All posts by Johnna

I am a Christian educator and writer.I have worked in churches, denominational offices, and seminaries. I have a PhD in Theology from Princeton Theological Seminary, with a focus on Practical Theology and educating in faith. In 2010, my book, "How the Other Half Lives: the challenges facing clergy spouses and partners," was published by Pilgrim Press. I believe that words can build doorways that lead to encounters with God through the Spirit.
art, Education, Meditation, observation

A Pause, and a Second Look

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I didn’t pick up this book for myself; it was a Christmas gift for my then seventeen year old son, who has created art that fits well in the Modern Art category. Because he said it changed his whole understanding of Art, I read it.

What are you looking at? Add one of the most recognizable modern art images, and it’s hard not go beyond the cover.

The book itself is amazing. Gompertz walks readers through the history and expressions of modern art, making accessible a whole category of work that I’d never given any time or attention to. Now, instead of my eyes sliding over the modern art pieces in a museum as I scurry to the Impressionist gallery, I stop and spend time really looking at them. I give them more than a passing glance because the cover of this book led to the pages inside, led to a pause, and led to a second look. I move beyond my first, fleeting impression.

What are you looking at? What am I looking at? Dangerous, life-altering questions. Because if we stop and ask them, pause for a second look, we might just see what is right in front of us. We might look at that bush long enough to see it burning. We might hear the voice of God. And we might remove our sandals because we know that we walk on holy ground.

If we don’t pause, we’ll miss it. At least for the time being. I suspect that the Holy will continue planting burning bushes and sacred images on our paths until we finally stop and look.

art, Meditation

Struck

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Wonder, like lightning, strikes in a way that illuminates. It can destroy the suffocating numbness that can kill the spirit as it dulls the senses. It can even strike so deep that the old way of being in the world is incinerated, allowing a new person to rise from its ashes.

True wonder inspires a heart-thumping awe, not a warm fuzzy awww. Lest we forget the nature of who we are, the cosmos we inhabit, and by whose hand it came into being…

For the title, the image of lightning hitting New York City, and for the ghost of a building in the clouds, Brian Selznick’s Wonder Struck is well worth reading and beholding. The inside is every good as the cover.

[New York: Scholastic Press, 2011[)

art, Books, Meditation, observation

By The Cover

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I see thousands of books every week, checked out or returned by hundreds of people. Most don’t grab my attention beyond the perfunctory amount required to get them where they need to be. But a few do. Either the artwork or the titles, occasionally even subtitles, extend an almost irresistible invitation to pause, to venture beyond the cover into the depths of whatever story it guards. All The Light We Cannot See, What Are You Looking At?, Fire & Blood – just to name three.

Why these covers and not others? I suspect it’s as much about my own way of seeing the world as it is the scant number of words on the book covers…

How about you? What titles and images snagged your attention? Let’s take a longer look together…

Meditation, observation, Thanksgiving

Looping Back

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The dumpster is nearly full, packed with twin bed frames, a couple of lawn mowers (drained of fluids), one of those corner entertainment cabinets so useful before flat screen televisions and so useless after. Both of my adult sons have gone through the attic and basement, putting aside things they want to keep and piling up whatever will be donated or thrown away.

The furniture in this space is a mix of things we’ve had for years, a few newer additions, and some pieces our son picked up in the three years he lived here alone. The same goes for the art on the walls and the kitchen supplies. There are still a lot of boxes to unpack as well as furniture that will need to be rearranged, but the home we returned to after a three year absence won’t look like it did before we left it. That’s good: none of us are in the same place in life that we held back then. This home should reflect that.

This whole move back feels something like walking a labyrinth. I’ve traveled a bit, then looped back – not exactly where I was before, and not exactly the same person I was before. Things change, the perspective changes, and I change along with them – whether I am living in a different house or in the same space, life moves me along. And just like walking a labyrinth, it can be a holy experience or a practically pointless looping back and forth. My choice as to which I choose.

finger labyrinth
Meditation, Theology

Priorities

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UHaul is coming to pick up the three boxes that carried our stuff from our Vermont home to our Massachusetts one. A dumpster arrives on Monday so we can clear the house of things that are in such poor condition that they are good for no one. There’s still a mess in every single room that needs attention, and I’m heading north to a sibling get-together tomorrow. All of that seemed really important until a little before seven this morning. A friend’s diagnosis arrived in my email and changed everything.

Prayers, a phone call, an offer to help: that’s what really matters. The rest – it’ll happen. I just won’t consider getting it all done as my top priority.

Mantra for Moving
Meditation, observation

Hope Chest

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It’s under one of the bedroom windows; it would be a great place to sit and read a book if there weren’t so many random objects on it. It would also be a great place to store things if there weren’t so many random objects in it: my wedding dress, fabric scraps left over from various projects, unpaired top and bottom sheets whose mates are long since gone.

Yesterday, I spent an hour reclaiming the hope chest’s inner and upper spaces. Two bags of linens for recycling later, and the deed was done. Blankets and seasonal items in current use and good condition are now inside the hope chest; a comfortable pillow is on top, providing a place for cats and humans alike to enjoy the view out the window.

Traditionally, young women would fill a hope with things they might want when they married – bed and table linens, even dishes. It has me wondering what the culture thought was the hope: a comfortable and well appointed home? A husband? A recognized and honored place in a society that didn’t value single women? In this time and place, what is the content of my hope?

A society that values life in all its many forms. Safe spaces for everyone to live and move and have their being. Hearts full of compassion for self and neighbor. The courage and chance to be our God-created and God-related selves.

Meditation, observation
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Magic

The cats are looking for their food bowls to be in the same place they were three years ago, not the current location. They scratch at the door to the attic and the one to the back yard, just as they did before we moved. On some level, they remember this house, this place they called home for ten years.

I’m still working on getting the kitchen in order, and I don’t remember where the rolling pins and cake pans used to be. Unless I don’t think about it. Half asleep or distracted by something else, I’ll return things to their former spots – my somatic memory knows things beyond what comes to mind (An existential muscle memory?). That’s neither good nor bad per se: it depends on whether I put things in their former places because it works well for everyone now or whether I put them there without considering other/better options.

Sometimes I think it’s the same in my inner life’s home. Without thought, I return to the same places and actions – prayers, ponderings, and spiritual resources that have been reliable ways to welcome God into my life. There’s nothing wrong with this, I guess. Unless familiarity prevents me from moving the spiritual furniture to make the place more welcoming for me, for others, and for God. Whatever prompts me to answer the door when God or neighbor knocks, whatever creates a home where who I am includes them both – old or new, that’s what I want in my inner sanctum.

Meditation, observation

Re-Entry

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We’ve been gone long enough to forget where we used to store things. There are new pieces of furniture that replaced the ones we took with us three years ago. And there’s Franklin – our son’s three year old cat. It’s not just a question of putting things back in their old places: it’s about creating a space that works for all of us – three humans and three cats – in the here and now rather than the here and three-years-ago.

It won’t be pretty or convenient for a few weeks. Right now, stuff is everywhere, in no particular order, making daily activities challenging (where did I put the French press and kosher salt?). It’s a period of cleaning, organizing, and adjusting; it’s not fun or easy, and if I could snap my fingers and have it all taken care of immediately, I’d do it. Who wouldn’t?

But a small part of me, perhaps a wiser part, thinks it’s better to have the mess and the work of getting the house back into a state that works for us all. Perhaps I won’t try to slip back into the life pattern three years past its expiration date. Perhaps I’ll find new patterns emerging from the chaotic mess that is my current situation. After all, if I have to put in this effort, why not take the opportunity to grow just a bit…

Three years ago…
Meditation, observation

Parting Ways

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Tomorrow, I’ll hand in my keys and leave the Bennington Free Library for the last time as a staff member. My shelf and drawer are already cleared out, and I’ve only a few more emails separating me from completing my to-do list. I’ve said goodbye to coworkers who won’t be working on my last day, and I’ve left my contact information so everyone can keep in touch. I’m pleased with the time I’ve spent here, and thankful for the people I’ve spent my work days with.

If I had worked somewhere else, I’m sure I’d have found meaningful work and connections with a different group of people in a different town. If I had arrived a few years earlier or later, the particulars would be similar, but not exactly the same. And the particulars matter. I wouldn’t trade the specific people – Wendy, Diane, Kathy, Linda, Karson, Jeanne, Linda, Chris, Tom, Richard, Teresa, Joyce, Abbey, Ellen, Renee, and Kane the library dog – for any of might-have-beens.

Meditation, observation

Point of View

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Main Street Perspective

It’s the view I see when I work at home – Main Street from the second floor of the rectory. There used to be a lovely but dying hydrangea tree a dozen feet in from the sidewalk, but it was removed a few months back. The house across the street was up for sale back then – the offices for Tost. I don’t know whether it sold or the owners changed their minds about going elsewhere.

In less than two weeks, this won’t be where I write and work. I won’t see life from this particular vantage point. It won’t be Manchester people I see as I look out, tending to their daily lives as I tend to mine. It’s something I’ve pondered.

I hope I learn the lesson of this particular perspective – that what I see is always limited, framed by who I am, when and where I live, and what I notice. What I see, the particulars of my life, offer a specific view. It could have been a different view with different particulars, but it wasn’t. It is in this place, with these people, that I have lived. There’s a grace to that, to seeing the hand of God here…

And mindful that the same can be said of all the places and times. Even the ones still to come. And that I’ll love the next one as much as I have the ones that came before.

(The header image is the view I had three years ago at this time…)