Tag Archives: church

Five Years Time

Posted on by under Season & Place

Five years ago, around this time, I was driving down a sunny Indiana road under a canopy of tree branches adorned with bright green leaves.

It was spring in Indiana, and it felt like the return of the humidity that seemed to go somewhat dormant during the winter. It looked like stepping carefully over the worms who had found their way to every sidewalk on my small college campus. It smelled a little like decay, as the leaves from the previous fall were exposed to fresh air again.

That spring, I was knee deep in a romantic relationship, the first one I’d had since my first love. I have never cried so much about anything as I did during that relationship, but when the leaves turn green and the light filters through them, I don’t think about the tears, I think about those Sundays driving home from the sweet little Episcopal church I was learning to love, listening to a mix cd he’d made for me.

There was a song we both loved by Noah and the Whale called Five Years Time. It’s about a relationship and wondering about the future.

In five years time I might not know you

In five years time we might not speak

In five years time we might not get along

In five years time you might just prove me wrong

Every time I hear that song, I think about that spring in Indiana. Part of me wanted us to find a way to make it work, just as I do with every relationship.

That spring was the beginning of many lasting love affairs for me. It was during those months that I first slipped between the pages of Harry Potter, devouring the series in just a few short weeks. I listened to the music of Over the Rhine for the first time, playing “Drunkard’s Prayer” and “Born”  on repeat through headphones in my dark dorm room, while my roommate slept. I began to practice yoga, tentatively, stretching muscles I hadn’t known existed. My crush on liturgy blossomed into a commitment.

Five years have passed and I am still wild about those things, if not about that person. The song Five Years Timeproved to be prophetic, we don’t know each other now, we haven’t spoken since that clear summer day when he called and told me he didn’t see a future for our relationship.

Recently, I was talking with someone about the way the seasons remind me of relationships. The first day of spring marks the birthday of a long lost friend who was once very close, the winter and new year remind me of a relationship I chose to end, and the freedom it brought. It seems that every season carries a context now. There are no seasons without memories, without twinges of sorrow, or joy, often intermingled. Memory triggers are everywhere, unavoidable. I’m doing my best to embrace them when they come, rather than shrinking back from the emotions they provoke.

When I graduated from college, I wanted a way to mark the occasion, to remember what it felt like to be in that moment. After doing a little research, I purchased a bottle of wine I liked a lot at the time (something I’d had on a promising first date). I wrote instructions on a sticky note, telling me to open the bottle in May of 2015. That bottle has sat in my wine rack all this time, waiting until the time is right. Soon, I will take it out and open it, allowing it to breathe in glasses before taking a sip.

I hope that five years have improved the taste of that season, but I won’t know until it’s open, sliding warmly down my throat.

How to Measure Time

Posted on by under Guest, Season & Place

On Sunday mornings, in preparation for the arrival of small band of 1st and 2nd graders, I make sure a great green felt arrow points to the right small rectangular piece of felt. There are 52 pieces of felt to represent every Sunday of the year in four colors: green, purple, white, and red. They form a circle on the wall like a two-dimensional stonehenge. The most numerous of those felt squares are great green growing Sundays. Next come purple preparation Sundays that come before the great white felt mysteries of Christmas and Easter. Easter has seven white Sundays. The mystery of Easter is such that we have to ponder it for a long time. Almost hidden, where 5:26 would be on a clock, is red hot Pentecost. Red hot Pentecost Sunday is a favorite with the 1st and 2nd graders. They all know that tongues of fire came on red hot Pentecost. We all say, “SSSS” like we’re frying bacon, when we talk about red hot Pentecost.

Even without a great circle calendar, as a preliterate kid I could recite these seasons of liturgical church life. It wasn’t too hard, usually the different colored stoles the priest wore gave it away. Pentecost happened towards the end of spring but before school got out for summer. After Pentecost, came VBS, summer camp, the choir summer musical in between swim team practices, meets, and waiting for the ice cream truck.

Soon after school started and the leaves changed to yellow, orange and red, we celebrated All Saint’s Eve. The entire church was transformed into a playhouse for kids, with crafts, cakewalks, mazes, duck ponds, and face painting. After All Saint’s Eve and its hayrides, two-pound bags of candy and glow-sticks, church entered the purple season of Advent. During Sunday school, all the kids would go to the undercroft (a large fellowship hall complete with stage) and make crafts for an “Advent Make and Take.” Leftover evergreens from trees and trimmings turned into advent wreaths. Plain candles became works of sequin, glitter, and wax stickers. Clothespins became angels with curly hair and perfectly sharpied o-shaped mouths.

The altar guild meanwhile would transform the church with festive evergreen wreaths the size of cars, neatly tied with red ribbons. The live nativity would be set up outside for the Christmas Eve service. With the brick walkways covered in hay or snow, the holy family (actors from the congregation) processed in under a tapestry canopy held by fellow acolytes in long white robes.

How To Measure TimeThe green and red of Christmas decorations would disappear as magically as they arrived, right before Epiphany. The following dreary days of winter lead into another season of purple, my favorite season: Lent. Ash Wednesday is to this day, as it was when I was a morbid nine year old, my favorite service. So solemn, so somber, so deep and beautiful. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return.” The bigger youth groups kids spread rumors that the ash placed on our foreheads was last year’s Palm Sunday branches—a rumor I never confirmed, though there was a catalogue, kept in a cupboard in the sacristy, where they could order ashes, along with acolyte robes and communion wafers.

After Lent, as daylight increased and so did the temperatures, Easter arrived. My brother and sister and I would decide whether we would serve as torch bearers on Palm Sunday, or chalice-bearers at Maudy Thursday’s foot washing service. Some years we would acolyte on Easter Sunday and wear new crosses over our white robes. And every year they would nag us about wearing the proper footwear: NO FLIPFLOPS or TENNIS SHOES.

And after the white of Easter and the red of Pentecost, the church year reset. I would acolyte at weddings and at funerals. I learned by heart the prayers, scriptures, and rhythms of each rite of worship. I knew where the extra robes were for when I spilled wine down my robe in the middle of communion (or the robes of the adult lay ministers; pouring is a tricky business). I read Prayers of the People at the lectern. I taught Sunday school. I lit candles before the service and extinguished them at the end.

My family left this church when I left for college. I’ve never gone back. I’m not sure why and I’m not sure I need to. Because in a way, I don’t think I ever left. How can I leave time itself? The seasons of the church are always there, no matter where I find myself worshiping. I am always home on Sunday, in great green growing Sundays, purple preparation Sundays or the holy, mystical mysterious Sundays of Christmas and Easter. They are the only home I’ll ever need. For they are to me the liturgy of Faith, the hope and the promise of the world to come.

*   *   *   *   *

Hudspeth_Family_0018_2“How to Measure Time” is by Sarah Hudspeth. Sarah is a mom of two kids full of life and mischief, a wife of a grad student, and a middle school math teacher for students with learning needs. Coffee is her favorite, as are books, Twitter (@eviesmomhuds), and any day spent outside. Sarah lives in Durham, North Carolina and eats extremely well due to food trucks, her garden, and the eat-everything-local movement.

Home Church

Posted on by under Guest, Home & Place

The reasons we chose the church weren’t particularly flattering. It was close, under five minutes from our house if traffic was favorable. They had a pretty thin looking praise team, so if they’d have us, we would both be able to play. The pastor seemed nice and the sermons didn’t strain my liberal sensitivities too hard. And it was relatively anonymous, so we didn’t feel the scarlet A’s branding us every time we entered the sanctuary.

We were married now, but that hadn’t always been the case. We had attended church together for five years, but in the before days, we had been married to other people, and lots of people in the church community of our town knew it.

countrychurchIn my previous life, when I had changed churches, I always knew immediately when I found my new church home. In those instances, there was a simple feeling of belonging. Even if it hadn’t made sense to me why I felt that way, I could tell when a new congregation was home.

But I didn’t have that feeling here.

I told my husband I’d probably feel more at home when I started serving in the congregation. I told him that when I was giving something of myself to the church, I would get that feeling of belonging. It wouldn’t just be the church that I went to, but it would become my church.

We never wanted our past to come to the surface and catch the leadership of the church unawares, so we had lunch with the pastors, one of us gripping the leg of the other who was telling their part of the story, trying to send strength to each other through leg compressions. Grace was extended, and we were invited to join the team of musicians. We had our first rehearsal with the team. We played our first Sunday, almost a year to the day from the last time we had played together, and it was a joy-filled experience. Everything was coming together in the best possible way.

And still the feeling of “home” evaded me.

I didn’t know what was wrong with me. What was holding me back from experiencing that sense of belonging in this place where we had been shown so much grace and love? Why couldn’t I feel at home when I was being embraced by those I worshiped with each week?

I turned these questions over in my mind and realized that the only thing holding me back was me. I didn’t feel at home because I wasn’t allowing myself to feel at home.

In my mind, I heard the voices that had told me I wasn’t welcome in church any more. Heard the voices that told me that I was a distraction. Heard the voices that told me that I didn’t belong.

Instead of seeing the ways we were being accepted, I kept expecting rejection. I waited for the shame I felt to be reflected back in the words or actions of others. I listened to the voices in my head instead of the voices of those right in front of me.

I wanted to feel at home, so I made a different choice.

When the voices in my head started telling me that I didn’t belong, I started looking for the ways that my church was helping me to belong. I thought about parking lot conversations after services. I thought about late night dinners at Burger King. I thought about hugs offered when we explained why the baby dedication service was too painful for us to attend. I thought of all of the ways that the church I was attending was becoming my church.

And it finally felt like home.

 *   *   *   *   *

424033_10151308414006236_662319879_n (1)“Home Church” was written by Alise Chaffins. Alise is a wife, a mother, an eater of soup, and a lover of Oxford commas. You can generally find her sitting behind a keyboard of some kind: playing or teaching the piano, writing at her laptop, or texting her friends a random movie quote. Alise lives in West Virginia and blogs at knittingsoul.com

A Place to Belong

Posted on by under Guest, Out of Place

I didn’t cry when my parents dropped me off for college. And I didn’t cry when I went to sleep that night or the next day or the next. I wasn’t sad, I was just excited. I didn’t cry about leaving home because I didn’t feel like I had left home. It felt like the times I had stayed at a summer camp, or a youth rally. Even when I started going to classes and managing my own food, it still didn’t hit me that I was not home.

It took until the first Sunday that I cried. I walked across the campus and into the church that mother had gone to when she had been on the same campus years before. I walked into the unfamiliar place, and suddenly realized I had no idea where to sit. There were lots of open chairs. The problem wasn’t that there wasn’t a place for me to go; the problem was that I didn’t already have a place to belong.

Back in my home town, my family had gone to the same church my entire life. My parents still go there. I am intimately familiar with the brown brick, the blue carpet with pink and turquoise speckled into it. I know the way it smells and feels when the lights are off and you are the only one in the echoe-y narthex with the tall ceilings.

I know the history of every inch of that building, and I never had to learn it. The church building grew up with me. The seemingly random brick wall in the lobby is a weight baring wall that was the first entrance into the church. The fellowship hall used to be the sanctuary, and for years the floors weren’t carpeted and the congregation would move the chairs to the side after the service and have a square dance or a dinner or anything really because the floors were so easily cleaned.

I played tag through the walls that were not yet dry walled, and picked up weird looking nails as treasures when they built the education wing. The original members had wanted a new sanctuary, but put it off because they saw the necessity of the immediate future. The nursery had been overflowing for quite some time. The original nursery is now the kitchen, the education wing has tripled in size, and the congregation finally did get that beautiful new sanctuary they were promised. I was singing in the choir next to my mom the first day it was used.

Throughout all of these changes, my family had always sat two or three rows in from the front, stage left. There were no official rules or seating, but that is where we always were. Perhaps this was because my mom was more often than not in the choir loft and she could give us “the look” from there if she needed to. I just knew that roughly three rows in, stage left, was where I belonged.

When, at eighteen years old, I walked into that unfamiliar church and did not know where I was supposed to sit in the sanctuary, suddenly I realized that I was not home. I did not have a place that I belonged in this building, in this sanctuary, in this church body. I sat down stage right, still sort of near the front, and I cried throughout the entire service. I never went back. It just didn’t feel like home.

It is hard to sit in a place when you are not sure where you belong.

*   *   *   *   *

Abby“A Place to Belong” was written by Abby Norman. Abby lives and loves in the city of Atlanta. She swears a lot more than you would think for a public school teacher and mother of two under three. She can’t help that she loves all words. She believes in champagne for celebrating everyday life, laughing until her stomach hurts and telling the truth, even when it is hard, maybe especially then. You can find her blogging at Accidental Devotional and tweeting at @accidentaldevo. Abby loves all kinds of Girl Scout cookies and literally burning lies in her backyard fire pit.

 

Between here and there

Posted on by under Out of Place

Going home, for me, involves many of the cozy things you might expect—fires in the fireplace, my mom’s apple pie, snow falling outside the windows while we play board games late into the night. But for the past decade, being at my parents’ house in Michigan has also involved hours spent in a place where I feel least at home: Among the dying.

Yes, we’re all in the process of dying—we walk every day among the living and dying. But death feels so much more palpable and impossible to ignore in the nursing home where my grandmother lives. Grandma turned 100 in May, and is no longer strong enough to make it out of her button-controlled bed into a wheelchair and then into a car for the 15-mile trip to my parents’ house. All of our visiting with her now happens at the nursing home, where nothing smells right, sounds right, or feels at peace.

Last week we visited her on Thanksgiving, a piece of pie in hand to sweeten her day with a taste of home. Grandma was sitting in bed asleep, a spoon still in her hand and dots of bright, abstract chili splatters marking her “bib.” She still feeds herself (mostly, if she can stay awake), she still exercises, pedaling a bike-like device with her hands, and her mind is usually surprisingly sharp.nursinghomeroom

Still, Grandma is 100. It took us a while to wake her up enough to see a spark of recognition in her faded blue eyes, as my dad gently removed the spoon from her hand, dabbing at a bit of chili on her chin with a napkin dipped in her water glass.

As we chatted, we raised our voices to an unnatural level, allowing us to be heard above the TV on the other side of the curtain. At this volume, we were loud enough to attract the attention of Grandma’s roommate Leta, who is tireless in her attempts to get in on our conversation. Leta has Alzheimer’s, and while we hate being rude, engaging her is like opening Pandora’s box: There is no end, which only makes Grandma grouchy. We are her family, and she wants our full attention. We want to give it to her, too. Each time we end a visit, as I kiss Grandma’s cheek goodbye and smile into her eyes, I am forced to inwardly acknowledge this might be our last visit.

*  *  *  *  *

I have never gotten comfortable with the idea of death. Of course, I have plenty of company in that place of discomfort, especially here in America. But even though my aversion to death is common, I’ve still always felt a certain amount of guilt about feeling this way.

The guilt, I suspect, mostly stems from being raised in the church, where there was a sense that, as Christians, we were supposed to “long for heaven”—that heaven was our true home, and God was our true father, and anyone who wasn’t praying for Jesus to return and whisk us all away (somewhere up in the sky with gold-paved streets) was probably not a true Christian.

While death is something I avert my eyes from, aging, so far, has been a good thing. I like being wiser and knowing better who I am with each year—feeling more and more comfortable in my own skin as time passes. I was surprised by how easily I embraced turning 40. It was a celebration of making it through so much and finding myself on the other side more whole and happy than I had ever been. But I assume there is a tipping point, a moment when growing older ceases to be an unfolding and begins to fold back in on itself—a realization that my body doesn’t work like it used to be, and that chronic pain has the power to eclipse joy.

*  *  *  *  *

For now, though, my family is young and we carry that joy around in us, like a bright light that emits warmth for others to bask in. Taking that joy to my grandmother’s nursing home may not be fun or comfortable, but it is our responsibility, even as we long to shrink away from the sights, smells, and sounds of the old and dying.

carolingpicIt has become our tradition when we’re in Michigan for Christmas to sing carols up and down the halls of the nursing home, pushing Grandma in her wheelchair at the front of the parade, where she feels like queen for a day. When she was young—even well into her 70s—Grandma’s trained voice was a beautiful soprano, and she played the piano like a dream. Now, when her family is surrounding her, making music in four-part harmony, Grandma is as close to heaven as she will get on this earth.

We pause and sing for a while to a group of people sitting in the lobby just outside the dining hall. As we finish singing and turn to go, wishing them a Merry Christmas, several of the residents reach out to touch our hands—especially the hands of our three teenage daughters, so young and soft they seem to radiate goodness powerful enough to be contagious. Others seem to have forgotten us, lost in reverie. Their eyes are misty with tears, focused on a faraway spot that takes them beyond the nursing home, beyond place and time. Here, we are all out of place in our own ways, suspended somewhere between young and old, life and death, the now and the not yet.

What’s possible around a table

Posted on by under Food & Place

My husband Jason is a true amateur chef—at least if you understand amateur as a French word derived from amare: to love. He cooks because he loves to, and he cooks for the purpose of showing love to others.

* * * * *

One of my first significant encounters with Jason’s cooking took place at a birthday dinner he prepared for a friend—a friend who happened to be (and still is) his ex-wife’s partner.

At the time, the birthday dinner plans didn’t strike me as unusual. Jason and I had been dating for about a month, and I knew he was close to his ex and her partner. I had also heard (but hadn’t yet fully experienced) that Jason was a great cook. Why wouldn’t he offer to make the celebration dinner?

That evening, we all chatted as friends arrived, pouring glasses of wine, helping to set the table, and keeping an eye on one-another’s children as amazing scents wafted from the kitchen where Jason was working his magic.

It wasn’t until we sat down around the table to give thanks for the food and for our friend on her birthday that the beautiful peculiarity of the event struck me—with enough weight to trigger a physiological response: goose bumps on my arms and a tingle of emotion rising up behind my eyes.

My boyfriend just prepared a dinner to celebrate his ex-wife’s partner, I thought, with amazement.

The sentence rolled through my mind like a ticker tape all evening, taking on slightly new meanings and more weight each time. My own life had gone through its share of rough waters the past few years, deadening what had once been an optimistic expectation that there was goodness in the world. That birthday dinner made me believe in the possibility of redemption. It suddenly felt like anything that seemed impossible to the world was, in fact, possible. Especially around a table.

 * * * * *

chefjacketAs our relationship developed over the months, Jason continued to surprise me with his capacity for rendering not just delicious flavors, but also soul-feeding grace. I soon realized that for him, the food and the emotional substance go hand in hand.

My first Christmas with Jason’s family (just days after we got engaged) was my introduction to his extended family and their collective love for food. Jason’s aunt is African American, and in her kitchen, Jason and his cousins combined all they had learned from Aunt Gina and all they had taught themselves, creating a truly fusion Christmas dinner. The traditions of the older generations blended with the new, as recipes from the African-American South were served up next to recreated dishes that had recently been tasted in Chicago’s hippest restaurants.

In our own home after we married, “What’s for dinner?” became our young daughters’ most eagerly-posed question. Their very favorite answer was one that rose unmistakably from the kitchen to their noses—roasted cumin, peppercorns, coriander, cardamom, and cinnamon being ground together for Jason’s Tikka Masala. I loved watching our daughters’ tastes and appreciation for delicious and new foods develop. I also loved the subtle yet powerful ways our two families first got to know one another and then blended and bonded over conversations around the table. Dinners that take time and care to create, it seems, demand meal times that mirror that time and care.

Jason’s cooking skills also make our home a favorite destination for friends—those who love to eat as well as those who love to cook. As our circle of food-loving friends began to grow, Jason and I decided to host an annual chili and cornbread cook-off. The event has evolved and grown over the years (eight and counting!), but the heart of the event has stayed the same: It’s an opportunity for us to bring together friends from all parts of our lives—friends we know from church and friends from the local music scene, foodie friends and work friends, family from Chicago and friends we know through our daughters’ schools. The event lets us gather the often-disparate parts of our lives—each with their own cooking styles and secret family recipes—and create a single whole, a representation of who we are and who we love.

* * * * *

I won’t lie—when it comes to Jason’s cooking, the food alone is an amazing thing. But it’s the spaces those meals create that I love most.

Those of us who grew up in the church tend to see The Table as a powerful metaphor, but that doesn’t mean we can always see or articulate how that metaphor plays out in our Monday-through-Saturday lives. I saw it clearly for the first time at that birthday dinner Jason cooked so many years ago. And once I recognized it for what it is, I started to see it everywhere: in the words our now-teenage daughters share with us over dinner, in the collaborative bustle in Aunt Gina’s kitchen, in the beauty of diverse friends gathered together for a co-created meal in our home. It begins to seem that some level of powerful grace and forgiveness—of authenticity and wholeness—is always possible when people sit down together for a meal.

t-givingtable