Recreation of the Heart

In all the snow, I’ve had a great opportunity to pick up some books that I love but never finished. Particularly, a collection called Pilgrim Souls with memoir essays from Christian thinkers and writers all over the world.

The essay that most hit home was “Surprised by Joy” where C.S. Lewis gives us a lens into his childhood and how he experienced what he describes something deeper than pleasure–joy.

He gives us three moments in his life where he experiences the grace of joy–Lewis describes one of these experiences as being child  standing under a currant bush and remembering earlier that morning when his brother had brought his toy garden into the nursery where they played. For no explicit reason, Lewis says he felt a “sensation” or an “Milton’s enormous bliss of Eden”…It was as though some longing that was fullfilled and “everything else that had ever happened to [him] was insignificant.”

I wonder as we reflect on our childhoods if we would be able to remember experiences of joy, an overwhelming feeling of…what the world will be some day. When have we felt Eden?

Home is here
With my love,
With sunlight pouring through.
Never have we seen this much home.

We are suddenly worshiping our Maker here.
In this house there’s still hope for
Growing up tall like a tree with roots.
Oh Lord, bless this house.

Somewhere in the brokenness is beauty.

There was the red pepper at the bottom of the L’Arche fridge. I had just realized that I was cooking dinner for 20 instead of 10. And as I was struggling to find an extra dish to make, I found the red peppers. As I began to cut them up, I realized that the one red pepper was black on the bottom from rot.  I cut it away and threw it in together with some whole wheat pasta, parsley, oregano, basil, white wine, some olive oil, and (secret ingredient!) V8; it made a delicious dish. Another day or so, and it would have been beyond use.

Then there was the next morning when I was going  to make oatmeal. Our groceries had dwindled, and the only apple in sight was one that on the outside was of questionable quality. I was ready to reject it, but something stopped me.  I decided to check it out, and as I cut it open, I saw that it only had a few bruises on the outside, but on the inside was a tasty, crisp, tart apple. I cooked it in some butter and brown sugar, and threw it in my oatmeal with raisins…for a taste of…goodness.

Finally as I was ending up meetings yesterday at L’Arche, I fished around the the fridge for some lettuce. At first sight, there appeared to be none. But as I dug deeper, I saw a bag of lettuce that looked like it might just be turning. I decided to give it a chance and poured it out into a bowl. As it turned out, the lettuce was just a day from going too bad.

There are so many places I can go from here, but I feel like having all this happen to me in the course of 24 hours weighs it on me a little more. God is teaching me something? Somewhere in the brokenness is beauty…

I think I am in Guatemala
I think I am in love
There are bagels & coffee
Sun rays and Spanish
Camionettas and children
I think I am in Guatemala
I think I am in love.

with a reprieve from the cold yesterday, alex and i went biking through the streets in the spirit of…fresh.

this time of year is so fresh. i want smoothies and salads, a light lemon vinagrette. the kind of fresh that makes something from what seemed like nothing…like soup made from broccoli stems.

everywhere i look, new is popping up unexpectedly–new routines, everything is different. what was monday is now thursday, what was thursday is now tuesday.

new colors, blue and green; new people, i am seeing them every day now. thank God for a new start.

And by sunrise I mean baby. The beautiful new baby still in her first few days of life–the baby, I saw yesterday–oh yes God, we are back from Guatemala.

I always pray a lot on long plane rides. We’re back safe and sound, but there’s more, too.

As I have been going through my life these past few days, I am seeing the world differently. It is as if the world of Guatemala and its beauty has opened me up to the world of beauty right here in Hyattsville, MD.

My rebelief in the beauty of the world started again when I was complaining to my friend about having to go back home, she said, “Well, we all have lives that we like.”

Yes, I do, I begin to think. Thanks be to God. Napping on Alex’s lap on the way home, I let my mind wander…so many beautiful places I have been with Alex over the course of our marriage– the woods of West Virginia, New York City on Valentine’s Day, Asseateaque Island, Harper’s Ferry and Pittsburgh, both places where three rivers meet and create cultures, then again more woods in West Virginia…our travels took us to glorious Guatemala the first week of January…Oh Guatemala, with your virbrant colors, your endless mountains, your forever spring…and the waking and the sleeping of the sun over lake Atitlan–the way it the light stretched and shimmered across your volcanoes.

Before I knew it we were home, walking in our door, walking back into our lives of Cleo and community, of
water you can drink.

We are home and Bernie, the cute oldish man whose been working in Safeway for 25 years asks me as I’m buying ingredients for dinner, “When am I coming over for lasagna?”

We are home and it’s an overwhelming feeling… this is a new life…a beautiful life…

I am reading “Spirit of the Cities” & in the essay by M. Shawn Copeland about urban ministry in Detroit, I found a quite deep set of questions I want to consider for myself:

Do I know what it means to make my own decisions? Do I know what I am making of myself in my daily choices and refusals? Do I understand that my liberty is the very delicate and fragile possibility of orienting myself in life for life eternal? Do I know what it means to respect others, to be in love with them? Do I know what it means to be a human person? Under what cultural and social conditions can human beings be truly and fully human persons? Do I grasp that conditions for human flourishing are the results of acts of human judgment and decision? Do I sufficiently grasp that the conditions for human flourishing are not something extrinsic, something pre-fabricated, something already out there now?

I’m thinking today about the life I’ve always dreamed of, what I’ll think about my life when I’m old, how this is a turning point of the direction of my life.

I’m thinking about dreams and how I don’t want a career. I’m wondering, what am I good at?

So I escape to this coffee shop, a haven in the suburban shopping center near the town where I grew up. It’s corporate, but it’s quiet. There are no demands. I can stare as long as I want, look confused, be…alone. I can see how these places have become sanctuaries for people everywhere when church for many has become meaningless noise.

I like the din of the heater, the conversations of people I don’t know and never will, the smile of the man sitting next to me —the anonymity of it all is refreshing.

I’ve never thought of myself as someone who has trouble at the holidays. How can you not be excited, I always used to think. Yet this Christmas, I found myself wandering through the colorfully lit streets in the midst of the holiday music, thinking–what is Christmas all about again?

Of course it’s about Jesus. Of course it’s about celebrating Christ’s birth. But how do we feel it? This Christmas involved a lot of trust, trusting that even though I didn’t quite get it this year, God was going to pull through.

And, then God did. At the Christmas eve service, when I was so tired, I could hardly stay awake, somewhere in the midst of singing all the songs, of lighting my candle, of finding the deepness of the “Silent Night” I felt alive again. And I went home happy to sleep, happy to awake Christmas morning, finding myself overcome by a realization of how precious life really is. My dog, my husband, my dad, my grandfather, my grandmother, my mom, my brother, my father-in-law, my mother-in-law…I could go on…their hugs, their smiles, their listening ears, their physical presence in my life are just hints of the Christ child who made holy our humanity in his birth.

During the snow-in of the weekend, I was blessed to not be able to go anywhere.

Blessed to be stuck at home–
decorating the tree
sledding on cafeteria trays
making shepherd’s pie

This Christmas will for sure be a white one. What remains to be seen is if we will keep waiting for Christ to come–will we “jump the gun” and celebrate Christmas now while we’re still traveling or will we continue on the road less traveled and wait till the Child arrives in Bethlehem?

There is a suffering, a serious reflection, and quandary of the soul that is almost necessary to receive the child.  After all, if Christ was born in a lowly stable…how will Christ be born in us?

I am speaking to myself, mostly. Slow down, Amy. Be ready for the King when he arrives.

I hear
the city
And it is beautiful

As the sun shines bright today
It shows our lives in a new light
The small things
The simple exchanges
In love and purity

Oh city
Holy city
Where Christ will reign
Soon and very soon

We receive the blessing that is to be packing up in the van, bike, or Metro and taking our gifts of warm food and clothes our gifts of love and care to You, however You are born to us this Christmas.