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By Sarah Pryor Something caught my eye in the garden. Pulling at oregano stems for dinner, my hand grazed over an orange lump just cresting over the soil. Excitement and surprise arose in me, joining together in elation – to see, after all this time, growth. I hadn’t gone out to dig for sweet potatoes that day. Most of my garden plants had already reached peak harvest by late September; the potatoes were the only ones left untouched, partly because of my theory that sweet potatoes are an autumnal vegetable and partly because I didn’t know the first thing about harvesting them. Sweet potatoes, like regular potatoes and most other things, were foods we just bought from the market growing up. This year was different: the first year of my own garden, at my own house. Planting potatoes was a spontaneous act, christening new ground for new life with new plants. When I stumbled upon the first potato that day, unexpected awe filled me. I know it sounds dramatic, but I found it to be beautiful. All beauty has a reference point beyond ourselves and our world. Harvard Professor Elaine Scarry discusses this idea in her book On Beauty and Being Just. She says when beautiful things are too self-referential, they start to lose their beauty: think songs about music or a book about writing. Works like these don’t often elicit surprise or connect new ideas. When the song ends or the book closes, we find ourselves to be the same people, in the same place, as before – trying to follow a moving dot that never moves. True beauty, she says, refers to something entirely other, beyond the imminent world. Pastor Ted Kim elaborated on this idea in a 2020 episode of The Ferment podcast: “We get glimpses of the kingdom of heaven in the here and now.” A musical masterpiece, prolific writing, dare I say a juicy peach – are pieces of beauty and wonder piercing the veil of our material world, whose reference points bound infinitely outward, drawing our gaze away from ourselves and toward a distant north star. “True beauty,” Kim says, “carries with it greetings from beyond.” I understand it’s absurd to regard a sweet potato this highly, but I’m going to do it anyway. Not due to any one of its qualities, but simply by virtue of where it came from: a garden. * * * Backyard gardens have felt like important endeavors for as long as I can remember. As a child, I begged my mom to let me plant vegetables – not that I particularly recall begging, but it felt like she was doing me a favor, saying how much work these things are to maintain. We planted marigolds around the plot to keep bunnies away. I tended to them year after year. For a couple of summers around middle school, I transformed my lemonade stand into “Sarah’s Vegetables.” I’d roll my mom’s old manicure table into the front yard, piling it high with cucumbers and green bell peppers. A cardboard box with a hole in the lid sat beside them, ready to receive donations. I think the homemade sign is still in my parents’ basement. Moving away for college brought my gardening seasons to an abrupt end. I left behind ripe tomatoes and a bumper crop of cucumbers in mid-August, adding to the list of sad goodbyes. It didn’t help that it was hard to find good, inexpensive produce in the city where I moved. I walked through the supermarket produce aisles with disdain, wondering, “Why is produce so expensive? Why is everything smaller and less flavorful?” My parents would visit and bring bags of cucumbers — three for a dollar, as they should be — and apples for my roommates and me. I’d lumber back to my dorm after fall break, weighed down by a bulging cooler bag full of bell peppers and eggplant. Someone observing me do this might think we didn’t have vegetables within city limits. In reality, I was stuck between living there and going “home” on holidays and long weekends. I pined for home, and a sweet, red bell pepper could transport me there, even if just for a moment. Like most young adults trying to figure out their lives, I had several hopes and dreams. But underneath my ambitions was a quieter one: to plant a garden in May and stay there long enough to see the harvest through. To have a place to land with room for a garden. Fast forward a couple of years, and my husband and I have just passed one year of living in our home. When we moved in last January, my eyes often wandered out the back windows to the yard. An old wooden frame stood there, crawling with withered ivy vines. I dreamed warmly of the months ahead, of turning over the dead grass and replacing the ivy with grapes. In early spring, we invested hard labor into that dry, rocky terrain, jumping up and down on shovels like pogo sticks to break through the dead, yet strangely strong vines running along the ground. Hives crawled up our arms as we discovered the wooden frame’s ivy was poisonous – a poignant reminder that working the ground had become a cursed activity. We poured soil onto broken ground, laboring for a time when new grapes might replace the toxic and withering vegetation. We dug little holes for the plants and crafted a fence from wooden posts and chicken wire, praying life might spring up from this dying ground. I’d never tried to grow a root vegetable before. The only viny plants I’d had before were zucchini and cucumbers, and of course, the pumpkin vines that grew from a couple of seeds I snuck into my mother’s flower beds one year after carving a jack-o’-lantern. She was less than pleased to see her shrubs overrun with vines, and they never did produce any pumpkins. Something about non-self-pollination. It was a bit of a lose–lose. Growing root vegetables was much harder than I imagined. When to dig? Where to dig? There was one time, though, I got it right: that first potato, which grew so large it actually pushed itself above ground. Harvesting that potato was much more of an involved process than I had bargained for. Its size and shape were largely a mystery, of course, which made digging a shot in the dark. After much cautious poking and aggressive tugging, I was shocked when a sweet potato the size of a child's head finally emerged from the ground into my hands. I felt a rush of adrenaline. Somehow I had freed it from the earth, though pressure bore down on all sides. It was radiant, though caked in dirt. My eyes were the very first to ever behold it. Maybe I’m projecting, but it was sparkling. Happy. I took the potato inside and weighed it on the kitchen scale: two pounds, seven ounces. It was as if I had seen, just then, through a window into the mystery of birth. For a moment, it was wide open: beauty, cracked and filtering light, just for me. I felt compelled to recall memories I didn’t have. “It must’ve been something like this,” I thought, “in the beginning.” * * * The Bible tells us in Genesis that God created the first man from dust. He breathed life into his bones, then took one and made a woman. Bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. God placed them both in a garden. From dust, life. Eden was creation’s epicenter – from it bursting forth flowers, trees, animals, people. The first human was born of the breath of God and the dust of the ground, in a garden. Adam, whose name itself means “man of the earth,” breathed his first breath in Eden, surrounded by unstained creation. Communion with God was alive and unhindered there, growing along with cedar trees and green figs and birds taking flight: communion that, of course, was severed with a bite of forbidden fruit. This one act of rebellion banished Adam and Eve from Eden. They were tainted by sin, a strange disease, beginning to fester in their good and beautiful bodies. It opened their eyes and minds to evil, drove their feet in the opposite direction from their Creator. “They heard the sound of the Lord walking in the garden in the cool of the day,” Genesis 3:8 says, “and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord.” Feet, infested with sin, running for cover. The strange disease drove them from that flourishing Eden, but their resting place landed them still in nature. After all, what other terrain was there? Genesis 3 says God banished Adam “to work the ground from which he had been taken.” Heading east, as they did, it feels far-fetched to imagine a hard scene break – rather, a kind of dimming effect from where they came. The terrain whispered of Eden, but with a gray overtone, stopping short of goodness, ground crumbling under their bare, cracked feet. That rebellion sparked a chain reaction, playing out in evil, sadness and isolation. It continued to echo out, generations of people singing a groaning song. Seventy-six generations trickled down before the birth of Jesus, whom the apostle Paul calls the last Adam. He triumphed in victory where the first man failed, even when that triumph was momentary death and defeat. He restored the barren land to flow with life once again. Though Eden was Adam’s birthplace, it was also where he fell into temptation. Jesus arrived in a garden, too, coming to the Mount of Olives in Gethsemane with his disciples on the night before his crucifixion. He admonished them to “pray that you will not fall into temptation” (Luke 22:40). The next day, Jesus gave up his life on the cross. He was laid “in a new tomb,” in a garden. He experienced a momentary death in that garden, death that birthed life for many. A chain reaction, continuing to echo out even now. Adam went from life to death in a garden. Jesus Christ, undoing that strange disease, went from death to glorious life – also in a garden. * * * This backyard garden patch has had its time of thorns and thistles. By the sweat of our brow did we cut open the earth to uproot what was dead, our arms suffering scrapes from prickly vines. How our back muscles strained, contending with the roots grown too strong, left too long. But even in this garden, even as we groan, that sweet Eden song sometimes sings. I heard it in the harvest – in a sweet potato, caked in dirt, emanating the scent of creation, carrying “greetings from beyond.” My eyes were opened, if just for a moment, to that good place where creation bears glorious witness to the Creator. Falling backward and forward at the same time, I tumbled into that garden in glory. The one with a westerly breeze, bathed in light. Sarah Pryor is a writer based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh with degrees in Nonfiction Writing and French, she interned for a year with Cru in France. Now, Sarah lives with her husband and works on the creative team for Lancaster-based NGO, Horizon: Empower the Orphaned, telling stories of life healing and transformation of children around the world.
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By Sara Kyoungah White My visit to South Africa begins with darkness. Disheveled from the twenty-hour flight, I step into the room at the bed and breakfast and find the light switches will not work. The last time I had sat in total darkness was several months before, out at the family ranch, where the Milky Way evanesced out of the night sky and my husband snored beside me. But my first night alone in South Africa, I have only the flashlight on my phone. Strangers in a foreign land need blind courage; exhaustion saps me of any of that. I find the bed and lean back. At home, my children are watching the clock in the classroom, willing the minute-hand to click toward the dismissal bell. Here in the dark, on the other side of the world, the white sheet is over my head to keep the mosquitos from whining in my ears, and the temperature is unexpectedly cool. I am like a corpse in a morgue. Lying in the darkness, I begin to hear the sound that punctuates my sleepless nights in Johannesburg and, later, at the lodge in Pilanesberg National Park. Piet-my-Vrou. Piet-my-Vrou. The red-chested cuckoo emits this distinctive three-toned call for which it receives its Afrikaans name, Piet-my-Vrou. Its call fills my days and nights. Later, I learn that female cuckoos sneak into other bird species’ nests to lay a single egg, which it then abandons. The egg incubates quicker than those of the host, and when it hatches, the orphaned cuckoo chick’s first instinct is to kick the other eggs out. The unsuspecting host then raises the chick as its own. Records show female Piet-my-Vrous laying up to 20 eggs in one season, leaving in its wake entire broods of unborn chats, thrushes, and flycatchers smashed on the ground. There’s something familiar about it. In the daylight, the call of the Piet-my-Vrou is lost in a gaggling audioscape of insect and bird calls I do not recognize, cackling and rattling and whooping like a thousand unseen hosts. I look for eggshells on the path between my lodge and the viewing deck, where there is an artificial water hole, a perfectly round circle of greenish blue. * 1,200 million years ago during the Mesoproterozoic Era, when the supercontinent of Columbia was breaking apart and sexual reproduction was first evolving among eukaryotes, a volcano erupted in what is known today as Pilanesberg National Park. The park is molded from the fiery bowels of the earth, a millennia-long imprint of a colossal eruption that hurled boulders and masses of land as if they were handfuls of dust. Three concentric rings of hills, known as an alkaline ring complex, provide a uniquely transitional habitat between dry Kalahari desert and the moister Lowveld vegetation, which we witness with each turn of the safari truck—grass and sand on one side, low-lying trees and hills on the other. The rising or setting sun tinctures everything with a ruby gold light. Dawn and dusk are when the shadow of the ancient red fire passes over the land, glowing still, calling out life like a dare. Life answers. The animals are out, grazing, walking, mating, hunting. I catch a glimpse of the silhouette of a giraffe against the green hills, towering above the trees, and I can imagine a time when there were dinosaurs here. It is late November. Winter is at the threshold at home, knocking furiously on the door and shaking snowflakes to the ground in thick, rolling blankets. But in the southern hemisphere where I am, the rainy season of summer is beginning. Only the sun shows its quiet fury, and the red-chested cuckoo is calling, as if I have dropped through a portal into another world. * When I was a college student, I lived at a children’s home in the South Korean countryside for a year, teaching English. My home that year was a small two-room annex off the office building, facing the houses where the elementary-aged kids lived—the Joseph House for the boys, the Esther House for the girls. Most of the children who lived there were either abandoned or unwanted by their families. I was a mediocre teacher, and the classroom left me feeling flustered. It was my first time so far from home, and I began to feel like an orphan myself. In my off-hours I would find refuge in the nursery, where there was a single baby girl and her caretaker, a quiet elderly woman whose wrinkle lines had settled into a perpetual good-natured grin. The baby girl’s name was Soo-yeon. They had found her in a trash can. Something about being alone with a baby makes you completely un-self-conscious. I sang to Soo-yeon, something I would never do in front of anyone else. I held her little hands as she slept in my arms and made silly noises to make her smile when she awoke. I watched her grow from a tiny infant who mostly slept into a baby who could follow me with her eyes; from a baby who could sit without being held up, into an almost-toddler who could take wobbling steps. Years later, when I would have a baby girl of my own, I would think of her often. One day I came to the nursery, and Soo-yeon wasn’t there. The caretaker told me she had been adopted. * Our field guide at Pilanesberg is a long-legged, cheerful Afrikaans woman with a small face and broad shoulders. Her name is Lara, but everyone unwittingly keeps calling her Laura. Someone asks her, “What is the latest you’ve ever been out at night by yourself on the reserve?” She replies with only a few second’s hesitation, “Midnight.” She heard the call of a leopard one night, like a handsaw ripping through tree trunk, and leaped out of bed to find it. She has seen a thousand elephants in her lifetime, but she never seems bored. She and the other field guides spend hours each day driving gaping tourists and their cameras all over the reserve, scanning from left to right, right to left, to spot a rhinoceros or a hippo, hoping for the rare glimpse of a caracal. They speak sightings of animals into their radio with a holy pronouncement. On their days off, they go out together just to watch the dung beetles roll their perfectly-shaped balls. “I could watch them all day,” she says, and she has. Her eyes can spot the curves and shadows of creatures from miles away, like how one might guess the silhouette of a loved one by their limps and proportions. Each time she stops the truck to point into the distance, it takes us a moment before the transformation happens: what we took for inconspicuous rocks morph into a herd of kudu on the hills or a white rhinoceros lumbering. When night falls, Lara whips out a giant searchlight from the seat beside her as if conjuring it out of the darkness. One hand on the steering wheel and the other gripping the lamp, we bump along as she scans every tree and bush, sweeping the light from left to right, right to left, up and down trees, under bushes. “I’m looking for the shine of eyes!” she shouts back at us over the roar of the engine. She doesn’t put the light down until she’s turned the engine off back at the lodge. She is still hoping to spot the leopard. What is it that drives her? She and the other field guides do this day after day, and yet her wonder rivals ours, her depth of knowledge coloring our vision brighter. Her whole vocation seems to me a search and a prayer. She is like the woman who turns over the house to find her lost coin, or Samuel calling into the night. We once lost our three-year-old daughter on a Sunday at church. My husband and I ran up and down the street, shouting her name, ran into rooms and out of rooms, asked every passerby if they had seen her. It was like being trapped inside an hourglass, the dread burying us deeper with each passing second, until the glass shattered and we found her. She was sitting in the back of the sanctuary, laughing, attended by a host of adoring college girls who were feeding her marshmallows. * We learn that what appears to be unspoiled, virginal terrain is carefully restored farm and mining land, wrought at great cost. I wonder to myself if anything is compromised by knowing that Pilanesberg is more curated Jurassic Park than wild jungle. In the early 1980s, entire buildings and villages were dismantled and hauled away from Pilanesberg, every person and non-native species transplanted. In one of the most ambitious relocation projects ever, nearly 6,000 animals were then moved to the reserve from other parts of the continent. A buffalo grazing in a field would suddenly black out and wake up blinking in the light of a completely unfamiliar place. Project Genesis, they called it. One article in the Los Angeles Times describes it as “rivaling Noah’s efforts with his ark.” The park spent nearly as much on the game fence surrounding the park as it did on the game itself. We come across a lone elephant bull in the road, and Lara tenses. She checks all the signs carefully to make sure he is not in musth, an annual time of heightened testosterone levels that makes adult male elephants unpredictable and aggressive. He’s not, so we drive toward him, and he rewards us with a glorious saunter across the road, bathed in the orange filtered light of dusk, his tiny wrinkled eye never looking directly at us. I later find out that when elephants were first brought to the reserve under Project Genesis, young orphaned bulls reached sexual maturity ten years earlier than they should have and went on wild rampages, resulting in the deaths of 17 rhinoceroses and several people. The issue was resolved when older adult bulls were brought in, and the young culprits were culled. For how large he is, the bull elephant in front of us treads impossibly softly. He passes within arm’s reach, and his footfalls are all rustle rather than thunder. There is hardly a puff where his massive feet touch the earth. He is a dust-covered cloud, an apparition of the gloaming whose bearing is edged with mournfulness. That night when I lie in bed, listening to the Piet-my-Vrou call ceaselessly through the hours, I begin to think in my delirium that it wants me to hear something. It dares to repeat, over and over again, something I have forgotten. * When kids who grow up in children’s homes turn 18 in South Korea, the government hands them a check for a few thousand dollars, and they are left to fend for themselves. Many turn to gangs, drugs, and prostitution and have kids of their own they cannot care for, continuing the cycle of abandonment. One night while I was living at the children’s home, I was almost asleep when there was a terrific rattling of my front door, as if someone were trying to break in. The next morning, I learned that one of the aged-out kids had returned. The annex room in which I’d taken up residence was also where he would often spend the night. I did not interact much with the older kids; they were sullen and cold to outsiders like me, unwilling to extend the possibility of being hurt. They had been hurt too often. But the children I taught were friendlier, maybe because of their age. They were boisterous, quick to laugh, whip smart, unpredictable second to fifth graders. One darling girl with sass would be happily reciting the Lord’s Prayer with the class one moment and then hurtling chairs across the room the next. I grew close to the young boys of Joseph House, often helping them with homework and playing tag with them in the courtyard. Each of them came to trust me in their own way, and I grew fond of them, thinking of my own little brother at home. But there was a darkness in them that always caught me by surprise. One day I came into their house, and it was too silent. I found them all in the back room, crowded around a small figure. With a sinking heart I knew it was the one they always bullied. They had put a bag over his head, and his hands were tied, like something out of a torture scene, and he was sobbing. “I watched my father commit suicide,” tells me one boy who I grow particularly close to. He visits me often with his best friend, who wants to become the president of Korea one day. “He was drunk and cut his wrists with a broken glass bottle.” Another time, a boy asked to borrow my phone. He was in fifth grade, and I, being a foolish young girl, said yes. I learned too late that he had stolen into the office earlier and pilfered his mother’s phone number. I watched in horror as his hopeful face hardened slowly into a raw despair, his mother’s frantic, anguished tone seeping through the phone. “You cannot call me again,” I hear her say clearly. When he hangs up, he hands back the phone without saying a word, his eyes like shuttered windows. * When we come across a parked pickup on the shoulder of a road, Lara slows and gives it a grim look-over as she drives past. It’s empty, with disheveled cartons and boxes rammed into the backseat. She mumbles something indecipherable about poachers, says something in Afrikaans into her radio, and kicks the engine back into high gear. The rhino’s horn sells for more than gold or cocaine on the black market, says Lara. To make sure to get every last bit of it, a poacher will cut off the entire face, leaving behind a ghastly carcass. Poaching became a real problem during the pandemic, when the park was closed to visitors. The rangers and caretakers at Pilanesberg recently made the emotional decision to cut every rhinoceros horn in the park down to a stub, in a last-resort attempt to deter poaching. So much of human–nature interaction these days seems to be a matter of choosing the lesser of two grave evils. All the data show that cutting off a rhino’s horn has no ill effects on its quality of life. But Lara and the rangers have witnessed firsthand how the loss of a horn can impact the entire ecosystem. Take for example two young lion brothers, she says, who in a burst of immature bravado decided to go after a rhinoceros one day. They were underpowered and soon realized it. One lion went straight for the face of the rhino. It would have been gored to death had there been a horn. I lie in bed awake and listen to a distant leonine desperation sounding into the blackness of night. I wonder if it is the same lion that attacked the hornless rhinoceros, the same lion we saw that morning, pacing a game trail and pausing to stare at us, black lips slightly parted. I had never heard a lion roar before. I know they make many sounds. But the one I heard that morning was filled with such longing, I was unexpectedly moved by compassion, not fear. I thought of my dog when he dreams in his sleep, twitching his legs, whining and baying for something instinctual. I thought of how babies can be comforted by a sweater that smells like the mother, or how a plant will always, however painstakingly, turn its face toward the light. I thought of the Piet-my-Vrou calling. The lion we saw that morning scented a wildebeest before he saw it. From deep inside his chest came an anguished groan, like one who bore a curse, or one who knew what it meant to pray. I can never un-hear it. * When the people of southern Africa hear the call of the Piet-my-Vrou, they know the rains are coming and begin to plant their seeds. I had journeyed to the other side of the world without knowing that it was this call I had come to hear. Every psalm I read that year in Korea reminded me of the children I lived with. Every night as I journaled my prayers, I sowed many tears on their behalf, praying for a reaping of joy, a bending of destiny. In the nursery, I often sang a Korean song over Soo-yeon based on Psalm 121. In it are bound all my hopes for her. The Lord will guard you, He is your shade at your right hand. The sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon at night. Lift your eyes to the hills--where does your help come from? Your help comes from the Lord, who made you and loves you. Prayer is like bird watching, says Rowan Williams. You sit for hours and wait for the burst of wings and color to flash before your eyes. Or prayer is like a game drive. Sometimes you go for hours without seeing a thing, and then you round a bend to find a serval in the road. Sometimes you stare off into the trees and feel the prick of eyes—a kudu with whimsically twisted horns is cautiously looking back. Day and night, you wait for the moment when the radio crackles to say there are lions in the east field; when you flash a beam of light into the night, and a pair of shining eyes answers in return. Day and night, you wait for the moment when you hear a call sounding. You wait for the moment when you call in return, and the answer is not rejection but love. I pray for them still. Sara Kyoungah White is a writer and editor living in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Her essays and poems have appeared in publications like Christianity Today and Ekstasis. She serves as a senior editor on staff with the Lausanne Movement, a Christian nonprofit.
By Michael Lyle  Art: Ludvig Christian Møgelgaard, Public domain The Carvers were a trial. There was a Carver on the rescue squad, a Carver in the church choir and every Sunday school class in the church, a Carver in the high school band, a Carver in the middle school, a Carver in the elementary school, a Carver on the church softball and volleyball teams, a Carver on community t-ball and soccer teams, a Carver at every picnic, meeting, or prayer group, a Carver in every parade. Every manifestation of church or community included at least one Carver. Hank Carver, sometimes-employed husband, father (five times over), and generally good fellow, attended worship regularly, worked faithfully with the rescue squad and Ruritan, and did whatever good he could whenever he could. His wife Amelia (who on the occasion of her fifth delivery insisted that the doctor remove all possibility of a sixth) taught Sunday School, sang in the church choir (along with her eldest, a son and exceptional soprano), attended every PTA meeting, volunteered every time the pastor asked for help, and did whatever good she could whenever she could. The lesser Carvers (son Jamie, daughter Edith, daughter Grace, daughter Candy, and son Joey), were, quite literally, everywhere else. It was not unusual to find several Carvers at the same place, and/or at multiple and widely diverse places, at the same time. The Carvers, like Moby Dick, were believed by many to be ubiquitous. The Carvers also possessed other universally attested traits in addition to their great, good hearts, outgoing personalities, and omnipresence. Their cars were frequently under repair, their bills were usually overdue, the children perennially lacked transportation, among other things, and they were often caught in the grips of some extenuating circumstance or other. Hank was perpetually on the brink of a new job, or just one seventy-five dollar part away from getting his truck back on the road. Amelia’s worn-out sedan was frequently one tank of gas, or one inflated tire, short of a trip to the doctor’s office, the pharmacy, the school (to drop off or pick up one of the kids, or to meet with one of their teachers), the church, or the supermarket. The kids usually lacked the instrument necessary for them to play in the band, funds for a week at summer camp, the deposit for the school trip, breakfast, funds for the youth ski trip, new shoes, hats, coats, umbrellas, lunches, belts, matching socks, dinners, pairs of glasses, or prescriptions filled. They lacked these things until someone in the community heard about it and came to the rescue. If it takes a village to raise a child, it took an entire town to keep the Carvers going. The Carvers were at the heart of the community, and the community’s heart never had an opportunity to stray very far from the Carvers. It was a textbook symbiotic relationship, except the community sometimes felt inadequate and occasionally resentful of its role. The Carver kids were legendary for emptying any and every candy dish a household had to offer in one quick pass. It was nothing to see them flying out the door, mouths and pockets at maximum capacity. If no treats were clearly visible, one of the little ones would usually ask about availability. Certain families stopped answering the phone on the days Candy would likely need a ride to (and of course from) soccer practice. In those days, before the Internet and smartphones, many acquired caller ID primarily to identify the Carvers. Everyone knew that once they agreed to give Candy a ride to the soccer game, or pick Edith up from band practice, or get Joey from preschool, they could be saddled with the child for hours, and sometimes through at least one meal. And because folks were uncomfortable dropping a nine-year-old off at home when they knew no one else was there, everyone opened their minivan doors, their refrigerators, and their hearts over and again despite promises recently and vehemently made to themselves to the contrary. Eventually, the Carvers found their way into the very language of the community. If one had provided money, transportation, clothes, food, or any other means of support, or, as happened on occasion, all of the above, they considered themselves “Carvered.” Giving a lot of money, keeping a child overnight, or paying a utility bill was considered to be a “Major Carvering.” Dropping a Carver child off at home, inviting one to a family meal, or swinging by the Carver home to take a late-sleeping Carver to school, was considered to be a “Minor Carvering.” To the extent that pretty much everybody in the community had been “Carvered” at one time or another, it was doubly true of the church. Mom Amelia often latched on to one person or family in the church at a time. About every two months, I got a call from a different upset and confused parishioner with the familiar story. Amelia had “been sharing with them,” and they had “started helping out.” Then Amelia had started asking for additional help. Then Amelia had asked for increasingly larger forms of help. Then the person began feeling used and confused and decided to call the pastor. Those within the congregation who had been “Carvered” grew at an alarming rate. The Carvers were a trial, and a peculiar kind of godsend. The Carvers generated more theological discussion and more visceral wrangling with Christian ethics than any sermon, class, lecture, presentation, or activity I’ve experienced. They provoked ongoing wrangling with servanthood, forgiveness, honesty, patience, love, stewardship, and the nature of Christian community. The Carvers gave liberally of what they had: love, honesty, strong bodies willing to work long and hard, musical talent, faith, and their unique selves. The Carvers loved and served well, and they were well-loved and served in return, as well as fed, transported, tolerated, subsidized, clothed, forgiven, gossiped about, complained about, embraced, prayed about, prayed over, prayed for, and avoided. No one ever figured out what to do, what not to do, or when and how to do it, or not. Everyone occasionally wished the earth would open up and swallow the Carvers and their needs whole, and everyone simultaneously wondered how to love them better and how we would get by without them. The Carvers were a trial. Every family and every person was ultimately left to make her or his own peace with the Carvers and how they should be handled. My moment came one Christmas Eve. I grew up hearing about how Santa was always so worn out from his work on Christmas Eve that he slept for a week, carefully ministered to by Mrs. Claus and the tireless, subhuman elves. It didn’t take many Advents and Christmases as a minister for me to completely understand such fatigue. I’ve done manual labor, worked in a department store during the holidays, and worked in other high-stress jobs, but the weariness I feel on Christmas Eve as the pastor of a local church surpasses anything the secular world has thrown at me. And it’s not the multiple services, the secular expectations, the inexhaustible details, the parties, receptions, celebrations, or engagement with rampant consumerism that does it. It’s the illusory holiness that can’t quite be grasped that really takes it out of me. My family had given up on me years before. I had surrendered being “normal” during Advent and Christmas, and they had given up trying to interact normally with me. Everyone had learned to maintain a certain distance. Sometimes I would catch them whispering about how I seemed to be doing when they thought I was out of earshot. They would give me looks of genuine compassion and periodically inquired as to how I was “making it,” or would simply place a loving hand on my shoulder. But by the time Christmas Eve arrived, the parsonage decorations were up, gifts wrapped, and my wonderful wife, daughters, and sons-in-law safely gathered in, I was pretty much beyond reach, and everybody knew it. They loved me anyway and waited patiently for my eventual, gradual return. The Christmas of my “Carvering” was as idyllic as it could possibly be under the circumstances. Our lovely, historic town was decorated to a standard sufficient for any Christmas story set in any English village or Currier & Ives lithograph. The beautiful, old church was glorious in its Yuletide finery. It was appropriately cold, and flurries had swirled all afternoon. The town always celebrated a 7:30 P.M. ecumenical service at which one of the town clergy preached and all the others participated in the service. These community services were much anticipated, and the preacher usually started on her or his sermon in October. (I still recall the sermons I preached on those occasions as well as the ones I heard. If we all had put that kind of time and energy into our weekly efforts, there wouldn’t have been an empty pew for miles.) These were occasions at which the host church, host pastor, guest preacher, and everyone present displayed their very best. Grown children of local families knew that if they were coming home for Christmas at all, they’d better have themselves present and presentable by 7:30 P.M. Christmas Eve. College students home for the holidays sat with their families and acted like their faith was more important to them than ever. These were much-anticipated, special gatherings of a close-knit community in which all cared about the others and knew more about one another than was healthy or necessary. By 10:00 P.M., however, everyone had resorted to home and hearth. A few still visited from house to house, delivering home-baked goodies and spreading Christmas cheer, but most were done and gathered in. The town lay quiet, as only we Methodists ventured back out for 11:00 communion. So picturesque was this particular Christmas Eve in the Blue Ridge Mountains that I had begun to believe this might just be the year that I arrived home from the 11:00 P.M. candlelight service ready to relax and celebrate. In spite of myself and the vagaries of the season, I mostly looked forward to those late services on Christmas Eve. They had become the essence of Christmas for me and for a goodly number of others, and they attracted a diverse crowd. People who didn’t even attend worship on Easter ventured out in the late-December cold each Christmas Eve to hear the story again, sing the familiar carols, and light their little candles. Those services, of the many in my life, remain the most beautiful and peaceful of my experience. That particular evening, a mystical holiness hung palpably in the air. The service flowed seamlessly, the worshipers departed in joy tinged with awe, and scattered snowflakes fell as I wished the departing congregation “Merry Christmas” on the church steps. My family waited patiently with me as I made sure all the candles were well out and began switching off lights. Finally, I told them to go along home, that I would be there in a few minutes. The parsonage was a short walk up the street, just on the edge of the town. I simply wanted to spend a few minutes alone in the quiet sanctuary. Tears filled my eyes as I knelt at the communion rail in the stillness of the darkened church. Like a shipwreck survivor fresh from a perilous, crowded raft, safely ashore at last, wrapped in a blanket and cupping a mug of soup, I blubbered heartfelt thanks for deliverance and my life’s innumerable blessings. Spent and calm at last, as I rose to gather my things and enter ever more fully into the childlike joy of Christmas, I was startled by Candy Carver’s silhouette, illuminated by the light coming through the doorway leading to the rooms behind the sanctuary. “I need a ride home,” she said. How long had she been standing there? Had she watched me kneel and cry like a sentimental child? Where had she been as everyone else was departing? How had she gotten there? Where was her family, and on Christmas Eve for God’s sake? My cozy Christmas Eve was suddenly adrift in a fog of resentment, covering me like a pall of lead. Here I was again on Christmas Eve, spent yet again, my expressions of relief and release answered by a punch in the gut. “Where’s your family?” I asked. “Isn’t someone coming for you?” I thought of my family waiting for me up the street, anxious to open our one Christmas Eve gift each before turning in, and ready to finally get “Christmas” underway. I thought of how they were probably expecting more of me than usual because of the good place in which they had left me just moments before. “Mom said I should get a ride with somebody.” Except we were all out of somebodies. At that moment it felt as if every other somebody in the world was sitting around the tree with their family sipping eggnog while I stood there wishing all the Carvers lived on Mars. Of all the somebodies in the whole world, I was the one being “Carvered” on Christmas Eve. “Can’t we call your house and have somebody come pick you up?” “Our phone’s not working right now.” “Get your coat. Let’s go.” I fumed all the way to the car, all the way through town, and halfway out to the Carvers. Finally, I came out of myself and looked over at Candy. There, all in a heap, bundled up in a worn-out coat two sizes too big, sat the entire Carver story embodied in that one child: all the embarrassing situations, the awkward requests for assistance, the hand-me-down clothes, unpaid bills, unappreciated duties grudgingly performed by over-used friends, neighbors, and church people. It all draped from that child like the acolyte’s robe she had but recently hung in the sacristy. Only this time it was her pastor whose irritation shone through. “What do you want for Christmas, Candy?” I heard a kindness in my voice that hadn’t been there since I’d bidden my family to go ahead home. After a silence, Candy named a couple of things popular with her age group that year. Both were expensive, and I knew she wouldn’t be getting either. “Anything else?” She named a couple more little things, and then we were at her house. “Thank you for bringing me home,” she said. “You’re welcome, Candy. Merry Christmas! I hope Santa is good to you. You deserve it. And thank you for being our acolyte tonight.” She smiled and closed the door. She let herself in the house. The light was on, but nobody greeted her except the two scroungy dogs that lived under the house and had come barking and snapping at my tires as we pulled up. Candy alone, of all her family, had come to the late service that night to acolyte for me, for all of us, and I was so caught up in myself that I hadn’t even noticed. Too embarrassed to impose on anybody else, she had waited around to ask her pastor for a ride home. She had waited for the safest person to impose upon, and yet had experienced the same old resentment yet again. Had I undone everything the service might have offered Candy? Had we really offered her much of anything in the first place? The wonderful feelings of my personal Christmas experience certainly weren’t hers. She was a Carver. Carvers were a trial. It was deathly quiet as I drove through town, passing the churches, houses, and small businesses of people I knew. As I passed my own now-dark church and headed up the street to the parsonage, I knew Candy would forgive me, probably already had if she was thinking of me at all, and that the seasonal, popular Christmas spirit had been replaced by something altogether more profound. Michael Lyle is the author of the poetry chapbook The Everywhere of Light (Plan B Press), and his poems have appeared widely, including Atlanta Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Crannóg, The Hollins Critic, Mudfish and Poetry East. He lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.
Michael's other work on Foreshadow: Wick of the Soul (Poetry, October 2022) Tennis Players (Poetry, October 2022) Yahweh (Poetry, October 2022) Family of God (Poetry, October 2022) By Katie Baker Vocation: a strong feeling of suitability for a particular career or occupation. (Oxford Dictionary) I will be upfront with you. I do not feel a strong feeling of suitability for my chosen occupation. To be honest, I was not exactly proactive in my choice. Post-Bible college, my only requirements for a decent job were 1) not working on Sundays and 2) stability of schedule. The first requirement was God-focused; the second was me-focused, and I did not pray as much about any of it as I should have. The result of this lackadaisical approach is that I have found myself working in one of my least favorite fields for the last 10 years. Yup. 2022 was my big 1-0 anniversary with its resulting bump in paid time off. The other side effect is that I do not, and never really have, felt called or suited by God to work in the banking industry. I have always enjoyed words, not numbers—ideas and stories, not finance. Therefore, I feel called by God to something that is not my 9-to-5 job. Something that does not pay the bills. I have been a writer and a storyteller for as long as I have been able to read, and that is where God has placed my passion. When I was 23, this sort of disconnect did not bother me; I was mostly worried about paying off my student loans as fast as I could. Now that I am 33, the line between what I am doing and what I feel I should be doing feels muddled. Is it okay with God if we spend all our life doing what we view as a meaningless job? Would God even agree that there are meaningless jobs? (Do I even agree with that supposition?) Can I be true to my calling while spending all my mental energy for a paycheck? It’s a rough, if not non-existent, accomplishment some days. Then I think: Well, sure. Sometimes God calls people to certain vocations that also serve as their “9-to-5”. We most associate missionaries and pastors with this reality. But the Bible also does a lot of talking about toil and the sweat of our brow—results of any vocation, whether God-called or chosen of necessity. After all, many of the figures called by God in the Bible had to have “day jobs” to support their ministries: Paul was a tentmaker. Peter was a fisherman. Lydia was a seller of purple. So why do I feel such dread and shame when someone I have not seen in forever asks, “Well, what are you up to now? You still work at _____?” It never fails. I always cringe. “Yup. I’m a blah-blah-blah clerk. Very exciting, I know.” If anyone asked the Apostle Paul what he was up to lately, I doubt he was replying with an abashed, “Still sewing those tents.” Pretty sure it was more like: “Spreading the Good News about Jesus Christ.” I doubt his occupation entered his mind at all when the shekels and generosity of the churches grew a little tight. Paul’s life mission was not to sew tents, even though that is an admirable profession; it was to reach people with the gospel of Christ. And isn’t that every follower of Christ’s first and foremost vocation? To show the truth, light, and compassion of Jesus to whomever is around, no matter what we may be doing? Who is to say I cannot proudly answer the question “Oh, what do you do?” with “I’m a lover of Jesus. A writer. And a blah-blah-blah clerk”? God may call some of us to make a living with the calling he has given us, and he may call some of us to scribble into notebooks and post on blogs, never really knowing who needs our voice and never really knowing if it makes a difference. He may call some of us to punch a clock at a job that intellectually bores us so that we can pay the bills for—or (maybe!) have a break from—the God-centered work we are called to do in our spare time. The word vocation conjures up more than just a 9-to-5 paper-pushing or ditch-digging job; it conjures up a sense of purpose and completeness. God calls us to a higher purpose than pursuing money or simply paying the bills, knowing full well that we will still need to pay the bills. In my life, my higher calling often collides with my day job by supplying me with inspiration to write about, and sometimes it opens up my highest calling when I am given the opportunity to show a co-worker or a customer the grace and love of Jesus. Although we can easily compartmentalize our life into work/home/hobby, God does not want us to compartmentalize Him. He wants the fullness of all of our moments ordered under Him, in sync with His will for our lives so that we can say like tent-maker Paul, “In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me” (Phil. 4:12b-13). God calls us to serve Him in every moment, on every platform. Even if you are like me and do not love your job, there must be a reason He has put you there for this season, however long it may last. Perhaps we are just a little bit too Western when we ask someone what they do and expect their 9-to-5 job to actually jive with their life purpose. Maybe we draw ourselves into these boxes by trying to keep pace with those around us who measure their success in currency symbols, promotions, doctoral degrees, and all those initials lining up behind their names. Our faith tells us that all those things, as nice as they are, if pursued outside of the will God has for our lives, will be so much hay and stubble when we reach heaven. Earlier in Philippians chapter 3, the Apostle Paul lists out his whole resume, all of the reasons he has for “confidence in the flesh” according to his culture and his religion. It reads exactly like someone today who has all the initials lining up behind his name, but because Paul’s calling was beyond all of that, he ends his pedigree with this realization: “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.” (Phil 3:7–8) Sometimes I have to take a step back and remember where God wants me when I am beating myself up because I am bored or stuck in my day job. I have to remember that it is God who gave me a passion for writing stories in an era when writing stories is not always profitable, and when I am wondering if anyone will ever read them and hear whatever it is God is trying to say through me. I need to forcibly remind myself of God’s grace and sovereignty when I get into that headspace where I believe my job does not fit because I do not like finance. Just because our perspective is too limited to see something’s value does not mean that that something is valueless. Above all else, I am called by God to have a correct perspective of my life and those things He has tasked me with doing. Despair can happen, but we do not need to stay there. I suppose God’s answer to someone like me whose vocation is beyond their occupation might just be, “Focus on Me, and keep on keeping on.” Katie Baker is a graduate of Clarks Summit University with a Bachelor of Arts from their writing programme. She lives in beautiful upstate New York and writes mainly fiction that deals with the truths of life even in the small moments. Her work has been previously published in Adelaide Literary Magazine, TWJ Magazine, and Torrid Literature Journal. You can find and follow her writing at Seekingprose.com.
Please support us by sharing this post or buying us a book.  Plaque at St Anthony's Church, Cartmel Fell, Cumbria (stridingedge.net) When the holy Abba Anthony lived in the desert he was beset by accidie, and attacked by many sinful thoughts. He said to God, 'Lord, I want to be saved but these thoughts do not leave me alone; what shall I do in my affliction? How can I be saved?' A short while afterwards, when he got up to go out, Anthony saw a man like himself sitting at his work, getting up from his work to pray, then sitting down and plaiting a rope, then getting up again to pray. It was an angel of the Lord sent to correct and reassure him. He heard the angel saying to him, 'Do this and you will be saved.' At these words, Anthony was filled with joy and courage. He did this, and he was saved. *** Someone asked the same Abba Anthony, 'What must one do in order to please God?' The old man replied, 'Pay attention to what I tell you: whoever you may be, always have God before your eyes; whatever you do, do it according to the testimony of the holy scriptures; in whatever place you live, do not easily leave it. Keep these three precepts and you will be saved.' *** Abba Pambo asked Abba Anthony, 'What ought I to do?' and the old man said to him, 'Do not trust in your own righteousness, do not worry about the past, but control your tongue and your stomach.' *** Abba Anthony said, 'I saw the snares that the enemy spreads out over the world and I said groaning, 'What can get through from such snares?' Then I heard a voice saying to me, 'Humility'. *** He also said, 'Our life and our death is with our neighbour. If we gain our brother, we have gained God, but if we scandalise our brother, we have sinned against Christ.' *** A hunter in the desert saw Abba Anthony enjoying himself with the brethren and he was shocked. Wanting to show him that it was necessary sometimes to meet the needs of the brethren, the old man said to him, 'Put an arrow in your bow and shoot it.' So he did. The old man then said, 'Shoot another', and he did so. Then the old man said, 'Shoot yet again', and the hunter replied 'If I bend my bow so much I will break it.' Then the old man said to him, 'It is the same with the work of God. If we stretch the brethren beyond measure they will soon break. Sometimes it is necessary to come down to meet their needs.' When he heard these words the hunter was pierced by compunction and, greatly edified by the old man, he went away. As for the brethren, they went home strengthened. *** It was revealed to Abba Anthony in his desert that there was one who was his equal in the city. He was a doctor by profession and whatever he had beyond his needs he gave to the poor, and every day he sang the Sanctus with the angels. *** Abba Anthony said, 'Whoever hammers a lump of iron, first decides what he is going to make of it, a scythe, a sword, or an axe. Even so we ought to make up our minds what kind of virtue we want to forge or we labour in vain.' From The Sayings of the Desert Fathers (trans. by Benedicta Ward, SLG).
Please support us by sharing this post or buying us a book. By Anthony S. Zimmer Maybe that job is a sacrament by which we are becoming Christian. Maybe it is saving us. We dreamt of achieving a vocation – and we worked hard for it! I remember the diligence, the faithfulness. But we live east of Eden. We strove to flourish, to “bloom where you are planted”, but the ground was cursed, and our souls withered on the vine, replaced by thorns and thistles. Those failures – the pain, the anger, the frustration, the despair – exposed our hearts to ourselves. And what is sanctification but first the revealing of our hearts? And what is sanctification but second the giving and receiving of grace? Maybe that job, like baptism, is a plunge into dying and a grace unto living. Can our half-saved hearts trust us with the jobs we want? Might it not root our hearts deeper into the soil of a corrupted kingdom? Might not Money/Pride/Power, its accumulation and storage, accumulate and store us? Might we become too sated by this fallen kingdom and forget how to criticize it, forget how to mourn? We forget that our first vocation, our first divine calling, is to pick up our cross and follow Christ. Do and be. Leave will do and will be to the vagaries of humanity and the constancy of grace. Anthony S. Zimmer has served in a variety of pastoral roles in America and South Africa. Bi-vocational, he lives and works at the nexus of business, missions, local ministry and theology. He holds a bachelor’s in Bible and Theology, an MBA, and is working towards an MA in Biblical Interpretation.
Please support us by sharing this post or buying us a book. By Terry Jarvis After eight months of getting up at 4am to go on the round and often working well into the evening on the figure work, it was a terrific shock to find myself out of work. I felt suddenly that my life had come to a total standstill. The pressure of the recent years weighed on me, and I felt crushed by the burden of my own inadequacy. For two whole days I lay face down on a sun bed outside in the yard in a state of semi-consciousness. I couldn’t think. I had no mind. No will. Nothing. Nothing but fear and a gnawing emptiness. I was living a nightmare. I was falling to bits. I couldn’t even talk to Sue. No one could help me. Only God. I made up my mind to pray and pray until I got through to him again. I prayed. Fell asleep. Awoke and prayed again. Slept some more. Prayed again. I felt as if all hell were let loose on me. Near the end of the second day I was feeling desperate to fill the emptiness in my heart with something from God. I reached for the Bible lying on the ground by the bed. I opened it and read: ‘It is God who is all the while effectually at work in you – energising and creating in you the power and desire – both to will and to work for his good pleasure and satisfaction and delight' (Philippians 2:13, Amplified Bible). That was it! That was really it! God was clearly speaking to me through this verse, telling me that he was working in me, making me willing… making me willing even when I didn’t feel willing… giving me the power and desire to do his will. The thought began to put me together. For the first time I felt free to think about what I really wanted to do and confident that my will and God’s will could be one and the same. And the instant I turned my mind to consider what desire there was in my heart about what I should do with my life, I was surprised to find that there were things tucked away there unrecognised. I pieced together the thoughts. My desire was this – to live entirely by faith and trust in God, to preach his message and to rely on him to meet the needs of myself and my family. But, even as this revelation came, I knew that I wasn’t yet ready for that life. So did I have a practical desire for the present? Yes. I was startled to discover that deep down I did have a very real desire. I wanted to be a craftsman! *** Why? Where had that strong desire come from? I saw a picture in my mind of a small resentful boy standing all alone facing a wall. It was me, in that children’s home so long ago, hurting, being punished. And for what? For whittling away at a lump of chalk with a toy drill. As long as I could remember, I’d always loved whittling sticks or lumps of clay or chalk. It came naturally. I enjoyed it. I might even be good at it. Could I be a woodcarver? I remembered what Sue had said to me years before when she’d watched me working away at a set of chess pieces in Manchester. Then I had been experimenting with mounds of clay baked in the oven, scraping away for hours to achieve some level of satisfaction. ‘You’ve got a talent for it. Use it for God,’ Sue had said. This was enough to put me back on my feet. I wasn’t sure where to begin, but I was convinced God was showing me that I should work with my hands. I’d already done a lot of experimenting in my spare time, using different rubber solutions to make moulds to reproduce chess pieces in resin. I got to work again, getting books on carving and practising endlessly on odd pieces of wood. Recognisable shapes began to emerge. Animals mostly, or birds. I prayed for a shed to work in – and almost immediately a friend told me about her mother’s next-door neighbour who wanted a shed taken away. I prayed for tools – and was given the opportunity to buy practically everything I needed to equip the shed for a fraction of the real price. Being creative in this way, actually producing something of value with my own hands, was the start of a new confidence and a healing closeness with God. I spent hours in my little shed in the garden – and worked for God and with God. As I shaped and caressed my rough sawn block and began to see emerging the antlers of a stag or the wing of a bird, I could almost feel God at work in my life, shaping and loving me. It wasn’t all plain sailing, but then, didn’t I sometimes have to take the roughest of files to my wood in my search for the best result? Working when you have to is boring, but when it’s a heart’s desire because it’s God’s will, then it’s perfect! Working in the will of the Lord is a delight! And he gives us the power to accomplish it. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy at first to make any money from my work, slow as it was. I decided to look for a job until my work improved enough to guarantee regular work. At the local employment exchange, I saw an advertisement for a driver with a joinery business. Bad memories of my time with the men at the radiator repair yard came flooding back, and I turned away. But when I returned three weeks later, I had the nagging feeling that God wanted me to take that job; sure enough, it was still on the board, and I applied. As it turned out, my fears were unfounded. It was a pleasant small family company of high-class joiners. And, as well as feeding us for the next year or so, the job had one other very valuable benefit: the carpenters, who got to know of my woodcarving, often passed me generous offcuts of really good quality wood which kept me well supplied in my shed for a long time. *** Carving new shapes from old… that was at long last happening in my life, too. And at long last, I felt I could cope with helping others. During this time I began to make contacts with prisons and remand homes and started to visit there, hesitantly at first but with growing confidence when I saw that the men and boys I talked to were interested in finding out what had happened to someone who really knew by experience what they were going through. Since my time in Manchester, I’d longed to visit prisoners...I met a chaplain who invited me to speak at Feltham Borstal, and that’s how I was finally able to start visiting the prisons. Also, our church fellowship had a singing group which used to visit prisons, and I began to use this as an opportunity to speak about my experience of coming to God. Following that, I was given invitations to speak at many prisons, including Wormwood Scrubs, Wandsworth, and Winchester. On one occasion, eight prisoners at Pentonville were converted after I shared my story with them. One afternoon, I was in Twickenham Library, in the reference section. I often went there to study books to get ideas for designs for my woodworking. I looked up as a creaking of the floor announced the arrival of someone else. An elderly, gentle-looking man with an umbrella hanging from his wrist and a big smile on his face searched the room with his eyes, obviously looking for someone. When he saw me, he marched right over and thrust a piece of folded paper into my hand. ‘God wants me to give you this,’ he said, still smiling broadly. Then he turned briskly and disappeared round the shelves of books. I was astounded. I’d never seen the man before and never had anything like this happen to me. I unfolded the bit of paper and read a Bible reference. I could hardly wait to get home and look it up. The verse was from Matthew 7:7: ‘Keep on asking, and it will be given you; keep on seeking, and you will find; keep on knocking (reverently), and the door will be opened to you’ (Amplified Bible). It was an exciting way for God to confirm to me that I was going in the right direction. I would keep on seeking, keep on with God, keep on wanting to do his will. Having found his will, I wasn’t going to let it go easily, no matter how tough the going got. Terry Jarvis is a wood carver and author based in Cumbria, England.
Terry's other work on Foreshadow: I Found a New Life (Non-fiction, 2021) 'Carving New Shapes from Old' is excerpted from Terry's book The Long Search (print version; ebook version). It has been republished here with the author's permission. Below is Terry's description of The Long Search: I'm a wood carver with a special love for working with driftwood. Right now I’m planning to create an original floor lamp from a large and beautiful piece of wood that is deeply grooved and lined from the effects of the ocean. I call it ‘the castle in the sky’ because that’s what I see in its shape. I want to mount it on a curved white pebble base and light the ‘walls’ and ‘windows’ and ‘turrets’ from below. My piece of driftwood has been shaped so creatively by the action of the waves – just as my life has been shaped by events, circumstances, difficulties and trials. The rough and smooth parts of my character have been moulded by the days that have gone before. I have been tested and tried as a person. By the age of 22, I had travelled much of the world, largely in pursuit of making money through drug smuggling. Although at one time I had a great deal of money, I discovered I was empty inside. Since I was a young kid, I believed there was a God. But after my mum died of a brain tumour and I found myself in the care system, I gave up praying. Despite the instability of my teenage years, deep down I always felt there was a God. However, my interest in spirituality took me on my travels into many religions and the occult. It was only when I literally got to the end of myself that I cried out to God in desperation. He heard me, and I began a whole new life. Please support us by sharing this post or buying us a book. Alice Wisler on helping bereaved parents through writing Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. ~James 1:17, NIV You can do it, an elderly poet and bereaved mother had written when asking me to lead a writing workshop. Sascha was well-loved in Denver and supposed to be in charge of the event, but since she wasn’t feeling well, she asked me to fill in for her. Get parents to write, she told me. It all sounded easy, but it wasn’t so easy for parents who had experienced the death of a child. Bereaved parents are heartbroken. They’ve gone through the worst pain. They mourn; they shout. On their really bad days, they’ve been tempted to smack a dozen moms who have healthy kids and life-is-grand attitudes. They are critical when it comes to those who want to tell them how to grieve, especially those who have never had to bury a child. “The hardest room in the world,” described one psychologist who was asked to talk to a group of bereaved moms and dads in a church basement. After his acknowledgement, the room let out a collective sigh. All the judgmental stares slithered under the front door. Bereaved parents are a tough crowd, and I would be facilitating a workshop for them at a conference where I knew no one. It would have been reassuring to have at least one person sit in the front row to smile and nod. I did have one advantage: I was not an outsider. I was one of them, a mom who had lost my son Daniel to a cancer-related death. I was also familiar with the workshop’s topic of writing. Every time I wrote in my journals and tear-stained, dog-eared notebooks, I was spared from driving off a cliff or smacking someone who told me I’d see my son again in heaven, so there was no reason to cry. Even though I had never stood before conference attendees and shared how to write and why writing is beneficial to healing, I knew that writing had saved my life. When I asked Sascha for advice on how to lead the workshop, she wrote: Get parents to put two words together. That’s how it starts. Two words together. Two words lead to three, and so on. Weeks later, I flew from my home in North Carolina to Denver, Colorado. I took my place behind the podium as parents trickled into the conference room and found seats. I smiled and hoped that no one knew that I was a novice and this was my first lesson. Would I be able to convince the gathering that unleashing pain onto paper is a gift? I thought of the ways my pen and keyboard had pounded out poems, articles, and journal entries, and how those actions had brought me therapeutic clarity. Breaking into my thoughts was a question from a woman in the front row. “Do we have to write?” Her black T-shirt had Loved and Remembered printed in gold letters across her chest. The sign by the door to the workshop clearly said Writing Workshop, but this was no time to argue. “You can do whatever you feel comfortable with,” I said. “I don’t write well. I just can’t write about my son. I’ve tried. Each time I sit down to write, I just cry.” I was sure that was true because she was crying. “That’s okay.” When the room quieted, I introduced myself. I told a bit of my story: how my beloved Daniel was diagnosed with neuroblastoma at age three and died from cancer treatments eight months later at four years old. I spoke of his love of watermelon, the beach, and the original Toy Story movie. One of the exercises I’d prepared for the group was to write poems in honor of their children. While writing through pain is vital, being able to recollect happy memories of our children is a comfort on the journey. I read a few poems from one of Sascha’s books and then told the gathering to put words together even if it was just two at a time. Chatter stopped as each person bent over his notepad. I heard muffled tears, saw a few people wipe their eyes, and as I watched, I prayed for a positive outcome. I wanted word to get back to Sascha that I’d been a successful substitute. After ten minutes, I asked if anyone wanted to share his or her poem. No one said a word. Some looked uncomfortable. Then a hand shot up. “I’d like to read my poem.” It was the woman who said she didn’t write, couldn’t write. In a clear, animated voice, she read her poem. The lines spoke of how her son used to tease her that she didn’t like to cook, that the only thing she could make was microwavable meals. I heard laughter. The woman laughed, too. When she finished, the whole room clapped. Her smile was wider than the Colorado sky. Two mothers in the middle row nodded at me while others hugged those seated next to them. They got it! They understood the power of written words, of shared memories. I hoped they’d incorporate writing about their children into their weekly lives and that the process would empower them. Over the next years, doors opened, and I was invited to facilitate grief-writing workshops across the country. Writing for healing, health, and hope is a message I never tire of sharing. When I hear parents read their written words or tell me how writing has been a healing balm on their journey, I’m grateful to God for this good gift that starts with one solitary word flowing into another. Alice J. Wisler is the author of six novels, one devotional (Getting Out of Bed in the Morning: Reflections of Comfort in Heartache), and three memorial cookbooks. She teaches writing workshops across the country. Visit her at www.alicewisler.com.
Support us by sharing this post or buying us a book. By Kathryn Sadakierski Throughout my academic career, it seemed that everyone had different visions of what I should become. Some teachers saw me as a future doctor or lawyer; others encouraged me to pursue studies in the social sciences, education, business, or psychology; another suggested that I simply focus my energy on writing. Imagining myself following these paths, I was overwhelmed by the vast array of possibilities and variables. How would my life change if I chose one over the other? I felt torn, knowing I couldn’t do everything, that I had to define my own dream, my own way forward, amidst so many conflicting views of my calling. Having worked with young children in early childhood and elementary school settings as an assistant teacher, I’ve come to realize a vocation broader than any single career: that of a spiritual mother. There is nothing I love more than nurturing and guiding other souls, pouring myself into helping them to grow, and being present for them, sharing the insights God gives me because He knows what they need to heal. Being a spiritual mother involves being a teacher, and the most important thing I can teach is love. In fulfilling my vocation and living my life for God, I draw upon my variegated academic background and wide array of interests to discern how best to teach and nurture a love for learning, for life, and for all that God has created, in others. Beyond imparting specific skills and content knowledge, a spiritual mother fosters faith and empowers others to live it out, finding wonder and inspiration in all of the little miracles that make up daily life so that, moving forward each day, a spirit of hope can be preserved. At one preschool where I worked, by the end of the day, the 13 three-year-old students in the class were loath to wake from their naps, tired and sometimes teary. As I assembled a collection of books at the table and began to read aloud, tears evaporated, weariness forgotten. Like little listeners of the Sermon on the Mount, all of the children gradually walked up, or sat down in a chair beside me, gathering around to hear the narratives. I channeled all my dramatic skill stemming back from the illustrious days of my roles in elementary school plays (perhaps it was apropos that I’d been cast as the queen once!), bringing characters alive with inflection, connecting the stories to the interests of the students, polling them as to what they thought would happen next, pointing out the vibrant details of the illustrations in the picture books. Enraptured, smiling faces ringed the table, laughter brightened the room, and, once one story ended, I was flooded with requests to read another favorite book, turning the pages again, starting a fresh chapter. In this small way, infusing my love into sharing a story (or several), I could comfort and uplift, offering the spiritual equivalent of a hug, a warm and maternal benediction to go forth with peace. I was led to my calling by a spiritual mother herself: St. Therese of Lisieux, the Carmelite nun known for her “Little Way,” a path toward Heaven paved by a sincere heart and given through everything humbly done for the love of Christ and others. St. Therese viewed each task, no matter how seemingly menial, as an opportunity to joyfully serve God, offering everything up for His glory. Her view later inspired St. Teresa of Calcutta’s life work: to “do small things with great love.” Through each experience, small steps building up towards a larger goal over time, great things can be achieved. Just one kind act has the power to convert another soul. Similarly, starting in middle school, the experiences I had with assisting as a counselor at my church’s Bible Camps, and later with teaching children’s catechism classes, all came together to strengthen my understanding of spiritual motherhood, as I learned how one smile, one encouraging word, could make a positive difference for a child. In her autobiographical masterpiece The Story of a Soul, St. Therese teaches spiritual truths through natural symbols that readers can relate to, just as Jesus did in his parables, illustrating the story of her own soul with rich imagery that captures the many blessings God gave her throughout her short, but no less impactful, life. Specifically, St. Therese likens souls to flowers in a garden, all resplendent in their own unique patterns and colors. If the garden were lacking one type of flower, it wouldn’t be the same, since each blossom radiates its own beauty that can never be replicated. Being a spiritual mother means tending to this garden planted by God, cultivating the seeds of His love, helping others bear fruits honoring the Spirit, and reaching out to Him as they bloom. Just as flowers gravitate to the sun, through nurturing others, I strive to direct them toward the eternal light of the Son. Spiritual teachers like St. Therese have shown me through the legacies of their lives that love is the root of every vocation and makes the greatest impact. This is what allows for growth, for gardens to flourish. It’s not only about providing the necessary tools, but about applying them and always caring. When I consider the far-reaching influence of global leaders, I see my own role as quite humble in comparison. How can I make a difference in my corner of the world? But, as saints such as St. Therese and Mother Teresa have taught me, change truly does start in our own backyards. Transformation is a cumulative process. Every part of our life is used to help us realize our calling and to aid others in finding theirs. Each moment is a stepping stone, another stair that can lead us above the limitations of circumstances so that we can be united with God. God hasn’t made any mistakes, hasn’t failed to take anything into account. What we see as small is an integral part of His plan, a thread in a tapestry of interconnected souls. In God’s eyes, every step matters. Cast in this light, helping children tie their shoes and button their coats are small things done with great love, love that doesn’t need to be communicated in words. Just by being their vibrant selves, the children I work with bring me so much happiness. Similarly, Jesus’ humility, compassion, and patience awe me--I love Him for being all that He is. To be in His Presence, whether at Eucharistic Adoration or in the yard watching the light dance across the sky, is everything. To pray, to do whatever He asks, even the ostensibly small tasks of the day, is important, if only because He has asked them. Anything done for Jesus is valuable. I have come to understand more than ever why God calls everyone to be more like children, so pure-hearted and full of life. It is my goal to help them retain their luminosity, to celebrate it, and carry it well into adulthood. Children learn best when treated with love--but then we all do, regardless of age. My work in the classroom inspires me to lead with love outside of the classroom too, as I realize the incredible need for kindness everywhere in the world. I can bring what I have learned from working with children to helping each person I meet, keeping in mind that love is what all of our hearts long for. My calling involves teaching everyone who comes into my life, through the written and spoken word, about God’s love for them. Not all of us may be called to be biological mothers or fathers, but we all can be spiritual parents, bringing new souls into God’s family by shedding light in the ways unique to each of us. In comforting, healing, teaching, writing, and speaking, I aim to point back to God, to instill hope in His mercy. But whichever route I take in expressing my vocation, God’s love is at the root of each little way, each little seedling that can go so far in brightening the garden. Kathryn Sadakierski’s writing has appeared in anthologies, magazines and literary journals around the world, including Agape Review, Critical Read, Edge of Faith, Ekstasis Magazine, enLIVEN Devotionals, New Jersey English Journal, NewPages Blog, Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality and the Arts, Refresh Bible Study Magazine, Snapdragon: A Journal of Art and Healing, Today’s American Catholic and elsewhere. In 2020, she was awarded the C. Warren Hollister Non-Fiction Prize. She holds a B.A. and M.S. from Bay Path University.
Consider thanking our contributors by leaving a comment, sharing this post or buying them a book. Tim Harvey on serving people who fall through the cracks After clicking 'Play', please wait a few moments for the essay to load. Jada Williams addressed the Gun Violence Prevention Commission in Roanoke, Virginia, with a conviction formed from tragedy and tinged with the tiredness of someone who has labored long with little to show for her work. Speaking in an unremarkable City Hall conference room, she had come to tell us the story of her teenage son, Jamal, who was the innocent victim of a gang-related shooting during the summer of 2021—a tragic situation of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The shooting left Jamal with significant, long-term disabilities. In the months following the shooting, Jada barely left Jamal’s side. Her fierce maternal care, however, came at a high price. Caring for Jamal meant quitting her job so she could be at his bedside. Quitting her job meant spending the savings intended to purchase a home for her family. Spending her savings meant being unable to afford rent, so now she and her family, including three other young children, live in the basement apartment of a church member’s home. At times, Jamal’s needs were so demanding that her other children spent the weekend with their teachers. Our commission’s agenda this particular evening left us mired in the data of gun violence, assault and murder tabulated into neat statistical reports and identified by colored dots on a map of our city. The poise and determination in Jada’s voice, however, reminded us of the deadly importance of this work. What might have been most striking about Jada’s remarks that evening was that she was not angry with us; in fact, she expressed deep gratitude for this voluntary effort. But Jada was determined to be heard. Since that night when her family’s life was changed forever, Jada has tried everything she can to get help. She has visited every social service agency in our city seeking assistance with housing, nursing care, and support for her children. In every instance, she has come away empty-handed. It turns out that our city has an abundance of agencies that exist to aid persons in all kinds of circumstances—all kinds of circumstances, it turns out, but hers. Everywhere has Jada turned, it seems that she doesn’t quite fit the mission of the agency or purpose of the charitable organization that otherwise exists to provide assistance of one kind or another. She came to the commission to insist that as we seek solutions to prevent gun violence, we not neglect to find solutions for victims of gun violence like Jamal, persons who fall through the cracks of the social safety net after news coverage moves on to the next story. Ministry beyond the congregation The Roanoke City Council appointed the Gun Violence Prevention Commission in the summer of 2019 to study the rising levels of gun violence, identify its root causes, and create meaningful opportunities for positive, non-violent living in our diverse city. Our nine-member commission is made up of social workers, mental health professionals, and clergy. Like many cities in America, incidents of gun violence in Roanoke have increased over the past 10 years. And while we are each horrified by the long litany of mass-casualty shootings plaguing our nation, the type of gun violence we are working to reduce is gang-related with a deep taproot in the soils of poverty, racism, and the so-called “urban renewal” movement of the 1960s–1980s. Many of the housing projects and neighborhoods where gun violence is concentrated are the product of this triplet of urban brokenness. I sought appointment to the Gun Violence Prevention Commission out of the commitment to peace and nonviolence I’ve learned as a lifelong member of the Church of the Brethren—one of the three “historic peace churches”—and my 18 years of pastoral leadership in Roanoke. The six Church of the Brethren congregations in our city have a long history of ministry with our entire community, an emphasis that has continued as incidents of gang-related gun violence are increasing in the high-poverty, historically Black northwest quadrant of our city. My congregation finds great spiritual value in our outreach: we tithe our congregational giving and designate much of that money to non-profit organizations that provide housing, counseling, and medical care to persons “in need.” Beyond our tithe, we regularly offer our time and talent to a non-profit organization that builds beds for children who do not have them. We eagerly support our denomination’s disaster response programs through special offerings. But two things are clear. The first is that ministries like these have a real impact and address a significant need. The second is that charitable giving has not yet touched Jada in a way that will change this new trajectory of her life. Jada’s story offers a difficult combination of two uncomfortable facts that seem to be contradictory, but actually combine in a difficult truth: the social “safety net” is only barely keeping her head above water. Yet Jada did not come to the commission to ask for assistance. Even after she learned I am a pastor, she did not ask if my congregation could help her. Jada is simultaneously appreciative of the many who have helped her and is still struggling to keep her life together. All she insists is that our commission be aware of the people who are falling through the cracks and do something about it. An uncomfortable confession As I drove home from our meeting the evening Jada spoke, it occurred to me that I have the privilege of choosing how to respond to people like her. Do persons in my White, middle-class, suburban congregation have any obligation to Jada? We share a faith, a city, and a common humanity. Each Sunday in worship, my congregation seeks reconciliation with God and one another by confessing that “we have sinned against [God] in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone.” Could the struggle of Jada’s family be something we have left undone? A challenge with a familiar liturgy is that repetition leaves us deaf to our words, granting us the privilege of keeping a deeper significance of prayer—and the people and circumstances it represents—at arm’s length. What would we learn if we asked God to show us what we are leaving undone? How can we translate these words into action and, in so doing, “produce fruit in keeping with repentance” in a way that impacts a struggling neighbor? Such prayer might cause us to reconsider the meaning of “neighbor.” This is the issue at the heart of the Parable of the Good Samaritan, a story so well known that the phrase “Good Samaritan” has long been part of our secular vocabulary. Jesus tells this story in response to someone who asks, “Who is my neighbor?” In a story of persons who either do or do not assist a man badly wounded in a robbery, we find that being a neighbor means personally entering someone’s suffering. The Samaritan man who provides assistance is held up as a model because of involvement that comes at great personal and financial cost. His direct intervention sets the wounded man on the road to recovery, an intervention that comes while others were so busy with religious obligations they had no time to be curious about a man who had been left for dead. Jada’s story presents some difficult questions for us. Repenting of things left undone should not cause us to overlook the good work we are already involved in. Financially supporting those who serve our community extends the reach of our congregations and strengthens our neighborhoods in significant ways. What our repentance offers here is an invitation to go deeper, recognizing that healing the brokenness in our communities will involve a costly personal involvement. It might begin with a partnership with a congregation across town, where we show up and earn the right to hear stories like Jada’s, while learning of both the beautiful and broken places in neighborhoods we rarely visit. It might mean investing our time and talent in ministries and programs that others are sponsoring, providing both assistance and encouragement for those already working on the front lines of brokenness. It might mean having our preconceptions shattered and our hearts touched about what life really looks like for neighbors we have not yet met. We live in a time when it is popular to blame others for the things they have done. But a commitment to public ministry challenges us to consider the things we have left undone: thinking about people and situations we’ve never thought about; seeing people we prefer to overlook; challenging ourselves to invest our faith in a compassionate neighborliness that walks long, costly roads with people like Jada for whom there are no quick answers. Tim Harvey is the pastor of Oak Grove Church of the Brethren in Roanoke, Virginia.
Tim's other work on Foreshadow: The Comfort that Comes to Those Who Mourn (Non-fiction, May 2021) Consider thanking our contributors by leaving a comment, sharing this post or buying them a book. |
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