As we went away on vacation for two weeks visiting family and going to a jazz festival, I realized that I had to let a few things go. I wouldn’t be able to see the first bloom of many of my flowers (meadowsweet, gladiolas, Joe pye). I wouldn’t be able to harvest all the sour cherries before we left, so the birds or my friends will get some. The blueberries were also just ripening as we left. I’m also grateful for friends who watched and watered our garden while we were away.

Summer is the time for road trips and camping. And abundance of fruit. It’s never the right time to go away in the summer. There’s always something in the garden that I’m going to miss. I usually find myself working hard to preserve some seasonal bounty from the garden or the market before we head off somewhere. This time it was cherries. I’m grateful for family movie nights to help me catch up. We watched Harry Potter while I was pitting almost 20 pounds of cherries and an extra two episodes of another show. As I was sitting in the dark pitting cherries I didn’t realize initially, but I found a new drying rack, and my lavender that I had just picked was hanging over my head curing as well. I couldn’t help but let their scents and flavours mingle together in my imagination. Sour cherries don’t release their full flavour until blended with sugar or honey, and lavender would be a great match. As we watched the magic of Harry Potter, the magic of cherries and lavender danced in my palette.

Serenity’s work:
a woven tapestry of
sorted threads from thorns.

All four of us spent a few hours weeding before we left to ensure that we were not getting our friends to water the weeds. Last year we had some friends’ connections house sitting and we asked them to water and weed our garden while we were away. We agreed to compensate them for any extra weeding they would do (this is not as enjoyable a job as watering). The problem was, they didn’t have the intimate knowledge that we have of our garden and they gave up on the weeding and watered the weeds for 2 weeks! That was a hard one for us to recover from and took over 7 hours of all of us weeding. Weeding is especially difficult in the early season when the plants are still very small. Over time we have learned a lot about what weeds look like and what they are called. We are also learning what the tiny shoot should look like as it is growing. I have to admit even as Zak planted many of the seeds, I didn’t always know what I was looking for and I pulled out all the corn that he planted because it looks a lot like crab grass when it is small… onions are also very hard to weed when they are small. So we tried to do as much weeding as we could before we left.

I decided that one thing I did need to do before we left was to make something beautiful with what we harvested already. It was my birthday and I wanted to enjoy some creativity. My favourite thing to make is drinks. So even though I didn’t have time to dehydrate all our roses for tea that were in bloom in our backyard, I did have time to throw some in a mason jar with water, honey, vinegar and some fruit to make some drinks. I also took time to go on a couple hikes with the kids and harvest two handfuls of new growth spruce tips and throw them in a jar to make soda with some fruits as well. I wanted to share something beautiful to drink with our house sitters, so I made some rose lemonade for them.

I am so grateful for the lectionary devotional I’m reading, A Guide to Prayer. The readings have been timely for me, talking about seeds and gardens. My reading from Micah 7 has such strong imagery that requires a lot of study, time and imagination. I let the images dance in my mind. In contrast to my family’s experience in our garden this week, Micah feels fruitless and depleted. He says how there is nothing available that he desires and there is no good he sees in the world. He uses the imagery of weaving, but this time it is not a beautiful weaving, it is the woven works of briars and thorns, but Micah still has hope in the waiting.

In my devotions there was a quote from Carlo Caretto, how we are in the act of becoming. It is our job to become — I imagine becoming a woven tapestry. We watch as the fruits become every year, but there is also a season of rest and waiting.

I wonder if Jesus was thinking of Micah when he told his parable in Luke 8:11-15. The briars and thorns are what stood out to me and Jesus helps to explain it further in Luke in the parable of the seed. The seeds that are amongst the thorns are people who hear the word, but they get caught upon the cares of the world and riches and pleasure. Micah talks of how those who weave their evil together are like a briar, and at the best, like a thorn hedge. Jesus and Micah are emphasizing how peace comes when we let go of our cares of this world, seeking pleasure only in things of the world, rather than seeking peace and serenity from God. It is equal parts work on my part and God’s part. It is very hard to weave briars and thorns. Something beautiful cannot grow when choked up by briars and thorns. It takes work to keep out the briars, thorns, and weeds.

It makes me think of how friendships are like weaving and how we are different colours of thread weaving tapestries together. I enter my friend’s tapestry as a beautiful colour and they enter mine with another beautiful colour and design. This is how I create beverages from what is growing in my garden right now. As I am working with my hands, I harvest, smell, touch and see the fruit and herbs. I love to taste fruits at different levels of ripeness. I let the scents of herbs I am processing mingle with the fruit. Even when I don’t taste them, the scents mingle in my imagination and I can almost taste through scent. These are my tapestries of flavours.

I see how these passions are teaching me how to be with others and how to truly listen to another. I cannot quickly assume that I know what another is talking about in their life. I have to listen carefully and use all my senses. Then I can meet another right where they’re at. Only after carefully listening will I be ready to infuse my own experience and bring it into the tapestry (don’t mind my mixing of images). It’s not a competition of sharing, rather, an intermingling. The thorns and the briars are what distract us from what is truly important.

I realize how I want to share and have my work intermingle with another. I wonder how Micah must’ve felt lonely. Prophets often were. There was no other good person around him who to turn to for help or understanding. He saw so much spiritual poverty around him. He wants beauty in community, but the trees are bare of fruit. There is no harvest to create with. Every season is different, yet Micah can have hope in the waiting.

Serenity’s work:
a woven tapestry of
sorted threads from thorns.

- Avery

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Hello Friends,

I love to see the calyx of the flower become a part of the fruit. It is the part of the flower that remains after the petals fall away. For apples and pears it remains a persistent part of the fruit, forming the butt of the apple or pear. For cherries, the calyx falls away from the top of the fruit by the stem. And for peaches and nectarines, the calyx remains to protect the fruit from pests and disease. My favourite realization was that the calyx of some fruit even forms a protective bag around it — like the ground cherry. It is fascinating that the calyx has a function in protecting the fruit.

I am so happy to see so many of our trees bearing fruit this year. It has been seven years of wondering whether what we are doing has been paying off. I can’t wait to harvest the fruit. I realize how much I long for it. To have that first taste in the orchard of tree ripened fruit. I take as much pleasure from the blossoms too, because I know what they will bring (and they have their own beauty and pleasure of scent — the bees know this). I was telling a friend once, the pleasure of having passion fruit. It is a treat here since they can grow, but they are not common. We mostly have them from Tunisia (or wherever) in the middle of winter. The smell is enough (when my daughter is eating one) to give me pleasure. This is the first share of the crops for me.

Fruit and flower are one
In the fullness of time merging
Sealed by the fragrance.

Everything seemed to happen so fast from blossom to fruit. The paw paw tree was the last to bloom and I didn’t share pictures of it in my last letter to you. We have three paw paw trees, but only one was blossoming. I got so excited imagining their blooms turning to fruit. I have been thinking about paw paws for a long time. Over seven years ago I read a book: Paw Paw: In Search of America’s Forgotten Fruit. I can’t believe that the author wrote a whole book on them, and I wanted to try them. I dreamed of going to the Paw Paw Festival, which is in Ohio, in the Paw Paw belt where they are naturalized. Why am I so excited about it? Well, it is a fruit that has fallen out of favour in commercial production because it bruises easily. It doesn’t look very good when it gets bounced around. I’m really selling it, but amazingly it grows here and it’s about as tropical as you a get in our area because it tastes like a cross between a banana and a mango. I have tasted one of its relatives, a cherimoya, which is also known as “ice cream fruit,” when we were in San Diego. I got a few fresh from the market. Sometimes I see cherimoyas in the grocery store in Nova Scotia, but nothing beats a tree-ripened fruit. Cherimoyas are a tropical member of the Annonaceae family, while paw paws are the only member of the family that grow in temperate climates. Their flesh is custardy and they go great in ice cream! I have even dreamed of paw paw beer, but that is a long way off in our future.

Nova Scotia just barely stretches into the zone where it can grow as we are in zone 5/6. A few small farmers in my area have planted a couple trees that I know of, but none have harvested any fruit yet. Our tree has been in the ground for seven years now and this is the first time that I have seen blossoms. It has a different kind of blossom than other fruit as it doesn’t face out. It droops completely down, so you have to crouch and look up to see the inverted cup-like blossom, which is a beautiful rich red. After watching the blossoms for a week or so, I lay in bed thinking of them and realized that I had planted a few paw paws of different varieties. Shenandoah—the one that blossomed — has been the healthiest, but none of the other trees have blossomed. The other two that were planted one year later are Benson and Chappell varieties. I watched as the flower petals disappeared, and the two stems of the calyx remained briefly, before falling away too, with no fruit to protect. I won’t see fruit from my Shenandoah paw paw because none of the others blossomed to cross pollinate with it. So I must wait yet another year to try this fruit that eludes me.

I realize a similar desire in my creative work. I have many ideas that are percolating in my mind and drafts on my computer, but many ideas are waiting for fruition and time. I desire a community of creativity where I can cross pollinate with others of similar desire. There are many times when we must wait a long time before fruit comes, or we must be satisfied with a blossom that never becomes fruit. In these cases, I’m learning to take a more eternal sense of time.

While I love to analyze the fruit and blossoms, I have also been having a conversation with each of our fruit trees. Pruning the trees takes attentiveness. Winter pruning is for structure and aesthetics, but summer solstice pruning is for keeping the trees smaller. By taking some of the leaves off when all the energy is in them, I slow down the resources obtained through photosynthesis and it grows less in the late season. So sometimes it is good that I get to things late! I didn’t get to the summer solstice pruning until early July, but as I learned from some gracious gardener friends — there is always the best time to harvest and prune, and then there are the secondary times that are still good, but maybe not prime. So the message to me, is go ahead and get out there even if you think you’ve missed the perfect window—there is still a good one! I have had to learn to give myself grace.

When I’m pruning the fruit trees I look for branches that are crossing each there and blocking the light from fruits below. I also take a lot of height off some of my trees so we can harvest them mostly without a ladder. My vision was to Grow a Little Fruit Tree, and to keep them short and manageable. The hardest prune I made was when we first planted each tree. They looked great, like they were going to be big and they had all sorts of branches growing. Then I measured the trunk up to my knee and lopped everything off above it. This was to encourage the spreading of the first branches to grow lower. If you look closely you’ll see all sorts of little undeveloped buds. When you prune just above it, they will grow new branches! Despite my efforts, some of our trees have gotten quite tall, but we have been able to keep others at a decent height. Pruning excess height also helps the tree to focus on directing its energy into ripening the fruit. I also look at how I can increase the airflow trough a tree to help the fruit grow well.

As I cut the fruit trees, I also helps me to think about where I should be focusing my energy—where I am growing out too far and how am I getting away from what is important. This is easy for me to do. I have been learning how to refine my focus each morning. At this stage I haven’t made it to having full journal and devotion time before the kids get up, but I have incorporated just 2 minutes, writing in a notebook, what my intentions are for the day. To write down what is important and what I want to remember before the day comes rushing at me and all the small things vying for my attention. Then I can come back to remember what I wrote (by hand, with a real pen and ink) and focus on what is important. This becomes so prominent to me with the amount of information and stories that are available to connect with throughout the day (through social media and the news). It’s so easy to get distracted immersing myself in someone else’s story or someone else’s narrative. As I am learning from paying attention to my orchard, I am choosing to listen to the story that is found in the pattern of creation. The truest version of the pattern that fills everything and sees beyond ourselves to love.

To see the process of growth the whole way through, all the work in shepherding the growth of the fruit — the pruning of the branches, picking diseased leaves, waiting many years for anything. In my watching and paying attention and labouring I have received a large share. By the time the fruit arrives, I am ready to give it away — I have already received so much from it. It gives me so much joy to see it, I can’t help but share it.

Fruit and flower are one
In the fullness of time merging
Sealed by the fragrance.

-Avery

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We break regular Lorica Letters: From the Garden posts for a poem on music. After my last post that referenced how “it was the music that sets the hobbits free” I couldn’t help but share a video that has made a strong mark on me. If you haven’t heard of Jacob Collier, I highly recommend checking out his videos on Youtube. He has albums available to listen to as well, but I have loved his live audience composing and conducting. It strikes something deeply human. I wrote a poem after I watched one of his first live audience conducting moments with the National Orchestra at the Kennedy Center. Check out this video and see my poem below! Enjoy!

After Jacob Collier composes live with an orchestra
by Avery Peters

We think we are watching
As the prodigy of music 
composes for us
a new song
in this moment 
something never heard before

Instructing each section
of the orchestra
he amuses us
bending pitches
bending his body over backwards
We wonder how the different 
layers
will come together

The tune seems new
Until he begins to sing
And then 
it is familiar
Now 
we know our part

It is to sing 
			“I love you”

Over 
and over 
again
we sing it

This is our part— 
to love
to become 
to move
Out of the shadows
and unite as
more than observers.

Dear Friends,

When we first purchased our property I was so excited to plant. We planted our first trees of the orchard seven years ago and they are just now starting to bear fruit in earnest. Seven years ago, I was also deeply into studying herbalism. Every night I would lie in bed before sleep, researching different plants and their uses and energies and how they’d pair and work with other herbs in helping to support the body.

After taking an in-person course with a local herbalist (Tarah Gibbon), she so graciously offered that I could come to her property to divide some of her plants and bring them to my own property. Her plants were very mature and overgrowing some areas. Our house had not yet been built. There were a lot of trucks and construction equipment coming and going, so I found a place next to the barn I thought would be a good undisturbed place to plant and let them thrive.

I had a lot of dreams and visions for those herb transplants and for our land to be a place that was full of life. I was so excited for what it would all become. Each plant represented something to me — a friendship, a potential tea blend, a relationship of watching and waiting to see what would become of it. The place next to the barn became a nursery of plants and it felt so good to get them into the ground at our property. I wish I had taken a picture to remember it.

I’m looking for signs
What grows where I least expect.
Light my shadow side.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before they would get ripped up by construction equipment and I didn’t even get to rescue them. Of course the trench from our well to our house had not yet been dug, and the plants were right in the path. I was devastated. We arrived to do some work on the orchard and I found them obliterated. No trace of them at all. I couldn’t focus on any of the work I was there to do. It felt like everything I had been working for had been demolished without any care. I knew I would have an herb bed in my backyard eventually, but it was a couple of years before we had the backyard graded and a patio created. This was supposed to be my “nursery area.”

I tried another spot and planted many herbs and plants in a new place closer to the house. And then as machinery was moving to our backyard, it too was run over and obliterated. I sometimes look for signs of what has survived and there are only a couple plants amidst the tall grasses and weeds. I have mostly left these two spots unattended for the last few years, now that our backyard is done and I have been focusing there. It was a surprise for me to go back to the spot beside the barn with the gravelly poor soil to see what had come up. It’s like a whole regeneration! There are a few plants I planted and a whole lot more. I was amazed to see ferns and new baby spruce and hemlock trees, and of course some less desirable alders and poplars, but there were so many things growing!

We have been reading The Lord of the Rings as a family and are almost done the third book of the trilogy. While we were reading the first book last year, a character caught my attention. If you’ve only watched the LOTR movies you won’t know him as he didn’t make the cut. Tom Bombadil is my favourite character, especially since I found a book going into the details of his character and what Tolkien was doing through his role in the story. We first meet him when Merry and Pippen are stuck in the willow tree, which has gathered them into his roots and Frodo and Sam run to Bombadil for help. He replies:

“Old Man Willow? Naught worse than that eh? That can soon be mended. I know a tune for him. Old grey Willow-man! I’ll freeze his marrow cold, if he don’t behave himself. I’ll sing a wind up and blow leaf and branch away. Old Man Willow.”2

As he sings a song to Old Man Willow, he begins to release Pippen and Merry and then he says to the tree “You should not be waking. Eat earth! Dig deep!”3 He’s not getting mad at the tree for swallowing up Merry and Pippen, rather, he’s reminding the willow what he was created to do — to drink deep and eat earth, not swallow humans.

Wiley, the author of the book explaining Tom Bombadil, goes on to explain later in the book that “Good magic doesn’t break things to know them, or pulverize them to repurpose them. Instead, it brings out latent goods in given things.”4

Through his song, Bombadil reminds Old Man Willow of his purpose.

I wonder why Tolkien did’t share the song that Bombadill actually sang to Old Man Willow. He just writes what he says to him before and after the song. Perhaps he is inviting us to imagine the song that is sung over us to remind us of who we are?

I’m looking for signs
What grows where I least expect.
Light my shadow side.

It got me thinking back to my dreams and my mugwort plants. I took two small pots from my overrun herb bed next to my kitchen to move somewhere and I realized this place by the barn is a place where I can let them run free. They would probably be slowed down by the poor soil, but I imagine a silvery field of its sweet smell one day a few or more years down the road.

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To return to the song from Neil Young, “The Painter.” He describes the painter trying to catch all the colours for the different times of day. I feel a lot like this in my visions and dreams for my garden, in my creativity, and in my life. I have a lot of ideas and I don’t have the time to follow all of them. I need to take time and see which ones settle. “Green to green, red to red / yellow to yellow in the light / Black to black when evening comes / blue to blue in the night / It’s a long road behind me / it’s a long road ahead.”

Here I am returning to a lost dream, my dreams for this herb space next to the barn, and I find myself painting in a different colour. Seven years ago I couldn’t see past my disappointment of it being run over by heavy equipment. But now I see new growth. This is something I learned when we were on the road, travelling for three months through the USA. Things don’t occur as we expect them to. We need to be open to what we have never experienced before. I needed to learn this on the road and bring it back home to a place I have walked through many times and don’t always see with fresh eyes. I need to let go of my expectations even in my own garden, for nature surprises me. I am a pilgrim in my own garden.

— Avery

I love music. I know there’s a lot more to talk about music and gardens! Songs have begun to follow me on this journey through the garden, so I’ve created a playlist to enjoy and share with you. There are a few songs in here that have helped me through some very difficult times and given me hope in darkest moments where I couldn’t even begin to understand the new growth that would come (The Sower’s Song, Gentle Gardener, I Will Give Praise ) and there are some that are my anthems of joy through difficulties (Like a Tree, The Color Green, All Will be Well). These are all songs of the garden. I’m sure I’ll be adding more songs through the season so save the playlist and check in for new songs. It is currently only on Spotify, but if there are those who’d like it on iTunes, let me know, and I can add it there as well.

If you’ve missed the first few posts from the full series, this Spring and Summer, you can follow along with The Lorica Letters: From the Garden, which will eventually take shape in a book, whether we self publish to share, or find a publishing home for it. Every 2 weeks or so, I write a letter and share a haiku from the garden. Here are the first few posts in the series:

Introduction: Follow Along with Our Second Book!
Post 1: A Struggling Rainbow
Post 2: The Seed
Post 3: Wind Kindled Watermelons

My interest in finding wild food in the city expanded to conifers and harvesting their new growth tips to use as flavours for baking or salads or drinks. I am particularly drawn to the pungent scent of spruce. If you eat the tips on their own they are citrusy yet very dry and tannic, but when you pair them in a sweet desert or drink, the magic happens. I find I am attracted to different plants when my body needs them. Perhaps I am needing some extra vitamin C — then I find myself attracted to spruce tips. Evergreens are finishing up putting out their new growth right now in my area. But I am not drawn to them this year. There are only so many places I can give my attention.

Mugwort, June 2026

The smell of dreams
Silver’y grace across fingers
Held in open hands

This spring I am drawn to mugwort, and it’s a bit of a complex relationship. While I have enjoyed watching it grow in my garden over the last 3 years, it has officially taken over my allotted space for my herbs. Last year I made the unfortunate realization that its roots (along with the wormwood plant also in the herb bed which is in the same family, artemesia) are preventing many plants from growing alongside them. I am learning that this is a phenomenon known as allelopathy, which means that a plant can release biochemicals which prevent the germination or growth of other plants nearby.

I have put cardboard down over much of it, but it keeps popping up around the edges and I realize that I will have to forgo using this space this season and completely cover it with cardboard and mulch and then wait another year, or two before I can use the space (I may even have to go back and dig up as much of the root as I can). It is filling the ground with its rhizomes which are quite aggressive. I’ve been trying to pull it up but it’s like a dense mat that covers the top layer of the soil.

As much as I am frustrated with it, it has its beauty too. Its silvery leaves have their own glimmering scent that stays with me. I love to rub my hands against it and the find the scent still on my hands once I have returned inside.

I find this plant has something to teach me in this stage of my life. It seems ironic that I am seeking to understand my desires as my own, while I am actively suppressing a plant that encourages the awareness of dreams. Whether or not you believe that plants actually have this effect. I have known so many herbs to help in different ways — with colds, flus, lung congestion. My allergy tea blend is a prime example that almost everyone in my family uses as a natural antihistamine and nasal passage soother. So I can attest to the energies and benefits of plants.

So why wouldn’t I entertain the idea of mugwort as helping me to understand my desire? We are often attracted to what our body needs.

As part of the artemisia family, its relative, wormwood, was thought to be hallucinogenic. Like many foods, too much of anything isn’t good for you. It turns out that wormwood’s effects were conflated with the effects of alcohol, which it is commonly used in (in absinthe). It was more the alcohol that had the toxic effects (when over-consumed by many artists in the early 20th century) than the wormwood itself. The compound thujone, found in wormwood is unsafe when consumed too much of it. It’s also in the herbs, sage and mugwort. It is a neurotoxin when consumed in high quantities or over a long period of time. Making teas from herbs is a much safer, and more aromatic and delightful.

So as mugwort is actively preventing other plants from growing in my garden, I feel I need to do something. Those shoots popping up will need to find a home somewhere on our property where it can crawl out and spread as it pleases. We do have lots of places it could go rather than my relatively small herb bed.

In many Christian circles, when you talk about dreams and emotions, people get wary, thinking that you can’t trust them. That they’ll lead you into navel gazing and not outward towards others in love. But I think what’s more important is the posture in how we hold these dreams and emotions.

A song from Neil Young came back to me from many years ago. The line I had written down was “If you follow every dream, you might get lost.” This made me think of the mugwort in my herb bed. It’s rhizome roots travelling throughout the whole space, making it inhospitable to anything else. There is a lack of openness to it’s taking over of a confined space. It needs to be in a space where it can be wild.

I realize now, how I was holding onto my dreams a little too tightly, with closed hands, and it was making me feel lost. I need to bring them to an open space and hold my hands open with my dreams and desires in prayer. This is how we let our emotions and dreams transform.

So I am going to take a piece of the dream-herb and move it somewhere else on my property. I wonder how it will find a new life of it’s own in a wilder place? I wonder what I will continue to learn from it?

Mugwort, June 2026

The smell of dreams
Silver’y grace across fingers
Held in open hands

—Avery

PS. This is part 1 of a 2-part post. Check in soon for part 2 and where the mugwort finds its home.

A lot has been happening in our garden since I last wrote you! I am trying to write more often, but the weeks pass by so fast. Thankfully I have the garden as a reminder of how fast things are progressing! Since I last wrote you, everything has burst into bloom and now the blossoms are blowing away in the wind and scattering across the pool and yard. The first to bloom was our haskaps. The bees had such a great time with them, as they are very close to our hive (we have one struggling hive left). I have enjoyed watching the bees pollinate our trees and hope that we will have another good harvest of cherries and nectarines as we did last year. We have yet to have a good harvest of apples, and I’m hoping to do something new about that this year and to spray the apple trees and leaves with neem oil a few times to help with the pests.

(Please open this email in a web browser as it may be truncated in some of your email inboxes — I added a lot of pictures because I couldn’t help sharing all the beautiful blossoms!)

Zak did a dormancy prune a few weeks ago to keep our trees shorter, and I will be doing the summer solstice prune as the trees after the trees have moved out of blossom and into full leaf.

Our biggest project has been getting ready for a fruit tree order. We ordered 5 more fruit trees this year to replace a few that died and some extra as well. Every time we choose to plant trees, we plant in hope for the future. It takes at least 3 years to see fruit on the trees after we plant them. We purchase trees from a company in Ontario that specializes in heirloom varieties and specialty varieties that are selected more for growth with minimal sprays or organic farming. They only have two shipping times per year, since they ship bare root trees — which means exactly that — they arrive express-shipped in the mail with bare roots, wrapped in wet spaghnum moss. This method of planting allows the trees to adapt more quickly to the soil we have on our land. We do have pretty poor soil, which we are working on amending. It is also heavy clay in some areas and it is quite rocky.

In addition to trees, I also ordered 6 asparagus crowns, 2 blueberry bushes, 2 passionflower plants, and Zak choose a variety of cedar that grows very quickly (for covering our propane tank). The trees were supposed to arrive on the Thursday, but I saw they only left Ontario at 3am, so they are arrived a day late. We tried to get them planted before we went camping on the long weekend. So on the Thursday we dug all the holes and prepared them with compost.

We have been preparing the lower garden for planting, which involves a lot of weeding and tilling. We spread straw between the rows. It was pretty buggy with black flies! We’re grateful for windy days here on the mountain to keep them away. I also prepared the strawberry bed for asparagus. As I mentioned previously, strawberry and asparagus are good companion plants. I have to admit that my strawberry patch is sorry looking. I need to work on weeding it. The ones in the shade of the weeds seem to be doing better — it’s either because they like a little more shade or it’s just a variety that’s better adapted to our climate. I transplanted a couple of strawberry plants to the “sadder side” and I’ll see how they do! I’m hoping the asparagus will help them thrive.

As I was weeding the strawberry bed I got thinking about my personality. I have been diving deep into personality study, particularly the enneagram. Zak and I both took this personality test just before we got married and it gave us a lot of insight into our compatibilities and areas that we need to work on. Now, almost 20 years later, I am coming back to it and there is so much more nuance I can learn from. Or perhaps I should say, I still have a lot to work on! It is a personality descriptor system that focuses more on spiritual aspects of personalities and lists 9 different types. I am a 9 in case you are wondering. This is the “Peacemaker.” I don’t like conflict, that’s for sure. I enjoy quality quiet time to regenerate and I don’t like to have my calm disrupted.

Just because I’m in the peacemaker category doesn’t mean I live peacefully. “Peace at all costs” is not the way. It has been hard lesson for me to learn that the spiritual journey is not safe. There are risks and dangers on any journey we embark on. It is difficult to embrace the hardships as they cause us to grow. I think this is a theme that has come up from often, if you remember my struggling rainbow haiku at the beginning of the season. Now I have another with a similar theme.

Those watermelons
planted indoors need a start
in wind kindling strength.

We started a lot of plants indoors. More than we expected to. There is one plant that Zak tried to start indoors last year, and it didn’t work and he tried again this year, and out of 8-10 plants, only 1 survived. Watermelons are difficult to grow in our climate, as we have a slightly shorter growing season. We’re lucky if they get as large as a basketball. But when they do grow they’re so fresh and have a concentrated sweetness you can’t get in store-bought watermelons. He started watermelon seeds indoors and they just don’t like to be hardened off after having been started indoors. As soon as Zak placed them outside, the stems twisted and cracked in the wind and died. There is something about their stems that curl and bend and meander along the ground. They just didn’t like to be placed out in the wind. They grow stronger when they are started outdoors and develop their resistance.

This week is Pentecost where we remember when the Holy Spirit descended upon the people after Jesus had left the earth. When we think of the Holy Spirit, we often think of a flame. It may have started out small, but when blown by the wind and buffeted, the flame grows and spreads. It becomes stronger. I couldn’t help about thinking of the watermelons. How they needed the strength that comes from being out in the windy field. How they don’t like a cushy start in our warm kitchen soaking up all the sunlight in the window. They want to get their start in all the elements, as the wind kindles a fire in them to grow and become strong. This is the reminder I need when think about peace and conflict. They come together. The wind brings a tension that is uncomfortable, but in reality it is the uncomfortable situations that make us stronger in our faith. The flame is kindled and becomes stronger.

Those watermelons
planted indoors need a start
in wind kindling strength.

In my readings this week, there is one that stood out to me from The Art of Prayer that shares this thought. It is a good encouragement.

“Cast aside everything that might extinguish this small flame which is beginning to burn within you, and surround yourself with everything which can feed and fan it into a strong fire…your solitude must become more collected, your prayer deeper, and your meditation more forceful.
How did our ascetics, fathers, and teachers warm the spirit of prayer inwardly and establish themselves firmly in prayer? Their great object was to make the heart burn unceasingly towards the Lord alone.”

Peace to you this Pentecost! And enjoy your gardening too! Feel free to comment below on how your gardening is going. I’d love to hear!

— Avery

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Share The Lorica Letters

Hello Family, Friends, and new Friends,

It’s good to connect with you again. Thank you to those who ordered our book! It was so fun to send out packages with little notes inside. I have plans to make some bookmarks soon, so if you’re still interested in ordering a copy of The Lorica Letters 2024, I will add in the bookmark in the next wave!

One of my favourite authors, Jan Richardson, planted an image in my mind that has stuck with me for a while. It is an image of Eve leaving the garden of Eden with a seed between her teeth, or under her tongue.

Eve knew she chose to take the fruit. What she had taken hidden inside her mouth was a reminder. Yet it was different than the fruit. It was a piece of the fruit but it was not the fruit itself. She knew she had taken something and she could not return it. She had obtained the knowledge of the fruit and now she would have to work backwards and learn wisdom by living with what she had taken.

Richardson continues to describe how “In her desire, Eve commits herself to the requirement of every quest: exile. We cannot stretch beyond ourselves and yet cling to what we have known.” p. 29

In her exile, I wonder how Eve created a sensory memory. I wonder how Eve felt every time she looked at a fruit tree or felt any kind of desire to eat something sweet from a tree (I know how I love fruit), how she would look at the remaining seed and think of beauty and what could come of it? How would she feel it in her body? How was the act of holding a seed between her teeth the beginning of the process of moving through discovering who she was created to be? How did she learn to claim her story and take the seed and continue to grow and learn?

The kids and I love to watch Bible Project videos together. The first video in their latest series got me thinking of this topic too. They describe how “Every command in the Bible is an invitation to find life.” A negative commandment not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil is balanced by a positive commandment — to eat from every other tree. They describe how this first command sets the stage for “how to discover life and the wisdom of God within [each] command” and how it is a riddle for us to meditate on what the command is really about. I imagine Eve, actively mediating with the seed between her teeth, rolling the words of God around in her mouth, wondering what was next for her.

***

Here I am — my dreams,
hidden seed between my teeth —
desiring beauty.

***

Zak and I finally started our seeds indoors. We’d decided that we wouldn’t plant too many indoors and try to direct seed as many plants as we can when it’s warm enough. Somehow we still maxed out our seed trays and our kitchen counter is covered with the little seedlings.

I watched the plants he’d started for over a week before I finally got to planting my own choices of seedlings. I knew it wouldn’t take too long to do, but I was preparing to leave on retreat and there were so many things I wanted to do before I left. So I kept putting off the seed planting. I finally did it in stages. On day I filled the trays with soil, the next day I placed the seeds in their rows. It happened 1 hour before I had to leave for my flight.

We have also been doing some pruning and garden bed preparations. We’ve had some beautiful days between some very rainy and dreary cold days. One sunny day I sat in the strawberry patch and removed some brush and dandelion taproots. I’m preparing space to plant some asparagus crowns between the berries. They are known companion plants and I’m hoping the asparagus will help suppress all the weeds that are growing around the strawberries or vice versa.

We have been making tiny harvests from our garden. The chives started to grow and we have Johnny Jump Ups (wild pansies) popping up everywhere. I think we may need to dig up a few and give them to friends! We like to add them to salads for some purple and yellow pop. I don’t have a recipe to share today — this was a dill, chive, cucumber, radish and lemon salad. I think I went a little overboard on the herbs!

Zak and the kids spent one sunny afternoon putting in fertilizer stakes under many of the trees we’ve planted — fruit trees and evergreen trees.

Thank you for joining us on our journey inward through the garden. Please let us know, how is your garden doing? What are you looking forward to this season? What seeds have you planted? What are your dreams for your garden?

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Avery, Zak, Llewyn, and Junia

Hello Friends,

We began the “Lorica Letters” as a small email list to family and friends. So as we begin part two of this journey, I will continue in an informal writing style. I will also be including a haiku in each letter to you. Zak will join in on writing the haikus, and they will shape the theme of each letter. I love to write by hand, so perhaps sometime I will include a handwritten portion, as letters are even more special when received in the mail. I am excited to share about our garden with you. We purchased our property 8 years ago now. I remember how much I wrote about my dreams for a garden and our house. We had visions of sustaining ourselves from our garden and storing many fruits and vegetables in our root cellar, making our own beverages including herbal tea blends, beers, wines, meads, kombucha (yes, we love drinks) from herbs and grains and honey that we harvest from our own land. We have made progress in some of these areas.

Here we are at the beginning of another growing season. I think it is very fitting that it coincides with Easter. Lent, the 40 days preceding Easter feels a lot like the dormancy of winter. There is a lot that is going on beneath the surface, but it hasn’t made itself known yet.

I have all these desires for the garden to see it beautiful and flush. It is easy to order the seeds and make plans. But often, when it is actually time to go out in the garden and do the work, I feel frozen. How many times have I not gone out and weeded the garden or pruned the fruit trees? How many times have I not sprayed them or given them the nutrients they need for the protection from bugs and disease? What am I afraid of? Doing the wrong thing? Yet despite my neglect, they still grow, albeit through struggle.

I never thought of a flower groaning, but in my readings through lent, there was a poem that stood out to me that helped me to think about that. There is a lot against their appearance — infertile soil, seeds blowing wherever and landing in unfortunate places. Though flowers even come up through cracks in the pavement.

A flower comes. It groans, yet sings,
And through its pain, its peace begins.

- “Resurrection” by Mary Ann Bernard.

In conversation with a friend one day, I commented how as I was throwing balls in the front yard for my dog I watched a “struggling rainbow.” He said he had never heard it described that way before. Isn’t a rainbow just what it is? You see it or you don’t? But I had watched it fade in and out of focus. Rainbows need the right conditions to appear. They appear with the perfect ray of light. Sometimes they are clearer than other times. It is in that struggle that I still find myself here on the edge of Easter. Waiting in the quiet. Waiting to plant and tend to my garden.

Waiting in shadows
For the right angle of light.
A rainbow struggles.

- Avery

We have begun our preparations for the garden this year. I know a lot of seasoned gardeners start their seeds indoors in February and March, especially for plants like tomatoes and peppers and onions. We just barely ordered our seeds. Zak and I finally sat down to go over what it is we want to grow this season. We took stock of the seeds that we saved from our garden last year, as we have begun our own seed saving, and reviewed the seeds we’d ordered from previous years, and ordered even more. I’m a little overwhelmed at how much we intend to plant and grow this year! We are also about to make another fruit tree order from a supplier in Ontario.

We planted an orchard 7 years ago, expecting a bountiful harvest in time. We have had modest apple harvests, a handful of pears, a substantial amount of cherries, and one bountiful crop of nectarines in those years. I know there is always more that I can learn in tending to the health of our trees. I know that the trees are struggling to grow and each year I pay attention and then have to wait another year to go at it again and learn from my mistakes or neglect.

There is an artist that has captivated my imagination. I wish I could see her work in person, but I have not been to any of the cities where her murals are located (ok, now I realize that I was in Portland, OR, and could’ve hunted this one down…too late!). Her name is Mona Caron and she creates large scale murals on city buildings depicting weeds and flowers that come up in the most unexpected places in cities. Plants are driven to grow, not matter the circumstances. There is a resiliency in them that is staggering.

That is why, even as I have this dream of a cultivated garden, my first love has always been foraging — where I pay attention to what grows wild and uncultivated. To pay attention to the struggle of plants that come up despite the odds against them and are beneficial and useful and beautiful.

This is how I feel in my vocation in caring for the garden. I love to marvel at it. The work to create the conditions for thriving is hard, yet many plants appear either way.

What I have been learning that the most important thing in cultivating the garden is my attention. If I stay inside and do not go out to even look at it, I won’t know what it needs.

All it takes is a walk — to show up. That is the first step. It’s easy to say something else is more important and demanding my attention indoors, but if I go outside my priorities get realigned.

It is reassuring to know that creation groans with me. It struggles into existence, into it’s beauty and wholeness — that all creation echoes this story.

Here’s to a year in the garden. May we all be more attentive.

- Avery

Our first book, The Lorica Letters 2024, is influenced by the outward journey and the distance we travelled. We saw so many places and traversed many miles. But I found myself wanting to emphasize that even if many of us don’t get to go on a long journey across the globe, we can still travel far. A favourite quote of mine is: “the longest journey is the journey inward” (Dag Hammarskjold). And it is this quote that is the inspiration for our next project. We won’t be going very far from home this year. In fact, our plan is to stay at home as much as possible to focus on our garden. You can join us as we write through the seasons of the garden for our next book: The Lorica Letters: From the Garden (working title).

I realize how powerful a metaphor the garden is for the inner life. I feel a calling to pay more attention to our garden. To immerse myself in it. The best way to learn and understand is by doing. So we are going to immerse ourselves more fully in the garden this year, and to take it one step further: to write to understand ourselves, and the lessons we would learn from the garden.

Geographically, we are here, in Nova Scotia. In many ways we have put down roots here. We have built our dream house, planted an orchard, built trails in our forest, developed a rich community.

Our original vision when we first built our house in Nova Scotia took time to come to fruition. I think of the afternoon Zak an I planted the fruit tree orchard before the land had been levelled, before we built our barn or our house. We found the most level spot to plant the fruit trees. I’m glad we did, because a lot of the land has had its topsoil shaved off and the soil fertility still isn’t very good, but the trees are finally starting to produce.

We had a vision to sustain ourselves and to grow our own food and fruits, to homestead, essentially. We’ve learned a lot over the last 5 years that we’ve been in our house, and realized that a lot of it is harder than it seems to produce your own food. Getting things to grow doesn’t always go how we’d expect—there are so many variables.

I realize how life-giving it has been to work in the garden for my husband, Zak, as a counterpoint to his work. Often he’d come in the house and describe how he’d wish it was all he could do, but we are far away from being able to sustain ourselves from our garden.

But the garden takes us deeper to something essential and we want to pay more attention to it this growing season.

So this is the seed of our next book in the series (yes, I feel it becoming a series!) of The Lorica Letters. This year it will be a series of dispatches from our garden and our homestead. We invite you into the journey with us. On our road trip we wrote an email to friends and family every week or two along with haikus. We will have the same format this time, but everything will be posted here on this Substack. Every two to three weeks we will share two haikus — one from me and one from Zak (and maybe even one from the kids here and there) — and a letter from the garden and its progress. I will leave room for the rhythm of the garden to speak as we’re out in the weeds, mulling on the syllables of haikus. The vision is that we will publish the letters and haikus again in a printed chapbook that you can enjoy and hold, once we finish this growing season.

On another note, I haven’t promoted our previous book to its fullest or offered you an opportunity to purchase it here on this Substack. I was looking into online options to send it to you, but we are not in this to make a profit off the books, we just want to share them! We are also not that interested in starting a store where I have to pay another company to host and take fees off the top too. So, we hope it’s ok with you to keep it really simple here.

To Order a copy of The Lorica Letters 2024:

If you’d like a copy of the book, please just send me an email to averylpeters at gmail.com (and an e-transfer of $18 CAD to cover the cost of the printing and shipping) and send me your address and I will personally mail you a package with the book. I like to keep things slow and personal. I’ll even include a note in my own handwriting. The first batch of books was stapled at the publishers, but I love the special touch of the hand-sewn binding, knowing I made a physical mark on the book. If you’d like the whole family to sign the books to you, we can do that too!

We’re looking forward to sharing more of the journey with you.

Avery

It took us time to warm up to the idea of travelling together as a family for three months. We didn’t get into our groove right away. It started out with the kids asking for screens in the car many times per day, and I needed to wean myself of my continuous phone checking. Zak was still recovering from pneumonia and slowly getting his energy and lung capacity back.

It took us time for our eyes and hearts to adjust to what we would need for the trip. What we would need to be open to the experience and soak in what we were actually seeing and experiencing. It was a good decision to decide to write poems. It forced us to slow down and pay attention. Poems need space (to write them and to read them). I wish we had enough time on the trip to write poems for all the special moments, but there wasn’t. There are still scenes that are treasured in my heart and brought back to me with photographs.


Travelling light

Just five days’ supplies
Make room and ready your heart,
choosing what to keep. A.

I didn’t finish this poem until the end of the trip, but I felt it the whole way through. It entered many revisions in my mind. We ended up grocery shopping every five days since we had a small fridge. I felt like this trip forced me to carry no more than I needed. I left much of what I thought I wanted to do at home. It was hard to do. Now a year later, I would write that poem differently and focus on what I need to let go instead of what I keep, but the sentiment of making space has been a constant.

Music has a similar effect in helping me to take what I learned on our trip and process it. So this weekend I started to put together a playlist. These aren’t songs that we listened to on the road, but they are songs that evoke what I want to remember about it. Ellie Holcomb is one who has helped paint some of the images more strongly in my memory as she recounts her own experiences in song. I watched her describing her experience in the Grand Canyon and the song she wrote about it. She tells it so well — the profound effect of experiencing the depths of God’s love in nature. Now unfortunately our experience wasn’t as profound in the Grand Canyon — we didn’t hike to the bottom and camp out as she did — but the effect that canyons had on me was strong (as in Canyonlands National Park and “The Narrows” of Zion National Park). The stars were amazing in Death Valley and many of the desert parks.

If you live locally, you are welcome to join us on November 16 at 6:30pm at New Minas Baptist Church. We will be sharing more of our stories and poems, a slideshow, and what we’ve learned. We will also be singing the first two songs on this playlist as they have become anthems (sung loudly in the car!) for us as we’ve moved back into our lives from the period of “time out of time” on our trip.

Enjoy the playlist, and please drop a line if any of the songs resonate with you!

Here are a few notes on some of my favourites:

The Prayer of St. Patrick (Rend Collective) and The Deers Cry (Shaun Davey)
- This is the prayer we read as we set out on our trip and we carried with us along the way. It is amazing to look back and see God’s hand of protection over us along the way and how we met Him in so many places and people.

Far Country (Ellie Holcomb)
- The kids (J) and I have been singing Ellie’s songs out loud in the car. We loved to be in the desert and one of our most significant experiences was in Canyonlands National Park. The silence and space could not be captured in pictures but it is a feeling that’s stayed with me as I’ve learned the importance of making space for God and being quiet before Him to listen.

Breather of the Stars (Josh White, Holly Ann)
The stars are pretty great in Nova Scotia where we don’t have too much light pollution, but they were even more amazing in Death Valley, CA and in Utah. Many nights on our trip I would stay up late after everyone else and unwind and stretch on our outdoor carpet under the trailer awning while watching the stars.

Arise, Arise, Arise (The Porter’s Gate, Taylor Leonhardt)
I love how this song brings together various passages about the desert—Elijah, Christ in the Wilderness, and the disciples in Gethsemane—and how they are all fed and nourished and given strength to get up and continue on their journeys. It answers the question of Psalm 78:19 “Can God spread a table in the wilderness?”

The theme of journeying has been on my mind a lot over the past year and a bit. Our 3-month road trip last year was a microcosm of the adventure that we live in. I keep learning new layers of what this means and this fall I wanted to delve into it more deeply with the kids as we begin a new season of homeschooling. I get really excited about choosing books we will read together. There are so many good adventure stories and we have been fully immersed in The Lord of the Rings as a family and Watership Down. My favourite time of the day is morning time when we begin with beautiful things like stories, and poetry, and art, and a bible story for the day. This year we began an new curriculum called “One Story” which is written by 2 women who are also homeschooling moms who have adapted materials from The Bible Project for children. We began with the 2-lesson introduction to the Story Map and I am so grateful for the beautiful way that they bring together the story of the Bible and show how everything connects. I have been reading the bible in the framework of “One story that leads to Jesus” but this framework breaks it down even more in a visual way to show how the story of the bible repeats itself in patterns and enables us to see how we can find ourselves in the story.

What is the adventure we’re being invited to? Do you feel like you are living in an adventure? Do you feel the call to a quest? I know I feel the pull when I read a good story like The Lord of the Rings, but it’s hard to see the quest that is part of my own life. We are all called to a quest in life, but do we accept the invitation? This crystallized for me in a way last year as we embarked on our trip and now I see it through the lens of the story map. How we began in the “Wild Place” where it felt like we would never get out on the road. So many things kept happening that seemed to want to prevent us from going. Then we moved “through the waters” as we were led out on the land and into our journey, and the adventure continues with blessing, covenant, the garden, a choice, a promise, and then back again to a wild place and the story begins again.

Now I could get into the details of how my family found ourselves in this journey, but the point is for each of us to find ourselves in it as we read the Bible. If you want a taste of part of our story, you can now (almost) get a copy of our book! It is printed and sitting in boxes on my dining room floor. Half of them are stapled, and the other half are waiting for me to sew them together. I need to get my hands on some (red, hopefully) linen thread and I will be hand stitching the copies together. We will be having a book launch at our church in November for all of those who live locally and I hope to share that by video or in written form with those of you further away. We will be sharing music, poetry readings, a slideshow, and reflections on what we’ve learned since the trip.

Thank you to Gary for inviting us into the process of printing and making it an educational homeschool field trip! I am very sad that Gaspereau Press is selling their business and moving all the equipment to another province. This offset machine is still for sale though, if you feel called to more traditional printing. I told Gary it is too bad he’s closing shop, because I’d love to keep working with them as I’m just getting started! I’m hooked on this beautiful format of printing and the high quality paper and book construction.

Above: One of our campsites in Idaho.

Last summer and fall, my family took a 3-month road trip across the United States. I had meant to write about it here, but it has been hard for me to decide what to share. I initially wrote letters and shared photos of our trip through a small email list to friends and family. I have retitled my Substack as “Slow Work” and I felt that there was a lot of slow work going on that I needed to process before sharing more widely. Our trip was significant and it took time for it to settle.

In late December or January, when meeting with my small group, we had dinner together and discussed what we were looking forward to in the coming year. I have had a lot of creative ideas over the last few years, but so many ideas are unfinished. I know what I want to share, but I haven’t fully learned what I need to learn yet, and a big part of that is not just head knowledge, but knowing it in my body too.

What I shared with my small group was that I wanted to publish one of my book ideas this year, and specifically that I wanted to publish it with Gaspereau Press. In our small little agricultural valley in Nova Scotia we actually have a letterpress publisher of poetry. Most publishers are in the city, but here we have Gaspereau Press. Unfortunately, they sold their business and they are closing this year, but I had a dream to publish with them and I guess it was meant to happen. In May, I was in town and I happened to see the publisher, whom I had never met before, walking into the local used bookstore. I followed him in, browsed for a bit, and then introduced myself and gave my pitch. He liked my idea and said he’d be able to fit it in to publish this summer. I was very excited.

I sent him an email with more details, and then he saw the scope of the work and realized that there was a lot going on and a lot of work to do to close up his business and he said that he didn’t have time to give it the proper attention and apologized. But then we decided to have a conversation over the phone and realized that this book was not meant to be a large book. It was meant to be a chapbook, which is a very short book of poetry with only two signatures (each signature is 8 pages, then folded which accounts for 16 pages). When you only print two signatures you can get away with a simpler binding and the pages are rounded at the open edge instead of flush. (Ask me in person and I can tell you a little more about book production and nerd out a bit.)

Above: View of Crater Lake from Garfield Point

It is always more work to write something that is shorter in length. Over the course of our 3-month road trip, I wrote one letter to friends and family almost every week. Each letter was 1000-1800 words long. I took each of those letters and edited it down to 300 words or less. During our travels both Zak and I also wrote a haiku almost every week to reflect on the beautiful scenery along the way. Writing haikus is an exercise in editing and economy of words as well. I am used to writing longer form poetry, so this was a challenge for me. For my husband, Zak, it is his preferred mode of writing. There is a beautiful metaphor in this and what we learned on our trip in how we also lived out of a small trailer for 3 months with only what we could fit in our trailer and truck, which I discuss more in the introduction to our book.

I am currently reviewing the proofs for the book and can’t wait for it to become an actual object I can hold in my hands. It will be encased in beautiful paper that is too thick and textured to print on with digital printers. After writing all the letters and haikus, I knew I wanted to encase it not just as a piece of art in a beautiful binding, but to enclose the poems in meaning. To see our journey and how it is a smaller version of the journey of our lives and the meaning we derive from it. So I wrote an introduction to it as well and a benediction to close it.

Above: “The Lorica” in our driveway ready to go on our trip.

We named our trailer “The Lorica” after St. Patrick’s prayer of protection that is also called “The Lorica” or “The Deer’s Cry”. A friend said we should call our letters “The Lorica Letters” and it stuck. So that is the title of our book. We are doing a small print run and will be sharing a book launch with our community, but if you are farther away and would like a copy, please let me know.

I would love to share more of what I am learning in light of our trip through some other creative projects I am working on, so stay tuned.

Fee free to drop me a line if you’d like to pre-order a copy of our book.

I have been away from this space for a while. Our family took a 3-month sabbatical and went on a road trip, which was amazing. I will share some of it in time (see picture above), but for now I have another poem from the collection I have been working on that I feel is fitting for this advent season.

The collection of poems is on the body and the body of Christ as a whole. This is one of my earlier poems. It was inspired by a friend who underwent heart surgery earlier this year. The heart is the centre of what is tender and raw. I imagined how he would feel for his heart to be opened up physically and how it parallels our spiritual journey. Our doubts and darkness speak to us and can linger in our bodies. We feel vulnerable at times. We all need the reminder of God’s love and how he will fill every part of our lives and dispels the darkness and doubts.

So I have a poem to share, but also a piece of art to go with it. I have admired paper cut art for a long time. One of my favourite paper cut artists illustrates children’s books. I love words, and it comes naturally for me to make art with words, especially as I am developing and working on my drawing skills, which I unfortunately stopped practicing when I was in my early teens, and have only resumed now as an adult.

I began with a simple silhouette of a person holding a heart and cut the letters of the last stanza of my poem into it. I called the poem “Making Space.”

As we wait for Jesus’ birth, it is a long waiting time. That is what Advent is set aside for. To give us time to prepare and wait. I imagine how long 9 months of pregnancy felt for Mary, how she had to physically make space in her body as she waited. We all do the same as we make space in our hearts. So this poem is also for all of us.

Making Space

by Avery Peters

When the heart is exposed
to the light of day
acoustics are altered:
the heard becomes visible at once.

Who can understand it?
What does the heart do
when it is stopped?

As if time is suspended—
waits for your return,
for you to find that ache again
that draws you to your work of loving.

For when you realize
that your inmost part
is on display
and another holds it in their hands.

All you can do is make space:
the kingdom of God is in you.
It starts small.
It needs space.

This time the work of love 
is not the doing kind.
You must let it occupy you.
Feel it, embody it.
Let it grow to abundance.

Do you know the blessing
that courses through you?
You are infused
from head toe.

This blessing travels every vein
and lands in your heart
with a rhythm of love.

I’m still learning the best way to show the nature of a papercut and how it casts shadows and moves, so here is a video clip. I have a frame, but maybe a shadowbox is better? My son jumped in here with a thumbs up. Thanks buddy.

Blessed Feet, High Park, Avery Peters (2013)

Blessed Feet

I know you see
the traces of new life.
The sign of the cross is everywhere:
before the green shoot reveals itself,
it forms underground;
before the sun opens the flower
there is night.

***

That day we wore our teal pants.
The pink we were seeking
would complement them.
We wanted to capture ourselves
in a moment
amongst the blossoms.

When we arrived
the petals had already begun to fall:
scattered on the ground,
swirling confetti around us in gusts of wind.
The green leaves already pushing
out past the cherry blossoms,
overtaking the colour.

We turned our eyes up to see
a corridor of trees, a hall of pink
leading to a gate.
Not yet sure what we were being
called to,
we witnessed a letting go at
our feet.

***

Here is Mary
kneeling at His wounded feet
inhaling the scent:
a fragrant carpet of petals surrounding her.
“Do not cling,” He says.
“Now go, and tell the others.”

She touched Him.
She saw Him.
Yet He is more.
Did she understand?

His feet, she felt,
solid and real.
His feet, the Word, in living flesh,
would return him to the Father.
A blessed, infinite union.

***

The flower’s withering, a beginning.
Each death deeper.
Each resurrection more abundant.

***

Now here are your feet:
your dirty, dusty feet.
He kneels down to wash them
and sends you.

Let them carry you,
as you follow in His footsteps.
Feel your toe, ball, heel, rooting,
as the rest of your movements agree.

How it sends your whole self:
your heart, mind, and soul
into deep love — Go!
Let these feet take you wholly there —

Into the radiance
of light
as you choose to step forward
not for yourself
but to make visible —

To she who waits for you at the gate,
at the end of the pink corridor.
You told her the place.
And she waits.
She waits to hear
what you have seen
and heard
and touched
and felt
and how the story
has come to you anew.

***

***

Cherry Blossoms, High Park, Avery Peters (2013)

Pink Corridor, High Park, Avery Peters (2013)

This is one poem of a series on life in the body of Christ. In reflecting on the various parts of the body I hope to come to a deeper understanding of what it means and our interconnectedness.

The image that inspired this poem was of Mary Magdalene kneeling at Jesus’ feet after he rose from the dead (Matthew 28:9, John 20:17) and how she was the first person he revealed himself to. She understood his bodily resurrection, but she did not yet understand him as fully God and fully man.

Lilias Trotter’s book, Parables of the Cross, speaks in words and watercolours of her deep understanding of the life cycle of plants and how they hold the story of the cross: “And we ourselves are ‘saved to save’ — we are made to give — to let everything go if only we have more to give.” p. 30

Other references:
Matthew 28:9, John 20:17, Philippians 2:5-7, Isaiah 52:7-8, John 17:5, Revelation 1:8, Hebrews 1:1-3

Most mornings, I send my kids outside after we have breakfast and morning time. They need to get their energy out before we continue our studies. The trampoline is the easiest place to send them, but as it’s spring, the temperature goes up and down every day and this particular morning felt cooler than previous days. They came in after 2 minutes and declared that it was too cold. So I sent them out on an mission.  One of the first flowers to come up in the spring is coltsfoot. Its flowers grow long before its leaves. So I sent my kids to go out to find some in the front field that surrounds our house. I knew wasn’t a complicated mission, because they do grow all over our yard, but they are low to the ground and weren’t quite open yet that morning since the sun hadn’t unfurled them. They had to look and adjust their eyes and minds to find them.

This is the idea of a scavenger hunt, a common activity for children (and adults!). We can have a map of the area we are searching in, but that’s not the point. The idea is to look for something on a list, something we may not have thought was there, but when we look more closely, we see what we didn’t expect or had never noticed before.

***

If you asked me two years ago if I could see myself homeschooling my children I would’ve said I wasn’t prepared or fit to do so. But I found people, books, and communities along the way that encouraged me. And a unifying element was story. In her essay, “Women, Work, and ‘Women’s Work,’” Ashely Hales similarly expresses that “what has come naturally has always been story.” Whenever I have doubts about whether I am doing enough for my kids as I teach them, I am reassured when I saturate them with stories that have a potent affect in forming our lives and imaginations.

For our daily “morning time” my kids and I create space around our kitchen table to lounge with cups of tea and hot chocolate and a mess of paper, crayons, pencils and markers at the ready to write and draw when we feel inspired. We read so many stories — the Bible, fairy tales, stories from the imaginations of many others and we take them in, drawing images of what resonates with each of us.

We are making a map together. We are marking what we have learned, where we have been. The stories become a part of the map in our imaginations.

We just finished reading the whole of the series of The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. In the same vein, an equally loved book series we have been reading together is the Wingfeather Saga, by Andrew Peterson. My kids like to say how every single chapter ends with a cliffhanger and makes them want more. I would tell you that every book leaves me with a feeling of a deep ache for more, it leaves men feeling tender and softened to the story of who I truly am. I can feel that the author himself has felt the story deeply. And then it makes me want to write and create too.

In watching an interview with author and songwriter Andrew Peterson, he described how he had the idea for the series of books he wanted to write, but he wasn’t able to write it until he made a map of his fictional world. Then the story came together in his mind. This stuck with me. As I am writing and creating more and have so many ideas and wonder where to start, what to focus on — how am I making a map?

I feel it is a gift for me to linger at my table with my children and I would spend hours there if I could, but we do need to get up and exercise and get fresh air, but then we’re right back at the table bringing back all of our experiences and synthesizing together. This is repeated again in the evening when my husband comes home from work and the importance of family dinner. We share food with friends too, and this is an important site of meaning making and integrating with our communities.

We are training our minds and hearts and eyes to be more keen to see truth in a world where it has been obscured. We choose carefully what stories we bring into our lives.

I am especially mindful of maps as we prepare as a family to go on a 3-month road trip later this year. My husband bought us physical paper maps — a huge Rand McNally Atlas with extra images of all the National Parks throughout the USA. It is significantly different to look at the whole scope of the map and to see the many different routes to one location, rather than just putting in a destination into a digital device and choosing the quickest way there. Most often we use our GPS and only listen to directions without knowing where we really are.

Sometimes it’s hard to see where I’m going. Sometimes it feels as though I’m circling the same ideas and life lessons over and over again. I have a map in my hands, but it doesn’t feel like much use. I’m learning that what I create along the way is the map to my heart and my relationship with God. If I pay attention, I realize that each time I circle back around, I am coming to a deeper understanding. There are a lot of layers.

***

The kids and I have been studying the story of King David, and part of this involved studying the statue of David, carved into marble by Michelangelo. A unique aspect of Michelangelo’s choice of pose was that he captured David in the moment before he killed Goliath rather than after Goliath’s defeat. We all know how the story goes — that David hit Goliath with a stone from his sling right between the eyes. But if you go back a bit in David’s story, you begin to understand more about his heart: “For the Lord sees not as man sees; man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7b). After meeting all of David’s brothers, God told Samuel that it was none of them who were to be the next King, so they waited for David to come in from the field and God told Samuel, “‘Arise, anoint him, for this is he’ Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward” (1 Samuel 16:12-13). David was chosen because God saw his heart.

The spirit of the Lord rushed on David. He was changed. It was a significant moment in his life, but he still had menial responsibilities, he still had to go out and tend his sheep. He wasn’t immediately going out to conquer Goliath. He lived quietly for a while, and King Saul didn’t know who he was right away. God was preparing him for more. He was giving him space in the field to let it settle, out with the sheep. His imagination was being formed poem by poem, song by song. I imagine him singing to his sheep, composing his songs, working out his frustrations, fears, joys, and longings. And how that day, after God’s spirit rushed upon him, how he’d have this deep sense of being made for more, but knowing he needed to be with his sheep. He saw what was in front of him and he loved them and cared for them.

The Psalms he wrote are a map of his heart.

Desert father Abba Poemen advised to “teach your mouth to say that which you have in your heart.”1 It can be a very hard thing to do. It requires vulnerability and weakness, to admit what we want and what we actually are, don’t line up.

How can we say what is on our heart? Practice with the words of one who has walked the path.

So often we don’t say what is on our hearts because it puts us at too much at risk. It is hard because there is so much emotion behind. That emotion is the sehensucht — that longing for more, for wholeness, the joy. How does this point to what is true? In our culture we are encouraged to speak our own truth and we applaud each other for the courage it takes. What happens when we hear the words of others who have walked the path? Who have done the work? Those who don’t take short cuts with words, but live what they say?

I recently discovered a song that communicates this. It is called “Blue Flower”2 by The Gray Havens. The songwriter, Dave Radford, was reading C.S. Lewis’s memoir, Surprised by Joy, when it jumped out to him that Lewis described a memory from his childhood where he called himself a “votary (admirer) of the blue flower.”3 Wondering what this meant, he looked it up and found that the blue flower was commonly used in German literature to symbolize a unsatisfied desire or longing that is just beyond reach. Lewis goes on to describe how joy is an “unsatisfied desire, more desirable than any satisfaction.” In composition, Radford describes how the song, Blue Flower, came together quickly, and during the writing process there was a point when the song changed, when the melody for a new hook came to him. He describes how the song began to say, “ok, let’s go.” Like the leader of the band taking everyone along. Or for me, as a listener, it feels like a sending out. I have to go and do something…make something.

What do we do with this ache we can feel? Like that feeling we get in a powerful scene of a movie, a song that brings a well of emotion, or a story we just can’t stop reading. It can be put aside, but what if we let it send us out into the world in a new way? This requires work. It’s an invitation to something more, but we need to accept it.

I had never read The Chronicles of Narnia until this past year with my children. The stories affected me deeply and in reading them aloud to my children it surprised me when it was hard to read certain sections. Jonthan Rogers recounts a story of a boy who wrote Lewis that he was worried that he loved the character of Aslan too much and that he loved him more than God. Lewis reassured him that in loving Aslan, he was loving God.4

I wanted to make something tangible to mark the end of our reading the Narnia series together. I’m sure I will read the stories again (we have already listened to the audio drama version of almost all of them as well), but this first time was significant. When I was perusing through the book section at Winners, I discovered a book of lacy paper cutouts designed by an artist and prepared for me to cut out on my own. There was a beautiful image of a lion and I knew I had to do it. But I knew I would need to practice before I came to it. All those detailed knife cuts require a deft hand, and I needed to become more familiar with the scalpel before I could do it well. So I began with a few other images and flowers and experimented with my own designs until I felt ready to trace Aslan’s floral mane.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was my favourite book in the series and in it there is a quote from Aslan, where he says “This was the very reason you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you will know me better there.”

It is hard to come back and remember. It is hard to have the spirit of God rush upon us and then arrive back in the day to day and remember all that glory and beauty.

We are inspired by those around us to continue to create. These moments are significant.“The flame-descending moments of inspiration are worthy and good, but they are not thing thing in itself to chase, the shiny new object of my latest affections,” cites Ashley Hales.5 There is work, a descent that happens when we create or take in these moments of revelation. The creating, whether it be with our own lives, or creating a physical piece of art, requires work and entering into and confronting painful aspects of our lives.

Aslan shows up in unexpected places at unexpected times. Sometimes only Lucy sees him, but she points the others to him. The map is not necessarily about showing us the way. It is about the journey and the seeking.

***

I don’t think my kids noticed the coltsfoot was blooming yet, but I wanted to direct them to it to find it for themselves. I could’ve told them exactly where it was, but rather, I said, “go find the little yellow flower growing everywhere.”

In going out to find the emblematic blue flower we may not find it, but we do bring something back with us, if not the blue flower. We are transformed in the looking for it.

And this seeking happens in community and around the family table. In my work of writing and creating I am learning that once I send my work and words out into the world, they are no longer mine. They become a part of my community and they take their transformation in the lives of others. It is an act of love as we all seek together.

5

Ashley Hales | Beauty Leads the Way

Women, Work, and 'Women's Work'

Motherhood and its demands have not come naturally to me. I love my four children but the tasks associated with both housekeeping and child-rearing are a far cry from my ideating, ideas-focused, artistic bent. I learned to cultivate the skillset through the means most natural to me: I read books. Then I invested in local community. Even with a supportiv…

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2 years ago · 18 likes · 8 comments · Ashley Hales

Split View Cabin 1, Avery Peters

I’ve had a long break from writing for my newsletter, but I have still been doing a lot of writing and discerning. I took a mini retreat to write in the summer. My kids were both at camp, so I stole away to a tiny off-grid cabin on the rocky cliffs of Scots Bay on the Bay of Fundy. I didn’t have to go too far — just 30 minutes from my house. I spent 2 days reading, writing, stretching, enjoying music, and walking along the beach and collecting rocks and driftwood when the tide was out.

In the fall, my son asked me to download an app on my phone so he could create stop motion videos. As I watched him create his first video, it got me thinking about my poems and how I can share them. The images from this past summer have been strong in my mind and it has been good to shape them into something tangible.

What is the work?

This poem is the work. It is a reminder. I do not write or create because I have figured things out, but because I am learning.

But who am I?

I have not created myself a platform and I do not intend to. Through the process of cutting of each letter, each shape, I am shaped and reminded. As I speak the words in my own voice, I am reminded again. Things move slowly. It is not my job to speed things up. I change and am shaped slowly. There is no shortcut to the work that is set before me. In our culture we like to find the shortest route to accomplish a task, or even get AI or a machine to do it for us, but there is so much richness in the process.

Fog Drifts, Avery Peters

The Work, Avery Peters

Cliff: A Stop Motion Video Poem by Avery Peters

Image: Making New, Avery Peters

We could feel the anticipation in the streets as we watched the throngs of people entering the stadium in Orlando, making it hard for us to drive into the parking garage. There were cops directing us across the road to get into the stadium. Everyone was rushing across, not wanting to miss the game. We arrived just after they began the first announcements. The lights were dimmed and there were flashing spotlights on the players to get the energy going.

The energy at the basketball game was contagious. My kids had never seen a college game before, so it was especially fun to watch through their eyes. My son and daughter, avid basketball players since they began playing in a league this year, were amazed at the skill of the players. The cheerleading team was also inspiring and I was amazed at the strength it took the male cheerleaders to hold up the females with one arm. The females balanced with smiles on their faces. They were encouraging us to cheer, but I was so transfixed by their moves and watching how they communicated with each other and casually took breaks between the output of extreme effort.

Video: Avery Peters

Anytime there was a break there was live entertainment, all encouraging us to engage. There is something distinguished about a brass band. They all had their own seats in the stands and on cue they would all stand together and play the intermission songs. My daughter still hums the songs sometimes. The rallying call. The music instilled a sense of pride.

They began halftime with smoke machines and a light show that ended with a call for everyone to turn on their phone flashlights and raise them up and down. “Lights up, lights down…”

My favourite part of the game besides the excitement and sportsmanship of the basketball game itself was the cheerleaders’ dance at the half time. The women were all standing there in their square formation, perfectly spaced out. But before they started the song, they said they needed to introduce their special guests. Then they each called their dads and they came running out in their own dancing outfits to their daughters’ sides. They had some pretty hilarious moves and you could tell they were dedicated to their daughters. Everyone felt included and everyone was having fun.

As the game was going on there were people watching behind me that were so into calling out after what was happening that I felt a shower of spit sprinkle over me multiple times. The emotion was intense. I could feel everyone really wanted to be there and they all had a role. Even if it was to call out with discontent “Ref-you-suck, ref-you-suck.” There was one particular player that it felt like everyone was on a personal basis with. He was one of the star players making many of the shots and working hard at defence. Near the end of the game, this star player had maxed out on fouls and was out for the last bit of the game. Everyone shouted “Bye, Tyler!”

In every break or time-out there were activities happening on the court. There were dinner roll eating contests, pushup contests, and a make a salad contest. At the halftime they also showcased all those with high GPAs and gave them awards.

This community coming around a basketball game was refreshing. I felt honoured to be a part of it and to witness the passion and excitement and be swept up in it for an evening. Even our friends who joined us, who would not normally go to a basketball game, enjoyed it as well. You know there is something going on that is good. You know what you’re there for. To watch the players and cheer for your team that was united in their purpose.

***

Image: Together, Avery Peters

This kind of community and connection happens in all sorts of collaborations. Recently I listened to an interview with the artist, Lauren Daigle. Zane Lowe was interviewing her on her recently released self-titled album. She writes much of her own music, but was describing how she wrote most of her songs on this album with others. She starts with an idea and then, depending who she’s working with, they try out the song and experiment with different lyrics, harmonies, and instrumentals. She described how when she listens to those in her band, she changes the texture of her voice.

One of her most poignant comments was that in the process of working with others, she discovered more layers of herself as she described how “I knew all this was inside of me and I hadn’t heard it outside of me before.” This was the moment a depth of herself was brought out to meet the energy of her collaborators in writing the song, “New.” In response to this observation, the interviewer, Lowe, commented that “We get so attached to who we’ve been that we forget who to become.” The element of change and seeing others is a huge part of community. We get so focused on ourselves that we miss the potential to rise up and meet others where they are. How can we truly see others when we are so focussed on ourselves? Eugene Peterson describes this well in his book, Run with the Horses:

But how much better it is if we take the time to get the drift of things, to find out where we fit. The story into which life fits is already well on its way when we walk into the room. It is an exciting, brilliant, multivoiced conversation…It is not long before  we are regular participants in the conversation in which, as it unfolds, we get to know ourselves even as we are known. (p. 38)

As a community it is so important to rally around a cause and to have a unified purpose, just as all the players on the basketball team work together. There are so many people besides the team that have important roles in making the game night a success. There are the organizers, announcers, the cheerleaders, the band members, even the viewers who buy tickets to watch. Everyone has an important role and it’s exciting to see it all come together with the energy of a live game.

The final song in Lauren’s album is called “Valuable.” A big part of finding purpose is understanding our insecurities and moving beyond them. This takes self awareness. After multiple years spent in varying degrees of separation from each other, it can be daunting to be vulnerable and to connect with others on a deeper level, but it is only by engaging in community, as on the court, and through music. I have found this especially in the community of the church, where I have returned to a vision and found my purpose.

As we engage, it slowly becomes clearer how we fit into the big picture. It is a matter of paying attention. Our parents see this when we are born and name us, with a hope for our future and who we will be. It is a moment of awe when a child is born, to think of all that has come before to culminate in the moment of our presentation into the world. And from this moment of birth and throughout our lives we continue changing. Peterson describes how “We are in process of becoming either less or more” (p. 28).

We all have a desire for wholeness and connection whether we pay attention to it or not. This happens on the court, shooting hoops with our friends. When we look into each others’ eyes, ready for the pass. When we gather at the ball field and cheer each other on from the dugout in the pouring rain as we take turns at bat. It happens sitting around the fire with a guitar, singing together, raising our voices up with the sparks. Let us seek wholeness together, because it is very lonely on our own and we all have a valuable role to play in each others’ lives.

A recent favourite is called Waiting Is Not Easy. The stories often begin with Piggie calling out to Gerald about something that excites her. In this book, she cartwheels in calling out his name and announces that she has a surprise for Elephant. Of course Elephant is excited about it and has many questions and cannot wait. Until Piggie says that he has to wait. He lets out a huge “G R O A N…” The speech bubble pushes Piggie right over. He resigns to waiting, but not for very long. Piggie remains firm that he just has to wait. There is no hurrying this surprise. His GROAN becomes even bigger and he resolves that this surprise must not be worth waiting for. But then he saunters back and groans again. The pages begin to get darker and darker and Elephant is losing it. He worries that they will not see each other. He laments “We have wasted the whole day!” And then Piggie reveals the surprise to him.

***

“Today I believe in God,” (p. 7) poet John Terpstra quotes his friend in his book, Skin Boat. He makes this statement as they listen to a jazz trio on a Sunday morning while the offering is collected. I too know this transporting power of jazz music being completely wrapped up in the moment and feeling as though I am right on stage and in the music. There is something special about the improvisational nature of jazz music that has the ability to create a conversation with the audience, the notes being played for that particular time and place. There is also the call and response element where, after each instrumentalist or singer completes a solo, the audience acknowledges it and claps. They participate in the music, respond to the musician, waiting for that last note or resolution when the solo is over. I miss jazz concerts in Nova Scotia, although in December, I had the pleasure of enjoying Michael Kaeshamer. It is unique that Terpstra enjoyed jazz music as part of a church service with an opening song by John Coltrane and the offertory song by Thelonious Monk. The band joined in for the hymns. As he ruminates on his friends’ statement he begins to “translate” it. “Today I have been won over by something that is both here and now and out of this world. With the unspoken addendum, It doesn’t happen very often. And, Tomorrow I may not.” He had been wooed, not argued, into saying it” (p. 9) Terpstra describes about his friend.

These moments when we feel “wooed” do not come very often. The day to day aspects of life plow along with repetition. I find much stability in routine as I homeschool my kids. They like to know what to expect each day, and I know teachers cultivate this ordering of their classroom and it takes many days, especially as January begins a fresh new year after a long break. In January, I take the opportunity to add new elements to my routine. I get up earlier to do yoga and pray before the kids get up most days, rather than sleeping in and having them wake me up. This routine can seem monotonous, this act of waiting, in a way. How we go about each day affects our attitude. Do I leave breathing space between these tasks in order to be wooed? Or am I rushing too much?

Image: Frozen Queen Anne’s Lace, Avery Peters

Tish Harrison Warren wrote a book Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred practices in Everyday Life. She gives meaning and importance to basic events that make up our everyday life and relates them to spiritual practices. From waking up as a form of baptism and learning to be loved, making the bed in light of ritual and what forms life, to brushing teeth as the practice of learning to be in a body, to losing keys and confronting the truth about ourselves, and to sitting in traffic in relation to liturgical time and an unhurried God.

How we choose to see these daily events as a part of our lives matters. Adding up these small events together can have a cumulative effect on the meaning of our life and finding truth in it. It is a form of waiting. It doesn’t seem very significant to be brushing our teeth or making the bed, but it is important how we do it. She quotes another of my favourite authors, Annie Dillard: “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives” (p. 23).

Harrison Warren describes how her typical morning routine was to grab her smartphone as she woke up “like digital caffeine,” she said, “my day was imprinted by technology…[it] began to fill every empty moment in the day…without realizing it, I had slowly built a habit: a steady resistance to and dread of boredom” (p. 27).

So for the season of Lent, upon realizing this affect her phone was having on her, she decided to banish the phone from her bedroom and begin her day instead by making her bed and sitting on it in silence. She “began to notice, very subtly, that [her] day was imprinted differently.”

Another friend of mine who finds himself steeped in the intensity of his days decided to set an alarm to remind himself to stop and be grateful at various points throughout the day. This small cultivation of a habit can greatly affect the outlook of a day.

Our days plod along with these seemingly mundane events . The question remains: What are we waiting for? Or conversely, what are we trying to distract ourselves from?

When Piggie finally takes Elephant out to see the surprise, she reveals the beautiful starry night sky and they both stand there in awe.

We don’t always get to go out at night and be amazed at the stars. It’s not every day that we walk into the world with our eyes open in wonder. After all his frustration in waiting, Elephant was gently guided by his friend, Piggie to open his eyes and see something that was beyond himself. They decided to go out again and marvel at the sunrise the next day.

Those who have a near death experience describe how they experience a sense of peace and unconditional love. There are research studies where participants describe this peace. Most of us do not have this experience where our lives flash before us. Instead we marvel at the stars, other times we are transported by an amazing jazz concert. But mostly, our days are filled with the mundane.

Image: Frozen Goldenrod, Avery Peters

***

How does waiting show up in the body? Perhaps in moment of suspended breath and surprise, with a deep release when a feeling of anxiety has passed. Last year, when I began to pay attention to where I hold tension in my body, throughout the day I found it in many places of strain such as my legs and shoulder from injury. I worked though them with stretching and breath, but most surprising to me was my clenched jaw. I clenched it throughout the day and paid attention to it and released it when I remembered but it persisted through the night. I noticed in particular the tension in my neck and jaw as I bent over my phone, staring at others’ images, slowly comparing myself to others. The tension would increase and my focus narrowed in so tight, my vision concentrating on a space so small there wasn’t even space for my breath. This distraction from the practice of making space took me out of it and wound up in my body so tight as feelings of inadequacy.

The man sitting in church who said “Today I believe in God” felt peace. Piggie and Elephant experienced wonder and peace. Can we trust a strength and peace that is beyond us?

“Today I believe in God.” Those words can take two different tones, whether or not you believe in God. It can be just a moment of awe that passes, or it can be a daily decision. As a Christian who makes this a daily decision, I don’t say those specific words every day to myself but they become a part of me every time I wake up and sit down at the table with my children in the morning and read with them. We light a candle, we read a Bible story, we sing together. I begin each day over and over again with the same routines and the same problems, the same anxieties and stressors, worries and doubts, and every day I feel as though I start again.

When you see the stars, how often do you really see them? Are you rushing off to your car as you glance over your shoulder at the sky? Or do you sit, take a deep breath and imagine the expanse light years beyond you? Does your body know how to stop, slow down and see?

I think it is wonderful that so many people are seeking to understand their nervous systems, deepen their breath, and find healing. The world is changing at such a rapid pace, it’s hard to keep up and it’s anxiety inducing to worry about what others think and whether we are speaking and behaving acceptably in public. We can apologize over and over again for our mistakes. We all do wrong and offend people. I wake up and need forgiveness every day, even for the way I fail my children and my husband. I am not the perfect wife or mother. Where is the forgiveness we can offer each other? Where is the grace? Where is the peace?

As a longtime supporter and advocate of fair trade, I worked as an assistant manager at Ten Thousand Villages for 3 years in Toronto. I gave presentations to schools and community groups on the benefits of fair trade and how it positively affects communities and their abilities to provide for their children and send them to school. I longed for everyone to know about fair trade and how child labour and corruption exists in the trade of cacao beans. I bought as much as I could from artisans represented in my store: dish ware from Vietnam, baskets from from Bangladesh, necklaces from Peru, hand cream from Burkina Faso. I shared all their stories along the way in hopes others would furnish their homes with their work too. It was hard to know how much difference I could actually make on my own. I tried to understand where my purchase came from and the benefit my decisions could have for someone around the globe. There is a cost for these ideals we aspire to. They are many. Intangible. The cost of justice for one at the price of injustice to another, the cost of having clean energy in one place while the environmental cost is offloaded somewhere else. Who will pay the price?

In the same way that we wait and hope and try our best to make ourselves better, less anxious, more accepting of others, seeking justice and fairness for those in our communities, we also wait for these things on a larger scale. We long for the world to be made whole. We long for nature to be restored, for there to be enough food and water for all. We long for wars to be over, we long and wait to be free. But we see how daily as individuals we don’t accomplish these desires. We look to others we admire to help us meet these goals — maybe they are wiser than us, maybe our leaders know something we don’t, but even they mess things up.

We all feel a sense of wonder and peace when we marvel at what is beyond us, but what are we waiting for? Like the audience listening to jazz music, we are present for each solo and applaud along the way at the beauty and wonder that is happening, but there will be a different applause at the end when we discover that there is a resolution and the song is whole and completed.

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Nourishing Nervine Tisane

Our senses open us up in many ways to shifts in perspective. Herbs are a beautiful way to engage with the sense of smell and taste (and touch if you blend your own). Tea is also something to share. This is part of the peace and the healing. This tea has been a pleasure for me to make and share with many friends who I know experience anxiety, but in the process as I make it for others I slow down and breathe and think of them and say a prayer. Each ingredient has its medicinal action. Oats are nourishing. Cocoa nibs are uplifting and lavender is soothing. I love all of the ingredients, but my favourite part is the lavender. I think back to midsummer, in the heat of the lavender field, sliding alongside lavender after lavender plant at a friend’s u-pick. Then I place all the stems on screens in my basement as they dry and then place them into paper bags until I am ready to garble (yes, I just learned from another herbalist that removing plant matter from the stems is called garbling). Garbling is my favourite process. My fingers get saturated with the oils of the lavender buds. The repetitive process induces deep breaths as they drop into the bowl. I get milky oat buds from my friend Rachel, but oat straw also works in its place. You can get the ingredients at your local health food store or grow your own!

4 parts milky oats or oat straw

2 parts lavender buds

2 parts cocoa nibs

Steep 4 tbsp covered in a 1L mason jar for 20 minutes or more. Strain and enjoy!

I still do this type of journalling, but less frequently. Since having kids I have been narrowing down what is important to me and to what I want to learn with the kids. A mentor homeschooler I learn from talks about finding sites of mutual fulfillment with our children. I love this concept. Now that I am with the kids for almost the whole day, I need to find times during the day to replenish my energy and cultivate a fertile ground within myself that sets the tone for the household. I spend time journalling, reading, praying, and doing yoga by myself and find short bursts throughout the day for a couple of these things if not all. Nature journalling has been a natural fit for myself and the kids, as it is something we enjoy together.

Since making a few zines last year (send me a note if you didn’t get my “Winter Drinks” one last year), I began to develop my confidence in drawing. In my preteen and teen days I had given up on my ability to draw, but something about the journal format brought life back to the idea and gave me an outlet to practice for the sake of enjoyment and study. I began to feel the concept from a quote from Frederick Franck in The Zen of Seeing that “I have learned that what I have not drawn I have never really seen . . . that seeing/drawing become one . . . and that I constantly rediscover the world.” It’s also a beautiful way to slow down and take in my surroundings. I bought a travel watercolour set and sewed together a notebook of watercolour paper with a Japanese butterfly stitch, some boards and fabric from a dress I never made composed the cover. The notepads from the paper store were not that inspiring and I wanted to make something beautiful to paint in.

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I am often inspired for our nature journal subjects by the books we are reading as a family. When I initially decided on The Secret Garden, I was looking through classic fiction and found these beautiful editions by Minalima, a husband and wife team of graphic designers. Their illustrations and design style immediately drew me in. They’d also beautifully illustrated classic books such as Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, and The Wizard of Oz. I settled on The Secret Garden as I envisioned beautiful fall days where we’d go to the gardens around us in the Annapolis Valley, spread out our blanket and read. When the book did arrive, the kids and I got so excited as we flipped through the book there were all sorts of extra sheets to protect the pop ups and various inserts. There were not just illustrated images, but fold out maps and letters, a pop up coiled snake, a toggling bird with the secret key swinging behind it, and doors that opened into the garden.

The first day we began to read the found that the main character, Mary, lost her whole family. That was not what surprised me most, but rather, the fact that the girl was so wrapped up in herself that she had absolutely no idea that anyone, or almost everyone in her household had died from cholera. She had been spared because she never set foot out of her room and didn’t care about anyone else, only that no one was attending to her in her room. Mary is all alone and has to make her way back to England, where her parents were originally from, to live with her uncle.

Initially, when Mary moved to her uncle’s house in England it describes how she wasn’t very interested in the landscape around her: “Mary went to the window. There were gardens and paths and big trees, but everything looked dull and wintry. ‘Out? Why should I go out on a day like this?’” She commented to Martha who was attending the fire in her room.

Eventually, realizing that there is nothing much else for her to do in the house since her uncle doesn’t keep much to entertain children, she heads outside. She meets the head gardener, Ben Weatherstaff, and a robin. Mary feels the robin is trying to show her something, and this immediately forges a connection between her and Ben and he calls the robin over with a whistle “Doesn’t tha’ know? He’s a robin redbreast an’ they’re the friendliest curiousest birds alive.” Mary watches the bird as he flies over a wall, and she realizes there is no way to follow him as there is no door into that part of the garden and there begins her adventure to discover the secret garden.

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Every time the kids and I go out for a hike we keep our eyes open for objects we want to draw for our nature study for a particular day. Sometimes we remember a backpack or a bag to carry these treasures in, other times our hands are full. Many times clumps of lichens, handfuls of pinecones and sticks with mushrooms and moss make their way into our mudroom. Sometimes they make it to the dining room table where we lay them all out for study. Then I haul out the various applicable identification guides and we look up varieties of ferns and mushrooms and lichen. One of our favourite studies was the birch polypore. We learned that not only does it have medicinal benefits (I have yet to use it in any type of cooking or tea), but it also is useful as a sharpener for knives and the outer peel is useful as a natural bandage. As we were watching the video, my daughter immediately started to peel off the outer layer of the mushroom and stick it around her finger. Then we’d paint and draw and record our learned information around the drawing. I didn’t expect too much writing from the kids, but they get to learn and spell some interesting words such as “interrupted fern” and “scaber stalk mushroom.”

My favourite times nature journalling are when I pack up my bag and take it along with me to the kids’ piano lessons. In the fall, as I waited for them outside, I spread out a blanket in the grass and continued to paint.

I take more time with my nature journal, leaving it out, ready for a moment when I can continue to work on my drawing and to study more information about the particular plant or animal I am learning about. Ever since I’ve been taking them on hikes every day and the kids joined a Forest School once a week for 9 weeks through the fall, they’ve gotten more and more comfortable exploring the woods. Now walks look much different and we stop along the way and create bug homes and icicle fairy kingdoms and teepees. We climb trees, walk on fallen logs and try not to get our mittens wet or boots filled in icicle laden streams.

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In The Secret Garden, after spending time outside, Mary begins to develop an appetite for the hearty English breakfasts served to her in her room. She meets Martha's brother Dickon, who is well known throughout the area as an outdoorsy boy who knows how to connect with animals and spend the whole day outside. Mary befriends him, and realizes how she’s becoming less harsh and disagreeable and begins to distance herself from the persona she has developed as “Mistress Mary quite contrary.” This ability to find herself anew in the outdoors begins to permeate her being. These lessons take even deeper meaning when she begins to look beyond herself and to share it with others such as Dickon. In the middle of the night she follows a crying sound down one of the halls that has been discretely curtained off and discovers that there is a boy there, Colin, who is not well. It is then that she is confronted by someone who is just as contrary as herself. They have it out at each other with words and find they’re well matched.

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My husband has also had a long interest in watercolour and drawing. When a retired woman we know learned that I wanted to paint watercolour with the kids, she invited us to an introductory class to watercolour that she was teaching. She welcomed our children as well, so every Monday night for 4 weeks we joined the class. It was a lot of work to get all 4 of us set up with our paper, boards, paints, water containers, etc. Jean advised us on all the materials we’d need and how it’s is best to have everything ready before we start, since watercolour painting happens fast. I wasn’t sure how the kids would do in a 1.5-2 hour class designed for adults, but they did very well, even if they didn’t do the painting that Jean was instructing us to do. It was beneficial to us to learn the basic techniques.

After reviewing the basic techniques of watercolour, she invited us to an intermediate class (that I started without the kids this time) and instructed us to begin with a sketch—a thumbnail sketch for our larger painting to get an idea of the basic shapes and where the more shaded and darker areas are. As I began to draw, my insecurities came back from my younger days of telling myself I could not draw. I’ve learned so many things as an adult and find now that I am more open to some things than others. Rather than criticizing myself, I realized that I need to paint and sketch for enjoyment before I add another layer of skill—and that’s what happens when I do it with my kids. So rather than continue the intermediate class I decided to put the class on hold and paint with the kids and on my own for now.

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After Mary discovers Colin and they begin to talk she realizes how he is bound up by the disabling thoughts he has about himself—that he will have a crooked back, and that he will have to remain in his bed until his worries about having an early death come true. After having a look at him, Mary surmises that he doesn’t actually have a crooked back, and he can actually stand up if it wants to, he’s just very weak from not having moved much. Emboldened by her own experience of the outdoors, she knows just what he needs and she shares about the secret garden with him. They set off to discover it together. Once they make their way out to the garden without any of the adults knowing what they’re up to, Colin’s mood improves and he decides to get up out of his wheelchair and walk. And he does.

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We learn by doing together. My initial nature journal entries are modest, but throughout the process I have slowed down and noticed. The kids watch me and we share our struggles. When we started painting together, my son would give up quickly and say he did a horrible job, and would throw is colouring implements across the room or leave the table. I showed my son my first sketch of Mary, reaching her arm out to the robin, and how her face looked pretty funny (faces are hard to draw!). But my second one looked better. Yesterday, we painted a hedgehog, and my son was proud of it. He signed his name on it and was excited to share it with Dad when he got home.

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Balsam Fir Sugar

Now that the weather is cooling, I find ways to bring more of the outdoors into my kitchen. One of my favourite traditions now is to get a no spray Christmas tree and find as many ways as possible to use the needles in various recipes. I love to surprise people with a taste of evergreen and watch their eyes light up as they are transported to the forest. To smell an evergreen tree is one thing, but to taste it is another and there are so many benefits to our bodies through the winter months. I love to combine evergreens into my elderberry syrups and other teas for cold and flu season, but they also lend themselves to desserts as spruce and balsam fir pair well with heavy cream and sugar. I made a delicious Balsam fir Pot de Creme this year.

Marie Viljoen has many ideas on how to use Fir sugar in various ways in her blog post here. Read through the post for the simple description on how to make the sugar with 1/4 cup needles blended in the food processor or coffee grinder with sugar. I have tried various evergreen needles. Pine needles are not as strong as a sugar but are more suited to teas or syrups. The flavour of balsam fir and spruce are more robust and citrusy.

https://www.gardenista.com/posts/how-to-eat-a-wreath-fir-sugar-recipes-for-the-holidays/