Making Room for Joy

December 11th, 2011 | 5 Comments

Today is the third Sunday of Advent, when we light a candle for Joy. This is the meditation I wrote to read in worship this morning.

At the hour before sunrise, in the subtle turn from night to day, the world that was cloaked in darkness  gradually comes into view. Forms in the distance are hardly recognizable, then silhouettes gain definition: a mountain, a tree, a ship on the horizon. The stars begin to fade in that gray light—a loss, yes, though necessary if we’re to greet a new day. Soon even the brightest planets give way, but in the half-light of early dawn we keep watching, waiting, for something more. Then the sky begins to warm, the rosy color rising from the East until it brings life to everything it touches, from the dome of the heavens above to the glow of our own skin. Morning. The golden sun. Joy.

Joy is not ours to command. We watch for it, make room for it, and feel gratitude when it arrives—a heart-opening presence, a gift from God. It can color the world like the sky at sunrise, or condense to the flame of a single candle that sees us through the night. Joy can feel like the most natural thing in the world, or the most elusive. Its light shines out in a shared laugh or a thoughtful gesture. We know joy in the experience of beauty, or when we offer our best and find that it pulls us into the flow of life.

The angels heralding Christ’s birth bring to us, even now, tidings of great joy. They have amazing news of how much we matter, how near God is, and how blessed life can be. May we turn toward those glad tidings, asking that God prepare our hearts and our lives to receive God’s life-giving joy.

Susan Christerson Brown

 

Comments (5) | Finding Courage,Seasons,Soul Tending Tags: , , ,

Designing a Life

October 10th, 2011 | 1 Comment

Over the past few days I’ve been saddened by the passing of Steve Jobs. Along with many others, I’m inspired by the creativity and persistence; vision and excellence; risk, failure, and resounding success that he exemplified. As he grappled with illness and the imminent possibility of death over the past few years, he seemed to gain a clarity and perspective that enabled him to encourage others to realize their gifts and offer their best. If you haven’t seen it already, or even if you have, his speech to the Stanford graduates in 2005  is worthwhile.

A college class in calligraphy was among his formative experiences. The beauty and variety of the ancient writing styles, called “hands,” drew him into the art of lettering, which shapes the fonts employed by technology today. He entered the realm of design through the study of beautiful writing and artistically rendered text. Looking back at what was worthwhile from the past informed him as he designed so much of our future—and our world looks better for it.

I can appreciate that aspect of his education because calligraphy has taught me a lot, too. It was in the study of lettering that I learned to appreciate the power of good design. I began to see the world in a different way, noticing the importance of visual elements that I had never before attended to. As I studied the work of others, I realized that every aspect of the world created by human beings is the result of some kind of choice—sometimes a conscious one and sometimes not, sometimes a reflection of limited understanding or limited resources, but always a choice.

I also came to understand that good design results from the pursuit of excellence; it comes about through intentional choices. I learned what I could about good design from seeing it, studying it, and trying to understanding the choices that achieve to it.

In a similar way, we design our lives through the choices we make. If we are wise, we learn from others who know how to live well. Within our limitations, and working with what requires accommodation, we choose what we do and how we do it. We can bring creativity and persistence; vision and excellence to the way we live. We have genuine freedom in the way we take risks, survive failure, and continue to pursue success.

Steve Jobs reminded us of that. It’s no wonder we miss him.

 

 

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A Gift Just for Showing Up

September 11th, 2011 | 4 Comments

If I hadn’t had a role to play in the service today, I would have skipped church. With family visiting all too briefly from out of town, another cup of coffee together sounded like a better plan. But since I was needed there I drove to church instead, listening to NPR on the way.

I’ve resisted the anniversary observances of 9/11 this year, wanting to avoid dwelling on the suffering in that event and the dismay at what has transpired since then. But the reminders are everywhere this weekend, and this morning’s coverage left me feeling the weight of the past ten years.

I found myself thinking that if I had to be going anywhere I was glad it was to church. If nothing else, I was glad to be offering up the events and emotions of this anniversary with others, as part of a service that makes remembering more bearable and perhaps even more meaningful because it is shared.

As I waited in back to follow a cherubic acolyte up the aisle during the opening hymn, I had a vision of the sanctuary I had never experienced before. The glass walls at the back of the sanctuary caught the light in just the right way to reflect the trees in the garden behind the church.

The reflection of their trunks blended with the wood of the pews on the other side of the glass, so that the trees seemed to have taken root in the sanctuary. A canopy of green appeared to shelter the worshipers and the center aisle was like a tree-lined garden walk. As a breeze lifted the branches and rustled the leaves outside, the reflected movement seemed an image of the holy spirit, stirring gently among the congregation.

Knowing I couldn’t possibly do justice to the scene, I pulled out my phone and snapped a photo anyway, just to help me remember. It’s the picture you see here, the photographic equivalent of an illegibly scribbled note.

I’ve written about trees in a church before—something I find to be a meaningful symbol. That’s why this scene of a worship service overlaid with the life of a garden felt like a gift. In the fullness of late-summer growth, brought to life by a gentle wind, the reflected image of the trees spoke of suppleness and fruitfulness, deep roots and new branches, life and hope.

At its best, that’s what a church is all about. And because I showed up today, I was able to experience a reminder of the good that can come from people gathering together. On today, of all days, I’m glad I was there.

I’ll leave you with a verse from the opening hymn we sang:

Yes, on through life’s long path,
still singing as you go,
from youth to age, by night and day,
in gladness and in woe
Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice give thanks and sing.

 

 

 

Comments (4) | Faith,Paying Attention,Soul Tending Tags: , , , ,

What to Watch

July 24th, 2011 | Click to Comment

Still on the vintage jewelry kick, I recently brought home a box from an estate sale for $10. It looked to me like there were treasures among its contents, and finding them is fun. A watch with a band made of tiny links was one of the things that charmed me. Even with its worn finish it’s a lovely, well-made piece that feels good against my wrist. I’m looking for the right way to make it into a bracelet.

I popped out the watchworks and face, leaving just the crystal. I knew that as long as the face remained I would keep wanting it to tell the time. But the design of the bracelet and my own long habits keep me glancing at that clear window expecting something to be there. Something important should occupy that space, but I haven’t figured out what. It needs to reflect light if it’s going to be visible. A pearl shows up well, but that’s not the answer.

Without a focus on time, how to decide? If not the minutes and hours, what’s worth framing? worth watching?

A few weeks ago I wrote about a watch that suspends time. I could wear this one with its empty crystal and accomplish the same thing, but without the option of an instant return to temporal reality—or at least measuring it.

I like the idea of a mechanism that keeps track of the changing tides on my favorite beach, or represents the orbits of planets around the sun, or the spiraling of the Milky Way. Not that I’ve seen such a watch, but it’s appealing to consider time on a more cosmic level.

In the meantime, the crystal is a window onto the skin of my wrist when I put it on—it reads a hair past a freckle as they say. I could leave it that way as a reminder to simply be in my own skin, to not be overly concerned with schedules. But I’m still looking for another idea.

What would you place behind the crystal?

 

 

Comments (0) | Paying Attention Tags: , ,

Something Old, Something New

June 27th, 2011 | 2 Comments

Lately I’ve been perusing local antique markets, flea markets, estate sales, garage sales, and second hand shops, looking at vintage costume jewelry. I’ve been having a great time exploring local places that have been in business for years, but hidden in plain sight from me until the antique bug bit. It’s a whole new world of old things.

The variety of beads and stones, charms and chains, colors and designs, are endlessly compelling. Some connect me to the past, reminding me of a pin I remember my grandmother wearing or beads for playing dress-up from my mother’s jewelry box. A cluster of beads on a clip earring or an elaborate rhinestone brooch evoke another era, while a strand of glowing pearls holds timeless allure.

Many of these pieces, separated from the women who once owned and wore them, are too lovely to be abandoned. So I find myself looking for ways to recreate and place them into the stream of life once again. They usually need cleaning up, and sometimes more—beads restrung, stones replaced. Some of the pieces ask to be worn as is, but more often they need re-visioning. The link from a bracelet can become an interesting element on its own, a single earring can be incorporated into a unique necklace, a pin can become part of a pendant. The amazing designs in these old pieces can find new life when they’re separated and combined in new ways. A worthwhile element from the past retains a sense of that era, even as it is fitted to live on in a new context.

One of the things I love about costume jewelry is its accessibility. I would hesitate to alter a valuable piece of jewelry, even if it were something I wouldn’t want to wear in its original state. The sense that what is valuable is untouchable is strong, like the childhood admonition to look but don’t touch. But such items, when they are no longer relevant, tend to be set aside. When objects or designs fall out of favor or use, they’re put away and may or may not be found again. The pieces that remain relevant to the lives we lead are ultimately the ones we’re able to keep track of.

The best of our ideas are like this. Our values, our faith, our commitments are not rarified notions kept apart from everyday life, untouched by our experiences. They are rather the things we take up every day, acquiring the patina of time and use, occasionally refitted to remain relevant to the life we currently live.

Fine jewelry, like a fine idea, enhances life only if we wear it. Those things we actually wear are part of how we’re remembered, and become part of who we are.

What kind of jewelry do you like to wear?

 

Comments (2) | Creativity,Inspiration in the Everyday Tags: , , , , ,

Time Suspended

June 4th, 2011 | 4 Comments

Paging through the WSJ Magazine today, I happened upon this charming piece. It seems that the people at Hermès have been thinking about time and longing, expressed in a limited edition watch design celebrating the company’s 174th anniversary. Part of the Arceau collection, it’s called Le Temps Suspendu, or “Time Suspended.”

The slant of the numerals suggests the ceaseless motion of hours and minutes on the watch face, but these 174 specially made timepieces offer something to counter that momentum. They include a feature designed to evoke the sense of stepping outside of time. Press a button and the hands stop their motion to strike an impossible pose (from a timekeeping perspective), holding the “12” between them. Something like prayer position, perhaps. The date pointer hides away beneath a raised level of the face.

Voilá. If time hasn’t actually stopped, it has at least become irrelevant for the time being, which is much the same thing.

And since the time we can allow for not measuring time is limited, the wearer is reassured that a hidden timekeeper within continues to keep track. Press the button again and the watch returns to the correct time. There’s no mention of an alarm to remind you when to rejoin the scheduled world, but perhaps that would defeat the purpose.

I love the idea of a symbolic act that suspends time, shedding the schedule-driven concerns that clutter the mind and crowd the spirit. We’re at our best when we’re fully present, focusing all our skill and intuition on the thing that engages us. That timeless and exhilarating state is described beautifully by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. A ritual that invites that state of mind is invaluable.

When we reach it, time’s movement and measures fall away. The passing of time neither forces nor impedes; we move effortlessly through it. Later, once again inhabiting everyday consciousness, we look around blinking, wondering how long we spent in that heightened state. When was I last aware of the time? What time is it now? How long was time stopped? Only after the fact do we realize that we experienced an escape from time.

For those of us who don’t have $36,200 to spend on a not-watch, or who aren’t among the first 174 people in line to get one, there are more pictures and musings about the watch here. But we’ll need a different ritual for setting aside time.

Simply taking off a watch is one way to have such a ritual. It’s a sign of inhabiting a different mental space, outside of ordinary time. Another way might be to turn off the phones that claim so much of our attention. They’re a door to a wonderful world, but left open all the time they invite too much interruption.

Entering a ritualized process is another possibility: making a cup of tea, digging in a garden, participating in worship, engaging the imagination. We benefit from anything we can do to set aside time in a way that allows us to live well—to enjoy a meal or a conversation, to take a walk, to lose ourselves in something we enjoy, to create something new.

What kind of ritual helps you to suspend time?

 

Comments (4) | Books I'm Reading,Creativity,Inspiration in the Everyday,Soul Tending Tags: , , , , , , ,

Learning to Change My Ways

May 24th, 2011 | 1 Comment

I recently committed to a three-week experiment in following a vegan diet—a way of eating I had long regarded as extreme. No cheese? No eggs? No milk? Along with no meat? It seemed a lot like no food.

But I was intrigued when my brother, whose favorite meals include Wendy’s double cheeseburgers, said he was trying it. And less than a week later when he said he felt more energetic than in a long while, I ordered the book he had been reading. By the time I had read most of 21-Day Weight Loss Kick Start: Boost Metabolism, Lower Cholesterol, and Dramatically Improve Your Health, by Neal D. Barnard, MD, I decided to give it a try.

To take on that kind of change, even for just three weeks, is a major undertaking. It means learning to cook with strange ingredients from unfamiliar grocery store aisles. It means bringing new lenses to reading a restaurant menu. If nothing else, it’s gratifying to now know I can take on something new and make it work. But more importantly, I feel better for the changes I’ve made.

Given what I had read and heard, I wasn’t entirely surprised by that. The unexpected part of the experience has been the help I received from friends, which was an unanticipated pleasure.

As I first considered this three-week trial, I mentioned to a few people what I was thinking about. Not only were they supportive and interested in how things were going, those with more experience in this way of eating have shared books, recipes, tips, ideas for menus, and a great deal of encouragement. A dear friend even walked with me through the Good Foods Co-op, pointing out some of the items that would help me prepare satisfying meals.

I could not have anticipated the warmth, encouragement, and practical help offered by many different people in my life. Some I knew well, some were acquaintances. But all were eager to talk about the positive results of switching to a plant-based diet. I came home from a conversation at my hairdresser’s with a recipe carefully written by someone glad to offer help in learning a new way to eat. Even the owner of our favorite Chinese restaurant noticed the change when my family ordered all tofu dishes. He was happy to hear about the diet we were trying and urged us to stick with the vegetarian way.

I’m struck by the generosity and goodwill of those who have helped me learn a better way to nourish the body. All the people who care enough to offer their experience and knowledge have made this challenge so much easier. In their help and support for what they have found to be a better way of life, they have offered a kind of hospitality that reminds me of what churches try to cultivate. Change is hard and we all need help when it’s time to make a transformation in our lives, no matter what kind it may be.

This experience will certainly shape the way I eat from now on. It also has me considering how communities naturally arise when people find something so good that it’s worth sharing, and want to help others along the way.

Is there a community that helps you through the transformations that life asks you to make?

 

Comments (1) | Books I'm Reading,Inspiration in the Everyday Tags: , , ,

Integrating the Elements – Life as Art

May 14th, 2011 | 3 Comments

This is the amazing sculptural screen I encountered on a recent visit to the Mercer County Public Library in Harrodsburg. (My friend Mary’s art quilt, Hollyhocks, is on the wall in the background. More pictures and a reflection on the library are at The KaBooM Writers Notebook.)

The 15-foot screen, by Erika Strecker and Tony Higdon, takes elements from the rural life of historic Mercer County and makes them into art. Tools were donated by local farm families and incorporated into the work.

The piece is beautiful, dramatic, and also inspiring. To look at this sculpture is to see the disparate elements of a life brought together to make something beautiful. The framework sectioning the screen lends strength and order; the lines, curves, and angles in each contribute life and movement as well as an emphasis on the particular tool or task.

It is a visual teaching about bringing an honored and valued history into a new context, claiming our deep roots and long-held identity while thinking about them in new ways. This piece of art, deeply connected to the place where it is installed, feels like it belongs.

Life challenges us to integrate our toil and dreams, our abilities and needs, our history and future, while living fully in the present. A piece of art that accomplishes such a task, with authenticity and grace, is somehow encouraging.

What helps you see the elements of your life together as a meaningful pattern?

 

 

Comments (3) | Creativity,Inspiration in the Everyday

Green and Growing Faith

May 2nd, 2011 | 2 Comments

The power of ceremony and ritual was evident in the British royal wedding this weekend. It offered a wealth of archetypal images—of union and strength, new beginnings and promise, grandeur and reverence. Many of its elements seemed straight out of a fairy tale. But what I keep remembering is the sight of English Field Maples lining the aisle inside Westminster Abbey.

It was lovely to see life that was fresh, green, and growing inside a sacred space a thousand years old. We have a need for the sturdy structures of the church and its traditions. They can help us contain and interpret the most important moments of our lives. Ideally, religious rituals and teachings help lift our joys to the light and bear us up under the weight of our sorrows. But to fulfill their role to the fullest those practices must meet our lives, and the culture and climate in which we live them, in a meaningful way.

For this to happen we must take responsibility for engaging with the traditions and leaders of the church. We need the courage to express our genuine questions, needs, longings, and aspirations. And at the same time, the church needs to respond with openness, granting a blessing upon our willingness to wrestle with angels in the dark. Where this is possible, the church will be a shelter for green and growing faith that transforms the world. But where we just go through the motions, all that remains is ritual drained of life.

The church helps us live into the truth that our lives are part of something greater than ourselves. But the trees in the abbey speak a message as well: the church is charged with fostering something more important than its traditions; its role is to foster life.

What can we do to live a green and growing faith, and to help build a church that fosters it?

 

 

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A Prayer at Easter

April 24th, 2011 | 2 Comments

 

When the cup we hold is bitter
and its weight heavy to bear
May we look to the One who sustains us
in whom all things work for good.

When we lose our way in the dark
and the night is filled with fear
May we remember that love upholds us
and find strength renewed by the dawn.

And when we find that loss and sorrow
draw us to the tomb
May messengers of life and hope
roll away the stone.

 

May your Easter season bring the gift of life that blooms anew.

 

Comments (2) | Faith,Finding Courage,Prayer Tags: , ,
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