Hold on.

Being rooted together

The fern was the first.

One Mother’s Day, about five years ago, my kids gave me my first live plant, one humble fern. Now that I know how ferns work (they grow into ginormous, fluttering heaps), looking back, she was remarkably small. I scooped her into the black pot inside a jute rope hanger in my kitchen window and promptly named her LaFronda, which is a joke I’m not proud to say I’m proud of, a reference to the character in the movie Napoleon Dynamite named LaFawnduh, except with a “frond.” Because that’s how ferns work; they have fronds.

I watered her various amounts, with no consistency, and she kept surviving as an act of forgiveness. I got LaFronda in the divorce, since I was her sole caretaker, and once I had my own place, I began to entertain a new theory: perhaps I had the bandwidth to keep things alive other than myself and my kids. It was only a theory, but I bought a few more remarkably small plants. And then I bought a few more. One was Esperanza and one was Octavia, but it got harder to keep up with their names, since everyone was growing.

Then, a verifiable plant-whisperer, also known as my dad, visited my home, and he planted several different kinds of succulents in a large, white, bowl-shaped pot. I definitely do not know how succulents work, but I think they work like lizards. You can break off their tails and they simply regrow; no one gets hurt. I will come back to this pot.

Last month was Pride month, and I ask you to stick with me, for a minute. It was Juneteenth as well. (If you don’t know what that is, please stop reading my words and quickly Google it. It’s far more important than this newsletter, I promise you.) Roe got overturned. There was a terrible incident at the border, the largest number of deaths ever from the illicit transport of humans. We got more sad news involving guns. And I am observing that many Christians - we - are plain forgetting that people who are made in God’s image are out in the world simply trying to live their lives. There are black people eating turkey sandwiches, and gay couples unloading groceries onto the conveyor, and trans people making coffee, and immigrants building a table from IKEA, and women who have had abortions sitting next to you at Bible study, and somebody who makes you uncomfortable, or even completely pissed off, is ordering ice cream.

The president of the United States, for heaven’s sake, is falling off a bicycle, wrestling with his own humanity and the awkward complexity of living in a body.

Since I am unsure how succulents work, this week, I thought I’d transplant one of the succulents - one I almost couldn’t see anymore - in the large, white pot to his own pot, because he was getting overwhelmed and shadowed by the other, bigger varieties. I thought it would be easy, but as I gently tried to scoop him up with a spoon from my kitchen drawer, all the other succulents around him wanted to come too. I wiggled the spoon a bit more to find his edges, but again, they all wiggled as one. He was the smallest, having the hardest time thriving among his peers, but he had sunk down into that soil, and grabbed hold. When I tried to pry him away, the rest defied me and held on.

Now, if my succulents have not spoken a bold word already, then I’ll go ahead and expand. No one needs to spend a single minute of their precious lives evaluating how a stranger is living theirs and deciding whether God likes it. Their sexuality, their life choices, their gender or distancing from gender, their politics, their uteruses, and even their biking skills are none of our business, and we have no idea how the God of heaven and Earth is meeting them as they wrestle with their humanity, as they struggle to make sense of occupying one specific body — one in which we’ve never inhabited.

We couldn’t look more different from one another. And I’m not saying God has nothing to say to those individuals about all their choices, because I know he has things to say about mine. I can’t and won’t guess how the Gardener tends to each of his creations; I can only explain how he cultivates and prunes me, and that chapter is entitled Tenderly. But despite all that might make us uncomfortable, our roots are braided together, inseparably entwined. We are planted in the same humanity-pot. Where have we lost this awareness? Each and every one of us knows what it’s like to wrestle with a body, to discover brokenness we did not know existed, to feel pain that threatens to kill us. And what happens then to us? If we allow them (and sometimes even when we don’t), the God of heaven and Earth interacts with us, lovingly, gently, patiently, and we hopefully grow, though as slow as the slowest turtle. We walk out suffering like it’s a pilgrimage, but we have no clue where we’re headed. Transformation is holy, humbling work, and it takes a lifetime.

Let’s be careful we don’t assume gay and trans people aren’t doing this same holy work.

Let’s be careful we don’t try to define and restrict the pilgrimage of another, particularly for those with different cultural backgrounds about which we know very little or nothing at all.

Let’s be careful we do not judge someone for the difficult choices they make, with their own complex and aching body, on that terrifying road toward transformation. Let’s not pretend we haven’t known some terrifying turns.

I’m not saying I don’t have opinions about the touchy subjects and political polarities. I have many. But I can work out my beliefs and vote for issues without ostracizing those who are rooted next to me. This is by no means a comprehensive assessment of the complex issues I’m mentioning; it’s just a brief reflection. My personal work is to embrace all people, honoring their personal, holy work before God, even if that work looks peculiar to me. Until the day we die, our living in a body entangles us with everyone nearby, and our primary job is to defy those who would wedge between us, and hold on to each other. This is how I read, “Love thy neighbor.”

When the angry folks try to pry the most vulnerable from our communities, we, as lovers - love being our primary calling - better hold on to them. When abusive and afraid church leaders try to uproot people from their congregations, we as lovers of the body can either fight to hold them, or let go and be uprooted with them, because we are root-bound. How many times throughout history have Jesus-lovers themselves been mercilessly uprooted and left for dead? Horror is one appropriate response to those who pursue the least of these with hatred and harm. We must hold on.

Each person’s individual, holy work has one manager, and we are not his police. We are not his panel of judges. We are not his landlords. We are not his lawyers. Jesus asked us to be his witnesses. We are to tell stories, that’s all. We see and experience the ways in which Love transforms our own lives, and then we report those details quietly in back rooms or loudly from rooftops.

It’s much easier to hide behind hateful anger than to engage with a God who wants to give us stories to tell. It’s easier to shame someone else than it is to close our mouths long enough to witness Love and its power to cultivate.

Living as the Beloved isn’t easy when the soil is crowded and it’s a lot of crouching down to see who’s in the shadows. It’s being root-bound to people who aren’t always easy to love and wearing dirt under your fingernails.

The angry people have parched roots, and were probably uprooted by someone else. They’re just afraid they aren’t beloved, and so they tell others they aren’t worth loving either. It’s a twisted kind of storytelling, and it only harms, cutting human beings off from safe community, and leaving them to wither. Followers of Jesus, we can’t keep letting it happen.

Hold on to each other. Particularly those with stories you haven’t lived, stories that are less popular or even seen as threatening to your own culture. Hold on to those who struggle more than you do to survive. When someone tries to uproot them, it might be your stubborn company that keeps them safe.

Hold on to each other like your own welfare depends on it, because it does.

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make this.

Pizza Scramblet

That is a photo of morning-after, Friday-night pizza, diced up on a Saturday. We all know that morning-after pizza is the best kind, so if you can resist eating it cold-out-of-the-box while standing in your socks and pajamas first thing in the morning, then you can make it into a very yummy thing called Pizza Scramblet.

It used to be called Pizza Omelet. But I don’t have the patience or the skill for a perfectly turned-out omelet. If you do, go ahead and adapt this recipe to be slightly more impressive. I am happy enough to make a scramblet, which is essentially a scramble of eggs and pizza and possibly some other things from the fridge that make sense. Oh, and this only works with normal-ish pizza. I would not use something like BBQ Chicken pizza or pesto pizza. Normal pizza flavors work beautifully.

Instead of a recipe, I’ll give you some proportions.

You need roughly 1 slice of pizza to every 2-3 eggs. If you’re serving 4 people, then use 2 slices plus 4-5 eggs.

Things you could add into the scramblet:

• a little diced tomato

• some diced mushrooms

• some onion, shallot, or green onion

• anything that you’d eat on a traditional pizza, like bell pepper or a little sausage

You also need a splash of milk and a handful of shredded cheddar cheese (or combo cheese - you know what that means, right?). It seems like you could use mozzarella, but don’t. It’s the wrong vibe.

Step 1:

Beat the eggs in a bowl with the splash of milk, salt and pepper. Dice the pizza as shown. (If we have more of a deep-dish style pizza, I will stand the slice up tall on the cutting board and slice the bottom half off because it’s just too much bread.)

Step 2:

Place 2 T butter in a nonstick skillet and sauté any raw veggies or sausage first. When they are heated and softening, add the pizza. Stir the pieces around. When the remnants of cheese from the pizza start to get stringy and the tidbits start to soften, pour the egg mixture in.

Step 3:

Scramble the mixture by slowly stirring and moving the eggs around. Wait, you probably know how to scramble eggs, so just do that until it is as cooked as you like them. Right before they are to your liking, add the cheese and fold in. You could garnish with some chives or parsley, but they will be eaten so fast, no one will even notice. Enjoy one of my family’s favorite breakfasts.

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I’m keeping this issue shorter this time, as we are heading out on vacation. But don’t forget to use those cute little icons below to let me know what you thought of this issue of Small Affairs. I hope it invited reflection, as well as some solid curiosity about trying to incorporate leftover pizza into a breakfast dish. And don’t forget, today, my friend…

You are the Beloved.

I don’t remember why I am holding a glass of champagne in a tent, here. But let’s pretend I am saying cheers to you, because you’re doing great. You’re showing up with a soft heart and open hands, and that’s enough.

Grace and peace over your week,

Leslie