6 Things I Learned this Autumn

“We don’t imagine we will become the beauty we make.” Curt Thompson

Here we are at the threshold of a new season. We are saying goodbye to Autumn and hello to Winter. I have found this to be a good time to look back over my journal, photo library, and books I am reading to see what I’ve been learning in the last three months.

Here are my lessons big and small in no particular order.

1.Beauty is calling.

In my childhood, I heard the saying, “Beauty is more than skin deep”. Honestly, for this freckle-faced girl in the era of Marsha Brady or Cher, it always felt a little like a consolation prize, a make-do when you cannot measure up. It is easy to laugh about it now, but at the time I longed to look differently than I did. Which is funny, because what I meant by different was like everyone else.

Later, I learned to love my tender spotted skin and how to care for it. And the saying became more than a consolation prize, a valuable invitation to look and live deeper and true-er.

Now, I see more clearly that my reaching for surface beauty was always an arrow for soulful beauty. Perhaps it is part growing up, raising children through their teens, spending time in Jesus’ company. Whatever it is, over time, my ideas of beauty have grown to include imperfections, sadness, and scars.

I am learning the ways beauty calls me to Beauty - walking outdoors, holding my grandchildren, laughing at the stuff they day, stoking a fire in the fireplace, meeting red-winged blackbirds at the pond, noticing the light pouring through the windows, bringing flowers to Sabbath. I cannot stop at beauty, but I can start there.

But what Curt Thompson writes about accepting God’s invitation to become the beauty we make in the world, that is new. It is helping me see beauty in places I have not looked before - when I admit parts of me that are afraid, stubborn or hurt, when I stop to consider that others have those same vulnerable places, when I listen (truly listen), when I forage for Sabbath flowers when no flowers can be seen for miles around.

Being a beauty-chase takes my imagination, creative energy, and faith. It takes looking well below the surface of things as they appear (think iceberg).

Becoming the beauty I make in partnership with the Trinity takes painstakingly cultivating a new level of trust in what God is doing and how he created me as I step into my authority ready to be gobsmacked by God’s Beauty.

It takes courage and humility. God is the breathtaking One.

2. They are called arils.

Those little tear-shaped juicy red seeds that fill the inside of a pomegranite that we put in our Thanksgiving salad are called arils. (Rhymes with Cheryls.)

They are nutritious for your heart and a good night’s sleep.

3. Ask more questions - deeper, sharper, funnier - and more often.

Andy, my pastor, recently shared this statistic in church. Four-year-olds will ask an average of 400 questions in a year. Between the ages of 2 - 5 years-old, children will ask some 40,000 questions.

Here are a few of the kind of questions my seven grands (ages 10 mos- 6 years) have asked recently.

Why do you wear a sweater with a scarf attached? (turtleneck)

What makes you a grown up?

Why do we wear one sock on Tuesday?

God doesn’t sleep? Is that why my parents don’t sleep?

Andy reminded us Jesus refuses to give easy answers. He is looking for deeper, more holy questions.

Martin Schleske says it this way,

The more violin-making took hold of me, the more I was moved by the questions no one was answering . . . Question things and be amazed."

Andy was encouraging us to be more like children, full of good questions. Not the kind of questions the Pharisees posed - full of power, manipulation, or scorn - questions they thought they already had the answers to. But more wonder-filled, curious, imaginative ones - ones we may not have the answer to.

Like this one I heard Curt Thompson ask, “I wonder how long Eve was with God before Adam woke up?”

Here are a few that I am finding helpful lately.

• What repetitions have I noticed lately? (words, themes, people, dreams, opportunities for growth, prayers)

• What is the current weather in my heart?

• I wonder what my friend Jesus would say if I spoke to him about it? And then really listened for a long time.

• How long is a long time?

• What is your violin-making?

4. We are “in the making”.

Last summer, I preached a sermon from Ephesians 2 on being God’s poem, his work of art. It was thrilling to remind myself and my church family that we are made in God’s image and when he made us by his hand and his breath, he declared us very good.

We have to begin there. There was heartbreak after that, but once we were made as God’s very good idea, and we still are despite our circumstances.

This autumn I discovered I had not quite grasped the way God is still making me. It wasn’t only something he did once upon a time and now he sits back and watches it all unfold without lifting a finger, though some would tell you so.

Our good and beautiful God continues to shape each of us into his image. It is an ongoing process.

And we are invited into it.

That is yet another layer of us being in the making. The process of us becoming is part of his shaping hand. He shapes with his character and our personality, his kingdom values and our flaws, his love and our faith in Jesus’ good work.

Psalm 102:27 says of God, “Year after year, you’re as good as new.”

5. Lists are as good as ever.

I am obsessed with lists. They can be organizing, revealing, and healing.

I posted my most recent list on the previous blog called 100 things I love.

Here are a few random selections:

I love the way my heart opens up after reluctance in the kitchen. I love how it happens when I make a mirepoix or a roux, feed my sourdough starter, smell garlic, cumin or cilantro on my fingers from the chopping, hear the sizzle of anything in a cast iron skillet, or feel our old wooden ladle in my hand.

I love the smell of juniper in the woods.

I love bookcases, book lists, books on my doorsteps, campus libraries, my local library, and Meg Ryan’s Little Bookshop Around the Corner. And the smell of a bouquet of freshly sharpened yellow #2 pencils.

Be careful friends, this list-making may be addictive. I am already looking forward to my next 100 Things I love post. Why not start your own?

6. My doodles just might mean something.

I have a habit of doodling in my journal. I might sketch something I am thinking about that goes along with a sermon or reflection. I might just create patterns to break up the text. But really the doodles always seemed fanciful, just for fun, without a story of their own.

But in thumbing through my journal every now and again to remember what might be stirring in my heart (and to write posts like this one), I noticed several doodles that kept popping up. They grew over time and actually later became something more as I realized they told their own story.

Here is one that went on to become part of my Lent devotional.

In my journal, this image kept showing up first as the broken heart shape. Then those hearts were surrounded by quotes from Van Gogh from a book I was reading at the time. Later ,my one word for 2021 “wide open spaces” was layered in, and finally some explorations with my spiritual director of the broken-open boundaries around my heart.

I am still doodling away in my journal without thinking too much of any one scribble. Some are just doodles. Some become openers for later ones.

But I am learning to recognize the ones that repeat or gather steam for their own story. It becomes clear only as I return and notice the stirrings behind and beyond the words.

If you enjoyed this list of What I Learned, you might like a few others like this Autumn one for Dreamers or this Fall one about waiting and Christmas lights.

And if you want to start your own seasonal reflection, try this.

Add a piece of washi-tape to the top of one or sometimes a spread of two pages and title it “Things I Learned this (Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring).

As lessons stand out as funny or important or useful to others, add it to the bullet list. Toward the end of each season - Aug 31, Nov 31, Feb 29, May 31 - gather the ones that still have legs into a reflection post or summary in your journal.