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.

There Must be More. . .

PC: Brian Masbaugh (slacklinemedia.com)

I want the world to be different. . .

I want to respond in kindness every time. To have enough of God's love in me to always be ready to give to others. I want fear to evaporate. For old-fashioned values to be held by everyone. And I want to not get hung on one side of a dichotomy or the other. I want to see this life and this world bigger. To see possibilities. To know how to walk the balance of hope in the face of despair, or that of love in the proper tension of the truth.

My sister told me recently that I wanted to have my cake and eat it, too—like keeping a beautifully arranged dinner and yet cleaning the plate in enjoying all of its flavours. I do. I want it to be true that Good wins in my lifetime. I want the shadow to be small and passing, and for it to pass away right now. For the high Beauty to swoop in and save the day—and the nighttime, too. I long to live in the not yet, because the now is so broken. I long for perfect relationships without underlying currents of tension, annoyance, hurt, or frustration. I long for the fully redeemed Heaven and Earth, and confess that I kick against the breakage in which we still live.

I have been given hope and permission to dream more richly, to see God as bigger than the false dichotomies we are so often handed. . . And then comes the thud—the fact that not everyone else has been handed that gift, or that they have not received it yet, anyway. When I ask for answers and have the problem reiterated, it doesn't help. When I say, "There has to be more than just this—God is bigger than these two bad choices," I get blank silence.

When I've been told that God is bigger than my small vision, but I'm not expected—or even allowed—to see more, I get frustrated. I feel like I'm constantly on the outside and the majority is convinced that there is only one key to get in. But I am not convinced. I don't believe that my life is on hold until I get married or move or have a different job. Yet so many others believe those very things that I begin to live like I believe it, too. But I don't. I don't believe that a circumstance change is what will let me in. 

When it comes to relationships with fellow humans, surely I don't have to be relegated to being friends with only women—and mainly single ones at that. God made us whole humans. He made us to need others—male and female, single and married—in whatever state we are. What I don't know is how to practise the truth that God's vision, His world, His Kingdom is here and now. 

How do I maintain healthy relationships with my long-distance married friends? How do I have rich and healthy friendships with the men in my life? How do I love my single friends well? What is the best way to connect with my local married friends? Confessedly, I'm tired of getting shut out of various friendships because I'm not married. What changed with that ring? Don't we still have some of the same loves in common? Can't we still encourage one another in our most holy faith? Does my friend having a husband suddenly make all of that disappear? If so, it's no wonder that I've looked on marriage with a dubious eye in years past.

If what I've been told is true—that I belong to the Body of Christ, throughout time and space—then why don't I feel like I belong once my friends get married? Why do I feel like I'm a second class human as a single person? My admission ticket to the Body of Christ is not a gold band. It is being sacramentally connected to Jesus, the Head. It is receiving the very same Body and Blood that every other Christ-follower receives. 

I don't have to only have friends like me—that would keep my vision and theirs too narrow. I need people of various ages in different stages of life: single, married, with children, with grandchildren, in various vocations and with a variety of interests and talents. I need people who have different perspectives to help me enlarge my view of God and His world—of His universe. And I need to help enlarge the vision of others. . . Like those who see that there is a problem and think there are only two ways to deal with it. But God doesn't call us to impale ourselves on one stake or the other of these dichotomies. He calls us to the much harder task of another way, of balance and counterbalance—of a slackline walk. And that over a canyon. The stakes are high if we fall, but the stakes are sharp and deathly wounding if we jump to one side or the other, too. We must constantly keep our eyes fixed on Jesus to keep our balance on the slackline. To look to the right or to the left is to lose the view of our Anchoring Point—the Fixed Point in a world of turning. To look to one side or the other is to fall.

I don't want to pendulum swing, I want to walk the straight and narrow. I don't need people to paint the problem, I need help to find the answers. I don't want to see the world as small—it is not. I want eyes, heart, and mind to see how long and how wide and how high is the love and the glory of God. I want the now to step into the not yet. For time and eternity to meet. For chronos to cross into kairos. For all manner of things to be made well. For the shadow to pass and for the stars to shine through to us, to draw us near to them and yet to leave us alive. . . so much more alive than we've ever been before. The glory of God is writ large, but we need His perspective to be able to see it whole, not in pieces. We need to set our eyes on Jesus—the Author and Finisher of our faith—to keep us balanced on the slackline, rather than teetering over the brink, swaying left or right. 

The world is bigger than we've been led to believe. There are more than two options for how life can work. We know about what is past. We live in the now. . . and we long for the not yet to arrive and make all things new. We long for redemption to be fulfilled. We've been told the world is different than we've believed for so long. . . Now we get to learn to live that difference, to dream bigger, to see more than we could before—to not get stuck on the outside, but to finally get in.

A Shadow of Beauty

I woke in darkness to the jingle of my alarm and the chatter of birds. Perhaps the birds knew it was the first day of Spring and were thus employed with extra jubilation, but my suspicion is that they greet every morning with such exuberance. I listened to their Lauds—their morning prayer-chant—with a slow smile on my sleepy face. Finally pulling myself out of bed as the sky became a deep rose-gold. I never can decide if I like sunrise or sunset better, I'm glad I don't have to—I can simply like them both for their own sakes. 

Being the first day of Spring meant it was my friend-and-co-worker's birthday, and I had offered to make breakfast for the office. As I toasted English muffins and poached eggs in my cast iron skillet, I turned around to rinse my hands and saw a lovely moment: a reflected shadow. The sun coming through my antique windowpanes lit up the tawny dried grasses in the bottle on the sill, but the shadow it cast made them look like fresh wildflowers. I paused my poaching liturgy to snap a photo of the spiritual reality bowing before my eyes. 

There are times in life when all we can see are the dried grasses of our dreams or best laid plans. No matter which way we look at them, they are brittle, dried up, monotone kindling tucked in the corner of the sill. But maybe the problem is that we keep looking at the broken dream or the mislaid plan, whilst God is nudging us to turn around and look at the reflected shadow. When we turn, we see flowers outlined on the wall. We see the contour of each stem and leaf; each pod becomes a glory of its own. The dried grass looks different from this perspective, looks fresh and lovely and renewed. 

Sometimes the shadow is full of beauty, not mere darkness. Sometimes the shadows that fall on our lives are not snuffing out the sun, they are the evidence that there is sunlight. Without light there couldn't be shadows cast, after all. All would be utter darkness, impenetrable, blinding. For darkness, as well as overpowering light, blinds the eyes after time. But shadows are a mix of light and solid things; they are the delicate darkness dappling the wall.

One of the darkest things I have witnessed is my faithful sister being turned out of her home and her marriage. We could only stare at the pieces all around, the shattered lives of those affected, with shock and disbelief and horror. How did this happen? Those pieces looked sharp and irreparable and bleak. In many ways, they are. But when we stop looking at the shards and begin to see the light shine on them, through them, around them, we see the shadow reflected on the wall. We see Beauty and hope springing out of dead things. It isn't the restoration or reconciliation we hoped for, but other good things are germinating. There is Beauty in the shadow, as well as beyond it. There is light high beyond the reach of darkness, as Samwise discovered in Return of the King:

“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”

The Fall and all its evil is but a small and passing thing from God's perspective. There is Light and there is Beauty that evil cannot touch. There is unseen Reality that cannot be destroyed, even when all the seen is turned into so much ash and concrete dust. The truth is that God is Real—He is high and beyond the reach of evil. God is the Light of the world, and it is His light spilling on and through and around us that casts a shadow of Beauty on the wall of life. Many times we get too busy looking at ourselves to see the whole Beauty-filled outline; to see the Light by which we see—but He is there, prodding us to turn around and see what the Light has made new.

Dawn of Redeeming Grace

The Dayspring hath dawned on Christmas morn. Yet...something about the darkness and the aching longing of Advent feels much more comfortable to me than the rejoicing of Christmastide. I am far more at home in the shadowy dusk and predawn, because that is where I have lived all of my life. I know my Guide, but I have yet to experience full redemption—that "dawn of redeeming grace" the Christmas carols tell us is coming.  I struggle to be truly excited about Christmas Day and Easter morning because I understand Advent and Lent, but I do not fully comprehend celebration, not yet. 

Sadness I know. Regret I am familiar with. Frustration and agony over the Fall I deal with often. I am faced with darkness around every corner, tinging life events, colouring my own heart...But I do not know, cannot bear, the illumination of full redemption, the face of the I AM Himself. 

The truth is, Christmas Day always feels like a letdown to me. It rushes by in a whirl, no matter how many times we start the day off with those beautiful, savoury passages from Isaiah, Luke, and Matthew. I want to be slow and quiet. To sit with the people imprisoned in darkness and watch dawn's light lick the edge of the sky. I want to magnify the Lord with Mary, to know with Simeon that a Light from on high hath visited those in darkness. I want to sit in a cosy chair with a cup of tea, all curled up, waiting for day to come—not sleeping late because I was wrapping gifts until the wee sma's. I want to watch snowcapped peaks turn violet and rosy in the morning light.

I want some elusive ideal Christmas. But what I want doesn't matter—what matters is what I've been given and how I steward that. To simply roll with soupy stuffing and lukewarm turkey. To not expect a stunning revelation when conversing with my extended family, or even my immediate kin, over the holidays. What I've been handed is prayer time with dear friends that replaces candlelight service this time. It is a crisp bill, unexpected, from a family member. It is a small arm squeezing my neck hard and a little voice saying, "You're my best!"—with a grin that wrinkles the little girl's nose and squinches her eyes. It is the genuine interest in the nine-year-old's voice as he shows me his lava lamp. It is singing songs and re-writing poems...and laughing hard when you slip up. 

Sometimes it feels like I've missed the baby in the manger in the late night wrapping and all those imperfect, cacophonous moments strung together. It feels rushed. . . But then, labour is not quiet, calm, and perfect. It is not slow and steady, like a sunrise. Still, Mary treasured up these things in her heart. The fact is, labour ebbs and flows, it pushes hard, it screams in the night. It is a bloody, messy cacophony. It feels like forever in the waiting, in the pain. Then it is a blur and a rush, white hot heat, a lot of breathing hard. Then comes the squawk of the baby. Then comes seeing his eyelashes and his perfect little fingernails. Oh, the pain is still there, but the endorphins rush in and fill the new mother with an awe and wonder that drives the pain to the periphery. She has thoughts and eyes only for her baby. 

I don't need whatever I've dreamed up as perfect and slow Christmas Days. Maybe I'll get to try that at some point...but I think I would miss the bustle of the wrapping, the cooking frenzy, singing Christmas music loudly while we all do our part to get ready for guests. I often want to savour Christmas Day—but what I want doesn't matter. What God gives is what matters. He gives Himself. He gives us family and friends. He gives us good gifts and we take them for granted—whether it is time with family or our health, time off or a travel fund to raid when the weather goes awry. Whether it is His Spirit whispering to us in the midst of the hubbub, "The Dayspring from on high has visited the sons of men" or an arm 'round our neck and a tiny voice saying, "You're my best!" Either way, He gives us what we need. It is our foretaste of redemption, preparing room in our hearts to know the Fullness of Joy.

Perspectives

"Why me?" I hear her moan;

"Why this broken mess?"

"Why am I all alone—

toiling daily, while he's free?"

"Why, why, why, God?"

"Why me?"

"Why me?" I look above;

"Why do You never quit?"

"Why do You love, love,

love me? You never flee,

You take delight...Why, God?"

"Why me?"

"Why me?" I hear her cry;

"Why all of my friends?"

"Why doesn't someone try

to love me in all my debris?"

"Will no man choose me, God?"

"Why me?"

"Why me?" I look around;

"Why his lavish love?"

"It overwhelms, astounds,

builds up, inspires, sets free."

"Why" I whisper, "Why, God?"

"Why me?"

Wanderlust

All those golden autumn days the sky was full of wings. . . The wings and the golden weather and the tang of frost in the mornings made Laura want to go somewhere. She did not know where. She wanted only to go.

"Let's go West," she said one night after supper. "Pa, can't we go West when Uncle Henry does?"

. . . "I know, little Half-pint," said Pa, and his voice was very kind. "You and I want to fly like the birds. . .”¹

Wearing long-sleeved flannel shirts and seeing snow geese—all glossy white with black-tipped wings—are among the signs that September has arrived in all her tawny glory. The incense of woodsmoke, the vaulted vibrant blue skies, and the slant of the afternoon sunlight all beckon me to come out and play. “Come West,” they whisper. And I do. I nose my car through fresh winds, snaking over mountain passes until I find a place to get lost in the wild and the beauty. Like little Laura, I ache to go West, to live freely. Free from schedules—the ever-pressing fist of time—and free from others’ expectations.

Familiarity feels like the level ground I need to leave behind on the hunt for paths that climb ever-upward. What is it that I long for, that I can’t get out of my blood no matter how often I hike until the stars wink open? The leaves of my favourite books rustle with the answer. I would never have believed just one of them; but when the overflowing shelves all carry me from an unassuming front door to wild lands, beasts, and men, only to arrive back at home, I take notice.

Home revolves around the familiar, the mundane. It is family and friends going deeper, butting heads, holding hands, reaching out, being still, being vulnerable. Though the familiar and intimate draw things out slowly and graciously, I often find myself like a ruptured seed buried in the earth. I struggle toward the surface, feeling the urge to keep pressing upward, though I don’t know why or what lies ahead.

Often I vacillate, wanting the routine and familiarity of the daily—yet restlessly craving the freedom and thrill of the untamed, the unexplored. I want to run away from all I have known and taste something wild and fresh. Restlessness, however, stems from dissatisfaction—named or unnamed; whilst imagination breathes life and satisfaction into the daily and the anomaly—the level ground and the arduous uphill climb.

How little I have learned from those tales of adventure—everywhere I turn, home is the way things end. Like Chesterton’s farm boy seeking a giant only to find he always lived upon one, or dissatisfied John in Pilgrim’s Regress, I suppose I will have to hike the whole globe ‘round to wind up at my own front doorstep, with my own mountains out the window.

“There are two ways of getting home; and one of them is to stay there. The other is to walk round the whole world till we come back to the same place. . .”²

Tolkien ends both The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings with the Hobbits’ return to the Shire. To be sure, the quest challenged and forged those who dared to go on it—fitting them for both the scouring of the Shire and the honest work of rebuilding and guiding it. But it is the cosy hearth fires of home and the minding of one’s own garden that the Hobbits are about for most of their lives. The quest of the Ring made each character wiser, nobler, and deeper—fitting them richly for the quotidian tasks of Shire life. The love of home is worth leaving it and fighting for it, in order that others might have that very home, even if they are unaware of those who have gone to great lengths to keep it free, peaceful, and beautiful.

If our ancestors and those in our military have sacrificed what is most precious to them that we might have a home, why do we often fly from it like so many birds on the wing? It is not the familiar and comfortable that stop my ears and blind my eyes to the gifts I have here and now. It is my own sins that make me “grow old” as Chesterton puts it. Adventure sounds alluring, but the heights are so windy that tears blind us, the ground is rocky and hard to sleep on, the uphill climb makes our lungs and legs burn. Do harshness and denial make us grateful for our everyday gifts of running water and a comfy beds? Does the beauty of a new place resonate in our hearts because it calls to mind that which we first loved, the beauty learned at home?

How do we live on the level ground, the familiar and cosy, whilst still pursuing the upward trek of adventure and all its hardships? We need both. The adventure takes us far enough away to see that what we have been looking for is in our own gardens, as Dorothy says in The Wizard of Oz: “If I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won't look any further than my own backyard.”³ It took quite the journey for her to gain that perspective.

Some find home by staying there, but others of us must circumnavigate the globe all the way back to our own cosy Hobbit holes. It is a long journey, but perhaps when we land, we will learn to appreciate what we had all along, rather than taking it for granted—to see life abundant in the mundane, and beauty all around. After all, “there’s no place like home.”⁴

---

1. Wilder, Laura Ingalls, By the Shores of Silver Lake (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers) 126, emphasis mine
2. Chesterton, G. K., The Everlasting Man (Garden City: New York, Doubleday and Company) 11
3. Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz (Directed by Victor Fleming and George Cukor. 1939 MGM studios)
4. ibid

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

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