Mending My Life

Katie Noah Gibson
Crafty
Mending is neither glamorous nor easy, but I’ve discovered it can be a calming antidote to the frantic pace of my everyday life. It requires me to stop in the middle of commitments — a day job and a marriage and freelance assignments — and commutes to focus on one small, tangible thing. There is satisfaction in threading a needle with just the right color of thread and making tiny, precise stitches to close a hole or hold a seam together. I’m always amazed by the strength of those stitches and the sense of accomplishment I feel afterward.

Threads

Julie Silander
Artful Kids, Bookish, Truth
From our hastily packed bag, I pulled out the tattered green copy of the book we had been reading as a family. Curled up tightly on the hospital bed next to my pale, tired boy, I flicked through the yellowed pages to find our place. Yes, that was it. A pile of neatly arranged feathers, topped with two carefully crossed crow’s feet and a beak, had been found in the center of the barnyard. Jinx the cat had been framed. As we read together in that hospital bed, what took place was a holy alchemy. Ordinary words on paper were transformed into extraordinary glimpses of hope.

On Greening

Allison Gaskins
Creation Care, Truth
A seed. I have wondered, is it dead? It is in so many ways a remnant of something good that was before. A fruit or a flower that has already spent itself in glory. A seed is the remains, fit only for burial.
 
A seed, small and dry, should be shrouded and cast into the soil. But it is not dead.
 
Nor is it yet fully alive.

The Beautiful Flaw in Liking Things Ironically

Russ Ramsey
Music, Truth
I slipped into the venue and climbed up to the balcony where I planned to observe the show from a distance. But so help me, by the middle of the second song I found myself headed for the stairs to stand among the crowd right in front of the stage. Why? Because my favorite band from high school was putting on an amazing live show. They were great! They moved me from being a distant observer to being a part of the experience.

Eden’s Face

Elisa Fryling Stanford
Truth

Because the truth is, you and I and Eden are all incomplete. We were made for a world beyond blood work and teasing and life expectancies. We were made for perfection.

Perhaps the beauty in Eden’s face is that she knows this. She radiates joy not in spite of what is “not right” about life but because of it. Because every loss we experience points us to the time when loss will be no more. Because life itself is more right than we realize.

The Interconnectedness of It All

Shane D. Wilson
Music, Truth, Vocation
The best chefs take risks and strive to surprise. A music mixer aiming to succeed needs to do the same. Whether by addition or omission, we need to catch the ear of our clients and listeners by creating an element of surprise. The dish needs to appeal, but it needs to stand apart from what others offer.

Of course all of this is open to interpretation. You may not like cashew chicken or banjos. Sometimes in your eyes or mine, I fail.

A Different Kind of Lonely

Stephen Lamb
Music, Truth
To love another beyond purpose or reason — to love them for who they are, not because they take away one kind of loneliness or fill some hole in my life — that is what I strive for, what I hope for in my better moments. It is the kind of life I desire to lead.

My Child’s Burden for the Ducks

Flo Paris Oakes
Creation Care, Truth
We had been driving in the car when Sera first mentioned the idea to me, so I was paying more attention to the road in front of me than the girl in the backseat with dreams of saving the ducks. But there in the Nature Center — the place in which she had earned her bird-watching badge just a year earlier — with all eyes on her, I saw it: reflected in her face was the image of a loving God who cares for and sustains creation.

The Poet

Kate Harris
Bookish, Truth
At every turn, I find that I know and believe that artists matter significantly for the ways they capture a culture, how they generate artifacts that point to the values and priorities and perspective of a generation, and how they wave the flag on overlooked issues. But over the past few months, I have wanted to know better why the poet, specifically, matters. Not just those who write and publish poems literally, but those who serve as a voice in the wilderness — the seers, the prophets, those who get something that others can’t yet get.

Shining Like the Sun: An Antler Story

Daniel Bowman Jr.
Bookish, Truth

Each of us recites a poem. We talk about current events, and tell stories from our personal journeys. The sound of crickets is broken by the bell tolling for Compline. We realize we’ve lost track of time, so we rush Brother Paul back to the Abbey for the service. 
     

Later, I will recall the blend of bread and wine and storytelling with prayer and the observing of silence. The rhythm of the afternoon, I think, might be a good model for the cadence of Antler’s work.

Kyrie Eleison

Heather A. Goodman
Creation Care, Truth
Once upon a time, a man and woman lived as caretakers in a garden ripe with mangoes and tomatoes and figs. I try to conjure up an image of cultivation without snails and squirrels and rabbits attacking my plants, without weeds demanding my constant attention, without the threat of too much water cracking my tomatoes and not enough withering the plant. Did Adam and Eve sing the fruit into bloom?

The Whole Hokey Pokey

Allison Gaskins
Truth
I can offer some of “my” time, maybe just my right arm’s worth. Or I can dive into something demanding and sacrificial, a place where I sense the Holy Spirit is leading. Jump in with both feet. But the whole dance? Impossible. I just really don’t know how to do that. I’m diffident by nature, and guarded. It’s unfamiliar, I’ve got no rhythm, and I look stupid. I am not a natural at this. I will lose my Self somehow, and my dignity along with it. Plus, I don’t even know exactly what I have to offer, or how to give it. What are the dance steps again?

Generative Fragments: Four Collaborative Movements on QU4RTETS

Jennifer Strange and Sarah Duet
Bookish, Truth, Visual Art
We wanted to respond by making, not just critiquing or even experiencing. In fact, we spent our four-hour drive home that evening discussing work and beginning to outline several collaborative projects. We were intellectually and emotionally exhausted, yet enlivened for work (our various cups of coffee throughout the day helped, too). These paintings cause the viewer to take a life-giving, culture-making posture before she even realizes that she has begun to stand. This is the generative nature of good art/work.
Righteousness and Bliss

Righteousness and Bliss

Meredith Schultz
Hospitality, Truth

Abstract humanity has no draining friendships, annoying relatives, or untidy neighbors. We are never responsible for, or adversely affected by, humanity in the abstract. Facebook statuses, sound bites, and shots across the bow ought not be confused with the real and costly love that underwrites transformation. Bliss without righteousness is vacant, but righteousness without bliss is cruel.

Interview Series: MAKING — A Conversation with Carey Wallace

Interview Series: MAKING — A Conversation with Carey Wallace

Charlie Peacock
Bookish, Crafty, Music, Truth, Vocation

Art in all its forms is intimately connected with every aspect of all lives. We sing when people die. We dance when they get married. Even sports events and video games incorporate music, dance images, theater. The things I make are only my participation in that constant, unstoppable swirl of creation. This world is already beautiful and good. It’s just a question of where we choose to look.

Beginnings

Beginnings

Mary Van Denend
Truth

I am learning to be more comfortable with uncertainty. I believe mercy hides everywhere in the world, waiting to swoop in and hold us. We cannot control much, but we can still live deep and meaningful lives. We can attend to the work of our hands and embrace our small yet worthy part in practicing resurrection.  Remembering that we are forever beginners, never experts, at love.

Barefoot Places

Amy Peterson
Bookish, Hospitality
Paris never slept, as I found to my pleasure when I returned at 21 and took up residence in a crummy hostel. Upland, in contrast, rarely seems to wake. But you can see the stars here like you never can in Paris, and the lonesome quiet of the prairie has started to feel like a companion. Maybe even a friend.
Academy of the Observant Life

Academy of the Observant Life

Charlie Peacock
Bookish, Music, Place, Truth

The irony of conversing with a stranger is that your individual lives always look very different and personal, but then you strip away the nuances to find a common likeness buried inside of diversity. Take away money and geography and we’re all just flesh and blood and soul. We’re all dealing with sin and forgiveness, love and hate, glory and shame. The big ideas remain. Life creates another day of history and the babies keep on coming. People dream their dreams. The young grasp at reinventing the wheel and the maturing masses learn to let go of such reinventions one breath at a time.

Making Stock and Taking Stock

Laura Lynn Brown
Feast, Hospitality, Truth

On the day I was making stock, I was also taking stock. No doubt many of us do that this time of year, with the old year gone out the back door and the lock turned behind it, the new year just over the threshold, still slipping off its coat.

One way to consider and savor a year: Whom did I meet? What new friends did I collect and get collected by? What correspondents became a face and a voice and a delightfully embodied presence?

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