Archives for February 2015

Doing Difficult Things Badly

February 20, 2015 by admin

The hardest part of launching a teleconference memoir-writing class has been to figure out how to time-slot in 15 participants from Texas to Michigan, the East Coast from Maine to Florida, a woman in California, and various writers from Canada (Ontario and Saskatchewan), with a few from the Midwest.

Frankly, my mind does not work well with these kinds of detail demands. It just boggles; papers confuse me. I don’t develop orderly systems naturally; I have to sit down and figure out the process. Though I am a highly intuitive person, there is nothing intuitive in me that is able to organize detail systems.

So my editor devised a chart (for a whiteboard) that keeps me from shuffling the same papers over and over. Here is the name of the participant, geographic location, boxes to tick if they’ve sent a piece of sample writing, have paid the registration fee, which time zone they live in, and the number of their group teleconference group—either Monday days or evenings, or Wednesdays days or evenings. Our office manager also took mercy on me and helped me put the possible blocks of time together in which three different groups could met.

Whew? By the time I struggle with fine-tuning with what I know for someone else would not be a very complicated exercise, the detail process itself has exhausted and deadened my sensibilities. Obviously, I do not have the natural capacities to organize systems data.

However, I am three responses away from being able to send out the final email and I am priding myself, albeit in a messy and halting way, for facing down the detail demon. I am also learning that it is not helpful for me to say to myself, You know you are just not good at managing details. Or saying to others, “You’ll be sorry if I take the notes of the meeting.” Here in these nagging dreaded insufficiencies is the possibility for growth. Step up to the I-can’t-do-it-plate. Take the challenge. You may do it badly, but you will have done it. That is what is important.

And you may discover you’re not so bad after all, at doing what you hated, because you’d thought you were bad at it. I am functioning in the later years of my life better than I ever have because I have developed proficiencies in areas I never thought I’d be able to accomplish. For instance, the car is always cleaned after we drive it, the laundry is done, folded and put away on time, dishes are washed after dinner, and as of this month, my writing study is organized and cleaned and waiting for me to be productive. I’ve rearranged file folders (and discovered wonderful forgotten articles and letters and notes to myself). Every corner of the house is ordered—I no longer have wastelands of disaster behind closed doors. To become proficient at keeping rooms aesthetically pleasing (all the time), cleaning up after myself, sorting and filing and putting things away (in a place where they belong), storing seasonal decorations with identifying labels, discarding items that are no longer used or needed—this all has taken me a lifetime. Believe me, it has been an arduous trek.

However, just the doing of difficult things badly has taught me how to do them better, so little proficiencies have developed. And though organizing the memoir-writing class has tossed me into a mind maze, it is now done. I’m ready to jump into the things I do really well, the things that give me joy. However, overcoming the memoir mind-maze—even badly—has given me satisfaction. That in itself is no small thing.

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, “Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains.” In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This micro-finance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. They are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

Share this Article

Dinner Disaster

February 18, 2015 by admin

A delightful Kanga cloth runner from Africa accents the table setting.

I had set aside Saturday afternoon to prepare food for Sunday dinner. A family from the church was coming, bringing seven of their nine children with them. Fortunately, I had enough vegetables of the remainder variety (some potatoes still in the bin, half a bag of spinach, some homemade red-cabbage sauerkraut left in a refrigerator jar, some carrots that had been shredded) to cook a vegetable medley without making a trip to the grocery store.

I took the time to pitch a couple potatoes that had gone bad; the rest looked to be healthy and firm. Although as I washed and diced them, leaving the skins on, which is my custom since so much of the nutrient value is in the skins as well as being a source of great fiber content, I noticed the skins seemed thicker than usual.

As the vegetables were cooking slowly in the wok, I made up a biscuit mix, used the rest of the stone-ground cornmeal to make cornbread, then I sample-tasted the cooking vegetables. Something was bitter; the summary of the mix didn’t hit the back of my tongue but lingered nastily on its tip. I added seasoning, finally a jar of cheese sauce, and still with another taste test, the bitterness hit my tongue tip and didn’t land on the savory zone of my mouth. I had visions of seven children and five adults writhing with stomach agony.

What had gone wrong? The potatoes, at least the skins, were bad. I couldn’t possibly serve the vegetable medley to guests! What’s more, the cheese sauce had turned the bright shining colors into a congealed mass hue. Now my cooking schedule was completely wonked. My back was beginning to tire from an afternoon in the kitchen, and David and I were scheduled to leave for an evening in the home of some friends—no time to work from 6 to 9 p.m. to correct the disaster.

I dumped the dish in the garbage—much to the pain of my frugal self—and began to frantically consider what else I had to serve in the house. The menu as planned included a beautiful broiled salmon, but I’d have to scramble to pull a complementary meal together the next morning—Sunday—something I hate to do. A trip to the store would eat up my time—it might mean I wouldn’t make it to church.

It is at this point for a frantic cook that the real blessing occurs. Lord, give me the creativity and cooking instinct to put something together with what I already have that will feed a family with seven children, my husband and myself and one of our sons who was also invited to dinner.

Ah-hah! A friend had brought us two dozen eggs from a shopping trip to Costco. I could make a curried white sauce to pour over a dozen hardboiled eggs garnished with dehydrated chives from our garden. There were some new potatoes, enough to combine with a large bag of green beans. I steamed the beans, parboiled the diced potatoes in the water, melted butter and garlic in the wok, then combined everything to simmer and season while I added skinned and sliced tomatoes. It looked great.

A bag of long-grain brown rice went into the rice cooker, and unfrozen summer blueberries and Georgia peaches were combined with an instant-pudding mix, piled on granola to cook in the bottom of individual ramekins, then topped with vanilla ice cream.

I had what looked to be a remarkable meal. Thanks be to God, the Master Chef.

So the family with the many children came to Sunday dinner. They were enchanting. Each took their blue plate into the kitchen where a serving buffet was set, filled them from each dish. Each child told me “thank you” about five times. Comments about the food included, “Oh, I love salmon.” “These vegetables look great.” Yes, I’d love honey from the beehives on the biscuits.” “Um-m-m-m-m, these eggs are yummy.”

I kid you not. They were polite at the table, made a point of not spilling the goblets filled with water (no mean feat for little folk of various sizes around a crowded table), and continued to commend me (“Yum! I love blueberries and peaches!”). I felt like I was an adult actress in a play titled The Most Well-Behaved Children in the Whole World. What an enchanting afternoon! The conversation at the table among the adults was stimulating and engaging; the children contributed when they could, found the toys in the basement and occupied themselves for an hour (and the basement was fairly intact when they all left).

A woman does not regret having to make two meals when she receives this kind of affirmation. I actually thought, Oh, it is so good to have the house filled with children again. Despite the cooking disaster, it was a most-successful Sunday dinner.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

Share this Article

Little Things and Simple Solutions

February 16, 2015 by admin

Do I really think the God of the Universe is interested in helping me find my cell phone (which I did find after a busy weekend without my cell—in a winter-coat pocket)? Our lives are filled these days with wonderful unplanned serendipitous events—more than usual, it seems. I always attribute these life-gifts to divine interventions, and I daily give thanksgiving for them.

However, as I was searching for my cell—the battery had run down in the two days I didn’t search for it—looking upstairs, downstairs, in the basement and then repeating the circuit when there was no success, I had a thought: Did I really think that the God of the Universe was interested in this minor inconvenience in my life—finding my cell?

After months without the answering machine working on our landline phone (and not having the time to go through the files in the basement where I store warranties, operating instructions and repair-order forms), I breathed a morning prayer, Lord, help me to get that answering device fixed on the phone. While wiping the dust off the little stool that holds our kitchen phone, I noticed the receiver needed a swipe as well as the call buttons. I gave them some quick attention, and next thing I knew, an automated voice was informing me, “Answering device is now on.” Wearing glasses, I discovered that sure enough, there is a button that turns on or off the recording that says, “Hello! This is the Mains residence. We can’t come to the phone right now, but if you will leave a message, we will return your call.”

Button on. Button off. That was all it took to correct my phone problem.

Yet, the question still remained: Did I really think the God of the Universe was interested in showing me that I had forgotten about my on/off button on the landline, and manipulated my cleaning inclinations to notice dust I hadn’t paid attention to for months and thereby discover a simple solution?

I’m not sure how this works: Does the great Divine Mind really lovingly attend to the minutiae that we humans are continually battling? Or is there a “ministry of minutiae” assigned to angelic-like beings that aid us when we lose things, can’t find the car keys, forget the basic operating systems of our machinery, don’t remember the password and send up those constant pleas for help?

I really don’t know. It seems implausible God would care about such trivia. Yet, it is often in the small attentions, the little things or simple solutions that I feel loving care. How relieved I am that people who need to get hold of us can leave a message. How glad I am to have found the cell.

I suppose people who don’t pray find their lost things and discover simple solutions anyway (but that doesn’t mean that the Divine, however it functions, isn’t at work in their lives). I’d like to think they don’t find things as much as we who pray do and that solutions to simple problems evade them more frequently. I don’t know.

All I do know is that when I pray, something loving and tender touches me. I am filled with delight and gratefulness and know that I am loved. God is good. All the time. All the time. God is good—even in the little things found and the simple solutions discovered. I don’t need to know how it works.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

Share this Article

Listening Group

February 13, 2015 by admin

Another Listening Group has started this week. There are only two women, and they have been friends for twenty-some years. Most of the time, the people who sign up for the Listening Groups come from many places in the Chicagoland area and if they know one another, it is only by sight or casually. We decided that they were an experiment.

It always amazes me how delighted I feel when a new group starts. I’ve journeyed with enough people for 2 1/2 hours per month over an eight-month period to know that amazing insights will be shared, and I will be privileged to watch courageous and remarkable people struggle to come to terms with their personal issues, and I will witness wondrous (and no longer surprising to me) growth.

While cleaning my writing study and going through all those neglected files, I came across a letter from a friend who shared these words from Frank Laubach, quoted from his book Letters From a Modern Mystic.

It is not in fashion to tell your inmost thoughts, but there are many wrong fashions, and concealment of the best in us is wrong. I disapprove of the usual practice of talking ‘small talk’ whenever we meet and holding a veil over our souls. If we are so impoverished that we have nothing to reveal but small talk, then we need to struggle for more richness of the soul. As for me, I am convinced that this spiritual pilgrimage which I am making is infinitely worthwhile, the most important thing I know of to talk about. And talk I shall while there is anybody to listen. And I hunger—O how I hunger—for others to tell me their soul adventures.

This is why I think I am so delighted when others gather in my living room just for the purpose of listening to one another talk.

The woman who sent the note also wrote on the bottom, “Karen—I liked this writing and it made me think of you.” I consider that a compliment.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

Share this Article

Investing in Myself

February 11, 2015 by admin

After our son, Jeremy Mains, died from a rare and acute lymphoma, I realized that the stress levels we were experiencing were on the dangerous ends of the charts that measure stress. Knowing what stress does to the physiological condition of our bodies, I took myself off to a clinical nutritionist (one who is credentialed to teach nutrition to medical students) and entered what was to be a three-month intensive detoxification program.

I met with the nutritionist once a week, had a bioimpedance analysis taken weekly, measured my pH balance daily to measure the toxicity levels for the purpose of turning it alkaline. I struggled to establish an exercise disciple—but made progress—removed dairy and wheat products from my diet along with anything with sugar (most refined foods) or caffeine. No meats were allowed (fish, of course, is), no citrus fruit or certain kinds of vegetables (the nightshades—tomatoes, green peppers). My meal base mostly was a mix of nutritional shakes.

After three months of this, I felt healthier than I had in my whole life, rising at 4 or 5 a.m. and going strong until 9:00 at night. My bioimpedance levels improved and I finally moved into the alkaline numbers. I lost about 15 pounds. My skin glowed, and my hair shone. People regularly commented on how good I looked. Nice for someone who was 71 years of age. (Some pundit—a doctor—said that we don’t really have a healthcare system, we have a “sick-care” system.) So I shelled out $2,825.81 to move myself into a healthy place.

I stopped the nutritional intensive two weeks before I had a thyroidectomy in which a 2.5 centimeter spot of papillary cancer was removed. My last appointment was in June of 2014.

This week, I finally had the money and the time concurrently, and stopped by the nutritionist’s office to purchase the product I needed to begin again. I’ll have to detox myself all over. (This is called the “weeding” process; the next phase is the “seeding” process.) Cost to me for one office visit in order to buy product and establish a bioimpedance baseline was $425.71.

No wonder we aren’t healthy as a nation. We can’t afford it.

As I thought about this, however, I realized that I am investing in my own future. The theory with the nutritional crowd is that when a person really becomes healthy, he or she ages but doesn’t decline with all the vagaries and distresses that usually accompany the later years. Maybe. The idea is that you don’t die from sickness; you just go to sleep. I won’t be able to let you know, obviously, I’ll be dead. I’ll settle for a healthier journey until I get there.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

Share this Article

Spiritual Friendships

February 9, 2015 by admin

Twenty years ago, I served as the first woman chairperson of the Board of Trustees for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. The president at that time was Stephen Hayner, who died of pancreatic cancer on January 31, 2015. He was 66 years old.

I remember when Steve asked me, after having been on the board for two terms, to serve a chair. My response was less than gracious.

“Frankly, Steve, that’s the last thing on earth I want to do.” I felt as though my personal trajectory had suffered due to the time I willingly gave to this worthy organization, and I needed to become involved in the writing life again. However, I promised to pray about the decision, and somewhere in the next week, heard that insistent, quiet inner voice say, You know, Karen, there’s artistry in creating a good board also.

Saying “yes” to Steve’s invitation was one of the better acts of obedience I exercised in my whole life. Some of the reason for that is the journey that Steve and I took hacking out what it looked like for the president of a well-known evangelical organization and a woman chair to work together to create a model infrequently (or never) employed that displayed the holy dynamic of how men and women of equal strengths could show forth the full nature of God. Meeting face-to-face once a month, in addition to a weekly phone call, gave us (man and woman) enough time to take a measure of one another’s character, disposition, response to stress and crisis, godliness in word and practice, vulnerability and authenticity.

Stephen was 44 at the time, working through early midlife issues, so our weekly discussions invited me into that dialogue. Fruitful growth and trust and mutuality developed over the two years we were in this relationship. I was often left breathless by Steve’s integrity and authenticity. Moreover, I’m not sure how many men in his position would have been so vulnerable with their board chairs.

On many important issue, Steve and I held to certain strongly formed common values. Our dual role as board chair and president of the organization allowed us to tandem and frame the function of the InterVarsity board in a mold different than what it had previously been.

We both believed that the business of the board was accomplished in positive and God-honoring ways when the relationships of the people of the board were ones based on holy affections, consideration and compassion. We established the precedent that all the committee meetings needed to begin with an hour of sharing what God was doing in our lives; this was necessary since we met only three times a year and were from disparate parts of the country. The love for one another as colleagues around the board table deepened so much that when one member’s term ended and he rotated off, he asked me, “I’m just wondering: Is there life after the InterVarsity board?”

Together, with others’ help, we “browned” the board. Since the student bodies in secular campuses across the country were multi-ethnic, and it was estimated that the white ethnicity would no longer be in a majority, it was important to us that the directors of an organization that worked among those colleges and universities reflect the kind of breadth and depth of thinking that multi-ethnicity demands.

Other women, those not afraid to speak out in a room full of powerful and sometimes opinionated men, were brought onto the board. A gender-equality was established. This again spoke volumes to a watching home office and field staff. Women were considered to be important, they were valued, and literally, room at the table was made for them.

Somewhere in the past, an edict had gone out that board members were not supposed to “talk with the staff”! We made a point to bridge what had become an awkward divide. Appropriate cautions were established: One board member was never allowed to speak for the whole board. Any staff complaints were to be directed to the appropriate supervisors. Due to this effort, a lovely co-inherence began to occur within the full human structure of the organization.

And we healed the divide between the national staff and the board. Up to this point, the IV senior staff sat in the board room, but since I felt they were the ones who knew the organization fully and completely better than anyone else in the room, they should be invited to sit at the table and speak out when they had something pertinent to contribute to whatever issue might be at hand.

After Stephen died, I pulled my InterVarsity board files. To my amazement, I had kept fairly extensive notes on our conversations. I could go on and give multiple accolades about this man—graduate of Whitman College, graduate school at Harvard University and Gordon-Conwell Seminary, and eventually a Ph.D. in Hebrew and Semitic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland—our conversations were obviously erudite, stimulating and challenging.

Perhaps some lines from my notes convey as well as anything the quality of the man and the high regard in which he was held. An email reported, “On top of it all, three churches have called this week to ask whether I’m interested in moving, (Park Street Boston, Christ Memorial in Holland, Michigan and Christ Church of Oakbrook, IL). I’m not interested in pursuing these, but it was a nice break not to have anyone calling for a while.” Then in a parenthesis, an oh-by-the-way, (“I also got a call from a head-hunter asking whether I was interested in either the presidency of Seattle Pacific or Denver Seminary.”)

For those who have never had the opportunity to establish a similar cross-gender working relationship such as this, they have missed the rare and beautiful opportunity to step into a trusting and mutually affirming spiritual friendship. I personally believe in the sacramental quality of marriage; something holy is shown forth when a man and woman love one another and live with one another in this covenantal way. But there is also a need for Christian men and women to model a more complete nature of God—trust and mutual admiration and like mindedness with no cross-gender “ickiness”—just in their working relationships and friendships. This may say more to a watching world than many of our words.

Others will more aptly tell the other extraordinary qualities of this rare man, but I can affirm that Steve’s exercise of holiness in inviting me, an evangelical woman (who couldn’t read a financial statement—still can’t) to walk beside him and other InterVarsity leaders, was unparalleled in my life and healing to me on the deepest of levels.

Stephen always signed his correspondence, “Joyfully, Steve.” And that is how I will always think of him. Joyfully.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

Share this Article

Book-Coaching

February 6, 2015 by admin

Our friends Bruce and Cathy Harro have been in our lives for the last three years. They are an exceptional couple in so many ways, and it has been a delight to get to know them better. Somewhere in his late 40s, Bruce decided he had chosen the wrong profession, a doctor practicing general medicine, and he set his mind toward a trade. He became a credentialed and trained electrician.

Not being party to the initial decision that he was constitutionally unfitted to be a general medicine practitioner, we are not always sure we completely understand why he left a profession for which he had arduously trained, nor why he is content to trade the perks of being a doctor for that of being an electrician. We did become acquainted, however, with the part of his life where he was attempting to find employment.

After a few false starts, Bruce began working as one of many electricians in a large chocolate candy-manufacturing company in the heart of Chicago. Since at this time we were meeting weekly for Sunday brunch, Bruce regaled us with fascinating stories as far as what he was learning in his new profession. We were enthralled. Our friend is a wonderful storyteller and thinker, but his tales about what he was learning in the chocolate factory was stunningly observed through the mind of his past experience with medicine. And let’s face it—once a doctor, always a doctor.

David and I found ourselves exclaiming, “Bruce, we hope you are writing all this down. It would make a fascinating book. What about a title like Everything I Learned in the Chocolate Factory?”

Since then, Bruce has been writing down chapters, about seven so far. The readings have become so fascinating that David and I beg for him to bring his latest work and read it aloud to us. This Sunday after brunch, he read one titled, “Oops!” It was about the mistakes he had made as a novice electrician in an aging, mechanized candy factory. Whole lines were shut down, workers put out of work for a day (without pay) until things could be sorted out by the understanding and collegiality of his fellow electricians. We laughed until tears came to our eyes. It was a lighthearted, self-deprecating collation of events, with the word “Oops!” culminating in each recounting.

Then the medical voice slipped in and Bruce told about an incident out of his days as a doctor. At a church picnic, a friend had brought his father to Bruce. His father was not feeling well. Bruce took him to his office, conducted an examination, took and read an EKG, then prescribed a medication and told him he needed to make an appointment with his cardiologist without delay. The physical matter was urgent but not critical.

With tears running down his face and choking back emotion, Bruce read to us how this elderly gentleman suddenly died that night, before he could make an appointment on Monday, the next day. “I checked with a cardiologist friend who told me that I had done exactly what he would have done under the same circumstances. It was an unfortunate incident but not due to any malfeasance on my part.”

By this time our laughter had turned to empathetic emotions and we were jolted when Bruce read, “Oops! Mistakes happen all the time. That’s just part of being human. But in the chocolate factory, no one dies from them.”

Now, I know a good writer when I hear one read his own work or when I read great work. This is a book in the making with extraordinary possibilities. I’m starting to think of agents I or my friends might know.

What is interesting to me, however, as a matter of personal observation, is how thrilled I am that our instincts were right: There is an unusual story here in the making. The juxtaposition of an electrician’s experience with a deep medical knowledge makes for rare reading. And I am discovering, that in the right circumstances, I love book-coaching. I LOVE IT!

In addition, Bruce can write. He can write really well. Not only that, he spent some of our Sunday time together, after we had hurrahed and exclaimed over his chapter, helping me to diagnose what was wrong with the electrical chandelier in the dining room and offered (at my inquiry) an initial diagnosis on a heart abnormality David has been having for years. Initial diagnosis: supraventricular tachycardia.

This is a friendship for the keeping.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

Share this Article

Rainy/Snowy Day in Paris/Chicago

February 4, 2015 by admin

Gustave Caillebotte’s Paris Street; Rainy Day (1877) was removed from the Chicago Art Institute galleries last summer when the museum’s conservators noticed that some lifting of paint from the canvas and cracking in isolated spots was going on.

When the Art Institute acquired this large canvas in 1964, some restoration had already been conducted, but since then, magnification, x-ray viewing and ultraviolet-light imaging have become sophisticated diagnostic tools for great art works. Conservator Faye Wrubel, while examining the canvas with these tools, determined that the varnish on the painting had yellowed significantly, masking nuances of pale blue, pink, and lavender-grey tints. This meant the masterpiece had aged beyond the artist’s original intent.

The member’s catalogue explains the result of restoration: “Instantly the painting began to take on new life, revealing qualities that had been hidden for decades. The woman’s earring, for example, believed by many to be a pearl, now reads as a sparkling diamond. The man’s cheeks now glow with a touch of color. Above all, the sky, which had appeared to have an even yellow-gray tone, now shows a subtle gradation, from rosy-gray near the bottom to a cool gray toward the top of the painting. The result is a transformed sense of light and atmosphere that is likely to change the way viewers respond to Caillebotte’s vision of 19th-century Paris and its people.”

My granddaughter, Joscelyn Timberlake, and I are beginning to take monthly study trips to the Art Institute; what a waste it is not to visit and learn in this nearby museum which is credited as being one of the finest in the world.

So on a gray and snowy January morning, we took the Northwest line from Crystal Lake (Josie’s mom and dad were out of town for a birthday celebration, and I was the grandmother supply) into the city, stopped in the wondrous French Market beneath Ogilvie Station, and bought six different kinds of Madeleine cookies, each of us eating one half of each flavor as we walked down Washington Street to Michigan Avenue.

We shared a lunch at Terzo Piano, the third-floor restaurant that overlooks the exquisite architecture of Millennium Park, then we plunged into our beginning study of the French Impressionists, beginning with Caillebotte’s restored painting, pausing before one of Josie’s favorites, A Sunday Afternoon by pointillist Georges Seurat (Josie also loves the musical it inspired, Sunday in the Park With George).

It occurred to me as I shot a photo of Joscelyn standing before the painting that it is some 137 years old and that the restoration and conservation process of great art is a constant, arduous process, very much like the process that goes on when the divine Master Painter attempts to render us into the human masterpiece He had in mind when He created us.

I am 72 years of age, and God is removing the varnish in my life brought on by the wear and tear of living this long. His methodology is to painstakingly remove whatever keeps the true colors of my being from glowing on the canvas. “Cotton swabs” are dipped into a solution that erodes the hard surface of my life but doesn’t damage what is lovely underneath.

“Ouch! That stings!” I cry. “Can’t You stop for at least a decade or two?” I bargain. “Whew! What an odor!” “I don’t remember asking You to take on this restoration project. It seems to be totally Your idea.” “Who gave You permission to be my curator?”

Of course, those are all the things we complain about when we are in the middle of painful conservation. The truth is I love the fact that there is a sparkling diamond on my ear, that the tints of the painting that is my life are really pale blue, lavender-gray and pink, that the sky behind me on a rainy day in Paris or in Chicago glows rose, and that my cheeks are really ruddy from walking along all the avenues of this good life.

Josie is 18, and it is so fun to watch her soul open up to what is beautiful and good and true. What a privilege it is to be a work of art some 72 years of age and be able to share with her what I know about walking along wet pavements, and avoiding storm sewers, and being part of the umbrella street dance, knowing the rain will not really spoil the pigments that are part of our lives.

We are under the capable hand of a Master Conservator, Josie. Stand before the work and attend.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

Share this Article

Filing, Not Piling

February 2, 2015 by admin

Time for true confessions: I am a piler, not a filer. And as a New Year’s effort (“resolution” is a little too strong of a word), I’m making a determination to become a filer not a piler! I’ve spent days in my writer’s study in order to get five hours of writing in per day, making more and smaller piles—these papers to the medical information drawer, these newspaper and magazine tear-sheets to the files about authors and filmmakers and curious bits of information, etc., etc.

Somehow, filing goes against the grain of my fiercely independent, artistic and free-floating nature. I HATE to be pinned to a too-tight schedule of any kind that lasts too long. A rule of life for me is NO More Than One Appointment Per Day. This means only one face-to-face, and if I have a committee meeting commitment, no face-to-faces at all.

But ordering papers is my donnybrook (David says that is like a mass melee; I had to ask)—the desk at the office is stacked with piles, my writer’s study, obviously, ditto, the kitchen bowls (see photo), and the household and garden management desk in the basement!

For a long time, I excused this as “creative clutter”—we artistic types do flourish in certain kinds of disorder and shrivel when faced with too much regimentation. Inevitably, when I go through these rare compunctions to exorcise the demons of paper disorder, I can never find anything I’ve filed, and I eventually and pretty rapidly revert to piling-not-filing again.

But truthfully, despite my excuses, piles are really symptomatic of some old sins. Procrastination is an oldie that I have whipped into submission and mastered with brutal determination. I arrive on-time, do household work on schedule, match my writing assignments to the deadline schemes and bask in the positive feelings of virtue I feel when I function competently in all these arenas. I even am mastering the glut that results from modern email ubiquity.

Old sins, however, no matter how much we attempt to vanquish them from our lives, die hard. This Procrastination, my dastardly enemy, keeps peeping out of my piles; “Hee-haw,” it taunts. “You done thought you got rid of me.”

Now I haven’t even mentioned that I am allergic to dust, so clean surfaces, wiped regularly, are important to my health. I simply have to face down this last remnant of defeat regarding a personality flaw that will probably attempt to haunt me for the rest of my life.

Consequently, I would like to announce that I have filed all-but-two-of my-piles. The remaining ones are in bowls in the kitchen. The household desk top is cleared and swiped. My writer’s study is ready for me to begin practicing sweat and inspiration.

And all that is left are two small kitchen bowls holding recipes, sales notices, coupons, etc.

They say it takes 30 days for any practice to become a habit. Consequently, I’ve set a grim goal: No more piles for the next couple of months. File instead.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

Skip links

Main navigation

Archives for February 2015

Share this Article

Share this Article

Share this Article

Share this Article

Share this Article

Share this Article

Share this Article

Share this Article

Share this Article