The to-do list is getting smaller. A few little things:

buy sibling gift ✓
pay phone bill ✓
clean back porch ✓
make banana pudding ✓

Kari left today; Kaci and the boys are at work. It’s just Dad and Mom and me at the house. It’s home-life and quiet for a while and I’m content after the long working season. It wasn’t never-ending after all, in spite of those September feelings.

Work finished the end of October and I flew home in time to vote. After a few days of sleep and some sunshine we found out Canon’s teacher tested positive for covid and they were sending his class home. I bumped my Nashville trip up a few days, stayed with Molly for a night and then drove straight from there to MO to hang out with Canon for the rest of his quarantine.

blanket forts ✓
super heroes ✓
pillow battles ✓
park time ✓

Barrett’s birthday was the weekend after. I’d hoped and waited all summer to be there — it worked out and I’m glad. He’s only little once, and he’s almost big.

Headed straight from Barrett’s party to meet Zach for his birthday. We went for lunch and talked about life over fried chips and American burgers.

From lunch I went to Kari’s and spent a few hours catching up. We holed up in blankets and I drank at least two mugs of tea, maybe three. There are different kinds of warmth, and that was more than one at once.

Kari had picked up Drew from school, so the next morning Drew and I drove back to AL together. Neither of us could remember a time we had road-tripped just the two of us. It was a real treat.

Thanksgiving was especially good. Mom cooked The Meal, we gathered and told each other about the things we’re grateful for, we sent Geoff a hello-and-happy-holiday message, Dad led the prayer of thanksgiving. A lot has changed, but not too much. Things are different, but not really. As long as the central things remain, as long as we trust God and keep coming back together, the family itself hasn’t been shaken.

Later Thanksgiving night we brought the Christmas things down from the attic and put up the tree. The next evening we stood around together and hung the ornaments — one hundred? Or two? We remembered this year and that year; some good times, some hard ones. But even in the hard ones we still came back; those years were all represented too.

I like having all those ornaments and decorations to put out every winter. They’re like the old standing stones, reminders of what’s been and also witnesses of what we’re making of this season. They’re all up on the tree now, waiting for the ones that will say ‘2020’; they’ll take them up into the collection, just as what we’re done this year is being gathered into what this family is and will be.

I’m grateful for our traditions – for things that remain and return – and for parents who have woven our family into them as much as they have woven them into our holidays together.

trust ✓
family ✓
home ✓
gratitude ✓

The colors are starting. It’s finally Fall.

My strength was sapped as in the heat of summer — a line from one of the Psalms that’s been in my head. But the cooler it gets the more like myself I feel, and the more I feel at home.

So I went for a walk, aiming for Compass Harbor, but I passed it and kept on, following the around-trail all the way. It wasn’t long, a mile or two, and it was quiet, and the fog made everything seem close and safe.

I realized that I did feel safer in the woods than I do in town. I think it’s because I’ve had to be available at every moment to answer any question or help with any small thing in the shop, and I have to guess what’s needed and am afraid at the end of the day that it hasn’t been enough. What if it hasn’t been enough?

But in the woods it’s not about me. In the woods it’s simple. And I know what the sounds are. And I feel that things are growing.

And the colors, the ones that are starting to come through: as I walked I thought about how much work the trees have had to do throughout the summer to produce them — all the rains they’ve had to drink up and all the sun they’ve had to process and just how much has to be done for the colors at the end of the season. And I wondered if the trees could talk if they’d have told me, Look, look — this is what it was all for. This is what it was for.

I do feel a bit of that too… All the summer, all the noise and the people and the shop and so many things to process and all the storms to weather, the friends who came and went and so much change and secret tears and the learning and chores and day-to-day things… And now…

Now the colors are starting and it’s finally Fall. And I’m just starting to see, in the parts of life that are drawing to a close, just how beautiful some of them are, and I imagine those parts of life saying to me, Look, look…

I think when it’s quiet I will see. And I do see.

“I’m sending your hammock… Do you want anything else?”

Because suitcases are only so big, there were some things I left behind, like my hammock; also a Bible, thinking it would be fine to read off my kindle, off my laptop, off my phone.

It’s fine, but not the same.

So with my hammock I asked if Mom would send me a paper Bible, an old NIV, the version we grew up with. (Turns out it’s important what you grow up with; it will seem solid later, and you’ll go back to find out.)

So that’s been nice to have. The Bible she sent used to be Geoff’s, and I’ve found little things underlined and a few notes jotted in it here and there in his handwriting. It adds to the comfort.

Colossians has always been a favorite, so the last couple of days I’ve found myself back there. Anyway, I came across these verses that I’d never thought much about before:

“I want you to know how much I am struggling for you and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have not met me personally. My purpose is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”

Made me pause for a second because whatever Paul is talking about, whatever “complete understanding” he wanted them to have, it seems like exactly what everyone is shouting about and competing for but which seems more lacking now than ever.

Though there are so many ideas going around, ideas that seem really good, we’re just becoming more and more confused. Instead of being led to reason and understanding, it feels like we’re just becoming more and more conflicted.

It seems that there’s no place to put the ideas, and that what’s lacking is a framework, a common framework into which everything can be integrated so that it’s actually useful. It’s like… what? confusion is all the facts without a place to put them (otherwise it’s not confusion, just a lack of information, or, at least, unawareness), whereas understanding is having all the facts and ideas where you can use them for life, for moving forward.

Understanding is use-ability of information for the creation of life, something like that.

So anyway, it was interesting that Paul didn’t start with “riches of understanding” and “treasures of wisdom and knowledge“; rather he backed up a level and threw his efforts into building up the framework, the place in which the order of all things makes sense so that understanding and wisdom would be known there.

So what is it? What’s the framework? What’s before the so-that?

…Encouraged in heart and united in love.

It’s the state of a group of people.

If each part of the group doesn’t have the courage to move forward (to become and grow), if each part of the group isn’t acting for the thriving and fulfillment of the other individual members (which is what love is), something will be missing, wisdom and knowledge won’t grow there, and something essential to real life won’t be understood.

The way things have been made to function is to reflect God as Creator (“creation” being the bringing of good out of potential, etc.), and is seen in who Jesus is as the one who shows the way to unity by giving all in behalf of the others — namely, the one who lives as all should live, the one who loves.

These are only half-thoughts, but I think what Paul was saying here is that understanding life comes after living encouraged and loved, that only once we’ve lived aligned with the way things are ordered will we make any sense within the order of things.

This was so important to Paul that he was struggling for it, had made it his purpose to work toward, even for people whom he’d never personally met. He was visiting and writing to group after group of people, not only teaching them the best ideas or teaching them what to say, but teaching them to give each other courage and sacrifice for each other in order for there to be commonality and unity, knowing that there were riches and treasure and life on the other side of that.

So my notes on these verses are that no matter how wise-sounding any idea is, if the people who hold it aren’t heartened and aren’t giving each other the courage to make something good of their lives and live forward with what they’ve been given, that’s not where God is. And no matter how knowledgeable people are, if they don’t sacrifice and give on behalf of those who are connected to them, the Ultimate and Good won’t be found there either.

And it’s personal. If the people who are connected to me can’t find the heart to put the pieces of their lives together for good, God can’t be known in my life, no matter how smart my ideas sound. And if I’m not actually willing to give up anything for the good of those right around me — that is to say, if I don’t love — then I don’t really understand how life moves forward and I have nothing to say.

God grant that we give courage to the ones near us, that we all find in common a willingness to give up something for the well-being of each other,

so that…

Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and never give up.

That was the most heartening thing I’ve read in a long time.

Always pray; never give up… He was telling them about the character of God.

Dear God, you know
just what we need
before we ask you,
for in our hearts
are groans that words
cannot express, and yet,
those are the very
breaths, the very sighs
making us like you.

For that is how
you breathe your life
and send your spirit
out into the world
to make things new.

And so to yearn,
to sigh for good
is what we need
to do, to be
what this world needs –
for this world needs
you and only you.

Help us to make
something around us new,
something around us good,
something around us beautiful,
like you are beautiful.

I love this place
Time and time again I come
To where I’m not afraid
And where I am not alone

I find a rest here
A quiet that I can’t explain
When all around me rages
In a never-ending storm

And though I ride the river and am taken where it goes
Though I’m in the wind and I am carried with it everywhere it blows…
I’m in the valley, but I know what I believe
And in my hiding place I have all I need

This place is more
Than where I am or where I’m going
I am on the shore
Of a never-ending sea

In the middle
Of a sight that leads away to nowhere
I’ll walk on the ocean
If you call out to me

And though I ride the river and am taken where it goes
Though I’m in the wind and I am carried with it everywhere it blows…
I’m in the valley, but I know what I believe
And in my hiding place I have all I need

There’s one window in my room, a small one, pretty high up. I finally moved the coffee table from the sitting room, threw on some cushions stolen from the couch and makeshifted a window seat. I can do a lot of things, but I can’t sit alone in dark corners for long.

Yesterday I left early for Connor’s Nubble. Weird name, great place — a mini-mountain with a view over Eagle Lake. The park bus isn’t running so I took the long way around by the carriage roads — 6 miles there.

I’m still not sure what I’m doing here and I’m starting to feel it. The park is amazing, but the life is empty and the closer I get to going back to work the more I remember all the things that are difficult. I remember how petty talk around can get, how the language eventually leaves you feeling worn out; I remember that I’ll be folding a million t-shirts and rearranging displays of things I don’t care about for people who don’t need them. Also, listening to Top 40 for hours a day is like living in Sodom — I hate it in my soul and I can’t turn it off. And all this I knew when I agreed to another season because of everything last year. Why did I do it? Do I really need to go back to Estonia so badly that I’ll go through this all over again to get there? What have I done?

So there’s that. Also I’m starting to feel the lack of church and family. Like deeply, I mean — in my life. And sure, I can go and visit somewhere, folks will be friendly, I can participate in services and activities, but I don’t have a people, not generations of faith whom I know and who know me, not roots in a kind of family that is hopeful and faithful and stays together through the hard stuff and is, at least as far as they can be, a good presence, like God, in the world.

The thing that nobody tells us growing up is that just as much as we need to explore and discover and to know in life, to that same degree we need to be known. That’s the thing about being a long-time member of a group — people who really care about you bring out things in you over time that you’d never be aware of otherwise, that you’d never know could be. And some of those things are god-awful, but some of those things are god-like, and without honest frustration and honest love to pull them out of you – to deal with on the one hand, and to build up on the other – you’ll never find them out. And if you don’t have that, painful and wonderful as it is, you go through life instinctively feeling that, no matter how much knowledge you’ve gained, something is missing. Well, part of you is missing because parts of you are still unrealized.

The route to self-discovery is not only to adventure alone but also to adventure together. We need a people, and a people needs us.

So what am I doing here? That’s what I asked God, for about 6 miles. And I told him what was what, and what I wanted, and what he’s promised, and I shook my finger like a psalmist. This wasn’t my plan, I didn’t want to be back here; I wanted something else, I tried other things. Why wasn’t there another way forward?

I walked. The mosquitoes were bad. I saw a turkey in the woods. I found two owl feathers. I kept walking. Finally I found myself at the foot of the little mountain, and as I climbed the wind picked up. (But God wasn’t in the wind, ha) There was a spot among some rocks to hide, and I rinsed the remains of bugs and blood off my hands then sat and mindlessly ate my packed breakfast. As time went on I slowly woke up, realizing at one point that here I was, on Connor’s Nubble, but instead of looking out over the mountains and the lake I was staring down, lost in my feelings, looking at the bushes and rocks immediately around me.

Don’t be here and not look up.

I checked myself, and looked. It was pretty cool. The clouds were low and moving fast, and the light on the water moved just ahead and behind their reflections. I watched a good while, and then, when my breakfast was eaten and I’d watched some minutes longer, I turned and went back down the mountain.

All the way home there was no answer, but it was quieter in the sense that there was less in me to say. Now he knew all; now at least I’d been honest. Maybe that’s why we call it saying our peace.

I was reading a book that Geoff recommended by Parker Palmer called Let Your Life Speak. One chapter in the book references the title of Ghandi’s autobiography: The Story of My Experiments With Truth. Palmer says that each of our lives are experiments with truth, and I’ve been thinking about that, about what things I’ve bet my life on being true and how the experiment is going for me.

I was serious when I became a Christian, and that means a couple of things. First, it means that I’ve bet that it’s true that there’s a God and that he knows me. Second, it means that I’ve bet it’s true that the best thing I can become is Jaime who looks something like Jesus, because he’s the human, the Type of the thing God made us to be.

I was reading about the crucifixion this morning (that’s just where I was in the reading), and a detail that stood out to me this time was the wine mixed with myrrh. They offered it to Jesus to dull the pain, to dull the experience of torture and death. But look,

²³ Then they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. ²⁴ And they crucified him.

He chose not to dull the experience, the worst experience. Whatever it was that God had for his life, no matter how humiliating and painful and lonely, not only did he refuse to run away, but he took it as bad as it could be.

Why? Wouldn’t he still technically have been obedient had he taken the painkiller? Wasn’t it his death that was important, not how badly it hurt? But it seems like by turning down the easier way he showed once for all whose he was, that he would take the worst from the one he loved rather than accept relief from the world he didn’t belong to. He served only one master. It was like putting the last of himself aside and saying,

I’m not going anywhere. Give me what you will.

That’s what a person can be. That’s the Type.

So with everything going on, to look like Jesus I need to do the same. I’ve said what I want to say, now I take what God gives and lean into it, not trying to dull the hard things, not looking for distractions from feelings and discomforts. God is doing something and I want all of it because I want all of him.

I think he wants all of me too, and that’s the point. I’m not Jesus, but I’m not supposed to be Jesus; I’m supposed to be Jaime, all Jaime could be.

And the staying and wanting all of the other — I think that’s what love is.

We used to drive to Colorado to see Grandma and Grandad, long road trips in the old Suburban. For hours there would be nothing to do but watch out the window.

To pass time I liked to imagine myself out there, wherever “there” was for the moment. I liked the wide open places, the plains — I would wonder what it would be like to be on horseback maybe, with all that space and no fences, riding free with some band of cowboys or Indians, or just alone, ridge after ridge.

I liked the mountains too. When we’d come up through the New Mexico end of the Rockies or go on trips with Dad’s family, I’d look up as we wound through the passes, imagining climbing the slopes from one tree to the next, like a ladder, all the way to the top.

Being in such a place reminds me of all those hours, watching out the window. Except I don’t have to keep driving — I can stay and be part of this place for a while.

This park is pretty tame compared to the wild ones people think of, but now that suits me. The trails are long enough, the climbs can be managed, and the views from the top are the sea. And too, rather than being a lonely place it’s a park where people come to be together. Families come here, groups of friends. It’s a favorite spot with older couples who come to cycle the carriage roads and hike the woods. Last year I met an 80 year-old lady making her way slowly and bravely up a mountain path with her golden retriever — “I left my husband back at the campsite,” she laughed. But they had come here together: that’s really something.

This morning I went for a long walk. The quarantine guidelines say we have to avoid public places — there wasn’t much public out there. It was a good wander: I went to the Tarn and climbed on some rocks then sat by the water and ate some trail mix. I had my camera and took pictures of ordinary plants to draw. It was a good exercise in looking twice; the simplest things can be hard to find.

Most of all it was good to be quiet. I laugh to say it at the end of several paragraphs, but there are just too many words. I have too many words. So it was good to get out into something bigger, something so beautiful that I would be speechless.

Google Maps says the name of the pond in the park near Chris and Jennifer’s is ‘Paradise Lake’.

Paradise Lake?

It’s probably 200’x75′, and though they’ve extended it beyond the little bridge and wrapped it around and put in a little spraying fountain, in the southwest corner of Missouri it hardly seems like a paradise, and it’s hardly a lake.

But you know, I learned to love that place. First I went running there, then I found a lonely grove of trees that would hold a hammock on my days off, then I started taking Canon there for walks and swings in the trees, then both boys and I started going all together…

We named the grove ‘our campsite’ and spent whole mornings there gathering sticks, picking various plants and flowers, piled in the hammock munching crumbly snacks, acting out David and Goliath, having sword fights. I bought hammocks for both boys and we’d go and put up all three. And then this visit (for the first time), we packed up as a whole family, even Chris, on a Sunday afternoon, and we went to that little lonely bunch of trees, put up all our colorful hammocks and hung out all together in the sunshine.

That park is only five minutes from the house; it was there all the time. Those lonely trees have been growing for years and years, waiting to become a campsite and welcome a few little guests. It was all there when we came, we just had to make something of it, to bring some love and give it some meaning.

Now if I was going to name that place, I’d probably call it Paradise Lake.

I flew over the weekend and am back in Maine again. When I arrived I found out that, for the next two weeks at least, I was going to be in one of the dark-apartments instead of the room I thought I would be in over Main Street. The apartment is nice, there’s nothing to complain about there, there’s just no light. The little windows face the side of a brown building about two feet away, and it’s just… soulless. That and my blankets hadn’t arrived yet so I slept the first night under my jackets and a bath towel. And I just felt poor and homeless, and I’m quarantined for goodness sake.

Then yesterday I woke up and realized that wait a minute I’d been given two room codes, and that the apartment next to mine was empty. So I checked it out and, though still those little windows, there was direct light and a view of the village green. So I moved my things over and rearranged all the furniture and swept and cleaned and ran my diffuser and made it homey for me, and I’m 50x happier and more settled.

It made me think back to Paradise Lake, since all that time I was grumpy about my view of the wall and the annoying pigeons under the sills, all the time I was feeling false, feeling like I had to be cheerful about being there, I had that other code, and this room was here.

“It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.” Something like that. Imagine that God has hidden good things all around, waiting so close in the smallest ways and places, and it’s our honor and privilege to search them out, to find and make something of them.

Even now, right now, we might only be five minutes from Paradise.

PS — Mail was delivered yesterday and my duvet came in. It’s fluffy and warm and exactly what I was hoping for, even better maybe. No more towel!