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Elrena Evans

Welcome, Spring! “in Just-spring when the world is mud-luscious… when the world is puddle-wonderful…”

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think e e cummings gave us a gift with those two descriptions of spring. Because the world is mud-luscious right now; the world is puddle-wonderful. The other day I stepped in mud that sucked the boot right off my foot, and as I heard the squelching sound, I thought, this is mud-luscious indeed.

When my middle two children were younger they invented a springtime game they called “Muddy Piggies” — they went out in the backyard and squelched around in the puddlewonderful muck until they were covered, head to toe, in mud. I have pictures of them— pictures taken inside the house—in all their muddy springtime glory, and those pictures are mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful.

We’re writing about hope this month in Paper&String, hope in all its luscious and wonderful forms. The hope of resurrection.

The hope of an aching planet redeemed.

The hope of our souls restored. My husband and daughter team up this month to tell a story of hope and paska bread. Anna writes of hope that flourishes and grows in empty places. And in our featured essay, Bonnie O’Neil writes: “Hope has been my tutor since those wilderness days, shaping and transforming me, revealing what could only be learned in the darkness.”

We are welcoming two new people to the Paper&String team! Anna Kocher is an artist living and working in Pennsylvania, whom I’ve had the privilege of knowing for many years. I’m so excited to see her artwork now gracing the pages of Paper&String. Tonya Salomons is joining us as our recipe curator, and when we had a chance to chat via Zoom, her description of cooking and welcome around her table made me want—if there wasn’t a pandemic and the borders weren’t closed—to hop in the car and drive the many hours to Toronto to invite myself to dinner. I hope you will join me in warmly welcoming these talented folks to Paper&String!

Wishing you a springtime filled with hope.

Enduring Hope

by Bonnie O’Neil

“Go. Away. Go away, God.” Standing before my bathroom mirror, the nearly unrecognizable face of a tired and bitter woman staring back at me, I repeated a third time, “Go away, God. I don’t want anything more to do with you.” In that moment, everything went silent and dark inside.

How did I even get to this place? I, who had loved Jesus my entire life, who never doubted his love and care for me—how could I so categorically disown him? The past two weeks were a blur of denial, crashed hopes, and recurring fear. My five-year-old son had just been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, the same disease that took my brother’s life when he was eight years old and has afflicted my sister since she was sixteen. The power of this disease has held my entire family in the grip of fear for such a long time.

I spiraled into an existential crisis. I grew up knowing I was born to replace the child my parents had lost, only now, the same disease was passing to the next generation through me.

As if the sting of this deeply personal disease reappearing in the warp and weft of my family weren’t enough to bear, it occurred during the upheaval of moving my family of five from Connecticut to Pennsylvania. The sand had shifted underneath my feet and I was caught in an undertow carrying me far from any recognizable safe harbor.

Two weeks after my son’s life-changing diagnosis, and one week into the disorientation of living in a new home, I found myself standing alone in my upstairs bathroom. Into the silence, a guttural voice spewed the question that split my hope in two: “So this is the good Christian life?” Like Eve, I took the bait, believing God was holding out on me—either because he didn’t love me enough to protect me, or because he was impotent against the forces of this world.

“You were supposed to protect me,” I cried out.

“I have loved and served you my whole life.”

And then the gavel fell. “You haven’t lived up to your end of the bargain!” Those words sealed my verdict. The God I had loved my whole life, but who no longer lived up to my expectations, was to be banished from my heart.

If a moment can be both awful and beautiful at the same time, this was it. The light inside me was extinguished, and all I could see was darkness. Without the light, I couldn’t see a new hope waiting in the shadows.

We are often told that times of suffering are given to us to test our faith, prove our character, and ultimately increase our hope. I have known plenty of these testing seasons, where medical crises, job losses, and relocations tumble in one after another. In fact, my son’s diagnosis was the capstone to a five-year season of unrelenting trials. But sometimes these testing seasons serve a different purpose. They uncover the deeper truth that our will has come face to face with God’s, and we have to decide who God is for us. This was one of those moments.

My deepest fear had been realized and it happened at a time when I was most

vulnerable. I had lost all sense of control and was unwilling to accept the path God had for me. He wasn’t doing things the way I wanted.

But God isn’t some genie in a bottle, standing ready to grant us our three wishes and do our bidding. Our God holds mystery in his hand, working out even our greatest nightmares for good. When we tether our hope to our circumstances, one storm can carry it away.

Hope is a gift that must be nurtured and stewarded well. Left neglected, hope can easily dry up if our focus shifts from accepting what is to regretting what has been lost. Hope is strong, and yet it is fragile. Hope is solid ground, and yet it is ephemeral. To shelter hope is to live courageously in the tension of these paradoxes.

How do we rekindle hope when we wear our disappointment with God like a suit of heavy armor? Where, we wonder, is God in the hope-parched seasons of life? Perhaps our hope is illusive precisely because he’s trying to refashion it into something more solid. Could there actually be invitations tucked into our prolonged seasons of hopelessness?

Might God be doing his deepest work in us when he is most difficult to be found?

My wilderness season lasted two long years.

After the initial six months, as I settled into our new routines caring for my young son with

type 1 diabetes, I began to attend to my faith crisis. I still couldn’t sense God’s presence as I continued drifting in a sea of hopelessness.

And in his mercy and grace, he allowed me to stay in that wilderness for eighteen more months.

I thought I was just angry at God for allowing my son’s disease. But there was so much more tucked in the secret places of my heart that God needed to reveal to me. The only way out of the wilderness was for me to go deeper in, and discover the hidden layers of my own story.

In the wilderness I kept bumping into the same two questions: Who is God in my story—me or him?

And, Is God good all the time? I went into the wilderness precisely because I had come to the intersection of my will and God’s, and had to decide if I was willing to surrender and let him fully direct my life. I came face to face with

my hidden “if-then” theology: “If I uphold my end of the bargain and live a good Christian life, then God will uphold his end and keep me _____” (fill in the blank with your own deepest felt need). I had to face an ugly truth within—because I felt God hadn’t met my needs, I lost all hope in him.

Without the light, I couldn’t see a new hope waiting in the shadows.

The truth is, our hearts harbor all kinds of things we would never imagine, things that need to be worked out before God can work his plans in us. God wants to take us to higher ground, but we can’t go with him there and stay where we are, so he has to change us. He unearths the hidden things in our tender places not to break us but to take us where

he wants us to follow. Even prolonged seasons of hopelessness shelter purpose.

My hope was built on my carefully ordered view of how I thought things should be. When I hit the intersection of my will and God’s, my hope collapsed, and with it, these two tenets of God’s grace—he is God, I am not; and he is good, all the time. No “ifs” or “thens” about it. Eventually God led me out of the wilderness and into a deeper trust in his goodness and love. Hope has been my tutor since those wilderness days, shaping and transforming me, revealing what could only be learned in the darkness.

If we keep the eyes of our heart open, we discover hope is an anchor to our soul, keeping us grounded when despair threatens to carry us away. Our hope may get battered and bruised, it may even be changed beyond recognition, but it continues to glow as long as an ember of hope remains. If we are willing, hope will always lead us out of the darkness into glorious light. The light may seem dim at first, but as we

continue our journey, we discover the light of hope can never be fully extinguished.

Ours is an enduring hope.

Bonnie O’Neil is passionate about restoring hope to hurting people. A spiritual director and the Executive Director of Alpha Mid Atlantic, Bonnie is also deeply connected to the type 1 diabetes (T1D) community, as her son was diagnosed with T1D at age 5. She has lived as an expatriate in both Paris and London and finds great joy in exploring the sights, tastes, and cultures of new lands, and is happiest when doing so with her husband and three adult children by her side. Her latest book, Chronic Hope, is about releasing control and discovering hope in a life that was harder than she ever expected, as she shares her journey raising a child with chronic illness.

To download this printable page, click here!

We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.

- Hebrews 6:19

Anna Kocher

A

t the end of high school I flourished artistically and got encouragement from art teachers to consider art school, but I didn’t take it seriously as a career and decided to pursue psychology.

After one semester, I deeply missed taking formal art classes, so I went to meet with the head of the art department. By the

end of the conversation, I knew art was what I wanted to do with my life. I went for a walk in the woods and felt God’s voice and leading in a way I hadn’t before—like Eric Liddell in “Chariots of Fire” saying, “When I run, I feel His pleasure.” Since then I’ve had many moments of doubt about whether I should have studied accounting or something instead (my husband could tell you that wouldn’t be a good fit for me), but I always return to that moment, walking on pine needles, feeling God’s pleasure.

Something that excites me about the work I’ve been doing recently is getting closer to holding contrasting ideas together in tension and harmony.

After many years I feel like I’m starting to be able to balance loose, abstract strokes with areas of more detail and refinement; finished areas with unfinished, dripping edges; feeling

confident with representational realism, but free to release it in favor of the physicality of the paint in areas. It’s difficult to explain in words, but it feels like getting a hold on something slippery that I’ve been chasing for a while.

I do a lot of work for commission as well as my own. I always think back to the 1950s American artists who worked as sign painters and in

industrial jobs as well.

I enjoy stretching and priming the canvases and sawing wood for frames— the more physical parts of the work, when sometimes art-making can be an isolating, ethereal experience. But it’s also very prayerful. I cry, talk to God, whisper to myself. The studio can be a sacred space.

Being a mother inspires me. When I first had children, I felt like maybe they would detract from my creativity. Certainly, the lack of sleep and physical demands of motherhood make it more difficult in some ways. Over time I realized that my artwork at its core is about the

big questions, about the meaning of life and death, about eternity and beauty and suffering and love. Motherhood has brought me closer to an understanding of those things, and that inspires me to keep digging deeper in my visual response to those questions.

Beauty is everything to me, as an artist and a Christian. I think of it as being almost synonymous with hope. It’s that feeling of being caught in your lowest point, in the muck and mire, and lifting your eyes to see the way the light catches a leaf and feeling that breath of restoration and encouragement to go on.

It doesn’t mean being pretty.

Beauty holds the truth of ugliness, pain, and death, and provides a window beyond it.

with ANNA GRIST

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he kids’ school was cancelled today because of the extreme cold, with a windchill of -45 degrees Celsius. A walk is out of the question, let alone a hike. This is a season of pivoting for me. Instead of hiking, I find myself on a treadmill running, or, when it warms up to the single digit negatives, a cross country ski nearby.

We’ve had to learn to pivot in many ways this year, and part of me wants to rebel. To not have to give up one more sure thing. To just be able to run my normal running route down our road, or take my usual hiking route behind our house to the river. Instead, I’m inside, avoiding certain death by frostbite and hypothermia.

Spring can’t come quickly enough. There are some things, like the advent of spring, that, as long as time continues to trudge forward, are certain. I will never have to pivot from winter directly into fall.

God, too, says some things will never change.

For instance, those who call on the name of the Lord will be saved. That His yoke of learning is easy and His burden is light. Even if I mistake my excruciating burdens for His and forget to give those ones to Him and take on the one He offers: learning of Him.

The thought of April gives me hope as winter hangs on. Easter especially beckons, as the reminder of all things hopeful is wrapped up in an empty cross, an empty tomb, empty nail hole scars in a sacred hand. The emptiness in my soul is ironically filled because of the physical places that no longer contain a Savior. He is present, instead, in my heart and soul and mind.

I will see the snow melt and vanish, too, reminding me of those empty spaces. Lent is another emptying, pointing to the cross and subsequent resurrection. Hope can’t live in a filled place. There must be emptiness to feel its warmth.

The knowledge that fulfilment is coming. So I will wait in the cold, knowing warmth, fulfilment, is steadily ahead.

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.

What Kind of Woman by Kate Baer Where You Can Find It: At your local library or anywhere books are sold Rating: PG Genre: Poetry What You Need To Know: Here is a flower garden of words to describe womanhood. In all its bright, sometimes brash, sometimes painfully tender, always striking forms. I didn’t know how much I needed poetry to put into words what kind of woman I am, can be, have been, especially after this past year. I confess, this collection made me cry.

When I picked up this little book from the library, I sat in my car for a full hour and read almost the whole way through it. I kept telling myself, “just one more,” and then I’d inhale at least another dozen and couldn’t make myself stop.

“To find the ones who say, I am not afraid of sitting in the dark with you.”

- Little Miracles

Kate Baer is a mother of young kids and a poet for our time. I first stumbled on her viral Instagram posts that create poetry out of some of the most hateful comments she receives. She lovingly erases the vitriol and what rises to the surface from the remaining words is always, only beauty.

Poetry, I think, does this for life. It condenses our most intense and universal experiences into sometimes no more than a baker’s dozen of words, all exquisitely delicious.

These poems crystallized motherhood, marriage, friendship, and womanhood in a way that felt like someone had finally interpreted my own, internal secret language. Here is a poet who is also someone you could imagine stacking the dishwasher.

Baer debunks an old myth in the poem “Nothing Tastes as Good As Skinny Feels,” and nudges her readers to remember their grandmother’s cake, the taste of the sea, the cool swill of freedom. In “Childhood,” the whole experience is summed up in 5 lines, “I do not remember being born / or how I knew my mother’s face. / Only that we woke to the sound / of pots banging against the stove, / knowing she would be downstairs.”

In “Transfiguration,” she unpacks identity: “I dreamt myself into a mother / but when I became her, I had to / dream her back into a woman.” In “Like a Wife” she unpacks womanhood and the pressure not to gain weight: “[I] devoured him whole, in one big bite / so he could see just how hungry a woman can be.” And in “What Kind of Man,” she unpacks what manhood means to womanhood in packed sentences, “What kind of man weeps at the feet / of his wife in pain.”

Her poetry is a mirror held up against womanhood, for us all to be reminded that we are as beautiful as we are brave. Here is a gift for sisters, mothers, and daughters to share.

A Playlist for Making Paska

by Bill & Annika Evans

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his playlist features songs of resurrection and redemption in a variety of styles— classical, contemporary Christian, Easter hymns, and children’s music. It’s a perfect accompaniment to your Easter baking!

Click here to listen to this YouTube playlist

In Our Earbuds: How To Save A Planet

by Jon Carlson

I

f you pay attention to the news about climate change, it’s easy to feel hopeless. Humanity seems to be on an immutable collision course with extinction. Is it even possible to cultivate genuine, realistic hope? Enter How to Save a Planet, a podcast from Gimlet Media.

Marine biologist and policy expert Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson teams up with veteran audio journalist Alex Blumberg to tell honest, hopeful stories about real solutions to climate change. And they take hope seriously: from the peppy intro music to the

bouncy, conversational tone to the occasional (and semi-ironic) use of air horns, they’re working to inspire hope, because all is not lost.

One episode to start: The Tribe that’s Moving Earth (and Water) to Solve the Climate Crisis (Feb. 4, 2021), which tells the story of Yurok Tribe’s efforts in California to reclaim their ancestral land while rediscovering sustainable practices.

Join us every month for

Have a breath of garden air sent to your inbox on the first of every month!

If you’d like a subscription for yourself, CLICK HERE! If you’d like to GIFT a subscription, CLICK HERE!

Salmon Cakes from Jon Purifoy

Y

ears ago, Christie traveled to the far reaches of Alaska for a writers retreat.

I stayed home.

With the kids.

She saw Kodiak bears. I… well, I watched We Bare Bears with the crew.

The remote island she spent the summer on had a salmon processing plant—taking the day’s catch of Alaskan salmon and preparing it for sale, either by canning or smoking. The partner in me wanted to experience this firsthand

with her, but of course I couldn’t, 5000 miles away, so what can one do?

Cook. Cook salmon.

So, here is our family recipe for salmon cakes.

I serve them with a veg like asparagus or broccoli...also, I prefer to cook the veg stovetop in olive oil with sliced garlic.

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

James Beard’s Carrot Cake with edible flowers from Allison Duncan

T

his carrot cake recipe is from a James Beard cookbook, with my innovation of topping it with edible violets, which I think make it look gorgeous! I made it last year for Easter.

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

Navy Bean Soup

by Tonya Salomons

I

grew up the daughter and granddaughter of Dutch immigrants who came to Canada in 1952 when my mother was two. World War II left a jagged scar across much of Europe, and the Netherlands was no exception. My growing-up years were full of stories about my great-grandfather’s bakery, and the Jews they would hide in their empty ovens. I was told over and over again about the special bond between our two countries, Holland having been liberated

by Canadian troops on May 5, 1945. To this day, when I see tulips, I recall being told about the thousands of bulbs that were sent to Canada after the war by the Dutch royal family as a gesture of appreciation. It’s

tradition that continues to this day, with the Tulip Festival in Ottawa.

The ravages of war also meant I grew up with a keen awareness of thrift and not being wasteful.

My Opa and Oma knew all too well about food shortages and rations. At birthdays or Christmas, I would watch with great interest as my Oma would smooth and fold used tissue and wrapping paper so it could be repurposed for the next celebration. Whenever she gave a card, she almost never wrote the recipient’s name on the front of the envelope because the next note, letter, or utility payment could be sent in it. As an engineer, my Opa hated to see wasted space, which is why the bookcase at the bottom of the family home was custom built for the National Geographic magazines that fascinated us kids when we came to visit. If there was

a corner, there was a use for it, and a special shelf or cubby would be made to fit in it. Us grandkids spent many hours playing hide and seek in their house full of nooks and crannies.

Food was no exception. Everything was useful: Potato peelings started the fire in the hearth and every chicken bone was boiled until they practically disintegrated, until rich and fragrant pots of soup could be produced for after-church Sunday lunch. I am certain my love of warm bowls of pea and chicken noodle soup started in my Oma’s kitchen. As I grew older I learned how to look at each left-over with a practiced eye and figure out how it could be transformed into another meal—or better yet, a pot of soup!

Every Easter I like to prepare a ham dinner. In my opinion there is nothing like a big bone-in spiral ham with scalloped potatoes, soft dinner rolls and roasted vegetables as we gather around the Easter table. And every year, after our bellies are full, and the next day’s left-over

ham sandwiches have been made and enjoyed, I pack up that ham bone in a freezer bag to use for one of my favourite soups: Ham and Navy Bean Soup.

If you’re cooking ham for Easter dinner this year, maybe you can save the bone and have this soup simmering on the back of your stove on a slow Saturday or Sunday afternoon.

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

Paska

by Bill & Annika Evans

B

ill writes: This is a recipe for Paska, an enriched white bread traditionally served at Easter in the Pennsylvania Coal Region. This recipe comes to us via my paternal great aunt, via my grandmother, and then father. My great aunt used to prepare this bread adorned with dough braids, little dough knots, and other little decorations.

I had the opportunity to prepare this recipe with my parents (via Zoom) and children for Easter 2020. The key to getting the correct texture of the bread is in the extensive kneading, and rising of less glutenous (all-purpose) flour in a justnot-quite sticky dough.

I recommend preparing more bread than you think you will need, as, when stale, this bread makes excellent French toast.

Annika writes: My family and I love Paska bread, often referred to by my littler siblings as “that yummy bread we get at Easter.” There was much disappointment last year when we discovered that the pandemic was here to stay for a while, disrupting all of our Easter traditions, including the much-beloved Paska bread.

So, we did the only thing we could do. We called the grandparents over Zoom and made the bread ourselves, with their guidance. It wasn’t the same, but it was still something.

I remember back when I first found out that school would be virtual, that dance classes would be disbanded, that my whole life was about to grind to a screeching halt. It felt like part of me had died. But then there was Easter, with its promising story about the Hope of

the World who had died and come back to life.

Even if Easter felt a lot less like Easter that year, I held on to what I could.

And if I was going to only get one Easter-y thing that year, Paska bread is a pretty delicious choice.

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

with CHRISTIE PURIFOY

“Garden Styles” An excerpt from Garden Maker, by Christie Purifoy Forthcoming from Harvest House Publishers

G

ardens grow:

1. In Peter Rabbit rows with scarecrows standing guard.

2. In raised beds edged with untreated, rotresistant wood like cedar and cypress.

3. In terra cotta pots like the back porch at grandmother’s house or the elegant terrace at

that Italian villa we visited one magic summer, long ago.

4. They grow in front flower beds that defy the homeowner’s association with their weedy exuberance.

5. In formal symmetry.

6. In jelly bean curves.

7. In concert with weeds.

8. In mulched defiance of them.

9. Gardens grow season after season after season.

Until they return to the earth like the gardener who tended them, resting and waiting for that resurrection day.

Anchoring In God-Love

By Bonnie O’Neil

I

’ve been a first-thing-in-the-morning Coffee with Jesus person most of my adult life.

That’s not to say I don’t ever miss this time with the Lord, but it’s my preferred way to greet each new day. Mug of steaming coffee in one hand, Bible across my lap, I gently wake up with Jesus.

Most days followed the same predictable rhythm—read a chapter or section from Scripture, meditate on it, notice what stood out and how I could apply it to my life. Then I would close my big worn-around-the-edges Bible and begin to pray. By which I mean, I would begin to ask.

I would tick through my prayers like a busy

woman crossing items off an over-stuffed Christmas shopping list, seasoning it with confessions and words of thanks or praise.

Then, fully awake and having accomplished what I understood the point of a “quiet time” to be, I would emerge from my holy cocoon and go about my day.

I grew a lot in my faith through this morning practice of Coffee with Jesus. As I digested Scripture, I learned deep truths—about God, about his interaction with humanity, and about my responsibility to love and serve others.

But in the secret places of my heart, God still seemed a little…well…out there. And I wanted to sense his presence with me all day long.

Scripture tells us frequently that Jesus withdrew to lonely places to pray. He did this after teaching all day on a hillside, after spending the night at a friend’s house, and after celebrating a long holiday meal with a group of his twelve closest friends. In none of

these stories do I imagine Jesus taking with him a scroll containing ancient Scripture. He didn’t slip away to study.

What exactly was Jesus doing in these times when he went to a lonely place to pray? I don’t think his quiet times looked like mine. I don’t think Jesus got quiet with God so Jesus could express his love for God. I think Jesus went to isolated prayer places to be reminded of God’s love for him. Steeping in God-love is how we remember our true identity as God’s beloved.

Listen in as I share how I turned my morning practice upside-down, and the difference it has made in my life!

Click above OR here to view Bonnie’s video

Click to download the accompanying PDF which includes:

• Practice Preparation & Materials • An Invitation to Practice

Psalm 8, A Conversation

By Amy Knorr

In the days before I forgot Your language, I babbled and sang of Your glories about which I can now only claim to dream — dreams that drown nightmares and cover the screams of those who deny you.

It’s not that you’ve hidden your brush strokes in inkwell sky as you flung diamond-dipped shawl around her shoulders.

It’s not that you’ve muffled your perfect pitch in craggy peak as you coaxed swirling melodies from boulder and rock.

It’s just that I’ve traded the vision of your fingerprints on my frame dwarfed and insignificant, for the lie that you cannot possibly be bothered.

I’ve held court As your world dies and forgotten the Genesis-charge.

I’ve dutifully fed the creatures but I have forgotten that the whale sings, and the ocean is deep and your name reverberates through the universe and through my own small heart.

To download this printable page, click here!

When I run, I feel His pleasure.

- Eric Liddell, Chariots of Fire

Tell me a story about something that gives you hope.

H

ope recently has been writing down what I’ve been avoiding for years. Facing old wounds that are now scars.

Knowing I’ve survived and thrived through so much already, and will again, and it will mean

I will know how to love myself and others with more wisdom. Knowing it won’t all be pandemics and political upset. That there are gloriously boring years ahead. That God invites us to rest as we learn of Him. I can’t be shaped without also weaving in moments to inhale and exhale. That being still and knowing God is still God is absolutely critical and cannot be replaced by hustle or worry. I hope in the seasons, in the advent of spring that cannot be postponed. Bears will wake up, mud will flow, burdens will be lifted, and mercies made new.

“A

pril showers bring May flowers” is a sing-song proverb I knew even as a child.

Where I grew up in Texas, we probably should have said, “March thunderstorms bring April

wildflowers by the old farm fence topped with rusty barbed wire.” It doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, but it conjures beauty in my mind’s eye nonetheless. Bluebonnets running rivers alongside country roads may be the thing I miss most about Texas.

Here at Maplehurst in Pennsylvania, April showers do indeed bring May flowers, and there is no more hopeful sound to me than the sound of running water. Whether it arrives in February, March, or April (and it shifts from year to year), water on the move, whether it moves in torrents or moves in drops, fills me with hope and happiness. It is the snow melt in

the creek at the bottom of the hill. It’s that last small patch of snow on the shady side of the barn finally erasing itself in a trickle. It’s the sprinkle of water on the baby plants growing under artificial lights in my basement. It’s my son with the hose out, cleaning off the porch.

Maybe we will sit there again in rocking chairs this month. Maybe we are all of us—people and place—on the cusp of bursting into bloom.

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 western 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.

Anna Kocher is an artist living and working

in the greater Philadelphia area. She’s an art teacher, a painter, and mother of three. When she’s not teaching, painting, or parenting she can be found reading, tea in hand and Ella Fitzgerald on the record player. She lives in a creaky old house with her husband, her kids, her dog, Mystic, and Edmund the cat.

Tonya Salomons

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.

by Elrena Evans

God of creation, Your breath brought galaxies into existence Mountains leaping from the face of the earth And tender grass swaddling the soil The world you’ve given us is a miracle.

Thank you for this home.

God of resurrection, Your breath reignited the life of your Son In the darkest hour of the world’s existence You were there To put an end to death.

Thank you for this gift.

God of restoration, Your breath reconciles all that you have made At the end of days, we will wake renewed To a world where all has been redeemed And all is made perfect in your time.

Thank you for this hope.

Amen.

Click here to download a printable version of the prayer

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