The People of the Praires

The people of the prairies are much like the land of the prairies – open, no surprises, and able to see a long way beyond themselves. It has been a beautiful time adjusting to this world and this culture. I find myself growing increasingly ‘prairie like’. Of course I will always have a heart for Europe, for the beauty and the elaborate and complicated detail but there is something infinitely beautiful about the simplicity of this place and these people. The adjective ‘simple’ often has negative connotations but to me simplicity is something rare and delicate, something that is scarcely grasped or deemed important in this complicated world. Let me explain: Being simple implies that one does not think hard or deeply about something, that one does not wish to complicate things with thought. Simplicity describes what one is beyond oneself. To live a life that exhibits honesty, selflessness and purity, one must eliminate all complicated presumptions and pretences. To really be perceived as Christ did, we must invite people in with simplicity. We all know Christ was the farthest from simple any man could be, and yet there was a simplicity about him and his message that drew people towards him. If we are seen as moody, full of issues and complicated problems, we do not seem open to loving other with a selfless love. We do not invite confidence or portray a listening ear. Of course we all have our issues, but if we fully give our burdens and idols and idleness to Christ, he will refine us and teach us the most simplest of lessons: love.

Some spiritual lessons seem extremely confusing at first. But the more we see the world through Jesus’ eyes, the closer we come to the message behind the lesson and those messages are surprisingly simple. But it takes time and patience and surrender to God’s love to find that simplicity and to recognize it in everything. Even the way Jesus taught is a good illustration of this point. He often spoke in parables – confusing riddles that more often than not stumped even his disciples. Upon asking Jesus to elaborate on his teachings, Jesus would answer in only a few words. So why didn’t Jesus just say that in the first place? I could be wrong, but I sometimes wonder if he was teaching us a lesson even in the way he taught. These parables, when understood and heard through the love and grace of Jesus, become very clear. Life seems so complicated. And yet, when you step back, look at the big picture, trust in God’s grace, you see just how simple it is.

It makes me think of the ocean – raging and pounding waves crashing against the sand. The sea seems wild and dangerous on the surface. But underneath the waves, it is calm. The only movement is a steady current. That is how I often feel. For a moment I am tossed and thrown about in the waves, pounded into the sand but then God gently reminds me to sink down into him, to settle into his current. And he moves me in his stillness.

So we see that when we exhibit simplicity, it doesn't mean that we are simple people or that we don’t think about anything. It means that we have the peace of Christ and that peace is what draws the world to us, and to Jesus.

I am content to be a person of simplicity, a person of peace, a person of the prairies.

Where I am.

Change. It is never sudden. It is never the same one day and different the next. It is a process, a great spinning wheel of woven thread, ever intertwining, ever creating, ever meshing until that last string is sharply cut, separating that sweater, blanket, or sock from the man-made creator. But even then it is not finished. The sweater is sold in a shop, bought for a husband, handed down to a son. The blanket is gifted to a granddaughter, who holds on tight and then grows up, draping it over the rocking chair in the living room. The sock is worn, and then worn again, torn, torn again and then mended.

We are always changing, being moulded and fashioned. It is a process and each season brings new doubts, emotions and sorrows.

One year and a week ago we left Germany. At this point last year our home was filled with bland boxes, piled to the ceiling in our dining room. Our walls were blank, clean canvases, and our hearts and minds were fixed as steadily on the future as on the present.

I never cried. I haven't once cried about leaving home. But I am heavy tonight. It has been growing and building in me for the last while. Summers in Kandern were filled with rolling green hills, fresh forests, the spring-fed pool that I found my way to every day. I miss it all. I miss it more than I ever have tonight.

Maybe the adventure of moving, the excitement of novelty has worn off and I see where I am. Although perfectly contented and at peace about where I am, I'm not sure where I am.

As cliche as it is, the question, "Where are you from?" is the most dreaded one. I realized recently that I can now say, "I'm from St. Pierre, just down the road" and it relieved me. But did it really? Is it really home or just an easy answer? I am grieving the loss of my home .. ever changing... never fixated.

I miss my dear friends, thousands of miles away. I miss big trees, hills, driving 45 mins. to the Alps. I miss talking freely about the places I've been and the things I've seen.

I miss Brazil, I miss Germany.

The spinning wheel keeps turning, the yarn keeps intersecting, homes are created, changed, remodelled, sold. But my identity lies in my creator - the master weaver who spins lives, ideas, emotions, homes and stories that are shaped into who we are but then he cuts that string and calls us to move forward, to let go and begin the painful, beautiful, healing process of starting again as a single thread. As hard as it is, it is exciting to watch as that thread is shapes into something beautiful and who's final form is a complete mystery.

He has blessed me with a world far bigger than I know what to do with and a life constantly in motion.

I miss.

But that's how it should be.

remembering gratitude and forgetting to be exhausted

Today as I drove to work, I was struck again by the beauty of this magical, wild land. I was driving away from my school and I had a flashback of the icy, snow-covered barren landscape only a few months ago. We drove past old cars, almost completely buried in snow every day. Now they look like normal cars, sitting casually in the heather and perfectly green grass, drinking in the sunshine as if they had never been frozen to death.

It is a blessing to live in this country of extreme weather; blizzards, tornadoes, ice storms, wind storms, hot humidity and dry cold. It is beautiful.

I love the days when you look across the horizon and can see the natural curvature of the earth.

I love the days when the rainstorms travel across the sky and you can see where it's raining and where it's not. And then you try and guess how many minutes it will be until you crash into those far off sheets of rain.

My mother and I took the librarian from my college out for supper tonight. It was 75 cent hotdog day the the Tourond gas station and the community embraced the event, full of enthusiasm. It was a wonderful evening, complete with sunshine, shorts, running into some little kids I babysat this year, hotdogs and swirled ice cream.

I am thankful and God is so good every single day.

I am writing this now because I am exhausted. By the time I get my next day off, I'll have worked 15 consecutive days. Yes, I am thankful for the amount of hours but I feel slightly overwhelmed. When I do have some time, I have a lot to get done and it's hard to remember what needs to come first.

But I remember how I greeted this day, smiling to myself as I drove those 31 kms, an inner joy so deep seeming to well up and engulf me. And I know that joy is always in me... and I know it only grows deeper as we experience surface sorrows.

As flighty, moody and unsatisfied as our human characters are, I pray that my spirit will ever overcome myself and remind me of those moments when God shows me that, "It is good."

whilst drinking hot chocolate and watching lightning

This afternoon the clouds began to gather, pulling each other so close. They were bleach white against the dark grey sky, advertising their importance as well as full capability of bringing in a nasty storm. They reminded me of knuckles clenched too tightly. It was almost like the clouds were knit so closely, pent up with so much energy, that they were ready to explode.

These past couple of days have been so full of smells. So often a smell will transport me back to a place, a memory, another life almost. Lately its been the humidity and the smell before it rains (one of my favourite smells). Interestingly enough, one of the places that holds the most smells for me is my Grandparent's farm. My Grampa passed away a few years ago and soon after my Grama moved away. I remember thinking when I was a little girl how the day Grama and Grampa sold their farm would be the saddest day. But when that day came, it was natural and although sad, it was a good ending to a legacy of memories. Life is so often like that. If we are in the right place and our minds are focussed on the proper things, those events that loom before us, seemingly catastrophic, end up being greeted by a surprising acceptance.

We spent so many summer on that farm, though. Quading through the back brush in the overgrown fields that were sprinkled so healthily with wildflowers and heather... there were campfires beneath the trees, great bins of grain, cows with their rough tongues and the salt they loved to lick, big swings that took you up and up as if you would touch the sky, and then brought you back down to the soft grass... there were hay bails to climb, kittens to hold, and a baby grande to play for hours in the house. One summer we had a golf cart. Me and Beth's favourite thing was to take it out at sunset, driving so carefree and full of life, singing Cowboy Take me Away in harmony. All of these things hold such strong memories and their smells are forever planted in my mind... and scent.

Today was a different smell, though. It was the smell of sitting in the wind outside by our tent in Spain, feeling nine-year-old pretty in a new purple nightie. It was the smell of that one thunderstorm in Ghana and the winds that blew our chimney off the roof in Brasil. As those white clouds loomed and threatened to burst, the wind and fresh breezes filled my room through the open window. I love nights like these; the soft pattering of the rain, the stark, magnificent bolts of lightning, and the dark, angry sky. But it's not mad anger, it's fun anger. The kind where you just go crazy, so entirely free that you feel aggressive and crazed by the liberty flowing through you. It's the kind that just lets you loose, releasing you from the bounds of your own derived pretences of how your character should be perceived. It is simply YOU.

And that is how I like to picture God in a thunderstorm. There he is, just being himself.

I am reading Jeremiah and I came across a beautiful passage that describes today:

"When he thunders, the waters in the heavens roar; he makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth. He sends lightning with the rain and brings out the wind from his storehouses."

(Jeremiah 10: 13)

"Faith is conversion: it is the radically new disposition of the man who stands naked before God and has been wholly impoverished that he may procure the one pearl of great price; it is the attitude of the man who for the sake of Jesus has lost his own soul. Faith is the faithfulness of God, ever secreted in and beyond all human ideas and affirmations about HIm, and beyond every positive religious achievement. There is no such thing as mature and assured possession of faith: regarded psychologically, it is always a leap into the darkness of the unknown, a flight into empty air. Faith is not revealed to us by flesh and blood: no one can communicate it to himself or to any one else. What I heard yesterday I must hear again today; and if I am to hear it afresh tomorrow, it must be revealed by the Father of Jesus, who is in heaven, and by Him only."

-Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans. Written after WWI, a time when man was seemingly powerless and frail when only a few years prior, modern philosophy praised and uplifted man as nothing shy of God.

He makes me think every time and today I am refreshed by his beautiful thoughts on faith and how little we truly know about it :)

Stillness

Tonight I had an amazingly encouraging conversation with my Father. This is not an unusual occurrence because my Father is the most encouraging, gentlest, wisest, most spirit-filled person I have ever known. We love to talk, analyze, process. He listens to me for hours, affirming and guiding my thoughts always to God. I have learned more about Jesus through him, than from anyone or anything else.

We've been talking a lot about the Church of today, about the Spirit of God, and about the things that are lacking. It is easy to pull the Church apart and that is something I try to avoid because it only pulls it apart more, but sometimes there are things that we are missing in our Christian lives that I have to speak out about. For a while now I've been meditating on Reverence, a deep respect for someone or something as Dictionary.com likes to describe it. But that word holds so much more power than that. To me, it is a word that even when whispered, resonates down a grand hall, shaking everything and threatening to raze all in its path to the ground with its perfect stillness. I picture a man, trembling before God in glorious fear of His greatness.

When David reigned, there were wars waging around him from all sides and he could not build a temple for the Name of the Lord but God told him that his son would build a temple for His name. When Solomon became king, he asked for the gift of wisdom. "God gave Solomon wisdom and every great insight, and a breadth of understanding as measureless as the sand on the seashore" (1 Kings 4:29). With the gift of wisdom, Solomon asked his allies to supply him with cedar and pine logs because God had given him peace on every side and with that peace, he built the temple for the Lord. Before building his palace or the wall around Jerusalem, Solomon honoured God by building Him the most beautiful, ornate place of worship so his people wouldn't have to sacrifice in the high places anymore. Now this is the part I am trying to get to :]

"In building the temple, only blocks dressed at the quarry were used, and no hammer, chisel or any other iron tool was heard at the temple site while it was being built" (1 Kings 6:7). Reverence. The word, whispered, echoing down the halls of the temple in stillness. Solomon knew what it was to revere God. He went to all of the effort, expense and time lost to honour God in every way he could. Solomon had the wisdom of God, but it wasn't this that prompted him to show such respect for God. It was the holy fear of God, a fear so beautiful and terrible that it demands reverence. Where is that fear today? Why do we spend so much time worrying about tomorrow and fearing the unknowns but when it comes to meditating and truly revering God, we suddenly don't have time? We've conveniently replaced the God of Israel with the soft, gentle God who is always there for us anytime we need him. And these traits are perfectly true but we cannot for a second forget the other side of God, the untamed Creator who inspires perfect fear.

This is already too long, but I stumbled across a book in my art box the other day that ties in quite well. I got it in the freebie bin in my old library. I used to pillage that bin and take all of the books, usually overly cheesy Christian ones from the 80s, and use them for various projects.. involving exacto knives... but this one is still in tact and despite the ominous title, "Who do you think you're kidding? God is No Fool", it has some good thoughts. This is a little melodramatic, but it really put me in my place.

"Once, a long time ago, God spoke to a man and the ground around the place where God was speaking was so holy that he made the man take off his shoes, just to stand there.

Once, when God's house was new, only certain very special and holy people were allowed into its center, where God himself lived for it was so holy.

And this holy God, from time to time, a long time ago, talked right out to certain holy men like Abraham, and Moses, and David, and others.

Today, we have crosses for earings and crosses for necklaces and wallet size pictures of Jesus in living colour. We have little saints for our cars; And we sometimes start important football games with little prayers. And the God, the Holy God, who spoke to a certain few, a long time ago, talks right out to no one anymore, as far as I know.

God have mercy on us."

Now I do believe God speaks to all of us still :], but not in the same way.

It is interesting how I think I have the right to belittle God to fit into my life, yet haven't the scope or the humility to give my utmost for His highest.

In the business of our lives, let us remember true fear, reverence and God's mighty Holiness and take a little time to be still.

It may be a strange thing to enjoy, but I love it when people try to determine or guess what's physically wrong with me. Today I was deemed "Eisenlos" by my wonderful co-workes, old Mennonite women who don't speak a pint of English. Basically they declared me to be iron deficient and proceeded to tell me that I was unnaturally pale. I was very grateful for their diagnosis as well as their prescription: 100 ml of natural Apple juice, 100 ml of natural orange juice and 100 ml of beet juice all combined. I am supposed to drink this every day. I love my job. The dishwasher has recently broken so we have all had to chip in to wash 100s of dishes a day. Let me tell you, we are a machine. But it is exhausting no matter how well greased we are.

All day the wind whipped and wined and blew the tent up and down like little kids holding a parachute in gym class (parachute day was always my favourite day. Double dutch, quite the opposite). At the end of the day I ran to my car and was literally not in motion as I stretched one leg in front of the other. Twas a powerful gale! Windy days are delightful except that I always get my hair caught in the car door. Speaking of hair, today a chunk of mine got completely intertwined and tangled in the button on my oh so cute floral apron and I had to cut it off with a knife. The jagged ends look is always a winner.

It was a good day and I am full of ideas about how to spend this evening. Time is such a blessing.

The Intermediate Stages

I wrote this near the beginning of April but as I reread it, I realize how well it fits with my first post. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a Jesuit Priest and a brilliant man who ran into many walls of controversy with the Catholic church in regards to his interpretations of the books of Genesis and Revelation. As with most controversial theological authors, many of his works are prejudged and sadly his great wisdom has not been given the proper credit it deserves. Or rather, Chardin's God given insight was not seen. While not all of his ideas align perfectly with my own thoughts and beliefs, this poem does. Give him a read if you have not already!

Patient Trust

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.


We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
 unknown, something new.
 And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you; 
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
 let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
 Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will) will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
 gradually forming within you will be.
 Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
 that his hand is leading you,
 and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
 in suspense and incomplete.

—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ

My dad gave this to me a while ago. I read it, was encouraged, and then like most things, I forgot all about it. I rediscovered it today and really took time to focus on each word. “Trust in the slow work of God” I am very impatient. I like to know everything, to predict my future, to understand. One of the most difficult areas in my walk with God is not faith but relying on God's faithfulness. I never think him to be unfaithful but sometimes when I don't see his immediate answers, I revert to trying to fix everything on my own. Of course this ends up being disastrous and I always come running back to God. And it is often only at this point that he reveals himself to me. And I have learned from that :] I love the last line of this prayer: “Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.” To accept the anxiety that I am living in is a big step. We humans continually try everything in our power to eliminate anxiety, suspense. We try everything to control our lives but to grasp this state of uncontrolled freedom is liberating as well as frightening. If we accept the anxiety of being led, we are completely trusting Christ. It makes me think of the cliche example of being led by someone, blindfolded. Even if we wholly trust the person we are being led by, there is a gripping panic that seizes us and more often than not, compels us to rip off the blindfold. What follows is a wave of relief and safety. But is there not disappointment as well? There is always a sense of failure – why couldn't I have just finished the task before me? And what is safety after all? True safety is being perfectly aligned in God's will. To us being safe might mean side stepping any ominous event that comes our way, controlling the situations we are in so as to avoid unpleasant complications in our lives. But it is when our heart and soul are safe that we experience true freedom. What freedom it is to be liberated of the constant worry over our physical selves! Yes, suffering is plenty in the center of God's will, but we are safest in the eye of the storm because we know who controls that very storm.

We must allow God to take us through the intermediate stages, to guide us fully for as Paul so wisely said, “We walk by faith and not by sight.”

The Ringing Grooves of Change

Tennyson has always been a favourite of mine. It isn't because of his whimsical imagery in Lady of Shallot or his breathtaking story telling in Ulysses. It was when I read In Memoriam that my respect and admiration for the man really grew. In it he struggles with the loss of a close friend, the concept of a loving God and how he can take life away, and the doubts he is faced with when living in a time where God and the church isn't the only explanation for all of creation. His journey is full of pain and honest truth. One of my favourite quotes from the compilation is, "There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds." This was a time when Darwin's theory of Evolution was taking hold and rocking the solid foundation of the Church of England. Those who rejected Darwin's theories embraced strict faith and refused to question. Tennyson lay bare his doubts, knowing fully the existence of God but questioning his own ability to have the faith to really doubt. If you haven't read it, please do.

The title for this blog came from another of Tennyson's quotes, "Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change." There is a lot of irony and I wonder if there is some sarcasm in it. The great world. The world's greatness lies solely in the fact that God created it. And it is spinning in a downward spiral. Each change has both good and bad in it but to see the good is getting evermore difficult.

So here are my thoughts on life, God, and the beauty that is still in this changing world.

Life

Maybe I'm sitting here in the dark on this Friday night because I'm too lazy to sleep. But laziness has never kept me from anything before. Perhaps it has put off the accomplishment of certain tasks at hand but it has never been a terminating force. The wind outside is howling. When I first moved into this little room in the back corner of the upstairs floor, I lay awake every night listening and marvelling at the appealing viciousness of the wind. It exhilarates me. It's like the same feeling you get on a winter's night when the stark cold is muffled by a blanket of blizzarding snow. Or on that summer night when the heat of the day sparks the air with an electric buzz and the thunder rolls in, dragging its bursting rainclouds with it. Maybe it's that excited hesitancy found on any such occasions when the choice is yours – to stay in or go out. Both are wildly exciting and yet often we choose to stay in, clinging to the cozy, delightfully pleased sentiment rather than the bold, triumphant dash for the door of the free spirit that is in us all. What is that feeling that makes our eyes sparkle with the unpredictability of the weather? No, close, but it's not love. It is adventure. Unknowns, uncertainties paired with something intangibly dramatic. Each day is an adventure. I try to live each day like the greatest thing yet will happen. And each day it does; another gift of life added on to the already piled high blessings, a surplus of moments where love and friendship provide affirmation, courage and joy, and 1,440 seconds in which God is working, doing the greatest thing he has ever done – being our God. A person would not be qualified as a person if they did not feel at least a slight burst of delight and suspense during a thunderstorm or any of the natural forces of weather stated above, but for me it is always something a little more than that. Alright a lot more, as grammatically incorrect as that is. I find that we should live each day with that excitement, that anxious yearning to see how the time given us is panned out. The weather is wild. It is not tame so why should the instigator, the creator be tame? He is not and that is why each moment is full of surprise, fearful wonder, and adventure.

One of my favourite things about being a waitress is listening to the buzz of conversations. The plethora of stories that meet my ears and the diverse and varied speakers is fascinating. From the man who makes his eating partners whisper whilst speaking self-importantly on his cellular device to the club of elderly women who traipse in bedazzled with red hats, purple outfits and all kinds of bling, you hear many a thing. Some words are normal, many phrases are expected but I heard something the other day that almost made me stop in my tracks. Had I done so I would have most likely dropped a tray of plates or poured coffee on an eagerly expectant caffeine addict, but I couldn't wrap my mind around, “My life is pretty boring right now”. Stated flippantly and very casually, it didn't seem like an unordinary comment. But it is. How could your life ever be boring? Life. The very word is brimming with possibility, pulsing with endless activity and static vitality. To us mortals, life should be a proper noun in accordance to how precious it is. It is sheer arrogance to deem a gift, a blessing that is taken for granted day after day, dull, as if we have the right to decide how it should be lived or even what adjective to put in front of it. A synonym for boring is lifeless. “My life is pretty lifeless right now”. Correct me if I'm wrong but that seems somewhat contradictory. Life is life. It is not ours to do with what we like. It's not a kite that we can just fly when we want and store it in the garage when the kids get too old for it. It is freedom. It is everlasting. But life is only truly life, when we live it not for ourselves, when we step out into the thunderstorm, embrace that untamed wind and say, “Today is the greatest day because it is not my day. Today is Life and Life is God.”