Jerusalem Jackson Greer's Blog, page 7
May 2, 2017
A Rule of Life: The Spiritual Practice of Being Present
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This month something amazing is happening.
My second book is being published and brought into the world.
Which is pretty amazing. Maybe even more amazing than when my first book was published.
You see, At Home in this Life; Finding Peace at the Crossroads of Unraveled Dreams and Beautiful Surprises , is not the book I set out to write 4 years ago.
The book I imagined and pitched to my publisher back then, was a little more fluffy, a little less messy. That book was a cheerful little ditty about how to pair monastic practices with domestic chores in cute Pinterest-ways.
But then life happened. Things came apart, plans fell through, dreams unraveled.
And instead of just being cute inspiration for adorable crafts and yummy recipes, the ancient monastic spiritual teachings of steadfastness, transformation, listening, and Sabbath became my life rafts.
They, along with the verses of Jeremiah 29:1-14, became the scaffolding on which I was able to rebuild a life of hope and promise. A life rooted in the goodness of God, the grace of Christ, and the passion of the Holy Spirit.
And the beautiful thing about these practices is that they are not only life rafts. They are also anchors and row boats.
In addition to their life-raft skills, they also hold me fast to one place when what I need most is to stay and learn the lessons that life has for me when it would be so much easier to run away, and they keep me moving and growing in the midst of the most mundane ordinary parts of life when I would much rather be lazy and stagnate.
Using these tools, I have learned how to be present to life I have, growing in gratefulness and faithfulness (imperfectly!) in the process. But as the little poster from my childhood said, “be patient, God isn’t finished with me yet.”
Which is why I have to keep practicing.
In order to really live into the wholeness that God has for us, we – me, you, everyone – has to keep showing up – to the table, to each other, to our lives. We have to keep practicing spiritual disciplines (after all to be a disciple is to be someone who is teachable, not someone who has all the answers,) day in and day out.
Which is where A Rule of Life comes in.
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This idea – that there are certain spiritual practices that are able to both anchor, rescue and propel us forward – essentially helping us remain present to our life no matter the circumstances, helping shape and form us in the image of God – is not a new idea – it is one that comes from the monastic tradition and is called A Rule of Life.
A Rule of Life is an intentional pattern of spiritual disciplines that provides structure and direction for growth in holiness. A Rule establishes a rhythm for life in which is helpful for being formed by the Spirit, a rhythm that reflects a love for God and respect for how God has made us. – C.S. Lewis Institute
The cool thing is that A Rule of Life can be established for a community (a monastery, a family, a church) and for an individual. It can be adjusted and modified over the course of a lifetime, it can grow and change as we grow and change.
Different people have different ways of creating A Rule of Life and there are many books and theories on the subject, but I have found what works for me, and what I think what might work for a lot of us, is a pattern based largely on the experiences I write about in At Home in this Life. It is a simple four-part rhythm inspired by St. Benedict’s teachings and Jeremiah 29:1-14.
A pattern that can help us remain present to the life we have, watering the grass beneath our feet, growing deep roots right where we have been planted. A pattern that can help is NOTICE the goodness of God in our everyday lives.
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Over the next month, as part of the At Home in this Life book launch celebration, I thought I would unpack this process and idea a little bit here on the blog. Over the next few weeks I am going to look at what each of the four overarching themes (or “vows” as they are called in the Benedictine tradition) that I think help frame an easy-to-use, but completely trans-formative Rule of Life. One that helps me dig into the Spiritual Practice of Being Present, and I think might help you too.
Below is a free worksheet I have created that you can use over the course of the next few weeks to begin creating your own Rule, as we go through the process together, looking at the four guiding themes – Steadfastness, Transformation, Listening and Sabbath – and how we can use other spiritual disciplines to really experience and practice each one to the fullest, making ourselves at home in this amazing, beautiful, chaotic, messy, glorious life!
Won’t you join me?
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You can download and print your own Rule of Life Worksheet HERE
And make sure to sign-up for email alerts under the comments so you don’t miss next weeks post, when we will dig into how we can practice Steadfastness!
(And make sure to go and order your copy of At Home in this Life and get all the pre-order goodies before May 23!)
Much love-
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April 17, 2017
8 Days This Week
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The thing about life is, it keeps on keepin’ on, in some form or another.
Even when it is Holy Week.
Or you have a book coming out in a month. Or a baby on the way. Or a move happening. Or whatever big life event is happening.
Life just keeps on keepin’ on.
In the past 8 days..
Wylie went to prom.
Miles had a band competition.
And a birthday party to attend.
Nathan and I had friends over to grill-out.
(That was just one Saturday.)
After that we kicked off our 13-service long Holy Week with Palm Sunday.
I found out that At Home in this Life will be officially released on May 23.
Wylie had play rehearsals after school and I had church each evening.
Wylie’s opening night was Friday night (which was also Good Friday)
As was his Cast Party.
The in-laws came over for dinner and the show.
We had the twins for 24 hours and took them to the play and then dyed eggs Holy Saturday.
That night was the Easter Vigil – I preached, Nathan served, Miles attended, Wylie slept in my office, worn out from his shows.
The next morning, the tomb was empty and we celebrated with 3 more services, an egg hunt, a baby goat, and a church-wide potluck.
Today I am still in my pajamas, drinking cold cups of coffee, binge watching Madam Secretary and making a to-do list for the last month of the book launch. I have thrown some laundry in the wash, and I check Twitter every now and then to see what is happening with the obscene number of executions that are scheduled to take place in our states capital today. I am covered in calamine lotion for a rampant poison oak outbreak, and hoping that a new prescription will take care of it once and for all. I think a nap is in short order.
Lent is over and I have turned my REMEMBER banner around to the ALLELUIA side.
Easter is here for another 49 days, and I am so very glad.
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April 12, 2017
The Spiritual Practice of Planting Seeds
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Four years ago, if you had told me that come late winter I would begin to crave the feeling of dirt between my fingers I would have declared you off your rocker. Gardening was never my thing. It was Sweet Man’s thing, my mother’s thing, my mother-in-law’s thing, my aunt’s thing, my Paw’s thing, but not my thing. I was firmly a house person. A inside person. A decorating sort. Not a gardener. But then everything fell apart and I had to learn to dig into the life I had, putting down roots – actual and metaphorical. And that is when I first began to dig in the dirt. But it was out of obedience and not out of love or desire. My relationship with the earth beneath my feet and in my backyard was more like an arranged marriage than a Vegas wedding. It began with a sense of duty, not passion.
It would take a few more years of digging and planting and tending and reaping for my obligation to turn to want.
Which is exactly what happened this year. Starting in early March, my body and my soul began to crave for soil and seeds and water and harvest.
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I am currently taking an online course from a seminary on Liturgics. One of our assignments is to observe Morning Prayer out of the Book of Common Prayer each morning, and I have decided to use Rite I (the more old fashioned version of the service) because the language is more poetic. It seems to wind its way deeper into my soul than the more modern iterations.
There is a line in the General Thanksgiving (a prayer towards the end of the service) that says this:
“We bless thee for our creation, preservation,
and all the blessings of this life; but above all for thine inestimable love
in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ,
for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory”
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I am finding that the more I garden, the more I want to garden. And the more I garden, and want to garden, the more I hear and feel certain prayers and passages of scriptures differently. They open up to me, the way the sunflowers in our garden open when they turn their faces to the sunrise, wide and bright.
Standing in my living room, reading The General Thanksgiving out loud, windows open, birds chirping, dining room table covered with seed pots, rooster crowing in the yard, I realize that the words
“We bless thee for the creation, preservation, and blessings of this life” are filled with a deeper meaning now that I have charge over such a large swath of creation, now that I work to preserve the lives of animals, gardens, trees, children in my care, now that I am harvesting blessing after blessing – fresh eggs, herbs, flowers, and copious amounts of vegetables- each of which always comes to me as a sort of miracle. That I plant a seed tinier than a freckle into a mound of dirt, and months later I am eating an endless meal of tomatoes sandwiches, so fresh and ripe that the juices runs down my chin, is never not a miracle. It is never not a blessing,
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This is one of the ways planting seeds has become a spiritual practice to me.
It is the practice of participating in the goodness of creation, in the miracle of tomatoes and peppers and lettuces and okra.
Each and every act of pushing freckle-sized seeds into tiny mounds of dirt, sprinkling with water and setting them view of the sun, is tiny act of hopeful risk. Will they, or won’t they take root?
Every seed planted speaks to a sort of faith in the process, belief in the process of co-creation as a worthy effort despite the uncertain outcome.
Every seed I push gentle into the soil is a confession of hopeful resistance. Resistance against settling for convenience and speed and efficiency and empty calories.
A believe that wholeness and slowness and nourishment are worthy of my effort, my patience, my nurturing attentiveness.
Me, the seed, the dirt, the sun, the rain, God… we are co-conspirators in our attempt at ushering forth – albeit slowly – new life, sustenance, growth.
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The tools of this spiritual practice are simple:
Egg crates, seeds, a pencil for making the perfect little seed size hole, dirt (potting soil, seed starter,) water, markers for remembering what is what, time, intention and invitation.
I read this week, in my liturgics class we read on what is (or can be) a sacrament, and my favorite nugget from the readings was this:
“There is a wonderful image in East Syrian (Iran and Iraq) liturgy that is helpful. In western catholicsm (including Anglicanism), the presider prays that “this bread may become the body of Christ” (or something similar). In the Syriac liturgy, the presider prays “now show us that this bread is the body of Christ.” In this vision, sacraments are the grace of God showing the material world as what it was created to be. In this way of thought, every loaf of bread “wants” to be Eucharist, and by the God’s grace and the intentional action of the church, some loaves of bread actually get to be what they want to be.” – Rev. Dr. Walter Knowles
All week I have looked at each piece of bread that I smear with peanut butter and jelly for my boys lunches, and at each drop of oil I drip onto my skillet, at the box of wine I fill my jelly jar glass from at dinner time, at the water that falls from my garden hose that soaks the earth around my cabbages in the garden – I have looked at all of them and wondered “Do you wish to be Eucharist? Healing oil? Baptismal water?”
If I gathered my family around the garden and said prayers, inviting the Holy Spirit into our midst and into the garden, would that be observing a sacrament, or maybe a sacramental act? Perhaps it enough to for me to say a prayer of Thanksgiving as I walk from plant to plant, letting the water find the driest earth, the greatest need. A sort of baptizing the earth and in order that new life can thrive.
To me intentionality and invitation are the things that lead me into an observance of the sacraments in everyday life – or into sacramental living at the very least. It is the combination of being intentional about noticing all the things before me- things in my hands, below my feet, scents in the air, sounds all around me, taste upon the tongue- and then combining that noticing with an invitation to the Spirit, an invitation to Christ to come and reveal his grace to me through those very ordinary elements. Elements, that just maybe, want to be noticed and invited themselves.
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This is why I plant seeds. Why I teach my children, silly as they can be in the process, to plant seeds alongside me. Why it is important for them to water dry earth, and clean out used chicken nest, and dig up potatoes, and chop wood.
And this is why I need to also make sure I am teaching them the Great Thanksgiving, why my job as mother is not only about laundry and lunches and correcting their grammar.
It is also about being a sort of Sherpa for their journey into the spiritual practice of intention and invitation. Of noticing and welcoming. Of living a sacramental life. Which is a beautiful life to live.
Selah.
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March 27, 2017
Make Yourself At Home… with this pattern!
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Hello friends! Happy Monday to you all!
Well, we have successfully navigated another Spring Break and lived to tell!
The boys went to my parents for half the week, then we picked up the twins (our foster respite kids!) and had them with us for the remainder of the week, which was amazing and exhausting and wonderful and exhausting. In part because I was determined that we would not just all sit on our devices all week (myself included, even though I get to call what I do “work.”) I was determined that we would both play and work – outdoors. Spring on the farm – even on a hobby farm – is a busy time, and with four extra sets of hands home for a few days it was the perfect time to tackle one of the projects that has been on our list since we moved here in 2014 – cleaning out the old potting shed behind the barn.
Hard work, stewardship, and teamwork (also known as mutual obedience in the monastic world) are values that Sweet Man and I work hard to instill in our boys and practice in our everyday lives. These are some of the tools we are using to make ourselves at home in this life. Some of the practices we are using to become rooted to our home, our land, to God and to each other. And they are the values and lessons I first learned when we still lived in town, when I was stuck in a life I didn’t want, but one I also knew God wanted me to make myself at home within.
Which is what my new book, At Home in this Life, is all about. It is the story of how everything came undone (including my heart) and how God used spiritual and monastic practices – such as stewardship and hard work and listening – to stitch me back together again.
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Which is why this embroidery pattern, inspired by At Home in this Life, and designed by the AMAZINGLY TALENTED Mollie Johanson, is such a perfect complement to the book and a great visual reminder that making ourselves at home in this life is always worth the mess and the mistakes and the hard work and it is always full of happy surprises if we will just stop running long enough to notice them!
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Isn’t Mollie’s work just incredible? And did you notice how the smoke stack heart is an homage to the unraveling heart on the cover of At Home in this Life? Simply perfect,
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And guess what??? You too can have this beautiful reminder to make yourself at home in your life!
How? There are 2 ways!
Pre-Order At Home in this Life and receive this pattern (and other printables and downloads) for FREE!! Simply order At Home from your favorite bookseller, then come back and fill out there form on the bottom of THIS page. The pattern and other printables will be emailed to you within 7 business days. (If you have already pre-ordered, you too will receive this pattern in the next week!)
Wait until May when this pattern and several other amazing handcrafted items inspired by At Home in this Life will be for sale as part of the Simply Sacred Everyday Collection! (More about that coming soon…)
Want more Wild Olive designs in the meantime? Make sure to check out Mollie’s online shop and her blog – SO MUCH inspiration both places!
And make sure to tag me and use the hashtag #athomeinthislife when you post pics of your work in progress or finished project! I would love to see how everyone is making this design their own!
much love-
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March 23, 2017
Faithful Famililes
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“Faith is learned as it is woven seamlessly into the fabric of daily life.
I don’t intend to ever sit down with my children and “teach” them
about the importance of asking God for healing, but they will grow
up with that belief as a part of their everyday experience. “
– Traci Smith
Today is BOOK LAUNCH day for my friend and fellow #preacherlady Traci Smith!
Her book Faithful Families, is an expanded and updated relaunch of her book Seamless Faith (which I already loved, but now is even MORE wonderful.)
Filled with easy yet meaningful activities and traditions (most of which take little to no-prep or budget) this book will help families of all kinds celebrate the sacred moments – big and small – of their lives together.
Today is also the launch day of the very first episode of my Shalom in the Home series on the Shalom in the City Podcast with Osheta Moore. On this episode we are talking hospitality, and what it means to have an open, inviting posture that promotes peacemaking – both in our homes and in the world. Traci’s book is the perfect compliment to this conversation, with her chapters on how to honor The Golden Rule, how to practice hospitality, compassion, and how to pray for the world through wind prayers – to name just a few!
Faithful Families makes a great gift for baptisms, baby showers, gotcha-days and even for grandparents – and it is one of my go-to books to give families at our church.
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To celebrate her launch Traci is giving away some free printables based on practices in the book, including 1 minute and 5 minute Sabbath practice cards. You can download and print them below, and make sure to follow Traci’s blog for more resources.
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Here is a list of all the other wonderful bloggers who will be sharing what they love most about Faithful Families – make sure to check them out throughout the rest of March and April!
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Congrats Traci on your wonderful and resourceful book! Families will be enriched in their faith for generations because of you!
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March 17, 2017
The Redemption of a Serial Plant Murderer
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I thought maybe it was Spring.
But that was way back in February.
Who was I kidding?
March was coming.
March in Arkansas is cold and wet. And even a bit snowy. Yes, snowy.
No matter how harsh or mild our “winter” has been, March sputters and spits and toys with our emotions and clothing options. March is a cruel mistress.
She is to our Spring what September is to our Autumn; A complete and utter tease.
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These pictures are all from a lovely warm weekend in February when I was inspired to begin to fluff our front porch and pot some ornamental plants and herbs.
Now they are all inside, and they – along with the dozen herb pots from the side porch, – are stashed here and there throughout our main rooms, near windows, perched on stools and bookshelves.
Suddenly my house has begun to take on a Mrs. Roper feel and I have the urge to wear caftans over my leggings and fuggs.
Thankfully the forecast is looking warmer, and today I get to put them all back outside, maybe even for a whole week!
The sage and lavender will be particularly happy as they are not loving indoor life as much as some of the others.
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The fact that I can even tell that my sage is droopy and that my lavender is depressed is somewhat of a miracle.
Somewhere around 19 years ago, when Nathan and I left the little college town where we had met, and moved to the “big city” of Little Rock, my mother brought us two huge beautiful ferns as an house (apartment) warming gift.
Despite my best efforts to the contrary, I killed those ferns, I killed them dead, dead, dead.
Ferns. The supper easy house plant of the ages.
Over the next dozen years or so there would be more house warming gifts, and hostess gifts, and get-well gifts, and congrats on the baby gifts, – all botanical in nature.
And I would kill each and everyone. Boom, pow, blast.
I would kill them with water and sunlight and shade and plant food.
And soon it was clear. I was a serial plant killer, and probably always wood be.
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And then one day, after a year of learning what it meant to be rooted in love to a place and a community and a house and I life I didn’t really want, a life I was stuck with (a life surprisingly filled with beauty and grace as it turned out...) I decided to try again.
One day, walking through the big blue hardware store, I noticed a rack of small, colorful, rubbery looking plants. And they made me think of my friend Liz, and how she always had beautiful rubbery looking plants.
So I bought three (three being the magic number and all…)
And I brought them home.
And I killed one quickly.
I killed one slowly.
And then, by some miracle one lived. It didn’t grow much, but it lived.
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Not long after that we moved to Preservation Acres.
And for the first year we made trip after trip to all the big and little hardware stores, sometimes daily.
So when Spring came, I grabbed three more succulents and brought them home.
This time two lived and one died.
But the two that lived, grew. And grew. And grew. Enough to split them into multiple pots.
That summer I met my friend Xandra at the Farmer’s Market, and I bought a small potted herb garden from her for my deck.
Again, there were three plants in the burlap pot.
This time I killed two, but the basil lived. And thrived. And lasted until winter.
The next summer I planted basil, and thyme and lavender myself.
The basil and the thyme went nuts. The lavender eventually gave up the ghost.
Inside the house the succulents thrived, as did house plants people had given me at our House Blessing.
No one who knew of my criminal record could believe their eyes.
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My mother, who has a beautiful green thumb, has a theory.
She thinks that this house likes me. That it is happy that we are here, that it likes having us between it’s walls, and so that is why the plants are thriving – the happiness and love of us in this house is nurturing to them.
As woo-woo as that sounds, I tend to agree. And not just because I am a little woo-woo myself.
I love this house.
On paper it makes no sense. It is nowhere near the sort of house I thought I would end up in. It isn’t a cottage or a traditional farmhouse or particularly old (built in 1971, it is the newest house we have ever lived in) But I loved it the moment I came through the doors. And I think somehow it knew. And it loved me, loved us, back.
There is an amazing contentment that comes each time I let go of my expectations for what things should be like, or what I should want, and instead open my hands to what is and all the gifts that come with that.
This house was not expected. According to every house I have ever pined for or ever pinned, I should not have ended up here.
But I did. And it is the most wondrous gift.
So now I grow plants. Inside and outside. In the ground and in pots and buckets and burlap bags. On the porch and in the kitchen and out in the garden.
And they thrive and grow and stretch their little stems towards the sun.
And so do I.
Selah.
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March 10, 2017
Peacemakers are people who…
To celebrate the BRAND NEW SEASON of Shalom in the City, of which I am one of the very lucky co-host, I thought I would post the very first Shalom-in-the-Home practice!
Use this printable with your family, your classroom, your Sunday School class, your art students, your Brownie troop, whomever, to begin defining what it means to be a peacemaker, a Shalom ambassador, in your home and community.
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Download and Print Here
And remember to listen to the first episode of our Hopeful Resistance season, as we pitch our tents in the land of hope!
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March 9, 2017
Shalom in the Home on Shalom in the City
I am currently a regular co-host on the podcast Shalom in the City podcast hosted by the AMAZING Osheta Moore!
Shalom in the City was born out of Osheta’s vision that Shalom “believes peacemaking is the primary way to see changes in our families, neighborhoods, cities, and world. Shalom is the Hebrew word for peace with a richer fuller picture of the world at her best: flourishing, unified, and vibrantly whole. A Peacemaker, or Shalom Sista, lives everyday to see this picture realized in her context.”
On our episodes Osheta and I will be chatting about what it looks like to live out Shalom in our homes and our communities, thinking about what it means to be wholehearted families, friends, and neighbors.
If you are not already familiar with Shalom in the City, please hop on over to the Shalom Sistas’ Facebook hangout page (where we are talking about Shalom daily, and where you can find all updates about the show) or to the podcast page and join in the sistahood of peace making and wholeness seeking. You will be so glad you did.
EPISODE LINKS
Hopeful Resistance Episode 1, March 9, 2017
March 8, 2017
H O P E
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I have become one of those people who has a chair.
It is my thinking spot.
My pondering perch.
My favorite place to write and mull and stare off into space.
In the picture above, you can see the spot just beyond the books, fuzzy and out of focus in the background.
When I sit here on sunny mornings, the light comes through the window behind me and cast the most lovely rays on the threadbare quilt that is splayed over the back of the sofa across the room.
Sometimes I get lost in those beams of light, in the folds of the quilt.
The pattern of the quilt is called “bow tie” but really what they look like to me is arrows.
Arrows pointing both ways. East and West. North and South. Side to side.
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I have a necklace that I bought at a craft market last fall.
The pendant is an old soup spoon that has been flattened and stamped into.
In the middle of the spoon are crisscross arrows, and then, in the four open spaces around the arrows
(what is essentially East and West, North and South,)
are the letters
H
O
P
E
When people, children in particular, look at the pendant, which they do often, because, hello, it is a spoon hanging from my neck, I always feel compelled to say
You see, it spells Hope. Because hope comes from all directions.
I say it for them. I say it for myself.
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The arrows on the quilt point both ways.
The sun beams move unto the floor leaving the sofa in the shadows, traveling as they do through their daily sequence of visitations.
Tomorrow the sun will peak in again, and cast its loving warmth over the quilt once more.
Soon I will use up all my thinking time and I will join the sun, traveling through my daily sequence as well.
I will step out of my quiet and comfort, in the wilderness of Lent.
Into the noise and the heartache and confusion.
Into the tidal wave that is living life with a heart exposed;
Wearing red shoes, and looking for H O P E in all directions.
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February 26, 2017
Sunday’s Pause Button – 2/26/2017,
From the Lectionary on the last Sunday of Epiphany, Winter Year A, Sunday of the Transfiguration of Christ
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16-18 We weren’t, you know, just wishing on a star when we laid the facts out before you regarding the powerful return of our Master, Jesus Christ. We were there for the preview! We saw it with our own eyes: Jesus resplendent with light from God the Father as the voice of Majestic Glory spoke: “This is my Son, marked by my love, focus of all my delight.” We were there on the holy mountain with him. We heard the voice out of heaven with our very own ears.
19-21 We couldn’t be more sure of what we saw and heard—God’s glory, God’s voice. The prophetic Word was confirmed to us. You’ll do well to keep focusing on it. It’s the one light you have in a dark time as you wait for daybreak and the rising of the Morning Star in your hearts. The main thing to keep in mind here is that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of private opinion. And why? Because it’s not something concocted in the human heart. Prophecy resulted when the Holy Spirit prompted men and women to speak God’s Word.
2 Peter 1:16-21The Message (MSG)
