Wide Open Spaces

Putting Together the Pieces

2012-01-21T15:33:00.000-05:00

On the day after Christmas, my mom and I trekked to one of the local department stores for the deep discounts on holiday items like wrapping paper and greeting cards. As we maneuvered our cart through the aisles crowded with other bargain hunters, I spotted a selection of boxed jigsaw puzzles, their prices also marked down.

“Look at these puzzles,” I said to my mom, pointing to the boxes with colorful pictures on them. “I think I’m going to get one. I haven’t worked a jigsaw puzzle in years.”

When I was a child, my mom often set up the card table in the living room during the winter and laid out the pieces of a 500-piece or 1,000-piece puzzle for us to work together as a family. Just last year for her birthday, I bought her a puzzle with a picture of Elvis Presley on it. And within days, the card table appeared again. Each time I visited over the course of a couple of months, I saw Elvis emerging from the cardboard pieces.

The selection of puzzles was picked over as other shoppers grabbed their favorites, but soon I settled on a seaside painting stamped on the jig-sawed cardboard. Three dollars would be a cheap way to carry on a family tradition.

A week later, as I was taking down my Christmas tree, I thought of the jigsaw puzzle that had been schlepped away in the closet along with the board games and decks of cards. As I looked around the living room, I saw no obvious place for the card table, so I rearranged the furniture, dragging the couch against the wall, moving the recliner in front of the window, and creating a space next to the television large enough for the folding table and a couple of chairs.

The next weekend, as I was preparing the house for my younger sister, Sky, to move in for three months while she works at an internship, I finally pulled out the card table and opened up the puzzle. After laying all the pieces flat and sorting out the ones with the straight edges, I managed to piece together the border.

Fitting together a jigsaw puzzle, especially one with 750 pieces, doesn’t happen in a day, or even a weekend, for me. My eyes strain from searching for subtle color differences or matching shapes, and my back begins to hurt from leaning over to find the perfect piece. I could sit in the chair, but sometimes I get too eager and find myself hunching again.

Sky found her way to the puzzle, too, drawn in by the possibility, no doubt. She will stay with me until the end of March, not that the puzzle has to be completed by then.

Every few days, I sit down in front of the puzzle, trying to piece together another little part of the picture. At this point, with just a few little sections completed, I can’t even imagine the day when this will be a fully formed picture. Each time I hold a grooved piece in my hand, it seems impossible that I will find a place where it fits. It’s going to take so long, I think.

But working a puzzle requires a strategy, demands a slowing down, and requires a different way of seeing. No longer do I look for clouds or boats. Instead, I look for blues and oranges; I notice the curve of the tabs and blanks. When I sit down, all the pieces look the same. If I linger, I see 750 unique shapes and colors, all connected to each other in a way I intend to discover.

Today, I found all the pieces with bright green on them and recreated the windows on the café. The white and blue pieces are sorted in a pile, waiting to be made into sky, and the multicolored pieces will eventually become flower boxes.

I could sit only about 20 minutes before I felt the familiar ache in my back and tiredness in my eyes. But I am amazed at what I have accomplished in such a short period. I’m smiling to myself as I stand up, push the chair under the table, and walk away.

We will finish the puzzle, I realize, if we just keep showing up. It’s only a matter of time.

Photo by mondays child, via Flickr, used with permission under the Creative Commons License.

The Other Side

2012-01-16T19:47:00.000-05:00

She left this comment on my post about living and planning and hoping after years of fighting cancer:

Tried to make plans, but my husband's cancer didn't allow it. Prayed, others prayed, he died. Don't understand it.

And I don't understand it either, why sometimes we pray and hope and plan and the cancer just keeps coming. It was all I could do to just go back there and tell her I was sorry and that I was grieving with her. It was all I could do, but I know it's not enough. Those words won't help.

I don't even know her name.

Since I was diagnosed with cancer in 2007, I can think of dozens of people who have received similar news over the phone or sitting in doctors' offices. Some of them heard their name and cancer together for the first time in the last four years. Some of them discovered a recurrence. Some of them have died.

This is the darker side of my cancer story that is harder for me to write about. Every day -- and I mean literally every single day -- I am aware of my imminent death. Though I am doing pretty well right now, and though I may still have many years ahead of me, the specter of cancer casts a long shadow.

As I consider even the possibility of a long life, I imagine year after year of wondering if this is the year I die.

People tell me this is normal for a cancer survivor. Doctors tell me they would be worried if I didn't have death as a concern; nurses tell me that most of their patients talk about it. A radiology tech once told me that she knows a woman who has been coming for annual CT scans for more than 10 years, and though she continues to be cancer free, she worries every time waiting for those results, wondering if this one is going to show something.

Most recently while I waited on test results, I started planning my funeral, picking out songs I would like to be sung and imaging a chapel filled with artwork and beauty. I began writing my obituary in my head, "Charity Singleton died after years of living victoriously with cancer." (I've never liked the metaphor of "battle" and "losing" to this disease.) And I started grieving with those who will survive me.

When my news came back good, I felt silly for going down that road. My body was not riddled with tumors as I had feared. But today, when one of the nurse's from my oncologist's office called to confirm that they would be following up on that one area on the PET scan that was inconclusive, the fear and the uncertainty began creeping back.

This was the same news I had heard a week ago, as my doctor took me to the back room and showed me last summer's PET scan and last week's PET scan. Then, as He explained the radiologist's hesitation because of my history, and said overall, it was very positive that there was no obvious cancer but we'd have to check again just to be sure, I had felt confident and hopeful.

It might not be anything.

Or it might be. That's where today's conversation left me.

"I'm sorry I can't give you 100 percent certainty," the doctor told me last week while I was trying to take in the news that was so much better than I had expected.

"You CAN'T give me 100 percent certainty," I said. "Even if this little spot didn't catch the eye of the radiologist, I'll always be waiting on the next blood test or the next scan."

That's the rest of the story of living with cancer.

Paul told the Corinthians that when he was in Asia Minor, he was "under great pressure, far beyond [his] ability to endure, so that he despaired of life itself. Indeed, he felt he had received the sentence of death." (2 Corinthians 1:8-9)

I could have written the same thing about my life off and on over the past four and a half years.

But Paul wasn't writing to the Corinthians to complain, he was writing to tell them the truth. This sentence of death wasn't to cause him fear and anxiety; it was given so that he might rely on God, not himself.

That's why I am praying that the Lord will help me stay in this long season of cancer, to keep living through the pain and difficulty, because I need to learn this reliance on God, too.

And that's the truth.

Photo by EmsiProduction, via Flickr, used with permission under the Creative Commons License.

Stay In This . . . Uncertainty

2012-01-10T21:23:00.000-05:00

This weekend, I was waiting on news. The mind crushing, soul bruising waiting that happens when the outcome is uncertain. I feared -- no, expected -- the worst.

In between the moments of panic when I was nearly undone, I found solace in this: casting my cares on the Lord and surrounding myself with beauty.

At times my heart nearly stopped, consumed as I was with the things I couldn't know yet.

But in the off moments, I laughed hard and breathed deep and clung to the people who gathered around me.

This time, the news came back good. I was flooded with relief.

Next time, the Lord will still receive my cares, the beauty will continue to shine, and my soul will be filled, whether in joy or grief, by the mercy of friends and family who walk with me.

There and Back Again: Dancing Priest

2012-01-05T18:25:00.000-05:00

I met Sarah Hughes and Michael Kent on New Year's Eve, and they were the first people I spent time with the next day, in the early hours of 2012. They felt like old friends by the time I said goodbye Sunday evening, but I probably won't hear from them again until summer. At least that's when I hope to meet up with them again.

Michael and Sarah are characters in Glynn Young's recently released first novel, Dancing Priest, and a sequel is due out in a few months.

I had been hearing about Glynn's book since it was first accepted for publication; Glynn and I work together as editors for The High Calling. So, on Friday, when I took all of the gifts cards and cash I had received for Christmas and bought a Kindle Fire, I knew the first book I would download would be Dancing Priest.

My only disappointment was that I didn't buy it sooner.

The storyline of the book is hard to summarize quickly since the action takes place on two continents, in at least four countries. There are two main characters, and a host of supporting actors. The summer Olympics make an appearance, as does the schism of the world-wide Episcopal church and the declining popularity of the British monarchy. But none of this is what the book is really about.

At the heart of this story is a young man whose great faith makes everything he touches great and a young woman whose great doubt threatens to undermine them both. This book is also about family and friendship and what it means to live out both in the context of Christian faith.

The ambitious storyline with the cadre of amazing young people as leading characters reminded me a lot of some of Madeleine L'Engle's fiction, like The Small Rain or A Live Coal in the Sea. The lives woven out of Glynn's imagination also took on that air of cultural exuberance that always intrigued me of L'Engle's characters, as well - people who excel in art and music and architecture and athletics and preaching. In that sense, the work ethic and talents exhibited by the main characters become a character of their own.

Dancing Priest is also a love story, told from two perspectives, that kept me flipping through the pages as quickly as possible to see what happened.

And since I'm notorious for giving away plots, I'll leave it there, except to say, you should buy this book. You will love it.

Just this week, Glynn made the first chapter of Dancing Priest available on his blog. Read it here.

Also, you can read this wonderful interview of Glynn by Maureen Doallas. He reveals more about the story, the process of writing, and why sometimes he has to put away the keyboard and use a pen.

You can also go THERE and visit Glynn's blog , and then come back HERE again!

Join me for regular jaunts around The High Calling network, randomly visiting fellow bloggers, soaking up their words and ideas, and then coming back here to write about them from my perspective.

Each Thursday, consider going "There and Back Again" yourself. It's simple.

Fix the Thing

2012-01-02T18:23:00.001-05:00

I rolled the thread from the spool a length just past the end of my arm, thread light blue like a summer sky. I slipped it in the eye of the needle on the first try. I pulled the two loose ends together, smoothing out the distance back toward the needle. When all was even, I knotted the end just like my mother taught me, close and tight.

Sewing is no hobby for me, so on New Year's Eve morning, when I looked at the frayed edges of the rug in the laundry room just one too many times, it took about 10 minutes searching for a sewing kit to know if I could even salvage it. When I finally found the little cylinder kit with needles and samples of thread and the tiniest scissors, I knew what I had to do.

Fix the thing.

The rug has been torn for several months now. I bought it after my realtor vetoed the old tan one with the rubber backing before the first open house. The tan one that now sits on a shelf in the garage came from a yard sale; I got this new blue one at Target.

With a rambunctious puppy, I didn't feel bad about the yard sale rug getting a little chewed up around the edges. But the Target rug that I paid full price for? I nearly cried when I saw the corner all ripped and frayed. Tilly got her nose smacked, and I, overwhelmed with having my house for sale and my little sister's wedding coming up and my step-dad's cancer and the stress at work, I felt like my nose had been smacked too.

Why fix it? I thought. It will just get chewed up again. So for months now, I have walked over the rug with the frayed corner, a little too frayed myself to really care.

With the threaded needle in one hand, I pulled the rug onto my lap, dirt and dog hair shaking down on my pants, the bench, the floor. I wasn't really sure how to fix it now that the weave had been disrupted, and I just had that thread and a needle. I considered again just throwing it out, even at that late stage, because honestly, I have the money to buy a new one. I also considering washing it, folding it up, and taking it down to my mom's house. She's always good at fixing torn up things.

But I want to be good at fixing torn up things, too, I reminded myself. I want to hold broken, ripped things in my hands and with simple tools and simple attention make them whole again. I can figure this out, I tell myself, looking at the frayed mess.

As I start smoothing out the fibers, making sure the blues and the greens and the browns and the yellows are all going in the right direction, I hear the lyrics to Gungor's "This is Not the End" from my Pandora station. And somehow I know I was meant to sit here this day, at the end of a painful year, holding onto this little rug that nearly couldn't be fixed, and figure it out.

This is not the end
This is not the end of this
We will open our eyes wide, wider

This is not our last
This is not our last breath
We will open our mouths wide, wider

And you know you’ll be alright
Oh and you know you’ll be alright

This is not the end
This is not the end of us
We will shine like the stars bright, brighter

I just start sewing. I pull the needle in and out, connecting the ripped up pieces of the rug together with each loop and circle, pulling tight when I put in a whole row of stitches at once. Pieces that originally didn't even touch each other are now connected as the thread follows the needle everywhere I push it and everywhere I pull it.

It's not looking too good, this little corner of the rug, but as I keep sewing and adding stitches, the rug itself has resumed the shape of wholeness. And just because I think I should, I go back over the whole area, mimicking the pattern of the weave, hoping to create a little unity.

As I fix the rug, a little corner of me feels healed up and whole again, like what I am binding here on earth is being bound in heaven. And this little act of pulling thread behind a needle over and over again feels like the call to bring wholeness to other broken things. To be merciful, to be shown mercy.

Gungor lyrics from "This is Not the End" from the Ghosts upon the Earth album, Copyright © 2011 Brash Music

Stay In This

2011-12-28T20:35:00.001-05:00

I began last year by cleaning out my spare bedroom, preparing for my sister to come and live with me for three months. As I pulled books off shelves and clothes out of closets, the Lord impressed on me that 2011 would be the year of "Empty." And so I set out to see what would come of it.

Early on, emptying my life became like a resolution, and I lopped off activities and obligations and possessions like I was really making it happen. I observed my life and the world through the lens of "empty" and saw that I could declutter my home, my inbox, my calendar and feel fuller on the inside, doing things that were a priority instead of wasting my time on what was filling my space and time.

Throughout the year, I wrote about this process of emptying, of being empty. Throughout the year until July, that is. As I looked back through my posts, I haven't written one time since July about being empty.

Not once since my life actually was emptied by my cancer recurrence have I thought about the word, "empty."

I am preparing for another sister to move in with me this year. My baby sister will come for her internship this year, and over the weekend, I'll be checking the drawers to be sure they are empty and creating space in the bathroom cupboard for Skyann to put her things. I'll probably make another pass over the book shelves that line her room, and I'll probably get obsessive with the clutter in the closet like last year.

But empty is not my word for this year. (Been there, done that.)

Even as I was being emptied this year, fighting to stay engaged with real life as a cancer battle went on within me, the Lord was planting the seeds of 2012's word. When the nausea and fatigue set in back in October, I wanted to just stay in bed many days, and even now, the fear that threatens to overcome me nearly crushes my spirit at times.

But truth swirls dreamlike in the back of my thoughts, and a voice tells me softly, "stay in this." STAY IN THIS, I repeat to myself, because I'm dull and difficult in those moments of deep discouragement. And even now, when the voice speaks, and my self repeats, I usually ask back, "What does it mean to stay in this right now?"

What does it mean to stay in this when I feel pain in my abdomen and fear the cancer is back?

What does it mean to stay in this when I see happily married couples around me, and I go home alone?

What does it mean to stay in this when I make the same mistakes, waste the same amount of time on the same silly distractions over and over again?

What does it mean to stay in this when the projects assigned to me at work seem bigger than me, or smaller than me?

Recently, someone was asking me about the activity on my house, was it still on the market, had there been any interest.

"Not really," I said. "But I am leaving it up until the end of March. That will be one year since I listed it, and then, if it hasn't sold, I'll just stay."

To stay here in this house, it wouldn't be a bad thing. I feel at home here; I'm figuring out how to get the help I need; I trust God's sovereignty that if he wants me to leave there will be a buyer. So maybe it's not what I was hoping, but it's what is best.

But if I stay, I'll have to continue to put money into the house, make improvements. Otherwise, the place is going to come down around me. Just this weekend, as my mom and I were talking about the coming year, I started making a list of things I will do to the house. If I stay.

Some of them I'll do. Some of them won't really make sense to do. But part of staying means hoping and planning for the future here.

I've been dreaming and drawing plans for a new kitchen since I moved in here. Based on my neighborhood and the real estate market and my savings account, it will probably never make sense for me to put that kind of money into redoing the kitchen the way I'd like. But I don't think I can live here unless a kitchen remodel is at least a possibility.

That's what it means to "stay in this," I think. From right where I am, I have to keep hoping and planning for the future. Otherwise, whatever I'm doing isn't really living.

It's ironic really. When that voice tells me to "stay in this," it seems like I am being locked in a prison of the present, forced to endure the pain of now, whatever "this" is. But the truth is if I run from "this," I will never learn from it, I will never grow out of it, I will never get through it to the other side.

To stay in this is to turn my present reality into a future possibility - not because God will always change my circumstances, but because He is changing me. Always.

So, my word for 2012 is really three words, "Stay in this." And if this year ends and I'm still right here where I started, at least I will be different for having stayed.

Photo by Chris Tsangarides, via Flickr, used with permission under the Creative Commons License.

Week 4, Day 7: Expecting a Baby

2011-12-24T08:47:00.000-05:00

One evening this week as I was driving through town, I passed a church with a giant banner out in their yard that said, "We're expecting a baby!"

I was in a hurry, so I didn't get a good look at the sign other than those four giant words. As I slowed at the stop light just around the corner, I wondered who in the church was important enough that the whole church was anticipating their baby. Maybe the pastor? We would never put a sign like that out at our church.

As the light turned green, and I sped away, it hit me. "Aaaahhh!" I said out loud. It's Jesus. They are expecting baby Jesus.

People from all over world are expecting that birth again this year, laboring with Mary and Joseph for the baby to be born.

But that waiting is symbolic. He already was born. The labor ended, a boy was birthed, they called him Jesus, the angels sang, the shepherds came, and the magi from the East brought gifts. We wait each year - we relive these events and imagine that starry night - but in reality it's over.

Yet, we're still waiting for Jesus.

A sign that says, "We're expecting a baby!" is a more palatable announcement to make to a world passing by at 45 mph than a sign that says, "We're expecting a Judge!" or "We're expecting God in all his might!" or even "The end is near."

Though the real waiting won't end with a baby being born, we are still laboring as we wait. The whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.

As Advent draws to an end and our season of waiting turns to joy as we celebrate God with us, I am always a little disappointed that I feel so disappointed, that I'm still groaning. The twinkle lights and candles didn't ease the burden, nor did the gifts or gatherings. The eggnog and fudge brought more regret than relief, and even giving to the poor and needy, which we all know should be the real acts of the season, helped only a few. There are still so many poor and needy.

I am still so poor and needy.

And so once again, this Advent waiting has brought me back to the real meaning of Christmas: the Gospel.

I am a sinner unable to atone for my sins.

God is holy unable to receive me in my sin.

God sent His Son Jesus to bridge the gap.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

You won't want to miss these posts by others wrestling with these same issues:

Jeff Goins responds to the Christmas question, "Did you get everything you want? "
John Blase turns to Charlie Brown to answer the question, "What does Christmas feel like?"

Photo by Sirenz Lorraine, via Flickr, used with permission under the Creative Commons License.

Week 4, Day 4: Dancing in the Shadows

2011-12-21T19:44:00.000-05:00

I light candles every day now.

When I was standing in the party store looking for inspiration for Advent a few weeks ago, I had a hunch that lighting a candle every day, not just Sundays, would be a way for me to bring a new edge to the ancient tradition of this season.

But each day as I stand with lighter in hand and bring fire to wick over and over - a new candle added every day - I marvel at the little amount of time it takes to light the world by the work of my hand.

Some days, I light only one day's candle, short on time and only a few minutes to sit with the dancing shadows. One candle in a dark room shines hope all around. But on the days when I have time to light all of the candles, the glow is transcendent, and the light spilling into the next room gives me courage.

The wax is nearly gone in the candles from the early days of waiting, the wicks laying flat, the flames growing dim. I actually brought in a replacement candle for the first Sunday's purple holder, and week two may also need a back up.

The light in my soul has dimmed a bit since that first Sunday,too. These weeks and days just never quite go as planned, and I spend a least part of every Advent discouraged and disappointed. This year I have worried too much and worshiped too little. And the light that casts shadows from inside me nearly stopped dancing this weekend.

But though the wick droops sideways, the eternal Light keeps a steady flame burning down in the deep parts of me. I will not be snuffed out though I waver.

“Here is my servant, whom I uphold,

my chosen one in whom I delight;

I will put my Spirit on him,

and he will bring justice to the nations.

He will not shout or cry out,

or raise his voice in the streets.

A bruised reed he will not break,

and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.

In faithfulness he will bring forth justice;

he will not falter or be discouraged

till he establishes justice on earth.

In his teaching the islands will put their hope.”

--Isaiah 42:1-4

Tonight, I laid flame to 25 wicks - just three days left of longing - and the soft, yellow light reaches far and deep, and as I write, I just keep saying to myself, "Glory."

"The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. . . We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth." - John 1

I light candles every day now, and every day, the true Light shines on me. And I dance in the shadows.

Glory, hallelujah.

Week 4, Day 3: Do

2011-12-20T21:35:00.000-05:00

Wake

Feed

Brush

Medicate

Eat

Analyze

Enter

Suggest

Research

Give

Fume

Drive

Talk

Wrap

Play

Listen

Sing

Write

Party!

Receive

Bless

Hope

Read

Think

Pray

Sleep

Now, your turn. Read:

Mary Joy Pershing's The Yes that Changed Everything

Anna Blanch's Ambivalent Anticipation

Faith Squared's Virtual Advent Calendar

Katie Sciba's The Dark Side

Photo by .thana✌, via Flickr, used with permission under the Creative Commons License.

Week 4, Day 2: Unimportant Things

2011-12-19T19:09:00.000-05:00

Saturday morning I was hurrying around the house trying to get the laundry done and the bathrooms cleaned after having stayed in bed a couple of extra hours. I wasn't feeling well, and I had had a very busy week. The extra hours of rest were needed. But the house needed cleaned, too. And I wanted to go to the gym to swim, and I had plans for the evening to go our for dinner and a movie with friends.

It had started out so peaceful, but now the day was barreling ahead.

With the washer and dryer going and the sheets on the bed changed, I found myself standing in front of the sink washing dishes. The same dishes I've washed hundreds of times standing there at the sink. I thought of my friend's new dishwasher and imagined having one of my own. Then, I would never have to stand there wasting time.

But since that thought took about 15 seconds and there was a whole pile of dishes to wash, I thought about other things. I thought about how busy Advent had become, despite my best intentions. I thought about the pain in my abdomen I had had for a couple of days, hoping it was nothing like most of the other pains and weird sensations I've had over the past four years that turned out to be nothing.

With each scrub of the plate and dip into the water, my consciousness poked around in the recesses of my mind, places that don't often see the light of day when I'm otherwise distracted with flashing screens and beeping devices. As I washed away caked on spaghetti sauce and rings of hot cocoa, I was tempted into a metaphor of sins being washed away. Instead, I just enjoyed the moment for what it was -- a chance to slow down.

My thoughts did become prayers as I imagined not having these moments were I to buy a dishwasher. "I would never have stopped here this morning, Lord, if it weren't for this mess in the sink." And then I told him outright how scared I am about that pain in my abdomen, hope or none.

It didn't exactly feel like waiting, standing there moving dishes from a dirty pile on the right, into the soapy water, scrubbed with the cloth, then into the left sink for rinsing and the drainer for drying. But it was more than just doing, standing there letting my mind play and wander.

"Time for important things can only come from one source: time for less important things," Pier Forni said today, in an interview with Diane Rehm in her syndicated NPR show. He was talking about his new book, The Thinking Life, making a case that time spent thinking was worth giving up less important things like web browsing and television watching. I agreed with him and began making a mental list of the unimportant things I do that I should give up.

But then I thought about standing there doing dishes, a relatively unimportant thing, and how beautifully it became the source of time to think. Forni was right on two levels. Maybe I should do more unimportant things.

We are in the final days of Advent, and the cards still need sending and the gifts need wrapping, and the sink is full of dirty dishes again. The pain in my abdomen is nearly gone, and my mind is full of light and life.

A few more links from the High Calling Advent Project. You really won't want to miss these:

Connie Mace's Living in Advent: Bethlehem Manna
Advent Reflections: Promise from Straight Meandering
Olive Tree's Celebrating Life Every Day
Michelle Derusha's Christmas Every Day

Photo by lisaclarke, via Flickr, used with permission under the Creative Commons License.

Fourth Sunday of Advent

2011-12-18T21:34:00.000-05:00

Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation,

that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in us a

mansion prepared for himself; who lives and reigns with you,

in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

--from The Book of Common Prayer

Week 3, Day 7: Ember Days

2011-12-17T08:13:00.000-05:00

Wet and muddy, contained within the wooden raised boxes, my garden rests as the December temperatures rise and fall in a downward trajectory. The tomatoes that fell there, the seeds that never germinated last spring, leaves that fell from the trees, grass clippings that sprang from the lawn mower -- all mingle in the dirt, decomposing when the temperatures rise above freezing.

When the mercury dips, the surface of the garden lies suspended, frozen, longing for the warmth and activity that lies deep, deep down.

I don't think much about what goes on out there during the dark days of winter. Exiled by the chill in the air, I spend my days in the house, in the office, in the car - in - with little thought for outside. Unless the sun shines especially bright one day, or the air grows warm enough to allow me to walk around without a coat, I am far away from seeds and soil, the sun and sky.

But today is one of the Ember Days, the quarterly sets of three days that originally were set apart to pray for and remember the earth and all of creation. As I consider all of this "in"-ness of winter, especially with the solstice still in front of us, I am beginning to be a bit claustrophobic, longing for what lies just on the other side of the glass from me.

Ironically, the Ember Days have evolved into an emphasis on the church and ordinations of priests. While postulants use the Ember Days as a time to update the bishops on their progress, more broadly this time can be spent praying for those in the ministry and the ministry of the church in general.

Again, the temptation of the Winter or Advent Ember Days might be to stay in, not just away from the cold temperatures and the dark evenings, but also away from the cold, dark hearts of those who are different, who are without hope. But to pray for the church is to understand the necessity of claustrophobia, that we can't remain comfortable all crowded inside together.

We must look beyond the glass.

Prayers for the church and her ministries necessarily take us outside the gate, outside the city, there on the garbage heap, there where the Cross casts it shadow.

The Ember Days are mysterious to me. I have observed the winter trinity of days for a couple of years now, trying to capture the spirit of them, but I forget about the Spring, Summer, and Fall Ember Days. They seem to have a different spirit, a different heart about them.

But then, come March and June and September, I have a different spirit and heart about me, too.

Lord, may your Bride be faithful in this dark season of waiting, and even now, may the seed of hope be planted in the cold, hard earth so that joy may rise in the Spring.

For more about Ember Days, read this interesting essay from the Daily Episcopalian.

And a few more Advent posts from the High Calling Advent Project:

Christie S. E. Blackwood's Christmas Stands Still
Nancy Franson's hilarious The Most Wonderful Time of the Year to be Lucy and Ethel
Sheila Lagrand's Coming Home for Christmas

And you just shouldn't miss Jennifer Dukes Lee's post at The High Calling this week, A Very Mary Christmas

Week 3, Day 4: Game On

2011-12-14T20:34:00.001-05:00

Best Buy, the nationwide big box electronics store, is raising some ire this year with their "Game On, Santa," ad campaign. In this series of ads, moms are seen raking in deals on electronics when the store clerk mentions, "Guess Santa has some competition this year." The next thing you know, the moms in each of the ads is seen taunting Santa, knocking the toy Santa off the roof, pointing at the dog as if Santa is fit only to fill the canine stocking, or other mean-spirited gestures.

I understand Best Buy's strategy here. In a sense, they are saying, "We know that moms don't get the credit they deserve at Christmas, having to pretend Santa is the one bringing the big gift." And just in case the wee little ones are watching, they even have the jolly ole guy make an appearance to validate his existence. They didn't want moms to have any explaining to do.

So, if Best Buy is trying to give props to moms, why in the world are all of them so outraged?

For one, the commercials make them look pretty snarky. In one of the ads, the mom stands sipping a hot cocoa watching Santa struggle to find room in the stocking for his gifts. "Awkward, isn't it," she says sarcastically.

But I think this ad also reveals something about a lot of us that we don't want to face: we really have made this a season about giving the perfect gift and less about receiving the Perfect Gift.

Imagine an ad campaign in which the words, "Game On, Jesus," flash across the screen. That's really the heart of the matter. It's actually no offense to a legendary jolly man that gifts are really purchased at a big box store. But the fact that we've allowed the birth of the Messiah to be hijacked by corporate greed, well, too bad we don't have that staring back at us from the television.

I have mixed feelings about the ads. I'll admit that they make me laugh, seeing poor ole Santa being attacked by desperate housewives. And as I have read through the very strong reactions many people are having in online comments (just Google "Game On Santa Best Buy" and you'll see what I mean), I've actually begun to like the ads even more. One lady suggested that beating up on Santa is like beating up on a charity. "Who’s next in the crosshairs? Toys for Tots?" she asks, in an over-the-top response.

But I also feel the sting of these ads, even though I don't have kids and I rarely shop at Best Buy. I do, however, spend a lot of time trying to find the perfect gifts for friends and family at Christmas. And all of the wrapping and the card sending and the cookie making and the decorating can consume me. So much so that I let it distract me from waiting for Jesus.

But that's why I light candles and pray prayers and read ancient texts during this time of year. There's so much more to this season.

There really is.

And I am my own worst enemy when it comes to being distracted and side tracked.

Game on, Charity.

There are so many wonderful Advent posts you MUST visit, including these from the High Calling Advent Writing Project:

Diana's Advent: Remembering the Ways of God

Carolyn's Happy New Year (yes, now!)

Journey Toward Epiphany's Making Room for the King

Anastasia's When It's Time to Do Advent

Photo of me and my friends, Verray and Mandy, with Santa from last Saturday's Jingle Bell Run/Walk in downtown Indianapolis by a kind stranger.

Week 3, Day 3: Seeing with Knowledge

2011-12-13T20:57:00.001-05:00

For the shepherds in the field that night, the call to go and see was immediate. The adrenaline and emotion of the angelic visit propelled them off the hill and down into Bethlehem, to a family huddled together in a stable around a newborn. For the shepherds, just a few miles run from the Messiah, seeing was believing.

For the Magi from the East, though, this trip to see Jesus was no last-minute, drop-everything-and-run kind of pilgrimage. These mystical astrologers with roots in the ancient civilizations had been looking for the King of the Jews for centuries. As scholars of ancient texts, they knew the Hebrew prophecies. When the star appeared, the star like no other, they knew exactly what had happened: the king was born.

For the Magi, seeing with knowledge meant an unusual star became a royal signpost, marking the way for these Eastern philosophers to embark on a journey of a lifetime.

Before the Magi ever knew about the star, though, the Star Maker knew them. The light that shone so brightly that the wise men thousands of miles away could see it but King Herod, just a few miles away in Jerusalem could not, was not just a freak of nature or a cosmic coincidence. God himself knew the Wise Men, knew that they were seekers of truth, and provided a star so that they could come and be part of the eternal story.

Seeing with knowledge meant worshiping in spirit and truth when they arrived months later to the house where the little King was becoming strong, as he was filled with wisdom and the grace of God was upon Him.

During this Advent season, it takes knowledge for us to see beyond the lights twinkling on the houses and the shiny paper wrapped around boxes beneath the tree. Everywhere around us the emotion of the season calls us to respond quickly, to buy now, only 10 days left.

But there’s more to Christmas than meets the eye. It takes knowledge to really see. Reflecting on THE ancient text helps us interpret the world around us during this season. We see an evergreen and think of God’s faithfulness; we see a man dressed in red and consider God’s generosity; we light candles and remember the flame of the Spirit burning in our souls.

And we see the star atop the tree, leading us again and again to the Light of the World, the true light that give light to all men.

This piece was written for and read as part of the third Sunday of Advent at my church last weekend.

A few more Advent posts:

My friend, Kelly Steffen's, Perfect Days

And from the High Calling Advent Writing Project . . .

Shanda Oakley's Tired: A Relative Term
Waiting on Waiting: Thoughts on Advent from The Dove Chronicles
A Double Advent from Brian at The White Stone

Photo by dalbera, via Flickr, used with permission under the Creative Commons License.

Week 3, Day 2: Lead Me to Bethlehem (Writing Project Wrap-Up)

2011-12-12T08:00:00.000-05:00

As I read Kimberlee Conway Ireton's post, The Road to Bethlehem, I felt like I was sitting in the circle with her and her friends Julie and Julia and Carol, tracing the path to the manger from the prophets to the shepherds to the wise men.

They sat in the circle in silence for a while, contemplating this rich scene in Bethlehem where so many people and ideas and angels converged.

Another moment of silence, so quiet, so rich, and then Carol speaks, wonder lacing her voice. “Seeing the figures gathered there, around the baby – it reminds me of the story of the banquet, when people come from east and west and north and south, to gather at the table of the Lord.”

I think of the stained-glass window I saw in Chartes when I was pregnant with Jack, how the baby Jesus lay not in a manger but on a table, an altar. And I think of that word manger. In French, it means “to eat.” This baby is our food, as He will one day declare to His disciples. “My body,” He will say, “my blood. Take and eat. It is for you.”

It is all here, in this story, the whole Gospel.

"Who will show us the way to Bethlehem," her friend Debbie asked, as she led the discussion among this group of friends. The prophets, the shepherds, the wise men? Yes. The Holy Family themselves? Yes. But who else?, they asked. Kimberlee writes:

I wonder, too: who will show us the way to the Christ Child? Who will light our journey? The prophets, yes. Mary and Joseph, yes. The shepherds, yes. The Magi, yes.

But also – Debbie.

And Julie. And Carol. And maybe me, too. And maybe you.

Maybe we can hold hands on this dark road and help each other to see: “Look, there is the light!”

“And there!”

“And here!”

And as I was contemplating who would show me the way to Bethlehem with Kimberlee, I thought of sweet baby Sylvia, Julie Little's five-month-old girl who played baby Jesus to Julie's Mary in her church's living Nativity. Julie writes about her doubts about the casting:

Wrapped in swaddling cloths, my squirming, kicking five-month old makes a ridiculous Baby Jesus. Adorable, yes, but she is all girl with those rosy cheeks and delicate eyelashes. And newborn she is definitely not, as evidenced by her ever-moving, chubby appendages and bright, curious eyes. And who am I to think I could pretend to be the Mother Mary?

Julie is surprised when the onlookers arrive, though, how easy it is for them to look at Sylvia and see the tiny Savior boy. And to look at her, Julie Little, and see Mary the Mother of God.

The people coming through our little stable do not see my bouncing baby Sylvia. Looking upon my sleeping child, they see Jesus. Because they are looking for Him. They have come this night to escape the bustle and glitter and clamor and noise, to be reminded of What It's All About. And there in the manger sleeps a perfect little baby, and they don't see my baby but another Baby who was also God.

The wonder and ridiculousness of it makes me laugh even as I am crying. That God would use a harried, exhausted couple and their too-big baby and a fake manger scene in a modern church garden...It's almost as ridiculous as God using a real teenage girl and her fiance and a real manger scene on a real night in Bethlehem.

And it makes me wonder, this Advent, if Jesus himself might lead me to Bethlehem, if only I am looking for Him, really looking to see my true, incarnated Savior, during this busy holiday season.

There were so many beautiful posts submitted for The High Calling Advent Writing project, each one a sign-post along the Advent road, showing me the way to Bethlehem. I am linking to three or four of these each day between now and Christmas, hoping they will show you the way as well.

But you can also see all the links reprised below. Thank you to all who participated by writing, and thank you to all who participated by reading.

We wait because we believe. We believe while we wait.

You also won't want to miss Laura Boggess's wrap up of the Advent Writing Project over on the High Calling. She has a beautiful way of weaving many of these posts together with her own story of Advent.

Third Sunday of Advent

2011-12-11T08:26:00.000-05:00

Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come

among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins,

let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver

us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and

the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen.

-- from the Book of Common Prayer

Week 2, Day 6: Quiet Spirit

2011-12-09T20:07:00.000-05:00

"In dark times, we fall back on those practices that a lifetime of practice has taught us. When words fail or fail to come, meaning and comfort spring from the most ordinary, elemental means: our work, small observances. This is the quiet spirit of Advent." -- Julia Spicher Kasdorf

It's a busy start to a busy weekend. I've run home just to leave again in a few minutes, and Tilly is desperate for some play time now that she's out of the crate. So, tonight, I leave you with this beautiful piece on theHighCalling.org - Two Pies Lighter. Go there right now - it will help you through this busy time.

And for other Advent reading today, a few more of the posts in the High Calling Advent Writing Project:

Patricia Hunter's A broken journey . . .
Katie's Mountain Sun
Julie Little's Mother of God

Week 2, Day 5: Swimming

2011-12-08T20:50:00.000-05:00

As I walked into the three and a half foot water, I shivered just a bit. Though the salt-water pool is heated, it's not exactly the temperature of my body.

I was heading to the center lane, so I dropped beneath the surface of the water, propelled myself under the lane marker, then came up shaking my arms and legs, warming up the muscles, then stretching them long and limber.

My ears were sticking out from my new white swim cap; did I have it on right? The goggles tight across my face were a miracle for seeing under water. And not just avoiding the irritation of the salt and chemicals, but really seeing.

Usually near-sighted, with more than a hint of astigmatism, I'm nearly blind in the water without my glasses. But with the goggles on, I hadn't counted on the effect of magnification of the water.

As I swam back and forth across the pool, I could see everything under the water as thought my vision were 20/20. My hands submerged in the water then scooping back - I watched them on the strokes when I wasn't turning my head to the right for air. The thick lines painted on the floor of the pool, helping beginning swimmers like me cut straight paths through the water - I saw them royal blue. The swimmers to my right and to my left, especially the one sharing my lane - I saw him coming near me or passing me, his laps doubling mine.

I've never been much of a swimmer. I was on a summer swim team when I was 13, and in high school phys ed class, we learned all of the swimming strokes of the IM medley - butterfly, breast stroke, back stroke, and freestyle. And when I've gone to the pool during the summers, I usually swim a lap or too to cool off from the sunbathing.

But swimming for exercise is new, and something I've got in my head to do.

I don't know why I thought I would be good at it or have any kind of endurance the first few times. But I have been disappointed when I have to stop every 25-yards lap because my legs are cramping or my shoulders ache. And though I've been able to do between 12-20 lengths during each work out, a good number of them involve me walking back and forth in the water to catch my breath.

Breathing is the hardest part.

When I'm in the water, I feel light and buoyant and spry like a dolphin for about 20 yards. And then the air that I take in between strokes gets less and less fulfilling, and if I don't stop and just breathe, I believe my lungs will collapse on the spot.

I'm embarrassed when I stop short of the wall after a length of the breast stroke, the man next to me swimming lap after lap after lap, flipping at the ends like the dolphin I want to be, his feet never even hitting the floor. When I have to just stand next to the wall for nearly a minute while the other swimmers keep moving, I feel the redness on my face, mostly from the work out, but partly from the shame.

I'm not a swimmer like them.

But I want to be. So I am going to keep at it. I will keep going, keep putting on my suit and shivering when I get in. Keep feeling the burn in my lungs, and resting between laps though I feel humiliated. A friend recommended a kick board when I get tired, and an online workout plan suggests starting with just four lengths of the pool taking 20 long breaths worth of rest between them.

I know what I have to do. I have to work, and I have to wait.

And while I am working and waiting, I will become a swimmer.

More Advent links from the High Calling Advent Writing Project --

John Blase's A Thrill of Hope
High Calling editor, Deidra Riggs', Festival of Lights
Suzie Lind's The First Candle

Photo by Randy Pertiet, via Flickr, used with permission under the Creative Commons License.

Week 2, Day 4: Nothing

2011-12-07T21:04:00.001-05:00

Writing these personal reflections about Advent each day has become more than just a writing exercise. By now, it is more like a spiritual discipline, an act of faith that when I sit down to write each day that Jesus will have done something in my life and I will have the spiritual eyes to see it.

Some days, what to write about is literally right in front of me - like the day I opened my blinds to see the first snow. Other times, I observe my friends, or even my own life, and think about the experiences for a few days, determining what the Lord might have for me.

Some days, I've got nothing.

I guess it's not entirely true that I've got NOTHING. There's always some thought, some truth knocking around in the back of my head. If I needed to, I could write about that. But if it's not ready, if I don't know exactly what Jesus is trying to teach me yet, if I haven't experienced in my soul, then it's dry.

And often, when I try to plan too far ahead, this is the case.

This daily reliance feels remarkably similar to my default survival mode since my cancer diagnosis more than four years ago. Many days during the first year, and even some days since, the sum of my days, the unknowns of the future, the hard things in life all feel like too much. So I interrupt my own thoughts and anxiety to ask myself about TODAY.

"What does Jesus have for me today? Do I believe His promise to be with me? With no thought for tomorrow, can I do what Jesus is asking of me today with His help?"

Sadly, the longer I find myself cancer free, the more I start planning for the future and relying on myself. When actually, this daily living, obeying and walking with Jesus for just this day, is the true calling for all our days in this space between Jesus' comings.

So if you are wondering what I am going to write about tomorrow, I really don't know. I don't really know what tomorrow holds at all. But I do know that if I am walking through tomorrow, it will be with Jesus. Tomorrow and every day, until I go Home or He comes again.

::

And today's links from the High Calling Advent Writing Project --

Connie's Living in Advent: crying in the wild places . . .
Michelle DeRusha's The Awakening
Angi's A Desperate Need

Post edited from the archives - this is what I was thinking about on Week 2, Day 4 of Advent 2009. Remarkable how much things are the same, and how much things have changed.

Photo by josecarrizo, via Flickr, used with permission under the Creative Commons License.

Week 2, Day 3: He Waits with Us

2011-12-06T19:01:00.000-05:00

This past weekend was busy with activity, some of it holiday-related - Christmas open houses and Christmas parties - some of it was just normal busyness - visiting an art exhibition, shopping, lunch with friends.

But despite the otherwise hectic schedule, Sunday afternoon and evening was completely free. It happened accidentally, if you must know. Before I could get tickets for a Christmas concert at my church, they all sold out. So even though most of my friends were attending, I wasn't.

And by the end of a busy Saturday, I had looked ahead to Sunday with relief.

"I'm actually glad I'm not going to the concert," I had told a woman at church Sunday morning. "I now have the whole afternoon and evening free."

But as the afternoon wore on, and I sat watching Christmas movies, sipping hot cocoa, and lighting the Advent candles by myself, the house felt cold and my heart felt empty.

But I'm slowing down, taking time for the season, letting Advent really soak in, I tried telling my sad little soul. Enjoy this time! But when I tried to call friends I thought would not be at the concert and instead got their voicemail, then I just got angry with myself: it's just one evening. Can't you be alone for even one evening without feeling sorry for yourself?

When Jesus ascended after the resurrection and left his disciples to wait for his return, he never meant for them to wait alone.

That's why he built His church.

But Jesus knows the truth about being human, that sometimes we can be the most lonely when we are surrounded by peopl, or on the one afternoon we've spent alone in weeks.

That's why He sent His Spirit.

It's good to be with friends and family during the holidays. It's good to love each other and encourage each other and point each other to the Manger and say, 'Ah ha! All things are possible with God.'

But it's also good to be alone this season. It's good to remember the lonely road from Nazareth to Bethlehem, from Jerusalem to Golgotha. It's good to point to the man there, alone on the cross, and say, "Oh Lord, you do know my pain.'

We wait for Him together. We wait for Him alone.

He waits with us.

More stories about Advent, from the High Calling Advent Writing Project:

Amber Baker's introduction to Advent
High Calling Social Media Editor, Dan King's Because He Came, We Have Hope
Contemplating Advent 1 at A Contemplative Space

Photo by billaday, via Flickr, used with permission under the Creative Commons License.

Week 2, Day 2: Now What?

2011-12-05T16:33:00.000-05:00

At holiday parties over the weekend, I saw some friends I hadn't seen in a while.

Even as we were catching up, talking about work and family and church activities, I knew the dreaded question would come. It's always well-meaning, and it always makes me feel cared for. But my answer never satisfies anyone. Including myself.

"So, you're doing great. Now what?" they always say, wanting, like me, for there to be a pill to take or a test to run or a diet to adjust to - anything - that will make the cancer stay away for good.

But unfortunately, the wanting doesn't make it so. Instead, I am left to say, "Well, I am going to just keep on living."

Once, I told someone who asked "now what?" that "I just wait for the cancer to come back." But really, that's not what I'm doing. Maybe in the past it was, but now, I try not to even think about cancer.

Except that cancer changes everything. It changes how I think about the future; it changes how I think about right now. So, I try not to even think about cancer except for the hundreds of times each day I do.

In a strange way, I think having cancer has given me a unique insight into waiting for Jesus.

I could just stop everything and spend every minute waiting. Or, I can keep on living, thinking about Jesus' return all the time. Except of course during the times I am not.

That's the difference, between being an Advent Christian and a cancer survivor. Though I think about both a lot, I try to think of one more and one less.

So, you are celebrating Advent, now what?

Just keep on living.

The living makes the waiting a lot easier.

::

We've had an amazing response to the High Calling Advent Writing Project. There's still time to link up your post, if you'd like to participate. All links must be submitted by this Wednesday, December 7.

I am going to be posting links to one or two posts a day over the rest of Advent.

Patricia's Trying on Advent at Lovepats
KD Sullivan's What do C.S. Lewise, Madeleine L'Engle, and Desmund Tutu Have in Common? at Journey Towards Epiphany

Photo by James Marvin Phelps, via Flickr, used with permission under the Creative Commons License.

Second Sunday of Advent

2011-12-04T09:08:00.000-05:00

Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to

preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation:

Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins,

that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our

Redeemer; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy

Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

-- from the Book of Common Prayer

Week 1, Day 7: Light

2011-12-03T18:11:00.000-05:00

The first week of Advent is ending with the light fading in the evening sky.

The days grow shorter now, and the light hours seem fewer and fewer.

Advent began in darkness last Sunday, with rain and snow dropping from the clouds that kept us from the sun.

But by Wednesday, as the light from my candles grew brighter and brighter, the sun hung full and bright.

We know dark days are coming - this knowledge makes the light days more needful.

And it makes the flicker from the wicks like beacons, keeping us on course as we journey through the waiting.

Week 1, Day 6: Waiting Interrupted

2011-12-02T06:00:00.001-05:00

I ran hot water in the kitchen sink and filled it up all sudsy and clean until I began to stack in the greasy plates and mugs with hot cocoa stuck in the bottom. The dirty dishes had been accumulating all week while I've been singing carols and lighting candles and writing about this season of anticipation.

While I've been waiting on the Christ child, the mess in the kitchen has been waiting on me.

But it's not just the kitchen.

First things first. Tilly bounced around the house barking and wiggling as I pulled her leash off the hook. With the rain and the snow and all the busyness cranking up around here, I haven't taken her on a good long walk for days. She needs the lap around the neighborhood regularly to help burn off some of that energy. When she doesn't get her walks, she starts eating heirloom afghans again. She's two for two, now.

When we returned home from our walk and the dishes were washed and stacked to air dry, I tackled the floors, first sweeping the hardwoods and linoleum, then vacuuming the carpet.

There's more to be done. Laundry is piled up high; I still haven't put away all the flower pots and windchimes outside; and there's always stacks of clutter to tend. But those can wait.

At least a little while longer.

This season of waiting can become all too sparkly and romantic if I don't remember that real life goes on even while the candles flicker and the twinkle lights of the Christmas tree glow.

Waiting for Jesus was never meant to be an isolated event, relegated to a cathedral. Waiting for Jesus, the real waiting, happens elbow-deep in the dish water, or on the wrong end of a dog leash half way across the subdivision.

Advent Season will end in a few weeks, when we will all be gathered with friends and family openings gifts and eating baked ham.

But the waiting on Jesus will continue. And life, right along with it.

Photo by lakewentworth, via Flickr, used with permission under the Creative Commons License.

Week 1, Day 5: Sleep

2011-12-01T08:00:00.001-05:00

Four little flames are all aflicker in my Advent candle arrangement this evening.

I didn't realize when I hatched the idea of lighting a candle every day of Advent, that I might actually be able to relight the previous night's candles so that on Saturday of each week, seven candles, then 14, then 21, and then 28 will be lit. I didn't think there would be enough wax in those first candles to light them night after night after night. Mostly because I failed to account for how busy I would be during this season.

By the time I actually light the candles, they burn for just a few minutes before it's time to blow them out and head to bed.

What is it about the days between Thanksgiving and Christmas that makes a schedule go bezerk? During other months, I can say no to too many requests; I have boundaries that I respect. But during Advent, I say 'yes' to everything. Dinners out, appetizers and games, shopping with friends, Christmas programs, birthday celebrations: yes, yes, yes. I say 'yes' to everything.

It's just day four of Advent, though, and already I am growing weary.

So, I am giving myself an Advent gift tonight. I am going to bed.

While the more typical Advent stance is watchfulness, attentiveness, alertness, tonight my prayer is that when the Lord returns, he will find faith on the earth. And the greatest act of faith I can accomplish this evening is to lay down my head, breathe in and breathe out, and taste the sweet death of sleep.

When I wake, I will still be waiting.

Week 1, Day 4: Real

2011-11-30T06:00:00.007-05:00

On a cool November evening, I walked up to my friends' house, just a couple of minutes late for dinner because of the rush hour traffic. They had invited a couple of us to share some leftovers, and I was hungry.

As I approached the door, I noticed the beautiful potted flowers sitting on their porch. So beautiful. Too beautiful for this late in the fall. These mums were full and bright, lively oranges and rich magentas. My mums sitting in front of my house all had withered blossoms and wilted leaves.

Are those real? I thought to myself, as I leaned over close enough to see that there was real dirt in the pot. So just before I rang the doorbell, I reached over and rubbed one of the leaves between my fingers. Then I touched one of the blossoms just to be sure. They were silky.

Artificial flowers, I said under my breath, marveling at how real they looked. I need to remember that.

After dinner, we were sitting around drinking decaf coffee and enjoying bowls full of hot apple crisp with vanilla ice cream. The conversation turned to plants, as my friend had a potted succulent waiting to be transplanted. We each talked about our experiences with plants, how watering regularly confounded us, how certain greenery had nearly done us in.

"What did you think of my flowers on the front porch?" my friend asked.

I felt the blood rise to my face. Had she seen me through the window, stooping down to rub the leaves between my fingers?

"Why, did you see me?" I asked, believing myself to be caught.

"What? No," she said. "Wait, what do you mean?"

"Before I rang the doorbell, I touched them," I confessed. "They were too beautiful for this time of the year to be real. Did you see me touch them?"

We all laughed. No one had seen me; had I played it cool, my secret touch could have remained just that: secret.

The real joke was that apparently the real trick to keeping beautiful flowers on the porch all year round was adjusting for the seasons, and my friend was just a little behind the cold front that had swept over our city just a few days before.

"Next week I'm switching to something for Christmas," she said, as though she was preparing me.

I'll still probably touch the poinsettias next time I stop by. Just to be sure.

I've been thinking of that sneaky feel of the front porch flowers this week as we get started with Advent.

Every time I light the candles (I'm lighting them every day of Advent this year, not just Sundays), I feel like I'm taking a little bit of heaven between my fingers, feeling to see if it's real.

And so far, every time, the answer is "yes."

I met Christine Keegan last week with There and Back Again. This week, she is writing about Advent. Visit her here.

You might also enjoy High Calling blogger Suzie Lind's post, The First Candle.

And don't forget to join our writing project by slipping your URL into the link up in this Advent post.

Photo by neoliminal, via Flickr, used with permission under the Creative Commons License.

Week 1, Day 3: Roots

2011-11-29T06:00:00.003-05:00

Friends were coming for dinner Sunday to light the first Advent candle, so I decided to make stew - a thick, rich stew full of root vegetables and hearty chunks of beef.

Saturday, I had purchased four long, skinny yams from an Amish farmer with a bowl haircut. His stand at the farmers market had a wooden box filled with yams, though the sign said "sweet potatoes." I was relieved to have found them, yams being one of four items on my list.

So as the beef simmered on the stove, I peeled and sliced the yams directly into the pot. I was surprised by the light colored flesh beneath the dirty peel. All the way in the center of the sweet potato disks was the orange color I had expected. This must be a different variety of yam, I thought to myself, curious about the words "yam" and "sweet potato" and how easily I interchanged them.

With the yams sliced and the beef browned, I chopped a bit of onion and celery, letting those saute for a minute or two before I covered it all with water and turned the burner up a little. I wanted to get to a boil quickly to make the broth thick and to get the yams soft.

Next I peeled the carrots.

The white and orange carrots I pulled from the refrigerator came from my own garden just about three weeks ago. My heart swelled as I had pulled and dug them from the ground, the first carrots I had every grown successfully. It had more to do with indifference than know-how, though.

My garden didn't do well this summer, and when news of my cancer recurrence came in mid-July, the raised beds were mostly left to fend for themselves. I picked handfuls of cherry tomatoes here and there, but the lettuce burned up, the beans shriveled on the vine, and the yellow peppers turned red.

But all along, the carrot tops stayed perky and green. Every once in a while I would walk past the garden and see the head of a carrot peeking out of the dirt, but since I've never been able to grow carrots in the past, I wasn't too excited. They're either growing down there or they're not, I'd think to myself apathetically, but if I pull them now, I'll never know what might have been.

So, a few weeks ago, when it was time to toss the wilted tomato vines into the compost pile and put the spindly pepper plants out of their misery, I decided it was judgment day for the carrots, as well. As long as they were hidden in the dirt there was hope. But they weren't doing anyone any good staying down there forever.

As I scrubbed and chopped the carrots into the pan Sunday, I thought about how fun it had been to dig root after root, some of them the size of cigars, other more like cigarettes, but all of them grown from seeds I had planted.

After the carrots, I chopped small red potatoes into the pot, then I dumped in tomatoes from the freezer, extras from a summer past, and a few frozen green beans. As the stewed heated up, I added salt, curry, and cumin, then a few bay leaves as is my tradition.

Then, the lid went on and I waited. Root vegetables take time to cook, but they are so worth it.

::

Can't get enough of Advent? Check out what others are writing about:

Michelle Derusha is hosting an Advent Link up every Monday during the season, read yesterday's The Awakening.
BibleDude.net is posting on Advent throughout the season, including The Already/Not Yet of Advent.
My new friend Sue Palmer also is writing about Advent all season long

Photo by color line,via Flickr, used with permission under the Creative Commons License.

Week 1, Day 2: Advent Writing Project

2011-11-28T06:00:00.005-05:00

I walked around the party supply store for more than 30 minutes on a November Sunday looking at candles.

I pulled out long, gold taper candles wrapped in cellophane, looking them over for just a few seconds before returning them to the bin. They weren’t what I was looking for. I marched up and down the Christmas aisles filled with ornaments and garlands and plastic chargers for decorating the table.

But again and again I returned to the wedding display studying a box of twelve votive candles in small glass holders for just $9.99. There was something appealing about this deal on votives that I couldn’t shake, but still I didn’t have a vision yet.

I was shopping for Advent candles.

The easy thing to do would have been to drive to one of the Christian bookstores in the area on Monday afternoon and pick up a pre-packaged set of candles, three purple and one pink. Then I could have sprung for a white pillar at the party store for the Christ candle and I would be ready for Advent. I even have a metal Advent wreath designed to hold just such a combination of candles.

But for the past few years, designing a unique display for the candles has become as much a part of the Advent tradition as actually lighting them. And the odds were good this year that my display would have something to do with votives, 12 for $10.

I first celebrated Advent when I was a junior in college. Our new campus pastor introduced the ancient observance into our thrice-weekly chapel services, inviting professors and their families to light candles and read scripture as a way to prepare our hearts for considering the incarnation.

That first Advent was a very non-traditional entrée of the tradition for our campus. The candles were not purple and pink; they were gold, white, green, and purple, representing prophets, angels, shepherds, and wise men. We didn’t read scripture or pray from the Common book, and we never met on a single Sunday.

But I was a young adult trying to ground myself in a faith tradition. The church where my faith was born claimed “Baptist” in its name. While a student, I attended church with friends wherever I could find a ride. Each Sunday was different: Methodist, Pentecostal, Wesleyan and non-denominational churches. But none of them became home.

In Advent, however, a ritual that had been repeated by Christians for centuries, I found myself.

I was an Advent Christian.

But with no other experiences to help shape my view of what an Advent observance looks like, I was left to research and imagine for myself. Every year, I pull out the Book of Common Prayer and pray the prayers and read the scriptures. But it’s not because I’ve ever been at a church that did that. In fact, I bought my prayer book at Borders after reading A Prayer for Owen Meany back in the 90s.

And I usually invite friends over on Sundays in December to eat soup and sing Christmas carols, though I’ve heard that Advent purists would never dream of singing a Christmas carol until Christmas Eve. Or is it Christmas Day?

But my real connection with Advent is the light of the candles, the flame kept burning until Christmas, the flame we fan in our own hearts until He comes again.

Whatever else Advent may be to me, it’s always about the candles.

Even as I grabbed a couple of boxes of the discounted white votives, I remembered my desire last year to return to the more traditional colors of Advent as a way to set this time apart from Christmas, a season of ubiquitous red and green.

With the boxes in hand, I returned to the aisle where the gentleman on the ladder was stocking merchandize. Twice he had offered his assistance.

“Are you sure there’s not something I can help you find?” he asked.

“No thank you, I’m trying to catch a vision for something,” I told him.

Then I saw the multicolored votives in the area where he had been standing.

“Actually, how much are those?” I asked, pointing to the purple and pink ones especially. I had done a quick glance at the calendar to realize that the 24 white candles would be enough for each weekday of Advent. If I bought colored candles for Sundays, I could do something really different this year.

A candle for every day of Advent.

As the man did a price check and I let the vision grow, I found beautiful pink and purple candles holders, just the right size for a votive.

I grabbed a basket for my purchases and checked out happily.

It took some work, but now I was ready for Advent.

Now, it’s your turn to share about a story about Advent.

I have the privilege of hosting a group-writing project for The High Calling here at Wide Open Spaces. And you, my friends, are invited to participate. Here’s how:

1 —Think of an Advent tradition that you continue to reinvent year after year. It could be something old you do for Advent year after year or something new you are doing for Advent just this year. Or consider an old Advent truth they are reminded of again this year or a new truth you have been learning for the first time.

2 — Write about those Advent traditions or lessons on your blog, using rich description and story.

3 — Return here – any time before Wednesday, December 7 — and link your story in the space below so we can find you. Be sure to link back to this specific post from your blog.

4 — On December 12, I will feature some of your posts here. And my fellow High Calling editor (Laura Boggess) and I may also feature some of your stories over at The High Calling!

By the way, if you are looking for other good resources about the Advent Season, check out Mark D. Roberts' new eBook Discovering Advent. I downloaded it yesterday and am enjoying it already. You can also read an interview with the author by High Calling editor Marcus Goodyear.

First Sunday of Advent

2011-11-27T08:00:00.001-05:00

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of

darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of

this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit

us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come

again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the

dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives

and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and

for ever. Amen.
--from The Book of Common Prayer

There and Back Again: Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T08:39:00.000-05:00

It's Thanksgiving, and where I lack in gratitude the other 364 days of the year, I certainly try to make up for on this day. All morning, I have been thinking about the things I am grateful for.

I am grateful for Tilly, curled up on the bed with me. She and I have come a long way this year.
I am grateful for my family. We've survived a lot of ups and downs this year.
I am grateful for friends who have walked a difficult year with me.
And speaking of difficult years, I am grateful to have come out on the other side of cancer treatment as a survivor. For the third time.

These are the biggies. There are a million other little things I am grateful for every day; today it is flannel sheets and crisp air and the little hunger pang in my stomach and the prospect of a lot of food in my near future.

But I don't want today to be just about the tangibles.

In her post, "Thanksgiving? Yes, Please," High Calling blogger Christine Keegan grabs hold of a different kind of gratitude, one that doesn't just look around but looks beyond.

So this Thanksgiving, I am thinking on the great provisions our family has received. Provisions that have little to do with home or food or clothing or the presence of others, though we daily give thanks for all those things. Each and every one of us are beneficients of the beauty around us- and we do well to name those things. Yet, when the beauty fades, He remains and therein is a provision that will never run dry. "Whoever drinks of the water that I give him will never be thirsty again," He told the perplexed little woman at the well. And I find myself often looking at him with that same confused stare, "Really? Is it really going to be enough? You are really going to be enough?... even without all these things I'm pretty sure I need in order not to thirst?"

It's about more than just counting my blessings. It's about counting on my Blesser. Am I truly thankful for Him?

Last night at the Thanksgiving worship service at my church, we sang songs and read scripture and heard testimonies of gratitude. Over and over we thanked God for all that he has done, and I was reminded of the word "Ebeneezer" I had meditated on earlier this year, which means, "Til now the Lord has helped us." I was filled with gratitude for all he has done.

But then we sang one more song, "I Thank You," a song not just about what God has done in the past, but what he will do. In the future.

I'm sure there's a risk involved in spending too much time being grateful for the future. In the meantime, I might miss a whole lot of right now to be thankful for. But maybe a better way to say it is that I am thoroughly grateful for hope, that wonderful reality that whatever happens tomorrow will be made good in the hands of a Redeemer.

Go THERE and visit Christine Keegan, and then come back HERE again!

Join me for regular jaunts around The High Calling network, randomly visiting fellow bloggers, soaking up their words and ideas, and then coming back here to write about them from my perspective.

Each Thursday, consider going "There and Back Again" yourself. It's simple.

Photo by Stew Dean via Flickr, used with permission under the Creative Commons License.

Forward and Backward

2011-11-22T20:06:00.001-05:00

Forward and backward, forward and backward. I pushed the carpet shampooer forward and backward as I cleaned the rugs in my living room and hallway.

With a dog in the house, my mom thought I needed to have my own Bissell hot water cleaner, so she bought it for me as a gift a few years ago. Every couple of months, I load up the machine with soap and water, and give my carpet a once over.

This time, as always, the process resulted in a couple of buckets of muddy brown water which I dumped down the toilet. "I live in squalor," I think to myself every time. I'm amazed by the dirt that sinks deep into my carpet, unnoticeable until it's significant enough to be a real problem.

On Saturday, as I pushed the shampooer up and down the hallway and back and forth in the living, spraying hot, soapy water, then sucking it back up, Tilly, my one-year-old black Lab watched with fascination. She approached the machine curiously, sniffing at it and then falling back on her haunches as if she might attack it. This wasn't the first time she had seen the machine in action, but it was the first time in a while.

I might add that it's mostly her dirt that I was cleaning up. I'm not the one that carries sticks in with my mouth then crunches them into small wooden splinters all over the carpet. I'm not the one that runs in from outside with muddy feet or crunches up dog biscuits over the carpet, even though the wood floor is just inches away. It's not my hair that coats the carpet and makes me wish I owned stock in the company that manufactures carpet bags.

This is why it was so very ironic that after analyzing the carpet cleaner for a while and determining that it was no threat to her that Tilly plopped down for a little nap right in the middle of the very carpet I was trying to clean.

The irony of wallowing in her own squalor was lost to her. The reality that I was cleaning up her mess while she laid in the middle of it also meant nothing to her. As far as Tilly new, the carpet warmed by the heated water made a great place for a nap. I stood there shaking my head.

Then I started nodding.

Tilly had learned from the best of us.

There and Back Again: Night Things

2011-11-16T22:21:00.000-05:00

I was laying in my bed; it was 2 a.m.; I was awake.

About two hours earlier, my one-year-old black Labrador Retriever, Tilly, crawled out from under the covers where she was sleeping with me, and vomited right on top of the quilt. I was initially disgusted, then I was frustrated, then I realized she hadn't thrown up much. And it was the "dog" quilt, afterall -- a bed covering I had once loved, but now used just because it already had stains and chewed holes in it.

When Tilly is older and no longer eating bits of sticks from the yard and used tissues from the garbage, and when she's finished with the annoying habit of chewing on things like heirloom afghans and bed quilts because she's bored, I'll have a nicer duvet to snuggle up with. But that night, the double-sided blue quilt had been on duty until very recently. Now it was wadded up in a pile on the laundry room floor.

Just a few minutes earlier, Tilly threw up a second time. Thankfully, she had jumped down from the bed and landed on the rug. The worn, hard-wood flooring in my 1959 mid-century modern home is cold in the winter, even with the crawl space beneath the house that is warmed by the duct work. I bought an old rag rug on an annual shopping trip with family more than a year ago. The blues, yellows, and purples woven together make a warmer resting spot for my feet in the morning than the bare wood.

When I would get up for work later that morning, I wouldn't have the luxury of the woven rug. It was laying on top of the quilt on the laundry room floor wet with stomach bile. And a few pumpkin seeds I fed Tilly from my hand a few hours earlier.

One vomiting episode was troubling, but after the second one, I began to get worried. Had Tilly eaten something that was now blocking her digestive system? My lab, Precious, who passed away just a year ago had had such an obstruction just a week after she had come to live with me years ago. The memory and the concern kept me awake for hours that night. That, and the chirping of the smoke detector.

For two days it had chirped, and I kept forgetting to buy a new battery. Every time I would begin to doze off, worries about my sleeping puppy snoring restlessly next to me subsiding just for a minute, then the chirping.

I'm going to write about this, I thought, after I had checked email, turned on the radio, turned off the radio, watched YouTube Videos on my iPhone, turned the radio back on, changed the station of the radio.

Chirp.

I'm definitely going to write about this.

And here I sit, writing about that night, the expired battery from the smoke detector sitting on the table next to me. I still haven't replaced it; the chirping had just become too much to leave it in the device. I'm praying there's no fire before I have a chance to get to the hardware store.

Even as I was lying there in bed planning to write about that night, my mind was attempting to catalog the details, just like LL Barkat teaches in her writing book, Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity and Writing. When her daughter comes to her with a poem about night, LL determines that what the poem lacks is specificity.

"Anyone could say that about the night. I wonder how you could say something that others might not say?" she tells her. "Make a list of night things."

I lay there in my bed, paying attention. Country music playing on the clock radio beside the bed; the piece of chewed-up pink plastic toy in Tilly's vomit; the rush of rain knocking against the window and then stopping abruptly.

These I remember now. But I lay there for hours, listening, observing, and most of the details of that night were lost to me the minute my mind finally submitted to the death of sleep. The weave of the rug, the mid-century modern, the restless snoring - these details I recalled just this evening, piecing together the sequence, going back to the room in my mind, and making that list of night things.

As a young writer, I often balked at specificity. It seemed so exclusive. What I failed to see, though, was that these details of mine, these lists I make about the night things, they speak directly to the lists you are making about your own life.

My house is mid-century modern; your house is arts and crafts. I have worn hardwood floors; you have new grey carpet. I am awake at night worrying about my puppy; you are up worrying about your son. Everything is different; everything is the same.

I stumbled upon this beautiful specificity in a piece by Caroline Collie called, "I Know This Place." While she currently lives in South Africa, she grew up in North Carolina, and recently visited "home" with her family.

I don’t remember the leaves turning such a brilliant shade of yellow. I never saw a hummingbird do a dance like the one I saw last week. Back and forth in swoops that might’ve made infinity symbols in the air if he could paint it along the way — he must’ve been trying to impress somebody. He got me.

I was transported. To her home, with the leaves and the hummingbird. But also to the home of my childhood, to the climbing tree in front and the pony named Princess and my downstairs bedroom that sat empty at night while I took the bottom bunk of my brother's stacked beds upstairs.

Tilly vomited one more time that night. There's was almost nothing left in her, so it was easy to clean up. By that time, however, I had been awake three hours making lists of night things in my mind. The yawns were coming more frequently now.

Though I was worried about whether or not I would need to make an appointment with the vet the next morning and whether or not the new blanket I had draped over the bed was destined for the laundry room floor, I found myself nodding and jerking with the first signs of sleep. Tilly snuggled tight next to me, and my breaths became prayers.

Breathing in, "More of Jesus," breathing out, "less of me."

Waking up the next morning, I wondered if the whole thing had been a dream. When my feet hit the cold, wooden floor, it all came back to me.

Go THERE and visit Caroline Collie , and then come back HERE again!

Join me for regular jaunts around The High Calling network, randomly visiting fellow bloggers, soaking up their words and ideas, and then coming back here to write about them from my perspective.

Each Thursday, consider going "There and Back Again" yourself. It's simple.

Photo by JustinMN via Flickr, used with permission under the Creative Commons License.

Two Gratitudes

2011-11-14T20:50:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, my friend Kelly and I attended a live production of It's a Wonderful Life.

With such a classic story from the movie we all watch during the holiday season, I wondered whether a local cast could pull it off. All morning I was doing my best Jimmy Stewart impression, "Mary, Mary!" my gravelly voice spoken through crooked lips.

I mean, really, how could they find a George Bailey even close to the caliber of Jimmy?

But despite familiarity working against them, the cast pulled off an entertaining show, with more music and dancing than I remember from the movie. And even though I had tried to forget it, the guy who played Sam Wainwright did the "Heehaw!" just as annoyingly as Frank Albertson in the movie.

I had forgotten how much of the show is set up as background to the real plot: George Bailey standing on a bridge contemplating suicide. When it came time for Clarence, his guardian angel, to show George what life would have been like without him, I had already determined what a wonderful life he had. It took George just a little longer.

When he makes it back home and is surrounded by his family and friends from Bedford Falls, George is full of gratitude for what he has rather than bitterness for what he gave up. Having seen the trajectory of the lives of his loved ones without him, George realizes his contribution was greater and his sacrifice smaller than he realized.

George Bailey was the second man I learned about on Sunday who faced his life head on and walked away grateful.

Earlier that day, my pastor, Mark Vroegop, preaching from 1 Timothy, talked about the gratitude of Paul, not born of his own sacrifice, but His Lord's.

I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength, that he considered me trustworthy, appointing me to his service. Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief. The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. -- 1 Timothy 1:12-14

Had these two men not been laid out before me on the same day, I might never have seen it. But there it was: two different gratitudes. One, human-centered: my life is not at bad as I thought it was. The other, God-centered: my life is even worse than I thought, but God's grace is even greater.

George Bailey reveals the best in people; Paul reveals the best in Jesus.

It is a wonderful life.

There and Back Again: Litany

2011-11-10T21:55:00.001-05:00

The very night I finished radiation, I joined a gym. It was on my list, right before, "Get Pizza for Dinner." When I mentioned the pizza to the guy who was registering my gym membership, he said lots of people do that. Go hog wild the night they join a gym.

But it wasn't like that for me. Eating pizza wasn't hog wild. It was just a way to keep living.

Although cancer treatment is no picnic, the days and months following the treatment have been hardest for me in the past. While I am seeing doctors and having blood tests and being radiated every day, I feel like I'm fighting the disease. When it stops, I feel like a sitting duck for cancer to return.

After my first and toughest cancer treatment, I stopped planning, lived one day at a time for months on end, telling every person who invited me to dinner or asked me to a movie for the upcoming weekend that I wasn't sure if I could make it. I might not be alive then was what I was thinking, as if never planning anything was much of a life.

This time around, I am trusting the Lord for something different. Not only am I planning, I'm planning big and long, not because there are any guarantees but because the abundant life Jesus promised me starts here and now and has nothing to do with fear and doubt.

A few weeks before my surgery back in August, my friend Kelly was watching the Cars 2 movie with her sons and decided she and I should plan a trip to Italy. (Apparently there are some animated panoramas of the Italian countryside in the film that can leave a mother dreaming!) So, today, Kelly texted me and said she had started her Italy savings fund. Italy is officially on the list.

So is attending the Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin College next Spring and taking another crack at writing a book and training this silly puppy of mine to quit jumping.

This is not a bucket list. These aren't things I have to do before I die. These are things I have to do if I want to keep on living. This list is really just a prayer in disguise: Lord, keep me hoping.

Past experience tells me it would be easier to make a different kind of list, to number one by one all the things cancer has taken from me. Don't get me wrong: I've made those lists in the past.

In her post, "How Our Litanies Shape Us," Stephanie Smith talks about this kind of catalog of complaints and what that can do to a soul.

This week I discovered there is another kind of litany. If a litany of naming all things good and beautiful directs us into grace, then a litany of complaints deforms us. I have been cataloging my complaints and I am afraid they are becoming ingrained in my living. But counting faults and keeping score is tiring. And I don’t like the fact that I so willingly spend myself on counting and collecting injuries, when I could find freedom in simply letting them go.

If this new list of mine, or litany as Stephanie refers to it, is really about living, then it can't just have the big things on it. Trips to Italy and writing books can motivate for a while, but those goals are so far away, and I have a lot of living to do in the meantime.

My litany needs to include things like writing letters to my nieces and nephews, painting canvases with my friend Sarah, reading good books, memorizing Scripture, walking Tilly every day. I need to write down every single one of those things on the list, and then I need to hand it to Jesus. Is this what you want my life to look like?

Stephanie writes:

Litanies are monologues of human wants and needs, the simplicity of which serves to keep us distracted souls in dialogue with our Christ and Creator, and the repetition of which serves to ingrain the pattern of our prayer into the pattern of our living.

This afternoon, as I was finishing up an appointment with my oncologist, he was talking about all the new doctors he was hiring for his practice, and I asked him if there was a retirement in his near future.

"Oh, I don't know. I still want to work, I just want lots of time off in the summer," he said, kind of chuckling.

"Well, then, I just need to plan my cancer recurrences for the Spring or Fall then, huh?" I chuckled myself.

"No, you just need to retire from cancer recurrences altogether," he said. "It's very possible that's what you've done."

We shook hands and he left.

Breathing hope into others, I thought. That's going on the list, too.

Go THERE and visit Stephanie Smith, and then come back HERE again!

Join me for regular jaunts around The High Calling network, randomly visiting fellow bloggers, soaking up their words and ideas, and then coming back here to write about them from my perspective.

Each Thursday, consider going "There and Back Again" yourself. It's simple.

Photo by Lel4nd, via Flickr, used with permission under the Creative Commons License.

The Gospel of Matthew: God with Us

2011-11-08T05:30:00.009-05:00

Friday was my day off.

I had arranged with work to be gone; I had arranged with the cancer center to come early for my radiation appointment; and I had arranged with my family to spend a few hours with them on an annual trip to Nashville, Ind.

I had arranged everything.

Except the flat tire. As I drove the hospital in the dark Friday morning, I could tell something was desperately wrong with the car. The loud grinding noise and the sluggish dragging feeling did not immediately indicate "flat tire" to me, a vehicular idiot.

But since the hospital was less than a mile from my house, and to pull over on the side of the road in the dark seemed more dangerous than carrying on, that's what I did. Carry on, all the way to the hospital, on a very flat tire.

That was not part of my plan.

But after going ahead with the treatment and then making a few phone calls, I had a new plan in place. A plan that involved roadside assistance and tire patches and a two-hour delay, but a plan that also involved sovereignty and mercy and a whole lot of gratitude. That nail in my tire meant it would be flat eventually. Either a mile from my house, or going 70 mph on the interstate.

As I waited in various places throughout the morning, I took the opportunity to read a couple of chapters of the new commentary on the book of Matthew that I recently received in the mail. My friend, Ed Cyzewski, had invited me to participate in a blog tour for IVP's new The Gospel of Matthew: God with Us, in their Resonate Series of commentaries.

As I read Matthew 7-8 in my Bible, then began digging into the new book, I realized right away what made this series different than other commentaries I had read. This one provided a sense of application, and with my tire deflated as I read, I found myself the subject of Jesus' teaching.

Attempting to keep the parking spot next to me free for the wrecker driver who would need to jack up the car, I kindly asked a woman who pulled into the spot if she would mind moving, as much for the sake of her own car as for mine.

She huffed at me, visibly perturbed, said, "Fine," with exasperation, pulling to a spot even closer to the building.

I'm the one with the flat tire, I thought. I'm the one having a bad day. What an unkind person. Yet there I was reading author Matt Woodley's commentary on Matthew 7:1, "Do not judge so that you will not be judged."

In this passage, Jesus quietly dismantles an insidious cycle that operates in human hearts and communities: the cycle of condemnation and judgment. In this cycle I don't just judge moral behaviors; I judge you. And then based on my incomplete, hasty and harsh judgment, I devalue and then exclude you from my life or the life of our community.

I was sitting in the parking lot of a cancer center, after all. Chances are, her day WAS worse then mine. Or at least just as bad.

Over and over again as I read, the commentary invited me to understand the text and then consider how my life might be changed by it, flat tires and all. And I found myself eagerly accepting that invitation.

Throughout the commentary of Matthew chapters 7 and 8, Woodley told stories of pizza restaurant owners and atheist neighbors, but he also explained the Greek derivation for the word "perish" in Matthew 8:25, and he explained the Old Testament significance of the phrase "Son of Man."

Make no mistake, this series is not academic. I didn't get a sense that I could read the commentary and conjugate Greek verbs or understand all of the controversy surrounding different interpretations of the synoptic gospels. There are other commentaries for that.

But I did feel like I could read the Bible for understanding, then turn to the Resonate series for help in the difficult passages. And definitely find a way for my own life and the Bible to intersect.

I thought of this commentary again Sunday as the cashier at the restaurant where I was having lunch rang up our order incorrectly. And this after several minutes of trying to explain what we wanted. When I tried to get some money back, she blamed my friend and I for telling her to ring it up incorrectly. I was getting frustrated.

"Never mind," I said angrily as I walked away. She's obviously not cut out for this job, I thought.

But then my friend, Kelly, and I started talking with her two young sons, Alex and Jensen, about what we had learned at church that morning. When I mentioned the word "gospel," Kelly asked the boys if they knew what it meant.

After they offered a few answers, I said, "Gospel means good news. It's good news that Jesus died for us and didn't count our sins against us. That's why we need to treat others with generosity because that's how Jesus treated us."

I was cut to the quick. My attitude toward the restaurant worker had been far from gospel-saturated.

When Alex asked for another taco, I took him up to the counter, helped him order, and as I was paying, I got the attention of the clerk. "I just wanted to apologize for being rude earlier," I said. "Will you forgive me?"

"It's ok. Do you understand what happened now," she asked, wanting to make sure I realized that she was right. I was tempted to get back into the same argument. But for the sake of the Gospel, I decided instead to just say, "Everything's ok now. Thank you." Then I put $2 in the empty tip jar and walked back to the table.

"If we begin the spiritual journey in poverty," Woodley writes of the end of Matthew 8, "knowing our dire need for grace, we will end up displaying gentleness and working for righteousness. Those who know and experience the Father's tender love cannot continue to treat others with cruelty or indifference. Once we taste the new wine of Jesus, we can't keep putting it back into those old wineskins of hypocrisy and disobedience."

I can't wait to read more. And I can't wait to meet Jesus on those pages.

I am writing today as part of IVP's blog tour promoting their new book, The Gospel of Matthew: God with Us, in their Resonate Series of commentaries. IVP provided me with a free copy of the book for participating in the tour and asked that I write honestly about my experiences with it. If you would like to read what others are writing about the book, visit the bloggers below on the blog tour (come back later in the week for additional links).

Part One
Chapters 1-2, Nov. 7, Darryl Dash

Chapters 3-4, Nov. 7, Todd Littleton
Part One Review by Dan King

Part Two

Chapters 5-6, Nov. 7 Jamie Arpin-Ricci

Chapters 7-8, Nov 8 Charity Singleton

Chapters 9-10, Nov 8 Todd Hiestand

Part Three

Chapter 11 Nov 8 Daniel Kirk

Chapter 12 Nov 9 Tim Ghali

Chapter 13 Nov 9 Ben Sternke

Chapter 14 Nov 9 David Phillips

Chapter 15 Nov 10 Ian Cameron McLaren

Part Four

Chapter 16 Nov 10 Alise McCoy Wright

Chapter 17 Nov 10 Thomas Turner

Chapter 18 Nov 11 Heather A Goodman

Chapter 19 Nov 11

Chapter 20 Nov 11

Chapter 21 Nov 14 Suzannah Paul

Chapter 22 Nov 14 Ray Hollenbach

Chapter 23 Nov 14 Christian Piatt

Chapter 24 Nov 15 Lisa DeLay

Chapter 25 Nov 15 Dan King

Part Five

Chapter 26 Nov 16 Christine Sine

Chapters 27-28 Nov 16 Jeremy Bouma

Making a Mess of Ministry

2011-11-07T06:41:00.001-05:00

As my pastor spoke on Sunday from 1 Timothy 1 about the series of bad decisions that can lead a person away from true Gospel ministry and toward a ministry of self-promotion, I couldn't help but think of this blog.

How easy it would be for me to follow the breadcrumbs of self-deceit to believe that my writing was actually something I should do simply to convince other people how great I am rather than to tell the stories of every day life that reveal the truth of God's redeeming work.

So, I'm writing this blog post for myself. You can keep reading if you want, but this post is a bulwark for me to protect me from what it is I am doing here. It's a billboard of sorts to remind me why it is I write as I pass by here each day. And it's a standard to help me decide whether or not it's ever time to quit for the Lord's sake. Or my own.

How to Make a Mess of Ministry

From a sermon by Pastor Mark Vroegop

Believe something passionately
Be fairly articulate
Gain a few followers
Be convinced you are special
Start to make over-confident, self-promoting statements that have little to do with the truth
Start to believe you've got all the answers
Become angry when people don't listen
Strategize for what you would do if you were in charge
Sow subtle seeds of discord
Become convinced that God is on your side
Become intoxicated with the mirror of ministry
Lose your way

I don't want to lose my way.

Photo by break.things, via Flickr, used with permission under the Creative Commons License.

Radiation: Day 23

2011-11-03T18:53:00.001-04:00

I walked out of work to head to my 23rd radiation appointment with more pep in my step than usual. For the past several days, the side effects of radiation have increased; nausea makes it harder for me to eat, fatigue makes it harder for me to stay active, intestinal cramping makes it harder for me to be comfortable.

But today, as I leave work, I know that I have only three more treatments. And a three-day weekend to help get me through these final days.

When I get to the waiting room, I see some of the usual suspects rounded up. There are rumors that the technicians are running ahead of schedule. Then there is a rumor that they are running late. Then, a patient is transported in by ambulance. He will probably get priority. I hear him in the hallway telling the techs he feels great today, "Morphine will do that for you."

I am not dissuaded. I have waited here before for my turn, long after the appointment time. Waiting again will not dampen my spirits. Not today.

Then, I listen to my voicemail. Ann is coming to wait with me; she's on her way. It's a surprise. I feel lighter, happier than I have in days.

When I am finally called back for my treatment, I am only thankful, even when it takes four tries to get me in the right position.

Yesterday, as they were getting me set up for treatment, I actually dozed off on the radiation table, even though I am desperately afraid of my arms flailing to the sides and being ripped off by the rotating cylinder that orbits my body.

Yesterday, they also had a hard time getting me on the table just right, and when the treatment finally started, it was all wrong. The machine normally starts beneath me, then rotates counter clockwise, over my right arm, across my abdomen, then around my left side - 360 degrees. Then, it comes back 75 degrees clockwise and the treatment is finished.

Yesterday, the machine started clockwise, and if they hadn't assured me later, I would have sworn I got a double dose.

That was yesterday.

Today, as they took xray after xray, trying to position me correctly so that the radiation would be administered in the proper area, I found myself singing out loud, tapping my feet, bobbing my head a little.

Just enough, apparently, that they reminded me to lie still.

"Time for

a cool change,

I know that it's time

for a cool change,

Now that my life

is so prearranged,

I know that it's time

for a cool change."

I sang along with the Little River Band on the Light Rock station playing in the room. I giggled to myself, wondering if they could hear me in the room around the corner with the camera where the techs sat safely away from the radioactive material.

After another adjustment to the table and another xray, I realized I was now singing a Bon Jovi song, also OUT LOUD, and this time, I didn't really care if they heard me.

"I'll be there for you, these five words I swear to you, when you breathe, I want to be the air for you, I'll be there for you."

I sang louder when I thought of Ann waiting down the hall for me and the friends and family who prayed me through these last few weeks and my Jesus who just never quits on me.

And then I really had to laugh as the Doobie Brothers hit the playlist. I laid there in a room by myself, completely exhausted and happy down deep, singing in my best 80s rock voice, "Give me the beat boys and free my soul, I wanna get lost in the rock and roll and drift away."

I wouldn't be falling asleep today.

Twenty-three down. Two to go.

Photo by LifeSupercharger, via Flickr, used with permission under the Creative Commons License.

Family Friends

2011-10-31T20:06:00.001-04:00

"I hope you like it," I told my brother as I went to the back room to get his birthday gift. "Because I'm trying to force something on you."

"It's probably something Republican," I heard our younger sister say as I walked to the spare bedroom of my dad's house. Forcing politics on him was the last thing on my mind, though. At least partisan politics.

What I was hoping to do, however, was to get my recently-turned 30-year-old brother back to reading and thinking after a few years out of college. Like most adults, becoming a husband, father, and career man left Nick little time for much reading at all, not to mention thinking about the issues of the day.

When we had talked about it a few weeks ago at our sister's wedding, I suggested he could even just subscribe to a magazine about current events, just read an article or two a week. After a college career of political science, and a curious mind that liked debate and philosophy, I knew if he just started back down that road he would find a niche again.

At the time, he had agreed. But I wasn't sure if he meant it. So, taking a chance, I got him a copy of the November Atlantic Monthly for his birthday, with the promise of a year's subscription if he likes it.

"I think it's actually kind of liberal," I said, smiling as I came back in the room. They didn't realize I had heard the Republican comment.

"Oh, and by the way," I said as I handed him the magazine. "I'd like to borrow it when you're done."

The conversation about reading and thinking had been interrupted that night by the minister's invitation to pray before the meal. We had been rehearsing for my sister's wedding, and we were now all spread across the banquet room of the local National Guard Armory. My future in-laws had catered the meal themselves.

I bowed my head to pray, sitting next to my brother who doesn't pray much. At least that I know about.

As the minister neared the "Amen," he said, "Thank you God for these friends we are gathered with." I felt myself nodding in agreement, until I realized that not one person there was my friend. They were all just family, or future family. And for those kind of folks - kin folks - the minister was silent.

When we looked up and around after the blessing, I looked straight at my brother.

"Do you think we'd be friends if we weren't related?" I asked, dead serious.

"Probably not," he said, meaning it.

"You're probably right," I said. "You'd think I was a prude."

"And you'd think I was a jack ass," he said.

We both laughed. No, we probably wouldn't be friends if we weren't siblings, we both agreed.

"But we might," I decided, wanting to defend the relationship we have worked hard on over the years. He, an agnostic, liberal, who drinks beer on the weekends and tells crude jokes, and me, a conservative, Christian who drinks lattes and attends Bible studies. We've worked hard to stay close, each being open minded toward the other, each knowing when to just be quiet.

One year for Christmas I bought him Barack Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope. Recently, he told me that if he had it to do all over again, he'd skip political science and become an evangelical preacher. "There's a lot of money in that," he told me, though the doctrine, the liturgy, and the clean living might be small hang ups for him.

Though our opinions differ, we often talk about labor law and immigration, big business and the environment. We swap work stories about office politics and corporate head aches. And we really love talking about his 2-year-old son and his beautiful new wife.

We're family. But we'd also probably be friends, I think.

Nick agreed. "Yeah, I think you're right, sis," he said, leaning back in his metal folding chair at the Armory. "I think we would be friends."

"But where would we meet?" I asked, laughing.

"Good question."

If a fish and a bird decided to be friends . . . you know the rest.

Before I ever handed my brother his Atlantic Monthly magazine for his birthday, and before he had gone shopping for scarves to give me for mine, we had already agreed we weren't giving each other birthday gifts.

Some years, the option hadn't even been on the table. There have been seasons when we didn't see each other for months at a time, and a gift exchange at Christmas for our fall birthdays just seemed silly.

But this year, especially the past few months, we've all been getting together more, usually around the table at my dad's house. It was at that table just a few weeks before, after Nick's birthday had already passed, that we made the agreement about the gifts.

That very day, when we all sat around eating grilled cheese sandwiches and playing with the kids, I realized that these times together had become essential in some way, that we were all adults and choosing to be together now, kind of like friends.

When I presented the idea to my dad that we have a "fall birthdays" gathering so we could all be together again, I knew then that I would be buying gifts for everyone, even though no one expected it. I had to keep up the charade somehow.

As I was leaving, I hugged Nick tight, thanking him for the scarves. He thanked me for the magazine. "This Fall Birthdays idea was really just a way to get us all together again," I said in his ear, confessing. Something about Nick makes me always want to tell the truth.

"I know," he said, hugging me back. "And I like it."

Photo by flashcurd, via Flickr, used with permission under the Creative Commons License.

There and Back Again: Food

2011-10-27T18:32:00.003-04:00

My mouth started watering as I walked around the "Big Food" showing at the Watts Fine Art Gallery in Zionsville. I had received an announcement about the paintings of giant pieces of pie and enormous bowls of Fruit Loops, and the pictures on the gallery website had been intriguing. But I never imagined a painting of a s'more the size of a flat screen television would actually make me feel hungry.

My friend, Kay, and I walked around the small gallery deciding which of Mary Ellen Johnson's precision realism paintings looked most authentic, as if a hamburger the size of a laundry basket could look "real." But each painting had a detail that brought life to it - the shimmering syrup on the cinnamon roll, the cracked edges of the graham crackers on the s'more, the corrugated lining of the cardboard pizza box.

We were admiring the melting ice cream dripping off a giant piece of cherry pie a la mode as the artist walked up to us. She and her family were there for the Gallery opening from their South Carolina home.

"How long does it take to do a piece like that?" I asked, pointing to the glistening cherries and flaky crust.

"Oh, it varies," she said. "Some turn out to be a lot more difficult than I expect. That one definitely was."

In the case of the pie, it was the shadows on the cherries that gave her fits. Though Johnson works from photographs, each painting is a composite of many photographs, merged together by her artistic eye.

Her art doesn't start with photography, however. Her art starts with cooking; each of her food paintings is a dish she either cooked or prepared, including the bowl of Fruit Loops which she meticulously arranged with her fingers in the milk long before she placed them on canvas with a brush and oil paint.

While I drooled over the baked goods hanging there on the walls, the pieces that turned out to be my favorites were not the ones that made me hungry. In fact, I normally wouldn't even eat the food I was drawn to. But her paintings of the steamed mussels, the freshly rolled sushi, and the shrimp cocktail caught my eye with their bright colors, their dramatic lighting, and a mood of sophistication you just don't get with a giant waffle.

The concept of painting food seems almost too simple. I was drawing and painting fruit in my earliest art classes. But the attention to detail this artist brings to the stuff we all eat reveals the holiness of ordinary things. Johnson's paintings give us a giant glimpse of what fills our plates and sates our souls. "We are what we eat" took on new meaning as I was staring down a pizza bigger than my head.

These food portraits also serve as an historical record; M&Ms, hot dogs, Life Savers: these are early 21st century relics, evidence that we were here.

Rich Kirkpatrick is a curator of relics in his own right. He wrote earlier this week in response to an old art journal he recovered from his attic. Pencil sketches of a rotary phone and halogen lamp offered a glimpse of the life he and his wife were piecing together shortly after marriage. The lamp he understood. They were everywhere back in the early 90s. I had one myself, actually.

But the phone? It was circa 1970s, and to still be holding on to one of those 20 years later said something about the Rich of 20 years ago.

Two items from yesteryear remind me of how time flies and of how ordinary objects become museum pieces or end up in a sketch book.

In her artist's statement, Johnson says her work "stirs visceral and psychological impulses; it evokes nostalgia and an intrinsic yearning for gratification," and she is right. In the 20 minutes I walked around the gallery, I felt hungry (the pizza we ate later looked a lot like the pizza painting we saw in the show), homesick (all the women in my mom's family make such good pie), wistful (would I ever be able to afford art like this), cold (the giant ice cream cone looked like it just came out of the freezer).

But the paintings also made me want more.

As we walked forward and backward, looking at the paintings close, then far away, Kay opted for the long view.

"I think I like them from far away better," she said. "They don't look as real when you're up close."

"You're right," I said, trying out the two views of waffles as an experiment.

"I think it's because of the light," I conjectured. "In real life, when you move up close to an object, the light changes. The light in these paintings is all as if it's far away."

That's the more I was looking for, I think.

The far away light, the Light that makes every day things shimmer and causes people to long for home.

::

If you live in the Indianapolis area and would like to see the Big Food, the exhibit will be hung at Watt's Fine Art in Zionsville through November 5.

Go THERE and visit Rich Kirkpatrick, and then come back HERE again!

Join me for regular jaunts around The High Calling network, randomly visiting fellow bloggers, soaking up their words and ideas, and then coming back here to write about them from my perspective.

Each Thursday, consider going "There and Back Again" yourself. It's simple.

The painting, "Big Shrimp Cocktail," is by Mary Ellen Johnson; the rendering above is linked directly to the artist's own web site.

Radiation: Day 17

2011-10-26T18:23:00.002-04:00

I walk into the radiation waiting room, and there are more people than usual for this time of day. A young man sits by himself, looking more like a family member than a cancer patient. A man and a woman sit together talking, though apparently they are not a couple.

An older man and woman, definitely a couple, sit talking with a woman whose quarter-inch spiky hair reveals a recently completed chemotherapy regimen. She is telling them how she feels after radiation, how it's different than the chemotherapy, how it's different than what her friend with lymphoma experienced. Two more days, she says, and her treatment will be completed. Except for the hormone therapy they will give her for five years after.

"This is my first time," says the other woman.

"She only has to go 10 times," her husband chimes in. "The tumor's in her brain."

"Oh," says the woman with breast cancer, comparing.

"Kind of like mad cow disease," the man says, to lighten the moment.

In natural waves, the conversation to my left diminishes, and we all hear the couple to my right talking, apparently planning a party.

"Sweet potato pie would be good," says the man, typing into his iPad.

"All that talk about food is starting to get to me," the woman with the brain tumor says across the room, maybe a little too loudly. She laughs. Is it the tumor talking?

"Are they still talking about yams?" her husband asks.

"No, sweet potato pie."

"I love sweet potato pie," he says to himself.

The tech calls the woman back for her first treatment, telling her and her husband that this one will be the longest so they can get things set up.

"You'll be next," the tech says to me as he walks by. "We're running behind today."

I look at the clock on my phone; it's 3:39. My appointment was at 3:30.

The couple planning the party begin to wind down their conversation.

"I'm an expert, and I'm telling you, open caskets make the mourning harder," the nicely dressed man says to the woman. The younger man sitting across the room has joined them as they prepare to leave.

"It's not just a personal preference. I've seen it both ways. Open casket is harder," he says, convincingly.

We've all heard them; we all realize, sitting there with cancer ourselves or with a loved one being treated, that this family is planning a funeral.

As they leave, several other people walk in, mostly in twos - daughters with moms, moms with daughters, wives pushing husbands in wheel chairs. I give up my seat so that a couple can sit together.

Walking across the room, I determine never to plan a funeral in a cancer center waiting room.

Even if it does include sweet potato pie.

Photo by jeffreyw, via Flickr, used with permission under the Creative Commons License.

What's Fun Got to Do with It?

2011-10-20T19:36:00.002-04:00

"Let's play Pokemon," Alex said, when he realized dinner wouldn't be ready for a few minutes.

"No!" I said, dramatically, "I don't want to play Pokemon. Not unless I can have the Pokemon with the most power because I never win."

"Well, you can't have the Pokemon with the most power, because I have that one, but you can have the second most powerful Pokemon," he explained, as though these were the rules.

In fact, these were the rules. These seem to be the ever-changing rules in the made up game of Pokemon cards which allows Alex to always win and me to always lose. Even though I'm 40 and he's eight, sometimes it irks me.

"I don't know if I can play. Let me ask your mom if she needs help with dinner," I said, hoping with all hope that maybe dinner was very complicated and my friend Kelly would need my help.

"No, I think I pretty much have it covered. You can just play with the boys," she said, sticking very close to the kitchen herself.

"But it's Pokemon," I said, desperately. "And I never win Pokemon."

"Yep, that sounds about right," she said, stirring away nonchalantly. I had said that I would come early for dinner so I could play with the boys. But if I had known they would choose Pokemon . . .

I headed back to the living room plotting to play Alex in his own game. Every time he would offer me a Pokemon character, I would pronounce boldly that it had the most power and would definitely win. I was changing the rules back.

"Huh uh," six-year-old Jensen chimed in after my first such pronouncement. "Mewto only has 200 power."

"Well, I think it has 200,00 power. I'm going to be Mewto."

"Huh uh," Alex said.

Our play time was becoming increasingly hostile, and we hadn't even started playing the card game.

"Where are the cards?" I asked, bewildered.

"We're not playing Pokemon cards; we're just playing Pokemon," he said. "You be Tepig. I'm the trainer. Jensen is Sewaddle."

I wanted to resist. How was I ever going to win if I didn't even know what game we were playing. And why were the rules, and now the game itself, always changing?

Then, it hit me. Pokemon is not a job to these boys; it's not politics or government. Pokemon is not a religion or a philosophical system. It's not a sports league or the military.

Pokemon is just playing.

And the boys just wanted me to play with them, not argue about the rules.

Sometimes, I have the same irksome feelings toward myself as a writer.

The rules seem to change, the power seems negotiable, and often, I'm not even sure what game I am playing. When I start to dread writing, I know it's because I have made it into a job or a philosophical system and have forgot what it means to just play with words.

L.L. Barkat talks about this in her book, Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity and Writing.

When we are engaged in what feels like the serious business of writing, we may be reticent about regularly incorporating play into our writing habits. It might seem too childish, too outside our familiar routines, too unpredictable concerning its potential impact on our writing.

Playing in my writing is what happens when I write poetry, when I look at a piece of art and try to describe what it does to me, when I watch a movie and write a review. These aren't things I'm necessarily good at; they don't always meet the needs of my target audience or create opportunities for publication. But I like doing them; they're fun to me.

And hey, if I can't have fun writing at my own blog, then what's the point?

Becoming a master writer requires that I work at my craft. I can't play all the time or my writing will never improve, my calling will never achieve clarity. L.L. talks about this, too.

When we possess a little natural talent for writing, we might be tempted to coast along. Why try to master these things called words? Isn't writing an art? Doesn't that mean we just let things pour out as they will? I know a lot of writers who don't work very hard, thinking this is no disaster. They set down the first thing that comes to mind, and they want that to be the end of it.

So, I don't just play here.

But what if in feeling around in the dark I discover a new doorway? What if in my playing I find a new direction to become masterful? What if I was meant to be a poet who writes about art and occasionally reviews movies?

Maybe.

But in the meantime, at least I will have a little fun.

Joining me to become a master writer yourself? Considering what it means to be masterful in another area of life? Does it all feel too serious at times?

Read this post by Jon Acuff: Dear musicians, authors, bloggers, and me.
Consider how play might improve your writing AND your marriage.
Write something just for fun and let me know about it; I need more fun in my life. (Plus I'll link to you in my next writing post!)
Read this post about words as toys that I wrote earlier this year.

Photo by Song_sing, via Flickr, used with permission under the Creative Commons License.

Radiation: Day 11

2011-10-18T20:30:00.001-04:00

I am tired.

I was laying on the table this afternoon as the radiation technicians tried to get my position confirmed. They were taking longer than usual, and since I was so tired, I closed my eyes.

As I felt myself near dozing, I imagined what would happen to my arms if I fell asleep. Normally, I hold onto a foam ring with both hands, making it easier to keep them securely positioned over my chest. Were I to fall asleep, would I drop the ring? Would my arms flail out to my sides? Would the large orange cylinder that rotates around me crush my arms as it made it's orbit?

I jerked awake.

When the treatment was over, I headed back to the waiting room to be called for my weekly doctor's appointment.

I slumped in the chair, wondering if I would have to wait long.

When I saw Erin holding a rather large chart and scanning the room, I knew she was looking for me. Without saying a word, I caught her eye. She smiled. I stood up and walked toward her.

I have seen Erin more in the last four years than I have seen most of my brothers. I have seen her pregnant, and I have heard stories about her children. I have even learned some of her medical history, as we have talked at length about mine over the years. She sticks up for me to the doctor when I try to get out of embarrassing examinations. She's as desperate for me to get married as I am.

"Are you getting some of your energy back?" she asked, knowing that I was already feeling tired last week after just five treatments. Back then, she blamed it on the traveling.

"No, in fact, I'm losing steam. I feel more tired this week," I told her, wishing it weren't true.

Erin weighed me, took my pulse and blood pressure, and asked the questions she always does, listening as though I was telling her a hilarious story. And it does get funny sometimes, me telling this friend of mine about my urinary problems and lack of sleep, her jotting down notes in my chart.

"He'll be in in just a few minutes," she said, as she left the room.

When the doctor walked in, we hugged, he introduced me to the resident shadowing him today, and then he got straight down to business: "So, I hear you're tired."

"Yeah, I think I wearing down," I told him.

He looked over my chart, commenting on the size of the radiation field and my past medical history. "Well, it is day 11," he concluded. "That's usually when people start getting fatigued. I think what you are feeling is just all the result of what's going on here."

"I don't need you to do anything," I told him, trying not to be a whiner. "Erin asked, and I told her, but I know this is part of it."

"Yes, unfortunately you've been down this road before. You know what to expect all too well," he said.

When the appointment ended, we hugged again, this doctor of mine, whom I've also seen more times in the past four years than most of my brothers.

"Be good," he told me as we started walking out of the exam room.

"I'll try, but next week's my birthday."

"Oh really," he said. "Next week's Erin's birthday too."

"Really, I didn't know that," I told him.

And we walked down the hallway in opposite directions.

Photo by kiwinz, via Flickr, used with permission under the Creative Commons License.

50/50: A Survivor's Review

2011-10-16T18:38:00.001-04:00

Ordinarily when I sit in a movie theater with tears streaming down my face and a lump building in my throat, I feel a little silly. After all, the guy ALWAYS gets the girl, and the wounded animal ALWAYS comes back to win the race or save the day or make the winning basket. (Yes, I did cry a little in AirBud. I'm not proud of it.)

But today, the tears started almost instantly and didn't stop until well after the movie was over. And I didn't feel a bit silly. Today, I was watching the new movie 50/50, about a young man who is diagnosed with cancer and survives.

I wasn't sure if I should watch a movie about cancer while I am in the middle of cancer treatment. After all, even just hearing a little too much bad news from my mom about family friends and family members recently threatened to sink me into despair. But after doing a bit of research to make sure the plot wouldn't be too depressing, I decided I needed to support movies like this one, movies that both educate and provide hope.

Much of the movie falls into two categories: crude or humorous. Afterall, the movie is produced by Seth Rogen, star and producer of movies such as Superbad and Pineapple Express, who plays best friend, Kyle, in 50/50. But Rogen also is the real-life best friend of Will Reiser, screen writer and the cancer survivor whose story is portrayed, thus lending a credibility to the occasional heart felt moments in the film.

One particularly funny scene in the movie was an office party thrown by Kyle to help cheer up Adam after just learning of his cancer diagnosis. One by one, coworkers approach Adam trying to connect with his news. "You're going to be fine," one person tells him. "My uncle had the exact same thing," another confides. His boss throws his arms around him, saying, "I'm really going to miss you," as though he's never coming back.

I've had those same conversations.

Several other points in the movie seemed right on as well: the difficulty of telling the news to close friends and family, having someone promise to stick by me and then walk away, the realization that this disease might kill me, and coming to terms with the effect the disease has on people around me, not just me.

Of course, this was a Hollywood film, so not every part seemed so realistic, like when the cancer patients all sat around eating marijuana-laced macaroons. I also thought Adam going out on a date just a few weeks out from cancer treatment felt a little unrealistic, but maybe that's just me. Understanding how to consider my singleness and dating in light of cancer treatment has been one of the hardest parts of being a survivor for me.

In the end, though, I would encourage lots of people to see this movie, especially knowing that it was written by a cancer survivor.

Several friends and I were having dinner last night, and in our discussion, we were talking about people in our church who were recently diagnosed with cancer, as well as others we know who have survived the disease, even people who had very advanced disease and have beaten the odds. People like me.

"I think they should talk about people who survive cancer every night on the news," I said, "because we don't hear about the good news very often."

Everyone agreed.

So, tonight, another story of another survivor - Will Reiser. And you can even see his story for yourself!

There and Back Again: High Stakes (Radiation: Day 8)

2011-10-13T19:59:00.000-04:00

One of these days, I'd like to climb up on the radiation table and lay down in the right position all on my own.

But from the moment I lay my head back on the hard rubber cradle, the lights dim, the green laser beams illuminate, and the radiation technicians start adjusting.

"I need a roll toward me," Sarah will say to her coworker standing across from her. Sarah's the one who's there each day, her work reliable like a clock.

Then she grabs the sheet beneath me and tugs just a little. I lay heavy just like she told me to the first day, and she matches the ink marks on my abdomen to the laser guides beaming from the walls and ceiling.

With a small control box, she moves the bed up or down, tilting this way or that to make sure I am on the table today just like I was yesterday.

And then, since she doesn't trust her eyes, she leaves the room, the red lights flashing, and takes a low-dose xray to confirm that the radiation treatment will hit the area where the tumor once was, not a kidney, not a liver.

The red light stops, and Sarah comes back into the room. One more tiny adjustment, maybe two, and I am perfect. Ten minutes after I first crawled onto the table, millimeters - maybe inches - from where I placed my own body. Just to the left of center.

Then, even though they go to great lengths to ensure I am in the same position every day, the radiation techs do a dry run, allowing the machine to move all the way around to beneath me on the left, then all the way around to beneath me on the right to be certain the giant orange cylinder will clear the table on all sides.

And before they begin the treatment, just to be sure, they ask me to say my birth date and my name, though they said it themselves when they called me back to the room.

I say it quickly, "Charity Singleton. 10, 24, 70." But I never mind that they ask.

Every day, they take the same care, make the same precautions.

Because the stakes are high.

I often wonder how people can work in a place where everyone is ill and many die.

In the way they rotate me and check the machine and ask me my name one more time, I find my answer.

I hadn't really thought about my position on the radiation table as left of center until I read High Calling blogger, Michelle Ortega's poem called "To the Left of Center." She writes,

if you exact with a surgeon’s skill,
to the left of the center,
beneath the bony shield of sternum,
suspended in tough ligament,
nestled in a spongy notch of lung,
you will see the pumping, deep pink muscle
that keeps blood pulsing
through me.

And while I read, I remember the "x" drawn with paint pen on my abdomen, left of my incision, and I remember, that every day they line me up just left of center that way.

Michelle continues,

if you close your eyes and reach me
to the left of the center you will see . . .
broken bodies healing
through Loving support and connected feeling

And I know that left of center is where His love keeps me whole.

Go THERE and visit Michelle Ortega (or visit 3 From Here and There, whose prompt Michelle was writing for), and then come back HERE again!

Join me for regular jaunts around The High Calling network, randomly visiting fellow bloggers, soaking up their words and ideas, and then coming back here to write about them from my perspective.

Each Thursday, consider going "There and Back Again" yourself. It's simple.

Photo by eviltomthai, via Flickr, used with permission via the Creative Commons License.

Finding My Voice, Finding My Place

2011-10-11T21:09:00.002-04:00

Growing up, people told me I had a nice voice.

I joined a traveling choir and sang solos at church on the weekends. When I was a junior, I was asked to sing at graduation. I had always liked singing, but was actually kind of surprised at the compliments.

Along the way, though, my voice became an object of shame.

One evening during my senior year, I was waiting in the stands for the girls volleyball game to start. I had been cut from the team, but I stayed on to be the manager. As the team was warming up, a friend leaned over to me and said, "The coach wants you to sing the National Anthem."

"Really?" I was suspicious. No one ever sang the National Anthem before volleyball games.

"Yeah, she told me to ask you," he said.

"Oh, well ok," I said. I was the girl with the nice voice, afterall.

Only I had never sang the National Anthem as a solo. And I didn't actually know what note to start on in order to be able to hit the high notes at the end.

So, I started singing, realizing right away what would eventually happen. The coach looked at me, surprised. Even as my voice crackled and screeched through the "land of the free," I realized I had been set up.

When the song was over, I was humiliated.

It wasn't just my singing voice that shamed me. In college, when I found myself with friends from around the country, my voice revealed things about me I didn't want people to know.

Every "crick" and "hollar" I let out told my friends I was a girl from the sticks. When I "warshed" my hands or carried my stuff in a "sack" instead of bag, I was nothing more than a farm hick from the country.

So, I changed my voice. It started by calling melons "canteloupe" instead of "mush melon" and by saying "green pepper" instead of "mango," but it extended to the way I say "aunt" and "orange," creating an "ah" instead of an "oh" with my mouth. "Pop" became "soda," and I was careful never to end a question with "at."

I'm sure I'm not the first rural Hoosier to change a few vowel sounds to quiet down the ridicule. And now, it's too late to go back to "warshing."

But when people try to figure out where I'm from by the sound of my voice, they can't do it anymore.

Now, I sound like I'm from nowhere.

It could be that these issues with the voice I spoke with and sang with were part of the reason it took me so long to uncover the voice I write with.

Having also been told from an early age that I could write well, perhaps I was fearful of the kind of set up that would leave me screeching through the proverbial "land of the free" in my writing. Or maybe, I just didn't want to sound like I was from a county so small that I couldn't throw a rock without hitting one of my relatives.

When I tried my hand at journalism, writing in my best AP style, people would thank me for just writing "like I talk." I was offended.

When I tried my hand at academic writing in graduate school, more than one professor took me aside to find out why I was really there.

"I want to write," I would tell them.

"Then go write," they would say. "You don't belong here; you're already a writer."

Ironically, during that same time of my life, as I was preparing a lesson on voice for the freshman composition class I was teaching to 18 and 19 year olds, it hit me.

I don't want to write like I'm from nowhere. I want a voice.

"Try to remember and write it yourself," I say. "So it'll be in your voice."

So, LL Barkat instructs her young daughter as she writes a story about a girl named Joy. In her book, Rumors of Water, Barkat spends several chapters on developing one's voice as a writer. On the one hand, she says, the writer's voice is "best heard by listening to oneself speak."

Maybe those newspaper readers of mine heard what I couldn't?

But Barkat also says "our voices are not entirely unique. The voices of others fill our minds."

At the Laity Lodge Writer's Retreat, David Dark called these other voices our "ancestors." They are the voices we give full access to fill our minds, to shape our thoughts, even to speak through the voice we are developing for ourselves.

Sometimes, an "ancestor" might even be a place.

Barkat says that "to have a voice, a writer must have passions and a sense of place."

These passions and their places infuse the writing with silvery leaves and orange peels, versus say, ocotillo and pequins. The words of a region, a philosophy, a passion for French or French tea, come with their own sounds and rhythm and fragrances. If we read the Palestinian poet Darwish, for instance, we will find ourselves mouthing, jasmine, doves, olives, veils. Whereas if we read a poet like Marcus Goodyear, we will find ourselves breathing to the staccato of cactus, cattle, tree poker.

Farmer-poet-philosopher Wendell Berry has developed his writing voice by embracing his rural Kentucky roots into all his fiction, poetry and prose. His recent collection of essays, Imagination in Place, speaks widely to this concept of voice and place among various writers known for their regionalisms.

In his essay "Speech after Long Silence," he discusses the writing of poet John Haines, whose voice so encapsulates the place he is writing about that Berry considers "how little 'originality' has mattered to him" and wonders "if the voice of the poems is in fact his." He includes these thoughts from Haines himself:

What counts finally in a work are not novel and interesting things, though these can be important, but the absolutely authentic. I think that there is a spirit of place, a presence asking to be expressed; and sometimes when we are lucky as writers, and quiet in a way few of us want to be anymore, a voice enters our own . . .

Or, to say it another way, you can take the girl out of the "hollar," but at the risk of taking the "hollar" out of the girl. Leave the girl in the "hollar," and you might just hear the "hollar" speak.

I am continuing on my master writer journey, considering what it means to become masterful with words. Want to join me? Here are some ideas:

Get LL Barkat's Rumors of Water and read and write along with me
Check out what other's are saying about LL's book:

Megan's "LL Barkat's Rumors of Water,"
Marilyn's "Rumors I May Write Again" and "Getting Out and Finding the Words,"
Maureen's "Monday Muse on Reading Rumors of Water"

Consider Wendell Berry's Imagination in Place with me, and listen for your own voice to emerge
Write in community with others from theHighCalling.org by joining Jennifer Lee's writing project.

Photo by by urbanshoregirl, via Flickr, used with permission under the Creative Commons License.

Radiation: Day 5

2011-10-10T19:05:00.001-04:00

I walk into the radiation room day after day, slipping behind the divider to remove my shoes and pants without being told. The towel they give me to cover myself seems large enough most days, when all of the technicians are women. But today, a man has come to get me, has walked me to the room, has told me that his wife's name also is Charity.

Today, the towel seems very small as I walk out from behind the curtain.

The radiation table already is covered with the plastic form of my body that I climb into each day. The large bean bag with the air sucked out of it feels just like me as I lay down and try to get comfortable in myself. The form feels just like me, but it also feels awkward.

The day they created the form, I must have been lying there crooked, because the techs always have to rotate me a little to get my position just right. And the crease that digs into the back of my head each time I lay down is a constant reminder that I've never really been that comfortable in my own skin.

When I am settled, the large cylinder of the RapidArc machine passes over me, and I see the length of my body reflected in the glass. My face, nervous, then my hands folded uncomfortably over my chest. I see my abdomen, with its scars and ink markings; then my legs, where the machine comes to a rest. Feeling the shape of myself below me, and seeing the image of myself above me, I am very aware that I am a person in a body.

Of all the things to fight for, I never thought I would be lying in a hospital fighting for my body.

I've never liked my body much, if you must know. When I was in high school, I participated in sports because my friends did, not because I had the body for it. It was always my mind, my personality, even my spirit that other people noticed. In the senior year book, I wasn't voted most good looking or most athletic. I was voted most studious, most friendly, most likely to succeed.

Like many women I know, I have tried to change my body over the years. I've tried to make it smaller, tighter, browner, smoother.

When I was 31, I felt betrayed by my body, my own immune system paralyzing me.

At times, I've even blamed my body for my singleness.

But watching my sloppy, scarred body pass over me in the image of the machine, suddenly I felt a great affection for this tent I've been living in.

Suddenly, my body felt like it was worth fighting for.

Today, I received good news that my CA125 level - a tumor marker indicating the presence of cancer - is back to the negative range after just the surgery as we had hoped. The radiation will be precautionary, to ensure there are no rogue cells remaining. I am so thankful to Jesus for this news, especially since the side effects of radiation (fatigue, mild nause) are beginning to take effect.

Photo by Detlef Schobert, via Flickr, used under the Creative Commons License.