Making Kairos

We had a guest preacher on Sunday who spoke about time. There are two kinds of time talked about in the Bible, he said. Chronos time, which is calendar time—the gradual ticking away of the minutes—and kairos time, which is God’s time.

He referred to kairos time as a special occasion--the arrival of God’s promised fulfillment.

A couple weeks ago we welcomed another guest. She spoke about the Kingdom of God being here—right now…among us. So, I started thinking about these two sermons, how they go together—how the arrival of the Kingdom of God is a promise fulfilled and if it’s already here—among us—then…kairos time must be available to us…right now.

The preacher this past Sunday agreed and he wondered: How do we make chronos time in to kairos time?

The scripture reading was from Matthew 25: Jesus said, I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.

The preacher tells us that we are able to enter kairos time in our treatment of the least of these. I think about this as I give to the needy. I ponder it as I go through the boys’ fall clothes, weeding out donations for the clothes pantry. I try to see Jesus in the hands of the man on the side of the road when I hand him a few dollars. I feel it. I do. In those moments of giving, I feel the Kingdom of God.

It feels good.

But I think there is more.

There is this aching need to give in other ways…to give to those impoverished in spirit. To give beauty and let it be rest, to give words and them be peace restored, to give love and let it be a shelter.

The Kingdom of God is here. Kairos time is at our fingertips. All it takes is noticing…All it takes is being in each moment.

Madeleine L’Engle, in her lovely reflection on faith and art, Walking on Water, says that “being time is never wasted time. When we are being, not only are we collaborating with chronological time, but we are touching on kairos, and are freed from the normal restrictions of time. In moments of mystical illumination we may experience, in a few chronological seconds, years of transfigured love.

She tells the story of a small village that had an old clockmaker. When he died, there was no one to repair the peoples’ watches, so they abandoned their time-pieces. When the town was visited by a famous clock-maker much later, the people clamored for their old watches to be repaired. After examining the time-pieces for many hours, the wizened clock-maker told the people he could only repair the watches that had been kept wound. These, he said, were the only pieces able to remember how to keep time.

L’Engle concludes, so we must daily keep things wound: that is, we must pray when prayer seems dry as dust; we must write when we are physically tired, when our hearts are heavy, when our bodies are in pain…at least we can keep it wound, so that it will not forget.

When I lift each moment to God…I enter into His time. It is a gift from the Star-namer. It is a promise fulfilled.

Linking up with  Michelle today:

And Jen and the sisters:

Playdates with God: Perspective

My computer was trying to crash—was churning, churning, churning like slow moving butter—and what should have taken only a couple minutes had consumed my entire day. And my husband’s. Trying to figure out what was wrong. Feeling frustration grow. I was sitting on the couch beside him as he pounded buttons and sighed deep. That’s when he said it.

“You can ruin a computer faster than anyone I know.”

It hurt my feelings. And it made me mad. And I thought he should apologize to me. But here he had spent his whole day trying to help me and I knew there was one thing I needed to appreciate that. Perspective.

I went outside.

I took Lucy Mae and we plunged into the fast-approaching dark. The sun was already down but light lingered and all the harsh edges of life were softened by dusk. I looked up at the smiling moon and felt my spirit quiet. Just from looking up. But thoughts come fast and furious and I wrangled with them. I recited my memory verses to harness the bad ones and lead them away. When I came to the part about my life being hidden with Christ in God, I cried and thanked Him. Hide me, I said. Wrap around me so tight that there is only you. No me. And I cried a little more.

The air was cooler down by the creek and I leaned over the bridge and caught the last glimpses of daylight winking on the water. So this is where the remnant is, I thought, as I watched the last fireflies of summer blink in the trees bending down to dip a finger in the stream.

Up the street we found a black snake spread out across our path. I couldn’t tell if it was alive, so I threw bits of mulch and some small stones at it. It never moved. Lucy wasn’t interested. We decided to go but just then a group of teenagers came walking our way. I warned them about the snake and the girls made girlie noises and they took pictures of it with their phones and shined a light on it. The snake, having enough, crawled away. I was surprised to see it move.

We left the teens and their laughter and I remembered my first real kiss—the first kiss I liked, not the one Mike Johnson gave me on the bus in eighth grade. That one made me want to spit. I remembered the feeling of being young and walking at dusk and how the air seemed to tingle expectation.

Further up, we found a toad. Lucy Mae pressed her flat snout up against that warty thing and inhaled deep. Poor guy just sat there. It made me laugh. At the top of the hill we were accosted by a little girl, sitting alone on her porch.

“What’s your dog’s name,” she asked, running over to me.

I told her and she chattered away. She had on a layered ruffled skirt and a shirt that said “princess”. She kept fluffing up the skirt when she talked to me. She brought me her puppy—a brand new teacup Chihuahua. It fit in one of my hands. I held its softness and pressed my nose to its puppy scent.

Her grandfather was weed eating in the back, because of the snakes, she said. And he told me to stay right here, she said. Don’t go anywhere.

I asked her her name and she told me. She told she just moved there, that soon she would go to school at church, and that she lived with her mommy and her mammaw and papaw. We stayed and talked—sitting in the grass on the edge of her yard—until her grandfather called her to come in.

The light had all but disappeared and the stars were opening their eyes. And I knew it was time to head back to the house. Because I had found what I was looking for. Perspective.

How about you? How do you embrace the God-joy? Every Monday I’ll be sharing one of my Playdates with God. I would love to hear about yours. It can be anything: outside, quiet time. Maybe it’s solitary. Maybe it’s loud and crowded. Just find Him. Be with Him. And come tell us about it.

Grab my button at the bottom of the page and join us:
Sharing with L.L. Barkat today too:

What Does a Writer's Retreat Teach? Or, Hobnobbing with Madeleine and Eugene

We were sitting around a table overlooking the Frio River, listening to Jeffrey Overstreet talk about how artful story invites the reader inside—invites the reader to discover what the story has to say to them—when he paused and had us go around the table and introduce ourselves.

My friend Marcus was seated to my right, Claire to my left, but the others were new faces. There was a retired photographer, two persons of the cloth, a young college student, an elderly woman, and Jeannie.

When it was Jeannie’s turn, she spoke about the nonfiction books she had written over the years, about coming to Laity Lodge to write, and about her dear, dear friend Madeline L’Engle. Immediately, my shoes felt too big.

We all tried to pretend like it was nothing but all the while, I’m thinking…Madeleine L’Engle! When I was a girl, this dear woman’s books opened up a whole new world to me. A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet…Jeannie’s casual namedropping sent me into a reverie of wistfulness, remembering the joy of discovering a series of books that aroused a deep awakening in my young self. How I loved Charles Wallace and Meg. They taught me through their story that anything is possible. And who wrapped science around fantasy in such a way? I’d never read science fiction before. I didn’t know people wrote like that.

We took a break and I went to the restroom and was startled to find Lauren Winner washing her hands and Ashley Cleveland exiting the stall. What’s more, they greeted me casually, engaged in a bit of small talk before going on their way. Back at our open-air table, I tell Marcus.

“I can’t believe she referred to Madeleine L’Engle as her dear, dear friend!”

He shrugs his shoulders.

“And Eugene Peterson writes here all the time.”

“Eugene Peterson? Really?” I am a bit star-struck. “But that makes me feel so…small.”

Marcus laughs.

“Why? I don’t understand that. That should make you feel special not small. You’re here too. Laity Lodge is for everyone.”

I tell him about running into Ashley and Lauren in the restroom.

“Right,” he says. “Because they use the bathroom too.”

We laugh but I am quieted a bit inside. Later, I walk downthe road with my friends Verbieann and Ann (who has since become a New YorkTimes bestselling author) and tell them the story. I turn Marcus’ words around in my mind.

Am I special? I mean, just because I haven’t held court with writers like Madeleine L’Engle or Eugene Peterson…does that mean there is no value in the words I share? My friend Elaine was recently at a conference in which the speaker posed the question, How do your words help solve the problem of pain? I’ve been thinking about that. Wondering. And I remember the young girl I was—wrapped in the pain of a broken family, uncertainty of self—and I know the question goes deeper than it appears at first glance.

Though Madeleine L’Engle’s story about a young misfit girl and her brilliant little brother and how they rescue their father using a tesseract and all the amazing things they encounter in the process…though these words may not appear to address the problem of pain directly, they surely helped to save a young girl who was drowning in it when she first encountered them.

I think about these things all these months after my conversation with my wise friend Marcus. I am learning to embrace myself as word-giver. It still feels fragile—I’m still self-conscious and clumsy. But when I look back, I see that time at Laity Lodge as a pivotal step in this acquiescence. Because Laity Lodge is for everyone. My time there was like a warm embrace; I was cradled in that canyon. Everyone there was someone special. This is because that riverbed and those canyon walls are saturated with the presence of God. Dan Roloff told us that the place was built to provide a place where people can encounter God. While there, I felt the breath of my Creator, I felt loved as a favorite child.

The truth is, we should feel this way no matter where we are, no matter what we do. But sometimes, gravity gets in the way and our earthbound nature blinds us to who we truly are. Laity Lodge is a place of transcendence for me.

We are gearing up for the retreat again this year. I’ll be there. Won’t you consider it too? There is a chance you could go for free. I’d love to meet you there. Would even share that table overlooking the Frio with you.

Food on Fridays: Zucchini

Have I mentioned how much fun I am having with my little garden? Who knew when we read through The Spirit of Food with the High Calling community what a wonderful fingerprint it would leave on my summer? I have a basket of Roma tomatoes waiting to be made into marinara, the peppers are just now coming in, the deer ate my beans but they came back and it looks like it will be a good crop, and when we returned from vacation, this was waiting for me on my kitchen counter:

My mother-in-law did some canning with my maters while I was away. That’s not all I returned to. There were three gigantic zucchini on the vine. About this size, each.

I’ve had a time with the zucchini, you all. I thought I was buying cucumbers when I bought the zucchini, so there was an initial disappointment. I wanted pickles. You know what? Zucchini make great pickles.  My friends at work like them better than cucumber pickles! They stay a wee bit crisper, in my humble opinion. I made several jars of refrigerator pickles. No canning necessary. My neighbor gave me her recipe. This is another wonderful thing about gardening—the sharing. I threw in some onion for good measure.

Roberta’s Refrigerator Dill Pickles

Makes 4 quarts

1 ½ quart water

½ quart vinegar

¼ cup canning salt

Put 1 head dill, six peppercorns and six or more cloves of garlic in each jar.

Bring water, vinegar, and salt to a boil (30 seconds). Cool. Pour over pickles in jars. Refrigerate immediately.

I’ve made zucchini casserole and given zucchini away. They boys have been subjects of the great zucchini chocolate chip muffin experiment. It was a hit! I made zucchini oven chips (loved them!) and froze shredded zucchini to make zucchini bread with this winter. But my favorite is this one: Zucchini fritters.

They are like little savory zucchini pancakes—so much fun to make. Even more fun to eat-- topped with fresh mozzarella, tomatoes from my garden, and a leaf or two of my basil.

It’s zucchinilicious!

Linking up with Ann today because she’s the Food on Friday queen: