by Christie Purifoy | Dec 5, 2014 | Uncategorized
Ring the bells that still can ring / Forget your perfect offering / There is a crack, a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in. – Leonard Cohen
We fall into Advent days like falling into some emptiness. There is a fissure in time, and we, for a time, are lost in it.
How long, Lord, how long? The cry of Advent reaches backwards and forwards. And it covers everything – everything we believe to be true and everything too good to be true. Everything that is broken and everything we hope has been healed.
It is a cry for ourselves. It is a cry for our country. This week, I can’t forget that it is a cry for Americans of color, our neighbors who have carried a weight of injustice for too long.
How long, Lord, how long?
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The only stories I can rightly tell are my own, but I struggle even to tell my own stories. One of the hardest to tell has long been the story of our son’s health. What he suffers is his to suffer, I suffer only on the margins of his story. Perhaps I do not suffer at all, but am only inconvenienced. Yet the view from here is only sometimes ugly. Mostly … mostly, it is beautiful.
And that is why I struggle to tell it. How is it that the most terrible things, the hardest things, might also be blessings? And how do I tell those stories without glossing over all that remains deeply wrong? Deeply unfair?
Of course, I’m talking about my little boy and about our growing epidemic of severe food allergies. Why, Lord, are our children endangered by their food?
And, of course, I’m talking about Advent. About the impossibility, the wrongness of our God made so small and so vulnerable, and how it is also the very greatest rightness. The most right and wonderful thing in the world.
And I am talking about Michael Brown, and I am talking about Eric Garner, and all the terrible things that can and should be set to right.
And I am talking about hope. Which is the light that shines with such surprising strength in all the cracks and broken places.
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There is a wonderful new website dedicated to stories of hospitality. I am telling my own small story there today. It’s about the crack in our kitchen table. It’s about the crack in our life as a family.
I didn’t think it was about Advent when I wrote it. Now I am not so sure.
Also, there’s a recipe. Our family’s very favorite holiday treat. I really hope you’ll click over and check it out.
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P.S. I’ve got something fun planned for the blog tomorrow. Here’s a hint.
by Christie Purifoy | Dec 4, 2014 | Advent, Christmas, Deeper Story, Seasons, Uncategorized
There is no one right way to do this season. Whether you observe a strict Advent, Christmas only, or some mish-mash of the two, we all celebrate in our own ways.
We do it just the way our own parents did, or we do it just the opposite. We did it one way before our marriage and something else again now. We do it differently every year depending on someone’s health or who might be just the age for grabbing ornaments off the tree.
There are so many ways to celebrate well.
There are so many ways to live well.
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I have always loved anticipation. I have always been the quiet, watchful sort. Though I wasn’t raised with Advent, my years of Advent observance now seem inevitable. The season fits me like a glove.
In some ways it also fits the life of my family like a glove. Our church is liturgical. On the Sunday after Thanksgiving, the first Sunday of Advent this year, our church had no poinsettias. No Christmas trees or twinkly lights. It had a deep purple altar cloth. It had an Advent wreath. These are almost the same decorations we have right now in our home, though we trade the altar cloth for white twinkly lights on our banister.
There is an ease between church and home which may explain why my children have not yet asked for a tree or for stockings on the mantel. But, in other ways, there is no ease during Advent. There is no fit like a glove.
Advent is irrational, as Madeleine L’Engle described it so well. A comfortable society, a society focused on buying and selling and consuming, doesn’t know what to make of Advent. Jingle Bells and buying gifts, sure. But Mary’s song? She sang of the rich being turned away empty, of the proud being scattered.
During Advent, we remember Mary’s prophetic words, and we remember that it is the humble and the hungry who receive.
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Each month I contribute a story over at A Deeper Story. I don’t normally link to those posts here, though I do always share them on facebook and twitter. But my story this month is about Advent, this disjointed season. It is about remembering how wide is the gap, how ill the fit between us and the world.
I hope you’ll click over to read my story there. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
by Christie Purifoy | Dec 3, 2014 | Advent, guest post, Uncategorized
I can no longer remember how I first found Tresta Payne’s blog, but I know I have appreciated her quiet, wise stories for a long time. We’ve never met, and our homes are separated by too many miles, but what I glimpse in her stories is a vision of a life well lived. I don’t mean that her life seems perfect or even that she seems perfect. Only that the thoughtfulness and attentiveness with which she lives her daily life inspires me. And this Advent reflection? It’s a song of hope calling each of us out into the wild world beyond even our imaginations. To the place where God, in all his fullness, dwells.
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At the dawn of first light, the Very First Light, there was a song about a savior coming. At Joseph’s court, on Moses’ long trek, at Nehemiah’s return – all through there was a hint of coming, of reigning, of redeeming forever.
I imagine God, like Aslan, singing the world into being and singing the first sunrise up with hope.
You will mess up.
You will fall short.
You will despise Me and think you’ve gone as far away as you can, but I’m making a way back.
Because you will want to return.
I need to imagine it like this, like Lewis did in The Magician’s Nephew. I need to imagine more about God than I think is possible, because my finite brain is tied to my eternal soul and both need more of who God is, less of who I keep being.
I am hopeful against the odds.
There was a message at church a month ago about hope. Our pastor was reminding us of personal revival in a time when the whole world seems a wreck and we so easily lose hope for it. He was encouraging us to think more about God, to remember that He does and is beyond all that we could ask or imagine.
I was challenged to think more of God. Not just to think of God more often – definitely that. But mostly, to think MORE of Him than my logic can fathom, and so to stretch beyond my mind’s small and logical borders.
I want to think the grandest thoughts I can about God, about His plans for good, and about His kingdom in me and you and the one to come. And then, when I’ve thought the best thoughts I can muster, I am challenged to believe that it’s even better than that.
Even better.
The imagination doesn’t stretch beyond the natural order of things very well, especially if it’s been stifled by years of common sense and religion. But yet, what is natural if not God?
Bring back the imagination, I say. Bring back the awe of God and the understanding that we simply cannot grasp Him, but He wants us to try and keep trying, seek and keep seeking, believe and keep believing.
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Before that Baby broke the thin skin between heaven and earth, landing in the rough hands of a carpenter, the world logically understood how babies were born. Mom + Dad = Baby. Of course. So logically, Mary was lying.
I wonder if she spent any time at all defending the truth she knew in her heart, but no one could fathom in their minds? How frustrating, to know the truth about God in a way no one else would believe.
She tucked things away in her heart, like moms do, and I suppose she also learned to think more about God, even more than a virgin birth and God-made-man.
The song was carried by angels that first night of Christ’s incarnation and they sang what they didn’t fully understand. God is too much for even the heavenly hosts to grasp.
Novatian says that if God were to be understood fully, He couldn’t be God. If our human understanding could box Him up all tidy (like we try to) then God would be a god of our making, a god of small minds and little imagination, bound by human experience.
But God is before, and God is behind, and He has to be more than our language can express. He has to be outside of every means we have to fully describe Him or know Him or experience Him.
Yet He placed Himself in us, bound up in the same minerals He spoke into existence.
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Voices from the past keep reminding us and I know I don’t quite get it yet. Do you ever feel like you are on the edge of something, about to take a huge leap in understanding or faith or imagination towards God? It’s a good place to be, but it’s not the finale.
There’s always, endlessly, forever and ever, more.
The hope of revival and the revival of hope in me, and the strain to hear that song – it’s Christmas’ reminder. It’s the only fitting thing for a weary world to rejoice in.
He’s coming and we hear the music and we imagine so much more than is possible, so much more than what the pull of this earth allows us.
He’s coming, and that’s enough and altogether too much for us.
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Tresta lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and 4 kids, surrounded by mountains and rivers and the best little community one could ask for. Her days are filled with homeschooling, laundry, and trying to find truth, goodness, and beauty in the middle of chaos. Any remaining brain cells are used to put words together at sharppaynes.com.
by Christie Purifoy | Dec 1, 2014 | Advent, God's Love, guest post, Jesus, Uncategorized
Kelli Woodford is a kindred spirit. I was sure of that after reading only a few of her online writings, but it was confirmed when we met in person at the Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin College last spring.
Her beautiful words pop up all over the internet, but you can be sure to find her blogging regularly at Chronicles of Grace.
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Just South of November
Just south of November, it begins to rain.
The air is heavy in my lungs and on my face. Like a vapor. Somewhere near the corner of the house I hear a persistent rustle which I first mistake for tears from heaven, dropping on bare branches. But further listening reveals that no, in fact, it’s an animal. Small, dependent. Probably a field mouse cloaked by the veil of darkness and mist.
From the deep recesses of memory, words bubble to the surface, and I smile:
… All creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful, the Lord God made them all.
In the not-distant-enough, I hear a rising wail of wild coyotes. They are closer than usual on this damp eventide. First one, then two, then the whole pack is howling. This is what they do when they have caught the scent and the chase is on … A chill runs up my spine. The dear animal near my feet stops its chatter. I hurry indoors to the safety of drywall and the hum of dishwashers. My little friend has no such dwelling. He takes his chances in the night.
I pray elemental prayers for the creature who is the source of the coyote’s call, whoever he may be. My imagination gets the best of me and I feel a familiar ache. For there are so many of them, these vicious undomesticated dogs, who threaten whatever is peaceful and simple and wholesome. Who tear to pieces the wandering defenseless.
As the door clicks shut, heavy against my hand, I close my eyes. My resident cynic can’t help but ask if the Lord God didn’t make them all, too. The hunters and the hunted …? What a world, this is. What a place for those who choose the innocence of yielding over the power of the mighty. What chance do they have in the recesses of the engulfing night?
And maybe because it’s Advent, or maybe because of my own baby who sleeps safe in his crib, I begin to think of another gentle Lamb. I begin to imagine what kind of risk wears swaddling clothes and lies in the manger. Among wolves. I feel the innocence of the moment teetering on the verge of disaster, so very near the lion’s mouth.
Because this time of year it’s easy to sentimentalize The Story. To skip right over the rough edges and the what-might-have-been’s. To jump to the ending we know so well. But on nights like this, I’ve a hunch that we do a disservice to The Story when we domesticate it.
Weren’t they treacherous times for God Himself to be born? Wasn’t there a pack of wild dogs slinking in the shadows that holiest of Silent Nights? Didn’t that round yon virgin tremble at the precarious nature of such a plan … ?
Oh, may our pine-scented nostalgia never strip us of this perspective. May all things merry and bright never blind us from the darkness that yet lurks.
For the reality is that it’s not an easy story to tell when you feel the thick air in your lungs and hear the silencing triumph of darkness. Like any good story there is conflict and there is climax. And the Hero comes not in absence of darkness, but in spite of it. Because of it. He comes to shine on those living in a land under the shadow of death. He comes to show us that the Lamb has the heart of a Lion. That love is stronger than hate. That what beats in the chest matters more than what weapon is in the hand.
Darkness and cruelty and the gnashing of teeth are part of the story and we should never shortchange their presence. Their part should be told. For a time they may even claim victory over a battle or two, but –
BUT –
they never win the war.
Somewhere south of November, I sense an awakening. A stirring as faint as a desperate field mouse nibbling his last tasty morsel. The Light comes anyway. Not because it’s safe. Not because the stable’s antiseptic or the virgin stoic in her certainty. This is the scandal of it all, isn’t it? He comes into the midst of our mixture: our love and our hate, our fear and our confidence, our peace and our war, our already and our not-yet.
He comes gently.
And here in the manger with hay in their hair and the scent of manure in their nostrils, the little family trembles. Because they hear the cry of the lone wolf and feel the chill in north wind and wonder at the unsure footsteps that pound the earth outside the tavern. But the smile that starts in the tired eyes of those two scared kids with a baby between them reaches quietly inside to somehow comfort their deepest fears, like whispered words:
Light does more than come. It overcomes.
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Kelli Woodford: I live in the midwest, surrounded by cornfields and love, with my husband and seven blue-eyed children. We laugh, we play, we fight, we mend; but we don’t do anything that even slightly resembles quiet. Unless it’s listening to our lives, which has proved to be the biggest challenge of them all.
by Christie Purifoy | Nov 30, 2014 | Advent, Desire, Dreams, Jesus, river, Seasons, Uncategorized, Waiting, Winter
Our first serious snowfall arrived the day before Thanksgiving.
The day began with rain. I left the house early to meet a friend for coffee and prayer, and the rain was already running in rivers. They said the rain would turn to snow mid-morning, yet that is a miracle I am always reluctant to believe without seeing. They were right. At ten in the morning, as I sat writing in one of the third-floor attic bedrooms, the rain turned quietly to snow.
Within minutes the golden-brown leaves still piled on our lawn were dusted with snow. Within an hour, the whole world had changed. Autumn had disappeared, buried beneath a new, wintry world.
My children had an early release from school for the holiday. I was standing at the parlor window, watching for them to come walking the long length of our driveway, when I heard it. A rumble. Like a heavy truck. But the rumble grew and cracked and broke into pieces, and I recognized it for what it was.
Thunder. A long, rolling river of thunder.
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Every year since I began writing this website, I have blogged daily during Advent. During the rest of the year, I struggle to post regularly once each week. But those Advent seasons of daily writing have been my favorite seasons. The intensity of those days, the witnessing and the telling, have changed me. They have also changed my life.
I began this discipline of daily Advent blogging because I was desperate. Desperate for something new and good in my life. Desperate for more. I ached and yearned and waited, and I wrote about it. I tried to anchor my own story in The Story. That January I found out I was pregnant. I’d had no idea what I was aching for, but Elsa Spring is, as her name suggests, new and good and as beautiful as a long-anticipated spring.
The second year I was weighed down by a gray post-partum fog. I was sure I had nothing to say. But God showed himself and gave me words. And in January the fog was finally rolled back. I was myself again. I knew happiness again.
The third year, I was sure I couldn’t do it. I had not had time to pre-plan a single post. I kept my eyes wide open, and I scratched out a few words each night. And God showed up. I woke every day feeling empty, and I went to bed every night having been given the story for that day.
In January, my long, vague dream of writing a book crystalized unexpectedly. Just after Epiphany, a book idea dropped, fully formed, into my head. And, in another year, that book will show up in bookstores.
You would be right if you guessed that I approach Advent with not a small amount of fear and trembling.
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Advent is a journey. And it changes us. It is a season of quiet beauty and gentle expectation, but it can roll over our lives like thunder. Sit. Watch. Wait. There is no telling what you might see.
Two thousand years ago, the whole world changed. And it goes on changing. There is always, always something new.
This year, I am deep in words for my book. For the first time, I have had to admit that I cannot blog every day of Advent. But I have not wanted to give it up. Instead, I have asked a few of my writer friends to join me here. I’ll be sharing their Advent reflections with you this season. I’ll also be showing up with Saturday book recommendations and a special food-themed Christmas giveaway.
And I pray, however you observe Advent, that it will be as beautiful as the first snowfall of the season. I pray that it will rock the earth beneath your feet like thunder.
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by Christie Purifoy | Nov 8, 2014 | Books, Food, Gardening, Seasons, Uncategorized
We had our first hard freeze of the season last night. This morning, the sky is a deeper blue than I have seen in quite some time. The sky seems to respond well to freezing temperatures, as if making up for the dreariness of the earth. Though the dreariness will only come later. Right now the leaves on the ground are traced in frost, and the dahlias haven’t yet registered that they have reached their end. Their colors are still vivid.
I am grateful for our long, pleasant fall, but I am also breathing more deeply today. I recorded the date of the first freeze in my garden journal and felt a weight slide from my mind. I can close the page on this growing season. I do still have garlic to plant and a few more daffodil bulbs, but the seasons have taken a decisive turn. Around this bend lie dog-eared seed catalogs and sketches for the new flower garden. Piles of books, too.
When it is cold and dark, we read books in front of the fire like it is our job.
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I recently finished a stunning new novel. I’ve never been in a book club, but when I closed this book for the last time, I wanted only to talk about this book. It’s that good. That thought-provoking. That beautiful. It’s Station Eleven: A novel
by Emily St. John Mandel.
I once wrote about books I don’t know why I read but am so glad I did. Station Eleven would certainly qualify as one of these. First, I tend to avoid anything “dystopian,” and “post-apocalyptic” is even less appealing. Finally, I have never read any of Cormac McCarthy’s highly praised but violent novels, and I don’t think I ever will. When I heard Mandel likened to McCarthy, I had serious doubts about picking up this book. Yes, this is a book about the collapse of civilization after a serious flu bug kills most of the world’s population, but, I promise you, it’s really not about that at all.
All I can say is to forget everything I just wrote and go read this book. It isn’t violent, so we sensitive-flower types need not fret, but it is disturbing. It is disturbing in the way of excellent art. It gives you new eyes to see your life, your family, our world. It’s a book to wake up your soul. I don’t think it’s possible to read a book like this and stay just the same as you were.
But if that doesn’t convince you, it’s a compelling story. A pager-turner. The writing is beautiful, the characters are rich. And days after finishing it, I am still haunted by a single image. There is a moment when we come upon a group of survivors who have made their home in a building that was once a Wendy’s fast-food restaurant. This new world has no fast-food (and, on the flip side, no antibiotics), but humans still flourish. The old restaurant door must have worn out and needed replacing because the door on this former Wendy’s is hand-cut from heavy wood. Also, someone has carved the front with delicate flowers and vines. A work of art in a place once devoted to everything fast, cheap, and plastic.
Because survival is insufficient. – Emily St. John Mandel
Another recently finished, dearly loved book is Receiving the Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time
by Dorothy Bass.
It’s a lovely, wise book. You’ll find a mixture of accessible scholarship and personal storytelling. You’ll find a bit about Sabbath and a bit about the Christian church calendar. But, mostly, you’ll find lost wisdom. Time is not our enemy. And each day is a gift. Live in it, and be glad. It isn’t always an easy or intuitive way to live, especially in our harried culture. But this book will help. It is helping me.
Preparing and eating is a major component of our days, isn’t it? As much as I love food, I struggle with that. I struggle with the time required to plan and shop and cook and clean. I resent the hard work, and I resent the time it asks. I’m praying to let go of resentment. I’m praying to grow in gratitude for the daily gift of food.
A good cookbook helps. I know one reason I have struggled with preparing meals for my family is the challenge of my son’s many food allergies. Anaphylaxis really takes the fun out of things.
Against All Grain: Delectable Paleo Recipes to Eat Well & Feel Great
by Danielle Walker is saving my life in the kitchen. Paleo recipes don’t all work for us (my son can eat almonds but no other tree nuts or peanuts), but most of these recipes are for foods we can and want to eat. I’m recommending this book to anyone with allergies or food sensitivities, but I also think this is a great cookbook for anyone who thinks they should cut back on wheat and dairy and refined sugar. Which, if we’re honest, is probably most of us.
There is a lot I could tell you about these recipes, but I will only share one story: I have tried and failed to make or purchase a dairy-free, gluten-free, nut-free birthday cake for my son for eights years. They have all been disappointments, some bigger than others. This past summer, I made the chocolate layer cake from this book. It was easy, used ingredients we already had on hand (though mine is the sort of kitchen where coconut oil and almond flour are always on hand), looked beautiful, and … well, my husband took one bite and looked at me with huge eyes.
“This actually tastes good.” I nodded in agreement. “No. I mean it. I would serve this to people! This tastes real.”
So. It’s good. You should check it out.
Tell me, what’s on your reading list for the dark days ahead?
