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Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

quiet

The Gift of Quiet and Still {and a giveaway of Roots & Sky}

March 3, 2016 By Michelle 19 Comments

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This morning I sliced three whisper-thin slivers from the frozen ginger root, dropped them into the bottom of my favorite mug and poured boiling water over them, watching as they bobbed to the surface like tiny life preservers. I filled a plastic measuring spoon with honey and dipped it in and out of the hot water, the thick amber coating thinning translucent with each plunge. I added a splash of lemon juice and then let the mixture steep before finally fishing out the sodden ginger slivers with a teaspoon and flicking them into the sink.

I have a cold, and even though “it’s only a cold,” this one happens to be of the apocalyptic variety. My neighbor swore by this ginger-honey-lemon tea remedy when I saw her late Monday afternoon. It was the first time I’d been outdoors in three days. When I spoke, my voice croaked with laryngitis, and my throat burned raw, like I’d swallowed a fistful of broken glass. I’ve been dutifully slicing and steeping ever since. I’m not sure it’s working, but at least there is something comforting in the routine – pungent scent of ginger, sharp lemon quieted with sweet honey, hands wrapped around the warm mug.

mug2

I’ve been yearning for silence and stillness lately. Ever since I turned the Luther book in to my editor (yes, I did!), I’ve felt restless. An unhealthy energy seems to hum just below the surface, under my skin. I feel anxious, edgy. When I found myself scrolling through the website for the Benedictine monastery a few hours up the road, I thought I’d happened upon a solution: a weekend of contemplative silence. Time to settle, to sort through some questions that have been pinging around my head, to quiet the thrumming.

And then I got sick.

Initially I was angry. The day I woke sneezing, throat screaming, the temperature neared 70 degrees here in Nebraska. The chickadees, clearly confused, abandoned their winter staccato and trilled their two-note summer salute. Bedroom sheers wafted in the breeze of open windows. Neighbors grilled burgers and hot dogs on their back patios, kids flung open garage doors and pumped air into bicycle tires…and I was stuck in bed.

I don’t readily take to my bed. I tend to power through most illnesses, bent on ticking items off my to-do list, refusing to succumb to mere bodily complaint. But this cold sat me down and told me straight up who was boss, and I had no choice but to listen.

The funny thing was, once I surrendered to it, I realized my illness was actually an unexpected gift. It offered me the quiet, contemplative retreat I’d been yearning for, and I didn’t even have to leave my own home to find it. I spent the day under my nana’s hand-crocheted afghan, the March issue of Better Homes and Gardens on my lap. When I tired of that, I dozed. I wrote in my journal and listened to the chickadees through the open window. I read the Midday Office from The Divine Hours. I blew my nose and sipped water and dozed some more.

The boys were outside, enjoying the beautiful day I was missing. The house was still. I lay in bed and listened to the clock tick and the questions inside my own head, and I stayed that way for hours. It was a retreat, albeit a sniffly one, and I was grateful.

Roots and Sky_cover (003)So I know I already wrote about Christie Purifoy’s beautiful book Roots & Sky, but a couple of days ago the UPS truck pulled up to the curb and the man in the brown shirt and brown pants dropped an envelope into my front door. Inside were three copies of Roots & Sky, and I am delighted to be able to give away TWO of those copies on the blog today (the other I’m sending to a loved one back in Massachusetts). Resting in the quiet of my home all day on Saturday and Sunday reminded me so much of Christie’s story, which centers around the passing of time and seasons, so it seems fitting to offer her book with this blog post today. {Email subscribers: visit the blog by clicking here to enter the giveaway}
a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

Filed Under: quiet Tagged With: quiet, Roots and Sky

2016: A Year of Stopping

January 12, 2016 By Michelle 16 Comments

one perfect snowflake

I saw the first snowflake fall a few minutes ago. Well, not the first snowflake ever, obviously. And probably not even the first snowflake to fall in my backyard today. But it was the first snowflake as far as I could see. It fell from the sky like a crumb of angel food cake. I didn’t recognize what it was at first. Only when I saw another and then another did I realize it had begun to snow, lightly, and silent like mist.

It’s rare for me to sit at my desk and gaze out the window. My “office” is in our sunroom; my desk is surrounded on three sides by floor-to-ceiling windows that open to the garden and the backyard. But I don’t spend much time actually looking. I’m too “busy” to waste that kind of time.

I typically start my work day with a quick peruse through Facebook and Twitter. I “like” a few status updates, comment here and there, click over to skim a blog post or an article, retweet a couple of things, post links to my own blog posts, if I have anything new. Once I finally get down to the business of my real work for the day, I’m usually pretty focused. Sometimes I even forget to pause for a bathroom break and find myself squirming uncomfortably in my chair.

But. When I do hit a block – grappling for the right word, frustrated with a clunky transition, unsure which direction to go or what I even want to say next – I click over to social media. I scan and scroll and click and retweet, and when I finally make it back to my own piece — the piece I’d abandoned when I hit the wall — I discover I’m just as stuck and frustrated as ever. I haven’t given my brain a chance to reset or rest or meander in a fruitful way, but instead, have filled it with noise and distraction.

One of my New Year’s resolutions this year is to make my work time more productive by pausing in a way that’s beneficial to the creative process. In other words, to “resist absentminded busyness” as Maria Popova says, paraphrasing Søren Kierkegaard. This means no quick email checks; no popping over to Facebook or Twitter; no Instagram scrolling; no blog post reading. I won’t begin my work day that way, and I won’t interrupt it that way when I get stuck. I’m sure this is not a revelation for you, but I’m finally beginning to understand that social media is detrimental to my creativity and my productivity as a writer.

Instead, I resolve to look out the window. Or use the bathroom. Or switch out a load of laundry. Or make a cup of tea. Or walk to the mailbox to slip an envelope inside and raise the flag. I resolve to do something that rests my brain so that when I return to the page (screen), my mind isn’t pinging with noise and distraction, but instead is open, quiet and refreshed.

I actually made three New Year’s resolutions this year — I love to make resolutions, you know (it’s keeping them that’s the problem…just ask me about flossing) — and each of them has something to do with stopping (I’ll talk a little more about the other two later this week and next).

On Sunday I listened to a new-to-me podcast called “This Good Word” with author Steve Wiens. The episode was entitled “Stop,” and in it, Wiens urged his listeners to “let 2016 start with stopping.”

I love that. It can be applied to so many facets of life, and in the episode, Wiens asks some great questions aimed at helping us think about how we can stop more in our daily lives. By the time I listened to “This Good Word” during my afternoon run on Sunday, I’d already made my stopping-related resolutions, but the ways Wiens talked about stopping helped to clarify what I’d been pondering since January 1.

It’s snowing harder now as I write this, thick flakes falling languidly, leisurely, straight down from the sky. They seem to be taking their time traveling from the heavens to the ground, not bent so much on arriving, but on the process of getting here instead.

I think I’ll watch them for a little while longer before moving onto my next project. It seems these snowflakes might have something important to say.

 

Filed Under: quiet, social media, writing Tagged With: quiet, Stopping, the writing life

Listening to the Woods on a Snowy Afternoon

January 7, 2016 By Michelle 15 Comments

birchTrail

“I’m not much good at it, but I love it anyway,” she said to me, as we rested on either side of the trail. Her skis were side-by-side in a set of parallel tracks; mine were lined up the same way, but pointing in the opposite direction. We had both stopped to peel off outer layers and lean heavily on our ski poles, our breath billowing into the cold air.

She was an older woman. Her jacket wasn’t the latest fashion; her gear wasn’t high-tech. She wore rented skis and boots like me. But it was written all over her face: she was content, happy to be out in the Minnesota woods on a clear winter’s day. Happy to be inhaling clean air, expelling her anxieties and disappointments into the forest.

The trees always seem to absorb what we give them.

cross country ski trail 3

cross country ski trail 4

“It’s a quiet sport. I think that’s why I like it so much,” she said, adjusting her knit hat and smiling at me from across the snowy trail.

I nodded, agreeing, and we both stood in silence together, listening to the woods breathe for half a minute more. Then she waved good-bye, planted her poles and pushed off, moving slowly but smoothly away.

My people had skied ahead of me; I’m slower than I used to be, and I’m just fine with that. I don’t mind having the woods and the quiet to myself, letting the boys’ whooping and yelping dissolve into the forest ahead of me.

IcicleTree2

SugarloafBirchTree

SnowyTrail

CascadeFallsWinter

As I skied, arms and legs moving fluidly, nylon pants swishing, I thought a bit about the book I’d been reading earlier that morning. In The Listening Life, Adam McHugh writes about the breath prayer, the practice of choosing a few words as a prayer-mantra of sorts, breathing them in and out at different moments during the day.

I decided to try it, and because I wasn’t feeling particularly creative in the moment, I borrowed McHugh’s refrain.

“Speak, Lord God. Your servant is listening.”

I repeated the words to the rhythm of my movement, legs and arms, forward and back, forward and back, pants swishing, breathing cold in, breathing warm out.

Speak, Lord God. Your servant is listening.

Speak, Lord God. Your servant is listening.

Cold breath in, warm breath out. Arms forward and back. Plant one pole, then the other. Legs forward and back.

Speak, Lord God. Your servant is listening. 

I didn’t hear a word from God that afternoon in the Minnesota woods. Or maybe I did. Maybe it was the quietest word – the wind in the trees, the softness of a snowy woods, the twitter of a chickadee, the whoosh of my own breath.

Mostly I heard no sound at all, save the shushing of my skis across the packed snow and the movement of my body through the cold air of a winter afternoon.

Those were more than enough words for me.

Filed Under: quiet Tagged With: cross country skiing, quiet

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Living out faith in the everyday is no joke. If you’re anything like me, some days you feel full of confidence and hope, eager to proclaim God’s goodness and love to the world. Other days…not so much.

Let me say straight up: I wrestle with my faith. Most days I feel a little bit like Jacob, wrangling his blessing out of God. And most days I’m okay with that. I believe God made me a questioner and a wrestler for a reason, and I believe one of those reasons is so that I can connect more authentically with others.

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