Thankful for this quiet, restorative day.
Thankful for rising dough, sleeping girl, and boys playing at the park.
Thankful for my brothers and their new endeavors in Alabama.
Thankful for great dinner plans with a friend tonight.
Thankful for soaking chickpeas and the promise of hummos tomorrow.
Thankful for home in its many forms.
Thankful.
I have preached on Matthew 18.21-35 multiple times in a sermon called “The Closed Gate”, and in that sermon I explore images of forgiveness from scripture and from my life. In considering Peter’s question of Jesus, “How many times do I forgive a brother or sister who hurts me?”, I offer these words:
When Peter is told to forgive and forgive again, it’s about the work that will take place within Peter. Sometimes forgiveness is an act of blessing the gates that should remain closed, locked, and bolted shut! Forgiveness then releases Peter (and you and me) to move into the abundant life God would have us to live.
I quote Douglas Hare who writes in his Interpretation commentary on Matthew:
Not only are we to let go of our revenge-seeking nature, we are to “reflect the majestic generosity of the kingdom of heaven.”
What does this look like? What does it mean to “reflect the majestic generosity of the kingdom of heaven,” as Douglas Hare puts it? This reflection takes place in loud and quiet ways—a cup of coffee and a long-avoided conversation, addressing unfinished business with a parent at a hospice bedside, a whispered prayer for someone long ago who still makes your heart pound with anger, a sincere apology, a blessing for the future.
And then later I return to the ways of forgiveness, saying:
It is not instinctual for us to want to forgive in this abundant, extravagant manner. However, it is God’s nature to forgive in this way—to unlock the gates, pardon the debts, release and let go. Scripture does more than just invite us to be part of this kingdom work—scripture implores us to “repent and believe!”—forever being transformed by our merciful God.
When I preach and when I write, I am almost always thinking aloud about the lessons I am learning, the way I want to live, and the hope I have that God invites me daily into that way. Rare are the moments of feeling I am holding myself up as having figured something out. I am fortunate to catch glimpses of the way, glimpses of God’s hope for us all, but I am often bumbling and stumbling into it.
I delivered that loaf of bread; the forgiveness loaf. Did I reflect that majestic generosity of the kingdom of God? If I got it right, then I may have seen a reflection of God’s ways of majestic generosity. Like Peter, I am the one who needs the work of forgiveness for my life. In my bumbling and stumbling, I need to see the reflection of a way I’ve forgotten, a way I sometimes ignore, a way that is not reflected around me. I am thankful for the stillness I feel within me tonight after inching closer to a lesson learned.
Not sure yet if this will be a two or three part lesson. I am raw and in the midst of a life lesson on community, grace, forgiveness, humiliation, the internet, and gossip. In processing aloud about surprising biases and lessons on community, I inadvertently posted a private email on a public email list to our neighborhood. Yikes.
So the question I am sitting with this afternoon is how do you ask for forgiveness when you do not anticipate receiving it? How do you make peace after actions that are not peace-inviting? How do you move toward reconciliation with a gut feeling that another does not wish to be reconciled to you? How do you apologize and bless even if you think the other may not care to hear it?
I’m listening to the wisdom of a good friend and a neighbor-who-could-become-a-friend. First, bake a loaf of bread. Second, this embarrassing, humiliating, middle school experience may not have happened by accident but because it invites an opportunity for something new.
I have enough dough in the fridge for a large artisan boule, and the dough is rising. I will breathe deeply as I hold the dough. I will pray as it rises and as it bakes. I will bless the bread that I share with the neighbor I have offended. I cannot control how it is received or whether it is even consumed. I cannot control what the neighbor thinks of me or how my words are heard and received. But I can acknowledge my fault, acknowledge my wrongdoing, and I can choose to make peace…at least within myself.
Curious, fast, independent, adventurous, funny, inquisitive, busy, sneaky, and a little wild. I am ready for a glorious Spring with two, big little ones.
On our trips to the library, I sometimes arrive with a certain book in mind as my selection for the next week or two. Often, however, I will simply grab a book that looks attractive, has a fetching title, or one that somehow catches my eye for no good reason at all. I know nothing more than the blurb on the jacket, and some of these books are very loosely in the “beach reads” category even here in February.
Today I began a book by Tim Farrington called The Monk Downstairs. It could be an award winner or a grocery store romance novel. I really have no idea. In it, a former monk writes letters to his former abbot, and I particularly enjoyed this quote today. It connects nicely both with the ways I long to live and the Lenten practice of presence I am seeking to embrace:
We expect God’s presence to be thunderous, spectacular, monumental; but it is our need that is so large. The real presence slips past our demands for spectacle. It slips past our despair. Not just like a child–sometimes it is a child. She walks down the blistered steps to where you kneel and says the simplest things. She is entertained by butterflies. She has opinions about unicorns. She does not seem to care that you are ruined and lost. She does not even seem to notice. Find an earthworm in the neglected loam and she will make you feel for a moment that your life has not been wasted. Name a flower and she will make you feel that you have begun to learn to speak.
Today has very much been a with-kids kind of day, though I found tiny moments for another loaf of bread and reading a few dozen pages of this library find. It can be tempting to view the busy days of mothering as not being productive. Instead of having some thing to show for my time at the end of a day, I have only moments. My culture wants me to believe that is a waste and that the thing matters more than the moments do. I am thankful for days when that temptation barely has voice to whisper itself because I am too busy in moments to hear.
Today wasn’t perfect. There were certainly seconds of wanting to be alone, or maybe to find a cabin in the woods with time to actually become a writer, and then the recurring hope of running away for a whole weekend with my darling. But those longings were rather fleeting. The moments that really saturated my day were filled with surprising laughter as my boy performed some ridiculous song about Noah’s Ark, amazement as my girl played with the big kid exhibits at our children’s museum, and contentment as we shared relaxing meals together all day. It was a good day.
One child off to a morning of preschool while the other plays contentedly on the floor.
I am thankful for this morning quiet as I listen to The Girl at play, catch up on a little blog and news reading, and reflect on a simply good, good, good weekend of family time.
We finished the last of the bread a couple of hours ago with peach and apricot preserves, so today will bring a new batch of dough. My darling dear bought a bag of onions with the request for rolls filled with caramelized onions. I think I also see naan in our future.
In this morning quiet I am: Grateful for this still moment, thankful for a Boy who asks for “some of that delicious bread”, amazed by a Girl who is trying to play her own soccer game through the living room, endlessly thankful for the love I feel for my husband, and still celebrating the sun that warmed our city for lots of good outdoor time.
And now it seems I am being invited to dance to farm songs with a toddler. Don’t mind if I do!
It is always stunning to discover I have been in lock-step with the dominant culture when I long to be conscious of those ways and profess to live differently. Yes, life with very young children sometimes calls for short-cuts. Yes, I know better than to hand over the Wendy’s chicken-like nugget concoctions to the little hands in the back-seat. Yes, we should own stock in Morningstar because the top shelf of our freezer is forever lined with green boxes.
But as we move out of the infant year with our second child, we are finding new energy and renewed desire to increase our time in the kitchen and invest in our children’s experiences with food and with the earth. The Boy is big enough now that he, too, is excited about Spring planning and planting. He is ready to build a new compost bin, eager to find wiggly worms, and ready to join us as we turn the soil.
Until then, we are finding new celebrations in the kitchen. Here’s where my lock-step awareness is a bit embarrassing. The bread is not only so good, which I expected, but so easy. There’s nothing impressive about my skill or some magic touch I have. The miracle, the impressive work of the thing, is the way yeast and salt and water and flour produce something so perfect and so simple. My little ones stood, faces pressed against the oven door, and waited for today’s second loaf. No plastic bag wrapped around it, no big-rig truck delivering it, just the fragrance shared between centuries of family kitchens.
My husband and I were equally giddy last night as we tried very hard to let the first loaf cool before we attacked it. “Why have we not been doing this for the past ten years?” was my husband’s immediate question. There are lots of answers, but I’ll not explore them now. The good news–yes, the gospel of it!–is that we participated in the miraculous simplicity of bread baking and bread breaking in our home this weekend. We are dreaming already of sharing this simple gift with others, and thus we see glimpses of God’s miraculous economy; simplicity and abundance and community are connected and take root in our little kitchen. It worked.
The first sewing project I took on was a crib skirt for my daughter’s room. I discovered this shop and began acquiring beautiful fabrics and patterns. Somewhere along the way I moved over to the shop owner’s blog where I found out about this book and this recipe for a basic aristan boule. After slowly gathering what I needed over the course of the week’s shopping, here I am this afternoon, trying something new. Truly, I consider it part of my Lenten practice of turning and returning to ways of moving that are balanced, that move me toward God’s presence, that still my breath, that consecrate the space that is our home. Now we just wait to see what happens after the dough rises…
I don’t know what I expected last night. It’s Ash Wednesday, so…to dust you shall return, right? It was my first night out of the house in a while, and I was so excited to see friends and hear their voices. But the death, death, death, die, die, die of it all just felt like showing up at a party only to have someone vomit all over me. Graphic enough for you? Yeah, my husband wasn’t particularly excited to have this little Suzie Sunshine returning home to him, either.
I woke up in the night thinking about how hard Ash Wednesday crashed down on me. As my wise friend aptly wrote this morning, I was awakened in the night by the inner critic. Inadequacy, isolation, fear, jealousy all bubbled up around four this morning. Death’s closest friends, I suppose. Death in this life is walking with those critic voices and giving them a place to set up home inside of you.
I then woke up for good at a much better hour but still feel the ache of last night’s unexpected darkness. I’m mulling over what to do with that. Alongside my own personal lessons about how a night’s discussion of life’s fragility overwhelmed me, I am also thinking about those fifty women who surrounded me and ways to connect our lives, voices, and stories.
Life is fragile. Death seeks to overwhelm us even in the midst of life. So how can we gather, in daily ways, to overcome death’s grip? I’m gathering up my favorite “So What?” questions and sitting with them for a while. More to come as Lent is just beginning.