Catharsis

I wanted so badly not to write about this until it was over. I was sooo excited to package up a tidy post about anxiety and being brave and fighting through your doubts. Sorry, guys. Pride gets in the way. Surprise of all surprises, this phase has haunted me for longer than I bargained, and I don’t have the clarity of retrospection. But I might need to write through it anyway.

I used to toss the word ‘anxiety’ around casually, never knowing how heavy it really is. I used it as a synonym for stress. I thought people who got truly anxious were…weak. Well. I know now how unfair that is. We’re all weak, all walking around with chinks in our armor. And anxiety is so much more than stress; it’s paralyzing and frightening and infuriating.

Without going into gory or boring detail, I haven’t been well. For about 98% of my life I’ve felt strong, capable, and high-achieving. I got what I worked for. I would see something materialize in the future and then I would move toward it steadily, never doubting my trajectory or losing footing. Certainty in my own control built up like plaque in my veins, fortifying the illusion that I was strong and frankly, without need. (A misperception so extreme that it might be funny, if it didn't make me feel so shitty.) Not believing in your own need is a dangerous thing when you follow Christ. And if there’s anything that’s grown out of these past 4-plus months (and, um, still counting) it’s the truth that I am SO FAR from self-sufficient. 

I would like to say, friends, be careful what you pray for. Because about six months ago I prayed this: God, let me desire You and not Your comfort. I had been scraping and searching for the comfiest circumstances, which left me feeling vaguely dull. So I sat down and asked God very seriously to teach me about Himself so that I wouldn’t just chase a comfortable life. Should I be surprised that He answered? (And would you be surprised to learn I’m starting to regret my prayer?)

For you who have felt anxiety or fear or doubt, I GET IT. And it’s been the biggest comfort of all to hear people say to me, I get it too. What I might be learning right now – still too early to tell for sure – is that God hears the prayers I keep flinging skyward, hoping something will stick. He’s inviting me into a way deeper trust than I’ve ever had, because I never knew my own need. My reliance on Him actually feels as essential as it is. From the trenches I just want to confirm that yes, this is painful place to be. But I’m starting to know God in a way I never have. This hasn’t quite equipped me to feel joyful in these circumstances. But I know Him better. Maybe the joy will follow.

I heard a quote last night that shook me. Peter Rollins writes, “What if Christ does not fill the empty cup we bring to Him but rather smashes it to pieces, bringing freedom not from our darkness and dissatisfaction but freedom from our felt need to escape it?”

What if? What if during our times of war we need freedom from our own selves that tell us endlessly we need to flee the pain? What if, in dissatisfying situations, we might still find freedom? Even in a job you hate. Even in the uncertainty of a lonely year. Even when you feel trapped and misunderstood and broken. Maybe there's still freedom.

May I suggest a few things to keep your head on straight when you feel frantic? These have been deep breaths to me lately:

• This post, to remind you that darkness ALWAYS PASSES and your darkness is no different. Dawn breaks, people. That hope will keep you afloat.
• Tow’rs music. For the heavy hearted, this music is healing and the lyrics are just straight poetry (“We’ll wear your grace like skin, taking us where veils are thin.” I meaaaan c’mon. So good.)
• That lovely majestic place called the outdoors also known as put down your phone and your Instagram and your computer screen and leave the house. Running outside has been my fix lately (because it’s January and I no longer live in New England, holla!) but any time you get off a screen and outside heals the soul a bit, in my opinion.

This is an ongoing catharsis. There will more posts in this vein. And I would love to engage with you if you’re reading and resonating. Leave a comment, shoot me an email. xo

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Wendell Berry's prose & poetry is forever worth re-reading. 

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

Status During Supermoon

Our little casita is quiet minus traffic humming from the I-5 and music streaming from the dark kitchen. Tonight was a good one: full kitchen, full deck, laughter and the melding of different friends. But last night was straight magic.

Like the incandescent ones usually are, it was a spur-of-the-moment night without expectations. Davis had mentioned wanting to see Iron & Wine play at Humphrey's as an early birthday celebration. A little context: Iron & Wine was THE band for me back in high school. His music colors that entire era in my memory, but I hadn't given it a good listen in years. When we were lucky enough to find a kayak to borrow the day of the show, there was no excuse not to go. And so we grabbed California burritos and slid off into the water toward the sound of an acoustic guitar and a Southern drawl. 

For the next few hours, we joined the flotilla of rafts anchored outside Humphrey's. I gotta say, after all this time Iron & Wine was still stunning. Especially on the water, under the stars, beneath a supermoon. We floated and looked up at palms, blue stage lights, and that giant orb. It felt like we could have been anywhere. When we paddled back, the moon had pulled the tide so high that we had to lay down to slip under the bridges lowered across the harbor.

As I hold routine in one hand and the ever-elusive contentment in the other, moments like this anchor me (no nautical pun intended). Last night was a rock solid reminders of the magnitude of life right here, exactly now. 

Cheers, Henry

Summer afternoon, summer afternoon. To me these have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.

- Henry James

These words will forever and always remind me of Molly, who kept them in a small frame that circulated from college dorm rooms to the walls of our tiny apartment during college. 

I'm with Henry. Three cheers for summer's glories: 

1.     For air travel that makes weekends with brothers and best friends possible

2.     For a 6' x 12' patch of deck to hold long dinners, evenings of wine-tasting,

and morning bare feet 

3.     For rooftops with city views in late bronze light 

words I want to carry around in my pocket

"I like beginnings because they’re so full of promise. The first page of a book, the first day of a job, the first time you buy yourself flowers, the first date with a new man, the first touch, the first kiss, the first kick of a good liquor, the first moment you hold your own baby. I like beginnings because I know there’s always more to come."

Shyma Perera, Bitter Sweet Symphony

Foolish love for a tainted world

“It takes a great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it.”

— Oscar Wilde

Evening jaunts around our little 'hood make me fall in love with this place over and over. Tonight, running down Fifth Avenue, my world smelled smelled like corn tortillas as I passed Barrio Star at happy hour. When I walk through Little Italy, the public bocce ball courts and Jacaranda trees woo me. I even feel an odd ownership of the planes that scream over our roof as they descend toward the tarmac. As the light show and long evenings of summer commence, I'm taken by this corner of the world we call home. 

But the world, as Wilde says, is tainted.

While I ran tonight, my brother two states north attended a vigil on his college campus. There was a shooting, again. This time at Seattle Pacific University. He's fine, his friends are fine, but other students aren't; and it was so close. As everyone will note, it could happen anywhere. I don't have much to add to the ongoing conversation and grief over shootings, but suffice to say it shocks and scares us that it could happen anywhere. Even in the little college neighborhood where Ben lives and studies.  

On days like today I don't feel courageous for loving this tainted world. I feel foolish. I feel like I'm about to have my heart smashed. There is real beauty and real evil, and one of the few truisms that actually feels comforting is that God, like us, hates the evil. And there won't be any in His restored world. So then. Let's help each other be brave and love the tainted glory of this one. 

Busy vs. Hurried (Go Outside)

We backpacked the weekend away in the gorgeous back country of San Diego. It fully delights me that you can drive 45 minutes east of the city and wind up in the mountains - real mountains, with pine trees and peaks and altitude and the whole bit.

Assuming the hike in would take half a day, we started around 8 am - an overestimation that got us to the campsite well before lunch. But those extra hours were some of the weekend's best. What I love about camping is how expansive time becomes. An entire day centers around survival (pitch a tent, build a fire, cook a meal, find a secluded spot in the woods to pee) and the spaces in between are reserved for simple leisure. I read for most of Saturday afternoon, something I hadn't done for months or years. Long-form reading doesn't seem to have a place in life's busyness; a quick blog post or thumbing through Instagram fits our harried schedules better. But I miss the restorative and simple enjoyment of settling into a story.

I read an article last week on the need for soul healing. Hurriedness, the author suggests, disconnects us from God and each other. He calls it a symptom of a fragmented soul. Being hurried, he wrote, is entirely different from being busy. One is an inward form of striving - the antonym to submission - while the other is simply a description of external circumstances.

This distinction struck me as exactly right. Jam-packed days can feel restful and fulfilling, even as I'm climbing into bed at the end. And conversely, I'm often internally disconnected and rushed on a slow Sunday. Hurry is combatted by soul rest, soul healing. Which is exactly what reading on a Saturday afternoon in the sun was. 

So here's what I'm thankful for about our time in the mountains. Rest. Reading deeply. Boy Scout Troop 2000 who saved our sorry selves when our water sanitizer didn't work. Yep - rescue comes in surprising forms. And also: wide skies, grass naps, picnic lunches, and morning hikes that welcomed new scenery with every turn. California's foothills just get me: green chaparral and yucca, shivering gold gold grass, pines in the distance, spring flowers spilling onto the trail. Here's to more soul rest and more reading, mountains or not. 

Female farmers, and more food for more people

Through Plant With Purpose, I was lucky enough to put together a piece on female farming for Christianity Today's Her.meneutics blog. Excerpted below - read the whole deal here, if you'd like.  

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It's spring, and as sporadic rains fall on thirsty California, I am thinking about a certain biblical promise. Found in Hosea, it follows an assurance that God will heal, revive, and raise Israel up again: "He will come to us like the rain, Like the spring rain watering the earth" (NASB).

From a literary perspective, this comparison sounds just right. If God were an element, he'd be rain – soft yet torrential, the only remedy for desperate thirst and drought. But in Hosea's agricultural society, this promise was also literal. Rain was a saving grace, the invaluable resource that allowed crops to grow.

Today, rain still represents survival to rural families in the developing world. Small-scale subsistence farmers stake their lives on agriculture, relying on what they can grow to feed their families, earn an income, and send their kids to school. Armed with few resources, basic elements like water, seeds, and good soil mean the difference between hunger and health.

Yet, around the globe, millions of female subsistence farmers don't have equal access to basic resources to cultivate the land and sustain their communities. Mothers, sisters, daughters, and wives represent the backbone of the rural economy, especially in the developing world. They grow the food their families eat, cook meals, sell excess produce at market, and care for the household.

According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, women make up nearly half of the rural workforce, yet receive only 5 percent of agricultural extension services, such as training and seeds. Despite their role in the rural food system, female subsistence farmers remain one of the most under-resourced demographics in the world.

Wood Floor Dining

On the day we moved into our apartment, Davis and I raced each other up the stairs with box after box of wedding gifts. By the time the car was empty, a small summit had overtaken the living room. We sat on the wood floor, overheated and relieved, and salvaged two clean plates from a Pottery Barn box. Someone had given us fancy olive oil for the wedding, and we ripped and dipped chunks of leftover ciabatta bread. We ate our first meal in that home amid chaos while listening to Voxtrot and saying thank you - not quite communion, but close. 

That same night, friends came over bearing gifts: toilet paper, hand soap, butternut squash soup, a pot, and beer. (Side note: always, ALWAYS bring a friend who's just moved toilet paper, so they can finally use their own bathroom. And bring them cold beer.) We made grilled cheese sandwiches and heated the soup and sat on the floor again to eat, a little tribe this time.  

Of all the meals we've eaten in our apartment, those two might be my favorite.

I love them for their unexpectedness and informality. And I always liked this about Chilean hospitality, too. No pretense, and no invitation needed; if you showed up at a friend's house you could count on being welcomed and fed. On more than one occasion while living in Chile, I watched guests appear unnanounced at the dinner table, while my host mother ran to the kitchen for extra plates and food. Even for planned gatherings, there was little prep. No cleaning or fuss - just heat the grill and open the front door. 

What I love about our home is not how it looks but who fills it. Here's to informality, and more meals on the floor. 

Tenacity

Like most mornings, I pad

into our kitchen and scorch water.

Coffee blooms in veins

as the day rises. 

But before full consciousness

I was wrapped around you

arm over ribs

head under chin

and your pulse, like a miracle,

beat the bridge of my nose.

Life - 

rhythmic and determined.

Your unconscious resolve

is still new enough to wake me.