“This is why we do not give up when we have grown weary. Not because we are promised that life will get easier, or because we must simply gut it out to the end, fearfully grasping a dying faith, but because, in due season, the harvest will come. We will be consumed by the presence of God. We will become all flame.” -Tish Harrison Warren
Recently, I finished Tish Harrison Warren’s What Grows in Weary Lands. In this book, amongst other struggles, Warren writes about the challenge of writing when the work becomes far more tedious and the thoughts become harder to come by. I found this quite convicting. Though I am no vocational writer, I have this blog because I know I think better through writing than I do in my head or (God forbid) when I only express my thoughts verbally. So, here I am, “butt in chair,” as Warren writes, quoting Anne Lamott, because God made me a person of words seeking to learn.
Alongside What Grows in Weary Lands, I’ve also read Knowing and Being Known by Erin Moniz, as well as lead a book study on Feasting on Hope by Hannah Miller King. Each of these works intertwine with the theme of God working in those places where dead things are. They speak of resurrection for a waiting world, frequently through routine means.
Feasting on Hope is a great starting point because I’ve had the most embodied experience of this book. I receive a resurrection meal weekly during worship. Actually, in an appropriate typing slip, I initially wrote that I receive it “weakly.” I suppose that sums it up. I have recently entered my second year teaching, my second year post-grad, a season of engagement with my fiancée, and, ultimately, a time of semi-settled young adulthood, I find more than anything, that I am of so little power and am covered by so much grace. What was once an anxiety of postgrad life— how my work took up all the space in my schedule— now serves to magnify God’s glory in those things I choose to add. That is not to say that God is not glorified in my work, but simply that acceptance of work has led to a greater appreciation of the people, places, and activities I choose to focus my downtime on. King writes of her early experience receiving weekly communion thusly, “Instead of coming to [God] with a task or a bit of information to dissect, I was invited to simply come… It was terrifying. And it was healing” (30). Her description of our own inability to bring anything but ourselves to the communion table has stuck with me through repeated readings. I feel I have little to offer, particularly little time and energy. My work takes this giant block of life and I am left with so little. Yet God keeps showing up in what little extra I have.
I am discovering that the phrase “distance makes the heart grow fonder” applies in many more ways than I thought. It seems every instance of going “without” in turn makes the time “with” sweeter. The fast makes the feast all the more joyous. This is not groundbreaking for those who have a more innate sense of their limits, but for me and my “do all the good you can” spirit, it’s been a magnificent revelation. King writes about her sons’ early communion experiences, “I feared they were only interested in it because they thought it would taste ‘yummy.’ My pastor at the time said, ‘yumminess is actually a great starting place’” (38). I find that, as my responsibilities make obviously enjoyable events further apart, that my enjoyment of simply yummy things grows. I experience this literally as I spend of the days before Mass craving the Eucharist, as well as my anticipation for social events, special meals, and time with family. As the psalmist writes, “we wait in hope for the LORD; for He is our help and our shield” (Psalm 33:20).
My initial reading of Feasting on Hope was soon followed by Moniz’ Knowing and Being Known, which I, ironically, cannot reference directly to because read in on loan from a friend (thanks, Hannah!). However, I can paint in broad strokes my learnings from the book and how they’ve been forming me. I was late to the party on this one. While a number of my friends personally know the author, she is somewhat of a distant grand-mentor to me. My first impression before reading actually comes from the recommendation of two friends that know Erin, who were reflecting on the differences in their collegiate and post-collegiate relationships. Knowing and Being Known seeks to reconsider Christian beliefs about healthy intimate relationships, especially elevating the importance of friendship as a deep and intimate relationship type. My friends, then, noted the great degree to which they were intimately known as friends in our experience in college, and how they have found it more difficult to make friends that hold a similarly lofty vision of friendship postgrad. In my case, my new routine has made not only made encounters with God more cherished, it has made the slow growth of friendship more cherished as well.
In my need for relationship, I decided to start a book study on Feasting on Hope at my church. For the month leading up to the study, I invited people multiple times during church announcements, to no avail. Ultimately, in desperation to have people attend, I reached out to the one person I felt friendly and safe enough with to invite one-on-one. I awaited his text response with tension. He said yes. I was equally emboldened and nervous. Then, I made the final announcement during the last service before the study was scheduled to start, and felt the urge to ask for older and wiser folks to join me and my other 20-something friend. 3 couples then joined. I all but begged them for community in our first meeting, noting that I seek greater community within our parish. I found that many of them felt the same. We are a friendly parish. And we are, notably, a parish that lives in spread out places. Each of us had found it hard to get close to many others because we simply weren’t together all that often. The work of this group was slow, but we shared. We read. We showed up to the best of our ability. I cannot yet say the impact of this, but I know there are 8 members of my parish, myself included, that I know better now. This will not be the end of my search for new friendships in which to know and be known, but I found that we all want those relationships much more than we often let on.
And so finally, we return to What Grows in Weary Lands, a work that ushered me through much of the book study, which got referenced a few times, and which I have now recommended to a fellow book-study companion. It appears to me now that much of our work on this side of heaven is weary work. Thus is the curse of toil born of the first sin. Yet Warren’s encouragement, citing the desert mothers and fathers, is to “stay in your cell” (28). No work comes to fruition if left before its due time. So I practice those things which God has called good. I pray. I worship. I take the sacrament and ask the Lord to make me a living sacrifice. Warren, comparing this diligence in waiting to a baby being formed in the womb, describes the experience in this way: “We wait in the womb of our lives for the day when our deepest longings will be fulfilled and the only way they can be” (79). Trusting in the coming resurrection because of the one who came before me, I pray: Lord, let me be born into the world where my deepest longings are fulfilled, and, as I wait, let me offer your grace to those I meet.
Thanks for reading after my long break! Recently, I’ve been listening to “Sometimes by Step” by Rich Mullins, which makes a very good soundtrack for this post.
