A few days before we picked up our chickens, we secured our backyard. We walked the privacy fence, looked for any holes under the house, leveled a steep hill to detract predators from climbing over. We found the shadiest spot for the position of the coop, bought pine shavings, wheat straw, organic feed and a waterer. We purchased a coop from an older couple west of town and asked our neighbors for help unloading and assembling it. We set out fresh bedding for the chickens, and then came the babes—all different colors, all different breeds. We gave each one a name: Marin (named for Marin County, California where we spent much of our honeymoon), Fanny Lou, Nina Simone, Nopalita, Lady Bird (named for our friend and church member) and Toby Ziegler (named for our favorite West Wing character). We became attached in an instant, learned their personalities, invited our parents over to meet the grandchicks, practiced picking them up, ate their delicious eggs and doted on them in public, showing people pictures of them on our phones.

Their second night with us, I had to be downtown for work until late. After a while, I noticed I’d missed four calls from Robbie. Then came the text: “I lost some chickens.” I called back to get more information. My husband was panicked: it was dark and he could find only two of our little brood of six. He’d checked the coop numerous times, under the house, under the porch, behind the shed, inside the shed, the coop again. He hadn’t heard any sounds of struggle—an indication that an opossum or raccoon had gotten inside the fence. Before we hung up, he said his plan was to hit the pavement and take a flashlight into the neighborhood to see if he could find any sign of our chickens, dead or alive.

I got home an hour later, and walked into a sad, dark house. Robbie was lying in a dark bedroom with a pillow over his face. He hadn’t had any luck finding them in the neighborhood. We discussed all the possible ways and reasons our chickens were gone: a predator had found its way in and made off with four of our girls; their wings weren’t clipped as well as we’d thought and they’d flown over the tall fence; there was some sort of hole or exit beneath our house that was accessible to them, but invisible to us. After all this positing, we concluded that we just weren’t ready, and we went to bed sad.

The next morning at 6 am, Robbie got up to let our two remaining chickens out of the coop and all six marched right out of their little door. He came back up to our bedroom with a huge grin on his face and a look of confusion. All six had been inside the coop all along, we discovered, just up on their roosting poles. Every time my sweet husband had lifted the lid of the coop to see if they were inside, they were roosting up on the top portion, the part of the coop in his hands. We were so excited to see them that morning and had a little party out back, in our PJs, with breakfast and coffee. We are still laughing at what those chickens were thinking each time they were tipped sideways in the dark that night. It would make a great cartoon…

I hope you get a good laugh from this story as you make your way through this week. We all spend so much time looking for what’s right before us, in front of us, inside us. We search for God, for ways to be faithful to him, for something to deliver us from present worry or strife. It’s not wasted time, but when we catch a glimpse of God living right where we live, we remember our deliverance has already been sent. Go well this week, remembering God is in our midst!

this past week, i was walking alone around the lake at Radnor, and just as i entered the woods, i caught a flash of a small bluebird just beside me on the trail, perched on a branch close to me, just above my head. it was impossible not to notice his blue body in the midst of the trim, winter landscape. in so much brown, even the smallest blue miracle is so pronounced.  as i walked, he talked and bounced from branch to branch along the trail. he stayed so close beside me for so long that i walked in amazement at the persistence of this little bird and what was happening between us. was he following me? or was i following him? eventually, twenty minutes later, we came to a place in the trail where other people were stopped and gathered. i lost the bluebird there, when i turned my attention to a family of deer eating and chewing and smelling the ground.

we often think we are alone, but we are never alone. i want to wear the memory of that bird close to my body all winter long—the small, blue miracle—like a hat to announce me and protect me and keep me going. it’s a story about how god stretches out alongside us. it’s a story about pride, about survival, about the complicated beauty of this wild world. it’s a story about how each one of us is set down here on earth, a miracle among miracles, and about what we make for ourselves from what we find in the woods.

Jeremiah 31:7-9

For thus says the LORD: Sing aloud with gladness for Jacob, and raise shouts for the chief of the nations; proclaim, give praise, and say, “Save, O LORD, your people, the remnant of Israel.” See, I am going to bring them from the land of the north, and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth, among them the blind and the lame, those with child and those in labor, together; a great company, they shall return here. With weeping they shall come, and with consolations I will lead them back, I will let them walk by brooks of water, in a straight path in which they shall not stumble; for I have become a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn.

Psalm 126

When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then it was said among the nations, “The LORD has done great things for them.” The LORD has done great things for us, and we rejoiced. Restore our fortunes, O LORD, like the watercourses in the Negeb. May those who sow in tears, reap with shouts of joy. And those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves.

An Armor of Roses by Rumi

Take January’s advice. Stack wood.
Weather inevitably turns cold, and you

make fires to stay healthy. Study
the grand metaphor of this yearly work.

Wood is a symbol for absence. Fire,
for your love of God. We burn form

to warm the soul. Soul loves winter
for that, and accepts reluctantly the

comfort of spring with its elegant,
proliferating gifts. All part of the

plan: fire becoming ash becoming
garden soil becoming mint, willow, and

tulip. Love looks like fire.
Feed yourself into it.

–

i’m thinking about how this room is built from Kentucky ground.  these walls were built from Kentucky blue ash—these logs cut and hewn by people who knew how to live off this land. oak and chestnut trees were used for beams and supports. the folks who built this church drove posts down into this fertile Kentucky soil, the same soil that grew those tall trees. they were in the work of splitting planks, carting lumber, setting each piece in place, truing up corners and mixing the mud to make mortar.

leave it to these two punky brewsters to get married on All Saint’s Day, a day we remember all the saints, known and unknown—those who have died, who are already at rest throughout the world. leave it to them to celebrate new life in marriage on the very day we make memory of lives already lived. leave it to them to make a ritual of looking backwards with gratitude, while looking forward with joy.

packed into this old fashioned church, it’s impossible not to think of the generations and lives that lived before us—people we love who’ve already passed through this life and moved into another one with god. in this room, we remember our ancestors, who are together somewhere else easy to be, where they can dance with their broken bones. but oh how they also are in this very room with us too—their hopes and dreams stretched out across the bone structures in our faces and their stories inside hand-me-down wedding bands, tarnished and shiny with their own stories of love and of striving. with us and with these two punky brewsters, those already gone from us, are celebrating.

Rumi talks about making fires to stay healthy, studying the grand metaphor of the yearly work that is cutting the logs, stacking the wood, building the fires and learning something from the burn. it’s like lighting a candle for someone we love—to memorialize the past and say a prayer for the future. meanwhile, the woodpile needs attention. meanwhile, the wood needs chopping. meanwhile, we’ve got to find a way to get through winter.

while we light fires to memorialize the past, we stack wood for the future. standing in this little country church, in the spirit of all our saints and on the eve of wintertime, we know this is how to build the sacred room of marriage: to let the people we love be our tall trees, our floorboards, our headboards. to put stakes in the ground for one another. to look backwards at who came before, to light a candle for every name, to haul the logs, place them somewhere special, burn form to warm the soul, say our prayers out loud, always looking forward—and back.

Sarah Wylie and Griffin, you are passions & boldness & punk & purpose. this is a really beautiful wedding, and we’re  all here to witness it. but we’re here to witness it, because we believe in an even more beautiful marriage. we’ll be here like so much more firewood for you when you need it. an armor of roses. fire becoming ash becoming garden soil becoming mint, willow, tulip.

god bless, the wooden frame of your faces. god bless your unbridled passions and all your devotion. god bless this sacred Kentucky spot and all the trees felled to build it. god bless you as you live into this love.

as time passed that year, the Jesus in the tree got harder to see. we would look for it, but some smaller trees got bigger and changed our view—branches broke off, bark peeled away or we walked the path from the other direction and this tree became just another tree in a forest of so many trees.

this happens with our images of god; too much changes in the course of our lives for God’s face to stay the same—our parents die, our babies get sick, we lose our jobs. one season moves into another one and new perspectives get bigger and crowd out old ones. god doesn’t change, but the look of the face of God changes as the conditions around us change, and we can’t see like we always saw.

changes wear down those images, high up in the sky. since I’ve been back in Nashville, I’ve been walking at Radnor and almost daily, I see a small cross of sticks laid across the same bench on the trail—tracks of someone else’s strong faith. i’ve made my own stories about the one who leaves them there. and now, each cross on the bench is just like the old tree—another face of faith in the forest—so humble, so close to the ground.

i recently moved into a new place and have made a morning routine of walking a block down my quiet street and across another busy one, to a house where a few sisters make corn tortillas every day of the week. when i get there, i am greeted by the big extended family and place my order, which is almost always the same. i love to watch these women make the tortillas; their arms are strong from working the corn, and their skin is smooth and shiny. i imagine their hands feeling like worn pennies to touch—hard and soft at the same time. they grind, knead, press and pat the dough at a tall table, dipping their hands into one cloudy bucket of water on a stool. they slap thick, pressed circles of ground, wet maiz into perfect tortillas with their right hands, while spinning the thin plastic discs beneath them with their left. the rhythm of their work is so satisfying to watch, and the sound of the slapping is so visceral, it almost hurts my still-tender scar to hear  it.

from these frequent trips, i have learned to bring my own flat plates for carrying the tortillas home. i pay my money and they place a neat stack on one plate and cover the stack with the other one. and i walk home, shifting the piping hot prize from hand to hand, always aware of the tender scar. the things i like about living here i can count on my one hand. this little morning thing is one of them, and i’d clap for it if i could.

after i lot of walking through the crowded hall, i sat in one of thousands of plastic chairs that had been set up in rows on the concrete floor. there were walkie talkies and fake flowers, electric water fountains, plastic rocks and crushed velvet money bags being passed down each row. there were prizes for raffle, an outfitted rock band up front and an impressive light show on every white wall. soon after we found our seats and sang some songs, we listened, through an amped up sound system, to a dozen testimonies of how god has increased portions and provided monetary miracles in the lives of those sharing them. this theology sank my heart, and this physical environment saturated my senses so much that it was hard to know what to do with my body, my eyes, my vision, my thoughts.

a short row of chubby, church-going family members sat in the seats in front of me—what i assumed to be a mother, father, grandmother and her grandson. this little boy, maybe two years old, spent most of the service in his grandmother’s lap. she was fat and dark-skinned, and when embraced between her two thick arms, her grandson would giggle into her delighted face for what seemed like a brief eternity. occasionally, he would leave her to run between the plastic chairs or down the aisles; i watched him drink all the soda from his dad’s thermos, swat at a bumble bee on the wall and pull on his mom’s blue earring. after doing each of these things, he would run back into his grandmother’s arms to check in, like he was bound to her by some joyful tether. and always so delighted, she would love him up there and they would share face to face time so contagious, it made me ache to be held so close, by someone so big. and then, quickly, he’d be gone again, weaseling under a chair or making eyes with another child or tugging on his own sandal.

after two hours of church, the little boy fell asleep in his grandmother’s arms. he looked heavy to me and hot, like children often do when they sleep. his chubby cheeks were so relaxed that his opened mouth leaked down the soft, loose skin around his grandmother’s elbow. everything about her body holding him close was a sermon about god for me—the boy so tired from all his wandering and she, all soaked in his sweat and spit, but still strong for him, still so full of love for him. and so this was my way of going to church in that church—with my gaze stuck on them, thinking about god like this, thinking about love like this, feeling myself tethered, trying to feel myself held.

but we’ve begun, and Elliet is lovely. she speaks slowly, in a way that allows me to understand every word. she is smart, direct and i think she likes me; she laughed and asked for more when i taught her some of the Nica slang i’ve been collecting. we arrived at our motel tonight when the sun was just setting in a dark orange glow. we passed through the modest entrance, and in the distance, i saw the silhouette of a brisk, older woman with crazy hair rummaging around a desk, looking frantically for something. i finally heard the jangling of keys and she came towards us with a flashlight, telling us with zero apology that there was no light, there had been no light all day and not to expect light to return before morning. Elliet and i dropped our stuff into our dark bedrooms, and walked down the street to a small restaurant for dinner, where there was also no light. we ate beans and rice by candlelight, and while were eating, i wondered how many people sit at two-tops in restaurants by candlelight asking each other questions like “Could you tell me again how to pronounce your name?”

after dinner, we walked back to the motel in the pitch black dark, along the road that was pocked with holes and mud puddles. we held onto each other’s shoulders and arms as we walked. i literally couldn’t see anything—my feet, the ground, Elliet—and there was no moonlight by which to read her lips. i was feeling around for everything—how to make it back in the dark, how to move the conversation forward in a language i can kind of speak, how to hold onto her but not too tightly, as we lumbered down the steps to the motel. when we finally arrived, Elliet held out her keys and we felt around together with our fingers for the longer one, the one that would get us in the front door. she asked the Senora in charge for two candles and a box of matches, and we bid each other goodnight in the pitch black dark.

now i’m inside my motel room with my one lit candle. there is a small bat who’s hugging the ceiling and i kind of like the company. it seems like he’s bumping into things he doesn’t know are in front of him. but even though he looks ridiculous, i’ve just remembered how deftly he can navigate in the dark. it’s part of who he is, part of what he’s been given and part of how he moves through the world. still, he looks so small in this big, dark room. i’m not sure how i’ll pass the next four or five hours more before bedtime, but i’m certain they’ll include a conversation with him or maybe a simple barter—some of my sick Spanish slang for a lesson about finding light enough to travel.

back in the kitchen, huddled over the tiny stove, i was tasting Martha’s soup with a spoon when Wendi, her adult daughter told me she’d found a job—something she’s been looking for since i met her over two months ago. Wendi was smiling, but Martha, who was making lemonade over a big plastic bowl, was not. i asked Wendi how she found the job, what she would be doing, where it was located in the city, which bus she would take. she answered the questions one by one, and ended in quiet tears as she explained that the work was outside of Managua and she’d be moving three hours away to Chinendega to take the job.

at some point this week, we inherited a gigantic cardboard box, and Jeshua and his nine year-old cousin Ali have been rolling across the tile floor inside of it with their four legs and two heads sticking out. the box has been crushed and flattened and has ceded any of its former shape and hard edges to the rough love of these little boys. watching them roll around in it, stopping only for cement walls and so much laughter would make anyone believe that lack of resources keeps people together, keeps people talking, keeps people in the same room to invent with wild imagination how to pass time. since being here i have received a lot of mail and email from friends and family who express a want to escape the excesses that life at home affords. i totally get these sentiments and understand how attractive a simpler life often seems to those of us burdened by too much activity choice, responsibility or stuff. from a distance, those of us with plenty can reach a conclusion that poverty somehow equals a simplicity or a basic happiness that we who are comfortable are not capable of living.

but i don’t think anything about my Nicaraguan family’s life is simple, certainly not their poverty. while we were watching the cardboard box game and eating dinner, i asked Martha how she felt about Wendi’s new job. her whole body held worry, grooves of heartache worn into her face like tattoos, like marks that will never leave her. she kept her eyes on her grandsons in the box and slowly listed the things she hoped to be able to give her daughter before she left—a big bag of oatmeal from Pricemart, a couple pounds of rice, some beans, a few dollars worth of minutes on her cell phone—but she didn’t know if she would be able to do it.

poverty busts up families, often at the cost of draining their one greatest resource—each other. chronic poverty ruins dreams or replaces the human capacity for dreaming with something sadder than i have the words to describe. most days it feels like i am living among people who do not dream, who’ve not been taught to dream, who cannot afford to dream, or in Wendi’s case, whose one dream of raising her child comes at the cost of living apart from him, at the cost of missing his most precious growing-up years.

i watched the boys in the cardboard box until it was time for all of us to go to bed. Wendi called her son Jeshua into her arms and he gave her the biggest, wettest kiss on her eye. i went into my room and washed my face with soap that cost at least three-times as much as the combined cost of those modest things Martha wanted to send with Wendi. and when i turned out the light and pulled the sheet over my tired body, i cried for i don’t know how long. as the reality of their poverty unfolds, i pray every day that my tears aren’t ones that paralyze, but ones that galvanize. that there are many people living without dreams only makes me want to work harder for my own—the impossible ones that would establish economic justice—ones that require a few of us having a lot less and a lot of us having a little more.