Getting Dirty

So, since moving in here in Logan Square, I've started gardening.  It's been a little bit of a project, since I do not, in fact, have any green space.  This was not necessarily what I'd been hoping for in a living space, but at least there is ample space and sun for the next best thing - a container garden.

It didn't take too long to get set up; Colleen and I made a trip to Home Depot and got five planting pots, a bunch of soil, two tomato plants (Earl Girl and Beefsteak), a red bell pepper plant, a banana pepper plant, and some cucumber plants.  Within a few hours, they were planted, watered, and left to grow in the hot Chicago summer sun.

And...grow they have.  I'm just now starting to get my first fruits of the season, some six weeks or so after planting, but I've got two tomatoes starting up, have already had two banana peppers with some blossoms back on the plant now, some promising bell pepper blossoms, and a cucumber on the vine.  I've even added on an indoor herb garden in my bay window, giving me lots of fresh basil, parsley, oregano, rosemary, and sage...I've had a bumper crop of sage this year.  It's exciting, watching these green, growing things do what God created them to do - grow, thrive, bear fruit.

In the midst of all this, I've been finding myself fall more and more in love with tending to green, growing things.  There's nothing quite like taking care of a garden, no matter how small.  It reaches deep in to who I am, roots me back into the rich soil out of God creates us in Genesis, restores me to the original work to which God called humans in the beginning.  

The sensory appeal of all of it, too - the cool, gritty feel of dirt on my hands, the smell of tomato leaves, the sound of wind rustling through the pepper plants and of water soaking into soil, the vibrant colors of green leaves and yellow blossoms, and (eventually) the incomparable taste of food fresh from the garden.  It's spiritual; I feel as fed as a child of God in my faith from working the soil (even in my pots) as my stomach will feel when those tomatoes ripen on the vine and become the first caprese salad of the season.

In all of this, I re-discovered a song that I'd had stuck in my head while on a tour of coal country in central Illinois back in April (another entry on this is forthcoming).  The protagonist in the song is just a poor farm kid who's always got the red clay of his work on the land all over him.  So, he wonders - "But when I pass through the pearly gates, will my gown be gold instead?  Or just a red clay robe with red clay wings and a red clay halo for my head?"  I sure hope so.  I sure hope eternity is marked with the red clay and black topsoil out of which we have come, and that things will be like in the beginning - all of us, working in God's garden, tending the beautiful land which God made and entrusts to us.

Waiting

So, I've been promising an update on my life, and have been failing to deliver the goods on that front.  I figure since I'm pretty much in a "can't focus on homework" haze right now thanks to the pending regional assignment for first call candidates, now's a good time to, finally, bear down on the sharing life news front.


So, two things merit reporting - one professional, one personal.  In that order...


Professional: Since mid-December, I've been working as the bilingual pastoral assistant at First Lutheran Church of Logan Square, on the Northwest Side.  At a congregation that worships between 50 and 60 on a Sunday, roughly half are native Spanish speakers, and probably 20-25% are homeless.  It is quite probably the most ethnically diverse congregation in the synod, and also probably up there in terms of socioeconomic diversity, too.  In addition to leading the pre-worship Bible study (at which I am probably the only person with stable housing and employment), I help lead worship...since the pastor's been out of town for the last several weeks, I've had the opportunity to preach and preside for basically the entirety of time after Epiphany, which has been GREAT.  It's a wonderful reminder of why I'm doing what I'm doing...which at moments like this, in which I feel like my life is in a weird state of suspended animation and I'm desperately praying that the Church listens to my voice in the assignment process, is really needed and helpful.  It's a wonderful congregation - plenty of challenges, to be sure, but a delightful community that models what it looks like to engage with the reality in which the Church finds herself.


Personal:  So, Colleen and I have been together for closing in on six weeks.  We met through a mutual friend; I was interested from the get-go, and after break, I decided to act on it.  Angie (mutual friend) conveniently arranged a joint hang-out time for the three of us, and...well, things took off rather nicely from there.  I could probably write entirely too much in the way of details about the first few dates; suffice it to say I think she's amazing, and perfect for me.  I love her, and look forward to seeing where we go and what we build together.  


So, yeah...2012 has been pretty great so far, and thank God for that.  2011 was rough as years go; not that I'm alone in this, but it's not a time in my life that I'd go back and repeat.  Plenty of good in the midst of it, too, but these days, I feel like I've woken up from a long, sullen sleep in a dark, dark room, and the morning light is streaming in at long last.  And that's why, ultimately, Wednesday doesn't worry me.  I'll land on my feet...I would like for them to be landing within a day's drive or less of Chicago, but I can always ask to be reassigned at the end of the day, if that's where the Spirit leads me.  For now, I know that I'm called and equipped for ministry, and that I'm blessed to be sharing my life with an uncompromisingly beautiful, smart-as-a-whip woman who loves me for just who I am.  I don't know that I can ask for anything more.

Film at 11

I haven't written much lately, but this is just a short reminder tha I am, in fact, alive, and that life is good. Very good. Really pretty incredible, actually. More later; all I'll say for now is that I love my work at First Lutheran, and that her name's Colleen, and that these two things are unrelated except that they both make me very happy, albeit in different ways.

Green Group

Yes, there are more Advent sonnets, and yes, I will post them soon and very soon.  But first...


The subject of kids and teaching has been a big one for me lately.  Not too surprising, when you consider that I work four afternoons a week with a delightful group of kindergartners at an after-school program.  And...we're trying to do things differently.


You see, the temptation when there are two or three adults and a lot of precocious, if sometimes hyper, little ones is to throw any attempts at substantive after-school programming out the window.  Not enough people to enforce discipline; can't be done.  Let's just go out and play for endless stretches of time...well, as endless as the weather in Chicago will allow any given day.  When that's over, go inside, have a snack, and monitor the organized chaos as the kids move on to free play with Legos, etc.


I don't mean to sound like I'm knocking outdoor play, snack time, and Legos...they all show up in our afternoon, too.  But...what if early child after-school programming focused on forming community in the classroom?  And on talking about peace, and did so concretely through work around sharing and respect?  What if we boldly talked about issues of identity and difference, and did so in a way intended to affirm the humanity of all people?  What if our stories for group time illustrated these things?  What if time outside involved emphasizing ecological consciousness and respect for plants, animals, and the earth?  When we play, what if we tell them "you can't say you can't play" and encourage them to play together and use their shared imaginations to create new games?  What about making snack time into a chance for community meal - eating as a rainbow-tinged family of different people celebrating being human together?  How about using art and opportunities for creativity as ways to help express some of these things?  And, quiet reading - how will the children be formed by being shown that reading for oneself or with a friend should be a part of daily routine?  How will they grow up to be if we teach them how to tell stories with wordless books, and ask them to imagine what might happen next in our story before we turn the page?  What would it look like if, when children break rules, the response is to engage in dialogue around the issues involved rather than simply rush to judgments and punish?  And, when they quarrel with one another, why don't we teach them how to talk through their problems together, express their feelings with considerate honesty, and arrive at mutually beneficial solutions?


These are the things we try to do with the kids in Green Group.  It's hard some days...really hard.  It's not how we're programmed to do things.  But, I genuinely believe that if we're ever, EVER, going to change life in this world for the better, then the process is going to start with a million groups like this teaching people, from day one, how to be the world we all say we want to live in.

Advent Sonnet Three

A candle flickers in the wind that blows
With fury, and with frigid teeth that gnaw
Away at skin and bone; the tree that grows
Outside my window creaks and groans, the maw
Of winter wrapped around its soul.  The light
That day by day grows dimmer as the wick,
Aglow with flame, fights on against the might
Of icy rain and snow that falls in thick
White layers on the ground.  The sun has set;
An endless night has fallen on our lives
As sin-black evil taints us.  We have met
Our deepest fear, the death of soul it gives.
But even in the dark our light shines on -
A hope to face our night until the dawn.

Advent Sonnet Two

O rend the sky and dwell with us, o Lord -
The old refrain, the tired plea we make
In all our weary moanings o'er the sword
Of hostil times - old enemies that take
Away our joy and sense of You.  And in
The absence that we face, we look to see,
But cannot see, the love we feel within
Our quickened beating hearts - the joyful glee -
When you, our God, are with us in the mess
And brokenness that we call life.  With sad,
Pathetic lamentation, we address
The hole we find; in it we are made glad
For in the hidden places You do dwell,
The secret space is where we are made well.

Advent Project - Day One

You know what makes blogging hard?  Being a full-time student and working four days a week. But, to try and get myself back into the swing of blogging regularly, I'm going to share here my Advent project - a sonnet a day for all of Advent.


This is the age of waiting and of hope,
Yet in the darkness there is no way out
But to walk in blinded steps and to grope
With eager expectation past the doubt.
This is the day of wonder and of fear
Of all the grumbling noises in the dark
That scratch and tear and bite the mindful ear
Which strains to find the song of distance larks.
This is the hour of once and future pasts,
The present gloom a curtain from the light.
We stumble on in fearful pain that lasts
What looks to weary eyes an endless night.
But in the inky midnight of our way
Will come a dawn, the birth of endless day.