Learning from what we read

Quotes and thoughts

“Sunrise in Feodosia” by Ivan Aivazovsky, 1852.

“A fledgling ascetic, I am learning to see loneliness as a seed that, when planted deep enough, can grow into writing that goes back out into the world.”

-Kathleen Norris (Dakota, 111)

if i could write like anyone it’d be Kathleen Norris

Three months ago I moved to a new state and stepped foot into an apartment that only I would occupy. Sitting at my (Target) writing desk, with a letter from Wendell Berry and a picture of my grandma beside my computer, I’ve been putting words to paper and sharing them with you during a somewhat lonely season. And you keep showing up, reminding me that my loneliness can have a redemptive purpose.

I am also reminded that in my loneliness God is there.

Mysteriously. Miraculously.

“And let anyone who dismisses such feelings of puppy love, silly love, be set straight because I suspect that rarely if ever again in our lives does Eros touch us in such a distilled and potent form as when we are children and have so little else in our hearts to dilute it.”

-Frederick Buechner (The Sacred Journey, 53)

please don’t speak down on first love

I love this Buechner quote because it reminds me of being in eighth grade, curled up in the backseat of the church van on the way back from Discipleship Now in Stillwater, Oklahoma. My best friend Connor and his brother Corbin leaned over me as blinkered street lights flashed through the windows. I had just seen Elizabeth from across the Fellowship Hall and something in my insides crumpled. All I could do was think about her, intimate her smile, breathe her air.

Two days later I stood in church two rows behind her. I remember I felt guilty because I couldn’t pay attention the entire service because all I could think of was her; all I could do was glance over at the back of her head.

Sure, I was just a kid. But my body knew what love felt like even if I didn’t have words for it—perhaps especially because I didn’t have words for it.

“I am getting out of the habit of technology, and there is freedom in the absence of it…. I have felt that it is only in the last year that I have finally begun to live. The thought came to me quite unexpectedly when I was swimming in the local pool. I was in my fortieth or fiftieth lap and I touched the wall, breached for air, and I knew in that moment that I was comfortable in my own skin…. I am no longer content to merely to be alive—no, not when there is living to be had.”

-John Connel (The Farmer’s Son, 66-67)

are life and technology dichotomous

I fear I am getting into the habit of technology.

Literally after I wrote that sentence I switched tabs to check my email. I currently have four windows and thirty-six tabs open.

I remember doing a study away in college. It was just outside Yosemite. I’d sit at a waterfall without wifi and write a paper for hours, with only a styrofoam cup full of nectarines to keep my company. Each page I wrote was another nectarine.

Just got a new email. It was telling me to check into my flight home for Easter. Upgraded my seat for eleven dollars so I could sit by the window.

I love writing on airplanes because there’s nothing else to do on there. No other distractions because all my tabs and windows are useless without wifi. It’s the closest I’ve come to that waterfall outside Yosemite in years.

“Jesus is preparing for you a place. A perfect place of perfected people overseen by our perfect Lord. And at the right time he will come and take you home.”

-Max Lucado (3:16, 112)

keep me from cynicism, Lord

I read 3:16 during the fall semester of my junior year of high school. I was seventeen, a few months removed from my first kiss, a full year before I’d get my first antidepressant. That semester I’d get to school early and sit in my car and read 3:16 before praying for my day. My world was as big as Stillwater, Oklahoma, and I was in love with God, in love with the soccer field, in love with church.

I believe there is a temptation in certain crowds to write off books like 3:16. It isn’t complex enough or erudite enough. It fails to be conflicted enough. It is too simple.

But why is simplicity bad? To write off 3:16 is to tell the seventeen-year-old that he better grow up before praying to God. That he better buy a sport coat, purchase life insurance, and get banged up a bit before talking of God. That only the conflicted—those who roll their eyes at anything that isn’t jaded—have access to God.

Lord, keep us from cynicism.

Be still, my soul, and steadfast.

Earth and heaven both are still watching

though time is draining from the clock

and your walk, that was confident and quick,

has become slow.

So, be slow if you must, but let the heart still play its true part.

Love still as once you loved, deeply and without patience.

Let God and the world know you are grateful.

That the gift has been given.

-Mary Oliver (Felicity, 77)

false teeth and chandler beats

Today I’m flying home to Oklahoma for Easter. I’m going to go to church in Chandler with my grandad—eighty-eight and still working full time at his furniture store.

A few years ago the church got an African drum, and the pastor invited the congregation’s drummer—a teenager—down front to play it. As he walked to the stage, my grandad stood up and said—confidently—“Play us one of those Chandler beats!”

That same year—one of the years around there, at the very least—we stood outside Grandad’s house after church taking family pictures. He smiled wide and revealed he had taken out his false teeth. His smile—filled with gaps—was the same as my elementary-school cousins’.

I want my heart—like my grandad’s—to always “play its true part.”

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Quick hits

What I’m reading / just finished:

• Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

• Foster and Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (Please, please read these. They are life changing.)

• Lights a Lovely Mile by Eugene Peterson

• Slow Productivity by Cal Newport

What I’m listening to:

• Wednesday by Madison Cunningham (literally as I type these words)

• “Come and Listen” by David Crowder*Band

• Joy Joy Joy Joy Joy by Paul Zach

• Sanctuary Songs by The Porter’s Gate (Maybe my album of the year?)

• “God and Prozac” by Chris Renzema

• CATCH by Peter CottonTale

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And finally, happy Easter

Happy Easter friends! I hope your Holy Weeks are full of rest, and if you’re a pastor, I hope your Holy Week is full of hope and joy (I wish that for non-pastors as well, but especially for pastors this week). I’m grateful for you.

-drew

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