Holy Experience

Links for 2009-11-06 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-07T00:00:00-08:00

The Myth of the House Magazines...
... encouraging to remember what real life looks like.

Links for 2009-11-05 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-06T00:00:00-08:00

Message in a Bottle
... @ The Gypsy Mama
A Chance to Write at Beliefnet...
... @ Seedlings in Stone:
The Day We Let Our Son Live
... @ Her.meneutics
Autumn Dance
... @ Aspire To Lead A Quiet Life

Links for 2009-11-04 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-05T00:00:00-08:00

Overwhelmed with Homeschooling?
@ Heart of the Matter Online

Links for 2009-11-03 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-04T00:00:00-08:00

Life is beautiful....
... deep truth from Christa as she grieves and celebrates the homegoing of her Isaac
Four Stories...
... @ One Roof Africa ... beautiful...
My Messy House
... @ Slice of Infinity

Links for 2009-11-02 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-03T00:00:00-08:00

Do Thanks: A Family Project
... @ (in)courage ... a truly inspired, simple idea...

Links for 2009-11-01 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-01T23:00:00-08:00

learning to lament: ps 22 ...
@ listening to the wind
Free Audio Download: John Piper's Desiring God
... for the month of November @ Christian Audio

Links for 2009-10-30 [del.icio.us]

2009-10-31T00:00:00-07:00

When farm kids get bored...
... and a farm kid here said: "I wish we got that bored."
Slow and Daydream:
... the mind may be most actively engaged when wandering

weekends are for parent-love

2009-10-24T04:30:00.001-04:00

Ministering words (of so many -- thank you) from the Mailbox:

I've put off writing this for a couple of days, but decided to go on and say 'thanks' for giving me a new outlook on my relationship with my dad.

The post you had about being in the combine with your dad and kids, and the painful interaction between the two of you - well - your dad and my dad are very similar in their methods of communication.

For as long as I can remember, our relationship has been like an open wound. Sometimes a little bit of healing takes place around the edges of the wound, but all too soon, something pulls and rips, the wound reopens, and I find myself trying to stop the bleeding.

... about "shifting" to get a different view .... (to see) a man who wanted to leave a legacy and not be forgotten.

That gave me a new insight on my dad....

So much forgiveness given for me, I want to give him a taste of that ...'

-Anonymous daughter

:::

My father is 75 rs old and currently in an assisted living facility. He is the shell of a man I once knew to be so tough and strong.

He grew up a farmer and attempted to pass that love of working the land even though he was acommunications engineer. We would spend the summers working 2 acres by hand to grow corn, onions, tomoatoes, field peas, cabbage, potatoes, squash, & more. Back then I hated it, now I look back on it with good memories. It helped shape me into the man I have become.

The "the art of subtraction - shift to see" ... (it) hit home about my relationship with my father. Out of the 4 children he's left behind I am the youngest, & only one that still has a relationship to him.

All of my father's other siblings only remember the barbs from him. They have no relationship with him except to call once a year around Christmas. They have no idea what they are missing but choosing to only see the bad in the past and not loving him for the good.

I know that God, my father, is able to look past my shortcomings, and see the good in me. The good I have done to others, the love I have tried to show...

I have been writing this e-mail in tears because I don't want to waste any more moments I have with my father because one day he will only be a memory.

- Anonymous Son

:::

My own Daddy, is oh so missed. What I wouldn't give to hold his calloused hand, and kiss his leathery cheek? Those Canadian daddys are tough, yes? Perhaps it's the cold. Perhaps it's their fierce loyalty to family, perhaps it's their (feeling that loyalty) that makes them hold us daughters now wives so close it hurts.

Over the years, I am sure there were many barbed words poking and tugging at my flesh until it rubbed raw with a desperation to be enough...only for me it was a golf cart and not a combine that housed the ride.

And then he was gone.

Gone on the side of the road in his car.

Gone because his huge heart that loved so fiercely had betrayed him.

Gone on the way home from communing with his God during 18 holes.

Gone.

And those barbs now forgotten, missed even.

So while it's hard to subtract to see now, let it not be a task that you leave ...

-Anonymous Daughter

:::

I called my Dad this week just to say it again. "I love you." And I shifted to see:
"And thanks. Thanks for being my Dad."

Farmer Husband took his widowed father out last night for a heaping plate of fried chicken and mashed potatoes smothered in gravy.

I've got some baking to whip up in the kitchen this weekend.... some parents to love up with a token of homemade.

May your weekend wanderings, kind friends, perhaps have a phone call to a familiar voice, a card scrawled with just three words, a plate of sweet offered with a heart of thanks... a detour home.

We've been loved with So Great a Love by a Father has subtracted all our sins and shifted us into the Kingdom of Grace...

All's grace,

Related: The Fine Art of Subtraction: Shift to See

Photos: My Dad's hands
Share your thoughts?...
Would you like to sign up for more quiet thoughts via email?...

Feast

2009-10-26T04:41:00.005-04:00

The lights lies down in the harvest and we carry it in, heap the plates and savor the rain, chew on the wind, swallow down the dew and the days of July.

In late October, we bow our heads and give thanks and again eat the miracle and I don't think I really understand the wonder of His Feast.

more multitudes on a Monday... endless counting of 1000's of gifts ... feast snippets...

1211. boy-picked-and-peeled apples ... for boy-requested apple crisp

1212. quiet lanes to quieter places

1213. our annual bringing in of the squash

1214. boy planted and boy harvested potatoes

1215. Winter stock

1216. Mama's mantle of multitudes

1217. Summer's sun in autumn's dishes

1218. Sunday Dinner at mama's

1219. Sweet love

#1220- #1237:

Raindrops on tin .... Her brushing on blush, giggling .... Pumpkins by hearth ...

Warm feet

Boys snapping fingers, swaying, singing too loud ... Screens that move... His stubble

Celebrating 75th birthdays and the wrinkles of old men ...

Mama bringing cookies

Hairbands and girl curls ... Smile of the mailman ... Fall plinking in puddles

Her finding my lost screw (literally!) -- arm of specs reattached ... Library renewals

Wavering wicks ...

Soup and biscuits, biscuits and soup, soup, soup, biscuits, biscuits

Long stillness

Seek to cultivate a buoyant, joyous sense
of the crowded kindnesses of God
in your daily life

~Alexander Maclaren

button code here

Want to live the shortest, surest rule to Happiness? Become a Joy Finder? Consider joining the Gratitude Community! Just jump in with your own counting!

How to begin your own 1000 Gift List ::: How Gratitude Can Change your Life

( Drop me a line if choose to begin giving intentional thanks and gather fresh joy and I will happily add either your name or a web link to the Gratitude Community I'm slowly getting caught up on meeting all you beautiful folks who have joined the Gratitude Community. Thank you for your kind grace and patience! I'm so looking forward to meeting you all soon!)

Will you quietly join me in welcoming these Joy-Finders to the Gratitude Community?

Nicole at Pure Perseverance
Suzanne at Homeschool by His Grace
Erin at Carvings of Life
Jessica at Jezamama
Becky at Daily on my Way to Heaven
Christine at Splashing about in Creativity
Norma at Reduce me to Love
Gretchen at Fearfully and Wonderfully Made
Elizabeth at The Reality of Following Jesus
Christine at Seeing the Unseen
Michelle at SSShhh... I'm Thinking
Bina at Bina's Pad
Claire at One Passion One Devotion
Ginger at Ginger and Spice
Kathy at Now & Then, Here & Now, This & That

Maria in CT
Mary in PA
Jamie in TN
Jackie in Enid who is joining with her 6 yr. old Julianne (wonderful!)
Rebecca and family of 9 joining from Tasmania -- paper on their wall (yes, wonderful!)

If you'd like to share your gathering of God in the moments... , (please, jump in!) consider adding the direct URL to your specific 1000 gift list post...

If you join us, we humbly ask that you please help us find each other by sharing the community's graphic within your post.

Photos: God's crowded kindnesses
Share your thoughts?...
Would you like Holy Experience posts quietly delivered to your inbox?...

Poems We have Loved

2009-10-26T17:21:00.010-04:00

A kind reader slipped a note asking for a poetry title or two for children, so we pulled some favorite anthologies off our shelves....

And please, if you have a favorite anthology of poems that you have lingered long over and have loved, do share!

Share your thoughts?...
Would you like Holy Experience posts quietly delivered to your inbox?...

Weather Report: Listening

2009-10-27T07:18:00.005-04:00

I sit on rim of the world, the edge of a cornfield, and only hear wind in corn.

October rustles leaves of the dead still standing. Dead leaves, thousands, touch, bows across strings, make music like water running, water falling on stones, the rattling of the bones. Tassels, dried and brown, bow. Grey clouds track low, heading east. Leaves withered dry sing hymns of living water in autumn’s chapel and I find my place. All the lost pieces find their place.

The silence and the song exhilarate. I can feel their coursing; the tingle to the tips, the rush.

Strands of hair fly on chorus.

There is a noise to the world and it is not the flickering screens of cyber chatter, the bing of inboxes, the intones of phones.

I listen to wind in corn.

Nothing in all creation is so like God
as stillness

~Meister Eckhart

Photos: our sea of corn behind the house
Share your thoughts?...
Would you like Holy Experience posts delivered quietly to your inbox?...

3 Ways to Keep Company with Jesus

2009-10-28T00:50:00.011-04:00

At top of the church stairs I mumble words, apparently aloud and louder than intended, as the woman two stairs ahead of me turns, asks with arched eyebrows, "Pardon me? Were you speaking to me?"

The awkwardness, it burns up the neck, scorches the tongue and I stammer out ashen words. "Oh, no. Just talking... to myself." Laugh, feeble, it's all I've got to stamp out the flames. "Don't you do that too? Talk aloud to yourself?" The laugh does a miserable job of extinguishing.

"Well..." she turns away. "Certainly not in public."

The fire whips and I'm singed.

But it's true and red-faced, burned, I own it. I talk to myself. But that's not the whole truth, really. It only looks like I'm talking to myself, mainly because no one is physically manifest.

Yet there is a shepherd and the sheep hear His voice and they follow Him.

Sheep bleat.

The bleating often, when the potatoes boil over and I leave the sink water running just to swamp out the floor with lily pads of suds and Little One's patting at my leg with her pencil, "Mama... Mama... Mama... How do you spell 'Dear Gram'?" -- the bleating is a whimpering plea pumped out of the sputtering lungs by resuscitating Spirit, "Lord. please. grant. grace!"

I carry stacks of the folded legs, the laundered arms, to the closets and line the shelves with voiced petitions, fresh clothes, "God, thank you for washing our daily mess in grace... (uncrumple a shirt stuffed on shelf, refold) ... for laying us out in the Son... (pluck withered apple core out of drawer, tuck in clean underwear) .... for blowing us in the wind of your Spirit... (toss dirty underwear to the door)... and for enfolding us in You."

Son wanders in, gnarly tree limb in hand, come looking for his carving knife. He's oblivious to his murmuring mother.

Sheep bleat.

My mind too, it wanders.

A stilled faith-tongue can steer body and mind straight to the pit. But if I steer the tongue towards Christ, the body, the soul, it follows.

Lost, I call out again, stay in audible prayer, and the soul has echolocation and I find Him again and He finds me. Tongue -- that rudder, bridle, flame of the heart -- keep that tongue with Jesus and you keep company with Jesus.

Hourly chime goes on the watch every mother needs and I stop, mid-trail, one hat, a battery, two crayons and one so-holey-sock-I-can't-believe-anyone-is still-wearing-this-thing, all in hand, and I vocally pray.

Wherever I am, whatever my hand is at, when the hour hand digitally strikes, I'm working on this sheep habit of bowing head right then and here, not later and there, because the idol of self-importance, the necessity of my work, lures, an irresistible magnet, and I am weak. I'm a delayed life learner but I'm starting to decipher: He wants communion more than cleanliness, worship more than work, knees more than hands. He wants the sheep to stay close.

Giving Him the first moments of every hour tithes time, establishes the purpose of time, Who it ultimately is for.

Time is for company with Jesus and if I keep the tongue close, I keep close company.

At the top of the church stairs, it's a long lost item I spot in a corner and I murmur, "Ah, so there it is! Thank you, Lord." Thank you, Lord.

The shepherd's gentle and the flock draws close.

Sheep bleat.

Lord God... I keep company with You, communion with You, when I keep conversation with You. Kindle my tongue in a love flame for You.

Three ways to Keep Company with Jesus:
1. Continual Conversation
2. Tithe Time
3. Steer a soul back to Communion with the Tongue Rudder

button code

Every Wednesday, we Walk with Him, posting a spiritual practice that draws us nearer to His heart.

To read the entire series of spiritual practices

Next Week: Consider sharing in community, "What one spiritual practice has most deeply effected your relationship with Jesus?"

Today, if you'd like to share with community How to Keep Company with Jesus ... just quietly slip in the direct URL to your exact post..... If you join us, we humbly ask that you please help us find each other by sharing the community's graphic within your post.

Photos: sheep flock in pasture down the road
Share your thoughts?...
Would you prefer Holy Experience posts delivered quietly to your inbox?...

Never Fear Shadows

2009-10-29T04:30:00.000-04:00

Never fear shadows.

They simply mean there's a light shining somewhere nearby."

~Ruth E. Renkel

The Lord is my light and my salvation—
so why should I be afraid?

~Ps. 27:1

Related:
Fear's the First Step of Faith
Be Not Afraid

Photos: Hope-girl walks the lit leaves
Share your thoughts?...
Would you like Holy Experience delivered to you quietly via email?...

What Time and Grace Gives

2009-10-30T03:00:00.006-04:00

I walk fields.

Sun has dried the soybeans of summer rains and green life. Pods near split, spiral springs wound. Children laugh when the golden beans pop from their skins. Combines collect the gold pearls and I watch the great golden globe sink.

"It will be late." Farmer Husband unwraps the sausage on a bun from its foil heat blanket, glances at his watch. The grain buggy rattles, unloading the last of the beans into the boot of the auger. He leans over to idle back the tractor.

"If we finish up the beans by 10:30... I'll start planting the wheat right away. Keep the drill going till it's done. Likely finish up tomorrow afternoon. Four or so? Lord willing. If nothing breaks down."

I nod. "It's warm enough?"

He takes a bite, smiles.

"Small window is all we've got, if that radar's right." He reaches for the thermos. "But if we just keep it going, maybe we can get all the beans off and get the wheat all in the ground before the rain. They're thinking it won't be till later on. We just might..."

I don't do the math, don't try to count the hours he'll go without sleep. He doesn't lay head down on pillow to put butter on bread and I'll never be able to thank him enough.

What a man will do to beat clouds. I hope he reads the love in my eyes.

"Dad's got to get home before seven. He's got the youth group meeting at his place at eight. Think you can get Cale in there so Dad can train him before he goes?" He nods towards the dust in the back corner.

Farmer Husband's Dad, Opa, rips up dirt behind the combines, laying out a warm bed for wheat seeds. He works earth; sons bring in gold. The field of the next generation ripens, boys laughing and girls running, and the cousins wave, sister-in-laws too.

The harvest is in the years, the ties.

I can't do the math on that either.

"Yeah, I can drive over to that side and see if Dad can get Cale going before he goes." I hand Farmer Husband another apple, a bag of cookies, pittance for a long night.

"You going to be okay?" I let the fingers linger. His hands are cold.

He winks, smiles. "I'm good."

I step back from the tractor cab. He hollers over the engine. "I'll see if I can swing in between loads to see Dad before he goes. And just make sure Cale's okay."

Our firstborn. Taking the wheel from his grandfather. His father and I watching. I picked stones off this field the day before he was born.

It takes a family to beat a storm.

He sits tall in the cab, a man beside his grandfather.

I can read that brow, the way it furrows like the dust he's made from. Cale's driven the Ford loader tractor, brought home the auger, picked stones. He's never driven the Case IH, opened up the bare ground.

"I wish it was the old 1466." I heard him mutter it, opening the truck door. Opa's nearing the headlands, idling back.

"Oh the 1466's got no power steering, Caleb. And it's gears are touchy. She jolts." How many years ago now Mama was holding the draw pin over the wagon tongue and a hired hand backed up the 1466 to hitch up when the tractor jolted, tempermental clutch, and sheered Mama's right index finger right off. She doesn't play the piano or guitar much any more.

"Be glad it's the Case and not the 1466." I had called the words after him walking up the headlands towards Opa and the cultivator.

"But if I wrecked the 1466 it wouldn't really matter." His words had carried back over the coming drone of the tractor.

He knows how Farmer Husband's begrudged the 14 since that day Mama called from ER, waiting on the surgeon.

"Well, he's right." His younger brother had stood beside me, hands stuffed in pockets, watching Caleb run not to keep Opa waiting. "He's likely going to wreck something."

I frowned.

"What?" Joshua raised his hands. "It's true. It's his first time and there's a lot that can go wrong."

I could see that same worry etched all across Cale's forehead.

Farmer Husband pulls up with the grain buggy, leaves his tractor still running, runs over to father, son. Three generations convene in a tractor cab. Engines mask those gentle voices. I don't have to hear them. Opa pats a knee. Farmer Husband nods, lays a hand on a shoulder, points. And then Farmer's gone for the next load of beans. Old will teach young.

I give Cale the thumbs up when Opa gives him the seat behind the wheel. Opa leans over from the buddy seat, shows him how to drop the hydraulics, lower the cultivator teeth back into earth after each headland turn.

They go. He goes.

Some torches pass without fanfare and only a silent witness.

I watch in the dust. Along time I watch in the dust. Dust burns deep places.

It's only their laughter, those youngest boys coming up through the beans, that makes me turn away from the changing of the guard, the shifting of the seats.

I smile in dust.

Those two crazy boys stepping high over beans stalks. Another generation coming on.

I know where those two have been. Hours up in the mow of the old bank barn, playing with puppies. Romped out, I know too what they've now coming looking for. Looking for menfolk and rides in tractor and combines. Looking for father, uncle, grandfather and their point in time.

They've come looking for things that due time and God's grace give.

The changing of the places and the wisdom of the ages.

They wait, springing pods, palms cupped with the gold orbs. The sun sets.

I take my place and walk fields home.

Related:
Harvest Workers
Power Source

Photos: our soybean harvest this year
Share your thoughts?...
Would you like Holy Experience delivered to you quietly via email?...

"Six days shall work...

2009-10-31T04:30:00.004-04:00

Six days shall work be done .... but on the seventh day there shall be to you an holy day, a sabbath of rest to the LORD."

~Ex. 35:2

Come Sabbath, come rest.

Till then... this season, we'll quietly toil, stewards.

May your Saturday hold good, soul-nourishing, God-glorifying work and may Christ be all your rest this weekend, kind friends...

All's grace,

Photos: beans in the bin, wheat in the earth, thanks in the heart
Share your thoughts?...
Would you like Holy Experience delivered to you quietly via email?...

The Beauty Challenge: Because God's Everywhere

2009-11-02T01:30:00.005-05:00

She's talking and I've got the phone cradled between neck and shoulder, putting away the ever wandering books, the lost knitting needles, the apple cores that belong. in. the. compost.

And sister's voice is keeping me company (don't sisters the world over keep their houses while keeping company, phone to ears?) and I don't remember what line of her's I interrupt (sisters do this freely, by mutual agreement): "Oh-- that SKY! Late fall's moody, unpredictable and I love her. You should see this sky."

"Grab your camera---" My sister feels art and the colors in her cells.

I shake my head. "Not today."

"Not today? I'll wait. Capture it before it's gone -- you've only got a moment or two." She knows me, part of herself.

Standing before the window, mesmerized, I set my collection of misplaced Latin textbooks, leaf template, scissors, two pencil crayons, on the window seat, watch the clouds, the strata of greys and blues mount.

The words rise with the shifting hues, slow, unsure.

"You think we ever weary of beauty?" My camera sits on the shelf.

"No. Never." I can hear her children laughing, the clatter of her dishware.

"But what if our lives seem .... grey. Or..." Ear and receiver fill with wails, her littlest squalling. "Overwhelmed. Yeah... Overwhelmed. Crazy. Doesn't beauty somewhere else then just..." I grope for what I mean, some word to express a heart... "wound. Doesn't beauty found elsewhere just magnify the barrenness of where He has you? Doesn't beauty hurt?"

She soothes baby sobs. To the west, high, autumn's lid darkens and I keep watch. Sparrows line the wires. She hushes distressed one and asks me still, "Don't you think beauty's everywhere?"

I'm stilled by the sky. I don't even know if she can hear my words, the ones that come unexpected but certain, soft but knowing.

"God's everywhere.... So beauty must be."

There's a half-carved pumpkin on the windowseat beside me, it's innards spilled gory and gooey across the floor.

"Exactly. And..." She laughs and too loud. "Even you, don't you find it everyday at your wild house?"

I half-smile, shake my head.

"Don't I come over there and your mudroom has a mountain of laundry you're working on? And I use your bathroom and you really need to teach you-know-who to flush a toilet when he's done! And it's loud and somebody gets hurt and ends up in tears and you get overwhelmed by it all and get to the end of your rope... but don't you still find beauty? Isn't God in the midst of all your mess?"

The top layer of clouds have deepened indigo, dark water over white clouds, foaming waves.... sea over fields.

"Yeah... He is. Even here, Beauty is here. Because God is."

He makes all experiences holy.

I reach for my camera.

Step over stringy pumpkin intestines, just frame the sky from the porch.

It's not perfect, but it's shift, subtract, refocus.

It's pray for the holy vision.

It's making everyday an empty vase, buying bouquets of beauty with attention.

It's been a hard few days.

Which is why it's perfect.

When I leave sister to dinner and her household of littles, I leave pumpkin guts and pile of errant things, and set out a row of old bottles. Glass garbage really, bottles long ago found in an old and overgrown trash heap deep in the woods.

I line someone else's junk up against light.

Can the discarded become vessels for unexpected beauty?

This week, the first of greying, raining November, I'm seeking beauty, gathering grace, seeing if I can fill the emptiness with bits of the found glory, bottles becoming vases for unlikely loveliness.

Can beauty be uncovered anywhere?

Do I have eyes to see?

Can I find God here?

Isn't that always the challenge?

The one He calls His people to, to see Him right here, find evidence of His Daily Art, become aware of His presence in the improbable and common. I take up the challenge with some discarded bottles-repurposed-as-vases, a pen, a gratitude journal, eyes longing to see, knees ready to fall on knees and worship.

I am ready to see sky, heaven right here.

"Our Father who art in heaven..."

And the heavens are but here too, air we breathe.

You're warmly invited to join me in a Beauty Challenge this week, your own motley crew of bottles, your own furniture vases, your own hunt for God with slips of beauty not bought but quietly and unexpectedly uncovered. A twig may become art when attended to. Of course, not all the found beauty will fit in a vase. Some will find a perfect container in a gratitude journal. Regardless what empty place you will with beauty , it will grace you, this week, a life, with God.

Perhaps you'll share next Monday with the Gratitude Community your own windowsill of vases and found beauty... beauty found in your heaven right here, place where God dwells...

button code here

Want to make your life a vase, filling with the beauty of thanksgiving? Become a Joy Finder? Consider joining the Gratitude Community! Just jump in with your own counting!

How to begin your own 1000 Gift List ::: How Gratitude Can Change your Life

( Drop me a line if choose to begin giving intentional thanks and gather fresh joy and I will happily add either your name or a web link to the Gratitude Community I'm slowly getting caught up on meeting all you beautiful folks who have joined the Gratitude Community. Thank you for your kind grace and patience! I'm so looking forward to meeting you all soon!)

Will you quietly join me in welcoming these Joy-Finders to the Gratitude Community?

Amy at A Mile in My Shoes
Teri at Under the Redbud Tree
Marsha at Sparrow's Watch
Kelly at In Memory of Bryan
Meredith at Lovely/Foul
Ronda at HomeFire
Aneta at The Progressive Lens
Trina at A Life Blessed
Erin at A Full Heart
Debbie at An Architect and an Artist
Angie at The One Thing
Christina at Christ, Kids and Cookie Crumbs
Samantha at A Day in the Life
Kim at Oh, for Heaven's Sake
Stacey at My Unfinished Daze
Sarah at Nobody Knows How They are Loved
Lisa at Our Country Road

Chad at Listening to the Wind
Sarah at Glory in the Clutter

(Journaling)
Carol Ann in IN
Sherry
Kathy in AR
Angie

If you'd like to share your gathering of God in the moments... , (please, jump in!) consider adding the direct URL to your specific 1000 gift list post...

If you join us, we humbly ask that you please help us find each other by sharing the community's graphic within your post.

Photos: heaven here... beauty challenge about to begin in grey November
Share your thoughts?...
Would you like Holy Experience delivered to you quietly via email?...

The Beauty Challenge: Beauty Inspiration

2009-11-03T07:29:00.006-05:00

In the space of a few days, oldest son breaks his right arm working in the barn, youngest son twists his left ankle on trampoline, and the sunflowers droop brown and heavy in the garden, blooms withered.

We elevate and medicate and supplicate, and yes, there are tears.

November winds blow and it rains.

Do I have eyes audacious enough to see beauty, courage to declare the lovely in days that wail of the ugly, the boldness to fill the hollowed out places with surprising grace?

The true artist enters into work of Father and makes the ordinary material of the world new.

Inspired to pick the common and make it new with seeing eyes:

sleepneko

studio choo

farmer julie

Marc from Borft

mbgrigby

jek in the box

Daydream Lily

Donut2d

farmer julie

Daydream Lily

SynPand

Daydream Lily

oiemah

Design Sponge

Montana Raven

Matthew Topolski

Lord God, here, let me see You... in the unexpected and unlikely.

Have you joined the Beauty Challenge this week? With gratitude journal and empty vases and prayers for the open eyes....

Share your thoughts?...
Would you like Holy Experience delivered to you quietly via email?...

Eating Bread: The One Habit that's Most Changed Us

2009-11-04T01:54:00.014-05:00

(You were asking? Several notes to the inbox with questions, so a revisitation on how our family quietly eats this book...)

Words are always dessert.

I was sixteen when I first I ate dinner at his house and when the plates were cleaned, forks laid down, when it'd seem commonplace to nod thanks to the cook and push back the chairs, his family bowed their heads and his Father opened a Bible, thick and tattered, a multitude of bookmarks sticking out from all the pages and he read a chapter of Scripture in an even thicker Dutch accent. Chapter finished, he'd close the book, look around the table, choose one to close the meal the way it began, in a word of prayer. And then, only then, would the chairs would push away, the souls fed.

It's the way he was raised, the way his parents had been raised back in the homeland. You never leave the table without chewing the Real Bread. Even if there were cows to milk and you had to run, or you were late for prayer meeting at the church, or you had company for dinner. If you sat down to eat, you never left the table without eating Words.

Because the food served on plates, isn't it the rotting and dead?

"Food itself is dead, it is life that has died and it must be kept in refrigerators like a corpse," offers theologian Alexander Schmemann.

The food served on plates is but a a corpse, the dead food, and when we partake of it, we eat of the dying world. But when we eat Scripture, we eat the only real food, for Christ is Living Bread and eating He who sustains all things, sustains body and soul. When we eat His Words, we eat of the eternal world.

"Man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD." ~ Deu. 8:3

The Word of God is what is living and active, Word that can revive the hungry and when we eat the Book, the cells in the body, they rejuvenate, enlivened with the true strength. Broken and starving, I need that.

Eating Scripture three times a day, it's the one spiritual habit that has most changed us because a body, famished, needs to eat and there's only one way to eat life.

When we married, woke together in a home that we were to make, he first hung a shelf by the kitchen table: a place to keep Food that didn't need a fridge. This way of eating, the way all his siblings ate now in their own families, it was new to me, a new way of eating, living, being, and it came strange at first, awkward. But it was his quiet way: he never got up from a without opening the Bible.

Babies came and toddlers sat at the table. If they ate from a spoon, they too ate the sweet of Scripture, even just a verse or two. Not long, not arduous... but Words, the rich and the divine, our dessert.

Babies cried and toddlers squirmed and company came and we had appointments and there were places to go and work to be done, but Farmer Husband gently taught by simple habits, everyday rhythms, that if we've eaten the dead food, we eat the Living Food and it's a menu that becomes second nature, like putting a pitcher of water always on the table -- its not hard to eat or drink -- What is our appetite for and what satisfies our hunger?

Babies became children, the toddlers teens, and the shelf is now a box with a Bible for each one, and we pass them out at the end of each meal and Farmer Husband, he quietly, humbly, takes us through the Bible, a few verses at a time, a book at a time; breakfast, lunch and supper, we swallow morsels.

Every family happily eats uniquely, menus and routines and foods that suit their lifestyle, their tastes....

For us here...

How We Eat This Book

We read 10-15 verses at a time, chronologically through a book of the Bible, less with little children, more with older. We want to savor, chew long.

We give each person their own Bible, their own serving, so each person can see Words, what they're eating.

We read the Words aloud together, eat like a communal meal. Like we help little ones eat with the fork, we help little ones with words -- oh how they smile, reading Scripture on their own...

We discuss, serve the Words around. Children explain meaning, offer summaries, ask questions. Parents taste conviction, confess, repent.

We meditate, listen to the Spirit, let each quietly chew the words

We close in prayer, voices around the table, sometimes too with a hymn

It seems long. It isn't.

It seems good. It is -- but only for us. But there are many ways for a family to eat Living Words and no one right way. As gathering in each family's home is a beautiful one-of-a-kind experience, so each family eats Words in their own special, creative way.

It seems perfect. It isn't. Days when I sadly want to rush, when children tussle over Bibles (and they are all the same!), when we read too fast and a little cries and no one pays attention. But some meals too are simply edible, hardly memorable, but we don't stop eating. We try the dish again or we change the way we eat or we just smile and set the table with candles next time.

Always, we eat again.

We eat again.

Then He said to me, "Son of man, eat what you find; eat this scroll...

So I opened my mouth, and He fed me this scroll.

He said to me, "Son of man, feed your stomach and fill your body with this scroll which I am giving you."

Then I ate it, and it was sweet as honey in my mouth.

~Ez. 3:1-3

Related -- Initial Post, the storied one I prefer, of our family reading Scripture at the close of each meal: How to Read the Bible: Eat this Book

Related Posts on Ways to Read the Bible

button code

Every Wednesday, we Walk with Him, posting a spiritual practice that draws us nearer to His heart.

To read the entire series of spiritual practices

Next Week: Consider sharing in community thoughts on memorizing Scripture.

Today, if you'd like to share with community One Spiritual Habit that Has Changed Your Journey ... just quietly slip in the direct URL to your exact post..... If you join us, we humbly ask that you please help us find each other by sharing the community's graphic within your post.

Photos:
Share your thoughts?...
Would you like Holy Experience delivered to you quietly via email?...

Beauty Challenge: Seeing Through

2009-11-05T06:00:00.001-05:00

R
eframing the mess, seeing through to the Real....

...He rewards those who earnestly seek him. ~Heb. 11:6

Lord, when I seek... when I seek.
The Beauty of You... You.

This week: Beauty Challenge #1 ::: Beauty Challenge #2

Photos: seeing through to the Beauty of God
Share your thoughts?...
Would you like Holy Experience delivered to you quietly via email?...

How do Christians Seek Beauty?

2009-11-06T04:30:00.004-05:00

The cold came for the color, drained summer brown, and the furniture vases, they’re open mouths, waiting for petals and I go looking for beauty in November.

And when I fill them with tassels of broom corn from the garden, stalks grown from heritage seeds of the Shakers at Pleasant Hill, I trim each woody stalk and think how seeing beauty in the obvious and apparent isn’t perhaps really seeking at all.

The Real Words read: "For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?” and my thoughts line up like an echo:

“For if you find beauty in only the obvious, what reward do you have? Do
not even the consumers and collectors do the same?”

How do the Christ-followers seek Beauty?

A week on a beauty hunt and I’m taken by the ways of the God-Man, Beauty Incarnate, who didn’t tramp this sod seeking reflections of Glory in the pristine and the manicured, the elegant and tasteful. I read through the Gospels and find Him: Jesus seeking out the lepers and demon-possessed. Jesus pursuing intimate conversations with adulteresses, having lunch with the corrupt embezzlers. Jesus touching the bleeding woman, spitting in the dirt, making mud, laying it across eyes of the blind man.

Can I let Him take the dirt of my own life, lay it on my eyes, and let the mud itself give me sight into the colored world?

I set out broom corn-become-bouquets and mudded eyes see the real: for Christ-followers, beauty is more than seeing the lovely. “Do not even the consumers and collectors do the same?”

As a Christ-follower, the pursuit of the beautiful is an act of redemption.

Like Christ, His followers thrill in repurposing the ugly as beautiful, in believing in grace possibilities for the disdained. Christ-followers radically use mud as glasses to see Glory.

I light candles and fill vases but as a Jesus-disciple, the real thrill of the hunt isn't in purusing beauty in the blatant -- it's in seeking to redeem beauty from the broken.

Every morning I wake, a seeker.

Lord God, You know how broken I am, how muddy this place. So here's the perfect place for redemptive beauty. Let me thrill in the hunt.

This week: Beauty Challenge 1 :: Beauty Challenge 2 :: Beauty Challenge 3

I'll be back Monday, Lord willing, with found beauty from this week, grace-finds for our little line of vases ... maybe you'll share yours with community on Monday too? Blessed weekend, kind friends...

All's grace,

Photos: broom corn made bouquets, filling furniture vases
Share your thoughts?...
Would you like Holy Experience delivered to you quietly via email?...

weekend wanderings: fun with the kids

2009-11-07T00:01:00.012-05:00

~ A free customizable - printable chorechart for kids
(and it doesn't say "chores" -- it says how one "contributes" to family. Beautiful!)

~ organization of art supplies -- home-education inspiration (I recollect you can buy those galvanized buckets at Ikea?)

~a Thanksgiving Centerpiece
(Child-Made, God-Glorifying, Easily-Beautiful!)

~ Instantly Preserved Leaves -- Wax them! (Oh, can we do this too? A walk first... and then a dipping into wax... and then string the colored garlands. Might be a way to hunt for beauty this weekend?)

May you enjoy the beautiful people you are spending your weekend with! Together, may you seek Beauty... and all that He is.

All's grace,

Would you like Holy Experience delivered to you quietly via email?...

Redemptive Beauty

2009-11-09T01:00:00.004-05:00

The power of finding beauty in the humblest things makes home happy and life lovely."

Louisa May Alcott

It snows during the week, large flakes, like bits of heaven come undone, and white, it dissolves into earth. I spend the week redeeming the time by redeeming the ugly, choosing redemptive beauty, and earth is saturated with heaven.

A twig becomes art. A mess becomes mosaic.

The domestic clothes Divinity.

And this is what I brush against in the midst: that to give thanks for a thing, even the ugly, exasperating, painful... makes it a gift.

A thing of redemptive beauty.

more multitudes on a Monday... endless counting of 1000's of gifts ... redemptive beauty...

I thank you, Abba Father, for

#1238 ... mismatched socks

#1239 ... kernels of corn in pockets, laundry basket, washing machine, mudroom floor

#1240 ... soggy pumpkin oozing

#1241 ... lost library book

#1242 .... recalcitrant son

#1243 ... boy tussels

#1244 ... dropped coats, boots, hats

#1245 ... lost Latin book

#1246 .... apple cores, apple cores, apple cores

#1247 ... scratched CDs

#1248 ... dusty shelves

#1249 ... lost grammar book

#1250 ... green painter's tape around trim... still

#1251 ... wrinkled mats

#1252 .... splattered mirrors

#1253 ... lost moments ...

... moments when I didn't redeem the time by redeeming the ugly with thanks... I repent and give thanks for these moments... and what I learned from them too.

Lord God... redeeming the ugly with thanks, isn't that my daily work? Because when I choose the work of redemptive beauty, I'm choosing to see You in all things. Please give me eyes to see behind to Beauty. You.

:::

You're warmly invited to share with us your Beauty Challenge from last week , your own motley crew of bottles, your own furniture vases, your own hunt for God in the ugly, seeking redemptive beauty.

button code here

Will you quietly join me in welcoming these Joy-Finders to the Gratitude Community?

(Private Journals)

Pat in Texas
Teri in FL
Sabrina in Texas
Tiffany in ON
Nora in MI
Joan (with status updates in Facebook-- Beautiful!)
Sandra
Jaymie

Annie of Purple Moose Tracks
Abbi at Proverbs 31 Living
Cynthia at Girl in a Glass House
Lindsay at Art of Reflection
Peggy and Pig Logs and 'Tater Berries
Beth at A Walk Along the Way
Raya at On the Wings of Dawn
Aimee at What's She Cooking Now
Sherri at Tall Tales

If you'd like to share your gathering of God in the moments... , (please, jump in!) consider adding the direct URL to your specific 1000 gift list post... If you join us, we humbly ask that you please help us find each other by sharing the community's graphic within your post.

Photos: filling vases here with redemptive beauty
Share your thoughts?...
Would you like Holy Experience delivered to you quietly via email?...