A New Serenity

In our home, we eat a lot of meals at the breakfast bar because it’s easy to serve up the plates and get to it. The kids sit on stools on one side and I’ll stand in the kitchen, ready to grab salt and pepper or fill their water glasses. But one recent Sunday night I performed this ritual like always and something strange happened. My daughter picked up her plate and started leaving the kitchen.

“Oh!” I said. “Do you want to sit at the table tonight?”

She smiled and nodded.

We all sat at the kitchen table together and it reminded me of my theme for 2014: A New Serenity.

Here are a few examples of what “a new serenity” means to me. I hope it can help you dream up reasons for keeping calm and carrying on this year.

A New Serenity means:

• I can walk a few paces around my breakfast bar to the table, sit on my rear and let my growing children teach me something new, like making eye contact.

• On Friday afternoons, I can clock out of work and acknowledge all I accomplished since Monday. Dang, I’m good!

• Singing and playing an instrument, or public speaking, is fun instead of scary. Otherwise, why am I doing this???

• Sleep is an important to-do item that I like to accomplish every day.

• Laughing, especially at myself, reduces the seven visible signs of aging.

• Big, messy dogs make excellent exercise partners.

• I trust that the world can spin uncontrollably without me.

A new serenity doesn’t come from a bestselling book, a kale diet or shoes (and I like shoes). It comes from mind and heart in harmony with ordinary time. Not perfect. Not splashy. Just exciting the atoms in my monkey brain. But I have to recognize the beauty like a hummingbird…dipping into flowers one minute, zipping over my roof the next.

My point is, don’t miss it when it’s smacking your face. Smile and keep it in that mind pocket reserved for your best-ever kiss and the carnival pony ride when you were 4.

I’m not dumb. A new serenity doesn’t mean I’ll never experience pain. In fact, it’s the knowledge of that pain – past, present and what’s to come – that makes serenity so powerful. If I never get this zen moment again, why spend it worrying that I left the stove on?

Maybe all this talk of serenity is just a carbohydrate hangover. Then again, it’s the knowledge that even as I spent quiet time with family and friends during Christmas, there were others not so fortunate who were restless, angry, lonely or in grief. I’ve been there too, and moving through those painful times gives me a huge appreciation for what I’ve lost, let go and gained.

We can’t keep serenity like our favorite shoes. That’s why it’s so important. It's like no matter how much we’ve messed up, beat up, misstepped, mistaken and misbehaved, we are dearly loved to our split ends and unpolished toes. With nothing to lose and nothing to gain, life is a series of whispers to be you in every time.

Sit. Eat. Bliss.

To your serenity this year, friends.
Romans 12

I Want To See How This Show Ends!

When he was a kid, my husband used to pretend he was in a television show. He narrated everything he did like he was “filmed before a live studio audience.”

He doesn’t play that game anymore, but it made me think about life in a smaller community and how it can sometimes feel like being on stage. I had that feeling recently when entering the high school gym for conferences. The gym was lined with teachers at tables and parents and kids walking around. In fact, it resembled one of my common nightmares of being in a crowd and feeling overwhelmed.

Quickly though, I noticed several friendly faces and started to chat with people. My daughter held our place in line when I got sidetracked in conversation, signaling me to talk to more of her teachers. Before I knew it we’d been there for almost two hours!

Later, a familiar sense of blessing filled me to live in a community where my kids have extra moms and dads looking out for them, where giving is just something you do and where the value of everyone knowing your business means that you get extra prayers and help when it counts.

I recently read a great book called “Wisdom Distilled From the Daily,” by Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun who provides a translation for living the Rule of St. Benedict outside the walls of a monastery. Chittister explains that personal and spiritual growth never happen in isolation. They develop and expand through the relationships, tensions and challenges of living in community. As we live with others who are different and similar to us, we see ourselves in new ways — sometimes wonderful and sometimes disturbing ways. But this awareness only happens if we are brave enough to persist in a community and gain wisdom from our experiences. People who move from place to place every few years never gain the richness of what Chittister calls “stability.”

I moved to Milaca in 2003, making this my family’s 10th year of living in community. As an adult, I’ve never lived somewhere long enough to experience roots curling into well-trod soil or clouds changing outfits across seasons. Here my children have grown from babies to adolescents. My garden has grown from four raised beds to ten. My pet count has grown from one to four. My marriage has grown from independence to teamwork. My spirit has grown in this soil and under these clouds.

Here is the best part about community. We get the privilege of experiencing relationships in which life isn’t always peaceful or friendly or joyful, but they move us to reach beyond our comfort zones, to listen and confess, to give of ourselves and hope in the best for everyone. Community is the sum of all its parts, not just the ones we like or prefer. If we’re growing with open hearts and minds, we will experience joy and sorrow, blessing and disappointment, hope and doubt. This is the common humanity of parenting, marriage, grandparenting, friendship, work, worship, volunteering and anything worth a broken heart. If our hearts break sometimes, it’s only because we care. The show goes on.

In community we have the space — the grace — to fail and heal. But we have to stand still long enough — sometimes years — to see things come full circle. Mobility, instant gratification and self may be natural desires, but community occurs through hand-knit sweaters and book reports, a plowed and seeded field, a bandshell restoration, building an entire house or making a five-course meal. We sweat and doubt and see progress slowly, but the result is beautiful.

If we can teach our kids anything about living in community, we should teach them to slow down, work with their hands in soil and paint, be gentle to friends and family when they fall, and wake up early to watch the earth reflected in new light. It’s not instant gratification and rarely fame before a live studio audience, but it’s worth tuning in.



Phil 4:8-9 "Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things...practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you."