Spirit

Purposing to live in the Wind River... and this morning He gives these verses as I read His love letter...


"You women who are so complacent, rise up and listen to me; you daughters who feel secure, hear what I have to say! ... Tremble, you complacent women; shudder, you daughters who feel secure!

... till the Spirit is poured upon us from on high..." Isa. 32


"Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised... For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit." Acts. 1


Lord, I pray again: Let me tremble, wait. Pour out Your spirit on Your daughters. Let us move only by the moving of Your Spirit.

Wind River

This sea moves, moving me too.

I string laundry and listen to her waves, arrange peonies in crackled masons at the sink and watch her ripples, weed rows of sweet corn and touch her lapping shores.

It shimmers green. And sweeps me away, an ocean of wheat cresting.

Come every morning, we come to her, us with our bowls of granola, to picnic table and sit here, listening to fields rush with her running.

"I see the wind." I turn to him, his face warm in beginning light.

We watch wind wave through blades of green, a bending, curving stream of blue-grey, winding up emerald hills, snaking down.

"Wind rivers."





Through heads of wheat, whispering leaves, a horizon of stalks, the wind takes her course. I'm mesmerized. In these fields, she's unveiled her way.

What is invisible is seen. What is a mystery is made known. The leaves of the trees only expose her for a moment. But through this kingdom of wheat stalks, this together body, the wind is witnessed.

And I begin the day considering how the way of the Spirit can be seen by how Kingdom people move. Only how Kingdom people move. Together.

And wondering how the Spirit might be manifested in me this day, beside these people here.

I carry my empty bowl into the house, the wind on my face.




Lord, no one sees the wind. But I see its current through the green. No one sees the Spirit. But how He courses through Your people. Move me. And may I only move in You.

Photos: the sea of wheat around our island home...

Living in His Heart

I have meandered through the city for nearly a week, but I haven’t figured out why I’ve come really, what I am doing here. This pervasive, quiet ache awakens me to what I hadn't fully known: I am lost.

True, I know the street I am staying on, the way down the cobblestone streets of the Left bank to the flat at 30 Rue Mazarine. And yes, a friend invited me, needing a friend, an ear, a heart. So I took wing, came.





Certainly, the history has stirred and the art’s deeply, profoundly, moved, but this farm girl’s walked tentatively, uncomfortably, through the haut couture of the Avenue des Champs Elysees, grown homesick for fields in the churning milieu of faces, voices, bodies of St. Michel square, kicked ball with laughing children in Jardin des Tuilleries and longed to hear the simple happiness of my own loved, far-away children.

Joining my friend on long walks along the Seine, down cobbled streets of cafes, delis, perfumers, of the Maurais, I can’t help but wonder: If I am called to go into all the world, why am I not rocking babies in an Ukrainian orphanage? Serving food in a Greek refugee camp? Building a school in Peru? What am I doing in Paris?

I’m a sparrow misplaced.

The week has nearly drawn to a close, less than 24 hours left in this city, when I see the plaque there high about the massive blue wooden doors leading into our courtyard. It’s commonplace, though passing by it is easy to miss. A plaque down the street, over the café Le Voltaire, notes the floor, the day, on which the philosopher died. The day before I had stood outside the house where Renoir had lived, now painted a shy shade of pink, in the steep, winding Montmartre neighborhood, overlooking the rooftops of the city.

But the name etched here in stone on the wall next to where I’ve slept these handful of nights makes me catch my breath. Not an artist, or a philosopher, but of a patient man who probed for meaning, wrestled a mystery, for nearly twenty years. One who fingered lines and pictures scratched in stone, the language of an empire, a civilization: the Egyptian hieroglyphics. And found the key, decoded the cipher. Understood.





My head laying in the dark loft, hand reaching up to finger centuries old beams, I pray. Can I too figure the riddle of being here, in a few short hours unravel the language of life that led me here?

My last day in Paris we do what we’ve done everyday: touch her past, taste her breads and cheeses, listen to her sounds on every street corner, violins, guitars, cellos, watch her international faces and vibrant colors.



I find an island of quiet in a monastic bookstore off Rue de Rivoli, a spray of blushing heritage roses creeping up sun-washed stone. A young nun in a long blue robe gracefully serves browsers in hushed, lilting French, her fawn eyes inviting, welcoming.



I too drift through stacks of Bibles, French titles, and back by old wooden stairs climbing up stone wall, standing in a pool of afternoon sun, I pick up a CD of hymns entitled “Eucharisteo.” I lay my hand over the word. I remember, this word to live and die by, this life key. Key.

I run a finger over “eucharisteo” like it's Braille, touching meaning. Isn’t this too a bit of deciphering why I am here, what every day means? God gives grace, we give gratitude, together we experience joy.

I take up the word, turning it over again and again in my mind, feeling its truth, as I walk across the cobble courtyard from bookstore to church. Inside, the vaulting space is still. The air feels old, the floor, holy. In the shadows of an arch’s lofty heights, I sit on a low stool and talk to God. I tell Him what little I do know. Tell Him I don’t know exactly what I am doing here in Paris, what my purpose is, what the meaning is for my time here. I tell Him that long waves across the ocean, home is loud, I am sinful, and there too I wrestle to figure what He’s writing on my days.

I tell Him I am a sparrow misplaced. Here, there. Everywhere?

A hand touches my shoulder and I look up. My friend’s found out which church we’ve wandered into, hands me St. Gervais’ welcome brochure. And the words that I happen to glance upon shimmer, flash:

“Since human beings are created as the most beautiful image and likeness of God, the monks and nuns want to pray and to meet God in the city, among its inhabitants…. In the heart of the city they are called to love, prayer, work, hospitality and silence, called to be chaste, poor, obedient, humble and joyful, all while living in the heart of the world.”

And the riddle cracks open. I walk out of the maze. The words, the world, falls open, understood. I understand.

Living eucharistically, gratefully receiving now, wherever, however, in the world that may be, one meets God. In the heart of teeming Paris. In the heart of my noisy home. In the heart of my own soul chaos.

I am here, wherever I am, because He is here.

I don’t have to get away from the people to find God; I don’t have to seek out a retreat to commune with Him. He is not confined to the prescribed, the predictable. He is everywhere. He is in the midst of the masses, the grime, the cacophony. Open-handedly receiving the gift of the present, we receive His presence, His work for us in the moment.

I read the hieroglyphics of here: While living in the heart of the world, I may live in His heart.

I turn to face my friend, look into her seeking eyes, warm face. I am here, available, present to His presence.

I’ve flown home to the heart of God.

Father, in the heart of today, let me live in Your heart. Wherever I am.

Scripture drink:
"Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it..." Gen.28:16

Photos: taken in the heart of Paris

A Love Body

Part One: Common Stones

It’s hard to think that it’s been almost two years since I wanted to quit church, ours. I mean that particular building, that group, not the Body, never the Body.

A Sunday in late August, as the corn dried golden all around that country church, Beryl Martin, after playing the closing chords of the service the way only she can, hair coiffed and soft eyes searching, she found Mama in the foyer, back by the coat hangers and children darting between legs, and she asked after me. Asked how I was doing and all. Did Mama think Ann might be interested in helping with the women’s ministry?

“No, Beryl, I don’t think so.” Mama has a reputation for her nonsensical ways; gentle, warm, but forthright nonetheless. “She’s not good here. Not good at all.” I can hear Mama saying that, the way she’d punctuate “at all,” her voice deep and certain, her eyes peering knowingly over the rim of her glasses, headed tilted down.

It bothered me for days, when Mama told me of their exchange. Laying in the dark, staring up at the ceiling, that line would lay out too, stretching long beside me, prodding me awake. “She’s not good here.”

And I’d say it again, what I’d been muttering all along, “But I am good. No, maybe not entirely with this particular church.” Satin night fell soft outside windows like a headboard over these pillows and I’d look up to Him who names those diamonds strewn across the Milky Way, “But I am good with You, God. Know I am good with You.”

I was.

But still this internal bleeding, anguishing slow drips of sadness that seemed to know no healing.
I was growing estranged from His Bride.

It hurt, my soul did, in this physical, fractured way, to have Mama say what I couldn’t say. That, true, I struggled to sit for a few hours with that particular group of people for whom the Carpenter had stretched out two palms and let hammer staple him to wood. That I shrunk from gathering formally with this group of folks who took His name as theirs. That I wanted to worship God elsewhere, even alone, but not in the midst of that assembly.

I mourned. But truth is I didn’t fit, couldn’t force myself into the shape of the place. I didn’t belong. I came to live on the fringe, a Body appendage exposed and cold. On the outside. This endlessly repeating experience of trudging through chilled blue moon nights looking for someone to open a door into warmth and a seat by the hearth. I think the loneliness though gnawed worse than the cold.

But, really, I wasn’t alone: many wander raw. The church as a whole is full of outsiders, dangling body parts who find themselves far from the heated heart of their spiritual home. So many numb-cold fingers of discouraged outsiders looking for doors, doors into places that read, understand, live Scripture as they understand it, to warm near sojourners who burn within as they do. The Christian landscape swarms with migrating outsiders seeking new church homes, new hearths to draw close to, places to feel embraced, full, wrapped warm.

We stayed. I got up every Sunday, dressed kids, gathered Bibles. We went. I read eyes of other outsiders, wounded ones who stayed committed through long years of cold. I read this line, underlined it, held it as a light through the wintry nights howling:

“God wants you to be in regular close fellowship with other believers so you can develop the skill of loving. Love cannot be learned in isolation. You have to be around people --- irritating, imperfect, frustrating people.” *

Maybe even wrong people. Not on the essentials, but perhaps not entirely right on doctrine as a whole. Could I love frustrating, arrogant, (possibly) wrong people? (And, anyways, haven’t I been all of that and more?) So we intentionally attended. Though worn out we reached out.

We (even us) learned grace.

But I never knew it like I did this past Sunday, standing there in the last row, holding a toddler, voice rising on hymn’s chorus. She’s standing too, singing there in front of me, holding a toddler of her own. A rowdy, bobbing toddler, playing this riotous game of peek-a-boo with 6-year-old sister who’s darting in and out behind Mama’s shoulder. A younger brother’s running back and forth across the chairs.

“Stop now,” she glares at oldest girl. Daughter giggles, pops around other shoulder. Toddler howls loudly, throws himself in her direction and another boisterous round begins. Singlehandedly, vainly, this Mama shoos away, shifts, shakes an angry finger and the kids play on.

I ache.

She’s bravely here alone, a single Mom trying to manage, no hand from a mate and father. He’s living with a highschool girl who swells with another of his children. It wasn’t that long ago this Mama too ran with that crowd, writing her own wild story.

My brother knows. He’s happens to be standing beside Single Mama and children this Sunday. I look at them both, standing here, side-by-side. They both did the same parties, the same all-nighters. And, incomprehensibly (but isn’t that God’s modus operandi?), they both met the same Jesus. Instead of dragging through a Sunday morning hangover from a Saturday night binge, they are standing here in a little country church singing a two-hundred year old hymn of worship.

Little girl flashes again, toddler shrieks with delight, brother dashes. Single Mama frowns, hisses, sighs.

Then my brother leans over.

Leans over, whispers something, and she nods. He scoops up brother zipping by, wraps arm around peek-a-booing sister, and the chorus crescendos but I can’t sing for the mess of tears streaming down.

I’ve seen grace.

Raymond Petersen’s leading the congregational hymn, and Charlotte Hiemstra’s playing the piano, and widowed Gerald Hayden’s manning the sound system. Ann and Piet Van Den Boogard are on the far side with the ten kids, and bachelor Andrew Versteeg is holding out a hymnal for the seeing-impaired friend he faithfully brings. And through this spilling blur, I see.

I see Bert Struyk across the aisle. Bert shaved bald, that crescent scar arching across his head where they cut into his skull and sliced out that knot of cancer. Bert exposed. Like us in this moment.

I may wash up, dress in Sunday finery, prune and preen and turn out to church looking polished. And in hushed voices (and sometimes a tad too loud) I disparage other pilgrims, point out the hypocrites, the Pharisees, the power hungry, the doctrinally wayward. I, we, try to tear off the masks, deflate the puffed up, set things straight.

But in this moment, we are this, all of us, naked and seen.

We are all as messy as these rowdy kids and an exasperated Mama. We are all as bruised as an abandoned wife with her own sordid past. Without exception, we are all scarred, torn and scraped, battle weary. Me (chiefly). My brother. Gerald Hayden. Bert. The elders. The pastor. All ragamuffins in need of a little help. A lot of grace.

I wipe wet cheeks, try to focus on the next verse of words still swimming when I realize that us ruffians are all He has. The only ones He has to gather here, braid voices together, and worship Him. The only ones He has to lean over, offer a hand, and love each other. The only ones to be His Body here in this wrecked world. We’re it. For all our façades and our masks, we are just a bunch of broken, cracked, messy ones. We, His global church, His beloved Bride.

We'll never get it all right, be all right, create heaven on earth. Because, individually, we aren't. Though I wish, no church utopias on this side. Because each of us as body parts are a bit malformed. (I guess that is what heaven's for, the perfecting yet to come.) But we can be here, together, loving, a bruised bride wooing the Bridegroom with worship.

The hymn’s on the last verse, and the children are asked to file down to Sunday School. My brother helps rambunctious children make their way to the aisle. Relieved, Single Mama smiles up to my brother, nods gratefully, takes little hands, and leads dragging, dancing ones to the stairs. Bert Struyk’s smiling too, because he’s here. Not sick at home or in some hospital bed, but here in the gathering of the saints. Us sinners sanctified into saints… still stumbling, still scarred under it all, but saints nonetheless, headed in the right direction, Crossward.

And I am here too, across the aisle from Bert, standing behind my brother, scanning the rows, looking for Mama’s face, her crown of white. I want to find her, tell her about loving the messy ones, like a Carpenter I know does for me, about living in community with (irritating, frustrating, maybe even wrong) ragamuffins, some obvious, some not so obvious, tell her about this grace I’ve touched for the wounded and mended ones.

Tell her that I am here, that I am staying here, and I am good.



Lord, today how do you call me to warm chilled outsiders who are scarred deep--scars I too know and carry. How can I love messy ones like me... who may not even know they're messy? How can I love Your broken and limping Bride? Show me. She's all You have. And I am a body part, messy too, made for grace and called to love.


To read part one of these thoughts : Common Stones
* quoted from the Purpose Driven Life

How to Spend the Day

"If humility is a Christian duty, then the everyday life of a Christian must show forth humility.


If we are called to care for the sick, the naked, and the imprisoned, these expressions of love must be a constant effort in our lives.


If we are to love our enemies, our daily life must demonstrate that love.


If we are called to be thankful, to be wise, to be holy, they must show forth in our lives.


If we are to be new people in Christ, then we must show our newness to the world.


If we are to follow Christ, it must be in the way we spend each day."

~William Law (1686-1761)

Lord, how I spend this day shows what I believe.

At the end of the day, will I have lived in a way that says I am Yours?

Photo: snowballs blossoms that little hands brought in

Common Stones

Our shadows stretch us long across this field, us bent low, rock pickers combing earth. This is spring's song. Always has been, as long as I can remember. It’s what I know and what those before knew, what those now coming are coming to know.




The ground moans after winter’s weight, working stones to the surface, and we, all of us, young or worn, come again with spring, pluck this sod, play this song. Fingers pry around hard edges, dislodge rock from soil beds, then haul limestone and granite to trailer. I watch us, silhouettes on dirt, scan, swoop, carry. We are outlined clay.


Here, it is clear. This is what we are, all of us without exception. Peel off the degrees, strip the careers, tear back the status symbols, this is who we are. We are dirt.

And in a moment I am twelve again, heavy with rocks, racing my brother in this same field, arms cradling rocks bigger I hope than his, to trailer heaped. Grandpa, near deaf, slows tractor, clutches, waits, but doesn’t idle back the throttle. Tractor engine screams for us to hurry, press harder.

We did. We do.

And now time’s raced on, returning Grandpa, returning him to the dirt whence we’ve all come, never to know these kids who walk this same soil, this same field, leaving footprints here too. But here in twilight, we somehow meet, dust bending down to touch dust.

“The earth is what we all have in common,” writes Wendell Berry.

In common with those in the past. In common with those in the future. In common with those now, all of us walking and living off this dirt beneath our feet. This earth, loamy and rocky, sandy and gritty, it’s where we live these now days, that from which we came, that to which we all return. We all return to our fathers, to what we all are.

“You picked this field, Mom?” Our 13 year-old future man pants the words, his arms too full, his face red with work.





“Every year. This ground’s been picked and picked and picked.” I toss two more rocks onto the trailer’s rising mount and think of the years of gilded harvests before the late autumn rains, the shift of clouds and winds, and white flakes falling, years of warmth returning, and us with it, to work up soil and pick these rocks, rocks, rocks.

“Is there a volcano or something underneath this field, just bubbling them up? Where do all these stones keep coming from?” His brother, sweaty, grimy, weary, hollers from the other side of the trailer. He’s kneeling down, both hands gripped to a stubborn one, thin muscles quaking it back and forth.

I laugh, motion him out of the way, kick at the embedded granite. “When I was your age, my brother, sister and I, we used to fill trailer load after trailer load with rocks and these crazy dreams of some spray we’d invent to disintegrate stones.”

Farmer Husband, wearing this mask of dirt, teeth smiling white, heaves a big one up to the trailer’s edge, rolls it in.

“You too? I thought only my brothers and I had those kind of wild ideas.” I look into those eyes ringed in dirt, and he into mine, and I remember him young, us farm kids, like these kids, us dreaming the same dreams.

Our oldest reaches up behind the tractor seat for the thermos and some cold wet for us all standing here for a moment. “Guess nobody can figure out a spray or anything better than just this, eh?” He grins, a raccoon of grime, then glugs that water down.

“Nope. This is really the only way. Bend down, pick it up, carry it off.” Farmer Husband takes his turn at thermos spout. He swipes away water dripping from chin with dusty, untiring arm.







“Just one rock at a time.”

I smile at the patch of skin he’s washed clean.

Just one rock at a time. Generations of us dirt-ones, bending low, picking up sin-boulders, asking Jesus to carry them off. Each growing season turning up more stony edges, more that needs prying, kicking out. So it goes for us who are dust.

It’s what we all, every one of us everywhere, have in common: this earth. These bodies of dust. This rocky soul soil.


We all must wrestle, wrench out, pray for Him to come do what we can’t do with these sin boulders so we can harvest a crop. Season after season, generation after generation, dirt dealing with dirt and all its stones.

All of us, we’re the same, working with Jesus on our soul fields.

We’re all just picking rocks.

Picking rocks with Him who does what we all only wildly dream of.

Working with Him who rolls the stones away.

Lord, I am just simple dust, dealing with a lot of rocks. Help me. Roll away my stones. And help me see what I have in common with all of us living after the Fall: that we are all just picking rocks, asking for Your hand.

Part two of Common to follow
Photos: us, dealing with stones

Weed Seeds

Spheres on stilts perforate the lawn, these dandelions propped feasting planets for sun-grazed feathers.

I watch from window, goldfinches flashing gold about the whitened old globes.

And He who choreographs these explosions, soft and soundless, winds time, just until the end, to transform a weed universe, bitter and unwanted orbs, into a galaxy of seeds. Nourishment. A banquet.

Fuel for the soaring ones.

Lord, cause me to trust You. To transform the weeds in my life into seeds for my soul, fuel to soar Home.

Related: Making Dandelion Wine
Video of goldfinch eating dandelion seeds

(More on education later today)
Photo: jpmatth

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

Eat the Mystery

Part Three of a series on choosing...

He comes to the back door this week, looking for his brother, looking like his brother, looking like those babies of his we buried in that country cemetery, and I see how it all could have been different.

My brother-in-law, just filling time, he’s talking about soil temperature and weather forecasts and that he’d heard from John van DeGevel who likely heard it at the coffee well on Main that some farmer brought a three inch bean plant into Atwood Farm Supply and nobody knew how a field of beans like that was going to survive the late May frost they’re calling for tonight. I lean up against the doorframe. There’s no saving a field like that on a night when the temperatures dip below freezing, that moon rising higher in a cloudless, cold sky.

“But that’s the way it is,” John shrugs his shoulders, looks out across our wheat field.




“We think we control so much, do so much right to make a crop, and when you are farming, you are faced with it everyday: you control so little. Really, it’s God who decides it all, not us.” He slips his thick, Dutch hands into frayed pockets, smiles easily. “It’s all good.”

I nod, almost fill the space between us with words about Farmer Husband coming home from the hardware store soon and instead of John waiting longer, making small talk with me, if he just wants to drop off that new water tank in the back shed for now. But I catch his eyes, those clear as heaven blue eyes, and I know I have to ask. Ask how he can say that, mean that. If he really believes that.

Tentatively, eyes fixed on his, I step into that place we rarely go.

“How do you know that, John? Like deep down, how do you know? That it isn’t all random, that it is really all good. Others who have walked your road haven’t arrived where you have.” His eyes don’t leave mine. I know he’s remembering too.

It had been a New Year’s Day, that day of fresh starts, resolutions, new dreams. And it was all ending. Again. John had called, left a message on our machine, asking us to come, if we wanted. Room 112, second floor, right across from the nurses’ station. The recording of that soft, matter-of-fact voice machine left us stunned, punched in the gut.

I searched my husband’s face. “Already? Today?” He had taken my hand, held it tight all the way there, right to that hospital room lit only by a dim lamp in the corner.

We met John at the door. He nodded, eyes smiling bravely. The singular tear that carved down his cheek chiseled something out of me.

He brushed it away, still clinging to that smile, that Dutch determination. “Tiffany just noticed he started breathing a bit heavier this afternoon. And yeah, when we brought him in, they said his lung had collapsed and it was just a matter of hours. It’s all like it was at the end for Austin.”

I can’t look into that sadness wearing a smile anymore. I look at the floor, polished tiles blurring, running.

Only a year and six months had passed since Austin. And here we were again, with Dietrich. Austin had been hardly four months old on a muggy June afternoon when I had stood in the light of the front window, balloons waving in the gentle hum of the fan, caressing my nephew’s bare little tummy, stroking each little toe, and watching his chest heave less and less with life. How do you keep breathing when the lungs under the skin you touch are slowly atrophying? The doctors said that with spinal muscular atrophy the chances of future children having the same fatal disease were only one in four. Twelve months later, Dietrich was born to hope and prayers and the same diagnosis.

John hands me a Kleenex, and I try to wipe it all away. He tries too, with his words, “But we’re blessed that up until today Dietrich’s had no pain, and we have good memories of a happy Christmas together with him. We had only hoped that with Austin, but it didn’t happen. Tiff got lots and lots of pictures. We got five months with him. It’s all good."

"And you know,” he laughs, that tone he’s teased me with since I was fourteen, that gawky friend of his kid brother, “Austin’s waiting for Dietrich to just hurry up and get there already.”

I shouldn’t have, but I did. I looked up. And saw all this wild grief, this dazed bewilderment in eyes above stoic smile. In that moment I forget the rules of this Dutch family of reserved emotion, of their carefully measured words, and, my world flooded in fluid pain, I grab John by the shoulders, pull him close and this ragged, scratchy voice half-whispers, half-chokes, “If it were up to me, brother, I’d write this story differently.”

I regret them, as soon as the words leave me, wish I could pull them back, comb out their tangled madness, dress them in calm Sunday best. But there they were, released, raw and real, stripped of any theological cliché, my naked, serrated howl to the throne room.

Those are the words I am remembering, standing there on the back step this week, probing more.

“You know,” John turns again towards the waving wheat field. “ Well, even with the boys...” He was remembering too.

“I don’t know why that all happened. But do I have to?” He turns towards me, shrugs again, eyes saying more. I wait.

“Maybe something else would have happened later on. Who knows? I don’t mention often, but sometimes I think of when God gave Hezekiah 15 more years of life because he prayed for it. But if he had died when God first intended, Manasseh would never have been born. Think of all the evil that would have been avoided if Hezekiah had died earlier, before that son was born. I am not saying anything, either way, about anything, really.”

He looks away, off across sea of green rolling in winds, lowers his voice. “Just that maybe you don’t want to change the story, because you don’t know what a different ending holds…”




My raw words from that dying, ending day, echo, pierce. There’s a reason I am not writing the story and He is. He knows how it all works out, where it all leads, what it all means.

I swallow hard, find my voice.

“Some bury a child and can’t accept there is Anyone writing meaning out of it. And others bury two children, and do. Why?”

His eyes linger, see through to my meaning, my ache, and he nods, knowing. “Maybe, I guess, it’s accepting there are things we simply don’t understand. But He does.”

And I think I see. When we find ourselves groping along insufferable desert floors (and we will), we can choose. We can choose to pick up what we don’t understand, what has no meaning to us, what makes no sense, and call it good. Because God sent it. Like Israelites gathering manna. And asking: “What is it?” Forty long years of daily eating that which had no meaning: “What is it?” More than fourteen thousand, six hundred days of taking as their daily bread that which they didn’t comprehend. They embraced the inexplicable.

They ate the mystery.

And they found the mystery to be “like wafers with honey.”

A pick-up drives in the lane and I watch from the window, two brothers, meeting, talking, their hand gestures mirroring each other. And I think of all the mysteries I have refused to let nourish me, the wafers with honey I have wasted, rejected. The sweet I have missed.

And I wonder if the rent in the canvas of our life-backdrop, the losses that puncture our world, those black holes that smatter everywhere we look, are not, somehow, ways to see through the soul holes to God. Thin, open places to see through the mess of this place to the beauty beyond and Him.

If we’ll sup on the mystery.



"When the sons of Israel saw it, they said to one another, "What is it?" For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, "It is the bread which the LORD has given you to eat." Ex. 16:15


Lord, cause me today to eat what you've given. To find nourishment in all that is a mystery.

Part of this week's focus on Choice. Part One here. Part Two here.

How to Drink the Cup of Salvation

Today, I am writing about Thirsting for God in Daily Work over at Laity Lodge's High Calling.

Because it's all about choices.

Will I drink the cup that He gives?

I'd count it a privilege learn from you. I hope you'll share how you choose to drink from His cup.

Thank you, fellow sojourners on The Way... I'll be over there, listening....

All's Grace,

Soul Holes

Part One Here...

We grew full of bitterness, not grace.

Years later I would sit at one end of that brown-plaid couch, my dad stretched out along its length. Worn from a day driving tractor, sun beating and wind blowing, he’d ask me to stroke his hair. I’d stroke from that cow-lick of his and back, his hair ringed from the line of his cap. And he’d close his eyes and I’d ask the questions I could never ask looking into them.

“Did you ever used to go to church? Like a long time ago, Dad?” The neighboring Williams family took turns with the van Veen family, picking me up Sunday mornings for the drive into town and services.

“Yeah, we went. Your grandmother had us go every Sunday, after milking was done. That was important to her.”

I kept my eyes on his dark strands of hair running through my fingers.

“But it’s not important to you now?” The words, barely whispered, hung.

He pushed up his plaid sleeves, shifted his head, his eyes still closed. “Oh….”

I waited, hands combing, waiting for him to find the words for those feelings that don’t fit neatly into the stiff ties, the starched collars, of sentences.

“No, I guess not anymore. The day Aimee died, I was done with all of that.”

Scenes blast my memoryscape and I reel.

“And, if there really is Anybody up there, They sure were asleep at the wheel that day.” I don’t say anything, that lump in my throat a glowing, burning ember. I just stroke hair, soothing pain. He finds more feelings, stuffs them into words.

“Why let a beautiful little girl die such a senseless, needless death? And she didn’t just die, like your mother always says. She was killed.”

That word twists his face. His eyes remain closed, but he’s shaking his head now, remembering all there was to say no to that hideous November afternoon that branded our lives.

Dad didn’t need more words. That shake of the head said it all. No. No benevolent Being, no grace, no meaning to it all. He rarely had said all that, only sometimes, when he’d close his eyes and ask me to stroke away the day. But these aren’t things you need to say anyways. Like all beliefs, you simply live them. We did.

No, God. No God.

The air our family breathed, this oxygen of negativity, it wasn’t ours alone. It is our human inheritance, the Garden’s legacy. It’s the bedrock of all sin, this ingratitude of Adam and Eve. The rest of the garden wasn’t enough.

When God said humanity was not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God ripped away what we wanted. He stole what we considered rightly ours. He snatched away what we deemed ultimately necessary for our happiness and wholeness. Don’t we keep reliving the Garden, again and again? No longer did we trust Him. No longer was He good. No longer could we see all of the remaining paradise.

When Eve stood there under that tree’s leafy shade, determining that she needed what God had said no to, she closed herself to the rain of His grace. So began our long drought. Focused on that which she was not to have, she lost all that she did have. Ingratitude throws us out the Garden and into the barren wilderness of despair.

And even long after I personally said yes to God, I still lived no, developing macular holes on the retina of my soul. Blind spots, missing God present and giving.

Funny, my soul’s macular hole seemed to spontaneously heal in church. There God’s obvious, close. Bibles lay open in laps, the sanctuary fills with hymnal worship, reverent and real, and the table, spread with the emblems, that singular cup and loaf, calls us to remember, to see. There, even I could see. But the rest of the week, the days lived in the glaring harshness of the gritty world? There, yes, full-thickness macular holes, complete loss of central vision, a world pocked with scarcity. I could find no water well.

I wasn’t good enough, my children weren’t good enough. Our church needed more of this, our community more of that. Now that we’d finally got this fixed, couldn’t we now tackle that? Sure, the new house down the road was lovely, but when were they going to get the lawn seeded? I appreciated the neighbor’s lively conversation, but when he was going to get busy, lose a bit of weight, find a wife?

My sister’s jarring death had torn a hole into the canvas of my world right at my beginning. Now everywhere I looked, I only saw all that wasn’t. Holes, lack, deficiency.

One life loss can infect all of our life, a rash that wears through the fabric of our days, our seeing, with black voids, shadowy fissures, endless abysses.

It means favor, grace does. From the Latin, gratia. Connotes free readiness. A free and ready favor, that’s what grace is.

I took the grace offered at the Cross, the free favor of forgiveness of my sins. But to live as Ann, "full of grace"? Full of all His favors, His gifts? I didn’t know how to patch that gaping gash up.

And so more tore.



Lord, losses burn holes in the soul retina. Leave us blind to You. And the infection spreads. Heal, Lord. So we can see You, find the well of Your living, spilling waters. And end the drought.

Part of this week's prayerful focus on Choices. Part One here. Part Three here.

Where's the Joy?

Reading through the Gratitude Community Blogroll ministers to this soul in meaningful ways. Thank you for joining and sharing what you are learning from embracing a lifestyle of "in everything give thanks."

From Early Morning Musings

" "Where's the joy?" I asked myself Monday mid-morning...

I'd started right, time spent in prayer and scripture first thing, then time spent planning the day. I was plowing through my list with determination, if not enthusiasm.... but still the whole morning felt like drudgery, and the boys felt like anchors around my legs with their whining and complaints and new messes. Why don't I feel satisfied when I'm doing all I set out to do?...

Tuesday, yesterday morning, I braced myself. Moms and kids coming for our moms' group at 9:30. Always the pressure is on to get as much accomplished as possible on mornings when guests are coming. Always the extra messes created by the boys are less tolerable on those mornings. Always I misjudge and don't leave myself enough time to get all I want to done before they arrive. Thankfully, my productive day Monday left me with just the basics to do Tuesday morning. Vacuum. Wash the floors. Make a coffee cake and coffee to share at snack time. I relaxed and let the boys be boys while we cleaned and prepared. I smiled at them and helped them and loved them.... I did have enough time, and when 9:30 arrived all was ready.

What was the difference between my two mornings? ....

I realized that Monday, in all my goal setting and agenda-making, I hadn't left much room for thankfulness. I was so focused I didn't have attention to spare on appreciating the small things. Or giving thanks to my Maker. Abiding in Him and letting Him guide my actions and responses. And I felt no joy or pleasure in the day...

I think my priorities were jumbled, and my list of things to do was at the top, instead of honoring Christ with my attitude, treating my little ones with patience and kindness, breathing thanks for all I've been given."

Read Marie's compelling post in its entirety here....

:::

Have you considered establishing gratitude as a personal soul fixture? Just grab a scrap of paper lying around and begin counting the blessings, with your own 1000 Endless Gifts:

Why begin your own One Thousand Gift List --(drop me a line if you do, and I'll add you either simply your name or a web link to the "1000 Endless Gifts" blogroll in the sidebar-- we invite you to join the Gratitude Community!)

Read the listing of the endless Gifts

Making Dandelion Wine

Notes from around the gratitude community on Making Dandelion Wine




Mama Whitney at Hearts of Gratitude writes:

"The gifts listed here are things I saw as barriers initially but, with the help of the Lord, are now opportunities for me to trust the Lord: Barriers now Opportunities.

105. My hubby's night meetings were a nuissance at first that really tempted me to anger. I now see how kind of the Lord to bestow the gift of a husband who provides for his family in addition to giving me opportunities to accomplish things I would not normally have time to get done. Thank You, Lord, for showing me that I can redeem the time with Your grace!

104. Food limitations due to food allergies is showing me I have a real opportunity to serve my family. This "barrier" is really a gift from the Sovereign Lord to help me grow in putting others first, beginning with my family!

103. Not having a clue of what to do with 25-pounds of brown sweet rice could've been a barrier but instead it has become an opportunity to be creative in my cooking and trusting God to help me in that. ...."

For more listing of how to barriers may be opportunities, making Dandelion Wine, read the rest of her thought-provoking entry here...

~~

And this post at Life is the essence of reframing the world. A breathtaking post that mustn't be missed. Mendelt's wife, Marisa, went home to the Lord in December, after a year long struggle with breast cancer:

"At the end of the day, life is beautiful or ugly. It depends from what angle you look."

His post Looking from Different Angles is achingly powerful.....

:::

Have you considered establishing gratitude as a personal soul fixture? Just grab a scrap of paper lying around and begin counting the blessings, with your own 1000 Endless Gifts:

Why begin your own One Thousand Gift List --(drop me a line if you do, and I'll add you either simply your name or a web link to the "1000 Endless Gifts" blogroll in the sidebar-- we invite you to join the Gratitude Community!)

Read the listing of the endless Gifts

How to Practice being Present to the Presence of God

(Part One: How (not) to Practice the Presence of God)

The mill whirs down to quiet and I open up its basin to flour, measure out kernels powdered, still warm from the grinding. I scoop a tablespoon of yeast, granules falling, scattering across countertop. Running hand along flour dusted surface, I collect these seeds smaller than faith, look through corner kitchen window, this eye out to firmament and the heavens.

Today the clouds glide high, gleaming white chariots for His ride through the skies. They make haste, billow, cast shadows in their wake. I watch.

It never ceases, this wind. It is endless, rippling through billions of wheat blades, dancing with the maple leaves all up the lane. Invariably, faithfully, this wind comes, sometimes whispering on breezes, sometimes roaring in the rush of it all; always more to say. It is constant.

But I know little of that, constancy. His inspired Word reads, “Pray constantly.” And I think, spooning honey into mixing bowl, if only I knew how to be the wind. Constant. Like the Spirit, always moved and moving, closer, onward, upward.

Life stifles under glaring sun, and I know prayers like a desperate gust, an imperceptible breath, hot and too near. Lukewarm.

Once I slept a July night in the nearness of a travel van, sweaty legs sticking, summer suffocating while I writhed. I needed wind. Opening the oven door, I went into night, searching. Toes found black surf rolling up the sand and the sky currents, wave after wave, washed cool over skin. That’s what I want, winds over water, fresh prayers, reviving, steady rhythms. And sometimes you have to move to find the wind.

So I do.

I stumble into it right there in the lulling routine of bread-making.

“Thank you, Lord, for grains of salt. For the color of this oil, sun streaming gold through its gold, the way it splashes into flour, pools into yeast foaming at the edge. Thank you, Father, for the stringy sinews attached to each bone in these fingers that scoop and pour and measure and stir…”





The wind sweeps in and I feel alive.

This is not practicing the presence of God, but the practice of waking to His presence. When I pray praise, I wake to Him who rides in on the air I breathe. That close. When, moment by moment, I attend to all that fills the now, and give thanks for it, this is to pray constantly.

“Wherever you are, be all there,” said Jim Elliot, that esteemed missionary martyred for Christ in Ecuador. Wherever you are, be entirely present to God who meets you in that space.

Too often, I don’t know how. The possibilities of problems that lurk around the next corner lure me on into worry. The pain of all that failed in the past trip me up in regret. I run ahead on the road, slamming into anxiety. I run back the path, grabbed by disappointment. I struggle to stay in the present, to be all here wherever I am. Yet attending to the beauty and bounty of each singular moment, paying attention to now by praying thanksgiving for this moment, and this moment, and this moment, I stay here. I become wind in this place, constantly present, constantly praying.

“Thank you for the warm softness of dough in hands, the tucking of this flecked goodness into pans old with history. Father, thank you for this stream of water gushing simply from a tap to wash away baking, for son who folded these dishtowels, the corners matching, folds straight.”

Is this communion unending?

“Wherever you are, be all there,” is possible as I give thanks for what is just now. This is meeting God who is the great I AM. I AM fills the present moment. I am learning that gratitude ushers into the grandeur of He who spills with glory now. Giving thanks is a way to be all here, a way to meet the I AM who is here.

But He too is the Alpha and the Omega, the One back there on the road, the One further up. He is both ahead and behind. We can rest in the memories of His past faithfulness , trust in the hope plans He has for our futures. So we are released to the joy of simply staying all here, knowing His goodness wherever this moment has us.

On a routine day in the kitchen, the clouds racing overhead, I find the sacred in the ordinary. I know wind. The practice of praying thanks for wherever I am, and whatever I have, this is to pray constantly, to meet God and live in His presence.

The bread rises, the wind blows, and I am all here, giving thanks.

Could there be more?

Part of this week's focus on prayer
(Part One: How (not) to Practice the Presence of God)

Praying His Prayer

I lay in the dark fading away and, before feet find floor, pray first because there is no other way to really begin. An ancient prayer, the one He told us to pray:

'Our Father who is in heaven,

Ours... You are all of ours (whether we acknowledge our lineage or not.) You are who we all have in common.

Our Father... we come to You, Abba Daddy, not to an unfeeling Master, but to You with a tender, Father's heart.

Our Father who is... Someone sits upon the throne, directs this cosmic play. The universe does not haplessly careen. You are.

Our Father who is in heaven... And the heavens are not a far-flung corner of the extreme atmosphere where time clips eternity. The heavens are the sky that falls around, the air that touches our skin, the medium in which we breathe, fill our lungs with. That is where Our Father is... You are close.


Hallowed be Your name.

Hallowed is Your name, holy. Keep me from profaning, belittling, treating as common, all that is holy, because of Your name. May I live without shoes, for all this -- everywhere You are-- is holy.

Your kingdom come ... not mine, not our plans, only Your kingdom come.
Your will be done... not my will, not our plans, only Your will be done. For this is the crux of living at Your feast table, of taking the cup, of following Christ.

On earth as it is in heaven... and in heaven the whole host of angels bow down and worship, give praise and thanks, crying Holy, Holy, Holy. Do I do that which is done in heaven?

Give us this day our daily bread... I trust that in this day, You'll give me what is nourishing, what I need. Keep me from chewing at tomorrow's worry, gnawing at yesterday's regrets. Today, I will simply collect the manna You've given for this day, and know that what You rain down in this day is what is best. My daily bread. Cause me to give thanks and eat what You give.

And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors... We are indebted to You beyond accounting. For arteries that faithfully pump, blood that endlessly courses, neurons and synapses that perfectly fire. For sun orb that rises and warms, for a Cross beam that supports the universe, for this waterfall of mercy that washes away our stubborn pride stains. There is no end to our debts. And yet You, with a Father's heart, graciously forgive the incomprehensible. How could we not forgive today?

And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil... When we follow Your leading, we are delivered from the clutches of the dark and into the wide open spaces of light.

For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.' ... always, only, utterly Yours. Amen. So be it.


And before I've begun, I've stopped. For stop signs are but havens of soul rest.

So now, having prayed the way He told us to, I begin.

Part of this week's focus on prayer

Image: One of this farm girl's favorite by Jean Francois Millet

Thirsty for Thirst

That ball of flame rises and dries out these fields of dark earth.

Little girl patters into coming light, chirping for water, water.

I fill her cup, and a pitcher too for the tomato plants drooping from waiting pots in window sills.

We break the nightly fast with granola, the nightly soul fast with morning readings in the book of John and these words: "After this, Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, 'I thirst!' "

God incarnate, thirsty. Like the whole world.
But He's parched for love.

Do I even know how dehydrated this soul is?
I pray and drink.

And He is quenched.

Praying today:

"O God, I have tasted of Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me

and made me thirsty for more.

I am painfully conscious of my need for further grace.

I am ashamed of my lack of desire.

O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee;

I long to be filled with longing;

I thirst to be made more thirsty."

~A.W. Tozer

Part of this week's focus on prayer

Related: Imbibe Deeply

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