P&S June 2022 GIFT

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Elrena Evans

Happy June!

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armer weather is still just the breath of a promise for some of our readers, and for others, it’s been hot for weeks. Here in Pennsylvania, the weather can’t quite seem to make up its mind. The other day, it was so cold we brought in wood and made a fire—if the weather is going to act like February, we’ll treat it like February. Then, mere days later, it was so hot we were getting out the paddling pool and the sprinklers—if the weather is going to act like August, we’ll treat it like August!

The theme for this June issue of Paper&String is playfulness.

It was perhaps a bit of a stretch for a team with so many Enneagram Fours… but I’m proud of the result. I hope you love it, too.

Amy Knorr quotes Eugene Peterson this month, when he writes: “Keeping a Sabbath is simple and easy: We pray and we play, two things we were pretty good at as children, and we can always pick up again with a little encouragement and if we can only find the time. But we don’t have to find the time, it is given to us. A day a week. A Sabbath. A day to pray and play. God’s gift.”

We pray, and we play. That is the Sabbath gift that has been given to us.

As I’ve been thinking about play, I’ve also been thinking about Sabbath, about rest. It’s been a hard month. Multiple members of the Paper&String team had Covid, despite living thousands of miles apart, including Anna Grist and myself. It was a push to get this June issue out the door… and we find ourselves now in need of rest.

Now, though, I am feeling the need to rest so keenly… and I know, the time for Sabbath is here. So I wanted to let you know, dear readers, that we are taking the month of July off. We will rest, we will recuperate… and we will see you all again in August.

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.

Wild Things and Castles in the Sky: A Guide to Choosing the Best Books for Children Edited by Leslie Bustard, Carey Bustard, Thea Rosenburg

Rating: G What You Need To Know: I can’t put it better than Luci Shaw did in her foreword: “For any parent or grandparent, any aunt or uncle, this generous guide for What to Read Next to your beloveds is a heartwarming, mind-enlarging, appetizing pathfinder to the wide range of available kid-lit. To fill this gap and cater to a child’s essential hunger for story, the legendary publisher Square Halo Books is coming to your rescue.”

Diving In: This is the guide to the good stuff I’ve been looking for, since I lost my mom and the library of books she carried around in her head. My fondest memories growing up were of “Story is to a my mom’s bookshelves growing mind and how she led me what a grilled through the themes cheese sandwich and stories, always and a crisp apple knowing which book is to a young and was the right fit for my hungry mouth.” age and stage. “You’re not ready for that one yet,” would finally grow into, “Now’s the right time for this story,” and I’d walk through the door into a whole new world she’d mapped my way to.

I lost my mom at 18. Now at 47 I feel like I’ve regained a part of her, one of the very best parts. Her nose for the best books through the journey of childhood. This is the guide I didn’t know I’d been waiting 30 years for.

With summer upon us, here is the parent’s ultimate companion for charting thrilling and meaningful reading suggestions for your kids.

With suggestions and related reasons for reads for toddlers through teens, these kind guides offer titles for an expansive library of topics: Family Reads, Read Alouds, Gospel Stories, Fantasy, Differently Abled, Art Appreciation, Race, Poetry, History, Suffering, Young Adults, you name it, there’s a list of intentionally curated titles waiting for you and your kids or your own inner child to discover this summer.

Find a warm patch of Wild Things has a sunshine or a chapter, “Books that cool patch of Sing: Rhythm and shade and curl Rhyme,” contributed by in with this our very own Amy Knorr! treasure hunt through kidlit. There’s something for every one of us to go adventuring without leaving home.

To download this printable page, click here!

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y own childhood exploring the miniature what the Bible of says hisgarden, love is true. wonders myabout father’s but there were whole decades when I never tasted the sweet snap of a clover’s stem or drank from a Ihoneysuckle wept as I performed song, considering trumpet.this And yet, I felt Some dayseventually, are simply meant my and asking take it easy on the suffering need for work that isGod also to play and play that for playing. me—to give (have me a break.

With the psalmists is also work you ever watched a young - Mary Anne Radmacher before I want create safe spaces for those child atme, play?

Theytoare working very hard). who might feel similarly; places where Eventually, I made my own garden.

I’vehonesty been and vulnerability will invite communion working in this garden all spring.

Now, I think, and healing; ground where relationship the time has the come to play again.

The time has deepens. come to grow small again.

May you meet Christ in the midst of your own suffering or questions, pain or confusion this Easter season, friends. May Christ have mercy on us all.

with ANNA GRIST

The Playfulness of Creation

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recently finished a book by Courtney Ellis called Happy Now that is one of a few new and wonderful books about the importance of playfulness, especially in relation to our spirit. It confirmed for me that my love for tramping about in the woods, stopping to

notice wildflowers and be wildlife paparazzi is not only healthy but vital to keeping my whole little self in tune with how God can teach and speak and delight.

She writes: “Our world is filled with useless activities that can fill us with absolute delight. And many of them are so very simple. Take a breath, take a pause, take a taste. Smell the herbs. Look into the eyes of the friend. Snuggle the baby. Watch the snow fall. Each of these things serves

no grand purpose. But each one changes us, incrementally transforming overly serious minds into open ones and stubborn hearts into joy-filled ones. The floor needs scrubbing, but is there actually something even more needful right in front of you?

Pausing a full moment to hug the living being before you—the spouse, the child, the parent, the friend, the fluffy dog—may be even more needed.”

I’m an Enneagram four so I usually follow the sad, not the fun. So actively practicing playfulness is outside my comfort level, mostly because fun for me is sometimes crying.

I’ve also noticed that as long as I’m open to the possibilities of playfulness, God will often bring the playful to me, instead of me actively pursuing it. Recently I was wandering through a West Vancouver park, which juts out into the Pacific (technically the Salish Sea at that point) and is nestled next to the coastal mountains. I sat down to enjoy the sunset on a bench overlooking the water, and the Lord brought me dolphins chasing their dinners and a sea lion meandering past the rocks. The most playful ocean animals, joyfully going about their days just under my feet. Sheer delight.

Gratitude and playfulness go hand in hand, and they work together to produce delight.

Leviathan plays in the ocean and we can witness it if we sit still long enough to notice, and wonder follows us as we marvel at God’s creativity. May we never stop noticing creation playing around us, and enter in as an act of worship.

Playlist: Playful Selections

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ere are our pick of three of the most playful playlists from Paper&String!

Joy: June 2020

by Jonathan Purifoy

Mystery, Magic and Myth: July 2020

by Rebecca Baker

DPP! (Dance Party Playlist): March 2022

by Marielle Evans

An Invitation to Play from Tonya Salomons

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f I had to pick a favorite month of the year from my childhood it would be June. June was the month of possibilities and wanderlust.

Of course, when one’s transportation is a banana-seat bicycle, or the much more mature 10-speed, you can’t travel far but you can certainly go farther when there’s no other pesky expectations, like school.

When the last bell rang on the last day of school I cleared out my desk, not caring for a minute what I dumped in my backpack. The dreaming about long summer days had started.

Usually I could be found with my nose in a book or traipsing through the

woods behind the house building forts or foraging for and stirring pots of “food” like Ma Ingalls, heading west in the wagon train.

Sometimes I would scratch dreams and poems in salvaged, half-filled, pink notebooks from school; my love of words having started at a very young age.

One summer, the neighbor kids and I spent hours in the empty lots behind our row of houses chasing after grasshoppers, laughing with delight when we caught the speedy jumpers. We tried to keep them for pets, but alas grasshoppers were not meant for childhood captivity. We dug many a grasshopper grave in that back lot, our small heads bowed with all the solemnity our age could muster.

While I could sit in the gilded light of these memories all day, they aren’t the ones that stand out the most. I’ve reserved the label “most precious” for the ones involving the big four-door, 1968, light blue Ford Galaxy 500 that pulled the family pop-up trailer. One summer we traveled caravan style with aunts and uncles and family friends from Canada all through Vermont. This was before the times of child restraint and seat belt laws. My view for that entire trip was from my perch on the back windshield, looking over my dad’s head as he drove.

For as long as I can remember and before the divorce tore holes through our family my August birthday was celebrated in a campground, surrounded by tall, leaning pines.

There would be grocery store cake, and hotdogs and marshmallows. At sunset my mom would fill a beach bag with our biodegradable soap, our pyjamas and soft-smelling towels. We’d all pack in the car and take the short drive to the beach. Watching the sun kiss the horizon we’d play and hoot and holler, splashing in the biggest bathtub ever. If I close my eyes I can still feel the way my clean pyjamas glided over my cooled skin and my dad’s arms holding me tight as he carried me to the car, to avoid the sand. I almost never made it back to the trailer awake, the fresh air and sun having played a day-long lullaby; the final chorus, the low hum of adult conversation and the crackling fire.

Life has a way of holding these playful memories hostage. All grown up now I feel the weariness of days and weeks weighing me down, the bossy to-do lists keep a ruthless pace; there’s no more last days of school or with-out-care days. I’ve long since outgrown bathing on the beach and my daddy carrying

me in his arms, but the smile on my face is like some wide-toothed permission to step into this summer full of joy and play! May the long and golden days remind you of places you’ve been or dreamed of. May you remember to play again.

I can’t think of a better way to celebrate playfulness than with cake! I hope you enjoy this chocolate fun-fetti cake.

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

with CHRISTIE PURIFOY

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wo little girls, twins, live in the house next door to mine. In fact, I share a June birthday with these girls, though that isn’t really my intended subject for this essay. I do, however, like to remember the one particular birthday a few years ago when my son and I were outside eating our birthday cake (because we also share this birthday), and suddenly, we heard a rousing rendition of the “Happy Birthday” song wafting through the open windows of the house next door. Double birthdays and quadruple birthdays: what could be more fun?

In summer, these same little girls sometimes wander past the fence that separates our yards and ask if they can visit my butterfly garden. The first time they made this request I responded with a surprised gasp. Butterfly garden! I have never called it that, but the name is a good one. By the end of June, my flower garden is a constant swirl of visiting butterflies. Of course, it should be called the butterfly garden. Of course, the butterflies are more important, more central, and more dynamic even than the plants.

There is something about a garden that invites even the fully adult and practically middleaged like myself to see the world with a child’s eyes. My own children are hardly children any longer, and yet I cannot notice the tiny daisylike flowers of the feverfew without imagining how perfectly suited they are for a dollhouse bouquet. Years ago, my firstborn and I would make arrangements for her dollhouse by placing tiny flowering weeds and herbs from our Florida backyard in upside-down china thimbles.

The large thimble with its blue and white pattern–a bit like a Chinoiserie vase–

was always set carefully (so as not to spill the teaspoon of water) in the middle of the doll’s dining room table.

When it comes to the built environment in which most of us spend most of our time, things are rarely made on a human scale.

Rather, we live in a world built for the speed of automobiles and the height of city skylines and soaring atriums. Even many suburban homes these days have double height entryways, too tall to re-paint without professional help with professional ladders. But a garden is different. Not only are garden plants set about on an entirely human scale, with paths and seating also sized just for us, gardens invite us to go even smaller: we kneel to weed, we crouch to harvest, and we find ever more to see and explore. In what other place do I notice something as small as a ladybug? As delicate as a dandelion’s fluff? Or even as worrisome as an almost-invisible aphid?

The birthdays keep coming: for me, my son, for the little girls next door. Childhood is fleeting, and age eventually weighs us all down with responsibilities that leave little time for thimble bouquets and butterfly chases. No doubt the little neighbor girls will stop asking to visit my butterfly garden soon. They will go

to the shopping mall, instead. They might get summer jobs serving ice cream at the Dairy Queen. I spent my own childhood exploring the miniature wonders of my father’s garden, but there were whole decades when I never tasted the sweet snap of a clover’s stem or drank from a honeysuckle trumpet. And yet, eventually, I felt the need for work that is also play and play that is also work (have you ever watched a young child at play? They are working very hard). Eventually, I made my own garden. I’ve been working in this garden all spring. Now, I think, the time has come to play again. The time has come to grow small again.

To download this printable page, click here!

what the Bible says about his love is true.

I wept as I performed this song, considering my suffering and asking God to take it easy on me—to give me a break. With the psalmists before me, I want to create safe spaces for those who might feel similarly; places where honesty and vulnerability will invite communion and healing; the ground where relationship deepens.

May you meet Christ in the midst of your own suffering or questions, pain or confusion this Easter season, friends. May Christ have mercy If you look the right onway, us you all.can see that the whole world is a garden.

- Frances Hodgson Burnett The Secret Garden

Practicing the Art of Prayer with Amy Knorr and Troy Cady

In an article entitled Confessions of a Former Sabbath Breaker, Eugene Peterson writes, “Keeping a Sabbath is simple and easy: We pray and we play, two things we were pretty good at as children, and we can always pick up again with a little encouragement and if we can only find the time.

But we don’t have to find the time, it is given to us. A day a week. A Sabbath. A day to pray and play. God’s gift.”

Praying and playing. Peterson suggests these two actions are connected both as the actions that constitute Sabbath and as actions that once came easily to us when we were children.

Join spiritual directors Amy Knorr and Troy Cady as they engage in conversation about playing and praying and how we can experience the journey to freedom with God.

They end the conversation with a simple practice to help us all taste, right now, what it can be like to practice playing and praying.

Click here or the image above to play video

Editor’s Note: When we launched Paper&String, in February of 2020, it was our hope that this Gather section might be a place we could showcase all the many ways we gather—Paper&String creators and readers alike.

We had no way of knowing what was waiting for us, just around the corner.

It’s been two long years and, while we might never be fully “out” of this pandemic, we are finding ways to gather again.

It feels like it’s been such a long time coming… a long, very long winter, perhaps now giving way to glorious spring.

It is with more joy that I can hold in words that I share this piece of Christie’s with you.

A Maplehurst Garden Party

By Christie Purifoy Photos by Alyssa Ruth Photography

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he wild thing about growing flowers is how astonished you can be by the end result of a process you yourself set in motion. I may plant the seed, I may water it, I may keep a close eye on its progress, as verdant growth rushes

skyward, and yet, when a green stem opens out into some intensely colored flower, it is always a shock.

It is as if every year I plan my own surprise party, then scream in genuine alarm when friends jump out from behind the furniture. Where on earth did you come from? I say to every single flower in my garden.

I could say the same about the garden party my family and I hosted at Maplehurst on an ordinary Thursday in May. I’d imagined the gathering months before as a springtime celebration of my winter-born book Garden Maker.

With help from creative friends, I decided on a theme, sold tickets, booked a band. I wrote lists, accepted offers of help, and wrestled a party tent into submission with my husband, sixteenyear-old son, and that son’s best friend.

When I was sixteen, my mother drove me to my best friend’s house only to trail in the front door behind me because she knew what I did not: that every one of my friends was hiding behind the furniture preparing to shout happy birthday.

My mother told me later that my younger sister, true to her goofball nature, had been singing, “We’re going to a party, we’re going to a party!” for the entirety of our drive. I had simply tuned her out, and I was completely surprised.

Perhaps I have an aptitude for surprise. Perhaps “we’re going to a party” is the truest thing about our lives. I moved to Maplehurst ten years ago with dreams of growing community, but no matter how I gathered people, every effort seemed to fall a bit short.

I dream about gatherings the way a painter might dream about color and canvas, so was my disappointment only the inevitable disappointment of the artistic life? After all, the vision that drives us to write or paint or create never can be perfectly contained by the poem or painting or party.

My surprise came because the night and the party and the people were perfect. The air was cool, the moon was bright, the white tulips held on. The French-speaking, crepe-making duo were a delight. The native beauties on offer in the plant sale tent made us wonder why anyone grows lawn.

The wines being poured by a family of vintners had English and Spanish poetry on the labels.

The man on the keyboard could have held his own in a Humphrey Bogart movie. The woman singing songs in French and English made me think of breakfasts at Tiffany’s.

And in the background, my friends, hosting their hearts out as if this were their home, too.

As if they’d been dreaming of a garden party for years. As if they were dancers, dancing their own steps, yet these steps somehow fit every other dancer’s steps.

The perfect gathering I had long imagined could only ever happen through the shared efforts of a community. Apparently, for these ten years, we’ve been growing the relationships that could imagine and execute the garden party of my dreams. When I told my friends I could not have done it without them, this was quite literally true.

Just as a garden party requires a garden and a garden requires seasons, a community also requires seasons. We are making an investment of time in one another, even when it feels as if nothing is happening, nothing is changing, that we are simply living, simply passing time.

But always, seeds are breaking underground.

Stems are pushing up.

This garden party was a sudden flowering on soil that had been well prepared and a stem that had been reaching skyward for a long time.

I always wondered why my parties and gatherings and community-building efforts seemed to fall a little flat. It wasn’t failure. It was fall. It was winter.

Now spring has come.

About the Photographer: It is Alyssa’s honor to capture whatever makes people come alive - whether that’s their business, their family, or being in their favorite place. It’s a joy for her to be a fly on the wall, capture magical, candid moments, and make people shine!

Find her at www.alyssaruth.com or on Instagram @alyssaruthphotography

Tell me a story about playfulness, silliness, and fun...

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e are a bit nomadic. In 23 years of marriage, my husband and I have moved 15 times. Our children have been a part of 6 of these moves, and none of them have ever been near to family. All of this means

that summers and Decembers often find us traveling across the country in a new move or to visit family.

I adore these car travel trips. In real life, I struggle to play and be silly. These car trips feel like permission to just let go. We have silly traditions like the Magic Sack. Every so often, I yell, “Magic Sack!” and reach into a bag I’ve

stuffed full of car trip treats — clown wigs, mustache glasses, mad lib books, Dairy Queen Blizzard coupons, monkeys that stick to the window. My favorite was a tiny, voice-changing megaphone that inspired a back seat road show complete with commercials and road sign readings. Our road trips are how my kids found their way to country music. The closer we get to Texas, the more I want to find an old country music station and listen to the tunes

that kept me company through high school.

And so began a tradition. I created a playlist of 90’s country music (just the good ones, y’all), and the kids start looking for the “Welcome to Texas” state line sign. As soon as we cross over, I crank up the music and it’s hard to decide who’s singing along the loudest with Shania, The Chicks, Jo Dee Messina, Trisha Yearwood, Faith Hill, and Alan Jackson (It’s alright to be itty bitty!). To add to the humor, my husband

immediately puts on his noise canceling headphones and starts singing “y’all, y’all, y’all” with an off-key twang. There is no end of laughter, and the memories made will keep us company long after the novelty of old country music has worn off. And I’m learning to let go a little more in real life, too. You won’t find me wearing a clown wig or belting out “Wide Open Spaces” on most days, but I’m finding the silly.

I’m learning to lean in to fun.

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y family likes to be playful in the worst possible moments. Dark humour runs rampant on both sides of my lineage. My Dad’s ladder blew over whilst he was roofing our barn in my childhood home, and my Mom’s mom who lived with us saw this, turned and said to my mother, “Mary-Ann, he’s stuck, now’s your chance…”

Years later, when I was a late teen and my parents went to pick out my mother’s grave site in the late stages of her fight with terminal cancer, they found a picturesque spot on a hill and Dad turned to her and ever so tactfully asked, “Why don’t you lie down and try it on for size?” Luckily she saw the beautiful absurdity and laughed instead of dissolving into tears.

Almost fifteen years later, my four siblings and I and our families would sit down at a restaurant for lunch between visitations for our late father’s funeral and just enjoy each other’s company. At the height of the lunch, as I, about to give birth the next day to my son, prepared to enjoy the chocolate covered strawberries I had been craving all meal long, my younger

brother swooped in and stole one right off my fork and swallowed it whole before I could even react, frozen in shock at the blatant theft. My niece commented “did you just steal food from a PREGNANT WOMAN?!” and we all lost it. My Dad would have loved it and considered this jovial meal the perfect tribute to his sense of humour.

We have used humour as a (usually healthy) coping mechanism, and as a way of defying despair and keeping hope in front of us. It’s the dim light in a dark place, the way to not deny the depth of what is happening, but to find the light in the midst of it, the joy in the storms.

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

Dear God, We cannot even today.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

(With love from Anna G. & Elrena, who both had Covid whilst preparing this edition for publication!)

To download a printable version of this prayer, click her

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