TIED TASSELS

I did not expect to be transformed when I narrated “Celebrate Life,” a cantata by Regan Courtney and Buryl Red. Sitting with the choir, listening to majestic voices singing powerful words, I was moved. More than moved when the alto voice of the Suffering Woman sang, “There was nowhere else to turn, and nowhere else to go; My body knew all the pain a body can know…” I observed the interpretive dancer as she followed the actor/Jesus across the stage. Suddenly as the dancer touches Jesus’ robe, the alto sings, “As I quietly turned to you, friend of the friendless/I quietly turned to you and you turned to me.”

Jesus twisted around to her: an outcast, a bleeding dirty woman. He was on his way to Jarius’ home, a rich guy and he still stopped! (Mark 5:25 or Matthew 9:20) He paused. Halted. Healed. Then he went on to touch Jarius’ daughter and bring her back from death of another kind. Two women at opposite ends of the social spectrum, didn’t matter to Jesus.

As Megan McKenna said in On Your Mark: “They know that fear is useless, only faith is sound. While their own lives were unraveling, Jesus made a new cloth of them, tying the fringes and tassels together in prayer. Now they wear a seamless garment of life that is a cloak of justice and healing that goes out from its edges to those in need.” (p. 81)

Jesus hands me that cloak daily through music, scripture, literature, and life; nudges to serve and invitations to love. Often I ignore or stomp on the cloak, or as the soldiers did at his crucifixion, “divide his clothes and cast lots” (Luke 23:34) but Jesus is lovingly patient. He turns to me.  Picks up that cloak and hands it to me again and again.

Image from Google

MOMENTS TOGETHER

Sometimes it’s a hidden moment of calm togetherness when you realize once again all that is good around you. Not a momentous moment, just minutes all together without mulling over deep troubles, sifting through past family rifts or trying to make sense of the crushing chaos of uncontrollable events. Last weekend the extended family gathered in Northern Michigan and we had all those mentioned negative elements trying to swoop or sneak into our time together. At times the negativity won; but it is the God given moments of beauty, laughter, and connection I will remember.

We found it in our Wildwood Rush Zip Line adventure.  wildwoodrush.com  Flinging through the smooth barked beeches, majestic maples and tree-topping canopies we had no time for mind wandering. The moment was now: Hang On! Enjoy the thrill! Feel the adrenaline rush! Spy the splendor! We were wrapped up in a woods of wonder. Together.

We found it on the beach at sunset. All of us collecting laughter, connecting through silly questions: “If you got a tattoo..where would it be?” “Besides family, who would you choose to go on a cross country adventure?” No judgment, no criticism, no meandering memories.  It wasn’t the answers.  It was the mood. Together.

In a poem by Denise Levertov, “The Secret,” she writes how many readers discover different secrets, she didn’t know herself, from her poetry. 

a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines

in other
happenings.

Last weekend I discovered again happiness in good family moments.  I plan to again.  A thousand times more.

HIS GIFT

Trust in the Lord with all your heart

and lean not on your own understanding.

Proverbs 3:5

In the midst of a crisis this scripture is scary. In the very long seven months our family and friends have endured, it is so easy to rely on my understanding of the crisis: a vindictive person with a personal vendetta, personnel who lack basic knowledge of what it takes to supervise a caring community of learners, a slow and burdensome court system, a press whose motto, “guilty until proven innocent” is easier to report than digging into the human story in back of the headlines.

All this is my knowledge, my understanding. It is not enough. Worry, despair, a sense of hopeless still can, and often does, take over. It is then I muddle around and find “love and faithfulness which has never left me.” (Proverbs 3:3) It is then “I call out for insight,” (Proverbs 2:3) beyond my own. It is then I must trust in the Lord once again.

And He shows me: I see a community rallying behind the good guy. I see a family steadfast as it holds onto the deep, abiding love for each other it probably didn’t know it had. I hear mature, honest comments from thoughtful and deep thinking youth.   I don’t just know this, I feel God holding unto us, all of us, tight within his grasp. It is His Gift.

So we’re not giving up. How could we?

Even though on the outside it often looks

like things are falling apart on us,

on the inside, where God is making new life,

not a day goes by without [God’s] unfolding grace.

2 Corinthians 4:16, The Message

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.