Overall Best of 2012 at The High Calling

I saw this afternoon that two articles I posted this year at The High Calling have been named to the Overall Best of 2012 List.

One was an interview I did with Ann Voskamp, author of One Thousand Gifts. Here it’s really all Ann, who had some insightful and wonderful things to say. (And I’m still trying to figure out how she pulled me into that argument on national health care that night at Laity Lodge.)

The second was an article I wrote as part of the “I Do” series for The High Calling. In short order, I had read two articles about people making decisions to divorce. I read the articles, and my heart and mind cried out, “No!”

You can see the entire list at The High Calling. All this week, The High Calling has been posting the best stories from each of the categories it publishes. Some 1,600 article were posted this year.

My secret for having two articles on the list: I worked with an outstanding team. We encourage each other to do our best. The team deserves the full credit.

Ann Voskamp's "One Thousand Gifts"

A meditation. A devotional. A confession. A prayer. An explication of Scripture. A plaintive cry.

One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp is all of these things, and more. I’ve never read a book quite like this one. I’ve never been moved in quite this way by a book, either.

She begins with an accidental death – of her sister when they were young children. The death and its aftermath, an aftermath that never really ends, radiate outwardly. Embracing and engulfing the family, ricocheting and echoing through time, affecting and touching so many and so much.

Voskamp asks this question: “How do I fully live when life is full of hurt? How do I wake up to joy and grace and beauty and all that is the fullest life when I must stay numb to losses and crushed dreams and all that empties me out?”

And then she answers it, by taking us on a journey that is rather unexpected – the journey of the daily, the small things, those little things that comprise a day, a moment, a life. She begins to see what she calls the eucharisteo, a combination of grace, thanksgiving and joy. It’s there. It’s there for her and for all of us. But this journey happens in fits and starts, advances and setbacks, something we all recognize as life.

She starts keeping a list of gifts she already has, the gifts she purposely begins to notice, like the “cry of blue jay from high in the spruce.” The list eventually reaches and passes one thousand gifts.

Along this journey, we find time, grace, aching hurt, disbelief, emptiness and intimacy. And we find God, always God, for that’s to whom this book is really addressed.

An honest, raw and bleeding, loving epistle to God.

It’s remarkable.

And I've started a list, too.

1. Snow lingering like cake frosting in our north-facing backyard.
6. Two little boys standing outside the grocery store, collecting food for the hungry.
9. The church choir bursting forth with "All Creatures of Our God and King," and singing a leavening of Alleluias.

She's right. It's eucharisteo.

Ann Voskamp blogs at A Holy Experience.

Pleasantly Disturbed Thursday: Digging Out

It that's time again: another Pleasantly Disturbed Thursday, hosted by our fearless leader Marty Duane Scott, who lives somewhere near the Arctic Circle (Iowa).

This past week has been all about – digging out.

The big winter storm that started Monday night and concluded Wednesday turned out not to be the “snowpocalypse” or “snowmageddon” it was predicted to be – for St. Louis. Actually, the snowpocalypse was farther to the north – I saw the pictures of Lakeshore Drive in Chicago, and Interstate 70 was closed from just west of St. Louis to Kansas City – that’s some 200 miles of highway. My youngest son reported a foot of snow in Kansas City.

We had about two inches of sleet on Tuesday (which was an absolute blast to remove from the driveway; yes, it was frozen solid) and about three inches of snow that finally ended late Wednesday afternoon. And, since you asked, that is indeed a picture of yours truly, victorious at having just finished shoveling on Wednesday, at least until the predicted snow for this weekend.

Yes, I fully understand that weather does not equal climate, but forgive me for what I think and mutter under my breath when I hear former vice presidents and various scientists try to explain that all this snow is happening because of global warming. I would like to invite the former vice president to come to my driveway and shovel all the global warming off of it. I’ll make him a cup of global warming tea while he shovels. Green tea, too.

Our offices at work have been closed for two days, which means working at home. It’s no surprise, but I get more work done at home. We’ve still had some of our scheduled meetings via phone, but they don’t last as long. Since a great deal of my work happens online, I’m good to go as long as we don’t lose power. Four years ago, we lost power during an ice storm, and we lost it for four days.

I’m almost finished One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. Oh, what a book this is. It’s mediation, rumination, reflection, devotional – all these things and more wrapped up in simple, plain language straight from the heart. She takes the everyday and finds the beauty and the thankfulness in it. But then she takes it to another level altogether. It’s a wonderful book. (A lot of other people think it’s a wonderful book, too. It was just published in January, has more than 200 reviews at Amazon, and hit #10 or #11 in its category on Amazon’s best-sellers list.)

I met Ann at Laity Lodge in Texas last fall. She’s from even farther north that Marty Duane – she lives in Canada. Her husband Darryl is a farmer. To read her book now is like talking with her then – she is exactly like the book she’s written.

Another good thing this week – the long-awaited DVD set of series eight of the British spy drama M1-5 arrived in our mailbox. Since last spring, we have watched seven seasons (via Netflix, mostly). We had a real problem with Season 5 – Netflix didn’t have enough copies, and someone was keeping the first disk set forever. We were such fans that I finally said phooey on Netflix and ordered series 5 from Amazon. It was buy it or wait six months. We bought it. It’s one of the best written, best produced television series we’ve ever seen, even if the Americans (the CIA) end up being the stereotyped bad guys most of the time (or, if not the bad guys, at least Machiavellian and untrustworthy). We’ve seen two of the 10 episodes, and we’re torn between wanting to watch them all now and pacing them out.

That’s plenty pleasant disturbances for one week.


To see more Pleasantly Disturbed Thursday posts, visit Marty Duane Scott at Scribing the Journey.

Photograph: Husband Freezing by Janet Young, taken from the doorway of the nice warm house while husband shoveled in the freezing cold. Used with laughing permission.