Category: Identity

“We are turning cemeteries into playgrounds.” Father David Peck

* * * * *

Well, here we are. Seven weeks later. I can hear late Sunday night traffic crawling by on James Street, on the other side of the drawn shades. The house is quiet, and I sit between two lamps that cast light and shadow around the room. Light and shadow. That’s all there ever is.

It’s been a long seven weeks. A long Lent. I came into it with a few things I planned on giving up, but it would seem that God had other things in mind. Go ahead, God said, give up your social media and your sweets, but I have bigger plans. It seems that’s the way of God, that just when you think you see the hill you’re supposed to climb, you get to the top and – hey, look at that – there’s a mountain range on the other side.

It’s that Yiddish proverb all over again: “Man plans, God laughs.”

After two very busy years of writing projects, business died off. For the last seven weeks I’ve been finishing up existing projects. Every potential job I had in the pipeline dried up, evaporated, disappeared. I’m not saying this to garner sympathy – it’s just part of the story. It’s been uncanny, how the lack of work has coincided with Lent. It seems there are many metaphorical deaths we can encounter. It seems that sometimes you can try to give up something for Lent, and then other times Lent can decide for you what you will give up.

I’ve been reminded that there aren’t many things harder than trusting in what we cannot see, yet that’s what I’ve been asked to do this Lenten season.

Trust me. Trust me. Trust me.

And I fought it. I did.

“Do we have to go down this road again? We’ve been here before. I’m not really in the mood for learning another lesson.”

But it seems the road will go where it will go, and you can sit down and pout along the side of it if you want. There’s a wide shoulder, and a lot of folks are just sitting there, passing the time, discouraged or angry or petulant. But the fact remains that you will have to walk the road at some point.

Might as well get up and walk it.

* * * * *

That voice said something besides Trust me. Strangely enough, it was also saying, Take this time to write the sequel. By sequel, I mean the sequel to my book The Day the Angels Fell. Just write it. That’s what I was sensing. So I did, all 80,000 words. And I’ll be looking for your help in narrowing down the title and a few other things in the coming weeks.

I was thinking of all these things when we went into church this morning – the dead spell in regards to work, the sequel I’ve been writing, the trust trust trust – and Father David said this phrase towards the end of the sermon, and let me tell you, it nearly knocked me over.

“We are turning cemeteries into playgrounds.”

If anyone ever asks me again what we mean by the Resurrection, that is what I will say.

Because I feel like that’s what God has done for me this Lenten season, took a dead time, a time full of anxiety and uncertainty, and told me to play. Write. Create. Turn what could be a monument to despair and hopelessness and, instead, have fun. So that’s what I did.

* * * * *

After church this morning, just as the sun was warming up and the sky was shifting into that late-morning spring blue, about thirty or forty children grabbed their Easter baskets and raced through the cemetery  behind St. James, looking for Easter eggs. I suppose it was all rather improper, the way they skipped along over the grave sites, the way they climbed over the massive tombs. At one point my daughter sat on a large, above ground grave, looking through her eggs. Cracking those little plastic things open to see what treasures were inside.

But there was something immeasurably beautiful about it, watching those children laugh and dance and play among tangible reminders of death and mortality.

It is, in essence, why I am a Christian. I believe, in spite of evidence to the contrary, that every metaphorical cemetery can be turned into a playground. I believe that God can somehow take these dead places and before you know it, before you can turn around, there’s laughter, and there’s playfulness, and there’s friendship.

Cemeteries into playgrounds.

What’s your cemetery right now? What’s your playground?

* * * * *

I’ve got a few events coming up where I’d love to see your face:

– Friday night, April 10th, from 6pm to 8pm, I’ll be at Aaron’s Books in Lititz for their local author night. Please come by and say hello.

– Saturday, April 11th, I’ll be speaking about memoir-writing at the Lancaster Christian Writers’ one-day conference. More details HERE.

– Sunday, April 12th, at 6:30pm at The Corner Coffee Shop I’ll be hosting a very special event with my friend, Caleb Wilde. We’re going to be talking about the death-positive message behind The Day the Angels Fell. Caleb is the writer behind the extremely popular blog, Confessions of a Funeral Director. He’s wise, and funny, and kind, and way more interesting than me, so come on out. Children are welcome.

– Monday, April 13th, at 5:00pm, I’ll be in Radiant, Virginia, reading from The Day the Angels Fell at God’s Whisper Farm, hosted by Andi Cumbo. If you’re in the northern/central VA area, you won’t want to miss it. Details HERE.

 

“Even if I knew that nothing would emerge from this book [East of Eden], I would still write it.”

John Steinbeck

I was feeling particular moved after the processional hymn on Sunday morning. Leo was in the nursery, the other four had gone off to children’s chapel with Maile (she was teaching the older kids), and I was alone in the pew, invisible on the other side of a mountainous pile of winter coats. It was a gray, rainy morning, we had been running late to church, and a busy day awaited us: I think that initial moment of stillness and beauty just about knocked me over.

Visit then this soul of mine
Pierce the gloom of sin and grief

When Father David spoke prior to the prayer of confession and forgiveness, he prayed against the racism in all of us, the structures that promote poverty, and the ways that each of us contribute to the inequalities and injustices in the world. He prayed for our congregation, our city, and our nation.

It’s a sobering thought, when you consider just how far we have to go, when you think about how many idiots there are in the world who seem determined to bring about discord. And then I realize, as I pray the confession, that in small ways and large, I am occasionally one of those idiots.

Most merciful God…have mercy on us…

* * * * *

Many times (most times? all the time?) this discord starts inside of us.

Are you aware of how many voices are trying to tell you who to be and what to do? I think back through my life and the various voices trying to speak into me: the voices that told me to get into business; the voices that told me I should write; the voices that told me I wasn’t a good enough writer; the voices that told me homeschooling our children was a mistake; the voices that told me I was too skinny as a kid; the voices that told me reading was for girls; the voices that told me athletes couldn’t be interested in literature.

Then there are the voices today, the ones that tell me what I write isn’t good enough. The ones that tell me I’m failing my children in various ways. The ones that tell me I need to do more, be more, buy more. Have more. Make more money. More more more.

We are surrounded by voices telling us who to be and what to do and how to live.

So many voices.

* * * * *

There’s a story of a boy named Samuel who had been dedicated to the service of the Lord. He slept somewhere in the temple, which is both a strange and comforting thought – sleeping in the church. I picture my 11-year-old son, grabbing a blanket, sleeping on the padded pews somewhere in the middle, somewhere he wouldn’t be afraid. In the middle of the night this boy Samuel heard someone calling his name. A voice. Just another voice.

“Samuel! Samuel!”

He thought the old priest Eli was calling for him, so he ran to see what he wanted.

“Here I am!” Samuel said. “For you called me.”

But Eli told him he hadn’t said anything. He should go lay down. So Samuel went back to sleep…only to hear his name called again. So he ran to Eli. Again, Eli told him to go back to sleep – he hadn’t called him. A third time it happened.

“Samuel! Samuel!”

So what does he do? He runs to Eli for a third time.

“Here I am, for you have called me.”

Powerful words, those: For you have called me.

* * * * *

At church on Sunday morning, Father David said something I had never thought of before – how often we think our calling is coming from a place it is not! How often we go running to the wrong source to find out who to be and what to do and how to live.

Here I am, we say to our spouses. Tell me who to be.

Here I am, we say to our friends. What do you think I should do?

Here I am, we say to our culture. Show me how to live.

We are lonely and frightened children, sleeping in unfamiliar places, and we run through the dark, looking for the person who called us. But our calling can never be defined by another person. It can certainly be encouraged. There are good voices around us, no doubt, voices of affirmation and kindness, voices that guide us.But a voice that can clearly articulate each of our individual callings?

* * * * *

Eli caught on to what was happening.

“Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, “Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.”

* * * * *

Maybe this all sounds like blah blah blah but here’s why it’s so important to not let the voices around you dictate your calling. And it all comes back to the Steinbeck quote at the top of this post.

“Even if I knew that nothing would emerge from this book [East of Eden], I would still write it.”

That is the true test of your calling – you will do it even when you cannot see what could possibly come of it. You will write the book even when you have no publisher and no audience. You will start the nonprofit without funding. Maybe it means starting a business you’re unsure of, or doing something different with your children’s schooling, or embracing your singleness in a new way. Maybe it means spending more time playing music or recording a podcast or starting a blog. Maybe it means going to a new church or committing to your existing church in the midst of trials. Your true calling will probably look ludicrous to most people, but if it’s your calling, so you’ll do it anyway.

I feel that way about the fiction that I write – even if nothing emerges from it, I will do it. Why? I have no idea, other than it feels like something I was created to do. And when we shout I will do it anyway! No matter what comes of it! all the other voices grow suddenly silent.

* * * * *

Is there anything you feel that strongly about, that you would continue to do even if the results are not what others would consider worth it?

If you don’t know your calling, are you listening to the right voice? Or are you running to the wrong people, the wrong sources, and asking them to speak into your life?

Be careful to whom you say the words, “Here I am, for you have called me.”

[Thanks to Ally Vesterfelt for reminding me of that Steinbeck quote, and thanks to Jamin Goggin and Ed Cyzewski for contributing to these thoughts on calling, and thanks to Father David for a Sunday sermon that got me thinking.]