7 Things I Learned this Fall (2022)

I need anything that “slows my roll”. Those are words of wisdom from 7-year-old Sweet Pea in case you ever need them to relax your pace.

One way to slow my roll is to pause at the end of each season and capture life lessons from the last ninety days, big and small, deep and quirky, subtle and earth shaking.

These seasonal reflections where we look back and notice of what we learned, things that seem to stick, hold on to, or become part of changing us even a tiny bit. Along with a few things that might need to be left behind are what this post is all about.

Here are my fall lessons. Maybe you can relate to one or two.

1. Oreos express deep gratefulness.

   My Mama was recently diagnosed with breast cancer at age 81. She had a mammogram, went back for another, then a needle biopsy. It was Stage 0 which I didn’t even know existed. Surgery was the treatment, a lumpectomy at least, followed by radiation.

   She consented to what she called a medieval MRI. Her treatment changed to a single mastectomy followed by radiation. We held our breath and prayed. She went into preparation mode: blood work, housework, to the dentist for a root canal. My sister planned to be there. Mama seemed calm for all that was swirling around her.

That desire for peacefulness had been deep in my prayers. Underneath prayers for doctors’ steady hands and wise decisions were deeper prayers for calm in her anxious heart, peace in her soul, and God’s palpable presence no matter what the outcome. She came out of surgery and the doctor smiled.

We all sighed with relief. While she recovered (did I tell you a mastectomy is day surgery?!), Daddy offered to go the pharmacy for her pain medications.

“What else do you want?”, he asked.

“I don’t know, maybe an Oreo would be nice.”, she replied.

An hour later he arrived to bring her home with FIVE packages of Oreos, every flavor on the shelf - original, double stuffed, peanut butter, chocolate, and dark chocolate.

Daddy bought Mama 200+ Oreos. Somehow that seemed just right and not nearly enough.

2. To tend your inner monastery, sometimes that means going to one.

Back in August, I started going to a Benedictine monastery once a week to listen, write, pray, and worship God. Depending on the shape of the week, I might go for a day or even a few hours.

There is so much to tell you about how being in that space is shaping the space inside of me. It begins when I leave my driveway and start the 40-minute drive through fields and farms. The quiet hilltop campus and curvaceous library designed by world famous architect, Alvar Aalto, give my soul a kind of healthy hush before I sit in the sanctuary before the cross or Eucharist. You don’t have to go to an actual monastery to tend your inner one, but it is a good way to begin offering God spaces in you.

I have made a few videos of some of my visits on my Instagram account if you want to pop over there and catch a glimpse with music and poetry.

In the meantime, you might enjoy this call to prayer with the noonday bells and let them ring in your heart for a moment.

3. Dolly Parton and St. Thérèse of Lisieux might be kindred souls.

This fall I spent time with St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the Little Flower and her Little Way. Her autobiography, “The Story of a Soul” was one of the books I took in my bag to the monastery.

Thérèse Martin was born the youngest of nine children, lost her mama at age four, entered a Carmelite convent at age fifteen, and died at twenty-four of tuberculosis. Throughout her short life she grew to be determined, resilient, experience her vocation as love, littleness in life, and largeness of soul. She never did anything by half-measures and yet her convent sisters did not describe her as remarkable.

Still, she became the youngest to be declared a saint and soonest after her death as well as one of only a few women to be given the title Doctor of the Catholic Church. Even her parents were canonized.

More than 120 years after her death, St. Thérèse is teaching me a stunning lesson - the very opposite of demanding anything from my Savior who gives all. I can let Jesus sleep in the boat during the storms of my life. Though it may make me feel desperate, as I grow in deep friendship with him, I can trust Jesus watches like one wide awake.

St. Thérèse might seem an unlikely kindred soul with Dolly Parton, but I think there’s something there. I heard Dolly say once in an interview,

“I’m very real were it counts - inside.”

I always stop in the coffee shop and enjoy a monk-made coffee and interesting conversation.

4. Good stuff happens when we turned off media in the evenings.

It started a few years ago with Reading Nights where we chose reading or listening to music over visual media after dinner. Please don’t hear me saying watching movies and TV series are all bad. Our family still quotes movie lines that bond us. But we wanted more variety and room for dreaming. Reading Nights were once-a-week and always seemed to fade for one reason or another. This time we quieted the television all week and it has mostly stuck.

We have read more books and poetry, played games, taken evening walks, enjoyed longer conversations about our day, the news, or stirrings in our hearts, and done some good piddling around. We have lingered by the fire and enjoyed more music. We have marveled at the moon longer.

I will let a few photos tell it best.

I checked it out from the library, but this book is worth owning. Keep reading some reasons why below.

5. Reading aloud is formative for every age.

We lose something when we don’t read or aren’t read to even long after we learn to read. It doesn’t matter how old we are.

Zora Neale Hurston captures the loss in “Our Eyes Were Watching God”,

“She didn’t read books so she didn’t know she was the world and the heavens boiled down to a drop.”

When my spiritual director reads poetry or Holy Scripture over me, I am moved. It is different than reading to myself without a sound. A similar movement happens when I read over those I companion.

I want to enjoy all that happens when I read or am read over: bonding, intimacy, refuge, repair, crossing distances and disruptions, with my grandchildren. I have been lamenting all the reading moments I am missing with mine who live far away. Those close moments where we point to pictures, ask curious, often hilarious questions, laugh or linger over our a scene are building something precious between us.

That sadness and the enlightening book “The Enchanted Hour” by Meghan Cox Gurdon (recommended by my friend Heidi) is why the 7 Wonders of the world are getting Yoto Player minis for Christmas this year. We want them to be read to on top of being read to by as many of us as possible. A Yoto Player is basically a book reader for kids to keep being read to during quiet time, nap time, road trips, or endless bedtime stories after cuddly bedtimes stories. There are also cards with music, nature sounds, and mindfulness practices. Oh, and cozy crackling fire sounds!

But what I wanted the Yoto for were the blank cards so I can read books to them in my voice. I suddenly remembered I had read to my oldest son, Sean, on those old Fisher Price tape recorders (the ones with the microphone connected by a curly phone cord) and tucked it in his backpack the night I went to the hospital to have his baby sister, Kate. It was one of only a very few nights Mike or I had not night read him his bedtime story.

In “The Enchanted Hour”, Gurdon quotes Gabe, a non-verbal child on the autism spectrum who typed this to his parents,

“I’m addicted to screens . . . but there’s nothing . . . I’d love more than to have someone . . . read to me all day long . . . instead.”

There is not instead of reading in-person, in relationship reading aloud together. This is to enlarge the experience in an ongoing way beyond the learning-to-read stage.

I talked to all the Wonders while they were in the womb. I felt as though they knew my voice in some measure along with their parents and siblings. I don’t want to stop now.

(Here’s 10% off your first purchase.)

Here’s the Yoto Mini with a sweet starter pack and two favorite books I plan to read aloud - Bear Came Along and Little Tree.

6. Peanut butter can be an egg substitute.

I recently needed to make brownies in a hurry and we were out of eggs.

Back when Mike had a double bypass, we had to trim most animal fats out of our diet so we have learned lots of egg substitutes like flax meal and aquafaba. But, I recently stumbled across a new stand-in for eggs when baking - peanut butter!

I began with 3T of peanut butter = 1 egg in a Costco brownie mix. I used Skippy as usually you need the full-bodied peanut butters for baking (not the natural ones with oil on top). My results were subpar which might be my cranky oven or perhaps this is a time for natural peanut butters. We’ll see. I welcome your ideas.

In the meantime, here is a peanut butter frosting recipe from my dear friend, Leslie, good to top for any boxed brownies you need to make special even if you have eggs on hand.

Peanut Butter Frosting

1/2 cup butter, softened (Earth Balance sticks are a good plant based option)

1/2 cup peanut butter

2 cups powdered sugar

2 tsp. milk (nut milks work here)

Beat frosting and spread over cooled brownies. Top with chocolate chips or melt 1 cup chocolate chips + 1/4 cup of better and spread on top.

In a pinch for a chocolate peanut butter fix, and to remember Hallie and Annie at Camp Walden, you can always dip Oreos in any kind of peanut butter and be a happy camper.

7. A prayer to bless God by Dallas Willard.

Have you ever realized you have had something backwards for a while now?

Over the last few years, I noticed I longed to take more of God’s perspective. I needed to in life, while reading my Bible, in prayer. Then I heard Dallas Willard pray this prayer. It had little to do with attention on working for God and everything to do with wonder and praise.

Almighty God - too one to be many, too many to be one.

A glorious nature that we can only catch glimpses of by your grace. Blessing, honor, glory and power be unto him that sits on the throne.

Our hearts do rise up to you now, overwhelmed with gratitude that you are who you are.

In this moment, we say, bless you, our Father, bless you, our Savior, bless you Holy spirit.

Bless you all in one.

May you rise above everything in our lives and hold us fast in the grip of adoration of who you are.

We bless you, Oh God, we bless you. We will and commit ourselves to what blesses you, on behalf of Jesus we do that in this hour, and ask you walk with us though life.

That it should always be so, and let it be done.

Amen.

Its a slow turn, but I am turning my prayers toward our breathtaking God and his beauty and letting my requests trail along rather than the other way around.

Those weren’t my only lessons. Some didn’t seem that helpful to you and some are still brewing. But now that I have looked back at autumn, I am a little more ready for winter.

I’ve already turned a blank page in my journal and written across the top, “What I learned this Winter” (2022-2023). I wonder what’s in store for us?