Rhythms of Rest

In 2017, I received the gift of being able to take my first sabbatical after 10 years in ministry. Right near the beginning of it, I attended a Creative Retreat with some fellow artists. This is a poem I wrote one morning overlooking the vineyards surrounding the farmhouse where we met.

Suspended

silence alive with morning

Birds drawing arcs between vine and sky

         Twittering of the new day

Sour and sweet mix on my tongue

         A dance of yogurt, banana, muesli –

the scrape of metal on porcelain signals finish

Steady chiming speaks of time

like the shrinking shadows between the

         straight regiments of vines

and growing sunlight on my cheek

A distant rooster call mingles with the

         murmur of voices and a frog speaks his mind

I welcome the timelessness in time –

         the brave being that slowly makes me whole

Sablet, France

May 28, 2017

“Wherever you are, be all there.” 

           Jim Elliot

“Listen to me in silence,

O Coastlands;

let the peoples renew their strength”

          Psalm 41:1a

“Quietness allows room for God to speak or to be silent. Both are gifts. Quietness stops crowding the Holy Spirit, elbowing aside God’s gentle presence. The end of striving makes room for dwelling.”
          Mark Buchanan, The Rest of God

(2nd photo courtesy of someone on the retreat, but I forget who.)

To See Anew & a window into my journey with writing

It's been a very long time since I have posted anything on this blog, but it's not because I haven't been writing. In December 2018, I gathered all the poems I could find that I had written between 2010 and 2018 and compiled them in a first little chapbook for some friends and family members, which I entitled "To See Anew."

It was my first foray into sharing some of my writing since graduating from college over a decade earlier, and it felt a bit like letting a fragile baby bird leave the nest. But I was encouraged by the gentleness with which my friends and family treated my "fledglings," and spurred on by their feedback to continue writing.

On January 9, 2019, feverish and in that peculiar liminal space between awake and asleep, I penned a few lines that, as I read now a year later, resonate with me once again:

There’s a greenhouse at the bottom of my garden

      where half-baked dreams go to live

            until it’s time to sprout (to bud, to become

            what they were meant to be)

They coexist in happy understanding that

      each belongs –

            no matter how undeveloped

It’s a messy but joyous place where

      each dream is safe to sit at a

      welcoming table in the peaceful

            gray haze

Over the past year, I've seen some of those "half-baked dreams" begin to take shape, while others remain in the hazy greenhouse. 

When they've blossomed in the form of a poem or bit of prose, I have jotted them down, not sure if I'd ever do something with them, but simply seeking to welcome them at the often-messy table of creativity.

As I continue on my quest "to see anew," I am learning to embrace the mess and unfinished nature of what I create, to take joy in the weight of an acorn in my palm, in the whisper of wind through pines stretching skyward overhead, in the taste of words rolling across my tongue...

A singer-songwriter friend of mine has an album called We are all rough drafts (Elise Massa). I love that! And it is true both of me and of my writing.

As a new year and a new decade begin, I feel moved to share some of my "fledglings" with a slightly larger audience than before by posting them on here in the coming weeks and months. May they spur you on to give shape or voice to some of your own "half-baked dreams" and create in your own unique ways.

As Christa Wells sings in "Shine,"

"Yes, we could lay our talents in the earth

We could pile on our doubt like dirt

Or we can shine - 

He shines his light through a prism

We give back what we're given

To color this world...

Be the friend you never had

Be the one to take a stand

Say it your way, say it your way, say it your own way...

Shine, we shine His light refracted"

As we all shine in 2020, I pray that the world will be richer, more loving, and more beautiful for it.

Beside the pool

As I sat one morning pondering Jesus' question to the invalid in their encounter in John 5:1-9, the following lines came to me:

The stranger’s question haunts my heart with hope:

            Do you want to be healed?

The flickering embers of “what if” had long since grown cold.

38 immobile years taught me “I have no one.”

Resigned to see nothing but impossibility:

            “While I am going another steps down before me.”

I’ve chosen the path of self-protection –

            isolation in the midst of a needy multitude.

But DO I want to be healed?

My lips tell him it can’t be done before my heart can truly decide.

And then in an instant he gives me wholeness –

            Grace I never knew

“Get up, take up your bed, and walk.”

This stranger knows my deepest desires better than I.

January 7, 2017

And here's a much older poem that I recently rediscovered, written for my mom on Oct. 4, 2010:

"Clear Fingernail Polish"

It’s nearly gone now.

The invisible link that strangely binds us across the miles

You’ve probably forgotten the gift

But I remember – as I see my hands each day,

I’m reminded of your care

The quick strokes of love that left my fingers

            shining as I flew off for adventures

                        - in trust

                                    - in freedom and dependence

            on the One your hands and mine lift to praise.

Though I know I will when it’s time,

I don’t want to cut them.

Perhaps an inner longing has kept the solvent away –

            sitting untouched on the bottom shelf,

                        unable to sever our ties

Which I know – with thanksgiving –

            run far deeper than the remnants of

            clear fingernail polish gracing my fingers

with the tender kiss of yours.