A Still Life

After a couple of weeks of taking time to tend to private concerns, my focus is returning to routine and life before me. I’m sitting in my living room with flavors of Thanksgiving still lingering and signs of Christmas emerging. I’m thumbing through this great family Advent book for creative practices to embrace in our home and in the Church. Just as surely as the catalogs keep arriving, talk of toy wish lists continue growing. While it may be altogether age-appropriate and not-at-all unusual, I find myself in a hurry to move past our son’s Christmas greed and get to the part where he naturally skews toward generosity and compassion. But if that’s a discipline I am still striving to embrace, then of course I am foolish to expect this young child to arrive at my own sought after destination.

I move toward embracing such ways of moving and being by reading words like those from this friend and of the actions of these activist heroes. Our family moves toward embracing such ways by welcoming neighbors for a long, leisurely meal instead of participating in Black Friday shenanigans. Let’s be honest, I have my own wish list of stuff even when I kid myself into thinking otherwise. I move toward a way of generosity and compassion when I unexpectedly receive that care from others. Recently, upon returning from a long trip, I was welcomed home by the fairy friends who crept into my house with savory soup, amazing floral arrangements, fresh rosemary bread, and a divine mac & cheese. These friends become heroes, too, and they remind me of a way that really can be lived right here and right now.

This time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is not just an in-between time or a countdown to festive celebration, it’s an opportunity to move between gratitude and living a life shaped by the perspective that true gratitude brings. In some ways, the anticipation of Advent is also anticipation of the life of gratitude and compassion I hope to one day fully embody. Can any of us ever fully embody it? Not yet. We sit in a perpetual before but work toward the goal, nonetheless. I am glad to sit in this season of gratitude for just one more day before the excitement and intentionality of Advent begins. One more slice of pumpkin pie, one more day of leisure and rest, and one more day to savor the moments that really matter.

While I’m not writing Family Fun Friday posts each week, I feel the difference in withdrawing more from social media play and choosing to participate more fully in real, flesh-and-blood life. It’s good. I’m *almost* ready to get rid of the old Magnavox…but not just yet. (How very St. Augustine of me, right?) I’m thinking on such things this morning while The Boy is at school and The Girl and I play.

She’s a box dumper. Happiest when each and every bin of toys and drawer of art supplies is emptied onto the floor for stomping and ignoring. We change shoes. Often. First frog boots, then pink Keds, then brown Mary Janes, and now ladybug boots. There’s lots of dancing in circles, a little Diego and PBS, much snacking, and a book or two thrown in for good measure. These are quiet, sacred little mornings together.

The Boy loves, loves, loves preschool. These half days help prepare my heart for next year’s fuller separation of Kindergarten, and these half days give me time with just my girl. No errands run, no cleaning tasks attempted, no meals prepared. It’s good to stop it all and just sit here and witness The Girl being her wild, wild self.

We receive our CSA share each Wednesday afternoon (if I remember, that is) from our new farmer friends at Power of Love. The variety of colors in the most recent share was stunning. I sat and shucked, peeled, and prepared the veggies for upcoming meals. I was reminded of childhood afternoons on the back porch with my mother, grandmother, and aunt who spoke of “putting up” peas and beans. It’s amazing how those motions and smells take me to the paper bag sitting between us to collect the discarded hulls.

Even with backyard gardens, the bulk of what we shelled came from the farmer’s market. Many of us today are enjoying an extra day of weekend for Labor Day today. I’m all for rest and firmly believe we fill our lives to overflowing with busyness. But I’m thinking of my brother this morning who, with a crew of friends, rose early this morning to a long day of hard work that heals the earth and feeds Virginia families. Rest and labor should inform each other. I am thankful for the labor of caring farmers who feed me and feed my family, who consider the value of soil, who know their work is sacred. May my work matter just as much.

I’m reflecting today in addition to enjoying this day with My Love and our Two. In seeking inspiration, I thought “Who gets the interconnectedness of labor, rest, and things that matter better than Wendell Berry?” Read here his poem “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front.”

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.

My youngest brother is currently working at Polyface Farms in Swoope, Virginia. In a previous career, he lived in Hawaii. We missed out on visiting him on that job site, but we were lucky enough to spend yesterday on this vibrant, important farm. The kids were both in bed before 7:30 last night, so I’d say our FFF (Family Fun Farm day) was a great success.

Yesterday afternoon’s events best describe both my week and this point in late Summer. After running errands and having a fairly productive, good day both in the house and away from the house, the kiddos and I went down to our neighborhood park to play on the playground as we waited for the weekly farm stand to open. I waited and waited for the farmers to arrive with our CSA share, but nothing happened. After 20 minutes of waiting I realized it was Thursday. I lost an entire day of the week and don’t really know what I did with it.

Now it’s Friday but feels like Thursday, and I forgot to observe FFF because I think it’s Thursday! Except I have no veggies around which to plan the next days of meals! Grrr. Thankfully, our weekly summer supper club will meet in abbreviated numbers tonight and with considerably less fanfare than most weeks. Perhaps we’re all feeling those last slow days of Summer as vacation moves behind us, school has not yet begun, we’re starting to stir and calendar and anticipate the large and small changes that are coming.

This afternoon, as I stood in the kitchen storing the last of the harvested lavender, I kept singing Emily Salier’s Mystery as I thought of these cooler days that hint of Autumn:

I could go crazy on a night like tonight
When summer’s beginning to give up her fight
And every thought’s a possibility
And voices are heard, but nothing is seen

It has been an odd week. We’ll observe FFF tomorrow as FFSaturday, instead. We may surprise the kids and road trip to the zoo. We may hang close to home and have family adventures. Either way, we’ll savor the last of our Summer days and give thanks for one another by simply being present to one another. That, too, is a mystery.

After a squandered Thursday afternoon with far too much online time, I needed a day to purge and renew my love for days filled with moments and time spent with intention and care. With much help from The Boy and the Girl, we celebrated our first Facebook Free Friday! It’s really not just about FB, of course, but that’s the worst of the online vacuums for me…and the FFF is nice, too.

My friend Bill reminded me of this quote he’s shared before (via FB!) from “The Sabbath World” by Judith Shulevtiz:

People began to learn, first from the telegraph, then from the radio, then newsreels, then television, and the Internet, that what was happening now, all over the world, mattered more than what was happening here.

I documented our day to mark some of the moments here and now. We didn’t hit every item on the to-do list and added plenty more that were spontaneous and fantastic. It was a good day.

A snack of fresh peaches from the week’s CSA share. Matching bowls are a must.

Three lists: grocery update, house tasks, crafty hopes.

Grocery trip: check.

Finally dropped off the bag and box of clothes from the back of the car.

The Girl is always ready to dig.

A 5 minute coffee break for me!

A new pillowcase dress for The Girl with bow on the back where she can’t reach it!

New shorts for The Boy.

Oh. The Aftermath.

Much better.

A rare goldfish break (after we found half a bag in a cabinet).

The bread: check.

The pie: check.

My favorite berry iced tea sweetened with honey.

Kitchen aftermath.

Ready for tomorrow.

Some might find the ebb and flow of this blog to be, er, maybe a little schizophrenic. One day it’s petroleum addiction, the next day it’s waterfall watching. One day it’s addressing the complex problems of poverty, the next day it’s finding Waldo. Rather than feeling scattered and frantic, this is the swing of balance for me. There’s a movement to my thoughts as well as to my days, and the two inform each other. Sometimes, the days remind me to slow down the thoughts. Sometimes, the thoughts remind to choose to make the days more substantive and intentional.

Today, I want to move with intention. How can I make the most of this Friday with my sweet Boy and my wild Girl? I like lists, as I’ve said before, and find good list making to unify thoughts and movements. Today I hope to:

Make this bread and this hummos. I was on a foccacia kick in the past couple of weeks but am ready to get back to the simple bread.

Make a version of this dress with part of a once-favorite, now-torn bed sheet.

Make this pie just because it makes me happy. I suspect I may be the only one in the house who wants to eat it.

There’s mopping and cleaning and tidying to be done because the house needs a little balance and order, too. There is a looming deadline and small writing project for the weekend ahead. There’s my Netflix date night with My Love. There’s a weekend to enjoy as a family of four. So much to do!

After yesterday’s confessional post on the tension between faith and praxis, I thought I’d spend the rest of the week focusing on moments in my life where there is unity of life-hoped-for and life-lived rather than tension. Our vegetable garden has limped through the summer’s heat, our herbs are hanging on and still adding to our fresh meals, the zinnias are filling out the neglected front walk, and our Mammoth sunflowers are at the end of their season. They are my favorites, though they stand so tall they begin to shadow the vegetables growing at their feet. The weeks of temps over 100 were hard on our towering friends, but we and the birds enjoyed them nonetheless.

Usually, when I write a post, I almost always sit down and write the whole thing start-to-finish in just a few minutes. It’s typically a thought that’s been kicking around in my head for a while before I let the words all come out. But as I slowly sort through my thoughts from the past three weeks, I have yet to find the words or the right moment to tackle my struggle with remaining centered or returning to a centering place. Maybe I’m trying to get at a better understanding of centeredness for my always-moving, ever-changing life.

I notice that when I really start thinking about the professional side of my vocation (because all of life should be calling, right? Not just the “work” part of it), I become more unsettled in the beauty and simplicity of daily life. Actually, I start to treat my daily life as a chore to get through with obligation rather than an adventure of new moments to discover and explore. When I’m focused on the next thing, I begin to ignore the present thing that is right before me. The kids watch more PBS than I should allow, I fritter away an hour online, and less gets accomplished both professionally and personally. I start to spin in thinking about that next thing when I suddenly realize I’ve lost days of this present thing.

Similarly, when I start to think about centering (be it the practice of meditation and centering prayer or simply moving quietly but meaningfully in my kitchen) as another chore to do, then I feel less centered. By this I mean, when I understand being centered as a result of some certain steps of doing rather than as a way of being, then I feel overcome by my failure to DO yet one more thing.

I tried to articulate this struggle for a friend earlier today after a rather anxious morning. What exactly am I trying to say? What’s the struggle? I think I mean that I am reacting to my life rather than being present to my life. My post-travel (almost-a-vacation) transition is taking a long time to get back into daily, centering (almost Sabbath) movements that feel healthy and energizing and integrated. But I’m naming that struggle and naming the dissonance in hopes of, dare I say, getting my groove back. BAH!

My darling dear has been away for three days fighting against the policies and corporations and ways of living that create disasters like the one presently in my Gulf of Mexico. I am proud to call him my husband and my best friend. He is brilliant and passionate and humble. He is devoted to working for good and for change (real change, not the political slogan kind of change that leaves some progressives grumbling two years later). My children are unspeakably fortunate to have him as their father.

But the reality of him leaving, even for just three days, is that I get lonely and grumpy and tired. Oh, the kids and I really do fine, and I even managed to turn in my weekly writing piece two days early this week. Our family-of-four routine is mostly smooth and steady, and I delight in my evening dates with this so-loved-and-adored one of mine. Today has been one where I’ve reminded myself to focus on gratitude and to focus on the privilege that is my life. To be honest, in spite of that awareness, I still wanted the day to come to a close.

Now, here in this quiet moment, my children are sleeping, and I smell my reward. Two loaves of bread are resting and will enter that gloriously hot oven just as soon as I finish typing. But the fragrance that has permeated every micro-millimeter of this house is the fassoulia. Wow! I have longed to make this simple dish ever since we first lived beside Richmond’s Armenian church.  The simple joys of fresh bread, savory beans, the laughter and story-swapping between neighbors remind me that the best parts of life that are pure gift. In spite of fatigue, in spite of grumpiness, in spite of tough moments…I am grateful.