The Plan

For the next few months, at least, I am hoping to post here with more regularity and consistency. To that end, I am experimenting with a new plan for the kinds of posts I will put up each week.  Here's the plan:

I can do anything once I have made a list (or ten).

Monday: Sabbath Reflections
    Ever since I started this blog, I've wanted to write about how habits of Sabbath-keeping ground my understanding of home, work, church, and relationships.  Those reflections are too big for single post, so I am committing to begin each week with a short reflection on the Sabbath.

Tuesday: Songs for Pilgrims
    My longest iTunes playlist is called (rather unimaginatively) "Songs about Home." On Tuesdays, I will share a song from this list.

Wednesday: Life Together
    These posts will deal with questions about how relationships of all kind--including those shaped and formed by the church--"establish the solitary in a home" (Psalm 68.6)

Thursday: Hidden Graces (name subject to change)
    Thursdays will be a day for pictures -- one of the hidden moments of grace that make a place or moment feel like home.
    
Friday: Letters from Home  
     These posts will be letters I write--some of them will be real letters I have composed and sent, while others will be letters that--for one reason or another--I can never actually send. 
   
Saturday: Homemaking
    On Saturday I will write about some of the concrete habits and practices of homemaking--everything from DIY projects and farmers' markets to "Living More with Less" posts

This is, of course, a tentative plan, but I hope that the structure will serve me well. As I plan posts and refine this structure, I must ask, What kind of posts would interest you? What sorts of themes, questions, and topics would you like to read?

"Let him easter in us"

My Lenten fast clarified and ordered many of my thoughts about home.  I'm thankful, because none of my other fasts worked. I tried to fast from sleep after 5 AM, so I could spend more time in prayer and preparation for the day, but I began failing that fast almost immediately.  I really wanted to fast from electric lights after sunset, but I was discouraged by the massive reorganization of my days that would have required. I couldn't even summon the willpower to observe some of my small fasts from years past (e.g. no colored ink, no bright clothing, no earrings) that have remind me that when Easter arrives, we remember that another world--a brighter, better, more real world--is possible.

My blogging fast, however, was a joy, and I was delighted by all the friends and strangers who shared their words here.  I've spent this week considering how I want to proceed with my blog now that Easter is here--I want to sustain, as much as possible, the steady habit of posting words and pictures each day.  I'll have more on that soon, but in the meantime, I want to share some pictures from Easter Sunday.

I invited friends from church and school to come for Easter dinner, and a score of merry men and women arrived with all sorts of wonderful foods: fruits, breads, casseroles, salads, drinks strong and sweet.  We ate and laughed, hunted eggs, enjoyed dessert on blankets in the back yard.

I spent the afternoon in a whirl of hostessing-happiness: sure that everyone had plenty to eat, a good place to sit, and people to talk to.  At the same time, I kept asking myself, "Is this holy? Is this a testament to the Resurrection?" The answer, coming without hesitation, was "Yes!" But I'm still not entirely sure why.  Pagans are as good as Christians at having feasts, and other than singing the doxology to bless our meal, we didn't say very much about Jesus. 

And yet it was a day set apart. A meal consecrated. A day I bought luxurious foods (brisket, pineapple) to celebrate the kingdom that is coming because Christ has conquered death. A day where grown men and women throw confetti and blow bubbles in the same spirit in which they sing "Praise God from whom all blessings flow; / Praise him all creatures here below!"

It was a day of good news. It was the kind of day that makes an evangelist of me. I wanted to stand like Lady Wisdom at the front door, calling to all the lonely, dreary people, "Come in! Join us! Christ is risen and we have casseroles and love one another!"
 
It was a day that makes me pray each day, "Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east..."* 


 How did you celebrate Easter this year?





*(Gerard Manley Hopkins, "The Wreck of the Deutschland")

Where we wait

If a man die, shall he live again? all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come. (Job 14.14)



(Good Friday and Holy Saturday: the final days of Lent)

In and out

(A guest post by George MacDonald on this thirty-seventh day of Lent)

"...home, as you may or may not know, is the only place where you can go out and in. There are places you can go into, and places you can go out of; but the one place, if you do but find it, where you may go out and in both, is home." 

Lilith (1895), Chapter 3

George is the author of numerous fantasies, fairy tales, novels, sermons, and essays. He died in 1905.  Learn more about him at http://glowwormandstar.tumblr.com/.

Where we can be ourselves

Easter 1991

(Day 36 of Lent)

Hands do the talking

 (A guest post by Eric on this thirty-fifth day of Lent)

Lacking a picture representing how the work I did on my Grandfather's farm etched an image of home for me, I stumbled upon a picture I took of my Oma and Opa's hands.  This picture helped me realize the importance hands have on a home.  Hands might be the part of the body that physically accomplishes the most that make a house a home:  building a garden to provide fresh food to the family; repairing or putting things together for display; writing a letter, sending an email; calling friends and family; providing the warmth of physical touch when the day has required so much of you; and doing the dishes, which my hands find themselves doing so much at my home or at a friend's.  When I don't know or can't put in words the emotions I have, my hands do the talking, finding a place to perform those feelings in action.  I think they are the intimate workhorses of the body or the first responders to need.  Is there an image of hands that remind you of home?

Hands pictured (clockwise): Sam Rodgers, Jackie Bonvin, Eric McAnly, Caleb Fristoe

Hands pictured: Opa, Oma

Where we shout, Hosanna!

Calvary Baptist Church celebrates Palm Sunday in the park. April 1, 2012

(Day 34 of Lent)