Back porch spirituality

Front porches are for company and up front sitting and reading. The swing and pretty rockers have flowered cushions and the butterfly bushes smell sweet in the summertime. The back porch is where your everyday life shows up. The back porch on our farm house is where we sit down to take off our muddy boots and keep our house shoes. Great Aunt Polly’s wicker furniture provides comfortable seating for the cats and humans alike. The old white drop leaf table is perfect for meals during the warm seasons and you don’t have to take your boots off... just sit, eat and take a nap with the ceiling fan whirring overhead to provide a cool breeze while you snooze. Occasionally it is neat and tidy but usually it is cluttered with the evidence of farm chores... power tools charging, sprinklings of hay, newspapers read and not yet picked up, screws and fencing staples in piles emptied from pockets on the table, bug spray, watering cans and stray hats. In the winter we take down the screen panels and replace them with glass, an uptown solution to the north winds that blow on that side of the house. Then our back porch becomes a sun warmed comfort in days that have need of it.
I’ve been thinking about my spiritual life as porches lately. My front porch spiritual self shows up for church on Sunday, dressed in my best with my hat on my head. This Sunday front porch self is my best foot forward, my “loving my neighbor” self. On my spiritual front porch I try hard to present myself, to be, to behave as a Christian should and sometimes I do that very well. I am gussied up and trying to live up to my image. That is not a bad thing. Sometimes we can live into our front porch selves with practice. And sometimes, we forget that our front porch image is not all of who we are. That is why we need back porches.
My back porch soul is a little messy, untidy and another reflection of who I am. If I am trying to live up to my Sunday best on the front porch, then my everyday soul shows up on the back porch to balance me out. People who know me as I am can sit on the back porch with me and we are both comfortable. Here we can relax and let our hair down, be easy with revelations of tender hearts and sore souls. There is no pressure to measure up or sit up straight. Those things are hard to do surrounded by the clutter of daily living and with a cat on your lap.
It took me awhile to live into my back porch soul. I so wanted to always be my front porch self and as a child, I spent my life trying to please everyone who mattered to me, losing myself in the process. It has taken many years to regain and appreciate my back porch soul. As I live my sixtieth decade, I am learning to balance my front and back porch sitting so that I may become a more complete creation. I am finding everyday miracles on my back porch soul. The sound of donkey heehaw reminds me that all voices sound lovely to those who are loved and loving. Junie B’s sweet morning nicker reminds me to look around and see who is waiting for my tender care. The muddy red spots on the back porch rug keep me humble, remind me of all my clay feet that have shattered. The sounds of Gary the hawk screeching overhead in the boundless blue sky makes me look up and reminds me of God’s limitless love. The sunset “of an evening” reminds me my life is no longer at its beginning but in its ending and I am grateful for all of what has been and what is yet to come.
“Miracles seem to rest, not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly to us from far off, but upon our perceptions being made finer so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears hear that which is about us always.” Willa Cather’s words help me see and hear miracles abounding as I sit on my back porch. I am being healed, made whole in my soul and I give thanks for the unending everyday miracles that are revealed as I sit and wait on the Lord on my back porch.