i write.

I have been writing all day/week. Just not here. Sorry. And what have I been writing, you ask?

1 -- Newsletter for Au Sable (I freelance!)

2 -- The 40-year history of Baxter Community Center, summarized succinctly and poetically in approximately 3 pages, along with accompanying stories and quotations (I volunteer!)

And allllll the copy is due on Friday.

Goodness.

Oh, and one more:

3 -- Random articles for Crossroad Bible Institute when I am not processing lessons and lessons and lessons (I work! For someone that has me on payroll!)

When 1 and 2 are complete, I will write for you and me again, my friends. Until then, think on this, some wisdom from our friend Frederick Buechner:

Here is the world.

Beautiful

and

terrible

things will happen.

Don’t be afraid.

functioning oven, poppyseed cookies and living gracefully

All of my posts thus far have been relatively serious, so on a lighter note, let me tell you two very good things that happened approximately a week ago:

1. Handyman Dave came and fixed the oven.

2. We turned on the heat in the flat.

I was so happy.

Let's talk about the oven. Our oven has been out of commission since the very start of the summer. It has been awful. The saga began with the pilot light being out. This seems like it should be easy to deal with, but it was not. First, a neighbor of mine lit it briefly, but the following morning ALL of the pilot lights (oven and stovetop) were out. Even Taylor, lying on the kitchen floor in his work clothes and reaching matches back into the depths of our oven, could not light it. And Taylor is good at these sorts of things. So finally Landlord Man sent Handyman Dave, who lit the pilot light but apparently did not check to make sure the oven worked. Because it did not. And then by this time, I was discouraged and frustrated, and I thought I was moving out at the end of the summer, so I just let it ago.

But when I realized I was staying, I was bound and determined to have that oven functioning. As Landlord Man was not all that responsive when the chimney fell off the house earlier this summer, I didn't expect a lot, but he was actually very responsive this time. But then again, I was quite firm. (As another result of this firmness, he has also now dedicated himself to the task of helping us catch our squadron of mice. But that's a story for another day.)

So last Friday, Handyman Dave (who is really not only knowledgeable but also very kind) came over and banged around under the oven for awhile and then informed me that it was fixed. As he explained to me and I now repeat to you, in my layperson terminology and probably quite inaccurately, there was gunk on the small pipe that the gas flows through to get to the big pipe where something else gets lit, at which point the newly lit thing, whatever it is, makes a whooshing sound and heats up the oven.

He knocked the gunk off the pipe.

There was whooshing.

There was heat.

I was thrilled.

Now, two good things did result from our oven being broken for this long, sad time. First, I now have a much better understand of gas appliances in general and our stove in particular. And second, I learned to be very resourceful in my cooking. I cooked many a thing on the stovetop this summer. I was particularly proud of my successful use of a skillet on the stovetop (rather than a pan in the oven) to roast tomatoes and to roast spiced chickpeas. I may not have been as innovative as my sister, but then again, she's pretty brilliant.

BUT.

But I couldn't bake. No scones, no muffins, no bread. And you cannot roast a butternut squash in a skillet on the stovetop. At least I don't think you can.

However, now the oven works! So as soon as I felt I could trust it, I baked. Constrained by a lack of baking ingredients, I perused my cookbooks until I found this recipe for poppyseed cookies in a little green book called The Peaceful Cook, written by Harriet Kolfalk in 1991. My sister got this book secondhand and then passed it on to me a year or so ago. (As a note, I must mention that my sister and I agree that the book takes the concepts of holistic living and interconnectedness further than we are comfortable with, but the recipes within are unique, healthful, seasonal and focused on whole foods. Good stuff.)

These cookies are soft and somewhat crumbly, just slightly sweet and with a faint crunch from the poppyseeds. My friend Abby said that they reminded her of scones; I think I'll try that next I return to this recipe.

Poppyseed Cookies for Celebration and Graceful Living

Adapted from The Peaceful Cook

1/2 cup skim milk

2/3 cup poppyseeds

1/2 cup raisins

1 1/4 cup white whole wheat flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1/2 cup butter

1/3 cup honey

1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

1/2 tsp. lemon extract

Heat oven (!!!) to 350°.

In a saucepan, heat milk to nearly boiling. Remove from heat and stir in poppyseeds and raisins. Set aside.

Mix dry ingredients together. Cream butter until smooth; add honey, vanilla and lemon. Combine butter mixture and dry ingredients. Fold in poppyseed mixture. (You may need to add a bit more flour as I did at this point if your dough is overly wet.)

Drop small spoonfuls onto buttered cookie sheet. Bake 15 minutes or until cookies are light brown at the edges.

Yield: about 3 dozen small cookies

Here author Harriet would insert some comment about harmony with nature through poppyseeds. I do like harmony. But today I just say this: Let the cookies cool. Eat. Enjoy. Be thankful for your oven. Be thankful in general.

That's the final thing I want to touch on today. Aforementioned friend Abby and I were talking earlier this week about being in this strange phase of life that we've found ourselves in and being confused and discouraged and disoriented. I had been frustrated about something, but with fierce independence, I said to Abby that I can handle this. I can. I can handle a lot of things, and I can take it, whatever it may be.

But wise Abby reminded me that actually, everyone "handles things." As long as we continue living, that is what we are doing. And so people handle tragedy, the death of those they love, cancer, unemployment, homelessness, depression, disappointment, betrayal... but sometimes they handle these things poorly.

So yes, of course I can deal with the situations I am in. The question is not if I can handle things (as they are and will be) but rather how I will handle them. Will I do so gracefully... or no?

I want to handle things gracefully.

But I don't always do a fabulous job of this. I think that at many times in the last few weeks in particular, I've been very far from graceful. And I apologize, flatmates, dear friends, family, all you who have had to deal with me being so clumsy. I'm working on regaining my balance, being stable, living as if I am dancing, figuring out what it means to be graceful when being graceful is so hard. Feel free to keep me accountable... but also please be patient.

Summary: The nice handyman fixed the oven, and we turned on our heat. I felt thankful. I made cookies. The thankfulness continued. I realized that life is not about just handling what comes my way but about doing that well. I decided that I need to live more gracefully.

And there it is. If I forget, I'll just go make some more cookies.

love is a miracle. seriously, people.

Disclaimer: The following does not relate to any one circumstance in my own life or that of anyone else but rather to the cohesive whole of all of my experiences and observations. Point being, don't read into this or try to figure out who I'm talking about, because I'm telling you now: I'm talking about the whole world. And everyone in it.

Tonight, my friends, I present one of my more brilliant (?) observations of late, something very simple but also true and worth at least a moment or two of pondering. Here it is:

For two people to (1) fall in love (2) with each other (3) at the same time (4) to even somewhere near the same degree... this is pretty near to a miracle.

This is like magic.

Really, though, how likely is that to actually happen??? All of these things, all at the same time? Not likely. Not likely at all. And I'm a realist in my (still persistent) romantic sensibilities; I am not talking about perfection, and I know well that any relationship necessitates significant work. But still. We should be shocked that it EVER happens.

Now on the one hand, this observation makes genuine love coursing back and forth between two people stop me in my tracks with its beauty. But the whole thing also just makes my heart ache. I know what it feels like to be in those other, more typical situations, in the more likely event that only one person has fallen, the timing is off or the levels of attachment are entirely unequal. I have been the person offering unrequited affection and the person not requiting the affection of another, and, as most of us know well, neither one is pleasant. And this is happening all the time, all around me, and people ache and hurt just for this crazy, inexplicable thing that is love.

I'm not trying to be cynical; I just want to keep things in perspective. For me personally, at this moment in my life, I cannot even imagine tumbling into a relationship in which the aforementioned points (even mostly) line up, and I don't want to forget feeling this way. If ever this kind of loving happens in my life, I do not want to take it for granted.

So we cannot expect this sensical, non-chaotic relationality as we so readily tend to... but let’s please be thankful and in awe when it happens. Hear that, all you folks in (even relatively) happy, committed relationships? Remember what a crazy, beautiful, unlikely thing it is that you are where you are, with that person you are with. How ever did this happen when all the cards seem stacked against? I know it's not perfect; of course it isn't perfect. Nothing is without its degree of brokenness. But even so... what magic!

Love. Really. Oh, what a world we live in.

good/bad (this is life).

(Good)

A few nights ago, I went on the most wonderful run, and oh yes, my friends, it is fall indeed. As I ran, the wind whisked through the leaves, leaves colored green to yellow to orange to red like fire, and I could hear the trees creaking in that erie way they do when the cold settles deep inside of them like it settles now already in my bones. I ran past a football field and thought of being sixteen and caught up in that strange and completely different world that is high school (thank God it's over). Canadian geese honked loudly in the distance as I passed Reed's Lake, bringing to mind nights at the wetlands in Midland with my dad when I was young; I never loved it quite as much as he or my sister did but was drawn in whatever small way to something in nature and thrilled to make my dad so happy just for having come. I ran down these streets that I've run down so many times before, past houses and down sidewalks whose shapes have become so familiar, and the smell of fall nearly overwhelmed me...

For whatever strange reason, after a day that seemed rather inconsequential, happiness was overwhelming me as well. And the mystery of changing seasons and the memories bombarding me and the hope of the future threw me into this strange place of beauty and I felt so deeply that the world is new the world is new the world is new.

And then the next day started so well. I went to the farmers' market (which, as many of you already know, is one of my most favorite things in the entire world), and the farmers were all bundled up and my toes were cold and I wandered through with the handful of other people that come out to sparsely populate the Wednesday morning market. I bought apples and tomatoes and zucchini and eggplant and onions for my house and talked to one of my favorite farmers, a darling old man with surprisingly straight, white teeth who I first bonded with early this summer over the beauty of swiss chard. I went to breakfast alone at Gaia, and it was warm and wonderful and peaceful. I talked to the waitress and listened to the rapid flurry of Spanish bouncing between two Puerto Rican men and a little girl sitting up by the window and wrote and drank a copious amount of coffee.

And I was feeling relatively, surprisingly positive about life in general.

(Bad)

Then I went to work, job 2, nonprofit 2, currently part-time/temporary but with promise of becoming part-time/not temporary. At the end of a few mundane-but-not-so-bad hours of sorting and filing, I found out that the possibility of the job becoming more permanent had lessened significantly.

And suddenly I did not feel quite so positive about life in general.

None of this should have been surprising. I knew, first of all, that things weren't completely settled in my life, and they never will be because life just isn't that way. And for weeks now, I have been telling people that I think that this phase of life I am entering into is one in which things will remain in flux, up in the air, shifting constantly. Whatever happens next, I realized mid-summer, is very unlikely to be a full-time job. With health benefits. Check back in a few years, and even then don't count on it. I've become quite okay with this.

And yet. And yet, I am tired, I am tired of being tired, I am tired of being confused, I am tired of the puzzle pieces of my life not fitting together. (Yes, Kyle VZ, don't you worry, Old Stacy will never go away completely.)

And this is the thing: loosening our grip on our lives, choosing peace (thank you Ryan), knowing that life is hard and crazy but choosing to enjoy living anyway... these are things we must do every day. Of course it's still hard. Of course things are still uncertain. I have to throw up my hands and give it all over, every day.

As part of my job at Crossroad Bible Institute (part-time job 1), I read through the Bible studies completed by our students, who are currently in the US prison system (more description of this job later). Yesterday, I read the following in one man's prayer:

"Le entrego todas mis cargas, mis angustias, pesares, anhelos, deseos, planes, mi vida, mi ser y que sea lo que Dios quiera." (More or less, "I give him all of my burdens, my distress, grief, yearnings, desires, plans, my life, my being and that it may be what God wants.")

All of it? Wow. But yes, all of it. I give him all of it today, I'll probably need to do it again in an hour or so and tomorrow I'll do it again. And to really mean this is terrifying, but it's the only right option. So may it -- all of it -- be what he wants.

And I know even now that it will be good, and it will be bad. May I choose to enjoy living, regardless.