Spring(-ish)

Last week I took pictures of the flowers blooming in my yard - Amber planted them at least a year and a half ago, but she's not around to enjoy the product of her labors. So, here you go, Amber. Thanks for the springtime flowers!


The plum tree also began to blossom... a week before it snowed twice. It has bad timing - I feel an odd kinship with that pathetic little tree. I didn't get a good shot of it, so you'll be spared the floral pictures.

Last Thursday it snowed enough between the time I got up and when I was leaving to give my class their midterm that the street in front of my house was covered by an inch of snow. It was perilous! I pulled out of my driveway and cautiously headed down my windy street only to discover that I wasn't being nearly cautious enough! I hit the first curve a little too fast and found my car sliding out of control toward a neighbor's mailbox. I hit the brakes - that did no good. I sucked in my breath, bit my lip, and tried in vain to regain control as I watched the mailbox slip closer and closer toward my window and side mirror. The car stopped sliding inches from the mailbox. On my way home from school that afternoon, I took a look at the tire marks in the snow - it was sooooo close!! (I think I'll continue trying to live in minimally snowy areas, for the safety of everyone!)

As I was writing about such elevated topics as hope and bold action, I wandered into the kitchen to brew some more coffee and found this on the pantry door:


Now, my roommate thinks it's creepy, and I have to admit that I'm not fond of mayflies much myself. These tenacious little creatures get stuck in my hair while I'm walking across the lawn - they can cling to a windshield for a long time, even at high speeds. (Just trust me on that one.) But something about this struck me as beautiful. Leaving behind its old shell of grey skin, the mayfly emerged bright yellow, spreading its wings to embrace new stages of life. Even the short lifespan of such a simple creature has its remarkably hopeful moments. Isn't the world wonderful?! It's at least as marvelous as it is, well, terrifying. But I have this crazy belief that the terrifying parts of our world will pass away... that maybe all creation is preparing to shed its old, grey skin and emerge fresh and new. That's the kind of vision I want to make real in some small, tangible way in my own life, in our community. Anyone else in?

Today I’ve been reading The Preaching Life by Barbara Brown Taylor and loving it. In her chapter on calling she recounts her spiritual journey – and this passage about the impact of a minister who befriended her at the age of seven is particularly poignant. It made me think of all those people who taught me to seek and find God in the ins and outs of my every day life. (There are too many to name, but special thanks go to my parents, Shannon and the backpacking crew, Ike, Vann, Karen, Jay and Anita.)

The pastor was a kind young man with no family of his own, who soon became a regular guest at our supper table. I grew to adore him. He was vital and funny and could catch an airborne fly with one hand. He listened to me when I talked and let me lead him on tours of my projects around the house. He seemed able, when he looked at me, to see a person and not only a child, and I loved him for it.

One Sunday he asked me to sit up close to the pulpit. He wanted me to hear his sermon, he said, and as I listened to him talk about the beauty of God's creation and our duty to be awed by it, all of a sudden I heard him telling the congregation about a little girl who kept tadpoles in a birdbath so that she could watch over them as they turned into frogs, and how her care for those creatures was part of God's care for the whole world.

It was as if someone had turned on all the lights - not only to hear myself spoken of in church, but to hear that my life was part of God's life, and that something as ordinary as a tadpole connected the two. My friend's words changed everything for me. I could no longer see myself or the least detail of my life in the same way again. When the service was over that day I walked out of it into a God-enchanted world, where I could not wait to find further clues to heaven on earth. Every leaf, every ant, every shiny rock called out to me - begging to be watched, to be listened to, to be handled and examined. I became a detective of divinity, collecting evidence of God's genius and admiring the tracks left for me to follow: locusts shedding their hard bodies for soft, new, winged ones; prickly pods of milkweed spilling silky white hair; lightening spinning webs of cold fire in the sky, as intricate as the veins in my own wrist. My friend taught me to believe that these were all words in the language of God, hieroglyphs given to puzzle and delight me even if I never cracked the code.

But the story doesn't end there. He goes on to show that the way of Jesus can be as difficult and complicated as it is beautiful. It costs something, sometimes a great deal:

I was a willing student until the day I lost my teacher. At first all I knew was that something was wrong. Threat hung in the air as it had on those dark afternoons in Kansas, only this time it was not the weather. "Civil rights" had come to Ohio, a phrase that made adults talk loudly and lose their tempers. They chose sides and defended them; they wanted my friend to chose sides too, and he did. The doors of the church were open, he said. He would stand there to make sure they remained open, he said, so that is where they hung him - in effigy - a grotesque stuffed figure that bore no resemblance to my friend, swaying in the heat as he packed and left town.

That was when I began to understand that God's call was not only wonderful but also terrible, that the bright gleam I pursued through the woods and fields behind my house had another dimension I knew nothing about. It had sharp edges to it. It was capable of cutting deep, and those who reached out to grasp it has best be prepared to bleed.

starry night

Tonight, after bidding my roommate sweet dreams, I drag an old blanket and pillow out to the boat ramp and creat a little pallet for myself under the stars. A cool eastern wind blows full in my face, chasing and snuffing the final glimmers of light on the western horizon. My toes hang off the end of my blanket and meet the rough concrete, the warmth of the day's light still captured in its stony clutches. The contrast of the lingering warmth and the fresh, cool wind is delicious! The longer I lay there, the more stars appear, almost like a re-enactment of the day the Lord beckoned them into existence with his creative "let there be." I listen closely, almost expecting a faint "it is good" to rise with the next gentle breeze. I don't hear it in audible words, but the symphony of crickets, rustling of dry grasses, lapping of water, and my own inexplicable feeling of awe is enough to make it just as real. It's as if all creation gives a constant echoing cry, "It is good indeed!" And I'm all caught up in it, too! Right there, in that moment, I feel like the purest praise, the highest contemplation I could ever offer is to soak in, with all my senses, the goodness of God in that one instant.

As I lay under the stars, my mind eventually wanders to a brief conversation I had at lunch with a cousin of mine. We were discussing world religions, and how they all have something to offer to the bigger picture of reality. My cousin feels certain that if he studies each religion, he'll be able to select the parts that he thinks are closest to the truth. I'm not nearly as confident about my ability to recognize truth when I see it! I'm afraid my "end product" would end up looking very much like "the world the way Kelli wants it to be" rather than as it really is.

We didn't get very far into this discussion before the tide of conversation changed, but it really stuck with me. (One of my habits, for better or for worse, is continuing to hold conversations in my head long after they're concluded.) Eventually, this internal "conversation" merged with another one - one I've been having with the Gospel of John. In the first several chapters (in much of the book really, but I'm just to chapter 6 right now), John takes pains to drive home the special relationship between Jesus and the Father. Jesus is the creative Word present in the beginning, and he has been sent to dwell among humankind. The Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as the One and Only from the Father, full of grace and truth. ... No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only being in the bosom of the Father made [him] known (1:14, 18). Over and over, John emphasizes the unique role of the One and Only Son as the one who mediates what he has seen at the side of God to the rest of us who are bound by "earth-vision."

Tonight as I sat looking up at the night sky, I wondered what it would be like if that was it - if all I knew of God is what I could gather by staring open-eyed at the world around me. Even in the presence of other reflective folks, I'm not very sure that we could come up with a good idea of what this world is like or what it means to exist at all. Perhaps we could find a little insight into who God is - I think God put it out there in creation to be found by everyone - but it feels to me like trying to describe something that keeps sneaking past the corner of my eye. I know I've seen something, I may even be certain it's there, but it's too slippery to describe fully. Yet, if Jesus is who he says he is, who John clearly believed he is, then God is no longer this shadowy figure in our corner eye. God is revealed in some significant, radical way in the person of Jesus Christ! I know I'm biased, since I've already decided that the Way of Jesus is the only way for me, but I'm re-convinced about the uniqueness of Jesus Christ - worlds apart from the teachings of those who, like me, can only "speak from the earth."

Greener Every Day

Today I had a chance encounter with a Reader's Digest article about the top cleanest (and dirtiest) cities in America (it's in the July 2005 issue). Surveying the 50 largest metropolitan areas in our nation, the article listed the top 10 cleanest cities as well as the dirtiest 10. Each city was rated by air and water quality, sanitation, industrial pollution, and Superfund sites (toxic waste sites- I had to look it up). For my Ohio friends: Columbus was in the top 5 cleanest. For the Texans: Austin is number 8 (it looks like "keeping Austin weird" is a good option at least in this regard!).

Like any loyal Atlanta girl, I carefully scanned both the cleanest and dirtiest lists, but "my city" wasn't listed on either. Naturally, I would have loved to discover yet another reason to boast about my hometown, so I was disappointed not to find Atlanta among the cleanest (but I'm certainly not surprised!). Still, I could take pride in the fact that it was not among the "lower ten" names. Then I found a link to view the analysis of all 50 largest metropolitan areas. (If your curiosity gets the better of you, too, click here to see how your favorite big city measures up.)

Well, it appears that my initial pride was a little misplaced - Atlanta, GA is the 11th dirtiest large city in the nation (Houston was worse, preventing Atlanta from appearing in that infamous list). Okay, I knew we were in bad shape, but I didn't know it was this bad. Apparently, the Phoenix hasn't quite risen from the ashes. Or maybe it's better to say that we continue to wallow in ashes of our own design (in oh so many ways).

Why is it that I am so indifferent, and even condescending, when I read the names of other filthy cities, but I'm so shocked to see my own in black and white? As long as there were other cities out there "dirtier" than my own, I was content. Maybe I feel like a judgment on my hometown is by extension a judgment on me, too; after all, this is a place that has shaped me significantly.

Above all this article makes me want to make a difference in the condition of the environment wherever I'm living. I wonder, how can I be a small part of maintaining the beauty of this world God created as our home? I also wonder, what keeps me from being involved in efforts to protect the environment on a regular basis?