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

Slowing to Make Seeing Spaces

Two tired boys with mononucleosis and a sniffling mama... I am slowing down. And seeing. A memory I'm revisiting as the snow melts and spring pushes through:

I close the mailbox with a snap and head into the house with a stack of junk mail and bills, rifling through them as I walk...chicken breasts on sale for $1.97 lb...telephone bill due again. A flicker of blazing gold flashes, once, twice, on the periphery of my vision and I blink, waking. Lowering the stack of mail, I pause.

I catch again the lighting of the monarch's golden wings…then another streak of brilliance. Captivated, drawn, I lean in...only to find the beauty wrapped in chains. Treacherously woven between the purple coneflower and the blooming lavatera, a spider's web ensnares this queen of the skies. The butterfly flails, exhausted, flashing its wings for rescue.

I reach my hand slowly, imperceptibly, into the snare and snap her bonds. In a flutter, the regal brilliance thrashes and flounders about my feet, snagged still in the spider's sticky lace. Do I dare touch her wings? But I must...and she stills, trembling.

I wait, hanging, hoping.

Intherushoflife,inthestreamofcommonandordinary,Ihadpausedandallowedtheretobespace.

And in the space, real seeing came. Paradoxically, seeing the seamlessness, the oneness, of the hallowedness and the everyday, I need to make space. Spaces around the moments. Without the spaces, I seem to lose sense of all meaning. Pausing, I look and really see: mailbox, bills, monarch, web, life ---

"No distinction was made between the sacred the everday…their life was all one piece. It was all sacred and all ordinary." ~Sue Bender

It is all sacred, all ordinary, all one piece.

Then she, quivering, unfolded her wings into the space, knew freedom...

and flew.

Lord, how can I slow down today, make s p a c e and really see? To be still... still... and see You who wants us to soar?

Related:
A One-Piece Life
Supermarket Poetry

(From the archives)

The Sacred Everyday

Deep thoughts for the sacred everyday...

• Keeping Home, the Litany of Everyday Life --Christianity Today
• The Beauty of Good Work -- The High Calling of Our Daily Work

Thoughts for tea time...

Photo: Grandma's teapot waiting

One-Piece Mothering....

Father, I keep tearing my life into bits, edges fraying, staining scraps with blackberries. But hear my prayer for a One-Piece Life--no seams, no fragments of secular and holy, You encompassing all.

Thank You, for these thoughts of Anne Kroeker's with Andrea at the Flourishing Mother . Grant Grace, Father, to be a One-Piece Mother.

More thoughts on Listening to God later today...

Everyday Liturgy: Holy Habits

They say a mother wears an apron and a myriad of hats. I say she wears a collar too. A collar which can never be removed. A collar which cannot be observed by the material world: a clerical collar. For she is a priest in her home, before a congregation of children.

True, she snaps wet sheets onto the line, mashes heaping bowls of steaming potatoes, kneels to scrub the grime that rings the toilet; she cares for a home. And yes, little bodies wiggle up in her lap for tales of Peter Rabbit, press close to study the topography of Israel, follow her lead through the wildflowers to the woods; she cares for minds.

But she never fails to know the essence of who she is: “But you are… a royal priesthood…that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of the darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9-10). While a mother continually changes her hats throughout the hours of the day, her collar remains: she is a priest proclaiming Christ’s glories. She cares for souls.

The Cross rent the veil; the priest now lives openly in the Presence of the Holies of Holies, leading little ones to the altar to worship too. The banqueting table is spread; the priest invites these young persons to come and feast on Him Who is sustenance. There is no intermediary, there is no spoon feeding. She is a priest, serving not only God in this domestic, hallowed place but inviting her children to come and do likewise. As Martin Luther wrote, “all we Christians are priests… as priests we are worthy to appear before God to pray for others and to teach one another divine things.”

Holy Habits

So a mother consciously chooses to live out her priesthood as a believer, so that her children might be taught ‘divine things.’ As the Old Testament priest’s days carefully stepped to the beat of His expressed laws, so the New Testament everyday priest thoughtfully orders her days to the divine rhythms of Father’s heart. While the Old Testament High Priest wore the apron-like ephod, the New Testament ministering mother wears apron and holy habits. Holy habits of communing with God, reading and memorizing His Word, prayer, fasting, service, worship. Holy habits of putting on the garment of Christ (Gal 3:27 NEB).

The domestic priest cannot forcibly dress her children in holy habits, for these are not outward mantles of routines and checklists, but the interior attire of the heart. One can only clothe one’s own soul. What is a mother to do? She can faithfully adorn herself with her own ardor for Christ, her own daily, holy habits stirring the desires of her children, all the while thoughtfully laying out threads for young souls to take up in their own life’s tapestry. She prays and fasts and sings hymns and serves and loves and meditates on Scripture before her children. Then she creates space, stillness and opportunity for her children to also enter in. She lives so that each child feeds not on her devotionals, prayers or worship, but from his or her own. She kneels beside her child and helps him gather his own spiritual food with his own hands, rather than simply eating from hers.

“Lazy people take food in their hand but don’t even lift it to their mouth” (Proverbs 26:15). I wonder: do (my) children sit in Christian homes (like ours) with cupped hands, waiting for someone to take food to their mouths, for a priest to spiritually spoon-feed them? (Do Christian parents attend Sunday morning services, then meander home with hands full of food…but spend the next seven days not even lifting food to their mouth?) Bibles on shelves, hymnals on table, prayer journals in baskets. Food is plentiful. Yet there must be purposeful effort to take it up in hand. The familial priest’s holy habits show how one daily lift’s food to mouth.

Relationship

Yet it is not solely a mother’s life or holy habits that will make her a model for her children. For children to model a believing priest taking up food rather than emulating bewildered, malnourished peers, they need to be close----spiritually, emotionally, and physically close. A mothering priest’s words and routines are critical but insufficient. Unconditional love, support, connection are the necessary, compelling magnets that draw a child close. Close attachment stokes a desire within a young person to be like mama, to take up holy habits too. Modeling, in short, is a function of relationship and heart strings. The mothering priest focuses, above all, not on parenting skills or behaviors, but on relationship—first with God and then with her children. Without an intimate, emotionally-supportive relationship with mother, young people are less likely to take up the holy habits modeled in a home. Why purpose to be like someone from whom he or she is emotionally distant? Thus, in a mother’s daily service before God, relationships—horizontally and vertically—are the paramount priority. “Have time for a walk down through the woods this evening?” “ Can I give you a back rub while you tell me about your day?” “Let’s make popcorn and play a board game together tonight."

Relationship is the essence of our daily reality. Our relationship with God, nourished by holy habits, is the essence of our spiritual (and eternal) reality. Our relationship and connection with our children, nourished by attachment and time invested, is the essence of our mothering reality…and our modeling. Priesthood, mothering, holy habits: they orbit around relationship, the essence of all reality in the universe.

Feast

So a mother adorns herself with apron, priestly collar, and holy habits. And there, daily handing out bowls for the Feast, her apron strings ties love knots to young ones gathered around. (Bowls and feasts are nothing without love.) “So, daughter, let’s lay out on the hammock tonight and talk to God under all the stars He knows by name.” “Son, would you like to lead our worship tonight?" "Might you pray for us tonight, dear?” “Anyone have any ideas of what might we do to serve that family at the corner?”

Care to have the next generation of kingdom priests know how to feast themselves with both hands, from their own bowl, wearing their own holy habits? Put on your own collar, take up your own habits, eat from your own bowl.

And love them to His Love Feast.

From the archives...

Sacred Rhythms and Everyday Liturgy

Letter in inbox: Hi.....I just found your blog... I'm an Eastern Orthodox (former non-denominational Christian). I've never heard a Non-denominational church use the word "liturgy." We use the word in our Church all the time, but I'm wondering what you're meaning by the word....Please don't be offended...just got my interest [and I'm asking] out of curiosity.

A Homeschool Mom of 4 in CA.




Kind Friend... I am grateful for your note (a curious mind is kin!)... privileged to listen to your story... to share here, too...

Yes, our family attends what may be deemed a "non-liturgical" church... or a "low church," that is to say, in our fellowship we do not make use of developed ritual, ceremony, or worship accouterments like vestments. (Though, even the wordless, waiting worship of our communion service could be considered liturgical, since the waiting itself, until the Holy Spirit moves men to speak, could be considered "the liturgy of silence.")

Yet perhaps even the distinction between "liturgical" and "non-liturgical" churches veils how believers in either tradition live the whole of their lives worshipping in very public, ceremonial ways.

While perhaps not commonly coined in Protestant, evangelical faith communities, when I speak of liturgy, I guess I am speaking of the whole of my life as liturgy. An everyday liturgy.

With its roots in λειτουργία (leitourgia), liturgy means "public work" or "public servant." Thus all that we do, think, say before others... others in our homes, in our places of work, in our communities.... I humbly offer that this is our liturgy, our public service, before people, and before our all encompassing God. In no way is liturgy to mean rote, empty ritual, but rather

...liturgy is a school where through sign and symbol, word and music, our minds and hearts are formed to be in union with the movement of God, with God Himself. ~Fr. M. Basil Pennington

Liturgy is our daily, vibrant dance with God Himself... through the reading, memorization, and meditating on Scripture, the singing of hymns, the lighting of a candle, through the signs of the cup and the bread... Liturgy is our pressing into the heart of God and moving with Him. Days, wild and crazy days of family life, need order, scaffolding, sacred rhythms. If we say God is at the center, so we order the tangle of our days around Him: we commune with Him through the liturgical, sacred everyday rhythms of our public work, our daily service, our vocation. And He untangles us.

As liturgy refers to a public and deliberate, well-defined ceremony, so we are intentional and deliberate in our rhythms, seeking equilibrium amidst all that sets us off kilter:

• set times of prayer, following the way of Daniel who prayed three times a day facing Jerusalem (Daniel 6:10), the psalmist who speaks of praising God seven times a day (Ps. 119:164) and the early disciples who we find praying at fixed hours: 9 am in the upper room (Acts 2: 1, 15); Peter on roof for his Noon prayers (Acts 10:9); Peter & John on way to temple for 3pm prayers (Acts 3:1), everyday liturgy invites one into knowing God's presence at all times by meeting with Him at certain, set, times.
• hallowed habits of meditating on His Word, savoring His bread each time we eat physical food
• regular family gatherings to sing hymns and psalms, worshipping
• being aware, present, to His abiding Presence, as we work
• honoring the Sabbath, celebrating the Biblical feasts, making holidays holy
• as a family, observing Advent and Lent in simple, thoughtful ways
• opening and closing our days with prayer, fencing our days with blessings...
• corporate and individual communion throughout the week

Often translated as "minister" or "worship" instead of "liturgy" in English language Bibles ("and in their ministering to the Lord and fasting..." Acts 3:2), so we minister before the Lord, presenting our bodies, all that we do, up to Him as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God, which is our spiritual worship (Romans 12:1). As The Message renders Ro. 12:1,

"Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering."

So this family humbly, (and bumbling) attempt to live all of life as liturgy.... for I quietly believe that liturgy doesn’t merely happen in church, but rather liturgy happens in hearts. Whenever, wherever, I am in God's service as His servant, so I am living out an everyday liturgy of deliberate worship. Without an everyday liturgy, a quotidian dance of worship, we may grow stiff, spiritually awkward, lukewarm. As the trees of the field perform their praise in the beauty of daily, quotidian rhythms, we too may enter into the quotidian liturgy of sacred rhythms, hallowed habits ... a sacrificed life which is our spiritual act of worship.

So that is all, friend... I simply pray to live a quiet life (that sometimes fizzles into a chaotically loud life) that is a holy experience: listening... laundry... liturgy. Only by His infinite grace...

Father God... remind me again how everyday is sacred, how life is liturgy, how to keep the rhythms of Your grace. I yearn for union---deep, intimate, complete union--- with You. You, here with me, in the holy ordinary.

Related:
Cleaning: My quotidian liturgy
The Problem with Not Experiencing God
Relationship with God in the Midst of Crazy Family Life

Grow Feet

I believe in Jehovah God who created the whirling galaxies, the birds soaring in the sky overhead, the endless crashing waves and all that dances within them. I believe in Father of all who knits together life, made in His very own image, in the secret quiet of our beings.

I believe in Jesus Christ, the One with no earthly Father, with the dust of this earth between His toes, and with our names etched onto the palm of His hands, right beneath the nail scars…Who now sits at the Father’s right hand making endless intercession on our behalf. I believe in the stone rolled away, in the Body being raised, in the first fruits of the dead…and us all following soon, very soon.

I believe in the Cross as our only Hope, our only Claim, and our only Foundation. I believe that in the pounding surf of life we have only one thing to cling to: the feet of our Lord, hanging on that tree, His lifeblood flowing down, washing us whiter than snow.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, moving, whispering, indwelling our very skin. I believe in living by the Spirit, walking in the Spirit, and producing fruit in the Spirit…in the Spirit who helps us in our weakness with groanings that can’t be expressed in words.

I believe in the infallibility of the Bible, God’s Word - a sure Word, a pure Word, the only secure Word. I believe the words on those pages are breathed from the very throne room of heaven, are the love letter penned from the heart of the Lover of our souls; a beacon of light for stumbling feet to find sure footing on a dark path.

I believe there is more than believing. There is living what I believe.

Thus this journal.

“God is not a belief to which you give your assent. God becomes a reality whom you know intimately, meet everyday, one whose strength becomes your strength, whose love, your love. Live this life of the presence of God long enough and when someone asks you, “Do you believe there is a God?” you may find yourself answering, “No, I do not believe there is a God. I know there is a God.”
~Ernest Boyer, Jr.

Father? My beliefs need feet. I walk out what I really believe. Father, I am praying for Your supernatural intervening to grow feet to what I say I believe.

I believe in the The Nicene Creed and the Apostles' Creed and our fellowship's statement of faith.

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....

A Life Roadmap

Remember The Question?
~from Mary Oliver's Summer Day from a Poem a Day for American High Schools :

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"

Debbie dropped a line to the inbox that read:

"I, too, have prayerfully, reflected on the Question this week. I copied the poem and left it on my daughter's bulletin board, above her desk. Last night, she came quietly into my room and whispered, 'Thank you, Mommy, for the poem that you left for me.' She and I will continue the conversation later, after we have had much quiet reflection."

Yes... quiet, prayerful reflection these weeks, Debbie... now fragments of the answer scratched down...

Life is the little walk before. How one takes this walk determines the forever destination. Doesn’t the jaunt require a map, an intentional, purposeful course? For we are a pilgriming people, en route to Somewhere. This is my plan, my chart for the one and only glorious life I’ll ever have:

I plan to rise and pray. Eat and pray. Work and pray. Laugh, cry, dance, wonder, read, wander, embrace…and pray. So I’ll intimately know the curves and deep places of His heart when I birth out of this life and into His arms and Home. I have no other end but Him, and it will be but the beginning. I needs know the language of my country when I get home, the culture, the landscape. So I plan to pray now and enter into His presence, enter into Him, enter in. I plan to make this life about communing with Him whose hands are upon me, who has shaped and formed me, who bends low and whispers, “I have loved you with an everlasting love.” I plan to pray and fall in love too.

I plan to tilt it all back, and drink the marrow right out of this gift cup, right to the last drop. I know: joy’s cup is sorrow’s cup by another name. But I am going to wildly drink it dry—entirely empty---anyways. So that just before I take my flight Home, I can turn to Jesus and whisper with Him, “It is fulfilled. Yes, all of it.”

He gives only one life and there are places I choose not to go: I plan (give grace, Father) not to go to the places, innocent though they may seem, that dull me, weaken me, impair me, blind me. For these places, though they may gleam in the sunlight and be marked as “must-sees” sights, are sin to me. I plan to detour that wide and deceptively alluring road, and take that steep and stony path off to the side. I have faith it leads to better sights and heights. And along the journey, I plan to scratch it down, testify, give witness. Leave traces of His grace.

I plan (give grace, Father) not to grumble over the way, the stumble and the scuffing of knees, but to keep pointing, rejoicing, singing over the brimming dawn on the Horizon, the coming of the Son and the wondrous forever light that is seeping into time.

I plan to take this little while and walk before and use it all up with love. To fall, head over heels, in love with Lover, so I may love and pour it all out for those who cross my path. I plan to use the power of His love to grace others with happiness’ warmth, with care’s touch, with hope’s hand. By His grace, I have the power to make others feel love, hope, joy. That is something I can do.

I plan to take this one and glorious life, and use it to die.

That is all: I plan to pray, to drink the cup He gives, to take that stone-strewn way, to leave tracks, to give thanks, to love. It doesn’t seem like much. But this little plan may be enough: "He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God" (Mi 6:8 RSV).

I plan. But only You make it so, Father.
Please do.

Listening.... Paying attention

This morning, I open the creaky steel lid of the mailbox and find the word emblazoned on a white envelope: “Attention.”

Who’d thought I’d find a word from the Lord in the mail today?

So I carefully open the day, choosing to take it out slowly, mindfully.

I pay attention to to the wet dew between my toes on the way in with the mail.

I glance upon a fragment of a brilliant blue egg shell thrown down underneath the second red maple, and bend over to tuck it in my pocket, life gathered up.

I pause by the black-eyed susans nodding at the backstep to watch a silver spider parade elegantly down its hairy stem, yellow petals hanging over its head like lacy parasol.

The day is worth this paying attention. Why be cheap and miss this wonder called living?

Who can afford blithe miserliness?

And really, attention only costs tuning the cochlear of the soul, massaging a heart to feel the sensation of this moment, and peeling back the drowsing lids of these eyes to focus on the brilliance of now.

Today has been delivered, and I think I will pay the price, dig deep into the pocket of me and pay attention.

For the price of paying attention, life is a startling bargain.

Lord, I'll pay the price of attention today. Your wares are too breathtaking to pass by.

One Piece Life

Tonight, my Mama and I make our annual trek to the quilts of the MMC Relief Auction . Thus, a reposting from the archives of The Sacred Everyday:

The last weekend of every May finds me among the colors and Mennonites of New Hamburg. Donning white gloves, I finger, stroke, trace. Rows of fabrics cut and sewn, countless seams and angles quilted and stitched, hang in brilliant splendor. The hues invite caress. I can’t resist: earthy log cabin, scrappy rail fence, vibrant stained glass. A myriad of patterns, explosions of colors. But in every aisle one finds a quiet “one piece.”

A swath of broadcloth in a single, solid shade, artful quilting is the hallmark of the “one piece.” No patches of colors, joined with countless seams, overpower delicate stitches. Single stitches that would have faded away, lost, on a many-seamed quilt, now gather on center stage. I soundlessly applaud. Gazing up at the expanse of beauty, I slip a gloved finger under the sheets of plastic, tracing the white threads on white cotton.

A one piece. No fragmenting. No tearing. No seams.

My existence yearns to be just that: a life of one piece.

“Now the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece. They said therefore to one another, ‘Let us not tear it…’ (Jn 19:23).

Too long, the fabric of this life of mine has been torn up into secular and sacred. Yet such a dichotomy is mere façade, mirage.

"The Bible makes no room for the idea of the secular. In biblical worldview, there is only the sacred and the profane, and the profane is just the sacred abused, unkempt, trampled down, trivialized, turned inside out. It is just the holy treated in an unholy way.” ~Buchanan

The Gospel, Jesus, comes to say life is meant to be all one piece. Jesus embodied the human and the divine. I can live a one piece life, an ordinary life that is wholly sacred, because the Holy Spirit resides within, this body now being the very house of God. Jesus very first miracle, turning the ceremonial cleansing water into wine for a wedding feast, thundered truth and shattered myth: there is no divide between holy and sacred.

God intended it all, every breath, to be received as holy. For He bestowed each one. Do I dare take the gift for granted? All might be treated as hallowed, coming down from our Father of the heavenly lights. All might be seen as sacred, pregnant with the possibility of spiritual acts of worship (Ro. 12:1). God wove life to be seamless, a tunic like Jesus’: one piece. For all is in Him. “In God…we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). “Where can I go from Thy Spirit? Or where can I flee from Thy presence” (Ps. 139:7).

God is everywhere: He is the continuous thread, weaving the world and all that is within it together. “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.”

As His child, He calls me to come to Him in all things, at all times, to worship in spirit and in truth.

I need not a sanctuary. The kitchen sink will suffice.

As Brother Lawrence writes, “Our sanctification does not depend as much on changing our activities as it does on doing them for God rather than for ourselves.”

I peel carrots, scrub the toilets, clip little toenails, pull up the bedsheets. Might they be gifts to the Weaver? Might I stitch this design onto the broadcloth of my one piece life:

“God be in my head, and in my understanding, God be in my eyes, And in my looking, God be in my mouth, And in my speaking; God be in my heart, And in my feeling; God be at my death And at my departing.” ~Walford Davies (to listen to hymn, click here)

Every moment presents opportunity to offer up my reasonable act of service. Of worship.
I wash these windows, Father, to give You glory.

Every moment offers opportunity to see and speak to Him who never leaves.

Father, my tongue is twitching to fire off here. I am on stimulus overload with crying baby, bickering kids, burning dinner and ticking clock. Father, may I have grace and mercy in this time of need?

Every moment is opportunity to glorify Maker of Heaven and Earth.

Do I spend this money on a book for my mind, or for food for the stomach of a starving child? Do I read the newspaper or a blog right now or spend time memorizing Scripture? How do I live?

It isn’t about legalistic, dead living. It is about He who is risen from the dead living with me and through me and in me, keeping company with me, directing me each step of the path.

Too often I fear I miss the burning bushes and just eat blackberries.

“Earth is crammed with heaven,
and every common bush afire with God;
but only he who sees takes off his shoes.
The rest sit around it and
Pluck blackberries.” ~Elizabeth Barret Browning

Do I see the presence of an ever-present God in the now and take off my shoes? Or do I sit around eating blackberries, oblivious to the holy ground of this moment?

Exasperated, I raise my voice to holler for kids to come... and stuff my mouth with blackberries. As I mutter over mittens and boots dropped at the back door, I tear the seamless weave. As I lecture in disgust over beds unmade, juice runs from my mouth, dripping on the torn scraps of my life. Do I not think that God is here, present with me? Do I forget that this moment is worship, as meaningful as Sunday morning in the sanctuary? Why do I rip up the fabric of my life, tearing God into a scrap there, so I might do as I please in this fragment here?

Sunday mornings find me unfolding my seamless white prayer shawl, spreading it over bowed head.

I yearn to be done with the insidious plucking of blackberries off burning bushes. They stain the white of one pieces. I desire to live bare foot: all is holy ground. Time to forsake the scissors and give up cutting and piecing. I am taken with the wonder of white stitches on seamless white cloth.

With a one piece shawl wrapping me, I set out for a one piece life.

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.

In the milestone of my thirtieth birthday, 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: H ow 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. 2:16).

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.

Hear Him now? Peace. Peace.

Call

Is that how a call comes—while living life, the wind sweeping through, this orb spinning in space? Does nothing stop? Such a whisper, so unexpected. So Him. Any old monastery will do. The waiting for some hallowed time, some consecrated place was over. Here was holy ground. The call had come. And it wasn’t to China, but to come face to face with God Himself, just right here, with kids pressing in, laundry to be folded, dinner to be served.

Was this what my great aunts experienced when they were called? The dissimilarity of our lives couldn’t be more juxtaposed: I, an evangelical Protestant, married, mother of six, was twice the age of my Catholic great aunts, called to the monastic life at the tender age of 16. That picture, that last family photo taken on the front lawn, older brothers in overalls, younger sisters dangling off the porch, mother still wearing her apron, before these young girls, strikingly beautiful, slipped into the cloistered life, called and certain, is forever seared into my memory. Same God, yet such divergent callings. God wasn’t calling me to come commune with Him away from family, but in the center of family.

Had God been calling me for years, ever since I had claimed Him as my Hope, but, in my deafness, I had plainly missed it--Him? Perhaps it was true that ‘a sense of a call in our time is profoundly countercultural,’ that ‘the ideology of our time is that we can live ‘an uncalled life,’ one not referred to any purpose beyond one’s self” (Walter Brueggeman). Had I, a called one, been haphazardly living what could sadly be deemed an uncalled life?

I think I simply had been listening, waiting for a different calling. When He called, I imagined it would be beckoning to some place of pronounced renunciation or uncommon sacrifice. And, in many ways, He had: here. The call was away from the world’s swirl and prestige and into the cloister of home, with a noise all of its own. The call was “a call to form love into flesh and bone, then care for it and help it grow.” (Ernest Boyer, Jr).

Ezekiel, in the midst of his priesthood, was called to be a prophet (Ez. 1-3): “ The Lord gave this message to Ezekiel…, a priest,…and he felt the hand of the Lord take hold of him.” Here, in the midst of parenthood, God is calling us to be His, to abide, live, dwell in Him.

Feel the hand of the Lord take hold of you, one in the center of family life, and call you to the center of Him.

Hear the Call. Our Call is love…bearing it, birthing it, bringing it up, into Him, whose very essence is Love.

A Call to Love. Any old monastery will do.

Embarking

Some journeys we plan. Others we awake to.

I wasn’t packed or prepared for embarking as I read that borrowed book before the fire, listening to rain falling on panes. Yet five simple words on a page came soundlessly and stirred me to consciousness, “Find a place for prayer…Any old monastery will do.”

Any old monastery will do. Whatever plain old one readily available. And my mind beat a familiar, well-worn path to secluded Tibet. I had been going to Tibet in my mind for years. I had enrolled in Chinese at university, wondering if , perhaps, someday, the Lord might call as a missionary to China… and I’d find myself in mountainous Tibet, “the roof of the World.” To go higher up into God’s presence, a place of prayer, was the destination I, my whole essence and existence, sought, though I too often was a lost wayfarer groping in dark hinterlands. My heart was on a journey to find, somewhere, a place of prayer and find, at last, it’s true home.

I had thought I would find it—that elusive place of communion with God and my soul’s peace---in the heights of Tibet. An outrageous thought, no doubt. Especially for a girl who had married a boy born in the same hospital as she, and who had birthed their own children in those same hospital rooms; it was looking like I would be born, live and die in the same hometown. Maybe that was the allure and mystery of far-flung Tibet---the prospect of a peace over there that I had never found here. When my life got too loud, the equilibrium dangerously off-kilter, I would close my eyes and escape to a Tibetan mountainside, for my own Elijah experience, hearing God whisper in the still.

I looked up from my book.

Any old monastery would do. This was it. This place, this home.

I was, for all intents and purposes, never going to Tibet. The only hallowed halls I would walk were these halls, the ones with fingerprints and crayon marks.

Here, in this place, at this time, I was to meet God.

I had embarked.

Traveling

(Home now from traveling with dh. Restorative time of quiet and talking and just being, gloriously, together...but in cyberspace I am in other places... more here tomorrow... but for today...)

By definition, we are called homeschoolers, for we learn at home; the kitchen table our hub of discovery.

We open pages of words, our vessels for the voyage out into time, nature, beauty and this world.
And yet here in this home, but a few steps from where we sleep, we can--if we choose--radically revolutionize the entirety of this spinning world--every single day.

If our heart beats like Gustavus’.... Read more at this month's CWO Homeschooling column

~~~~

And Faith is Eating over at The Sacred Everyday. Join us at the table?

Exercise Daily

Shaky fingers type these words. Sweat beads on my forehead, drips down my back, shirt sticking. My chest pounds with racing heart.

It all may seem a bit…ridiculous. Each morning, as rhythmically as rising sun and mail delivery, I submit myself to this, tending my own vineyard. I voluntarily sit on the rowing machine, inhale deeply, and pull. Leg muscles drive back. One stroke. Two seconds. A couple of meters. My heart rate picks up. A few calories burned. Next stroke. And another. And another.

Continue reading Exercise Daily at The Sacred Everyday

Old Ways

an excerpt:

I want old ways. Simple ways. Christ ways. I know I want to create a place of prayer right here. I know I want to live like the early church.

....to read more at The Sacred Everyday

Peace isn't a place...

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, 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. Read more

The Sacred Everyday: The Gathering Room

Over at The Sacred Everyday:

A gathering place to share and listen and wrestle and work it down about your Sacred Everyday.

Let the barista serve your a cup, put up your feet and sit awhile. The conversation is as warm as the mug.

We hope you find it a daily soul-filling place.

An Uncalled Life?

Call

over at The Sacred Everyday.