My mama, she has stacks and stacks of them in her attic—scribed memories from our childhood. “Daily Communicators” we called them during our growing-up days. I remember, she would sit there at her desk during the shadow-hours when her home-world was dark and quiet and she would burn that candle low and bend her heart even lower as she poured love-words and holy-verse words and made funnies in the spiral notebooks with each of our names on them. She was sacrificial-love in flesh-form and the Spirit whorled from her fingertips and across pages and when she was done with the writing and drawing each night she would place them on the steps going up to our rooms so they would be there to greet us come morning. Always, always, always we were jubilant to read our secret correspondence from mom and scurry ourselves away to message her back with our own unfurling thought and creativity.

Back and forth, day and night. For years this holy ritual spread across and seeped deep into our evolving bodies, minds, spirits. And those sacred pages? They’re just wet and pressed tree pulp and maybe they’ll turn to ash one day, but this practice lit our limbs from within and sewed feathers on our wing-less frames and maybe that was her plan all along? To make sure we flew further then she did? Because that is my everyday prayer now that I’m a mama and everything I do is for the dream of shooting our own boys past the celestial cradle where all the stars are born.

This practice of writing with my mum? I know what it did to mold me—all the conversations and communion and cartoons committed into the fabric of my molecular memory and printed right on my stretching skin and I am something more because of it . . .

It was midnight last Sunday and I lit my own candle to burn low and I folded my own heart over brand new pages of mother-son friendship possibility and Spirit whorled up from the way-down roots in my belly and tears of hallowed gladness ran over the ridges of cheekbone and I knew for the first time what it must’ve felt like for my mom at her late-night altar all those years ago . . . The savage hope that every beautiful intention and devotion to the young ones would make a difference in who they become, that the maternal love would be their aviary until the doors are swung wide and they go aerial—up, up and away.

We’re calling them “conversations” and carrying this tradition forward in our family tribe. And the paper-words are flip-flopping now between me and three young lads and do you know that their souls come out so different this way and who is blessing who? I eat every scrawled out letter and imaginative picture like the soul food it is. But I would also tell you, that in two weeks time we are already stronger in our intimacy bonds. Because the written-words seems to go beyond the everyday-words. And I can draw a snarly, fang-faced cartoon with angry eyes and steam blowing from the ears and say: “I know that sometimes I look and act like this. But, you know right? That I’m human (and hormonal because I’m a girl and we’ve already established that girls are different, eh?) and no matter what, I LOOOOOOVE YOU!!!! And I’m doing my best. My absolute best.” And 10-year boy writes me back and tells me that he is sorry for the times he is an “ogre” too, that I am a very fun person to be around and can we be friends forever? he asks. Oh, need he ask? Not only this, but he searched his own Bible for verses to help us both be better together and wrote all ten of them down in our “conversations” notebook.

With 99 cents spent? We make priceless, timeless art.

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In which I join Sarah’s parenting carnival:

{This post is dedicated to my mama, Anne Louise. She is mine and there is love between us and my heart is glad. So glad.}

The snow finally came this Saturday past after very much yearning and praying and watching from the little-lad division of our family tribe. But, you know? Right next to their sides I would squeeze up and I would press my face to the shivering glass, sing a prayer-sonnet or ode-to-snow and stare with such great hope that the sky would start dropping white magic over our land. And when it came 12″ thick?

I was born that day.

Again.

Because snow always feels like grace to my courtesan-heart and I need this winter elixir of nature’s cathedral to symbolize Christ’s purification of me, for as much and as long as my wandering heart . . . wanders.

So it descends . . . deep like grace, a flawless and impartial alabaster-velvet shroud to cover all the begrimed. I can see it in my spirit-eye, one by one the flakes are gathered from the cradle of a far-out comet, where everything is still clean. And it comes slipped down the slide of the forgiving Divine fingers and the metaphor-for-pure passes thru the age of the earth, the damage to the atmosphere . . . the contamination of trash and time. And yet, it’s still so white? Because the cleansing kind of grace doesn’t get dirty, it seems, no matter what we humans do. It never effects the color that grace makes you—the color of clean.

No wonder I am born every time snow spills.

Initially it felt like a bit of a deviation for me, this next post. But, I reflected a little further and a little longer and wasn’t surprised in the end to discover that my next muse did indeed harmonize beautifully and fully with what it means for me to intentionally {and hopefully} craft all dimenions of life into fine, fine art.

Now that I’m done being cryptic, would you care to wander over to Deeper Story  {deeperstory.com} today and find out what I’ve been writing about?! I’d love to have you . . . and I do mean LOVE to have you! Just come on over. And if you feel so inclined? Leave me your thinkings!

Love,

Life

This is where we sleep, wrapped in blankets of joy and blessing.

Our house was broken into last week. There are desparate dudes around these parts with powerful, door-kicking legs . . . Maybe they didn’t have mamas to teach them not to destroy things and steal what isn’t theirs?

:::

The paternal and maternal parental units (that would be me and hubby) of this familial gimlet were broken into and wrecked by the sinus infecting aliens. Dirty butt-heads. Now, I know they didn’t have mamas to teach them not to invade people’s nostrils with their trashy little germ-talons.

:::

And yet, there was this high and unbidden moment when I was crawling my sick and miserable hiney into bed and Austin was standing there across the room watching my red-rimmed and watering eyes—-never mind the snot pooling on my upper lip—when Joy dropped from the sky and made Himself full in me and I knew this and said: “Is there anyone in the world as blessed as we are?” And why is my heart somersaulting wildly inside my congested chest when my head feels like someone took a sledgehammer to the left side of my face?

“Is there anyone in the world as blessed as we are?”

He pauses, as if to sniff the air or gather himself to the most present place . . . “I feel it too Honey”. He says it slowly, maybe to commit the moment to memory and my eyes are running for a different reason. All this and “Can you believe that we get to sleep in this bed every night? Even when we are violated with day-time robbers, night after night we are safe and warm and cozy” and those three four-letter words cause an emotion that my throat won’t let go of.

I love when the Unexplainable shows up out of nowhere and for no foreseeable reason, maybe just because? But, I do know that I cannot take credit for these juleps of Joy because they are not man-made and I am never really responsible for them. They come when they come, sudden and quick and unrepeatable. And unforgettable. This Joy feels a mystery, it can happen anytime, anywhere, even in the most unpromising circumstances—even in the midst of suffering, with tears in the eyes.

Even when nailed to a tree.

Amen.

(Linking my blessings with Ann’s blessings today.}

via pinterest

My darling girlfriend with the big baby-blues and long goldi-locks pulled me into her sacred yearly practice of intentionality—she gives a name to every twelve months, just one word to spotlight and I’ve been doing this now for the past five rotations around the Son. Last week I danced with the alphabet and wrote Celebrate; narrated to you the hope I have that this will be my new personal lens for the entirety of twenty-12.

Would you know? Hubby and I thought this might be a worthy practice to introduce into the flux and rhythm of our family life. In other words, we are making tribe-tradition and doing the same thing—as a little five-person unit? We are adopting a 365 day focus.

Blistering barnacles and poppy-cock pudding!!!! Why didn’t we think of this before?!

Timing and all that, I guess.

:::

December 26th and the “number 5 family” is ensconced in post-Christmas slow and cozy, strewn across couch and chairs in Mamere’s Louisiana living room. We are eating deep breaths and deciding to open ancient text for an inhale of prophetic phrasing from that long ago Isaiah oracle:

The wolf will romp with the lamb,
the leopard sleep with the kid.
Calf and lion will eat from the same trough,
and a little child will tend them.
Cow and bear will graze the same pasture,
their calves and cubs grow up together,
and the lion eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child will crawl over rattlesnake dens,
the toddler stick his hand down the hole of a serpent.
Neither animal nor human will hurt or kill
on my holy mountain.
The whole earth will be brimming with knowing God-Alive,
a living knowledge of God ocean-deep, ocean-wide.

A few scripture verses and everything about the air around our heads is changing. We can see with spirit-eyes the gossamer strands of God-breath floating like evening vespers and kissing everything to awareness—even the tiny hair-fibers on the back side of our necks. A little God-breath wisps into our right here, right now and old words are brand new and it is like we are hearing this antiquated, most holy message for the first time—again.

“Calf and lion will eat from the same trough and a Little Child will lead them.”

With this Bible creed, we introduce the New Kingdom concept to our boy-children and tell them of this weary world and how through long Child-less years, everyone and everything waited in the burgeoning dark, rotating around their sin and bloody sacrifices until the mad prophet Isaiah with his nutty-news-feet began spouting of The Impossible to an impossible human-horde and a New Kingdom forecast pinpricks the conscience of all the dizzy people; pokes the atmosphere with a promised Light. A Light that will flip the world on it’s head and who? Who will follow the governing shoulder of this Baby and be a New Kingdom people?

Our young men decided they wanted to be New Kingdom people that day, which to me is equivalent of inviting the Lion and Lamb to feed in the heart-trough together. And we all said “YES!” in unison and since then have been excitedly talking and dreaming about what it might look like and what it might mean to be such a family who would wear this fantastical, fairytale message like a heavily-inscribed tattoo on our soul-skin.

2012 and this family is writing New Kingdom all over, speaking, practicing and imagining how this thought shapes our story and Little Buddies? We might be pressed by the old kingdom every day . . . the kingdom of systems, politics, manipulation, institution, rules and must-do’s and must-have’s and must-be’s, and not to mention the eye-for-an-eye, but it is our adventure to peel back this illusion-curtain and touch Newness with all our senses.

New Kingdom :: One word and our longing could not be summed up better then Seth’s Monday morning prayer: “May the New Kingdom open in our family like a flower blossoms in spring.”

Amen.