Moon and Lamp

I chose the back bedroom because it had a desk overlooking a path filled with flowers. The other two rooms were oceanside--with breath-taking views. But my window ledge was inches from my pillow on the bottom bunkbed, and after I covered it with a bandana and set out my flashlight to read by, I was more than content with my lot.

I did not yet know about the moon, perfectly framed in that little window beside my head. In the course of the week it would complete its movement to fullness and every night I would watch its course across a clear sky. The memory is fresh and quietly precious, stored in the treasure chest from my week in Maine.

The memory of that moon surfaced in my soul this morning as I read these familiar verses: "Your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." (Ps. 119:105) I was struck by my reflective moments of watching the moon and how it has taught generation upon generation to reflect with simplicity on the nature of God's guiding word. He has spoken, and like the quietly permanent moon, the words have the same orienting power now as when they were first spoken through the prophets.

A "lamp" is marvelous image for God's guidance, for we who often want a complete internal GPS system receive instead, a single direction at a time. A lamp's domain, like the moon, has boundaries. The angel Gabriel tells Mary nothing about her own family or fiance, only some pertinent information about Elizabeth. And to Elizabeth's house she goes.

This past week I have listened to the heartaches of those with broken and struggling relationships of every kind: in families, between friends, between souls and their God, in the churches that seek to nurture them. I am not immune from my own complicated path. And I have tried to resist the temptation of viewing God's word as a cosmic GPS. All I need, quite simply, is the next word for the next step. And I'm grateful for a moon that waxes and wanes, yet reminds me that the lamp is never snuffed out, and sometimes illumines us with a beauty so surprising that it is hidden, with the word, in our hearts forever.

A Bonsai of Righteousness

When I was teaching in Thailand, we called them "Teak of Righteousness"--Oaks are not native to Thai soil. But this morning I found myself praying with a wry smile and said to the Lord, "If you are making me a Bonsai of righteousness, I will not fight you."

My life has been pruned back so many times that I have literally lost count of the events--nor even really give it much thought anymore. But this morning I found myself marveling at the apparent skill, time and patience my heavenly gardener is taking with me. And, in looking up the mystery of the Bonsai, I found this description: "They are kept small by pruning the roots and branches and repotting the trees." Perhaps I'm being formed into a Bonsai.

Here the questions I find myself asking these days. Can I be content when most of my days are spent in my house? When the fruit on the tree is cut way back yet again? When I cannot see the roots yet wonder if the Lord isn't reaching in and rearranging some of the deeper things in my soul as well. Can I be content to be small and intentional, a miniature work of art that does not attract attention in the streets. Will I receive the life I have been given--not as judgment or punishment--but as gift?

I wonder if knowing ourselves as small enables us to see the small things better? And if, in fact, the very limitations imposed on life are not themselves the ground for discovering new channels of beauty, truth and hope.

No plant naturally becomes a Bonsai. But then, no tree reaches the majesty of an Oak or the durability of a Teak, either. All are "the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified." (Isaiah 61:3) May we be granted the grace to wait for skilled hands of our gardener, particularly when the view from below does not look very promising.

Contagious Contentment

My husband is in the midst of "rush"--that semi-annual event that descends upon college bookstores the week prior to the start of classes. He was coming home frazzled every night for days, and falling into bed by 8:00. Our conversations were brief and rather snappy. One would think that after 54 rushes (27 years of marriage times two) I would know he needed some extra support in these moments. But I was in my own world most of the week and not much help.

I woke up on Friday. The house needed major attention, there was no nourishing food to be found, and, most importantly, I was as internally distracted as my environment. So, I confessed my distraction to the Lord, professed my ongoing love and commitment to this academic book guy, and got to work. The house got clean. The groceries got bought. Dinner actually got prepared.

In the midst I found myself looking around at this house we bought 16 years ago over a whirlwind weekend visit the spring before I started teaching at Wheaton. I love it. It's small and wraps itself in warmth around us. I began to taste gratitude again.

And by the time Wyatt walked in the door, I was once again in my right mind. I received yet another infusion of contentment--which must surely be one of the Spirit's most delightful sisters to simplicity. Have you noticed that contentment is contagious?

Becoming Roadside Art

The images from my last blog have been working their way down to another level in my soul. The beautifully cared for "lobsta" traps, buoys and ropes are a lovely symbol for pondering our creativity with the everyday stuff of life. But, at another level, these images remind me that, to God, we, too, are "a medium for creation..." We are the stuff of His roadside art.

The first 10 verses of Ephesians 2 are such an encouragement. In the verse 1, the Apostle begins by reminding us that we were once "dead in our trespasses." We were traps unfit for use, buoys no longer buoyant, ropes too frayed to be trusted. Nine verses (and an incarnation/redemption crowned by Christ's ascension) later, we are his workmanship, literally, his poetry--his art along life's road. For while there is a definite starting point to our redemption, Christ's re-creative care for those he has made alive is ongoing.

So let me imagine Jesus on Monhegan Island at the end of "lobsta" season. He walks through our bent traps, our water-soaked buoys, the ropes about to break, and carefully picks up each of us. "Here, Father. I recognize this one. She belongs to me. He is mine." And by a grace and a faith not of our own making, our re-creative workman again reclaims his materials for creation. He restores and renews us, preparing us for another season where, as his patiently crafted workmanship, he prepares us to be beautiful and create beauty with the materials he then sets in our hands.

Lord Jesus, may we walk alongside the road receiving the grace and faith to be the art remade in you according to the creative design of your Father. Then, and only then, will we be enabled to make beauty of the well-worn stuff of our lives. Grant us your Spirit's compassionate eye, your Father's gracious heart, and your own patient hands.

Roadside Art

The “lobsta” fishermen on Monhegan Island, Maine, take “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a medium for creation” (Dorothy Sayers, The Mind of the Maker) to a whole new level. During their off-season (which, for reasons of state politics, was already in effect by the beginning of August) they turn their traps and ropes into what my friends and I experienced as roadside art. Who would think that traps, buoys and ropes could be so attractively stored or so beautifully displayed? It was so lovely that I wondered at one point if the island sponsored a contest to see who could use these utilitarian artifacts to out-create each other.

But I think not. I think, instead, that they, being surrounded by constant beauty, could not imagine doing anything else. Ugly had no visible place there. (I'm not painting the island as paradise--humans with all their foibles live there, too. Nevertheless, I rarely saw anything physically out of place, and the island isn't that big.)

And I wonder how to carry the relationship between beauty and creative use of the materials of everyday life back to my context. It isn't overtly pretty here--the Japanese beetles and I are in a fight for my roses, and my grass is slowly turning brown. My house needs more than "straightening" and my need to get organized for the fall is keeping pace.

But these meticulous fishermen challenged me to ask this question: How do I live within the beauty of a "medium for creation" approach when "problems" peak out from the roadsides of my life?

I think the answer begins with gratitude for the little things: the rose the beetle didn't get to, the comfortable chair in my living room, one more year with my high school senior. (Yesterday I got tangled up in the unexpected expenses of high school. Life was a PROBLEM.) But when I am grateful for the beauty of the little things, I seem to have more room to approach the whole of my day in a composed and composing frame of mine.

I cannot live with spectacular beauty all the time. But, but God's grace I can turn my eyes and mind to the quiet beauty around me. Who knows? I may get inspired to create a bit of roadside art myself.

Repainting the Portrait

Last week I met separately with two young women. Both are in their 20’s, both are in serious dating relationships, both desire to “do this right,” and both are painfully aware that they view themselves and their beloved through the distorted lenses of difficult backgrounds.

While the nature of their immediate concerns are radically different, their fear is so similar. They are terrified of repeating what they experienced as children, and there are moments where they want to run and hide because the fear is so great.

Although neither one would have recognized the underlying symbolism in our conversation, my encouragement to both of them (while vastly different in detail) rested on the foundation I state in “Simplicity.”

In this book “feminine” includes all created things that find themselves drawn into vital connection with an outside source…(p. 30)

Vital connections are, by definition, vulnerable connections. “I give myself to you” comes with so many risks, and even as our hearts long to be known, sometimes they have a mind of their own that wants to run and hide. Our hearts can, quite literally, be “broken.”

But thanks be to God that in Jesus my friends are heirs to the wholeness of an undivided heart. For Jesus did not come only to redeem us, but to recreate what was broken and make us new. St. Athanasius pens this gorgeous word picture to speak of the fullness of Jesus’ incarnation:

You know what happens when a portrait that has been painted on a panel becomes obliterated through external stains. The artist does not throw away the panel, but the subject of the portrait has to come and sit for it again, and then the likeness is re-drawn on the same material. Even so it was with the All-holy Son of God. He, the Image of the Father, came and dwelt in our midst, in order that He might renew mankind made after Himself. (St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation, St. Vladimir’s Press, 1993, p. 41)

My young friends are pressing in, learning to love rather than to leave. They are seeking to embrace the beautiful mystery of being drawn into vital connection with another. And as they choose to nestle into their new relationships they are, in St. Athanasius' words, sitting for the second drawing. A Savior who refuses to rip up the canvas of their broken lives is re-drawing the likeness he originally intended in each of them. What a gallery he is restoring.

Drop Everything Now

My senior in high school left the house this morning with a slight swagger on the way to the golf team meeting. The top of the totem pole looked great at 9:00. At 9:40 the view was slightly different. Cell phone rings: “Mom! I need a sports physical before try-outs begin at 12:15.” Hmmm. “OK. Where do you need to go?” He tried one place on his own, only to come to the dawning recognition that he needed his mother. He is still a minor.

Enter Mom, comfortably ensconced in her reading chair, blissfully developing curriculum for fall classes. “Mom! You need to get over here. And there’s nine people in front of me! I’ll never make it! Can we try somewhere else?” “I think we could go to Convenient Care.” “Can you call quick and find out?” “Yes, dear.” I watch my peaceful morning evaporate into a quick change of clothes and a testosterone-infused ride to the nearest clinic.

But here was the great thing. We were both laughing. He was a knucklehead and I was the knucklehead’s mother, and there was nothing either one of us could do except drop everything and wait for a doctor’s signature on a sports physical form.

All I had to give up this morning were a couple of hours of leisurely thought.

All he had to do was release his pride. It could have been so much worse.

And now, he’s on the green and I’m back to my day, and the wind ripples through our sails with the humor of being human and letting it be OK. It’s a good day.

Tolling Wisdom

I just spent a week on an island off the coast of Maine, as close to the water as was physically possible without living in it. I saw sea gulls and sunsets, waves and rocks. But what I heard was a bell.

A small rocky island just off my own varied in visibility with the changing tide, and, except in moments of calm, high tide, a small green buoy rang its constant warning: there are hidden rocks here. Day and night: travelers beware.

Among my constant companions was the “The Dry Salvages” from T.S. Eliot’s The Four Quartets. Late in the week I read these words as for the first time: “And under the oppression of the silent fog/The tolling bell/Measures time not our time, rung by the unhurried/Ground swell”

The tolling bell! Traveler beware. An unpredictable cadence of the sea’s time, with the tone of Donne’s church bell.

And now, back home with that haunting clang still ringing in my ears, I find myself praying for an increased sensitivity to the arrhythmic, tolling bell of wisdom’s deeps--

Let the rope out a little farther for your growing son, lest you both crash against the rocks. Speak these next words in kindness—or not at all—your mouth is perilously close to danger. Listen, listen to the quiet tolling bell of the Holy Spirit’s check in your spirit. It’s low tide and the rocks are sharp. Proceed with care.

“So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” (Psalm 90:12)