Saturday, February 10, 2024

Of Pictures and Pieces

Gloaming is blue and ethereal, with fine flakes of winter shrouding my valley in quiet. The windowpanes in my little cottage are frosted 'round the edges, as I've been simmering a lentil stew and braising some cabbage for dinner later. 

Today has been rather quiet, stillness only broken by the scraping of the snow plough and some shovelling...and the occasional tramp of boots on the stone stairs outside my cosy home. I'm grateful for the quiet space to reflect and pray (and sleep in, after a week of late nights). I'm thankful for my cup of Himalayan Bouquet tea with wildflower honey as I cuddle up in my softest, long grey sweater to watch the snow fall. 

I'm grateful for the foggy, snowy weather, which calms and quiets my soul so that I can come to the Lord in prayer and meditation. And I am so very thankful that the Lord hears me when I cry out to Him. He hears my recent confusion, my aches, my joys, my fears, my hopes. He hears my confessions, my uncertainties, my desires—the ones that so often pull against one another, tearing me to pieces. 

My whole life feels like it's been one series after another of deep desires that pull me in contradictory directions. I thought everyone felt this way, but it turns out, they don't. At least, not all the time or maybe even most of the time. This constant struggle being unique to me and people like me was revealed when I learned my mindstyle: being equally task-oriented and people-oriented. Most people tend to be more one or the other, but not me. It makes work a challenge at times—especially working with other people. And when I'm with people, I can multitask (do the dishes, play games, etc.), but I can't both work on a project with them and also give them my undivided attention. The reality is that what I want most is to sit side-by-side and listen deeply, to share intimately.

While it was immensely frustrating to discover these equal and opposite mindstyles were at war within me, it made sense of many situations and seasons in life—and explained why I get burnt out on work or people. It's been four or five years since this revelation and I feel like I'm still not good at figuring out my balance, at walking with both the left foot (people) and the right foot (tasks), one after the other in rhythm.

The issue is further complicated with God. I love learning about the bigger picture of the Bible and the themes God has woven into His world and His works from the beginning of time. I love it when I finally make a big picture connection myself. But I find myself doing one thing or the other, not both at once: I either read Scripture slowly and methodically, gleaning details or I don't read it at all and listen to others who help me see the big picture. I've done the detail-gleaning most of my growing up life, even into my twenties. I've only begun the big picture learning since entering my thirties.  

In hindsight, I wish these processes had been reversed. I wish I'd known the big picture of God and His story when I was little, filling in the details as I grew and matured. Because when you've been digging up little artefacts for your formative years and you don't know where they go or how they fit together, you do some weird cobbling together of those pieces. You may make a beautiful mosaic or a grotesque image of God, but you will have to take it all apart to put things together in the way they are supposed to go, not how you decided they should go. And how do we (I) do that if we don't know the nature, character, and love of God?

No one person can see God, His world, or everything in Scripture rightly and thoroughly at once. That is one of the many reasons God put us together in a body, in community—both with Himself and with others. This is why we need to read Scripture communally, but also individually (where we can read and absorb at our own speed). 

I've been in a rather long season now of studying the Word in community (both at church and in Bible studies), but now comes the point where I need to jump back in to also reading daily to re-familiarise myself with the words, phrases, and details. They go hand-in-hand. While I love both the details and the big picture, I need a lot of help from intuitive and perceiving people to see the big picture. I don't naturally have that vision. I see the trees, not the forest. And that has SO many positive outlets and uses, but I need to see the forest, too. Just like I need to learn to balance tasks and developing relationships, not at the exclusion of one or the other.

It's easier to learn photography basics in black and white, learning about shadows, shapes, and composition. But when you add colour, it's a whole new field. Both mediums are beautiful. But you can use either and fail in composition, clarity, or depth. You can fail to tell a story—you have to have an informed, intuitive eye for that.

Dichotomies are hard for me. I understand black, I understand white. Where gradations and colours fit in is where I need God and other people to help me imagine. To see truly. When I can't see beyond my own confusions, conclusions, and projected outcomes there is God, holding out truth, light for the path, and hope. Colours. Stories. Pieces of the whole...and the whole story, too.


Saturday, January 6, 2024

We Were Meant to Live

 Dear Aaron,

It's a new year, a new Church season (Epiphany). It's a new season of life for me, as I'm about to get married. And there is a new recording of Switchfoot's Meant to Live that I wish you could hear. I've known this song for twenty years, but this recording breaks my heart almost every time I hear it. It makes me think of you. It makes me miss you. And it makes me cry. 

We were meant to live for so much more, my friend. There's no going back in time to tell you, to remind you, to help you believe that you were meant to live life abundantly. In those last years there was no way for me to help you live inside. I can't imagine what 'inside of you' was like for you... All I can do is sit in the gloaming listening to this song soar inside of me. Somewhere inside of me a little piece of you lives. Your life glows like an ember in my own heart. You touched me and it changed who I was—who I am. Your friendship shaped my life in so many ways... You made my world bigger. Did you know that you did that? That you could do that?


Fumbling his confidence and wondering
Why the world has passed him by
Hoping that he's bent for more than arguments
And failed attempts to fly

This was what the world might have seen from the outside... A shy and quiet chap who lacked confidence and direction. I happen to know you felt like the world had passed you by, like you were a failure of sorts. But you just didn't fit into the world's mold... You wanted 'more than this world has to offer' while 'everything inside screamed for second life.' You saw the world with different eyes. The problem was that you felt the opposite tug of what society dictated you should do and who you were—what you were truly made for: to show your corner of the world beauty and light and hope through new eyes. 

We were meant to live for so much more, 
have we lost ourselves?
Somewhere we live inside...

That tug inside of you pulled you into a place you weren't made for. You remained yourself in that space, but I think the strain became too much. At some point, something snapped and you lost yourself. I don't think you ever lost your True Anchor, but you did lose your true self enough that you quit living at all. 

How do I reconcile this, my friend? How do any of us cope with your absence? It's been five years, four months, and three days since you stopped living inside and out. But I stop to remind myself that you are now more alive than I am. You are with Life Himself. With the Author of all Hope, all Life. And in other ways you are still living on in the lives you touched, mine included. You being with Jesus (and not here) doesn't stop me from loving you and missing you and wishing things were different. 

We were meant to live for so much more.     You...     Me...    Anyone reading this. 

We were made in the glorious image of the incomparable, multifaceted, life-giving, imaginative God of the universe. We were made for a purpose. For life. For love. For relationship. We were made for so much more than the crumbs this world has to offer. Let us prepare a sumptuous feast for those around us with our words, actions, and lives. And let us feast on the Word of Life Himself, who gave Himself for us that we might live eternally.




* Meant To Live (Jon Bellion Version) — Switchfoot, Jon Bellion
The Beautiful Letdown (Our Version) [Deluxe Edition] © 2023
Seriously, if you haven't listened to this version, do yourself a favour and go somewhere by yourself with a good speaker... Play it as loud as you dare.

Sunday, December 31, 2023

December Jamborees

Recapping December in Photos...

Summit's Christmas party at the Peel House was just lovely!















Good thing we looked fabulous in this photo, because we only took two all evening!



We had a bit of a mini Oxford reunion watching Emmeline in The Nutcracker. Leah's daughter was enthralled...with the ballet. And I confess that her big eyes, quick smile, and confiding nature stole my heart right away!



Nick and I found a tin soldier (not quite a nutcracker) when we went to the Broadmoor to see their Christmas creations and decorations. They go all out with classic trimmings and lots of lights...and a life-size gingerbread confection that changes each year. 

They also have something of a Beauty and the Beast library with a fireplace and movable ladder. *Happy sigh* We spent most of our evening browsing the books and reading a beautifully illustrated copy of Clement C Moore's Twas the Night before Christmas.


  

Over all, 2023 has held some very big losses and sadness... But it has also been filled with much happiness and excitement, too (there's a sapphire ring on my left hand, since Nick asked me an important question when we were in Wisconsin in October).

The best parts of the year and the hardest parts all involved people we love and support (and who support us). Where would we be if the Lord did not put us into families and tuck us into loving communities? Where would we be without the Lord Himself? HE is our life

Friday, October 6, 2023

Where is Time?

Where is time?
Does it live on the bottom of a well,
the bristly back of an elephant,
or under furry-soft moss along a fallen tree?

Does it crouch in the crevices of caves,
under the eaves of fairy cottages,
or over the smile of the man-in-the-moon?


Where is time?
Is it tucked deep in the heart,
with old memories of lost love,
and ambitions that have crumbled?

Is it hidden in the mind,
trapped in formulae and fancies,
buried under long-unused ideas?


Where is time?
Does it flit, forever beyond our fingers
outstretched, fleet as the wings 
of an owl or the feet of a fawn?

Is it running like swift spring streams,
chortling at us from just over the next rise,
or peering down from the treetops?


Where is time?
Does it hide in an hourglass 
or stuck between calendar pages,
awaiting freedom by the flick of a hand?

Is it waiting to pounce upon us,
springing on our vulnerable souls
to carry us away at the end of days?


Where is time?
Living in the hollows of longing 
and in the halls and homes of dear friends—
in children's laughter and delighted hearts.

It hangs on the tip of the crescent moon,
dripping over us in flickering shade
and sweet scents of summer hay fields.


Where is time?
Deep in the wells of our belovéd's eyes,
blue, yet flecked with one rusty speck
and over-full of sorrow and kindness.

It dwells in worlds pressed between 
the pages of books, and in the notes
of a bird's song, evensong, all song.


Where is time?
In the pockets of jackets worn on 
autumn hikes, full of leaves and pine cones—
and in brimming cups of fragrant tea.

It crowds in cookie crumbs shared
with family and friends, and spills
over our tongue, savouring memories.


Where is time?
Settled in the silence of a misty forest or
with a comfortable friend, and in the cries
of gulls and the sweep of crow's wings.

Under every dew-encrusted blade of grass,
crowning headstones, rippling in sandstone
and in the shore's ever-lapping waves. . .

Where, oh where, is time?

Saturday, September 30, 2023

We Are Once In a Lifetime

Dear Aaron,

Did you think I forgot? Because I didn't. I called your mom on 3 September. Last weekend I hiked around the area where I carved your name into a fallen tree five years ago. The Switchfoot playlist that gave words to my aching has been on repeat all month. Tears have definitely rimmed my eyes on repeat, too.

I was re-reading some of your thoughts/poems earlier this month... You had good thoughts, friend. You had good taste in lyrics. In poetry. And goodness knows you had more patience for certain literature than I do. 

You know that dark blue plaid shirt of yours? It is ringed with holes now... I sleep with it every night I'm not travelling. There is something comforting in its tangibility—like there is with your letters. I just like seeing them, holding them, reading them. 

You left an indelible mark on me, Aaron Eugene Hennig. The mark of friendship. The mark of one who has known a similar sorrow and tried to walk with me through my own, even when you didn't always know how, and I didn't always recognise your efforts. 

You know what I do recognise? You were once in a lifetime. My ticket to Oxford and Alaska and Rhode Island. My ticket to a land of imagination and Beauty, reminding me there is Hope—and He is the Anchor for our souls. 

Do you have any idea how mad I am that you went ahead of me? Or how much it hurt to have you leave, both five years ago and all those years ago after I came to Alaska? You walked out of our friendship because I was me and not someone else. Or maybe because that 'someone else' was taking up too much space inside of you. 

Do you remember writing about how some people take up more space inside than you wanted to give them? I remember, not only because I've re-read your letters so much in the past handful of years, but because I understand that feeling from the inside. Some people want to take up more space than you have to give...and some people that you have vast treasures of storeroom for don't want to take up much (or any) space inside of you. We can't always choose these things.

What are you waiting for?
The day is gone. . .
I said, I'm waiting for dawn

...

Every now and then I see you dreaming
Every now and then I see you cry
Every now and then I see you reaching
Reaching for the other side*


Your reached it, friend. Aslan's own country. The other side from here. The end (which was only the beginning!) of your dreams. You found the womb of the dawn you were waiting for. The mental clarity you were reaching for with fingers wiggling, straining to reach just a little more.


May all of your days shine brightly
And your nights be blessed with peace
Wherever you lay down to sleep

And all things are made good
For those who believe
May you grow from a seed
Into a strong, fruitful tree**

___

Aaron, you are a tree, my friend. 

Not "you were"—somehow, you still are.



. . .

*Switchfoot "Red Eyes"
**Josh Garrels "Benediction"


Saturday, September 16, 2023

Autumn Apple Spice Cake

 


Autumn is my favourite time of year... There's a nip in the air, the sunlight is honey-gold, and the flavours are rich, warm, and home. If you need to be transported to an autumn tree-lined lane, this soundtrack never fails to work for me.

Generally I'm not a cake person, but in the autumn and winter I love a good coffee cake or spice cake with a cup of maple black tea with a good book or my favourite fall films

If you are looking for something cinnamon-spicy and appley-dapply, here is a sour cream apple spice cake recipe for you! 


Wet Ingredients:

  • 1/2 cup butter*, softened (8 Tablespoons
  • 3/4 – 1 Cup packed brown sugar
  • 1-2 tsp vanilla or maple flavouring (or 1 tsp of each)
  • 2 eggs, room temperature
  • 1 cup sour cream/yoghurt*
  • 2 apples, peeled, cored, and grated (granny smith are super good!)
I like to add the spices to the wet mixture, but most folks include them in the flour/dry ingredients. You can decide which you prefer. ;)
    • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
    • 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
    • 1 Tbs fresh grated ginger (or 1 tsp dry)
    • 1/4 teaspoon cloves

Dry Ingredients:

  • 2 cups (270 grams) whole wheat flour
  • 1  teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt

Optional - Cinnamon Crumble Topping:
    

      2-3 Tbs Butter

      1/4 C Oats

      3 Tbs Brown Sugar

      1 Tbs Flour

       Cinnamon (to taste)


Directions: 

  1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Grease a 9"×9" or 9"x13" glass pan with butter.
  2. In a medium bowl or sifter, combine the dry ingredients. Whisk together/sift flour, spices, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. 
  3. In a large bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer, cream butter and sugar with a hand mixer or whisk 2-3 minutes, until light, fluffy, and well combined.
  4. Mix in eggs, one at a time.
  5. Stir in sour cream and apples.
  6. Add the dry ingredients mixture and gently mix till all dry ingredients are just mixed together. Don’t over-mix.
  7. Pour cake batter into the prepared baking dish. Sprinkle with crumble topping, if desired.
  8. Bake at 375 degrees for 30-40 minutes or till a toothpick inserted comes out clean. 
  9. Cool on a wire rack. *
  10. Make this recipe dairy free by using vegetable oil and apple sauce in place of the butter and sour cream.




  11. Inspired by: https://www.onelovelylife.com/apple-spice-cake/

    Photo by Jen Theodore on Unsplash

Saturday, August 26, 2023

Irrational August

This is the irrational season
When love blooms bright and wild.
—Madeleine L'Engle

It is no secret that I despise the month of August. The heat, the weight of work, the physical and emotional exhaustion, it all feels crushing... But this August has been especially hard to bear. In the span of a week, two of my oldest Summit connections were dealt death blows in their families: one lost their 17-year-old daughter, the other his 88-year-old wife just 12 days before their 66th wedding anniversary.

Now in the same span of time, I will attend two funeral services... One for a vibrant girl who was just about to begin adulthood, the other for a gentle soul full of humour and grace—both loved Jesus, and both loved people. It is no easier to go to one service or the other. Death is the great thief, thrusting itself into our safe worlds and snatching away those we love; snatching our security from under us. 

Death happens to other people. . .until it doesn't. 

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
—John Donne

As I pulled on my swishy black dress today, I reached for the right necklace to wear with it—the necklace with winter-bare branches etched in silver, my 'Aaron necklace'. It seemed the right thing to wear to Elsie's funeral. Elsie was a toddler when Aaron and I met. I've watched three families from that Semester lose loved ones too young. Stephen's brother was 27. Aaron was 30. And Elsie was 17. 

 Alice Noebel was also too young. Yes, she would have been 90 next year, but that's too young, because death isn't how it's supposed to be. And I know that Jesus turned death on its head, making it the gateway to the New Kingdom for those who believe... But it wasn't supposed to be part of this world. Not until one of God's image-bearers reached out her hand to take; to make the choice between tov and ra for herself. 

That is what we all do... In big or small moments, we decide for ourselves what good or evil are. And sometimes we choose evil, saying it is good—while eschewing the good, experiencing it as evil. Our stubborn choices bring various kinds of death and destruction. In relationships. In creation. In ourselves. Knowing the real difference between tov (good) and ra (evil/bad) is nuanced and complicated, and I for one don't have enough information about the future to know which thing is which. That's why we are supposed to depend on the Creator of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil to help us discern. 

August is irrational, this one full of death and wounding grief beyond words. Perhaps the irrational part is that it also holds the bloom of love, bright and wild. Even in my own grief, I also know a love I've never known before. It is bright, illuminating. It is wild. It is both stable and hard to predict. And I experience this love as a sweet gift. On the surface it appears tov...  I pray for the wisdom from the Creator to know tov from ra, to open my hand to what He will place there in His time. It is so hard not to reach out and pluck what looks good and right. YHWH, give me wisdom and patience to wait on You. Help me to choose life, not death. Help me to see rightly what is tov. 


Saturday, August 19, 2023

Somebody Loved


  Rain turns the sand into mud
    Wind turns the trees into bone
Stars turning high up above
                 You turned me into somebody loved
— The Weepies
  



Maybe it's the lateness of the hour. Maybe it's the weight of sorrow from the last two weeks finally breaking in. Maybe it's my lack of sleep. And maybe it's just truth hitting my unguarded heart... I stumbled across this song tonight, sitting in the soft twinkle lights of my kitchen. And now I find myself weeping as I listen on repeat. 

So much is held in that tiny line, "You turned me into somebody loved." Not someone lovable. Goodness knows all of us have moments, hours, whole seasons of being unlovable. But when someone loves us, even in in those seasons, well... We become someone loved. Not by anything we've done, but because someone makes the choice to love us. And that choice shapes who we are. 

And maybe I'm weeping in my kitchen because I've lived my whole life with people who love me. Knowing God loves me. Not everyone gets that—always knowing they are loved. And when someone does really, truly love them, it transforms them into somebody loved. 
 
Maybe I'm letting the tears flow here in my kitchen, because I also know that love for the first time. I haven't dated many men, but the ones I dated in the past, while I knew they loved me, never made me feel like somebody loved.

However, those words pierced my heart tonight because they resonated as utterly true. Nick has turned me into somebody loved. Maybe because he sees me for me—not as a project, not as an accessory, not as a sounding board, and not as an ego boost. I don't exist to highlight his story. He just loves me. 

I've always been loved, and I don't even know how grateful I am for that incredible gift...until I see the fractured lives all around me. Until my own world cracks. I've always known my parents' love, my sisters' love, God's love—I've never known life without their love. I accidentally take it for granted. I don't mean to, and I am deeply thankful for that constant love... It has made me who I am in so many wonderful, healthy ways.

But I lived so much of my life without Nick's love that I can see the difference between who I was before and who I am now. There is a different kind of comfort and confidence that comes when you are turned into somebody loved. 

As I listen to this song, I think of a young woman, neglected, abandoned as a child. She is out in the cold, on the streets. She has been used and abused. She is skittish and gauche. And then, someone comes along and loves her, even when she is graceless. They don't love what she could become, they just love her. . .as she is. And through that love, she is changed. Because how can we not be changed when we find that we are somebody loved? And yet, it isn't who-we-will-become that the person loves. It is us, as we are—messy and ridiculous—that they love. Certainly this can happen in non-romantic relationships, too. But there seems to be something sweeter when this change comes though a spouse (or an almost-spouse). 

My my writing skills are dusty, but even if they weren't, I really can't gather into words what that two minute forty-one second song says so simply and profoundly.

All I know is that being turned into somebody loved is a miracle—a gift from God.


____

1. Somebody Loved lyrics © Deb Talan Music, Steve Tannen Music



Monday, July 3, 2023

K. G. M.



His tide went out

with the rising of the Hunter's moon

in all its fullness and hunger,

that early July morn


For days and weeks

his body ebbed away, bit by bit 

until his gaunt frame

sighed its final exhale


The sound of that breath,

though faint, much the same

as YHWH's very name—

a final note of coming hope



Friday, June 30, 2023

I Have Set before You Life and Death





Misty days and Spring rains have given way to Summer heat; screen doors are flung open for cooling breezes; there are pots of flowers thriving on the porch. . . One of those is quite new, a lovely ribbed green ceramic creation with pink vincas blooming over the edge. It was a surprise gift from Nick, when he unexpectedly popped by my office on his day off this week.

Sometimes we need delightful surprises of flowers and monster-sized cookies, soft dresses on sale, and precious days with family. We need sad songs and sweet ones, too. We need bright smiles and long kisses, an unlooked-for hug on a hard day, and honest tears as we work through discerning what is right and best. We need meandering walks to drink in late sunshine and colour-drenched flowers. We need crickets and quiet moments on the porch, talking with God...which I think mostly means listening hard in the silences between words.

It has been both a restful, beautiful Spring with silvery mists and clouds rolling in over the mountains, and simultaneously a difficult season of stress, solicitude, and stealthy sorrow snaking its way into my family. I loved going home in April to take Nick to meet my family and enjoy the glorious spring beauty of the Midwest. I loved driving to Kansas to meet up with my immediate family to celebrate my aunt and uncle's 50th wedding anniversary... It was lovely to reconnect with many of my cousins, though the days were laced with a bittersweet undertone, as my uncle's health is deteriorating rapidly. 




Though it may not sound like it, the thread weaving the beauty, the bittersweet, the bite of sorrow is always the Lord of all. Not simply in the Bible Project podcasts or daily lectio divina of Pray as You Go, or even in Tim Keller sermons (how sorrowed I have been with his recent passing!)... Though also exactly in and through those things. Yet it is the Lord asking me questions from the mouth of the man I love, from my best friends, from unexpected sources. There is the question of God giving us choices, life and death—which will we choose? It sounds so easy: choose life! But am I seeing death as life? Will I choose wrongly because my eyes are mis-seeing? And what does that stem from? Is it because I am unused to looking at the goodness of the Lord?

What does loving someone well look like? Lately it has involved both saying what I need and setting boundaries. It involves sacrifice of time, and also listening fully engaged. It means being quieter than I have been lately. Do I remember that God is the Someone I love first? Am I loving Him well?

Questions, questions, questions. . . And Beauty. And sorrow. And joy. And hope. And boundaries. And learning to say hard things. And quiet. And open hands. It all weaves and flows; it all whirls in the delicate dance of this life we live, the air we've been gifted to breathe. All these come as gifts of some kind, even the gifts that feel like pain. As God gently, graciously unpeels our fingers from 'round the things we cling to, we stop strangling them and allow the breath of life to come in. . .

Come, Holy Spirit. . .



*Photo stills from The Cottage Fairy, no copyright infringement intended (I just want to share the beauty)...