Post Office Lines

I laugh when I see the line wrapping around the old brick post office. Behind the counter the post man, who has always been there, takes his sweet time measuring width and height and depth of package, checking it twice. It’s lunch hour and he is in no hurry to thoroughly explain each and every possibility for delivery confirmation, optional insurance, and letter expedition.

The woman waiting ahead of me tells me how much schools have changed, how she’s glad she birthed her children whilst young. I learn about her grandchildren and the old combination locks the PO Boxes kept before the keys – how she wanted to purchase one when they redid the place, but every last one was melted down for scrap metal.

We wait and make small talk and my racing heart slows a bit.

I think of the four hundred year silence between last old testament prophecy and the birth of Christ. I think of the nine months between Mary’s angel visit and the Shepherds’. All those everyday days.

The hard and the quiet is where the longing is birthed, and there’s a slow knitting together that happens inside empty soul places when our every-days become holy ground.

And there are high holy days to be celebrated and I’m not one to shirk the dance and loud-off-key-singing of the extraordinary beauty and goodness, but there’s something, too, to the conversations at the post office, the oatmeal making and the kitchen cleaning.

I’m learning slowly to lean into the ordinary, unglamorous everyday; to seek the hidden and the not seen (or blogged about) treasures; to let the ache grow and draw me back to the center, the Word, the quiet.

My friend Phileena says it beautifully: “Advent doesn’t feel any different to me than how I live daily.”

Joining Emily for Tuesdays Unwrapped.

Sacred Everyday {Guest Post for Micha Boyett}

I can’t remember exactly when I discovered Micha Boyett‘s writing at Mama Monk, but I can trace the influence her gentle, steady words have had on my heart these past few years. Her posts about the contemplative life in the midst of the everyday have been a gift. She is wise and honest and she is the real deal, friends. I’m so honored to be sharing over at her blog today for the last of her Sacred Everyday series. Would you join me? Here’s an excerpt:

I am an artist, and I see all life through this lens. All our days, we are making art: creating, with our hands, our words, our silence and our lives. We make oatmeal for breakfast and love letters to slip into lunch boxes. We write on each others’ lives in delicate strokes of compassion and jagged lines of judgement. We create bridges, cultivate community, fashion idols.

We were made and we are making, always. Imago Dei.

Some artists, they dream of a small studio… [Keep Reading…]

Ordinary Light

Light.

I think about it as I sit near the tree, all other light silenced: just twinkle here. In the near-dark I can’t see the cardboard castle or collection of autumn’s acorns still lingering on the dining room table. It’s nice here in the dim.

This morning, I stood at the kitchen sink, wondered how so much light pours in though these old, small windows. I imagine a hundred year’s worth of women washing dishes right here in this light, and a few good men too.

On Sunday night we lit one small candle and read ancient words about light dawning on those living in the land of deep darkness (Isaiah 9).

A small candle for a great light.

…

All year, we seek to shine spotlights on any shimmer of hope, drawing attention to the everyday gifts that point back to the giver.

Other times, it’s the hard, broken parts we illuminate. We share from the depths of our ache, and are reminded that this is not our home.

We watch the sun rise steady on dark, hidden chains; shine light into the dark corners of injustice.

…

In high school art class, I rushed an oil pastel of a hand clutching a candle in the dark. It was decent, but my instructor gave me a C and wrote the word trite next to the grade. The grade reflected the amount of effort I’d invested, but I challenged her anyway. She crossed out trite, wrote redundant instead.

It’s true, there’s no shortage of metaphor or message when it comes to light and dark.
Last night I sketched a campfire for paper-doll shepherds hailing from a printable Bethlehem.

And I wonder if they could see their little flame at all when the glory came. All year long I build my campfires, look for ways to name gifts and illuminate beauty in brokenness. But when Christ-light comes in the midst of my ordinary, my attempts to illuminate this, that, or the other thing seem small.

I warm myself near the fire for now, heartsick for Light who envelopes all my striving and acedia, my feeble attempts and brave footsteps, all the heartache and dark places in this broken world. Come, Lord Jesus.

Joining Emily Freeman – whose artful words are a gift – to look a bit closer at the everyday this day.

The Real Wonder

I throw a strand (or seven) of twinkle lights on an ordinary, drive-past-it-all-the-time kind of tree, and when I wrap myself in the white blanket, cozy on the couch, there’s instant wonder here.

I wrote last year that it doesn’t take much to make Christmas magical when the little ones are little, and I am much the same. I reread last years posts:

The one about shepherds and wisemen, how plastic Mary went missing in action, and the one about a Christmas that stinks.

And I wonder if I’m circling Advent again, like a character lost in the woods, tracing my steps around the same tree in the forest again and again, just as the year circles the calendar back to it’s beginning. I get all starry eyed and wonder-filled at the Word Made Flesh coming and dwelling among us, only to get lost in the isolation of long mothering days and sin-sick self, forgetting that Emmanuel abides here still.

I made it my word for 2012, abide, thinking it was just me doing the abiding. It ended up looking a whole lot like working harder at not working harder. Has this year looked any different than last? Mercy, I fail even at abiding – prone to wander, indeed.

For Christmas I paint the word again, and set it right in front of me:
O Come To Us
Abide With Us
Our Lord Emmanuel

Right into the darkest night, the stench of the stable, the restlessness of this heart: abide.

I’m a dark night in need of angel chorus, an ordinary stable full of everyday muck. It’s a wonder, even when it doesn’t feel like it.

Perhaps especially, then.

Joining Lisa-Jo Baker for the last Five Minute Friday of 2012. We gather and write for five minutes straight on one word. Join us? This week’s word is wonder. (It took me more like ten to write it… a child may have woken up in the middle of… keeping it real!)

Also, that painting with the words, you can find it here, in my Etsy shop.

On Quiet Stacks of Dishes

It’s dark out by the time I get to the dishes. I’ve dropped my phone into a pot of hot, soapy water more than once, but that doesn’t usually stop me from making good use of this still standing time.

When I ask my three year old to pick up her little ponies, she cannot fathom a way to complete the task without company and some make-believe scenario, usually a funny little song: she is my clone. I call a friend while I scrub dishes, listen to podcasts as I fold laundry, check my email on the sly while we work puzzles.

Three weeks of sick kids and sick self feels like forty years in the desert, and I justify the constant background noise with my extroversion’s aversion to isolation. But when the kids are tucked in and my phone disappears somewhere upstairs, it’s just me and the dishes in the kitchen. I realize how long it’s been since I savored any quiet at all.

I’m not running to community, I’m running from silence.

For thirty minutes I empty the dishwasher, scour butter burned onto stainless steal, stack cookie sheets and pyrex. And I don’t find an epiphany among soap suds, but the quiet does wash over me, let the deep buried thoughts rise to the surface. I exhale. Even extroverts need quiet.

This morning, I shuffle into the kitchen desperate for the coffee he brews in love each morning.

On the counter I find the mountain of air-dried dishes, stacked like a pile of stones in the desert to mark a moment. I sit and savor coffee slow from my cracked, broken mug, then read lines that breathe life, from Scripture not screens.

And I may circle this desert longer than I like, but I will mark the moments grace seeps in and rescues me from harried myself. I will make space for silence and stack the dishes and laundry and the love right in front of me.

I’ve got dishes to put away, puzzles to piece together here.

From the Studio: Thoughts on Vulnerability

Today I’m sharing about art and vulnerability over at Be Small Studios. Care to join me?

This little acorn makes me quiver.

I can speak in front of an audience, write my soul bare, or host intimate gatherings of friends and strangers. True, my heart may beat a bit faster as I take the microphone or crack wide the front door, but always experience and hope remind me that I can.

It is these small paintings – the offering of my art, that leave me feeling exposed, a bit vulnerable. (Read the rest of this post over at Be Small Studios)

In Which I Give Thanks for the Soup Makers

Last week, in the middle of a hurricane, I got sick. And my girls got sick. And three times, soup was delivered to my door by people who love me. I don’t know how food didn’t make it onto the list of love languages, but I firmly believe it deserves its own category.

I grew up watching my mother make meals for friends and strangers, casseroles in sickness and at the arrival of new babies, a warm dish after a cross-country move, a hot meal weeks after the funeral. If I had to write an essay on grief as a child, it would have been titled Ziti, because I grew up knowing that if someone died, pasta was as close to comfort we’d get this side of heaven.

I am grateful, and we are healing.

At church this week, we gathered our broken lives and came together at the communion table. After we remembered the life and the death and the life again all mixed in with the cup of the vine and bread of life, we filed down the rickety narrow stairs, and shared a meal, the whole lot of us.

There were fifteen crock pots lined up, all filled with piping hot soup. We all stayed later than we intended, scraping the bottom of the bowls and swallowing up teenager-and-toddler-interrupted conversation.

I am grateful, and we come home full.

Sharing a favorite fall soup recipe, a conglomeration of a few I found online and altered to taste. It’s so easy to make. This recipe makes 6 quarts – perfect for sharing.

Pumpkin Curry Bisque

Saute 1 minced onion and 2 cloves of garlic in  butter.
Add a liberal dose of curry (5 Tablespoons? More? Can you have too much curry?), and stirring constantly, heat just until color darkens (about 30 seconds).
Immediately add 2 large cans of pure pumpkin and 48 oz of chicken broth.
Whisk together and add 28 oz. coconut milk.
I also add 1 pint of heavy cream to make it extra delicious.
Add brown sugar, salt, and cinnamon to taste.
Allow to simmer.

Share your favorite fall soup with us in the comments?

On Listening and the Eight-One Percent {Allume Post}

{photo credit Lindsey van Niekerk}

I spent last weekend at Allume. I sat in a room full of writers, beautiful women who weave words into beauty, and women that say their words plainly too. There were artists and idea curators, poets and comedians, strategists and lullaby-hummers, babbling brooks and roaring lions – all clickety-clacking away on keyboards and little screens: writers writing, writers being.

I sat among them and read their words, watched them laugh long around small tables in the hotel bar and on panels up on stage, speak intentionally at podiums and tucked into quiet corners.

All these writers, all we humans are telling stories – the stories we have lived and the one’s we’re living right now. We write the story out in blog posts and book chapters, on the hearts of our families, the lives of our friends and neighbors. We write them broken and beautiful, whether we admit it or not, because we all are broken and beautiful.

I heard it this weekend and I’ve heard it before: a small survey once found that eighty one percent of folks have a book penned up inside them. (A New York Times op-ed sites a survey in early 2002 by a small Michigan publisher.)

I have no aspirations of writing a book, but I wonder if the universal drive to tell our stories is because really, we are all a story being written.

And if we’re all full of story, perhaps the greatest gift we can give is our listening. Perhaps the 81% is less about written words or unpublished books and more about listening ears and time spent silent.

And when we listen, we hear through the filter of our own broken, beautiful life stories. It is in our slowing and our sitting, in our focused attention, in our listening with minds engaged, hearts humbled, and spirits sensitive that we begin to hear new melodies and chords we could not perceive alone. The listening changes us as much as the writing.

I like to talk and I like to write. But it was the quiet of listening ears that spoke deepest to my heart this weekend. It was the moments my voice grew quiet and my heart held the words of others that I saw new, beautiful, broken perspectives that challenged me and grated against me, soothed my soul, and called me home.

I am home now, and longing to press into the listening: the abiding kind in the presence of Jesus; and the real life kind with my sisters and children and the friends that gather in our living room; and the artful kind, in books and blog posts and paint-stained canvases.

I am home, and I am listening.

{Would you tell me friends, what helps you to listen, really listen? I have much to learn here.} Read the other Allume posts by attendees here.

Voice

I hear a sweet song, a whisper in the midst of rustling leaves. There is something stirring deep down, in the place where art and beauty dwell. I am painting again, and there’s a sweet melody in it.

And I hear the song of encouragement, from a mother who has delighted in fingerpainted rainbows and stick figures long before there was a Be Small Studios. I hear the voice of my husband, speaking: make, create.

And I hear a voice of fear, the critic, and I whisper, “Hush.”

I am learning about this One Voice, One that sings above and under and through all the others, and that voice is the One I yearn to train my ears to hear, still my heart and listen long and slow.

Before creation, was there singing preceding the art of all that making?

******************************************************************

Tonight I’m at Allume, and we’re celebrating Five Minute Friday together: writing for Five Minutes Straight with no editing. Tonight’s prompt was Voice. Stop by Lisa-Jo‘s to “hear” the rest!

On the Making & the Being Made

When I was sixteen I took a sculpting class in school. I have two remnants, and this one, the armless woman on the dusty white doily in the hall, she speaks to me.  Her imperfect shape rests perfectly in my palm, because it was my hands that shaped her; the crook of her neck is the round of my thumb.  At sixteen she whispered hope about curves I hated, and the mystery of being fearfully, wonderfully made. I’ve doubled in age, and still she sings of the being made, and I am remembering her making.

I spent my whole childhood sketching and making, all my school years pursuing art. But a dormant decade slipped in the back door, and I didn’t even notice I had stopped painting, because I was busy creating other things.

Aren’t we all, always making something? Imago Dei; we bear God’s image.

I’m not sure when I started believing it, but somewhere along the line, years ago, I stitched together the notion that art – specifically the painting and sculpting variety – was more risky, less redeemable than writing or teaching or missionary service. I didn’t apply to art school because I was dearly afraid I’d loose my faith.

And I don’t regret these years, not one little bit, but those threads of fear are coming loose and I am learning to worship with my whole broken life: with my loving and my listening, my watercolors and my sock-pairing, my going and my staying. All these years later, it is the art that’s schooling me in the ways of joy and small, unchangeable graces and Imago Dei.

I began writing here, I think, to hunt the art down – to track it’s scent in the word-weaving and the homemaking and the well-lit photographs. I write to make art because I am an artist, not the other way around.

In the two years we’ve lived here, our house has slowly filled up with paintings: words and pictures that center my heart.

Pigment bleeding onto parchment: this is how I always say it because this is how it feels. It was loneliness and grief that stirred up the painting again, after the dormant decade.

Here, inside this old house, sitting on hundred-year-old mantels and radiators, in hallways and murals painted smack dab on the wall, this art is personal revelation, quiet meditation. I play with light and color, wild water spreading wide and thin lines pulling tight. I paint the words I need to grasp. This art has been a shaft of light through dark valleys, shade and shadow on sweet, sun-kissed days.

Something new is being made here: I am being made new, and I am making again. 

And, friends, [this is where I don’t know how to write it proper, because I’m so full of awe and trepidation all mixed together...] I am making space for this art.

My husband, the strong, tender man I’m building this small life with, he’s poured so much hope into me, and he’s helping me shape and launch a new space to create and think about art. Soon, I’ll be able to share these labors of love with you on my own little Etsy shop: to share the birds and the nests, the small acorns and the watercolor words of Let Love, and (I hope) many more.

I’m calling this new space Be Small Studios, because it has been in the small things I’m reminded of daily grace, and in the remembering of a small, childlike faith that I’ve rediscovered a sure hope.

Will you join me? I’ll still be blogging my heart out here, but you can follow this artistic journey at BeSmallStudios.com, or on twitter here.

{Tomorrow I travel to a conference called Allume. The sweet friends who gather there will find something lovely in their gift bags, a small offering from Be Small Studios. I cannot wait. If you’ll be there, I’d love to meet you!}

So many words here, would you tell me, what are you making these days? I’d love to hear…