Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

faith & spirituality

Between now and then

A few weeks ago our daughter brought home a flute. She is now a first-year band student with no previous flute experience (unless you count the recorder she brought home last year for music class). She excitedly told us all about the upcoming concerts–one in December, the other not till April.

On the first day of practicing being a flute player, she was already looking ahead to the performance. There is nothing wrong with her excitement about the concerts, but I gently reminded her that there are a lot of days between now and then and every one of them matters.

If she does not practice each day before, the concert will not be as meaningful.

—

I’m going to talk about baseball again.

Our team, the Cubs, made the playoffs again. Last year, as you might recall, they won the World Series, an achievement more than 100 years in the making. After last year’s win, there was a lot of talk and hope from Cubs fans about doing it again the next year. I understand the excitement and I, too, get swept up into the thrill of victory.

But when the baseball season opened this year, all teams started at the same place: zero wins, zero losses. Before the playoffs even begin, they have 162 games to play. Maybe every game doesn’t hold the same importance, but they still have to play every game to earn it. No team gets handed a trophy because they won last year or because they have the best fans. (I’m biased.)

Photo by Jason Weingardt on Unsplash

To win it all, they still have to work for it every day, accumulating more wins than losses.

—

“A quick way to make life easier.”

The outside of the envelope blares an outright lie. Whatever it is they are selling, I’m not buying it. While it is tempting to believe there are quick ways to make our lives easier or better, these words are nothing more than a junk-mail promise. Whether it is on the outside of an envelope or blared via television or written online, this message deserves its place in the trash.

I know of few, if any, quick ways to make life easier and even fewer that don’t require work and commitment. And even if the whole rest of the world offered a quick-and-easy solution to life’s troubles, the church should be the last place to offer it.

I am thinking about all of these things because in October, I am teaching a class at my church. For the five Sundays of the month, I will be leading people on a journey toward incorporating spiritual practices into daily life. I’m calling it “Between Sundays” because I am a firm believer that what we do during the week has more lasting impact on our spiritual lives than what we do on Sundays.

Are Sundays important? Yes. Can attending church on Sundays be the sum total of our spiritual lives? I’m going with “no.”

Whether we’re learning to play flute, trying to win a baseball championship, or striving to be a better person, it takes practice. Spiritual transformation is not just going to be handed to us. We are not naturally inclined to love people we’d rather hate, to serve when no one is looking, to give until it hurts, to rest in God’s love for us, to stop trying to earn our salvation.

It is a mystery to me, sometimes, this idea that we cannot work for our salvation but we must work for our transformation. To me, the spiritual practices are not about earning our spots in heaven but learning to live as redeemed people here on earth. That is what takes work.

It is like God has handed us a musical instrument, capable of creating a beautiful sound, but first, we must learn how to play.

Photo by Tadas Mikuckis on Unsplash

And it will not be immediately perfect. The first few practice days for our flute player were at times wince-worthy. But just this week, she played an entire song–“Hot Cross Buns”– that sounded like music. She has a long way to go, but she is on her way.

It will be the same with spiritual practices. It will be awkward and messy and imperfect. We will get it wrong, especially at first. We might not see any improvement.

This is no reason to quit.

It is all the more reason to keep practicing.

Maybe we are not “there” yet but we are on our way.

 

 

Life, even when …

The path we walked through the woods felt different from the other paths we had walked. The trees were closer somehow, the underbrush lush and green, as far as the eye could see, full of fruit and flowers.

“What’s different about these woods?” I asked my husband. He had suggested this hike on Labor Day, and our more recent hikes at Gettysburg and through an almost-untouched wood in our county loomed fresh in my mind.

“It’s new growth,” he said, pointing out that the trees hadn’t grown tall enough to block the sun from the ground cover. Suddenly I could see the difference. I am awed by tall trees, the way they stretch to the sky but it was the beauty of the thick low-growing plants that caught my eye this time.

As we walked, we read the information signs. How this land was old and among the first to be settled in this part of the county. How it later became a landfill and now, through careful planning, a beautiful park.

We were literally walking through a garbage dump.

And it was beautiful.

—

Call it what you want: a dumpster fire, a garbage heap, a hot freaking mess. You don’t have to read or watch or scroll for long before you’re convinced that the world is trash and maybe a good scorching would do everyone good.

Five minutes on Twitter and I’m scared and worried and paranoid. I can’t keep up with all the tragedies, nor am I meant to. My soul can’t hold all the hurt, but sometimes I still want it to.

Even without the earthquakes and the hurricanes and the tragedies, I am spinning into a pit because there’s a hole in our kitchen ceiling, a mouse we can’t catch, bills we can’t pay, and frustrated tears during homework. It is 7:30 at night and I am D-O-N-E with it all. I want to curl up in bed, read a book to take me away from it all, or drink something to dull the pain. Maybe a combination of all three.

My personal vice is to flee, escape, give up when the trouble comes. When the going gets tough, I get going, as far from the tough-going as I can get. (I’ve heard the world might end this weekend. I don’t believe it, but at this exact moment I don’t think I would mind if it did.)

Still, as much as I want to give up on the world, to throw up my hands and scream, “How much longer?” and “What can I do?”, I can’t walk away. I can’t give up.

Because life finds a way to break through even the most trashy of circumstances. This is not naive idealism. It is true.

Photo by qinghill on Unsplash

Did you see the video of the man sacrificing the last generator in Florida before Irma to a woman who needed it for an oxygen tank? I cried. Or if you’re on Twitter, go find Kristen Bell’s posts from that week. She sang songs from Frozen for an elementary school and rubbed shoulders with senior citizens hunkering down in the same hotel she was. It was refreshing.

That’s life breaking through.

Sometimes it’s just harder to find. And it takes time.

But I have to believe it is worth the wait.

—

Years ago, my life, our marriage, felt like a stinking pile of garbage. We distanced ourselves from all but the closest of friends because we know the human tendency to steer clear of trouble in case it’s contagious. This was not a fair assumption on our part, and eventually, we did start sharing the garbage with people. It still felt like a smelly offering, but we are grateful for those who took it and didn’t run away.

Ours is a compost pile of a story. A continual adding on of dying things, a turning over of the decaying. It’s contained now, like a compost pile, instead of like trash day gone wrong with litter strewn across the street.

And though it sometimes still stinks, it is producing something life-giving. It might not be a fragrant offering, but it is a fertile one, promoting life and growth in ourselves and others.

At least, that is my hope. Sometimes it is still hard to see.

Boston, Mass.

—

As hard as we try to squash it, life goes on. The earth rattles and shakes. The winds stir the waters into terrifying storms. The nations threaten violence and war. If our goal is to obliterate humanity, we’re seemingly on the right track.

Still, the earth yields beauty. Trees and flowers bud and bloom and thrive. Our garden plants stretch across the lawn, bursting with butternut squash. Our tomato plants tilt under the weight of so much ripe, juicy fruit. Our family is fed from the earth.

Grieving the death of one, we also celebrate a birth. A life lost. A life gained. A circle we have yet to break.

The days are dark, the sunlight growing shorter, so we turn up the music, filling the kitchen with song as we make dinner.

Our daughter is learning to play the flute because music might be what saves us in the end.

I cannot stop thinking of a quote I heard recently: “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be in your revolution.” (Emma Goldman)

We can dance AND revolt. Sing AND persist. Create AND call out.

We do not have to abandon ourselves to despair. We can find hope in the beauty yet to come when all we can see right now is a garbage heap.

Life stinks sometimes. I’m feeling that way today. The only thing I can think to do is remember the places where life can’t help but break through. The landfill-turned-park. The cemeteries. The birthing rooms.

Life is always breaking through. Even when it looks like it’s not.