Pesto!

I made the first pesto of summer, with basil that I brought home from our farm in my suitcase. It has a lot of garlic -- so I can only eat it when I am going to be alone. It has the sharp, bright greenness that is both a color and a flavor. If my garden yields even half as much as my mother's, I will have lots to put in the freezer. Then, in the depth of winter, I will take some out, cook a little pasta, and have a taste of summer.... all by myself!

Where Love Lives

The twelfth floor is where love lives. I walk down the corridor, and most rooms have open doors. Very few people are alone here. A middle-aged man is feeding a small woman with thin white hair. Another person missing a leg is gently supported as she makes her way slowly down the hall. A young mother has her almost-new baby with her as she sits with her father, the generations keeping vigil. The man’s wife comes with food made at home in the kitchen where he has cooked for her for years. Machines beep and whir and drip and count. Those who were once full of vitality have their vital signs carefully monitored. The staff is quiet, polite, efficient, responsive.

When I leave, the middle-aged man is sitting by the bed just holding the old woman's (his mother?) hand. She is quiet and so is he. The next day, the room is empty, and I think to myself that she has gone home – whatever that means. I wonder how long he stayed there with her, and I know that his love somehow lingers.

This is what love is: watching and feeding and touching and talking when there is nothing else left to do. It is not moonlight and candlelight and wine and roses. It is biopsies and bedpans, tears mixed with laughter, sadness and pain and memories and prayers. And it is all there, on the twelfth floor.

Gardening

Two minutes after I finished planting my garden -- literally -- we had a hail storm. The rain came down in torrents with chunks of ice the size of giant marbles. I could have collected them and cooled a glass of iced tea. The chard and the beets look a little smashed, and some of the peppers, but I am optimistic that they will bounce back.

I garden for fun and because I love the feeling of wandering out to the back yard to see what I might have for supper. But I think of all those folks who grow things because they must, and I hope for them that the weather is fair and the growing season is long.

This year, the new thing I have planted is dinosaur kale. Even with its tiny leaves, it has a kind of prehistoric look. The beet greens are already red, the rainbow chard yellow, green and magenta. I have two colors of peppers, eggplant and heirloom tomatoes. And I am going to see if it is possible to grow okra north of the Mason-Dixon line. I'll keep you posted!

Beulah Land!

Last Sunday, we sang an old Southern hymn, "Dwelling in Beulah Land." You won't find it in the hymnals in the kind of churches I attend in Connecticut! The chorus has stayed with me all week:

I'm living on the mountain underneath a cloudless sky,

I'm drinking at the fountain that never shall run dry,

O yes! I'm feasting on the manna from a bountiful supply

For I am dwelling in Beulah Land.

There is one place in the Bible, Isaiah 62.4, that speaks of Beulah Land. It is a powerful statement of the promise of God's love fulfilled in the land itself, in the place of grounding, where the people find their life and livelihood. The prophet reminds them: "You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate;but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Beulah (Hebrew for Married); for the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married."

It is odd to think of the land being married, but the old hymn explains the meaning. It is to come to a place of abundance and joy, a place where all that is needed for life is present in overflowing measure. Maybe Beulah Land is all around us but our culture has become so soaked with fear and greed that all we see is scarcity. It is a fact that there is enough food in the world for everyone to be fed, and yet countless numbers die of starvation every day.

I was in my own Beulah Land when I sang the hymn. In the few days I was there, different people showed up with various little gifts: a cabbage freshly cut from the garden, a dozen eggs right from the chickens, potatoes and onions newly dug, squash and blueberries just picked. It was a bountiful supply of manna and we indeed had a feast, several actually!

And the first verse of the hymn starts with these words: "Far away the noise of strife upon my ear is falling." I did, in those few days, feel that the noise of the world's strife was far away; not absent, but not overwhelming either. To live in the place of abundance is to be able to be present in a world that is far from perfect and still to know that God's intention for all the earth -- people, animals, plants, and everything -- is only good, always shalom. It is to remember that the whole universe is, indeed, as Brian Swimme has said, "bottomless vaults of generosity."

Vocation

Charlotte, North Carolina, must have the best airport women's bathrooms of anywhere. They are clean and they have attendants! The woman who takes care of the bathroom in Concourse C is a treasure. She welcomes each person with a smile and a greeting. Traveling is stressful and a lot of us are not in the best mood, but she fixes that. "Come right in, ladies. Plenty of room. Take your seat and pour your own troubles!" It is impossible to leave without feeling less harried; it is impossible to leave without smiling.

Hers is not glamorous work, and I'm sure it doesn't pay very much. But she has made it a calling. She creates a little place of peace and fills it with her own contagious joy. She is doing honest work with integrity and grace. And what a world it would be if we all did that....

Saturday Sabbath

This is the busy season at the place where I work. It seems there is too much to do in the time we have over the next ten days. I have several things I need to complete before Monday, and I probably should have worked on them today. But it was a perfect May day. The sky was clear blue, the sun warm but not hot, and there was a little breeze blowing. So I hung the wash outside on the clothesline. I bought yellow begonias and planted them in my pretty blue pots for the front porch. I filled the little fountain in the front yard and got it going. I read a little bit. And tonight I will have dinner with friends.

The peril of technology is that there is no escape from the workplace anymore. It used to be possible to leave the office behind when I went home -- no more. Now it follows me everywhere, like a stalker almost. The scripture says that even God rested, took a deep breath, in the midst of work. So today I practiced being God-like -- I rested, I breathed, I played in my yard, I visited with my neighbor. And God saw that it was good.

How to eat peas

Go to the field.

Pick the first five fat pea pods of the season.

Pop them open with your thumb,

and eat them raw, right then and there!

Shopping at the Piggly Wiggly is a lovely experience, not a chore at all. The woman in the meat department does not find it at all strange to custom cut beef and pork chops for a vegetarian who knows nothing about meat. The assistant manager knows where everything is; and if they don't have something you want, all you have to do is ask and they will order and stock it for you. The aisles are wide and there are products that you don't think you would find in a country grocery store in the South -- guacamole, Italian wine, smoked paprika, adobo seasoning, polenta. The very best thing, though, is the check out. There is always someone to bag the groceries. The baggers sort your purchases in logical groups, all the cleaning stuff in one sack, the cold food together, the veggies in their own bag. Putting the groceries away at home is simple because of that. But, best of all, someone ALWAYS takes your bags to your car and loads them for you. They do not ask; it is taken for granted that this is part of what you get with your groceries.

Next winter, when I am struggling to push a shopping cart through a snow bank and the wind is cold and it is sleeting, I will wish for the good folks at the Piggly Wiggly!

An expedition into ministry

In my church, one of the questions that we ask those taking on particular ministries is:

Do you sincerely receive and adopt the essential tenets of the Reformed faith as expressed in the confessions of our church as authentic and reliable expositions of what Scripture leads us to believe and do, and will you be instructed and led by those confessions as you lead the people of God?

Recently, I was asked that question, except the person asking first misspoke the word “expositions” and said instead “expeditions.” I’ve been pondering that small slip and have decided that it might be a very good thing to ask those setting out to minister in a new role. What if I really did promise to take an expedition into what Scripture leads me to believe and do?

I’m thinking about those who take expeditions like climbing Mt. Everest. I’ve never done anything like that, but I once knew someone who had. The climb itself required months, maybe years, of preparation. There was physical conditioning and training, planning what to take and how to carry it, deciding on only the essentials for life. There was the tricky work of timing, going when the storms would not be quite as threatening. Climbing companions had to be engaged, those who know the mountain and its secrets, its dangers, its passage ways. And for all the challenges, there was an enduring exhilaration in carrying out the expedition.

And I find myself thinking that I ought to take on this ministry as an expedition: preparing myself, working on my stamina and endurance; choosing carefully what I need to sustain me on the journey; considering the conditions, the possibility of dangerous storms, and planning accordingly; and finding knowledgeable and supportive companions to accompany and help.

What if I really did travel deep into the Word? How would I be changed; how would the ministry I do be changed? Would I experience that enduring exhilaration that comes to those who take on what seems more than they can do and even so, get to the top of the mountain?

And from the same occasion of the question to me, this poem that I have known and loved, coming to me again in a new context, with a new meaning, with a new command:

Dark and cold we may be, but this

Is no Winter now. The frozen misery

Of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move;

The thunder is the thunder of the floes,

The thaw, the flood, the upstart Spring.

Thank God our time is now when wrong

Comes up to face us everywhere,

Never to leave us till we take

The longest stride of soul [we] ever took.

Affairs are now soul size,

The enterprise

Is exploration into God.

Christopher Fry, A Sleep of Prisoners (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1951)

And I hear it now as another call to expedition, to take a long stride with my soul, to explore God, to go looking for what I am being led to believe and do.

Spring!

The flowering trees are like slightly wild party girls on their way home from a raucous night out. They are dressed all in pink and white, but now starting to look a little tattered. They are strewing confetti all around them. The petals litter the sidewalks and the gutters, mixing with the sand left over from winter, looking almost like snow, except for the pink and the rose color.

The peas, on the other hand, are not at all like these extroverted sorority girls. They poke their little green heads up out of the dirt, cautious and timid, as though they are not quite sure what is waiting for them. No wild abandon for them!

The hosta unfurls itself, and the lettuce and the spinach and the azaleas applaud. The world is very beautiful, and there are more shades of green than the eye can take in, more than the heart can count.

In the beginning, God saw that it was good, and, by God, it still is!