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Category: simplicity

Unexpected stillness

Unexpected stillness

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“May God bless this unexpected stillness in our lives.”

I have been corresponding with Kirsten, our dear friend from Edinburgh, Scotland. My wife, Lynne, and I have plans to travel to Scotland for two weeks in July. We intend to revisit many of our favorite destinations — Stonehaven, Edinburgh, Glencoe, Oban, Loch Lomond, Skye, Iona — as well as introduce two Iowa friends to this magical land.

The trip has been in the works for over a year and I have already made all the reservations for flights, rental car, housing, a Skye boat trip, and even a birthday meal for Lynne at a favorite Stonehaven restaurant. But now, because of this global pandemic, our trip seems very much in doubt.

Kirsten ended her most recent email, responding to my inquiries about the state of life in Scotland under the current lockdown orders, with those words: “May God bless this unexpected stillness in our lives.”

Oh, my …

Unexpected stillness. May God bless this unexpected stillness. Her words pierced me to my core and brought tears to my eyes. Such a simple description of our present state of being, but so lyrical, poignant, moving, and hopeful.

Unexpected stillness. This is a stillness, but stillness can be a gift. Unexpected stillness can be an unexpected gift. We are obliged to set aside most of our usual comings and goings, much of our usual busyness. We are constrained to be quiet, often alone or with just a few nearby, to be still. But in the stillness … we may hear other voices, we may hear other things, we may remember, we may discover, there may be space enough in us … for God to fill. In the stillness, we may be blessed.

May God bless this unexpected stillness in our lives …

“living with a sense of gratitude”

“living with a sense of gratitude”

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Barbara Kingsolver was interviewed by World Ark, Heifer International’s bi-monthly magazine, about her newest book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. The book describes her family’s yearlong pledge to eat only locally-produced foods. In response to a question about “moments of miracle on this journey,” Kingsolver replied:

For me, the biggest miracle is the fact that this project, which may have seemed to us in the beginning to be an exercise in deprivation, very quickly guided us through a paradigm shift. Very quickly, we came to see this way of living with a sense of gratitude.

We moved from beginning each meal by asking. “What do I feel like?” to asking, “What do we have?” We would look at what’s coming in — what’s wonderful and abundant right now — and work from there. It was very valuable for our family, and it’s a wonderful way to live. It’s a paradigm shift that all of us could probably use in our lives.

We are easily seduced by convenience and quickly jaded by an overabundance of, well, just about everything. But convenience and overabundance mask the ongoing reality of a world where most folks don’t have even enough, and where we, who have more than enough, are often deprived, too. We are deprived of gratitude, because things come to us too easily, and we are deprived of joy, because the price of convenience is quality. What comes quick and easy and cheap IS quick and easy and cheap.

The Kingsolvers’ experiment is interesting — even if it was done for the sake of a book! — but what I find most interesting about it is this rediscovery of a sense of gratitude, of finding again the daily rhythm of prayer and thanksgiving to which Jesus invites us: “This is how you should pray … ‘Give us this day our daily bread.'”

chattering and scampering

chattering and scampering

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From inward/outward: The Worrier’s Guild by Philip Deaver

Today there is a meeting of the
Worriers’ Guild,
and I’ll be there.
The problems of Earth are
to be discussed
at length
end to end
for five days
end to end
with 1100 countries represented
all with an equal voice
some wearing turbans and smocks
and all the men will speak
and the women
with or without notes
in 38 languages
and nine different species of logic.
Outside in the autumn
the squirrels will be
chattering and scampering
directionless throughout the town
because
they aren’t organized yet.

straight story

straight story

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Movie poster: the straight storyWhat a great movie!

I previewed David Lynch’s film the straight story last evening. It tells the real-life story of Alvin Straight, an elderly Iowan who rode a lawn mower two hundred and sixty miles from Laurens, Iowa to visit his ailing brother in Mount Zion, Wisconsin.

I will be showing the film as part of our monthly Movie Night at the Ensworths’ series for people from our church. It is a beautifully made film, beautiful in its simplicity and its emotional power and its celebration of human goodness, not a goodness that is artificial or overtly demonstrative, but a goodness that is interwoven into the fabric of stubborness and pride and regret and loss with which we can all identify.

It is a tender and hopeful film, and a funny and playful film. But what makes it special is its refusal to go “over the top” or to indulge in easy sentimentalism or to tie up all the loose ends. It celebrates love and forgiveness and joy and endurance, sterling Christian virtues all, without being preachy. You simply see the virtues in action … and end up believing that you yourself might be capable of such feelings and such kindnesses.

good news

good news

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televisionI do not watch television because the world on the screen is not the world I want to live in. It is not the real world, but if I spend enough time watching it I know I will forget that.

A thought-provoking quote from Barbara Brown Taylor. The entire article from which this quote is taken (What’s new?) is worth reading, to provoke thought and to encourage us believers to keep on doing evangelism, telling good news in a world overfilled with bad news, telling stories of human kindness and divine grace.

it’s the little things that matter

it’s the little things that matter

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Love is not ill-mannered or selfish or irritable …

It’s not in the grand gestures that love leaves its mark … the unexpected gift, the display of sympathy, the kind words. It is in the little things, like stopping what you are doing to listen, pulling your mind from wherever it is to give this one moment to the person in front of you.

I’ve been thinking about that this week. I’ve been thinking about my children and the ways I show them my love. I have loved them — by providing for them, by rooting for them, by guiding them, by correcting them, by telling them I love them. But I wonder if the true success — or failure — of my love for them will be measured in those fleeting moments, like when a daughter comes home and says “Hi” and I give her my time or I go back to doing whatever it is I am doing. Or like when a son calls on the phone and I make it short or pass the phone to my wife or I find a way to communicate to him how excited I am to hear from him.

It’s the little things that matter, because it is in the little things that we reveal our heart … not what we have intentionally chosen to show of ourselves to the rest of the world, but what we really are.