the zen of egg washing

i was just washing eggs.  fresh local eggs.  they come dirty and sticky and sometimes they even have feathers stuck to them.  so you wash them, not rinse, wash, and carefully so they don't break. 

i've never really thought about eggs before, but as i washed them and held them and paid attention, i saw their beauty.  each one differently shaped and colored with unique freckles.  and i realized it was a moment given to me because i had stopped, the busy of life, to just wash 24 eggs by hand.  i thought about how eggs must be washed in some giant factory system most of the time.  efficiently.  rapidly.  saving all this time- but missing the simple pleasure that comes from just hand washing eggs. 

sometimes the simple things, the work of our hands, really-our hands, connects us to the earth and to each other.  it humbles us and it makes us slow down and it gives a boundary that modern life steals.  no you can't obsess about x,y, and z because you have to stop and wash those eggs, or rake that yard.  no you can't run out to buy, x,y, and z, because vegetables need to be planted and weeds need to be pulled, and water carried.  lifes work gives us structure. lifes work reigns us in.

i remember last year the joy i found in the exhausting work of raking my yard. i was outside for hours, smelling those fall leaves and the dirt and the wetness that gathered under them. i wore out my arms and got dirt under my fingernails, and my cheeks turned red and my nose was cold and i felt alive. and i remember my childhood and my mother with her rake and her corduroys and vest in the new england fall. 

but it can take a lot for me to rake and wash eggs.  i'll be honest.  i didn't look at that bag of dirty eggs and get excited.  i looked at it and got annoyed- 'rats, now i have to wash all these eggs!' same with the yard full of leaves.  but.  in these moments.  in the mundane.  the tasks.  the boring parts.  the work. the non-glamorous parts- the shoveling of snow, we experience the world as it always was and has been and will be.

africa is much closer to this than most of the US.  life here has more dirt and more work to get things clean and less technology to help get it done.  we were watching 'the nativity story' about the birth of Jesus and i noticed how much of life back then, way back then, looks like life here.  small farming, milking the goats, gathering eggs, going for water. 

i so quickly forget the importance of the boring parts.  i like making cakes with the eggs- not washing them.  i like the exciting stuff- the drama and the glory.  most of life- where ever we find ourselves - is filled with the small things.  the small but essential. 

in a few hours- we begin again.  a new year.
i hope in this next one, i can find myself washing more eggs.  i hope i can be present in those moments, that i can be satisfied in the small parts. that life- just as it is-where ever it is- will be enough.

for elizabeth who i get..

the last day of the year. i'm outside enjoying this early morning light and near quiet and time to think over this year, to think about being here- really being here-and what that means.  the other day i saw a picture of my nephews on facebook. they were at the airport going from their grandmas house back home to chicago.  i couldn't see their faces but just the tops of their heads was enough, for me to feel very far away.  i had a pang of homesick.  i had that longing for family.  i had that sadness that is part of my reality- we live deep in the heart of africa- my kids will not grow up with their cousins- they are a minority- a few blonde tops in the middle of black and brown- it's not a quick flight anywhere.

i have a modern world friend, a woman i've connected with online through mutual friends, who is living a parallel life in malawi.  she's a doctor and a mama and a writer and moved to africa about the same time as i did. http://voyagetoafrica.blogspot.com/2011/12/bearing-witness.html?spref=fb  today she'd written some stories that needed to come out- that needed to be shared- that needed to be told- because what else do you do with them?  what else do you do when you can't fix it?  sometimes all you can do is tell the story, raise awareness of the disparity, the poverty, the injustice that is life here.  but sitting in it, choosing to be here, to work here, to serve here- brings up for me the ideas of sustainability and capacity and consumption.  what is our capacity?  how do we avoid being consumed?  how do we maintain sustainability?

for me, i sit under the wing of God.  i lean on this.  this promise. this old hymn by annie flint-

He giveth more grace as our burdens grow greater,
He sendeth more strength as our labors increase;
To added afflictions He addeth His mercy,
To multiplied trials He multiplies peace.

this song we used to sing in church and i would cry as i sang because my life at home, in atlanta, where people were healthy and injustice is more hidden, even there my stores were empty as i struggled with zoe, even there i felt the weight of my burden.  and i would cry and beg, beg for some more strength and some peace. so this i hold on to here too.

and i think of writers who remind me of a God who is present in suffering.  buechner (alphabet of grace), annie dillard (holy the firm) anne lamott (traveling mercies)- writers who aren't afraid of reminding God of the ugly in the world and not afraid to ask why.  because there is a lot of ugly.  there is a lot of unfair and uneven and not right and never going to be right.


the promise is not to be consumed.  the promise is a God who gets it, who provides the grace.  and, even, the joy.  a God whose heart breaks with you elizabeth as you watch the dying child, whose heart breaks even more with the mom who watches her child die, and who opens his arms to embrace all three of you.


it's hard.  really very hard when you chose to sit in the yuck of life.  when you go to the ends of the earth where you don't have to be; to be and to try.

so we will try.  stay.  choose. lean. pray. rest.
don't forget to rest.  allow the sabbath in your life.
rest so you can be the hands of God here- in the corners where not everyone will go or even ever see.

“I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wondering awed about on a splintered wreck I've come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty bats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them...”
― Annie Dillard