Let us crazy ones have delight....

"Ah! My dear comrades, let us crazy ones take delight in our eyesight in spite of everything, yes, let's!" -Vincent Van Gough

It feels strange to intentionally to put my interior thoughts out there, in cyber space, for someone else to read.  I lived in England for 10 years.  I like privacy.   But here goes,  my first blog.  Joseph and Aly, here's to new beginnings...thanks for the push. You too, Teri. 

I have a core belief.  I believe that life is incredible hard and difficult and unjust and ugly AND incredibly beautiful, all at the same time.  To use the words of Tolkien, life, like a good fairy tale, contains "joy and sorrows, sharp as swords."  Both deserve our attention.   If we do not fully own the hard bits - the bits that wound us and cause us to suffer -  we cannot fully embrace the joy.    In this blogg I do not want to deny hard reality or gloss over painful things.  I simply want to make space for goodness.  I want to make room in my heart, in my soul, for delight. In spite of everything.

Every year we lived in England we made a pilgrimage to an apple farm to pick apples.  We discovered the farm the day we purchased our first of many junk cars.  One Saturday, after having lived car-less in Bristol for a few months, we bought an old, white Vauxhall diesel for 600 pounds, turned the key in the ignition, and proudly set off to see the countryside.  We wound our way down narrow country roads through hedgerows and rolling fields, until we happened upon the apple farm.   Every autumn since, we had repeated that trek, at least three or four times a season.   We were drawn not so much by the apples, although they are truly amazing.  England has many different variety of apples that have been lost to us here, and we would weave through the trees, picking them and sampling them to our hearts content.  We were drawn by our desire to visit with the Apple Man, a small cheerful man named Ted with a weathered face and bright pink cheeks.  We met him on our first outing in our new car.  The next year, we came to see him on our first outing with our new baby, Johanna.  The next year, we told him of our decision to move to a multicultural neighborhood in Bristol.  The next year, we brought our new son, Adam.  Every autumn we'd come by three or four times to get more apples, visit our apple man, and chat about the weather, apples, and life.  

It was our seventh year in Bristol, and life had somehow gotten busy.  Craig had finished his Ph.D. and was working full-time lecturing at Trinity College.  I was a tutor in Spiritual Formation.  Adam and Johanna were getting involved in soccer, dance, birthday parties, and play dates.  We were helping to plant a very unconventional church to the marginalized.  It was already late October, and we hadn't visited the Apple man. 

We went to bed late Saturday night.  We'd been to a party at some neighbors, feasting on homemade Thai food.  I woke up early, at around 4:30, not feeling well in my stomach.  The pain increased, and soon became unbearable. I woke Craig up.  Soon the pain was so intense I could not draw my breathe except for the smallest of sips.  I began to feel as if I was loosing consciousness. I thought I was dying, and all I could think of was regret that I had not made scrapbooks for my children.  Craig ran across the street to our neighbor who was an M.D.  He took one look at me, saw that my lips were turning blue, and called an ambulance.

By the time I was at the hospital, the worst of the attack was over.  They could find nothing wrong with me, and eventually said I could go home.  I turned to Craig and said, "Let's go to the apple farm! "  We rushed home, and without showering, without even changing clothes, we grabbed our kids and made for the apple farm. The leaves were mostly off. The apples were mostly picked.  We laughed and danced and played hide and seek amongst the apple trees. We took goofy pictures, including the one on top of my blogg.  We lay down under the trees.  Johanna looked up at the branches, bare against the sky, and said, "Look, Mom, stained glass windows."  It was Sunday. The world was my sanctuary. Holy ground, my friends, holy ground.  

I know life is hard.  It can be really hard and painful, and sometimes it just sucks the wind right out of you.  I know that injustice is ripe, that power is misused, that the weak are tossed aside like empty corn husks.   I know the weight of shame and guilt. I know the darkness of depression.  I know if you live long enough, your heart will be pierced.

But I know the glory of green leaves, and the weight of a child's sleeping head, and the gift of life when you thought it was all over, and let me tell you, this world is holy.  Shot through and flaming with glory.  Maybe i only see it now and then, in hints and glimmers and fits and starts, but every now and then, the veil parts, and I sense that God really is with us. 

 All of us.