My lovely friend Becca is giving away one of her original paintings. The first time I saw the music staff with birds, I fell in love with this one, so if you don’t go to her art site, I stand a better chance of winning. Thanks for your consideration.
Author Archives: Life is For Living book
The Stuff of Discussions and Recipes
I have a small complex. It’s this:
I’ve always thought men’s discussions more interesting than women’s. I don’t know why, because I do love to hear about my domestic friends’ gardens and kitchens and babies. Honestly. But generally, men have these controlled, under-stated turns of phrase that hold my attention and make me laugh.
I don’t know what to do about this complex, but I’m putting it out there because I suspect that I’m not alone in it. There are some of us who want to live as full and rich lives as possible without denying our feminine design of nurturing and supporting. We want to think in addition to make dinner.
How can a young woman become a thinking woman? A sweet friend asked me this last week, and it was fun to think/talk/discuss it for a little bit instead of compare pudding recipes. (I’m all for cooking good food but not if it becomes pride or one’s life focus.)
These are some of my ramblings about it:
A woman who reads and thinks through and discusses ideas is a wise woman. She pursues wisdom, not intellect or logical men’s discussions. All of Proverbs urges her to call out for, search for, be turned toward wisdom. It’s a direction and shape of her life, not just words that she bats around.
My friend is a mother, and I’m single, and both of us need huge amounts of wisdom–probably she needs it even more than I because she’s needing to equip her children to live their stories well out of passionate love for Jesus, and she’s supporting and walking beside her husband in his life vision. She needs lots more inside her than knowing recipes for puddings and salads.
A couple weeks ago I was teaching a girls’ class, and we explored Proverbs 31. It’s a daunting chapter for women, especially when they aren’t even 20 years old yet. But we did a fun exercise with the text. At every verse, we wrote at least one character quality that describes the action in the verse–words that describe what the woman was inside more than what she did.
We found words like thrifty, active, cheerful, prepared. It made the description of the woman seem warm, human, inviting to be with.
What if Proverbs 31 is a personification of wisdom, and not describing a super-woman? If this is true, we could say that being cheerful, active, prepared is part of being wise.
Which means that every woman regardless of her giftings and life assignment can intently look for wisdom, watch around the corner for it, be prepared to take in whatever she can learn. God knew life would be too big for us and that we’d need help outside ourselves. James wrote the wonderful words that God invites us to ask Him for wisdom for life, and He won’t scold us for asking.
Maybe there aren’t enough thinking women because there aren’t enough of us who are humble and needy enough and desperate enough to ask God to give us wisdom, when all the time He’s waiting for us to ask so He can help us and share His character with us.
A woman who is a thinker is only a researcher and analyst until she becomes a woman who is amazed at her Jesus and wants to be like Him and asks Him constantly for His advice and to share His heart with her. This has to give a beautiful shape to her life, and make her a nurturing, attractive person.
Which might or might not include making pudding from scratch.
Related post: No Bird-Brained Women
No Beauty?
“Why do Christians celebrate Christmas?” This was the conversation question.
“It started when Saint Nicholas started giving gifts to children. I’m an atheist, so that’s how I think Christmas began.”
“I’m a romantic, and want to have a lovely wedding in a church someday, so I can’t be an atheist, but I think those stories in the Bible are myths like Zeus.”
I listened because this was about practicing English, but then I said that I choose to believe that the stories are true, and when you read the stories about Jesus, you can see that He was such a beautiful person, the way He talked with people and loved them.
Then the conversation went to the funny ways I use words. I say a dog is ‘handsome’ and I say Jesus is ‘beautiful.’ “You can’t do this in our language!”
We laughed, and they left after I hugged them at the door, wishing them lovely Christmases. But it’s true: Jesus is a beautiful person, even if Isaiah said there was nothing beautiful or majestic about His appearance, nothing to attract us to Him. I wish I could have heard how Jesus read Isaiah’s words about the blind seeing and the captives given liberty. I wish I could have seen Him talking with children and the broken woman accused of adultery.
I’m thinking these days of how earthy Jesus was, how dust and bad smells and conflict was part of His world, and He didn’t run away from it, or think Himself above it.
Our grime and fracturedness is nothing new to Him. It was for the broken and shattered ones that He came, and I think that’s beautiful beyond words.
A related post: My Commander in Chief
This Week’s Reads
Because of always having several books on the go simultaneously, I finished 3 this week and they’re phenomenal enough to recommend them here.
The Dean’s Watch by Elisabeth Goudge is stuffy and passionate and achingly beautiful. I’d read it a long time ago, and it felt especially fitting to be re-reading it this week, since its setting is Advent. The characters are vivid and alive, even if sad and scruffy. They’re real. I’ve heard that it’s to be an allegory, but I haven’t seen through it all yet. There’s something in this quote though, that means more than the words say:
“It does not matter, Job,” said the Dean at last. “I mean it does not matter that the clock was broken. What matters is that the clock was made.”
For years, I shied away from Henri Nouwen’s The Wounded Healer because I thought it was too deep and wordy. But when I actually opened it I found it very readable and accessible. The depth and wisdom was amazing. The thoughtfulness and careful words are to be read slowly and digested. He talks alot about loneliness and how it’s not something to run away from, but can become a source of life for others.
This is the announcement of the wounded healer: ‘The master is coming–not tomorrow, but today, not next year, but this year, not after all our misery is passed, but in the middle of it, not in another place but right here where we are standing.’
This morning over coffee, I finished The Shack, the book that took the evangelical world by storm some years back. I’d read it before, after an operation when I was in a daze of painkillers, so not everything registered very well, but my impression then was the same as this time: that its message is valuable and powerful, but the writing style was very distracting. I wanted to mark out all the fluffy adverbs. Even so, I really like the picture of the fellowship and love among the Trinity, and the way they shower love and are ‘especially fond’ of people. The story was both convicting and comforting.
Mack, if anything matters then everything matters. Because you are important, everything changes; every time you reach out and touch a heart or a life, the world changes; with every kindness and service, seen or unseen, my purposes are accomplished and nothing will ever be the same again.
I never wanted an e-reader before, but today I do. Next week I plan to go to the US for 2 months. I’m teaching a Bible school class for girls for 3 wks, and have no room to take any books for resources. Living with one checked-in bag for 2 months means only essentials go. In theory and in practice, I like travelling light. But I hate to be book-less. I don’t know yet how my ideal will match my practice.
Related post: Heavy Books
To the Women I Saw Yesterday
Dear Women on the Street,
I walked past you this morning, sun shining and snow glittering. I was wearing my long down-filled coat, with the hood up, practically wrapped up in a blanket. I want to ask you why you scowled at me, raking me over with your eyes–eyes filled with what seemed to be contempt and disdain and disapproval.
I don’t get it.
Was it the tall hood that looks sort of like an astronaut? But lots of other ladies use their hoods too.
No, mine isn’t fur or even fur-lined. Was it the unfashionable tan color you disapproved of?
And I don’t wear mascara or lip-stick, but surely I wasn’t so haggard-looking that my un-painted face shocked you into scowling.
I was smiling. Was that it? The sun was shining, and I was happy thinking about the day and what I had to do before hosting my sister’s baby shower. Was it the smile that shocked you?
Would it be too much to ask for you to smile back? Yeah, I thought so.
You know, some days it gets to be Too Much. Some days I think I’ve had it with women who obsess about their hair and skin and nails and figure and I want to say CAN WE PLEASE JUST BE? Can we just relax and say I’m ok–you’re ok. You’re ok, just the way God made you, and I don’t have to prove anything, and you don’t either.
This class-consciousness, this taboo list of what you can wear or not wear because of what year it was fashionable, this caste system that has untouchables and upper-caste, I’m sick of it. Sick of the favoritism and elitism and snobbery. Sick of the capriciousness and pressure to perform. Is that why you can’t smile–you’re worn out from it?
So I opt out of it, and I’m happy to be out of the race. I probably don’t care enough about clothes and how I look, but I aim to be clean, smell nice, and dress modestly. Which is a whole other subject, and we won’t get into that here.
But please, please, please, if the sun shines and the snow is like glitter, please smile. Just try to eek out a little pleasure from the spires stretching into the sky and children on sleds.
I know it’s a sad world, and we cry when we see the news about children being shot, and our friends are ill, and our hearts are smashed into bits for reasons that no one knows. I know, I know, and it’s ok to cry.
And I know it’s different in this country, when you used to be able to curry favor from the police if you told them about an insurrectionist like me who didn’t do everything that everyone else did.
But today is today! The sun is shining! I’m walking past you and I’m not SO ugly!
I beg you, ladies, please smile back at me! It would make me so happy.
A Happy List
What made me smile this week:
1. buying hostess gifts for my trip to the US later this month
2. a child’s sled piled with snowballs
3. the mingled smells of coffee and tangerines
4.discovering delightful blogs to subscribe to: a foodie one, and a bookish one
5. red berries on a tree, powdered with snow
6. magnanimous love sent in a huge box all the way from America
7. picking greenery and putting it around the kitchen (greenery is magic because it arranges itself!)
8. a peppermint chocolate latte with all the trimmings made by Carolyn just for me
9. a successful decorating project (travel, paper, and fonts)
10. beautiful students beaming because they could make this construction: These boots are black.
11. knowing intimacy with the Almighty never changes because of circumstances
12. a long video Skype call with a friend who says it how it is with finesse and incredible largeness of soul
13. having time to teach two girls about pentangles, and seeing their fun with it
We Have a Winner and Advent
The random number generator chose #16 which means that Twila Burkholder won the giveaway for Tea and Trouble Brewing. Thanks to everyone who entered the drawing. It was way more fun than I was expecting, and it’s making me think about doing a giveaway for my own book, so stay tuned!
Until then, if/when it happens, you can order my book, Life is for Living (Not for Waiting Around) from the helpful people at CLR:
Christian Learning Resource
28500 Guys Mills Rd.
Guys Mills, PA 16327
Phone: 
FREE 814-789-4769
Order line: 877-222-GROW (4769)
And for a sneak preview of the book, you can go to my blog and read the first page of each chapter. They’re listed on the sidebar, so have a look.
In other news, this morning I heard myself say “It’s snowing, I’m listening to Christmas music, eating a donut and drinking tea. Life is good!”
It’s true.
Advent is a beautiful season, waiting and focusing, expecting the light that will erase darkness. This is my favorite Advent hymn, though I wish I’d know and understand its original German lines.
Comfort, comfort ye my people, speak ye peace, thus saith our God;
Comfort those who sit in darkness, mourning ‘neath their sorrows’ load.
Speak ye to Jerusalem of the peace that waits for them;
Tell her that her sins I cover, and her warfare now is over.
Make ye straight what long was crooked, make the rougher places plain;
Let your hearts be true and humble as befits His humble reign.
For the glory of the Lord now on earth is shed abroad,
And all flesh shall see the token that His word is never broken. –Johann Olearius
Book Giveaway: Tea and Trouble Brewing
Writers live these strange double lives. They want to write honestly, but they can’t always say things exactly as they are about themselves and the people they love, because it might be uncouth, or an invasion of privacy, or Too Much Information. Then people think the writer is a paragon of perfection, and stand around waiting to tell her that they feel like they know her when they actually don’t know her, and she can’t tell them that they have really inaccurate ideas about her.
But Dorcas is an author whose writing is as authentic as it is possible to be without being inappropriate. She is as witty as but not as sarcastic as Erma Bombeck, and she is gentle, without being spineless. Dorcas is one of those special people with whom I corresponded long before I actually met her. She advised me to self-publish my book instead of waiting longer for a publisher. It was the push I needed, and I’ve never regretted it. Then when she visited here in Poland and we drank tea together with her girls at her sister-in-law’s table, I saw how gentle and wise she is in real life. Happily, we still correspond now and then, (nearly always about writing) and I always feel safe and understood with her.
Now I get to promote her newest book, Tea and Trouble Brewing.
The whimsical cover illustration looks like the proverbial tempest in a teapot. I was charmed when I opened the cover and saw the table of contents, and that the five sections each had their own tea name. Oolong. Mint. Roiboos. This is going to be tasty! And it was, of course.
The way I can tell if it’s a good book or story is if it makes me laugh or cry. This book did both to me. To you I admit that I cried when Dorcas cried when their dog died. But I laughed aloud when she apologized tearfully to the fish dangling on the end of her fishing pole.
Dorcas graciously agreed to an interview with me. So here we go:
1. How did you decide on those 5 kinds of tea for the book sections?
Actually, I don’t recall. I went for variety, and some of my favorite flavors. And I love the sound of “oolong.” I considered including Kericho Gold Black Kenyan Tea but that’s not really a “kind” of tea in the same sense as green or rooibos.
Weren’t you tempted to include Lady Grey, Spiced Chai, and English Breakfast?
Well, yes. But you know, one has to stop somewhere.
2. Do you drink coffee at all, or is it always tea?
I do drink coffee on occasion. If I go out for breakfast, at church potlucks, now and then with my coffee-living children. I love iced coffee on a hot day.
3. Do you write in quietness in the middle of the night, or in the hubub of your family life?
I wish very very much that I could write in the midst of noise and action. It would make my life much easier. So my best times are early morning, late at night, and when everyone is out of the house. With my youngest being 13 years old, you’d think I’d be home alone all day. Somehow that doesn’t happen very often. And when it does, the phone rings all day. So this is an ongoing struggle for me, to find time to think and write.
4 Your stories aren’t stuffy, but full of depth. Your life experiences and your wise responses to them have given you have a lot to offer your world, but you don’t pour it out indiscriminately. What do you know now that you wish you’d have known when you were 21? (This is your chance to give free advice!)
If I could, I would go back and tell my 21-year-old self: Quit obsessing about everything, especially yourself. Most people mean well. God actually loves you. We are all sinners, so don’t let people intimidate you. You’re going to be fine. You’re as cute as you’re going to get, so enjoy it.
5. What’s the best piece of writing advice that you’ve ever received?
A tossup: Elisabeth Elliot’s “Make every word do its work,” (paraphrased) which means, cut out every unnecessary word. And “You have to write bad before you can write good,” which frees me from the paralysis of fear of beginning. I don’t know who said it. Oh, and Elizabeth Engstrom said that you don’t need to write with an agenda. Who you are and what you believe will come out inadvertently, whether you write novels or essays or advertising copy. That was freeing.
6. You have a gifted way of describing places like the Willemette Valley or Lake Victoria with crisp, simple words that help your readers see the scene. Have you ever considered travel writing?
Ooooohhh, have I considered travel writing. If I could come back and live another life, I’d be a travel writer. I love seeing a new place from the inside out, and telling about it. Going to a women’s party in Yemen and watching all those black robes get shed and those gaudily clad women come alive and party, and then writing about it, was a highlight of my writing career.
7. If time and money were no issue, where would you travel?
Australia. An island off Puget Sound. South Africa and Botswana. Eastern Europe. Ireland. Prince Edward Island. The Civil War battlefields. Jamaica. Somewhere in South America–maybe Paraguay.
8. Your dedication to Amy is beautifully worded. How many more dedications/books to your children are you aiming for? Does this look like hard work or pleasure to you?
You may note the progression of dedications: Paul. My parents. Matt. Amy. I told the children I plan to keep going and dedicate one to each of them. That looks like both pleasure and work. Getting Tea and Trouble Brewing published after numerous delays seemed to uncork something in my head, and now I have freely-flowing ideas for three or four more books.
Thanks, Dorcas, for sharing your world and words with us!
Now it’s your chance to win a free copy of Tea and Trouble Brewing! Leave a comment below to enter the drawing. Or if you can’t log in for a comment, email me at anitayoder-at-gmail-dot-com. The give-away is open for 7 days, and on Dec. 1 I’ll draw a number and send the book to the winner. All the way from Poland!
To buy your own copy , go to Amazon to pay by credit card. To pay by check, send $15 to Dorcas Smucker, 31148 Substation Drive, Harrisburg, OR 97446. . Dorcas is doing a promotion and is selling her 4 books for $40, shipping included.
Normal: Travelling and Telling Stories
“Do all Mennonites travel as much as you and your friends do?”
Last night wasn’t the first time that my friend asked me this. but it stumped me again. I don’t know what is normal for other Mennonites, only what’s normal for me. And normal for me is to hear stories of other countries, the food, the houses, transportation, the languages encountered. Stories and details galore, to wonder at and admire.
I said it’s normal for my family. Both of my grandfathers are globe-trotters dedicated to service, and the trait is strong in their grandchildren. An hour before my friend’s question, I’d read an email from my aunt planning Christmas activities with the extended family. There will be photos and stories from schools and missions in Liberia, the Far East, El Salvador, Mexico, Ukraine, Poland. Not to mention places of ministry within the US. Stories, stories, stories!
I’m not as well-traveled as I want to be, but packing a bag and making sure the ticket and money are safe is something I’ve often done–though not often enough to satisfy me. So I was ecstatic to be able to fly on a whim to Ukraine last week end and join a friend for a missionary conference. The quick decision and foreign country and new acquaintences thrilled me like little else could. I wrote my family and close friends a report that was long but didn’t nearly say everything because it’s impossible to put all one’s impressions and comparisons and theories of a new country on paper.
While I’m immensely grateful for the legacy of travelling and missions that my grandparents and parents gave me, I don’t want to minimize the value of being steady in the home place. (Though I have this sneaking suspicion that the majority of people do that because it’s their default setting rather than their calling. This makes me sad and a little angry sometimes. Is that my problem?) Going out to ‘do missions’ isn’t something to do for adventure. Sometimes the most anyone can do for the Kingdom is to be gracious to the irritating person beside them, to be gentle to the child speaking to them, to do more than the boss asks, to do the next thing even though it feels impossible.
Which we all must do, no matter where we are on this wide, beautiful globe.
Related post: Lengthening the Cords
Together is The Way to Be
When I go to church on Sunday morning, I think I don’t have impossible expectations. But it would be nice if everyone could be there on time. And please don’t expect me to chat with you while we’re singing because I don’t like being disturbed from focusing on the song and leader.
Would it be so much to ask to have the window cracked, so I could breath? Would it really be the death of anyone to have a light breeze in the room? It’s hard for me to concentrate on the speaker while I’m breathing fumes of fried onions and bad personal hygiene. I try sucking mints and holding my hand to my nose so as to smell the (nice) (Irish) lotion I used, but I still feel nauseated and need huge self-control to keep from bolting out the door.
When we’re drinking tea together afterwards, I want to have meaningful conversations, not negativity or complaining or arguing. I like to argue, but not after church. Let’s please try to take a day off from our vices.
We work hard to clean the place every Sat. and in several hours on Sun. the floor has clouds of dirt scattered around, sugary tea is splashed down the steps, empty water cups stand around, song books and chairs are anywhere and everywhere. It would be nice if someone else would care about keeping the place clean instead of just using it and leaving.
I could stay at home on Sunday mornings and be more comfortable on most every level. I could talk to God; He could talk to me. I could sing alone. I could even listen to a sermon. There could be worship and communication and encouragement.
But there wouldn’t be community.
I’m finding that when I leave seclusion and walk into a messy, unpredictable universe full of personalities and bodies, there are a lot of aspects that prickle, disturb, irritate me. But I would also miss out on way too many things that make my life richer.
So yesterday, I could hardly breathe during the service for the smell and the stuffy air. But there were wise words spoken, sad news shared, tears, hugs, and songs. There was care and love poured out, worship and surrender. Glints of beauty sparkled around us–beauty that I’m not willing to do without.
There’s a woman who searches me out every Sunday to kiss me and ask how I am, because she knows that I’m not always ok, and sometimes we’ve cried together, mingled tears on cheeks. There’s another who tells me about her week, and says she has stories to tell me when we’ll meet later in the day. There are creative little people in Sunday school who chatter happily to me and draw pictures as easily as they breathe.
Community means give and take. Not liking some things, but welcoming other things. It means color and texture (did I mention smells?) and depth that is impossible to find anywhere except together. I like it that way.
Tis a Gift to Receive 