11 Things I Learned This Fall
I’m joining Emily Freeman, a writer and podcaster I admire, in her invitation to reflect on the past quarter with a What We Learned reflection. I appreciate the wisdom of author and teacher Jan Johnson’s encouragement: “It’s not the experience that brings transformation; it’s our reflection upon our experience.”
Brian and I at a beautiful October wedding in central ny.
The context for our autumn seems especially important this year. We were coming from a particularly hellish spring and summer as we cared for one of our children during a mental health crisis. The illness didn’t evaporate with the onset of fall, but the flame of the crisis level dissipated to more of a slow, steady burn. We’d both - gladly and thankfully - taken a leave of absence from our work over the summer and re-entered at key stages of our respective jobs. We each hoped we’d be ready to attend to our work with rested hearts and minds even though our summer was anything but restful. We fell on the mercy of God and our communities to help us bridge the gap, and most days have lived from that mercy. On other days, we’ve felt deeply the depletion of our emotional, spiritual, and physical selves.
On one of the worst days of the summer, I woke in a kind of daze and headed toward the kitchen for coffee. It felt too far and I sat down on the floor behind our dining room table. I don’t know why I picked that spot, but it’s where I landed and I suspect it felt like a kind of shelter for my weary head. I leaned against the table leg and tried to pray. Brian found me in this position and sat next to me. All I knew to say to explain my posture was “It feels like God wants us to be nothing.”
As soon as the words left my mouth I heard them as an invitation rather than a curse. Of course God wants us to surrender ourselves as nothing into the Everything we’re given through Christ. Those words sound simplistic to me now as I write them, but the impact was soul-shifting.
We spent the spring and summer in the refinement of paring down to nothing. Everything seemed at stake, and more than just subjectively. God demonstrated a deep holiness to us that felt like a burning flame at times. It hurt. May the result be a deeper purity in our own character and presence to God, each other, and ourselves.
With that as the background, the rest of fall spun into a life of its own with many, many good things. We keep telling each other “God is being silly good!”
Here’s a bit of what I learned about myself, God, and others during this paradoxical season.
1. I love creative team collaboration when the goal is clear and the methods are constructive.
I was invited in September to participate with a team of church leaders from around the country tasked with creating an online vehicle to encourage those who are not in church to consider their own callings in this world. This project is funded by the Lilly Foundation as part of the C3 (Creating A Culture of Calling) initiative under the umbrella of the organization Vibrant Faith. There’s so much more I could say about this, and some of it shows up in the annual Work Stories series I offer during Ordinary Time. The element that felt like learning to me was that this fall, I actually had several opportunities to be part of a team tasked with conceptualizing ideas into concrete offerings. Several of those opportunities were not enjoyable at all. The week with the C3 team woke me up to some of what I love most to do. The difference, I think, is that the purposes, goals, and rules of engagement were clear in this opportunity and fuzzy, at best, in the others. This makes all the difference in the world!
A conversation prompt from the visual Faith Project as part of our c3 missional design meeting
2. There’s much to celebrate in Bridgeport, CT
We already believed this, but are still learning where to look to see the light of hope. In late September we had the privilege of attending the unveiling of a mural painted by a collaborative of Bridgeport students. The Aim Higher Together To End Gun Violence Mural was unveiled during a ceremony in a park behind Bridgeport’s City Hall on Saturday, September 28. The students created the mural in cooperation with several community artists, mentors, sponsors, and partners, including two of our very favorite neighbors and church community friends, Adiel and Amy Dominguez.
Several of the student artists shared their personal motivations for participating in the project. Each of them had experienced the death of a family member or close friend to gun violence in Bridgeport. I loved being able to observe the way the adult community members supported and celebrated the students, and pray the experience will give them a sense of connection as they continue to grow up. Lord, have mercy.
3. Staying in touch with old neighbors is priceless
The first weekend in October, we traveled to central New York to celebrate the wedding of the daughter of our neighbors from all the way back to the late 1990s and early 2000s. We used to live across the street from each other in the best little town in the Southern Tier of NY.
This family were more than our neighbors, but also our friends, class and teammates, students, and first doors to knock on when we needed anything. In those days Brian and I were barely figuring out how to care for our kids, our home, and our jobs. These neighbors welcomed us and made us part of a tight-knit community. We literally walked through floods and fire together.
In all of our moves since 2008 we’ve never had better neighbors. We haven’t seen each other for about a decade but it felt like no time at all.
My friend and former neighbor, Geri.
4. Buying good walking shoes from from a real-live shoe salesperson is a game-changer
This after years of buying the cheapest possible shoe online. After another long walk of me complaining that my feet hurt Brian drove me straight to a running store in Fairfield. I walked through the door and announced “I don’t run, but I need new shoes!”. The saleswoman helped me choose the right style, size, and even helped me tie my laces in a new way. I still don’t plan on running, but this is a game changer!
5. Christian churches and Jewish synagogues make good neighbors.
This is a long and beautiful story I’ll tell another time. For now, celebrate with us that God and our Jewish neighbors made space for our homeless church to have a home. Everyone benefits. It’s the perfect example of blessed to be a blessing with mutual flourishing for all. Thank you, God, you are silly good! And thank you, Congregation Rodeph Sholom!
Church of the Apostles’ first Sunday worshiping in our new home at Congregation Rodeph Sholom, Bridgeport, CT.
6. Emily McDowell makes the best stationary.
After reading Kate Bowler’s Everything Happens For A Reason (and other lies I’ve loved) I ordered some postcards from Emily McDowell & Friends (this booklet and this one) and love every single one of them. Have YOU seen the greeting card by Emily McDowell inspired by Kate Bowler’s story? You must!
7. I like panel discussions, even when I don’t quite understand my role, but don’t mind when I’m in such excellent company.
Another out-of-the-blue opportunity I enjoyed. Put me on a panel, any panel, and I’ll have things to say. I will also swing my feet back and forth under my chair because they don’t quite reach the floor.
Responding to the Rev. Dr. Taylor’s excellent plenary talks during a Panel Q & A at the annual Convocation and Synod of the Anglican Diocese of Christ Our Hope.
Catching up with our dear friend, David Taylor, and missing Phaedra.
8. It’s possible to create a baptismal pool in a synagogue.
Where’s there’s a will, Father Brian will find a way. And it was perfectly lovely. We processed down the hall as a congregation and celebrated our friend’s baptism and then processed back to the sanctuary for Eucharist. It was perfect.
9. Sometimes we just need to see our kids’ faces in person.
Thanks to friends’ generous sharing of their airline miles Brian and I were each able to make separate, rather last-minute, I-need-to-kiss-my-kids’-faces trips to Austin. We hate living so far apart and these kinds of moments make a huge difference. (Some other time I’ll tell you about the time I got up from my bed in the middle of the night, packed a suitcase, and started driving to Texas because I couldn’t stand it any more. We got as far as New Jersey and decided a bit more planned approach would be better for everyone.)
10. We were made for a home with walls that go all the way up to the ceiling.
If you follow me on Instagram, you've seen lots of photos of our Bridgeport loft apartment in a converted corset factory (not kidding!). It was the right place for us while I was paying tuition for my Spiritual Direction certification, but a triiiiccckkky place to live with more than two people at a time. For one thing none of the walls (except, thankfully, the bathroom) went all the way up to the ceiling. It’s one thing to live in a dorm-style loft bedroom with one’s husband and quite another with one’s husband, 1-6 adult kids, and 1-2 dogs. Thanks be to God for this unexpected opportunity to rent a single-family home neighborhood in another Bridgeport neighborhood we love. Moving is horrible, but finding a well-suited home is (literally) divine. Stay tuned here and on Instagram for lots more setting-up house stories!
11. I love our Sacramental Life Community that’s forming on Patreon!
Have you checked it out yet?!?
You’ll find the Advent Daybook 2019 devotional posts and more of my off-the-cuff personal writing that isn’t published anywhere else (yet).
home page at my new site, click the photo to visit me over there!
patreon.com/sacramentallife