Happy new year, friends, and I hope you are well. I am so grateful for each of you who spend your valuable time reading at least some of the words I write. I am grateful if you care, if you are encouraged, if you are moved to places of peace AND to acts of worship and justice.
As I write this, my husband and I are enjoying blessings in our family and personal lives. We recently welcomed our first two grandchildren in our lives with all the smooshy sweet cuddles and thrills, swaddles, giggles, and all the tiny milestones. I am experiencing a sweet season of spiritual fruitfulness and answers to five years of prayerful longing and waiting. It’s also been a season of enjoying the rich presence of decades old friendships and attending the swearing in of two of my dear friends elected to the offices of district judge and NC state house of representatives.
And then, there is all the other stuff happening on the national stage.
Since the elections I’ve been moving with a kind of low energy that of peaceful, tired, sad, hopeful watchfulness, content with a quiet contemplative mind where there aren’t too many words to unpack the happenings. And I haven’t felt much of a demand to do that. My Decembers are usually journal-heavy where I’m filled with ideas, reflections and resolves. Not this year. I actually ended up writing stories! Five whole stories, furiously filling a notebook and having so much fun escaping into the little worlds I was writing. I’ve happily given into the much needed mind rest from a series of crushing disappointments, thrilling celebrations and unsuspected lovingkindness from a church fellowship we recently became a part of.
All that to say, no new year’s hoopla of reimagining, rebranding, rethinking ANYTHING.
I wish we could have a chat together about what kind of energy you are bringing into this new year, and how you are feeling about the next several months. I know some of you pay attention to this American culture, news media and information systems, national movements, and what it all means. Wouldn’t it be nice to talk? In light of that, I may try my hand at the Chat feature that goes out to subscribers and see what happens. Stay tuned!
"Decide what to be and go be it." --Avett Brothers, A Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise
Decembruary
I’m rested, but not ready
Pare down, cut through the noise of stuff and duplication
Molt and nest simply pushing towards a clear
Still voice that doesn’t shrink back from the
Fray but doesn’t go looking for it either
Serenity of soil and leaf mould and rot
To examine the
Vanity of things that change and
withers grass-like
Dies and the names of the great doers of vanity who
Impoverish themselves and souls and others
Rest, still, observe that the red-shouldered hawk nestled in the crook of a limb, motionless, focused, quiet, waiting, unhurried
To watch what we become together,
To dare to ask what if?
To hide with the winter sky and its cold clean
Stars with its lush dark curtain of silence
Thick and velvet, till I’m wound up in its
Infinity
To cast out fear like
a plaything
Of bullies and tyrants
and to grasp their fearful dreams
Of sawdust
Clawing at the void, and I, a step or two ahead
To capture it all in a bud vase,
To learn pity as the path to love, where
I fill the glass with a plucked daisy and see what
Difference it makes.
And all this while I sit on this other 6th of January, remembering the thirsty lust for chaos– mesmerized by the plebes who walk the plank with
Toy dixie flags toy soldiers with sashes, belts and feathered caps and
All the pretty cowboys and cowgirls
Tumbling with tumbled terror
Stepping in their own nooses, soiling themselves with
Misplaced patriotism.
To trace the dying star, its announcement of
Immolation already ancient history–for
There is nothing new under the suns. The vicious little
Kingdoms will duke it out on the dioramas and stages, imagined
Scottish battlefields of public opinion
rejected the terms of peace of
Drinking their own melted gold dust
I fill the glass with a plucked daisy and see what
Difference it makes.
Now I’m ready.
There’s no falling back to sleep Once you’ve awakened from the dream Now I’m rested and I’m ready I’m rested and I’m ready to begin I’m ready to begin -Avett Brothers, February Seven
“You can’t pour from an empty pitcher” is a staple piece of wisdom in my advocacy community. We can’t give if we don’t have it. It points to the need to be a well-watered garden if we are in places of scarcity, injustice and violence. As believers of Jesus, we understand the doctrine of loaves and fishes and Christ produces abundance out of dearth. We are strong when we are weak because the need is supplied and clearly supplied by the Creator, the uncreated one who creates out of nothing, and who arranges and sustains the cosmic and terrestrial.
My friends, all we need to do is ask. Bodies and minds wear down as consequence of merely existing, and excessive neglect of either takes its toll. So your pitcher may be empty or even cracked right through. This is your sign, your invitation engraved in fancy gold calligraphy to pray and rest. Anyone including ourselves who says it is all up to us has forgotten who we are and who Christ is. So rest.
My husband and I are total homebodies, and also really love music. At home. But this year we did something out of character and stayed up way past our bedtime to join my brother and sister-in-law at their annual Avett Brothers New Years Eve concert. It was extraordinary.
Besides the magnificent talent and showmanship, the finale included their transcendent song No Hard Feelings. (Listen here.) They had us all sing and repeat the last line “I have no enemies.” It was a beautiful moment as we sang it together, as if we were promising and sharing accountability for whatever may come.
I have no enemies.
But then there was the count down and balloon drop. My very favorite part was an arena full of young and older people playing with balloons. And that, my friends, in that moment, felt like the key to world peace.
Head’s Up!
In the next Bearing Witness post I’ll share an experience I had very recently titled: “We Are All Waiting In Line with Trump at Target and what Dr. King Has Taught Us.” It may show up in the next 24 hours.
Protect your peace my friends and God bless you!
