Packing Up

Our current apartment is slowly morphing into stacks of boxes against the living room wall. I’ve been going through the closets, cleaning out old boxes, packing away elements of our lives for the transfer into the next chapter. A few boxes actually hadn’t been opened since our last move, so I’m determined not to have “open much later” boxes this time around.

It’s interesting going through all of our things. In many ways we have already done a pretty good job of simplifying and taking stock. But looking through old letters and memory boxes, or seeing things that were really important to me three years ago that seem so much less important now–it’s a thought-provoking process. In some ways it’s like a longer version of an examination of conscience. Where have I been? What has mattered most to me? Who am I becoming in the wake of these experiences?

I think about where I’ve been and the contrast of dreams to come. I think about the long road Robert and I have walked to get to this point, and the work that lies ahead of us. I thank God for the trials and the blessings, those in the past and those that are inevitably waiting. This process is blessed, even if it is, at times, a painful or scary one.

Feeling anxiety about the unknown is also inevitable, I think. No matter how wonderful a future seems, leaving the warm comfort of one’s known world requires no small amount of courage. As I pack up each box, I think about all the things that will be different when it is opened again. It thrills me and makes me nervous all at once. The passage of time is stronger than the movement of glaciers across our lives. Each second gone, one second closer. I embrace the coming of this dream.

Three weeks to go, and it’s all I can do to keep my mind on school. I’m already planting gardens, hammering fence posts, sewing clothes. I’m checking the temperature in the greenhouse. I’m taking our dog on a walk. I’m watching our family grow older and bigger in this new home. I need to remind myself that the present is sacred, too.

And I cherish it. I cherish the “lasts” of living in the city. The last few times a Barnes and Noble is right down the street.  The last time visiting our beloved vet. The last time driving to my parents is an easy 40 minute car ride. Last, last, last. I cherish the lasts, as I anticipate the firsts. But I feel the tension of being caught in the middle.

Yes, I embrace the dream to come. But I also embrace the one that is here.

Getting Closer

We took my parents up to the house on Sunday and gave them the grand tour. We also got a closer look at the details of the place–we went inside the root cellar, took a peak inside the jacuzzi, gave a the chicken coop a once-over. The grape vines might be able to be salvaged, but they haven’t been watered in a very long time. There’s also an unused foundation that may someday turn into the goat barn–who knows! Some fruit trees are already planted, but I think we are going to expand the orchard. The chicken coop will need some protective wiring around the area. I can’t wait to watch the sun rise out of that kitchen window.

The potential just seems to ooze out of every element of this place. I can see all the different possibilities of what we can do, and I am still in disbelief that this is actually my life.

The best possible scenario is that we move in over Thanksgiving weekend. And we will be giving thanks indeed! For now, a slow and steady pace of work will be necessary for the short run. Juggling seminary and packing will not be easy. But, in a strange way, I’ve always enjoyed packing. The potential and hope of the new place always keeps me going.

At this time of year, it gets around freezing at night in Tehachapi. I’m going to have to find a good winter coat. This isn’t the Southern California beach weather anymore, Dorothy!

Each day gets us one step closer.

A Cautious Hope

It makes me nervous to actually write the words…dare I say it? We’re in escrow! This is the northward view from our new house(!), which we’ll hopefully be able to truly call our own  in a little over a month. The air vent you see in the bottom right is on the roof of the root cellar on the property.

It’s a dream.  A dream I’m afraid can be snatched away at any moment…but, as I said before, there is value in any dream. So we wait and hope and prepare. It’s possible that just after thanksgiving we may be in a home with a greenhouse, a root cellar, and a chicken coop. Everything we’ve been working toward. Everything we’ve hoped for.

It takes a willingness to change–change jobs, change level of convenience, change the entire pace of life. But we’re ready. More than ready…we’re excited for it.

We’ll be moving two hours away from where we are now, away from the smog and traffic and LED billboards. We’ll be actual country folks, with an acre and a half to call our own. We can have chickens and goats and bees, and we’ll can and pickle and freeze our summer harvest so we can taste a little of July’s blessings in January. We’ve already decided what to call our little homestead: abbondanza. Abundance.

And if this dream is fulfilled, if we actually get to live here, then we will always do our best to share in the abundance. For it isn’t really ours in the first place…our breaths are on borrowed time, so how could we even think that we could actually own a piece of earth that has seen tens of thousands of millenia? But for this time on earth, let us be able to share the blessings. May it be a place of safety, of welcoming, and of community.

We wait and we hope.

A Morning Prayer

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me.

I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.

And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

 ~ Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude, Part 2, Chapter 2

Blessings of Bounty

I’ve talked before about getting food from a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). Here is some of our seasonal bounty, along with fresh baked rosemary potato bread. Shortly after we baked the bread, we spread some of our homemade butter over two (or three) steaming slices.

One of my favorite parts about getting food from a CSA is the challenge and surprise of seasonal eating. I love it. I probably would never have bought sunchokes or persimmons, and yet here I am eating them with delight.  Autumn is no longer the time for cucumbers or peppers (and certainly not asparagus!), although you’d never know it from walking into a supermarket.  It’s no wonder that eating seasonally isn’t a mainstream practice; it’s hard to even know what that means without being pointed in the right direction. All of the choice that is available to us in the grocery stores have actually stripped us from understanding the natural limitations of the seasons. We’re actually quite spoiled when it comes to our food choices, but we don’t know it–to most it’s just “normal.”

This is one of the beauties of eating seasonally–we become more attuned to the rhythms of the earth. No…we participate in the rhythms of the earth. We become part of it. We appreciate it.

And we are grateful.

Still Dreaming

Our dream of a true homestead may be closer than we ever could have anticipated. I’ll post more when we know more, but for now, we’re saying some extra prayers.

Someone Else’s Life

Yesterday I happened to be in the neighborhood of the school where I used to teach first grade. I was walking to a local pharmacy, and as I walked by the school, I looked into the school yard. Some class was just walking back from the computer lab. Girls in little jumpers were skipping, boys were hopping–it was all they could do to contain their energy in those small bursts. Their teacher was giving them “the look” to keep them quiet through the transition. Ahh, a morning at school, a half hour before recess. It was all too familiar–and yet, I realized, it was someone else’s life.

It’s strange sometimes to travel the windy road of memory. I know I traveled the path, but it somehow looks different when I look back from the other direction.

I suppose this is what it feels like in the middle of one’s adulthood. The experience of college seems so important and yet my concerns from that period so irrelevant (of course, it didn’t feel that way at the time!).  They are someone else’s concerns now.  Likewise, my time teaching feels like yesterday and a billion years ago all mashed into one. My past, someone else’s present. Perhaps seminary will feel that way too, someday.

Recognizing my life in someone else’s and someone else’s life in mine is part of what connects us all. Out of our experiences come compassion, empathy, understanding. All of this is accompanied by bittersweet nostalgia, relief, yearning, and hope.  Just another way to connect.

The unknown path

These days are full of joy and uncertainty. As the nightfall arrives earlier and the air begins to cool, we sit at the kitchen table each evening for dinner and the talk inevitably turns to the future. It’s exciting and scary in a new way; in the past our anticipation centered around the wedding (in the early days), or a new job, or starting school. Now the talk centers around having children, buying a house, moving to a new town, and above all, our shared vocation. We know we’ve been placed on this journey together for a reason. It feels like we’re beginning to understand that reason a little more clearly.

Discernment is a lesson that I continually learn. What is from God? What is sourced in my own will? Am I trying to force the issue? Am I scared of what God really wants me to do? Do I even know what God wants me to do? Do I have enough faith?

It takes patience and trust to properly discern such heavy issues. Sometimes the answers don’t come for months. Sometimes they don’t come in the way I expect. So discernment of God’s desire is important, because if I was left to my own devices, I would craft for everything to happen now and under my terms. Of course, this would inevitably lead to disaster.

It’s a good thing God’s in charge.

In the meantime, I have to settle for the tension of uncertainty. Like the autumn days, there is inevitability in the air. “But not yet,” the night’s breeze whispers, “Not yet.” We continue to try to discern to the best of our ability, and I try to remain patient in the unknowing.

Thank goodness we’re in good hands.

These many beautiful days

These many beautiful days cannot be lived again. But they are compounded in my own flesh and spirit, and I take them in full measure toward whatever lives ahead.

-Daniel Berrigan, SJ

Communal Hope

Rob and I spent some time chatting with LMU students last night about Creation Care. Officially, he and I were speakers on the topic for a “Theology on Tap” gathering. But, as seems to continally be the case, I found that as we ministered, so we received blessings tenfold.

These young men and women were mostly seniors in college–about seven or eight years younger than me. They are filled with a vibrancy and hope that inspired both of us.  I am finding that as I speak to more and more people, it becomes clear that the ideas are out there. The motivation and desire exist.  Most people just need one or two things: a little direction, and the knowledge that they are not alone in their journey. This is why I am so passionate about speaking on Creation Care–not because I have an abundance of knowledge to impart, but rather to give people a reason to come together. As we share ideas, talk about what one another is doing, and make connections, we build a network of support for one another.

Which leads me to comment on the thought that has been turning over and over in my head throughout the last three weeks of this quarter: the lynchpin of all sustainable Christian movements is communty.

True community is sorely lacking in many of our most foundational Christian gathering places.  We seem to get very comfortable in the way things have always been, and are anxious when we consider things being different. What if we really knew the people in our parish–really knew them? What if we extended our boundaries beyond Sunday Mass or meeting with fellow parents in the school parking lot, and decided to try to model the early Church of Acts? I’m speaking mostly to my Catholic brethren now, because this is the community with which I have the most familiarity. My experience at Fuller has taught me that there is much we can learn from some of our brothers and sisters in certain Protestant denominations.

I had a class last quarter with a young man (he couldn’t have been over 24 years old) who had formed a group of about fifty people within his church. They decided to be a type of “emergency ministry.”  Any time a person in their congregation had a personal emergency–a woman’s transmission suddenly blew out, or a father lost his job unexpectedly, or a family didn’t know how to pay for a child’s school supplies–they went to this group of people. Everything was out in the open and nothing was secret. The person would talk about the problem with the group, and they would find a way to help. The natural checks and balances within the community kept the system sustainable; since everyone saw eachother at least once a week, people could continue to see how the person was doing as the emergency passed. Likewise, the person knew two things: they could depend on the community and that they were responsible for how they responded to the gift. The young man described great success with this program and told us that it did bring the church community much closer in their support of one another in time of need.

I tell you this story because I believe it shows the importance of community in our Christian lives. Often we look at the problems of the secular world and feel overwhelmed. How do we counter a culture of overconsumption and spiritual starvation? The answer, I believe, lies in community. We must break free of the idea that we need to “go it alone” or accomplish everything as individuals. In community we are stronger, and in community we can accomplish more through our combined gifts than we ever could on our own.

Back to the idea of our experience at LMU last night. Forming a small community–even for a moment–was just one example of how we might support one another as we seek change in our world. I think that every opportunity should be taken to do this. It may be for one night, it may be for a whole year. But forming community and supporting one another is essential. We cannot live out Christianity in solitude. That’s just not how it works.

Thank you, LMU students, for giving me more to think about–and for giving me more hope. I am continually amazed and grateful for the potential that God has placed in each of us. Think of what we can do with that potential….together.