"You don't have to be perfect. That's not why you're here."

Now that I’m going away, I look at my world from new eyes; it’s a wonderful by-product of imminent departure. Each habit, friendship, and choice becomes shiny and dear.

Suddenly, I’m seeing the stories I haven’t told, glimpses into the glory of the people around me that I haven’t taken the trouble to paint. They have been too enmeshed with the everyday for me to bother telling them. I still have three weeks, though, and maybe I’ll find the time to do so here; perhaps it will even aid me in the interior process of closing out my last years here in Kansas City.

Today: a treat.

I have loved many things in these last years; there are rituals I’ve hardly noticed built into my life. One of them, for two years or so, has been that of Wednesday night yoga. Those of you who have committed to yoga over a long period can probably attest to its many benefits and wonders, and I will gladly join the choir and sing its praises. But it’s my yoga instructor that has made this process human.

Bernie’s class is called “Yoga is for Every Body,” and you might scoff at that title until you experience his first class. He’s not the typical yogi, being middle-aged, tall, large of build and pot-bellied; oftentimes he reaches up in a posture and we participants glimpse not a tiny swath of hairy belly. This is offset by clear, light eyes characterized by peace, and a somehow twisty grin. Clearly Bernie’s unique physique creates a certain permission, because there are people sweating it out every week of all shapes and sizes and levels of skill, many of whom I’ve never spied at the gym itself.

A more earnest, gentle yoga instructor I would be shocked to find. Every once and a while, Bernie references a physically difficult past, back problems from working full-time in retail, tinged with an unspoken-of hint of sadness and depression. Yoga changed his body, changed his mind, and changed his life. He’s a believer to the core. But also not a zealot—Bernie’s instructions toward the spiritual aspect of the practice are intentionally open so as to allow his students to “apply whatever faith” they practice. Many a time I have felt the Holy Spirit’s presence like a gentle nudge or a physical tingle, as Bernie has posed a question or directed our focus Above. Principles of balance and connectedness that could be alienating if forced have enriched my faith and beautified my life.

I love about Bernie that he’s a whole, inter-connected, balanced person himself. He nonchalantly mentions his full-time finance desk job one day. Then, every now and again he’ll reference the fact that he’s an artist, represented by Kansas City’s Blue Gallery. He can stand on his knees in lotus pose for several seconds (one of his favorite yoga masters says you should be “elated” if you can do this for 3). And the guy is a mental music library, making kick-ass mixes to set his class to. Though the mixes change, this one is always on it, and I will leave you to the chills of comfort and peace it should send through you.

Find more songs like Stronger Hand at Myspace Music

image: Within every one of us there is a heaven, painting by Bernal Koehrsen

Bright Sadness

It’s the Lenten season right now.

Growing up in a lackadaisical Protestant family, I didn’t practice Lent as a child; nor did my non-denominational awakening really encourage participation in it.

This year, I thought it was time. I can’t explain what pushed me towards it, but in the end, more than a whim and less than a Word from Heaven caused me to decide I wanted to go Vegan for the six or so weeks that comprise the Lenten season. Vegan means no meat, no dairy; I have felt it good to also eliminate refined sugars and caffeine as much as possible.

On Ash Wednesday, which kicks off the season, I went to an Anglican service with friends Jonathan and Ben. I’d never been to one before, and actually had no idea what Lent is actually about in the Christian tradition, outside of giving stuff up. That night I learned that it’s considered a time of “Bright Sadness.” It involves, first, examination of our human condition, turning away from what is unhealthy, unjust, dysfunctional, or otherwise grieves the heart of God. That’s the sadness. But then, it’s also bright, made so by the glorious hope that things of difficulty and mourning in this life can and will be made right by Jesus’ death and resurrection.

“Hm, that’s interesting” would more or less summarize my reaction to these findings, as I was then concentrating on teetering on the edge of my new diet.

Oh, but the Lord is interesting. I thought I ought to look at the story of Daniel, since a Vegan diet is pretty much what Christian fasters call a “Daniel fast”—eating only things that grow from the ground. In the first chapter of the book, Daniel and his friends are living in captivity in Babylon, but as the choicest of the young men, are being trained and pampered. Presumably, they are given the richest of foods to eat. However,

“Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine, and he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way.” (1:8)

So it is that he and his buddies eat only vegetables and water, and turn out healthier than all the other strapping young men.

I began, as I carried this story in my mind, to consider how partaking of certain foods might defile us. There’s some clear evidence that we as a culture aren’t consuming the healthiest of diets; we’re heavy on the grains, fats, sugars, and processed foods, and many of our kids can’t recognize simple vegetables in their original form. We’re defiling our own bodies and stealing our own health by not eating as we should.

So that’s one thing. I can choose to take responsibility, when I eat a big ol’ cookie, for the extra weight those kinds of choices add to my body and the other ways it messes with my system. But do my choices about what to eat only defile me? Maybe Daniel and company abstained from the foods of Babylon for an even bigger reason than personal health. This is the train of thought that has turned everything upside down.

At work, I thought about what we sell.* Consider the muffins we sell, that have an ingredient list three inches long. Who made them? Where did the flour and sugar come from? Where they grew, was the soil managed well? Were chemicals used on the crops that could harm our health? Were the farmers compensated well? And what about our meat? Who raised the turkeys whose meat we put on our sandwiches? Did those birds ever see the light of day? How were they killed? Who butchered them, and are they making a fair living? Was the feces of the beef cattle allowed to leach into a town’s water supply?

There are answers to these questions, but I don’t know them for sure. In the last year, I’ve learned enough about these issues to know that, in general, these answers paint a bleak picture. As consumers, we’re enabling small farmers (those remaining, and there aren’t many) to be run out of business, soil to be sapped of its health, animals to be treated as objects, and workers to be treated as animals or pieces of a machine.

I say “we” because I’m totally included in this. My choices do this. I am responsible.

This understanding has brought repentance to a whole new level. Suddenly, as I look at how we—I—treat food, I’m looking at a giant cultural deficit that I believe is evil and has gone astray from God’s good, righteous, functional plan for us as human beings. And I’m saying, over and over, several times a day, with all my heart, “I’M SO SORRY. My choices deserve death because they have caused death. Help me change my ways, God. I want to align my life, ALL of my life, with who you are.” From that place, then, I’m crying out that God would have mercy on our culture for these ways that we ignore or deny what is true and good.

Because there’s better, right? There’s a “bright” to this sadness. We’re meant to feel good, all the time. There are good, healthy, loving, joyful, caring ways to eat, to buy food, to grow food, to run food companies. And they come from a good, healthy, loving, joyful, caring God who is seated in Heaven rooting for us, and our children and all our descendants, to have good, whole lives.

*I use this not to defame my workplace, but because it’s the closest, most regular way I come into contact with the “normal” way our culture interacts with food.

Putting Down Roots

It’s a dreary day: still, the grays and browns of winter dominate our Midwest landscape. It’s nearly time to plant cool-season vegetables, and I’m scheming at how best to make use of the bits of soil we have at our house. The goal this year is to use what we have here at the house and take really good care of it; granted last year’s experience, I don’t think that, as much as my housemates travel, it’s reasonable to expect to take really good care of two gardens.

In addition to plotting (and re-plotting, and re-plotting again) our garden, I’m amping up for the growing season by tackling another tome of Wendell Berry’s essays. This time it’s Home Economics I’m keeping tucked in my bag at all times. Again, I’m finding it uncanny how the writings of this man manage to tack down so many of the discontents that swim in my heart about our culture, and yet put them in a greater perspective than I myself can muster, being just a young pup compared to this prophetic grandpa to all of us budding conservationist agriculturists.

“Property, Patriotism, and National Defense” caught me off guard. It’s mostly a well-reasoned rant against nuclear war. Like a lot of people in our generation, I’m ignorant about this issue and don’t know its ins and outs. Berry, ever able to see through the flimsy reasoning of our society, hacks at the cause of nukes like it’s a shoddily-constructed piñata. I read with a bit of a grimace and a hint of nausea as disillusionment with our culture comes and knocks at my door.

On the other hand, he also presents his own ideal of national defense. Come to find out, Mr. Berry is strongly for certain things even more than he is against nuclear weapons. I respect that. Doesn’t this sound good?

“…Widespread, settled, thriving local communities, each having a proper degree of independence, living so far as possible from local sources, and using its local sources with a stewardly care that would sustain its life indefinitely, even through times of adversity.”

He’s constantly asking questions that make the reader think about locality: do we know the place we live in? Do we know its physical landscape, its cultural heritage? Do we care for the land, culture and community of our home? Are we staying for a lifetime, for a committed season, or are we just stopping in? Clearly he’s a man in favor of staying put, not just passively hanging out in a place, but actively working towards its maintenance, health, and betterment.

The benefits of staying put and cultivating relationship where one lives are many. Indeed, how can we relate with others without enjoying common history, common life, common space?* Without the practical ways of caring for one another that living together necessitates, can we truly love one another?

This is the time of year when people our age plan summer trips, get accepted to grad school programs, finish school and leave the city. But for workers of the land, it’s a time to put down roots. While my friends are looking at traveling or moving, I’m looking at a few months of getting to know my back yard really intimately, shepherding a flock of vegetables, and bringing people into the process. It can feel boring in this swirl of youth culture in which travel is like a status symbol. How good to be able to have a wider perspective, thanks to a man who’s been watching the long shifts of our culture for a whole, long life. I’m grateful to Mr. Berry for the reminder that living in the land and cultivating faithfulness** does indeed lay a deep foundation for peace.

*See “Men and Women in Search of Common Ground” for more on this concept.
**Psalm 37

Death Swallowed Up

A week ago, my friend Dawn died. She was a campus minister at KU, a dear friend of two of my dear friends and a role model for years. In fact, she lived with my mentor-figure-turned-friend, Naomi, at the house that first enticed me into living in community with the beauty of their relationships.

Dawn was born with Cystic Fibrosis, a disease of the lungs that tends to take people’s lives before the age of 25. All the time I knew her, she struggled with breathing, and had to spend a good hour a day strapped into this machine that would shake loose the mucus in her lungs. But this wasn’t what defined her. Dawn was a daughter of the Lord, confident in him in spite of the many, many prayers for healing that seemingly went unheard. With broken young women, she showed deep compassion; with her friends she was frankly wise and sassy. She had the deep love of her husband, Austin, and loved him well in return.

There’s not a lot you can say or do in the face of the years in and years out suffering of a young woman; there’s even less you can say about her death. Surely, all of us who sat at her memorial service yesterday afternoon, watching a slideshow of pictures from her life, were wondering on some level how it is that a good God lets good people die. It’s the same question I asked several years back when I lost my 54-year-old mom to cancer, and a version of the deep ache I felt as I lost my three remaining grandparents the last year and a half. Death, death, death, sorrow and pain. Why death? What do we do with it?

The timing of Dawn’s passing in my life is interesting. The Boiler Room as a whole is experiencing a great move of Joy, and learning what and why that is. On a personal level, I’ve been more joyful in the last few months than maybe my whole life combined. This joy isn’t simply happiness, an ignorance or an ignoring of the difficulties of life. Instead, it’s a perspective that there is something above hardships that is and will be overcoming them, transcending them.

Often, these days, as I worship God in song, I also worship him by imagining him, Jesus, at the right hand of God, in an unimaginable heaven. He’s a man who knew suffering as well as any other man—better than most, it’d be fair to wager—and died a torturous death. But he’s free of death! He’s not bent over, as I am, sobbing his guts out, hopeless and despairing. He’s joyful, because though he sees death and the package of pain and grief that comes with it, he sees equally, below him in the stretch of eternity, life that includes no death and no tears, life as he intended it from the beginning.

As I mingled with old friends after the memorial service, someone said to me, “You know, so many people here were looking at Dawn’s beautiful life, and asking why bad things happen to good people. But Dawn answered that question with her life.” In Christ, Dawn conquered Death. She was not squelched by it; it did not take life away even though she physically stopped living.

In the book of Hosea, God says this to Israel: “I will deliver this people from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death. Where, O death, are your plagues? Where, O grave, is your destruction?” Though Dawn leaves in her wake a bunch of really sad people who will be in a painful process of learning to live without her, there’s a substantial hope, tangible in the midst of this. I can feel it, different from the other deaths I’ve experienced in my life. We’re so sad she’s not with us, but we know whom she’s with. Dawn is redeemed from death, and in that, so are we.

Bread and Glitter article

I will be writing now and again for the KCBR arts journal, Bread and Glitter. It's a really wonderful exploration for our little family into the intersections between art, theology, and community. My first article for them, which is a combination and extension of several of my blogs about gardening, went up this week. It's called "Rotten Good Soil." You can read it here, and give B&G some lovin'.

That's amore? Woah.

Sometimes these days, it feels like I’ve been swept into a whirlwind. Days are swirling by, leaving a trail of debris on my heart.

There are lots of ways to say “change.” There’s the mild “modification,” mechanical “adjustment” or “remodeling,” clerical “amendment.” None of these describes what’s happening here and now in the middle of this glorious storm; what I’m marveling is not beige and nor is it of my own doing like a mark in a ledger or a shift in a schedule. This thing is forcefully mysterious, like a rip tide.

So what’s got me disheveled with a grin on my face? I’m knowing love, my friends. No, there’s not some dude I’m gaga over. I’m googly-eyed over a family and shocked to find myself in a tailor-made little spot in the middle of it all.

This is a shock because, while my natural family never withheld the expression of love, somewhere, I came to believe I was not right for anyone, not good enough, not worthy of esteem. According to my own estimation, my quiet disposition disqualified me from attention, my simple gifts were less valuable than those of others, and my fierce affection for others scared them off. And I began to say “no” to who I am.

There hasn’t been a single moment of shifting; instead it truly has been like being in the middle of a force of nature, with multiple things in flux at any given moment, nothing in its rightful place. Then, things come to rest, and I realize I know something new in the very center of me.

I know that to accept the identity God has given me means that I accept some limitations. I can’t be everything. It’s ok to not be everything. Geez, thank goodness! Something in that understanding broke a heavy burden on me, and gave me permission to receive what the Lord gave me long ago and to be who I am. I read this and think, “Well yeah, duh!” but there’s sure as hell a difference between knowing that in your head and believing it in your heart. To be able do the latter is a gift, a rare treasure.

So that’s really floaty and abstract. The way it plays out is with people. For the last four months I’ve been in consistent relationship with two groups of people: one, a group of learning leaders we refer to as the Collaborative. The other is my house church, primarily made up of artists and art students. In both of these groups, I’ve been challenged to expose myself, to risk loving other people in words and deeds. I sincerely thought, in my inmost being, that I would be ignored, rejected, or found a failure. How can it be that for years I have lived under that assumption?

The actual reaction has been the opposite.

Heroes have hugged me tight. Beautiful men of amazing character have told me they love me. Culinary geniuses have fed me with love. Busy pastors have listened to me and prayed for me. Brilliant artists have treasured my likeness with their pencils. It’s baffling, undoing, and altogether good. Because I do the same, with all joy.

It’s a marvelous exchange, a righteous reciprocation the likes of which I never dreamed. And yet, here I am, upside down in the middle of it.

Oh, just a sappy garden recap...

It’s a crispy-cold Friday morning, clear and sunny, and I am sitting here in my room staring out my window. Just recently, the trees out there were full of brilliant green leaves, their heavy branches ceremoniously waving in the wind. Now, lots of the leaves are gone, while others are faded greens or golds, or the color of rust. Again, the apartment building down the street is visible, reminding me of my placement right in urban Kansas City.

I’m wearing my coat and drinking a hot cup of coffee, because we can’t get our heat to turn on. It’s a strange reminder of the shifting season as I reflect with the Lord who has been with me this last 8 months, who has stirred my imagination, pricked my conscience, and developed friendships in the arena of gardening. Any day now, we’ll have a hard frost, and the garden will be officially over for the season. I feel a funny sort of grief about that, not too dramatic, but noticeable nonetheless. At the same time, I anticipate the “OVER;” I am longing to turn the page, to declare it “GOOD,” as the Lord did his work on the first day, before moving onto something even more fruitful.

Can we flip back through the pages first, though?

There was a dream in my heart to have a garden. I suppose it goes back to some dreary afternoon when I was little (and again, last year, when I was big), as I read stories like the Secret Garden, which painted gardens as hidden places of wonder and life and uncanny communion with beasts.

In late winter of this year, then, I asked our landlords if I could till up some of their spacious and then uncared-for yard. Since we already had a modest garden plot in our own backyard, my intention was simply to learn and to make use of something that had no function. I didn’t really expect they would say yes, but they did, and offered a sizable chunk of their space for our use, and granted us access to their home—and therefore their two surly adolescent boys, four darling little girls, an anxious German shepherd, and a formidable but dopey mastiff.

Come March, we started working the soil…which we discovered was healthy but littered with stones and bricks and other more interesting objects from a 16-plex which had been razed there years ago. In spite of the fact that I spent hours and hours digging stuff out, I was energized and happy, even drawing a sunshine with a happy face in my journal to illustrate my joie de vivre. The most beautiful thing about this phase was that, as I worked (sometimes with my roommate Dana, sometimes with other good friends who came along for the ride), I talked with God, and he spoke. There were sweet moments of hearing his sorrow and hopes over the neighborhood in which the garden is situated, and the people that walk by, or watch from the run-down apartments next door with lots of windows knocked out. My friend the Holy Spirit and me started to dream together about teaching people how to grow food on unused land, how to cook it, eat well, and enjoy others in the process.

Fencing was donated and put into place, seeds were bought, a hose was extended out to the plot, and then it was time to plant. What simplicity! At the right time and when the soil was not too wet, I planted flowers, beans, squash, and melons. You poke a couple of holes in the soil, you put a seed inside and cover it up, you water it gently for a while, and—bada boom!—you’ve got yourself some seedlings! It was a process so simple it made me uncomfortable. Would anything really grow? With each planting, I blessed the seeds like children, “May the Lord bless you and keep you; may he make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you.” Yet, at the same time, I told God it would be ok if nothing really grew, that the experience in itself would be fruit enough.

But to my joy, some plants poked their heads out of the ground; most survived and grew. There was a period of waiting, and of faithful tending—weeding, mulching, watering, thinning. In spite of two incredibly needy dogs, both of whom could kill me if they wanted, the times in the garden were mostly lovely and enchanting. I loved discovering what shapes the leaves took as they formed, how fuzzy the vines were on the squash plants, and the way the female melon flowers swelled into fruit like pregnant bellies.

Then there was fruit! Flowers! Vegetables! Beautiful beans, vibrant muskmelon, scary giant zucchini, and lovely summer squash. The zinnias blazed in color against the back stone wall. I came to understand that there’s nothing like picking something you grew, bringing it back to your kitchen, and enjoying it right away. As I’m not yet a parent, it might be one of the more fulfilling experiences I’ve had. If that sounds silly to you, grow a few things next year and you might change your mind.

I’m sad to say that the early summer was the apex of the experience and that things went gradually downhill from there. My zucchini, poor things, were brutally attacked by bugs. First it was teeny tiny aphids, and then some big old beetles. I let them conquer the plants, first one and then the other. Then they went after the summer squash, a truly beautiful delight of a plant that I was sad to see go down. I mysteriously lost a couple of muskmelon plants, while in the meantime, the watermelon grew slowly, and then ripened without me realizing it and were inedible. I only got two good ones off that plant, both in October!

My visits have become scarcer since summer closed. I’m largely deterred by the dogs, who, hungry for attention, swarm about forcefully and grasp at my attention in scary ways. They’ve made the little garden patch their domain, and I’ve resigned myself to it, resolving that if I have a plot there next year, there will be adequate fencing, in spite of possible cost. Luckily, what I have planted pretty well takes care of itself. There are turnips and rutabaga and cabbages growing still, while the butternut squash whose mother vines have not perished are still ripening until we get a hard freeze. Some of them are fighting hard against pests, but I don’t think that can be helped, as the rest of the vegetation in the yard was poisoned off in late summer and they have nowhere else to go.

And so it winds down, and my little plot and me prepare ourselves for the repose of winter. Though I used to hate this gray, barren season, I may indeed relish the chance to recoup, to reformulate my process and gather materials.

What I know right now is that it has been a good beginning. A foundation has been laid. Next year’s gardens(s?) will certainly not look the same, but I have no shame, no fear. I’m deeply grateful for the wonderful gift that was my secret garden.