by Christie Purifoy | Jan 13, 2016 | Art, Books, children, Grateful, Roots and Sky, Uncategorized, Writing
My youngest child is three years old, and every day she paints.
She paints lions and footprints. She paints me, and she paints rivers, roads, and bugs. For a while, she painted without giving much attention to the finished product. She would paint until holes appeared in the paper and then move on to the next. I would make a great show of laying the art out to dry, but she hardly noticed. Her focus was always already on the next creation.
Recently, that has changed. When I gather up her morning’s work, she cries out, “Don’t throw them away! I want to keep them!” Sometimes, she hunts for a magnet and tries to hang them on the refrigerator herself.
She recognizes these lions and bugs as the work of her hands, and she no longer lets them go so easily.
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We all make things. I write stories, and my daughter paints bugs. My husband builds window seats and picket fences out of wood, and my son makes castles with lego bricks.
Making some things feels like wearing our heart on our sleeve or serving it up on a platter. This is true of memoirs. Sometimes this feels true even of our first attempt at sourdough bread when there are new guests at our table.
We are not all artists or writers, but most of us, perhaps all of us, create. We long to know that what we have made is good. Not perfect or ground-breaking, necessarily, but good.
Perhaps it shouldn’t matter what others think of our creations. Sometimes, we succeed in being philosophical. Some people just do not like the taste of sourdough bread, after all. But I do think there is a desire in each of us to hear the words well done.
Hearing those words is far less important than simply doing the work. It may even be that the creating matters more than even the thing we make. Which means that those words, well done, are something special.
They are a gift we give one another.
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Here are five gifts given to me.
I hope they make you just that much more eager to read the work of my hands when it releases February 2. I hope, too, that you will seek out these creators. Each one has written a book (or more than one!) that means something special to me.
Each one should be confident that what they have done is very well done, indeed.
“When it comes to finding God in ordinary places, no one does it better than Christie Purifoy.
Her words in Roots and Sky met me when I was unable to connect with any other books.
Somehow her personal journey to find home turned into a spiritually informative pilgrimage for
my own soul. This book is hope for the weary and wandering, and Christie Purifoy’s smart,
grounding voice is a new favorite.”
—Emily P. Freeman, author of Simply Tuesday
“I have been terrified of hope. Because if hope disappoints, does that mean God is also a
disappointment? Christie reminds us that hope, like dreams, is made of stronger stuff. She invites
us into a year of her life lived in real time in an old Pennsylvania farmhouse, chock-full of hope
and decay, promise and weeds, work and wonder.”
—Lisa-Jo Baker, author of Surprised by Motherhood and community manager for
(in)courage
“In Roots and Sky, Christie Purifoy paints an elegant expression of the church calendar—Advent,
Lent, and Ordinary Time—with great depth of thought, expression, and insight. Planted in the
rich soil of everyday liturgy, Roots and Sky is an astonishing, rhythmic work of unmatched
artistry. There is no doubt: this book is a must-read for the lover of the quiet, contemplative, and
beautiful.
—Seth Haines, author of Coming Clean
“This is not a book. This is a sanctuary. I met God here, in the hushed and unrushed space that
Christie Purifoy has so exquisitely created for us. With a lyrical pen, Christie lights the candles,
prepares the altar, and helps us see the sacredness of our everyday moments. Step inside and
breathe again.”
—Jennifer Dukes Lee, author of Love Idol
“Roots and Sky is the best kind of read: it reached me, passively and deeply, as I got lost in the
pages. Christie ushered me into my own heart, through the back door, as she invited me across
the foyer and into the rooms and out onto the sprawling green lawn of her one hundred-year-old
farmhouse. God met me at Maplehurst, too.”
—Sara Hagerty, author of Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet: Tasting the Goodness of God in
All Things
by Christie Purifoy | Jan 5, 2016 | Uncategorized
We have yet to see snow at Maplehurst.
I have seen a dusting of white blossoms on the spiraea shrubs outside the small red barn. I have also seen two cherry trees foolishly speckled with pink blooms. They were planted at the edge of the grocery store’s parking lot. Our strangely warm December plus the heat of that concrete lot confused the trees. They think spring has come, but there can be no spring without winter.
A notice from the school arrived letting us know that the “science of sledding” field trip has been postponed.
I sat with a friend recently, and we talked about the weird weather. We also talked about some of the awful, tragic things happening in the world. We wondered how exactly to go on living and loving and creating with that shadow overhead. Is it ever okay to forget about the shadow? Is it ever okay to just be happy?
We don’t always have a choice when it comes to happiness, but sometimes we do. Yet, it isn’t always easy to accept happiness. Even if we find ourselves happy, we don’t advertise the fact. It is our guilty secret.
I love snow because it gives us both the opportunity and the permission to be happy. The shadow disappears for a while, obliterated by the icy sparkle. While it snows, we know that now is for angels and cocoa and home.
Now is for happiness. Sorrow can wait.
This world privileges Monday-morning efficiency and business-as-usual. But the kingdom of heaven is more like a snow day. It is right now. It is permission to be happy. It is laughter bubbling up from within the shadow of the cross.
There may be no snow, but today is the twelfth day of Christmas. The Douglas fir we cut down in that farmer’s back field is, miraculously, still fresh and green. I won’t pack away the ornaments until tomorrow.
Christmas has come even if the snow has not, and this right now is for angels and cocoa and home.
Right now is for happiness.
by Christie Purifoy | Jan 1, 2016 | Blog, Books, Roots and Sky, Seasons, Spring, Uncategorized, Writing
Here at Maplehurst, 2015 ended with a solid month of rain, fog, and strangely warm weather. 2016 has dawned with sunshine and blue skies. On this, the first day of a new year, it is easy for me to believe what has always been true: God’s compassions never fail. They are new every morning.
“New” is the drumbeat of creation. It is the song of heaven.
This is always our reality, though there are seasons when the beautiful new is hidden by fog.
I am especially grateful to feel the pulse of the new after all the gray days of December. I am grateful to be sharing a few new things with you on this first day of a new year.
There is, as you may have noticed, a new website design. Thank you to Dan King of Fistbump Media for the new look and, even more importantly, a new blog subscription system. If you already subscribe to my blog posts, you should continue to receive them, but in a more timely, more readable format.
If you have never subscribed, you can enter your name and email address in the popup, or simply scroll to the bottom and find a signup form there. I promise never to share your email address, and I don’t blog frequently enough to flood your inbox. I like to call my approach “slow blogging.” Or, sometimes, “quality over quantity.” Though I appreciate your politeness in not mentioning those writers who do manage to offer both.
There is also a new book. In just a few weeks, on February 2, Revell will publish Roots and Sky: A Journey Home in Four Seasons. You can read more about the book on my book page (see the links at the top of my website). And, if you haven’t already, I hope you will pre-order a copy for yourself and perhaps a few to give as gifts.
I am glad to give a gift to each of you for supporting this book before it releases. Once you’ve pre-ordered, simply send me a brief note (yes, it’s the honor system!) at this email address: rootsandskybook[at]gmail.com. I will send you a link to a high resolution file of the following image, free for you to print. It is suitable for framing. It is also suitable for thumb-tacking to your bulletin board. Really, whatever.
I hope you like it. I hope it makes you hungry for spring. Spring is always sweeter when we’ve longed for it.
The quotation is straight out of Roots and Sky, and the image was captured last spring by my friend Chelsea of Chelsea Hudson Photography. She also took the photograph for my book cover and is responsible for the new author photos you will see sprinkled throughout this website. If you live anywhere near Washington D.C. or Baltimore I highly recommend Chelsea’s work.
Happy New Year, friends.
I hope, whether your eyes see fog or sunshine, you can feel the newness of heaven pulsing through your veins.
by Christie Purifoy | Dec 21, 2015 | Advent, Christmas, Community, God's promises, grief, Hope, Jesus, Joy, Scripture, Seasons, Winter
Each December I think it will be different. This will be the year I shake my winter melancholy. This will be the year my delight grows day by day. These are days of ornaments and sugar cookies and twinkling lights. Aren’t they supposed to be happy?
But this year is much like every other year. The ornaments shatter, the cookies crumble, and those new LED bulbs cast a cold-hearted glow.
More than ten years ago, I spent a few December days watching my friend’s little girl. My friend was in the hospital laboring to deliver a baby boy whose heart had already stopped beating. Over the weekend, I took care of another little girl who has no idea her parent’s hearts are broken.
All weekend, in the background, Over the Rhine was singing, “If we make it through December we’ll be fine.”
This was going to be the year I would look on the bright side, but I have just about accepted that there is no bright side in December. Only darkness and the pin-prick lights on the Christmas tree, and tonight is the longest night.
At one in the morning on the fourth Sunday of Advent, my friend’s little girl threw up. When I found her, she was crying, and her beautiful curly hair was smeared with vomit. While I bathed her and toweled her dry, I thought two things: Why is this happening tonight? and Thank you, Jesus, that I can do this for my friend.
This is what we do in December. We bake sugar cookies, and we scrub vomit from the sheets. We cry for our friends and we cry for ourselves, and we hand out bars of chocolate tied with red and green bows. We make toasts to the new year, and we wonder how we’ll ever survive another one.
We pray come, Lord Jesus, come, and we remember that he already has and that he’s seen it all before. The vomit and the death. The good food and the hunger. The love and the loss.
I don’t know if I’m angry, or tired, or simply sad, but I will keep baking cookies. I will continue hanging ornaments, and I will make my husband climb up on the barn roof to secure a lighted star.
Because somehow despite it all (or because of it?) I still believe that there is a God up there in heaven who has made us this promise: “I will turn their mourning into gladness; I will give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow” (Jeremiah 31:13).
We live somewhere between the promise and its ultimate fulfillment. It is a land where tears drop onto festive wrapping paper. A place dusted with cookie crumbs and peppermints. It is empty stockings hung by the fire, and it is our hope, perhaps a little shaky and unsure, that one day we will wake and those stockings will be full.
But it isn’t only a one-day hope. Perhaps if we make it through December we will be fine, but I don’t want to be fine. I want more than that. I want better than that.
I want gladness.
Gladness like the taste of sugar cookies and candy canes and the cinnamon rolls I make every Christmas morning.
Gladness like the face of a child when snow finally does fall.
Gladness like every bright, sweet gift that comes to us only in December.
by Christie Purifoy | Dec 18, 2015 | Advent, children, Christmas, God's Love, grief, Jesus, motherhood
I wrote this Advent reflection two years ago. My daughter is twelve now, but she still asks difficult questions. I still have no easy answers.
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When I began writing these Advent reflections, I had a very general structure in mind. The whole series would move, I thought, from dark to light, from ordinary to extraordinary, from dust and dirt to starlight.
Oh, the best laid plans.
Instead, I have consulted this writing plan each morning and discovered my own emptiness. No words. No stories. No ideas. Which is a desperate place and a very good place to find oneself. It has led me to frantic prayer and constant listening. Finding no stories in the plan, I have listened hard for any hint of story in my day.
Often, I have found my stories in my daughter’s difficult observations.
Yesterday, she said, “I think it must be the worst thing in the world to have a child who dies.”
I am a writer, and I abhor a platitude, an easy answer. The cliché we use to bypass actual thought. Even so, it can be tempting to fall back on those things when we are faced with the unanswerable and the terrible. But I have learned a few things from writing and from reading, and I have learned a few things mothering this daughter.
I fight the pull of the pretty, easy answer and say nothing but “Yes, yes, I know.”
She is only ten, but she already understands love’s terrible shadow. She knows intuitively, without ever being taught, that great love rips us open. Leaves us wounded and bleeding.
I have no good answers for these kinds of questions. I have no band-aid for this degree of pain. Today, I do not even have much of a story. Sometimes, the world looks darker and more ordinary the closer we get to Christmas. Sometimes, there is no perfect, timely trajectory from Advent waiting to Christmas fulfillment.
But if I have no story, I do have this one thing to share with you. A vision of sorts.
After our conversation, I kept seeing a picture in my mind. It was my daughter, so full of difficult questions and a grief too old for her years, and she was wearing the angel costume we once found at a thrift store. It is white and shimmery, and the padded, embroidered wings are gold.
I kept seeing her sad eyes against the white glow of the angel’s dress, and I realized, I think for the first time, how much our Christmas gift was heaven’s loss.
I realized how vast an emptiness the Prince of Heaven left behind him when he poured himself into Mary’s womb.
I looked into angel eyes, and they seemed to say, “We have lost him. We have said goodbye. How long till he returns to us?”
I can’t erase love’s dark shadow, and I’m not sure I would if I could. But I know that the parent heart of God has known it all already. He has passed by a heavenly chamber and found it empty. Heart-breakingly empty. And I know he suffered that pain for love.
And yet, the emptiness of heaven at the moment of incarnation is as much good news as the emptiness of the tomb.
This is the good news of God-with-us. This is the good news of our restoration.
This is the comfort of believing God sees our emptiness, our pain and says, “Yes, yes, I know.”
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