Home-grown Tomatoes

If you love home grown tomatoes and if you live in the Midwest with a nice sized backyard, you will probably want a summer garden to grow your very own red, juicy beauties.

Quite possibly, you love home grown tomatoes because you grew up with a garden, a huge one, you were expected to help weed and to help pick -- tomatoes, okra, corn, asparagus, strawberries.  Maybe you had a dad who loved to garden and a mom who loved the vegetables, but grumbled about all the canning.  (Now that you are an adult, you do understand that.)


And chances are, though you remember griping about all the weeding (and perhaps you even remember complaining to your elementary school friends about summer beginning because now you would have to weed the garden all the time), you now understand the beauty of gardening, even the weeding, maybe even especially the weeding.  You understand the solitude of the garden. Working alone, sweat dripping down your back, clearing the soil of weeds, creating order. You still feel that childish rush of pride all these years later in knowing the difference between a corn seedling and a weed.  You still delight in the pungent organic smell of tomato plants.


You may remember all these things, savor them mentally, and vow to plant a big ol' rural-Oklahoma style garden next summer.


But life will be as busy as ever when tilling and planting time comes... and goes. You will mentally settle for a tomato plant or two and maybe some dill or zucchini. And then more time will pass and your dad will possibly ask when you want him to bring some tomato plants over.  He will have started all sorts of varieties in his greenhouse during the spring and he'll be anxious for you to plant some of them. More time will pass.  You will probably look out your kitchen window while hand washing a few dishes and you will see the barren garden and feel guilty you've continued to neglect it.


Finally, your dad will relent.  You hadn't intended that to be the result, but you won't feel disappointed either.  He will till the garden for you.  He will plant tomato plants.  You wanted a couple of plants.  He will plant five.  That's okay.  You don't have to eat each and every tomato.  You can share.  Maybe you'll puree and freeze some.  Maybe you'll waste a few.

Special tomato-slicing knife

When that first full, fragrant tomato reddens, you will slice it with the special tomato-slicing knife you received for Christmas a few years ago.  You will prepare a turkey sandwich on 12-grain bread -- green leafy lettuce, cheese, mayo, celery salt and a fat juicy slice of tomato.  It will taste so transcendentally delicious you will make another sandwich.  Forget about chips or a cookie for dessert; two tomato-laden turkey sandwiches will do.


You will document your first turkey-with-homegrown-tomato sandwich of the year as your Facebook status.

The summer will progress.  You'll savor more tomatoes.  Your husband will eat some of them like apples, squirting mustard on each as he goes.  (A strategy he learned from you.)  Sometimes you will eat so many tomatoes, you'll get canker sores.  And over time, you will no longer appreciate the tomatoes quite so much as you first did.  You will give away more and more.  You will pick less frequently, allowing some to rot on the vine in the blazing summer heat.


When fall arrives, bringing increasingly harder freezes, and the vines begin to droop, you will once again neglect your garden.  Now when you look out that kitchen window, you'll see a garden patch in need of clearing.  You know it won't be much work, just a few minutes of tearing out vines and dragging them to the compost and a few moments of stacking the tomato cages under the deck.  If you've thought ahead, maybe you'll spread around coffee grounds collected from the local barista.


There's a good chance though that even in December, those vines will still be there, black, ugly, sagging, evidence of the difficult months that preceded this one.  But one afternoon, you just might look out that kitchen window and see magic.  


To be continued...

Unexpected beauty

Somehow, these fit together in my brain.  This exquisite video of a starling murmuration in Ireland.  (You can read more about it here.)

And this song, "The Dawn Will Break upon Us" written by the brilliantly talented Mike Crawford.  


His song is layered with unexpected sounds and beauty.  It soars.  It murmurates.  


(Yes, I made that word up.)


For the album premiere last year, he and the Secret Siblings projected a jagged-y video of birds flying through a grey sky.


I've been listening to the album on a soggy, grey December day and savoring the flight of birds against barren trees and a bleak sky. Today, I've replayed the song several times because listening to it seems right for the moment.


The Dawn will indeed break upon us.  


****************
I wonder if any of those birds have a mustache.

Hamster Wheel

I've been chasing after clarity.  Mulling over frustrations in my life, my former job, my head.  Thinking and rethinking and rethinking.  Driving myself crazy with it.  Trying to understand, to pinpoint, to capsulize.  Getting nowhere.  

This has continued relentlessly for quite some time now.  Months.  

Running on a hamster wheel.  Frantically.  To the point of exhaustion.  Yet finding it immensely difficult to stop.  

There's a certain comfort in the hamster wheel, a familiarity that, though wearing, is also energizing.  On the hamster wheel, the fuel of inner confusion, anger and frustration keep me going with boundless spiraling compulsion.  

There's a predictability to the hamster wheel too.  I may not understand the situation.  I may be revisiting the facts and the emotions with little genuine insight.  But I know the wheel.  

In the absence of true clarity, I lock fiercely on each nugget of fact and emotion.  I see each of them clearly, albeit briefly, like rungs on a hamster wheel.  They speed by.  But for a moment, a fleeting moment, I can see something clearly and then something else and something else.  In the absence of true clarity, I've been willing to settle.

The morning after I first came to this realization, my mother-in-law, who had no idea what I'd been thinking, sent me an email with the link below.  (Be sure to watch to the end.) 

Sheesh!

I'm discovering (through the help of a spiritual director who meets with me periodically) God is not in the hamster wheel.  It's not that he's not with me or accessible to me there.  But I will not experience him in the hamster wheel.  In fact, I will not even experience him in clarity.  Sure, he sometimes offers me moments of true clarity, but that is not where I need to look to find him.  

I am made not for clarity, but for relationship with the Creator.  Clarity is nice, but it alone will never be truly satisfying.  Chasing after clarity only expends energy and fuels frustration.  It does not bring me closer to what I truly and deeply desire.

I'm trying to learn how to step off the hamster wheel.  It is not easy, but boy oh boy do have lots of opportunity to practice these days.  


Yesterday, I read the following excerpt from Rechurch: Healing Your Way Back to the People of God by Stephen Mansfield:
 

"You have been replaying the facts of your situation over and over again in your mind.  You want to talk about the facts as you see them, and then you want to set those facts afire and shove them into the faces of those who wronged you.  But hear me on this: there may be a time and a place for the facts to be aired, but getting the facts right will never set you free.  Even if everyone involved in your hurtful situation instantly agreed with your perspective on the facts, it would not heal the damage that has been done to your insides.  So, excuse me while I sidestep the facts -- your version and theirs -- and simply show you the path to wholeness.  Then, may God do with the facts of your painful situation whatever he pleases." (p. 17)

It's true, but... OUCH!

And yet, I find the most consolation and feel the most wholeness and freedom in stepping back from my pursuit of clarity, vindication and self-defense, and stepping into the arms of God, as best I can.

Zephaniah 3:17
The LORD you God is with you,
He is mighty to save
He will take great delight in you.
He will quiet you with his love.
He will rejoice over you with singing. 

For the Coming Day

Evening Prayer

Lord, You have always given 

bread for the coming day; 

and though I am poor,

today I believe.

Lord, You have always given

strength for the coming day;

and though I am poor,

today I believe.

Lord, You have always given

peace for the coming day

and though of anxious heart,

today I believe.

Lord, You have always kept

me safe in trials;

and now, tried as I am,

today I believe.

Lord, You have always marked

the road for the coming day;

and though it may be hidden,

today I believe.

Lord, You have always lightened

this darkness fo mine;

and though the night is here,

today I believe.

Lord, You have always spoken

when time was ripe;

and though you be silent now,

today I believe.

From the Northumbria Community and the Celtic Daily Prayer book

Three brief stories

One
During my sophomore year in college, my sorority worked a day at the local amusement park as a fundraiser.  Before the park opened, our supervisors asked several of us to test ride the Orient Express, a zinger of a loop-de-loop roller coaster.  We rode it once.  When that ride came to the end, instead of stopping, the coaster slowed a bit and then kept going for another round... and another... and another.  We rode through at least five times without stopping.  By the end, I was thinking "Get me off of this thing!!!"

The Orient Express.  It's since been razed to make way for another ride.

Two
About a month ago, I dropped the carpool off at school and headed to a doctor's appointment arriving about thirty minutes early.  It was too early to run a decent errand (and most places weren't open yet), so I decided to pop into the McDonald's across the street, pick up a coffee and sit in my van reading until the appointment time.  It was a warm and sunny fall morning and I had a great book with me.  I was looking forward to it.


While parking at McDonalds, I remembered I owed my mom a quick phone call and decided to give her a ring her before going in.  I chatted with her for a moment when suddenly the car door next to me slammed forcefully into my passenger side door.  I glared fiercely at the man with the meanest "What the..." look I could muster.  I jumped out of the van, hurried around and examined my passenger door.  No damage thankfully, though I don't know how.


Then the man started yelling at me.  


He was around seventy.  He had a bumper sticker on his car saying, "You cannot be Catholic and pro-choice."


"You parked right on top of me!" he yelled.


I looked down at the line dividing his space and mine, his car and mine. All of my van was at least six inches within the divider's inside edge. Could I have parked further away from his car? Sure. But I was well within the line.


I pointed this out.  He just kept yelling at me.  His friend got out of the car and stood behind it saying nothing.  A McDonald's employee taking her smoking break by the dumpsters watched from the distance.


The conversation didn't last long.  I can't remember what I said.  At some point, the words "not appropriate behavior" came out of my mouth, the sort of thing I might say to my children.  


I didn't back down, though, and I didn't explode either.  In the past, I might have jumped back in my car and driven away avoiding the whole conflict.  


Instead, I argued briefly, but firmly, calmly.  Then I walked in and ordered my coffee.  The man and his friend ordered coffee at the register next to me.  I told my cashier that I would like to buy their coffee too. The disgruntled man looked shocked, at sea for a moment.  Then he mumbled that they had already paid.


We all walked out at the same time, using different doors, each of us with coffee in hand.  I got in my car.  They got in their car.  And I drove away. 


Three
A decade ago, our church decided to change denominational affiliations. This decision involved much agonized thought and prayer by our pastor and the church leadership.  The decision was far from easy, but for a variety of reasons, it was the best and most honest one.  


The denominational leadership was livid.  They retaliated with cunning and thorough vehemence.  They immediately distributed a letter to all denominational members in the region demonizing the decision.  The letter was full of half-truths.  The implied conclusions were lies.


Our pastor was devastated.  He had grown up in that denomination and in many ways, still loved it.  He had wanted to part amicably, with integrity.


But I thought, even if we might have doubted the decision beforehand, seeing how the denominational leadership behaved in response only served to confirm -- to underline and boldface -- the rightness of our decision. 

Free to Run and Play

A prominent theme for me this past year has been freedom.  I hadn't anticipated it being a theme.  If I were to select one myself, I'd probably choose a character trait needing improvement -- something like patience, peace, compassion.  This freedom thing seems to be God's idea.

I first noticed the theme at a retreat in March.  A friend read Psalm 63 from Eugene Peterson's The Message translation.  These words jumped out to me:

"Because you've always stood up for me, I'm free to run and play."


Upon hearing that line, I knew it was meant for me.  I reflected on how carefully I tend to tread through life, trying to step wisely, trying to not make mistakes, trying to be not just above reproach, but above all criticism.  This creates a life that is intentional, yes, but one often accompanied by a clenched jaw and a sour stomach.  One that doesn't allow much time to run and play.

The retreat was in the Colorado Rockies.  I love the mountains.  Across the street were hiking paths and foothills, perfect for bouldering, for scrambling around like a kid, for savoring broad panoramic views.  During the free time after hearing that verse, I hiked alone, literally running and bounding and playing.  (At least until my lungs protested the thin air.)  

The view atop one of the boulders.

Later, a friend who'd been sitting high on a boulder told me she had watched me at play.  Normally I would have felt highly embarrassed to discover someone was watching.  But she expressed such joy at witnessing my playfulness I realized God too had noticed and watched and enjoyed.


Free to run and play.


Because you've always stood up for me...


The rough situation I've experienced these past few weeks makes me want to defend myself.  Misunderstanding, misinterpretation, misrepresentation.  They all burn deeply.  I want to lash out in anger and vindication to protect myself.  I want to set the record straight.  I want to warn others, or at least to drop little watch-out-this-could-happen-to-you hints.  


I've heard God is my defender, but frankly, he seems to have been asleep on the job here.  Even a good friend who did step up and strongly defend me was  reprimanded, shamed, misunderstood.  


That was one of the lowest points for me, for my husband, for some of my friends.  The realization that this is actually happening and there's no turning back now.  Lines have been drawn.  Bridges have been burned.  Ultimatums have been issued.  Reconciliation, if it occurs at all, will be a long, arduous process.


The next morning, when I checked email, I found a Noisetrade link to the album "Now You're Free" by Matthew Mayfield.  


Now you're free.  Indeed.  


At the time, I smirked.  Part of me took it as a message from God.  The cynical part of me just took it as interesting timing.  A few days later, I actually listened to the song (lyrics here, scroll down on the page).

"Don't let the wave push and pull you away

Now you're free and it sets you apart."

I'm realizing through this song, through the Psalm 63 passage, through countless other recent hints and nudges, that I am free, that God has set me free -- not just in a meta, life-encompassing sense, but in this specific situation.  His mercy is sometimes severe, but it is indeed merciful.  He is being merciful to me.

When I feel despairing about the situation, I'm trying to focus on the sheer freedom that comes with it.  This calms my anxious heart and helps me to trust, sleep, smile.  It helps me to imagine a day very soon when I might run and play with more freedom and bounce in my step.  

Last night, my daughter said, "Mom, you seem awfully sprightly tonight."  My son asked her what that meant and she explained.  He looked at me, cocked his head and said, "Yeah, she is looking sprightly."  Perhaps it is true.

***********

As I was looking through my Colorado retreat photos to chose one to insert in this post, I discovered one other retreat pic I had forgotten.

An American friend who lives in what used to be Eastern Germany brought the picture.  He said it represents a common theme in his life the previous few months.  I asked him for a copy because translated into English, this sign says... Freedom. 

But I Believe...

Pattern

Some believe the slumber
Of trees is in December
When timber's naked under sky
And squirrel keeps his chamber.


But I believe their fibres
Awake to life and labour
When turbulence comes roaring up
The land in loud October,


And plunders, strips, and sunders
And sends the leaves to wander
And undisguises prickly shapes
Beneath the golden splendor.


Then form returns.  In warmer, 
seductive days, disarming
Its firmer will, the wood grew soft 
And put forth dreams to murmur.


Into earnest winter
With spirit alert it enters;
The hunter wind and the hound frost
Have quelled the green enchanter.


- C.S. Lewis