Thank you for welcoming me into your palace of greenery, where I lived as a hermit for four short days. Thank you for whispering words of greeting in the breeze through the oak leaves. Thank you for fresh air with the hint of campfire that I breathed so deeply each day, along with all the creatures who live in your palace.
I met the twitching chipmunk who dug in the leaves and darted away so quickly I could not see which direction he went. I met an otter who was swimming underneath the boardwalk to proudly bring home tall grass for his family. (And I’m sorry I scared him with my giggle, but he was so adorable I couldn’t stop myself.) I met a gray squirrel who would win any and every dance contest that involved standing still the longest, frozen in position. He looked stuffed, but I’m glad he wasn’t. I encountered deer who looked long and hard at me and then agreed to move off the walking trail and let me by, only when I disappointed them with the news I had nothing to give them. (I did assure them “Bambi” is one of my top five favorite movies.)
Thank you, The Woods, for welcoming me as a guest in your palace. And thank you, The Woods, for sharing the same Creator, and sharing the same need for one another.
I drove away and escaped all the way to northern Minnesota. Not far south of where I parked my car is the home where my family lived before moving to Dickinson. I waved to Tulip Street as I got out of my car at Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth) Hermitage for my four-day adventure as a hermit.
To some extent, we have all been hermits since March. Maybe you have hardly left your house since March. Or maybe you yearn to be a hermit, pandemic or not, because it’s just your style. That’s cool, too.
A friend told me about Pacem in Terris last year and reported how much solitude he enjoyed and how renewed he felt at the end of his stay. This introvert cannot get enough solitude! I love it like Linus loves his blanket. I reserved a few days in May, but because of the pandemic, rescheduled in June after the hermitage could open up again.
I’d never been a hermit. I have heard of them, but never been one. I know some of the stories of saints who lived as hermits, and then there was Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and that guy in Maine who was recently a hermit for decades before he was discovered. I didn’t have decades, only a few days. Plus, I would miss my coffee creamer after too long. Oh, and my family.
This hermitage is a series of 14 small cabins, each with a twin bed, rocking chair, big picture window, and screened in porch. There is no electricity, bathroom, or running water in the cabin. It was a throw-back to my summers at Camp Metigoshe, although instead of “outhouses”, the hermitage offers “spiffy biffies”! (It actually was quite spiffy, I must say.)
I began my silent retreat on Wednesday afternoon, speaking only a soft and self-conscious “hello” to fellow hermits on the path. I walked and walked under old families of burr oaks that folded together above me like hands ready to pray. (I learned not to walk too fast, or you scare the other hermits.) I prayed and prayed beneath canopies of sugar maples, and on a boardwalk along a lake. I asked God questions, asked for forgiveness for this too-hurried life, and recited Scripture and learned new Scripture.
But mostly I listened to the silence.
Time to listen is hard to come by in daily life, as you well know. There is always time to make noise, but less time to listen. For there to be listening, someone has to stop talking and there is always talking. People talking, cell phones talking, traffic talking, news talking.
In a book that remains in the hermitage, I read, “There is no solitude without silence. True, silence is sometimes the absence of speech – but it is always the act of listening…when we are filled with ourselves, we leave silence behind.” (Poustinia p. 6-7)
I am often too filled with myself to be silent and listen. Too filled with my responsibilities to make plans, care for others, and go and go and go. This is how my life is designed to be, but it is not sustainable without solitude. Going and going means running and running from true, meaningful life. Meaningful life requires escaping from the going and doing. It may be for days, or it may be only for moments in your backyard, on a walk, or wherever you feel most at peace.
Sitting in silence lets you listen to the God who is trying to catch you from your running to renew your spirit.
Last week I escaped. I got in my car early Wednesday morning before anyone but our puppy was awake and I drove until the afternoon. I drove away, which can be at the right time, an incredibly lovely thing to get to do. To drive out of my neighborhood, onto the interstate, a few hundred miles, then out of the state can be tiny gifts of freedom, one after another.
I had planned this escape for nearly a year and it landed at precisely the time I needed to escape. These months of pandemic, quarantine, racial honesty and tension, kids at home and needing to be here, there, and everywhere had worn me down.
What do you do when you know you need to escape? Out of the state or just out of the house? Away from the people whom you love so much so that you can renew your strength to love them even more.
In my experience, men tend to be a bit freer to make these escapes. Outdoor sports and weekends with the guys simply seem more acceptable, maybe even more encouraged than a woman’s escape. That is not true in every household, but it is true in many.
So as I tell you with renewed freedom and life that I escaped, I say this with awareness and a twinge of guilt that I had the chance to drive away. Away from people at home needing food, encouragement, refereeing, structure, and so many things from me at most minutes of the day. Away from work with its weird pandemic intensity. I escaped and I was free for four entire days.
I’m going to keep you in suspense about where I went in hopes that you will think about your own need to escape. Escaping does not make you a bad parent or spouse or pastor. It makes you a restored, renewed, whole, and more at peace child of God.
I could escape because I have family members who love me, a spouse who understands when I need to drive away, and co-workers who support me. And women, I know these are luxuries that do not abound. I escaped with gratitude and returned with gratitude, but mostly I returned more aware of who I am, beloved child of the generous God who shows up in the silence. The one who gives me the signal to escape that I often miss but this time did not.
As the days of summer come and go, I am still confused by what day it is. Even all these weeks after the daily and weekly confusion of the spring quarantine, each day I have to stop and think. “Is it Monday? Yep, I believe it is Monday. Unless it happens to Wednesday.”
Yesterday I sat down and planned the summer of 2020 for the second time, now halfway into the first month of summer. Originally, I was on sabbatical this summer. I was watching one of my sons play tons of baseball. I was listening to the legendary Danny Gladden tell me each play of my favorite team, the Minnesota Twins. My boys and I were taking a trip to Boston to watch the Red Sox beat the pants off the Yankees. My husband and I were excited to take a kid-less mini-vacation and I would not attend a single meeting.
But these are not “ordinary times,” as my colleague preached yesterday. In the church, we call these months of the season of Pentecost “Ordinary Times”, but these days feel far from “ordinary”.
Wondering whether to wear a mask, whether to eat in a restaurant, with whom and where my kids can play, whether we have enough hand sanitizer, and how easy it would be to let this not-so-ordinary summer slip away while I’m wondering through those questions.
Don’t you wonder how kids will look back and remember this not-so-ordinary time? What will they remember? What words will describe these days? What stories will stick with them? Will they read any of the books people will write about these extraordinary days? Or will they be determined never to remember them because of how restricted they were for so long?
As I planned the summer of 2020 for the second time, there are now ordinary plans penciled in, although they all feel tentative, maybe precarious. Bible Camp. Not as many baseball games, but still baseball games. Doctor appointments. Camping.
Whether these plans actually happen, or whether I sit down and plan the summer of 2020 for a third time, whether the days actually do feel ordinary or not-so-ordinary, maybe I will at least remember what day it is. And that is enough.
(In the fashion of “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie”)
Photo Credit: Mick Haupt
If you bring a kid to Walmart, you will surely pay more money.
Pushing a cart and trying not to run over your own child or someone else’s…
Your sweet child will wonder about multi-vitamins for her and her brothers,
And you will remember you need more Vitamin D…
You will purchase toothpaste, because it is so nice to have extra toothpaste.
And then you will notice the cute pink toothbrushes and need one of those, too…
In the shampoo aisle, oh the shampoo aisle, which holds promise after promise of full hair,
You will keep on walking because you know your hair is not so full and that is just okay…
Your child will beg to walk by the toy aisle, but you won’t,
So then you will need to go down the arts and crafts aisle…
She will choose a few projects, some involving paint, none involving glitter,
And next you will go straight to the cleaning aisle…
In the cleaning aisle, you will find a whole lot of nothing.
More nothing. Stupid Pandemic.
More nothing.
Then you will say a silent prayer that God will protect your home from the paint that surely will spill in the absence of 409 and Magic Erasers…
Your child will remind you that you can never have enough cereal, peanut butter or English Muffins.
You will remind yourself that you can never have enough coffee…
At that point, you are exhausted, so you head to the self-check out, yearning for the coffee that will be made from the beans in your cart very soon…
You will pay the bill, walk out the door, and load the goods into your vehicle.
You will drive away and remember three things you forgot while you were at Walmart, even though your receipt had plenty of items and the number at the bottom is very big…
You will begin to plan your next trip to Walmart in your head, and wonder whether your kid will come with you. She will…
And you will bring a kid to Walmart, where you will surely pay more money.
For weeks I waited for the pieces to come together to launch this website and tell you stories. My intention has been to share tales that might encourage people, maybe a person like you, and add levity to the daily work of raising kids, sustaining marriage, and all that you may do as one day spills into another.
And then George Floyd was murdered. Recently before, in my own America were the murders of other black Americans: Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and Dreasjon (Sean) Reed. Boiling point.
The pot had been simmering. For years and years heated by angry words, unchecked bias, and inequality that Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered for in 1968. The simmering pot of racism in a country someone once called a melting pot is now a boiling pot.
For a couple of years I had fled the Facebook and Twitter scene to avoid this kind of simmering. Social media can be anxiety-producing and I figured there was enough of that in my life so goodbye Facebook and Twitter. I deleted the apps on my phone and said goodbye to my newsfeed.
And that was nice. It was nice not to know all the anxiety-producing news and go about my life. It was nice to narrow my gaze to my own work and get ready to launch a website. It was nice to ignore the simmering pot.
Now the pot boils and there is no ignoring. I need to see the words on Facebook and Twitter. Otherwise, how would I believe the ignorance from my very own president? There is no filter on his Twitter feed. (Except when his words are too violent and Twitter has to take them down. ) There is no news bias on his feed. No one else to blame. As much as his subordinates would love to take away his Twitter account, I hope they never do. It is through those words of his that we see the words that hold true for the people who adore him.
Yearning for a glorified America is to yearn for a colorblind America with no awareness of the tension among people that needs to be named. The famous Twitter feed suggests we let the white people in charge take charge with military force. He stood in front of a medic station on a church lawn where people had been providing water, holding the written word of a God who sets people free.
We are to be color-amazed, as Bishop Eaton has preached. We are to be amazed at the uniqueness of people, the value of each breath, and the strength in each voice. This is not a time of this or that, them or me, us or you. No person is perfect in this boiling pot. We have all sinned. We have leaned on political allegiance instead of the freedom of Jesus Christ that is for each person.
There is a story our nation needs to tell. We can delete the apps and ignore it, but the simmering pot now boils. So pray. Pray all day long as you hear the news and realize we have so much to learn about this boiling pot. Pray, because only prayer (not the news) changes our perspective. Pray and realize the story of rage and racism is indeed your story and mine.
Let’s be honest. The country in which we live is quite…what? Unsettled? Angry? Confused? Thank goodness we all seem to have enough toilet paper! That’s one worry that no longer grips us.
What is going on? A pandemic not everyone believes is a pandemic. A vicious murder not everyone believes was a vicious murder. A president who teargassed peaceful protesters in order to hold up a Bible in front of a church for the camera.
What?
How do I explain to my kids what is going on when I’m not even sure? I am overwhelmed by the hatred, violence and anger, along with the certainty that only by leaning one way or the other, all the way, can someone be right.
And so I offer one response: curiosity.
Perhaps I don’t need to teach my kids in this moment as much as I need them to teach me. No one is better at curiosity than children. In the earliest years, a child’s world can only be understood through “how come” questions. “How come it is bedtime?” “How come birds fly and I don’t?” “How come vegetables don’t taste like cookies?” It is only when we have a few more candles on our birthday cake that we extinguish “how come” and replace it with the dark and lonely words: “I know”.
Nothing stops progress faster than an unequivocal “I know”. When “I know” a thing, curiosity withers away and there is no reason to wonder why poverty settles in every crack of particular neighborhoods. Or why girls who are brown-skinned more often grow up without a father. Or why moms of white boys don’t have to worry when our sons go for a run. “How come?” because “I don’t know.”
How come it is easier to teach our kids “I know” this or that instead of joining them in the land of curiosity. I want to live there forever. Then, maybe my kids will, too.
“What are you watching?” asked my daughter, as I stood in our kitchen staring at my phone.
In a moment, I had to decide how to explain racism and riots to an 8-year old. Or, I could turn off my phone and let the moment go. Isn’t that so much easier? To believe whatever is happening on a screen is far away and someone else has to live with it?
I was watching Pastor Ingrid C. A. Rasumussen on Facebook walk through the neighborhood of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in South Minneapolis. Touring littered streets, she explained the true identity of the damaged buildings that exposed generations of anger. Like vapor, smoke rose up here and there, like injustice that rises up here and there and here and there.
“I am watching a pastor show us a neighborhood where there was a riot.”
“Did they wreck things?” she demanded to know. “Someone is going to owe a lot of money! Why did they do that?”
“His name,” I slowly began, “was George Floyd. And he was murdered by a police officer, and many people are angry about it.”
With my husband, we tried to explain there are police whose job is to keep people safe, and there are people who are black and there is an ugly history we can’t seem to shake off.
In the end, dear daughter, this world is not yet as it should be. People who happen to be black are not as safe as people who happen to be white. Last week was one of many moments the vapor of injustice rose up in a city we know well and love very much.
There is no perfect dialogue to explain George Floyd’s murder to an 8-year old. It would be perfectly easy to believe his story need not be tied up with our story. But I want my kids to know some hurts in the world are not easy to explain, and those hurts are our hurts, too.
You will not find answers to any questions about how to remove a stain, cook the perfect pork chop, preach a high-level conversion sermon, or prepare your home for your husband. The tales you will find here are not those kind of tales, I assure you.
In fact, these might be the opposite kinds of tales. The tales you will find here reject stainless homes and perfection of any kind. Through the years, I’ve come to find peace in my own imperfection. Instead of yearning to be a better mom and wife, I am simply the mom and wife I am.
I am also an imperfect pastor in a Christian denomination called the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Like my home, I will not tell you my church is perfect, although I still love it. The church, like me, is a work in progress utterly dependent upon Jesus’ mercy.
I follow Jesus, bake chocolate chip cookies, and preach hope.
My husband is a middle school principal and some of the students in that school are also confirmation students at the church I serve. Of course, we never swap stories about these lovely and always cooperative children of God. And by never, I mean only when we cannot help it because the material is just so good. For nearly 20 years, Marcus and I have made a way through the wilderness of marriage and found comfort in our church community and in friends and family who have loved us no matter what.
We have been parents for nearly 15 years. In other words, I have been humbled privately and also publicly for a decade and a half. The only thing easy about parenting is admitting how freaking hard it is. Every. Single. Day.
And I love baking (and devouring) chocolate chip cookies like my mama still makes them: crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. Whenever the cookie jar is empty, it’s time to fill it up. Because one thing my kids should be able to depend on is cookies. It is perhaps my only perfect offering.
I hope these tales inspire you to embrace your own life, let go of perfection and find at least a little joy in each day God gives.
Lisa Lewton 