Wide Open Spaces

Iowa is full of wide open spaces.  Anymore, visiting my mother is the only time I manage to get nine hours of sleep.  At home there is always something to get up for.  In Iowa, my mom gets up with the kids and they have their time alone.  They bake scones or bread or cookies.  It all depends on the season.

I always leave with a burst of creativity.  Maybe it's because of the sleep, or maybe because my mom infuses creativity into everything she touches--house, garden, food.

The drive home is full of wide open spaces.  Miles and miles of corn and bean fields punctuated with farm houses and red barns with quilts painted on them.   The four square houses have the mandatory orange tiger lilies planted on the west foundation, ferns on the north, hostas and lily of the valley on the east and peonies and lilacs on the south.  There is no neighborhood association to regulate this--it's just how stuff grows best.  Occasionally the overgrown yew that started out as a cute shrub by the front door ends up completely blocking the view out the living room window.  It doesn't matter anyway, because the old upright piano goes there and comes up higher than the window anyway.  It all works out.  Two dogs pant in the yard.

I come back home to Minnesota ready to hit the ground running.  I'm ready to clear spaces.  I'm ready to clear my house and my mind of clutter.  I fantasize that I am a Shaker.  I only have what is beautiful and necessary and take very good care of what God has given to me.  I eat seasonal foods and grow them in my weedless organic garden.  My kids are disciplined and helpful.  They eat the vegetables they grow.

Then I go around the pantry corner and see the mountain of crap the kids have brought home from school on Friday and the week's mail and I get into a heavy discourse with the kids about how much computer time they are going to be allowed this summer.  I get sucked into the new Pottery Barn catalog. Then there is the box of junk we bought at the Tipton church garage sale.  I throw away the MacDonald's trash from the car.  I shove the empty suitcase in the bulging closet and shut the door quickly enough that everything doesn't fall out.

Here in suburban Minnesota I'm never gonna be a Quaker.  I'd have to give up my Dansko shoes.  But I can still work toward my own version of simple.

One drawer at a time, sweet Jesus. . . 

I'm not really joking.  I know the Iowa Amish women find spirituality in the rhythm of taking care of the household and the children.  It's just so difficult when my kids are always interrupting me when I'm on the computer. . .

We all have to find our own way.  Tomorrow is the first day of summer break.  I'm going to try to find some rhythm and some wide open space.  Keep what is good and meaningful and let the rest go.  Wide open space is a slow and steady process. . . at it's worst--chaos--at it's best--a living prayer.