P&S Aug 2022 GIFT

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Elrena Evans

Happy August, Paper&String readers!

W

e have a very important announcement for you, this month.

After two and a half years of creating Paper&String, two and a half years of inviting you to Read, Listen, Taste, Grow, and Gather with us each month, we took a sabbatical in July to rest. And on that sabbatical, we noticed something: a quickening, a stirring, a call to create. Something that is both now, and notyet.

We heard the call, individually, and then began to talk about it as a team. Are you feeling this way, too? Does this stirring in my heart stir in yours, as well?

And the answer, over e-mail and voicemail and text, was… yes. I hear it, too.

We don’t quite know what it is, yet. But as creators, we recognize the beginnings of something new.

We are praying, discerning, and brainstorming… and we are taking a pause from Paper&String to allow us the space for this new growth.

This isn’t the end, dear friends. This is only a pause, a caesura, as we’ve called it, to make space for what is to come.

Practically speaking, we will pause all Paper&String subscriptions so you won’t be charged for the coming months. And we will be in touch, in three months’ time… and we can’t wait to tell you all about what our hearts and our minds are dreaming.

Until then, this month in Paper&String, we are noticing. We are noticing majestic mountains, and tiny green shoots. We are noticing the inner workings of our own minds. We are noticing how a small act of kindness can fill our hearts even after decades.

My youngest son, who is eight, is a noticer. A noticer, and a thinker… the one most likely in his secondgrade classroom to ask about the limits of jazz music, as in, when is jazz no longer considered jazz? A few months ago he noticed that “nothing”—because it is a word—is not in fact “nothing,” it’s a thing. He wrote a poem about this in school, which I have included here in Paper&String.

Until we meet again, keep noticing. Notice the small joys and the tiny green shoots. Notice the swell of awe in your hearts and the humbling mountains. Notice both the joys, and the sorrows, which wait for us in this wild and wonderful world. Notice, and with us thank the Creator, for all his gifts of love.

It has been a joy and a delight and a privilege to create this care package for you each month.

Until we meet again….

Noticing

by Christie Purifoy

O

ne afternoon in August, I read a poem exhorting me, the dear reader, to notice the world around me.

Pay attention! the poet sang.

Open your eyes and marvel! No grasshopper or petal is too small to be worthy of our regard. My heart rose up in response, and I set aside my book.

I would notice! I would pay attention! Right now!

But the first thing I noticed as soon as my book was no longer blocking my field of vision, was a weed growing right in the middle of my window box planter. When I drew near in order to pull the offending weed, I noticed a rash of powdery mildew on the lower leaves of my flowers. Leaning in to inspect the powdery mildew, I saw that the wooden side of my window box had cracked nearly in two. With a sigh, I sat back down and retrieved my book.

Why pull the weed that threatened to smother the infected flowers that grew in a box that was surely about to break?

I have always taught my children to notice the world around them. Since they were babies, I have cried out, Look at that butterfly! That sky!

That shapely tree! I have always said, do you hear that

birdsong? That bubbling creek? The sound of the breeze in the highest leaves? I want my children to notice the world around them, to open their ears and eyes and marvel. I want them to know that no bug or petal (or person!) is too small to be worthy of our regard. But I have never said, Look! There is a weed, a pest, a stain, a broken mess.

Yet when we take the time to open our eyes and look around us, we see as many messes as marvels, as many broken things as beautiful.

Sometimes my children notice the things I do not want them to notice. They read the headline, overhear the news report, ask about the whispered conversation. Sometimes, we are gathered around the table, and I look meaningfully toward the baby of the family and mouth, we’ll talk about it later. Sometimes it is the baby who notices the sorrowful thing, and I am forced to notice with her. Always in those moments, I am tempted to offer the platitudes I myself would never find acceptable if they were offered to me. Platitudes are

the philosophical equivalent of Hush now, child, go back to sleep, but no poet ever sang a song about wilful oblivion or deliberate blindness. We do not celebrate the ostrich in our stories or our songs. Yet oblivion and blindness do sing a tempting siren tune.

Brokenness is not the only troubling thing we notice when we set ourselves to practice noticing. We also notice absence.

Recently, I noticed the lack of something I had not noticed in a long while. In fact, I had not

noticed it for years and years, had not noticed it since I was a child in the back of my father’s wood paneled station wagon, careening up hill and down as we drove the gravel roads at night on our way to grandmother’s farm. In those days, these nighttime drives would stir up great clouds of winged insects.

The headlights, our windshield: these things were a beacon for the moth-y denizens of night, and the next morning, my father would take a hose and a sponge and attempt to remove a hundred, a thousand, a million? insect bodies from our family car. Today, I am raising my own children in a fairly rural area.

We regularly drive past farms not so different from my grandmother’s, though we see apple trees where I once noticed live oak and pecan.

But clouds of insects?

A car windshield splattered with gossamer wings? Never. I’m not sure my children have ever seen such a thing.

All I need is one quick trip down an internet rabbit hole, and I confirm the absence I have noticed: insect populations are declining. Bird populations have less food to offer their young. I pull myself up and out of the hole and turn off my computer before delving too deep into the nightmare scenarios regarding pollinators and our global food supply. Part of me wishes I had never noticed this particular absence. What good is noticing if it only leads to grief? Or–even worse–to worry?

As a longtime gardener, I am on daily, intimate terms with this question. In my garden, I am often like the three monkeys who see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. I avoid looking closely at certain areas of my garden because if I don’t notice the weeds or pests or various garden plagues, I won’t be bothered by the weeds or pests or various garden plagues.

The proverb may ask about a tree falling in the forest, but my own version of the proverb asks about an unseen rosebud. If this rosebud is devoured by invasive Japanese beetles unnoticed, has anything been truly lost? Deep down, I want to believe that nothing has really been lost. Or, at the very least, that this loss does not matter, and that it asks nothing of me.

That is the very inconvenient thing about noticing: once we have seen, we cannot un-see.

Whether it is a rosebud, a beetle, or my hurting neighbor, I am not so bad as the figures in Jesus’s parable. Spotting trouble, I do not cross to the other side of the road. But I do march along life’s road with blinders on lest I be held accountable for some mess or stain or broken thing. No doubt I am not alone in trying not to see in this way, in trying not to notice. The only problem is that the comfortable, unnoticed life I seek is a life that does not exist. Life is change. Life is growth. Anything else is death.

The possibilities and the pitfalls of a mortal life are the stuff of many stories, tales, and legends.

From The Velveteen Rabbit and Pinocchio to the elves of Tolkieen’s tales, a mortal life is both a gift and a burden. In fact, the two elements are the warp and weft of life. To pull the thread of one is to unmake the whole. We are alive because we can change and grow. Because we can change and grow, we will one day die.

Because we can change and grow, our noticing matters. When we notice and respond, we are changed or we effect change. We live and we bring life.

My refusal to see, then, is a refusal to live the fullest possible life. Do I want to be a real human? Like the stuffed bunny who longed to be real? Or the wooden puppet who longed to be a boy? Or the elven maiden who chose a mortal life for love? These are heady thoughts, a long way off from my garden pests and mildewed flowers. I am no fairy tale princess. I am only an ordinary woman in an ordinary garden in this ordinary world who has somehow found that all the books on her many shelves are saying the same thing: Wake up and pay attention. Live.

Let the things you see—the “good” and the “bad”— change you and soften you and shape you. And be an agent of change in the world.

In the creation songs of Genesis, we read about the origin of all life. God is the creator of everything. First, God separates and shapes and brings order. Then, God fills everything with life. Finally, God makes a garden, and places people there. Adam and Eve are to be gardeners. Their work is a microcosm of God’s own: shaping and bringing order to the natural world and then filling it with life. This is the work we have inherited.

This is the work our perfect gardener, Jesus Christ, empowers us to do. But can we do it with half-opened eyes?

And an unwillingness to do the uncomfortable work of changing and being changed?

By the end of summer, the many weeds in my garden weigh heavily on my mind.

The thought of them fills me with dread. I procrastinate in every possible way. But when I finally throw on some work clothes and drop a sunhat on my head in order to grab great handfuls of stiltgrass and crabgrass, common copperleaf and ground ivy, I am flooded with relief.

I sweat buckets and grumble about how much I would rather sit on the porch with a book, yet I notice how quickly I clear ground. In half an hour, I have freed enough space from weedy invaders that I forget about my book and my porch and I begin to dream of flowers. There is room here for so much more. Perhaps another dahlia? Or pink-tinted hydrangea?

I know, perhaps a container with pretty purple hyssop for feeding those declining bees. In this way, I notice. My garden changes, becomes better, fills with life. And so do I, its gardener.

Noticing…

By Allison Duncan

W

hen I was out in my garden, hunting down cabbage worms to squish, a man I’ve never seen before looked at me over the fence, and said, “My dear, it’s a pleasure to see what you grow.”

••• On three occasions, when I have come home from work and checked my mail, I have found little paper airplanes made from Post-It Notes in my mailbox, made for me by my 8-year-old neighbor.

••• After my friend’s mom died of cancer, she finally took back a lot of library books that were long overdue. She explained the reason for her delay to the librarian and reached for her wallet to pay the hefty fines. But the librarian told her, “Oh, honey, we don’t charge fines for people whose mothers have just died.”

•••

An Oscar-winning actor talked about being a dad and shared that, earlier that day, he was with his daughter as she was sitting on the toilet. “OK, Daddy,” she said, when she was ready for him to wipe her butt. “This is the best day of my life!” he said, and laughed. He was joking. But also not joking.

••• My great aunt lives in an apartment in a retirement home.

When COVID had just begun to lurk and spread, and she and the other residents were stuck in their rooms, she told me about a young man who sang hymns as he delivered meals, his music echoing through the empty halls. “He has a beautiful voice,” she said.

•••

One summer in my teens, I was getting ready to take the SAT. I had watched instructional videos, checked study guides out of the library, and taken practice tests, working hard to memorize as many college-level vocabulary words, algebraic formulas, and test-taking strategies as I could.

My parents were away, and my grandmother was staying with us.

The night before the test, we slept in my parents’ room, the only one in the house with an air conditioning unit. My grandmother took the queen-size bed, and I slept on a cushy pull-out sofa mattress on the floor, with the air conditioner cranked up to fight the Baltimore humidity.

I needed a good night’s sleep. But my mind woke me early, before my alarm, racing through daunting scenarios, adrenaline-fueled. I lay still on my side in the chilled air, hoping to sink back into unconsciousness and snatch a few more minutes of rest.

But I did not. Instead, I heard my grandmother quietly approach me, thinking I was still asleep.

I felt her lift the edge of the sheet from around my middle and pull it up to cover my shoulder.

Two decades later, why do I still remember—and cherish—this tiny act of tenderness?

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 Wikjhgdren sweet snap of a clover’s stem or drank from a Editkghfhsenburg Ihoneysuckle wept as I performed considering trumpet.this Andsong, yet, eventually, I felt Rating: G my and asking take it easy on the suffering need for work that isGod also to play and play that What You Know: I can’t put it better me—to giveNeed me aTo break.

With the psalmists is also work (have you ever watched a young than dary publisher Square Halo Books is coming to before me, I want to create safe spaces for those child at play? They are working very hard). your rescue.” who might feel similarly; places where Eventually, I made my own garden.

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

Now, I think, Diving In: l will invite 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.

I always notice flowers.

- Andy Warhol

with ANNA GRIST

An Unexpected Journey “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door. You step into the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.” - Bilbo Baggins

S

ome journeys happen in the nether and in the corporeal, and take twists we don’t expect. This last year has been this way for our family. “Our son is going to get his ADHD assessment this week, finally,” I told Elrena this while we were working on an edition of Paper&String many months ago.

She immediately said, “Then I think you need to see this before it’s out in the world…” and sent me some sections from her book, Special Grace: Prayers and Reflections for Families with Special Needs, including “A Prayer for A Diagnosis.”

I hadn’t even finished the first line before I’d teared up, it was exactly what I needed: to feel SEEN and understood. To know we weren’t the first, nor the last, to go through this process.

I slowly made my way through the vulnerable and sometimes hilarious journey Elrena led us on in her beautiful book, and sat with so many of the prayers that I could now say “yes, our family is here” for. Her words gave me words for things I couldn’t name myself. I found inclusion into this community as I recognized ways we, too, were navigating similar terrain even though the diagnoses and severity and outcomes may differ, the questions and fears were much the same. There is something freeing in the naming of things, giving shape to things that live in the dark in our minds, on the edges, that we can’t fight until we can see their form.

This was months ago, and though we were asked to have a review ready to share as the book launched, I found myself stopping every time I went to write words down. I had many, There is something all of them good, but freeing in the they didn’t feel finished. naming of things, I knew if I sat down giving shape to to write the review, I things that live wouldn’t be able to finish in the dark in our it yet, but I had no idea minds, on the why.

edges, that we can’t fight until we can see their form.

Then, just over a week ago, I was able to go see my doctor and get my own ADHD consultation and assessment after over a year of asking myself questions, and investigating information that no one had ever presented to me before as a possibility.

As a 39-year-old Mom of two, I finally had someone who listened to the ways I’d been navigating in the world my whole life and said, “That is not normal, you’re right, that is ADHD, you’ve been overcompensating for your brain.

Let’s start a treatment plan.”

I started ADHD medication on an idle Tuesday morning. By 11am I was sitting in a Subaru dealership waiting room with tears streaming down my face because for the first time ever in my life, I wasn’t fighting my brain to be heard and to navigate my thoughts.

I could sit and focus without intrusive thoughts. I could decide to do a task and not have to fight not only my brain trying to go in a million directions, but my emotions saying “NOPE, VIBE’S OFF, NOT TODAY.” My

subconscious was doing its job and sorting through the impulses rather than making me negotiate with the terrorist inside my head that held my executive functioning skills at gunpoint.

Suddenly, I could see exactly how much I’d learned to fight, cope, compensate just to exist as a human going about their normal day. I felt the weight of how much I’d been carrying, thinking that life was this hard for everyone, I was just lazy, I hadn’t applied myself, I hadn’t made myself pay attention. When in reality,

I’d been working possibly twice as hard as the person next to me, been forcing myself to concentrate, and had maintained sheer willpower to make myself go against what my brain was telling me was actually possible. For thirty nine years. As a wife. As an employee. As a mother of one, then two children.

I could suddenly understand, in a small part, how the world is set up to misunderstand, give no help for, and be set up to work against people who don’t have a neurotypical brain or a typically-abled body. And how if you didn’t measure up, you might spend the rest of your life trying to keep up, while being told you weren’t trying hard enough.

Suddenly, all these prayers—representative of families who KNEW they were on this journey of finding help and a way to be a fulfilled human for their child who was born or had acquired differently-abled traits—were prayers I needed to have prayed over ME. I was the one praying for my diagnosis, because I hadn’t gotten that need met when I was a child.

I realized the book had impacted me so much not just because I could see how we would need these prayers when we had no words of our own for our own children, but for my very own self also. That this book would help me reparent myself in ways my parents weren’t equipped to back in the days when ADHD was considered a hyper-active boy diagnosis, never even considered for a girl.

I grieved for the little girl who worked so hard to be “normal” so that her already stressed parents wouldn’t have to give her extra help. I grieved for my Mom, who now I realize was probably also navigating ADHD as an undiagnosed adult, and in many ways couldn’t cope and didn’t have words, only shame for what she was trying to live with.

Elrena shares her story in such a way that you can see the overwhelming strength and will that is behind what would look to a typical family as a “normal” day which in fact has nothing normal about it, and I could see the similarities to my own childhood and the way I parent now.

Now that I, too, finally have my own diagnosis for ADHD, I could finally finish that review because I could explain how this book continues to minister to MY soul, as parent with ADHD AND a child with ADHD, and another child who we are on a journey to get a diagnosis for as well. How the grace of community is extended to any who fall under the vast spectrum of those who don’t measure up to what is considered “normal” in our society. That I now felt seen, understood, that hope and joy had been extended for us as our family starts navigating all the ways we will have to live with ADHD, treat parts of it where it’s possible, and learn how to better interact with each other and the world around us.

This book can walk us through joy, grief, acceptance, learning, and all the myriad responses to parts of life as a special needs family. Shame can’t survive in the light, and this book brings the shame we feel as parents or children who keep telling ourselves we SHOULD be able to do this or that, and instead tell us that we can only do so much, then we need to just rest and just accept and just learn grace. Special grace, given one day at a time.

No easy answers, maybe no happy endings, sometimes no solutions, but always grace.

Those without special needs who want to better understand those with special needs in their communities will find a glimpse into the ways that life for special needs families is both hard and beautiful. Entering into that story can develop grace for understanding the weight of effort on families with special needs to live and move in their communities.

Special Grace shows the ways that we special needs humans are another kind of “thin place” in this world where God is visible more fully to us and through us, where glory can be seen if you stop to look with keen eyes and your whole soul. Where God’s grace for humanity is seen more fully.

The timing of this book with the journey that our family has found ourselves on this year, a journey that will continue, was absolutely providential. Like Bilbo, we will find ourselves with help when we least expect it, on paths we didn’t plan for, experiencing things we wouldn’t have even had words for before we found ourselves in them.

So we will hike onwards, taking the beauty with the blisters, stopping when we need rest, consulting our maps, and other hikers along the way. May we all find ourselves with grace given at just the right time, and the wisdom to recognize it when it comes.

Poetry: What is Nothing?

By Christopher Evans

If nothing is a thing what is nothingness?

The void of space could be counted as nothing but it’s filled with void.

Air could be counted as nothing but it’s filled with oxygen and other atoms.

Can nothing be counted as Nothingness

Christopher Evans is eight years old and going into the third grade. He likes creating imaginary worlds, writing poetry, art, music theory, dancing (sometimes), interesting words like “conundrum” and “tintinnabulation,” and ropes courses.

Pocast: Anna’s Picks

I

hope that out of this list of some of my favorite people to take on a walk or drive, you find some joy and new insights as you enjoy these conversations...

Pearls With Kristi McLelland • Kristi is a professor of Ancient Middle Eastern studies and gives incredible context and depth and accuracy to diving through the Bible. Our church ladies group recently finished her Jesus & Women Bible study series, and it’s a LIFE ALTERING, beautiful explanation of the importance of how Jesus interacted with and viewed women. This podcast gives a more broad and varied selection of insights that I’ve found incredibly helpful in understanding more completely and accurately the contexts that inform our reading of the Bible in a Western world that misses much of the nuance and understanding of the times and cultures of the Bible.

A Drink With A Friend with Tsh Oxenreider and Seth Haines • These two authors dive into how to notice and carve out a more sacramental life, and touch on a variety of topics and questions. This is a great podcast for a little deeper dive into how and why to cultivate an intentional and introspective life.

The Next Right Thing with Emily P. Freeman • I’ve read all of Emily’s books, consider her a kindred spirit, and enjoy her gentle questions and observations. This podcast is about making decisions and how they make our lives. She delves into many different threads that relate to decision making, and none of them are less than useful.

We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle (and often her wife and her sister) • This one stretched me in the best ways last year, especially the way these women tackle hard topics with grace and vulnerability and open hands. I’ve learned immensely about what I actually looks like to really love and understand people who have been pushed to the margins or who have encountered hostility or misunderstanding, specifically LGBTQ+ and BIPOC people. I have not listened to

an episode yet that God has not spoken to me or humbled me through, and though I know our readers will have a wide spectrum of places and beliefs, I would recommend this podcast as a way to connect, to combat dehumanization, and develop compassion and understanding. I highly recommend the episodes with Kate Bowler on suffering, and all of Brené Brown’s times on this show.

Just for Fun: Office Ladies with Angela Kinsey & Jenna Fischer • This is just a fun and sometimes touching rehashing of “Angela” and “Pam”’s memories from each episode of The Office. For Office fans, the background and guests are a really fun way to revisit the show, and honestly I cry over a lot of them because of the way every guest just has such great memories of working on the show with the various crew, cast, and writers sounds like the best kind of ego-less, creative collaboration, and will restore your faith in humanity.

Rocky Mountain Majesty from Tonya Salomons

I

’m sitting on an airplane as I write this article. My husband, Brian, and I are heading to Edmonton to visit with his family. The last two and a half years have made travel almost impossible, and there is a sense of urgency with this visit. Brian’s dad’s health is poor, and while we are anticipating a wonderful trip, there is a bittersweet element that cannot be ignored.

Of course, anytime we head west my thoughts always turn to the mountains. Jasper National Park in particular holds a special place in our hearts. It was there, on the side of a mountain overlooking the winding Athabasca river, Brian got down on one knee and asked me for forever.

That was 30 years ago and yet it feels just like yesterday.

The last time we’ve been west was 2014 to celebrate Mom & Dad Salomons’s 50th wedding anniversary. It was the first time in decades

that the whole family was together. What a celebration. Our kids were a lot older, and we decided a trip to the mountains were in order.

We loaded up the rental car bright and early for the four-hour trip due west of Edmonton.

The kids, in their teens and groggy with sleep,

grumbled a bit as we hit the McDonald’s drive thru. We hadn’t even made it past the city limits when I looked back and both kids were fast asleep, stacked one on top of the other— exactly the way they used to sleep in the car when they were smaller. Brian and I grinned at each other, our quiet murmurings playing like a lullaby.

There’s a feeling you get when you see the Rockies for the first time. It’s difficult to describe. It’s like everything in you rises praise, your spine straightens,

your eyes widen and try as you might you will never be able to stop the way your jaw gapes. They are a sight. It was a view I didn’t want my kids to miss. The noticing of the mountains changes you—stunned by glory while simultaneously feeling so small and inadequate.

The kids were still fast asleep when we pulled off the highway in Hinton, Alberta to fill up with gas. Brian got back into the car, turned to the back seat and coaxed them awake. Having been born and raised in Edmonton, he knew what I knew, there was something spectacular about to happen and he didn’t want them to miss a minute. And just as we crested the hill outside of Hinton, I could hear the gasps and exclamations from the backseat.

It was pure joy watching them see those mountains for the first time. Now that they’re grown and on their own I don’t get to watch them notice things for the first time very much

anymore, but I can’t wait to catch that view again on this trip, and think about my kids.

In honour of Alberta, particularly its famous beef, here is a recipe for the best hamburgers you will ever taste. No grill required, but feel free to use the BBQ if you want.

These are best when the ground beef and steak are fresh. They are super simple with zero fillers.

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

guest column

ist

with ELRENA EVANS

I

am not much of a gardener, but I will tell you a gardening story.

In the front of my house is a garden bed that used to hold the most wretched boxwoods.

Untended for years before we moved in, they were flat-in-the-middle, funky-looking things that my aunt said smelled like cat pee. I wanted to rip them out, but my husband said it would be too much of a project. So there they grew, funky and smelly and making me feel ever-soslightly annoyed every time I looked at them.

A few years ago, I tried to plant a clematis in the bed with the wretched boxwoods. I like clematis, and I thought it might be nice to have something growing up one of the support beams for the overhang on my house. Except... the clematis wouldn’t grow up the beam.

All it wanted to do was lie on the ground and tangle with the weeds. I tried to train it onto the beam, and it still just laid all over the ground. I got a little trellis and tried to train it onto the trellis, and it still just laid all over the ground. Finally I looked it up online, and I learned that clematis doesn’t really want to grow on a trellis or a beam—it has a different kind of climby-

tendril thingies, and it wants to grow on something like wire mesh.

If I wanted something to climb up a beam, I should have gotten a morning glory.

When I read that, I felt stupid. And I gave up on the clematis, and let it lie all over the ground and tangle with the weeds. And someone even gave me a little wire cage to put around it, at some point... but by then it was too committed to the ground, and entangled with all the weeds.

And then I forgot about it.

This past spring, my husband went away on a business trip, and while he was gone I decided the boxwoods were going to go. As I was ripping them out (which was quite the project) I found a little piece of what looked like a dead stick with some old roots on it, right where the clematis had been.

Oh, you, I said… and just seeing it made me feel stupid again.

I couldn’t decide what to do with it. For some reason I didn’t want to just chuck it… so it laid on the brick walkway all day in the sun, and I glared at it from time to time. But then, for whatever reason, at the end of the day when I was all done with the boxwoods, I stuck the dead stick back in the ground and put the wire cage around it with the little trellis it refused to grow on when it was busy lying on the ground with the weeds. And I expected nothing.

A few weeks later… I noticed.

I noticed a tiny green shoot. And I was like... no way. That thing was DEAD. I don’t even know why I stuck it back in the ground! But there it was... a tiny green shoot.

It didn’t get any bigger, the next few days, so I thought well, that’s the end of that. But then a few days later… I noticed again. It had grown, overnight. And it found its way to the cage.

And then it just kept growing.

I bought a new trellis, online, without actually reading the specs (oops) and when it showed up it was almost six feet tall. I assembled it and stuck it in the ground over the clematis anyway, my youngest son watching me the entire time. At the top of the trellis was a little carved bird, and my son asked me, what if it grows up all the way to the bird?

I told him, I don’t think it will… I’m shocked this thing is growing at all.

But it grew. And it grew, and it grew, and it grew. It reached the little carved bird. And then it bloomed, on the day of my eldest daughter’s graduation. From an old dead piece of stick, I now have a glorious clematis, greeting me every morning and filling me with delight.

I told this story to a friend, and she wrote me back and said, “I think sometimes gardens are a metaphor for life. Just when we think there is no hope for new growth, out sprouts a tiny little green shoot. And we realize that there is always hope.”

And that is my gardening story.

To download this printable page, click here!

what the Bible says about his love is true.

But it grew. And it grew, and it grew, and it grew. It reached the little carved bird. And then it bloomed, on the daythis of my eldest daughter’s I wept as I performed song, considering graduation. an old God deadto piece I my sufferingFrom and asking takeof it stick, easy on now have a glorious clematis, me every me—to give me a break.

With greeting the psalmists morning filling with delight. before me,and I want to me create safe spaces for those who might feel similarly; places where honesty and vulnerability will invite communion I told this story to a friend, and she wrote me and healing; the ground where relationship back and said, deepens.

“I think sometimes gardens are a metaphor May you meet Christ in the midst of your own for life. Just when we think there is no hope suffering or questions, pain or confusion this He toldgrowth, them another parable: “The kingdom like a for new out sprouts a tinyof heaven littleisgreen Easter season, Christ mercy mustard seed, whichfriends. a man took May and planted in hishave field. Though it is shoot.

And we realize that there is always on the ussmallest all. of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden hope.” plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.”

- Matthew 13:31-32

And that is my

v

gardening story.

Practicing the Art of Noticing with Amy Knorr

A

re you feeling like the season has gone by in a blur and you can’t believe it’s already August? Or maybe the season is dull and faded from overuse. Either way, it sounds like a good time to pause and refocus. Won’t you join me in a short and simple practice of noticing?

Click here or on image above to watch Amy’s video

Click here or on image above to listen to Amy’s audio clip (video form)

Are you weary of online spaces where everyone shouts and no one listens?

Do you wish the online world nurtured more goodness, truth, and beauty?

Would you like to grow and connect online in ways that transform and enrich your real, everyday life?

No matter where you live, no matter how many miles between the front door of this barn and your own front door, you can come in.

You can join the Black Barn Collective.

Click here to explore more about the Black Barn Online or Click here to join right away!

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.

introduction by Elrena Evans

A

few years ago when I was going through a difficult time, a dear friend of mine wrote me the following prayer, encouraging me to notice all the places where goodness and light and the peace of God were present in my life. I printed out the prayer on a small piece of paper, and folded it up to the size of a quarter, to carry around in my hand on very hard days.

I don’t carry it around anymore. The words now live inside of me. But every now and then, I take out the piece of paper, crumpled and yellowing, from a small box where I keep my special things. And I read it again. Because it helps me. It helps me to notice.

My prayer for you this morning is that you feel a moment of peace.

A moment when you know that life is good.

A moment when you feel that you are loved.

A moment when you feel the strength of God with you.

A moment when your body feels free and light and unburdened.

A moment when you laugh genuinely.

And smile because you can’t help but smile.

To download a printable version of this prayer, click here

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