A Still Life

After more than a week of influenza lockdown, I am pretty much done with the cold part of the year. This Winter fatigue is not unusual, and I am thankful we don’t have inches upon inches of snow on the ground. (*Knocking wood.*) But let’s all get well and stay well, okay?

While it’s still cold, though, I’m still in the mood for lots of soups and stews. Randi at I Have To Say is hosting a recipe swap tomorrow for favorite cold weather treats. We eat a mostly vegetarian (maybe flexitarian) diet, but I’ve been thinking about something hearty like beef stew. I was excited to find this vegan “beef” stew recipe this morning and may try it later in the week.

On the very first warm day (warm = anything above 45 degrees), you will find me measuring for this year’s garden, and we’re expanding. Planning for planting is a lovely way to daydream. How you folks far to the North manage long Winters, I hope to never know. Ick!

As I continue to reflect on what feels like a monumental shift in life balance, I am reading old words from my short mothering life. Before A Still Life, there was The Great Mother. (Here’s the first post about the blog’s name.) I kept that blog for about 18 months and started when The Boy was only 26-months-old. When my daughter was a few months old, I wrote about missing home, label confusion, and vocational longings. Below is the follow-up post that ran on May 20, 2009:

It’s been almost a month since I wrote of some in-between feelings that have been strong lately; feeling in-between callings, in-between physical homes, in-between identities.  I’m amazed by how much of my experience of motherhood has been this journey of identity–a steady revisiting of who I really am at my core, what makes me deeply happy, what ignites my vocational passions, and the truth that I am (we are) whole without packaged labels of profession.

I do miss home, the Gulf Coast home in Alabama with pecan trees in the backyard, jumbo lump and Gulf shrimp waiting in the freezer, 19th century house with wide-plank hardwood floors, cheese straws and sweet tea at the ready for unexpected guests, oak trees bowing to meet me over the street whose name my daughter now bears.  That home is in me even if I never get to return.  (Deep breath.)  That home will live in the new home I have created with my husband.

But oh, oh, oh do I miss my mama.

And I still feel in-between in my vocational identity.  I don’t want that to matter as much, but it’s a nagging that doesn’t go away and that hasn’t gone away since middle school.  I was one of those kids that took church camps really seriously, and summer was always the rededication-recommitment-call-to-full-time-Christian-service time of year.  Maybe my decade of youth ministry has trained my body to anticipate some increased sense of calling or renewal as summer approaches.  For almost twenty years I have felt that my life would be about, to paraphrase Buechner, my passions and the world’s needs meeting.  That is not to say that motherhood isn’t “enough” for me or that witnessing my children’s lives isn’t calling.  I hope and pray that my husband and I have such a home that our children will become partners in caring for a world in need.

But I still can’t figure out how the passions and words and desire to make change fits with who I am both as a mother and, according to my seminary degree, a Master of Divinity.  It leaves something fidgeting and wrestling in me.  At times I think I need to learn to breathe and move differently, release some of that busyness.  Right now I think this disquiet is a Holy Fidget (did I make that up?!)…a discomfort that precedes some new thing that will make sense of seemingly disparate pieces of my life.  I want to pay attention to the unsettled places in hopes that lessons are hidden there, paths are being carved out.  I want to pay attention in hopes that my mothering ways speak to my vocational longings and that my vocational ways inspire my home.  My disquiet, at its best, may continue this ongoing work of knowing my whole, true self.

Home sweet home after nine days on the road. I have new posts swirling in my head about vocation, slow living, feminism, petroleum dependence, good food, and the struggle to remain centered. That’s at least six, but let’s see what this life-on-top-of-each-other summer really allows. More preaching and teaching and writing popping up in my little freelance life as well. Oh, my. Full days.

I think I’m going to repurpose the Resources section of this blog, too. A Still Life is almost a year old now, and I’ve not gotten to that section. It’s not that I’m not working on my own curriculum writing, but it’s just very slow. My plan is to pull down those pages until they are actually full since I promised myself I wouldn’t have one of those “coming soon” sites that never does. The Be Amazed idea has morphed and is turning into a small group series for mothers that I’m writing with a friend. We’ve given ourselves a soft deadline, and I’ll keep you posted on that.

Until the changing and posting and updating gets done:
I am glad to be home.
Glad to have our family sleeping in THREE different rooms at night.
Glad to have plans with a fun friend for a little light shopping and chatting tomorrow.
Glad to have participated in so many meaningful conversations (and fun, crazy ones) at the conference I attended last week.
Glad to know good, smart, kind, thoughtful folks who care about things that matter.
Glad to keep my days with that lovely man of mine.
Glad to rest in the quiet of the afternoon while my boys do the shopping and my girl pretends to nap.

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.

My beloved gifted me with Wendell Berry poetry this Christmas, and I am swooning. We sat and talked last night about plans for the future, desires to move, worries of housing markets and social security and economic uncertainty, and found ourselves in a funk. We shlumped into bed, and I began to read a little poetry. Fittingly, Berry offers this on “The Future”:

For God’s sake, be done
with this jabber of “a better world.”
What blasphemy! No “futuristic”
twit or child thereof ever
in embodied light will see
a better world than this, though they
foretell inevitably a worse.
Do something! Go cut the weeds
beside the oblivious road. Pick up
the cans and bottles, old tires,
and dead predictions. No future
can be stuffed into this presence
except by being dead. The day is
clear and bright, and overhead
the sun not yet half finished
with his daily praise.

Amen and amen. 

It was just a few months ago that I wrote of feeling settled and ready for some new thing in my life. But here I am, middle of December, and feeling that fidget again. We all say things like God laughs when we make plans or that life really is all about interruptions. My hope for Autumn had been to write this lovely study on Isaiah (finally done and mailed, thank you very much) as well as creating some fantastic retreat  resources for churches to purchase right above this post at “Retreats”, and in the midst of all that I might have a few moments to sit alone and be quiet.

But starting in mid-September and running right into this week, our home has been invaded by germs. We’ve had a couple of ear infections, the obnoxious trip to the pediatrician that costs $25 only to be told it’s a virus, a foolish knee injury, and just smashed plan after smashed plan. I am not a pretty person in my own chaos. I can handle other people’s chaos, but I desire a bit more order and predictability for my own life. It seems cruel for someone to then say, “Ah, you know God laughs when we make plans.” Boo.

So this point right here, where the fidgeting turns into spinning, is a good place for that deep breath and slow exhale. It’s a good place to practice the waiting of Advent and the coming of peace, joy, love, and hope. It’s a good place to remember what I was feeling a few months back and ask for direction on how to return. Oh, I’m no good at waiting, and I’m very good at worrying. Deep breath and slow exhale. The Holy Fidget is not just about my own restlessness but about some sense that God is real, God is present, God has gifted me for a purpose, and that some new thing is still waiting to come. 

Frederick Buechner says that Advent is like sitting in a theatre just before a great performance begins. The house lights have gone down and the curtain is about to rise. In that brief moment, when we are still sitting in darkness and waiting for this thing of majesty to begin, that is the essence of our Advent waiting. I feel it in me. I’m still waiting, and I just know within me that it will be worth it.

I began acknowledging feelings of disquiet back in April of this year.  Not knowing what is coming next in my life had me longing for the oak trees and coastal waters of Alabama instead of the Commonwealth of Virginia.  I couldn’t shake those feelings, continued processing in May, and began to sense that some new vocational thing was soon to emerge.  It was then that I wrote:

But I still can’t figure out how the passions and words and desire to make change fits with who I am both as a mother and, according to my seminary degree, a Master of Divinity.  It leaves something fidgeting and wrestling in me.  At times I think I need to learn to breathe and move differently, release some of that busyness.  Right now I think this disquiet is a Holy Fidget (did I make that up?!)…a discomfort that precedes some new thing that will make sense of seemingly disparate pieces of my life.  I want to pay attention to the unsettled places in hopes that lessons are hidden there, paths are being carved out.  I want to pay attention in hopes that my mothering ways speak to my vocational longings and that my vocational ways inspire my home.  My disquiet, at its best, may continue this ongoing work of knowing my whole, true self.

With the help of a listening companion, I’ve continued asking these questions and listening to the Fidget.  Suddenly, the pieces around me are coming together in the form of this site, A Still Life.  It’s the life I want to live: still, intentional, aware, present to sacred moments.  It’s a word I daily need.  It’s a way that is, at times, unnatural for me and for the powerful pull of the dominant culture around me.  The meanings are myriad, and I hope to explore them all in my posts here.

Another new thing is the Retreats component of this site.  One of my favorite community events in the life of the Church is a good retreat. It’s been a while since I’ve made time to go away with a trusted group for quiet and fun and conversation.  When planning retreats and special events as part of a church staff, I often felt I could not find the right curriculum for these brief times away.  I either created my own or modified material that was just short of what my group needed.  For that reason, I want to create the sort of material I could never quite find.  I am excited to be a resource to ministers and churches who are seeking time away for growth and renewal.  

There is much more to come as A Still Life grows.  I am eager to hear your thoughts and hope you find a good word to take with you.  Welcome.