Foreseen in Joy, Present in Grace

This morning I took time to read a poem and my hand fell on Sabbaths by Wendell Berry and I opened to this poem, number X:

Whatever is foreseen in joy
Must be lived out from day to day.
Vision held open in the dark
By our ten thousand days of work.
Harvest will fill the barn; for that
The hand must ache, the face must sweat.

And yet no leaf or grain is filled
By work of ours; the field is tilled
And left to grace. That we may reap,
Great work is done while we're asleep.

When we work well, a Sabbath mood
Rests on our day, and finds it good.

What do you look forward to in joy? Is it your work? Do you have a vision, a goal or a harvest that you are willing to sweat for?

Yet, catch the punch line: "no leaf or grain is filled by work of ours; the field is tilled and left to grace."

How are you at leaving things to grace?

I find I am often busy doing, and am less successful at being present in grace, whatever that is. To know and understand that we are a forgiven people, to rest in true Sabbath in God's love and presence, to turn our work and our lives over with the understanding that our work and lives are a part of a greater work, those are inklings of grace.

I do not at all understand the mystery of grace -- only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us. ~Anne Lamott via Jim Taylor in Rumors

Yes, what is grace? My word processor's dictionary offers these definitions:

grace n
1. elegance, beauty, and smoothness of form or movement
2. dignified, polite, and decent behavior
3. a capacity to tolerate, accommodate, or forgive people
4. a short prayer of thanks to God said before, or sometimes after, a meal
5. See grace period
6. a pleasing and admirable quality or characteristic (usually plural)
7. in Christianity, the infinite love, mercy, favor, and goodwill shown to humankind by God
8. in Christianity, the condition of being free of sin, for example, through repentance to God
9. See grace note

vt
1. to make a pleasing contribution to an event, often by attending it (often used ironically)
2. to add elegance, beauty, or charm to something
3. to add ornamental or decorative notes to a piece of music

Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

I think about grace often—my name, Nancy, means "full of grace" or "gracious." This morning my "Nancy" tea mug reminds me of that. Fortunately, I didn't discover that when I was adolescent and gawky and not at all living up to my name in being graceful. Now I understand grace more broadly, not just in large movements of the body, but in smaller gestures of the hands, and in actions toward others: that "capacity to tolerate, accommodate, or forgive people," made possible mostly by God's grace: "infinite love, mercy, and favor."

What is important about this poem is the reminder that joy and grace go together. Looking forward in joy requires grace in the present, or being present in grace. It also may mean getting unstuck from the past as this acronym of GRACE illustrates:

FIVE STEPS FOR MAKING A COMEBACK
1. Grieve to flush out the frustration over disappointment.
2. Rest to replenish your strength.
3. Accept new hope rising inside you.
4. Create new dreams.
5. Engage life with fresh energy.
Note the first letter of each strategy to identify the great comeback agent that makes all the difference in the world.
from Faithbook by Kirk B. Jones

The grace note to this morning's writing was the singing of Amazing Grace as our closing hymn today at church.

’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved;
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed.

Grace taught my heart to fear? That's in an old sense of that word: to be awed and to have wonder. It's a play on two meanings of the word, where today fear is almost always used negatively. But it is always wonderful when grace appears.

This morning's serendipitous occurrence of amazing grace reminded me of the bumper sticker I saw the other morning on the way to work:


The grace, joy and peace of God be with you.

Where are the Bumper Stickers—Whimsy & Joy gone missing

For those of you who have been wondering why it's been a while since I've written—here or elsewhere, I can only say that I've been feeling like Alexander in a continuous loop of terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days (if you don't know this children's book, hear it here). Mostly it's been a lot about work, stress, budget and staffing issues, but it also had to do with having to replace the oil tank ($$$) and then the computer hard drive crashing ($$$) and having to set up a new computer. Or so I thought, but I discovered that a lot of other folks are also feeling stretched too tightly.

As I got up and left the house in the dark this week, I wanted to blame the extension of daylight saving time as a contributor to the stress and sense of being overwhelmed that everyone I've talked to is bearing, from colleagues to neighbor to friend to grocery clerk. But although I don't think the early morning dark helps, it's also not the cause. It could be the economy, but at least all of the people I talked to are working, so that's an indirect cause for many of us.

So, I decided that I needed to pay attention, and yesterday on the way to work I started looking for bumper stickers. In previous reflective periods of my life, I have come to value bumper stickers for their inspirational value and as a barometer of how people are feeling about the world. My problem this week: there are hardly any bumper stickers, fun or otherwise, on cars anymore! I realize it's a limited sample, but I commute through what was at one point in the past twenty years, although perhaps not today, one of the most densely populated cities in the United States, and there are a lot of cars on the road and parked on the streets. There were two or three slightly tattered presidential election bumper stickers, one religious sticker in Portuguese (although my Portuguese is nearly non-existent, I recognize the words for God and Jesus). Just when I'd decided that bumper stickers have become useless as a societal barometer, a car pulled in front of me with this bumper sticker:

"Don't Postpone Joy."

That was the catalyst and proof. I've figured it out. The reason we're all so stressed is we don't have enough whimsy in our lives. And that bumper sticker is excellent advice.

So, what joyful, whimsical thing can you do?

Clue 1: it doesn't require money, or shopping.

Clue 2: it has to be personal to you.

Clue 3: smiles probably help and may be essential.

Clue 4: Don't stress over it, but answer the question: What brings me Joy?

Clue 5: Having answered that, act on your answer.

I also will acknowledge that for many of us our work is not what brings us joy. I don't know what it takes to change our attitudes about our current job or to change our jobs while we are in them or by leaving them (harder in this economic climate), but we need to find something more in our work that gives us peace and/or joy. I'm inspired to assert this is possible after reading this poem by Wendell Berry. I highlight the lines that caught my attention relative to my last few weeks at work. What would it take to have work that is more like Sabbath?

Wendell Berry from Sabbaths, #VII

What if, in the high, restful sanctuary
That keeps the memory of Paradise,
We’re followed by the drone of history
And greed’s poisonous fumes still burn our eyes.

Disharmony recalls us to our work.
From Heavenly work of light and wind and leaf
We must turn back into the peopled dark

Of our unraveling century, the grief

Of waste, the agony of haste and noise.

It is a hard return from Sabbath rest

To lifework of the fields, yet we rejoice,
Returning, less condemned in being blessed

By vision of what human work can make:
A harmony between wood-land and field,
The world as it was given for love’s sake,
The world by love and loving work revealed

As given to our children and our Maker.

In that healed harmony the world is used
But not destroyed, the Giver and the taker

Joined, the taker blessed, in the unabused

Gift that nurtures and protects. Then workday

And Sabbath live together in one place.
Though mortal, incomplete, that harmony

Is our one possibility of peace.

When field and woods agree, they make a rhyme
That stirs in distant memory the whole
First Sabbath song that no largess of time

Or hope or sorrow can wholly recall.

But harmony of earth is Heaven-made,

Heaven-making is promise and is prayer,
A little song to keep us unafraid,
An earthly music magnified in air.

I would be glad if you would share with me what your joyful act is, and what thing you can and will do to make your work more like true Sabbath, rather than your Sabbath more like work, something I suspect that more of us know how to do.

If you don't know the difference between work and Sabbath, I would suggest that you follow God's example to find out about Sabbath: see that what you have created is good and rest on at least the seventh day. Or perhaps you just need to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Without a doubt joy and the holy are closely related.

Clutter

The Oxford Dictionary of Word Histories says, "Clutter [late Middle English] started out as a verb. It is a variant of dialect clotter 'to clot,' influenced by cluster and imitative Old English word clatter. See clot." Clot: "Old English clot(t) is Germanic in origin and related to German Klotz. With reference to a person, a clot was originally (mid 17th century) 'a clumsy person' but it came to be associated with stupidity."

I spent Labor Day weekend getting rid of the clutter in my study, currently defined by the dictionary in my version of Microsoft Word as "noun: 1) an untidy collection of objects; 2) a condition of disorderliness or overcrowding; 3) images on a radar screen that hinder observation; or as a verb: to make a place untidy and overfilled with objects." There is some clumsiness involved in getting rid of clutter—we were tripping over piles and on boxes that are in different places. I think I've cleared paths now through the bags and boxes waiting to be taken to Goodwill or to the curb. On this side of the weekend, I am thinking it's a harsh, but perhaps accurate, judgment to regard clutter as a form of stupidity. What else can you call having had a space so full of paper that there are now twelve grocery bags of recycling waiting to go out? That doesn't count the boxes of things that have been organized, consolidated and trashed.

Several years ago, I read an article in the Boston Globe about the FlyLady. She's all over getting rid of clutter and I have to say that her clean sink trick is very helpful to me in knowing where to start in the kitchen or how to keep the kitchen clean: spend a few minutes to make the sink clean and shiny. For the office, FlyLady recommends Chaos Control. Of course, I just discovered that after spending all weekend at this task. My office at work is not quite as bad as my study was, mostly because it's smaller and because other people need to access the paper, so it stays more organized. But while not berating myself, how does a single room get so bad? ...

For those people who keep Sabbath in the letter, not the spirit, I would guess that my weekend cleaning and clutter-removing binge is not Shabbatful. Sometimes, however, spaciousness comes from our work to clear space. My long weekend's work now brings Sabbath and readiness for the coming school year. There is empty floor space and desk space and shelf space and drawer space, and plenty of paper and pens and pencils and binders, once lost in clutter, now found and accessible.

The spirit of the Sabbath is to set aside time to prepare yourself to emulate God's work of creation—sometimes that's rest and reflection and relaxation, and sometimes it's clearing out the space to allow creativity to happen. Just now, I'm going to bask in the emptiness. I have to say that I feel more joy looking at my clean study than I might after a worship service, and joy is quite central to Sabbath. This is holy and blessed time indeed.

Silence and Sabbath

Silence is scarce.

As I start to write this, wanting to write on our congregational experience during Lent of sitting in increasing amounts (a minute increasing by a half minute each week) of silence, my daughter is in the room next to me watching a re-run episode of "The Lucy Show." Somehow it seems like a fitting dose of reality. How hard it is to find quiet time, time to sit in silence. This Sunday, it seemed to me as if people were sinking into the silence. There didn't seem to be the shuffling and rustling that we've had in previous weeks. Note to self: don't announce the amount of time that we'll have and then people don't wonder when it's supposed to be up. But there was a power, an enfolding or upholding of the gathered community as the silence deepened. I think we were making space for God.

Even early in the morning, in my supposed quiet time, it's hard to find silence or space for silence. The kettle whistles, the furnace clanks, refrigerator whirs, the computer hums and cars swish by. Even now, although it is quieter since my daughter went upstairs, my chair squeaks and I hear the clock ticking as my fingers are tapping. Why is it easier to find God in the silence than in the busy-ness and noise? I'm not denying that it is—I'm just wondering why we're not wired to find God in rush of everyday?

I read somewhere recently that Sabbath is the most radical contribution of Judaism to the world, or maybe it was the most radical contribution of any religion to the world in 4000 years. Not that Sabbath is always silence, but it is holy time, and it seems to me that we were achieving holy time on Sunday in our silence. Somehow in my mind I equate the spaciousness of Sabbath with the quality of silence we had.

My calendar popup reminders intrude as I try to sit in silence again. And I suspect that if I close my eyes to sit in silence now, I may be asleep—restless night from aching shoveling muscles last night.

If we lost scents and ritual in the reformation, it was a much bigger loss to have lost Sabbath keeping, whenever it was that we did. Blue laws, that remnant of Puritanism, really didn't ensure Sabbath, although the laws helped to control the options. How hard would it be to buck the tide and keep a day of Sabbath in a Christian tradition? How hard is it to find 3-4 minutes of intentional silence? Yet, what an absolute blessing it is when we do.

I tried yet again to sit in silence, and my mind has too much chatter just now. So, there it is. Yesterday I felt enfolded by others around, like being wrapped in a communal blanket of silence. My mind was not nearly so noisy.

I'll miss the silence during service when Lent is over. I'm not sure that I've made enough space for God, but it's been a special part of the season, not a giving up, but a getting.