reading (verb) — a complex cognitive process of decoding symbols in order to construct or derive meaning and compassion, allowing an individual to move outside of their perceived place as the exact center of this one world.

Sometimes, it feels like the place I work is some sort of dreary cross between Dorothy’s colorless world before she went to Oz and the ugly, soulless setting of 1984. Don’t get me wrong: I am extremely blessed to have a full-time job, and I know it (two years of part-time jobs taught me that much!). Plus, I have learned a million amazing things in this job that I never would have in a different environment. It’s nothing I ever imagined for myself, but I am very, very grateful for it.

Most days.

But some days are just too much. Some days, when I walk through the gate, it takes every bit of will to make myself ignore the rolls of barbed wire on the fence, grinning at me like wicked, prickly teeth. My shoes crunch over thirsty, salt-bleached sidewalks, and as I walk from one squat, outdated building to another, I stare up at the blue, blue above me sky and try to suck it right in to fortify my soul against the drabness of row upon row of office cubes.

That’s why I cover the walls around my desk in poetry. In pictures. And in the hanging vines of my houseplant that is somehow thriving despite the complete lack of any direct sunlight. And that’s why I put quotes in the status bar of my office communicator, where most people put their hours or their phone extension. It is my small rebellion, in a world of products and practicality, to whisper something different.

It was a quote from a Wendell Berry poem that got the attention of a friend of mine. “Ask the questions that have no answers.” Somehow, this led to a conversation about books, and anybody who knows me knows I could talk for hours about books.

“I love to read,” I told him. “And my ‘To Read’ list has been nice and long lately. I love it.”

“Ugh. Not me,” he said. And then he told me he would rather do something “productive” with his time. “Reading is a form of entertainment,” he explained, “and it’s just as productive as other forms of entertainment: not at all. I’ve never heard someone say they read to improve their brain. They read because they like to read.”

Ummmm... since when is the reason for doing something the determining factor of its value? 

I tried to clarify this with a comparison. I ride my bike a lot (when the weather is warmer, at least: I don’t bike in this negative-temperature-nonsense). The reason I go mountain biking is because I like to do it (I’ve written one or two posts about this). When I bike, I’m also exercising. I increase my stamina, my legs get stronger, my balance improves, etc. etc. Biking has a lot of positive health benefits.

These benefits—these products—are a side effect of me doing something I enjoy. Not the reason I do it, but it happens anyway. Like reading. Most people don’t read because they want the products of reading, but they get the benefits anyway.

And what’s wrong with that? Why does every minute of every day have to be characterized, and driven, by producing?

But I guess, if you see the world in terms of products, not processes (or journeys, I think is a better word) this idea of the valuable journey may be a hard concept to grasp. Because this was my coworker’s next comment:

“But you’re not accomplishing anything. Reading is just entertainment. And reading isn’t a particularly special kind of entertainment, either: anything you get from reading you can get from movies or TV.”

(Where do I even begin???)

When you watch TV or movies, or even a play, you’re being presented with everything. Your brain is still working, still making connections as the story unfolds, but much less so than when you are reading. Movies and TV, they give you everything. They give you the visuals of character and setting; they use music and color and camera angle to set the mood. They give, give, give, and you don’t have to do anything in return.

It’s so passive.

When you read, all you’re given is words on a page. Black and white shapes. That’s it. And then you begin reading and your imagination can’t help itself: it starts to create. Scene and character spring up from nothingness, brought about by your will alone.

I think, when the Bible says we’re made in the image of God, part of what it means is that we are little creators. We create all kinds of things: new science and technology, new art and music, new means to live life and new means to enjoy it. And reading is one of the easiest ways to experience this innate creativity.

This is not all. I read a beautiful article the other day that talked about one of the less obvious products of reading (I strongly recommend you follow that link when you’re done here). When we read, the author says, we grow our understanding—our empathy—for other people.

My coworker was quite dubious about this one. Creativity and imagination he could see (although in his mind, neither of these results were “productive”) but empathy? Open-mindedness? Understanding? “How does reading give you empathy?” he asked me, and I could hear the doubt behind the words. “That seems like a huge stretch.”

(I had to bite my tongue to keep from informing him that maybe, if he read more, it would be less of a stretch to understand.)

Reading gives you empathy because it asks you to suspend reality. Part of the contract between the reader and the story is that you will take the words at face value. You will step into the world, into the characters, and you will leave your ideas about how things work outside. Although this is most obvious in fantasy and science fiction, where the very laws of nature are often tossed aside, it is not limited by any one genre. When you open a book, you accept the world and the characters it presents to you. You just do. And as you read further, your mind and your heart are stretched, and you find yourself seeing the world through another set of eyes. You’re still you… but not wholly.  And this compassion comes naturally when you’re reading, when you’re given, not just the outward lives of a person, but their inner thoughts as well. The trick, though, is taking this out of the book world: bringing the understanding and empathy out into the real world and not picking up your biases again when you close the cover. But the more you read—the more you stretch your mind and your heart in this way—the easier and more natural it can become. That article I mentioned earlier puts it this way: 

“… reading fiction—when we do so with attention and imagination, when we do so in a way that suspends disbelief—is one way to suspend that glib belief that we, each of us, is the ‘realest, most vivid and important person in existence.’ So that being alive to words can mean, put simply, being alive to the people in your reach and letting them be alive to you.”

I don’t think I had my friend convinced. And maybe not you either. But if that’s the case, maybe you’ll take a little challenge from me.

Read a book. Read twelve books. Read one each month of the year, or more if you’re a fast reader, and then tell me if you are the exact same person you were before. Tell me if you can read twelve good books without feeling something in your heart, because I don’t think you can.  I think your perceptions will be, if not altered, then at least tested. Your ideas about the world will be colored, as if you’ve just stepped into Oz. Your understanding will deepen, like Winston Smith’s... just don’t let yourself fall back into the old, smaller world.

I think you might be surprised.

And if you had to Google “Winston Smith”, you might want to start your 12 months of reading with George Orwell’s 1984.

Poetry as Creation: A Manifesto

¹ In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. ² Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. – Genesis 1:1-2

               

And then, God twirled his little finger in the mush that was the earth and he wrote words, beautiful words.

And then the mush bulged, and with a flick of a divine finger, was flung up into the most beautiful words- oh, how beautiful!

(sparkling adjectives, verbs that thrummed with life, and nouns that for the first and only time actually were what they claimed to be!)

Little gods observe this now-

                the sparks still flashing, if a little dulled-down,

                the verbs still humming, albeit a little unsteadily,

                the nouns still themselves, still going about their grimed-up lives-

and the little gods try to stir all of this up into beauty that bursts and pops like it used to, like it does

when God writes poetry.

still (adjective) – free from disturbance, agitation, or commotion (as in a still, silent night); or (adverb) at the present time, for the present (as in, we are still there).

Quiet. I feel like there hasn’t been enough quiet lately, and it’s catching up to me.

I don’t mean quiet as the absence of noise. I mean a quiet mind, and a quiet heart. I’m not sure why this feeling, this noisy static, has been so pervasive the last few months, but it’s wearing me down. And there are so many things about this season especially that I want to catch; to savor, like you savor hot chocolate, loaded with marshmallows, after being outside in the beautiful, snowy cold.

Like wrapping gifts with Eric. I love wrapping Christmas presents. It may have something to do with my memories of doing it as a kid, sitting on the floor up in my parents’ room, my mom showing me how to carefully fold the corners to get tight creases, or how to use one blade of a scissors to make a curly bow. I want more of those memories. New ones, for next year’s Christmastime, and for the ones after that.

~*~

I plug in the Christmas tree lights and put on some music- the kind I grew up listening to. We’ve discovered, Eric and I, after two Christmases together, that we brought our own idea of “classic” Christmas music into this new family of ours. For me, it’s Perry Como, Mitch Miller, and Kurt Bestor. For Eric, it’s Mannheim Steamroller and Kenny G.

I choose Mitch Miller, and start getting out the wrapping materials. Almost immediately, Eric calls from the kitchen.

“I know what that accordion means…”

I laugh, and he sticks his head out of the kitchen, singing along in a deep, warbling voice, “… and on every street corner you’ll heeeaaaar, silver belllls, silver belllls…!”

“Ya goof!” I tell him, laughing, which is probably what he was after in the first place. He sits down on the floor next to me, surveying his options for wrapping paper. I got my gift wrap ideas off Pinterest this year, and they have Eric a little stumped.

“Red or brown?” I ask. I have green and red ribbon, some twine, jingle bells, and fake evergreen branches to go with the plain paper. The results, so far, have been quite pretty: a quaint, country Christmas kind of thing.

Eric opts for red paper to wrap his first gift: I guess he feels it’s safer to go with something that’s automatically Christmasy, considering his other option is a post-office tan. I turn my attention to the dilemma in front of me: brown paper, green ribbon. Maybe a twine bow and some evergreens to finish it off? I’m in the process of trying out different looks when Eric gives a cry of dismay. I turn, and see him holding an almost-wrapped gift. Almost, because he cut the paper too small, and there’s a tiny square of box showing through on one side. I laugh, then grab a piece of scrap to tape over it.

“There!” I tell him. “No worries!”

He sighs, then, and picks up a roll of ribbon, looking at it like it’s from outer space. “Where are the bows?”

“You can make one.” I wave a hand toward the wrapped gifts already under the tree, hoping he’ll find some inspiration there.

His brow furrows, and he goes for it. He tries- really hard. And I try- really hard- not to laugh. Finally he tosses the ribbon away.

“I can do bows!” he says emphatically. “I can do the ones where you just—” he smacks the top of his box— “stick then on!”

So I grab a piece of twine and show him how to make one on his own, stringing on a jingle bell for a little something extra. As we finish, and he slides the gift under the tree among the others, he asks for normal gift wrap and bows next year.

 ~*~

This is the kind of quiet I want more of. Christmas-quiet. Memory-making, together-with-the-people-you-love quiet. In my head, this quiet has color. Christmas Eve quiet is gold and silver. Gold, because when you walk into church that magical evening, everything inside the sanctuary is warm and glowing: the trees covered in lights, tucked behind the altar; the hushed sound of the congregation singing Silent Night, somehow filling the big church even without the help of the organ; the glowing advent wreath, every candle finally, finally lit. But silver, too, because of our breath forming pale clouds in the sparkling night as we leave church. The grey sidewalks, the vivid snow, the steely echo of our footsteps against the faraway stars themselves.

Silvery, golden quiet.

And then Christmas Day: Christmas Day is red and green. It's holly and mistletoe and poinsettias and wreaths with fat, jolly bows. It’s Hark! The Herald Angels Sing and Go Tell It On The Mountain.  Its sturdy handshakes, giant smiles, and one boisterous “MERRY CHRISTMAS!” after another. It’s an outburst of joyous celebration: the only response possible after the breathless awe of the evening before.

Red-green quiet, the color of a happy, happy soul.

And it occurs to me that there’s a connection between my own immediate longing for quiet, and something else: a bigger, holier anticipation. I can’t quite put my finger on what it is, because it’s so innate, so much a part of human nature—and creation itself—that it’s hard to discern just what this longing is for.

But I like to imagine that it is the hope for peace. Like the peace I am so looking forward to in the next few days, when we’re home and happy with our family, and the only thing to do is be with the people we love. Only, this hope is bigger. This hope is for an entire creation to be at peace with its Creator.

~*~

snowfall (for the first time, again)

it’s infinity falling
and even though you know it
(or maybe because you do)
some little corner of your brain
is still watching for the
end, still waiting for the
                                            last
                                                piece
                                                       to fall.

it doesn’t, though
(at least, not while you’re watching)
and something about those
quiet, dancing flakes makes you
brave.
makes you
understand
a moment
                    of
                          eternity.

schenectady (noun) - a city in northeast New York, from the Iroquois "Schau-naugh-ta-da", meaning, the place beyond the pines; also, that time we lived in the sloping mountians and my heart finally said, "this is a home, too".

From this:

 And this:

To this:

 

And this.

And this.

And all of these, 

             and then some.

From one of the hardest, rockiest seasons of my life to this rich, dancing, golden one.

In two years.

The faithfulness of God truly amazes me.

Looking back over the past two years, I feel guilty that I wasn’t happier. On the surface, it should have been easy: we were newlyweds, just starting out on life together! It should have been an adventure. 

It shouldn’t have been so hard to find a people, and a place, to belong, because we were together.

I shouldn’t have been crying every day.
 

 Right?




But we sure did learn fast how much we needed one another. How to build each other up, to
make each other more than we’d been before, and more than we could ever be by ourselves.

And, well, I don’t want to say that people experience bad things so that they can better appreciate the good things, because that seems shallow and overused and not at all comforting.

But usually, the most cliché things are the most true.

And how incredible it is to have joy come so easily again!

My heart is so full, so achingly thankful, for all that I have grown to love in the past two years- and “grown” really is the only word for it- that I want to laugh and cry all at the same time.

Bit by bit, this place and these people have wrapped strong cords around my heart that tie
a piece of me here, to New York. They’re just like the ones that bind me to Michigan, and to
Wisconsin, and I’ve grown enough now to recognize what they are.

Ties of home.

And I am so, so thankful that God has given me the gift of this place, at this time, as home.

Schenectady

It is a difficult thing,
to start over.
to hollow out the ending enough
to leave room for another beginning.

there is nothing , at first:
an empty space,
the corner of a room just emptied.
the first place the patient spiders come to
and the last place they leave.

You must clear away the cobwebs
the old musts,
and let them to spin new strands
clear ones that will not choke on sunlight

They will cut you
those webs
when you tear them loose again
when you start over and over and over

but it will be your prayer
your amen
your privilege to string around your heart
and hollow out the ending-
a gift for the next beginning.



 

angel (noun) –a heavenly figure, usually depicted with white robes and wings, but sometimes represented as a greasy bike mechanic.

I don’t know if angels walk around on earth and interact with human beings. But if they do, I wouldn’t expect to find them in Nowhere, NY, in a battered bike shop with wide, uneven floorboards, somewhere up in the high peaks of the Adirondacks. I wouldn’t have pictured them with long, grey-streaked brown hair and well-worn Chacos. And I wouldn’t expect them to be potheads.

But if I were to run into a member of the heavenly host, out on a jaunt around the planet, I would expect to like him immediately. If his teeth were crooked, they’d be set in a wide, warm smile that’d make me want to smile back just as big. If his stomach stuck out a little far, it would be because of a few too many beers with good friends. And he’d be one of the most easygoing, welcoming individuals I could imagine- kind of like Jesus.

And if this is what angels are like when they visit earth, then I’m pretty sure Eric and I ran into one.

We never would have if Eric hadn’t forgotten to replace the cassette on his bike when he replaced his old stretched chain. The day after he put the new chain on, we drove north to those piled-up, blue-green Adirondacks I’ve come to love so much, and it wasn’t until we were there for the weekend that we realized the cassette was as worn down as the chain had been.

If you’re not familiar with this bike lingo (like I wasn’t until this happened) it basically means the gears in back and the links on the chain are so worn, they don’t catch and when you pedal, so it skips. As you might imagine, it’s pretty much impossible to ride any sort of technical trail if this is happening.

We left the campground and drove until we had reception, then started calling bike shops. Most were closed already for Memorial Day weekend, and we were close to giving up on a chance to ride at all when a cheery voice on the other end said, in answer to Eric’s query about hours, “Yeah, I can be open till one, maybe two tomorrow afternoon? Come on by!”

So we did. The next day, we drove over and around and down one of the loveliest roads I’ve ever been on. It set us winding through cliffs and hills, crossing and re-crossing the Ausable River, and gliding along under the high-domed blue sky, and forty-five minutes later it brought us to a town (so small you could hardly call it even that). 

The ramshackle side street  we turned down next was lined with overgrown lilacs that reached knobby branches across shabby homes, dressing them in scattered clouds of purple.It was here that we stopped, across the street from a flat-faced building with a man sitting out front. The bike rack to his left might have toppled if you leaned on it too hard, but the bikes stuck in it were anything but rickety: under the mud, they gleamed, their lines hard and powerful. And then-

“You’re just in time!” the man said, setting his mug down on the cable spool that served as his patio table. He was already eyeballing Eric’s bike.

“In time for what?” Eric asked.

“I just finished my coffee!” He’d crossed the road by then, and when he reached us he stuck out a hand, his smile wide and honest. We shook, and then he took the bike from Eric, who’d just hefted it off the rack, and started examining it; spinning the wheels, testing the shocks, and all the while asking us questions: where were we from? What trails in the area were we planning on riding? Had we eaten at the sandwich shop up the road? Because if we hadn’t yet, we should: they had the world’s best sandwiches!

I think he would have done the entire job right there in the middle of the street if a car hadn’t come up just then. The driver slowed to let us move out of the way, waving amiably, and the owner of the bike shop waved back. And then we followed the man into his shop.

It was unlike any bike shop I had ever been inside before. The bikes that crouched in rows in the small room were old, not new, although there were a few beefy downhill frames stacked on a couch, and some light, speedy-looking road bikes hung on the walls. Boxes of tire tubes sat in rows on the low rafters, and behind the counter (which only had glass on one side) hung a wooden sign, words burned clumsily onto its surface:

“The man who works with his hands is a laborer.
The man who works with his hands and his mind is a craftsman.
The man who works with his hands, his mind, and his heart is an artist.”

I smiled when I saw that. And I smiled again when the man told us a bit of his story: how he used to be an engineer, but quit because he wanted to work with his hands, to give his time to the thing he loved. He laughed out loud when he remembered us from two years ago, when he and some buddies had been breaking in a trail while Eric and I—out for my first-ever mountain bike ride—accidentally  ended up on that difficult run. And then we laughed with him when he told us his life philosophy: 

“Everybody opts for the quick fix now, you know? I call it ‘FPP’: flip a switch, push a button, pop a pill... ain’t that easy? People don’t take ownership… it’s rough, man. You forget what’s really important.”

And somehow, between his stories and ours, two hours passed. Although he only charged us for the cost and installation of the part we needed, he gave the bike a full tune-up, explaining what he was doing step-by-step, and stopping to clear things up if either of us had a question. And then, as we were about to leave, he stopped us.

“Have you guys ever done ‘Poor Man’s Downhill’?” he asked.

We told him no, we’re from Schenectady, so we don’t get up this way much.

“Oh, man, you need to ride it. It’s not hard, but it’s a ton of fun to rip down! Tell you what,” he said, shaking a strong, battered finger at us. “A bunch of us are doing some shuttles up to the trailhead tomorrow: there’ll be food, and beer… you should come!”

We told him we’d love too, and that even though we had a long drive home tomorrow, we’d try to be there.

Fast-forward to the next afternoon.

We pulled up to the meeting spot a little before the bike shop owner had said to be there, so we got to watch everybody else arrive. It was a group of mostly guys, many of them in need of a shave and/or a haircut. They started pulling bikes off of racks and out of truck beds and tipping them down on the grass: big, beefy downhill bikes that made me suddenly very self-conscious of my little hardtail.

("Hardtail" is slang for a bike without full suspension. 
Just in case you wanted to know.)

Despite the cussing that filled up at least half of each sentence any one of them spoke, they seemed like a nice bunch, and they welcomed us without question. Some of them even recognized us from two years ago, as the bike shop owner had, so any doubts I had about Eric and I getting into a car full of strangers fell away. And that sense of security lasted until we got into our “shuttle”.

I had never seen such a beater minivan until we wheeled our bikes up to what was to be our transportation to the trailhead. It was the furthest thing from a “mom car” you could imagine: rusty, dirty, missing all but the front seats. It took a bit of creative packing, but soon we had five bikes and five riders tucked in, and our caravan of trucks and vans turned out onto the toll road up the mountain.

And this is where it gets really good.

 
See, we were barely on the road when the driver plopped a six pack down on the center console, popped the top off one of them, and started pounding it down. Several of the others in our van grabbed one for themselves, and my eyes got wide.

(Yes, "Porkslap" is the name of the
beer they were drinking....)

Personally, I wouldn’t drink a beer before barreling down a crazy downhill trail… but then again, I hadn’t been on this trail before: maybe they were just so familiar with it that they weren’t nervous like me.  

I decided that it would be best for me to ignore the fact that our driver had finished his before we were even halfway to the trailhead. But my eyes got pretty wide when one of the guys in the back asked if anybody “partook of any medicinals” and pulled out a little plastic container.

To my great relief, they opted to wait for a clearing halfway down the trail to pass the pipe around (and lest you think me a prude, the random drug tests where Eric and I work are pretty serious business). I’ll just say that our newfound friends were a pretty loose, relaxed group when they went flying down the side of the mountain, jumping rocks and skidding turns like nobody’s business. I didn’t even try to keep up: they were a good challenge for my fearless husband, maybe, but I wanted to make it down the mountain without eating too much mud.

And I did. And we even went up again for a second run. For Eric and I, that meant another chance to test our skills on the intense trail; for the rest, it meant more Porkslap and pot. By the time we finished that second run, though, there were pink tints in the sky, and the blue shadows stretching across the clearings were a reminder of the three-hour drive we had between us and home. So we waved goodbye to our new hippie friends and headed towards the car.

“Great to hang with you guys!” the owner of the bike shop called after us. He left the group and came trotting up to us, holding out his hand and grinning his big, easy smile. “Next time you’re around, stop in and say hi! Even if you don’t need a bike fixed.”

 

Which is why I think that man is an angel in disguise.

We left the Adirondacks in a hazy, yellow-red sunset, rolling back towards Schenectady and the routine of our people and places there, and we left with a smile and a story. The bike shop owner was part of our lives for less than a day, but I’ll remember him better than some of the people I interact with much more regularly.

I know what you’re thinking… and I can’t say you’re wrong in thinking that. You can tell me that it was the “medicinals” making him so easygoing and kind, or the beer, and you might be right. But I like to think that it’s just him: that his big, crooked smile and joy-crinkled eyes are all his own.

He lives his life with his hands, his mind, and his heart, and because of that, his life becomes a gift to others... even total strangers.