Philosophizing | Erin Bartels

Waiting vs. Anticipating

Posted on December 11, 2020December 12, 2020 by Erin Bartels

waiting: the action of staying where one is or delaying action until a particular time or until something else happens.

anticipating: regarding as probable; expecting or predicting.

Now, I know I’m not the first person who’s come up with positioning these two attitudes against each other. But it struck me this morning just how dramatically different it feels to wait for something than it does to anticipate something. Waiting feels overwhelmingly negative. Anticipating feels brightly positive.

As a kid, when you’re waiting for the slowest person to get out of bed on Christmas morning so you can open presents, you feel more irritated impatience than joyful anticipation. When you are waiting in line, you’re not smiling at the thought of getting out of the store—you’re scowling at how slowly the person in front of you is sorting through coupons and haggling about sale prices. When you wait on hold on a customer service call, you’re not anticipating with glee being able to get on with your life (ever).

Waiting feels bad. Anticipating feels good.

When we anticipate a fun trip, we get to participate in it before it even begins by planning our itinerary, learning about the place we’re going to visit, making plans to meet up with a friend while we’re there. We get to daydream. We look forward to it with longing, but that longing is joyful because we know what awaits us will be fun, an adventure, a break from the normal, boring routine of life (which I think we’re all feeling really keenly right now, aren’t we?).

When we are actually at the airport and our plane is delayed, that’s when joyful anticipating transforms into anxious, irritated waiting. Will I miss my connecting flight? Will I not have time to do everything I planned? Will my luggage get to the right destination? Will the woman next to me ever stop talking so loudly into her cell phone about deeply private matters?

Just look at the definition of waiting. The action of staying where one is…until something else happens. The act of being passive. The act of doing nothing until we are told the time is now. The very definition feels contrary, so we feel contrary while we’re doing it.

Waiting for a table at a restaurant. Waiting for the storm to pass so we can get on that plane. Waiting for someone to call or respond to an email. Waiting for someone to forgive us. None of this feels good.

We’ve all been doing a lot of waiting this year. Waiting to see what the next restriction will be. Waiting until our hairdresser can get back to work. Waiting for the newest numbers and charts. Waiting until we can get together again. Waiting for dine-in to resume at restaurants. Waiting for borders to open to nonessential travel. Waiting for vaccines. Waiting for the day we can stop wearing masks. Waiting for the day we can hug and shake hands with impunity.

So. Much. Waiting.

I’ve always thought of Advent as a time of waiting. Waiting for Christmas. Waiting for God the Father to send God the Son. (There’s an interesting aside here about waiting for God the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, which really was waiting for something to happen…but that’s a whole other discussion.) But basically, yeah…waiting for God to do something He said He would.

Personally, I have been waiting to feel better about myself after screwing up something big in my personal life. I’ve received forgiveness, but I’m still waiting to feel anything more than shame and contempt for myself. It’s not a great feeling. And I’m not sure what else needs to happen before I’ll feel better.

Our natural tendency as a year draws to a close is to take stock of what has passed and make plans for what’s to come. To anticipate what the next year will bring. I wonder how many of us are hesitant to do that this time around. I know I am. I had so many events canceled last year, I don’t have the heart to go through the same thing next year.

Though I am starting to fill up the early months of the year with virtual book events, I am eagerly awaiting the time when I can get back to doing events in person. My family already rescheduled our trip to Yellowstone for June, and I’m worried we still won’t be back to normal by then. I am already planning next September’s WFWA writing retreat in Albuquerque and wondering if we can accommodate as many people as we usually do.

I am anticipating some good things next year—not simply waiting for them to happen, but expecting them to happen, preparing for them to happen—even if my normal joy in such planning is tempered by fear of cancelation, or at least complication.

And that’s really what Advent is. It’s not just waiting for God to do something. It’s expecting it, regarding it as probable. It’s having real hope which is grounded in the fact that He has fulfilled His promises in the past and so He will fulfill this one as well. It’s preparing for it. Preparing our houses, sure, but far more importantly, preparing our hearts.

When you’re expecting a baby, you don’t just wait for it to be born. You prepare for it. You learn about it. You buy furniture and equipment and diapers and bottles and a hundred other things. And you anticipate with joy the coming of this new life into yours.

I want to feel better about myself after my personal failing. But just waiting for that to happen is pointless. Rather, I should anticipate it happening by actively working toward wholeness. I’ve taken some first steps by asking for and receiving forgiveness. I’m taking more steps by getting some good advice from godly friends, praying more frequently and more fervently, and beginning a purposeful study of Scripture.

I want to feel more hopeful about next year, but if all I do is wait for the news to be better that’s not going to help my mental state. Instead, I can anticipate it by making my plans joyfully, fully expecting that by June most people will be vaccinated and our Yellowstone trip can feel mostly normal, and further that by September things will be even better.

Because, yes, there were times 2020 has felt interminable. But aren’t most of us kind of amazed it’s already basically over? Why should the next six to twelve months be any different? Instead of just waiting Covid out, I want to anticipate it being over by using the next several months well. Finishing a manuscript, doing some projects around the house, starting to exercise more regularly. All the stuff that we didn’t have the mental or physical energy for this year as we simply dealt with the constantly changing reality and rules around us—that’s the stuff we can start doing now that there is some hope on the horizon.

Hope is the key.

Romans 8:18-25 says,

^“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hopethat the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”

That’s Advent. That’s anticipating. That’s expecting, predicting, regarding as probable.

Maybe for me 2021 will be one long Advent season, waiting with patience and expectation for things to be made whole—including myself—believing with absolute trust that it will come to pass…because God promised it would.

Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

Posted on September 8, 2018September 8, 2018 by Erin Bartels

I don’t know why or what precipitated it, but recently I had a realization about my favorite childhood stories that seemed worthy of exploring. Namely, that my go-to movies as a child were . . . kinda dark.

The four movies I remember watching the most — like we’re talking an almost constant rotation — are

Watership Down (1978)
The Last Unicorn (1982)
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1979)
The Neverending Story (1984)

We had each of these movies on VHS. If memory serves, only Watership Down was a VHS my parents actually purchased for me. The others were taped off TV whenever a free trial of HBO had appeared on the cable box. (I now have all but one of them on DVD or Blu-Ray.)

This is not to say I didn’t watch Disney movies (which were almost always quite dark in their own way, especially the old ones) or Looney Tunes (also dark . . . there are more suicide jokes than you’re remembering). But when push came to shove and I was watching something on my own, these are the four movies from which I picked. My sister would join in on The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and occasionally on The Neverending Story, but she had little patience at the time for talking rabbits and unicorns.

And if I wasn’t watching those movies, I was watching nature documentaries on VHS from National Geographic, which are, quite naturally, filled with hunting and death and infant mortality and hardship of many kinds.

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Darkness pervaded my reading life as well, in the form of books like A Wrinkle in Time, which my son made me stop reading aloud to him when Meg sees the stars being swallowed up by The Black Thing, and Island of the Blue Dolphins, which my husband made me stop reading aloud to him when the girl’s little brother dies.

This all came to me at once one day so that I knew I ought to mark it in some way. I thought that it might make a blog post, but then I didn’t write anything for weeks and weeks and weeks. Because I didn’t know what to say about it.

What did it mean? A few possibilities seemed to drift across the transom of my mind.

Perhaps these things seem dark because they were relics of an earlier age in entertainment. In the 1990s, the self-esteem movement began and children’s programming turned into variations on the innocuous message that “everything’s okay.” I’m okay. You’re okay. Problems are small and the world is bright and everything is bubble-gum and cotton candy and irritating little pop songs that make me want to kill, kill, KILLLLLLL!!! Miss Hannigan style.

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Perhaps because my life was easy and simple and full of light the only way to experience the full range of human emotions was to experience it vicariously through the travails of cartoon rabbits and animatronic luck dragons.

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Perhaps I was simply drawn to the great drama of good against evil. (Starting, again, in the the 1990s, nothing was evil. It was just misunderstood, and so you were supposed to feel bad for it, not fight against it.)

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Whatever the reason, I apparently couldn’t get enough of this…

Or this…

Or especially this…

I’ve been thinking about and writing this post for days now, days when I am also reading Irish author Sara Baume’s second novel, A Line Made by Walking. In one of my newsletters, I wrote about when I read her first book, Spill Simmer Falter Wither. I love that book. That rather dark book. And this newest one is dark as well — not in the suspensy-serial-killer-murdery sort of way, or the shape-shifter-vampire-paranormal-apocalypse sort of way, but in the real-life-and-all-its-complications-and-sorrows sort of way.

In A Line Made by Walking, the narrator is trying to work out her depression at her dead grandmother’s home (and a better description of clinical depression I don’t think I have ever or will ever read). Frankie takes pictures of dead animals, thinking that she can form it into some kind of artistic statement (she is a former art student). She’s unhappy and anxious and occasionally near despair during the entire book. And yet, to me her story isn’t depressing.

Dark is not necessarily depressing, though I can see why some people would look at my perhaps-odd choices in entertainment and think that they were. To me, dark is a necessary component of life on this earth, and it is the way in which we know light.

A photo with too much light and not enough dark and you lose the detail in the lighter elements.

A photo with too much dark and not enough light and you lose the detail of the darker elements.

It’s when the light and the dark are at complementary levels that we get the clearest picture of reality, isn’t it?

One of the reasons I write is to understand people in general and myself in particular. I want to understand the darkness that exists within us and the light we are striving toward. I want to understand why people do terrible things to each other. I want to see them reconciled. Without serious conflict, reconciliation is meaningless. Without deep hurt, forgiveness is meaningless.

So I suppose it’s natural that, even as a child, I read books where children died and worlds were snuffed out by some dark power, and I watched movies where entire civilizations were consumed by The Nothing and countless souls were imprisoned in the sea by a maniacal king.

Because of course, in the end, there is always a ray of hope.

A single grain of sand that will become a new land.

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A time of peace and prosperity when weary souls can rest and enjoy the result of their terrible sacrifices.

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The release of a kingdom from the grip of an everlasting winter.

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The freedom of the captives.

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There are, in all of these stories, whispers and echoes of the ultimate story — the fall and redemption of humankind.

When A Line Made by Walking came to an end, Frankie was not “fixed” and “happy.” That kind of ending would have betrayed the work itself. But there was something on which to hang just a little bit of hope for her. For all of us.

Who’s Afraid of Imperfection?

Posted on April 25, 2018April 25, 2018 by Erin Bartels

Yesterday I took up my journal for the first time in six weeks. Before writing anything new, I read the last entry from March 14th, which began with the question What am I building?

The majority of that entry asked such questions — Will I ever stop yearning? For what?…Is it resolution? That stories have them but life does not?…Am I too aware of my own insignificance?…Is it simply March, that horrifying month of zero beauty?…Am I always to be utterly mediocre?

At points, it felt psalmic — Where are my friends? Who can understand?

Finally, I managed to get to the crux of the matter — I so often feel bound, stifled, tied by good manners and good decisions and doing things the right way…Can such a life ever lead to great art?

I read that yesterday and thought, Wow…I don’t remember feeling like that. In fact, things have been going pretty well this year…well, other than the weather…and the writing.

The weather is out of my control, and Michiganders are allowed a certain measure of existential angst in March (and this year well into April). But the writing? That’s all me, right?

The truth is, I’ve been struggling to write since last summer. I’ve flitted from project to project, never landing solidly on one. I’ve been anxious about the “wasted” time for about six months. Six months! I should have a new book drafted by now! Instead, I have two chapters each of two novels, ten pages each of two screenplays, half of a TV pilot, and one and a half poems. Oh, and a half-finished painting.

I’m not blocked. I have plenty of new ideas. Too many. What I’ve lacked is time and discipline and follow-through.

I have to allow that October through February were crazy, hectic days in our home (see my last blog post for why). It was pretty exhausting. And when you’re doing that kind of work, you’re going to need time to just decompress with TV, movies, and books. Which I did.

But now all that’s over and, other than the spring garden clean-up, I don’t have so many demands on my time. So why am I still struggling with the art?

Perhaps it comes down to expectations. I expect a lot of myself. I always have. Now that a wider audience is going to experience my work, I expect even more. I’ve begun a new round of self-criticism, brought on by doing the edits on We Hope for Better Things. The edits themselves were not bad. But I’ve begun to second guess some of them. Should I have rearranged that chapter that way? Should I have dropped that line?

As I ask established authors to endorse the book I wonder, Will they read it and be unimpressed but feel they have to say something nice anyway?

As we work through cover designs, trying to get it just right and trying to get everyone involved on board…So. Much. Angst.

And that uncertainty makes its way to the new projects I’m trying to focus on. Because I don’t want them to simply be good; I want them to be better than what I’ve done before. I know, intellectually, that they won’t be perfect. But that knowledge doesn’t stop me from wanting them to be perfect.

Yet, perfectionism is the enemy of art. Back to that journal entry. Can a life of good manners and good decisions and always striving to do things the “right way” lead to great art?

My husband is turning 40 next month. I just turned 38. We are prime targets for some mid-life-crisis-level self-examination. What have we done with our lives thus far? How much time is left? Where haven’t we been (most places) that we long to go? Are we letting time slip by, unnoticed, while we are busy with what must be done in the day-to-day? Is the time for this or that just…gone?

Neither of us had a wild, rebellious phase. Neither of us took a year to hike through Europe and “have experiences.” We have done the school, job, house, family thing, and neither of us would ever give that up. But, as I have since I was a happy child, I do find myself worrying every once in a while…does such a measured and comfortable life lead to great art?

This morning I read a post on The Art of Simple called When the Art You Create Disappoints You. In it, writer Shawn Smucker tells about how his daughter wanted to paint a very particular scene that she had in her head. She worked on the painting all day. And then, when it didn’t turn out how she’d wanted it to, she painted over it. I have done this. Probably we’ve all done something similar with something we were trying to create. We have a vision of what it can be. We haven’t the skill to pull it off perfectly. And so rather than let this imperfect creation live, we hide it or destroy it.

There is a book I have been planning and researching and imagining for years now that I haven’t had the courage to start because I fear I don’t know enough or will not have the skill needed to pull it off. It’s not one of the several projects I have started and then left hanging since last summer. It exists in no form at all, not even an embryonic outline. Because it doesn’t exist, it can be perfect. The moment I begin to put it to paper, it will fall short of my expectations.

Done right, it could be magnificent. Done wrong, it could be a source of deep embarrassment.

I recently watched an episode of Raiders of the Lost Art that told the story of the theft and recovery of the Mona Lisa in 1911 and 1913, respectively. During the episode I learned something about Leonardo DaVinci I might have intuited, knowing what I know about the breadth of his creativity and the very different and innovative things he designed, from flying machines to war machines. The documentary makers mentioned how experimental DaVinci was and how that makes it difficult to identify newly found works that are purported to be his. One such recent find was La Bella Principessa, which was painted on vellum, a medium he was not known to have painted on.

They also discussed a huge fresco, The Battle of Anghiari, which may be hiding behind a later painting in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. It was a technical disaster. DaVinci had been trying out a new technique (on an enormous scale) that simply didn’t work. His paint was not adhering to the wet plaster beneath it. He set up large urns with fires burning in them in order to dry the paint, but instead of drying it the heat caused the paint and plaster to run down the wall. This was a master, commissioned to do a large and important work, and it failed.

One might argue that DaVinci should have stuck with the techniques he knew would work. He should have done it the “right way,” especially with the stakes so high. But was apparently more interested in experimentation, in keeping things fresh and trying out new ideas, than he was in succeeding by way of routine. And actually, by some standards he failed much more than he succeeded, as these two very short films show.

Imperfection takes far more courage than perfection. If perfectionism keeps us from creating anything at all because what if it doesn’t turn out perfect, that takes no courage at all. That’s just following fear where it naturally leads — to immobility, to stasis. But to create despite knowing full well your creation will be flawed? That takes courage.

My journal entry from March 14th may have been affected by the weather. Heck, it may have been hormonal. But at its core, I think it was voicing my frustration with myself for my own stasis when it comes to writing. Before there was the prospect of publication and reviews (and bad reviews) I could write anything without fear. Because if it didn’t work, who would know but me? But now I think I have subconsciously been letting concerns about audience and reception stifle my experimental streak.

Maybe I need a little less caution in my life. Maybe I need to reach back in time to an Erin that existed before responsibility, an Erin who never worried and never counted the cost when it came to creative expression. An Erin who dove in headfirst and figured things out as she went.

You may be wondering about the odd collection of pictures in this post. These are that Erin’s art, when she didn’t know what the hell she was doing. They’re technically immature, often derivative, and parts of them may even have been traced. But that Erin was happy with them in a way today’s Erin is never happy with her own work, whether it be drawings, paintings, poems, or stories. That Erin was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen.

And somewhere inside Erin Version 38, that fearless Erin still lives.

These Changeable Days

Posted on January 24, 2018January 24, 2018 by Erin Bartels

It is a cloudy morning, but a springish light is in the air. Despite it being January. We’re all discombobulated by the weather, bouncing between thaw and freeze, rain and snow, sun and clouds. In the words of They Might Be Giants, “Everyone’s excited and confused.”

Lonely piles of snow still linger in the cold and sheltered places, but much of my world is a dull wash of brown and faded green. One day I walk our little chihuahua mix with her plaid coat on and worry about her little paws and ears freezing. The next she goes out naked, splashing through puddles of meltwater, going ballistic when she sees a squirrel.

This is January?

There is a tall and slender dead ash tree in the back yard that is listing northwest, aiming for the garage. It looks like a rope and a couple of determined guys could pull it the rest of the way down. Part of me worries about it and part of me is rooting for it. But it’s not big enough to do enough damage so that we’d have to replace the garage and might be able to claim some insurance money to get the job done.

I worry about the fence as well. Katy is small enough to fit through the spaces between pickets. The fence needs to be replaced — it is rotting in spots, pulling away from the posts. But on one side the neighbors have a new metal fence Katy can get under and through with little effort. A tie-out is one solution, though it’s apt to get tangled up in bushes. A mostly invisible wire fence along the neighbor’s metal fence is another. For now, we take her out on a leash.

There’s a strange, unsettledness to life right now. We have more orphaned socks in our sock bag than ever before. I’ve been washing dishes by hand every day as we figure out a solution to a dishwasher problem. The workroom is clean, yet there’s sawdust being tracked through the house. The outdoor Christmas lights lie in a pile by the door, drying out before we can put them away in the attic. The far end of the dining room table is gathering an assortment of papers and Legos and headphones and items with no home. Desks are almost clean. Laundry is mostly done. Books are all half read.

And I have started writing a new novel. A story about sisters and identity and a hiking trip that will go very bad, but ultimately be good.

I don’t know yet how 2018 feels to me. I do know that eventually the seasons will figure themselves out. Eventually that dead tree will come down, one way or another. Eventually the fencing issue will be resolved.

Ultimately, it will be good.

Loosening the Facebook Noose and Rediscovering the Natural World

Posted on December 15, 2017December 15, 2017 by Erin Bartels

Two days ago, we got about five inches of snow. Yesterday was clear and cold, six degrees in the morning, warming to about twenty. My son spent his snow day largely out in the snow despite the temperatures. Between bouts his snow gear tumbled around in the dryer to get it ready for the next session.

Today it is snowing again and my yard is filled with birds munching seeds from dead flower heads and from the feeders which I’ve moved to the north side of the house so we can watch them from the kitchen and the dining room table. The neighbor’s garage acts as a windbreak for them.

We’ve seen dozens of goldfinches in their dull winter coats all vying for a place on the feeder with the thistle seed in it. House finches prefer the sunflower seeds in the tube feeder. Juncos pick up the scraps that fall to the ground. A woodpecker has been carving away at the seed cylinder that is laced with cayenne pepper to keep the squirrels off it. Sparrows and nuthatches and cardinals and chickadees and the occasional blue jay round out the company.

“It snowed all yesterday and never emptied the sky, although the clouds looked so low and heavy they might drop all at once with a thud,” writes Annie Dillard in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, which I’m reading for the first time. Winter is a good time for reading anything, but especially nature writing.

I find myself jealous of all that is right outside of Annie’s door in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and I recall how much time I used to spend outside, especially in winter, when I lived in Grand Rapids and volunteered at Blandford Nature Center. Winter and early spring hikes around the property were always far better than those taken in summer. The world holding its breath all winter and then finally releasing it. Each spring hike a wonder as new things came alive. The wonder of spring only made possible by the icy grip of winter.

I think I love winter more every year.

My friend Cindy Crosby writes in the tradition of Annie Dillard, though she is in the great wide prairie lands rather than the mountains. If you enjoy nature writing, you may like her blog or her book The Tallgrass Prairie: An Introduction. Here’s the description from Amazon:

More than a region on a map, North America’s vast grasslands are an enduring place in the American heart. Unfolding along and beyond the Mississippi River, the tallgrass prairie has entranced and inspired its natives and newcomers as well as American artists and writers from Willa Cather to Mark Twain. The Tallgrass Prairie is a new introduction to the astonishing beauty and biodiversity of these iconic American spaces.

Like a walking tour with a literate friend and expert, Cindy Crosby’s Tallgrass Prairie prepares travelers and armchair travelers for an adventure in the tallgrass. Crosby’s engaging gateway assumes no prior knowledge of tallgrass landscapes, and she acquaints readers with the native plants they’ll discover there. She demystifies botanic plant names and offers engaging mnemonic tips for mastering Latin names with verve and confidence. Visitors to the prairie will learn to identify native plants using the five senses to discover what makes each plant unique or memorable. In the summer, for example, the unusual square stem of cup plant, Silphium perfoliatum, sets it apart from its neighbors. And its distinctive leaf cups water after the rain.

A gifted raconteur, Crosby tells stories about how humankind has adopted the prairie as a grocery, an apothecary, and even as a shop for love charms. Rounding out this exceptional introduction are suggestions for experiencing the American prairie, including journaling techniques and sensory experiences, tips for preparing for a hike in tallgrass landscapes, ways to integrate native prairie plants into home landscapes (without upsetting the neighbors), and a wealth of resources for further exploration.

An instant classic in the tradition of American naturalist writing, The Tallgrass Prairie will delight not only scholars and policy makers, but guests to tallgrass prairie preserves, outdoors enthusiasts and gardeners, and readers interested in American ecosystems and native plants.

Earlier this week, two red-tailed hawks took a brief respite in a maple tree in my back yard then went on hunting. I felt lucky to see them. And I feel lucky that I live in a place that gets a real winter, which always feels like my own respite. A Sabbath season.

I’m winding down my year of reading A Year with C. S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works. Today’s selection includes this observation: “When promiscuity is the fashion, the chaste are outsiders. They are ignorant of something that other people know. They are uninitiated.” Lewis is talking not just of chastity versus promiscuity in this selection, but of the desire to be part of the Inner Circle of mankind. To be in the know. An early 20th century version of FOMO (fear of missing out).

I never used to care about being at one with the Zeitgeist. I was comfortably on the outside, not even looking in, because I was spending my time looking at the same kinds of things Annie Dillard and Cindy Crosby were looking at. And I felt with certainty that I was the one in the know, in the inner circle. I noticed the things that mattered while everyone else was whirling about trying to be current. I was the insider and they were all outside, not even looking in, because they were too busy for the slow, constant, predictable motion of the natural world.

Sometime in the late 2000s, that changed, and I’ve spent a decade far more engaged with the tumult of mankind than I could ever have imagined I’d be. It’s probably 100% due to my entrance into social media by joining Facebook in 2007. And honestly, I’m not happy about it.

There are things that have to be said, wounds that have to be opened, policies that need to change, and power structures that should probably be toppled. It’s certainly unclear if social media is the most effective place to do this. It certainly is clear that social media makes people feel less understood, less connected, and more anxious and depressed than they would otherwise be. It is the ultimate irony of our times.

The history of mankind and the history of everything else in the world run on parallel tracks, one frenetic and anxious and bumpy, the other timeless and deliberate and while not unchanging certainly changing slower and for more logical reasons sometimes.

Maybe its too early for resolutions, but this has been on my mind. This desire to jump back over to that other track for a while and remember that the weight of the world’s problems are not a burden I need to carry. I can’t carry it.

In his first letter to the church in Thessalonica, Paul encourages them to “make it your ambition to lead a quiet life.” And to the Romans he says, “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” This is hard to do in a democracy. It is made all the more difficult when media and social media seem designed to stir up anger, fear, dissension, and self-righteousness.

When I first joined Facebook, it was fun. It was a waste of time, no doubt, but it was fun. Now it’s mostly not. I’m not dumping it entirely for 2018, but I’m taking a step back. I’m unfollowing A LOT of people. I’m limiting my time on it, and eliminating it entirely on weekends. I’m going to go quiet. Take a Sabbath rest. Rediscover my blog, which I’ve let go quiet this fall.

I’m really looking forward to 2018. A time to start fresh. A pure white blanket of fresh-fallen snow. A year of possibilities. A year to buckle down and work on what pleases me. A year to lead a quieter life, at peace with those around me.

I’m not worried about missing out. I’m looking forward to it.

The Problem with 30,000 Feet: Thoughts on Las Vegas, Evil, and Why God Tarries

Posted on October 3, 2017October 3, 2017 by Erin Bartels

As I flew back to Michigan after attending my third Women’s Fiction Writers Association Writers’ Retreat, I felt tired and satisfied, happy to be coming home yet still sad to leave.

Most of all, I felt a profound sense of love for the world that sped by 30,000 feet below. Almost everything I saw was lovely in its own way.

Neat lines of houses I knew were inhabited by people with hopes and dreams, fears and disappointments and triumphs.

Crooked lines of canyons carved out of the rock by rivers.

Fingers of mountain ranges stretching out across the ground.

The world from 30,000 feet is easy to love.

On the ground? Not so much.

I’m not talking about the natural world in this case, but the world in the way the Apostle Paul talked about it — the world’s system, the flesh, humankind’s sin nature, our tendency to corrupt and twist nearly everything we touch in some way.

Events like the shooting in Las Vegas Sunday night — 58 dead and 515 hospitalized with injuries is the last count as I write this — force us once more to grapple with this reality. Why are some people so utterly horrible? Why are we bent on destruction? Why this waste of human life and potential?

And no answer we come up with truly satisfies. It’s guns. It’s mental illness. It’s religious ideologies. It’s Fate. It’s dumb luck.

As much as we would all like to avoid the question of why great evil continues to be done “in 2017” or any other year, we cannot. Bad people do bad things. Storms level entire islands. People take advantage of one another. Evil simply is.

I would like to live with my view of the world at 30,000 feet. But I’m not afforded that luxury. I live here on the ground. And so do you.

While I was at the retreat, a friend and I chatted on the patio after the sun went down. We talked about our work, but also about the state of the world. It seems it’s hard to avoid talking about it — it’s on everyone’s mind. She said something to the effect of, “I suppose your faith helps you with all that.”

It does. To an extent.

When it comes to politics, I vote my conscience and trust God to work things out according to His will. That frees me from a lot of hand-wringing, anxiety attacks, and ulcers I think a lot of my friends are dealing with on an almost daily basis.

When it comes to terrorism and massacres, it still helps, but it’s harder. I can intellectually accept that each of us is sinful and in need of redemption. But it seems like some people are SO sinful, so utterly consumed by irrational hatred. I feel sick to my stomach with the magnitude and mindlessness of it. There’s no revenge here or personal vendetta. Those, while still horrible, are at least comprehensible at some level. But randomly shooting strangers? Driving trucks and vans into crowds of strangers? Blowing up strangers? It’s incomprehensible. I hardly know what to do with it.

My one comfort in these cases is still my faith. That God is just. That evil will be punished. That my own sins are forgiven through true repentance. That He still has and is working out His perfect plan. That these events grieve Him — but they do not surprise Him.

And when I am tempted to accuse Him of allowing terrible things to happen as His judgment tarries, I must remember that it is because of mercy that He waits. That just like the door on my airplane, once the doors to salvation are shut they will not be reopened. His seeming slowness in setting things right is is not an oversight, nor is it an indication of neglect or of sadism. It is patience and compassion.

“As I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live.” – Ezekiel 33:11a

and

“The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” – 2 Peter 3:9

I must rest in the knowledge that God sees the world from 30,000 feet and He sees it at ground level and He sees into the hearts and thoughts of every single human being that has ever lived, is now living, or will ever live in the future. And while I may sometimes have a hard time keeping a handle on the plot of a 400-page novel that I am writing, He never misses even a syllable of the story He has been writing from the Beginning. He is a far better author than I, and I can trust Him with every character, every plot twist, every dark moment, every triumph in His story.

And I can certainly trust Him to end each chapter exactly when it should end.

The Clock Ticks Ever On

Posted on May 2, 2017 by Erin Bartels

If I’ve been lax at regular blog posts of late it’s probably because life is in a busy season. The end-of-school-year activities are picking up. The vigorous growth in the yard needs tending. We’re at the height of another catalog season at work. The articles for the WFWA newsletter need to be written and edited. And most of my spare time at the moment has been claimed by freelance editing and writing projects.

There’s a lot to prepare for in the coming weeks. Both my husband and my son have May birthdays. I’ve been invited to speak to a large group of Nepali and Bhutanese women on Memorial Day as part of an event devoted to women and mothers in the church, so I need to start working on my message. Our summer travels are coming up fast, which means packing lists and playlists need to be created.

I’ve had little time for leisurely pursuits, like painting or taking photographs, though I am managing to read and wind down with a little Netflix now and then (Master of None at lunch, Better Call Saul or Brooklyn 99 in the evening). And I even watched a couple movies I’d had on my queue for months: The Imitation Game (amazing) and Sarajevo (quite good).

Life barrels forward. It seems with every new month I’m surprised that the last one is already ended. Were someone to find a way to slow it down to the pace of childhood, when every day was a lingering one and every summer hung on for eternity…Ah, but then we should complain that the future did not come fast enough.

Time is such a funny thing. Always a constant in reality, yet always slipping and shifting in our experience of it. And never enough of it, though it is infinite.

From One Attitude to the Next

Posted on March 26, 2017March 26, 2017 by Erin Bartels

A rare Sunday skipping church, home with my boy who has the flu. My world is all Pedialyte, Tamiflu, vomiting, and Phineas & Ferb.

Outside it looks like the flu too. Blank gray sky, wet brownish ground, still-bare trees. Winter’s leavings. But the goldfinches are starting to shine a sunny yellow and two days ago it topped 70 degrees. We soaked it up with windows down and radios blaring, knowing it wouldn’t last. Yesterday it was 45 and raining. Thirty degree shifts in 24 hours is par for the course in a Michigan spring. But it does seem to make us all a little sick.

As I write this, Sunday school is getting out and people are pouring their coffee and placing cookies on napkins in the library at my church. My husband will be walking between there and his office and the sanctuary, talking with his flock and getting things in place for worship. The kids (minus one) will be bouncing and running through the halls, slaloming past the old ladies with their walkers. Chatting and laughing will filter through the air until people find their way to the sanctuary and settle down as the first notes of the prelude emanate from the piano.

It’s a time of transition from one place to the next, one attitude to the next. Like March. Like Lent. We’re now in the second half of that liturgical season, a time when it is easy to forget about what we intended to do or not do. I have read three of my five books for Lent. Tomorrow I start Here I Walk: A Thousand Miles on Foot to Rome with Martin Luther. I’m excited to begin my armchair pilgrimage, the story of going from one place to the next, one attitude to the next.

It is now fifteen minutes before the service begins. The microphones will be in place. The sound check done. The choir has finished running over their song and are now milling about with friends and grabbing a last cup of coffee or popping throat lozenges. I run upstairs at home to tell my son to take another sip of Pedialyte but he says his stomach doesn’t feel very good, so I decide to wait another fifteen minutes. I wonder when to try the Tamiflu. It’s been a few hours with no vomiting and I don’t want to get him started again, but I also know that if he can keep the nasty stuff down it will help shorten the whole ordeal.

So often we resist what is good for us because it seems unpleasant in the short run. And maybe it is unpleasant. March is unpleasant. The self-denial of Lent is sometimes unpleasant. Certainly contemplating one’s own sinfulness or mortality is unpleasant.

I understand that molting feathers is unpleasant as well. But without sloughing off the old drab colors of winter, the goldfinch will not find a mate, which is his purpose in life. He first needs to lose his old identity as an olive-gray bird before he can embrace his new identity as a drop of sunlight. He doesn’t do this himself. He doesn’t decide one day to molt his old feathers. That is something outside of his control. Just as my son cannot decide to be well and will the flu virus out of his body. Just as we do not simply decide to be holy and then do it in our own strength.

I hear those first notes of the prelude now. The worship service is beginning. So I need to stop my chatting. I need to make that transition from one attitude to the next. I can’t be among the saints and sinners at church this morning. I can’t join my voice to theirs in song. But I can commune with them and with our God in prayer. So that’s what I’ll do now.

Right after I check on my little boy.

Just a Girl in the World

Posted on March 8, 2017March 8, 2017 by Erin Bartels

Today, as you might know, is International Women’s Day, and as I was scrolling through my Facebook feed I was struck by the juxtaposition of two posts. The first was posted by an novelist/missionary I have the privilege of knowing through my work in the publishing industry. She and her husband serve some of the poorest of the poor in Mozambique. Here’s what she has been up to today:

The very next thing in my feed was this “sponsored” post (which is another way of saying it’s an ad):

A cooking hut for a woman being rebuilt with the help of another woman, who will also be helping to rebuild half a dozen other homes, made mostly of natural poles, dried plant matter, plastic tarps, and even garbage. Then a marble kitchen in a $35 million dollar compound.

I clicked through to see what $35 million dollars bought Gwen…

Now, I’m not a redistributionist. People can spend the money they have earned on what they want, and many wealthy people are great philanthropists. This post isn’t about the disparity between Mozambique and Beverly Hills. It’s about women.

And I’m not anti-Gwen Stefani. Like many people of my generation, I am a huge fan of No Doubt, Gwen Stefani’s band in the 1990s and early 2000s. I love her feminist song “Just a Girl,” which came out in 1995 when I was fifteen and felt all of its lyrics deeply. Ms. Stefani has done well for herself, projecting a confident, powerful female persona to millions of girls and women (though lyrics of some other songs and her overly sexual videos may undermine that at the same time).

My novelist/missionary friend from the first post? She writes strong female protagonists, sells tens of thousands of copies of each book, and is the winner of several awards, so she has a reach too. Still, when stacked up against Gwen Stefani and her rock-star kitchen, how many of us might be tempted to feel like the little things we were doing with our own lives just didn’t matter quite as much?

On this International Women’s Day, I’d like to submit that my novelist/missionary friend who is piecing back together grass huts that will likely fall apart again during the next big storm is doing more important and lasting work than Gwen Stefani, and that women should strive to be more like the woman with dirt under her fingernails than the one with the sterile, pristine, marble-ensconced palace who only encounters dirt in the tabloids.

Menial tasks that will have to be redone (like dishes, laundry, and cleaning) are not inconsequential or somehow “beneath” us, despite the fact that, unless you work in the cleaning industry, you do not get paid to do them. To those six or seven poor families who see a woman of God helping them rebuild, my friend’s labors may mean the difference between being safe and being exposed to the elements.

And that woman who is getting back her cooking hut? I bet she appreciates it more than Gwen Stefani appreciates her (frankly hard to look at) rock-star kitchen.

Today’s feminism often looks like a strange combination of worshiping Beyonce and screaming and flipping people off rather than listen to someone with whom you disagree. But feminism that makes a real difference in the lives of women is generally quieter than that. And frankly, it doesn’t pay all that well.

It’s my friend Jamie who works with women in the prison system.

It’s my friend Jeni who is in Thailand working to free women and girls from the sex trade.

It’s my sister Alison excelling at a traditionally male job.

It’s my mom who chose to stay at home with us when we were little, kept a clean house, and cooked dinner every night, but who also went to work when we were older.

It’s all of the amazing women writers I know who create female characters who have the wherewithal to admit when they are wrong and forgive when they’ve been wronged.

It’s the women in my church of different generations who have persevered through hardship, who have raised incredible children as single moms after unplanned pregnancies, who have survived a spouse’s infidelity, who have carried on with grace after the death of loved ones, who have been friends and mentors to other women.

If you are a woman reading this, I hope you won’t buy into the lie that feminism has to look a certain way. That it must be angry or hypersexual. That it must be full of bitter resentment against men or our society. It can simply be you being the best person you can be to your family, your friends, your coworkers, and yourself.

You don’t need Gwen’s rock-star kitchen to feel fulfilled. You don’t have to scream to be heard. Build a grass hut for someone. Get your hands dirty.

You’re just a girl in the world. But you get to decide what that’s going to look like.