Stars in the Pools

Ridges of foothills rise and swell, then swirl away in the fog filling the valley. Streams of melting hail run off the eaves with the sound of endless rain—and the look of thick snow. My neighbour's flower box is one puddle of icy water. The gravel parking lot is more like a muddy-red pond than solid ground. All at once, a wave of thunder shatters the air, makes the ground shudder. Lightning flares pink and the ground trembles again—and again. 

It is Spring in the mountains—cool, wet, glorious. Yes, glorious, because pools of water seem incongruent with this arid place. This comes from having transplanted into the mountains amidst a lingering drought some years back. I am learning that even dry climes have Spring rains and puddles, once the spectre of drought moves his dwelling elsewhere. 

The pooling rain water recalled to mind these words:

Blessed are those whose strength is in you,
in whose heart are the highways to Zion.¹ 
When they walk through the Valley of Weeping, 
it will become a place of refreshing springs. 
The [early] rains will clothe it with blessings.²

Long have I loved this Psalm. Long have I gained hope that tears will come to fruition in blessings. Then, I met this Psalm in lectio divina and my perspective was expanded. My attention caught in those pools, as my world is dotted with puddles—puddles colossal, puddles micro. Rarely do they last very long—the ever-thirsty earth slurps them into deep aqueducts, unseen, insatiable. Oft I have thought of the Valley of Baca (translated, weeping) as a cracked desert, bare and ugly, sometimes covered with stagnant, muddy meres. This vision has now been replaced by one of red soil, juniper trees, and depressions lined with rocks of many hues, filled with clear water. 

Pilgrims on their way to the house of God—where even the birds of the air vie to raise their broods—walk through this valley. It is the proverbial (or Psalm-ish, in this case) 'vale of tears' to which many individuals refer. Long have I thought that the tears shed in this dry land were simply for the refreshing of the valley, for the watering of any living scrubby bush in the desert. Wrong. Again. That is just the surface tension—these pools run deeper.

Think for a moment how many tears it must take to fill even a small pool. So many. A large puddle would take myriads more. I began to picture all of us sojourning toward home, where God is, traversing through Baca to reach our desire. The tears of our whole lives are collected in those pools encrusted with rocks of so many shades and shapes. My long-standing mental photograph of the Valley of Weeping withered. Our tears are not collected in turbid puddles, watering needle-nosed cactus or gnarled brush. The pools are refreshing springs, says the Psalmist. He must know from experience. 

There they are: dusty, foot-sore, the travellers trekking on toward a home they have never yet seen. In the dark of night they reach this Weeping Valley. Swish! Their feet splash into an unseen, unanticipated, unthought of pool. The night air has cooled the hot salt-tear puddles. These unexpected springs cleanse wounds, refreshing the hot and filthy feet. They are a resting place for the weary. Water weaves, wavers, settles. The travellers are arrested by the night sky above them, but no! Below them, all around them—the stars gently throb and quiver. What mythical valley have they entered? Wobbly circles of star-light spread out as far as the horizon, kissing the starry ceiling. How can this be? It is all of the sorrow-pools, echoing back the beauty of the night canopy. Long the pilgrims gaze, their bloodshot, dry eyes drinking in argent rivers of liquid light. Hearts and feet and eyes refreshed, rest comes to the weather-beaten bodies and parched imaginations. Though these wayfarers will weep enough to fill puddles of their own, for now they are given strength to journey on.

Our tears, our sorrows, can somehow heal and refresh others. We might not see them come through the vale behind us, but our tears are not wasted. Always and ever do we go onward, toward Zion. Suddenly, my view of the Psalm dilates again—I see that we are dropping tears into varying pools of all sizes as we press on toward the lights of home. Our tears are not one deep tarn itself—no! Our tears are co-mingled with the saints who have gone on before us to refresh those who follow. Whether to wash and heal them, to inspire them, or to water the fruit trees to feed them. Indeed, the Valley of Weeping is clothed in blessings—the blessings of Beauty, of healing, of satisfying. Our weeping is not in vain, it is a blessing.

Being Italian for a Day

Today I stepped back in time and took life at a slower pace. For nearly seven hours I was given the gift of being Italian. 

It all began about a year ago when our (then) new accountant kept telling those of us in the office about "tomato day". She and her husband would go to the fields and pick bushels of tomatoes. They would save them for a week to make sure they were really ripe. Then began the process of turning those tomatoes into a year's worth of pasta sauce. Many a time I have sampled minestrone, Italian vegetable soup, and so forth imbued in the goodness of this homemade sauce. Today I was given the opportunity to join in the labour of the fruits.

Three of us from the village arrived at Sue and Blake's house around nine in the morning. We petted the dog, washed our hands, met some family, and jumped in to the fray. Soon we were slicing onions in great big quarter chunks and learning how to peel garlic by shaking it inside two metal bowls (this actually works, you should try it). I also encountered a wooden spoon longer than my leg, which is impressive, because my legs are the longest part of me. When all was said, sliced, and done, we had four bushels of tomatoes, six onions, two bulbs of garlic, and two large containers of basil simmering over the camp stove in a collective eighty quarts. If you have never seen a twenty quart pot, you may not realise how massive it is compared to whatever normal persons use for cooking. However, the twenty quart pot was significantly dwarfed by the sixty quart pot and the spoon the size of Reepicheep's coracle paddle. Perhaps a photo will help illustrate my point:

See, doesn't the twenty quart pot look like your everyday sort of soup pot? Unless you normally feed an army, however, that pot was by no means everyday-ish. 

We stirred and squashed tomatoes for a few hours. We ate lunch. We petted Verona some more. Finally, the tomatoes began to boil into a rich red, aromatic fervour. We washed our hands, set up the press, gathered pots and buckets, and formed an assembly-line. Blake said "go!" and we began. Amanda poured the boiling hot tomato mixture into the wide funnel, I pressed it down with the plunger, and Sue cleared the skins and debris as they filled the flat "catcher". Those skins and onions and basil leaves went back into the press's funnel—we wanted all that flavour! Then they were removed to the rubbish. Various splatterings and eruptions left us with orangey splotches on our arms, feet, jeans, and shirts. Blake kept bringing pots and pans to catch the juices and thick sauce. We filled four different containers with that crimson, delicious-smelling sauce. Then back into those huge pots it went for an hour to boil out any bacteria. 

We stirred continuously to prevent burning the sauce. We set up the table with jar after jar—over sixty of them. Blake boiled the lids to ensure a good seal. Sue took soundings with the thermometer—we had to hit 180º. We let the sauce "percolate" there for about half an hour. Out came the silver funnel for filling small mouth jars. Out came ladles and glass measuring cups with pour spouts. Next came the empty boxes to put the finished jars in for safe-keeping. Over came the neighbour girl to help wipe around the jar tops to make sure they sealed well. All was set... Then Blake said, "Go!" and we were in full swing. Clear jar after clear jar was filled with hot, pungent, tomato sauce. Red jar after red jar was passed to me to put in the empty boxes. In a matter of minutes sixty-two empty jars were full and sitting in their cardboard casings on the counter.

The dishes were washed and drip-drying; the delightful "pop!" of the seals was beginning; and four tired persons were grinning at the success of the day. We had made legitimate Sicilian tomato sauce with a recipe and process passed down from Blake's grandparents. We had been swashed in hot red juices and remained standing. We had picked up nearly all the parts and pieces... And it wasn't even four o'clock yet.

It felt good to stir hot sauce on a cool Autumn day. It was rewarding to slow down and make the year's supply of sauce, rather than buying that processed stuff from the grocery. I was reminded of all those times growing up when my mother, sisters, and I cut, cooked, mashed,  pressed, and strained apples for applesauce. I remember crisp days, sweet smells, and very tired arms from hand cranking that machine. But the satisfaction at the end of the day in making one's own food with one's own produce and labours was just the same. There is something to be said for making things rather than buying them.

There is a sweet satisfaction a a job well-done. There is camaraderie, fellowship, and working together in the process. You get to know stories you might never have heard were you not using an oar to paddle red sauce over open flames. You learn more about your friends and family, your skills and others', by working together. And you have to take life slowly when you're watching a sixty quart pot of tomatoes boiling. I'm glad I was allowed to be Italian for the day.

~ Johanna

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

On the Second Day of Christmas...

...I remembered how many blessings I had been given this year.

Hikes, challenges met, travels from one end of the country to the other, renewed health for my Dad, good books read, tea, good conversations, new friends and old, and ever so much more - including one very special little niece.

What Saturdays Were Made For...

Sleeping in.

Writing and reading.

Long walks in order to work through life's questions.

Imbibing in steaming mugs of tea and scones.

Cooking a delicious dinner: caramelised onions and mushrooms over pork, broiled sweet potatoes, stuffed mushrooms, and cider.

Watching an episode of Larkrise to Candleford.

Blogging and listening to Ben Kyle's charming new album.

P. S. My bed does not look that fancy.

The Balm of Writing

Nothing went as planned today. Our visit with some dear friends was cancelled due to strep throat at their house. I went in for tea and a pumpkin muffin this morning, but never made it back out to my room for quiet time. I felt listless, cranky, and off kilter most of the day... And then, as the daylight began to wane, the snow continued falling, and I spent about two hours writing. I slipped into the world being created, my mind pictured all I was describing and dwelt there. 

There is something redemptive about writing. Our minds and hearts engage with our own story, even more deeply than when we are reading another's story. There is a peace and a sanity that comes with fashioning our words into a story, a poem, or a blog. All of the world's insanity and brokenness can either be seen and put right in our writing, or it can be kept at bay whilst we scrawl away.

So, in spite of my plans going awry, the gift of creating with words brought balm to my soul. When we create we are most like God, or so I've read. After this month --and this day-- I am inclined to agree.

~ Johanna

*Note that cute photo up there, that kiddo is left-handed, oh yeah! ;)

The Best [Satelite] Roomates -- Ever!

Near the close of the year I begin to recall all of the good and hard things from that year. All of the laughter, lessons, tears, prayers, group dinners, inside jokes, travels, and whatnot swirl 'round in my thoughts.

What a hard year 2012 has been for my friends and my community... Several of my close friends lost very dear loved ones this year (mothers, boyfriends, and children). One good friend moved out of the roommate house (and we have gained another dear roommate, but there is still a hole there). There were mass shootings in Colorado and Connecticut. There were many natural disasters, from devastating hurricanes to wildfires that rolled dangerously close to my front door.

Yet what joy and growth have come this year, as well! This has come from many corners this year, but by far I have shared the most life-stuff with my roommates across town. My year began with a surprise visit from my best friend and a sensational birthday party with the roommates. A welcoming haven these roommates have been all year... I especially remember our conversation (and delicious crêpes!!) on Palm Sunday/Easter. I remain eternally grateful to these dear friends taking me in when I was evacuated during the wildfire, and crying and praying with me as our city was threatened with conflagration. I cherish our Christmas celebration, reading parts of Luke 1 and 2 and discussing what things must have been like for Joseph and Mary, and Zacharias and Elizabeth. So much thought went into the gifts given, and work into the delicious brunch, and the day was full of chilling and talking about the things on our hearts. 

 

Those events merely mark the flow of the year; in between were many other mixed happenings: Stacia losing her mom this summer, Lyndi's hip surgery, Lauren's new job celebration (ha, and driver's license debacle), Nicole's going away party, Karen's arrival, birthday parties, coffee house band listening,  tea parties and kleenex, dinners on the patio, family members visiting, and more.

Considering how much joy and pain, new friends and old friends coming and going, and deepening in life and in the LORD has taken place with these women, I would be utterly remiss if I did not say how deeply grateful I am for the LORD placing me with 'The Awesome Ladies' community.

And I am filled with joy.

~ 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

To the Full!

Stiff fingers peck the keys. My face is rosy from a brisk walk in the nippy Autumn air. A tea kettle is rolling to a boil over blue flame, and the smell of freshly baked bread permeates my home.

Home... How glad I am to have my little cabin to trot back to after a walk in the chill, stiff wind. How gratefully my frigid fingers wrap 'round a mug full of tea.

Tea, the perfect thing to warm the body and the soul -- especially when a pot is shared with a good friend.

Friends! I am thankful for not just one or two close and dear friends, but whole hands full of fingers --and feet full of toes-- on which to count the blessings of kindred souls.

Souls and spirits and bodies, too. I am cheered to know that God made us with depth. He gives us a mind, a will, emotions, a body, and something inside that cannot be seen, but communicates with His Spirit as well.

Well -- all things shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. Like airline tickets changing and helpful persons getting things put right, long walks and talks, words of wisdom from books, and everything else from today.

Today is all we have, let us enjoy God's blessings great and small, living well and sucking the marrow out of life.

Life! Let us live it to the full...

“Dear old world,” she murmured, “You are very lovely. And I am glad to be alive in you.”
-Anne of Green Gables

~ Johanna