in support of non-productivity

I R E L A N D  //  July 2019 

When you thought you were going to spend a Saturday night at home alone, and your friends invite you to the new brewery in town...

You shirk the work you were planning on doing. And you join them for a couple hours.

Because you are an extrovert. But mostly because you value people, and connecting with them is the thrill of life. Life isn't all about productivity.

I've been reading Jenny Odell's book, How to Do Nothing, in little spurts lately. This passage confirms my convictions:

"I'm suggesting that we protect our spaces and our time for non-instrumental, noncommercial activity and thought, for maintenance, for care, for conviviality. And I'm suggesting that we fiercely protect our human animality against all technologies that actively ignore and disdain the body, the bodies of other beings, and the body of the landscape that we inhabit." 

 Preach, Jenny.

practicing gratitude

Glendalough, Ireland // H. took this; it's way better than the two I snapped of this same view

My step-brother came over for brunch today. In between whisking eggs and half-n-half together, and testing the quiche to see if it was setting, he asked me a question. What am I hopeful for right now? I had to pause. Because it didn't come easily. Even though there are so many gifts in my life, I don't always feel tangible hope.

So, I am pausing again, this time to practice gratitude.

01. my fiddle leaf fig is doing well. I moved it to a new spot in the apartment, and I think it likes its new home.
02. FaceTime with my sister this morning, if even for a short bit. There is something magical about Wi-Fi connection being that good although you are 8,574 miles apart.
03. my beautiful friend and neighbor dropped by to bring me some cotton she picked for my fall wreath-making
04. the local library! recent finds: Garden City, How to Do Nothing, and The Sabbath
05. actually loving my job this year as a music teacher at a local Catholic school. Year two, baby!
06. getting to see one of my favorite bands - Lowland Hum - live on Friday night with a dear, new friend who just moved to Norfolk
07. stumbling upon a YouTube channel of a sweet married couple from Georgia. i don't agree with all their perspectives, but there's something about their wholesomeness that is comforting.
08. getting to dote on my yet-to-be-born nephew, sending baby clothes and already spoiling that kiddo!
09. for the health of my family, spiritually and physically
10. a long phone chat on Thursday night to catch up with one of my closest friends from college. feeling mutual connection and love.

to trust

Glendalough Upper Lake, County Wicklow, Ireland

H. in the sun // 35 mm

beautiful H. // I'm really pleased with how this roll of film turned out. sometimes I get lucky. 

a Sessile Oak in Glendalough // 35 mm

I visited one of my favorite faith communities in Charlottesville, VA last weekend, All Souls. The pastor, Winn Collier, shared various quotes about waiting. This one especially struck me (no surprise there; Henri Nouwen speaks my soul-language):

Hope is trusting that something will be fulfilled, but fulfilled according to the promises and not just according to our wishes...To wait open-endedly is an enormously radical attitude toward life...So, too, is giving up control over our future and letting God define our life, trusting that God molds us according to God's love and not according to our fear.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               - Henri Nouwen 

When I was in Ireland this summer, I was grappling with some big unknowns awaiting me upon my return. I found out then that my sister/roommate/best friend is moving to teach in Thailand.

And I had the choice to trust. To trust that this new season will bring good. To trust that my needs will be provided for, even if in unexpected ways. To trust that God is Love and He will not leave me alone.

And today I have the same choice. I still don't know where/with whom I will live, but I see the Lord providing beautiful friendships, a deep contentment and joy about teaching at the Catholic school where I am starting my second year, and a peace that it will all be OK.

I'm fan-girling hard

Property of The New Domestic.org

Inspired lately by the life and work of Michelle Garrels. There was one week recently where I was constantly telling my sister (who is also my roommate) a new fact about the Garrels family every single day.

Mother to five kiddos, wife of musician Josh Garrels, home-school teacher, visual artist/designer. Can I be just like her when I'm 39?

I'm attracted by the purity that their family exudes. From the beautiful intentional way they name their children to their practice of rest every week to her perspective on home-schooling and doing it in ways that feel authentic to her (which means lots of outside time and nature study, lots of audio books, and incorporating crafts into the curriculum simply because she loves making things), she and Josh are creating a family culture of beauty, truth, and connectedness to one another.

And now, please excuse me, as I am gonna go peruse her blog and watch more YouTube videos about them!

the unlived things

I'm just one of your little ones (roughly translated from the German), Rainer Maria Rilke

Lately, I've been struggling with a decision I made months ago about work and my career. I had then decided to leave my teaching job at the end of the school year, not pursue certification, and explore other career possibilities. I thought the issue was settled. But now I struggle, and I am returning to what I had originally forsaken a few months ago. New perspective is leading me to shake things up.  

But am I shutting the door on opportunities I deeply want, but have too much fear to embrace? 

Does our true face ever speak? 

I often feel a tension between what's given to me and "the other" possibilities, whatever the heck "the other" is. 

//

One of my favorite movies, The Time Traveler's Wife, holds this tension so beautifully. A Chicago artist, Clare Abshire, falls in love with a time traveler, Henry DeTamble. He can't control when he travels, or how long he's gone. He is drawn out of linear time into present and future events, in the same way that gravity pulls a falling object back to earth. 

Henry often travels to a meadow where he meets Clare during her childhood years. Later in her life, she meets him in "real" time, and they marry. 

One is left wondering, did she ever have a choice? He would not have traveled to that meadow had they not fallen in love later in her life. But they would not have fallen in love had he not traveled to that meadow. His presence throughout her formative years melded her heart to his. It's a strange confluence of coincidence and fate, but also, choice. 

//

When I was nine years old, I started taking piano lessons from an amazing teacher. She pushed all her students farther than they ever thought they could go, and I was no exception. I had natural skill, and I enjoyed the beautiful classics she introduced me to, so I practiced intensely. For many, many years, I was at the piano for hours a day. My skill increased, I competed throughout middle and high school, and I went to college with a music scholarship. 

By my sophomore year, I started feeling burnout. I didn't practice as much as my colleagues, and I didn't have the desire to compete anymore. But, despite my degree requirements, I still wanted to give an hour long junior recital AND an hour long senior recital. My degree only required a half hour senior recital. 

I gave those long recitals, and I taught 16 piano students those last two years of college. After graduation, I continued teaching, though I didn't always love it. I guess you could say I had a love-hate relationship with teaching. And still do. I'm still teaching, though what that's looked like has morphed over the years. Currently, I am teaching private piano lessons as well as teaching general music and chorus part-time at a private school.

Sometimes I wonder, did I ever have a choice to be in this field? This amazing teacher came into my life and impressed me, pressing music into my soul, imprinting in me the sounds of Debussy and Bach and Chopin. 

//

In Rilke's poem "I'm just one of your little ones," he suggests that all paths lead to the "unlived things." 

Perhaps this path of music teaching will someday lead me elsewhere, like flower farming, or pastoring a church. 

Until then, I have a choice. 

another genesis account

Makebelieve 

by Pádraig Ó Tuama

And on the first day

god made 

something up.

Then everything came along: 

seconds, sex and 

beasts and breaths and rabies;

hunger, healing, 

lust and lust's rejections;

swarming things that swarm

inside the dirt;

girth and grind

and grit and shit and all shit's functions;

rings inside the treetrunk

and branches broken by the snow;

pigs' hearts and stars,

mystery, suspense and stingrays;

insects, blood

and interests and death;

eventually, us, 

with all our viruses, laments and curiosities; 

all our songs and made-up stories; 

and our songs about the stories we've forgotten;

and all that we've forgotten we've forgotten;

and to hold it all together god made time

and those rhyming seasons

that display decay. 

Season of hustle, soul at rest

Photo: Heather Kaufmann // Durham, NC // winter 2019

I must remember that it's just a season, this year of hustle. (Well, it's not quite a whole year, just an academic year.)

How does one keep her heart at rest when there's so much pressure to do, do, do? And I want to maintain a spirit of excellence in my work, I want to finish strong. I will finish strong.

Then I remember the quiet moments. Walking among the young trees in a New Zealand orange grove, sneaking up on the birds, all by my lonesome. But not lonely.

Drinking in the faint light of stars with friends on a hanging bridge, also in New Zealand.

Mosquitoes biting all my available limbs last summer and I didn't care at all, cicadas chirping, trespassing with friends in Chesapeake.

There's a constant tension within me between my ambitions and my limitations. Wanting more, but also being content with the present. And it's not about wanting more stuff; it's about wanting more experiences, more connection with people, more knowledge (I always want to be reading more!), and wanting to create more. I have so many ideas bubbling every so slightly just beneath the surface, and I am trying to be ok with the reality that I can't get to them in this season. I am made for eternity, and my spirit feels that longing. 

These words echo throughout the full days,

"He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together."  [Colossians 1:17] 

And somewhere between those words, between the thousands of thoughts racing through my head, my soul finds rest.

a credo to live by

Photo: Heather Kaufmann // Durham, NC // spring 2018

Thank you, Kelly Flanagan, for these words that so accurately portray the longing within me to create:

"It's as if artists have given a megaphone to the voice of grace, so they can always hear it saying: You're not here to be great; you're here to create. You're not here to make a difference; you're here to make beauty. To make a little order out of the big chaos. To add a little abundance in a world of scarcity." 

[taken from Loveable by Kelly Flanagan. Zondervan, 2017]

I knew then it was over

when I had short hair, ages ago // 35 mm // Virginia Beach oceanfront

I was babysitting for a friend a couple years ago, and jotted down this poem in her dimly-lit living room after putting the kids to bed. Something about the author's unabashed telling stirred in me an eagerness to take risks, to jump when the opportunity presents itself. And simultaneously to be aware of the beauty and gravity in each of our choices.

Genesis 1:28
Kate Daniels

In the dank clarity of the Green Line tunnel
we hatched our plan - to grow a creature
from those nights of love, those afternoons
of thick scents, those liquid mornings, odor
of coffee mingling with musk. Actually, he wanted
six, he said, standing there in the chill, a train
thundering up like an epiphany the two of us
verified together.

I knew then it was over, irrevocably
over, my previous life, alone and unloved, could see
how it would finally play itself out, starring him
and our creatures, the chaotic kitchen, the rumpled
beds, my wrinkled shirttails smeared with egg.
Helplessly, I tilted toward him and those sweet
images, to his mouth and his smell, toward my life
and my future, the nights we would recline, locked
and rocking in groaning love, the months my belly
would expand with our efforts, the bloody bringing forth
of two of him and one of me.

I stood for one last moment alone,
inside a cloud of grace, a pure and empty
gift of space where history released its grip.
Its bulging bag of bad memories burst open
in the doors of a train and was carried off
to a distant city I swore never to revisit.
And then I turned to his lips and his tongue,
to our hands in our gloves unbuckling each other,
calculating how quickly we could travel
back home. To anyone watching, it must have
looked like lust - two lovers emboldened
by the anonymity residing in a subway stop.
What kind of being could possibly see
a new world was being made, a universe
created? Who could have known how called
we were to what we were doing? How godlike
it was, how delicious, how holy?