P&SMarch2021GIFT

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Elrena Evans

Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus, for our Welsh readers, or Happy Saint David’s Day!

T

he calendar tells me that spring is just a few short weeks away, which is hard to believe as I look out my window on to a snow-covered world. I’m wondering if any of the bulbs I haphazardly stuck in the ground in the waning days of fall last year will poke through the ground this spring and grace us with their presence. I probably planted them too late, I probably planted them too close, I probably planted them upside-down (I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a gardener) but every spring since moving into our house over a decade ago I’ve wished I’d remembered to plant spring bulbs. And this year, I (kind of/sort of) did.

So now we wait.

I love spring bulbs. I love the idea of bulbs— something buried in the ground, breaking open and giving birth to beauty.

The theme for March’s Paper&String is brokenness. Specifically, the way our brokenness surprises us with grace, or helps us find the light.

Three quotes were dancing around my brain as I was planning out this issue— dancing, quite literally, as two of them are from pieces I’ve danced myself.

The first quote is a line from Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah (here’s a link to my favorite rendition): It’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah.

I love the idea of broken hallelujahs. Because, really, aren’t all of our hallelujahs imperfect and broken?

The second quote is from Matthew West’s song Broken Things (and another link): Now I’m just a beggar in the presence of a King I wish I could bring so much more But if it’s true, You use broken things Then here I am Lord, I’m all Yours.

And the third quote is a line from a poem by Rumi: The wound is the place where the Light enters you.

I write about dancing, in this issue—about the role dance has played in my life, in seasons of broken and unbrokenness, in places where the wound has welcomed the light. This month we also have Anna taking us on a walk in the rain, Lisa-Jo reviewing an album about water, and Christie sharing

beautiful pictures of daffodils, in honor of Saint David’s Day. I’m also delighted to welcome my brother, Jon Carlson, reviewing a podcast for us.

All these and more await you in the pages of this month’s Paper&String. My prayer is that it will help you find the light.

Dancing Broken

by Elrena Evans

Plié. Tendu. Rond de jambe à terre.

The slate floor of the altar is cold and hard beneath my feet, cold in a way that seeps through my thin canvas ballet slippers and hard in a way that knocks my joints when landing a sissonne or jeté. I’ve been told that following my latest injury this body of mine is too worn, too broken to absorb the shock of landing on unforgiving slate; I’ve been told I should no longer dance in this space. But this hard, stone altar on which I dance is the nexus that connects me to my faith.

When I talk about the role my church has played in shaping my faith, I mean the church as a physical building. I am

a trauma survivor, and one of my places of sanctuary is a literal sanctuary. I find refuge in rows of prayer books, embroidered kneelers, the faintest scent of twice-yearly incense and the flickering flame of the aumbry candle. Within the walls of my church, I feel no harm can come to me—every sight, every sound, every scent speaks to me of safety. Alone in the cavernous space of the sanctuary, I feel secure.

And in this sanctuary, I dance.

••• “So you do, like, praise dancing?” Quizzical expressions often meet my admission that I dance in church. And I can explain that I prefer the term “liturgical dance,” that our dance choir is classically trained in ballet, and that our rigor matches that of many semiprofessional performing groups, but what I find more difficult to explain is that dance is the life support system for my faith: a faith that feels most real to me when emotion can

transcend words and find expression solely through movement. Using words, I will always stumble; when dancing, there is nothing to interrupt my belief. Faith feels tangible in the air surrounding me as my body surrenders to the space.

Unlike some faith seekers and shifters, I can’t pinpoint a moment when a God who was formerly real to me surrendered to the clouding of question. From childhood, my vision of God was always semitransparent: a thing both there, and possibly not there. Perhaps the first seeds of my doubt sprouted from the Bible itself— because the Bible is, after all, a book. And even as a child, I knew books are written by people who make things up.

I was the Sunday School child who asked how dinosaurs fit into the timeline of the flood, and how a loving God can predestine people to hell. I pointed out that the Bible quotes God as saying both “Peace I leave with you,” and “I come not to bring peace but a sword.” I

protested the illogic of omnipotence, salvation, immaculate conception. I probably made more than one Sunday School teacher want to quit. This kind of doubt is understandable, I was later told, given the traumas through which I lived…but I’m not sure my doubt is an outgrowth of trauma. Despite being saturated in the Christian faith from birth, I’d already arrived at a borderline agnostic state before I started to lose my baby teeth.

Yet I believe in God when I am dancing. Logic melts when the faith that ordinarily seems so out of my grasp comes within reach as I balancé, chassé, soutenu across the wide-open space of the altar. To dance, for me, is to enter the thin place—that space where physical and spiritual, things seen and unseen, the now and the not yet—come within a breath of touching.

And God is real to me as I fly.

Plié. Tendu. Rond de jambe à terre.

In the exam room, I half-listen to the orthopedic doctor as I scan the printout I was given: Complete disruption of anterior talofibular ligament. Injuries to flexor digitorum longus and flexor hallucis longus tendons. Possible fracture to posterolateral talar dome.

“What does this mean?” I interrupt, clutching the paper.

“Well,” the doctor replies, “it’s a complicated injury, so you’re going to be in a fracture boot and non-weight-bearing for a while, followed by some physical therapy. But with time, we’ll get you back to your normal daily activities.”

“But can I dance?” I ask. “I’m a dancer. Will I be able to dance?”

In the heartbeat space that follows, I watch the doctor try to reconcile his apparent assumptions of me with the words I am speaking: a middle-aged suburban mom of average height and weight… a dancer?

“What kind of dance?” he asks.

“Mostly ballet. But also modern, some lyrical, occasionally character. And a bit of folk. In a pinch I even tap dance. Pretty much anything that moves rhythmically to music.”

“Show me as best you can some of the things you want to be able to do,” he directs me. I hop off the table on to my uninjured foot, and extended my swollen ankle up into the air in développé à la seconde, followed by several quick rond de jambe en l’air. Using the table for support, I close into fifth position and do a small glissade to jeté battu.

“That kind of dance,” I say.

The doctor raises his eyebrows. “So basically, you’re an athlete,” he says.

“I wouldn’t use that term,” I say. “I’m a dancer.

And a middle-aged suburban mom of average height and weight.” I grin at the doctor, and think, but do not say, Let’s not pretend you weren’t making some assumptions, there.

“I have to be able to dance,” I conclude.

••• In high school, I first learned the concept of “muscle memory”—the idea that our muscles can hold on to information our brains have misplaced or forgotten. I was skeptical. Yet trying to remember a dance that had been out of my repertoire for months, my instructor told me to stop thinking about the choreography and just move.

“But I don’t remember the steps,” I said.

“You don’t need to,” she replied. “Don’t think about it. Just start moving and see if your muscle memory will take over.”

Feeling foolish, I slid into tombé pas de bourrée… and then, without, thinking, pirouette en dedans. Movement spilled from my body as I capered around the studio, realizing that, without knowing how, I could do the entire choreography.

“You see?” my instructor said when I finished.

“Muscle memory!”

At a physiological level, of course, muscles are incapable of storing memories. What my instructor called “muscle memory,” I went on to learn, is actually a complex system of actions occurring in multiple sections of the brain: the motor cortex, the basal ganglia, and the cerebellum. Notably absent from this list, however, is the cerebral cortex—the part of the brain responsible for things like logic, analytical thinking, and questioning one’s faith.

I could dance without thinking because, through movement, I could bypass the stumbling blocks my cerebral cortex set out to trip me up. And I started to wonder if perhaps that is also why, when I dance, I can more fully believe in God. Instead of engaging with logic and analysis, I can surrender solely to the existence of movement: to my motor cortex, basal ganglia, and cerebellum. Stripped of the need to ask “how” and “why,” I can experience the Divine.

And when I dance, my muscles remember what it feels like to believe.

••• Once cleared to begin physical therapy in the rehabilitation pool, I drop my crutches poolside and cautiously test my injured, non-weightbearing ankle in the warm and welcoming water. But I still can’t put my full weight on it, even in the water, even in water nearly up to my chin. Despair feels like a physical presence slinking through my otherwise buoyant body.

“I can’t even stand,” I say to my physical therapist. “I can’t put weight on my ankle. I can’t walk. How am I ever going to be able to dance?”

“Baby steps,” she says. “You have a complicated injury and you’ve been in a fracture boot for weeks. Give it time.”

But I don’t want to give it time. I want to dance.

I want to believe.

Plié. Tendu. Rond de jambe à terre.

Several years ago, a parishioner coordinating the all-night Maundy Thursday prayer vigil at my church asked me if I wanted to sign up for a time slot to pray in the sanctuary.

“Can I dance?” I immediately replied.

“Umm,” he responded. “I know you’re a dancer and all, but…I worry it might be distracting to other people who come to pray? You know?”

“Can I dance if I sign up for the slot at 3:00 AM?” I press. “And no one else is here?”

“Okay,” he relents. “I guess that would be fine.”

I sign up to pray at 3:00 AM. In the semi-lit sanctuary, I can barely make out the lines of the soaring ceiling above my head. In front of me, the altar: a seemingly endless expanse of slate and stone, a vast emptiness that culminates in a dais on which the communion table stands as silent sentry.

Above it all, a larger-than-life wooden cross

hangs from the invisible ceiling, presiding over the space below. As I approach the altar, I think about Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday. I inhale deeply as I plié, and every molecule I breathe is choked with liturgical meaning as I start, through movement, to pray.

Despite decades of immersion in the Book of Common Prayer and a career as a writer (with a forthcoming book of prayers, no less) my prayers still rarely emerge in their natal form as words. I think of a favorite quote from my fictional redheaded doppelganger, Anne of Green Gables, where she says: “If I really wanted to pray I’ll tell you what I’d do. I’d go out into a great big field all alone or in the deep, deep woods and I’d look up into the sky—up—up—up—into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no end to its blueness. And then I’d just feel a prayer.”

In my sanctuary, on the hard stone altar, I feel a prayer with my entire body. Words are superfluous: I have movement. I rise and fall and spin as I dance and I believe God hears

every prayer, every praise, every supplication, every allongé.

At 3:00 AM in the sanctuary as Maundy Thursday swirls into the darkness of Good Friday, I love my church perhaps more fiercely than I ever have before. I feel the prayers of decades of saints kneeling on these very stones where I rise in arabesque. These stones, so unforgiving to my joints, hold the echoes of long-forgotten prayers and petitions—and I feel them, blending with my movements, as I dance. Alone and yet surrounded I dance through the story of the crucifixion, and God is as real to me in this hour as if I was standing at the foot of a wooden cross so long ago.

Plié. Tendu. Rond de jambe à terre.

As a college student, I traveled to Israel to look for God but returned home with a bar of dutyfree chocolate instead. On the return flight, I compressed my empty-feeling limbs into myself, folding in my longing as if my entire

body could disappear into a God-shaped hole.

I’ve always had the ability to make myself small on demand, a combination of flexibility and determination working together to reduce the physical space I otherwise occupy. In moments of grief or loss I wonder if I could just keep folding myself, indefinitely, until I disappeared.

The flight attendant woke me when it was time for my meal, little portions of food in plastic boxes.

“I’ve never seen someone manage to fit into a seat that way,” she observed, as I slowly untangled and extended my limbs.

“I’m a dancer,” I explained. “I dance.”

I dance, I repeated to myself as she wheeled the trolley down the aisle, my dinner arranged neatly on the seatback tray in front of me. I dance. But do I believe?

•••

“You’re really making good progress,” my physical therapist says. In the water, I am now able to walk on my own two feet around the perimeter of the pool. The other therapy patients smile at me as I pass by, and I smile back. Over the preceding weeks, we’ve come to know each others’ faces as we work to heal our bodies.

“Why don’t you try a few dance steps, here in the water?” my therapist asks. “Slow and controlled, of course. Just to tolerance.”

I push away from the smooth floor of the pool and upward into a simple temps levé, my arms falling naturally into position as my body springs up out of the water. As my muscles tighten and release, I feel weeks of pent-up tears rushing suddenly to my eyes. Heads turn all around the therapy pool to look at me as I rise and fall, and then, as if of their own accord, my legs glissade, jeté, assemblé battu. My arms extend to allongé and I soar, splashing, around the water. My ankle supports my weight. Giddy

with joy, I turn to my therapist and say, “I can dance!”

“Yes,” she responds, wide-eyed. “Apparently, you can.”

The last piece I performed before this injury landed me in a rehabilitation pool was a choreography to Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. I love this song, but I almost can’t listen to it if I’m not able to dance—the beauty exploding in my chest during the final crescendo of hallelujahs would just hurt me too much. I think of the lyrics as I dance in the pool: It’s not a cry that you hear at night It’s not somebody who’s seen the light It’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah.

I feel as if most of my hallelujahs are broken.

Unable to cling to belief unless I am dancing, my faith is only as strong as the connective tissues linking muscle to bone—easily shattered, easily torn. And the hard, stone floor of the space where I dance makes me even more

likely to break. But now, dancing broken around a therapy pool, I can’t help but wonder if the broken hallelujahs are perhaps the only real ones.

Plié. Tendu. Rond de jambe à terre.

When I was in graduate school, I danced for the midnight service on Christmas Eve, one of my favorite services of the church year.

The sanctuary was filled with darkness and expectation, the scent of expensive perfume layering heavily over the waft of wood and stone as hundreds of congregants filed into the pews from the chill air outside. As I warmed up behind the altar, a parishioner rushed out of the sanctuary and over to our dance director. In low tones that slunk along the ground and to my ears, I heard the words: “…front row…sitting right there…call the police.” As they glanced at me, I knew. My abuser was sitting in the front row.

“Do you want us to tell her to leave?” they turned and asked me, now full voice. “She won’t go without a fight. We’d have to call the police.”

I thought of the faithful congregants seated in the surrounding pews, the expectancy of Christmas Eve, the countless hours of preparation that had gone into making this service a beautiful welcome for the birth of the infant king. I didn’t want to spoil that beauty with my pain.

“No,” I said. “Don’t call the police.”

“You don’t have to dance,” my director said.

“We’ll call an understudy. Or we’ll scrap the whole piece. Seriously, you don’t have to do this.”

I balanced in sous-sus, my arms rising to high fifth while I thought. The words from the aria I was preparing to dance, from Handel’s Messiah, circled through my mind: O thou that tellest good tidings to Jerusalem Lift up thy voice, with strength Lift it up, be not afraid!

“No,” I said. “I want to dance.”

And dance I did. My arms and legs and body were my voice; lifted up, I was not afraid. Prayer

and praise and defiance and triumph carried me as I soared. The hard stone altar became a cushion under my feet, absorbing my pain as I landed the jumps, giving me strength to dance, to soutenu, to believe. A series of chaînés became a mantra as I turned: I believe. I believe. I believe. I believe. Help my unbelief.

Plié. Tendu. Rond de jambe à terre.

Rehearsing in the sanctuary late one night, I run on to the altar and feel the change in the floor beneath me where wood gives way to unforgiving slate. My body protests. I feel the pain of old wounds deep in my joints, the disconnect my body feels in this, my sanctuary space. And I wonder: What will happen when the day comes when I can no longer dance?

Will I reject my faith?

Sometimes it feels like my faith is rejecting me.

This cavernous space that seems so inviting hides a bitter secret: every step I take on the hard, cold stone is a step closer to the day that I will eventually be too broken to dance. Too broken, perhaps, to believe.

••• Another injury on the altar has landed me back in the orthopedic doctor’s examining room, and although I no longer have to convince him that I am a dancer, still the words he speaks are not what I want to hear.

“You have to be wise,” he says, as I shift on the exam table and hear the paper crinkle beneath me. “You’re over forty years old. Your cartilage is worn from excessive use, and it’s not going to grow back.”

He pauses, and we consider each other in silence.

“I’m not saying you can’t dance,” he concludes.

“I’m saying you’re going to have to choose what you want to be able to do.”

I don’t know how to tell him that it’s not a question of whether or not I can jeté. It’s a question of whether or not I can believe. I can dance in a different space, surely—one that makes less excessive demands on my body— but dancing in my sanctuary, on my altar, is

how I maintain my faith. How can I believe, if in my sanctuary, I cannot dance?

My faith is broken, and I am broken. The welcoming space of my altar twists tendons, inflames bursae, and tears ligaments—pushing me ever closer to the point when I will no longer be able to dance at all.

But that day is not here yet. On the altar, I plié, I pray: I believe. I believe. Help my unbelief. The Bible exhorts us to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice, and as I dance, I offer my broken body to God. My arms, my legs. Piqué, allongé. My hands, my feet. Chassé, soutenu. My motor cortex, basal ganglia, cerebellum. Even my cerebral cortex. I believe. I believe. I believe. I believe. Help my unbelief.

Plié. Tendu. Rond de jambe à terre.

with ANNA GRIST

Appreciate the Deluge

R

ain is often used to symbolize a relief, a beginning of renewal, a cleansing.

It revives, restores, resets. It creates a slow rest. Humans in our modern culture sometimes resist rain, initially. We see it as an inconvenience, a hindrance to the speed

and efficiency of our day. It’s one more thing we have to prepare and gear up for. Henry Wordsworth Longfellow uses it to illustrate trouble and sorrow in this excerpt from his famous poem, The Rainy Day: “…Be still, sad heart! and cease repining; Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;

Thy fate is the common fate of all, Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary” However, besides sodden clothing—and of course potentially devastating flooding—rain is usually a positive aspect of the cycle of life.

That lovely, earthy, grounding scent that comes with a rainy day actually has a name: petrichor.

Science aside, the scent evokes a connection to the earth, a reminder that there are things growing slowly beneath our feet, a signal that the earth is being refreshed within this small space of geography.

When we lived on the “banana belt” edge of Lake Ontario, rain was the theme of winter, rather than snow. I remember many mornings in early spring sitting on our teeny front porch (just enough room for maybe two butts on the steps) with my coffee, inhaling the rain on the new grass, listening to the copious traffic whisper and splash past, hearing drops thud gently on the roof, seeing the wet trees sway lazily and all the colors around me darken and sharpen.

It was my moment, living on the corner of a busy semi-rural street, to see God’s fingerprint in the few pieces of nature we could see from our front stoop.

Rain has been my favourite weather condition in every place I’ve lived or visited. In England it was almost a daily part of life, and didn’t stop me from bicycling to the library or the train station to go exploring.

Driving in Scotland, it made the Highlands come alive with color and mist, and collected on sheep on the roadside until they steamed and smelled of wet wool (and other less lovely aspects of farm life). During a jaunt to Australia, it caught on spider webs and exotic ferns in the park in downtown Sydney, where skyscrapers were merely backdrops for giant

bats and cockatoos to fly against. It bounced off the sidewalk where I stood gazing at the bay and the opera house and bridge. It seemed too normal an occurrence for so grand a view.

I will get soaked whether I am standing in the school pick-up line or on a tropical beach in Costa Rica. Rain will fall in the midst of peace or chaos, on the evil-minded and the saint.

On failure or grand success. The wealthiest stock broker running down a city street needs an umbrella just as much as the homeless man sitting near the curb. It reminds us that all souls are equal in God’s eyes, and receive temporal blessings from His hand because of His grace, not because of their belief or love or trust or lack thereof. God lavishes the majestic show of a thunderstorm on audiences whether or not they recognize Him in it.

Rain reminds us not to keep our love and service solely for those who deserve it. It lets us slow down and spend some time learning the importance and comforting rhythm of preparation. In putting on “wellies,” finding an umbrella, donning a raincoat. When we

are being rained on, may we remember that we are being caressed closer by nature, may we embrace back the natural creation of God put into motion.

A holy hug.

I’ve spent years raving to friends about the books, shows, and films I love and why. They don’t have to be recent to catch my eye.

They only have to be a new way to see the old, old story of light vs. dark.

This never fails to move me.

While not every review will be for every person, my hope is that these move you too.

Critical as Water by Jeremy Loops Where You Can Find It: Any streaming service Rating: G Watch the beautiful music video to Gold here What You Need To Know: Jeremy Loops is one of South Africa’s most precious exports, right up there with gold and diamonds. He hails from a tiny seaside town in the Cape and yet his music echoes around the world, with its eclectic folksy sounds and big ballads. Critical as Water is his second album, and it’s an anthem to unique South African musical influences with universal impact—including his statement on the water crisis— in South Africa and across the continent.

I

was in the car on the way for an extended dental procedure (can you say “dental implant”) when my husband Peter first hit play on Jeremy Loops. It’s been three years since I was last home in South Africa, and I remember how Peter sat at the table with my siblings, grilling them on the latest artists and music.

Loops was on that list. And at the airport on the way home, Peter picked up a ton of albums.

They’ve been on repeat ever since.

We played Loops’ first album, Down South, until we had it memorized, and then counted down till his second release, Critical as Water.

Both bear playing, on repeat, but this latest release is an anthem to how water sustains, connects, and lifts us. It operates on a poetic as well as a political level. It calls out corruption (“Vultures”), it calls on the youth (“Runaway Kids”), it understands the power of being brave

“We’ve all felt out of place Just a shade in the human race.”

- Dreaming Again

enough to dream (“Dreaming Again”). Loops is known for his passionate tree-planting with GreenPop, an organization he helped co-found that has planted over 85,000 trees across Southern Africa. His lyrics are the plea

of a South African who is watching his city desperate for better political management of water resources, a surfer who loves his ocean, and the touring gypsy who was in the US during the election cycle four years ago and felt the fabric of a nation straining in different directions.

“A wise man once told his son, ‘Be all you can, be all you can be!

It’s as critical as water.’”

- Flash Floods

“Freak” should be required listening for all teens, since it’s the anti-rap rap song. It calls out the glamorizing of “ballers” and jet-setters who aspire to “drink champagne on a private

plane.” At his core, Loops is a smalltown boy who writes big ballads and isn’t afraid to twist the DNA of his country, his travels and his mistakes into his music.

The centerpiece of the album is the track “Underwater Blues,” and it’s got a sound you can sink into: deep, lonely, and somehow comforting at the same time. It’s a song about drowning in your schedule, your fears, your doubts, and then being reborn, catching your breath again. If the color blue had a soundtrack, I think it would be this song. I love the lyric: “Whales and tigers they roll in my dreams,” referring to the whales and tigersharks of his home ocean.

These songs are hopeful, critical, unexpected and layered with a signature looping technique.

Jeremy Loops is a voice worth adding to your favorite poets and musicians.

Dancing Broken: A Playlist

by Elrena Evans

T

his playlist began as a collection of pieces that I was rehearsing in early 2019. When the pandemic—itself a form of brokenness—shut everything down, I had to put the playlist away.

It just made me too sad.

But eventually, I pulled it out again, and I added “O God Forgive Us,” the last piece I performed before the shutdown. Then I added the piece I performed before that, a duet with my daughter called “Babybird.”

Slowly, I started adding in other favorite pieces of mine, from nearly four decades of dancing.

I’ve danced, in some form or another, to every piece on this playlist. For some reason, that gives me hope.

Picture credits: Bill Evans, Amy Sinns, Marielle Evans

Click here to listen to this YouTube playlist To download this printable page, click here!

The wound is the place where the Light enters you.

- Rumi

Podcast Review: Heaven Bent

by Jon Carlson

In the mid-1990s, Christians from all over the world began streaming into Toronto to catch glimpses of what many were calling supernatural experiences—bouts of laughter, physical healings, even gold fillings appearing in their mouths. Twenty five years later, podcaster Tara Jean Stevens revisits the stories of the Toronto Blessing.

Stevens’ own adolescence was shaped by her church’s revivalistic fervor, but she admirably withholds judgment as she guides listeners

through these jaunty, conversational stories.

Each of the series’ five episodes clocks in well under an hour and offers something for jaded skeptics, true believers, and complete novices alike.

Heaven Bent from Frequency Podcast Network is available on Apple Podcasts or wherever you find your podcasts.

Jon Carlson serves as Lead Pastor of Forest Hills Mennonite Church, exploring how the witness of God’s word, the example of Jesus, and the energy of the Holy Spirit empower people to faithfulness in every facet of life. He and his wife, Lyn, are raising three young children in Lancaster County, PA.

Maple Syrup Taffy

from Agapé Valley Sugar Bush

W

hen we lived in Ontario, early every spring we would visit our local sugar bush to take a tour of the maple syrup process and stop to have a delicious breakfast as well!

Agapé’s sugar bush proceeds go to maintaining their summer day camp program as well as the sugar bush operation.

We loved going and seeing friends volunteering (including my brother who did

chainsaw carving demonstrations for a year or two!) and enjoying breakfast! It was a rite of spring, a tradition that signals that winter is almost over. We miss living close enough to visit the sugar bush, but luckily they ship syrup west! I hope you enjoy this taste of a Canadian sugar bush in your own home! May it remind you that winter is not forever and spring is on the way!

Download the recipe as a letter-size page or a recipe card, just click on the images below!

Pretzels Syrup Taffy

by Tonya Salomons

T

onya lives with her husband in Canada’s largest city. During the day, she works as a registered social worker, but at night and on the weekends the kitchen is where she finds the space to recharge and finds her joy, feeding not only the body but the soul.

She admits to reading cookbooks like they are novels while sipping copious cups of coffee and eating chocolate chip cookies.

Download the recipe as a letter-size page or a recipe card, just click on the images below!

From Tonya Salomons Recipe adapted from: Magnolia Table Volume 2 by Joanna Gaines, 2020 Illustration by Brian Salomons

Ingredients • 5 cups all-purpose flour • 2 tsp kosher salt • 1 3/4 cups warm water 95-110 F • 4 cups boiling water • 1/2 cup (1stick) unsalted butter, melted

• 1/2 cup white sugar • 1 tbsp vegetable oil • 1/3 cup baking soda • 1/4 flaky salt such as Maldon • 4.5 tsp active dry yeast (or two packets) 1 tsp sugar

Looking for Blessings in Unlikely Places: Growing Practices from Habits

By Tonya Salomons & Amy Knorrr

P

retzel making, a soul practice? The movement of God seen in the washing of your face or the making of a cup of tea? Maybe this sounds ridiculous, but we know that God is at work in every moment of every day, and we are called to praise God from dawn to dusk. Maybe finding grace in the unlikeliest of places is not such a ridiculous idea after all.

Click above OR here to view Amy’s video

Click above OR here to view Tonya’s video

Click to download the accompanying PDF which includes:

• Practice Preparation & Materials • An Invitation to Practice

To download this printable page, click here!

If I really wanted to pray I’ll tell you what I’d do. I’d go out into a great big field all alone or in the deep, deep woods and I’d look up into the sky—up— up—up—into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no end to its blueness.

And then I’d just feel a prayer.

- Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

Tell me your stories of brokenness... of broken hallelujahs, of wounds that let in the light.

L

ast Christmas, as I was thinking about all the losses a socially-distanced season would bring, a friend suggested I find a way to bring meaning into the Christmas season even in the midst of the pandemic. And what jumped to my mind as being perhaps the most meaningful part of the season, to me, was

dancing. Dancing in my church, on my altar, surrounded by people I love.

So I decided to dance.

I thought about all the Christmas pieces I’ve performed over the years, and I knew, almost instantly, what I wanted to dance: my solo from “O Thou That Tellest,” from Handel’s Messiah.

I danced this piece on Christmas Eve, many years ago, with my birth mother sitting in one of the front pews. I danced this piece last fall, the night my birth mother died, illuminated on the altar by the light of a single candle. And I

danced this piece during the pandemic Christmas season, for all of my loved ones. Alone in the sanctuary, dancing only to the camera lens on my phone, I imagined them, sitting there in the pews. I imagined their faces, their voices, their presence with me. Together we could proclaim, in a frightening year that robbed us of so much, the truth: Love wins. Joy wins. The darkness is overcome by the Light. Be not afraid! Behold, your God. This short offering is only my solo section. I considered performing the entire choreography,

dancing each of the group parts myself, but I didn’t want to. I only wanted to dance my one small section, in hope—in faith—that one day, the world will not be so broken and we can dance together again.

Until that time, Lift up your voice with strength, be not afraid! Behold, your God.

Click here to view video

A

s an Enneagram Four, feeling broken is my native soil.

Knowing this helps me to use the places I have been broken to show how God has renewed. Like the Japanese method of taking broken pottery and fixing it with melted gold to create something even more beautiful than the original: kintsugi. God has taken my broken parts, and with them, has let me minister in empathy to those with whom I might otherwise not have had a connection.

The deepest break in my life, so far, was losing my mom to a long battle with cancer when I was a teenager. There were lasting scars I didn’t recognize until years later: PTSD from many late nights waking up to Mom in distress and needing immediate attention from either me or my dad; anxiety from having my childhood and teenage years marked by various uncertainties and insecurity; depression from trying to pretend after my mom died that “everything was fine,”

and pushing grief away rather than letting it have its full and timely work in my heart.

It took years for me to learn the lessons from that broken season, but it has given me words to encourage others to not forget to sit in the lament. To comfort not with upbeat words, but with the fellowship of tears and silence. To find my security not in finances or place, but in God’s leading and presence. To look for those who are

putting on a good front after being in places of trauma, and let them know: it’s okay to not be okay.

W

hen our son was born silently into the world, I wasn’t sure there would ever be light again. I felt shattered into millions of tiny pieces, held in the Everlasting Arms but utterly shattered. I found comfort in

the call to bless the name of the Lord when there was pain in the offering, but the darkness was deep.

In fifth grade, I had to get glasses. And looking up for the first time with them on, I realized that the trees had individual leaves. More than a year after Treye died, I remember looking up and noticing again that the trees had leaves and that they were a deep and vibrant green. I could still feel the

place on my arm where my son’s head lay for far too short a time—I can still feel it—but I could see again. Broken hallelujah.

I am still amazed by the people who were there in this redemption story, the people who were part of the way I was held. They wrote notes that said, “We love you. We are here.” They laughed and cried with us by turns. They had us over for sleepovers when the emptiness of our own home threatened to swallow us. They sat with us and

packed away Treye’s nursery, and then, when I panicked, they unpacked it all again so that I could touch each tiny sock and hold each hope for just a minute more. These people and the way God nudged them into my life felt like light— sometimes the tiniest and faintest of lights, but light even still. Their way of being with in

that hardest of times still feels like light. Broken hallelujah.

Broken hallelujahs. I’ve sung a few of those. I’m singing a few of those now. In some sense, there is no praise to be sung without an understanding of our great need. That is the old, old story, right?

The redemption story. Rumi is right, I think. The wound is where the light gets in.

The Team!

Christie & Jonathan Purifoy

live at the old farmhouse in Pennsylvania called Maplehurst and built the Black Barn. Christie earned a PhD in English Literature from the University of Chicago before trading the classroom for a picket-fenced garden and an old writing desk. Now she writes books and raises kids and chickens and tends the trees that gave Maplehurst its name.

Lisa-Jo Baker is a

third culture kid, former attorney, reader, writer, and storyteller. Every Wednesday on the Out of the Ordinary Podcast she and Christie explore the surprising ways that cultivating ordinary life leads to extraordinary stories. She is endlessly fascinated by people and how loud her children are.

Elrena Evans first had the dream of

sending you a care package from the Black Barn. She’s a writer, editor, and dancer, a mother of five, an ally and an advocate. A new Paper&String care package every month is her gift from us to you.

Allison Sheeler Duncan studied English

and theology at Eastern University and is now a writer and editor at a university in southeastern Pennsylvania. She enjoys growing flowers and heirloom tomatoes, watching superhero movies, and trying new recipes.

Anna Grist is the Canadian in our midst,

working on Paper&String from the Rockies near Calgary. She creates all the design and layout and contributes a few illustrations and snippets of writing as well as laughter and well-timed GIFs. She’s a wife and mother to two human children, as well as twins Quill & Ink (pictured).

Amy Knorr is an

educator, speaker and writer who loves to create contemplative spaces in real life and online.

She is in a Nonprofit and Spiritual Formation graduate program with a spiritual direction certification.

Amy has shared a nomadic married life with her husband, Dan, for 21 years. She is mom to two girls growing tall and a son she will hold again someday. She enjoys a good laugh, a quiet moment, a furry doggy face, a challenging trail and a cup of hot tea.

by Elrena Evans

A Prayer for Healing In the brokenness of our hearts, bring us love.

In the brokenness of our sorrow, bring us joy.

In the brokenness of our discord, bring us peace.

In the brokenness of our longing, bring us patience.

In the brokenness of our grief, bring us kindness.

In the brokenness of our complacency, bring us goodness.

In the brokenness of our belief, bring us faithfulness.

In the brokenness of our pain, bring us gentleness.

In the brokenness of our impulses, bring us self-control.

In the brokenness of our lives, bring us Your light.

Amen.

Click here to download a printable version of the prayer

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