PERSIST, PERSEVERE, AND PRESS ON

Outrage, wrath and hurtful venom are not enough. They feed on themselves and grow into ugly winding vines which cling, clog, and cause catastrophe. Yet if we don’t yell and stomp and punch our fists into walls how can we get rid of the ugly stomach-chewing- fury which claws at our insides?

We write paragraphs like the one above.

We go into the Temple and throw over some tables.

We ask questions: How can the sincerity, kindness, and decency we have observed be trampled by revenge and mean spiritedness? Why can’t honest mistakes be forgiven instead of engorged into criminal acts?

And then we go on. We pray. We hold onto to each other. We huddle against the tempest. We persist until we can at least see random rays of goodness and truth shining forth, melting demented demands: too late to destroy all their ugliness, but never too late for us to press on out of the savage storm.

SUNSETS OVER SANIBEL

I still remember the scene: me a grouchy teenager stuck with my younger siblings and cousins on a Lake Michigan beach at sunset. Who cared? All I really wanted was to snuggle up with my book back on the rented cottage’s screen porch. But as usual Dad needed more sunset pictures and my cousin and sister wanted me to jump the waves. No way. My book was better.

I do not remember the book but I do remember Dad and his pursuit to discover and photograph the ultimate sunset. My stepdad, stationed in Australia during World War II, snapped pictures from a plane during the war. After the war, he joined the Photography Club, taught me how to develop pictures in his dark room in the basement, and his sunset pictures were famous and fabulous (at least in our extended family.)

As a young family my husband and I loved giving our children memorable summertime excursions all over the United States: rafting the Grand Canyon, driving Lombard Street in San Francisco, breaking lobster claws full of succulent meat in Maine. But it is perhaps our spring vacations to Ft. Myers Beach which invoke the most memories. And often it is because of the sunsets over Sanibel. Always there. Always something to run out on the balcony and savor; or jog down to the beach and dance under. Timing our returns from shrimp dinners at a favorite restaurant, the sunsets were a must: with family pictures, walks in the waves and just good long looks.

This Spring our family is not with us for the Ft. Myers Beach sunsets. Spring Breaks, job obligations, and other family functions have taken over. But talking to my son, he asked me to “take a picture of the sunset for him.” I did. Dad would be proud I put away my book in time.

BLUEBIRD TEXT

In the barren dry brownness of late February I received a text from granddaughter, Claire. I covet texts from any of my grandchildren. When younger we enjoyed bountiful beach days, roundabout meadow walks, and frosty winter afternoons with sticky, doughy cookie cutters. Now my empty nest seems more often filled with a lonely unsettledness as they grow into happy, adjusted and well, very busy, teenagers. That’s why I covet their texts: giving me a morsel of their sweetness, a glimpse of delight I can savor.

Claire texted me as she was returning from a Winter Break mission trip to tornado ravaged Alabama. “I’m on the drive home, just saw a bluebird and a marshy area with some little critters in it. Thought of you and how you would put it in your blog and wanted you to know.”

A bluebird in February! A February pretty much devoid of intense white snow and contrasting deep sapphire skies. I thought of Mary Oliver writing about Snow Geese, “hold my breath/as we do/sometimes/to stop time/when something wonderful/has touched us.” (Why I Wake Early, P.34)

My Mimi Memories washed over me as I remembered other birds I had shared with my grandchildren: Of course they all know about my favorite, the chickadee, but there was also Gus, the silly wild turkey in our suburban backyard, Rufus (and now Rufatina) the powerful red tailed hawks hunting in the ravine, and how about the Bald Eagle which had swooped down the beach scaring the smallest grandchild? And I remember taking some of the grandchildren with my friends who set up bluebird boxes in a county park and were tallying sightings. No bluebirds that day, but we did see a fluffy pink nest instead.

Now a bluebird. Mingling, meandering into the moment. Gracing it with goodness. My nest was no longer empty.

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.

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.

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

COMFORT YE

Crazed, lying in a zero circle, mute,
We shall be saying finally
With tremendous eloquence, Lead us.
When we have totally surrendered to that beauty.
We shall be a mighty kindness.
     -Rumi (version by Coleman Banks)

Our family is going through some extremely tough times right now: negative accusations with no substance, rumors running rampant like a runaway snowball packed with whispers of untruth. How can one continue to function? How does one respond when a hug seems inadequate? Add a hundred hugs, piles and pleas of personal, powerful prayers and a tremendous eloquence of support showering truth and wisdom.

Communication channels have been overwhelmed: Facebook, Twitter, email, phone calls and even snail mail delivering words of encouragement. Hundreds taking time from busy over extended lives to write letters of support. Teenagers and adults, so often at odds, united in positive support behind our family.

It does not dispense the deep dark hurt of wrongdoing, but like a shimmering sunrise after a dense January night it gives cause for hope.

Give me a sign of your goodness,
That my enemies may see it
and be put to shame.
For you, O Lord,
have helped me and comforted me.
     -Psalm 86:17

Our family has become part of a mighty kindness.