Comfort in a Purl

This morning I've felt lazy. And, oddly enough, lazy often takes me to the porch with a book. But it needs to be a book that feels like it's in a different direction than where I've been going for the past week or month.

So I dug out Knit One, Purl a Prayer today, and took it to the side porch. Did you know I have two porches? Side and back.

On the back porch, I've been working hard, in so many ways. Including writing a book that feels both the same and different from what I've done in the past. Because it's fiction, it took a lot out of me. Having never written fiction before, I had to learn as I went along, and I was presuming to actually teach others how to write fiction, so it had to be good. Pressure, pressure.

Now, I always feel a sense of peace on the back porch, but I knew that had been tainted just a bit, because of all the hard work I've been doing there. So I went to the side porch, and here I am.

As you may remember, I've been aching for solitude this past year. And I've honored that ache, and it still remains.

Yet I know there will come a time. A re-entry. I've been wondering what that might look like, and I still don't have a clear picture. To that, this morning I am comforted by two things from Knit One, Purl a Prayer.

The first is a communal knitting project a woman kept in her home. It wasn't pretty; it was useful. Anyone who came into her home could practice on it, no pressure to be good. Just learn.

And so as I wonder about my solitude and my re-entry, I take this image to heart. It is okay to just knit my way, as if in the home of a generous woman with her communal knitting-piece. Did you know God might have such a piece too, somehow? I think maybe God does. We might not need to know exactly where we are going, to put our hands to growing in this life.

The second thing that comforts me from Knit One is the amazing community that apparently exists around the pastime of knitting. There are groups you can join. It's a little like church without the preaching, as some of these groups offer the chance to have spiritual connections with others not only through sharing a craft and stories but also through giving to the world.

It's almost amusing for me to think about maybe someday joining a knitting group. It's been so long since I've knitted. And maybe I won't join such a group, but I am reminded that community and the chance to give-back can be found in the most unexpected places, if we are seeking a chance to belong and bless. To this end, yes, I might even read Knitting for Peace: Make the World a Better Place One Stitch at a Time.

For now, though, I'm just sitting on the side porch. It's quiet here this morning. And, for now, that's the way I'm still knitting-my-way. Taking the quiet into my hands and holding it near.

What I Am Not Doing for Easter

It is a continuing part of this season for me. The desire to "not do."

So I am not going crazy with preparations and readings and posts and, and, and.

I am simply looking.

Have you seen what Spring is doing?

It's a resurrection, blooming on every tree.

When Simple Things Speak

It has always been this way for me. The simplest things speak. Last night, tidying up the living room, I saw this Off button my littlest daughter made, for one of her animation projects.

Standing by the coffee table, I stopped moving and stared. Struck, yes, that's how I felt. You'd think I had been visited by an angel.

But I was not afraid.

Just very still.

And the simple red Off button has been speaking to me ever since.

Yellow Flames Flutter

The other night I pulled out my house copy of InsideOut. Not sure why. Maybe because it had somehow turned up at my bedside. And the solitude it had poured from seemed to be calling.

I realize that many of the poems are just glimpses, like this one...

Kale is purpling,
bluing and
purpling.


Or this one...

Little lemon tongues,
wagged off at last.


And this one...

Lightning flashes
and I write
of yellow leaves.


There are longer poems in the book too, but these are the kinds that solitude evoked—a simple focusing on one vision. An awe, if you will, and a willingness to capture that awe in very few words.

So you will not be surprised when I was pleased by Chapter 7 of Sanctuary of the Soul, which suggested poetry (reading or writing it), as a way to embrace silence and release ourselves from distraction.

Foster shares this poem from Robert Siegel...

Yellow flames flutter
about the feeder:
A Pentecost of finches.


Where does Siegel (or anyone?) come up with something like that? First the heart must see... and flutter. Near the feeder, in the yard, perhaps beside a lake or the sea.

What's Your Chair?

For a special project, I'm reading a book called A Sunlit Absence: Silence, Awareness, and Contemplation.

Hmmm.

I love the picture on the front. A gentle woman leaning in the shadows, arm on a book, quiet. I love the idea of silence and solitude (you know I do).

The book encourages us to choose a prayer chair on which to practice our silent moments ("quite googleable and not especially inexpensive"). I am wondering: couldn't a red sled do?

It also occurs to me that all of the examples so far, of successful contemplatives, were monks and nuns (and of course Jesus in the Wilderness). I wonder if these people were naturally introverted and drawn to the idea of silence. I have little doubt that they were childless.

I'm not judging the book yet (by its cover or anything else :), but I simply want to say that I truly wonder where the extrovert fits in a life of faith, where the woman with a few children hanging on her arms can find silence and solitude. I found some outdoors for a year, but it wasn't quite what the book I'm reading seems to have in mind.

Sitting

Wind whips, the hemlocks dip and sway. I sit in silence, sipping green tea. Waiting for solitude to do its work. To stir my soul in ways I cannot see, cannot make happen. Something about simply being here, setting myself in the cool of the day when sun is obscured by greyness and rain is at my back... something about it feels like a swabbing, a sweeping, a winnowing. Nothing happens per se, no lightning with this particular mist, from these clouds on this day. I am just sitting. Letting the wind wail, the trees speak. Sitting. Waiting.