Tag: making the world more beautiful

Little Things and Sacred Places

Lately, I’ve just had to push myself to find goodness, find beauty, find any amount of energy. Parenting and homeschooling are hard work. Living in another country can be hard work. (It can also be a fun adventure.) Being eight months pregnant and iron-depleted is also hard work.

I manage to feed and educate the children and do the fun Christmas traditions they’re used to, but I’ve really had to force myself to do much more than that. I’ve been working on double-stranded scarves for the last week or two. I’ve made eight so far for the teens/young adults we work with, and I have theoretically 13 to go. Michael initially had a count of 15 boys that he works with, and then it ended up being 21 total, so I may have to order yet more yarn to get them all done. (They may end up being New Year’s scarves, depending on children/health/yarn supply/shipping.)

BUT:

Michael handed out one wrapped scarf to a young asylum seeker that he mentors, and the young man was so shocked to have been given a present. His eyes started to tear up, and his face was filled with joy. He didn’t expect anything, and he didn’t know what Christmas gifts were.

This.

This is why.

I have photos, but I can’t share them in order to protect the privacy of this young man. But they make me cry every time I look at them.

To know that a couple of hours of time, a few balls of yarn and approximately 3500 stitches could tell a boy that he was cared for and valued and that people see him as a person and not as a helpless case. It’s immensely humbling that my hands could be used that way, and it fills me with awe and a sense of sober purpose when I sit down to work. It reminds me that little hobby of mine can be holy work. Just like faithfulness in doing laundry, cooking supper, and scrubbing toilets is holy work.

Too often we separate things that are “sacred” and things that are “ordinary.” It brings to mind the snatch of Wendell Berry that I often quote.

There are no unsacred places;   
there are only sacred places   
and desecrated places.   

Wendell Berry

But even though I quote it so often to myself, I still forget that everyday work is a chance to breathe and worship in a sacred place. It’s a chance to practice gratitude. It’s a chance to bend my knee. And more importantly, it’s easy to forget that if I don’t make it into a sacred place, it might become a desecrated place.

I don’t share this story to toot my own horn. I share it as a bit of a journal to remind myself that this work that I have the privilege to do can indeed make the world a more beautiful place. And to remind you, too, that wherever you are found today….it can be a sacred place.

I’ll close with a quote from Brother Lawrence, who some call the Kitchen Saint because in the monastery he served in, he had the oh-so-glamorous-job of washing dishes. But he found that he was able to experience a vivid and powerful relationship with God because he was able to spend time doing little things while acknowledging the presence of God.

We ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.

Brother Lawrence

With Great Love: Work That Honors

One of Mother Teresa’s favorite mottos was “Do small things with great love.” There are about three or four iterations of this particular motto, but all with that refrain of doing small things with great love.

Isn’t that what making the world more beautiful is about? We can’t just swipe a huge oil pastel brush over the ugliness in the world to paint a sunrise or a sunset in its place, or a “happy little cloud” like Bob Ross. That’s not how it works. Because the world is cursed with sin and sadness, it will always remain present. But in our own small acts of redemptive defiance, we can resist the darkness. We can’t erase it, but we can plant a garden. Or we can make a pie. Or we can fold laundry. And in doing those little things with great love, we redeem and cultivate.

A few nights ago, I was up in the middle of the night. I’m a bit of an insomniac, to begin with, but pregnancy emphasizes that. And I was worried about a few different things. So I began reading poetry. At 3 a.m. (Please tell me that someone else, somewhere in the world, does this?)

I turned to Wendell Berry because his poetry has been so soothing to me in the last few years and in particular, his book This Day: Collected and New Sabbath Poems.

Teach me work that honors thy work,
the true economies of goods and words,
to make my arts compatible
with the songs of the local birds.


Teach me patience beyond work –
and, beyond patience, the blest
Sabbath of thy unresting love
which lights all things and gives rest.

Wendell Berry

And this became a prayer for me. Work that honors God’s work. Small things done with great love. They’re both so interwoven that it’s difficult to see where one leaves off and the other picks up.

This past month has been one huge march, placing one foot in front of another. November is always our family’s most busy and haphazard month, with birthdays and Thanksgiving and trying to intentionally get things done so that December can be a restful season of Advent. But each of the kids has demanded attention in different ways.

I often notice that when some of my children want attention, they’ll pick up a handicraft and ask me to help work with them on it. It’s usually not well-timed or convenient. But it is a ministry. It is heart work. And it is teaching my kids that love is available and that love becomes available when needed. I’m teaching my kids about prayer and how the Father always is ready to listen to them. It’s nothing earth-shattering. It’s saying yes in a moment when my flesh and to-do list long to say no.

It’s also teaching the kids to fight for beauty in their own way. It’s teaching them that they have the agency to choose colors and designs in their own projects. They have creative license. But at the same time, their handicrafts are bound by the rules/laws of that particular craft, material, and gravity. It’s teaching them to take pride in their work and the joy of making for others. It’s giving them a way to do little things with great love.

One step at a time. One stitch at a time. One moment at a time.

Little things.

Making Tomorrow a More Beautiful Place

This morning found me waking up in a funk. I mean, nearly every morning does. I am genuinely Not a Morning Person. But when I’m pregnant and the baby inside of me hates me from the hours of 11 p.m. and 4 a.m., I’m even more Not a Morning Person.

So the kids had peanut butter and jelly on baguettes for breakfast this morning. Just saying.

After a cup of tea and two hours of sheer survival, I started to feel guilty for just gritting my teeth to get through the day. I wanted to make the day more beautiful. So I began. I washed several loads of laundry, changed several sheets and washed them because it was windy and the sheets would actually dry outside today.

As I was cleaning up the aftermath of the peanut butter and jelly breakfast, I thought to myself “Well, this is nice. Laundry is done. Dishes are washing. But how can I fix tomorrow morning? How can I make tomorrow a more beautiful place to be before it’s even begun?”

Several of the kids were wanting to help, so I decided to do a bit of a deep clean of the kitchen. They organized my storage containers and glass jars, and I began a few pots of veggie broth for soup this week. We found our gratitude journal (embarrassed grimace at having lost it for a while under a sack of leeks) and began writing things we were grateful for.

I sat down and realized that deep cleaning the kitchen, while useful, didn’t really solve my problem of tomorrow morning. So I decided to make up breakfasts for the next three days for Michael and the kids. I made up four batches of raspberry pancakes. (In my defense, I thought the bag of berries in the freezer was a multi-berry mix from our smoothies. But it wasn’t. So raspberry pancakes it is. )

(and pizza sauce for our supper tonight…)

I also made a batch of blueberry muffins. These two items should cover breakfast for the next three days for Michael and the kids. If all-day-sickness allows, I’ll usually eat a few scrambled eggs for breakfast, but that’s typically all I can handle. So these breakfasts, while scrumptious looking, will not be for me.

I found that looking ahead to helping tomorrow helped me to gain more energy and task momentum throughout the day. Instead of staring at the pancakes, waiting, I would try to find little tasks like washing a window or hanging three pieces of laundry or straightening the bathroom sink that could be done in the 1-minute before I’d have to flip the pancakes. It became a game. I’d ask myself “What is one thing that I can do this moment to make the world more beautiful?”

And sometimes that meant stopping a sibling bicker-fest. Keeping it real here.

After we put the kids to bed tonight, I rearranged the master bedroom with my husband’s help. We don’t have any furniture for when the baby comes, but at least I can get our bed positioned on the correct wall. That way, we’ll be able to fit a chair, changing table, and pack n’ play for the baby to sleep in.

I’m loving this piece of art by Van Gogh and can’t decide if I’m going to hang a print of it in my room near where I’ll have my nursing chair or in my daughter’s room near her dollies.

I can’t claim that any of these tasks will make me more cheerful tomorrow morning. Because it will–in fact–be another morning. But at least I’ve done my best to make tomorrow a more beautiful place.

A Birthing of Sorts

Many times the written word is birthed out of times of complexity or change. Usually, an author will hope to effect a change in the world. And I suppose both of those are true in this instance. I’m in a period of great complexity and change, personally. And I do hope to change the world by bringing beauty to the forefront in my little corner.

People question me repeatedly, genuinely wondering why I put effort into things.

Why garden? Why crochet? Why knit socks when you could buy six pairs for the same price instantaneously? Why would you squeeze your own lemons for lemon juice?

I guess those are questions worth answering. And here’s my simple answer.

Because it’s good and lovely. And goodness and loveliness are worth the extra effort.

One of my children’s favorite books is Miss Rumphius by the talented Barbara Cooney. In it, a grandfather instructs a child to make her world a more beautiful place. She wonders how she could do that. Is it possible? The book follows her as she ages and, yes, as she makes her world more beautiful.

This blog is part of my battle cry for beauty, truth, and goodness. In this world, evil, ugliness, terror and anxiety bombard us daily. Gentility and civility are so far absent. But it was not meant to be so. And if, by flinging words into a corner of the internet, I can make it a bit more beautiful, then I’ll do so.

Join me.