T.S. Tuesday: More Than Enough

I’m back to reading Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts. So today is my Voskamp/Eliot mashup, if such a thing is possible.

I huddle in my sheets, drinking my coffee as I read,

“I awake to I AM here. When I’m present, I meet I AM, the very presence of a present God. In His embrace, time loses all sense of speed and stress and space and stands so still…and holy.

Here is the only place I can love Him.”

When I say,

          I don’t want this day

          I don’t want this moment

          I don’t want these tasks or this conversation or this job

I am saying, I don’t want this God.

This I AM that is present in the moment. That is Himself the present tense.

I start. I flinch. My coffee jolts.

Is that what I’m saying?

When I reject the present, I reject the I AM.

The I AM in the moment.

He is present in every one. In every moment.

My very breath proof of His presence.

I flash to Eliot, a phrase from Burnt Norton that caught my heart many years ago: “Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs.”

I am the unwholesome and He is the wind. In and out. In and out. In the rhythm of I AM.

All day I try to embrace the moment. I really try. I write notecard reminders. I consecrate my desk and my space and my tasks.

Dissatisfaction oozes in.

They can’t occupy the same space: gratitude and discontent.

I can only see the NOT ENOUGH.

Ann has a cure for this too.

She recounts the story of Jesus feeding the masses with the not enough of loaves and fishes. A phrase jumps out to her, this woman “sleuthing for glory.” She sees right there in the text that before the miracle, before the full bellies, before the multiplication of the not enough, HE GAVE THANKS.

She writes,

“Gave thanks…I’d missed it and all of my life?

I’d never considered those two words, the bridge words there in the middle, the crossing over that took the not enough and made it enough.”

Gave thanks.

Counted gifts.

Stacked joy.

But, I protest, I can’t give thanks until I know what the future holds. Thankfulness is bondage to complacency. Saying things are okay right now ensures certain paralysis, right?

I am born to move and grow and learn and leave. Where does thanks fit in?

I don’t give thanks because I feel this moment, this circumstance, is not enough.

But wait. Isn’t that what Ann just said?  The moment of not enough is precisely when Jesus gives thanks.

“Jesus embraces his not enough…He gives thanks…And there is more than enough.”

Later that day I am at the beach. Saved by daylight savings and one more hour of sun and surf and life. I run, I splash, sand wedges its stubborn way into my shoes. Children erupt in squeals of cold and glee, emerging from the emerald waves with strands of shimmering seaweed. 

I reach a doggy beach painted with doggy paw prints with doggy yips and doggy paddles under a piercing blue sky of endless doggy summer. I stop my body, but my breath pants on, the wind in and out of unwholesome lungs.

And at last I gasp, give thanks, “It is more than enough.”

I am born to move and grow and learn and leave. This gratitude in motion is second nature. It's the sedentary thankfulness that will require more discipline.

Today I write more notecards. I consecrate my desk and space and time once again. Calm in my-not-so-ergonomically-designed desk chair, I force myself to notice my quiet breaths: wind in and out of unwholesome lungs.

And give thanks, waiting for the more than enough. 

Forget Me Not

This post was inspired by Anita Mathias' Let Nothing Be Wasted post. 

"If you have a bad day, don't plant it. Bad days have a habit of turning into bad weeks, months and years." Dave Roberts

I am kneeling grass stained on the ground. Hunched over, I am digging. I am shoveling. I am preparing the seed to plant down deep. My worry, my distraction. They are acts of cultivation. Of sowing. I will reap bitterness. I will reap burnout. I will reap bitter roots, a fruit that sickens the stomach. 

Eyes turned away from the sun, I read the Braille of the earth with my dirt crusted fingertips, sifting through the soil of my bad day. I don't foresee the harvest. I don't envision spring. I see fall brown and dead dirt. I see tears drip plop sploosh off the end of my nose, salting the soil of the pain I plant. The pain I clutch proudly, possessively in my grimy palm. It is mine to hold. It is mine to plant. This bad day. These bad thoughts.

Why do I exert myself with this bitter planting, when your gifts spring up like wildflowers? The glittering orange of African daisies and California poppies. The purple pallor of morning glories and forget-me-nots. 

Forget-me-nots. 

I was given a vision a few months back by a friend. A part two of sorts to my life as a basking case. In this vision I am still in the field. Still in the meadow of flowers. But I am not laying still with baited breath. I am not lounging lazily as God bursts forth more buds of morning glory. I am active; I am weaving to be precise. Weaving flowers. Weaving flowers bursting wild with hope.

"Your weaving is your worship," my friend said. 

Tying together the gifts into a wreath of remembrance. Forget-ME-nots.

So why do I find myself today elbows deep in dirt, preparing soil to nourish roots of anger and disillusionment? Why do I plant at all when the harvest is upon me? 

Convicted, I unhunch my back. I pluck the seed of pain from its pre-formed hole. I smooth the space that would have sustained the bitter bulb. I wipe my hands on the leg of my dirt-flecked pants. 

I lift my gaze to see the sun is out shining, ready for the basking. My eyes scan the landscape teeming with untamed flowers, ready for the weaving. Ready for the worship.

A smile sneaks across my teeth up into the crinkles of my eyes, and as my fingers reach for petaled stem, the words escape my lips, "I will forget You not."

Franny and Zooey Obsession Part 2: Seeing God in Chicken Soup

Franny and Zooey are the most sophisticated pilgrims I have ever had the chance to stumble upon. And the job of these pilgrims, of all of us, is the journey. The seeking, the wanting, the longing.  

There are journeys away from love and journeys towards love. Chasing and running. Hiding and seeking. 

But what if what we’re looking for has been here all along? What if the real journey is to discover that the divine is all around us and within us and before us and behind us and never ever apart from us?

Franny and Zooey embark on a journey that leads them to discover that what they’ve been searching and scratching and scrambling toward has been there all along. 

Zooey says to Franny,

"If it's the religious life you want, you ought to know right now that you're missing out on every single…religious action that's going on around this house. You don't even have sense enough to drink when somebody brings you a cup of consecrated chicken soup--which is the only kind of chicken soup Bessie ever brings to anybody around this madhouse. So just tell me, just tell me, buddy. Even if you went out and searched the whole world for a master--some guru, some holy man--to tell you how to say your Jesus Prayer properly, what good would it do you? 


How in hell are you going to recognize a legitimate holy man when you see one if you don't even know a cup of consecrated chicken soup when it's right in front of your nose?" 

Zooey’s right. If we can’t hear God in the whisper, how can we hear Him in the storm? If we can’t see God in the minutely beautiful, in the mundane acts of love and life and service and hope, how will we see Him in holy temples and mission trips? How will we ever reach a state of praying without ceasing when we can’t even partake in communion clothed in chicken soup?

We are in such constant need of reminding that every breath is proof that there is magic and every bowl of chicken soup is consecrated.

The job of the pilgrim is the journey to discover the Christ, the wonder, already among us.