August is the Cruelest Month...

...to paraphrase T. S. Eliot. 

I rather hate the month of August. I'm physically, emotionally, and soulishly drained by this hot and crazy month. It is the hardest month at work. It is freakishly hot (making sleep difficult). And I'm out of people energy. Every summer. Then there's the added sorrow of September 3, already looming. 

But God.  God is kind to surround me with His love. With generous friends and family. 

Did you know that kindness makes hard days and weeks brighter? 

It does. 

So. Much!

A box of sunshine (sweet words, creative-cute cards, and lemon-flavoured everything) from my creative, thoughtful sister... Sent after being rather heart-disappointed.

Flowers, chocolate, and cheese from a good friend after the same hard week.

I love the colours of these flowers! Plus, they lasted two weeks. 

Surprisingly, the cheese and chocolate have lasted longer.

A thank you gift from my sweet co-worker for assisting her in shipping a lot of packages this summer. 

Here is a close-up of the necklace. . .

This was part of the theme of the summer. Have grit. Determination, yes. But also, the grit that feels like its rhyming counterpart. . . The irritation produces the substance that covers the grit with beauty. Without the irritation, the disruption, the foreign object, no pearl can be formed. But from that little grain comes something beautiful. How much more beauty might be born from this gritty season in which we are living?

August is in many ways the cruelest month. But it has many pockets of kindness and love and beauty.

Thanks be to God!

Knowing Home Now. . .and for the First Time

"What do you want to do with your life?" someone asked me recently. Without hesitation I replied that I wanted to do what I am doing. Living life, loving God and people, liking my job, writing, and hiking. Perhaps I should have said more accurately—and succinctly—that I wanted to do with my life whatever God calls me to each day. That doesn't mean I'll stay in this house or this job forever and always. It doesn't mean that I will get to have the same friends all of my life. It means that I will seek to live each day to the full, to "suck the marrow out of life"¹ as Thoreau says.

My answer may sound transitory, thoughtless, or hopelessly mangled—wanting the now without thought for the future. But I have a few things in place for the future, and I see no reason to worry about something I don't have when I could enjoy what I do have. We aren't called to always quest after what may or may not be on the horizon. We are called to live where we are—and who we are—now.

I was once told that I have the pioneer spirit of a first-born—which is rather interesting, considering I'm a youngest. However, the comment was, in part, true. I want more out of life than the homeland of my youth could offer. I longed to go West and live amongst mountains. I had not yet figured out what it meant to live fully wherever I was. I still haven't. Wanderlust plagues my blood sometimes and I must fly down the two-lane highway to chase the wild geese, to breathe in mountain air, to get away from my little cabin, so that I can experience the joy of coming home again.

Chesterton talks about sailing away from Christianity to figure out what he believed, only to find that his beliefs lined up with orthodoxy. In The Everlasting Man he explains it as leaving one's homeland to fight giants and seek adventure, only to realise one's home rested atop a slumbering giant the whole time. He says, "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 Much like Lewis's, John, in Pilgrim's Regress, learned. He left his home at the foot of the mountains to seek the pull of Joy (an elusive island in that book) and found that he had circumnavigated the world and returned to his mountain home, where the island/Joy had been all along. Or as Eliot so adeptly explains it,

"With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."³

These men all knew and wrote about the experience of leaving home to find it. It was not easy, the road was long, but in the end, they arrived home—knowing its value for the first time. The hearts of men long for our true home—the New Heavens and the New Earth, yes—but more specifically, we long for God. Augustine was right to confess that, "Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Him." 

So, how do we live where we are now, while our hearts long for completion in God? How do we live in the present? How do we walk the balance of wanting to be complete now, but living in the not yet? Part of the answer—because I certainly do not have the full answer—is simply to be present. For me, this means I need to not plan one event after the other. I want to be present where I am with the people there, not be thinking about the next event in the back of my mind, hurrying myself along. Part of being present—counter-intuitive to this being written and viewed on a screen—means being face-to-face with people or the world around us, not being at the beck and call of technology. 

Perhaps the biggest part of being present, living in the now but not for the now, is savouring things. Swallow slowly—both food and the world. I love cooking. I enjoy chopping all of the ingredients, serving things as fresh as possible. It takes time and effort to make a meal. I want to savour what took me thirty minutes or more to make. But I want to savour the time it took to make the meal, too. I don't want a dozen labour-saving devices. One or two are sufficient (mostly, a garlic press is sufficient, so my fingers don't reek of garlic for days on end). I want to spend the time chopping, arranging, mixing, letting every flavour meld within my cast-iron skillet. There is deep satisfaction in the process of making a meal from scratch, and at my own pace. Confessedly, I do love my slow cooker for winter evenings of stew or tenderised meat—but I still put all the ingredients in as slowly and deliberately as ever (most of the time).

With the changes made to things like cooking or farming or travel, I wonder what we modern folks do with all of our saved time. Do we dance more and read more? Do we spend more time in conversation or in contemplation? Though e-mails save time and cutting and pasting is helpful, there is nothing like the joy of a real letter—handwritten, not typed—in our mailbox, and the feel of it in our hands and under our eyes. 

What do we do with all of that time we have saved?

"Good morning," said the little prince."

Good morning," said the merchant. This was a merchant who sold pills that had been invented to quench thirst. You need only swallow one pill a week, and you would feel no need of anything to drink.

"Why are you selling those?" asked the little prince.

"Because they save a tremendous amount of time," said the merchant. "Computations have been made by experts. With these pills, you save fifty-three minutes in every week."

"And what do I do with those fifty-three minutes?"

"Anything you like . . ."

"As for me," said the little prince to himself, "if I had fifty-three minutes to spend as I liked, I should walk at my leisure toward a spring of fresh water."⁴

What do you want to do with your life? The question hangs in the air. I want to use my time saved to cook slowly, to hike long, to be with friends and family, to sit on my porch and watch the twilight fall, to smell the seasons' scents, to dance in the snow. . .In these things, I am learning to love God and enjoy Him forever—because He is Home.

_________

1. Thoreau, Henry David, Walden (New York: Penguin Group), 72

2. Chesterton, G. K., The Everlasting Man (Garden City: New York, Doubleday and Company 1955) 11
3. Eliot, T. S., Collected Poems (New York: New York, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, Inc. 1971) 208

4. de Saint-Exupéry, Antoine, The Little Prince, translated by Katherine Woods (New York: New York, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, Inc. 1971) 73-74

To Arrive Where We Began

Feathery snow traces dark, bare branches—edges clearly seen, crisp in Winter's garb. Juxtaposed with these stark lines, a low fog tucks my little town into hushed, hazy seclusion. The world wears the physical contrast of things clearly defined and things hidden in the blurred perimeter.

New years themselves are the edges of one season blending into another, of one year gracefully giving way to the next in the steps of a great dance. The past year or two has taught me that sometimes the sadness in our lives slowly fades into joy, or that the pain is replaced with Beauty, without us comprehending the moment of transition. At times, new life is breathed into dead hearts and relationships. As G. K. Chesterton explains:

"...boundaries are the most beautiful things in the world. To love anything is to love its boundaries; thus children will always play on the edge of anything. They build castles on the edge of the sea, and can only be restrained by public proclamation and private violence from walking on the edge of the grass. For when we have come to the end of a thing we have come to the beginning of it."*

Fringes and edges are where change is occurring. New beginnings are at the boundaries of old endings. A new year does not erase the previous one, but builds upon it, beyond it. Sometimes the story goes on with similar themes and veins. Other times whole new plot twists are added; sweetness flows where the sore and sour reigned—and Beauty blossoms in the howling wilderness.

Sometimes I become enamoured with the start of a new year, thinking it must be better than this or that, or that my great expectations will be fulfilled in the coming days. I anticipate that vibrant Beauty will replace grey ashes. This is my view from the edge, straining to see ahead into the unknowable future. If I would instead look back on what has clearly gone on behind me, learn from that—seeking not to make the same mistakes this day—I might enjoy a richer year.

Often I live on the fringes—of church sanctuaries, of social gatherings, of my own thoughts. Yet I need to step in, to step onto the altar and taste the wine and wafer. To pull others in from the edges toward deeper relationships. To stop wading in shallow thoughts and dive deep into study, into ideas, into knowing what it is to know, to be. There are times when new places or experiences make us feel the edges of ourselves; they cause us to see ourselves as small.

We cannot, however, remain at the edge of a year, of a story, of ourselves and know the heart, the depth, the themes there-in. Each day is a step closer to the heart of the year. Each question we learn to ask—and answer we seek—leads us to a deeper experiential understanding of God, of life, of ourselves. We look back in order to know how to move forward. We look at the close of one story in order to appreciate the beginning of another.

For last year's words belong to last year's language.And next year's words await another voice. **

Here we are, between last year and next year in this year—awaiting its voice, words, and song. We hardly reach the end of one year before the next one opens, unknown. We must muse over the things that have gone before, as they are our guides—in many ways—of what not to repeat and what to pursue.

So, here's hail! to the rest of the road. Let us walk in humble boldness from end to beginning, and on toward the boundaries that beckon us to enter in.

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.***



_______________
* Chesterton, G. K., “The Lion” in Tremendous Trifles (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1920) 222
** Eliot, T. S., “Little Gidding” in Collected Poems 1909-1962 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1971) 204
*** Ibid, 208

To be Redeemed from Fire by Fire

LITTLE GIDDING - IV
T. S. Eliot

The dove descending breaks the air

With flame of incandescent terror

Of which the tongues declare

The one discharge from sin and error.

The only hope, or else despair

Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre—

To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.

Love is the unfamiliar Name

Behind the hands that wove

The intolerable shirt of flame

Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
*
Consumed by either fire or fire.

(*Suspire: to draw a long deep breath; to sigh.)


I have a confession: I have never liked T. S. Eliot. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock spoiled Eliot for me. C. S. Lewis's dislike for his work doomed him. Thus, I have never read what many consider some of Eliot's best works: the Four Quartets.

Tonight I was browsing books at Barnes and Nobel. How I managed to not buy at least three books is beyond me. I'm a cheapskate, I guess. The inscription page of one of the books had the above section of Little Gidding neatly typed there.

No, I didn't fall in love with Eliot. But something burned in my imagination. I saw a picture painted by those words. I saw a dove, tongues of fire, God's purifying fire saving one from hell fire. It occurred to me: God uses fire, satan uses fire. God uses the right amounts for testing, for burning off our impurities. Satan uses fire as torment, pain for the sake of pain. It is the same thing -fire- but wielded very differently based on the attitude of the one holding it.

Who then devised the torment? Love. Oooh, haven't I just written about this very thing? It is Love Who puts us in the fires of purification for our good and His glory. It is Love Who allows pain - if it makes us like His dear Son. It is Love Who cannot bear to leave us as we are, but prunes us, redeems us by His very blood.

Interestingly, I was out with two amazing ladies when I discovered this poem. Our conversation in the "Spirituality/Religion" section at Barnes and Nobel centered on, "This is where I am in life, but I don't like it." Sparks are flying, embers glowing. Mhmm, you are in the Master's furnace. He's making you better than you were. He's forging you into something you couldn't possibly be if you weren't hardened (strengthened) by the fire. Though it hurts will you let God's fire consume you?

We only live, only suspire

Consumed by either fire or fire.

~ Johanna