Morning at our house.

Practice Resurrection.

We've been doing a round of telling our faith stories in our Sunday School class, and they are a blessing each and every time. Many of us live our lives with the hope of it being God filled, though not always being intent that there is a literal interpretation and belief in the Christian narrative as concerns the divinity and resurrection of Jesus, or the virgin status of Mary, or the trinity. It is an open, loving, liberally minded group of folks who are vital to our community, and are focused on our each being spiritual at our core.

Yesterday, a dear couple shared their faith stories, and at the end of his sharing, our friend David read Wendell Berry's Manifesto: The Mad Farmer's Liberation Front, a piece that reduces me to tears for its beauty and rightness, and yesterday one which spoke to me in a particularly deep way. The Mister and I are navigating an especially difficult conflict at present; he'd chosen not to accompany the boy and I to church. And this piece, so holy and extraordinary in its ordinaryiness, was read by our officiating reverend and dear friend Bill, at our wedding.

Manifesto: The Made Farmer's Liberation Front, by Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.


So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion - put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

On  the day we wed, in our livingroom, with an intimate group of friends and family around us, Bill charged us to, "Plant sequoias," and to "Practice resurrection." His wife, Kaki, dear friend and mentor as well as the other officiant at our wedding, placed her message in the pumpkin we passed round for messages, wishes, and prayers. It was a little scoop of soil with a tangle of roots and seeds.

In times like these, we must remember both, Love the Lord, Love the World, Work for nothing. Take all you have and be poor. AND to: Love someone who does not deserve it.

The way is not easy. Living in a God filled world charges us not to profess to a prescribed narrative or transubstantiation or to limit our contact to those who look and think as we do. Rather, it charges us to open our hearts and arms wide and wider still, to become radically inclusive. To prepare the world by planting seeds we will not live to see bear fruit. 

Love someone who does not deserve it. 



Practice resurrection.

Just married, on the way to toss the pumpkin into the ravine. October 2002.

Addendum: Yesterday's worship service was centered on the message Remembering our Baptism. I rose and walked toward the altar rail to be blessed by baptismal water by Lanecia, our youth pastor, my friend, and someone I admire greatly. I remembered my struggle in the year previous, whether to participate in this ritual or not, and ultimately circling back to what my son expressed of baptism, in simply "UH-cepting the love of God that's already there." 

Yes. 

Reflections and intent.

In this new year, I'll be spending less time on the computer in general; on Facebook and a message board for mama friends in specific.

I will exit the year fitter, stronger, healthier, and smaller than I've entered it. Also braver.

As with previous years, I will continue to be working on being a better steward of resources in all facets.

I'll also be looking to expand radical hospitality in the ways in which I am so led. With the twin focus being to hone in on service to my very own family.

Less time spent on junky / less essential and distracting stuff makes for more time spent really present, with my child, my Mister, and other loved ones. Even me.

I want to exercise and read more. Have more dates with my Mister, and in general make more time for each other -- have deeper conversation, renew efforts to do things we enjoy together.I want to publish to earn again. To bust out the sewing machine, to excel in my work and in my schooling by putting forth the effort and putting in the time.

I want to move more, sit less. Listen more than I speak. Get plenty of sleep, eat green foods everyday, make fruit my favorite snack. Allow there to be room -- in my thoughts, my pants, my relationships. I want to know myself better, and how to address the realest longings of my heart.


Awhile back our Sunday Night group met. It was an evening of confession. I found something to confess to, and it was a real thing, but the thing gnawing at me that I couldn't bring myself to say aloud was, "Gluttony. I've been jamming myself full of biscuits and information and tasks and chocolate and Facebook and cups of coffee with half and half and none of it really feeds me, but I don't yet know how to be comfortable without all this -- there's a hole where I'm lonely and scared and sad and I'd really like to do it all differently. I am making myself sick with this way of being."

So, there. I've said it. And with each reflection and plan for the New Year, I state my intent to do it all differently, to thank my fat for protecting me, Facebook for its companionship, and so on. And let it go.

 It is well past time.

Shared history.

 

The pink tree and village are from our first married Christmas -- we found them at the Otsego Antique Mall in southwestern Michigan, a place we visit nearly each trip to the Mister's hometown. He wore a jacket from there for our wedding.

The Santa is from our second married Christmas, and comes from a little antique shop in Clinton, Tennessee. On the trip we also procured a lovely old standing lamp (very fragile and unweildy, given away when the boy began to crawl,) vintage choir boy ornaments that to this day hang from our tree, and a wind up rooster alarm clock from the late forties or early fifties. 

Our boy refers to any ornaments (and there are still a handful or two left: balls adorned with roses, green foiled pinecones, some spiral decorated balls, and a single precious acorn ornament...) we got for our first shared tree as our "wedding ornaments." Very sweet. 

The longer we are wed, the longer we are a family, the more history we share. The better we get at it all, and the more we're able to incorporate the multiple facets of who we are. 

Happy Christmas, my dear ones.

Of Ceramic Donkeys and Gratitude.

This past Sunday, the Second Sunday of Advent, Ziggy carried a ceramic donkey through the sanctuary to place it with the creche by the altar table. His friend carried a shepherd. They were so proud and careful, soberly coming down the aisle as the handbells chimed from the balconies surrounding us.

Ziggy then tucked into the pew beside us, and proceeded to do a sight word search in the bulletin insert through the service, choosing to remain with us to "work" and to take communion rather than exiting for the children's worship hour. This does not, of course, mitigate the fact that he lay beneath the pew in front of us on the floor, or that in a loud stage whisper he called to his adult prayer friend who was kneeling at the altar after taking communion. Church with our boy is always a spirited experience, his father's jaw clenching, me smiling at other parents with other young wildlings in nearby pews.


I wept through the service.

Members of the Homeplace community, a home for developmentally disabled adults, played a significant role in the morning's worship. Ruby, who helps in the three year old Sunday School class and therefore has been known to us since first we began to attend Belmont, was both baptised and received as a member of the congregation in an official capacity. It was so incredibly moving and beautiful. I am thankful to Sarah, a lovely high school senior who sat with her parents in front of us, for providing me with a much needed tissue to dawb at my eyes and runny nose. Hamilton read scripture about John the Baptist and both tickled and delighted me with his pauses to be sure we were all listening, and that he was taking his role very seriously.

Our worship leaders were so loving and sensitive and patient. None more so than the remarkable Lanecia, she of the beautiful countenance and face, with a hipster twist. Watching her walk Ruby through serving communion was a wondrous thing. 

Too, I wept, because my husband and I had had words that morning, and because Ziggy threw things at me as I drove to church through the snow flurries, the last straw that caused me to pull off the road and have a bit of a come apart. And because I was feeling sick and congested and raspy in earnest. And remorseful that my come apart had frightened my child, albeit momentarily.

When evening came, I took him to the craft night at the church's community center. "Can you just drop me off, please?" he asked.

###

I've had the crud for days, though I seem-- at last-- about to round the corner. My voice is still a scratchy rasp, though the congestion is greatly diminished. I think that my family may be glad of my inability to speak much or well.

So what to do? Neti pot. Drink water. Extra rest. Walk with the dog, have sex with my husband (both boost the immune system.)

And for tonight's supper: sweet potato chicken soup with garlic and dill (yum!!) and a pan of Almost Zona's Drop Biscuits.

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We're on a spending freeze. Being between jobs and at the end of the year has killed our budget dead. I'll start working for pay again next month, and there'll be student loan money, too. Thank goodness.

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I hung the stockings on the banister. "We don't have a fireplace! How will Santa get in?" Ziggy wants to know.

###

I've yet to write our year end letter, and wonder if I'll really get it done this year. I give myself permission to let it be if I choose....

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Another reason for the aforementioned spending freeze is the fact that my debit card has been compromised by someone who has made bogus purchases. Which leads to the cancellation of the card, a filed dispute and a few weeks to get things cleared up and the monies refunded to our account.

If it's not an essential purchase, we shall not be making it. If I haven't already purchased it, if I can't make it or borrow it or trade for it, or somehow pull it together from things already in stock, I won't be getting it for you for Christmas. Or your birthday. Or whatever.

Every once in a bit, it's not bad to simplify. To cut the fat. And to recognize that we have what we need, and much of what we want. And in comparison to much of the world, we are very wealthy indeed.

###

I have completed my first full semester as a graduate student. Yay, me! Classes attended, projects churned out and turned in. Graded, all but one.

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I am thankful. For all of the above.

I pray for patience. For the willingness to forgive where forgiveness is sought. Including that of self. For the presence of mind and body and heart to be with those I love as fully as possible. To lean into now. To be grateful for blessings both small and large.

I am thankful, not just this Thursday, but always.