God in the Yard

Excerpt...

1 ~ Woods

When I was a child, I lived in the woods.

Not literally, of course. I wasn't a pint-sized Paul Bunyan, wielding my axe, toddling around with a stuffed blue ox.

No, the woods were a place I sought solace from a difficult life. Beneath the trees, I watched the creek change from a silver-green ribbon, to an amber reflection of fall, to a spill of blue ice, and finally to a rush and tumble of white. I floated sticks and made forest beds of pine needles. Sometimes, in mischief, I raced my sister across the creek rocks, then knocked her into the flowing reeds. In the woods, I was free! That was long ago.

Today, the squeal of a garbage truck wakes me three times a week. Horns and sirens break through the quiet of dawn and night. My house clings to the edge of a hill, less than a quarter of an acre in size, and a rusty chain-link fence hitches my yard to the yards of my neighbors. Three unidentified cats use my front steps to nap and my back yard to poop. My sister lives far away.

There is a part of me that feels pinched in this life-a life that I freely chose when I put a healthy distance between me and my growing-up place.

But it's no fun to live with the pain of pinching. That is why I first returned to the woods.

~

It is perhaps an exaggeration to call the trees in my back yard "woods." A single fir tree spreads her arms above a river of English ivy. Two maples reach their skinny fingers to the sun. A dying dogwood pokes out somewhere to the left. Wood-winged bushes and thorns tussle in the shade. This is a very small space.

In the years of my life here, I've mostly ignored this space. It is the unruly edge of a small back lawn that never grows lush enough because there's too little sun, too much soil erosion, and a lot of moss invasion. Sometimes we've thought to erase this wooded edge and terrace the hill, to pursue the dream of a swath of green. It's the thing to do in my urban community.

Still, I'd hate to see that happen now. For I've discovered there's life in the edge.

To this, I remember reading a discussion of edges. I think it was Wes Jackson speaking. He said that farmers should foster the edges of a place. The edges are where life teems unseen and unexpected.

An edge is a small place where one habitat meets another-where grass gradually gives way to bushes, which gives way to trees, or vice versa. I saw this recently, on a trip south. There was a sign explaining the vitality of these regions. "Edges are places that support a broad range of wildlife." The bald eagle is an example of a bird who lives in the edge; he nests in tall pine trees, but he fishes in wetlands and marshes.

Yet we are not trained to love these edges. They are small places that get in the way of our big dreams.

Wendell Berry, a farmer like Jackson, has a lot to say about putting aside our big dreams to cultivate life in a small space. In fact, it was Berry who first got me thinking about embracing life in the edge, in his book The Gift of Good Land.

Berry recounts a trip to Peru, where he sees mountain farmers grow food in small, seemingly inhospitable places. He observes, "For those fields hold their soil on those slopes, first of all, by being little. By being little they protect themselves against erosion, but their smallness also permits attention to be focused accurately and competently on the details." (p.26)

Smallness permits attention. The fields stay intact because they are little. These thoughts about the mountain fields of Peru hit me square in the heart, as I sat on my little hill, feeling pinched in spirit, eroded in joy....

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Garden Fire artwork by Gail Nadeau. Used by permission.

Excerpt...

2 ~ Breath

As a culture, we are not trained to cultivate life in the edges, existence in small spaces. I know this in myself, in my own desires to live big and without constraints. I see this in friends and family who have ransomed their lives to debt, in order to live big. I understand this, too, when I view the stories of cultural icons-big names who live big, who do what they want, when and where they want to.

Even wonderful literary movies like The Namesake come around to this conclusion that we must live bigger, broader, beyond. The story, about two generations of Bengalis who come to terms with their intergenerational tensions, ultimately holds forth a vision for dismantling our boundaries. I took it that way, because near the close of the movie, we find out that the mother's name, Ashima, means without boundaries. Soon after, the son's marriage folds and he takes "a pillow and a blanket" to go out and see the world. The mother goes back to her country to pursue a long-lost singing career. Though perhaps realistic, avoiding a fairytale ending, I found the message of the movie oddly disturbing: live without boundaries; you will never regret it.

Maybe I only found this message disturbing because of the soul work I committed to unwittingly, by trick of my soul, by ignorant collusion with the divine. Perhaps the theme of The Namesake did not resonate, because I was beginning to discover a different reality by sitting within the same boundaries every day, beneath the pine, under the reaching arms of the maples.

~

There were days when I would go outside only to think, "There is not a single new thing I will find here." In these moments, it felt utterly true, and I felt I was completely wasting my time in my small excuse-for-a-woods. Then, in the next moment, the trees above me would shudder in the breeze, and something might blow past. Seeds, maybe, releasing themselves to the wind, raining over me.

Then I would start to relax, to breathe. It occured to me that I breathed differently when I was outside, and that with each breath I lost some care of the day. I became a lady's corset, unstrung by the wind, unlaced by black-capped chickadees. Or maybe I was the plump body within, coming undone, flexing a newly unpinched belly before the mirror.

It is the mirror I suspect we are afraid of in a small space. We can't get away from our reflection, sitting outside in a little woods, constraining ourselves to a single marriage, staying with a particular job or a house or a church community. The mirror sometimes lies, of course, or speaks with graceless clarity. But it may reflect much valuable truth. Is our house sagging? We see it speaks of our ingratitude or laziness. Is our marriage rife with conflict? We begin to suspect we are selfish or unkind.

Outside, I surely had mirrors... the mourning doves, the grey-tailed squirrels, the dog next door incessantly barking, the wood-winged bushes. God could use these to chatter, trill, rustle or gently float truth into my needy, shut-up soul. Yet not too far into my experience I realized I might intentionally bring other mirrors with me— the wisdom of a spiritual director, for instance, which I pulled from the next selection in my book bag....

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Lantern artwork by Gail Nadeau. Used by permission.

Woods - invitation
Breathe - need
Sweep - promise
Child - readying
Rules - the way
Look - contemplation
Weep - celebration
Sky - gratitude
Talk - prayer
Gone - presence
Cycle - sabbath
Mute - silence
Me - self care
With - submission
Home - hospitality
Epilogue

Last year, the idea for God in the Yard was preliminarily tested with an article called Heaven in My Own Yard, which Geez Magazine decided to publish.

Also, though the idea for God in the Yard had several catalysts, it was the positive response to a series of blog posts, including this one on Seedlings in Stone, that urged me to consider writing on this subject.

Now Available...



From chapter 1...

"I came to God through a want ad. 'Piano for sale,' it said."

Endorsement...

"The only writer I know quite like Barkat is Eugene Peterson. That probably tells you all you need to know." — Scot McKnight, author of The Jesus Creed

You can read more excerpts and endorsements, as well as give feedback, at Stone Crossings, a book club blog.

Stone Crossings excerpts, readings, endorsements, interviews.

Stone Crossings blog

and

Stone Crossings wiki.

I come out here out here every day. Write. Or read. Look up at the sky. Just let the visions wash over me. Today...

... today, the wood-winged bushes are this otherworldly, barely-lemon yellow. They are... a baby's breath, sweet, weightless. Or... a faded meringue spilled across the understory. Like air. Light. Lovely. Inspiring. The split maples have lost their red, their orange frostings, licked clean by the wind in a mere day. The forsythia are yet holding on to green, full leaves— denying, spurning winter's cool advances.

Why am I here? Lick me clean, great Wind of the universe. Sweeten my soul, Breath of a Babe once come among us. Let me not miss, as Eugene Peterson says, "this invasion of Life into my life..." Run your fingers through my soul, until... gone is the faux, the illusions, the frosting.

Quote is from foreward in Whole Prayer, p 13

Autumn Still Life, by Sara.

Today's Christian

InterVarsity Press's Behind the Books Blog

The High Calling.org

Barclay Press

Seedlings in Stone

Green Inventions Central

Love Notes to Yahweh

When I wrote the proposal that sold Stone Crossings, I used this informative source...

How to Write a Book Proposal

Here's another link you might find helpful:

Anatomy of a Book Proposal