Thursday, February 16, 2012

WEDNESDAYS AND WOW!



Wedneday afternoons bounce with happiness. It’s Camp B Day! Last fall my Companions class felt we needed to share our love. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, we found a way to do that through Camp B, an afterschool reading club for first and second graders at a local aparment complex. Every Wednesday we meet the children’s bus. They fly, jump, and skip off that bus with big smiles and open arms. Once in a while we can tell their school day was tough, and we open our arms first. On the walk back to the apartment, maintained by Youth Assistance and the complex for just such afterschool programs, we talk and chat and find out just why they’re wearing their clothes backward (Wacky Wednesday) or who got in trouble on the bus, and what words they must know before Friday.

Camp B was set up with book enrichment and reading relationships as its purpose. It is easy to love a child when they’re snuggled on your lap, reading together. We plan happy reading activities, play book games, toss story cubes and read aloud favorite books. We savor books together and all the adults involved nod and keep repeating, “We are learning so much,” “The children are teaching us simple happiness,” “We are the lucky ones.”

This Wednesday that was affirmed once again and it came not from the reading, but from the eating. When the children arrive at Camp B, we have a substanial afterschool snack ready. Yes, we try to be healthy, but an occasional cupcake or gummy worm does slip in. In the middle of carrots, celery, cheese and turkey rolls, yesterday, was a fruit rainbow; a kabob filled with strawberries, oranges, kiwi, blueberries, grapes. We talked about the colors, the tastes, the shapes. They were amazed a kiwi starts as a brown fuzzy hardball.

But it was the popcorn that gave us the greatest gift. JOY. One of the volunteers brought an airpopper and popped the first batch before the children arrived. But the second they were allowed to watch, and watch they did. With rapt attention to the empty popper, they were told to be patient as it “got hot.” Their eyes didn’t move, except to open wider. They were transfixed as the popper gurgled and bubbled out pure white kernals of fluff. One little boy covered his mouth in sheer amazement as he whispered, “Oh.” Two girls who spend most of their time gossiping together, remained silent, their eyes grown huge in astonishment. It was a good moment. Joy eminating from such an innocent foodstuff.

Thanks be to God for giving us children who can transform a simple moment into simple joy.



Tuesday, February 7, 2012

LETTERS FROM DAD: CENSORS AND DETAILS






When my parents said their last good bye in early May of 1944, Dad’s letters changed. Gone were the details of daily life: what he was doing, the landscape of the countryside, the actual names of locales. More importantly, not only did the miles from home become more distant, his own emotions and feelings were much harder to gauge…except of course in his effusive over the top love for Mom. That he did continue to express.

“I guess I can tell you it’s raining this afternoon. It doesn’t bother me, only serves to bring you and I closer together. Let’s park beside the pond, listen to the rain and frogs. Sounds nice doesn’t it?” (5/7/44)

Just the day before one of the “permanent party” had smuggled out a letter for him, full of details…Grenier Field, Manchester, New Hampshire…plane is under repair…route has changed…didn’t go to Maine…I’ll see Iceland…But in that same letter he cautions Mom, “Don’t mention anything I have written to anyone except the folks. Don’t write any of it back to me. You will receive other letters, censored ones, from me about ten days after we leave here.”

“Somewhere in England” was all Mom knew. Now, over sixty years later, I am devouring details of Somewhere in England. Of course I would have loved to hear my dad’s version, but books and histories dense with descriptions and details from strategic planning to how airmen peed in their bomber fascinate me. The Mighty Eighth by Gerald Astor focused on eyewitness accounts. I kept saying, “I bet my dad did that. I wonder if he saw that.”

My copy of Masters of the Air by Donald L. Miller is full of post-ettes and underlining, much more complete and detailed than any college textbook I ever read and tried to remember. Now it’s not for an exam. It’s to know my dad.

“In air combat, the technical sergeant who manned the guns placed his head and shoulders inside the revolving dome…when not firing his guns, he stood behind the pilot, looking over his shoulders at the gauges, that monitored the health and functioning of four engines.” (Miller, p. 83) That’s my dad.

But because of my intense reading, I also have an image of the unbelievable, horrific stress, tension, and heartbreak of a bomber crew. In my dad’s last letter dated June 19, 1944, he writes “I haven’t worked at all today (their code for mission) Yet, my dear, it has been a hard day. Someday I can tell you all about it. Don’t worry because I am feeling in good health and as happy as possible.” Certainly bland words for what he faced every day; but now I know what is behind the words. No censor can cut up my dad’s story now.





Thursday, February 2, 2012

PRAYER WAVES



Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them,
For the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.
I tell you the truth,
anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a child
will never enter in.
Mark 10:14b

The image of Jesus and the children is a favorite of mine. Perhaps because I love children: embracing their spontaneity, their honesty, and their unconditional love. Perhaps because Jesus stipulated we need to hug His kingdom like a child with spontaneity, honesty, love. Lately however, the image radiates with prayerful new waves of deepening faith.

After we sit on Jesus knee, we are asked to pattern our lives after his. But like children, we can’t sit long. We need to get on with the doing, the being. And Jesus gets up with us, to hold our hand as we get on with the busyness of life. As Teresa of Avila says:

“Christ has no body now on earth but yours,
no hands but yours, no feet but yours.
Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion is to look out to the world.
Yours are the feet with which Christ is to go about doing good.
Yours are the hands with which Christ is to bless all people now.”

Those radiating Jesus spheres are understandable, although not always easy to follow. Even more difficult is comprehending, let alone absorbing, God’s all encompassing love for us. Over a lifetime of prayer: childlike prayers, demanding prayers to fix, protesting prayers to undo, forgiving prayers to make better, finally, we come to a place of connecting to God in an actual loving relationship.

Early every morning, at least five days a week, I swim. In the summer it is in the glorious expanse of Lake Michigan; in the winter, at a local glass house pool.  Not swimming at all fast or in competition, just a consistent, even breast stroke. I would like to say it is for the exercise and it is. But more than that, it’s a prayerful encounter and embrace with God. Moving my arms through the water I am one with it and around it. God is the water. I am in a cavernous, contemplative prayer with Him. All else, the swimmers next to me, music from the pool’s speakers, playful summer waves splashing me, is blocked as I reverently dialogue with God. Often I hear answers, understand next steps. More often I just feel and touch: trusting completely God radiating within my next stroke, wrapping his love in and around me.






With thanks to Pastor Rick Dake and my Companions Class,
both at Clarkston United Methodist Church,
for encouragement and enlightenment while developing this writing



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