Sustainable, a word reclamation
The word reclamation here is “Sustainable.” Like many popular words, you can hear this word sprinkled around the meeting table, rolling off silk ties swung around starched shirts. The project needs to be sustainable. Is it sustainable? How do we make it sustainable?
Buzz words generate excitement, but users of them don’t always have a crisp understanding of what they mean. Take the word sustainable. It may sound wise to talk about sustainability. It may be convenient to label a new idea unsustainable if we don’t like it. But let’s think through this idea of sustainability and what it means.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines sustain as:
sus·tain
tr.v. sus·tained, sus·tain·ing, sus·tains
1. To keep in existence; maintain.
2. To supply with necessities or nourishment; provide for.
3. To support from below; keep from falling or sinking; prop.
4. To support the spirits, vitality, or resolution of; encourage.
5. To bear up under; withstand: can't sustain the blistering heat.
6. To experience or suffer: sustained a fatal injury.
7. To affirm the validity of: The judge has sustained the prosecutor's objection.
8. To prove or corroborate; confirm.
9. To keep up (a joke or assumed role, for example) competently. [Middle English sustenen, from Old French sustenir, from Latin sustinēre : sub-, from below; see sub- + tenēre, to hold; see ten- in Indo-European roots.] sus·tain'a·bil'i·ty n., sus·tain'a·ble adj., sus·tain'er n., sus·tain'ment n.
Most of the time when we use the word sustainable, we actually mean self-sustainable, our goal being to make sure there is a plan for X Project to continue on long term without the support or intervention of the creator. We use it to answer in the affirmative the question, “When I am gone, will this continue on?” But the word in itself means to maintain, nourish, and support something. Wanting something to be self-sustainable is wanting it to maintain, nourish and support itself. I wonder, how many things in our world can nourish themselves? We live in families and communities because we need each other. Sustaining something is part of our nature. So why is independence the measure of success? I wonder if it would be better to think in terms of healthy interdependence rather than independence.
But there is wisdom in planning for the future. The desire to have something go on beyond our direct influence is good and healthy when it is within Gods will and direction. But if we determine our success solely by how long something survives, it may be echoing our desire for legacy and the ability to live on despite our finiteness. These desires cannot be met in our work, but only through the infinite God who supplies our legacy through our obedience to Him. When we find these personal needs met, we are freed to see clearly enough to let go of projects that may have outlived their usefulness.
The common sentiment when we talk about sustainability is to ask, “Can man sustain whatever project we are talking about?” And “Can we train, organize, and manage the endeavor in order to turn over responsibility to someone who can sustain it after we are no longer working on it?” The reality is, nothing is sustainable outside of God. Man is finite and anything that begins and ends with man is temporal. It may be helpful to talk in terms of degrees of sustainability asking, “How finite is my project?” or “How long of an existence would be considered success in this endeavor?”
To look to sustainability as the ultimate measure of success for something is probably not wisdom. If we did, we may forgo efforts that God would have us try. To feed a hungry person is not sustainable, but it does show God’s love. Jesus encouraged us to help the poor, and to build our legacy in Heaven (Luke 12:33). Helping the widow and the fatherless does not restore their family, but it does bring our Lord glory when it’s in obedience to Him. We need to be careful not to put aside projects God would have us do because we don’t see them as sustainable.
Many times a buzzword pops up to answer a void that exists. Perhaps we didn’t think enough about sustainability in the past and now in the excitement of a new and helpful concept, we have swung to use it too heavily when measuring success and judging effectiveness. We need to find a balance between sustainable and self-sustainable, and evaluate the motives behind our value for sustainability by looking to God for His direction in all our endeavors.
Verses to Ponder
Isaiah 44:6 (New International Version)
6 "This is what the LORD says— Israel's King and Redeemer, the LORD Almighty: I am the first and I am the last; apart from me there is no God.
Psalm 55:22 (New International Version)
22 Cast your cares on the LORD and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous fall.
Psalm 146:9 (New International Version)
9 The LORD watches over the alien and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked.
John 12:8 (New International Version)
8You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me."
James 1:27 (New International Version)
27Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
Nehemiah 13:14
14 Remember me for this, O my God, and do not blot out what I have so faithfully done for the house of my God and its services.
Psalm 103:14 (New International Version)
14 for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.
Psalm 112:6 (New International Version)
6 Surely he will never be shaken; a righteous man will be remembered forever.
Ecclesiastes 1:11 (New International Version)
11 There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow.
Mark 14:7 (New International Version)
7The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me.
Luke 12:33 (New International Version)
33Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.
Sources
Biblegateway.com
Dictionary.com
Etymonline.com
American Heritage Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This
sus·tain (sə-stān') Pronunciation Key tr.v. sus·tained, sus·tain·ing, sus·tains
10. To keep in existence; maintain.
11. To supply with necessities or nourishment; provide for.
12. To support from below; keep from falling or sinking; prop.
13. To support the spirits, vitality, or resolution of; encourage.
14. To bear up under; withstand: can't sustain the blistering heat.
15. To experience or suffer: sustained a fatal injury.
16. To affirm the validity of: The judge has sustained the prosecutor's objection.
17. To prove or corroborate; confirm.
18. To keep up (a joke or assumed role, for example) competently. [Middle English sustenen, from Old French sustenir, from Latin sustinēre : sub-, from below; see sub- + tenēre, to hold; see ten- in Indo-European roots.] sus·tain'a·bil'i·ty n., sus·tain'a·ble adj., sus·tain'er n., sus·tain'ment n.
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The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth EditionCopyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company.Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Etymology, http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=sustain
sustain
c.1290, from O.Fr. sustenir "hold up, endure," from L. sustinere "hold up, support, endure," from sub "up from below" + tenere "to hold" (see tenet). Sustainable growth is recorded from 1965.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Refracted Messages
Refracted Messages
When I was a kid, I was fascinated with prisms. I’d look for prisms in everyday life; a beveled glass window, a drinking glass, a shard from a lamp shade, or a raindrop on a flower petal. I loved to create a circular rainbow while watering the tomato plants with the garden hose. My prized possession was a prism I bought at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago with my allowance.
Sixth grade science tells us that white light is made up of many colors that can be broken apart using any sort of prism. When the light is bent, our eye receives only part of the truth within the light. What comes to our eye is, in fact, truth, but it’s only a part of the whole.
In communication, a refracted beam of light can represent a message that has been bent. This can be through sarcasm, humor, sending it through another person, phrasing a command in the form of a question, and the list goes on and on. Humans are experts at refracting their messages because they’re smart and clever and extremely adept at reducing pain. Why pain? Because truth hurts. It’s more pleasant to look at a rainbow than to look straight into the intense white light of an unbroken message. It is painful to hear what someone really thinks about you. But refracting a message also makes it difficult on the receiver whose interpretation of the message can be way off. In addition, it is difficult to respond to a refracted message. This means that progress on a difficult issue is nearly impossible.
Suppose my young daughter comes down the stairs Sunday morning wearing 5 clashing colors. I want to teach her how to coordinate colors and save her from certain teasing, but I don't want to hurt her feelings. So, I exclaim, “You look like a rainbow jello!” My daughter likes rainbow jello and so feels like this may be a compliment. However, she picks up on the tone of the comment and wonders at the incongruity, “Does this mean I look pretty like the rainbow jello or does it mean I look silly and should change my clothes?” In the end, the result of the wrong interpretation of the refracted message can be more painful than the "straight truth" that says, "Your clothes don't match," as the child has no way of responding or confirming whether what they interpreted is even close to the intended message.
We learn to refract our messages so early on that we do it almost without thinking. We even call it “tact.” To counter the effects, then, it takes a lot love and extra effort to keep communication clear and open. The child needs to learn how to say, “Mommy, does that mean you like my clothes?” instead of assuming she understands and either becomes concerned about picking out her own clothes or thinks that clashing colors are part of an acceptable wardrobe. When the messages come as sarcasm or humor, strategies at responding to them become a little trickier. But having tools to respond is an important life-skill to learn.
NOTE: I personally think the rainbow jello look is cute!
When I was a kid, I was fascinated with prisms. I’d look for prisms in everyday life; a beveled glass window, a drinking glass, a shard from a lamp shade, or a raindrop on a flower petal. I loved to create a circular rainbow while watering the tomato plants with the garden hose. My prized possession was a prism I bought at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago with my allowance.
Sixth grade science tells us that white light is made up of many colors that can be broken apart using any sort of prism. When the light is bent, our eye receives only part of the truth within the light. What comes to our eye is, in fact, truth, but it’s only a part of the whole.
In communication, a refracted beam of light can represent a message that has been bent. This can be through sarcasm, humor, sending it through another person, phrasing a command in the form of a question, and the list goes on and on. Humans are experts at refracting their messages because they’re smart and clever and extremely adept at reducing pain. Why pain? Because truth hurts. It’s more pleasant to look at a rainbow than to look straight into the intense white light of an unbroken message. It is painful to hear what someone really thinks about you. But refracting a message also makes it difficult on the receiver whose interpretation of the message can be way off. In addition, it is difficult to respond to a refracted message. This means that progress on a difficult issue is nearly impossible.
Suppose my young daughter comes down the stairs Sunday morning wearing 5 clashing colors. I want to teach her how to coordinate colors and save her from certain teasing, but I don't want to hurt her feelings. So, I exclaim, “You look like a rainbow jello!” My daughter likes rainbow jello and so feels like this may be a compliment. However, she picks up on the tone of the comment and wonders at the incongruity, “Does this mean I look pretty like the rainbow jello or does it mean I look silly and should change my clothes?” In the end, the result of the wrong interpretation of the refracted message can be more painful than the "straight truth" that says, "Your clothes don't match," as the child has no way of responding or confirming whether what they interpreted is even close to the intended message.
We learn to refract our messages so early on that we do it almost without thinking. We even call it “tact.” To counter the effects, then, it takes a lot love and extra effort to keep communication clear and open. The child needs to learn how to say, “Mommy, does that mean you like my clothes?” instead of assuming she understands and either becomes concerned about picking out her own clothes or thinks that clashing colors are part of an acceptable wardrobe. When the messages come as sarcasm or humor, strategies at responding to them become a little trickier. But having tools to respond is an important life-skill to learn.
NOTE: I personally think the rainbow jello look is cute!
Monday, October 15, 2007
Yuck, Yuck, Yuck
Yuck Yuck Yuck
A couple weeks ago, I went in to get the little one out of the crib after naptime, and instead of her usual smile and squeal of excitement at my arrival, I got an outstretched hand, a crinkled nose and a clear, “Yuck!” From the smell in the room, I knew she had a problem during naptime, and even though we cleaned it up with surprisingly little effort, she was still horrified. The entire rest of the afternoon, everything was “Yuck!” From truly disgusting things like poop in the yard, to a benign scrap of paper on the floor, she exclaimed with the same intonation, “Yuck!”
I began to have visions of her growing up to be obsessed with clean, everything in rows and perfectly organized, not being able to tolerate the everyday imperfections of our world. I decided, “We need to draw this ‘Yuck’ category very tightly.” However, in spite of my concerted efforts to downplay her exclamations, explaining that, no, that wasn’t yuck, it was just this or that, she would have none of it. She had decided what yuck was, enjoyed the drama of it, and continued her word-play with disgusted pleasure.
I think redrawing this category is going to take quite a bit of time, effort and patience.
For more on drawing categories for kids, see http://ourwordshop.blogspot.com/2007/10/line-drawings-drawing-categories-for.html
A couple weeks ago, I went in to get the little one out of the crib after naptime, and instead of her usual smile and squeal of excitement at my arrival, I got an outstretched hand, a crinkled nose and a clear, “Yuck!” From the smell in the room, I knew she had a problem during naptime, and even though we cleaned it up with surprisingly little effort, she was still horrified. The entire rest of the afternoon, everything was “Yuck!” From truly disgusting things like poop in the yard, to a benign scrap of paper on the floor, she exclaimed with the same intonation, “Yuck!”
I began to have visions of her growing up to be obsessed with clean, everything in rows and perfectly organized, not being able to tolerate the everyday imperfections of our world. I decided, “We need to draw this ‘Yuck’ category very tightly.” However, in spite of my concerted efforts to downplay her exclamations, explaining that, no, that wasn’t yuck, it was just this or that, she would have none of it. She had decided what yuck was, enjoyed the drama of it, and continued her word-play with disgusted pleasure.
I think redrawing this category is going to take quite a bit of time, effort and patience.
For more on drawing categories for kids, see http://ourwordshop.blogspot.com/2007/10/line-drawings-drawing-categories-for.html
Friday, October 12, 2007
Line Drawings
Line Drawings; Drawing Categories for Kids
One of the most important things we provide for the kids in our lives are line drawings superimposed on the paintings of their lives. We accentuate the picture of their world with dark ink, pointing out the important things to us personally, and to the culture the child has been born into.
When they are born, a child’s little brain receives stimuli and messages that they are just beginning to learn to process. Through trial and error, they learn to make sense of the world by interacting with their environment and with the people around them.
It’s amazing to watch and participate in. The child in the stroller watches the world go by and observes with wide open eyes and ears. She sees a neighbor wave at Mom. Mom waves back. Then she sees a great palm tree hand waving in the wind. She lifts her little hand and waves. But Mom doesn’t wave. “That’s a tree,” she says. “The tree branch looks like it’s waving at us in the wind.”
The child learns that we wave at people, but we don’t wave at trees. Mom is accentuating the world her child sees with values and customs. The child is learning what is important. As good realists, we believe the world itself hasn’t changed, but how the child interacts with it and sees it has changed.
When my first was born, I had no idea how her personality was going to change my world. A shy person by nature, I prefer to blend into the walls, but when my little one got around people, she began to shine. Heads turned, the barametric pressure of the room actually changed, and there was no hiding at a party.
At first I used to shush and hush her…bring extra toys to try to keep her quiet and settled. Over time it was a useless exercise. She was who she was, and I began to think to myself, “Why do I think it’s better to be quiet and unobtrusive in public? There is absolutely nothing wrong with letting her be the little extrovert that she is!” I began to separate my idea of politeness from the personality traits of quietness and shyness. My hope is that I have been teaching her politeness without squelching her personality.
Most of the line drawings we create for our kids are just an outpouring of our internal values and culture. They are almost invisible to us. But it’s worth thinking about and evaluating the categories (line drawings) we draw for them as we notice them because it could be an opportunity for personal growth. It also may help us identify the values we really want to teach and make us more proactive in the process of showing and teaching kids about what is really important to us.
One of the most important things we provide for the kids in our lives are line drawings superimposed on the paintings of their lives. We accentuate the picture of their world with dark ink, pointing out the important things to us personally, and to the culture the child has been born into.
When they are born, a child’s little brain receives stimuli and messages that they are just beginning to learn to process. Through trial and error, they learn to make sense of the world by interacting with their environment and with the people around them.
It’s amazing to watch and participate in. The child in the stroller watches the world go by and observes with wide open eyes and ears. She sees a neighbor wave at Mom. Mom waves back. Then she sees a great palm tree hand waving in the wind. She lifts her little hand and waves. But Mom doesn’t wave. “That’s a tree,” she says. “The tree branch looks like it’s waving at us in the wind.”
The child learns that we wave at people, but we don’t wave at trees. Mom is accentuating the world her child sees with values and customs. The child is learning what is important. As good realists, we believe the world itself hasn’t changed, but how the child interacts with it and sees it has changed.
When my first was born, I had no idea how her personality was going to change my world. A shy person by nature, I prefer to blend into the walls, but when my little one got around people, she began to shine. Heads turned, the barametric pressure of the room actually changed, and there was no hiding at a party.
At first I used to shush and hush her…bring extra toys to try to keep her quiet and settled. Over time it was a useless exercise. She was who she was, and I began to think to myself, “Why do I think it’s better to be quiet and unobtrusive in public? There is absolutely nothing wrong with letting her be the little extrovert that she is!” I began to separate my idea of politeness from the personality traits of quietness and shyness. My hope is that I have been teaching her politeness without squelching her personality.
Most of the line drawings we create for our kids are just an outpouring of our internal values and culture. They are almost invisible to us. But it’s worth thinking about and evaluating the categories (line drawings) we draw for them as we notice them because it could be an opportunity for personal growth. It also may help us identify the values we really want to teach and make us more proactive in the process of showing and teaching kids about what is really important to us.
Mourning the Morning
Mourning the Morning
What joy the dawn brings. A new day is born in hues of pink that remind us of a newborn’s cheeks. But with each celebration of morning, there is the mourning of a death. It is so core to our experience that most people don’t even notice this loss, but today’s morning mist marks the death of yesterday. We are surrounded by the casualties of time. Day after day dies at the hand of the invisible marching clock, our memories reminding us of our losses. Many of us do not realize how we grieve these losses, but the fact that most of us struggle with change indicates that we do feel the effects of time.
Each new phase in life means that the old phase has to die. We have parties, give gifts, and have ceremonies as ways of celebrating the new and letting go of the old. We work hard at remembering the lost yesterdays. Photos, bits of paper printed with dates and places line our scrapbooks. Our past is our present and our future. Yesterdays make us who we are today and affect who we become tomorrow.
But then what if yesterday was not gone forever? What if we never lost it at all? What would God’s scrapbook be like? Perfectly preserved, could we pull it down and read it again and again, experiencing our lives in crystal clear memory? We could study it, gaining understanding into the why’s and how’s we could never see while knee deep in living. We could smile at our memories, and remember the hard times, but now instead of “through a glass darkly,” we could finally see the purpose behind the trial or loss.
Just a wondering that makes me long for heaven.
What joy the dawn brings. A new day is born in hues of pink that remind us of a newborn’s cheeks. But with each celebration of morning, there is the mourning of a death. It is so core to our experience that most people don’t even notice this loss, but today’s morning mist marks the death of yesterday. We are surrounded by the casualties of time. Day after day dies at the hand of the invisible marching clock, our memories reminding us of our losses. Many of us do not realize how we grieve these losses, but the fact that most of us struggle with change indicates that we do feel the effects of time.
Each new phase in life means that the old phase has to die. We have parties, give gifts, and have ceremonies as ways of celebrating the new and letting go of the old. We work hard at remembering the lost yesterdays. Photos, bits of paper printed with dates and places line our scrapbooks. Our past is our present and our future. Yesterdays make us who we are today and affect who we become tomorrow.
But then what if yesterday was not gone forever? What if we never lost it at all? What would God’s scrapbook be like? Perfectly preserved, could we pull it down and read it again and again, experiencing our lives in crystal clear memory? We could study it, gaining understanding into the why’s and how’s we could never see while knee deep in living. We could smile at our memories, and remember the hard times, but now instead of “through a glass darkly,” we could finally see the purpose behind the trial or loss.
Just a wondering that makes me long for heaven.
Dancing in the Garden
Dancing in the Garden
Grandmother put down the Bible, took off her glasses and rubbed her deep blue eyes. “What a tragic day that must have been for them, having to move out of the garden.” She sighed and hugged the little girl in her lap. “But I guess none of us could have done any better in the same situation, could we?”
The little girl looked up, “If I were in the garden, I wouldn’t have eaten that apple Grandma, I promise.”
Grandma said, “Yeah, maybe so, but you would have done some fence-dancing, believe me.”
“What’s fence dancing?” The girl asked, getting down from the lap and sitting on the floor looking up. Grandmother grinned and settled into her chair. The girl smiled knowing she was going to get another story before bed.
“Let me tell you a story,” she began. “A long time ago, almost before there was time,” She winked, “a little girl very much like you said exactly the same thing. Only instead of hearing a story from her crazy old grandmother, a wonderful and frightening thing happened.”
The girl’s eyes did not blink. You could see the whites of her eyes in the night.
“Now I’ve got you!” Grandma thought, and continued.
“This girl lived in a small town. There wasn’t much to do really; compared to the towns we live in today. No movies, no McDonald’s. Parks consisted of trees, and streams and fields of grass. Kids had to make up their own things to do. And this little girl was particularly good at making up things to do. Mostly, she made up stories in her head and acted them out. She could be so many people and go so many places in her mind that she would live in her imaginary worlds for hours. She imagined she was a princess picking roses for a banquet she was giving. Sometimes she was a great scientist trying to discover a cure for a terrible disease that threatened the lives of the entire town. Her favorite was when she was an animal doctor, fixing the broken legs of horses and watching baby kittens be born.
Outside the town was a gardener living in a lovely singing cottage. The girl called it the singing cottage because so many birds perched there that it seemed as if the cottage itself was chirping and peeping, and singing. Around his home was a beautiful garden with flowers, vegetables and fruit trees.
When the girl first discovered the garden, she sneaked in to play her games because the closer she was to the garden, the more real her stories became. She came back day after day until one day she met the gardener face to face. She was playing with a stick, sword fighting with an imaginary enemy when he walked up and smiled at her with the most peculiar grin.
“Not trying to hurt my friend there, I trust,” he said.
The girl smiled at his laughing eyes. He turned toward the imaginary swordsman, took off his muddy hat and bowed. She liked him immediately. His eyes were a potpourri of green—the colors of the leaves, grass and flower petals mixing together and reflecting back at her.
“I’m sorry to trespass," the girl said. "But your garden seems to make things alive. I like playing here.”
The Gardener turned away and walked a few steps, twirling his cap in his hands as if in thought. “You may play in my garden. It is a wonderful place to pretend and to grow,” He said decisively. “But there is one very important rule you must follow. If it is broken, you cannot play in the garden any more.”
“What is it?” the girl asked. And he told her the story of the Great Garden of long ago.
"I've heard that story before," the girl said, "I would never do that."
The Gardener took her hand, and together they walked over to a single tree in the center of a perfectly circular fence. “What is the fence for?” she asked, “You have a fence around the whole garden. Why do you need another one around this tree? Certainly it is safe from anything that would harm it.”
The Gardener said, “It is not to protect the tree, but to protect you and me. Tradition says that the Great Garden was at or near this spot, and that seeds from the Original Tree fell here and planted themselves in the ground. All the other trees of this kind have died, but this tree remains alive. It’s too dangerous to even go near the tree because the temptation is too great. You can play in the whole garden, but you may not go inside the fence.”
The little girl agreed to stay away from the tree, even as she noticed that it was the most beautiful tree in the garden. Every tree wore springtime flowers, but the colors of the fenced tree splashed the brightest shades of pink and yellow and purple against the blue of the sky.
At first she played as far from the tree as she could, but the colors drew her closer to the fence each day. She longed to feel a petal against her face. Was it as soft as velvet? Which sweet smell in the wind was coming from those flowers? As the air warmed day after day, the flowers turned to fruit and the branches weighed heavy toward the fence. She thought, “Oh, how I wish there wasn’t that rule!”
Every day, she played her games closer and closer to the tree. Then, the tree became the main character in her imaginative dramas. One day, she was the princess performing a dance for the kingdom. The first time she performed the dance, all the subjects loved the dance, but not everyone could see her. So, she decided to dance on the fence that stood around the tree. The dance was beautiful; the music soared; she jumped, turned and ended the dance with a beautiful pose. The whole kingdom cheered, and she bowed, but when she did, she lost her balance and began to wobble. She leaned forward, pulled back, then sideways. She was about to fall when she reached out and grabbed one of the heavy branches to steady her from falling.
As several pieces of fruit fell to the ground and the girl’s body made a sick thud on the ground, the Gardener walked up, His shoulders lowered and his head drooped. “I thought this might happen.”
He came over to the fence and leaned on it. He patted it several times “Fences. Rules. When they’re around, we feel trapped. But it is when we have them that we are actually free."
She got up slowly and walked over to the Gardener and looked into his sad green eyes. She ducked under the fence and stood next to him looking down. She felt the wood of the fence on her fingertips.
“It’s like this for everyone. We start out being afraid of what we can’t do, but as we get used to it, it becomes less scary. Our hearts stop pounding and it doesn’t seem so bad anymore. Then we get closer, until one day, we either give in, like I did; or we trip up like you and fall into the trap. It’s always better to play away from the fence because one day, we’ll want to dance on it.”
“You see, sometimes we figure out how to obey a rule, but we inch as close as possible to the deed. We find a loophole. We stretch the rule as far as we can without breaking it, but we break God’s heart in the process. What God wants is our heart obedience. He wants us to obey Him because we love Him.”
Tears dripped silently off the end of the girl’s nose. “I guess I have to say goodbye to you and the Garden,” she cried, trying not to sound like a baby. “I am so sorry.”
“You will have to say goodbye to the Garden,” he said gently, “But you will not have to say goodbye to me,” He tucked her under his arm, “You come to the garden fence whenever you want, and I will come out to meet you. I love you, little one.”
“Did the little girl ever get to go back into the Garden?” the girl said through a yawn.
“Well, that’s a story for another time, but I will tell you this. She came back every day to meet the Gardener at the fence, and they remained great friends. I could tell you about all the mysteries he told her or about the imaginary stories she shared with him, but I think that’s enough for tonight,” Grandma hugged the girl who had already fallen asleep.
Grandmother put down the Bible, took off her glasses and rubbed her deep blue eyes. “What a tragic day that must have been for them, having to move out of the garden.” She sighed and hugged the little girl in her lap. “But I guess none of us could have done any better in the same situation, could we?”
The little girl looked up, “If I were in the garden, I wouldn’t have eaten that apple Grandma, I promise.”
Grandma said, “Yeah, maybe so, but you would have done some fence-dancing, believe me.”
“What’s fence dancing?” The girl asked, getting down from the lap and sitting on the floor looking up. Grandmother grinned and settled into her chair. The girl smiled knowing she was going to get another story before bed.
“Let me tell you a story,” she began. “A long time ago, almost before there was time,” She winked, “a little girl very much like you said exactly the same thing. Only instead of hearing a story from her crazy old grandmother, a wonderful and frightening thing happened.”
The girl’s eyes did not blink. You could see the whites of her eyes in the night.
“Now I’ve got you!” Grandma thought, and continued.
“This girl lived in a small town. There wasn’t much to do really; compared to the towns we live in today. No movies, no McDonald’s. Parks consisted of trees, and streams and fields of grass. Kids had to make up their own things to do. And this little girl was particularly good at making up things to do. Mostly, she made up stories in her head and acted them out. She could be so many people and go so many places in her mind that she would live in her imaginary worlds for hours. She imagined she was a princess picking roses for a banquet she was giving. Sometimes she was a great scientist trying to discover a cure for a terrible disease that threatened the lives of the entire town. Her favorite was when she was an animal doctor, fixing the broken legs of horses and watching baby kittens be born.
Outside the town was a gardener living in a lovely singing cottage. The girl called it the singing cottage because so many birds perched there that it seemed as if the cottage itself was chirping and peeping, and singing. Around his home was a beautiful garden with flowers, vegetables and fruit trees.
When the girl first discovered the garden, she sneaked in to play her games because the closer she was to the garden, the more real her stories became. She came back day after day until one day she met the gardener face to face. She was playing with a stick, sword fighting with an imaginary enemy when he walked up and smiled at her with the most peculiar grin.
“Not trying to hurt my friend there, I trust,” he said.
The girl smiled at his laughing eyes. He turned toward the imaginary swordsman, took off his muddy hat and bowed. She liked him immediately. His eyes were a potpourri of green—the colors of the leaves, grass and flower petals mixing together and reflecting back at her.
“I’m sorry to trespass," the girl said. "But your garden seems to make things alive. I like playing here.”
The Gardener turned away and walked a few steps, twirling his cap in his hands as if in thought. “You may play in my garden. It is a wonderful place to pretend and to grow,” He said decisively. “But there is one very important rule you must follow. If it is broken, you cannot play in the garden any more.”
“What is it?” the girl asked. And he told her the story of the Great Garden of long ago.
"I've heard that story before," the girl said, "I would never do that."
The Gardener took her hand, and together they walked over to a single tree in the center of a perfectly circular fence. “What is the fence for?” she asked, “You have a fence around the whole garden. Why do you need another one around this tree? Certainly it is safe from anything that would harm it.”
The Gardener said, “It is not to protect the tree, but to protect you and me. Tradition says that the Great Garden was at or near this spot, and that seeds from the Original Tree fell here and planted themselves in the ground. All the other trees of this kind have died, but this tree remains alive. It’s too dangerous to even go near the tree because the temptation is too great. You can play in the whole garden, but you may not go inside the fence.”
The little girl agreed to stay away from the tree, even as she noticed that it was the most beautiful tree in the garden. Every tree wore springtime flowers, but the colors of the fenced tree splashed the brightest shades of pink and yellow and purple against the blue of the sky.
At first she played as far from the tree as she could, but the colors drew her closer to the fence each day. She longed to feel a petal against her face. Was it as soft as velvet? Which sweet smell in the wind was coming from those flowers? As the air warmed day after day, the flowers turned to fruit and the branches weighed heavy toward the fence. She thought, “Oh, how I wish there wasn’t that rule!”
Every day, she played her games closer and closer to the tree. Then, the tree became the main character in her imaginative dramas. One day, she was the princess performing a dance for the kingdom. The first time she performed the dance, all the subjects loved the dance, but not everyone could see her. So, she decided to dance on the fence that stood around the tree. The dance was beautiful; the music soared; she jumped, turned and ended the dance with a beautiful pose. The whole kingdom cheered, and she bowed, but when she did, she lost her balance and began to wobble. She leaned forward, pulled back, then sideways. She was about to fall when she reached out and grabbed one of the heavy branches to steady her from falling.
As several pieces of fruit fell to the ground and the girl’s body made a sick thud on the ground, the Gardener walked up, His shoulders lowered and his head drooped. “I thought this might happen.”
He came over to the fence and leaned on it. He patted it several times “Fences. Rules. When they’re around, we feel trapped. But it is when we have them that we are actually free."
She got up slowly and walked over to the Gardener and looked into his sad green eyes. She ducked under the fence and stood next to him looking down. She felt the wood of the fence on her fingertips.
“It’s like this for everyone. We start out being afraid of what we can’t do, but as we get used to it, it becomes less scary. Our hearts stop pounding and it doesn’t seem so bad anymore. Then we get closer, until one day, we either give in, like I did; or we trip up like you and fall into the trap. It’s always better to play away from the fence because one day, we’ll want to dance on it.”
“You see, sometimes we figure out how to obey a rule, but we inch as close as possible to the deed. We find a loophole. We stretch the rule as far as we can without breaking it, but we break God’s heart in the process. What God wants is our heart obedience. He wants us to obey Him because we love Him.”
Tears dripped silently off the end of the girl’s nose. “I guess I have to say goodbye to you and the Garden,” she cried, trying not to sound like a baby. “I am so sorry.”
“You will have to say goodbye to the Garden,” he said gently, “But you will not have to say goodbye to me,” He tucked her under his arm, “You come to the garden fence whenever you want, and I will come out to meet you. I love you, little one.”
“Did the little girl ever get to go back into the Garden?” the girl said through a yawn.
“Well, that’s a story for another time, but I will tell you this. She came back every day to meet the Gardener at the fence, and they remained great friends. I could tell you about all the mysteries he told her or about the imaginary stories she shared with him, but I think that’s enough for tonight,” Grandma hugged the girl who had already fallen asleep.
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Letting Go
I wrote this last year when my first went to Kindergarten. It's been a year of adjustment, and though painful, there has been a lot of growth--and joy. I thought I'd put it up since I didn't have a blog at the time.
Letting Go
As I watch the waves crash in and swish out across the sand, I notice how the things I’m learning seem to do the same in my life. A theme will come in to the front of my life and then ebb out only to come back again.
Recently that theme has been letting go. I feel like permission to hold onto anything has been stripped away and I am left trying to hold my hand open, relaxing the muscles, wishing I could close it tight.
Two ice blue eyes bounced up and down near my waist, excited to start this new adventure of school. To me it was our last walk together as my baby. We had been walking together for nearly six years…I as the mom and she as the baby. It was hard for me to let her go grow up.
It’s hard to write about, trite as it is. I expected some tears, but the gush that came after I was out of eyeshot of the school was as surprising as the tsunami. The wave just came up and swallowed me.
There are probably many reasons. For one, the deafening quiet my firstborn left in her wake constantly reminded me of the change. There is hardly any way I could fill up the silence and lack of constant conversation.
The other is that it was a change in our team. It had been me and her together for so long. During good and hard times, she was my constant companion. When my husband would leave on long trips, she joined me in the night. “I’ll always be with you when you have hard times,” she would say. Her presence was a comfort.
Sharing. How hard I had worked on that concept with her, but had failed to see I was reluctant to share her with others. Always her passion was to be out there, finding new friends. The world is full of opportunities.
Also, I enjoyed our relationship where we could understand each other. Our experiences were so much the same, that we understood each other completely. She was convinced that I could read her mind, and many times she did the same for me. It was a common vocabulary with parallel connotations. I knew that was going to begin to change.
Change. I’ve never been good with it. It ties my stomach all in knots. I get headaches. I cry. It hurts to change. It’s a grieving process, even when the change is a good one, a happy one. I wish I could see it differently, but life is a series of births and deaths. Not just people, but phases in life. Constant death is in my life. The intense, painful, constant change of life.
Letting Go
As I watch the waves crash in and swish out across the sand, I notice how the things I’m learning seem to do the same in my life. A theme will come in to the front of my life and then ebb out only to come back again.
Recently that theme has been letting go. I feel like permission to hold onto anything has been stripped away and I am left trying to hold my hand open, relaxing the muscles, wishing I could close it tight.
Two ice blue eyes bounced up and down near my waist, excited to start this new adventure of school. To me it was our last walk together as my baby. We had been walking together for nearly six years…I as the mom and she as the baby. It was hard for me to let her go grow up.
It’s hard to write about, trite as it is. I expected some tears, but the gush that came after I was out of eyeshot of the school was as surprising as the tsunami. The wave just came up and swallowed me.
There are probably many reasons. For one, the deafening quiet my firstborn left in her wake constantly reminded me of the change. There is hardly any way I could fill up the silence and lack of constant conversation.
The other is that it was a change in our team. It had been me and her together for so long. During good and hard times, she was my constant companion. When my husband would leave on long trips, she joined me in the night. “I’ll always be with you when you have hard times,” she would say. Her presence was a comfort.
Sharing. How hard I had worked on that concept with her, but had failed to see I was reluctant to share her with others. Always her passion was to be out there, finding new friends. The world is full of opportunities.
Also, I enjoyed our relationship where we could understand each other. Our experiences were so much the same, that we understood each other completely. She was convinced that I could read her mind, and many times she did the same for me. It was a common vocabulary with parallel connotations. I knew that was going to begin to change.
Change. I’ve never been good with it. It ties my stomach all in knots. I get headaches. I cry. It hurts to change. It’s a grieving process, even when the change is a good one, a happy one. I wish I could see it differently, but life is a series of births and deaths. Not just people, but phases in life. Constant death is in my life. The intense, painful, constant change of life.
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