the here of this earth...this now of the sky

In honor of the last day of National Poetry month...

I just had to post these lines from e.e. cummings!

Father Rooster read them in his sermon last Sunday, quoting from Richard John Neuhaus's little book As I Lay Dying: Meditations Upon Returning. They speak so eloquently of the things that keep us from really living in the present moment:

whereling whenlings
(daughters of ifbut offsprings of
hopefear
sons of unless and children of almost)
never shall guess the dimension of

him whose
each
foot likes the
here of this earth

whose both
eyes
love
this now of the sky

I don't know what larger poem they are from--does anyone out there?

My Minivan is My Cell

Late last night, it became clear that Bantam9 was really sick. He had been coughing a lot, off and on, for nearly a month, but it had just become nonstop, and now he had a fever of 101. Plus he was coughing up copious amounts of phlegm...and a quick Googling of those symptoms revealed that he could very well be getting pneumonia.

So today, instead of spending the nice domestic day I had planned, cleaning, cooking ahead and preparing the guest room for my parents, sister-in-law and two nieces who were arriving this afternoon...

I spent from 10:30 to 4:00 with Bantam9 at the walk-in clinic (with the exception of a short period when, facing a 2-hour wait, we went home for 45 minutes, only to be called and told that our names were coming up sooner than expected).

Yes, our names, because I had an urgent reason to see the doctor myself, which I had put off because of holiday busyness and doctor's office closures.

Long story short, Bantam9's chest x-ray does indeed look suspicious for early pneumonia, and I was given several new things to schedule further doctor's visits for, including a reminder to get that baseline mammogram that I still haven't had. And you can just guess how excited I must be at the thought of spending more time in a waiting room.

So while I was waiting, I was reading Kathleen Norris' new book, Acedia and Me. Acedia is a very old name for a modern condition--something between depression and restlessness, I would nutshell it.

I was struck by this passage:

A desert monk troubled by "bad thoughts" knew he was not alone. He was expected to seek an elder and ask for "a word." But the elder consulted was likely to be reluctant, and even suspicious. If he determined that he was being consulted for the wrong reasons, as a diversion from tedium or an excuse to socialize, he would admonish the seeker to stop looking outward for what he needed to look for within. Lengthy confession or conversation was deemed unnecessary, and the elder's good word often consisted of Zen-like instruction: "Go, sit in your cell," said Abba Moses, "and your cell will teach you everything."

My heart leaped at this. Oh, to go and sit alone in my cell! (It's a monk's bedroom, essentially). To embrace its peace and quiet! Sign me up!

Later, on my way to the pharmacy, with a house full of relatives and my planned preparations undone, this thought returned to me. And a second thought flashed just as quickly through my mind: This minivan is your cell.

No doubt I was affected by an article I just read yesterday (HT Jen at Conversion Diary) called "The Domestic Monastary." Here is a relevant portion:

Moreover, the demands of young children also provide her with what St. Bernard, one of the great architects of monasticism, called the "monastic bell". All monasteries have a bell. Bernard, in writing his rules for monasticism, told his monks that whenever the monastic bell rang, they were to drop whatever they were doing and go immediately to the particular activity (prayer, meals, work, study, sleep) to which the bell was summoning them. He was adamant that they respond immediately, stating that if they were writing a letter they were to stop in mid-sentence when the bell rang. The idea in his mind was that when the bell called, it called you to the next task and you were to respond immediately, not because you want to, but because it's time for that task and time isn't your time, it's God's time. For him, the monastic bell was intended as a discipline to stretch the heart by always taking you beyond your own agenda to God's agenda.

Hence, a mother raising children, perhaps in a more privileged way even than a professional contemplative, is forced, almost against her will, to constantly stretch her heart. For years, while raising children, her time is never her own, her own needs have to be kept in second place, and every time she turns around a hand is reaching out and demanding something. She hears the monastic bell many times during the day and she has to drop things in mid-sentence and respond, not because she wants to, but because it's time for that activity and time isn't her time, but God's time.

There is a lot more I'd like to say about that, but it's way late and we have church in the morning and then second Christmas tomorrow afternoon. Then another bloggable treat is expected around dinner time, barring illness or the monastic bell of some other emergency! And my brother is joining our party, and sometime tomorrow, I hope to upload pictures so I can write the promised "Speaking of Movies" follow-up I so rashly promised for today.

So I must adieu...but think on it, all: "Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything."

What is your cell?

Metronome

I had given it up for lost weeks ago.

I discovered it missing late one night, when I opened the metronome case to check a tempo...and the metronome would only click back and forth at one pace--a frenetic 220 beats per minute.

The movable weight which slows the tempo was missing. I recalled suddenly the moment I had found the case open, months ago, on top of the piano, and without noticing the missing piece, had moved it then to a higher shelf, out of reach of a curious 3-year-old.

That weight had been lost for a looooong time.

Yesterday I showed the metronome to my youngest kids, in the faint hope that one of them might know where it was.

No, they all shook their heads. They hadn't seen it.

***

Last night, Bantam9 appeared at my elbow as I was reading.

"Say thank you," he instructed.

"Thank you," I replied.

I looked deep into his solemn blue eyes. Then a smile spread across his face as he held out his hand and opened it. There on his palm, was the weight!

"I found it in a box when I was looking for my Lego guy's helmet," he said. "Aren't you happy?"

I was thrilled.

I held the tiny piece of metal in my hand, which would transform my useless metronome into a precision timepiece.

***

What weights do I want to throw off, to be free of--that might actually be part of who God created me to be...of what God is calling me to do? Feeding a family day after day, doing laundry, cleaning floors, helping with math problems--waste, or weight? Accepting limitations of time, money, energy, health, circumstances--burdens, or boundaries?

What weight is missing from my life? Time spent in Scripture reading and prayer? Too often, I skim through those at the same hectic 220 beats per minute as the rest of my day. The weight of care for the sick, the widowed, the orphaned, the destitute? It is so easy not to look farther than the needs of my own family. The weight of silence? Two hundred twenty beats per minute is a lot of noise, believe me.

I am so grateful for the lost weight that is found.

I thank God for the precise weights He has given me to bear. May He add precisely the weight I may need. And may I function as He intends me to.

The Feast of All Saints

"All Saints II" by Wassily Kandinsky

A saint is not a superman, but one who discovers and lives his truth as a liturgical being. ...It is not enough to say prayers; one must become, be prayer, prayer incarnate. It is not enough to have moments of praise. All of life, each act, every gesture, even the smile of the human face, must become a hymn of adoration, an offering, a prayer. One should offer not what one has, but what one is.

~Paul Evdokimov, quoted in Living Icons: Persons of Faith in the Eastern Church by Michael Plekon


The saint will no longer be characterized by extraordinary behavior (as the historian, say, understands it); he will no longer appear to the world as separated from his fellow men or above them. On the contrary, he will be doing the same thing as everyone else: what needs to be done, what is right and just. But he will join to his behavior a purity of intention more and more deeply united to a great love of God; more and more detached from selfishness and self-satisfaction.

~Romano Guardini, The Saints in Daily Christian Life

More on the Sacramental Stream

Weeks ago, I began a little series explaining more about the church we're planting, and why we believe people will come and are coming to it. In Part One, I described it as a "three streams, one river" church, made up of the three streams of liturgical/sacramental tradition, evangelical, Bible-based teaching and discipleship, and freedom of the Spirit in worship. I've been exploring the least-familiar-to-most sacramental stream; Parts Two and Three discussed its emphasis on ritual and ceremony.

I mentioned that a visitor to our church plant emailed me in advance of her visit and shared: "I feel like the Episcopal churches here are dead but also that the non-denominational churches are missing the importance of the sacraments." She was one of four people in the same week who said to me, essentially, "We've crossed over a 'sacramental line' and now, we can't go back."

What did she mean, that the evangelical churches were missing the importance of the sacraments? In Part One I touched on the difference between the official church "Sacraments" and the adjective "sacramental," but now, let me illustrate the crossing of that sacramental line by contrasting views about Eucharist, or communion.

Most evangelical denominations hold a memorialist position on communion; that is, they believe that it is a remembrance of Christ's death, and no more. Sacramental churches believe, by contrast, that somehow the bread and wine become the spiritual food of Christ's body and blood. It is not a memorial service the priest invites us to, but a feast!

(This Wikipedia article summarizes various theological positions of sacramental churches. Some believe in varying degrees of a literal transformation, with detailed theological explanations for how and when that happens; Anglicans are less interested in the rational discussion, believing simply that something happens in the Eucharist service that is a mystery, and somehow ordinary bread and wine become containers of the "Real Presence" of Christ.)

The conventional definition of sacrament is "an outward sign, instituted by Christ, that conveys an inward, spiritual grace through Christ."

Memorialists practice the outward sign, but don't realize or emphasize the inward spiritual grace that comes with it. So they usually decrease the practice to once a month or only once a quarter. They tend to place emphasis on searching one's heart for unconfessed sin right before "taking communion" rather than on the grace that they are receiving by it. (Even the verb choices are significant. Growing up in my Baptist church, we "took communion;" in liturgical churches, you simply "receive," often without a direct object.)

In a liturgical service, confession has its place before the Eucharist, but then we switch gears to a section of liturgy called the Great Thanksgiving. In it, we focus on what Christ did on the cross to cancel our sins and we ask God to "sanctify these gifts, to be for your people the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ our Lord, the spiritual food of new and unending life in Christ."

We receive the bread and the wine with the words, "the body of Christ, the bread of heaven; the blood of Christ, the cup of salvation," reminding us again that Christ not only died once for us, but He continues to feed us with spiritual food. The emphasis is on what Christ did and continues to do for us.

See the difference it makes to believe that communion is more than a remembrance; it really is spiritual food? Food strengthens and sustains; it builds up the body. One is so thankful for food. That is why we call it Eucharist, which means "thanksgiving." When you believe that, you want Eucharist every Sunday! You know you need more than an intellectual feeding through the sermon; you need spiritual sustenance as well.

Not to say that you can't receive spiritual sustenance through the worship, the sermon, the prayers and the fellowship at a non-sacramental church; God feeds us all through them as well. But communion is like an extra helping (or two) of grace and spiritual strengthening!

So that's the sacramental line that once you've crossed, you can't go back. Because that sacramental understanding begins to pervade all elements of your worship--and life, not just communion...

More on that next time!

Numbering Our Days Aright

Can you believe it is November 1? Where did October go?

I have to confess that autumn is my least favorite season. I love the beauty of the leaves, but their flaming colors are the flickering of a funeral pyre, it seems to me, with only bleak bareness to follow--nothing like the promise of months of light and beauty which spring, summer or even late winter offers.

And autumn heralds a year's end too fast approaching. Is it possible that in a few short weeks it will be Thanksgiving...Christmas...another New Year's? (Didn't we just do this?)

So you can understand my frame of mind perhaps, and why I cried when I read aloud to my kids recently:

Time, You Old Gypsy Man
Ralph Hodgson

Time, you old gypsy man,

Will you not stay,

Put up your caravan

Just for one day?

All things I'll give you

Will you be my guest,

Bells for your jennet

Of silver the best,

Goldsmiths shall beat you

A great golden ring,

Peacocks shall bow to you,

Little boys sing.

Oh, and sweet girls will

Festoon you with may,

Time, you old gypsy,

Why hasten away?

Last week in Babylon,

Last night in Rome,

Morning, and in the crush

Under Paul's dome;

Under Paul's dial

You tighten your rein --

Only a moment,

And off once again;

Off to some city

Now blind in the womb,

Off to another

Ere that's in the tomb.

Time, you old gypsy man,

Will you not stay,

Put up your caravan

Just for one day?

I tried to explain to my kids. "You know, no matter how much you might like time to stop, it just keeps going. I know you guys don't want time to stop--you're all eager to grow up. You think that everything will be great when you're old enough to do whatever you want to do. But then you'll have to work, and you'll have bills to pay and you'll look back and think, 'Wow, when I was a kid, I didn't have to worry about anything except having fun! Those were the good times!'

"Each day is a gift from God," I continued. "Yesterday...it's gone already. You can never have it back. So let's enjoy each other today, and tomorrow. Someday you'll all be grown up and moved out, and these days we have together right now will be gone forever."

"Wow," my daughter said. "I never thought about that, that yesterday is gone and you can never have it back. I'm always wanting the days to go by fast until the next thing I'm looking forward to. I'm wasting a lot of days that way."

They got it.

For a moment, we all got it.

"Show me, O LORD, my life's end
and the number of my days;
let me know how fleeting is my life.
Psalm 39:4

Teach us to number our days aright,
that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Psalm 90:12

September Color

I just realized I better get this post published before September is over!!

Since I started blogging, I've learned so much more about using my camera, but I still haven't quite figured out the close-up setting. Last week I was experimenting and learning a bit more, when I noticed how many flowers were blooming even in September--and I don't even have a 'mum!


Here's the showiest thing we've got going on. This trumpet vine blooms from June on, right outside my kitchen window. When we moved in 11.5 years ago, there was no view there but the the side of my neighbor's garage; now I have beautiful flowers and foliage and hummingbirds to boot! I've read that these can be very invasive, but this one hasn't spread at all.



Next is an Autumn Joy clematis. Its blooms are smaller and less showy than our June-blooming clematis, but aren't they delicate and pretty close-up?



















This is a close-up of the tiny but numerous purple flowers on our nepeta, or catmint, plant. Again, I have heard this one can be really invasive, but mine has stayed nicely contained in one corner of a raised bed right by my driveway. I don't let it sprawl all over the bed but only out on the driveway, where my van runs over it regularly and releases its marvelous scent. What a nice smell to come home to!


This is the flower bed in the front of our house. There's always something going on in it, but fall is one of its best times. The big grass plant in the middle doesn't really feather out till late August, which is also when the false dragonhead behind it blooms too.

The Dusty Miller right in front came up volunteer this year. Don't its white leaves add pretty color? Right behind it is one of my favorite groundcovers. I've been told it's called artemesia, but I just googled and it looks like there are dozens of varieties, and this one doesn't seem to be a common one. Most artemesias apparently aren't groudcovers at all; they grow up tall and are part of the sage family. This one grows long trailing tendrils and has beautiful feathery leaves.


Here's a close-up. Anybody know which variety it is?

Maybe it's not an artemesia at all. That would be too bad--I love the name!




And here's a close-up of the false dragonhead. See its teeth?

Leisure
William H. Davies

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this is if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

On Blogging

Thoughts from my friend Tonia:

We are leaving tracks for the ones who come behind. Here in these pages lie our stories, the playbook of our lives: hilarious and humdrum, simple and profound, dull and surprising. Here we testify of what it means to walk out our salvation, to trust in God, to worship in spirit and in truth. It is no small thing to leave behind a witness.

I have never really tried to put into words why I blog, and if I had, I'm sure I would have rambled on a long time before saying anything close to what she said in mere sentences.

But what is it that drives me to share my most personal hopes and dreams, plans and disappointments, in a public forum like this...for all my friends and family as well as virtual strangers to read and judge?

It is the hope that with God's help, the tracks that I leave scratched here will be a testimony of glory to God, a witness of a life lived faithfully.

--What she said.

Choosing Joy

Saturday I was in the car running errands, and I took advantage of the time alone to pray and sing aloud. My prayer life lately has been consumed with intercessions for the sale of our house, and it was good to just praise God unconditionally. Whether our house is sold or not, I can still praise God’s goodness and care! I sang, “Allelu-, alleluia, glory to the Lord…I will sing, I will sing a song unto the Lord…I will come, I will come with joy before the Lord….”

It was those words that did it. Choked me up with tears of something I couldn’t understand—never have been able to understand. It seems that often when I really let go of myself and focus on God—and especially on the joy that He gives—I cry. I know they are cleansing, healing tears; but still, I have prayed for more understanding.

And yesterday, He gave it. It wasn’t an audible word or a verse, but I suddenly realized that God’s joy is always there for the choosing. It’s me, and my self-preoccupation, that comes between me and joy so often. So when I do choose it, mixed with it in a bittersweet way is sadness, remorse and repentance that I don’t choose it more often. Hence, the tears.

So why do I so often choose worry, choose care, choose perfectionism (as Tonia named it in this post)? Why do I choose to take myself and life so seriously—instead of choosing joy? Do I think I’ll accomplish more by being all grim and serious about it?

I can’t honestly say, except that it’s a habit. I get up from bed or from a prayer time (on a good day) and I put on my game face and I start tackling the duties and problems of the day. Too often each day feels like that—just a series of duties or problems.

What if...I could develop the habit of choosing joy as my default? I’ve been thinking about this, trying it out, noticing. To me, choosing joy—when I’m not singing or praying, but just living life—feels like literally fixing my inner gaze on a higher spot than normal. It’s almost physically, in a mental kind of way, “Setting my mind on things above.”

This verse also comes to mind: “I set before you life and death—choose this day which you will choose.” Is it possible that my response to a spilled Frosty is a life or death choice? I’m beginning to think it is. Choosing the way that leads to life means that the spilled Frosty is just one more stain to soak, not an occasion for anger and sin. Choosing the way that leads to life means not letting small things rob me of joy.

Or big things, for that matter. It’s been a huge anxiety in my life that we haven’t sold our house yet, aren’t swamped in moving boxes, aren’t picking out a new house yet, and don’t know if we’ll be here or there for children’s fall activities. We've been called, commissioned and sent. We are so eager to get there and start building this new church; the team there can’t wait for us to come, either.

So it’s been easy to miss the beauty of the summer around me. I haven’t been very thankful for this unexpected chance to enjoy it and a suddenly slower pace. It's only just occurred to me what a gift it is to have time to spend with friends I will soon be missing. I fully intend, this week, to get a couple lunch or coffee meetings on my calendar!

We'll see how I do with keeping this mindset. I know that in my own strength, I can't do it. I know that without regular worship and praise, I can't do it, and I have not been successful at creating a way forward in that. I'd like to make it part of the worship time I do with my kids in the mornings (ahem, on the good days)--any suggestions?

Naturally, for a post on joy, I thought of the book Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis. Surprisingly, when I googled, I found few quotes from that book, but here are others from that great evangelical saint:

"It is in the process of being worshipped that God communicates His presence to men."--Reflections on the Psalms

"The most valuable thing the Psalms do for me is to express the same delight in God which made David dance."--Reflections on the Psalms

"From the moment a creature becomes aware of God as God and of itself as self, the terrible alternative of choosing God or self for the centre is opened to it."--The Problem of Pain

"We poison the wine as He decants it into us; murder a melody He would play with us as the instrument...Hence all sin, whatever else it is, is sacrilege."--Letters to Malcolm

"'Something of God...flows into us from the blue of the sky, the taste of honey, the delicious embrace of water whether cold or hot, and even from sleep itself.'"--'Scraps', St. James' Magazine

"The universe rings true wherever you fairly test it."--Surprised by Joy

"Where, except in the present, can the Eternal be met?"--Christian Reflection

I don't know what the future holds, but I can choose joy in the present!

Mom As Priest

Today, enjoy this article by Ann Voskamp. It begins:

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.

The rest is all so good...but here's a part that jumped out at me:

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.

Parents, do go read it all!

In Other Words...

"No gift unrecognized as coming from God is at its own best...
when in all gifts we find Him, then in Him we shall find all things."
~ George MacDonald~


For the wages of sin is death,
but the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord.
~Romans 6:23~

In this familiar Bible verse, we usually think of "eternal life" as something that will begin when we die, don't we?

But "the gift of God is...life"! It's life that will continue forever, but it certainly includes the here-and-now.

How many of us are in such a hurry to get to the next thing in life that we don't receive the precious gift of the moment in which we are living? As the dead Emily asks the Stage Manager in the play Our Town, “Do human beings ever realize life while they live it?”

Perhaps the only way to realize life as we live it is to constantly give thanks for it. A habit of breathing thanks to God throughout the day is a way of consciously receiving God's gifts, finding Him in them and ultimately, finding them all to be in Him.

"Thank you, Lord, for the blessing of a little girl to hold," I pray silently, my nose buried in her fine hair as she opens one of the books she has selected for me to read.

"Thank you, Lord, for this 'little buster,' " I say aloud as I hold Bitty Bantam tight before laying him down for his nap. "Help him go night-night now." (That last bit is primarily for Bitty Bantam's benefit.)

"Thank you, Lord, for this day," we pray together most mornings.

"Thank you," we say to each other, "for your hard work, for babysitting, for making dinner, for including your little brother, for picking up my drycleaning...I thank God for you!"

But the Scriptures say, "In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you." And to realize life as we live it is to embrace the difficulties of life as well--and to find God in them:

"Thank you, Lord, for this illness. Thank you for the reminder to depend on You and not trust in my own strength."

"Thank you, Lord, for this financial setback. May I grow in my trust in Your provision, and may I learn greater financial discipline during this time."

"Thank you, Lord, for this difficult person in my life. Thank you for the opportunity to grow in love and prayer for them. Thank you for using them to show me things about myself I don't normally like to see. Thank you for the opportunity to let You work on me through this relationship."

"Thank you, Lord, for this trial, and for the character and maturity You want to increase in me through it."

We need to recognize all gifts, even trials--especially trials!--as coming from God if we want to receive each gift "at its own best." We may have to look hard, but He is there--Emmanuel, God with us--in the gift of every moment of our lives.

In Other Words...

"No distinction was made between the sacred and the everyday...their life was all one piece. It was all sacred and all ordinary."

~ Sue Bender ~
author of Plain and Simple

No matter how fulfilling our careers or our families may be, most of us can't escape what Kathleen Norris has called "women's work." Finding the sacred in the ordinary is somewhat of a preoccupation of mine. I could have had careers or part-time jobs, I could have written articles or maybe even books, I could be serving my church and my community to a much larger extent--but I'm homemaking and homeschooling six children, day in and day out, and hoping I don't regret it. I don't want to regret not making the most of these years. I don't want drudgery to rob me of the joy of each present moment.

So I surround myself with older, wiser women who show me, in the midst of the ordinary, how to open the window into the sacred. Women like Josephine Moffett Benton, the author of The Pace of a Hen. Her metaphor--actually it's Teresa of Avila's--is one I'm borrowing for this blog and for this season of my life. Women like the poet Kathleen Norris, author of The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and Women's Work, The Cloister Walk, Amazing Grace and Dakota. I've shared their insights before, on Mary and Martha, Washing Dishes and Worship, a liturgy of the delicious orange, and Work As Love Made Visible.

From Gerard Manley Hopkins (as quoted by Kathleen Norris in The Quotidian Mysteries):

It is not only prayer that gives God glory but work. Smiting on an anvil, sawing a beam, white-washing a wall, driving horses, sweeping, scouring, everything gives God some glory if being in His grace you do it as your duty. To go to communion worthily gives God great glory, but to take food in thankfulness and temperance gives Him glory too. To lift up the hands in prayer gives God glory, but a man with a dungfork in his hand, a woman with a slop pail, give Him glory, too. God is so great that all things give Him glory if you mean that they should.

From Josephine Moffett Benton in The Pace of a Hen:

If one feels this sacramental quality in daily living every piece of work can become a consecrated act. It is not too difficult to pray on one’s knees as a floor is scrubbed, “Wash me, O Lord, as I wash this floor, wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.” Awakening from sleep can be woven into a beginning prayer for the day: “As I stretch my body and limber my joints for the day’s tasks, thou O Lord, make my spirit supple and ready to accept whatever the day may bring.” Again, a prayer of thanksgiving for the first refreshing cold water of the morning: “As this water cleanses the sleep from my eyes, cleanse thou the sins of selfishness and pride and fear from my being. Pour upon me the water of life.” And then in the act of dressing: “Clothe me in the garments of righteousness.” Prayers so brief can run through all the day’s activities. They can be simple, symbolic, spontaneous, based upon the needs and acts of the day.

From Kathleen Norris in The Quotidian Mysteries:

This is incarnational reality, the sanctity of the everyday…. Laundry, liturgy and women’s work all serve to ground us in the world, and they need not grind us down. Our daily tasks, whether we perceive them as drudgery or essential, life-supporting work, do not define who we are as women or as human beings. But they have a considerable spiritual import…it is daily tasks, daily acts of love and worship that serve to remind us that religion is not strictly an intellectual pursuit.

Work is Love Made Visible

Work is love made visible.
And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feed but half man's hunger.
And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distills a poison in the wine.
And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man's ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.
--from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran (as quoted in The Pace of a Hen)

“Work is love made visible.” And it truly takes the love to make the work good. It may be love of God outflowing in service to others—nursing the sick or building cathedrals. It may be love of people—husband, children, mother, friends, so that clothes are made, houses swept, books written, motivated by warm human love.

It may be love of the beautiful that produces the long hours of work required to write a poem, carve a statue, or keep minute bouquets of flowers freshly arranged. The best work is probably that prompted by all sources of love.

My favorite example of love deliberately made manifest is the Mother Currier quilt story. Each year as Christmas drew near, her sacramental offering to the Christchild, and the crowning gift of all her many kindnesses of the year, was a quilt, hand-pieced for some baby who otherwise might lack sufficient warm covering. That is not strange, you say, many good hearted women have taken many stitches to cover the naked. The phrase, love in every stitch, is a common place one. But Mother Currier was able to plumb an even deeper level, for her discipline was—a loving thought back of every stitich. If any least thought of irritation, or resentment, or ill will in any relationship slipped into her heart, she laid aside her handiwork, until she was calm and serene and loving. No sounding brass or tinkling cymbal was sewed into her stitches to mar a baby’s sleep. Who can guess how much more was done unto the least of these, because of the wholeness of her gift. (from The Pace of a Hen, Josephine Moffett Benton, 1961)

The quilt story always reminds me of the time I watched a demonstration of icon "writing" (we think of it as painting). The writer explained that the whole process is begun and sustained in prayer, and if she was unable to stay focused in prayer as she painted, she would lay down her brush. I looked online just now, and found this beautiful prayer before starting work on an icon. I also found these interesting notes here:

it is said that icons are not painted, they are written

the writer ‘prepares himself’ before starting to work, with going within and staying within, fasting, prayer and with the way he lives his life

icons are windows, gates and mirrors to ourselves showing us 'something' of who and what we are

icons communicate an unseen divine reality, beyond logic and thinking

icons form a part of Liturgy, which means ‘the work of the people’

icons are venerated for what they represent, not as objects as such

an icon is an embodiment of prayer; it is made with prayer and for prayer

painting icons is also called Work

Lord, may my Work of writing on human hearts be performed with love and supported by prayer. Forgive me when I bake bread with indifference...when I crush grapes grudgingly. May my daily work be love made manifest.

Washing Dishes...and Worship

A few days ago, I shared one of my favorite sections from The Pace of a Hen (Josephine Moffett Benton, 1961). There Ms. Benton described an accepting attitude toward our responsibilities that lightens their burden. These two little anecdotes are from that section, and they have always been meaningful to me:

Casual remarks are often so much more character-forming than all our carefully thought-out speeches. How deeply we need to be good and whole and honest. I can still see the country kitchen, the brown patterned ironstone ware, and the old aunt who said to the do-less little girl beside her, “I like to wash dishes.” No sermon was preached, but those five words summed up a not-to-be-despised way of life.

I used to ask the busy mother of six young children, “Don’t you get awfully tired and find you need to rest in the afternoon?” Because her work was the expression of her deep love, and because she had an inner rest so many of us know nothing of—“In Him I live and move and have my being”—she could answer, “Oh, I keep going, and I get my second wind.”

I think these pictures are helpful because we know we're not supposed to complain, but we honestly don't know sometimes what to think or say if it's not complaining! To find one task that we can honestly say of it, "I like to do that," can begin to change our whole mindset. Though I used to enjoy it more when there wasn't so much of it, I actually enjoy doing laundry--I like turning smelly hampers full of damp clothes into clean, neatly folded piles. (We won't discuss putting the laundry away.) I wonder if one reason I like laundry is that, when I was in high school, my dad once confided in me that he finds laundry a satisfying job! Now, what attitudes about work am I passing on to my kids?

I can relate to the busy mother of six, too, who says she just keeps going, and she gets her second wind--me too. It's nice to think that that second wind can come from a place of "deep love", of "inner rest" that has nothing to do with how much sleep I've had or haven't had!

(I'll go out on a limb here too, and say that I think Mental-Multivitamin is preaching the same message when she says of homeschooling--and of life: "It's. Just. Not. That. Hard." Benton's version is: "…whether [work] is hard or easy depends upon a woman’s feeling about the multitudinous, monotonous tasks that confront her each day...Work does not wear us out, but an emotional jag of feeling abused and overburdened very quickly produces a “cumbered Martha.” They're both saying that you can choose your attitude. That's also the point of Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning...but that's another post.)

Ms. Benton goes even further, then, to say that our work can be worship:

When all work is done to the glory of God, Martha learns from Mary the blessed sacrament of the present moment.

If one feels this sacramental quality in daily living every piece of work can become a consecrated act. It is not too difficult to pray on one’s knees as a floor is scrubbed, “Wash me, O Lord, as I wash this floor, wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.” Awakening from sleep can be woven into a beginning prayer for the day: “As I stretch my body and limber my joints for the day’s tasks, thou O Lord, make my spirit supple and ready to accept whatever the day may bring.” Again, a prayer of thanksgiving for the first refreshing cold water of the morning: “As this water cleanses the sleep from my eyes, cleanse thou the sins of selfishness and pride and fear from myt being. Pour upon me the water of life.” And then in the act of dressing: “Clothe me in the garments of righteousness.” Prayers so brief can run through all the day’s activities. They can be simple, symbolic, spontaneous, based upon the needs and acts of the day.

…Certainly, Mother Currier made the preparation of food a sacrament. “My children came home bringing other relatives and I did everything alone and became neither fussed nor tired. My secret feeling about preparing a Thanksgiving feast is that it should all be done in a spirit of worship. It isn’t stuffing a turkey and peeling onions, and washing celery; it is preparing food to place before people to remind them of all their unearned blessings on this day. Then there’s a high joy in having the food my strength and care have produced become a source of strength to those I love. In that way—a mystical thing perhaps—I become part of them.”

Another writer who has delved this idea of work as worship is Kathleen Norris, in her book The Quotidian Mysteries (1998), which Papa Rooster gave to me soon after it came out. I read The Pace of a Hen a year or two later, and found that Norris and Moffatt were saying many of the same things to women--though separated by 37 years and huge cultural shifts during that time.
For more from Norris, see here and here. (Highly recommended; inspiring reading.)

Mary and Martha--With a Twist

I've been promising that I would post some more quotes from The Pace of a Hen (Josephine Moffett Benton, 1961). Here's one of my favorite passages:

“A woman named Martha received him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was cumbered with much serving; and she went to him and said, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.’ But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and needful about many things; one thing is needful. Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her.”

This is a mere incident that took place as Jesus and his disciples “went on their way.” It was not told as a parable. It is not a principle that Jesus taught, saying, “Let them who have ears, hear.” This was a bit of eldering [instructing] done to fit an individual case. It wasn’t that Martha worked and got the meals on the table that was all wrong; it was that she was anxious and troubled. And it is not that the meals do not need to be prepared; it is just that Martha needs to be partly Mary and put first things first.

The incident might even have been reported in this fashion: A woman named Martha received him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who worried and could not center herself. She sat at the Lord’s feet and questioned him and wearied him with much talking. But Martha was calm and sweet-tempered and went about her work preparing the meal with much serenity. Mary said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left us alone? Call her then to come and talk with us.” But the Lord answered, “Mary, Mary, you are anxious and troubled about your libido, about your dreams, about the progress of your soul. You waste my time, your time, and that of everyone you meet. One thing is needful, and Martha has chosen that good portion. She has accepted herself, and the frame in which she lives. She is receptive of grace and truth. She has learned to love and serve God and her neighbor as herself. This shall not be taken away from her.”

I was astounded the first time I read this chapter, having all my life heard poor Martha either villainized, excused or defended, to read this story in a new light. To think that it is our attitude toward work, and not the work itself, that is wrong when we are feeling anxious and cumbered by our responsibilities was a pivotal idea for me. I may not be able to control the amount of work before me--and it can seem overwhelming at times--but I can choose my attitude toward it:

…whether [work] is hard or easy depends upon a woman’s feeling about the multitudinous, monotonous tasks that confront her each day. She has the opportunity to choose one of the most creative roles in the world, or to exist as a toiling slave forever chained to household drudgery.

...A friend who came back from spending a vacation on a ranch related that her most enlightening experience of the summer was observing the unhurried and tireless work that seemed to continue all day and into the night. Work does not wear us out, but an emotional jag of feeling abused and overburdened very quickly produces a “cumbered Martha.”

I love the line from the "rewritten" story of Martha: "She has accepted herself, and the frame in which she lives." For me, the word "frame" is a multi-layered symbol. I think that Ms. Benton means it as something like a picture frame: the boundaries around the life of a woman. They could be constraints--having small children, being without a car during the day, having a husband who is gone a lot. They could simply be her realities: the husband and the children she has, or doesn't have; the distance she lives from extended family; the number and quality of friends she has, or doesn't have; opportunities she has or doesn't have.

No woman can find joy and fulfillment if she is expending energy railing against these realities or striving for the day when things will be different--she must accept the frame in which she lives, for the present moment at least. In this way, I think of "frame" also as meaning "time frame."

But a third meaning could be our physical frame. As women, our skeletal frames are generally smaller than those of most men, yet we are the ones who carry the children for nine months inside our bodies--and for years afterward we lift and carry them, though they grow heavier every day. We must accept the physical limitations of our frames and respect the body's need for rest and replenishment. If we don't, we're far more likely to fall into "an emotional jag of feeling abused and overburdened."

In a metaphorical way, too, many of us small-statured women shoulder Atlas-sized burdens. Accepting our frame sometimes means admitting that we can't do it all, all at once! We often think we are stronger than we are. There is a great relief--and a power--in confessing our weakness, our inadequacy to God, for "when I am weak, then I am strong."

For he knows our frame;
he remembers that we are dust.
(Psalm 103:14)

Fans... Hens!

The Headmistress is also a fan of Josephine Moffett Benton's 1961 book, The Pace of a Hen!

In her archives are a number of posts related to it. She's collected them here.

I've been planning on quoting a bit more (I've already done so here and here and here) from this book myself, especially now that we've started homeschooling again and I won't have as much time for original material. So at first I was worried that she'd stolen my thunder! But the interesting thing is: she chose many excellent quotes, and a few overlapped with the ones I've already quoted, but mostly she hadn't touched the sections I was planning on quoting. It's a rich little book, though it meanders in circles a bit.... (Appropriate, don't you think?)

Trying to Obey

I got up early, before the kids, to be silent for an hour. I sat on the deck and listened to the birds and watched the squirrels.

In the silence, I had time and space to process a painful conflict from the weekend. When the hour was up, I opened up my other blog, my private blog, and poured out my feelings. I reread this post, looked up some Scriptures, and did my best to own my part and start the process of forgiving.

This afternoon I found myself, after an unusual set of circumstances, alone in my minivan, driving in silence. I wanted to turn on the radio or put in a tape. I wanted to pick up my cell phone and call someone. I drove in silence. I felt a little tired. I prayed for a friend. I thought of someone to call...later. I drove on in silence.

It was nice. It was...refreshing.

Tonight, I looked up what Sister Wendy has to say about silence in her little Book of Meditations.

Silence is a paradox, intensely there and, with equal intensity, not there. The passivity of silence is hard to explain, since in one respect it is intensely active. We hold ourselves in a condition of surrender. We choose not to initiate, not to cooperate with our mental processes. Yet from this passivity arises creativity. This mysterious liberation from all commonplace demands is exemplified in Rebecca Salter's abstractions, which have been compared to gazing at a waterfall. Salter seems to have painted silence itself; the work is both alive and moving, and yet still, so that the eye wanders absorbed and yet patternless, through and among the shapes. There is nothing to say, nothing even to experience in any words that sound impressive, yet the looking never wearies. This is a rough image, in its very imagelessness, of the bliss of silence.

Entering into silence is like stepping into cold water. The dust and debris are quietly washed away, and we are purified of our triviality. This cleansing takes place whether we are conscious of it or not; the very choice of silence, of desiring to be still, washes away the day's grime.

Ahhh, maybe that's why I love a silent house at night...

Getting the Message

...in my e-mailbox:

It is always easier to add to the noise of the world than to be silent.

Silence is a very precious thing--"There was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour" (Rv 8:1 AV), when the seventh seal was opened in the Book of the Revelation. Thunder and horses and martyrs and earthquakes had preceded the opening of this seal. Hail, fire, blood, and fearful judgment followed it--but in between, angels stood in the presence of God and there was utter silence.

Have we learned to stand in God's presence, mouths shut, hearts open? "Lord, what do you want me to do?" We must be quiet in order to know Him and to hear Him and to hear Him answer us.

"Be still"--that is, shut up--"and know that He is God" (Ps 46:10 AV).
Elizabeth Elliott, A Lamp For My Feet

...on my kids' boomboxes:

What's it gonna take
to slow us down
To let the silence spin us around?
What's it gonna take
to drop this town?
We've been spinning at the speed of sound.

Stepping out of those convenience stores,
what could we want but more more more?
From the third world
to the corporate core
we are the symphony of modern humanity.

If we're adding to the noise
turn off this song.
If we're adding to the noise
turn off your stereo, radio, video...
Switchfoot ("Adding to the Noise")

...from the pulpit:

The Transfiguration August 6

O God, who on the holy mount revealed to chosen witnesses
your well-beloved Son, wonderfully transfigured, in raiment
white and glistening: Mercifully grant that we, being
delivered from the disquietude of this world, may by faith
behold the King in his beauty; who with you, O Father, and
you, O Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, one God, for ever and
ever. Amen.

(Added later)
...and reading blogs!

Francis De Sales' Letter "To A Woman Beset By Many Tasks"

My dear daughter,

I remember you telling me how much the multiplicity of your affairs weighs on you; and I said to you that it is a good opportunity for acquiring the true and solid virtues. The multiplicity of affairs is a continual martyrdom, for just as flies cause more pain and irritation to those who travel in summer than the travelling itself does, just so the diversity and the multitude of affairs causes more pain than the weight of these affairs itself.

Lord, it's so true! It's not the individual weights of the tasks or even the cumulative effect--it's being pulled thirty-three different directions before lunchtime that kills me. "The multiplicity of affairs is a continual martyrdom"--indeed.

You need patience, and I hope that God will give it to you (if you ask it of Him carefully) and that you will try to practice it faithfully, preparing yourself for it every morning by a special application of some point in your meditation, and resolving to restore yourself to patience throughout the day as many times as you sense yourself becoming distracted.

That could be pretty often!

Lord, in what careful way can I apply myself, with Your help, to patience as a starting point each morning? And how "restore myself to patience throughout the day"? I know this is exactly what I need to do.

Do not lose any occasion, however small it may be, for exercising gentleness of heart toward everyone. Do not think that you will be able to succeed in your affairs by your own efforts, but only by the assistance of God; and on setting out, consign yourself to His care, believing that He will do that which will be best for you, provided that, on your part, you employ a gentle diligence. I say "gentle diligence," because violent diligence spoils the heart and the affairs, and is not diligence, but haste and trouble.

Ouch. I confess, Lord, to gutting it out with a violent diligence that does neither me or my family any good.

May I set out each morning by consigning the day and myself to Your care, employing a gentle diligence as I entrust You with my multiple affairs.

...Have patience with everyone, but chiefly with yourself; I mean to say, do not trouble yourself about your imperfections, and always have the courage to lift yourself out of them. I am well content that you begin again every day; there is no better way to perfect the spiritual life than always to begin again and never to think you have done enough.

Grace and perserverance--so simple, yet so difficult. Lord, give me patience with myself and my imperfections, as You do. Help me begin again every day--as You do!

Revisiting the Quotidian

Remember when I blogged about The Quotidian Mysteries--the idea of work as worship?

Ann at Holy Experience has been meditating on the same topic in her beautifully poetic way:

Cleaning: My Quotidian Liturgy
Quotidian Mystic: Finding Divine in the Daily
The Hallowedness of Housework: Worship in Motion
Glorifying God in Housework
Work, Prayer and Dirty Troughs

Highly recommended inspiration for at-home moms.