by Christie Purifoy | Jul 14, 2014 | children, Family, motherhood, Scripture, Summer, Uncategorized
In ancient times, the sea was the home of Chaos.
I could write that the sea symbolized chaos, but that word symbol is too easily brushed aside. As if symbols are merely tame bits of literary frippery with no power to unleash the deepest truths of our lives. Like opening the floodgates.
To the sea.
For these ancients, the sea was unfathomable. The sea bedded monsters. The sea could surge forth, at any time, and swallow up land, homes, lives.
Death, darkness, oblivion, terror. This was the sea.
And if you love beach vacations and find it hard to understand how the play of light on dancing waves could ever have been a harbinger of doom, then you will read the twenty-first chapter of the book of Revelation with surprise. And disappointment.
Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. (Revelation 21:1)
But if you are like me, you will sigh with longing.
If you are like me, the mere act of sifting through an overfull kitchen drawer for a thermometer hiding somewhere in its depths while the milk you had intended to turn into yogurt boils away on the stove is all it takes for Chaos to begin seeping in.
A moment later and the failed yogurt, the waste of good milk, the scorched pot and the murky kitchen drawer have caught you in their surge. One glance around and you are lost in an ocean of legos and marbles and bits of paper from the morning’s craft and a sticky puddle you cannot explain.
Now you are drowning because it is so humid and your kitchen is a furnace and the baby, the beautiful curly-haired baby, abandoned the slip’n slide after five minutes and is now tracking wet grass and clumps of mud from kitchen to dining room to entryway rug.
One day there will be no sea.
Yes, the sea is a symbol and my kitchen drawer is a symbol and whoever told you a symbol isn’t real? Whoever said it was not possible to drown in symbolic waters?
But if it is possible to drown, it must also be possible to swim. It must also be possible to open your eyes and observe the play of light on dancing waves.
To stand before the unknown and the unmanageable and discover, not the hiding place of terror, but the birthplace of beauty.
***
by Christie Purifoy | Jun 17, 2014 | children, Family, Grateful, motherhood, Summer, Uncategorized, Work
It is June, and I count my blessings.
Vines dripping in snap peas. Bowl after bowl of strawberries. Lettuces grown so large, I cradle one leafy head like a toddler in my arms. And carrots. I’ve never had much luck with carrots, but, this year, carrot tops are waving in the breeze like a dense fern forest.
And these are not my only blessings. Four wild, whooping noisemakers munch on raw peas and hunt for strawberries. Two boys can usually be found up a tree. One small girl runs after the kitties, grabs small green cherries from the low-hanging branches of the sour cherry tree, and never looks back at the big sister who follows, calling, “Elsa, come back. Elsa, are you ready to go inside?”
Yet even blessings can weigh you down and wear you out. Four small faces sticky with berry juice seem to ask more of me than I have to give.
***
***
We like to speak of callings. We acknowledge the dignity of difficult work when we say I am called to this.
And parents do the same. I am called to mother. I am called to father. But I have always imagined a calling to be like the revelation of something already there. God has called me to be a writer. God has called you to be a teacher. Or an encourager. Or a farmer. This is calling as the meeting place of God’s work and your talent.
Which is why I have never said I am called to be a mother. I am blessed, richly blessed, with four young children, but I have no particular talent for the work involved. On tired afternoons, I might even say my need for quiet, alone time makes me especially unsuited for the job.
***
Perhaps I have misunderstood the word. Perhaps a calling has nothing to do with talent or giftedness or any kind of suitability at all. Was a poet shepherd suited to battle giants? Was a young boy asleep in the temple especially gifted at hearing the voice of God?
It seems he wasn’t. Three times Samuel got up from his bed having confused the voice of heaven’s King with the voice of his master Eli.
And so I acknowledge all the ways I can never measure up to the blessings I’ve been given. But I will follow in Samuel’s incompetent but faithful footsteps. I will say, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”
And I will tell of what I hear.
Because our God calls.
by Christie Purifoy | Mar 4, 2014 | children, Lent, Uncategorized
Our dinner-table conversations with the kids seem to pivot between the ridiculous and the ultra serious. There is no in-between. Either, there are jokes about Thomas the Train crossing the road or there are existential complaints about prayer.
Why do you say we should listen to God when I can’t hear him? even the four-year-old wants to know.
I Don’t Know what His voice sounds like! another child chimes in.
In all honesty, even our serious conversations collapse toward the ridiculous until I, utterly exasperated, announce:
“Let those who have ears to hear, hear! Now clear the table.”
***
***
Snow is falling again. The world outside my window is dusted in silence, but I am listening. I am waiting for the wind to “shake a thousand whispers from the yew,” as T.S. Eliot writes in “Ash Wednesday.” Specifically, I want to hear a whisper about Lent. It is nearly here, and I don’t yet know how to set the time apart.
I still believe in sacred time, though I live in a world of Sunday-morning swim meets and Sunday-afternoon birthday parties. I know that, without some effort on my part, all time looks the same whether or not it is the same.
And yet, every year I seem to arrive at Ash Wednesday utterly emptied. Without even the energy to give up chocolate or add in more prayer or commit to some act of service. Whereas Advent fills me to overflowing with words and ideas and inspiration (so much so that I have blogged every day of Advent for three years running), Lent finds me spent. Dry.
Lent finds me listening to silence, desperately hoping that silence has something to say. That it isn’t the absence it sometimes seems to be.
***
When I picture that forehead smudge of ash, I hear the words of one of our oldest Christian hymns: “Let all mortal flesh keep silence.” I am dust and dust I will be again, and there seems nothing else to say. I will keep silence.
But I am a reader and a writer, and what it means to keep silence is complicated. Perhaps, it is always complicated, for each of us.
Silence might be the fruit of humility, but I can remember using it as a weapon. When I was a girl with two younger sisters I wielded my ability to hold my tongue like a sword. I may have been just as responsible for the argument, but if I whispered while she yelled, I would appear innocent when our parents doled out punishment. I was the evil queen of silence.
For years I told myself I would never write on the internet – I would keep silence – but my reasons were selfish. I was afraid to be that vulnerable. I was afraid to risk looking like a fool. Silence as shield. Silence as upper hand.
***
I seek an invisible God, and I must not forget that. Of course, there is little danger of this thanks to my small dinner companions. Even the four-year-old cries Why can’t I SEE Him? Why can’t I HEAR Him?
Why, indeed, dear one.
To remember his invisibility and his silence is not to keep him at a distance. Far from it. It is the reminder I need to look hardest from the corner of my eye. To observe closely the spaces between those things right in front of my face.
He hides, but he hides in plain sight.
He is silent, but He is the Word.
This is what I want my children to know: Believe that He can be found, and you will find Him.
***
Suddenly, my calendar is overfull. I said yes, and yes, and yes, and now I am staring down a Lenten gauntlet of circled dates and fiercely scribbled reminders.
But I think it will turn out fine. The trick, I am learning, is to focus on the spaces between. The gaps. The pauses. The moments that leak silence.
Ash Wednesday is the first rupture, the first crack in the usual order of things, and I will welcome it. I may have no plan. I may have no energy to implement even the plan I do not have. But these forty days are set apart.
Sacred days for seeking.
Sacred days for finding.
***
by Christie Purifoy | Dec 21, 2013 | Advent, Books, children, Uncategorized
I finished the Christmas grocery shopping today.
That means I have nothing to do for days but read and read and read by the tree. Well, that and wrap presents. I do tend to put that chore off till the last possible minute. And, I suppose the children will still demand to be fed. Strange how they expect regular meals even while on holiday.
But, still, rest assured, there will be a great deal of reading in the days ahead. I hope that proves true for you as well.
Here are a few more favorites from our stack of Christmas stories.
(You can find all my book recommendations here along with a disclaimer about the affiliate links I use.)
***
***
Today, I’m recommending three picture books, but wait … these books aren’t really meant for small children. My second-grader and fourth-grader enjoy these, but I would share these books with anyone from an older child to an adult.
This first book would make an especially nice gift for a poetry or art-lover.
It is Robert Frost’s Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening
with gorgeous illustrations by Susan Jeffers.
With its intricately detailed illustrations of snowy landscapes, this is a book that demands we slow down. My children love to search out the forest animals hidden in each image, and Jeffers gives this familiar poem a lovely, new twist of an ending through her designs.
But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep
Christmas Day in the Morning
was originally published by Pearl Buck in 1955. This picture-book version features full-color artwork by Mark Buehner.
If you don’t know the story already, I won’t spoil the surprise. I’ll only say that this one inspired my daughter to shovel the driveway as a Christmas gift to her Dad.
Buck’s classic story always makes me tear up a little. Okay, I have trouble not breaking down whenever I read it out loud.
The best Christmas gift I ever had, and I’ll remember it, son, every year on Christmas morning, so long as I live.
Winter’s Gift
is another sentimental favorite (but what’s Christmas without a little sentimentality?). It is written and illustrated by Jane Monroe Donovan and tells the story of an old man spending his first Christmas alone. He is without hope until a horse, lost in the woods, brings with her a very special gift.
‘The star is the most important part of the tree,’ she would always say. ‘It’s a symbol of hope, and no matter how bad things get, you should always have hope.’
by Christie Purifoy | Dec 7, 2013 | Advent, Books, Family, Uncategorized
Saturdays are reserved for a peek at the bookshelves which fill so many rooms in this old farmhouse. Books live everywhere here.
This month, this Advent month, I’ll be sharing some of our favorite books for the season. Advent books. Christmas books. Wintery and snowy books. These are books that live most of the year in two big boxes in a third-floor closet. I lug these boxes down two flights of stairs before I ever even look for the Christmas decor.
Mostly, these are books for kids. Or the kid in each of us (a self we simply must indulge this time of year, in my opinion). Quite possibly, these books are loved more by me than by any child in my house. Although, considering the state of it, Jan Brett’s Gingerbread Baby
is well loved by all.
(You can find my full series of book recommendations here, including more information about my personal book review policy and a disclaimer about affiliate links.)
I love Luci Shaw’s Accompanied by Angels: Poems of the Incarnation
year round. I love it especially at Advent.
Shaw’s poems hit that magic mark for me. They are conversational yet lyrical. They are accessible, but they do not give up all of their secrets with one reading. These are poems to return to year after year.
This is a season of serial visions, and a bodily God, / and a sword in the heart. – Luci Shaw
Astrid Lindgren is the Swedish writer best known for her books featuring Pippi Longstocking. Christmas in Noisy Village (Picture Puffin)
, part of a series of picture books about the “noisy children,” is a family favorite. Really, this is the Holy Grail of children’s literature: a book that pleases parents, toddlers, early readers … even my soon-to-be “tween.”
This is a fairly straightforward telling of a child’s Christmas in rural Sweden, but there is magic in realism like this. Gingersnap pigs, an early-morning sleigh ride to church, and gifts of skis and skates.
We have bigger books, funnier books, more spiritual books, but, this time of year, we probably read this book more times than any other. (Bonus recommendation: Lindgren’s The Tomten
is a wintery classic. One of our all-time family favorites.)
‘Everything is so beautiful and Christmasy that it gives me a stomach-ache,’ said Anna.
I’m sad to see that this third recommendation appears to be out-of-print. However, it looks like you should be able to track down a copy without too much trouble. Little One, We Knew You’d Come
is a sentimental favorite of mine. This is the story of the nativity, yes, but it is also a lullaby and a love song for every parent and child.
Sally Lloyd-Jones is well known for The Jesus Storybook Bible: Every Story Whispers His Name
. This is a quieter, more poetic take on the story of Jesus. I’m not sure my children even know it is a book about Jesus. They each think it’s a book about them. And they are right.
Lloyd-Jones beautifully captures the longing and love parents feel for their children. It is the longing felt by all creation for her redeemer.
And every year, we remember you, / Our miracle child, our dreams come true. / Oh, how we thank Heaven for you, / And the day that you were born. – Sally Lloyd-Jones
Lastly, I have one bonus recommendation: Sounding the Seasons
by Malcolm Guite. I’ve mentioned my love for these poems before, but, if possible, I love them even more this time of year.
