The Price of Loving Fiercely

“I’d believed—fool that I was—that because I knew this end was coming, I was prepared, that I would not grieve as hard. As if one can pre-grieve and get it out of the way. It’s not true. Grief is the price I paid for loving fiercely, and that was okay, because there was no other choice but to love fiercely and fully.”

― Patti Callahan, Once Upon a Wardrobe 

Dear Aaron,

The fog of a freezing frost is settling in my valley this evening, friend. I hope to wake to a glittering world of beauty and delight—a sort of Eden splashed over all I can see. Sometimes I think other people want that for grief. . . For some joy to splash over one's world and cover over the grief, leaving only shimmering Beauty where once there was pain. But like hoarfrost, those moments are just that: moments. The pain leaks back through like mud beneath the snow. The ever-present stain of grief is the price paid for loving fiercely and fully.

A while back I had someone whom I consider a close friend tell me that perhaps there was something wrong with me for still grieving you stepping out of life—not just out of mine, but out of your life. To this day that comment still rankles in my soul, because the loss of you will not go away while I'm still living. You will always be gone now. Oh, one day I will cross the Great Gulf and join you in the Kingdom, but who can say when? And until then, we are separated. That doesn't quit or stop or go away. Just like your birthday is always your birthday, even if you're not here to celebrate it. It's your birthday just the same. . .the day before mine, every year. 

It was a full day with an appointment, work, small group, and exhaustion. But I thought of you, of course I did. Each time I had to write the date on every page of the chiropractor forms. When I was running a mailing and setting the stamp date. When I texted your parents and sister. Of course I knew it was your day. And of course I missed you, even if I spent the evening with dear friends. None of them were you.

I miss getting to know you. I have pieces of your thoughts and heart penned in about twenty letters spanning about five years. I have three months (plus a week) of shaky memories of the time we spent in the same place, often together. But I've forgotten too much of those weeks, days, and hours. My mind and my life are full, always edging out memory unless I sit with it, stoke it, tend to it. And yet... There is a hole where you should be. Where I should still be able to write or receive a letter, where we should still be able to talk on the phone or visit one another. We should still be getting to know each other. And we aren't. I miss what we had; but perhaps even more, I miss what we never got to have. 

Lately the pain has been something like a branch beneath the hoarfrost of dating someone I truly love. He's very different from you, but also he reminds me of you in some ways. But even the wonder of a sweet relationship doesn't cover the pain of loss forever. Perhaps the mud seeps through the snow a little less often right now, but I still think about you every day. I still miss writing real letters to you—letters I can drop in the mail and have you receive at the other end of the line. I still raised a mug of tea (caramel-coconut-sesame) in a toast to you on your birthday. And I still believe that if the Lord allows you to see through the veil—to know the love of those who miss you—then you know that already.

Here's to the twilight
Here's to the memories
These are my souvenirs
My mental pictures of everything
Here's to the late nights
Here's to the firelight
These are my souvenirs
My souvenirs

I close my eyes and go back in time
I can see you're smiling, you're so alive
We were so young, we had no fear
We were so young, we had no idea
That life was just happening
Life was just happening

Here's to your bright eyes
Shining like fireflies
These are my souvenirs
The memory of a lifetime. . .

—Switchfoot, Souvenirs 

Though I'm a little later than the day of, happy birthday, friend. I miss you. The mud and blood beneath the snow still surface. But one day the glittering frost will melt into Spring and I will see you again. We can get to know each other more then, my friend. Until the Kingdom comes, I will pay the price of loving fiercely and fully. Until then, here's hail! to the rest of the road.

Love,
Johanna

Messy Christmas

The branches have traded

Their leaves for white sleeves

All warm-blooded creatures make ghosts as they breathe

Scarves are wrapped tightly like gifts under trees

Christmas lights tangle in knots annually

While many people are wrapping up their Christmas lights rather than untangling them from last year, some more traditional churches are just entering into the celebration of the Christmas season. For them, Christmas begins on the evening of December twenty-fourth (since the Creation, days begin the evening before—think of Genesis 1:5: "...and there was evening and there was morning, the first day" etc.), going through to Epiphany on the sixth of January. 

This year, snow fell like shimmering garments on tree arms a week before Christmas. Yet for many of us, by the time the day itself rolled around, the sun had melted the tree robes and we were down to shirt-sleeves and thin sweaters. I love snow, but who decided that it is “necessary” at Christmas? 

Our families huddle closely

Betting warmth against the cold,

Our bruises seem to surface

Like mud beneath the snow

Some kinds of "snow" feel necessary... We want the blanket of "nice feelings" at Christmas to mask the cracks in our families of origin or in our marriages, in our loneliness and in our broken spots. But holidays have a way of hitting our bruised places. An argument in the car on the way to a Christmas gathering reminds us of the scores of fights we've had all year. The question, "So, are you seeing anyone?" (and you know they want to add "yet" at the end of that query) rankles when you're tired of being alone, or you've recently broken up with someone, or you feel somehow lesser because you in fact don't have someone. Sometimes the bruise is cruel and bone-deep: someone is missing in the pew at midnight mass with you; there is only the memory or shadow of someone you dearly love hovering at every crowded table, making it feel incomplete. 

It is a muddy, messy time, this Christmas. Messy Christmas. That is the phrase my phone auto-corrects to instead of "merry" Christmas. I laughed the first time happened. It struck my cynical side as humorous and morosely accurate. The mud of the Fall still lurks beneath the snow of the now-but-not-perfected redemption. But clean slates are coming. . .

So we sing carols softly

As sweet as we know

A prayer that our burdens will lift as we go

Like young love still waiting under mistletoe

We'll welcome December with tireless hope

Hope. Christmas is replete with Hope. God joining to flesh in a miraculous marriage. The Redeemer was born. Happy, sentimental sigh. 

But the crushing reality is that the Redeemer wasn't born as an adult. Things didn't change when He came. Yes, there was the flash of Heaven, opened to the shepherds. There was a great sign in the heavens, leading the wise men. Then, just like the previous four hundred years, there was a lull. Silence. Hope was born...but He wouldn't be revealed for another thirty years. 

I wonder if the shepherds were like fourteen-year-old me: not subtle, hanging around wherever I could—whenever I could—to be around the guy I was crushing on. Or did they cease hoping? Certainly, unflagging hope is hard to cultivate, especially when your hope is placed in the wrong thing, the wrong outcome, or the wrong person. Those shepherds waited for thirty years. Did they continue to hope? Did they connect that awe-filled night years ago with the peripatetic rabbi stirring up the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Jewish people, and the Romans?

Hope can be hard to cling to in the darkness, but that is precisely where we need it the most. Where we need Him the most. Thirty years before the Rabbi began calling fishermen, the ancient, long-awaited seed of promise was sown, becoming a tender shoot in Egyptian and Galilean soil.

"...For you [John] will go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways,

To give knowledge of salvation to His people

By the remission of their sins,

Through the tender mercy of our God,

With which the Dayspring from on high has visited us;

To give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death,

To guide our feet into the way of peace.” (Luke 1:76b-79)

Hope. It comes in through those very cracks we long to cover. He enters into our broken places. He is gentle with our bruises.

Let our bells keep on ringing

Making angels in the snow

And may the melody [of Hope] disarm us

When the cracks begin to show

Like the petals in our pockets

May we remember who we are

Unconditionally cared for

By those who share our broken hearts

_______

The table is set

And all glasses are full

The pieces go missing

May we still feel whole

We'll build new traditions in place of the old

Cause life without revision will silence our souls

Last year, table after table was set, glass after glass filled. But the gaping hole of grief gnawed at me like an insatiable, unwelcome guest. Every table felt incomplete. There was a strange distance between me and everyone I was around. Like I was in a glass bubble and could see them, but I could touch them, couldn't really hear them. Those layers show up in many ways at various times, but all last Christmas I felt it. I couldn't enter fully into anything, because I wasn't whole. I am still not whole. I will always carry in me a bleeding wound. And it will only grow as the number of empty chairs rivals the number of full ones. And one day, the perpetually bleeding bite from grief, from death will kill me. Then I can fully enter in to the Kingdom come, to the City of God and the Feast of the Lamb. Strange how a fatal wound precedes life. 

The missing pieces haven't gaped so glaringly this year, but the numbness is still floating around. My heart, mind, and body are all topsy-turvy this season. The missing pieces can never be filled—but sometimes there is a new friend waiting in a vacant church pew; there is an old friend who remembers the ache with you, and even carries it with you for a bit. 

So, let the bells keep on ringing, making angels in the snow. And may the melody surround us, when the cracks begin to show this messy Christmas.

"Snow" by Sleeping at Last (Ryan O'Neal)

Here's to the Firelight

“Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,

Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,

Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air

Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven,

And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.

The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet

Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit

Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed

In a tumultuous privacy of Storm.”

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Snow Storm

_______

We watched the first red blaze appear, 

Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam 

On whitewashed wall and sagging beam, 

Until the old, rude-furnished room 

Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom; 

While radiant with a mimic flame 

Outside the sparkling drift became, 

And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree 

Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free. 

— John Greenleaf Whittier, Snow-Bound

It is snowing down in big flakes from the street lamp circles tonight. There is the hush that comes with it. Kept within my cabin by the drifting snow, there is no radiant fireplace—no flickering flames to 'drive away dark spirits'. The dark spirits of loneliness crowd into  my little house and it feels like all friends are shut out, indeed. There is still a cosy "privacy of Storm" feeling, but whenever I think of Whittier, there is a bittersweet ache. You see, Whittier reminds me of you, my friend.

My copy of Snow-Bound is in a slim green book. A book that used to be yours. A book with your mother's handwriting in the front, inscribed with the year I last saw you. How can six years go so quickly and feel so eternal? So much has changed in those years—especially in my family. Too much has stayed the same—especially in my bad habits. Six years ago last week, I flew to Alaska to see you. I was worried for you. When I finally found you, waiting in your truck, my worry increased. The lack of sleep from many flights wasn't helping, but even so, my panic mode rightly kicked on. Something was desperately wrong with the friend I once knew. He was gone. . . Gone away, leaving someone else in his stead, someone I didn't know.

What I didn't expect was that I wouldn't see you again after our initial time together. You dropped me off with your friends and left me. Though they graciously looked after me that day and the next, dropping me off at the airport in good time, it wasn't strangers I had come to visit. Yet it was only strangers whom I found. You were a stranger to me—not letting me hug you, not making eye-contact with me, not making sense, not feeling safe. You simply left me.

What I didn't expect was to have you cut me off after that visit. You made sure I got home okay, but from that time on you didn't call and you didn't respond to my letters. It would be years before I found out that you never even opened my letters after that point. All because I wasn't someone else. Being myself—your friend—wasn't enough. I wasn't enough. I sat at the airport that February, tears running down my face, feeling horribly abandoned. . .because you had left me.

No one seemed to understand what a devastating loss it was to me, your friendship. So I swallowed my grief deep inside of me. What I didn't expect was to feel abandoned for all those years. You would cross my mind with great frequency, and I felt a wall. . .a barrier that I couldn't cross. And you wouldn't cross it. Or maybe you couldn't cross it either. I reached out my hand again and again—hoping—but yours never met it. You left me to reach out into the unfriendly darkness, alone.

What I didn't expect was how much I trusted your last promise to me. As long as she was safe and alive, I need not fear for your life. But I guess it got to be too much, living. And maybe you forgot that promise. All I know is, one September day, you left me—irrevocably. I didn't expect that the previous five plus years of ache would come spilling out in wave after wave after wave.

In one sense, you died years ago, but I didn't know how to grieve that living death. So, I tucked it away inside of me, because no one else cared, no one understood that aching, living loss. But in your physical death, people cared, they tried to help, they listened, they hugged me. . . At last they understood that I was experiencing a deep, deep loss. Wave after wave after wave of grief left me gasping.

What I didn't expect was to find this gem in abandonment: Abandonment (n.): from 1839 as "condition of being forsaken." In music, Italian abbandonatamente is the instruction to play so as to make the time subordinate to the feeling.

Not the feelings subordinate to the restrictions of time. . . No, time must surrender, be sub-ordinate to the feeling.

The first six weeks of grief were like a hurricane, one pounding wave after another, huge and crushing. Then I finally had a lovely day hiking with a friend, a day where I didn't cry—and I felt so disloyal to you. I visited your family a few weeks later—the time together was both healing and intensely painful. Remembering heals, but it leaves a bigger hole, a deeper ache. I felt like you had died all over again.

Then I'm not sure what happened. . . Maybe it was self-protection, but in December I was mostly numb. I wanted so badly to remember your visit ten years before, but it was like it had been erased from my mind—and not only mine, but everyone else's. There were no photos of our time together, few memories. . . I just wanted people to talk about you with me, but it was like you were gone, like you walked out of our memories. And again, it felt like no one understood why it mattered so much that we were friends, why it hurt like Hell that you were gone. It was still so raw that all I wanted to do was cover up my hurt, yet I wanted to share it, too. . .

What I didn't expect was the waves of loneliness. In my home. At my parents' house. At work. With dear friends who didn't understand. With friends who expected (even more so now) me to 'get better' or 'get over' my grief. I didn't expect this clawing, craving loneliness that nothing can fill. I didn't expect the emptiness, the feeling invisible, the feeling abandoned to drive me to distraction. But it has.

If numbness felt horrible—like fuzz between me and everyone and everything—distraction feels. . .not horrible. It even feels normal. Not exactly like nothing happened, but certainly like I'm pretending on the surface that nothing happened. I am silly at work, I laugh with friends, I flirt with the mailman, I try to reach out to others, I fill too many hours with noise—audible and visual. But in the distraction and in the intense loneliness I have been reckless, terrifying myself. Behind it all, I miss the grief (though it still washes up at odd hours). The steady waves of grief have been my connection. My companion. The distraction hasn't been all bad—it has pointed me outward; it has made me face some things internally; it helps other people feel more normal around me (I think)—I have too often felt like a "death's head" as Lewis described it in A Grief Observed. I don't want people to feel like they need to avoid me or to feel awkward around me because I am grieving. So, I've hidden my grief over your loss yet again. But I feel out of step from God, from others, and from you, because I stepped out of the flow of grief. 

For months I tried to maintain the feelings, tried to grieve well, to the point that I was exhausted. So, I took a break. . .but the break has ceased being restorative (like a sabbath day) and has morphed into laziness (like a month of Sundays). I keep wanting to go back to the grief, but I've changed and the grief has changed, and I can't go back. I can only go forward. . .but I don't know how. I feel lost about how to grieve now, about where I should be at this point. I can't compare my grief to others'—I just want to know for myself where I need to be. I don't know, though. I simply know that I feel lonely like I never have before. I feel abandoned. And that feeling does not yield to time. Six years later, I still grieve that you left me.

Six months later, I grieve that you abandoned life. I don't want to ignore the emotions or push them aside until I can 'deal with' them. I need to know these feelings—not to be ruled by them, but to know them—and I need time to be subordinate to my emotions. It can take as long as it needs to take to grieve. And the grief is allowed to change. There must not of necessity be colossal breakers all the time to prove that I care about you. I don't have to cry every day to prove my friendship and affection. There will always be a hole in my life without you. And there will always be so much of me that has been shaped by you that you cannot be wholly gone. You may have left me, but you also changed me. You shaped me in so many ways.

Distractions can be okay for short stints. By the kindness of God, this season of distraction has had its healing moments, in spite of its recklessness. Still, I want the upcoming season of Lent to be one where I learn to hold grief and gladness together. Not one or the other, but together. I want time to be in subjugation to the feelings. If I need to feel sad, even in front of other people, then I will. I don't have to be 'over' my grief by now. I will never be 'over' the grief that you are gone. There will always be the absence of you in my life. Even if your presence was quiet, and sometimes unnoticed, it was monumental to me. I miss you so very much, Aaron. I pray that the flame of your fire is radiantly mimicked upon the sparkling snow of my life. 

Childlike. . .Wonder

Chill air makes me pull my covers closer just as my alarm buzzes. I roll over, swat my phone, and snuggle back under the blankets. Then I slit open one eye to see what the morning has brought. Suddenly I am all awake: the sky is grey, but the evergreens are shadowy jade, frosted with feather-flakes of snow. Snow! It is early this year, and cold, and...delightful. I can hear sleigh bells in my dreams, and though I am quick, I can never quite catch a glimpse of Jack Frost as he paints my windowpanes—which is a stunning feat, as I have a dozen panes before my desk.

My blood quickens at the thought of wandering out in those downy flakes, listening to the strange hush that snow always brings with it. My body is slower to answer the fairy calls—after all, covers are warm, the air in my house is decidedly not. After a good amount of standing by the heater, I am layered enough to sally forth into a world drenched in cold and quiet. There is wonder in the wintry wind. Magic laces the limbs of Old Man Cottonwood.

I stop on the bridge to watch the morning. Great puffs of snow shake off branches and glide into the stream. They are gone, liquid water once again, what moments before were airy snow-castles. The aching chill in my legs prods me to walk again. Still I watch the morning—the dancing snow, the plump little birds along my path—and I wonder about things. Do other people wonder about "things?" I wonder. I walk on, thinking of how the brown hedge next to me was teeming with living colour this Summer. How I clipped a lavender flower from it to wear in my hair. Do people my age wear flowers in their hair?

I question more and more whether I am an adult, or just a child inside an adult's body. Certainly I have learned some tact since childhood. Wait, is that tact, or have I learned to lie? Have I learned to gloss over something that I obviously see and am curious about? When does snow lose its magic and become merely an obstacle on the road? Do you become a grown-up when you step around a puddle rather than jumping in it? Does progress in years mean regress in seeing details like feathery finch bellies, pale peach against the snow? Does paying bills mean you stop chasing the rainbow's end? Does reality awaken us from our dreams?

The lenses of child-eyes have been mine for quite a long time. I think folks snicker at me sometimes after I walk by, wreathed in flowers or Autumn leaves. People often try to tell me that reality will burst my bubble; outlining various horrors, as if they are reality's servants, sent with sword in hand. One of my neighbours thinks I only appreciate happy endings, that I just pretend the Fall didn't happen, and that I need a dose of darkness to snap me out of fairy tales. Yet I realise that fairy stories have plenty of dark and morbid moments; many end unhappily-ever-after. I know the darkness of the Fall in my own heart and brain; in bitterness, betrayal, and broken bodies. I know Sorrow's shears, clipping off friendships that should have grown; snipping life out of loved ones, far too soon. It is always too soon, too young, too much...The Fall is too much with us.

The Fall is too much with us—should we shrink away in fear? Do we pretend it isn't real? No, that is a childish response, like hiding under the blankets from invisible night-fears. Thin quilts won't turn the blade of the Black Riders. What then is our defence? A heap of philosophy books to explain away the evil in the hearts of men? That is a cheap grown-up trick. Let us then be childlike—not childish—and revel in the fairy snows, walk so that we may see Beauty—rather than to burn calories. Let us know that the Fall happened, but not allow it to be the end of our stories. As Chesterton asserts, "Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey."1 Indeed, I need childlike faith that Smaug can be defeated—I already know that he exists. So for the Fall, I need to know it will one day finally and fully come untrue, because it daily threatens to undo me.

Yes, there is roadkill by the sidewalk, graffiti on the dumpster, and scraggly undergrowth along the river path where I walk. I do not deny these things. But there are majestic trees, glimpses of a snow-capped peak between branches, delightful bridges, and cheery little birds piercing the morning with sweet songs. It is Beauty that leads us to worship. Beauty, that restores sanity to our weathered souls. It is Beauty that turns our focus toward the One who made all things Beautiful in their time.2 That One is trustworthy and true, and He will make everything sad come undone one day...Interweaving myth into a Man and fairy stories into facts. 

---

1. Chesterton, G. K., “The Red Angel” in Tremendous Trifles (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1920) 130
   
2. Ecclesiastes 3:11 (ESVUK)

The Art of Grieving

Drip-drop. Drop-drip. Plink! Glorious Spring rain drips off the gutter-less eaves of my cottage this forenoon; every now and then one drop making a sharp ping off something metal below. Steady, strong notes to set the rhythm for the day, those water-drops. I draw icy water for the kettle, waiting for its warm whistle as a Southwest wind kicks up its heels. The song of the rain slows, softens, becomes silent. Whirling this way and that come the downy flakes of snow. 

Pungent Earl Grey tickles my senses as I gaze long at the steady, slanting white. I am very much alone, but not in the least lonely. Solitude need not make one solitary. Fog, snow, roiling grey skies – they are all friends. The damp, chill, and quiet give one time to pause, to recalibrate the soul toward stillness and Beauty. When we make the time to hush, not writing, nor reading, nor listening to the ever-present music that pervades our senses, we are able to be. We are able to grieve or mourn, to ponder and reflect, to pray and listen, to know and be known.

Stillness and reflection often seem colossal threats to our current 'culture of noise'. Particularly in the process of grieving, perhaps the greatest conundrum in this age. In times-not-long-past, there was a set period for mourning in which the mourner at the least wore a black band on their arm, if not complete outfits of black. Now we hardly even say someone has died, but that they have 'passed away'. We have funerals and weddings in 'Life Centres' at cemeteries. Our culture seeks to sanitise death from all its ugly brokenness. I am very, very pro-life, but even I cannot ignore the effects of the Fall. We cannot pretend that death is routine, neat, and 'part of life'. It is not. It is a violent affront to God the Creator. It is madness and fragmentation at their extreme end.

Grieving is a slow process; whether it is the death of a loved one, the loss of a friendship, or the crumbling of a cherished dream. It takes silence and prayer to walk the road of sorrow. Yet, not even the evangelical church seems to accept this. Half-truths are still lies, yet they ring forth from our Postmodern Evangelical churches and the reams of pages in 'Christian' bookstores: God must always make bad things good. We must always smile and say we are well, that it is good to be alive. Christians are always to be happy, happy, happy - which translates to fake, fake, fake. God will make all things well, but probably not the way we think He should, and often not on this earth. It is good to be alive, because we were made for life - but 'good' does not mean 'easy'. 

The Anglican response to death in the prayer book does not ignore the creeping shadow of death, nor does it wallow in the Fall. It brings one's focus back to God, the Author of life, the Redeemer of death:

Thou only art Immortal, Creator and Maker of mankind;
and we are mortal, formed of the earth, and unto earth shall
we return. 

For so Thou did ordain when Thou created me,
saying, “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”
All of us go down to the dust... 

Yet even at the grave we make
our song: 

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

Even at the grave we sing of the Hope to come. We weep and mourn in Hope. This is not easy. We may sing our alleluias through teeth clenched, through stinging tears. But we have Hope: Jesus Himself, the Resurrection from the dead for all who are 'in Christ'. And when death takes from us one who does not know God, we lament even more. Again, we cannot pretend that death is normal. It is grotesquely abnormal. We still mourn loss. 

Learning to lament takes times of silence, of being. It can take the form of long walks, writing poetry, playing or writing music, cleaning vigorously, cooking and baking (for oneself or others), painting or drawing, gardening, crying, and many other things. Strikingly, lamentation is often pro-creative. By that I mean that we find an outlet for grief, anger, and sorrow in making, in serving. 

Look at the first line of the Memorial Prayer - it calls God three things: Immortal, Creator, and Maker. We tend to think of the last two words as being synonyms, but they are Names and have nuances. A 'creator' begets - the thing begotten is from himself, is part of himself, like a child shares the 'humanness'  and DNA of its parents. A 'maker' is a companion or a spouse, as well as one who designs or constructs. So, the act of creation is intensely personal and part of the creator-begetter. The act of making is taking something already in existence and fitting it together; as one takes flour, water, and yeast to make bread; or wood, nails, and varnish to fit into a wardrobe; or chisels and marble to form a sculpture; or a man and a woman together fashion a marriage. 

In grieving we image God by making. We turn to pro-creation to pro-cess (move forward, continue). We seek solitude and silence in order to better serve, because the act of serving (helping one's neighbour with various tasks, inviting others over for dinner, etc.) brings us outside of ourself so that we do not dead-end in grief.

This brings up the other aspect of lamenting. To lament, I said, one needs times of solitude. But one also needs time with others. God says in the beginning that, "It is not good for the Man to be alone". God was right there with the Man, but still says he is 'alone' or without a match (or mate) of his own. We need other persons. We need friends and family who will be still with us, who will listen to us. We need others to serve with our creative acts. We need those close to us to cry with us, and also to make us laugh. 

The hush of snow is heralding a chance to ponder, time to be. This late Spring snow is a gift before I step into the bustle of Summer. The silence of a full day to process and grieve is worth the thanks-giving. Right here and now I learn to be still and know... and to be known.

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!

~ Johanna

We Are Still Trees

A rook's coarse cry rends the snowy hush of this pearl-grey afternoon. On my desk awaits a piece of crusty, warm, homemade potato bread - liberally spread with butter. My thoughts turn to the brisk walk I enjoyed this morning...

Fine snow blew from every direction. Stinging my eyes, settling on my nose, eyebrows, and hair, it filled my very soul with vibrant life. Along the paths I tread were birds, birds, birds: a flock of  three dozen robins, a brace of red-shafted Northern flickers, a downy woodpecker, and (my favourite) a pair of nuthatches. Drawn by the chatter of birds, I turned into a quiet cul-de-sac, enjoying the view of fast-falling snow upon tall golden grass. Next to that avian sanctuary a line of snow along the trunk of a pine tree caught my gaze. A fir, slanted at a forty-degree angle from earth. How had I not seen it before? 

I paused my forward motion to drink in the sight, to ponder this tree's perseverance. Like other trees, it grew straight and up. Unlike other trees, it did so at an angle, rather than perpendicular to the ground. Some hardship or radical impact had drastically changed the course of this pine, yet it remained a tree, growing as it ought.

This gave me pause to think on my own life, and the lives of several of my friends. We do not pursue life at the pace of forty-plus hours a week, an MA or DPhil, spouses and children, or numerous other things many consider the mark of a 'normal' person. We pursue the good life from a different angle.

We study both books and persons not for a diploma, but for the sake of challenging our minds and hearts. We work as a means to keep our lights and heat on, to put food in our cupboards, yes. But we also see work as an end itself, something to be enjoyed; whether it is the work that gives us the funds to put bread on the table, or the work of making the bread to put on that table. When we do not have spouses and children of our own, we learn instead to enjoy the time spent with married couples, children, peers, and those older than we. Being gracious is a continual refining process. Opening my home, pantry, and heart to others takes effort, but the rewards are bountiful. 

 My friends and I are humans, cultivating life, growing as we ought: toward God, with others,  while stewarding the gifts (physical, mental, emotional) given by Providence. Though we desire and seek things that other persons do, we are often seen as 'not normal', because we seek those things differently. We desire friendship, enjoy Beauty, find work cathartic,  want to enrich our minds, etc., like any healthy human being ought. Yet those of us who undertake to live fully are seen as stumps, as compared with growing trees.

The fact is, we are much like that fir tree, growing upward and in a linear direction, but at an angle. We are still trees, still growing as we were designed to grow. Our position relative to the ground has simply changed due to hardship or a radical impact... But we are still trees.

~ Johanna

Solitude

“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” 

~ Blaise Pascal, Pensées

Evidenced by the fact that I began to listen to music  directly after typing that quotation. How quickly I forget that Beauty most often finds one in stillness. How readily I push aside God's messages delivered by silence and solitude. 

The whole world clamours and clangs with noise. Even our eyes are assaulted by 'visual noise' - billboards, skyscrapers and 1960s apartment buildings, badly hung Christmas lights, vulgar lawn ornaments, and the like. There is the disarray of 'stuff' all 'round us. Rather than making our lives better, 'stuff' can simply clutter our homes and gardens, as well as our thoughts. Many persons attest to being unable to think or study well in a messy area, myself included. 

Visual chaos and the din of television, films, iPods, et cetera almost constantly fill our minds or blunt our senses. "What of it?" one might ask. Think for a moment of what you do when you go for a walk or run. Do you put in earbuds? Talk on the phone? When you sit down at your desk or kitchen table, do you pull out your smart phone, computer, or a book? Can you fall asleep without music? Do you ever simply look out the window and think in silence?

Outside my window tiny white faeries flutter and float, flurry and fall. Trying to watch individual flakes makes me nearly dizzy, they are coming so quickly. There is something calming about snow, or a blanket of fog. Both give a covering of quiet to ponder, to let the thoughts we push away with noise come forth from their banishment: Do I have what it takes to be a man? Will anyone ever love me for who I am? What am I here for? Do I even make a difference? Is living any better than dying? What if so-and-so dies? How will I support myself when I am older? What will happen if other people find out how little I really know? Am I just faking it through life? Who is God? Is God really real, is He really there? Does God care about me? Why would He? Who am I, behind this skin and those eyes in the mirror - who is this I inside? 

In solitude and stillness I realise I have more questions than answers. Sure, I have a vague idea of how to answer some of the above questions. However, if I spent an hour thinking about Who God is, I might find how little I actually know Him. I know about Him, and in small degrees I know Him, as a person knows another person early on in a friendship. But do I truly know Him? 

When faced with thoughts about family or friends dying, I try to push them aside - usually successfully. It is too hard, too painful to think of them actually being gone from this life. Likewise, I am accomplished at ignoring thoughts about the future state of our government,  how long my bank account will be worth something, or where I will be in ten, twenty, or thirty years. I do not like depressing thoughts, yet sometimes I really do have to face them. Sometimes the pain from 'out there' comes 'in here'. The brokenness of the fall is not just for other people. I, too, experience the fall in my own circle of friends, in my own family, in my own life, in my own body.

Solitude brings these thoughts to the surface, rather rapidly, in fact. No wonder Pascal said that a man is unable to sit in a room quietly and alone. We want to be distracted from the questions  we cannot answer, the thoughts we do not like. We do not want to think about how far we fall short. We hide from rejection and loss. We block it all out with constant music (degrading the worth of music to mere background noise), non-stop communication, and busy-ness.

Have you been running away from your thoughts? Are you ignoring God's arms wide open to you by running the course of the noisy world? When was the last time you sat down to listen to God? Do you often (or ever) turn your phone, music, and computer off completely? Have you taken a walk in silence recently? When was the last time you faced your thoughts rather than fleeing them? How about practising solitude today... Right now.

~ Johanna

Snowy Perspectives

Crack! A thunder clap and thick flakes of snow woke me this morning... A rare combination that can occur in Mid-Western winter storms. Even in my sleepy state I smiled, because I  simply love snowstorms. Swirling snow, heavy grey clouds, and bumps and clumps of white have a way of transforming the world.

Have you ever noticed how snowstorms make things still? They diffuse noise by deadening echoes and swallowing sounds. Familiar objects take on new outlines. I noticed this a few weeks ago at home when it snowed. As I went for a walk down by the creek in Manitou, a walk I have taken a couple hundred times, I noticed things I had not seen before. I looked up a good deal in wonder. I chattered with squirrels (not a new thing, admittedly), seeing at least one dart into his hole - a previously unnoticed hole, despite being directly over the walking path.

Snow gives one a new perspective on old, familiar things. Snowstorms bring that unusual quiet. Perhaps snow is God's tangible reminder for us to have quiet hearts to listen to Him, to see a different facet of Himself or our own lives. Snow makes us slow down, literally and figuratively. Thus, those frozen flakes give us time to re-create with silent contemplation, and in the boisterous joy of snowballs, coasting, and fort-building.

Others may grumble about snow or call it a mess, but my perspective is different... I am thankful for snow, which gives me new ways to see familiar things, and a quiet place to listen to the One who makes my crimson stains whiter than snow.

~ Johanna

Kyrie Eleison

Lord have mercy upon us
Christ have mercy upon us
Lord have mercy upon us
~ Kyrie Eleison

A beautiful way to start this snowy day. I'm watching fine flakes shaken like caster sugar over all the orange, yellow, and green leaves of Autumn... Thank You Jesus for Beauty!