Saturday, March 30, 2013

Earning my spot.

Today, I feel like I earned my spot on planet earth. Let's not talk about what that means theologically or anything. I just got my hands dirty.

We started our own garden - something I've been dreaming of for years. We haven't even planted anything yet - we just dug in the dirt and tilled the soil and got it ready. I think it's fitting for the day in between Good Friday and Easter, actually. I love gardening and I see the Kingdom of Heaven through it and through the way our bodies function (thrive) with food.

I feel like I've earned my spot on planet earth when the water runs brown when I wash my hands. When I come home a little bit sweaty, with a few more freckles than the day before. This probably sounds really silly, and it's coming from a girl living in the city, but it's true. People and dirt and sun and rain. It's a way I connect with God.

Neighborhood.

So, it's been a while. Crazy stuff: we bought a house. Now here we are, settled a little bit more, and I'm ready to do this again. A little bit.

I have some thoughts about staying and settling, and this is the opposite of what I thought for my life 4 years ago. I wrote a little bit about this last August, and that was a mere three weeks before we bought our house (which we didn't know we would do at that point). 

Here's a link to that post: http://eliselo.blogspot.com/2012/08/staying-put.html?showComment=1345935978643#c4836143285117010783

And here's a link to a post by a blogger that I admire greatly (though I've never met her). This post encouraged me so much.
http://sarahbessey.com/in-which-i-radically-stay-put/

Like she says, this is hard and it's shaping me. Little things, things that I didn't even notice needed to be changed. But they're changing and it's so hard and so necessary. I think I'm discovering things about myself that I never knew before, things hidden deep down inside that given the opportunity they arose with a passion. 

And then recently I read this: http://www.neighborfoodblog.com/2013/02/on-staying-for-better-or-worse.html 

And I agree again. The Church rarely talks about this and it's hard and so beautiful. We just moved in here at the beginning of winter, but now it's spring. The neighborhood is starting to wake up again, and every time we're outside on our porch for more than three minutes, we meet someone new. I love that.