Author: Natalie Hart

an unexpected overcoming

~ Natalie Hart ~ 1 Comment

On Monday, I saw a friend in the parking lot at Meijer and in the course of chatting, I started crying. There in the parking lot, with all the people doing their errands streaming past me, I couldn’t pretend I was handling it all anymore.

Now, nobody I love is dying (although people I love have cancer). My husband is still employed. I’ve even got work for which I’ll get paid. Eventually. I won’t even say the thing I was going to say, something about not missing the E.R., but that would be tempting fate, so I won’t.

But in every area of my life that is important to me — kids, marriage, writing, finances, church work — I’m overwhelmed by failure and fear. And fear of failure. Things that I thought would be manageable, became huge, looming problems that won’t untangle themselves quickly or easily. Things I thought were positive have taken their pound of flesh instead, but not surgically, more like the flesh-eating bacteria kind of thing where the wound must remain open for a long time. Issues I thought we were past…. You get the idea.

My throat on fire barely registered, because at least it was understandable.

I’ve been waking in the middle of the night, heart pounding and unable to fall back asleep, which certainly doesn’t help me deal with any of this more rationally. I’ve spent my days trying to convince myself, “These symptoms of stress are helping me. Body, thank you for preparing me to deal with these challenges,” after hearing this great TED talk on how to make stress my friend. But that never helped for long.

And I’ve prayed. Oh, how I’ve prayed. Mostly that most basic of prayers: Help. No specifics. Just, Help. I’m overwhelmed. I don’t have the imagination to see how this will get any better. Help.

On top of that I’m in the thick of the prophets in my Bible reading. All that doom and gloom and punishment and exile and “you brought this on yourselves.” Even though most books are tempered by a little bit of “on that day when the Lord thinks you’ve had enough punishment and he restores you, everything will be perfect and amazing,” it’s not exactly the most uplifting reading I could be doing.

Yesterday morning, I read this from Hezekiah 3:16-17 (NLT):

“Cheer up, Zion! Don’t be afraid! For the Lord your God has arrived to live among you. He is a mighty savior. He will rejoice over you with great gladness. With his love, he will calm all your fears. He will exult over you by singing a happy song.”

Did I sigh with relief? Did I hand over all my fears to God? Nope.

I liked the bit about rejoicing and exulting over us. How great is it that we can made God so happy that he can’t help singing?

But God’s love calming all my fears? All my fears? Even those ones that have nothing to do with my behavior but with other peoples’? How does that work? I may have even added a tweenish, “I don’t think so.” And a curmudgeonly, “Hmph.”

That same day, I had a kid home sick, which I responded to the night before (when I saw the writing on the wall) by yelling at her. Classy.

This school year has my head spinning, trying to keep track of two kids in two different schools with entirely different academic calendars. In the 7 weeks I’ve had one or both kids in school, I’ve only had one 5-day stretch with both of them gone. Truth time: I love it when my kids go back to school. After a summer of togetherness and putting aside my plans so their plans can happen, I relish the fall. We always do better when we have a little time apart. But this year, I’m still scrambling, still trying to find purchase and focus.

Instead of resenting her, I embraced the kid at home. After all, we have the same symptoms, so I knew exactly how she felt.

(My selfish “somebody give me a medal for that” side wants me to add that I managed to make breakfast and lunches and pick up kids from school and sit and cheer at a soccer game and do the dishes and give some lectures about my expectations regarding making up missing work on that same “first day of illness” that she sat on the couch and had a bath.)

I was warm and sympathetic. I scrubbed the tub for her.

Then the other child came home from school and practice. We had a good dinner all together, and then that child buckled down and got the missing work completed.

And I was flooded with love for my children. My husband was gone for bedtime, so I got to pray with both of them. By the end, I was overwhelmed with love and tenderness. To the point of tears. I’m still a little weepy about it.

This is not normal for me. I love them, yes, but I’m rarely swamped by it. They are, after all, 12 and 14. And I’m not a super-gushy mother.

Right before I went to bed, I remembered: “With his love, he will calm all your fears.”

Not one single issue was solved. But doggone it if love didn’t calm my fears. God wins again. And despite my skepticism, too.

All I’ve got to say to that is, Thank you.

 

Where I’m From

~ Natalie Hart ~ Leave a comment

 

I am from the flour-encrusted wooden speculaas mold of a windmill,
from the Delft tea strainer and Loonies and Toonies in my change bowl.

I am from the duplex on the corner with the handmade furniture
and the green 1954 MG-TF in the driveway that my dad bought in Australia
(to prove to his employees that he wasn’t always a humorless hardass)
so the steering wheel is on the “wrong” side.

I am from the ferns and lily of the valley that mixed in my mother’s garden and now in mine,
and the yellow plum tree with the two thin-skinned plums a year the squirrels would leave us.

I’m from praying in the New Year and always being right;
from Oma and two Esthers. I’m from clean as you go and making things gezellig
and reading in the living room.

I’m from your brother’s doing it on purpose and close that book and turn off the light
and every ABBA song ever committed to vinyl: I feel the beat from the tambourine.

I’m from opening presents on Christmas Eve, after the oil fondue dinner.

I’m from Toronto and the Netherlands (as far back as they can see),
from boerenkoel met wurst and the cereal cookies that everyone
wanted the recipe for and then would complain that they didn’t taste
the same as my mother’s even though they hadn’t followed the instructions.

From “poop on your own time,” Tante Nell’s pronouncement when someone tried to get out
of his chores by hiding in the hall bathroom, there in that big house in the country
during the Hunger Winter, the last winter of the war, when the house held 3 families,
3 resistance workers, one nanny, and five people who “hid” in plain sight.

From the farm in Overisel — the one in Michigan, with its sharp basement smell,
and the crook in the sour cherry tree that perfectly fit my 12-year-old behind,
and afternoons spent pitting those cherries in the kitchen with my aunts and grandmother.

From looking for new things to try and always investigating new solutions and ideas.

From using imagination to deepen faith.

 

 

I am linking up here with SheLoves Magazine’s Where I’m From poems. The secret is that there’s a template, so you (like me) don’t have to be any kind of poet. Come over, follow the template and make your own. Add it there, or post it here in the comments. 

 

[new mantra] it will be fine

~ Natalie Hart ~ 1 Comment

My hard drive died.

Sitting at that genius bar with only scorched earth possibilities is … sobering. Galvanizing (surrounded by all that lovely metal, I couldn’t resist that word). Clarifying. What was important enough to have the very helpful young man give me a backup of? One thing. One thing that won’t surprise anyone. Family photos.

It Is You and all my other past and partial manuscripts were already backed up. Same with Word documents of family stories. But the one thing that was most overwhelming to save was the most overwhelming to consider losing.

There was a lot I chose not to save. I will miss the folder of positive notes about my writing that I’d hoarded, but I never looked at them after the first read-through. I don’t need a physical copy of them to let them bolster my faith in my dreams and my vision. I remember how wonderful they were and how important to me they are. That’s good enough. There were some hilarious extended family exchanges that I’d saved, but I’d never looked at them. I let them all go.

This has changed what my main focus of my Happiness/Stableness Project will be. The project is modeled after the one Gretchen Ruben did for herself (and has written two books about, The Happiness Project and Happiness at Home). The idea is to take a year (or so) to focus on and turn around areas of your life that are a drag on your happiness/stableness and pump up areas that are uplifting. Before today at 11:10 a.m., I’d had some ideas about what I needed to focus on: our finances, my irritability, my failure to be emotionally balanced or distanced or stable about the already (you are doing good writing that is satisfying and pleasing to you and to others) with the not yet (you do not yet have an agent or publisher) of my writing career.

I’ll still have some goals that relate to those broad issues, but those things just became secondary to the massive project of sentimental organization. Photos, cards, letters, kids’ stories, kids’ drawings, school projects — I know where they all are. Pre-2005 is in 3 neat file boxes. Post-2005 is shoved in a box, willynilly. It would break my heart if I lost these due to my own negligence.

So while I sat at the bar trying not to cry, surrounded by the genial geniuses, I came up with my September Happiness/Stability Project goals:

1. Figure out good backup procedures for everything. Implement them.

2. Restore and consolidate all digital photos from the various computers and external drives they’re on. Make sure they receive regular backups.

3. Work out (with husband) a budget that incorporates our new financial obligations and work on a system for regulating spending (envelope system?).

4. Finish reading The Happiness Project and interact with the others in the group.

And speaking of backups….

5. Schedule the RotoRooter people to prophylactically clear out sewer pipe so we don’t get a clog from tree roots and have a disgusting back-up problem of a different kind (like we did 2 years ago).

My computer works again, after being wiped clean, inside and out, which I’m grateful for. But who knows how long it will stumble on with only its left fan working?

And now for a little stress eating — for once, I’m taking the last chocolate chocolate chip muffin for myself.

Have any of you had to bounce back from this very modern catastrophe? How did you do it?

 

 

Wait a minute, who’s on trial?

~ Natalie Hart ~ 1 Comment

 

The muttering started as soon as they broke camp. No. Moses had to admit that it started as soon as the pillar of cloud moved and he gave the official word that the Lord was moving them out of the Wilderness of Sin.

It was always about the same thing. Where is there water? Are there water holes where we’re going? How much water should we put in the skins? Will there be water in two days, because that’s all the donkeys can carry?

His answer was always the same: “The Lord is leading us. He took us out of Egypt, across the sea on dry land, and he’s promised us a new life. He will not let us die of thirst on the way.”

The answer he wanted to give? We were slaves for 400 years, people. None of you left Egypt unless you were part of a work detail, and then you were more likely to be trying to avoid the whip than noticing your surroundings. Any of you who knew these lands and how to recognize the signs of water died generations ago. This is only possible with the Lord! So trust Him.”

But the people were too anxious. No argument, either rational, sarcastic, or faith-filled could get through, so he just let them grumble.

They were a slow-moving column, slow enough that runners with donkeys could go back to previous campsites to fetch just enough water to get by. But the Lord kept moving them further and further from known water. Days away. Mountains hemmed them in on every side. Cruel rocks with no vegetation, which meant no shepherds who might tell them where there was a spring. Now and then they’d see a smoothed section of rock that looked like it was made by flowing water, but it was too late in the season; all the runoff from winter rains had dried.

Moses could hear a whine of disbelief roll through the people when the pillar of cloud stopped after only a half a day’s walk. They wouldn’t reach water again today. It was true that the people only had strength to journey that far, but he could feel the weight of their panic like one of those mountains, pressing in on him.

And then something worse happened: silence. All the chatter of the people stopped as they surrounded him.

A lone voice cried, desperation in every word, “Give us water to drink!”

Everyone spoke at once, each accusation like a rock thrown at his head. “My mother is dying.” “My children will not live through the night.” “I’ve already lost livestock. I’d better not lose more.” “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“Quiet!” Moses tried his best to calm them down. “Why are you bringing this up to me? I don’t control the water any more than I control you.”

But they weren’t listening. “Why did you bring us out of Egypt?” “Are you trying to kill us?” “We were better off as slaves.” “At least we knew where water was.” “At least our masters gave us enough food and water to keep our strength up.” “We’re going to die out here.” “The Lord brought us out here to die.”

A sandstorm swirled through Moses’s insides. “No! No. Don’t say that. Those are serious charges.”

“You looked so tough in Egypt, but you don’t know what you’re doing.” “We’re cursed.” “We’re doomed to fail.” “Why is the Lord leading us to our death?”

Their complaints took an even darker turn. “How can Lord be with us anymore?” “It was all a trick.” “The Lord doesn’t care about us.”

Moses clenched his fists and cried out to the Lord, “What can I do with these people? They’re ready to stone me!”

The voice of the Lord came into Moses’s mind, as unhurried as usual. “Walk out in front of the people. Take your staff, the one you used when you struck the water of the Nile, and call the elders of Israel to join you.”

Now they were going to get it. They’d pressed the Lord too far. The Lord was calling a judgment council and putting the people on trial for daring to challenge Him. And people would die. Because there would have to be deaths. What else could the result be for calling the Lord’s power and wisdom into question?

He sent Miriam and Aaron to gather the tribal elders, and then stalked through the crowd, pushing through with his staff in front of him, no longer even trying to answer the people.

The Lord told him to go the rock at Mount Sinai, so that’s where he headed with the judgment council. They each assured him that they’d been trying to keep their tribe in line. What could he say to that except, “It’s too late. They’ve pushed the Lord too far. He told me that he’d stand on the rock at Mount Sinai. I don’t know what He’s going to do to them from up there.”

“Not quite.” It was the Lord. “I said that I will stand before you on the rock at Mount Sinai.”

Moses stumbled. “But it’s the accused who stands before the judgment council.”

The Lord was silent.

“You–” Moses could hardly get out the words. “You will stand before the council and let the people make their charge against you?”

The tribal elders gasped when they heard his side of the conversation.

Moses panted at the effort to keep his fear in check. “My brothers, the Lord will allow Himself to stand before the judgment council, under the accusation of abandoning his people.”

This was getting worse and worse. The people were not supposed to put the Lord on trial. And the Lord wasn’t supposed to agree to it. They had all watched as the Lord moved the waters of the sea for them and then swamped the Egyptian army. What would He do for this offense? Would He pull down the mountains on top of them? Strike them down with a sickness?

Finally, Moses and the elders were there. They sat between the rock and the people, unsure of how to proceed, afraid to look at each other or at the people.

“Strike the rock with your staff,” the Lord said.

Moses pushed himself up and thought about bargaining with the Lord, begging for mercy for His people, but dread pooled in his gut. The people were beyond his help.

“Moses.” The Lord’s voice was so … gentle. “When you strike the rock, water will come out. The people will get their drink.”

This was even more confusing, but if Moses had learned nothing else, it was to do what God told him to. He grabbed his staff with both hands and swung it behind him. In the heartbeat when the staff was poised in the air, right before he brought it against the rock, he heard the people scream in panic. He put all his power behind his swing and almost broke the staff against the rock.

Water gushed out and drenched Moses. He stood under its stream and cried — whether it was in gratitude, in relief, in shock, in awe, he didn’t know. When the tension washed away, he stepped to the side and watched the people. Many of them had turned away from the rock and tried to run, but the crowd was too thick. In the confusion and arguing, few people noticed what happened. The elders had to wade out and tell them, “Turn around. The Lord has given us water.” “Come and drink your fill.” “Bring your jugs and water skins.”

Some people dipped their fingertips in the water and tentatively licked them as if it might be poison. As the water filled the dry river bed that had been their path, others knelt in the middle and stuck their faces in while they drank. Some people danced and others wept. But there was more than enough water to revive everyone. Even the livestock.

When everyone was satisfied, Moses raised his staff one more time. The people quieted.

“Whatever this place used to be called, I am renaming it Massah and Meribah, because here is where we brought our complaint against the Lord. Against our charge, “Is the Lord with us, or not?” the Lord did not put us on trial for daring to accuse Him, nor did He crush us. He agreed to stand trial and his evidence is all around us. Here is the verdict of the council: He is with us! Glory be the name of the Lord!”

*****

This story found its germ in a sermon I heard this summer that unpacked the ancient legalese that I hadn’t recognized in the biblical record. Thinking about how radical a shift it was for God to agree to stand before the tribal judgment council fired up my imagination, and I wanted to play with unpacking the story, and taking more time to tell it than we get in the Bible. Also, I apologize that I do not have a credit for that amazing artwork — I’ve looked. If you know about the original, please drop me a line.

On Writing My Prayers

~ Natalie Hart ~ 2 Comments

I’m thrilled to be doing my first guest post today, for my Renew and Refine Retreat for Writers friend, Emily Miller, over at emmillerwrites.com. I’m talking about the one spiritual practice I’ve managed to be consistent about: writing out my prayers. Regular readers of mine, I invite you to start here and click through to the rest of the post at Emily’s site. Readers who’ve come here from Emily’s site, I invite you to read this post (When Fear and Avoidance Mean You’re On the Right Track) with more details about how praying for compassion for my husband affected our marriage.

Whoever you are and however you got here — thank you for reading.

 

Thank you, Emily, not only for inviting me to talk about writing my prayers, but also for calling the series Spiritual Practices and not Spiritual Disciplines. I like the attitude of practice. As a spiritual director friend of mine likes to say, “That’s why we call them practices, because we’re not very good at them yet.”
I’m really not very good at being disciplined.

Ten or so years ago, I prayed through the Psalms. And then several years later, when God let me know I was acting like a child, he led me to read through the Jesus Storybook Bible. Both inspired sweet and holy times of prayer and reflection, but when each was finished, that was it; they were projects, not practices.

I’ve decided numerous times to pray every night before bed, but either the prayer would get me so charged up that I’d lose sleep or I’d fall asleep and lose prayer. Or my mind would follow one loosely connected path to another until I was in an imaginary interview with Terry Gross about the fabulous book I’d written, and prayer time lost to my daydreams of personal glory.

Determination to pray first thing in the morning was no better. It either cured the insomnia that woke me long before the alarm, or, if I managed to follow through, the children would get up earlier than I expected, and the amount of discipline it took not to snarl at them would sap my ability to stick with the prayer.

I prayed often, particularly when driving or doing laundry or awake in the middle of the night. But I resisted all attempts to be disciplined or intentional about my spiritual practices.

And then, in December 2010, a pastor friend suggested that I write my prayers down. You know, because I’m a writer. So maybe writing was meaningful to me and helped me process my world. D’oh.     keep reading

 

Flipping the servant worship switch

~ Natalie Hart ~ 4 Comments

[My point here is probably better made in the children’s message at the bottom of this post. I understand if you’d rather skip ahead to it.]

I have a confession to make: I have been a moody worshipper, grumbling and getting upset if two songs in a row left me cold. We’ve been at our new church for about a year, but even this winter, I could be in tears about music selection — and my husband was one of the people picking and leading music. I sometimes desperately missed the music at our previous church and that got in the way of my appreciation of other parts of the service. The music at the new church was (and is) good, and I love singing old hymns again, but I was wrapped up in my own sense of what “proper” worship was.

Something needed to change and, conveniently, and predictably, I didn’t think it was me.

And then this past spring I interviewed over a dozen ministers in order to write profiles on their churches (for this project). I asked each one the same five questions, one of which was, “What are your strengths as a congregation?” One of the answers changed my experience of worship — changed it utterly.

Bob Boersma of Providence Christian Reformed Church said that servant worship was one of their strengths. He characterized servant worship like this: “We ask our people to sing along [with songs they may not like] because someone else may need to sing it.” So the act of worship is not just personal, and it isn’t just communal — that is, we’re not each doing our own personal worship all in the same place. Worship as an act of service to the other people in the congregation is more intimate. It requires me to give up (some of) my fussiness about worship, to modify my need to get something out of every moment of the service and my right to be upset if every moment of the service doesn’t speak to me.

I found this glorious. And freeing. But also grounding. Even better, it helped connect me to the church that still felt foreign to me after seven months of involved membership.

It’s not like the servant worship switch being flipped made everything about worship wonderful. It didn’t. There are still songs I don’t like, songs that don’t feel particularly worshipful to me. But now I think to myself, “here’s a servant worship moment,” and I sing with my eyes open (otherwise, I close my eyes), looking around for those people who are getting their worship on, looking for the people singing with their eyes closed, or raising their hands, or bouncing their clapping baby. I listen for the voices of the older women singing their hearts out or the “Amen” from someone in the back. And in those moments, I can be glad that we’re singing that song I don’t like.

This explanation has been pretty good, but I think I said it best yesterday in my children’s message:

I’ve been thinking about children’s worship starting up again soon, and thinking about the songs we sing. Songs like the walls of Jericho song [to the adults, I noted that it was one of our crazier songs]. Some of you love, love, love it. And some of you are kind of scared by the craziness of it. And I was thinking about my 3 versions of Jesus Loves Me. Some of you love the sweet and quiet regular version and some kids love the louder rock and roll version. That happens in grown-up church, too.

I have a confession to make. Can we keep it just between us? That song we did two songs ago, [name of song], I don’t like it very much. I don’t.

But I sang it anyway.

Why do we sing songs that some people don’t like?

Let’s do an experiment. Grownups and kids, I’ll need your help on this. If you loved that song, if it made you joyful, it you felt the love of God for you or your love for God while you sang, raise your hand.

[a couple dozen hands went up]

Look at that. Look at all those hands of people who loved that song, who were really worshipping while they sang it.

So that’s why. But it’s only part of why we sing songs not everyone loves. Here’s the bigger reason.

[did the sign language for love and made the kids tell me what it meant]

That’s right. Love. We are all God’s family here, and because God loves us, we love each other and we want to serve each other. Jesus served the people he loved. Even though he was God, he washed his friends’ dirty, smelly, sweaty, disgusting feet. Serving someone by singing a song I don’t like is a lot more fun than washing their smelly feet.

So that’s why we sing a lot of different songs in children’s worship and in grown-up church: we’re a lot of different kinds of people who love a lot of different kinds of songs who feel and express the love of God in all kids of different ways — and because we love each other, we serve each other by sometimes singing things we don’t personally like. It’s servant worship, and it’s a lot more fun than washing smelly feet.

Let me note here that I am not suggesting that you stay in a church even when God is nudging you out just so you can be of service to the people there by participating in worship you can’t stand. And I’m not saying that all churches need to sing a variety of music — I’ve never met anyone whose spirit soared during every single song that was sung in their church.

I am suggesting that changing how you think about worship — in particular, changing how you think about singing songs you don’t like — can help you feel more connected to your fellow congregants, can give you joy even in the midst of songs you don’t like, can utterly change your experience of worship for the better. It did for me.

And now, because I’m talking about worship, you may commence yelling at me.

 

Magical Thinking Makes Me An Island

~ Natalie Hart ~ 2 Comments

I am a hypocrite.

Lately, I’ve been writing about fear and about moving ahead despite fear. I’ve talked with one of my kids multiple times over the school year about magical thinking: as in, “you can’t just let your unfinished work pile up, hoping that it will go away and everything will resolve on its own.” I can honestly say that I’ve been doing things this year that give me high anxiety and the change and growth that have resulted have been really, really good.

Except in one case.

My daughter had 4 E.R. visits in from December to May, one of which involved an overnight stay, two of which involved IVs and X-rays, and one of which involved a broken bone. An avalanche of insurance paperwork and hospital bills have been arriving at our house. And I let them pile up.

After awhile, I let them pile up unopened.

My husband’s company had switched insurance companies two weeks before all this started, and the new company’s policies were incomprehensible to me. When my husband called about the first item that arrived, he was told to wait, that they’d pay that soon.

I took that too much to heart. Way too much.

In May, I made a binder for all the medical stuff, and I paid a few things from our flex pay account. I even discovered that we could pay bills based on the full amount that we’d set aside for the flex pay, that we didn’t have to only use what was in there at the time. Even so, I let the bills pile up. Unopened. As if everything would be fine. I’d been praying about it for months, praying that I would push through my anxiety and take a look at the bills, asking God to help me stop being such an idiot. I couldn’t sleep. For weeks, every time I woke up in the middle of the night, I’d lay there in a stew of anxiety and fear. And in the morning, I’d do nothing.

So this past Wednesday, I taped two pieces of paper together, opened the binder, opened every piece of mail, detailed everything in one big chart, tossed duplicate bills. And discovered that we had enough in the flex account to pay for everything. I felt chastened and relieved. And really, really stupid for having wasted so much time.

At least part of the relief was that I didn’t have to feel so alone anymore. Because that’s part of magical thinking: it keeps you alone. Alone and terrified. You can’t admit your magical thinking because as soon as you say it out loud to another person you realize how irrational it is and then your adult self will have to step in and do something about it — if you don’t, the person you said it to will step in. This is a lonely place to be.

I’ll have to confess this to the child I talked to about magical thinking, which should be good for both of us. And make us feel less alone.

Anyone have any magical thinking they want to confess? Feel free. You already know I’ll relate to it.

This was part of my participation in Lisa-Jo Baker’s Five Minute Fridays, wherein we write for 5 minutes about a common topic. This week’s word: lonely.

What a great concert does to a person

~ Natalie Hart ~ 4 Comments

The last time I went to a concert in a basement was 17 years ago in a grim bar on the eastern edge of the East Village, when my husband’s band, The Haints, went on at 2 a.m. to play to the 3 friends and 2 near-comatose strangers in attendance, all of us drinking $8 glasses of soured McSorleys. I think we all hated each other by the end.

This was the opposite of that show in every way.

Jason, Toby Hazlet and Gerko Tempelman

Friday, July 19, Jason Harrod and his traveling band – Toby Hazlet on the ukulele bass and providing nicely understated harmonies, and Gerko Tempelman on drums – played a garden concert in Chris Smit and Lisa Van Arragon’s basement. Rain earlier in the day left everything outside wet, so they moved it downstairs. A great decision. There were no distractions from the music in that limited space, so emotion could build and flow between and among us. I felt it as an audience member, and I hope we were feeding it back to Jason and the band.

He had an opening act, local 16-year-old singer-songwriter, Maddy Wiering. In the interests of full disclosure, I should say that I’ve known Maddy since she was 4 – the flutey little voice she had back in the days of minivan carpools has matured into a high and lonesome sound that draws in and holds on to the listener. Okay, more full disclosure: I asked my husband, a musician, how he’d describe Maddy’s voice, and “high and lonesome” was his answer.

Many of her songs are restrained in presentation, so you can really hear the lyrics, and appreciate the pathos of “Tough All Over,” which is about not being tough all over. But then she can strum her guitar harder and sing louder and wilder so we can join her in the crazier side of human relationships in “Crazy.” It was really fun to watch other musicians in the crowd nod along as she played, to hear them laugh to themselves when she got something so right. Check her out on SoundCloud. A fitting opener for Jason.

I love Jason’s voice. There, I’ve said it. It does something to the back of my neck, in particular, not quite shivers, not goosebumps, but that’s where I feel it. For the entire time he’s singing. Especially when he breaks out the falsetto. I just had to get that out.

Indulge me one more time. Jason stood in front of us with more command, more generosity, more comfort than I remember seeing from him in the past. He guided us on emotional journeys and we were happy to be led. I blame/credit his recent experience as a worship leader. I’ve seen this same change in another long-time performer; not quite enough of a sample to make for a full-blown theory, but close.

Now on to the show.

Even before he started singing, the mood in that basement was rather gleeful – we were all so happy to be there, even the chubby baby with squeezable legs sitting on his dad’s lap. Jason started with an oldie, “Siren Song,” which got our heads and toes bopping. In the intro to the next number about riding the subway, he confessed that his songs are generally about God, women, or geography, or a combo of all three. He was right; there was only one song that didn’t fit that description.

The third song was the first new one he played, a cool mix of monumental and granular imagery. “When I came down off the mountain, I was breaking like a wave,” to lyrics about particles of dust. And then in the middle of this fantasy, he pierces us: “Who’s going to love me today? Who’s going to calm me down? Who’s going to take me as I am? Who’s going to take me home?” This was the first of three times Rachel Laughlin leaned over another person to look at me long and hard before finally whispering, “I love that one.”

Then it was on to “Moon Mission,” the first single off the new album Highliner (give it a listen here). What seems, at first, like a straightforward song about the last man to walk on the moon turns into an exploration of the sadder and bleaker side of human experience: “I’ll be your sweet sailor up in the sky … There’s nothing for me down here.” This is something Jason does so well. At the end, Steve de Ruiter called out, “That’s a killer tune, man.”

I must add that opening act Maddy Wiering pulled a similar shift in her song, “The Girl With The Gorilla Tattoo.” It started out as a cheerful story song about a waitress in Nashville with some impressive tattoos, but then Maddy took it somewhere else with the observations that nobody knew her name or cared to hear her stories. Bodes well for her future songwriting.

By the end of Jason’s next song, we weren’t just appreciating a good line or a gorgeous falsetto or an intricate guitar solo (a more music-y person would’ve written more about that, because he’s got some chops, but I’m a word person, so that’s what I tend to focus on). The room hushed when he took out the harmonica for “The Messed-up Everywhere Blues.” The next phrase looks sort of wrong in print, but it’s the best way I can think of to describe us during the next song: we were feelin’ each other, and feelin’ him. The plaintive cry at the end, with his “Jesus don’t take my song away,” and the repeated, “you know I only play for you,” just got me.

When he sang “Carolina,” it was the first of a few times that I could hear people singing along – it’s hard not to for longtime fans. But they didn’t sing along very loudly. I call it “ghost harmony.” Just loud enough to hear it, but not loud enough that you get annoyed because you didn’t come to hear people in the audience sing (or is that just me who gets annoyed when the person in front of me sings louder than the person I came to hear?).

Jason introduced the next song as a straight-up prayer: “Chains” — “Take these chains from off my neck …Melt them down into something good.” One wouldn’t normally characterize a prayer this way, but in my notes, I wrote, “this is the shit.” In all caps. Also, “If my husband doesn’t do this song at church sometime, I’ll leave him.” Beth Skillen and I almost raised our hands as if we were in church.

I was still recovering from “Chains,” so I didn’t recognize one of my favorite Jason Harrod tunes until he started singing “My Mad Girlfriend.” I sat in a row with two other women above 35, each with somewhat passionate, emotionally intense natures, and it was a blast listening to this song together. Did I give a whoop at the line, “She’s so boss”? Yes. Yes, I did.

And that was just the first set, people.

I won’t exhaustively detail the second set (for fear of losing everyone), but it was just as wonderful. After “Kicking Mule,” it was a little more contemplative in tone than the first set, and marvelously intimate. All the lights were on in the basement, so Jason could see us clearly and we could see each other, appreciate each other’s reactions to each song, hear each called-out encouragement (enjoy Steve de Ruiter’s multicolored striped socks). Toby and Gerko added great energy to the songs and to the evening. We even found a few people to speak Dutch with Gerko and his wife Rachelle.

Big thanks to Chris and Lisa (and Moses) for hosting and to the musicians for giving us an experience. It was a great night. If you’re reading this and you haven’t seen Jason and Toby and Gerko yet: make plans to do so. Go here to see the rest of the tour schedule (many East Coast dates in August). And if you feel inspired to host them for a house concert: go for it. It was the kind of night where we all loved each other a little more by the end. I’m still smiling about it.

sometimes I want to break up with the Bible

~ Natalie Hart ~ 10 Comments

So I’ve been participating in these Five Minute Friday posts (prompted by Lisa-Jo Baker), and today’s word is broken. I want to keep up with this habit, this community, but I also have something else that’s been bugging me, so bear with me as I go a bit past 5 minutes.

Sometimes I want to break up with the Bible.

I come to the Bible a broken person. I have a sinful, selfish mind that can grab onto technicalities and blow little things out of proportion. More than that, I’m a specifically broken person, with my own experiences and my own hang-ups (as a result of those experiences), my own expectations. Even more than that, I’m a hurt person, a hurting person. I bring those hurts and (sometimes secret) fears to my reading.

This is partially why I’m reading the Bible through from beginning to end: no more picking only my favorite parts, no more focusing only on the fun passages, the passages that support what I already think and believe. This has meant dragging myself through Numbers (why, oh why repeat each set of numbers twice?!?), but also meant discovering gems of passages I wouldn’t have found otherwise.

Right now I’m reading Ezekiel. That is one weird book of the Bible. God really puts some of his prophets through the ringer. It starts with a fantastical vision of strange beings with wings and wheels and multiple faces and God giving Ezekiel a scroll of funeral dirges and pronouncements of dooms and making him eat it. Actually chew and swallow it (don’t worry, it tasted as sweet as honey). But within the weirdness is this:

“You must give them my messages whether they listen or not….And whether they listen or not — for remember, they are rebels — at least they will know they have had a prophet among them” (Ez. 2:7, 5, NLT).

I am not a prophet and I have no plans to ever go around calling myself Prophet Natalie. But God puts things on my heart to say, to write. And that passage tells me to say and to write them whether people respond or not, because my responsibility is to give the message that God has given/does give/is giving me, to use the voice God has given me. It’s not my job to fuss about how many readers I have or to despair because people don’t seem to be listening. It’s my job to speak. I am encouraged by this. It sets me free.

Ezekiel has to pull some crazy stunts (although God goes back on his request that Ezekiel defile his food by cooking it over human dung patties). I tend to approach these as God doing the equivalent of making a viral video: he’s having his prophet pull a public stunt that people will see and just have to talk about with people at the market, at the threshing field, on the roads (see Ez. 5 & 12).

“Did you hear what Ezekiel did this time?”

“Can’t be crazier than when he shaved his head and beard and divided it into thirds and burned part, scattered part, and slashed part.”

“Why did he do that again?”

“To show what will happen to Jerusalem because we’re ‘so rebellious.’ What was it now?”

“He packed his stuff, dug a hole in the wall, and walked away with his hands over his face. Says we’ll all be in exile, never to return, even Zedekiah.”

God will use anything to get his people to listen, even our love of gossiping about something crazy that someone did. I can appreciate that.

But then Ezekiel 16 has a disturbing metaphor about Israel as an abandoned female baby that God cleaned and cared for and raised and then married, but the wife/Israel trusted in her fame and beauty and gave herself as a prostitute to every man/country that came along. The wife/Israel used the gifts God gave her and turned them into idols and gifts for idols and gifts to all her lovers. The story gets quite graphic about how God will turn over the unfaithful wife/Israel to her lovers for them to destroy.

Israel as an unfaithful wife is a common metaphor in the prophets, and I’m trying to take to heart the message that my relationship with God is an intimate one, that God feels my betrayals as personally as a spouse who’s been cheated on. As a result, I’ve been trying not to skimp on the confession part of my prayers in my rush to get to the assurance of pardon. I can also approach the story as historical, as describing the history of Israel and saying how it will be for Israel in exile.

Still, this story sits in my gut like a gas bubble and I’m not sure what kind of foulness will result it it bursts.

And then I read on. Ezekiel 23 is about the repeated adultery of two sisters (aka Samaria and Jerusalem) against their husband/God. The story starts with this indictment: “They became prostitutes in Egypt. Even as young girls, they allowed themselves to be fondled and caressed” (v. 3). As if a young girl makes that happen because of her lust. As if a young girl being fondled is her fault.

There’s more stuff in the chapter, but that’s what really got me, what sent a lick of flame to one of my fears: that the Bible is a book by men for men, where what I am (female) is repeatedly misunderstood and misrepresented and used as a metaphor for what is wrong.

I know, I know. There’s more than that to God and more than that to the Bible. But it’s easier to keep that assurance going when I don’t have to read stories like the above. It is, in fact, what kept me from a regular devotional practice for years: fear that I’d meet a God who challenged my beliefs about him. But stories like that are in there. And I have to deal with them.

Here’s how I do it. I will keep reading the Bible, and I will find something amazing, something that gives me hope, something that tells me how much God loves me, how radical and countercultural God is, and the bubble will deflate. The bubble will still be there, because the Bible has some disturbing stuff in it that’s hard for this woman to deal with. But I also know that God is bigger than any culture’s language or stable of metaphors about him.

So even though I kind of want to at this moment, I won’t break up with the Bible. And I definitely won’t break up with God. I’m going to be uncomfortable for a little while, no doubt about it. But God will love me through it. He always has, and he always will. That is my faith.

 

belonging is a decision

~ Natalie Hart ~ 4 Comments

Here’s a thing about belonging: being chosen isn’t enough.

Let’s say you want to be part of a group. You can see them over there being awesome in exactly the way you’d like to be awesome. If only they chose you. Well, let’s say they choose you. Does that solve everything? For some people. Those people will bounce into the group, happy to be there. Others will question themselves: Do I really belong here? Are they just being nice? When will they notice that I’m not worthy to be with them?

Belonging is a feeling, but it is also a decision, a choice you make.

It’s a decision to accept being chosen. Yes, I do belong here. I am worth belonging here. Or even, I’m not on a level of experience with these people, but I will be; this is where I want to be. But especially, they are just people, scared and scarred and sometimes insecure, like me. Because if it’s a good group, a group that lifts up its members by both encouraging and challenging them, that’s one thing I guarantee you’ll find out about each other: you are all striving.

It’s a decision to reject being chosen. No, the cost for belonging here is too high — you’re too snobby, you reject too many people, you take drugs, you take steroids, your sense of humor is too mean. A great deal of personal growth occurs for the “no, I do not belong with you people, I do not want to be the kind of person you have to be to belong in this group,” to happen.

It’s a moment in every Disney show, whether cartoon or live action, when an “outsider” somehow gets in with the “in crowd” and has to be mean in some way to their best friend; then the resulting angst and the pointed words of said best friend teaches them that there are more important things in life than being in the in crowd. (This was the first example that popped into my mind because this is the first summer I’m letting my 12-y-o daughter watch live action Disney shows, so she’s rather bingeing on them.)

This is when your question changes from “do I belong to you/with you?” and “do I measure up?” to “do you belong with me?” and “do you measure up to me?”

There are probably all kinds of groups you’ve been in that you’ve unchosen after awhile, or people you’ve culled from your life because they don’t belong in the kind of life you want to build for yourself and your loved ones. So own that when you feel that being chosen isn’t enough.

*** There might be more wise words, but my five minutes are up in my Five Minute Friday exercise, hosted by Lisa-Jo Baker. ***