by Christie Purifoy | Aug 13, 2018 | Books, guest post, Seasons, Uncategorized
(the following post contains affiliate links)
I met Patrice Gopo during a week-long writer’s residency at the wonderful Collegeville Institute. I was just beginning the book that would become Placemaker. She was nearing the end of the book that has become All the Colors We Will See. It was always a treat to take a break from writing and run over to the kitchen for tea or coffee, only to find that Patrice was taking a break at the same time. Even a brief conversation with Patrice would give me something to laugh about and something to think about.
A notable endorsement of Patrice’s book says that in this collection of essays, Patrice “sets herself apart as one of the most promising and talented writers of faith of our time.” And it’s true. She has written a beautiful, enjoyable, and quietly powerful book. It was an honor to offer my own endorsement:
It gives me so much pleasure to share a guest post from my friend Patrice Gopo on the blog today. Her reflection on a moment of seasonal transition feels just right for these days when I am contemplating (and longing for!) that subtle shift from summer to fall. The seasonal shift Patrice invokes is much less subtle, even a little violent perhaps, but it reminds me of the deep tremors we can feel when we navigate even the most seemingly ordinary life changes.
Patrice has offered a free copy of All the Colors We Will See to one reader! Read to the end to find all the details.
Breakup
In Charlotte, where winter brings no guarantee of snow, small children press their palms together, close their eyes so tight they see waves of color, and plead with God to unzip heaven. And last night God answered their prayers, pouring a fine dusting across the hard ground. This morning the radio says, “No school.” Twitter commands, “Stay off the roads.”
After my young daughters slip into seldom-used boots and pull fuzzy hats over the tips of ears, I open the front door to the sound of melting snow. We emerge into the bright sun as rivulets of water already gush down the road. Grey concrete peeks through our trail of footprints. Tiny icicles clank against the ground, succumbing to the same warm rays beating my brow. Tomorrow, I will stand on this bare sidewalk, absent the melting song that declares the cold can’t remain.
In my childhood home, we referred to today’s symphony as “breakup.” Breakup in Anchorage was a thing of weeks, maybe stretching beyond a month. A whole season. First winter. Then breakup. Finally spring. After months of snow and ice, breakup reminded us that winter could not prevail. That spring would always swallow death. Drops of water plunking against still frozen ice. Tiny rivers in search of street gutters. Frozen fangs released from roofs, shattering against porches and decks. My rubber boots—breakup boots, we called them—pounding puddles, splashing slush.
Now in my front yard, thin blades of dead grass poke through the snow. The girls lean back on the white lawn, thick tights and fleece pants shielding them from the damp. Flapping arms and legs, they leave behind the outline of angels.
“Listen,” I say. “Do you hear the snow melting?”
“Listen,” I say again.
Can they know the music? Can their ears discern those sounds in a world where snow leaves in a day? Tomorrow we will stare at yards returned to winter’s norm, at our world carrying on in muted colors. Then on a Saturday in the near future, we will awaken to the hum of lawn mowers and the soft fragrance of fresh cut grass. Without realizing it, we will step into a season that splashes pinks, purples, and vibrant greens on flowers and buds and lawns.
But what of the waiting, what of the longing for an end to the grey? What of a season that reminds us of what we leave, but hints at what still will come? The in-between time when we start to believe for another year that winter will pass. When we muster hope that the spring we remember will come again.
Standing in the driveway, I watch the girls tumble around the yard, puffed out with coats, weighted down by pastel boots. They lean towards the ground and run mittened hands across the snow. We walk to the sidewalk, a mixture of feathery white and patches of wet concrete. Around me the air sings, and the curve of my mouth mirrors my daughters’ smiles. The girls remove their mittens and slide warm fingers across chunks of ice while I languish in the dripping, the cracking against the ground, the music of today’s breakup.
Feel the ice, I think as I watch my daughters. Feel the melting ice. With both her hands, my oldest breaks a frozen gem into smaller stones. She presses a piece against her cheeks. My youngest takes another to her lips. And I imagine what I hear today, I will hear tomorrow, and the next day. Until one bright morning, a bird will sing amidst fresh buds pushing through the branches of a tree.
***
(This post originally appeared at Lunch Ticket and is used with permission.)
Patrice Gopo is a 2017-2018 North Carolina Arts Council Literature Fellow. She is the author of
All the Colors We Will See: Reflections on Barriers, Brokenness, and Finding Our Way (August 2018), an essay collection about race, immigration, and belonging. Please visit
patricegopo.com/book to learn more. Facebook: @patricegopowrites Instagram/Twitter: @patricegopo
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Friends, Patrice is giving away a copy of her book! To be entered to win, simply leave a comment on this post. A winner will be drawn Sunday, August 19 at 9 am eastern.
Tell me, do you pick up more serious, weighty books as we shift from reading on the beach or park bench to reading by a fire? I look forward to hearing from you!
by Christie Purifoy | Apr 18, 2018 | Books, Giveaway, Seasons, Spring, Uncategorized
Winter does not give up easily. Not this year, at least.
For weeks now, winter has held on, as if digging icy claws deep into the frozen soil, deep into my heart, and deep into the whole wide world (yes, even in the southern hemisphere where warm winds blow but hearts still feel the chill of injustice or violence).
When the thaw finally begins, I feel as if I should shout for joy, yet I find myself angered by mud and mess. The ice is giving way, the green tips of daffodils are reaching for cloudy skies, but I want a settled beauty. I don’t want the mess of hard transitions.
I really don’t want to set my hopes on spring only to find the snowflake icon creep back into the ten-day forecast.
In the final pages of our Bibles we hear a victorious Jesus say,
I am making all things new!
How those words ring. How they lift my heart.
But then I look around.
The beauty of winter snow gives way to the ugliness of mud puddles, and I recognize that making new is hard, messy, sometimes back-breaking (always heart-breaking) work.
I could turn away. I could close my eyes to the mess that always does emerge in the middle.
Or I could hold my broken heart still, will my eyes to open wider and wider, and wait for that magic moment (and it always feels like magic) when something hard yet necessary finally breaks and a river is loosed.
A river of spring is set free.
I’ve never yet seen the precise moment. Always, I marvel: Did this leaf uncurl overnight? Did those tulips grow six inches in an afternoon?
Yet here is the wild thing about this particular magic: we helped make it happen.
We participate in spring.
When our hearts are broken, when are eyes are open, we don’t simply wait for spring. We join in. We dig our shovels into the dirt, and we help to release rivers of justice and peace. When the flood finally comes, I like to think we will turn to our Jesus and say, we made things new, didn’t we?
Together, we made things new.
***
In celebration of spring, whether it is firmly planted in your neighborhood or still just a dream and a prayer, I am giving each one of my newsletter subscribers a free gift.
Here are four more pages from the book of my dreams.
When I first imagined the book that eventually became Roots and Sky, I pictured an old-fashioned treasure, something like the books I seek out in thrift stores and used bookstores. I thought my stories would be interspersed with seasonal tips and recipes and nostalgic pen-and-ink illustrations.
Almost as soon as I began writing, I realized that the story I needed to tell was simpler and leaner. Those first four seasons at Maplehurst were more quiet and watchful than busy and industrious, and the book needed to reflect that.
But the idea of offering more–seasonal stories, tips, recipes, and beautiful illustrations–has never gone away.
In collaboration with the talented designer and illustrator Jennifer Tucker of Little House Studio, I’ve created four spring-themed pages from that book of my dreams.
They are free for every one of my email subscribers to download and print.
One comes from my kitchen, two from nature, and one from my bookshelves. Each page offers something practical and beautiful wrapped up in my own lyrical point of view.
I’m planning to print and frame mine, but they’ll do just as well tacked to a bulletin board or tucked into a garden journal or recipe box. Feel free to share this post with friends who might like to subscribe and print their own.
Simply click the subscribe box below, enter your email address, and a confirmation email will be sent straight to you. Confirm your address, and you’ll be taken to the link in order to claim your download.
If you are already a subscriber, check your inbox. Your link should be waiting for you.
Something to remember: THREE WEEKS from today, the offer expires, and the prints will no longer be available.
by Christie Purifoy | Apr 10, 2018 | Books, children, guest post, healing, motherhood, These Farmhouse Bookshelves, Uncategorized
Spring is for new life.
I have twelve baby chickens and trays of green seedlings in my basement. I have a teetering stack of new books by my chair.
One of those books is by Hilary Yancey. I’ve shared her beautiful words in this space before. She writes with rare wisdom and lyricism, and I look forward to digging into Forgiving God: A Story of Faith as much as I can’t wait to dig into my garden. This is the story of Hilary’s pregnancy with her firstborn, Jackson, and her journey through his diagnosis with craniofacial microsomia at a 20-week ultrasound. It’s a story of working to believe in miraculous healing, and confronting God when the miracles don’t look the way she expected.
It’s a story of learning to leave behind old expectations to make room for something wider, and wilder.
I am so glad to host Hilary’s reflections at my home online today.
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Lord,
I am not one to despise Your gifts.
May You be blessed
Who spread the riches of Your sweetness
For my zeal…
Let my small span of ardent life
Melt into our great communal task;
To lift up to Your glory
This temple of sweetness,
A citadel of incense,
A holy candle, myriad-celled,
Moulded of Your graces
And of my hidden work.
– “The Prayer of the Bee” by Carmen Bernos de Gasztold, translated by Rumer Godden
When I was in high school I was once described by a new friend as doing a kind of “butterflying” – from person to person, subject to subject, leaving conversations half-finished or always to be continued. I had, in the thoughtlessness of a fifteen year-old experiencing peer acceptance, jumped from lunches to free periods and neglected her. I hadn’t realized that she moved more carefully, finishing each thing before taking up the next one. I apologized profusely, and we went on to build a friendship in chemistry classes and after school theater. But I vowed to myself that I would change, I would abandon my butterfly ways. I would be slow, I told myself. I would be wise.
Have you ever kept a promise too well? Have you ever been so good at becoming more like someone else that you left yourself behind?
Three years later, at the start of my freshman year of college, my mentor told me that I was too flighty. I came in, as she once called it, in “a gust of disquiet.” I was so anxious to prove that I could be a quiet soul. I remember trying to practice daily prayer in the windowless study room of my dorm, growing bored in the words even as I willed myself to practice, practice, practice what I assumed she meant by stillness and calm.
In trying to become wise, I have been trying to become someone else. I assumed wisdom was sturdy, like wood, that you had to carve in yourself a space for it to live. I assumed I was the wrong shape for it, that to acquire it, to be the better friend and the wiser soul, I had to sand down and rework the architecture of my heart.
*
During the day, my daughter sleeps in fits and starts—fifteen minutes, thirty minutes, a rare hour—waking with a surprised widening of her eyes and then a smile that slowly creeps across her face, indenting at her dimples that echo her brother so strongly. Her waking hours stretch and bend, winding like a river through our days. She is never asleep that long, she is always looking for a reason to wake up.
My son gallops through the day, racing from backyard to coffee maker to puzzles and books. His energy is just barely contained by the limits of the sun going down and coming back up. He is a tidal wave, dancing to a record or to the NYC Ballet’s Nutcracker movie, and he thunders his life around me. He moves so fast, and I feel the stretch of my body and mind to keep up with him.
Perhaps the shape of wisdom isn’t always wood. Perhaps sometimes it’s water.
*
My children echo back to me parts of myself I put away back when I assumed that remaking myself was the way that I could honor God. But of course, God doesn’t ask us to become other people, even other wise people. God asks instead that we become ourselves.
Lord, I am not one to despise Your gifts.
And I am the bee, the scattered heart, the wave. I am built for movement and for restlessness, I am built with too many loves which always feel like too few. The other day I told Jesus I want to learn to play the banjo. The other day I told Jesus I want to study the structure of our immune system. The other day I told Jesus I could spend my days rereading Richard Wilbur’s Collected Poems out loud. Perhaps this is you, this restless movement. Perhaps you are more like a tortoise or an owl, perhaps your wisdom is in how you keep watch or how you pace yourself through the world. Perhaps you are built for a different kind of movement.
Lord, I am not one to despise Your gifts.
I wrote Forgiving God because there was a book in me and it was bursting to come out. I wrote it to search for God, to find a way to confront him and a way to lean on him. I moved restlessly then, writing twenty minutes here, ten minutes there. I labored, I hope, like the bee – gathering hope from a thousand flowers to build something up.
But this I hope more than anything else – that this book, this small span of ardent life—melts into the task before us all: that together, we lift up for God’s glory something holy and beautiful. That we, in the many ways we might be wise, whether slow paced or ceaselessly moving, whether more like a tortoise or more like a bee, we live ardently. That our tasks come together to offer something fragrant and good.
And wisdom can be like water, and it can fill all kinds of hearts.
Hilary is a student of the surprise hidden within the every day. She explores the challenges and blessings of marriage, motherhood, and a life of faith–and how these are expanded and changed by disability. Hilary is also a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at Baylor University and lives with her husband, Preston, and two children in Waco, Texas. Her blog can be read at www.hilaryyancey.com.
by Christie Purifoy | Feb 1, 2018 | Books, Gardening, Giveaway, Home, peace, Seasons, Uncategorized, Winter
Winter came early, settled in to stay, and shows no signs of an early leave-taking.
By Friday, we will have counted forty days since Christmas. The strength of the sun has grown, but I do miss those cheerful days of twinkle-lights and candy canes.
Still, I would not unwind time. Onward and upward. Spring beckons, though it is only a light far down a very long tunnel.
Now, we mark the traditional halfway point of winter. Friday is Candlemas, the day when candles were blessed for the dark days of winter that remained, the day when we remember Christ presented at the Temple and sing Zechariah’s song:
… the dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.
Peace is a way, a path, a choice.
I am sorry to say that peace often looks anything but peaceful when we begin to choose it. In order to seek peace, we must sometimes fix our eyes on the light we only barely see, far down a very long tunnel.
Peace is a wholeness, a completeness, and a rightness. We seek peace and we pursue it when we walk toward–not away–from those things in our homes, our neighborhoods, and our world that are broken, incomplete, and wrong.
We are peacemakers, not peacetakers out to grab whatever we can for ourselves.
The good news is that we seek that which we have already received.
Jesus said,
Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you.
We cultivate seeds planted in us long, long ago.
Halfway through this long, dark season, I desperately need to remember all that is special and good about winter. Things like long books, warm fires, garden dreams, geraniums on the windowsill, and so much more.
I need a winter reset.
If you feel the same, I think this gift will help.
The third installment is finally here: it’s a Winter Giveaway!
When I first imagined the book that eventually became Roots and Sky, I pictured an old-fashioned treasure, something like the books I seek out in thrift stores and used bookstores. I thought my stories would be interspersed with seasonal tips and recipes and nostalgic pen-and-ink illustrations.
Almost as soon as I began writing, I realized that the story I needed to tell was simpler and leaner. Those first four seasons at Maplehurst were more quiet and watchful than busy and industrious, and the book needed to reflect that.
But the idea of offering more–seasonal stories, tips, recipes, and beautiful illustrations–has never gone away.
Last summer we celebrated five years of cultivating home in this Victorian red brick farmhouse.
I can’t think of a better way to mark that anniversary than by finally giving you the more I imagined so long ago. In fact, I plan to give you more (and more, and more, and more). I have four gifts planned, each one arriving with a new season.
In collaboration with the talented designer and illustrator Jennifer Tucker of Little House Studio, I’ve created four winter-themed pages from that book of my dreams.
They are free for every one of my email subscribers to download and print.
One comes from my kitchen, two from the garden, and one from my bookshelves. Each page offers something practical and beautiful wrapped up in my own lyrical point of view.
I’m planning to print and frame mine, but they’ll do just as well tacked to a bulletin board or tucked into a garden journal or recipe box. Feel free to share this post with friends who might like to subscribe and print their own.
Simply click the subscribe box below, enter your email address, and a confirmation email will be sent straight to you. Confirm your address, and you’ll be taken to the link in order to claim your download.
If you are already a subscriber, check your inbox. Your link should be waiting for you.
Here are two things to remember:
One: TWO WEEKS from today, the offer expires, and the prints will no longer be available.
Two: Spring won’t keep us waiting forever. Look for my spring giveaway in April.
by Christie Purifoy | Sep 12, 2017 | Autumn, Books, Family, Giveaway, These Farmhouse Bookshelves, Uncategorized
September at Maplehurst is for birthdays and books.
And birthday apple pie.
Both of my daughters were born in September. This year, only four days apart, my big girl turns fourteen and my little girl turns five.
September at Maplehurst is also for full hearts and grateful tears.
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My favorite gifts to give are books, and this month I have a stack of new favorites to give family and friends.
Shawn Smucker’s beautiful new novel The Day the Angels Fell would be perfect for the fourteen-year-old in your life. It would also make a great family read aloud with younger kids, and, honestly? I’m also telling the adult readers I know all about this winsome fantasy. If you’re a fan of Madeleine L’Engle, Neil Gaiman, or even Wendell Berry, then you’ll appreciate this beautifully written, spiritually rich story. This is a gorgeous, gift-worthy hardback edition, too.
You might worry that your child is too young or too sensitive for a book about death, but I can think of few better ways to introduce the topic than through the work of a gifted storyteller like Shawn. Local friends, I’ll be hosting a reading and book signing by Shawn at my home some time in October. Please do reach out to me for more details!
My friend Sara Hagerty has just released Unseen: The Gift of Being Hidden in a World That Loves To Be Noticed. This is also a beautiful, hardback edition with a cover design I love, but, of course, the real treasure is inside.
Sara’s quietly powerful story will transform how you think about success. I am personally grateful to her for giving me a fresh, new perspective on what it might mean to change the world.
GraceLaced: Discovering Timeless Truths Through Seasons of the Heart, by my talented friend Ruth Chou Simons, may be the ideal book for gift-giving. Ruth is a devotional writer and visual artist, and her book is the most exquisite thing on any of my over-stuffed bookshelves. Featuring her own watercolor floral art, luminous photography, and special touches like pretty endpapers and a cover begging you to touch it, this is a book lover’s book.
The seasonal meditations are written in a classic, not at all sentimental devotional style and include beautiful spaces for personal responses and notes. I’m convinced we all know someone who would love to receive this book for an autumn birthday or Christmas gift, or, goodness, maybe just because?
One of my favorite mystery writers, Louise Penny, has just released Glass Houses, the 13th installment in her Chief Inspector Gamache series, set in the quaint Quebec village of Three Pines. You could read Glass Houses on its own, but I highly recommend beginning with the first. The story builds from book to book, and you’ll appreciate the slow unfolding of these characters’ lives.
Louise Penny isn’t the most literary or polished of the mystery writers I appreciate, and yet there is something about her cozy village and philosophical Inspector that has earned this series a very special place on my bookshelf. Penny’s authorial presence can be a little heavy-handed. In writing-workshop speak she is more likely to tell than to show, but that style suits her material. I, for one, want to hear everything Penny has to say. In the character of kindly Armand Gamache and the evocative Quebec setting (not to mention the delicious details of food and drink!), Penny offers serious but cozy reflections on the human heart, relationships, and the nature of evil. There aren’t many mysteries with the heart and soul of these.
If you are a book lover then you probably already know Anne Bogel’s fabulous podcast What Should I Read Next. If not, well, you’re welcome. Anne’s first book (with its own beautiful cover) releases very soon. Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything is the book many of us have been waiting for.
In it, Anne uses personal storytelling to distill the wisdom of various personality tests and templates. If you’ve ever wanted to understand yourself and others better but found the big books on the Enneagram or Myers-Briggs or the Five Love Languages to be too technical or time-consuming, then Anne’s book is for you. Or if, like me, you already love the discoveries these personality frameworks make available, you’ll appreciate this fresh, enjoyable, and personal perspective.
That’s all for now. I’m off to make a little girl’s birthday cake.
But first, which new books do you have your eye on? I’d love to hear.
P.S. I’m giving away a calendar of my flower photography on instagram this week.
by Christie Purifoy | Jul 18, 2017 | Books, guest post, Home, Uncategorized
I wrote a whole book about the longing for home and the painful (but beautiful) process of homecoming, and yet, five years after moving to Maplehurst and more than a year after Roots and Sky was published, I find I have so much more to say.
And so much more to learn.
Bekah DiFelice is teaching me and inspiring me. I feel as if I could have written every word of this post myself, and yet her experience of moving, moving, and moving on again has given her wisdom and a perspective that can benefit us all. Myself, included.
She shares some of her story below, but I encourage you to pick up a copy of her just-released book, Almost There: Searching for Home in a Life on the Move.
I’m not a gardener, nor do I possess any talent for coaxing green things to grow, but I am a person who is curious about roots. I’ve often wondered what it takes for them to wind through the ground beneath me and make me feel settled, at home.
Nearly a decade ago, I married a handsome Marine who promised to show me the world.
Then he moved us to Yuma, Arizona.
Ever since that first departure, my family and I have moved often, rearranging the same furniture in different houses, coaching new acquaintances on the correct pronunciation of our last name.
In a life on the move, I have found that a person can be homesick for many things besides an address. You can long for a relationship, hobby, or talent that you’ve lost or tabled for a time. You can be homesick for a version of yourself that existed before you changed jobs or had babies or decided on a whim to try out bangs.
Any source of stability can unexpectedly expire, so I think we’re all “on the move,” in one way or another. We are moveable gardens and transplanted roots, all asking what—and where—home is now and what else it could be.
My favorite quote from Christie’s book Roots and Sky is that homecoming is a “process rather than a moment.” It takes some time. Because to establish home is to strain for it. Home is not a passive landing pad, but the place where we battle for roots.
For a long time, I wondered if all this physical transience was detrimental to my root system. I wondered if I fostered shallow relationships or a short attention span; if I had an extra-large appetite for elsewheres, since new possibility was just one move away.
But when I evaluated our mobile life, I didn’t find a touristy sense of ease and detachment. I found, instead, that transience motivated a muscular strain for settledness. It takes a lot of work to transplant, after all. And this work is for our good.
This makes Jesus’ message in John 15 all the more alluring, where he refers to himself as a vine and you and me as the branches.
‘Live in me,’ he says, “Make your home in me just as I do in you.’ (John 15:4)
The work of the branches is to live in companionship with Christ so that they may enjoy a good and abundant life (John 10:10). But the best life doesn’t necessarily mean the lightest or most carefree, which is why the same passage also talks about pruning, the trimming down of branches. God cultivates us by occasionally clipping at our edges so there’s room and reason for us to expand into greater growth. Vines are spreading plants, after all. They exist on the move. And when they’re healthy, when they’re challenged and pruned, they know how to take new territory and to live well in it.
Whether you’re someone who is on the move in identity, career, purpose, or geography, movement has a way of encouraging resilience by way of hardship. It spurs the pursuit of community, clarity, and hopefully God himself as tethers of stability we reach for when other kinds expire.
Although transience doesn’t always train us in the grit of staying in one location, it does train us in the grit of remaining in Christ, in sinking our roots into Someone who interprets for us what to do with all these bits of temporary.
I believe that God is fostering the fullness of life within by placing us in contexts that require us to tenaciously remain in him. So it is a sort of consolation, or maybe even a source of deep gratification, that the distinct stressors of a life on the move are the same tensions that train and grow us.
The work of homecoming clarifies the destination our roots are straining towards.
Bekah DiFelice loves strong coffee, her home state of Colorado, and turning strangers into friends. She is a passionate gatherer of people, mediocre cook, and writer who has a lot to say about only a few things. You can find her at BekahDiFelice.com, where she shares her story of discovering pieces of home in the most unlikely places. Her book, Almost There: Searching for Home in a Life on the Move, is available now.
