Saturday, September 13, 2008
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Sugarcane fields in Brazil are actually burned before they can be harvested, and the green stalks are fire-rusted when the women start cutting with machete blades in the honey of morning. The fire sprawls and dies, washing the field clean of venomous snakes and dry leaves, but preserving the water-rich roots and stalks. So the women begin their harvest of hand: they shoulder machetes against the sweet-splintered earth, splitting the shoots with their last cries of green, and hauling the cane into tall, wet piles. The brown of their arms ripens in the sun as it clips small circles over the earth, the blade obedient to its revolving course. The women who work the sugarcane field are paid by production, not by the hour, so they will push themselves until dusk. Some will toil the field for twelve hours a day, and then return home to their other world of cooking and cradles.
i watched a documentary once of photographer Sebastiao Salgado who called these women warriors. And I see it, in his pictures. The sugarcane field is their battleground, and they wrestle for their days with the sling of steel. They struggle through thickets of brown, enemy stem. The earth is their Goliath, and they face each morning with a jaw full of resolve and a pocket full of rocks. The sugar will be visited by salt, its sister, in the narrow of their eye and the bright of their brow, as the women labor from their bones up. The hours are long in the swelling sun, and the women will suffer muscle pains, machete cuts, and scorpion encounters before the day is done. Their lungs will itch with the ash from recent smoke, their shoulder blades will ache like Atlas; nevertheless, they will fight to claim the day. And after they have claimed it, they will parcel it up and haul it home and pour it into the mouths of their children and the sweet of their sleep. And we will put it in our tea.
My mother is no stranger to sugar. She heaps it into her mornings with teaspoons, usually into inviting cups of green or black tea. Tea is my mother’s morning ritual; a portion of peace before the sun and the kids are up, and in tramples the day. If she is late putting on the kettle, she will heat her mug three or four times in the microwave before she gets around to drinking it, because she refuses to drink it if not perfectly hot. Many a time i will click open the microwave door to find Thomas Kincaid with a handle, forgotten and cold, leaving a tea-rusted rim on the glass. She will set down her cup for a litany of interruptions, which have become just a part of the ritual that she accepts.
But the one morning ritual she tries not to interrupt is her time in tribute to the morning Maker. This time does not hinge on whether or not she has styled her bangs, made the French toast, or tackled the laundry; she will sit in the hovering morning light with her tea and Bible and claim just one hour of quiet. She and the chandelier make soft silhouettes against the fifty-paned beau window (i know for a fact there are fifty panes because she cleaned and glazed them all one year for my dad’s birthday), which splinters the Oriental rug with its shadows. There are piles of chaos waiting to be sorted and disentangled, but if she can pocket this one remnant of morning for the holy, half the battle is already won.
And usually, there is quite the battle at hand. Her planner notes themselves are an inky labyrinth of lists through which she must daily navigate. We always make fun of her for those lists, scrawled out in cursive and circles and cross-outs, on yellow legal pads that she stashes behind the phone. After tea and Bible study, she will spend the rest of the day devotedly connecting those dots and wearing different hats: mother, wife, homeschooling teacher, foster parent, manager of our 150-year-old home, part-time social worker, hostess, friend. And of course she will sprinkle in sledding parties, music nights, and mother-daughter teas into the cracks for good measure.
In between mugs, she will pick up the three year old from daycare, run my sister to piano lessons, create a care package to send me at college, and throw a baby shower for a soon-to-be single mother she’s watched grow up. Then she will cook dinner, which is faithfully a family event at our house, sing the brush-your-teeth song just so, and tuck three daughters, two foster kids, and one husband into bed before the day is done.
She’s been reading a book this year called “Keeping House: The Litany of Everyday Life” and a peek at the margins show a bolded and heralded hand-written YES next to the sentence, “A Christian home overflows its boundaries; it is an outpost of the Kingdom of God, where the hungry are fed and the naked are clothed and there is room enough for everyone.” This echoes the idea set forth in Isaiah 54, “Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes. For you will spread out to the right and to the left…”. This is my mother’s philosophy of house.
“i have eight children,” she likes to say. Three daughters and five foster children, not counting the foreign exchange student from France, the pastor’s daughter from Brazil, the neighboring family who lived with us one summer, our nursing student friend, various missionaries on furlough, great uncles, college friends, and the handful of other pilgrims, kin, and folks who have added to the tent pegs.
The strain of the Brazilian women shows in their hands. Their calluses fill the white sugar sacks like sweet pillows, ton by ton, stalk by stalk. My mother’s work is not so tangibly measured, but she is no less generous. Salgado writes in his book Migrations, in preface of the faces and stories that scatter the world, “More than ever, I feel that the human race is one,” and i believe him. There is a thread of similarity that spins sameness between the tangled fields of sugar stalk and the thicket-clutter of a happy kitchen. Women wake before the rest to scuffle with the light and harness it into something they can give; they wrestle the morning for their fruit: the harvester women with their machetes, and my mother with a silver spoon.
i watched a documentary once of photographer Sebastiao Salgado who called these women warriors. And I see it, in his pictures. The sugarcane field is their battleground, and they wrestle for their days with the sling of steel. They struggle through thickets of brown, enemy stem. The earth is their Goliath, and they face each morning with a jaw full of resolve and a pocket full of rocks. The sugar will be visited by salt, its sister, in the narrow of their eye and the bright of their brow, as the women labor from their bones up. The hours are long in the swelling sun, and the women will suffer muscle pains, machete cuts, and scorpion encounters before the day is done. Their lungs will itch with the ash from recent smoke, their shoulder blades will ache like Atlas; nevertheless, they will fight to claim the day. And after they have claimed it, they will parcel it up and haul it home and pour it into the mouths of their children and the sweet of their sleep. And we will put it in our tea.
My mother is no stranger to sugar. She heaps it into her mornings with teaspoons, usually into inviting cups of green or black tea. Tea is my mother’s morning ritual; a portion of peace before the sun and the kids are up, and in tramples the day. If she is late putting on the kettle, she will heat her mug three or four times in the microwave before she gets around to drinking it, because she refuses to drink it if not perfectly hot. Many a time i will click open the microwave door to find Thomas Kincaid with a handle, forgotten and cold, leaving a tea-rusted rim on the glass. She will set down her cup for a litany of interruptions, which have become just a part of the ritual that she accepts.
But the one morning ritual she tries not to interrupt is her time in tribute to the morning Maker. This time does not hinge on whether or not she has styled her bangs, made the French toast, or tackled the laundry; she will sit in the hovering morning light with her tea and Bible and claim just one hour of quiet. She and the chandelier make soft silhouettes against the fifty-paned beau window (i know for a fact there are fifty panes because she cleaned and glazed them all one year for my dad’s birthday), which splinters the Oriental rug with its shadows. There are piles of chaos waiting to be sorted and disentangled, but if she can pocket this one remnant of morning for the holy, half the battle is already won.
And usually, there is quite the battle at hand. Her planner notes themselves are an inky labyrinth of lists through which she must daily navigate. We always make fun of her for those lists, scrawled out in cursive and circles and cross-outs, on yellow legal pads that she stashes behind the phone. After tea and Bible study, she will spend the rest of the day devotedly connecting those dots and wearing different hats: mother, wife, homeschooling teacher, foster parent, manager of our 150-year-old home, part-time social worker, hostess, friend. And of course she will sprinkle in sledding parties, music nights, and mother-daughter teas into the cracks for good measure.
In between mugs, she will pick up the three year old from daycare, run my sister to piano lessons, create a care package to send me at college, and throw a baby shower for a soon-to-be single mother she’s watched grow up. Then she will cook dinner, which is faithfully a family event at our house, sing the brush-your-teeth song just so, and tuck three daughters, two foster kids, and one husband into bed before the day is done.
She’s been reading a book this year called “Keeping House: The Litany of Everyday Life” and a peek at the margins show a bolded and heralded hand-written YES next to the sentence, “A Christian home overflows its boundaries; it is an outpost of the Kingdom of God, where the hungry are fed and the naked are clothed and there is room enough for everyone.” This echoes the idea set forth in Isaiah 54, “Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes. For you will spread out to the right and to the left…”. This is my mother’s philosophy of house.
“i have eight children,” she likes to say. Three daughters and five foster children, not counting the foreign exchange student from France, the pastor’s daughter from Brazil, the neighboring family who lived with us one summer, our nursing student friend, various missionaries on furlough, great uncles, college friends, and the handful of other pilgrims, kin, and folks who have added to the tent pegs.
The strain of the Brazilian women shows in their hands. Their calluses fill the white sugar sacks like sweet pillows, ton by ton, stalk by stalk. My mother’s work is not so tangibly measured, but she is no less generous. Salgado writes in his book Migrations, in preface of the faces and stories that scatter the world, “More than ever, I feel that the human race is one,” and i believe him. There is a thread of similarity that spins sameness between the tangled fields of sugar stalk and the thicket-clutter of a happy kitchen. Women wake before the rest to scuffle with the light and harness it into something they can give; they wrestle the morning for their fruit: the harvester women with their machetes, and my mother with a silver spoon.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
i wrote this at cornerstone
So i wrote an intro for this, then erased it because for some reason i feel like it needs to be left unexplained. So there you have it.
He told me
salvation is not seamless.
It is sure, but not without the grit of the fight
as we struggle through the husk
as we pin down blessings with our naked teeth
for that home-made, hand-tackled joy
that blooms out of our throats
into something we can sing
together; a tribe of tattered saints.
At least,
i am no icon:
stilted in the smoke and hollow plaster,
nothing but holiness clenched under the bright of brow.
Actually,
i trudge my way into the kingdom
most of the time.
i skin my knees
on the way into glory
so that my golden hat was scraped off long before,
somewhere in the thickets of my flaw,
and my hands are raw with the coming.
Friday, June 6, 2008
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
the harsh and the holy...part II
My mental framework lately has been that God is a consuming fire, and we, the wicks. This is Annie Dillard but also Jeremiah theology, who cried, “His word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot” (Jeremiah 20:9). This is a truth, but it is lacking its complement. It is not a holistic perspective. Extremes like this need to be tempered, or I will only touch half the vision.
Here is what i mean: I need to temper my fire with grace, and salt my grace with fear. God is both mercy and judgment. He is both Lion and Lamb. He is gloriously both and one.
There is a violent side of grace just as there is a tender side of grace. And the latter has lately been my musing. Grace that nurtures, grace that heals, grace that comes in thin whispers rather than branches wrapped in flame.
My pastor spoke on this side of grace on Palm Sunday. Coats and palm branches are soft, he said. The triumphal entry of Christ is God's Light Touch to the World, He comes gentle. Jesus with children on His knee, Jesus touching the eyes of men born blind.
Clearly there is a dichotomy that needs to be reconciled. How can God be a pillar of fire and also a babe? How can His voice shake the earth and strip the trees at one time, and at another speak in a trembling whisper? i have a suspicion God is glorified in being BOTH. He is magnified when two seemingly opposite entities collide in Who He Is and unite in a divine harmony. The contrast plays off each other, sharpening the other into brilliance.
So i am thinking perhaps grace, like some other gifts of God, comes in seasons. Christmas shows us the tenderness of God, and Easter shows us the wrath. Just as Christ arrived in the tender newness of life in one season, and departed in raw violence in the next, perhaps grace is lavished on us through both the soft and the fierce. Even the earth and its turnings speak to the glory of God.
i believe God is gloriously both. He smashes tables and holds children. He is Judge of the Earth, Pillar of Fire, Lion of Judah; and He is Healer, Babe, and Lamb. He is soft AND savage--"the wrath of the Lamb" (Revelation 6:16). And we worship Him because He knows how to meet us where we are. He knows when we need to be wrestled and when we need to just rest in His lap.
Here is what i mean: I need to temper my fire with grace, and salt my grace with fear. God is both mercy and judgment. He is both Lion and Lamb. He is gloriously both and one.
There is a violent side of grace just as there is a tender side of grace. And the latter has lately been my musing. Grace that nurtures, grace that heals, grace that comes in thin whispers rather than branches wrapped in flame.
My pastor spoke on this side of grace on Palm Sunday. Coats and palm branches are soft, he said. The triumphal entry of Christ is God's Light Touch to the World, He comes gentle. Jesus with children on His knee, Jesus touching the eyes of men born blind.
Clearly there is a dichotomy that needs to be reconciled. How can God be a pillar of fire and also a babe? How can His voice shake the earth and strip the trees at one time, and at another speak in a trembling whisper? i have a suspicion God is glorified in being BOTH. He is magnified when two seemingly opposite entities collide in Who He Is and unite in a divine harmony. The contrast plays off each other, sharpening the other into brilliance.
So i am thinking perhaps grace, like some other gifts of God, comes in seasons. Christmas shows us the tenderness of God, and Easter shows us the wrath. Just as Christ arrived in the tender newness of life in one season, and departed in raw violence in the next, perhaps grace is lavished on us through both the soft and the fierce. Even the earth and its turnings speak to the glory of God.
i believe God is gloriously both. He smashes tables and holds children. He is Judge of the Earth, Pillar of Fire, Lion of Judah; and He is Healer, Babe, and Lamb. He is soft AND savage--"the wrath of the Lamb" (Revelation 6:16). And we worship Him because He knows how to meet us where we are. He knows when we need to be wrestled and when we need to just rest in His lap.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
the harsh and the holy
Annie Dillard says, “I came here to study hard things—rock, mountain, and salt sea—and to temper my spirit on their edges.” This is the woman who talks about “the smash of the holy”...“the bladelike arms of God.” This makes her a kindred spirit.
There is no other God i want to know. Something in me is wired to love extremes, to love fierceness, to be awed at the harsh and the holy. If it doesn’t have an edge i don’t want it. If it doesn’t have an edge, how can it shape me? how can it carve and create? how can it wound and heal?
Don’t be fooled, a dull edge is not safe, it is lethal, muting all the rage of life. It’s the prick and the puncture that we want, sparking us to something, quickening our souls to the world, igniting us to love and outrage.
If God were only meek and mild, if He politely raised His hand in the back row of my mind to suggest a cosmic word, rather than devouring my eyes clean with His brightness, i would not love Him. But i do love Him, and He reigns in pillars of fire and tables shattered and curtains slashed.
Grace on the loose. Grace in utter rampage. Hallelujahs flame like arrows. Blessings wrestle us down to our teeth. How else is He supposed to get my attention, thick as i am?
Hosea 6:1-3
"Come, let us return to the Lord
he has torn us, that He may heal us;
He has struck us down, and He will bind us up.
After two days He will revive us;
on the third day He will raise us up,
that we may live before Him.
Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord;
his going out is sure as the dawn;
He will come to us as the showers,
as the spring rains that water the earth."
There is no other God i want to know. Something in me is wired to love extremes, to love fierceness, to be awed at the harsh and the holy. If it doesn’t have an edge i don’t want it. If it doesn’t have an edge, how can it shape me? how can it carve and create? how can it wound and heal?
Don’t be fooled, a dull edge is not safe, it is lethal, muting all the rage of life. It’s the prick and the puncture that we want, sparking us to something, quickening our souls to the world, igniting us to love and outrage.
If God were only meek and mild, if He politely raised His hand in the back row of my mind to suggest a cosmic word, rather than devouring my eyes clean with His brightness, i would not love Him. But i do love Him, and He reigns in pillars of fire and tables shattered and curtains slashed.
Grace on the loose. Grace in utter rampage. Hallelujahs flame like arrows. Blessings wrestle us down to our teeth. How else is He supposed to get my attention, thick as i am?
Hosea 6:1-3
"Come, let us return to the Lord
he has torn us, that He may heal us;
He has struck us down, and He will bind us up.
After two days He will revive us;
on the third day He will raise us up,
that we may live before Him.
Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord;
his going out is sure as the dawn;
He will come to us as the showers,
as the spring rains that water the earth."
Monday, February 25, 2008
day by day
day by day
dreams
swell from their starch pillow husks,
gold-drenched and shimmering, and
rise like the souls of martyrs,
after the lions,
after the salt,
to clutter the universe
anew.
night stales between shadows
snuffed flat
by the gathering lights.
dreams
swell from their starch pillow husks,
gold-drenched and shimmering, and
rise like the souls of martyrs,
after the lions,
after the salt,
to clutter the universe
anew.
night stales between shadows
snuffed flat
by the gathering lights.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
advent
the souls of men are too often born,
red-raw and howling,
of scandals and spectacles:
the scarlet letter branded on the breast
and blooming in the womb.
tangled advents snatched from the clench of children
and scattered under the table to the host beneath:
the imperial souls so ill-sheathed:
dogs and circus freaks,
whores and seraphs, all communing
at the knee.
our legacy roars forth
in violent elegance
of such as these.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
First Snow
First Snow (December 2007)
white,
the plunder of ghosts,
has made a fury of the rooftops
i savor on my sympathy:
are not i also such a flicker
fury that I sometimes seem
dissolving in the streetlight
so suddenly swallowed.
white,
the plunder of ghosts,
has made a fury of the rooftops
i savor on my sympathy:
are not i also such a flicker
fury that I sometimes seem
dissolving in the streetlight
so suddenly swallowed.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Proverbs 21:1
Just a thought from my devotion this morning...
Proverbs 21:1, "The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; He turns it where He will."
Psalm 73:26, "God is the ROCK of my heart." Water is fluid, flowing, smooth; but rock is solid and unmoving. So when the two are brought together, the water flows as directed by the rock. The rock in a streambed defines the boundaries as the water submits to them. Praise God that He is this Rock, unchangeable in truth, unshakeable as my foundation. The obedient heart is that which 1) puts itself willingly into the hand of God, and 2) accepts the boundaries He has set. Because it is the rock that channels the water, and the boundaries that in fact direct our way.
May my heart be as water directed by the Rock: an outpouring, a life-giving source, obedient to the boundaries of the rock that determines my path.
Proverbs 21:1, "The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; He turns it where He will."
Psalm 73:26, "God is the ROCK of my heart." Water is fluid, flowing, smooth; but rock is solid and unmoving. So when the two are brought together, the water flows as directed by the rock. The rock in a streambed defines the boundaries as the water submits to them. Praise God that He is this Rock, unchangeable in truth, unshakeable as my foundation. The obedient heart is that which 1) puts itself willingly into the hand of God, and 2) accepts the boundaries He has set. Because it is the rock that channels the water, and the boundaries that in fact direct our way.
May my heart be as water directed by the Rock: an outpouring, a life-giving source, obedient to the boundaries of the rock that determines my path.
Friday, January 4, 2008
come simple
Matthew 11:25-26 "At that time Jesus declared, 'I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealed them instead to little children; yes, Father, for such was your good pleasure."
The parables all unwrap themselves—
strings and lines fall simply away—
when the scribes count their stars,
the rocks hold their breath,
the years tilt on their very eve,
and the universe unclenches of its shining advents
and stoops to fill instead
the cradle of a child's hand.
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