I have not done much actual writing lately. I’ve missed it. I enjoy putting out the quick videos (although I am not very good at it yet), but there is something about putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard that is just more fulfilling.
Something about writing down thoughts makes me feel like I have accomplished something with my day. I makes me feel like I have reached some sort of summit. Maybe that is what makes me a writer. Maybe it’s not about the publishing of the writing. Maybe it is about the sense that writing is the answer to some call of my heart.
I haven’t been practice writing much lately. Honestly, I have been struggling with the discipline of my lifestyle for the last several weeks.
I have been chalking it up to transition. So much has changed in the rhythm of the Vicarage these last several weeks it has been a bit overwhelming for all of us. It’s been good, but admittedly a little daunting.
and I think I have a perfect recipe for a procrastination depression. I don’t feel sad, but I know I am hiding in YouTube, Facebook and episodes of “CALL THE MIDWIFE”.
I think I am also struggling with the permaculture mindset that flows between ministry and forest gardening. The two things seem to be a perfect complement for each other. Yet they also call for a mindset of self discipline that is, frankly, a new level for me.
I keep watching episodes of the “The lazy Gardener” and “Huw Richard” on YouTube. While they talk about how permaculture is cooperating with nature and actually less labor intensive than conventional gardening, I am left wondering if this is the “lazy” way then……GOOD GRIEF!
I am also powerfully aware that my perspective is being powerfully effected by all the changes going on inside my home and in the community. The return of my sister is wonderful…and it is the fulfillment of prophetic forth telling that comes at the convergence of many prophetic forth tellings. Add to that the currents of global instability and…. GOOD GRIEF!
So I guess I will wrap this up by saying I am struggling a bit and praying a lot for the new level of self-discipline this new season is calling me into both as it regards the Vicarage forest garden and the ministry here in the town of Winchendon. If there was ever a time for prayer it is now!
TODAY I AM FREE WRITING FROM A DAILY WRITING PROMPT ASKING ME “WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE DRINK?”.
THE PURPOSE OF THESE PRACTICE POSTS IS TO TAKE A FEW MOMENTS EVERY WEEK TO PRACTICE THE CRAFT OF WRITING.
I have two favorite drinks and both of them came to be my favorite drinks as an adult. The first drink, I wasn’t allowed to drink until I was sixteen. The second, I refused to drink until I was over twenty because I was told by relatives that I would not like it.
My father would not let me start drinking coffee until I was sixteen. He said it would stunt my growth. I guess it was for him a rite of passage into manhood. I started seriously drinking coffee when I went to work for Dad as a dishwasher at our family diner.
As to the second drink….to be perfectly honest, I did steal a sip of that second drink when I was little and my relatives were right. I did not like it. I have always likened the taste of my second favorite drink to pennies soaked in water. As I aged the taste of the drink didn’t change but my taste did and now… I kind of like the taste of pennies soaked in water. This drink is one of the oldest sodas in the United States….MOXIE!
In these practice writing sessions, I have been trying to awaken the writing craft within my soul. The muse went into a state of hibernation when I took on the role of lead pastor of Cornerstone Church.
I used to write a lot. I generally turned out about four blogs a day. Some of that was written expression but I was also experimenting with photography and pencil artwork. I also finished a book and was toying with the idea of self publishing or maybe even finding an agent.
I knew when I took the role as a lead pastor, that my dedication to this art form was going to change. It was one of the things I considered when I answered the call. In the end the call won out. I was resigned, if need be, to say “good bye” completely to writing and my artistic side.
For all that, I did try to create a modified writing lifestyle. I managed to keep Lillie-Put alive, by posting a daily devotional blog. Over time though, the ability to write began to fade. I found my use of words becoming clunky and even ideas for blogs which used to seem a dime a dozen became harder to drum up in my mind. Other creative gifts also began to atrophy. I noticed my vocal range was shrinking and when I attacked the keyboard to wring a song from it, my fingers felt like sausages only mildly obedient to my brain.
I have not minded the loss much, though. The work I have entered into is some of the most rewarding work of my life. I know that this work is what God wants me to be doing. Still, I have to admit there have been moments that I have missed my creative side: I have missed music; I have missed poetry; I have missed story telling; I have missed art.
Then about a year ago, I noticed a change beginning in me. It seemed I was building capacity…room for more in my life. It seemed that I was being directed to fill that new space in my life with creativity. It has taken time to implement a rhythm in this new margin of life, but I feel like finally I am getting there.
It strikes me that this was not anything I consciously intentioned. It seems more a gift God is giving me for the season that lies ahead. However this margin has been built, wherever this capacity has come from, I accept it with open arms and I am so thankful for it!
From my childhood I was spiritually sensitive. I know that in our “modern” world saying something like that has the potential of offending our culture’s deep bias toward a skeptical humanism, but there is no better way to explain the road I walked from my earliest memories.
I was deeply interested in the supernatural and by the time I was 12 I was intentionally seeking a deeper spiritual experience that would awaken something inside I knew was there but did not remotely understand. I read about the new age. For a while I actively sought out the power it purported to have.
Then I met a young lady in my class who was a Jehovah’s Witness. She began sharing her faith with me. It was the first time I had ever heard about Jesus as a Savior (previously he had been introduced to me through my reading as a powerful seer or psychic). It was also the first time I had ever come close to any kind of biblical explanation of existence.
I didn’t understand it then but I was being guided by the Hand of Divine Providence. I can look back on it now and see how God moved the pieces around the chess board of my life, but then it was just questions and realizations coming in real time.
I ended up hearing the full gospel message first from my eighth grade social studies teacher and then through another twist, my father who was most definitely not a believer called my “crazy uncle” and asked him to take me to church. I ended up attending church with at a little Assemblies of God in my hometown (where I am now the pastor). I sat in that little church for six months before I made a true personal commitment to Jesus Christ as my God.
I have learned that there are many bends in the metaphorical road of faith. The way is narrow and it winds precariously up a very high mountain. I have also learned that on this journey of faith, truth is not so much discovered as it is revealed.
My father died so young (at age 49), I hardly got to know the man.
When I was young, he worked all the time. When I was young I knew only his authority. It made me feel secure and it scared me. I suppose that is because I understood his authority as a weapon.
My father struggled with an explosive personality, something I am told he inherited from his grandmother. On more than one occasion I saw him use his temper to reinforce his will as the boss or the head of the family. Don’t get me wrong I was never abused. He never hit my mother or me or my sister. I was just always aware of an anger in him boiling somewhere just below the surface. I wanted to stay away from it.
I suppose that is why I fell down the tunnel of imagination. I learned to hide in stories. Some I read, some I made up, but most of my young life I was more inside my head than I was in the outside world. I kept those psychic walls up throughout my childhood. I didn’t have my father’s forceful personality, but I learned how to do weird as well as he did angry and that became my defense, and a wall of separation between me and….well almost everyone.
My father and I were just coming to an easy peace, when he suddenly passed away. I think I was just beginning to learn about the sources of his anger and he was just beginning to understand the gates that would get him through my weirdness when we ran out of time.
Still and all, I am glad that I was a part of his life when he went. I realize while I did not have as much time as I would have liked, we did have time. I had come home. I had begun to learn how to stop isolating from him and we were working together when his time came. We had begun to share our adult selves. I think given more time we would probably have become good friends.
We buried my father on the hill at Silver Lake Cemetery.
My mother turned to me as the committal concluded and said, “It’s my birthday.”
In all the chaos of those days, we had forgotten. Maybe she had forgotten too. I like to think so. It helps.
This was grief’s first contact with me.
Here is what I learned. Grief reveals chaos. Grief has no standard form or process. It has no absolute expression. It is inevitable. It is universal. It is inescapable, and it does not come with a verifiable end date.
For me, grief’s expression was not sorrow. I cried once during that whole time. That was because I realized my children would never get to know my father, and it was because I knew I would not… could not represent him in his full personhood to them. I had only just started knowing him as a multi-faceted being myself. My father’s death made me realize I had lost an opportunity, one that would never come again.
And so it was that the doorway to chaos first led me into a confrontation with my guilt.
My father was a hard working man. That is to say, he owned two small businesses. Hard work was not an option. It was as necessary to survival as eating or breathing. At least that is how it seemed to me as I grew up watching him.
I seldom saw my father out of his work clothes. When he was working a shift at the package store he would wear dress slacks and a button up, but when he was working a shift at the restaurant he would wear his chef whites. The whites were what I remember him wearing most and it was those uniforms that so profoundly affected me.
I remember getting my first uniforms when I became a cook at the restaurant. They defined what it was to be a grown man for me. All the adult men in my immediate family wore them and also the men I spent most of my time with as a child. I suppose it shouldn’t seem odd that I had tied some small thread of my definition of manhood to that uniform.
The thing is, while the uniform did make me feel like a man, it also never really fit me. I was not my father ( a good small business man) and I certainly wasn’t my grandfather a consummate chef. I was horrible at the managerial end of the business and I was only a passable cook.
When my father passed suddenly in the fall of 1990, it didn’t take long for the truth to be revealed that without him the businesses could not survive. I had no talent for the work. I plugged along for six months after his death and then rang the bell of surrender.
I remember turning in my final uniforms on the day we closed the restaurant. That was the day I lost my adult manhood. I was twenty three. Of course I couldn’t articulate any of that back then. I was grieving the loss of my father (I didn’t even know how to do that properly). I was married with two kids and one on the way and losing my only means of support. I was in survival mode.
One of the things I didn’t lose was my father’s gift of hard work. Then there were the gifts my Heavenly Father had given me, that at that point, I knew nothing about.
Lillie-Put 