Feeln {like a Mothers' Day movie giveaway}

There's always been a soft spot in my cold robot heart for Hallmark Hall of Fame movies. (We all contain multitudes, don't we?) So when Feeln, the movie subscription service of the Hallmark Channel, contacted me about a promotion, I was game, so long as I could wrangle a giveaway or three for you.

Basically, Feeln streams movies people of all ages can watch together. I was a little bummed they don't have Sarah Plain and Tall, which I vividly remember watching curled up on the couch with my mom one Sunday night growing up, but they do have that one with Keri Russell and Skeet Ulrich that I also enjoyed.

But it's not just Hallmark stuff, though. Feeln has a variety of content, including award winners like Chocolat and Rain Man; classics like The Sting or Twelve Angry Men; favorites like A League of Their Own, Big Fish, and Finding Neverland; and kids' stuff like The Secret of Kells or Ella Enchanted. They have the 1985 Rainbow Bright movie which I am definitely putting on for the kids soon, along with 1989's The Wizard, with Fred Savage and Jenny Lewis. 

Feeln streams online; on devices such as Roku, AppleTV, and Xbox; as well as on mobile phones and tablets. New subscribers can save 50% and get a year for $.99/month with the promo code 0515BlogSally. Feeln also kindly put up for grabs three complimentary year-long subscriptions for Smitten Word readers. Just check out Feeln's movie offerings, and leave a comment here about a favorite film listed or one you'd want to see. That's it. Giveaway ends Monday, May 11 at 11:59 PM, EST.

Happy (almost) Mothers' Day, to everyone who mothers and mentors and loves well.

Feeln provided these (and my) movie subscriptions. Opinions mine.

i'm just so good at spaceships

"I'm just so good at spaceships," he admits, blue eyes sparkling proudly. He shows me the nature one, the water one, the sports one: an entire cottage industry of space craft in every hue. I admire his work and confidence, not altogether sure which skill I'd claim for myself.

I used to be a good youth minister, but that was a while back. I was a good caseworker and a good student before that. Am I a good mom? What's a good mom, anyway?

I certainly don't "control my kids," picky eaters and chicken chasers in perennial need of a hair brush. They're part of me, but they're their own little people, too. I'm not sure their strengths or mistakes are ever mine to fully claim. 

But mine are. I'm just so good at kissing their soft necks. I'm so good at read-alouds, and I make a mean chili. I'm really good at scouting fish frys and remembering where I've seen that actor before. I'm reasonably good at starting fires and packing lunches. It's no secret I'm terrible at being patient or on time, but I try to apologize and model how it looks to make things right.

James reminds me that good is a different beast than perfect. Cold space craft are perfect; noisy, naughty, messy, creative people are warm and good and velveteen-real.

like precious oil poured on the head

Sartre famously wrote that “Hell is other people.” Hell can indeed feel like tiny, whiny people who Just. Want. To. Watch. A. SHOW.

We’ve never even SEEN a show. Not in FOREVER.
Forever!
Can we watch a show?
What about now? Can we watch a show now?
Peg + Cat? Justin Time? Now? We’ve never even watched them in forever!

It’s kinda hard to disagree. (With Sartre, I mean. My kids’ grasp on forever is tenuous at best.) We can all be hell to be around, can’t we? We’re a hoggish bunch, prone to violent outbursts, icy snubs, and haughty insularity. We lie, exclude, and think the worst. We’re unfathomably selfish, but at least we’re better than them. (Ugh!)

But then I read Psalm 133 where David makes the rather audacious claim that heaven is other people.

1 How good and pleasant it is
when God’s people live together in unity!

2 It is like precious oil poured on the head,
running down on the beard,
running down on Aaron’s beard,
down on the collar of his robe.
3 It is as if the dew of Hermon
were falling on Mount Zion.
For there the Lord bestows his blessing,
even life forevermore.

Community is where God ordains his blessing, “even life forevermore.” We are saved together for an eternity starting now. Salvation is nearer than when we first believed. The Kingdom of God is at hand, in our hands.

here the oil is an anointing oil, marking the person as a priest. Living together means seeing the oil flow over the head, down the face, through the beard, onto the shoulders of the other–and when I see that I know that my brother, my sister, is my priest. When we see the other as God’s anointed, our relationships are profoundly affected. (Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction)

We are each other’s priest: co-bearers of good news, deep burdens, and great joy. Evangelical Protestants are quick to claim that we require no mediator but Christ, but as Bonhoeffer reminds, the Christ in my heart is weaker than the Christ in my brother’s–or sister’s–word. When my eyes are weary and my heart is faint, I need you to kindle the flames of faith. At times, we’re all the paralyzed man on the mat in Luke 5: saved by the faith and faithfulness of our friends. We carry each other into the presence of God that we may be seen, known, and healed.

But what about the times when we can barely stand to look each other in the eye? When listening turns to mockery and blood boils hot? When we’re frustrated, furious, and exhausted, what hope have we for pleasant unity then?

***

The township put a gravel bike trail right through our yard this summer. I haven’t done much (okay, any) running since my 5K back in May, but I’ve been out there on my bike, stealing moments when the kids are at VBS or I’ve snagged a sitter from camp for an hour or two. (Glory.)

The trail weaves around the soccer fields, over a creek, past a cattle farm, and into town. It’s quiet enough to begin to hear myself think. To pray. And listen. Even the weeds and wildflowers whisper, and I remember the discipline of paying attention.

It’s quiet at home, too, before the kids wake, after goodnight kisses are given, and intermittently in-between, but I’m far less disciplined about cultivating solitude there. There’s work to do, sleep to be had, and tempting ways to avoid both in the light of screens.

We might practically judge the state of our psychological and emotional health by our practice of solitude. Our ability to care in a world of ongoing change grows when it is deeply rooted in a quiet, silent encounter with our faithful God. This allows us to move through our days without being terribly disturbed and distraught by the interruptions or disruptions. It also allows us to perform a diversity of concrete tasks without haste and distraction. In solitude we re-find our center and rediscover that our unity is continually strengthened and nurtured. (Henri Nouwen, Clowning in Rome)

If Nouwen is right – and I’m inclined to think he is – the elusive unity for which we long grows not in togetherness, sameness, or the absence of disagreement (or whining) but in the fertile soil of solitude. Unity is cultivated far from the din of the crowd.

If we base our life together on our physical proximity…life quickly starts fluctuating according to moods, personal attractiveness, and mutual compatibility, and thus becomes very demanding and tiring. Solitude, on the other hand, puts us in touch with a unity that precedes all unifying activities. In solitude we become aware that we were together before we came together and that life is not a creation of our will but rather an obedient response to the reality of our already being united. Whenever we enter into solitude, we witness to a love that transcends our interpersonal communications and proclaims that we love each other because we have been loved first (1 Jn. 4:19). Solitude keeps us in touch with the sustaining love from which we draw strength. (Nouwen, Clowning in Rome)

***

I took both kids out on the trail tonight for the first time together. It was ambitious, as they’re both two-wheel tenderfoots, but we’re hoping for family bike time on the boardwalk in a few weeks, so we’ve got to log the hours.

It was not, as one might imagine, a transcendent experience. One child fell off the path completely into a tangle of poison ivy, and the whine flight was not to be missed, but you know what? I didn’t lose my cool (much), and all in all, I’d put our little outing in the “win” column. They pedaled their faces off, ’til they’d earned tired like a badge. Although they took turns proclaiming they couldn’t do it and they weren’t strong, they did, and they are – even stronger than they know.

My little priests, anointed with bike grease and sweat, down the collars of their summer tees.

For there the Lord bestows his blessing, even life forevermore.

Image Source

out of ash

The trunk is full of clothes for the Salvation Army, and the recycling overflows. Mail piles, junk drawers, closets, toy bins: it’s all fair game. I’m the culling, sorting, take-no-prisoners arranger of disorder.

Well, today I am. Even Type Bs have their breaking point, somewhere between la vie boheme and utter chaos, and I found mine sometime after the furnace broke and the vomiting started.

Three day weekends aren’t the same once you have kids. I mean, it’s a long weekend all right, but not like it used to be when we’d stay out late, just us, and linger in bed all day next. These days, Jim works weekends, and I’m home with the monkeys, who are too sick for adventuring but not too sick to bicker and pick each other raw.

Try as I may, I can’t make them calm their hearts, but if my counters are clear, perhaps I’ll calm mine. Our house, which lately looks like it’s been hit by a tornado, is a metaphor for every furious squall I can’t control, so I’m starting with what I can. One shelf. One dresser. One pantry.

We lit a bonfire with the Christmas tree and toasted marshmallows in the flickering blaze. I’m tackling my temper next. Every blood-soaked strand is fuel for the fire.

Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland. (Isaiah 43:18-19)

A way through the wilderness. Streams amidst the wasteland. I’m trusting spring lies waiting beneath winter’s dormancy and toasting to cleared clutter, setting fires, and the new life which arises out of ash.

Image Source

tell it & think it & speak it & breathe it

[Content note: abuse apology, victim blaming, rape, child abuse]

I'm not much of a crier, not typically. Although my heart could burst sometimes for how deeply I feel injustice, my eyes are far more likely to flash with anger, passion, or mischief than spill hot with tears. And yet yesterday found me weeping, racked with sobs twice. I cried reading The Fault in Our Starsand later upon receiving a maddening email from a stranger.

He had written a post condemning scripture's Esther for joining a pagan king's harem and bed. According to the writer, she could and should have refused the king to keep herself "pure," and failing to do so made her a "complicit adulterer." Nevermind that one was a powerful sovereign and Esther a foreign girl descended of political captives, or that women were considered men's property and without rights, or that the modern concepts of consent and bodily autonomy didn't even exist. (They barely exist now, particularly in many Christian circles!)

[You can read the post here, but know it may be triggering. It's worth noting (although the author doesn't) that the post's parenthetical note appeared this week and was not original to the piece.

The author unconvincingly suggests that believing Esther to be anything other than sexually sinful requires believing in perfect heroes, and oddly, he then paints abusers as "monsters", as if abusers (or abuse/rape apologists for that matter) are not also the sorts of ordinary people we know, work with, and love.

Abuse is predatory, devastating, and unconscionable, surely, but conceiving it as something committed exclusively by monsters leads us to disbelieve victims. ("But he's such a nice guy/ talented man/ respected leader! You must be confused/ overreacting/ imagining things/ lying.") The late addendum doesn't rectify the post's mixed and destructive teachings about gender, sin, and sexuality.]

The author illustrates his point with the story of a woman who was raped as a teenager by her uncle. According to the author, the woman felt complicit in her uncle's abuse of her and found hope in the story of Esther, whom God used despite her "brokenness." The author initially presented this narrative of child victim complicity not only as fact(!) but as something seemingly intended to encourage and teach a lesson: even the most sexually compromised sinners can be redeemed! Glory!

The post had me shaking when I read it the first time and again this week when a new comment addressed to me hit my inbox. This theology isn't just bad: it's abuse apology and victim blaming cloaked in the language of religiosity and grace.

Sexual abuse survivors who have been sinned against require no one's forgiveness. We who miscast blame, heap shame, and side with the powerful and the perpetrators--we are the ones in need of repentance and atonement.

***

When reading Dylan Farrow's description of being abused by her father, Woody Allen; the Vanity Fair profile from 1992; or the recent shitstorm of doubt passing itself off as objectivity, my heart breaks into a million pieces for all the hurting kids who are never to blame for what happened to them, for the ones who never tell, and for those who did and we chose not to believe.

We have a daughter named Dylan, too. At six, she is a voracious reader with sea-green eyes, a playful imagination, and an startlingly sharp mind.

The dark outside is thick like smoke, and I choke to find my breath.

***

The author of that post sent me an email explaining that my comments were deleted because I used "inflammatory language." Perhaps I could have worded things a little differently, he suggested, in order to appear less harsh and encourage more dialogue in his comment section. He even supplied a sample script I could have used.

His email was extraordinarily polite and quite nice in fact, but it was also an outrageously silencing and presumptuous adventure in missing the point. I had been careful with my words. In print, I am nearly always careful with my words. (It is a significantly more difficult task in speech!) I hadn't called names, assigned motives, attacked anyone's character, or engaged in any otherwise untoward rhetorical tactics.

The thing is, I have zero desire to engage in a dialogue about whether or not survivors are complicit in their own rape and abuse, because survivors are not complicit in their rape or abuse. Rapists and abusers are the ones to blame for raping and abusing. Full stop. No apology.

Is that harsh? I can think of a number of things that are considerably harsher, particularly sexualized violence and the cultures and theologies that support, excuse, and enable it to hide and even, to thrive.

When what we are taking about is young people coerced into abusive, exploitative, non-consensual, illegal, and violent sexual experiences, I have an exceptionally hard time imagining that God cares much about optimizing niceness or even fostering dialogue.

The love of Christ looks far less like monitoring language for civility and more like identifying and subverting oppressive power dynamics, holding abusers accountable, supporting (not re-victimizing!) survivors, and transforming rape culture into something far more reminiscent of the resurrecting, upside-down Kingdom of God.

***

I cannot change, control, or be held responsible for another's actions; I am solely responsible for my own. This realization can be tremendously liberating (particularly within purity culture that blames women for men's sins), but as parents it can be extremely hard to accept that we cannot control either what our children do or what happens to them.

We cannot shield them from every shadow or protect them from every harm, but we can raise our voices (and a ruckus if need be). We can grieve each other's pain and celebrate each other's joy.

We can't stop the darkness from falling, but we can kick at it 'til daylight bleeds though.

We can listen to survivors. We can trust children. We can light candles and a better way together.

Children of the Light,
love the day and Dayspring
and each one as ourselves:
beloved, transforming, and renewed

like the dawn of something better

{image source} 

on parenting honey badgers

I’m a natural with babies. One of those earth mama types with babes slung close to my heart, I rarely met an early parenting problem that couldn’t be fixed or at least ameliorated by proximity to my breasts. Put a boob on it! It was like having a superpower.

But even as a kid, I was good with babies. I had a booming babysitting business watching the neighbors’ infants and toddlers for three bucks an hour. The 90s were different, man. Back then, no one thought twice about leaving tiny children in the charge of an eleven year old Girl Scout with a child care badge.

Connecting with teens comes pretty easily to me, too. I’ve got over a decade of youth ministry under my belt and know more ice breakers and group facilitation tricks than a lifetime of team-building retreats could exhaust. Nerdy, popular, troubled, loud–I enjoy all sorts of teenagers, even the stinkiest, silliest middle schoolers.

Babies are my jam. Awkward adolescents are my cup of tea. But little kids are tough. Little kids are honey badgers. I have two whom I love fiercely, and parenting them is the hardest thing I’ve done in my life.

–

Remember My So-Called Life? “I cannot bring myself to eat a well-balanced meal in front of my mother. It just means too much to her.”

Grungy, melancholic Angela Chase captured my fifteen year old heart, and she’s still among my most beloved fictional characters. But these days, I feel a peculiar affinity for her mom Patty, because Kyrie eleison, being on the other end of that fork might just be the death of me. My fiercely independent children never met a hill they weren’t willing to die on, and our dinner table is their perennially favorite last stand. At just four and six, their sighing, eye-rolling, and angst-y tears could give Emmy-winning Claire Danes a run for her money.

If they aren’t battling each other, it seems like they’re double-teaming me. Some days feel acutely like a losing battle I never signed on for. Aren’t we supposed to be on the same side?

**

They came by their stubbornness honestly. Truth be told, their mama can be something of a honey badger herself. Parenting is nothing if not a mirror into our own flaws and inadequacies.

But slowly, we’re learning–the whole Team Paul. To control our emotions and manage our tempers. To listen with our ears and move our feet. Speaking kind words or holding our tongues, we’re helping with our hands (or keeping them to ourselves). We’re turning and walking another way into repentance, forgiveness, new mercies, and resurrection.

Learning to love with our whole selves, we honor God with all that we are. Honey badger ferocity included.

we are pierced women {guest post Osheta Moore}

Our paths crossed in an online group of faith writers, and I am continuously struck by the boldness and vulnerability Osheta brings to the page, particularly when she's writing about race, faith, and family. She is a woman who loves Jesus deeply, and her blog, Shalom in the City, is one to watch--a breath of hope in a world of cynicism.

This month on my blog, I’ve been writing about finding my tribe. I’ve never thought about a community of like-minded women as a tribe before, but there’s something fitting about this word that takes its roots in the primitive, organic, and ancient. To be a tribe means to push pass the excess to the essential of who we are and what we stand for.

So my thirty-one days have been on “finding my tribe”, my community who pushes pass the excess to the essentials of Jesus, his life, ministry, and death. Every time I wrote the word, “tribe”, certain images and sounds filled my mind.

I heard vibrant, welcoming, rhythmic beating of drums. I felt the heat from a gathering fire as women dance with abandon, laugh from their bellies, and wet the shoulders of their fellow tribeswomen with cleansing tears. At the word, “tribe”, I pictured sable beauties with shorn hair and fascinating markings on their strong bodies. I see women with interesting piercings, naked and unashamed with their tribeswomen.

And that’s the image that drove my series—a tribe of women so committed to Jesus that we’re willing to be inconvenienced, uncomfortable, and forever changed. Like Jesus, who for love was pierced to stand in solidarity with us, I want to be a woman who loves the women in my life well enough that I am willing to be pierced for them.

Last Friday, for her seventh birthday, after a month of pleading and promising that she was ready, I took my daughter to get her ears pierced. Then, much to her delight, I would get my nose pierced.

But my bold and brazen daughter, who can put her brothers in their place with a well-executed eye roll, stood outside the shop and said, “Mama? I don’t think I want to do this anymore.”

After a few hugs and promises that I was with her, and even I was a little afraid, she straightened her spine, shyly smiled, and said, “Let's do this.”

That’s my brave girl! I remember holding her hand as our sexy-chic body art practitioner, who noticed her telltale shaky breaths and nervous fidgeting, knelt down and said, “Girl, you’ve got this” to my little woman-child. “When I’m done with you, it’s going to be so cute, you won’t believe it.”

He winked up at me, and I wondered, ‘How does he get his eyeliner to do that?’

Sitting in his chair as he prepped to pierce, my daughter and I held each other. I could feel her heart beating, yet she smiled and played with my hoop earrings.

“Okay, girls” Sexy-Chic began, “I’m going to count to three. When I get to three, breath in, and when I tell you to… breath out.” He positioned the pink tourmaline stud on my baby’s right ear and gave me another wink over her head.

“1…2…3…” he said confidently, and we breathed in together. “ Now exhale,” and as we breathed out in unison, the stud pierced my daughter, marking that moment with both beauty and pain.

We did the same for her left side, sharing breaths and twitches that reminded of me the hours after her birth when she slept on my chest, twitching and breathing with an exhausted me.

Then we did my piercing, and when she saw tears flowing down my cheek, Trinity handed me a tissue while Sexy-Chic cleaned me up promising, “She’s alright, boo. But isn’t your mama’s nose so cute?!”

Today she remembers our piercing date as fun mommy/daughter activity. And it was, but one day when she’s older, maybe on her thirteenth birthday or when she gets her period, I’m going to sit her down and show her this outing in a different light. I’m going give her a pair of hoop earrings—her first pair and teach her about being a Pierced Woman.

Maybe this first pair will be large beaded silver and gold hoops like the ones she’s eyeing in my jewelry drawer now, or maybe they’ll be simple white gold that goes with everything. They’ll probably be made my refugee artisans as this Tribe, this Jesus Tribe, cares about women globally.

They’ll definitely be chosen with love and care because this lesson is one I want her to hold onto.

I’ll sit across from her, who somehow has become more woman than child, and ask her if she remembers when we got pierced together. And then I’ll tell her,

“Trinity, these hoops are for you. Every time you wear them, I want you to think of Jesus who was pierced for us out of his great love for all people. His love is as never-ending as this hoop is round. When you go to wear them, remember, just as He was pierced for us, so we must be pierced for him and press into the hard of being a Jesus follower, baby.

"When you go to match these hoops with your outfit, remember that this Jesus Tribe is diverse and beautiful and quirky and fun, so take chances. Wear them against an odd color or different texture. Celebrate the different. Remember how Jesus was pierced to bring unity among diversity. This is what we pierced women do, baby: we love the diversity and defend the unity.

"When you put these on, remember how we held each other while you were oh so afraid of the pain of the piercings, and ask Jesus to help you hold your friends when they are afraid. This is what we pierced women do: we hold the terrified in our strong, capable arms since we know what it’s like to be afraid.

"Trinity, I give you these hoops and I hope you remember that I, too, was pierced with you. This is also what we do—we are pierced women who love the pierced King, and we stand with one another through celebration and pain. Just as we both celebrated your seventh birthday and shared in the pain of our piercings, celebrate with your friends and share in their pain. Listen to their keening cries that pierce your eardrums when her heart breaks. Hold her hand and let nails leave marks on yours as she bears the weight of sorrow. And somehow find a way to share in her pain. This is what is means to be a pierced woman.

"And when the usurper of relationships comes to cause you to doubt if your tribeswomen have your back, remember the times they were pierced for you. Go back to your ugly cries on their shoulders and the late night with Ben and Jerry’s. Place your fingers in those holes in your soul left by your tribe’s love, and like doubting Thomas, remember that You. Are. Known.”

And someday when she’s moved away and maybe has a daughter of her own, I hope she comes across those hoops while rummaging through her jewelry box. I hope smiles as she remembers Sexy-Chic and his amazing eyeliner. I pray she remembers how her birthstone just happened to be her favorite color—pink. I pray she remembers being held in my arms, trembling and sharing anxious breaths. Then maybe, she’ll puts those hoops on and ask Jesus, “Lord, help me be a pierced woman today.”

Hi, my name is Osheta. I’m an Assembly-of-God-Methodist-Southern-Baptist-a-teryn turned Anabaptist. I love Jesus who is THE MOST scandalously loving person to walk the face of the earth. I love to dance and you can find me doing the Robot with my husband and three kids in our tiny apartment in Boston. Someday...somehow...somewhere I will be in a flash mob. All the better if we dance to Michael Jackson's "Thriller"! When I'm not dancing, I'm planting a church with my husband, writing on my blog, Shalom in the City, or watching "Pride and Prejudice" for the eleventy billionth time. 

body of Christ, cup of salvation {guest post Micha Boyett}

At the Festival of Faith and Writing last year, a notable highlight was spending time with Micha over drinks and good conversation. In the time since, she wrote a book, which I cannot wait to get my hands on this spring. She is a gifted wordsmith with the heart of a mystic, and I love the post she bring us today.

I remember the first time I took communion as a kid. I’d been watching the adults do it all my life. I’d been waiting for the day I’d be brave enough to make a confession of faith, to walk the aisle toward the front of my church’s sanctuary with it’s huge golden chandelier and 80’s orange carpet. One choice, one decision to follow Jesus, and I was welcome at the table.

Then, communion was a symbol. Only a symbol. They said this to us over and over until it was ingrained in our minds. And I understood symbol. I loved metaphor, even as a child, my nose stuck in books.

But then, why would Jesus ask us to do this very physical thing if it only had the power of symbolism? If it was just a symbol, couldn’t we just imagine the bread and wine? Why couldn’t we draw pictures of it and experience it in the same way? Why ritualize it if it only stood symbolically?

No, there was something more to it. That was before I learned about sacrament and liturgy, when ritual was still a dirty word. All I knew was that I wanted to take the Lord’s Supper with gravity. I wanted the bread and wine to do something to me, in me.


*

By the time I was pregnant with my first son I was learning to pray using contemplative practices. I was embracing the liturgy. And I was in a church that celebrated communion every Sunday with real wine in a shared chalice. My husband and I had been at this church for two years prior to my pregnancy and during those years, I had taken to putting my lips to the shared cup and gulping, despite my husband’s more sanitary bread dip. 

I had this physical need to live the metaphor each Sunday. I wanted to experience the burn of the wine in my throat. I couldn’t help putting my lips to the chalice where all those lips had gone before me. I wanted connection to our community, germs and all. I wanted a physical faith.


*

Pregnancy is the most physical work I’ve ever done. I felt it in every part of my life. It wrecked me in the hardest and best ways. My body could not build the lives it built without remaking every part of me: how I comprehended, how I experienced emotion, my physical shape, my view of the world. So how could it not also shift my faith?

In those early days of placenta-building and limb-forming, when my stomach rejected every morsel of food given to it, I came to church and begged God to nourish me. I worried, should I gulp that wine in the chalice, me with my early pregnancy and all those studies forbidding alcohol? I dipped for a few weeks, like a good pregnant lady. Then, I couldn’t stop myself. I took the sip straight from the cup. Instead of worrying about the wine or whether or not I’d be able to hold that small bit of bread down, I asked Jesus to go straight through my body and into that little life in me.

Jesus, using me as the vessel, blessing my child.

The thought was too much for me. And so it continued every Sunday, as I grew fuller and fuller with life. Jesus came through bread and wine and I prayed for my little boy in a way I never could with words. I prayed in images, bright colors. I watched the wine and bread flush straight through my organs and nourish my child’s soul. And then I watched Jesus prepare my son for the world. I watched and knew that God had purpose for the little one in me. I believed.

And when my baby arrived, needing my milk, I still took communion with the reverence of a begging mother: Come to my baby, here, through me, I’d pray. Arrive in some way I cannot comprehend.


*

I love metaphor. I love symbol. But, the resurrection of Christ is bigger than symbol. It happened in the Body. So here we are, heart’s beating, flesh and blood, needing God to meet with us in this cracker and single sip from the chalice. Arrive. Be here, Emmanuel.

Sometimes, we need to see what God is giving us. We need the Spirit world to collide into physical. And, thank Mysterious God, we get to experience that great collision each week. And whatever it is, however it happens. It happens. We are nourished.

Micha Boyett is a youth minister turned stay at home mom attempting to make sense of vocation and place after three cross-country moves in four years. She is mama to two blonde boys and wife to a very tall Philadelphian. Her first book, a memoir of prayer, will be released from Worthy in April 2014. She blogs at Patheos about motherhood, monasticism, and the sacred in the everyday. Follow her on Twitter or Facebook.

{image source}

do not go gentle into that good night

We celebrated his birthday wrapped in blankets on the porch, our breath hot and cheeks cool in the night. I told him about the stillness of that first dark morning, when we marveled at his bright gaze and impossibly thick baby thighs.

Four years later, he still leans in close for comfort. His hair is damp from the coughing, and I realize helpless new mama feelings fade but don't extinguish. When nights are dark and breathing labored, they haunt me still.

I hold him tighter, my lips against his cheek. His breath slows, and I listen for the grace of quiet as cars pass and the wind rustles the corn.

{just write}

from my head to my hands {guest post Heather Caliri}

The world needs more of the sort of quiet wisdom and practical kindness Heather shares with us here and on her blog, A Little Yes: Baby Steps to Big Adventures in Faith, Art, and Life. Pull up a chair. I'll pour the tea, and let's listen in together, shall we?

When my kids are angry at me, I have a religious experience

When they are angry with me, my children rage, wild-eyed. Or they are cold, whispering “Bad Mama, bad Mama,” their lips curling in a smile. Or they destroy something and drop it at my feet, in shards or shreds.

Jesus says to bless those who hate you. When my kids are angry, I wonder at Martin Luther King Jr. facing fire hoses, because when my sweet children are angry--my own flesh and blood--Lord forgive me, I have a hard time turning the other cheek.

I am no saint. No, indeed. I have whispered or yelled words I wish I could take back. I have lost control. I have not modeled the behavior I wished to see, and worse, I have said, figuratively, “raca” to my child, in more ways than I wish to remember.

Parenting isn’t the only time my anger has controlled me.

I remember ripping the towel bar out of the wall of my bathroom in frustration over a set of pre-calc problems. I still have the junior high yearbooks where I defaced faces of people who were unkind to me. In the same yearbooks, I defaced the pictures of people I was unkind to. Perhaps I was trying deface all the unkindness, but instead I just made everyone ugly.

I look more like a librarian than someone who struggles with anger, but when my children are angry, ugly angry at me, I can feel myself turning ugly as well, as though a nauseatingly hot wave is rising over the flood plain of my heart.

Here’s what I have discovered about parenting: that moment of ugliness is the time to work out my faith in fear and trembling. Instead of letting the anger rise up into my throat, I can breathe and choose differently.

And when I calm my voice and my hands, when I respond kindly even when my children are out of control, I see my heart change.

In other words, it gets easier.

Somehow, I am still shocked by this: that choosing to follow Jesus’ words in the most mundane of ways, while my children are in a tantrum, will bear fruit that feeds me throughout the day. The choice brings sweetness I can taste any time I am faced by my old, ugly emotions.

Because in the moment of choosing love instead of ugliness, I start seeing differently.

I see the frustration and hurt underneath my children’s actions. Little by little, I forgive them for being little, for being out of control, for responding to their emotions in the same way I am tempted to do.

And under my anger, I see my own desire to be respected and connected to my kids. I sense my own fear when they are out of control.

I see how much we need each other’s kindness, every moment. And finally, I see that the real change comes not in what I know about anger, or parenting, or myself.

No, change comes from choosing.

Faithfulness is not so much about intellectual assent to certain principles: “Blessed are the meek”, or “I will parent positively”, but a moment-by-moment obedience.

The intellectual work matters, sure: the parenting classes, books or Bible study. But when I am there in the room with my anger and my children, I must do more than just believe good ideas.

No, I must seize that moment to bless instead of curse. I must move my faith from my head to my hands. I must kneel down on the hard floor and hold out my arms, ready to be openhearted, whole, and unafraid.

Heather Caliri is a writer and mom from San Diego. Two years ago, she started saying little yeses to faith, art, and life. The results were life-changing. Get her free e-book, Dancing Back to Jesus: Post-pefectionist Faith in Five Easy Verbs on her blog, A Little Yes.

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an act of faith in time itself

I have spent a lifetime learning to believe in things that can never burn down. I can invest my heart's desire and the work of my hands in things that will outlive me. Although it grieves me that houses are burning, I have fallen in love with a river that runs through a desert, a rain forest at the edge of night, the right of a species to persist in its own wild place, and the words I might assemble to tell their stories. I've fallen in love with freedom regardless, and the entitlement of a woman to get a move on, equipped with boots that fit and opinions that might matter. The treasures I carry closest to my heart are things I can't own: the curve of a five-year-old's forehead in profile, and the vulnerable expectation in the hand that reaches for mine as we cross the street... 

I can clear the brush from a neglected part of the garden, working slowly until it comes to me that here is one small place I can make right for my family. I can plant something as an act of faith in itself, a vow that we will, sure enough, have a fall and a winter this year, to be followed again by spring. This is not an end in itself, but a beginning...Small change, small wonders--these are the currency of my endurance and ultimately of my life. It's a workable economy. 

{Barbara Kingsolver, Small Wonder}

fold your hands {on teaching consent to pre-schoolers}

“The boys kiss me on the bus every day even though I tell them not to.”

WHAT.

I’ve never been what you might call a helicopter parent. Last month after yoga, when a stranger asked me how I was handling my daughter’s transition to kindergarten, I made the mistake of not being appropriately mournful. She looked horrified, and I was forced to backtrack: “I mean, I get to spend more time with my other kid. Which is great!”

After a long summer, we were all ready for the rhythms of autumn and school. Dylan was practically born school-ready; the only thing I was remotely concerned about was the bus. See, I remember the bus. I remember a particularly nasty fifth grader who called me an asshole and made fun of the knock-off pink Chucks I wore in first grade. I remember an inexplicable corn fight, brawls in the aisle, and setting my backpack down in a pool of loogie. We won’t even talk about P.D.A. on the high school bus.

A public school bus can be something of a study in anarchy, and recent news stories and bullying exposés hardly engender renewed confidence in the wheeled, yellow free-for-all. But Dylan was so excited to ride it, counting down the days ever since she started pre-school. I figured we’d give it a shot, and see what happened.

What happened is that boys kissed my five-year-old.

–

When they get rowdy or grabby, we tell our kids, “Fold your hands.” It applies when we’re headed into a store, but more often than not it’s about how we don’t touch people without their permission. We use our hands to help, or we keep them to ourselves. Consent to touch is not implied.

Conversations about personal boundaries and “No means no” don’t start in middle school; we have them now, every day. My kids aren’t tiny extensions of my husband and me. They are their own people who bear the Imago Dei, and their bodily autonomy ought to be honored.

–

I contact her teacher. She tells the boys to refrain, but the unwanted kissing continues. My husband informs the bus driver, but they persist, and we learn it’s been happening on the playground, too. Are consent and touch part of school policy, classroom conversations, and discipline? I ask in follow-up email. Could a teacher please end this right now?

I don’t hear anything right away, but the next afternoon Dylan bounds off the bus grinning.

“There was NO kissing today. I saw the principal talk to the boys at school.”

I was pleasantly surprised and grateful with how decisively the school finally handled it. There haven’t been any incidents since.

–

We don’t make our children kiss relatives or tickle anyone after “Stop.” We talk a lot about being gentle with our hands and heeding other people’s “No.” We talk about respecting privacy, honoring boundaries, and not touching people without their permission. Love is more than words or feelings; it encompasses what we do with our bodies–and how we refrain.

We don’t get it right all the time. The kids still push and fight. I don’t leave enough time exiting a play date and have to wrangle an unwilling three year into his car seat. We’re not perfect, but we’re trying.

We help with our hands. Or we fold them together, a symbol of self-restraint. And possibly prayer.

fish out of water {guest post Misty Green}

Misty is the very first friend I made through blogging, back when I was a new mama finding my voice and my footing. I am so grateful to host her words here, particularly now that she keeps them farther from screens and closer to her heart. This piece on beauty, shame, and mortality is something I'll be meditating on for a while. Enjoy, friends.

We’re told we hover, clothed from a thousand fig leaves, ashamed of our figures and functions and dying an eve’s death; today is just one more day of our mortality, bought with the price of a bite in forbidden fruit.

And yes, fig leaves cover (is this our multitude of sins? hiding from the God we walked with?).

And yes, many of us lie naked and ashamed (and not, in fact, because we wish to dominate Adam’s sons).

Have you read C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces? It’s a terror-ific (not to be read terrific, which it certainly is, also) manuscript full of holy and misguided theology, the kind that wears thistles to betray our fear. It is a myth that tells a truth, and it’s my favorite novel. I won’t waste words here on how it’s a book of faith and mercy but will simply quote a passage:

I felt ashamed.
But, of what? Psyche, they hadn’t stripped you naked or anything?
No, no, Maia. Ashamed of looking like a mortal—of being a mortal.
But how could you help that?
Don’t you think the things people are most ashamed of are the things they can’t help? 

This passage gets at something crucial—that we humans are wearing skin that is improbably ours. That we are mortal in the face of God who can’t but look on our skin as what it is: mud weaved with grace-breath. And instead of choosing Psyche’s fear (to look like our skin), we fear our skin itself or rather, its loss, decay, disease and frailty, the constant breakdown of something that is on borrowed time.

Herein is faith: we wear a transient gift over our eternal parts. And defeat? That we mock our Maker by hating and fearing our outer selves. It takes faith to see that a True Self extends beyond our bodies, but there is faith, too, in beholding each other and ourselves as Lovely in the interim.

We long for Beauty; this is in our nature, divined in the image of One who creates. We lust after beauty, create things of beauty or images we persuade each other are beautiful, and all too soon we see only fog in mirrors and shadows instead of sunsets. We can deride constructs and tropes and counterfeit beauty (camouflage), or we can run to the shield of the inner beauty and raise her flag, and in both scenarios, we might often return to our tear-soaked pillows, afraid of our own un-loveliness.

I know I have. I know I do. And I tell myself I know better, that external beauty is skin deep, and I think that’s exactly part of the problem.

We were never meant to have beautiful skin, but we chase the elusive idea of perfection, or we shy away from being un-fully-known. This skin of ours is a wet suit designed to get us through “finitism.”

Like a fish out of water, we long always to get out of the temporal and back to eternity. And faith is trusting the journey there. Trusting that being a ‘mere mortal’ is part process, part gift, and part dying a hundred deaths to self.

After all,

It takes faith for a husband to love his wife, though she’s been abused and she still suffers with intimacy sometimes.

It takes faith for a woman to trust her husband’s words: You are altogether beautiful, my darling; there is no flaw in you.

It takes faith for a broken mother to draw her children closer when her mind is screaming for space to be herself again.

It takes faith for a battle-worn couple to face the front doors of that church, to enter a place of worship, afraid the smell of sin and stagnancy clings to them like smoke.

This skin? Kind of expensive for a bite of fruit. Cheap in the face of grace that weeps bitter 'til we can see our Father face-to-face.

misty is mama to four boys, wife to a man she calls home. homeschooling one year at a time. God-believer. An introvert who talks a lot and is terribly awkward at ending phone calls. an ex-blogger (also awkwardly ended). lover of words, wearer of grace.

God gives to his beloved sleep

I've been sick all week, in a fog of partial wakefulness. My house is a disaster of half-done chores and piles of clutter I can't bring myself to focus hard enough to tackle.

My coughing fits could wake a village, so Jim's been sleeping on the couch. He had the plague before me, and the quarantine has made housemates of us.

Achy and weak, my body feels outside of my control, and I remember it is, even for the most disciplined among us. We can nourish our bodies and exercise and rest, but we still can't stop the sick.

(I'm not so great at any of those three, if we're being honest. I've subsisted this week on toast and something called Biscoff spread.)

I lie there coughing and remember that Welcome Wagon (and the psalmist's) refrain:

God gives to his beloved sleep.

Sleep is a gift I've taken for granted since the children began sleeping through the night. But they didn't for about four years, and life was foggy then, too. I remember keeping a night watch as I breastfed James, praying particularly for the grieving and longing mamas with empty arms.

I turn on the light and find my copy of The Night Offices. If I weren't alone tonight, I wouldn't read this liturgy now, and I try to receive this, too, as a gift.

O God, come to my assistance.
O Lord, make haste to help me.

Two lines turn my sunken, inward gaze a few degrees.

Darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day; darkness and light to you are both alike.

Before we married, Jim and I were long-distance for our entire relationship. I remember getting on plane to leave him, again. The rain beat down angrily, and the sky was so dark it looked much later than it was. My eyes blurred with tears as the engine roared and picked up speed, getting farther and farther from the only place I wanted to be.

The plane lifted off the runway and into the grey, climbing fast through the clouds which quickly obscured the airport and city below. The was nothing to see but thick clouds and water.

But then we broke through the clouds and into the pink sunset, an ethereal wonderland of light, texture, and dazzling color so bright my breath caught.

Darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day; darkness and light to you are both alike.

The litany leads me to pray for the Church, for friends and enemies, forgiveness and grace.

Lord, in your mercy, hear my prayer.

I am reading a book that tells me Trappist monks greet the day and the Lord together at three every morning. I pray alone, but there are others keeping watch (and they won't go back to sleep!). They are far more faithful and practiced, and somehow their prayers buoy me, these unseen pilgrims along a shared way.

Now guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping; that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep, we may rest in peace.

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the rarest and purest generosity

Today is the last day of a camp staff training period that lasted nearly three weeks, with Jim working most every waking hour since Memorial Day. We are eating ungodly amounts of dining hall hot dogs, pretzel dogs, bagel dogs, corn dogs, and even, God help us, something that might best be described as a "breakfast dog," and we are hanging in, some moments by a thread.

But! Campers come Sunday and with them daily hours--and a whole weekly day!--off for Jim. And hopefully my own emergence from survival mode and renewed commitment to things like leaving my house, grocery shopping, and preparing healthful food, because I cannot abide the breakfast dog. There are limits, certainly, to what a person can endure for the sake of the Kingdom of God.

My friend D.L. Mayfield posted a link this morning to an article by Jonathan Safran Foer that challenged me, and I wanted to pass it along to you. When I experience stress, I have a tendency to retreat into technology and myself, and parenting unruly preschoolers is nothing if not stressful. But this is not how I want to live this summer or at all:

My daily use of technological communication has been shaping me into someone more likely to forget others. The flow of water carves rock, a little bit at a time. And our personhood is carved, too, by the flow of our habits.
Psychologists who study empathy and compassion are finding that unlike our almost instantaneous responses to physical pain, it takes time for the brain to comprehend the psychological and moral dimensions of a situation. The more distracted we become, and the more emphasis we place on speed at the expense of depth, the less likely and able we are to care.
Everyone wants his parent’s, or friend’s, or partner’s undivided attention — even if many of us, especially children, are getting used to far less. Simone Weil wrote, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” By this definition, our relationships to the world, and to one another, and to ourselves, are becoming increasingly miserly. (New York Times)

I want to know, what helps you to pay attention well? What are you enjoying or looking forward to this summer? Are there disciplines or boundaries that help you to stay focused and engaged? What memories endure from your own childhood summers? How do you keep things simple and fun for yourself, your kids, or your family this season?

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so beautiful it hurts to look at you

April's end is fling-wide-the-windows
coffee on the porch
lunch al fresco and
honest to goodness dandelion-and-dogwood
Spring, God be praised.

Resurrection smells of fresh mown grass,
tastes sweet as blueberry ice cream.
We dig out bikes from the shed
and the dirt in the garden, sinking
bean poles that reach for the sky.
A new trail opens, we tie on sneakers and
emerge from hibernation. Stretching limbs we blink and
breathe in this new day, its dawning grace.

---

Western Pennsylvania winters encroach on fall and spring like choking vine. On my mopiest days, I am certain that we endure but two seasons here, Summer Camp and The Winter Of My Discontent, but the proof is in the pictures and the skip in my step today.

Spring has sprung. (Leeeeeaaaaaves!!!)

I'm playing along with HopefulLeigh's monthly What I'm Into link-up. This April I'm also down with:

• Morel mushrooms. Jim's been foraging, and we cook 'em in butter and garlic and YUM. 
• Chickens pecking about. (Less down with the fox who ate one just off our deck, though.)
• Three little piglets at the neighbors' house.
• Grilling season.
• Renew & Refine Retreat for Writers. I'm so excited to spend time learning and writing and having a little fun before summer camp wreaks its havoc. (And it's not too late to spend Memorial weekend with us...The code BREATHE gets you $25 off.)
• Mad Men. I still love that and Scandal. (There doesn't seem to be a lot else one right now, is there?) I mainlined two season of AMC's The Killing on Netflix in an embarrassingly short amount of time, and it's coming back for a third season soon. Jim thought it was slow, but I was hooked on the characters, emotional depth, and mystery.
• You already know I've been reading Bread & Wine, Carry On, Warrior, What It Is Is Beautiful, and The Mermaid of Brooklyn. I'm also reading (and LOVING) The Prophetic Imagination, but more on that another time--or better yet, head over to Kelley Nikondeha's for a week's worth of reflections.
• I used a birthday gift certificate to buy a weighted hippie-made hula hoop with fiery stripes. It seemed like the right thing to do. 
• Library story hour. I drop both kids off on Wednesday mornings for one glorious hour in which they are thoroughly charmed and I am blissfully uninterrupted. Magic, I tell ya.
• The kiddos are turning a corner. It's part timing and all grace, but we're hitting a stride. Dylan's not Too Old, and James isn't Too Little. We're out of diapers and babyhood but not yet in school, a fun place where they're little and "big" at all once, and they really are best friends. Hallelujah and Amen.

(an ongoing record of God's goodness, #400-423)

What's catching your eye and capturing your heart of late? (100 points for knowing to what my post title alludes.)

the mermaid of brooklyn

In tv land, there are generally two roles for the thirty-something woman: the (sexy) childless career woman or the (sexy) mother of a (sexy) teenager, a decidedly more supporting role. Motherhood dominates a commercial landscape for everything from paper towels to snack food, toothpaste, and air fresheners, but sustained storylines about parenting little ones are few and far between.

I posted a musing about this on facebook once, and a tired mom, admitting her own preference for escapist entertainment responded, Who wants to watch stories about real life?

I do, I thought. Not stories about diapers and crying, of course, but honest narrative about motherhood, relationships, change, identity, sex, self image, community, family, depression, joy, struggle, work, worth, meaning? Absolutely.

The Mermaid of Brooklyn is that story seldom told, a rare jewel and rough diamond both.

The sophomore novel from Brooklyn dwelling writer Amy Shearn is loosely based on her own great-grandmother, Jenny Lipkin, whose husband disappears one night without a word. He goes out for cigarettes and fails to return, leaving Jenny with their infant and toddler, his dog, and a host of questions.

The story takes place one scorching summer in Park Slope. It could be an enjoyable beach read, but it's no frivolous fluff piece. Shearn writes with honest insight and biting wit about new motherhood and the inevitable trials that set us off, set us adrift, or set us free.

Lipkin is a fascinating protagonist, because although she is not tremendously likable, she is strikingly relatable, and as a reader, you do want to see her succeed  The book takes a novel turn into the waters of magical realism, a charming plot device that serves the story and doesn't take away from its more down-to-earth enchantments.

I don't want to give anything away, but I especially liked the sensuality that Shearn imbues Jenny with as she re-learns to navigate her own body even while sharing so much of it with her young family. It was tender and true picture of life-after-baby.

Darkly funny, smart, and resonant, The Mermaid of Brooklyn tells a true tale about relationships, parenthood, second-guessing and starting over, even when today looks exactly like yesterday and the day before that.


Who is telling good stories about motherhood--or of women as more than romantic leads--in books, television, or movies? Are you reading/watching anything good lately?

TLC Book Tours hooked me up with a book, but these opinions are all mine. But you knew that;) Affiliate links, yo.

what it is is beautiful {giveaway}

I'm thrilled today to introduce you to Sarah Dunning Park, although since she is poet-in-residence for a little media empire known as Simple Mom, you may already be thoroughly charmed by her lyrical take on aspects of motherhood both sacramental and mundane. Her first volume of poetry, What It Is Is Beautiful: Honest Poems for Mothers of Small Children, had its official release this month, but I was lucky enough to receive my own copy when Sarah and I met up at our alma mater last May.

Sarah and I traveled in similar circles in college, but she graduated early, and I never got to know her as well as I wanted. Reconnecting last year on Twitter and then again in person for an afternoon with her and her girls was a delicious treat and exactly what my heart needed.

Sarah's a good mama, not because she's perfect or put together but because she's honest and kind. She generously agreed to share a poem here as well as a copy of her new book with one reader. (Yay!) It's available for only $4.38 right now at Amazon, so you might as well pick up a few for gifts. Mother's Day is just around the corner, and these poems are a cup of cool water and a needed "me too" to harried mamas in search of a little peace amid the storm of parenting littles.

Keeping the Peace

I saw it out of the corner of my eye,

noticed its tall, silver form
long before naming it in my mind:
heron. It perched, utterly graceful and
still, on a fallen trunk that sloped down
into the creek we cross over every day.
Fog was rising from the water,
and I wished I could stop the car,
approach quietly with camera in hand,
and somehow arrest the moment—
then lift it, intact, to take with me
as an emblem for the day.

Instead I turned away
to face the road again,
letting the moment flick past
like the flipping of channels,
and swallowing my awareness
that we live in a world with—herons.
The children were slumped behind me,
only just lulled into a dubious harmony
that would no doubt be shattered
if we stopped, or if I called out
for them to notice this marvel,
already now behind us.

I envisioned
three heads swiveling,
eager to broaden their horizons
with the wonders of the natural world.
Then I pictured a careless elbow
clipping a seatmate on the chin,
and two sets of hands clawing
at the sibling with the prime view—
of this animal
who has had the good sense to freeze
as we go barreling past.

No, I decided
(and it felt ungenerous):
today I would choose to keep
this emblem of peace to myself,
not sharing it with them directly,
but thereby preserving
the absence of conflict in the backseat,
and the heron’s solitary breakfast,
and perhaps most important,
that rare jewel—peace of mind—
for me.

© 2012 Sarah Dunning Park

To enter to win a copy of What It Is Is Beautiful, leave a comment in the vein of mothering or poetry, and we'll pick a winner Sunday night at 11:59 PM.

unsponsored content. affiliate links. please don't repost sarah's work without permission. you know the drill.