Patience

Sometimes words are futile, and the hand that grasps the pen is weak. Sometimes language wears thin, wears old, wears out.

Grab-Bag

Today was a smattering of everything. A half day of teaching, a half day of professional development, a walk, an exploration of the next town over, and a bit more Frederick Buechner over a solitary dinner at a hole-in-the-wall pizza place called Two Doughboys.

I'm nothing if not consistent. Patchwork day, patchwork blog post. Here's a scrambled-up offering of the Life of Debbie over the past few days.

The faithful jalopy, Blue Bess, and I, off to see the sights:

The sights:

Growing things:

And lastly, some words. Not mine, but part of the truth I live. 

"...I have come to believe that by and large the human family all has the same secrets, which are both very telling and very important to tell. They are telling in the sense that they tell what is perhaps the central paradox of our condition--that what we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often just what we also fear more than anything else. It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are--even if we tell it only to ourselves--because  otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real thing. [...] I suspect that it is by entering that deep place inside us where our secrets are kept that we come perhaps closer than we do anywhere else to the One who, whether we realize it or not, is of all our secrets the most telling and the most precious we have to tell."

                 

                                                                                   - Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets

And So We Are Kindred, You and I

Some ruthlessly torn-out-of-context quotes. Read the book, friends.

"Little by little he began to feel that he was catching at least an occasional glimpse of what all the shouting was about. It was something utterly out of reach up there in the sky where they were all rushing about in the street pointing at it, and yet it was apparently near enough to have set them on fire. It was something even more outlandish than they were who had fallen in love with it and yet it was at the same time so full of stillness and loveliness and ultimate sanity that to live blind to its existence, the way he always had, struck him as more outlandish still. He began to believe that it might even be worth burning your face off for if you became convinced that it was somehow your face that kept you from it."

"...occasionally to hear as plainly as though they were being whispered into his ear the words, 'I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart" as he stood in the shuffling line to receive the Eucharist from the hands of a priest as gorgeously gotten up as Sarastro in the temple of Isis and Osiris."

                                                                               - Frederick Buechner, The Storm

When Life Is Too Much...

...get your walking shoes on.

Walk and walk and walk until your legs ache from going uphill. Drink in the view. Rejoice at the sound of the first peepers of the spring. Listen to the mourning of the whippoorwill. Find winter and spring intermingling, death and dryness joined to life and newness.

At the top of the hill, happen to meet an old, old farmer named Edie, whose ingenuity is as deep as the wrinkles around her eyes.

What else would you do with an old bathtub, pray tell?

"Come back anytime," she says.

Soak in the trees and the light and the sky and the hills until dusk falls and the colors fade.

Cross the tracks and go home, boneweary and heavy with peace.

A Room With a View

Having one's own little nest isn't so bad some days. When spring comes and the air just tastes good and your apartment windows are wide open to catch it and breathe it all in, it's not so bad.

                                                        
No. Not so bad at all.

Not in Nanticoke!

My family has always taken great pride in its geographical isolation. We live in Nanticoke, a small town named by Native Americans in the distant past and not much more populated now than it was back then. Growing up, a multitude of life's greatest joys were inextricably bound to the the soil of Nanticoke. Childhood was carefree, for the most part. We children boasted--or I did, at least--that we were so far out in the middle of nowhere that we couldn't see any other habitations from our house. Our greatest trials were doing the dishes and weeding our allotted rows of the vegetable garden just outside our kitchen door. Life was good.

But oh, Nanticoke, land of free children (except when they are pulling weeds under the blazing summer sun), how you have been corrupted! How is it that you, the Unsullied Country, now bear the stain of criminal activity? Yes. Nanticoke has turned to the dark side.

You see, when I called home today to chat with my parents they told me a disturbing story. In the dead of night, around 1:00 in the morning, my mom woke to the sound of a door slamming just outside the house. My dad, perpetual Finder and Bearer of Gloom, Doom, and General Pessimism, quickly got up to check it out [you see, it could have been an arsonist, a murderer, or sundry other classes of criminals...]. He found nary hide nor hair of a lurker. He and mom returned to bed.

Cue sunlight. Morning breaks. Dad gets out of bed, goes outside to putter around as usual. Lo and behold, he finds the bottle of Tums that he habitually, hypochondriacally keeps in the family van out in the middle of the road! The middle of Nanticoke's pristine, criminal-free road! He walks over, inspects the bottle, picks it up. He then trudges slowly to the van and opens the door. Theft! Vandalism! His two metal coffee mugs have been stolen. What's worse, a raw egg has been smashed on the driver's seat. Yes. This is a true story. And it happened yesterday night in Nanticoke (oh, Nanticoke...).

The story doesn't even end there. My mom's car has been rifled through as well. A bag full of freshly-rolled pennies and nickels, waiting to be brought to the bank and exchanged for crisp bills (64 dollars' worth of crisp bills...) has been lifted.

Sixty-four dollars in pennies and nickels. Two travel mugs. A smashed egg. Tums.

Nanticoke is the new New York City.

[In all seriousness, though...how creepy is this?!]

When Spring Comes Back...

...she wakes up my insides. Today, my friends, was lovely. The air was warm and the breeze balmy. After a morning at church and an afternoon spent enjoying good food and good company with a home-away-from-home family, what better way to spend the last hours of daylight than painting?


I am no painter. But I like to pretend that I am...


I've just recently started fooling around with watercolors, and though I get ridiculously frustrated that the visions in my head are so much lovelier than what bleeds its way onto paper, I still have a lot of fun. I have a friend whose birthday is coming up on Friday, and I decided long ago that part of her present would be a watercolor.


Not-yet-painted-birthday-watercolor + too-beautiful-to-be-wasted-spring-day = One Darn Good Afternoon


Step 1:


Travel to the local park and pick a scenic place in which to do some paint-dabbling. Be sure to have a clear view of a) the river so you can watch geese taking off and canoers canoe-ing and b) the picturesque red barn in the distance. Start painting. Stop to feel the sun on your skin. Keep painting.

Step 2:


Finish painting and leisurely clean up after yourself. Stroll back to your car.


Step 3:


Choose a painting to give to said Friend Whose Birthday Is On Friday. Do this by leaning each watercolor on a teapot, taking a picture, and framing the one you think she'll like best. Try not to be hard on yourself when you see your amateur work...after all, you're not a real painter. Count yourself lucky that--seeing as when you paint, you just start blobbing water all over the place in the hopes that shapes will emerge--you accidentally made something that might work as a gift.

              Exhibit A:

  
              Exhibit B:

              Exhibit C:

              Exhibit D [the winner]:

Step 4:


Ask a trusted friend (and, oddly enough, the only person who knows your newly-born blog exists) if she thinks you made the right selection. Or if she should keep painting between now and Friday because none of them are fitting to gift to a friend? [Sally, if I were you I would tell me the latter. Does it bother you that the evergreen is about a bajillion times smaller than the other tree? I just keep telling myself that it's just a baby evergreen...].


Today was a Good Day.

Ecclesiastes

I never knew you, Pete Seeger, but in some ways I count you a brother. Life is seasons, and in this the bravest of us glory. 


To everything (turn, turn, turn) 
there is a season (turn, turn, turn) 
and a time for every purpose under heaven.

A time to be born, a time to die 
a time to plant, a time to reap 
a time to kill, a time to heal 
a time to laugh, a time to weep.

To everything (turn, turn, turn) 
there is a season (turn, turn, turn) 
and a time for every purpose under heaven.

A time to build up, a time to break down 
a time to dance, a time to mourn 
a time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together.

To everything (turn, turn, turn) 
there is a season (turn, turn, turn) 
and a time for every purpose under heaven.
A time of love, a time of hate 
a time of war, a time of peace 
a time you may embrace, a time to refrain from embracing.

To everything (turn, turn, turn) 
there is a season (turn, turn, turn) 
and a time for every purpose under heaven.
A time to gain, a time to lose 
A time to rend, a time to sew 
A time to love, a time to hate 
A time for peace, I swear it's not too late.