by Christie Purifoy | Jan 19, 2013 | Books, children, Gardening, Uncategorized
This week I’ve been knee-deep in gardening books and seed catalogs.
I love winter gardening. It’s all about dreaming.
This is one of my new favorites. Free-Range Chicken Gardens: How to Create a Beautiful, Chicken-Friendly Yard
is practical and inspirational. The photography is lovely, and the ideas are especially well-suited for small, suburban yards.
Another book discovered with my third-grade daughter (actually this is the first of an eight-book series) is Moonsilver (The Unicorn’s Secret #1)
by Kathleen Duey. This is a very rare kind of book. Written for beginning readers, it still manages to tell a beautiful, sophisticated story.
My first-grade son is currently obsessed with The Magic Treehouse series of books. I can hardly stand to read those aloud because the simplistic language and choppy sentence structure drive me nuts. Duey’s series proves that it doesn’t have to be this way. Buy her series for yourself to enjoy. If you feel awkward reading a “beginning chapter book,” just say you’ll pass it on to a young reader when you’re finished.
I especially love memoir, and one of my favorites is Martha Beck’s Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic
. Here is my true story: I actually brought this book home more than ten years ago from a white elephant gift exchange. No one else seemed to want it, but I knew I’d rather go home with a paperback than a cassette of bad 80s music or a withered house plant. Just before I left the party, a young man came up to me. Very seriously he told me that others may have thought the book was a joke, but he wanted me to know that I would love it.
He was right.
This is the story of how two Harvard academics unlearn almost everything Harvard had taught them. It is the story of a devastating diagnosis, an almost unbelievably difficult pregnancy, and an encounter with Love. I give that word a capital letter, because through this nightmarish yet somehow magical experience, Beck meets Someone. She doesn’t name him, but I recognized him immediately. He’s the one I call Jesus.
What books are keeping you company this winter?
(You can find my earlier book recommendations here and here.)
by Christie Purifoy | Jan 15, 2013 | Family, God's Love, Religion, Scripture, Uncategorized
I often have a face in mind when I write out words in this space. To be honest, it’s usually my own. When most of me is stuck in boredom, doubt, or depression some small part of me still sees the truth. I write to remind myself how beautiful life is. How good God is. And how near he is.
Today I have a face in mind, but it isn’t my own. Technically, it’s not a face at all but a voice – the voice I heard on NPR yesterday morning. A young man spoke of how he found Christianity but eventually gave it up because he couldn’t bring himself to believe that those who reject Christ will be tortured for all eternity.
And my heart broke.
I wished I could put both hands on his shoulders, look him in the eyes and say, “You’re giving up Jesus because of a theological position not even all Christians accept? Oh, honey, don’t do that. Trust me. You don’t want to do that.”
I can still remember my shock as a young woman, sitting down to lunch at the Benedictine monastery where I worked, when I overheard the conversation of two visitors sitting a few seats away. “Won’t people be surprised when they get to heaven and see Hitler there, too,” one woman said.
Personally, I will be very surprised if it turns out she’s right, but, today, I am less shocked at the image of Hitler in heaven than I am awed by this woman’s embrace of God’s very big love.
I also remember my shock, that same year, when a fellow church-goer admitted he didn’t think babies who die automatically go to heaven.
Clearly, we Jesus-followers don’t always see eye to eye.
Usually, I’m okay with this. I tend to agree with Augustine that if the Bible leads its reader to be more loving then the Bible has done its job. Augustine isn’t saying that accurate interpretation doesn’t matter, only that it’s okay if we get a little lost on our journeys as long as we arrive at our destination.
As someone who feels at least a little lost, most of the time, I like this idea.
At least, I did, until my daughter stood at the bus stop surrounded by our neighbors and said this Out Loud: “I wonder if Dr. Seuss is in heaven or hell?”
It was Dr. Seuss’s birthday, the kids were geared up for a celebration, but they also knew that Dr. Seuss was no longer among the living. I suppose one thought led to another, and suddenly my own daughter was broadcasting a question that didn’t reflect my own spiritual preoccupations at all.
I was mortified. Here I had imagined myself a Christian unconcerned with guarding the borders of who’s in and who’s out, but my own unconcern left a theological hole that my daughter filled in for herself.
So now, as hard as it is, and as comfortable as I remain with theological diversity, I know I owe my daughter a little more. I owe that young man on NPR a little more.
I want them both to know that whether you are blinded by God’s love or by his justice you are welcome in God’s family. I want them both to know that I’ve wandered to a spot somewhere in the middle. I think when Jesus said in Matthew 10:28 God would destroy both body and soul in hell that destroy means what it sounds like it means. Not eternal torment but destruction. An end. Justice.
In other words, I believe in this good news about hell: there is a place where evil will be confined and where it will be destroyed.
And the really good news? God’s love is big. Very, very big. I may doubt we’ll meet Hitler in heaven, but I’m sure we’ll be surprised at the size of the gathering. Because God’s love? Well, it chases us down. It pursues us. And frankly, where most of us are concerned, my money’s on God.
“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.”
Ephesians 3: 17,18
by Christie Purifoy | Jan 12, 2013 | Books, Faith, motherhood, Uncategorized
Last Saturday, I gave you a peak at my bookshelves.
Let’s take another look, shall we?
I found Mitten Strings for God: Reflections for Mothers in a Hurry
,
by Katrina Kenison, years ago. It is about neither God nor mittens, but if I could put a copy in the hands of every new mother, I would. Kenison is in search of a less frenetic, more thoughtful approach to family life, and she shares with us her discoveries along with stories of raising her two boys. I’m sure many mothers of young children imagine turning off the tv and scheduling fewer activities. But, then what? This book gives us a glimpse of what might happen next.
Perhaps many of you have already read Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis
by Lauren F. Winner. I think I’ve mentioned it before. It was one of my favorites of the past year. In a previous memoir, Winner describes her journey from Judaism to Christianity. That was her beginning, and it was marked by enthusiasm and optimism. In this book, she describes the middle of her spiritual life. It is characterized by doubt, loneliness, and even boredom. This is a quietly beautiful book. It is a book about remaining faithful even when faith falters.
Sharing this final book with you is a bit like handing you my heart on a platter. Well, maybe not exactly, but I imagine if I ever find someone who loves this book as much as I do then I know I have found a friend. Unfortunately, Penelope Fitzgerald may just be the best writer you’ve never read.
You might find The Bookshop at your local used bookstore. Or, you can pick up this three-book edition (this is the copy on my shelf) from amazon: The Bookshop, The Gate of Angels, The Blue Flower (Everyman’s Library)
. The Bookshop is short, beautiful, and sad. It’s also funny. We are in a small English seaside town in the 1950s. A middle-aged widow defies the complacency and pettiness of her community and opens a bookshop.
Even a seemingly small thing like opening a bookshop can be an act of courage. Alas, the bravest and wisest among us do not always emerge as victors.
Still unconvinced? Let me just add that even the spirits have aligned themselves against our heroine. The bookshop, it turns out, is haunted.
What are you reading?
by Christie Purifoy | Jan 9, 2013 | Family, Jesus, motherhood, prayer, Uncategorized
I sometimes wonder why God gave me boys.
Recently, my oldest son had to wear a team sports jersey for “spirit day” at his elementary school. I’m sure whoever came up with this idea imagined it to be fairly inclusive. Who doesn’t have at least one shirt for some kind of team playing just any kind of sport?
Well, our family, actually.
Jonathan and I would rather watch Masterpiece Mystery on PBS than college football, so if we raise a sports fan it will be despite ourselves.
The more children I have, and the bigger and more “boyish” my boys become, the more helpless and inadequate I feel as a mother. You might expect it to work the other way. Don’t I have years of experience tucked under my belt? This is true. However, if you look closely you’ll find years of doubt, years of second-guesses for every parenting decision I’ve made, and many spectacular failures. Nine years after becoming a mother, I am less confident than ever.
I’ve decided this is a good thing. It is good because I am praying like never before. I am praying daily and in desperate bursts. I am praying spontaneously, and I am praying systematically, bowing my head over scribbled prayer cards.
Lord, hear my prayers.
I’m praying, yes, but I’ve been struggling to pray for these boys. Who are they made to be? Who do I hope they will be?
I think a lot of mothers pray for “leaders.” They pray their sons grow up to be leaders in their families, in their churches, in their communities.
I try praying this, and the word leader feels like a pebble in my mouth. Whose word is this, anyway? Where did it come from?
Is this the right word for the boy who prefers the edge of the crowd to its center? The gentle boy who loves his baby sister so much he’ll spend thirty minutes trying to make her laugh? The compassionate boy with the quiet voice who would rather play alone at recess than roughhouse with the other six-year-olds?
I try out the word servant-leader. I hear a lot about that one, too. But there’s the pebble again, and I ask myself, “What’s wrong with just servant?”
In my mind, I see Jesus. He is kneeling in the dust of the floor washing feet. I may be uncomfortable with what counts as masculine in our culture, but even I find it difficult to pray this kneeling-in-the-dirt way of life for my boys.
But my son is teaching me how to pray for him.
Here he is beside me. We are bathing his baby sister. I watch as he takes the washcloth and leans across the edge of the tub. Slowly and carefully, he wipes between each little toe.
Lord, hear my prayers.
by Christie Purifoy | Jan 7, 2013 | Religion, Seasons, Stories, Uncategorized
I began to love stories when I was tiny (my father told a serial tale about a little girl and her many exotic pets). That love has only grown. It makes perfect sense to me that I would want to measure my days with the Story. Walking through a year with the liturgical calendar is, essentially, living the story of my faith from its beginning to its triumphant end.
Epiphany has past, and we are headed into the season of Ordinary Time. As has happened to me before (and likely always will, for this seems to me the point of living the story), my own spiritual life is mirroring the spiritual life of the larger church, at least as it is expressed in the calendar.
To put it plainly: my days are ordinary.
Ordinary Time seems somehow outside of story. There is no drama, no central narrative. It isn’t Advent, Lent, or Easter. The meaningful intensity of those periods is lacking. Though time passes, it doesn’t feel as if we are on any kind of journey. The days simply are.
I find it easy to wish these days away. I like the excitement of storytelling. I like to know that I am quickly moving from point A to point B, from introduction to conclusion. I like that in books, I like that in church. I like that in life.
I suppose I could make an argument that we are never, truly, outside of the story. We never actually pause in our journeys, as humans, as communities. However, it doesn’t feel right to me to push these days into the narrative mold. It’s dishonest, I think, to dress these days up as more meaningful and significant than they are.
Perhaps they aren’t significant in terms of the story. But could it be this lack of significance that makes them so amazing?
They are gloriously excessive. They are like the galaxies, the uncounted stars and planets that have been created yet remain unseen by our eyes. What are they for? Why did God make them, anyway? For the joy of it?
These ordinary days don’t matter all that much, but they’ve been given to us. God gives the extraordinary – the birthdays, the graduation days, the holidays, the days spent on the mountaintop, and the days endured deep in a valley. As if these weren’t enough, God gives us more. He gives us the ordinary.
The blue-sky day in a month of blue skies. The hand-holding day in a decade of holding that child’s hand. The sunrise and the sunset, always and again. My husband in the kitchen making breakfast for all of us, not because it’s Mother’s Day, but because it’s morning.
revised and reposted from the archives
by Christie Purifoy | Jan 5, 2013 | Books, Uncategorized
Books are bread and water for me. You may think that’s metaphor, but I mean it quite literally. I feel the need for reading like I do a sudden drop in blood sugar. My introverted, sensitive self falls apart regularly. Time spent with a book puts me back together.
It won’t surprise you to know that my bookshelves are crammed. Two whole rooms in this house are practically devoted to them. There is also my desk. That’s where the stacks of library books live.
Recently, I’ve had so many friends ask for book recommendations that I knew I needed to do something. Of course, the easiest and best way to share books would be to sit with you on my old green sofa and talk our way through a stack of them.
Here’s my plan for “next best.” Every Saturday I’ll give you a glimpse of my bookshelves. I’ll share old favorites. I’ll share the latest thing on my bedside table. I won’t write long reviews (because these days I’d rather be reading than reviewing), but I’ll try to nudge you towards books I’ve enjoyed, no matter the category.
I read widely. You can expect anything from cookbooks to poetry to theology to children’s picture books. And maybe you’ll comment with some recommendations of your own? I would love that.
I have my nine-year-old daughter to thank for this first book. She found Inside Out and Back Again
by Thanhha Lai at her school library, and she’s been reading it aloud to me. Years of having to listen to Junie B. Jones and Wimpy Kid exploits are now redeemed. This book is exquisite. Written as narrative poetry, this story of a young Vietnamese war refugee making a new life in Alabama is accessible for a child but still powerful for an adult. It will break your heart. In a good way.
What Alice Forgot
by Liane Moriarty reads like a fluffy, fun beach read. Don’t be fooled. There is a lot more going on here. In this novel Alice bumps her head and forgets the previous ten years of her life. She wakes up believing she is pregnant with her firstborn and madly in love with her new husband. In reality, she is an angry mother-of-three in the midst of a divorce. Observing Alice negotiate the chasm between the life she has and the one she remembers is not only fun (I loved every character in this book), it is eye-opening. Fluffy on the outside, yes, but this book offers real wisdom on the subjects of marriage and motherhood.
My husband gave me three cookbooks and a pasta maker for Christmas. He knows me well. One of those books is Vintage Cakes: Timeless Recipes for Cupcakes, Flips, Rolls, Layer, Angel, Bundt, Chiffon, and Icebox Cakes for Today’s Sweet Tooth
(yes, that’s a mouthful) by Julie Richardson. I can’t stop reading her descriptions of desserts I’ve mostly never heard of. Pink Champagne Cake, anyone? As of the new year, I am back on my no-added-sugar diet. Surprisingly, this book is actually helping. I’m finding it easier to say no to chocolate today because I’ve promised myself a little cake over the weekend. I’ll let you know which recipe I choose.
