The Inheritance of Cathedral Work

As I write, it is one day since most of Notre Dame has burned. The reports are slightly conflicting as to how much was truly destroyed, "ravaged" by flames as the eye witnesses describe. But in any case, it's a breathtaking loss. It feels surreal. This magnificent, larger than life structure, full of grandeur, designed to lift the eye to the light and bend the knee to the holy has been standing for eight or nine hundred years.

I've been learning about cathedrals just as a matter of happenstance lately. Many of the podcasters and bloggers I follow have been writing and speaking about them. Most of the oldest, tallest, grandest cathedrals took generations to complete. One generation would begin the work, another would finish it. Perhaps three or four generations separated the beginning and the end, but the work was singular--to construct a beautiful gathering place to reflect on the majesty of God, to lift songs to the risen Savior, to quicken the imagination for the perfect city God is building for us. 

My modern American brain struggles with the idea of starting a work that I will never see completed. We build churches in a matter of months. We routinely tear down sanctuaries and start over to build bigger, better. We seem to make our churches ever darker--not lighter. Paint the walls black, use filtered lights, fog machines. Our ancestors would think we were nuts. In a time before man-made light, they craved light. Stained windows cast a holy glow over a place to open up the mind for contemplation. I wonder what our obsession with dark and fog says about our cravings. Maybe it's because we live in a world so full of stimulus, that we have to darken our worship areas in order to focus. I don't know. I digress.

So today I've been thinking about building cathedrals. It's a lost art. Communities just don't do it anymore. We don't quarry the rock and fell the forests and hire the artisans to labor for two-hundred years to build a place where our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will worship. We don't weep on the same altar where our parents and grandparents did. And that's okay really. The Holy Spirit is just as sacred and potent and strong in Saint Paul's Cathedral as in a hovel in Africa or a secret church in China. Some would argue, the earnest artistry has been overshadowed by pageantry and the Spirit has been hushed. Perhaps so in some of these grand once-sacred places.

Still, there seems to be a message in this. For me, anyway. A directive finally uncovered. I'm in a strange, quiet season where words don't flow and writing hurts. I've been reading and reading and reading. And listening to podcasts and soaking up whatever I can to wring meaning out of it. I'm hungry for answers to deep questions, questions that I've maybe carried with me my entire life but are finally bursting forth to be answered. As if someone had planted tiny little apple seeds in my soul when I was a baby, and now it's time for them to grow into a tree and bear fruit.

As I pondered cathedrals and generations laboring together, knowing one would start and another would finish, I felt some sort of deep truth blossom. Isn't this exactly what my grandmother did in her own quiet way? The woman never carried a chisel to carve a stone, she never worked with glass to reflect the light, but she labored in love for Christ. She served in her local church for decades, and at her funeral person after person after person after person stood to tell the story of how she loved like Jesus and their lives were changed through her. She loved us, her kin, her family with humble devotion. She taught her kids right from wrong and the promises of God. She loved my brother and me, her grandchildren, whole-heartedly but with wisdom. I just said to my husband last night that when I'm tempted to complain about my kitchen (I cook on a hot plate, y'all, because I don't have a stove actually in my kitchen) I ask myself what my grandmother would do and I know she would do her work cheerfully. I try. I try to carry on as she would. She started a cathedral work; I've inherited the labor and I want my contribution to be as lovely in the eyes of God as hers.

It will look different. I tried to be her for a while, but that doesn't work. We were created differently. I'm working with different spiritual gifts, different personality quirks, different talents. My generation is also remarkably different than hers--she grew up in The Great Depression and had her oldest children during World War 2. I'm in that displaced generation between Generation X and Millenials, where we remember library card catalogs but also had to be told Wikipedia isn't a legit source for research papers.

However, our striving is the same. My grandmother spent her life laboring for the Kingdom of Heaven. There's no cathedral I can point to and boast that she set this stone, she crafted that window, she hand-carved that gargoyle. But I am a living, breathing example of one who was changed by her work and her example. And I labor for the same Kingdom. The fruit will be in the people around me. My children, my someday grandchildren, my friends, my community....the people I may never meet who read the words I write. My words are like seeds blown into the wind. I don't know how far they may float or onto what kind of soil they may land, but God may bring fruition through them. I pray for this. I pray that my contribution to the cathedral pleases Him. And I pray that though I get tired and weary, I never give up.

I have to imagine that at least some of the workers in the cathedral had to wonder if spending their lives creating something they would never see finished really made sense. Certainly, in our modern world we would say it was stupendously inefficient and a waste of  life. We crave production, end results, and mass quantities of them if possible. Thankfully the laborers of the cathedrals didn't quit when they couldn't see the end. And thankfully those who have labored on invisible cathedrals of the heart and soul didn't give up when they couldn't see the end either. They kept the faith, they finished their work, and passed the mantle to us.

I was almost done with this post and my kids came in. The writing bubble has burst. The words are just gone. As suddenly as they came to me, they're now gone. So I can't really "finish" this the way I would like to. I like to wrap up with something neat and tidy, poignant if I can manage it, quotable if I'm really on a roll. But. After ten minutes or so I've trying to manufacture something that's good and it just feels like a tangent or like I'm changing the point or I'm just plain rambling, I've realized something: this whole post is about doing work that can't be finished. I'm a writer with two noisy kids. My labor in their lives is perhaps the greatest work I'll never do, so sometimes I have to set aside the writing. I don't truly know what my legacy of words will look like, but I know what I want my legacy of love to look like. So. I'm leaving this blog post more or less unfinished to go do the work that will last. And I'll leave you with this simple thought: What are you working on that will last? What will out-live you?

And since words escape me and I find myself lacking the poignant, I leave you with a poem that has given me much food for thought in the last six or nine months. Just read it slowly, line by line, and consider how you live today and the cathedrals you build for tomorrow.

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

By: Wendell Berry 

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,

vacation with pay. Want more

of everything ready-made. Be afraid

to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.

Not even your future will be a mystery

any more. Your mind will be punched in a card

and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something

they will call you. When they want you

to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something

that won’t compute. Love the Lord.

Love the world. Work for nothing.

Take all that you have and be poor.

Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace

the flag. Hope to live in that free

republic for which it stands.

Give your approval to all you cannot

understand. Praise ignorance, for what man

has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.

Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.

Say that your main crop is the forest

that you did not plant,

that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested

when they have rotted into the mold.

Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus

that will build under the trees

every thousand years.

Listen to carrion – put your ear

close, and hear the faint chattering

of the songs that are to come.

Expect the end of the world. Laugh.

Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful

though you have considered all the facts.

So long as women do not go cheap

for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy

a woman satisfied to bear a child?

Will this disturb the sleep

of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.

Lie down in the shade. Rest your head

in her lap. Swear allegiance

to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos

can predict the motions of your mind,

lose it. Leave it as a sign

to mark the false trail, the way

you didn’t go. Be like the fox

who makes more tracks than necessary,

some in the wrong direction.

Practice resurrection.

Sparrows, Rams on the Mountain, and Me

When my daughter was born she screamed for the first forty-five minutes of her life. She wasn't crying. She was screaming. She was irate. Inconsolably angry at being brought into this cold, strange world. And she was hungry. I mean, she was eleven pounds, eight ounces at birth. The girl probably really wanted some chocolate chip cookies and a glass of cold milk. It was her favorite in utero and it's her favorite now at three years old. But it's not exactly protocol to give newborns cookies and milk, however much they scream. Instead, we tried to get my baby to nurse. By "we" I mean I had a whole team working with me and trouble-shooting and trotting out every trick they had up their sleeves. When the lactation consultant--who was so kind and cheerful and positive and wonderful--declared that my daughter was a "tough case" I knew I was in for trouble.

You see, I have two children (most of you already know this, but I will write for those of you who perhaps don't know me in real life). My daughter is my youngest. I have a son three and a half years older. And he never did get the hang of nursing. Oh, we tried. And the guilt I had when I stopped trying and started using formula instead was intense. Deeply intense. And very much exacerbated by my undiagnosed post-partum depression and the mommy wars. You know, those passive aggressive comments made on social media that cut to the quick and everyone bloody well knows it. Those mommy wars.

So when my sweet screaming girl came along, I had been determined that I would breastfeed her longer than my son. If memory serves (which it doesn't because I've been sleep-deprived for almost seven years), I made it about ten weeks with my son and my goal with my daughter was eleven. I wanted just one more week. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Back to the hospital....Collectively, the experts and my husband and me agreed that we would try to get my daughter to latch for ten minutes and if she was still hopping angry, we'd stop and give her a bottle. We didn't want her to start associating feeding, or worse yet, me, with anger and frustration. The plan was to pump as much as possible but if girlfriend needed a little formula, that was okay too. Really hard for my pride in the mommy wars, but okay.

I so clearly remember sitting alone with her in my quiet little hospital room and feeling deeply worried. I had all this emotional baggage from "failing" with my son. I had hoped she would be easy. Nothing about this was going right and we hadn't even left the hospital. Then--all of a sudden, as they say--I felt in my spirit a message from the Lord. He assured me that he looks after birds and makes sure they get enough to eat each day, and that my dear sweet girl was worth more to him than any bird. He would make sure she'd thrive too. One way or another, I wasn't in this alone. I wasn't responsible for making sure she was okay. I mean, I wasn't free to neglect her, but the parts that were out of my control were in His control. He saw me. He saw my daughter. And we were going to be okay.

Naturally, I looked up the scripture passages about sparrows and the lyrics to the song "His Eye is on the Sparrow". I started singing it to her to soothe her. I found a rendition by The Newsboys that I think freaks my mother (Hi, Mom!) out a little bit, but it worked like magic to settle my fussy newborn. I learned all the words to that song. I memorized them in the first week or so of her little life. It became my anthem, even when it didn't work to calm her down.

There were some nights when she just wouldn't stop crying. It didn't matter how hard I tried, how much milk I offered, if I swaddled her or not, if I rocked her or not, if I sang or not. It didn't matter to her if I sang, but I kept singing because it mattered to me. I distinctly remember standing in her nursery, so bleary-eyed from no sleep, and teary-eyed because I was just so wrecked by the crying infant and singing over and over again...

"And I sing because I'm happy, I sing because I'm free for His eye is on the sparrow and I know He watches me."

Singing about happiness with tears streaming down your face makes an indelible impression on your spirit. I was clinging to that promise. I grabbed hold of it hard and I didn't let go.

Eventually, my daughter got a grip on her emotions and settled into a pretty wonderful baby. I also eventually gave up nursing her (I believe I made it eleven weeks and one day.) About the same time she became rather pleasant, PPD hit me hard. Anxiety. Never had it before. Not like that anyway. Which I talked about in the post 'Kindness Carries the Light'. Fluctuating hormones, and weeks of high-stress and very little sleep did me in. Still, I had the promise that God was watching.

And not just watching, lest you think this God of mine is a passive one who merely observes from on high and occasionally remarks to other celestial beings about the tiny humans on that blue and green ball. That is not my God. My God is deeply personal and intentional and deliberate and kind. God moves. His plans are, in fact, set in motion before my need even arises. He knows what I need now and what I will need next week and what I'll need in three years or thirty or whatever. Being omniscient gives you that kind of high-level clearance. And being omnipotent gives Him the clearance to also do something.

You don't always see it. Or, I don't anyway. I probably shouldn't speak for you. Maybe you're more observant than I am. But I don't usually see the provision before it's smacked me in the face and announced it's arrived. I don't see the ram climbing up the hill as I trudge up with my sacrifice. When Abraham and Isaac went up the mountain so Abraham could sacrifice his beloved son, he didn't notice or know about the ram coming up that would take Isaac's place. But God did. God made sure that ram was coming. Lately, I like to trace the steps backwards in this biblical narratives that we know so well that we take the details for granted. God knew that ram was needed the day it was born. That ram had a purpose and God got it up the hill for Abraham on just the right day. The ram wasn't a week early and missed it, it wasn't a day late and a dollar short. The timing was perfect. The provision came in the moment of crisis.

Friends. I'm going to be honest with you. 2019 has been a moment of crisis for my family. All three months of it. My husband has a heart condition; it's genetic and he's known about it for over twenty years. It's been well-managed and monitored for those two decades. This January he had an episode that landed him in the hospital for five days while they poked and prodded and scanned him, then hemmed and hawed and read results. The good news is after a minor surgery where he got a new internal defibrillator with some additional features and some new medicines, he's stable and good to go. He can live his normal life and he's fine! Except his employer won't let him come back to work for a year. We don't understand it. The doctors don't understand it. No one I have talked to understands it. And mountains of paperwork has been printed and faxed and copied and mailed and messed up by people not us....and hours and hours of phone calls have been made to fix what's messed up and find out what's needed and to determine what our immediate future holds. It's been stressful.

Yet. My God is watching. El-Roi. The God who sees me. This name was given to Yahweh by the Egyptian slave Hagar, a woman mistreated and hurt and desperate. She was sure she was alone in the wilderness and unable to provide for her son when God spoke to her. He gave her a promise and he provided for her and her son.

I've loved the story of Hagar ever since college when I first intimately understood that my God is one who sees me. Then today, oh, today was a hard day of listening to my husband's half of phone calls and feeling like I can't fix anything and trying to keep the kids and the dog quiet and no one was having it. I was so done. I was just so exhausted deep inside. I used up all my soul energy frowning and fretting and freaking out but swallowing it up whole so the kids wouldn't start to worry. Anyone else ever been there? Anyway. I finally got shoes and socks on the wild ones and we headed out the door to pick up some things we needed. As I stepped into the garage, it hit me--all of a sudden:

"His eye is on the sparrow and I know He watches me."

It was almost audible. I'm surprised my kids didn't' say, "who said that?" I dialed up the playlist I made for my daughter when she was a newborn, I haven't listened to it in two years at least. The first song on it is "His Eye is on the Sparrow" by The Newsboys. Ordinarily, my children have very strong opinions about what we listen to in the car. If it's not The Greatest Showman, Mary Poppins Returns, or Charlie Brown Christmas they're not having it. Today we listened to "His Eye is on the Sparrow", "A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes" (the Lily James version, so lovely), "Blackbird" (yes, by the Beatles. My son asked to turn it up), "Forever Young" (sung by Alfie Boe. Look. It. Up. Get tissues first), and "Your Grace Finds Me." They fussed a little with the last one but I had it cranked pretty loud at that point. *Shrug* I was worshiping the Lord.

I wish I could tell you that we got home from the store and my husband ran out to greet us shouting that all our problems are over and we struck oil in the backyard...or found gold under the shed....or someone just gave us a check that would cover the whole year....or some other bananas thing. He didn't. But he was smiling. And we had a nice dinner and then he played with my son while my daughter and I did the dishes. Okay, I did the dishes. She played in the sink but it makes her so ridiculously happy to do it that I no longer mind the water slopped on the floor or the fact that she's technically in my way. We were together. We've been together more in 2019 than we've ever been since the kids came along. And happier. We have our moments--all families and couples do. It can't always been sunshine.  But we're contented together. We play games and build with Legos and do puzzles and draw pictures and tell stories and read books and watch movies and play with the dog. There's so much to do just here in our home. The little home we complain about because the kitchen needs remodeled and we wish it sat on five acres. Yet this home is full of good things, and "every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like the shifting shadows." (James 1:17 NIV)

James wrote that in his contribution to the New Testament. James was a brother of Jesus. I wonder if he was among the brothers that first thought Jesus was mad and tried to bring him home to just be quiet and stop embarrassing the family. In their defense, maybe it was bad for business. Reputation is everything for a family business. But James came around. We don't know how exactly, but clearly he came to believe in his big brother. And I'm glad he did. James also wrote "consider if pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance....Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him."

In my life, I have faced trials of many kind. The other evening I started thinking through the last several years of my life and the list of trials was staggering (I had a legitimate reason for pondering this, it wasn't self-pity, I promise! It may perhaps be another post sometime this year). I don't know that I've always persevered well. I'm not much for perseverance typically. I'm more of a sit in the dirt and whine type. And yet. I'm here. And I've learned so much about the Lord it is also staggering. I know I haven't considered it pure joy. At no point today did I start naming and claiming 'pure joy' about our circumstances. Yet, in the moment when I heard the Good Shepherd speak to me, I experienced peace and joy. I was able to worship Him with a lump in my throat and kids in the backseat because I know that His eye is on the sparrow and He also watches me. I don't know that have that 'crown of life' yet, but I know that if I get handed any crowns or treasures when I arrive in Paradise that I'm headed straight to throne room to set it at the feet of Jesus. I have much thanks to give for all the rams on the mountain, all the provision in the wilderness, and all the reassurances that my family and I are worth more than many sparrows. Really, I owe Him everything.

2019: Nowhere To Go But Up

"Life's a balloon that tumbles or rises depending on what is inside. Fill it with hope and playful surprises, and oh, deary ducks, then you're in for a ride..." 
--'Nowhere To Go But Up'. Music and Lyrics by Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman

For the last three years Hollywood has gifted me beautiful movies that fill me up with inspiration, beauty, and wonder. First, there was the re-imagined Beauty and the Beast, and although I've now seen it five or six times, I still get teary-eyed at the ending. (I've become one of those grown-ups.) Next came, The Greatest Showman which took many of us by storm and filled us up with glitter and dreams and music. Now this year, a kindred friend from childhood has come back--I feel almost like Jane Banks myself when she blurts out: "I thought we'd never see you again!". Yes, of course, I'm speaking of Mary Poppins Returns.

In full disclosure, I was against this film when I first heard of it. There were a lot of grumbles and bah humbugs all the way until Thanksgiving this year. We stumbled upon an ABC special about Mary Poppins Returns and when I heard Dick Van Dyke's ringing endorsement (and learned of his amazing cameo) I finally decided to open my heart up to another installment of Mary Poppins. I'm so glad I did.

(I feel that this is a good spot to warn you that there will most surely be several posts over the next couple of weeks inspired by this movie, and probably the original, and then we'll go tripping and traipsing all over the stories and songs that have taught me the way to see beauty and wonder in a world often too busy, too cold, and too dark to notice. That was actually the vision I'd been dreaming up for this blog anyway. A cozy house blend of inspiration, insight, and imagination all fueled by stories. I've always been a sucker for a good story.)

I promise, no spoilers....although, I should hope that you'd trust Mary Poppins to deliver the Banks family a happy ending. After all, she is Mary Poppins and practically perfect in every way. Spit spot and all that. But I wanted to share some thoughts I had after soaking in the last song in the film.

"The past is the past. It lives on as history and that's an important thing. The future comes fast. Each second a mystery. For nobody knows what tomorrow may bring."

I think most of us would agree that 2018 was a hard year. Many of my friends are walking steep paths marked with loss, grief, and uncertainty. I myself felt heavy pressure and stress in the various roles I play in life--wife, mother, friend, homeschooler, church volunteer, and of course, writer. Rarely it seemed to me that I was measuring up to those mystical standards I felt both externally and internally. With feelings of failure, doubt, and frustration I almost crawled to the finish-line of the holiday season. But in that bleak mid-winter, I started to read books again and listen to podcasts about beauty and hope. As my brain started to drink up this goodness, I could feel the bud of hope peeking up from the soil in my heart. I started to remember what it was like to believe in my dreams, and not just drag them along in a heavy sack. I started to really look forward to the new year. It felt like the turning of a page was coming; that I could mark an end to some of the hardships of 2018, and pick up fresh ink to write on the pages of 2019 with renewed energy. 

It's a matter of coincidence that I saw Mary Poppins Returns on January 1, 2019. Although, maybe, since I do whole-heartedly and stubbornly believe that God is a man of details, perhaps it was providence. Isn't it rather perfect to begin a new year with a good strong dose of imagination and adventure? Isn't it grand to be drawn into a world of possibility and reminded what childlike eyes can see? And, isn't it wonderful to be assured that when life has been grinding and our loads have gotten so heavy we can hardly think straight or see the path ahead of us that there's "nowhere to go but up"? 

Each day is new. When the sun rises, even on the gray dreary days we've been plagued with here in Ohio, it shines on untouched hours. Busyness and commitments do limit some of the possibilities in each day, but there are so many moments unaccounted for in which we can breathe in deep and notice the world around us. There are opportunities to love hard and live well. There's time to play and create. There's room for silliness and laughter. There's space for faith and hope. There's nowhere to go but up. 

Lest you think I've gone completely mad with optimism, I'm sure 2019 will have its ugly bits I'd rather not have to sort out. I've been on this planet long enough now to know that all my lists and resolutions don't really stop the tide of life from crashing hard sometimes. But here I am on the shores of a new year and I'm inviting you to join me. Let's journey together pointing out beauty as we go, searching high and low for magical things, and celebrating the wonder in ordinary days. And in jealousy guarding our faith and hope and discoveries, we may just keep the dark from inching out our joy in another year. Here's to a new year! May we go nowhere but up carried high by hope on steady strings of faith. 

"Let the past take a bow, the forever is now. And there's nowhere to go but up, up!"