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.

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.”

I walked away dazed because I felt that I hadn’t done a thing, hadn’t given one bit, instead, had been loved and complimented and patted very sweetly on the arm and was a good bit richer myself. The feeling grew as the day drew down to a golden, windy close and I said goodbye to the people near, to the girls I’d folded clothes with, the staff, and the burly, good-humored men from the city rescue mission who hugged me and said ” thanks, hon.” I said, truly, it was my pleasure. And it was. It was my delight, it was life unexpectedly filling my heart.

I realized as I drove home that night, that Jesus knew what he was doing when he told us to go out and serve in his name. All the things he asks us to do as his followers – serve, love, open our homes, heal, work, give – are floodgates of life not just out of us, but back into us as well. They are another channel of his love to us. It’s a crazy secret; we have this notion that we will be used up, tired out by ministry, that giving is subtraction. In fact, its multiplication. The act of service or love is the opening of a dam in our hearts. On its way out to others, God’s love enriches us first, fills us up so that we end our day of service richer than before. And the richer we become, the more we yearn to give. The more we delight to reach out, to offer up our filled up hearts in the service of others.

It would have been so easy not to show up that Sunday. My plane was late the day before, I had laundry and emails and the excuse of no sleep. In our busy, isolated culture, we could stay detached, give a check in lieu of face-to-face help, or just bustle around and never get involved in local, personal ministry of all. The whirlwind of life can make the thought of serving seem one with exhaustion. Surely, we think, working all afternoon sorting clothes, or volunteering for this or that, will just make me more tired than before. But I guarantee you that a receipt in the mail can never give love back to you as it came to me in the pat of an old woman, the grin of her husband. I guarantee you that you will find unexpected life and joy and friendship coming back to you through the very work you thought would exhaust you. Nothing is void or empty in God’s kingdom, nothing is lost. You can’t give anything away without getting better in return. It’s the infinitely expanding love of the kingdom, and when you serve, you become part of it.

I am now lobster red with an infamous sunburn, but I’m happy. So happy you can see it in my eyes. It was a tiny thing, my little afternoon of service, but oh how it filled up my heart. I thought I’d be emptier when I left. Wind and shoes and sunburns of and all, I was fuller at end than I could have imagined.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!

But I shall still be blogging, so stick around…

And have a lovely day!

The hysterical thing was that I started out by reading Psalm 46 in my quiet time with its peremptory command to be still and know that I am God. Hah and argh!

I decided to run errands. (And I hate to fragment a beautiful day with errands.) For sheer comfort, I stopped at the tiny coffee shop around the corner, got my usual creamy cappuccino, and got back in the car. I was still in the parking lot when I realized with a shock exactly what I needed to do.  I needed to escape. I glanced around, warmth growing in my mind: Gypsy, my darling blue car was all ready, the coffee was steaming in my hand, a car full of music awaited and the widest blue sky imaginable was jumping exultantly to the heavens out my window. I skipped the grocery store and headed for the hills.

There is a sinuous, two lane highway that jogs deeply north into the mountains just west of my home. It scampers out into wild places, where houses are sparse and the slopes of the mountains curve and laugh in an unbroken line from earth to sky. I headed there. I turned my music up as loud as I could bear it and let it shake the worry loose from my soul. For an hour, I let blue sky literally wash my eyes with color, clean away the illness of a too busy life. I pounded my steering wheel in time to my music, until all my angst was drummed out. I breathed slow and deep, let the swelling scent of newly greened hills fill my lungs with life. Three ravens wove a ring in the windy sky above me, back and forth, a dance that tied my soul and mind and heart back together.

There came a point where I realized, abruptly, that I was finally still. Stilled by an hour of wordless wondering. Prayer came quick as breath and I felt God laugh.  I realized that sometimes, being still is a matter of action. You have to flesh out stillness, go on the hunt for the quiet you have driven away. It takes a bit of a quest after hushed, lovely things to replace the frenzy that comes of a heart forgetting the strength of God. That day, “be still and know,” became “be still and sing,” “be still and watch”, “be still and breathe.”

Sing at the tipsy top of your lungs, and somewhere in the catch of breath and swell of music and light of your eyes, you’ll know. He is God.

I have a new post up at The Rabbit Room.

While I’m at it, I should say how very much I love the Rabbit Room blog and how highly I recommend it as a daily dose of all things arts and faith with a good bit of lively discussion thrown in. I’ve been a regular reader for about three years, and now am highly honored to be writing for them too. You should take a look.