that one time they asked me to speak at church

So I spoke at church on Sunday and the video has some skips.  I'm posting a transcript in case you want a little Jesus today. 

My name is Lori Barfield and when I arrived at FBC in 1974 they weren’t handing out life verses.  Still, by the time I was 6 I had adopted one of my own. Probably because spent enough time with Hubert and Josephine Lowe and Jane Tucker that by the time I got to Mrs. Tillman’s class, I had used a crayon to trace over it. John 13:34 begins with “Love one another” and it was years before I understood the rest of the verse. Jesus says “A new commandment I give to you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”  

This verse stays with me because it’s the simple verse that I make the most complicated in practicality.  I’m ashamed to admit to you that I have looked for a translation error.  I relied on loophole between behaving lovingly and actually loving.  I have wished that Jesus put a few qualifiers in there to excuse me from loving the most difficult, but he didn’t.  His commandment was clear.  Somewhere along my way I’d become a fan of Tug of War. You know between those of us who worship correctly and vote correctly and those who don’t. My go to’s were condemnation, judgement and isolation.  I really liked that tug of war and I held tightly to my end of the rope. 

But the phrase, “as I have loved you” always stumped me because I knew how well I had been loved by Jesus.  When I was difficult or offensive, Jesus didn’t leave me. When I was at my least loveable, Jesus comforted me. He never isolated me because of a political or theological stance.  He never stood opposite me.  

I wish I could say that I worked really hard and overcame it, but what really happened was I got tired enough of confessing the same thing every week on my pew there, of being at odds with the world and with Jesus’ commandment. I was tired of the tug of war and I finally asked for God’s help.  

And in short order, 2 things happened: 

First, quite suddenly and consistently, I saw only the brokenness among the people I encountered. It looked just like my own brokenness and there was no room for condemnation, all I could feel was compassion.  It was as if a veil were lifted and I saw that THERE HAD NEVER BEEN ANY US AND THEM. THERE WAS ONLY US.  All of us everywhere were connected by brokenness and a desire for the reconciliation brought by Christ’s love.  My brain was so altered by the beauty of it that I told Kenny I thought maybe I was dying. I wasn’t.  It was only the love of Christ that I was seeing and I was so compelled to participate in it that I just dropped the rope.

And that’s exactly when the 2nd thing happened. Since my hands were now empty, I picked up a hammer. Maybe you remember the $5 mission project we did here last year. My family voted that we would combine our $25 for supplies for me to make leather bracelets from old belts and then I hammered words on brass pieces and attached them. We used words like “faith, peace, hope” and  phrases like “it is well with my soul, love never fails, be still.”  The plan was for my Mom to sell them at Wednesday night suppers for a few weeks but what began as a small church project somehow exploded overnight.  Bracelets flew out of my hands as quickly as I could make them. Every cashier, every stranger in a bookstore, every drive thru worker asked, “Where’d you get that? Could you make me one?” It seemed that people were starving for the messages of God's love, for reminders of His presence and even though my hands ached by bedtime, I would wake up every day with new words and fingers tingling and grateful to be a vessel for it. 

An online store, 3 retail locations, and a year and a half later, I’m not sure how many hundreds of bracelets we have sent into the world to friends of friends, strangers, cousins… but regardless of the message they all head to the post office with a prayer for a stranger’s brokenness and reconciliation. When I dropped that rope, I could never have imagined the joy it would be replaced with.

Today I'm wearing the one I wear almost every day LOVE LIFTED ME - because it did. and on this arm, from Kenny’s belt, LOVE NEVER FAILS. Because it doesn't.  But hammered into my heart is Love one another.

My heart is too big for my body...

What's left behind

We discovered a few years ago that there's few things Olivia Barfield loves more than taking something apart to see how it works.  At least for the last several months, she's been taking various cameras found at antique stores apart and seeing how they work - the fascination with the process explains the workshop vibe that the kitchen has taken on.  Anyway, after lots of discussion about how images reach film and then become actual pictures with her daddy and Granddaddy (notice she knew not to ask me because she knew my response would be, "It's MAGIC"), she started taking photos.  We don't do anything the easy way so her first batch was from an old Brownie box camera. She's since discovered her dad's old 1970ish 35mm Nikon. This thing weighs about 14 pounds I think and requires actual FILM which hardly anybody but your granddad uses anymore.

Anyway, you would know that we are not the sort of people who would enjoy taking pictures of flowers and birds.  In the last few months we have discovered the joys of abandoned buildings. I'm not kidding when I use the word joy - she's skipping over broken glass with pure glee on her little bespectacled face while Kenny and I fight off mosquitos and stand guard with the pepper spray.

It's these questions of what gets left behind and what's waiting to take over that's fascinating to all of us. Typically, I drive, Olivia shoots and Kenny serves as bodyguard and film support.  All of my pictures are me following her around and I like that.  It's fun for the whole family.  We are already mapping out a route of ghost towns for Thanksgiving break.

After her film is developed (which requires detailed labeling and sorting on her part), we all sit around and talk about what can be done better, what needs to be done again and where we ought to search next. I can't tell you how many of these places we've driven past for years without notice.  It's wonderful especially to see nature slowly push through and reclaim what we don't value.  I want you to see that these buildings aren't tragic - they are filled with the legacy and livelihoods of families, the hopes of communities at ribbon cutting ceremonies held years ago, and now they are filled with the joy of a girl.

Finster

I think a lot about Howard Finster.  He's not new to my radar - you can't grow up 25 minutes from his Paradise Garden and not be a little in the know about the porch preaching tent revivalist who came to art significantly late in life.  He'd done what a lot of novelties do and moved to the back of my mind until Olivia started enjoying junk so much.  We'd spend afternoons in antique stores looking for just the right tiny bottles or spoons to make a junk chime and her delight in all things rusty shook Howard out of the recesses of my brain.

The reason I think he finally even resurfaced was because I was trying to express that the PRODUCT of something divinely inspired doesn't have to be pretty, but it certainly HAS to come forth if a person believes it's been commanded and usually somehow manages to be recognized as a good thing by other people.  I don't think Howard was crazy when at the age of 59 he saw a face on his finger that told him to paint sacred art. I don't think that at all. I think it would have been crazy if he'd tried to NOT paint sacred art at that point.  The great part was that the bicycle repairman did not consider himself an artist before then.  So if he was "picked" by God for this mission, it's not because he was already doing a great job with artwork. It didn't seem to come about with Howard thinking, "Hey I know I'll paint these weirdo visions out with Sharpie markers and stick stuff people have thrown away all around my yard and tell people God said do it and then I'll be rich."  Cause you know how highly the artist community thinks of Sharpie markers.  I think Howard wanted God's direction, listened for it, and I think his compulsion to stay awake all day in his garden and all night in his studio was about fulfilling that mission.  I don't think the money (he said it would have been a distraction) or the recognition, which he surely at times enjoyed, were reason enough for him to invest that time.  I mean, he couldn't have known then that he'd be celebrated as the South's Andy Warhol.  What's crazy is that he undertook this mission without any idea that he would be considered so highly, that all the fame and money and esteem would be attached to the work - the junky, on plywood or maybe a coffee can, elementary work. I love that all of these thrown away items have been reconfigured into something still wonky, but something divinely inspired. It makes me think of people in the same way - that we can be dirty and broken and still become vessels of something divine.

To visit Paradise Garden is a little sad. There's lots of evidence that the work was forgotten but just as much evidence that it's still celebrated.  Rustier and "scrubbier" (his word) than it was originally, some of it is so faded it's illegible.  What draws me there repeatedly lately is precisely that the work doesn't have to be good - it can all be forgotten really (even though I would hate that). What's lovely is to witness the intensity with which God's messages were strewn all about - almost like the words and images where tumbling over one another to get out of this bicycle repairman's body and onto any surface  (ANY surface).  What can't be forgotten is that this place was one man's constant vigilance to fulfilling what God told him to do.  So the shoes and the typewriter and the mailboxes and stacks of bike wheels can all just go to kudzu and you can decide it's not art or whatever, but it's still this rusty testament to faithfulness and the desire of an old man to articulate his relationship with God.  And I think that's beautiful because I like when some person perceived as a crackpot exposes something lovely about the world and about God - even in spite of his own craziness.

Here are some of the pictures Olivia and I have taken out there recently.  Go take a look anyway - it's only $2 for students.

I'm going to remember to do this...

Power Of Words

I've become more and more convinced that we "speak things into our lives" as the saying goes. What you say, what you read, and eventually what you absorb, becomes a prediction of sorts for your direction.  That's why I love making these cuffs.  Because maybe if you see on your wrist enough times the words, "it is well with my soul" you can make that so when it's not so well with your soul.  Maybe you can move closer to being well with that.  The brass and copper loses it's shine and the words maybe fade, but you know it's there and that's the real magic of it.  It sits in your psyche long enough and moves you closer to being well.  Conversely, the ugly words we use for one another, the ones we let slide and don't call our friends on, those words stick on our skin until we soak them in too. Words are things. Just ask Maya Angelou.

Well you knew this had to happen

Two of the best things in my life these last 3 years have been developing this blog and making so many friends through it and developing this small business making leather cuffs from upcycled belts. I've thought since the beginning of the latter that I'd probably need to combine these two things at some point, BUT REALLY WHO'S GOT TIME TO THINK ABOUT IT BETWEEN THE BRACELETS AND THE WRITING??

So TAHDAH!! I found about 15 minutes and made it happen.

It turns out that every creative endeavor is kind of related here. Let's write, read, and create leather cuffs all at the same time.  I want you to know what I'm up to and where the inspiration for it originates.

If it doesn't work, we'll just go back to not talking. OKay? Okay.

Great to see you and great to be back.

xoxo
Lori

OH. MY. GOD.

I can't stand it

Bracelets and Janie

I've been completely covered up lately in filling bracelet orders and it's about the most fun I can imagine having.  I wake up an hour earlier than my alarm clock goes off and wonder if I'd bother anyone if I started hammering at 5:45. The answer to that one is YES.  So, I just lie there in bed and make my excited face and think about what I'll do today.  I think about new phrases for cuffs and where I'll find some old belt that will be perfect for someone. I really want the phrase to mean to someone else what it means to me and to fully receive the message on it.  It does help if they are cute.

My friend Janie asked for just about the hardest thing when it comes to these leather cuffs.  She asked me to just make one for her - just make one that's just for her.  No pressure. When I think about it, most of us have a word or phrase - kind of a motto - that propels us through life and I guess that's always subject to change, but if you think about it, you'll know yours in just a few minutes. But to describe someone else's and to want to get it just right because you love and admire someone is a different project.  It's different because sometimes we don't see ourselves the way others do.

For the last two weeks I've described my friend Janie to all of my other friends and polled them on other phrases and ideas to try to get it just right. My friend Janie is a hard one to pin down.  I sent her cuff out today and felt like she really needs an explanation for the phrase I've picked so I'm writing it here for her, and for you:

Dear Janie,

The very first day I met you your family invited me into your home (do you remember? Your mom was there!) and behaved like I was the most interesting guest.  Just one more question, just one more story and then we could move on to the next thing.  That was 8 years ago I think and we've never been ready for the evening to end.  "Awwwww, don't go!" is a phrase I think we repeat at the end of every visit.

In 8 years of friendship I don't think you've ever gone to bed first.  In fact, I am pretty sure I have a recording of you and Megan trying to talk me out of going to bed on more than one occasion because you're afraid we might miss something.  For you, the summer night isn't the end of anything. It's just one more opportunity - a chance to see one more mama turtle, to finally figure out the constellations, to meet a stranger at the turtle nest who knew someone who might have known someone you one time met.

I think the curiosity that drives you to stay awake is the same thing that drives you in everything. The desire to not miss a thing, to encounter one more wonder is the thing that I admire most about you. I am not sure if your parents somehow instilled this mission to absorb every good thing in you or if you were just born that way, but it allows you to look at the world with wonder and so wonderful things appear to you.  It's not that these wonderful things aren't available to others, it's that you are willing to SEE them as the wonders that they are.

This lens you have, the one that lets so much light into your life, must be the thing that caused you to take the risk of keeping a baby you knew might not make it and is definitely the thing that would make a person have 4 kids.  I believe it's that perspective that must be what causes you to laugh so often and to keep filling salt water tanks with little dancing fish.  I think it propels you onto every passing boat and keeps you rushing to make sure we don't miss a chance for the one thousandth sunset picture.

I think you have an inherent trust that the universe is operating just as God meant for it to and that allows you to find joy in every little living thing.  I can't tell you how many times I've heard you tell our kids, "I just want you to appreciate this."  Your gratitude for the things the earth offers you- a blue bird nest hatching just in time for your mom to witness it, a double turtle nest boiling under a full moon, a baby snake you kept in a purse even  - is only possible if you have a mind like yours, Janie, one that can bear witness to the gift of goodness in all things.  Perhaps it's linked to faith, perhaps just to thoughtful parents.  Either way, I don't think you need to wear it as a reminder, but I do think you will be asked when you wear it what it means to you and I hope that you'll be able to say, "My friend loves that I look at the world this way."

What a wonderful, wonder full, world Janie.  Go wait by your mailbox! Something wonderful is coming!

So very much love,

Lori

Best Poem of 2014 so far...

Found on the wall at a NYC public elementary school and written by a first grader this poem was featured as part of National Poetry Month (April). This is a delightful work.
 

In case you don't read 1st grade well, here's the transcript:

We did the soft wind.

We danced slowly.

We swirled around.

We danced soft.

We listen to the music.

We danced to the music.

We made personal space.

America

The Warmth of the Closest Star

I found this to be the loveliest glimpse of understanding the universe, of trying to impart wonder about our existence.  Sasha Sagan, Carl Sagan's daughter, wrote about her "mini existential crisis" when confronted with death and her parents lovely response to it:

“You are alive right this second. That is an amazing thing,” they told me. When you consider the nearly infinite number of forks in the road that lead to any single person being born, they said, you must be grateful that you’re you at this very second. Think of the enormous number of potential alternate universes where, for example, your great-great-grandparents never meet and you never come to be. Moreover, you have the pleasure of living on a planet where you have evolved to breathe the air, drink the water, and love the warmth of the closest star. You’re connected to the generations through DNA — and, even farther back, to the universe, because every cell in your body was cooked in the hearts of stars.

Now as a person who is incredibly in love with the warmth of the closest star, I have to tell you these words really speak to me.  Olivia and I have lots of conversation about our universe and God and the intricacy of billions of cells moving in a rhythm that you can hear if you're still. What a lovely way to express the wonder and gratitude of it all to a child.

So worth watching!

In Which Evelyn Does What She Wants

Could It Be??

Everyone has their favorite version, but here's mine.  We've almost made it fellow sunshine lovers!

I'm not up to much

Did you know that before I picked up a paint brush a couple of years ago, I'd never really nurtured any real creative instinct in myself? Writing was always easy, but I wasn't doing that regularly and anytime my sister undertook a DIY project I'd promptly say something about how it would be better to just pay someone else to do it.  A lot of that has to do with confidence. It's not a good feeling to discover over and over that you're not good at anything and I'm really good at avoiding disappointment.

Anyway, painting little birds was fun until lots of people wanted me to paint specific little birds for them and I found myself spending all my free time hunched over a little canvas wearing clothes covered in paint. In other words, I liked it when I was doing my own thing but really didn't like being told what to do creatively.  That sounds like I'm pretty spoiled, I know, but I insist that I was always grateful that folks liked what I was doing enough to actually pay me to do it.  And I've always been sure that there's plenty of people doing things they don't really love for a lot less money than I was making off little birdie paintings.

Still, HAVING to do it all the time caused me to take my ball and go home. I stopped painting mostly.  I figure when I want to paint, I'll paint.  And then I bought this bracelet. It was months and months ago that I bought this little leather cuff with words stamped on a metal plate on it for $45 online.  I kept looking at it thinking, "I bet I could do that."  And a few months passed and I took an old belt and punched some holes in it and bought a set of metal stampers and messed around and it didn't work so I put it away and got busy with something else. Then our church challenged us by giving us each $5 to generate something good for mission work and Olivia wondered if we couldn't buy some more belts at Goodwill and give it another try, maybe even sell them and make money to return to mission projects through church.  If we combined my mom and dad's $5 with our family's we'd have $25 to start with and maybe we could turn that into something.

I can't figure out why all of our best ideas involve me doing labor in a sweatshop sort of manner, but I had to admit it was a good idea. Selling bracelet cuffs could easily multiply into something that might help someone else.  So I raided the accessory section of the thrift store and made a few worth selling and in less than a month, we'd made $300 to donate for supplies for the FBC Youth's trip to the Dominican Republic in the summer.  That's something to be proud of I think.

So now I'm just tinkering away with making more bracelets because my friend has invited me to make a few more for a craft fair and I've got some custom orders to finish.  If it's true what my therapist says about not speaking some things into your life, maybe it's conversely true that a word reminder on a wrist might also bring good things into a life. That's why I like ones that say "Peace" or "Be Still" so send me some words and phrase ideas and we'll try it.  I don't know how long I'll ride this wave of bracelet making so make sure and get yours now before I get all grumpy and have to wear reading glasses all the time and stop playing again.  The one I wear most frequently is the 25:40 one. It's a reference to Matthew 25:40 and so it reminds me that, "Inasmuch as you have done it unto the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me."

Here's a picture:

I can see how this happens

I need this puppy

And in other shocking news...

Pastor Dies After Snake He Was Handling Bit Him (link to story)