Day 006 of 100 | Rebounding joy: Reflections on goodness and grief

#100DaysofWonder | What's one small thing that keeps you grounded in your creative work?

Today. A little longer of a read. Lent has long been my favorite season of the liturgical year, partly due to weekly soup dinners and lively discussion forums of my youth. Community gathered around common tables and freshly baked bread.

Yesterday found me in a place I didn’t know existed a week ago, sitting around a table with kind new friends talking about insights and thoughts from a book study we are doing over the coming weeks.¹

It was lively, tender, diverse, and so very welcoming. For me it was a full-circle moment. I was raised in the Episcopal church. I have loved the space of spiritual seasons and contemplative rhythms lived together since childhood.

Sunrise across the St John’s River Wednesday.

In my teenage years, I moved over to the evangelical side of things until they told me women weren’t allowed to preach or lead. I eventually found my way into the charismatic/independent corner of Christendom, where I worked professionally for almost two decades in different capacities around the world.

But the last 13 years have been a journey of deconstructing my way home to my contemplative roots. I haven’t spoken of this part of my life a lot here. But much of how I experience the world with wonder and metaphor has its beginning in seeing all of life as a sacred space.

I rose before dawn Wednesday to get genetic testing for my very long list of pharmacological sensitivities. It would have been my mama’s 84th birthday. The irony didn’t escape me. The dawn sky looked like a paint palette of light had been poured across it.

Grief and goodness, beauty and loss, hope and pain… they can all grow up together. More than one thing can be real at the same time. Wonder helps us lean into nuance and see the sacred spaces of our ordinary lives.

Wednesday night, at a Lenten study with new friends and a bowl of homemade soup in a cozy room that looks like it fell out of a CS Lewis novel, I remembered. My mama always wanted me to find in-person community, as I am naturally very happy with paint, books, coffee, and a garden.

But looking around that room, I felt so privileged to get to listen and witness the sacred ground held in our skin and our stories.

Much as I am privileged here to read and respond to your comments and insight as we share these 100 Days of Wonder together.

I’m replying when I can do so with thought rather than haste. You are so important to this community, and I am beyond honored by you being here. It may take me a little while, but I will be responding.

Wonder doesn’t just live in the cracks of our world; it lives in our skin and our stories.

In a time when things are heavy and hard, wonder and connection are acts of resistance. Community and compassion stand in the face of oppression. Hope dismantles fear and control.

A few weeks ago I got a rebounder. A little trampoline with a balancing bar now lives behind my couch. I needed a way to move my body that was gentle on my one leg and delightful enough to want to make it happen.

Sometimes we feel stuck in our creative practice because we aren’t moving. I know that sounds like duh… but in order to get our creativity moving, we have to move first. Take a step. Make the first mark.

I take breaks between writing sprints, lightly bouncing. It hit me today. In a world steeped in uncertainty, joy can be elastic. It can cushion our sinking and boost our rising.

Stories. They ground me. And they give me the resilience I need to bounce back.

PROMPT | DAY 006

What’s one small thing that keeps you grounded in your creative work?

Ok my friends, your turn. Share your thoughts in the comments below.

All my love,

1. In case you are interested… the book mentioned is For Such a Time as This: An Emergency Devotional by Hanna Reichel. It explores scriptural meditations and the Confessing Church’s resistance to what was the state church in 1930s Germany under Nazism, as well as others who have stood against oppression. I am SO encouraged by it.