Until it is time

forty each

one of them says

greeting the passerby like

he's known her before

he

just

slows

goes

while i pull

weeds and wonder not

about dirt and indiscretion

but how it is i know

yet stay

sometimes

the ones behind

the lattice weaved i must leave 
till they've grown

so
go

slow

then 

each is known

before reaching to be pulled
out of dirt and in discretion

Gardening one day last year, I overheard an exchange maybe fifty yards away between a female pedestrian and a driver.  Quickly I was conscious of its nature: the young woman and her friend were marketing.  Selling themselves.  For as long as we've lived in this dubbed-destitute place, there are still moments that stun.  The real world of the desperate is right here.  (It's everywhere, mind you.) The cruelest acts are lauded for amusement and the most innocent or vulnerable are handled with contempt.  I am thankful in these moments that I'm still disturbed.

Interrupted.  Stirred up.  Dismayed.

On another day on our old property, I decided - once and for all - to get at a menacing vine.  I started digging to reach the roots, pulling it foot after foot and yard lengths, only to see that the further I dug the thicker and deeper it grew.  Still, I worked: heaving, chafing hands, bent in affront.  I never did rid the root.  Somewhere in the fight I had the picture of a powerful, unseen enemy.  It symbolized perfectly certain things that we'd discerned in our midst at that time, and it has since served me repeatedly.  Whether on individual or universal scales, it's the systems of earth and sky that we battle against here.  Not people. 

Jesus used metaphors for teaching the truths of how this all holds together.  One parable depicts the kinds of soil that determine whether seeds take root and thrive and finally bring a bounty.  In another, there's a story of an enemy who's sown bad seed and the workers have asked to pull the resulting weeds.  The landowner replies, "No; for while you are gathering up the tares, you may uproot the wheat with them.  Allow both to grow together until harvest."  Let them go.  Until it is time.

I think some weeds aren't weeds at all but life existing where it shouldn't be. 

Two weeks after the soliciting incident, I was tidying up the yard again and couldn't quite reach the saplings growing wildly under my porch.  Even though they're trees and I love trees, they're unsightly and destructive when they grow under there, behind the lattice.  I know now from experience that if I let them go, they'll grow long enough to be easily grasped and drawn out.  The metaphor returned to mind.  How often I wish I could just pluck others - neighbors, family, strangers - from the entangled messes they live in, in the dark.  I'd like to act quickly, forcefully, but my attempts to reach into those places in such a manner would and do prove futile.  (Not to mention the cuts and bruises that might ensue as when I try squeezing my arm through that lattice!)

I may feel disturbed.  I do get dismayed.  If I wait, though, wait on the Lord in supplication, I do get shaken up to hope.  I keep up with gardening, and I beckon with power in prayer for the day when seasons have proven to mature it all.  Many tomorrows may pass, but I pray that even these seeming weeds are found to be seeds that fell on good soil, longing in the end to be pulled from the dirt, from the dark.

-------------------------------------------------

And this is for
anyone feeling they're in the dark
wondering about the ground they're in.








 

Something new

The house quiets because the children are in bed.  I consider going myself, as I get dreamy watching the shadows of snowflakes bounce and fly on the wall.  One seemed to come descend inside, and then they all fall faster and fatter, and distorted through window glass they look more like a fifty Nerf gun attack. 

Every year when we get our first real snow, to me it's like the first time all over again.  Something new.  Something saved, too, because it's all enveloped in white.  That's especially the feeling when it comes on days like today, as I recover from the previous evening's too many loads of laundry and floors to wash in too many rooms after the littlest one puked everywhere.

It's like the new door on the house on our block.  Currently, empty apartments and boarded up homes number more than those that are not.  One house has been under major renovations on the inside but you cannot tell from first glance.  You couldn't until today.  I cannot believe the difference a door can make.  It isn't my taste, but it also isn't quite the piece of junk landlords will slap on only when it's absolutely imperative for their own sake that a door be replaced.  Is something new really happening?

Though I'm always dreaming about what's to come, no matter the time of year, I'm also no stranger to despair.  I need pictures like the snow cover to mirror my heavy prayers and then quiet me with hope.  I know the snow will melt away, and not before it's soppy and sullied!  Winter only lasts so long, and even spring has rain.  Still, I ache for a sweeping in to cover, cover.  Recover.  Whiten, lighten, hush. 

And make new.

A can of beans

Oh, summer... You and your beach days and swimming pools and bronzed skin and getaways.  You have barbecues and church camps and lightning bugs and late nights, lazy chillin' on a porch.  Nice is the break from the schooling pace and I welcome the shift that work takes.

But oh, summer... When your heat can mean a very dry land, why cast that same spell in our pocket each year?

Kenn's been our food shopper since summer came.  I take care of the menus and grocery lists and have been extra frugal and simple in planning, knowing our income is stretched very lean again. (Or is it "still"?) This week, I picked a recipe for an easy sweet and sour chicken that called for one can of green beans. I can do better than that, I thought. We've got 'em growing fresh in our backyard... but the plants have barely yielded two servings a week... maybe it'd be wise to put a can on the shopping list.  To run after it at last minute would be a bother, not to mention wasteful... 

I left it off the list anyway. It'll work out, I concluded. And I handed the post-it to Kenn. (I wonder, do you find that attitude a little too easygoing? I know we're talking beans, but maybe you think it's careless? Reckless, to leave things hanging so?)

Today, on the day that ends up being the best to make that sweet and sour chicken, guess what I found in our little garden:

 

Our biggest yield yet.
More than a can of beans. Or a hill, for that matter.

I'm worth
more than a can of beans.
Kenn and the kids are worth
more than a can of beans.
When God says he'll provide, he will.
And trusting him, I get so much more than my pocket can hold.

make room

something i'm most thankful for this week - besides central A/C - is my renovated bedroom in this old house.  it took more than half a year to complete it, but it is now THE most beautiful spot in our home.  and the spot i'm obviously (yet happily) confined to for some hours during this hot spell.

we still wait for Baby.  and i've begun reading another book, one about the writing life.  the first pages inspired me to pull out a memory and mark it with a poem.

rooms

this week i have
spent in my new room
newly remade
my oasis for days
and these, scorching
outside
the first i have 
ever designed altogether
in adulthood
though many
i drafted in 
early years -
did you have
barbies who lived 
on armchairs 
with hankies for blankets
and tissue box
beds?

it was wooded 
outside that was
drawing board
life-size
where trunks of tree 
were corner posts
for walls marked 
off by roots
exposed
stumps and logs
made sitting places
brier and branches
divided spaces
each with carpets
lush moss or
dried leaves


sister and cousins
or kid-down-the-street
would be well into
role-play
as i'd stay
in visions
adding new touches
to newly made rooms
just as inside
i stay
and envision
new touches to make
to this painted room
a luscious color:
dry leaf


- c. l. atkinson

* * * * *

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practice thanks & wash the glass

i finished reading my eighth or ninth book of this bed rest season: one thousand gifts.  (i do recommend.)  ann voskamp writes of the surprising and profound soul change that happened as she set out to record thanks, numbering one thousand.  somewhere in the middle of reading it, i began my own list, wanting to practice gratitude with a slightly different intentionality.  and to see what God may do.

when i realized bed rest would continue long past the first two weeks, one thing i moped over internally was missing out on gardening.  no planting of new perennials to fill out my flower beds.  no weeding to beautify.  no cheering up the front "yard" that practically sits on the sidewalk and greets every passerby.  even buying a few hanging plants for the porch seemed one thing too many for us to handle.

after two months on rest, i now have a better idea of my limitations.  i can use the stairs, a handful of times per day.  i can make a quick meal or bake an easy treat.  if i don't stand for the duration.  i can go on an errand, if there's an automatic cart to ride.  i can attend a social event, if there's guarantee of relaxation and shelter from the heat.  each of these requires a degree of help from someone else, and no one day can be filled with them.

if i am in a chair, i can even water my plants outside! though i had to let go of my first hopes for the yard, it's not hard to find other ways to enjoy it. and be thankful. this is the key to living fully, at all times, as voskamp teaches through personal story and poetic flare.  here's one picture she paints of this verbalizing of thanks:

      "i speak the unseen into seeing . . .  all the world is window. no material is opaque. if we are willing to see - people, circumstances, situations, relationships - all is transparent.  all of this globe is but glass to God." (emphasis mine)

      
and thanksgiving washes the glass, she says. thanksgiving washes the glass.

so i join countless others who have kept or are keeping gratitude journals and lists of blessings. moment to moment, they choose to set their eyes on the Giver and find more life.

i end with a few of the thanks from my yard:

126. newly molted cicada

 128. morning glories appearing

129. sun on my back

132. smile of girl on bike

181. low humidity

184. low, long reach of the elm over me
 218. a sandbox

219. imagination at work in the Littles

221. how play can be work and work can be play

day two greets me

before eyes open

my ears recognize

sweet dawn is greeting

with winged chorus outside

night's heat is exchanged

by the drapes being blown

in a dance with soft breezes

at windows wide thrown

my body now wakes

in new strength from true rest

as my heart remembers

this hour as best

morning offers

something of Glory

 * * *

another post to join L. L. Barkat and this week's On, In and Around Mondays 

poem written by c. l. atkinson

how does your garden grow?

i may have inherited a green thumb from the dear gardeners in my family. i'm surely no expert, but i have learned how much effort, time, patience and carefulness it takes. and don't forget ingenuity! yet even with the best sweat, the process can be downright disappointing sometimes.

for example, take efforts thwarted by insects and other animals. you choose a tiny seed, dig in dirt and position it just so, water and watch and water some more. a small stem starts to show sweet little leaves and excitement begins to build. the care continues and the dreams of a lush garden light your whole day . . . until those leaves are chewed right down to nothing!

living life as a Kingdom servant can be likened to this. you pour yourself into others, dreaming of the beauty they could enjoy some day. you sacrifice time and share your belongings, open your heart and help carry theirs. you push yourself to give and stretch your ability to commit. then you start seeing changes in how they treat others or in the kinds of choices they make. excitement builds and it's easier to imagine healing, restored faith, a transformed family and sometimes even a holy city!

until a neighbor disappears for awhile. or one who claimed his need for change, proving grateful for support, finds it easier to stay stuck in old patterns. or a family who seemed headed toward reconciliation falls into turmoil again. or a period of peace in the neighborhood is upset by another rash of violence.

our lives are teeming with "pests" that interrupt growth. maybe it's addiction. maybe fear, or denial, selfishness, anger, greed. some we choose ourselves and others are inflicted upon us, but the list that tears and destroys is endless. when it seems no green could appear and never a blossom would show, we need to trust the Master Gardener. the One who plants life in us will continue to tend to what's begun. and recognize this: when we serve others in the love of Jesus, pour out our time in prayer for them, willingly invite them into our families and become a shining light in their midst through our faithfulness, something of life gets rooted in their hearts and in ours.

which seeds will take root for good, we may not know. just keep going back to the garden. water, prune, and address those irksome pests. and picture the garden full and vibrant one day, flowing over with beauty.

worth the wait

i had the feeling (read hope) that we would get a "real" winter this year.
and more is yet to come! yahoo!