Weapons to Tools

(This post was originally published in the Reformed Journal)

I’m just coming off the most challenging few years of my life, and I continue to grow and be stretched and learn so much along the way. This post gets personal, but this is part of my story (albeit a very small piece of a much larger story) and I’m inviting you into it. Just so we’re clear, I don’t share it because I want pity. I’m way past that, and pity is an obstacle to what I really desire, which is transformation.

I share it because usually things need to be named before they can be transformed. Too often we fail to transform because we fail to name, and we fail to name because, as people of privilege, we especially seem to dislike the discomfort of the naming. If you’re already uncomfortable by what I just wrote, consider this your opportunity to stop reading and move on.

*****

“How does this end,” I have wondered, “if people of faith are unwilling to stand up and boldly model a better way of political engagement? Will we continue to spin and spiral in darkness, waging war with the weapons of our murderous words until everyone is dead inside? Or will we lay down our killing words and enter life-giving conversations sharing hopeful stories about the way the world could be?” 

*****

I enter my garden to remember that life and revival can cut even through the hardest crust of winter. I enter my garden for the tactile reminder that persistent planting, watering, weeding, pruning, tending and coaxing can nourish a life-giving community of green things as they push up out of the ground. I enter my garden to see the fruit of hard work- to know that all the bending and kneeling under the heat of summer with sweat piling in the folds and creases of my skin and dripping off my chin in heavy drops, nearly always yields good things. I enter my garden when I need to be reminded of how the world can be if we work diligently towards the vision of it’s fruition.

The last few years have been like bits of gravel pocketed in my cheeks and scraping around in my mouth alongside sweet saving dollops of honey that roll around on the tongue and remind me of the goodness of life. My husband, a pastor, ran for U.S. Congress… as a Democrat. 

A Christian pastor… running as a Democrat… in West Michigan. I hardly need to spell out for the readers of this journal how that went. We knew it would be a difficult experience given that we live in a predominantly white, Christian, conservative Republican community, but we never imagined the extent of the vile things that would casually dribble from the mouths of the people around us. 

Needless to say, I’ve been spending a lot of time on my knees in the garden as of late.

By the end of what surely was the most divisive and tumultuous U.S. election season my generation has ever experienced, we had moved out of our house twice because of concerns of violence and harassment at our home, on a regular basis people drove by our house slowly with the windows down shouting obscenities before peeling off with a roar. 

Several families in our Christian school community made it clear through emails, anonymous snail mail, Facebook messages, and icy stares that our family was unwelcome and unwanted at “their” school. Our kids endured more than I care to write about here. We were slandered in unmentionable and dehumanizing ways, even some local pastors told us straight up that we were not Christians if we voted for Democrats. 

Strangers on Facebook — people who had never met us or engaged in meaningful dialogue with us — wrote monstrous heart-stopping words about our family and took giddy pleasure in publically boasting about all the ugly things they would like to do to us- including how they would have their way with me and my then eleven year old daughter. 

Why? Because there was a “D” beside my husband’s name, and that was enough to justify vilification. There was no end to the violent, poisonous and dehumanizing rhetoric- including by self professed Christians. 

Throughout history, dehumanizing labels and rhetoric have always been a precursor to justifying violence. Always. And so it was so very difficult to realize that this kind of cruelty was lurking underneath so many of the polite and well-manicured faces that moved among us.

Thank God, our family also experienced overwhelming support from friends, other parents at the school too terrified to publicly let anyone else know they voted for Democrats, other pastors, other Republicans, and our kids’ teachers — so many people who loved us and stood by us through all of it. Without that significant community of support we would have never survived the struggle. They say you find true community in difficult times, and this proved true for us. This has been the honey of the last few years.

Last Spring, my friend, Shane Claiborne, hammered out the barrel of a gun and transformed it into a beautiful garden trowel for me. He is literally turning weapons into garden tools. Gripping the carved wooden handle and plunging it into the hot summer soil became a repetitive symbolic reminder that we are called to be people of life and hope — not death and destruction. We are called to throw light at the darkness, to dish out love to those who slam us with hatred. We are called to embody God’s way of shalom in the midst of a cruel and chaotic world. We are called to self sacrifice in the service of others — not to sacrifice others in service of ourselves and our selfish power gains.

Gardening has become a meditative, contemplative practice where I’ve learned to intentionally examine the workings inside myself and begin the work of easing out the hatred that hides in the corners of my own heart — a hatred that tempts me to draw a sword and swing back. Here I am learning to appreciate and name the good in even those who seek to hurt my family. Here in the silence of the garden, God seems always present and always whispering to me the reminder that violence nearly always begets violence whether we are talking about global warfare or a war of words intended to wound and kill, and that God calls us to step away from it.

Daily I find myself in the garden where all my grief and angst gets worked out as I knead tears and compost into the soil of the garden beds and into the soil of my soul, where I bury seeds alongside my scars, and wait to see what grows. In my moments of anger I tear the flesh of destructive and invasive weeds out of the ground before they overshadow the good things growing. This has been holy, sacred healing work that uproots the anger in me too. I have learned that it takes time for the vision of hope and possibility to emerge transformed, to push roots into the nutrients and stretch its arms straight up, grabbing fistfuls of sun and mulch on its way to the sky. 

Imagine what would be possible if we had the strength and humility to beat our partisan weapons into plowshares and work together — side by side in the garden — towards reformation and transformation of the systems that determine how we live together. Imagine if we held up a vision of a world where everyone has the opportunity to thrive and we threw ourselves into the work of making it so?

The more time I spend in the garden, the more I sense the Spirit of God hovering inside me, and the more deeply a peace that passes understanding begins to take root and grow in me, even as this wild spiteful storm seems to be following our family. The more I experience God’s peace, the more I find myself able to let go of the grief and pity that I had been feeling for myself and the easier it becomes to transform it into prayers that God’s Spirit would work in the hearts of those who seek to harm. Out of the heart the mouth speaks. So I guess it’s a transformation of hearts that I’m really praying for — a transformation of mine, of theirs, and of the whole wide world.

Metamorphosis

She glided down swiftly into the grass on her delicate wings so intricately threaded together in her cocoon. Beside me she landed. Her proboscis relaxed and rolled up tight a few times. We looked each other in the eye for a brief moment of deep understanding- two small living things who know the struggle of metamorphosis and the freedom on the other end. Then she was off again. And I too.

Hope Springs Eternal

Four acres of Poppies and Bachelor’s Buttons are tucked in beside the cemetery, in Fennville, Michigan. Four acres of unadulterated goodness springing up from the earth, twisted roots clinging to the soil, drawing up nutrients through the stems. This field- so much aliveness beside the eternally resting.

I’m told Mateo Donaldson was a bee keeper on Pleasant Hill Farm before he served a tour of duty in Afghanistan. Like too many others who serve, he returned with PTSD and took his own life. This is the second year his parents stitched these seeds of love and grief into the soil in honor of their son. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this year the world seemed to suddenly take notice. This year, in the midst of people fighting for their life on ventilators and people gasping for breath in the streets, in the midst of partisan division so toxic it’s ripping apart families and tearing up relationships and pitting neighbor against neighbor, in the midst of national growing pains and cramping muscles as we learn to stretch into a better way of being… in the midst of all this… four acres of wonder pushes up from the ground.

Four acres sprouting, blossoming and bursting into unflinching beauty- a spiral of hope, a gift to this community borne out of a farmer’s mingling of soil, tears, sweat, love and thoughtful generosity. Everyone from everywhere comes to walk the path around this field- all labels set aside for these few moments as we are filled with the sacred simplicity of poppies and bachelor buttons.

The earth has a way of grounding us to what is holy, of reminding us who we are and who we can be in the process of becoming better together. It has a way of promising us that the seeds we plant will survive the storms and rupture through the hard crust of winter as the earth warms and stretches its arms to wakefulness. It has a way of reminding us that hope indeed springs eternal.

Among the Trees

In the midst of the very hard parts of social distancing, this weekend I found myself thanking God that we at least get to stay close to the trees. Quite frankly, I don’t know what I would do if I was no longer allowed to move myself through a full forest of them.

changeless and calm

a contemplative chant by Gerald May

changeless and calm

deep mystery

ever more deeply

rooted in thee

I Pray With My Feet

Some people pray bedside on their knees. Some pray from the pew with head bowed and hands folded. Some pray bent over at the foot of a cross and others shout to the heavens with arms outstretched. I mostly pray as I walk in sacred silence— pounding my prayers into the earth through my feet as they move my body through wooded trails, snowy fields, grassy knolls and sandy beaches. I release my prayers in the walking— like captive birds being released from open hands outstretched.

In my experience, it is sometimes the harshest climates that draw out the deepest longings and the most precious praises.

And so today I wind my way down icy trails to a cold and windy beach, on a freezing afternoon. Here the waves wail against the icy edges, coughing up their chilly spittle, and I bash my prayers out against them too— prayers for close friends recently dealing with devastating diagnoses, for communities of people pressed down and squeezed by the weight of injustice, for a nation divided, for the normalcy of vitriolic rhetoric and displays of deep, graceless hatred, for the ignorant nasty attacks that My husband and I sometimes endure in the midst of his campaign as extremist, false and disparaging words are so casually and recklessly thrown down. Poison from tongues seeking to harm.

I choke out loud on the growing lump in my throat. Hot tears spill and freeze half way down my cheeks— even the wind is cruel today as it bitterly denies those tears the opportunity to complete their roll and somersault to the ground. The world can sometimes be a vicious place where noxious people lurk with their sinister motives, where disease takes loved ones too soon, where injustice is celebrated, where sometimes even the weather seems to join in the bestowing of uncharitable contributions.

As I snake my way across icy sand dunes at the edge of Lake Michigan, the clouds roll back and the sun falls down over the edge. I pause and receive this gift. It reaches its arms down to me, holds out a hand for me to clasp, offers a shoulder to lean on. After a few moments of hesitation I fully sink my body into its warm embrace.

The light envelopes me. I am grounded. I am clear-eyed and strong. I will not give up the call to love those who seek to harm me, despite it being the way of this world. I refuse to trade hate for hate because I am rooted in the soils of this earth, and it’s fierce love and holiness is a river in my veins.

I will absorb this warmth here. I will absorb this light. And I will push it back out into a world that is revealing itself to be dark and desperate for it.

As I trail my way back to through the woods, the swelling wind lifts praises from my lips. It is unexpected. These thanksgivings are ribbons on a helium balloon, and they spiral upward. I don’t even know how those praises found their way to my lips, but this is the nature of praying through your feet.

Winter Fog

Sometimes the fog holds a certain darkish murk in its clammy clutches. Even so, I am drawn to wandering away from the warmth of the home and into the thick of it. Cutting a trail of light through the darkness makes me feel alive.

A Time for Everything

 

Lake Michigan takes what it wants. She reaches into the woods and claws at the sand until whole trees slide down the dunes, are gnawed to palpable bits by the chugging and churning of waves and swallowed up by the deep. Body parts of oak, maple, birch, pine and sassafras lay scattered up and down the beaches.

Maybe a hundred years rooted there- having born witness to generations of sunbathers and sailboats. Gone in a single season.

The water level rises and angry waves continue to jeopardize the rootedness of what has long stood firmly in place. A certain groundedness has come undone.

Our homes, our forests and our tears have been slipping down the West Michigan dunes with avalanches of sand. And we feel swallowed up by the sea.

But just up the trail, there is an acorn. It’s been buried and forgotten by some squirrel scampering about his winter business. The water will not rise to reach it, and it will push roots down into soil. It will sprout and grow tall. It will provide shade for summer hikers, nest for birds, food for animals. The essence of its life is to be life-giving.

There is a time to be born and a time to die for everything on earth. But perhaps there is a remnant that always lives on through all this dying and rising- a spirit of good that is determined to flourish. We must look for the thing that is rising up out of the destruction and rise up with it. This new thing growing will be our hope in the days to come.

 

The Barest and Simplest of Pleasures

I went for a walk in a light fog this October morning. I needed to. Sucked the cool air into my lungs. Took the silence into my skin. Wove the damp into my hair. Stood out there on the fields of the back forty with my arms outstretched as the sun woke and reached its arms across the field to accept my warm embrace. And I wished to be swallowed up by the earth here with the sun as my companion. This earth that dares to be wildly beautiful despite the chaos of humanity who mars her flesh and who mars the flesh of each other.

Sometimes I feel exhausted in this work of civil discourse— trying to step in the middle of the marring to encourage more meaningful engagement with the other. Sometimes I want to quit this work. It would be easier and less lonely to jump fully on a side and start slinging stones at the perceived enemy. Or to step away from such things altogether— wandering the woods instead, watching the seasons crack open and die to the next when its turn comes, moving among the tall grasses that sway in the open fields, breaking the skin of the pond with swirling toes hanging off the end of the dock, sitting still as the geese collect themselves and take flight in formation. They do their thing, it seems, so effortlessly and without question. I could just stay here on the surface of the earth without a care for the world.

Sometimes the nastiness I encounter in my work brings me to a breaking point, to a point of not seeing the fruit and light in it all, to wondering if it’s even worth the effort, or if this is a wasted life. And I would like to just disappear into all this simplicity that I find so achingly lovely. Because the earth always calls to me, embraces me and energizes me when I’m feeling tired and weary of the world.

But then, always it seems, this reenergizing leads me back to working in the world, back to the middle places, back to setting tables in the spaces where anger and arrows live…

…until I am spent again, and cycle back to the barest and simplest pleasures as before.

 

Grounded

Sometimes, when the things of this world feel sad and weighty and the very skin of the earth seems stretched and sagging and thin and tired and brittle and bustling with more unkind activity than it was ever designed to carry, I step outside to where green things are growing. I get myself inside some patch of earthy aliveness, and the earthy aliveness gets itself inside of me. I become in every sense, grounded.

I swallow the air and let the weather – regardless of the season – beat fully upon my face. Morning is my most cherished time. Because the earth seems freshest in the morning as it slowly rouses when the sun first begins stretching its arms across the dewy land. It has gotten some rest and relief during the night. Sometimes it appears as if it’s just me and the world in these very early hours- these very early hours when all things seem possible.

I walk through Spring fields as warm thick rain licks my cheeks the way sweet cream butter melts, rolls, slides- in small rivulets down fat yeasty rolls fresh out of the oven. My bare feet squish through soggy fields with grasses and mud sieving through my toes. The thirsty earth sucks up a million silvery liquid drops and is refreshed. And with it, I.

Under direct Summer sun my skin darkens and the heat of these long days pulls continuous sweat from my pores, leaving a salty residue stuck to my skin. My supple body relieves itself, sleekly slipping head long through the cool satin sheets of Lake Michigan. And here, all the heat and residue of my day gets washed away too.

When the sugar maples slowly fade from emerald to crimson to apricot to burnt sienna to fleetly floating downward- released by the grip of the trees and caught up in the swell and song of Autumn breezes -they slip and dip through cracks in the air currents and make their mosaic on the ground. Their earthy scent is taken into the far corners of my lungs as they float past my bundled up skin and I inhale deeply. Exhale slowly. The earth releases what is old here. And so do I.

Winter comes. Fat snowflakes drift down – tiny intricate works of art created for only this moment, for whomever happens to be paying attention. These glimmering masterpieces bury the brown lifeless edges of autumn. The snow is an oddly warm bed to lie in as I watch the flakes float down around me and over me, nibbling at my cheeks with a curious tenderness. The earth is bright, fresh, alert, crisp and silent. And I with it.

Here I am grounded, with roots that spiral deep into the earth, as the earth roots itself deep into me. And when I come away from here- full of this aliveness that has seeped into my skin, my bones and my tendons, that pumps through my heart and vessels and winds it’s way through the neurons of my brain- I must keep my eyes open to the realities of the world. I must remember that I am a rooted part of all this too – the messy and the beautiful parts. And I must remember that I am to be in the work of brightening and lifting up the sagging parts of the world, of being life and light to the sad parts, of strengthening the thin and brittle parts.

For such a time as this.