The Ann's at My Table

"Stare at something beautiful. Stare for a long, long time."

This is the first Ann. The one who reminded me months ago to slow down.

She is practical. She gives me ways.




The first Ann's words resonate with the words of the second Ann. The one who reminded me just a few short days ago to be "happy in all these little things that God gives." The second Ann is leaning over cheese curls with her camera, when her husband walks in the door.

"I do feel foolish," she says. "I mean, it's curls of mozzarella and cheddar piled high in a pond of golden day."

These Ann's, both a part of my fast-paced online world. They visit my thoughts, accompany my moments. Slow down. Note the sunlight. Note the curls of time, the secret tucked-in places.

I decide to stare at something beautiful. How hard could it be?




My first thought is to cheat the experience, work from memory. I know what my great-grandmother's table cloth looks like.

Don't I?

My second thought is to set a timer. But what constitutes a "long time"?

Forget the details, I decide. Just jump in (mosey in?).




I feel the linen between my fingers. The weave is uneven, as I suppose all linen is. What is linen? I realize I don't know.

I don't know if my great-grandmother used a pattern for this table cloth, or if she dreamed it up herself. Oh goodness, are these grape leaves and grapes? I hadn't noticed. Ah, communion sewn into the cloth—a silent, spiritual poetry that sat under dishes and glasses, time and again.

And there is more I don't know. So much more. Is this the lesson of beauty? How much we don't know? Is this what moves us to awe? The ache to know?

I don't know how she chose the thread. It is strong yet silky. Did someone peddle it to her door? Did she walk to a shop on some German market street? Who made this thread that has lasted through time?

The stitches are small, so so small. How many hours did she work to make them? Did her fingers hurt as she moved the needle through nights and days, stitching a love gift for her daughter's wedding? Did she work by gaslight? Electric? Did she get bored, or did this work soothe her spirit?

I don't know. All I know is, thanks to my sweet Ann's, I have looked for a long time. And beauty has left me with questions.




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Thanks to...

Ann Kroeker, author of Not So Fast: Slow-Down Solutions for Frenzied Families

Ann Voskamp, author of One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are

Top Christmas Book Picks

There are books I return to, because they give me new gifts every time I open them. Sometimes these books give me old gifts too, and that is good, because I delight to relive the wonder or joy, the philosophy or challenge.

When I consider these again-and-again books, I realize that although I've taken certain things from them, they also promise to give general gifts to their readers. Perhaps some of these gifts are the kind you might want to put on your wish list or share with someone else this Christmas...


The gift of writing-freedom

The Soul Tells A Story: Engaging Creativity With Spirituality In The Writing Life and The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life. Does writing call you? Are you answering that call? What gets in the way? What might move you forward? Here are my two favorite books that offer writing-freedom, not just anecdote or advice.


The gift of spiritual rejuvenation

Sacred Rhythms: Arranging Our Lives for Spiritual Transformation. Are you tired, maybe disillusioned, or in search of deeper direction in your spiritual life? This gentle book is worth reading once a year.


The gift of reassurance for mothers

Ordinary Mom, Extraordinary God: Encouragement to Refresh Your Soul. This is my standard baby-shower gift, or anytime gift for mothers who could use wisdom, solace and a dose of light humor.


The gift of reconciliation (denominational and ethnic respectively)

The Real Mary: Why Evangelical Christians Can Embrace the Mother of Jesus and Reconciliation Blues: A Black Evangelical's Inside View of White Christianity. Both of these books give a new twist on subjects we think we already know about. And they pave the way for reconciliation. The latter might even bring you to tears, it's so honest and beautifully written.


The gift of forgiveness

Stone Crossings: Finding Grace in Hard and Hidden Places. I used to think this was a book about grace. And it is, in its way. But somewhere along the line, I realized that many people were finding a particular kind of grace in its pages: forgiveness. One woman wrote to tell me that she'd been told to forgive for a long, long time... through friends, sermons, religious books, and nothing had ever made it possible. Until she read Stone Crossings. This sentiment has been echoed elsewhere, including in Glynn Young's precious revelation of how the book helped him forgive his father.


The gift of a poignant story

The Summer Book is a gorgeous telling of the relationship between a young girl and her grandmother, both coming to life and facing endings in their own ways. Kristin Lavransdatter changed the way I write. Undset's choice of details is often simple, yet conveys powerful emotions of love and loss. The Things They Carried was one of those books that took me by surprise. I don't ordinarily prefer war stories, but this one gets to the heart of humanity in amazing ways. It also makes you think about the nature of truth and story.


The gift of poetry

How to Read a Poem: And Fall in Love with Poetry and Poemcrazy: Freeing Your Life with Words. As children, we are naturally drawn to poetry. Yet many of us lose our love of it along the way. Both of these books will help you find the joy and necessity of poetry again, the first lyrically so and the second creatively so.


The gift of better blogging

Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers. This is one of my all-time favorite books on how to navigate the blogsophere and grow an audience. Every blogger should read it at least once.


The gift of thoughtful morning devotions

Celtic Devotions: A Guide to Morning and Evening Prayer. Simple yet deep, this is a beautiful book. The prayers are like poetry (which makes sense, because many are taken from Celtic song).


The gift of smart humor

The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible. This one is hilarious and gives a fun perspective on our Old Testament roots. It's worth buying the book just for the description of how he tries to live the Proverb "slow to anger" while at Mail Boxes, Etc. (Do remember that this is a book written by an agnostic. I probably don't need to say that, but I didn't want anyone to be surprised when the author admits to believing or not believing in things that various kinds of Christians might hold dear.)


The gift of simplicity

Not So Fast: Slow-Down Solutions for Frenzied Families. This good-humored book will make you smile while giving you practical ways to simplify your life and dig deep into family relationships.


The gift of art

A Profound Weakness: Christians & Kitsch is a bit expensive, but if you can afford the price tag it's full of excellent art philosophy. And the pictures are gorgeous (all the more amazing because she has photographed kitsch in unusual, beautiful ways.)

Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art, and Culture will give you new ways to think about art and faith. The essays have a great balance of both the personal and philosophical.

What gift do you want to give someone this year? Maybe you can find it in this little Christmas list.


Stone Crossings Christmas photo, by L.L. Barkat.

Drift Me

Night comes and I realize I'm bound up. I can feel it ...as if cords are laced from one part of my insides to another, and little tension-elves are pulling them tight, tight, tighter. My breathing is shallow. I keep sighing, as if to catch elusive breath. The day has done me in, or maybe the week... okay, the month.

It has been long, too long— sitting inside, letting life wrap and tug. I remember these words, written during my year of daily outdoor solitude and I'm filled with the urgency to be freed...

There were days when I would go outside only to think, “There is not a single new thing I will find here.” In these moments, it felt utterly true, and I felt I was wasting my time in my excuse-for-a-woods. Then, in the next moment, the trees above me would shudder in the breeze, and something would blow past. Seeds, maybe, releasing themselves to the wind, raining over me.

Then I would start to relax, to breathe. It occured to me that I breathed differently when I was outside, and that with each breath I lost some care of the day. I became a lady’s corset, unstrung by the wind, unlaced by black-capped chickadees.

Why have I gotten away from this? The commitment over, I guess, life rushed back in, but my heart still needs rain, seeds, wind, sky. The Ann's are reminding me to come back to lazy moments, to let God drift me.


Sunset Over the River photo by Sara. Used with permission.

RELATED:
Ann K's book Not So Fast: Slow-Down Solutions for Frenzied Families
Ann K's post Catch a Falling Star
Ann V's Slow Down, A Primer
High Calling Blogs Power of the Slowing
elk's Four Windows
Mom2Six's Still
S. Etole's Take Time
LL's Stumble into Loveliness and Morning with the Moon
Kelly's A Broken Still
nAncY's into
Maureen's Reading GoodNightMoon
Bonnie's The Beauty of Whitespace
Esther's Ditch the Leash
Joelle's This
Ann K's From the Rush to a Hush
Jennifer's Hush...
Bonnie's The Call of Love Whispers
DSMama's The Best Part
Kirsten's Cemetery Walking
Monica's Slow to See the Spinning
Jessica's Sit Down!

HOW ABOUT YOU?
Do you have a story to share, about the need to slow down, or your experiences with "slowing"? Drop your link in the comment box and I'll link to you here (links back are appreciated, though not required; that way, others can see what we're up to and share too). Let's celebrate and drift together...

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Poetry prompt: Make a "word pool" of at least five slow words. Yeah, I guess molasses counts. But verbs are good too. Create a poem using a minimum of one of your slow words, but feel free to use the whole pool. Post your poem by Thursday, October 22, for links and possible feature at High Calling Blogs. Drop your post link here in the comment box so I don't miss it. Thanks!

This Blog is a Book

"Blogging is for angst-filled teens."

That's what I said just a few months before launching Seedlings in Stone.

I was talking to Simon & Schuster's Director of Marketing and Promotion. I think we were both eating curried lentils when I showed my terrible naivete, but she forgave me— not for the lentils, but for the misled comment about blogging. Then she firmly contradicted me, "You need to blog."

She was right. Blogging has shaped my professional life in ways I never anticipated. And I'm not alone. Off-hand I can think of several wonderful friends who've found unexpected opportunities through blogging.

For instance, I just read a chapter in Makoto Fujimura's book Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art, and Culture; it's called "Planting Seedlings in Stone: Art in New York City." The first time I read that chapter, it was a humble blog post. I loved the ideas so much that (obviously) I used part of the title to name my blog. At the time Mako wrote that post, did he have any idea it would one day be in a book, along with many of his other posts?

I think too of Gordon Atkinson, who started out as an anonymous blogger called Real Live Preacher. His posts, gathered and bound, now grace my home in the form of a lyrical, amusing, straight-on book called... um... what else... Real Live Preacher. Gordon now shares his life with us through his awesome writing, over at HighCallingBlogs.

Then there's Billy Coffey, who started tentatively, wondering... what would this blogging thing really lead to? Today, Billy writes a parenting column for us at HighCallingBlogs and he found an agent (or maybe she found him).

Ann Kroeker, the Parenting Content Editor at HighCallingBlogs approached other bloggers and included their work in her new book Not So Fast: Slow-Down Solutions for Frenzied Families. Why, just today, as part of my talk "Jesus the Gucci Guy", I read Ann Voskamp's contribution to the book. You could have heard a pin drop.

If you're here today, you probably know what blogging can do. But maybe you've got a writer friend who hasn't quite figured it out yet and is still typing largely off-line. Grab a dish of lentils (curried or plain) and break the news, "You need to blog."



Refractions with Me in Long Island, photos by L.L. Barkat.

Just Fun

I had so much fun doing this with Ann, that I had to share it.

And since I'm in the mood for sharing, there's also this... my little thoughts on how Chinese food converges with Mark Galli. Or in other words, how liturgy relates to forks.

STONE CROSSINGS:

Ted's latest book club post Palisades Cliffs: doubt


Hanger Sculpture at Smithsonian, photo by L.L. Barkat.