​How can I not bake? For the first day of the New Year, I made a keto banana bread (yeah, that's a bit of an oxymoron, but it was a treat) with some gnarly bananas left from Christmas week, and some cute blueberry squares using up some blueberries we had defrosted for my MIL to make blueberry pie for the kids. All sugar-free and grain-free.

Someone said you should do on New Year's Day what you want to do more of in the coming year. So, I baked two things! 

The Banana Bread Recipe is here: https://delicrunch.co/banana-bread-recipe/, and the Blueberry Crumble Bars recipe is here: https://www.lowcarbmaven.com/blueberry-crumble-bars/ 

In case you were wondering...they were delicious!

This urge to bake again is interesting to me. I can only think that some good and amazing creative stuff that's been happening at work is overlapping into life, and I am totally ok with that. I need a lot of it, because there's a lot to get done around here. There's organizing to do, planning to do, restoring a farmhouse to do, and so.much.more. This is how I stay calm in the crazy of my life. Stay tuned. 

It’s been what I can only describe as a hectic week. I’ve been absurdedly super busy, as I begin to enter all that the next few months has coming. I always feel this way in September—church schedules run pretty similarly to school schedules--pastors see September coming much like teachers see a school year coming, with most of the same emotionally oppositional things running through our messed-up brains. (Excitement! Dread. Anticipation! Disappointment. You get it.)

Today, I have five meetings. All of them were important, all relevant, all about continuing good work in the world. All were with people I care about deeply. But.Five.meetings. And I’m out of the office the next two days, and there is still work to do for this weekend, and I’m going to be away for almost a week at the end of the month…

That’s about the way a good part of the rest of my month looks.

So, how do I survive it? Good question. This is the 21st year of this kind of yearly rhythm, so I hoping I will start to get good at it soon.

Last week, I signed up at a fitness center for a promotional six-week program, which, yes, I think feels crazily counterintuitive, too. Adding one more thing? To this crazy schedule? Barmy.

But what I know is this: I’m awfully out of shape. I have limited strength and barely any stamina. I’m carrying more pounds than I should be, and I get tired very quickly. Oh, and I get winded going up stairs—I’m particularly mortified by that fun reality. People look at me and tell me I’m small, but I feel huge and clumsy, and tired. Just tired. And old. Did I mention the birthday coming up next month? I’ve got to do something.

So, my alarm rings at 5.30am, which sounds less problematic if you know that I am a born morning person, and am usually naturally awake around 6 or 6.30. I go and prove to myself that I was totally right about how out of shape I am—it’s terribly frustrating. And embarrassing. And painful. And more tiring than I thought it could be (what about those endorphins everyone promises? Where are they? I wouldn’t know one if it hit me upside the head).

But there it is. I know that I need strength to get through this hectic work. I know that I need stamina. And I also know that these things don’t just appear overnight. So here I am, slogging away, hoping I can get good at it, so that I can be better at the work I have to do.

Wish me luck. And lots of arnica cream for the sore muscles. And an extra day each week. I’ll let you know how it works out.

I've been taking a sabbath from this writing. It wasn't intentional, nor was I particularly feeling the need of a rest, but Sabbath happened. Somewhere in my mind and my spirit, I moved inward over the last few months. Writing here is such an external process, a giving over and turning inside-out process. To set things into prose and offer them to others to read, digest, comment, evaluate is an extroverted thing, and it requires the right frame of mind, even for an extrovert's extrovert, as I am.

My first year at my no-longer-new appointment to this congregation and community is over. The first year is both exhilarating and exhausting, and this one has exhausted me more than that first year in most of my previous appointments; perhaps my age is a factor, or maybe my experience in ministry has taken its toll, or maybe it's that I've invested more deeply this time around. Whatever the case, the first year has passed. As we have learned to work with each other to find out the ministry we are called to develop together, we're learning that we don't have to use party manners all the time any more. We aren't so shy around one another. We now know what to do with our hands, and when to speak and when to keep silent, and what the outlines of our boundaries look like, and what our capabilities are. It's been exciting and wonderful and sometimes fraught with the arranged-marriage glitches in the get-to-know you process. My writing effort has been for the preaching in this place. Perhaps I just needed to rest from that.

I've been working on that dream I mentioned, as well. That's been some complicated emotional and logistical work, and I'm not quite ready to talk about that. Maybe that's why I needed a rest.

Sabbath isn't always intentional, but it is always necessary. It will take us, if we don't take it. Moses tells his people in the giving of the commandments that if they do not observe Sabbath, they will die. It's a simple, yet powerful statement. It may mean to Moses and his people, and the author of the story, of course, that God will smite them if they do not honor the Sabbath and keep it holy. But what if it has another meaning: might it just mean that when we do not take time--rest time, sabbath-time, breathing time--we will die, because we cannot sustain the pace most persons try to keep; we cannot keep not breathing, not resting, not stopping.

I'm finding my lungs again. I'm learning to re-pace again. I don't credit that to my own power. I have felt called to breathe and to rest, and that did not come from me alone. In that rest, I have realized that I have lost sight of the light, in some ways. In that rest, I have observed that God is trying to lead me to still waters and is trying mightily to restore my soul. In that rest, I have seen my center shift, and the ways God is trying to shift it back. I am grateful. My Sabbath came, ready or not.

I had a dream-building day today. It was a snow day, and I did not go out; I am so very done with winter. I gave myself a break from work and worked on my dream instead.

Here’s a confession: I never had dreams about what I wanted to be or do when I grew up. I never could answer that question when curious adults would ask, though I did occasionally make up answers to stop them asking. As I did eventually begin to grow up (though I will not claim to be completely grown up yet), I discovered a sense of vocation, and some goals and ambitions, but never had that “dream” everyone was supposed to have. What did I really want to do, and who did I really want to be? After a particularly tumultuous recent episode in my life, I decided that it was about time to figure that out. After all, I’m closer to retirement than I used to be…

But wow, how does someone who’s never had that kind of dream go about constructing one?

I think a dream of that kind is about the things your mind wanders off toward in spare moments, or just before sleep. It’s about the passion you have between the tasks at your day job. It’s about the possibilities you cook up in your mind and heart. And it’s about stepping beyond the things I usually do, and beyond the things other people expect of me.

So, here’s my simplified blueprint for building a dream that could actually become real:

1)      Pay attention. Where does my mind wander? What are the daydreams I have? I started holding those close instead of letting them just fly away when I had work to do.
2)      Add some practicality. Can the things I dream actually happen? All things being equal, can I actually do the things I need to do to make this happen? Do I have the skills or the resources-or am I willing to develop them? What do I need to learn, and from whom do I need to learn it? What research do I need to do?
3)      Take a risk. Am I willing to make a leap to make this dream happen? What am I willing to give up? How am I willing to think differently, what am I willing to do differently, even outside my comfort zone?

Three things. I’m working on them. I’m building a dream. And sometimes it scares me, and sometimes it exhilarates me--which I think is the point, after all. It wouldn’t be a dream if it didn’t do both. I’ll tell you about it some day...

Out of clutter, find simplicity. –Albert Einstein

Anyone who knows me, knows that I despise clutter of any kind. I’m forever picking up stuff that isn’t where it belongs, always looking for new organization ideas, relentlessly tidying up my desk and the areas around me, and not always being super-kind to my husband (who is less clutter-averse than I am) when he leaves things out.

Maybe that makes me a perfectionist or a compulsive hot mess--I don’t know. What I do know is that when I have taken the time to clear the space around me, I have cleared a space to breathe, and think, and create. With fewer things occupying the valuable real estate of my life, I can focus on what happens on the inside. I’m not pouring my energy into finding the thing I misplaced. I’m not frantically trying to choose between the four identical things I have because I forgot I had three and so I bought another. I’m not worrying so much.

What I know about clutter is that it also takes up brain-space, and it takes up soul-space, and I don’t want to be captive to it.

There are a million and one de-cluttering websites out there, but the simplest way I have found to do it, is to ask three questions about whatever it is that takes up space in my life:

Does it have a current useful purpose?
Does it bring me joy?
Am I keeping it because I am worried about what someone else will think if I get rid of it?

If it does not have a current (not past or future) purpose, or it does not bring me joy, or I am keeping it out of a sense of obligation or worry, I don’t need it. This applies to all kinds of things, from clothes and objects and calendar items to relationships and obligations. Clarity comes from shedding anything that fills my life for no good reason. I'm not perfect at it yet, but I'm working at it.

It’s hard work, but it's worth it for me.

photo: Jugen de Clercq, by permission

It is the season of light. Many religious traditions teach about the power of light for our bodies and souls. We know it ourselves, instinctively. Here where I live, we haven’t seen a sunny day in weeks, and this week, when the sun suddenly broke through the clouds for just a little while, the difference in the atmosphere was tangible. I have friends who have already pulled out their full-spectrum lights and are sitting faithfully in front of them for hours each day. There is something deep within us that craves the light.

How do we get in touch with it?

Sure, sunny windows and therapy lamps and Vitamin D supplements are great for the body—they can work wonders.
But we need light for our spirits, too. The calm soul breathes light: in for energy and life, out for sharing with the world. To breathe in the light is to invite it into every part of ourselves. To hold that light within is peace and restoration. To let it overflow is to become light in the world.

Tomorrow is the Christian celebration of light and life coming into the world, the celebration of the shining of a star and the birth of a baby whose life was Light itself. For those who choose the Christian way, his life becomes ours as we become his, and his light becomes ours to share.

So, light a candle and catch a glimpse. Breathe in the light and find some calm. However you celebrate this season of Light, may it fill you and grant you peace.