce, and my own dark silhouette standing here in this place. But if I step back a bit, at a certain angle, I can see clearly into the interior of the porch, with its bead board walls flaking chips of white, its plank floor a tired grey. I count again, to be certain. Yes, there really is five.

Five rocking chairs ring, fill, crowd the small side porch. One is cushioned with a lumpy green polyester, another with a brown and orange nine-patch pillow. Others beckon unclothed. Slender wood rails, bare and gently curved, wait openly, patiently, for one to come sit a spell. Actually, for five to come and sit a spell. Five persons to sit, all in the same moment of time, watching light pool in a pond of warmth in the center of the worn floor. A floor worn with gentle rocking.

Does Saloma sit out here with knitting needles while Ephraim rocks beside her? But the remaining triplet of rockers? Does a ring of bonneted women sway upon these chairs with their laps full of embroidery hoops and threads, balls of yarn and socks in need of mending? Perhaps a wreath of men in black jackets and starch white shirts buttoned to the top, congregate here after Sunday’s noon meal, while women in cape dresses clatter with dishes and gentle laugher in the kitchen.

I am still mesmerized by this humble cluster of five swayers when Saloma steps out on the far stoop, her grey cape dress draping long, her plain black shoes laced tightly. Her gentle eyes reflect the blue grey of the cooling sky, the wisps of white hair curling from about her bonnet, like the remnants of snow wrapping round the feet of the spruce trees. She nods her welcome and turns the steel doorknob into the dim shop.

I have come to restock our pantry. My last visit was involved, with Ephraim fetching one item at a time as I checked it each one off my list… and waited. This time, I have taken a different tack: two lists. On one list I have carefully printed out the bulk items that Ephraim will need to carry from the storage shed: 3 pails of honey, 2 bags of whole wheat, 2 bags of oats, 1 bag of cornmeal, flax, 3 boxes of raisins. I will keep another list to guide me around the wee shop’s wooden shelves lit by only one small window: salt, cream of tartar, baking soda, chicken boullion, baking powder, yeast. I glance at my watch. How much time can I afford to give up for this errand? On the counter at home looms another list with Saturday chores: window-washing, bathrooms to wash down, vacuuming of the learning nook and rec room, a dessert to make for Sunday’s guests, rolls to make for Sunday dinner. If Ephraim makes short order of the bulk list I have, and Saloma tallies quickly each of my shop purchases… might I be able to head home in twenty minutes?

Saloma waves for Ephraim to come in from the yard. His eyes light with recognition as he steps in from outside. I smile and he nods his black hat. They exchange words in German, and she hands him my list of needed bulk goods. Ephraim’s wrinkled hand slowly takes my list, and lays it upon the wooden counter before the window’s grey light. His finger underscores my first item. He repeats, “Three pails of honey,” as he steps out into the cold, headed towards the storage shed. He leaves my list there on the counter. A sigh escapes and I fidget with my own list. Regardless of my efforts otherwise, Ephraim will now have to return to the shop again to read the list for the next item, and then again for the next, and the next. I try to squelch this welling feeling of panic, that at this rate that chore list at home will have a layer of dust slowly accumulating upon it before I return. Imperceptibly, I shake my head, shake my head at me. Slow, now. All is well.

I collect my shop items and try to wait patiently as Saloma meticulously records “2 jars cream of tartar” in her perfect Edwardian script across her spiral notebook. Out the window, the hens cluck and scratch about the edge of the frozen garden. On a scratch pad off to the side, Saloma calculates “.75 X 2” and then notes $1.50 besides the entry of cream of tartar. I offer a small bag of wheat germ next. As she neatly records, I struggle not to think on how quickly the cashier in town scans each item’s bar code, how automatic the tallying, the rapid digital output. Sparrows light about the stoop, twittering, singing. Slow now; all is well.

While billing up my cache of goods, Saloma pauses often as Ephraim steps in to note how he is gradually fulfilling my order for bulk supplies. Yes, he has loaded up the wheat, no not the cornmeal yet. Isn’t there a bag of flax there in the side room? Their heads, hers bonneted and his capped, nearly touch, as they lean over the ledger, their voices mingling German words with English. I wait, watching the snow melt off the eve, pattering into a puddle on the stoop. About the edges of wet, sparrows catch their reflection. I have the cheque already made out, but for the final total, pen waiting, when Saloma gives me the tally. The sparrows scatter as I push the door open, arms full of the box of supplies. I slide my box into the back of the truck, making sure there is room for Mama’s order, which she and Saloma are now ordering.

I stand in the deep quiet of the farmyard. Soon Ephraim will open the door of the shed and haul out the last of the bags of oats. Mama will step out on the stoop with her box of goods, Saloma holding the door for her. And then Ephraim will begin to carry out Mama’s bulk supplies. But all there is for me in the now, is to wait. There, at 2:42 on a Saturday afternoon in November, in the farmyard of Ephraim and Saloma Weber, the quiet softly, completely, falls down on me.

There is no hum of electricity anywhere. No whir of vehicles. No drones, no crackles, no beeps. Just thick silence. The quiet cackle of the black and white speckled hens, now scratching around the sandbox at the base of the windmill. The windmill moves lazily, soundlessly, bird houses stringing up its metal scaffolding like a necklace of feathers and nests. In the far back field, behind the barn, I think I can see a workhorse hauling a wagon, straw-capped man at the reins.

Alone in the all-embracing still, I glance over again at the side porch with its clutch of beckoning rocking chairs. Fretting and fussing, I have been lulled, hushed by the sway of this place.

The curve of the rocking chair spindles gather to tell the story of what has happened on my insides: when two sit side-by-side in rocking chairs, they will, as a law of the universe, adopt the same rocking frequency.

One study concludes, “Most surprisingly, synchronization occurred even when participants rocked two [chairs] with different eigenfrequencies.” Thus, even though the chairs natural tendency was to desynchronize, individuals unintentionally [but dramatically] acted against this dissimilarity, so as to synchronize their rhythmical movements. To harmonize.

So I have. I have fallen into the pace and rhythm of Saloma and Ephraim’s quiet ways. Mindful ways of being; considered, unharried ways of living.

Ephraim loads the last bag of oats, but I do not turn, move. I am watching the way the clouds seem to have caught in the lightning rods perched atop Ephraim’s barn roof.


As the light seeps out the end of that Saturday, the lantern’s reflection flickering happily in the window, I sit for a moment in our rocker. The fireplace glows. The clock ticks. The washrooms are sparkled, the house smells of wholewheat bread. The windows are still smudged, and I mentally add another task to the list: oil rocking chair. I sit and creak.. . creak. Rocking. The light glimmers off the two copper lightning rods standing before our hearth.

And I think: how I rock in this place changes everything. If I rock mindfully, I might just catch a bit of heaven.


Father, what if I rocked differently? How might it change the place in which I live, effect the people who rock here with me? By Your power, Your grace, let me rock in the gentle ways of Jesus.


Related: Lessons from last visit to the Weber's

In quiet...

"Blessed are the ears which hear God's whisper

and listen not unto the whispers of the world."

~Thomas a Kempis

"Silence is imperative...

We are going to be quiet with One who has everything to tell us...

His voice is so still, His deepest contacts so imperceptible,

that only in quiet can we perceive them.

The Holy Spirit educates us in inner stillness,

and it for lack of this that most spiritual lives are

so crude & shallow & vague."

~Evelyn Underhill

Father, to hear the song You sing over me, I will need to still today, to quiet. Or I'll miss You. I will need to be careful where I listen, how I listen... or I'll miss Your whisper.

Following after Jesus, who went up to a quiet place to pray, give me the grace to go away from the world, too... into the silence and solitude. The world presses in: help me to find, make, create, a place in quiet today, to listen to You. A still place to worship You in spirit and in truth.

Seeing: The Art of Walking on Water

I say it endlessly, prayerfully: I want to see.

And intuitively, I think that seeing is about more. It makes sense, I think. When we are blind, we think sight is, obviously, about seeing more, about seeing all that we can’t right now, about seeing that for which we now only grope, feel , imagine.

And, for certain, this is true. Gehazi needed his eyes opened to the spiritual world that surrounded him. The beggar needed his eyes opened to the splash of sun’s blush across a horizon, the glint in water’s eye, the explosion of poppy’s scarlet. Hagar needed her eyes opened to the well, and hope, right within her reach.

But, in the paradoxical tradition of the Upside Down Kingdom, might there be times that sight is actually about blindness? I can’t say I ever considered such a surprising twist, until my exploration into seeing suggested otherwise. I hastily scribbled as my photography instructor spoke:

“Now you need to remember, when you paint or write, those acts are about adding. Think of it: you may have a blank canvas or paper. You have to decide what words or color you will trail across the emptiness. Photography isn’t about that.

Photography is about beginning with a full canvas. And figuring out the art of subtraction: what will you leave out of the frame, what will you not include in the shot, and what will you choose to focus upon?”

Seeing is the art of subtraction. Upside down, radical notion. Turns the idea of seeing on its head.

I ask: Is it true?

True north knows no other home than in His Word. I line up a skewed world with the compass of His Word. And read the story of Peter.

You know the scene. Waves batter and buffet, shattering foaming white. The wind howls and moans, slicing hair across eyes, thunderously drumming sails relentlessly. Land is but a sliver of distant anchor. It’s impenetrably black, stars and moon blotted out like clouds of squid ink. Robes are pulled tighter. The chill of the fourth watch of the night whips through.

That—what is that there? It’s late. Squint eyes close, rub, peer again. Can it be? Hearts jam up in throats. Hands grow clammy and shake. Is that a… a… man? There? Striding effortlessly across the pounding breakers? Terror strangles. The scream mangles as it escapes, “It is a ghost!” Fear writhes and wraps through the boat like a menacing python.

Into their horror, comes a voice. Immediately. Assuring. Confident.

“Take courage!” The snake loses its choke hold.

“It is I.” I? Who could that be but Him? Jesus? An incredulous, nervous laugh breaks the tension. It doesn’t seem plausible but with Jesus anything, everything is indeed possible. The python releases, retreats.

“Do not be afraid.” If it really is Him, then yes, no fear. But is it Him? Eyebrows raise, shoulders shrug, a few heads shake.

Rash Peter, passionate Peter, he’ll find out. He yells loudly over the roar of water, shrieking of wind, the hammering of their hearts.

“Lord, if it is thou, command me to come to You on the water.” There. That will be the litmus test, the irrefutable proof. If this eerie apparition putting foot to choppy waters and finding solid ground, a foundation on which to place his weight and effortlessly make step after step, truly is Jesus, anything, everything truly is possible. Even the likes of Peter walking on undulating, fluid water. The python rears, deliberating.

The voice of Jesus carries, caught up with the wind: “Come!” The snake falls dead.

Does Peter’s chest grow hard with fear, with gripping realization? What have I said? Does he throw his head back and break the night up with crazy, wild laughter? This Jesus! Does he bite his lip, clench his fists tight till knuckles turn white and throw his leg over into the stinging, rocking storm? I will then.

We’ll never know for certain the inner thoughts of Peter’s mind in that startling moment.
But we do know this:

“But Peter got out of the boat, and walked on the water and came toward Jesus.”

His heel presses into the rocking waves and, incomprehensibly, these black night waters hold him. Mind-boggling. Like a water strider, he does not sink, but knows, staggeringly, suspension, upheld. Eyes fixed on Jesus, he takes another step, and another.

A biting gust of wind lashes his robe to his legs. Peter looks away from that face, those steady, sure eyes. The water heaves and swells, rolling, pitching.

“But seeing the wind, he became frightened.” In a flash, the python resurrects, screws up, tightens his death grip.

But seeing the wind….

When Peter was blind to the wind, he had eyes for Jesus and feet for the waves. When Peter practiced the art of subtraction, and blocked wind and waves from his sight, Peter saw God incarnate, miracle, wonder. When Peter subtracted the distractions from his frame of sight, he entered into the spiritual reality.

And when he didn’t subtract the entire scene from his line of view? "But seeing the wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink….”

When he left off focusing on the face of Jesus, and zoomed out to take in the whole scene, his feet fell through the molecules of hydrogen and oxygen. When he subtracted nothing, but went for a wide-angle view, Peter sees the wind. Ironically, no one has the ability to see wind, where it comes from, or where it goes. What caught Peter’s eye that wave-tossed night? Was his mind’s eye seeing scenes of that blasting wind crashing him into the mouth of the foaming, ravenous sea? Did he turn to see the boat and his companions hurled and flung about by the merciless howling? Whatever the case, Peter did not subtract from the scene to focus only on the face of Jesus.

Sputtering and flailing in the frigid waters, the near-drowning Peter spews, “Lord, save me!” Sounds vaguely reminiscent of the blind vagabond begging for sight, doesn’t it? When we do not choose to subtract from the scene and deliberately, resolutely focus, we plunge into an icy vortex of murkiness.

Compass on true north, I wear my camera over the course of the next week, and practice the art of seeing. I try on the discipline of subtraction.

An early dawn chill finds me peering through the viewfinder, zooming in on frost on the petals of the season’s last sweet pea . The frame fills with minute hoary pearls studding a carpet of green, tendrils trailing the leaf up the garden windmill. I shift to cut out a weed, a stray, stubborn lamb’s quarter.

I turn, and wait, watching the strained crimson of the laboring sky. And then the final thrust from dark into light! The horizon births a glowing red head of flooding light, bursting upon the fields, the trees, the expanse of sky with uncontainable, spilling glory. I consider where to position the camera, what to place in the foreground, the background. Into the lens , I let come the spindly trunks of juvenile ash, ordering them in some odd, pleasing arrangement. I set the sun to one corner, deliberately, audibly reminding myself of the rule of thirds. Then I notice the excavation pile of dirt at field’s edge, the remaining deposit of a recent farm building project. I reframe the scene without the unattractive heap of dirt.

Come breakfast, Shalom sits in a shaft of morning sunlight, coroneted in gold. I set the aperture, modify the shutterspeed…then notice how her hair looks like wild nest of down, soft and riotously fluffed. I slip down to focus on her eyes, the curve of her cheeks, and let her hair only fringe her face.

Seeing well may mean choosing to subtract well.

Hanging on the wall in our home is a framed watercolor print of a wildflower bouquet in an old enamel pitcher. The profusion of color erupts amidst a gardening bench’s shards of pottery, clumps of dirt, rusting gardening tools. The verse underneath the painting reads, “Whatever things are lovely…think on these things.”

My discerning husband graced with the print more than a decade ago, a tender exhortation for his wife during a season when the fog fell thick, and I fell deeper. Today, heading out with meals for hungry men working in the fields, grabbing camera gear too, I pause in front of the picture, the words, to gather my baskets together. I read the words over again, like I do several times everyday. But today it strikes me: Isn’t that what the Apostle Paul is saying? “Whatever things are lovely…think on these things. Subtract from the frame. Focus on the good.”

It’s harder with three dimensional people than with photographs. But that is who the Apostle Paul is speaking to, speaking about. To grown children with difficult parents. To grown parents with difficult children. To wives, husbands, with neglected hearts, to neglected dreams with pressing responsibilities. To deformed bodies, malnourished relationships, seemingly hopeless situations.

What can we subtract from our frames? On what good can we focus? For what can we give thanks, see as lovely--regardless of the wind that whips?

Today will bring difficult hills to climb, difficult people to love, difficult tasks to accomplish. Today will bring waves.

Subtract from the viewfinder. Focus with fixed eyes on Him.

Walk on water.

Father, give grace to subtract the wind and the storm from my viewfinder. Focus my weak eyes on You. Give me wisdom, strength to practice the discipline of subtraction. By Your grace, let me walk the waves.

Part One: See Part Two: See the Well Part Three: Seeing Along the Beam Part Four: Colors of a Tear Washed World Part Five: Father of Rain

Introversion

~Introversion, Evelyn Underhill

"What do you find within, O Soul, my Brother?
What do you find within?
I find great quiet where no noises come.
Without, the world’s din:
Silence in my home.

Whom do you find within, O Soul, my Brother?
Whom do you find within?
I find a friend that in secret came:
His scarred hands within
He shields a faint flame.

What would you do within, O Soul, my Brother?
What would you do within?
Bar door and window that none may see:
That alone we may be
(Alone! face to face, In that flame-lit place!)
When first we begin
To speak one with another." ~Evelyn Underhill

Lord, quiet me today... that You, with scarred hands, and I, seeking, knocking, finding, may speak one with another. That alone we may be together, wherever we are. I introvert into You, dwelling within.

Decision

The pillows prop me, Grandma’s double wedding ring quilt covering.

The keys lay on my lap, as I stretch out upon this bed, my toes pressing upon the cold windowpane, night dark waiting patiently too for the kindling of day’s warmth. My face reflects starkly in the black window frame, highlighted by the blue light of this screen. Shalom drapes over my arms, snuggling close to keys and thoughts and me.

If l lean ahead just so, I see the moon, a slipping crescent of luminosity hanging overhead, softened by a veil of clouds. Alone in the before dawn sky, she dances with a solitary star of brilliance across the velvet heavens. Are they watching us, or we them?

Shalom whispers, “A blue moon.”

Her and I, we dance with keys and this blue screen, under that waltzing blue moon, serenading day to come forth. But maybe not too soon.

“Where da moon go?” she whispers, laying beside the window, gazing up.

I leave off keys, and look up too.

No, moon’s choreographed tread across the heavens leads her farther away, as a streak of glowing day leaks over the horizon. Is that a sliver of her dress, there, beyond the towering spruce?

“She hides up in the trees, Shalom.”

“I need to find her.”

“I need to kiss you.” I bead the pearls of her bare little toes.

“After I find da moon.”

She stretches to see the tips of the line of spruce trees. I caress her heel, soft and curved.

And it strikes me: this moment, slow, unhurried, is poetry, stirring me inside.

Warm radiance seeps over the rim of the world, and day brightens night sky.

In the still, I quietly decide: I will take today slow too.
I do not want to miss the poetry of His kiss.

Lord, thank you for leading me beside quiet waters. Today, a new week, comes forth and I have decided: I am in no hurry. I am resting in You. Today brings the decision: I want to slow to read Your poetry.

Thinking more today on this...

The Works of Righteousness...

The work of righteousness will be peace,

And the effect of righteousness,

quietness and assurance forever.

~Isaiah 32:17

Father, chisel me righteous, carve out peace.

Peace is a Person

Peace isn’t a place we live in.

The house—and me—spins: laundry, school lessons, library books, basketball games, bills, phone calls, meals, dishes, women’s Bible Studies, diapers. Too often, I am dizzy: Anyone know how to get off? In the whirl of it all, I crave retreat, sanctuary, monastery.

On the milestone of my thirtieth birthday a few years ago, my sister-in-law presented me with a journal embossed with one simple word: PEACE. I cried. It was all I wanted. Just that one simple, frustratingly elusive word: PEACE. The homeschooling mother of (then) five young children, eight years of age and under, I was desperate, at a breaking point, for some place of serenity. I held the journal in my hands, lip trembling, tears streaming. PEACE. How could I find it? I had to find it.

I went for walks down through the woods, sat by the pond, journalled, prayed. Peace was short-lived, the angst tightening its relentless grip as I walked home: How could I fold art study into our school days? How could I make weekly, even monthly, date times with each of the children? How might I persuade the baby to sleep through the night so I could be a more attentive wife?

I went a way to a cottage for a few days, read Gift from the Sea and soaked in the Psalms. Peace pooled around my toes, wetting me, quenching me…and then ebbed away again, lost at sea, as waves of worries flooded in: How could I balance my own creative, intellectual pursuits, my own spiritual growth, in the midst of the paramount endeavor of discipling these little people for the Lord’s glory?

I had thought somewhere quiet would ensure peace. It didn’t. I was still in my skin. Peace wasn’t a place I could find on a map, or even a place that I could create. Peace wasn’t a place to live in.

I came home to the noise, embraced the kids, and laughed loud and long. Peace wasn’t “out there.” He was here. Peace was a Person I could listen to.

No matter how boisterous and chaotic it gets in here, the Prince of Peace has moved in too, living here in the midst of this rambunctious, exuberant family.

In the rush and the roar of it all, I have to bend my ear to catch it:

“Listen carefully to what God the Lord is saying, for he speaks peace to His faithful people” (Ps. 85:8).

He leans down low and if I choose to listen carefully, over the cry of the baby, the scream of the toddler, the stomp of the disgruntled student, and the beep of the stove timer, I hear His voice, low and soft: Peace… Peace…Peace.

I crawl out of bed, ready to get dressed and head out, not to some rustic respite in the mountains somewhere, but into the fray of family living. For “the Lord of Peace Himself gives [me] His peace at all times, and in every situation” (2 Thess. 3:16).

How to find Peace in the crush of motherhood? Peace may come fleetingly as a reviving, necessary place, but, like a fog burning off in the heat of the day, peace as a place will dissipate. For enduring Peace, look for a Person whispering the word softly to your anxious heart: Peace, peace, peace. Seek a Person, the very Lord of Peace, who is willing to give you his very own abiding, unwavering peace.

Places come and go; tokens and pictures tucked in scrapbooks. Tickets and reservations are expensive, the cost of coffee adds up.

This Person, though? He will never leave you nor forsake you, and is close as breath upon your cheek. Peace is a Person with whom we live, keep company with, commune with.

Hear Him now, above the din? Peace. Peace.

Lord, I find Peace, wherever, whatever, when I live in You. Please, Lord. Today, let Your peace fall softly, come what may.

Originally posted in April but a truth I need to regularly revisit....

Quiet

If you cannot improve the silence, do not speak.

Lord, these are days of more interior talk, You and I, and less words spoken aloud...

Less, "Listen, Lord, your servant is speaking,"....

and more quiet...

More "Speak, Lord... your servant is listening."

I shall walk through this silence...and listen for You.

All

Some folks have prayer closets.

Us here, well.... we just have prayer walks.

With the heights of heaven the ceiling and the walls, rings of wood and time stretching upward too.

The children wheel ahead, spokes and feet awhirl down the gravel road. I come behind, pushing Shalom in her field of curls and peals of laughter. The pram and I paint shadows, long and limber, across beans turning gold.

Feet walk. Boys whistle. Crickets, like violinsts, sing down through the woods. And a thumb holds prayers and pleas open.

"Be my good shepherd to lead me into the green pastures of thy Word,
and cause me to lie down beside the rivers of its comforts.
Fill me with peace, that no disquieting worldly gales may ruffle the calm surface of my soul."

I slow to gaze at the willow hanging still over the glassy pond. Worldly gales whipped today; I looked ruffled...because I was ruffled. Peace seeped. These prayers, whispered in twilight while the bikes kick up gravel, they fill. I fill. This choppy soul calms, waters quieting.

Boaz dashes into the ditch's rustling summer grass. Levi is sure its a coon he's after. Malakai scrapes the gravel with his scuffed runners, brakes screeching. He thinks he saw a coon there just now, too. And could I please tighten his helmet?

"Impress me deeply with a sense of thine omnipresence,
that thou art about my path,
my ways, my lying down, my end."

Abba, Jehovah Shammah , is about this path, my path, tonight. Emmanuel, God with us, really is. Impress it upon me deeply, Lord, as I adjust helmets, call the dog back, push the pram, muddle life: Thou art about this path.

Joshua wildly beckons to come see the swallows nesting in their architectural wonders under the bridge. Shalom points and lilts, "Cow in the water, Mama, right there, right there." The moss sways in the stream, the sparrows swoop, the river eddies, lost among the rocks...and then drifts further down, far and away. I pause, then sit in amongst the Queen Anne's Lace on the bank, praying, thirsting...and drinking His ebbing day.

Malakai leans in with a sprig of yellow and exuberant delight. "For you, Mama." I smile, inhale delicate scent, and press it between the gilded leaves. It will mark this prayer, this day.

"It is sweet to be nothing and have nothing,
and to be fed with crumbs from thy hands.
Blessed be thy Name for anything that life brings...
How admirably dost thou captivate the soul!"

The heron flies and we head for home. Was anything of note crossed off the list today? Oh, and yes, isn't the laundry still hanging on the line? But then, thankfully, I, the amnesiac, remember.

This is all there is, really; all that matters.
One step in front of the other. Walking towards Home. Fragrant prayers.

Communion.

*Photo: Malakai's sprig in our copy of Valley of Vision, a humbling gift from a magnanimous friend.

Upwards

"I don’t look back: God knows the fruitless efforts,
The wasted hours the sinning, the regrets;
I leave them all with Him Who blots the record,
And mercifully forgives, and then forgets.

I don’t look forward, God sees all the future,
The road that, short or long, will lead me home,
And He will face with me its every trial,
And bear for me the burdens that may come.

But I look up —Into the face of Jesus,
For there my heart can rest, my fears are stilled;
And there is joy, and love, and light for darkness,

And perfect peace, and every hope fulfilled."

~Annie Johnson Flint

Why the Push?

Perhaps this knotted-up way of living commences with how doctors and midwives usher us into this world. Yes, I wonder if that first word the cosmos urges to our waking consciousness, that initial directive, permanently scars this business of living: PUSH. And so it goes. We inhale, fill our virgin lungs with the air of this planet and begin: pushing, straining, tangling, knotting. Hurrying.

I saw another way the other day, in a different world that orbits a few gravel roads to the north of here. Coming down that hill facing to the west, clouds floating in silence overhead, even the way the oxygen inflates your chest cavity feels different… peaceful, deliberate. The gnarled orchard suns itself in the noonday heat. Young girls, bonneted and barefoot, cluster in the shade of ancient limbs. Boys in straw hats and suspenders scatter throughout a farmyard, the lazy windmill graciously serving as the home base anchor for their game of baseball. I breathe deeply, exhaling long and completely. The red geraniums greet cheerfully as I park near the hitching post next to the back door.

Two steps up take me up past the corn bristle broom hanging on the clapboard and into the cool dark of the shop. Eyes adjust to the still dimness. Feet shuffle across the worn wood floors. Then hands, old and well-used, dig into apron’s pocket in search of a pencil.

“Yes?” the hunched-back Mennonite man quietly asks, pencil nub ready. Glancing around the farmhouse store, no bigger than my mudroom, at its gray wooden shelves of recycled tins marked with masking tape labels of “baking soda,” “cornstarch,” and “chicken bouillon,” I humbly nod my hello, and offer a pondered, “Well….” This air slows…

Nodding understanding, he steps into the room’s only beam of light streaming through the four paned window and patiently waits. Thoughtfully, I select a 25 kilogram box of raisins stacked in a darkened corner, a 5 gallon pail of honey, a 25 kilogram bag of oats. Soundlessly and in perfectly executed scrolls, the shopkeeper itemizes each in his coil notebook along with corresponding price. He conscientiously weighs the bag of cornstarch I set on the butcher top counter, marking down precisely what the scale hands pronounce.

“Might you have larger bag of flax?” I inquire, softly so as not to break the peace of this place.

He nods and shuffles into the windowless black of a side room. I finger jars of oil reflecting the room’s sole sunray, lean to smell baby food jars of cloves, pick up one of the fragile glass flutes of a lantern. And wait. There is no clock in this room. I do not know how long I just simply am before he returns carrying a bag tied at the top with fraying twine.

He cradles the bag closer to eye level and makes mention: “Found a little hole here in the corner so the flax seeds were trickling out. I just tied it up with some baler twine.”

Unexpectedly, he turns his face directly towards mine, gentle eyes locking. “This isn’t one of those big good stores,” he apologizes. It takes me a moment to know what he means, to find words ready to respond, the silence of the space so complete. Finally words stir and I assure, “Oh, I find this place good. Very good.”

Taking the double tied flax bag in hand, I can feel it deep within: I have unwound and let go. There has come an end to the unraveling. I already am, already here, already born. There is no need to push.

He smiles gratitude and tallies the flax to my list. There is only the sound of his pencil slow scratching out the math of my total. What is hurry in this world that has let the world go on ahead?

On my way down the lane I notice collections of women in the long waving grasses of the pasture, their black aprons blowing too in the breeze. A line of men parallel the fence, leaning on the cedar rails. Here, there is no compulsion. They have found time. And each other.

In that moment it comes to me, that story of a well-known pastor who was once asked what was the most profound regret of his life. Recalling the expansive and chaotic landscape of a life of sins and wounds, he thought for a moment, then answered, “Being in a hurry. Getting to the next thing without fully entering the thing in front of me. I cannot think of a single advantage I’ve ever gained from being in a hurry. But a thousand broken and missed things, tens of thousands, lie in the wake of all the rushing. Through all that haste, I thought I was making up time. It turns out I was throwing it away.”

Pushing, hurrying, rushing to gather and store…as it trickles out a corner.

The cord was tied moments after our birth. There is no need to push anymore.

Listen. Hear Jesus soothing his children with another word, one that massages life into this business of living?

Rest.

Sabbath

"The Sabbath is a day for the sake of life. Man is not a beast of burden, and the Sabbath is not for the purpose of enhancing efficiency of his work....

The Sabbath is not for the sake of the weekdays;
the weekdays are for the sake of the Sabbath.


It is not an interlude but the climax of living."



~Heschel, Sabbath

A Sense of Quiet

"Arranging a bowl of flowers in the morning

can give a sense of quiet in a crowded day

- like writing a poem,
or saying a prayer."

~Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Father? Whisper to me in the noise of today to keep whispering to You. Therein lies Quiet.

Self-Talk: The Constant Conversation

From the archives of Paul Tripp's blog:

"Remember, there are few people more influential in your life than you are because no one talks to you more than you do.

You spend each day in constant conversation with you!

And the things that you tell yourself shape what you do and say each day.

Do you constantly remind yourself of your need of God and others? Do you tell yourself that it is good to admit weakness and to reach out for help? If you do, it is not a sign that is something wrong. No, by God's definition, that kind of self-talk is a sign that something is very right. How about beginning to pray these three prayers every morning:

1. "Lord, I am a person in desperate need of help today."

2. "Lord, won't you, in your grace, send your helpers my way."

3. "And please give me the humility to receive the help when it comes."

Are you intimidated by your weaknesses? Are you afraid to bare your needs to God and others? Don't forget that Jesus is the Prince of Peace. He came so that we would be able to experience both peace with God and with others. He came so that we would no longer have to seduce ourselves with the delusions of autonomy and self-sufficiency. He came so that we could be the kind of people we were created to be, living in humble worship of Him and humble dependency on others, right here, right now. " ~Paul Tripp

Lord, set a guard over my lips, that the words I speak to myself, in this constant conversation that I am having with self, would be words that would edify and build up, interior talk that would influence in godly ways, offering courage in the pilgrimage. You are the Prince of Peace. Thank you for being close, whispering Peace to my soul---such words in this interior conversation.