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.
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(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 | 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.
by Christie Purifoy | Jun 5, 2017 | Books, Food, Gardening, Giveaway, Home, Pennsylvania, Roots and Sky, Seasons, Summer, Uncategorized
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.
This summer we will celebrate 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.
First, summer.
In collaboration with the talented designer and illustrator Jennifer Tucker of Little House Studio, I’ve created four summer-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, one from my flower garden, one from my vegetable 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 print their own.
Simply input your email address to the subscribe box below, and an email with a link for the download will be sent straight to you. If you are already a subscriber, check your inbox. Your link should be waiting for you.
Here are two things to remember:
One: Summer is fleeting, and so is this gift. Two weeks from today, the offer expires, and the prints will no longer be available.
Two: Autumn follows fast on summer’s heels, and my fall pages should appear some time in September.
P.S. Because I couldn’t decide which I loved best – full color or black-and-white – I’m giving you both. I am also giving you the recipe page in two color options. Feel free to choose one or print all. Enjoy!
by Christie Purifoy | Apr 4, 2017 | Books, These Farmhouse Bookshelves, Uncategorized
You probably know that I love to share about the books I’m reading just as often as I can, but it’s a rare day when I can tell you about a wonderful new book on friendship written by one of my oldest and dearest, real-life friends.
Never Unfriended: The Secret to Finding and Keeping Lasting Friendships by Lisa-Jo Baker
I want to tell you that Lisa-Jo was the perfect person to write this book because she is a perfect friend. I want to say this because she has always been such a very good friend to me. When we said goodbye many years ago, just before she and her husband left Chicago for Ukraine, I assumed our friendship would fade. But Lisa-Jo held on. And I will forever be grateful to her for that.
But I will not in fact tell you that Lisa-Jo wrote this book out of a place of perfection. I will not even tell you that she wrote it out of a place of personal strength. I know her well enough to know that she feels her own failures as a friend keenly, and that she has also felt the deep wounds only a friend can inflict.
Like most precious things, this book is the fruit of suffering and struggle. When Lisa-Jo reminds me that I am free to become a friend to others because I have found the most perfect friendship in Jesus, I listen.
I listen, because she knows this for herself, and because she tells the story so persuasively and so well.
One: Unity in a Divided World is the just-released book by Deidra Riggs. I don’t know Deidra nearly as well as I know Lisa-Jo (we are facebook friends who have never met in person), and yet, I know enough of Deidra, and of her wisdom and experience and passion, to know that this timely book should be embraced and widely read.
If you are troubled by the rancor and divisions that seem so prevalent today, here is a book to inspire you and challenge you to pursue the reconciling way of Jesus.
Whether you’ve never heard of the Enneagram or have read every book about it you can get your hands on, I highly recommend this new book by Ian Morgan Cron (the author of one of my favorite memoirs!) and Suzanne Stabile.
The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery is probably the most user-friendly introduction to the Enneagram I have read. Not only that, it is wonderfully written (in fact, this book is proof that instructive nonfiction can feature insanely good writing).
The Enneagram is an ancient personality typing system with roots in Christian monasticism. I have personally found it to be a powerful tool for gaining self understanding and, perhaps most importantly, compassion and even gratitude for those who are very different from me.
I am slowly reading my way through Anne Fadiman’s book At Large and At Small: Familiar Essays. I am reading slowly only because I am making myself read slowly. I want to devour these delightful, witty, intelligent essays like a bowl of ice cream (and Fadiman even has an essay on ice cream!), but I also want this treat to last as long as possible.
Tell me, do you read nonfiction?
by Christie Purifoy | Dec 3, 2016 | Books, children, Christmas, Family, These Farmhouse Bookshelves, Uncategorized, Winter
(the following post contains affiliate links)
If you know me, then you’ll have guessed that the “all new” in the title of this post does not, in fact, refer to newly released books. In fact, once I went looking for links online, I realized that almost every single book I wanted to tell you about is out of print.
But don’t let that deter you! Fortunately, the internet makes searching for and purchasing used books very easy. You can follow the amazon links below, or you can search Abe Books or Powells. You could also do what I do: keep a list of authors to look for the next time you visit a used bookstore or thrift store.
So, what do I mean by all new? I mean that these are some of our favorite seasonal books, but I have never mentioned them on the blog before. You can find all of the Advent and Christmas books I have already recommended over here on one handy page.
Why so many books? Who has time for reading during this, one of the busiest months of the year? I love what Sarah Arthur has to say in Light Upon Light:
So the one time of year that we are given to pause and seek the One who seeks us becomes the one time of year that drives us nearly to self-extinction. And it is this season, of any, when we are least likely to pick up a book and read. Who has time for that? But it is a Word that has come to us, and words that tell the story of that Word from generation to generation.
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First, lest you imagine that picture books are only for children, I recommend Lisbeth Zwerger’s version of The Nutcracker by E.T.A. Hoffmann.
Zwerger is a prize-winning illustrator from Vienna. Her art is strange but lovely and is the perfect thoughtful foil for the disturbing whimsy and intelligence of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s original Nutcracker tale. While I have shared this long picture book with my older children, I think this book would make a wonderful gift for any adult who appreciates art and literature.
The next book I’ll mention couldn’t be more different than Zwerger’s, but it is a new favorite in our house. Christmas For 10 by Cathryn Falwell is a counting Christmas book featuring multiple generations of an African-American family. My four-year-old loves it because she can count along, my older kids are drawn into it because of the bright cut-paper illustrations, and I love it for its depiction of ordinary Christmas fun like stringing popcorn and filling gift baskets. I am also grateful to have a Christmas book featuring a non-white family. Unfortunately, this is still very rare in Christmas picture books.
The Christmas Party by Adrienne Adams is more than a little unexpected (a Christmas book about a family of Easter egg-painting rabbits??), but it is a thrift store gem. I had never heard of Adrienne Adams before I picked up a used copy of this book, but her illustrations are so appealing.
And though I picked this one up for the pictures, the story is wonderful, too. It’s a bit of a Christmas coming-of-age tale, as the rabbit children turn the tables on their hardworking parents by surprising them with a memorable outdoor Christmas party. Adams’ illustrations of an egg-decorated Christmas tree and rabbit families sledding a snowy hill under a full moon are equally memorable.
Christmas in the Country by Cynthia Rylant is my favorite kind of picture book. It is almost like a picture-book version of a literary memoir: Rylant’s recollection of a country Christmas from her childhood is spare and straightforward, yet the small memories seem to add up to so much more than is at first apparent. I could read this one over and over.
My children, on the other hand, much prefer The Worst Person’s Christmas by James Stevenson. I wasn’t even planning to mention this story of a truly awful Christmas curmudgeon, except that my kids have begged for it every night this week. When I refused to read it one more time, my oldest decided that she would read it out loud instead. Three pages in and my boys were howling.
Fortunately, the horrifying behavior of “the worst person in the world” can’t persist against the unrelenting cheer and kindness of his neighbors. His insults may be horrifying (to me) and hilarious (to my children), but the story has a sweet ending.
If you need a break from the picture books, I’ve been enjoying Christmas at Thompson Hall & Other Christmas Stories by Anthony Trollope. These Victorian short stories offer the best of an old-fashioned British Christmas with the usual concerns of nineteenth-century literature. These are stories of roast beef, plum pudding, property, and humorous misunderstandings neatly resolved by the end of Christmas Day.
I’ve always enjoyed classic British murder mysteries from the 1930s. A Christmas Party: A Seasonal Murder Mystery by Georgette Heyer is wickedly fun and clever. I recommend reading it near a roaring country house fire. However, I found that a small kitchen woodstove will do in a pinch.
Happy reading and blessed Advent.
