these are the days: march

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I have three or four half-written blog posts drafted in the queue, but nothing I have to say seems meaningful enough to add to the media din that has only grown louder as the world draws itself inward. Thoughts on what it actually means to be the Church in a time when we can no longer substitute “going to church,” thoughts on how all I want is to write honestly but I hesitate to do so now that honesty feels like a currency, thoughts on whether or not there is a place for someone like me (by that, I mean a female Bible scholar who has been called to teach people how to study the Bible) in the Church at all… they’re all in there, waiting to be given voice lest they make my brain explode, but for whatever reason it doesn’t feel safe out here for them yet.

So these are the days of jotting down just enough notes to keep the lid on while I wait for the day that I’m brave enough to pour out. I remind myself that this website is mine to invite others into, and they may accept or decline as they see fit. I remind myself that I’m not being asked to write the inerrant Word of God, so I don’t have to say everything just right, or even be completely right—the grace I feel burdened to show others is abundant enough to cover me, too. I remind myself that there must be other people out there who are tired of hearing the same old Christianese teaching the same tired platitudes, and that I can’t possibly be the only one craving something a little more honest, more Biblical, less pristine. I can’t possibly be the only one with complicated or uncomfortable questions to ask—and I remember that Jesus Himself showed us pretty clearly just how much the devout can benefit from a healthy dose of discomfort.

For now, these are still days of quiet—quieter than I ever envisioned when I wrote my last post. The only thing breaking up my days and weeks is my work schedule, the only thing that holds a semblance of normal. Even that is abbreviated and interrupted by a week of being sick at home, feeling more than usual the pressure to keep my germs to myself, letting Bible180 be my church service and Zephaniah be my preacher and a simple “Let’s all agree to pray together in spirit at 2pm today” be my community.

Some of the daffodils have bloomed. I cut the last of the hyacinths for one more bouquet. Between rain showers I take quick walks through the garden to see what else is coming alive to prove that time really isn’t at a standstill, and that God really isn’t checked out of this mess. It is spring, and He is here.

Suggested Thinking

  • Matthew 23

  • Zephaniah

these are the days: february

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These are the days of sunlight, at last, streaming through the windows in the morning—after eighty days, some estimated, without the sun showing its face here. Until you’ve lived through eighty days without the sun I don’t think you can fathom how suffocating and dire the world becomes, nor how life-giving and joyful the privilege of sun on skin really is. The first week of February, when it finally came out from behind the gray blanket of clouds, I wanted to cry from pure relief, and I haven’t taken a minute of it for granted since. There is nothing so important that it can’t wait for a few hours while I sit outside in the sun.

These are the days of waiting eagerly for more flowers to pop up—my crocuses are in full swing, and the hyacinths and daffodils are close on their heels. I feel starved for every bit of color and light and joy the world can spare me and if I thought that sleeping in the garden next to my plants would make them grow faster, I’d do it. Every leaf that emerges is hope.

And especially, these are days of quiet. Even inside my mind, which is usually buzzing with new ideas or goals or processes, it is quiet—because nothing else seems reverent. I wish we still followed the old customs of mourning, in some ways, because the plunge back into life the day after a death seems not only horrifically inappropriate but exhausting beyond description. So many days I’ve wished I could respond to a call or a text or an appointment or a reminder with “Sorry—in mourning until further notice.” As much as life must stubbornly go on, it feels like something somewhere must cease, because a life that shaped my entire world is gone.

Suggested Thinking

these are the days: november

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I took this picture on one of the last days of October. The leaves were past peak, but still hanging on; now that November is in full swing, nearly all the trees are bare. The changing of the clocks seems to have sounded the knell of winter’s arrival, despite several more weeks of fall ahead. Suddenly there are only six weeks left of the year 2019, and an entirely new decade is around the bend.

It’s in the midst of all this constant moving and changing that the days have turned, for me, into the days of learning how to stop.

Did you know that the word “Sabbath” (or “Shabbat”) comes from the verb in Hebrew that means “to stop”? It’s not quite the same as the verb “to rest,” the way it normally appears in our Bibles. God didn’t “rest” from His labors so much as He “stopped.” Sabbath is an invitation to stop. To cease. To quit trying to carve out our own survival and success for a pause to remember that the real source of survival and success is Someone else.

Between my regular job, my writing, and various other projects, I got caught trying to avoid Shabbat for a bit too long and spent a few days sick in bed because of it. Even during my fifteen minute breaks at work, I’ve had a bad habit of keeping my brain busy by checking my email or listening to a podcast. It can be so hard to submit to a full stop - to release the need to find my value in my productivity and performance for even a few minutes a day and just be still.

So these are the days of learning how to stop. To sit and look out the window when I have five spare minutes before I need to leave for work. To sew quilt binding in silence when I’d normally want music or a podcast or a TV show to fill that space in my brain. To follow God’s example and not only rest, but fully cease, as an acknowledgement that the work I’ve done is good and that the Provider is even better.

Suggested Thinking