This Post Is Not About Anything: A Guest Post From Christie Purifoy

March 12, 2014March 12, 2014 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 8 Comments

I have the honor of having my new writing friend Christie Purifoy guest-posting here today. If you don’t yet know this beautiful soul and her art, you are in for something simply wonderful. Though I have only known Christie for a short while, I feel I have know her as long as her Victorian home, Maplehurst, has been providing a backdrop for living in southeastern Pennsylvania. Christie is real and fresh. And her writing speaks for my own tired soul on days I can only mumble, “me too”.

You will hear a deep thinker but one who is unpretentious. And you will fall in love with the art and the heart of this woman. Christie, I am honored.

The close of day one of Daylight Savings found my husband Jonathan and I washed up like wreckage on our old green sofa. We could hear all four kids still awake in their rooms. Maybe that is why we left the dinner dishes on the counter and the toy dinosaurs on the floor and simply sat right where we happened to be. We were too tired and too irritated by the noise to attempt anything productive.

We had no energy for choosing or making a plan, but the evening chose something for us. Something lovely. Jonathan opened the laptop left lying on the floor. He hit play on a recent episode of Austin City Limits, and we let the sounds of one of our favorite musicians wash away every irritation and tired distraction.

Listening to these songs, I remembered that the lyrics have always been indecipherable to me. I have no clue what this singer is singing, and yet these song have been some of my favorites for years. They are soaked in beauty, drenched in emotion, and, listening to them, I found myself floating in a rich sea of meaning.

I don’t know what they are about, but I seem to know just what they mean.

***

Living my ordinary day-to-day, I often find myself tripping over the same question. Something like, what is the point? What is the point of sweeping this floor, what is the point of baking this bread, what is the point of putting the toys back in the basket? The floor will be dirtied again in minutes, the grocery store sells bread, the basket will be upside down in no time at all. If my life is made up of these seemingly pointless activities, then what is my life about?

I am afraid that my life is not about anything beyond time wasted, tasks repeated and minute-by-minute survival. Yes, the minutes might be adding up to something good, but when the minutes are messy I can never feel sure.

But what if I am not asking the right question?

***

The film critic Roger Ebert used to say, “It’s not what a movie is about, it’s how it is about it.”

These are important words for more than just movies. These are words to remember for novels. For poems. For paintings. Whether we are making them or enjoying them. These are words that help us appreciate the wholeness of a work of art as well as the small grace notes.

These are words that honor the joy of creation.

We do not ask ourselves what the sky is about. I has a purpose. It is far from pointless. But its meaning is blueness. Spaciousness. Openness. Its meaning is shelter and canvas. Its meaning is the joining of heaven and earth.

What is my life today about? I don’t know. But how is my life about this thing called living?

My life is about fresh clean skin after a shower. My life is about butterfly kisses on my baby girl’s cheek. My life is about lighting a candle. Brewing tea. Even the back and forth beauty of my arms holding the broom.

I focus on the how, and I am convinced.

My life–yours too–is about great things.

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Christie Purifoy writes at an old desk in the parlor of a Victorian farmhouse called Maplehurst. After earning a PhD in English literature from the University of Chicago, she traded the university classroom for a large kitchen, garden and a henhouse in southeastern Pennsylvania. When the noise of her four young children makes writing impossible, she tends zucchini and tomatoes her children will later refuse to eat. The zucchini-loving chickens are perfectly happy with this arrangement. The chickens move fast and the baby even faster, but Christie is always watching for the beauty, mystery and wonder that lie beneath it all. When she finds it, she writes about it at There is a River (www.christiepurifoy.com)

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Joining Jennifer Dukes Lee for #tellhisstory and Emily Wierenga at Emily Wierenga dot com for Imperfect Prose

Sunday Poetry – Through My Lens In Prose

February 3, 2014February 3, 2014 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 3 Comments

If you are here every now and then, or have ever visited my space here, or perhaps read my page with a bio. Back when I had a page with a bio, and not an underconstruction about the writer or author page, well you’d know the ratio of poetry to prose. ( I have an aversion to bios and struggle to write them.)

For a longish while the ratio has been heavy on poetry.

But I find that I am moving into a period of prose.

Did you leave? Or did you return? I find that humor helps calm the beating heart. And helps to hold back the flood of tears. Because I come writing today with an overflowing heart. One filled with raw emotion. Maybe even writing about poetry makes me feel vulnerable and exposed. That is different, right, from writing poetry. Right?

Sundays always seem filled with poetry. Maybe it is there Monday through Saturday but the eyes can’t see. Or maybe the holiness of Sunday causes the soul to feel ever single poetic thing. Maybe Sunday created by Creator God to be an eyes wide open to beauty day.

I just know that yesterday there was an abundance in every turn and fold, step and dash. And I think hard these days of why poetry. For me. In my life. Why is there a passion in me to write it and find it. To unearth it and not miss it. To seek it out and name all that seems poetic in my days.

Because there are those days I truly wonder why. Wrestle hard. Question long. Think deep. And they are more frequent, raising their heads and shining light, looking for an answer.My wandering and weird journey to poetry continues in tandem with a questioning spirit. Why do I feel fire in my belly to write it and explore the poetry of everything. It would be rhetorical to ask, so for now I am living into the call to write and earnestly hope that my art blesses.

There was poetry for the uncovering everywhere in my yesterday. And while some I captured with my camera lens, some I simply cupped my hands and caught there in the moment, drinking from the vessel of the day. When I see how alive poetry causes me to be, I question less the draw to it. For if God unveiled poetry as a gift for my receiving, then I say thank you, truly and turn it back, release it out and beyond myself.

I can question and create in the same breath. He makes room for both. This is the Grace shown to the artist. And in the revealing of each small beautiful poetic offering in my days, I feel more like one who is undeserving. So much beauty and nuance. Lilting and singing. Swaying and flowing. Wooing and whispering. Calling to come see. To taste. And savor.

In life’s poetry.

Each verse of scripture read by our Vicar carried me off and out of church on the wings of words. Yesterday. Lost in the lines of the living Word.

Browns and creams, smoothed by years of refining salt and sand, held my gaze for minutes and more. And I simply was stuck in a beauty pause carried in from the sea. Gifts my husband brought home. Porcelain-like. Perfect. Deposits from wave on wave of glory. Now sitting in my home. A reminder of love and beauty.

At dusk, the dolphin danced on the calm waters of Jeremy Creek and I was there in the moment. Because I answered the whisper to go stand by the water at the just right time. Dipping up, breaking the water, his stage. And I on the banks alone. Breathing in poetry.

I rested my head on my husbands shoulder, smelling the salt the aroma of him whom I love. And lost my breath. He had captured with his own lens, the swan preening, like a marble sculpture, frozen in time. And the mink stuck in the crab trap. But oh the story of its release told in his soothing voice. And the Oyster Catcher. The oysters and the sea.

And as I tell, I tell myself. It is a gift.

This life. This poetry.

On Mondays I love to join my friend Laura Boggess. I am there today with other writers. Come visit?

The Encouragement To Go

January 8, 2014January 8, 2014 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 7 Comments

The Encouragement To Go

Sometimes we need the encouragement to step out and into, away or toward. Sometimes we need a pull or push. The woo, the whisper. The invitation. A delightful plea.

Somedays we hunger for a call. A voice. Excitement. Permission. To hear the old spoken anew.
Somedays we need a new friend, an old friend too. A collision of yeses. A harmony of go’s.

Sometimes we need the repetition of the familiar played to the accompaniment of strings, not brass. Italics not bold. Gentle, not tough. The solo, not the symphony.

Some seasons we respond to age and wisdom not fleeting fancies or current trends. The rose with the thorn, not a re-constituted hybrid.

And we bend in to hear what may have been said all along. Yet suddenly we listen, and hear, and the invitation to go sinks down to the bottommost place of our soul.

To wander and wonder.
To run and soar.
To find and be found.
To discover and uncover.
To rest but not falter.
To store up but not hoard.
To enjoy and be joyful.

Some days we crave a soul full of poetry. To read and weep. To weep and exhale. To make art and be made by it too. To create and be re-created.

And so we go.
Whether out and beyond. To the new and to notice. Or close by to the familiar. Extending or pretending. Dreaming and imagining.

We go. Out and not in.
To others, not ourselves.
In charity and love.
With art and a song.
Seeking the beauty and beautiful. The grace and the gracious.

But in all of our ways, we long for the encouragement of another to just go.
From the Father, the friends, a poet, a child, another, a mother.
Go with glee. Go in love. Go to serve.
Encouraged, awakened, arisen, alive.
We go.
Together.
Never alone.

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Joining Jennifer and Lyli

The Noticer

November 26, 2013November 26, 2013 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 3 Comments

The Noticer

It was in the fall that I noticed. Again. But it was different this time. The yard had been raked in a suburban monochromatic sweeping. Overly antiseptic. The way the neighbors might approve. But in a way that appears boring. Void of creativity. The kind spilled out from heaven. Released, unfurled by the hand of Artist God.

And it was then that I noticed. The brushing aside. Made manifest in my yard. A physical representation in the form of dead leaves. Brittle. That heart of God on my yard. The mosaic, the fallen tapestry of gold, sienna, burnt orange pieces had been raked up. Msn moved the art of God. There on the canvas of my autumn day, a mosaic laid in love was moved in uncaring haste. To sanitize. To bring man-made order.

The leaves had fallen just so, placed, by a holy hand. The Creator had, was it by design, offered a masterpiece of autumnal muted hues, surrounding me with glory come down. And we, in an effort to re-create our own standard of beauty, had brushed it aside. It was then that I noticed. What a mistake the rearranging might have been. I saw, what it feels like to be invisible.

To be brushed aside.

And I am touched by holy noticing, once again.

Thankful for the nuances of ordinary life. The subtlety of beauty. And the generosity of the Giver. And the gentle reminder, to notice.

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Joining Jen at SDG

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