Arranging the Flowers

Some fragmented thoughts on finding beauty amidst chaos, a couple of podcast episodes, and the paperback edition of Wholehearted Faith

Thursday, October 13
Atlanta, Georgia

Hello, fellow travelers.

My note to you is going to be shorter this week because I’m in Atlanta for Evolving Faith 2022, which kicks off tomorrow. Our team has scrambling to get everything ready. Our speakers have begun to trickle into town—Cole Arthur Riley got in yesterday morning, Propaganda and Alma Zaragoza-Petty late last night, and a few minutes ago, I got to greet Maggie Smith (the brilliant poet, not the British dame—we had to clarify for one of our production people). We’ve started sound checks, and rehearsals are underway. 

It was a glum, overcast morning here in Atlanta. But outside the window over my shoulder, I can just glimpse some blue sky. Which seems just about right for the day before the Evolving Faith gathering. These feel like glum, overcast days in the world, and we’re meeting because we want to look for hope amidst all that. And I mean it when I say “we.” Especially amidst the tumult of our times, we all need glimpses of goodness, and amidst the clamor of prepping for an event that will gather, via modern technology, thousands of people from dozens of countries—Mozambique! Cambodia! Nicaragua! Germany!—I need reminders of the love that can steady us, if only we notice its presence.

This morning, I went to the dollar store to buy some mason jars and then to Whole Foods to pick out some flowers to decorate the space where our speakers will be spending most of the next two days. The supermarket had one bunch of lovely tulips with white petals tinged with green, some white hydrangea, some pale purple roses. (I googled to try to find a word for “pale purple,” and the machine told me “lilac” or “wisteria,” but it seemed disrespectful to describe a rose by another flower’s name.)

Not bad for supermarket flowers! 

There was a part of me that hesitated before I even got into my rental car to go buy the flowers. Didn’t I have better things to do? Couldn’t I have delegated this task to a member of the team? But then I realized what I wanted: With all that’s going on, with all that still needs to be done, I also needed just a few minutes of tending to beauty—to busy my hands with arranging some flowers, to still my heart by regarding goodness that I did nothing to deserve.

Is this rationalization? Maybe. But also: Occasionally, we can sense that we’re getting swamped by what’s beyond us, whether it’s the sorrows of the world or our seemingly endless to-do lists. Often, we feel overwhelmed by all that we can’t control. Sometimes everything around me seems so loud, lusting for my attention, that I can’t hear even a whisper of the good news that I claim to believe. 

Perhaps then, more than ever, we need to be summoned back to what grounds us, to what tells a better story. Perhaps then, more than ever, I need the testimony of the flowers—to receive all over again a reminder of grace.

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I’m going to keep this short this week, because I go on camera for a quick test in an hour, and I still need to steam the wrinkles out of my clothes.

A few quick bits of housekeeping:

1. If you haven’t got your tickets yet for Evolving Faith, you can still join us! In fact, I hope you will. And if you’re booked up during the next couple of days, all the talks and all the goodness will be there for you to watch between now and the beginning of January. You can register here.

We’ll be broadcasting from the Church at Ponce and Highland. It’s a spectacular space—and our production team has done a spectacular job. Look at that forest that they brought in! I didn’t know that forests were available to rent.

2. My dear friend Kate Bowler had me on her podcast this week. Kate is lovely. I recorded this talk while I was sitting on the floor of my sister’s walk-in closet—the quietest place, I was told, in a house with four kids. Kate told me we weren’t recording video. This was not true! Here’s a surreptitiously recorded video snippet from our conversation. You can listen to the entire episode here.

3. I do very few podcasts these days, because I actually don’t like talking all that much. But Blair Hodges, who hosts the Fireside Podcast, was pretty persistent in inviting me to talk about what it was like to complete Wholehearted Faith for Rachel Held Evans. I think I dodged him for eight months, but he finally got to me. It was a lovely chat. And if you haven’t got a copy of Rachel’s book, the paperback just came out this week.

Thanks for being alongside me amidst all this. You, too, remind me of beauty, goodness, and hope. Please forgive any typos! I was trying to type fast.

As always, I’m so glad we can stumble through all this together, and I’ll try to write again soon.

Yours,
Jeff