Honeyed light

I am a psalm a day sort of girl.

The psalms are a door to me, a portal of entry into that room I seek every single morning where God waits, waits, for me to join him. Those words, all cadenced in sorrow and struggle, awe, joy, are the best way I know to chant my brain into the hushed wonder that becomes my key in the lock of God’s presence.

I do have my favorites though. There are a few that come to me now and then like pieces of gold dropped in my hand, or rare, limpid summer days. They are full, rich, and just what I want. They are the ones that dwell on a world made right by the Messiah. In these Psalms, the red of struggle, the dark and dusk of anguish, even the taut grey of hope deferred in patience, all fall away, and there is only gold. Light. That inner glow that rises from every created thing being just as whole as it was meant to be.

To read them is like peering at a painting by an artist like Vermeer, or Caravaggio, or the Hudson River Valley school, those masters whose brushes somehow caught the light of a world purer than our own. Vermeer’s The Milkmaid, where the light dots the corner of bread and jug and the girl’s hands at their work are a slow, holy dance. Or the landscapes of Thomas Cole, with light on the mountains like it must have been in Eden, with every leaf and fisted branch gilded in this still, honeyed glow. Each color is richer for the quiet, as if the world were at its deepest peace and the zenith of joy all at once. Those paintings, and my psalms, dwell on the world I need to be true. I could not keep walking the days of my life if I did not have these pictures, these golden images of promise to speed me on the way to the perfect world that is coming. But the psalms especially, also picture for me exactly what I must try to live, every day. To read this morning that:

God will deliver the needy.
Has compassion on the poor.
Will rescue the poor from oppression and violence.
There will be an abundance of grain in the earth and on top of all the mountains.
That those from the city will flourish.
That God’s name will increase as long as the sun shines.
That all nations will call him blessed…

The words are brushes stroking a mighty picture in my mind of shelter and arms strong to save, of hands reaching to fallen people, homes built up for the lonely. Health, and friendship. And also an earth, a life, ripe with beauty. A world rich “in grain,” in feasting and festival. The celebration of a world and a people, remade and righted by the Beautiful One. It grows up in my inner mind as this great mural that is the example by which I strive to live my small days, because those words picture the mighty creation that is in process even now. The process of redemption, the kingdom of heaven, is here. And I join it, I join it, when I live it out in my life. By loving those close to me, and bringing those close who are lonely. By fashioning a home, a life, with the artistry of love, and a sense of stewardship for all the beauty God has handed me. By saving the poor, the lonely, the ones who need food or clothing, or just the kindness of a caring touch. By being a light of truth that heals to those blinded in spirit, to those who have never heard truth, or had love.

And glory grows up, ripe, and quiet, all around.

Filled

Usually,” said my new friend with a grin, “I make it a point not to touch other people’s shoes. Ever.”

I had to smile, for there we were, up to our elbows in battered moving boxes full of sandals and stilettos, digging in search of a size eight shoe for one girl’s prom, followed by toddler sneakers for a black-eyed darling of a little boy. It was a brilliant Sunday afternoon and we were standing in the wind blown parking lot of our church. We had both volunteered to help sort and distribute at a church-wide drive for donations of basic household goods and clothing.

I had come that day in a very jet-lagged state, quite happy to help out, but expecting to be flat on the floor exhausted at the end of it. You go into situations like these, church or charity, soup kitchen or after school volunteer hours and you think, I am going to be a giver. It’s a bit of a duty. Jesus tells me to. I have much, I’ll give to those who have less. What you don’t expect is the filling up you get in return. It’s Tuesday now, but my heart is still filled with a summer sun-like glow of the love I found waiting to fill me on my service Sunday. I thought I’d be emptied, I came back full, and the river flow of it is with me yet.

First, friendship trickled into my heart. The fun and ease with which people work together on a thing like this is a marvel. Are you lonely? Go volunteer. There is no ice to be broken when you’re sorting used boxers five minutes in, and conversations can roam the wide earth in the six hours it takes to sort everything. Then came the lovely people I was supposed to “help.” I got to guide a little elderly couple around, helping them find the things they most particularly wanted or needed. They spoke only a bit of English, and I, almost no Spanish, but the woman, in her sun hat and dark glasses, took my arm with a confiding pat and we dug together through piles of sheets and blankets, and looked for a frame for the picture her grandson had drawn. At the end, when I said “audios,” both of them grinning at my goodwill attempt at Spanish, the old man came to hug me and say “you a very sweet girl.”

(more…)

A week in the Alps

From our first day's hike.

Any good Austrian picnic, for us, must end with Manner Schnitten; wafer cookies with Nutella-like filling.

Our train station. Home base.

Joy, in contemplation, on a rainy grey day in Zell am See.

This little man welcomed me into the chapel of St. Johan when I wandered there in my walks. I could sit in old European churches forever.

Up the main street in St. Johann.

A one street village through which we walked on our way up to an old fortress. It was misty that day, but the flowers were sun enough.

An hour's hike took us up to the fortress. I looked through this arch at crags and cliffs in a shifting veil of mist.

Joy, I am convinced, has a thing for snails. Look at that grin!

Cream for my "melange" (cappuccino). The crown to a two hour hike in the mist.

Topfen strudel.

Accidentally perfect day

We had one of those mishmashed mornings where everyone was a little held in the pincers of jetlag. Fog lowered out all the windows and it was cold as “Februar” as they say here. A lively discussion with a bus driver about whether or not our tickets were valid (he thought not) left us on a rainy curb, quite without a plan, in the windy cold of a frustrated moment. We four glanced back and forth. Take our picnic and scurry back to the hotel like whipped puppies or… let’s go to the train station! And that began the goodness, for I remembered a winding little way through the forest and down to the river that would set us on the Bahnhof platform double quick. We strode down the mountain (everything requires a climb here), Joy and Mom doing their best impressions of Mozart’s soprano in The Magic Flute, Joel and I ahead, in a game of humming Baroque tunes from the computer games of our childhood. Odd, yes, I know, but very fun.

With dramatic gestures and Mom’s still quite nimble Deutsch, we managed to convey to the station manager that we desired a “schon” (pretty) mountain town with a good walk and awesome view. He sent us four stops down, where we alighted to find craggy cliffs with fierce grey eyes staring down over a greening, misty little valley, with a silvered thread of a river through its heart and a proud old fortress as its crown. It was a one street village, the best sort, and we walked up snapping photos of tiny cobblestone paths and the window boxes crammed with pansies and geraniums that so weave the loveliness of Austria. There are little portraits, intricate pictures painted on house walls here. Gardens that topple over low fences, vines that wrap tiny houses year by year. Yes, we hiked all the way up to the fortress, rather an accomplishment for it was quite a mountain climb. But we loved it, striding slowly up through wet, dark-limbed forests gemmed in moss, with gigantic snails in every corner whose gooey skin Joy described as ‘a warm caramel’. I think that girl has a thing for snails. We made it to the top, found it cost 20 euros a person to enter the keep, took our fill of the view and hiked right back down. A tiny konditerai (coffee and cake shop) was waiting in the lower part of the village, with a corner table and a single red rose. There, we had “melanges” (cappuccinos, basically) served in a blue earthenware cup with a fairy’s pitcher of real cream. And split two topfen strudels(lemony cream cheese in pastry) with warm vanilla sauce.

We scurried back to the train through a spiteful little spit of rain with the mist rising up to dusk just as we settled into our seats. We rode back to the dreamz loll of the train tracks, and the music each of us chose as our soundtrack to our misty gift of a day and the green, green, emerald green of the hills out our window.

A day of goodness. Quite unplanned. But, if you’re up for an adventure after an argue with a bus driver (or anyone else for that matter) you can expect a lovely time. It makes my heart glad our last hours in the mountains weren’t wasted. We almost sucummbed the sleepiness and irritating fate, but we didn’t! I have about a thousand and three pictures I’m longing to post. As soon a I get more than five minutes of connection, I will. Off to Vienna today, via Salzburg and Halstatt. Have a lovely Sunday!

Sky of caribbean blue…

I sat in my room for an hour yesterday. The morning was a shadowed one. I stretched on the tiny couch so that my face met the tawny, mist-framed green of the mountain, and the dove light dripped and flowed over my sight. I’d read, I’d studied, I’d thought on my rainy morning, and now, I wanted music. Joy had mentioned the lyrics of an old Enya song to me the day before, and I suddenly remembered the passionate, teenage adoration I’d borne the very mysterious Enya and her ethereal music. The song itself, a twirling, foot-tapping waltz of a thing came tumbling into my mind, this joyous presence I’d forgotten. I plugged in my iPod and sat back, listening. Memories, states of being, get woven into music for me. To hear one particular song is, at times, to reacquaint myself with the heart and knowledge I had when I first heard it. Hear an old song and you find a feeling in your heart, a taste in your mouth, familiar as yourself. For me yesterday, the taste was joy.

I remembered being seventeen, just moved to the eastern side of the states, with Enya as my soundtrack on long, summer conference road trips up and down the verdant east coast. Her buoyant, rather whimsical music was my marching tune as I explored my loop of lake road and wandered the farmer’s fields that bordered my new home. One song especially, Wild Child, with its lines of:

Only take the time,
From the helter skelter,
Every day you’ll find,
Everything’s in kilter…
What a day! What day to take to,
What a way! What a way to make it through…

It was my chorus. Those were hard years, and yet my heart was budding with the vibrant secret of a joy I was discovering in music and Scripture, that hummed on beyond the reach of circumstance or irritation. Another song, with the lines of

If all you told was turned to gold, if all you dreamed was new, imagine sky high above, in Caribbean blue,

was my anthem. In my dreamer’s heart I was sure the blue sky she sang about was symbolic of joy. I remember loping down the hot, humming Tennessee roads to the whirling beat of the song. The blue she celebrated was the the fact of joy, the truth of a mighty hearbteat pulsing gladness right at the center of creation. I became acquainted in those days, and somewhat through the grace of that music, with the fact that it was a beautiful thing merely to be alive, to love and exult right in the face of this uphill climb of a life.

It was that glory returned to my heart as I lay on the couch yesterday. I have, perhaps, loosened what should have been a stranglehold on gladness in the past few years. My eyes have been so much on the fight for redemption, the struggle through all the foibles of fallen life, the helping of the broken, that the sheer gladness of liveness has been a little lost on me. But that’s the beat of my heart deep down. Beauty has broken through though. That song, and then, this week in a craggy, cool, green place. God knows so much better than I what my heart needs. I dragged my feet a bit at the thought of another trip, even to Austria. I’ve been in a hurry for years. I’ve needed the grace to be aware of how wildly good a thing it is to have a mind to think and a heart to beat and lungs to draw life from the air around me like magic. Thank God for these days, this rest I didn’t know I needed and the joy he stored up here to greet me. And know to the full again.

I wish the same to you.

Bits and Bites

Favorite Austria moments so far:

Train ride from Vienna to the Alps in which Joel and I frantically ate sour gummy worms in a near futile attempt to stay awake until we got to the hotel. I even sprayed Joel in the eyes with my water bottle. (Yes, he asked me to.)

Simmels and coffee, simmels being impossibly crusty white rolls that crisp and melt to a perfection in one’s mouth when paired with alpine butter and cherry jam. And strong, very strong coffee.

Waking up every morning to a windowful of green mountainside.

Hiking, tromping, jogging up through meadows, past mountain farms and up through forests, through wind and butterflies and wide fields of yellow flowers, with a circle of white-topped mountains on the horizon. That stretched out, wind blessed, sun rained feel of being outdoors for hours.

Sunbathing in the Gasthaus garden; tulips, morning light, and a good book.

Picnics! On trains! With the alps out the window!

The frantic (and I do mean frantic/frenetic) run to find the next right train and figure out the right “bahnsteig” (platform) all while trying to speak passable German. Oh so fun. And dignified.

Frankfurt

I think I need a badge saying I Survived the Great Volcano Debacle of 2010, even if I only had a four hour flight delay. It still felt historic and rather adventurous. I write in a slight haze of jetlag from the Frankfurt airport. We have one more flight, two more trains, and about a mile to walk before we can crash in our hotel tonight. But since I met up with my brother Joel in Boston, we’re having a grand old time, drinking as much coffee as we can get our hands on, and savoring the catching up that comes of three months apart.

The flight out, however delayed, was gorgeous last night. To cruise up through a sunset sky, with city lights in a checkerboard beneath you is a sight to be remembered. We lifted off just at dusk, with storm in a navy bank on two sides, and one clear shaft of sky between. The full-blooded city light was in a red pulse on the horizon, we climbed up through diamond-lighted towers, and came straight into a wet, royal blue bowl of night sky with the evening star sitting like a jewel on its rim.

This is a rare trip in that its pure vacation. It’s off to a lovely start. Cheers for a lovely Sunday to you all!

Adventuring I go…

to Vienna. Yes, Vienna. And St. Johann im Pongau in the Austrian Alps.

But I shall still be blogging, so stick around…

And have a lovely day!