Palm Sunday

 

Much less a cloaked, handpicked donkey on a dusty road.

In two weeks, the leaves will dry to cracking, tucked behind a picture frame.

Palm Sunday.

Prim.

Spare.

Measured.

Where is the crowd?

Where the sweaty exultation?

Let Him enter the ancient doors,

The King of Glory!

Shout for joy, daughters of Jerusalem!

Instead, this rote crowd shuffles, trudges,

Singing in polite unison,

Missing the slow burn,

The threat of pregnant glory already poised at the temple veil.

Who is this King of Glory?

He is the Lord of Hosts!

Silly palms.

Too little then.

Too little now.

Praying the Mass

Preserve my life and keep me from harm, not  only so that I may enjoy it, but so that I may bear witness to your Godhead.

Teach me your good that I may do it, not to be a good human, but to be an obedient child looking always to you for wisdom.

Forgive my sins and make me white as snow, not only to save me, but to reveal what you have deposited in me for your glory.

Accept my sacrifices, not because they are worthy, but because they are all I have.

Hear my prayers, not because they are beautiful, but because words re the only way I know to describe my love.

Give me a new heart and a new spirit, not only because I need them, but so that I may use them in your service in this life and lay them at your feet in the next.

Have mercy on your church, not for its victories, but for its failures--in vain leadership, in hard-hearted exclusion, in sure, self-centered righteousness. Help the church you commissioned mold itself to your intent.

Help us be content with humility, but not satisfied with partial holiness.

Help us to face and repent of sin, but not assume sanctification outside of your specific influence.

May we always be refreshed at your table, but not forget that not only are all invited, all too are children in your sight.

I hide, safe in the shadow of your wing, at the same time warm in your shared glory.

You are greater than my heart.

Credit: Donatello's Mary Magdalen, Opera Museum, Florence, Italy
 

Elizabeth

 

No one ever reminds us you’d gotten old.

The paintings are too kind--

they’ve smoothed your skin,

covered your silver hair,

draped or forgotten your knobby bones and age spots.

I know how you felt.

Not only the erratic weariness and morning aches,

but the unbidden pants,

the huddling, cold shiver,

the squinting, the pause before each stair.

Small things, each of them,

not debilitating,

only ungentle reminders of what time had done.

Add them all to a great, tussling belly.

Urgent, with a job to do.

Bursting to begin.

While your own flesh all too often remembers its own job is nearly done.

Yes, the paintings are kind.

They ignore it all,

looking at you both with Mary’s eyes, with God’s,

and revel only in your exultation.

Bradford Beach, February 28

 

The clouds draw back and steel-white yields to new gold.

Sand that had solidified into rough concrete starts to crumble back into grains.

Waves form mounting regiments as far out as the horizon and advance.

Suggestions of blue wash below their white foam

And curl onto the beach, disintegrating over hills of gleaming ice they made of their own muted thunder through long, cold months.

New wind blows them in, one that today promises hot sand leaking up radiant between grateful toes

and cool, welcome water on bare, grateful legs.

Today, visitors pull parkas tight against wind that still carries winter’s learned chill,

But the big lake is never quiet.

It won’t hide its constant churn the way smaller ones do,

The way even rivers ice over, acquiescing to winter’s dominion.

Yes, Persephone weeps below and the earth mourns, temporarily subdued, life and motion stolen, but not here.

Here defiant water still moves,

Resisting winter’s seasonal death,

Resilient.

Leading the way to renewal.

Already still-cold water begins to wash away the frozen mounds of its own making.

The earth’s arc veers again back toward the sun.

I stand and watch, not moving, but flying through space,

Remembering that even a long winter can’t stop this dance.

Escape from Mark Zuckerberg

 Plato was a pretty smart guy. 

Most people know that, of course, but most of us don't think often about what he had to say and what it might mean for us 2500 years later. For anybody who has any inclination to make sense of life and the world, Plato has always been one of the places to begin, after all, and his principles of life's essence, his Forms, have plenty to chew on. But Plato liked to tell stories, too, and one of his most well known is his Cave Allegory.

I've included a picture to help you visualize it, and *SPOILER ALERT* also stole the contemporary twist from my Philosophy professor, Agust Magnusson, but it was so good I had to share it. Thank you, sir.

So here's the basic tale: there are these people who have lived in a cave all of their lives and they're chained in there so all they can see is the back wall. Behind them is a big fire and also somebody standing in front of it holding up a bunch of shapes that mimic stuff in the world-birds, animals, that kind of stuff. So what do the chained people see? Shadows. Now, they're shadows of stuff that's real, but they don't know that because they've never seen anything real, only the shadows. And they like them. They're amusing, even beautiful in their way. And, as long as the shadows are around, the cave dwellers are pretty happy. 

But one day, somebody escapes the cave and gets out in the real world. "Whoa," he thinks. "There's a lot of stuff out here--things not only to see, but to feel and taste and hear, too. This world is way cooler than we thought." Now the story doesn't say this, but maybe this guy brings back something to show his friends. Maybe he brings back a rose. And he tells them about the world. And he gives them the rose. But they don't much like it. The rose is too fragile and too dirty and -ouch!- it has thorns. They throw it back at him and turn back to their shadows, content and safe. 

Our escapee turns to face the people holding the shadow shapes that keep his friends amused. He can't figure it out. What's wrong with these people? But the shape holders just smile. They know. Our escapee flees the cave for the last time to encounter the real world, and all the beauty and ugliness it presents and eventually, probably gets eaten or something, but at least he's exulted in the meantime. He's lived.

So the escapee dies, but the cave dwellers are still alive. Kind of.  Yeah, you say, I saw the Matrix too. What's the big deal? Take a look at the picture again. Doesn't it look like a movie theater? Or your gaming setup? Or the place you binge watch 100 episodes of The Office? And who the heck is that holding the light? Are those mouse ears on his head? Is he wearing a tee-shirt with a lower case 'f'? 

Come on. You know who he is. He's anybody who's invested in keeping your head from turning to look around, who creates a world where you lose yourself, one you can't figure out whether you love or hate. It's anybody who sucks you in, steals the irreplaceable moments of your life, and substitutes what's important to them to keep you from thinking about what's important to you. It's Netflix. The NFL.  It's Mark (blanketyblank) Zuckerberg. (Humph) Meta. It's only another word for fake. 

I deleted Facebook from my phone a month ago and everybody's been asking me whether I've had any withdrawal. Nope. Not a moment. All I feel is free. Tired of shadows, I'm out of the cave and in danger, but oh, man, it feels good. 

photo credit: reddit.com

One Thing

 

I'm looking for God. Where should I look? Well, it depends. There are a lot of choices. Jewish. Christian. Catholic. Lutheran. Evangelical. Baptist. 

It's all pretty confusing. Everyone I talk to is pretty sure their flavor is right. I want to make sense of it all, make sense of what God is trying to say to me. So I pick up the Bible. Old Testament. New Testament. King James. The Message. New International. New Revised Standard. New Living. Torah. Greek. Hebrew. Aramaic. Well, that doesn't help much, either. And among the confusion, these keep echoing:

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.-Deut 6:4.

There is One God. One Faith, One Baptism. Eph 4: 5-6

I was reading this morning about Ilana Kurshan, a New York expat Jew living in Jerusalem, studying and teaching Torah, the Hebrew Bible. Now, as Midwestern Christians, we think of Jews as truncated Christians, a flawed ungrateful people, constantly forgetting about God's mercies and complaining while they trudged through the desert, chanting meaningless prayers and fingering the silly tassels on their robes. But one thing they do is study the Bible. In their own way, just like we do, trying to understand what it means and how to use ancient texts as guides to modern life.

"I believe," she says, "that Torah is divine. But for me this does not mean that God handed the entire Written and Oral Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai. Rather, Sinai is the human record of an encounter with God"

This is where I stopped. I stopped reading and heard the echo of what I'd been taught. The Bible is inerrant. Its words are not to be altered, jot or tittle. Its words are our perfect guide to life and decision making. "All scripture is breathed by God"- 2Tim 3:16. Okay, I'll buy that, but which Scripture? The Protestant Bible? The Catholic? The Jewish? (Read it before you turn up your nose. It's pretty amazing)

Kurshan further says, "This record has had to be adapted to later generations, both to changing historical circumstances and to evolving theological understandings" These adaptations are called Midrash in Jewish tradition, commentary and exegis in Christian tradition. She goes on. "In high school, my students had surely learned, as I had, the difference between natural numbers and rational numbers. Natural numbers are integers: 1,2,3, etc. Rational numbers are the decimals in between, including 1.1, 1.12, 1.23378. Both sets are infinite, but only the rational numbers are infinitely dense, meaning there are an infinite number of rational numbers between any two natural numbers. In the Torah, there are in infinite number of midrashim, or reinterpretations, that are possible...Midrash is the creative commentary that reworks and retells the Bible so as to render it ever relevant."

Now, she and I are on the same road, using similar measures and signposts. The Bible as relevant. Yes, please. 

But there is danger up ahead. I mean, how many times can one thing be reinterpreted and still be faithful to the original? How long will it be until the original meaning has been divided out and left behind? God and I, after all, do not think alike. How can I trust either myself or anyone else to stay true to what God intended to say in the first place? After all, critics of the Bible are quick to point out the endless translations and interpretations. Who's right in dealing with God's word, when it's so critical that we deal rightly with it? "Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth." 2Tim 2:15. Believe me, I'm trying.

So is Kurshan. "The Talmud at the end of Sanhedrin 99a explains that even someone who challenges the divinity of any single verse in the Torah is denied a place in the world to come...There is a fine line, I recognize, between extolling the creative possibilities of midrash and declaring the Torah can say anything we want it to."

So that's it. The Bible needs interpretation if it's to be useful, but that very interpretation can take us far away from what God intended. And we all agree on that. Jew. Christian. Catholic. Protestant. We have one goal. But how to reach it? By looking beyond the word. Looking to God-infinitely loving, perfectly righteous, endlessly holy. That, at least, we can all agree on. 

And, actually, we're dealing with one text. The Old Testament as given to the Jews and its completion in the New Testament. One God. One Word, with the epistles as the first commentators. What about Jesus, you ask?  He's already answered that. "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them." - Matt 15-17. 

Jesus gave us the example. The Bible is meant for us to use. We are not meant to worship the word. We are meant to worship God. In interpretation, God is our backstop. We cannot go beyond Who He is. 

There is one God. There is one Word. There is one Truth. Our job is not to find what separates us and so elevate ourselves, but what unites us before that one God. To sift together through what He gave us in both word and tradition to find out how to live to honor Him and each other. 

This text was given by God into stumbling human hands. To Moses. To prophets. To apostles. It is a "human record of an encounter with God." And, if we use it right, the encounter continues. 

Lord God, bring me to your the foot of your mountain and let me hear you speak. 

Buds and Fresh Breezes

 

The wind is blowing. Everything around me moves with it, but subtle changes have happened when I wasn't looking. Flowers faded. Nests emptied. Leaves brittled so that now, rather than rustling, they rattle. Summer has, without permission, drifted from what is to what has been, cramming itself into what must be my almost-full bag of  THE PAST. 

It's big, that bag, and getting bigger, full to almost bursting with first my own youth, then my children's, with the grandchildren not far behind. It holds all of our early missteps, dreams, and triumphs. It hides our disappointments and shames, too. Heavy now. Too heavy to carry, but still draggable and by now a familiar companion. 

I realized this morning that the bag of  THE PAST holds not only my youth but all my memories of Dave. That's new. It took a long time for him to climb in there, and took a lot of sad work, too, but there's more. Italy has migrated there, too, taking with it all the spontaneous music and unapologetic beauty of Florence. They've been displaced as memory always is by newer revelations and more recent days, mine accompanied these days by surf and seagulls. 

They just keep coming, the days, insisting on new sunrises and fresh breezes. More days than I'd expected, but I can't help but relish them, trying to store up the feel of them in case they are the last. 

Maybe the full bag is a blessing after all, even while it sometimes feels a burden. Not everyone's bag carries as much, nor are they all so full of so much that was so good. It may be true that summer is waning in more ways than one, but as I look around I find new buds next to almost-spent roses. Life asserting itself. There may even be enough time to see them open. 

Black Like Her

 

I don't ever think about being white. Maybe that's the difference. I think about wrinkles or spots, about hair gone silver or lips gone thin and pinched, but never about being white. It's just not a thing. It doesn't affect what I do. Ever. It's just there. Nothing to be changed or even noted. A 70-year-old fact.

My husband said he had at least one black and several American Indian forebears somewhere in his genealogic tree a number of generations ago, but our son emerged blond and blue-eyed. No wide nostrils or high cheekbones. I never even thought of it, didn't consider for a second he could turn out otherwise.

But skin color, as it turns out, matters. Not because it changes a person's basic composition or worth, but maybe because it's so, well, so there.

I've thought a lot about how I look over the years. Green eyes, chestnut brown hair, smooth skin in fortunate times, bumps and blemishes in others. Long legs. Small breasts. Fingers that span eight piano keys and feet misshapen by bunions. But nothing so elemental as skin color. I didn't think of that. I don't think of wearing something that I can't change or hide, that covered me head to toe. Nothing that labeled or disgusted or frightened.

And here's the irony. As much as I tried to make myself beautiful from time to time, the most beautiful woman I ever saw had something I could never have. The most beautiful woman I ever saw was black. Not politely coffee or nut brown, but black. Senegal black. Slave black.

 I saw her only once, and stripped to the waist in a church bathroom in a homeless shelter on a morning when I'd been frying pounds of bacon in the kitchen, but paused to call everyone to breakfast.

I gasped to see her. She was astoundingly female. Round and generous everywhere that spoke of women--shoulder, hip, breast. Her skin gleamed, flawless and shining. She paused to look up, washcloth in mid-stroke over the back of her neck, but her head never turned. I saw her eyes in the mirror then, more slate than brown and just as flat and hard. She had no idea.

What I wouldn't have given for that beauty, that voluptuous depth. I would have traded my fashionable thinness, my obvious collarbone, my silly pink nipples for her charcoal and mahogany in a second. She looked like a woman. Next to her, I looked like a washed-out wannabe. I carried her image with me for awhile but later, shrugged off my envy and went back to my life, failing to notice again my white, almost completely ignorant of her black.

The closest I ever came to any kind of understanding was in Italy, where the locals knew me as Eastern European  by a look, where I was identified and catalogued by a glance. There, the way I looked determined how I would be treated--like a tourist--and how I was expected to act: to speak English, to ask simple, polite questions, to tip well. My foreigness was with me wherever I went. 

Maybe blackness is sort of like that kind of foreigness. Are we all basically the same? Sure we are. But for some, for those who can be categorized by a glance before anyone knows anything about their dreams or character, we automatically create distance. In that gap, wariness can become mistrust and mistrust breed marginalization. It changes the world. It changes us.

Even though I still don't think about being white, I do think about that beautiful black woman in the church bathroom. I still wish for her color and voluptuousness. I want to tell her how she looked to me, but can't think of how it could be done without sounding condescending. I don't like a world that won't let me do that.

 

Image: copyright Saatchi Art

The First Freedom

Freedom. This country has stood for freedom since it began. Even the Statue of Liberty declares it: Bring me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to break free. 

Human beings, by their very nature, know they are destined to be free. It's the way we were made to function. But, today of all days, it's important to remember that we didn't invent freedom. Freedom isn't the property of the United States of America. We didn't wire people to need it, soldiers to fight for it, or provide anything new that hadn't existed before.

In fact, the first freedom had nothing to do with a country's rebellion against a king. Nor did it have to do with the abolition of slavery or with what we are allowed to talk publicly about, or with the ability to go to church anywhere we want. It had nothing to do with a constitution or a set of laws, ours or any other. 

Freedom is much older than that. The first freedom was bestowed by God.

The first freedom was free will. 

Yup. When God made men, He said, "Oh, by the way, I'm in charge of everything, and my plan will take place because I AM, but you get to decide what you're going to do regarding me. You get to listen to me or ignore me. You get to follow me or walk away. It's up to you. You're free."

And we know it. It's what we fight for. It's what some people have died for. 

We get confused about this sometimes and think the United States of America is special. One nation under God. But we forget that every nation is under God. And every nation that fights for the liberties bestowed on men by God is His. 

Were we one of those? Yes. Are we still? That might be up for debate, but the idea of freedom hasn't changed. A people who fights for personal freedoms does so because they were first given permission by God to have them. 

No, those freedoms are not absolute. They are not to be wanton. They are not to be random. We are meant to be governed by just laws made by honorable men, and that is worth remembering, too. But, as we celebrate the Fourth of July, let's remember that the United States of America is one nation among many acting out God-given freedom as best it can, that there is always more work to be done, and that there will always be a struggle somewhere.

America. One nation exercising God-given free will, joining all other nations doing the same. All the people of the world recognizing the good and noble in one another. Better together.

Sparrows and Lilies

 

Spring mornings at the farm were blue and white, colored by the sky, hard and square-edged. The memory of winter lingered long there. Birds hid in the woods. The sky commanded all. Horizon spread side to big side. Morning sun declared reign over bested hills. Red, pink, orange, yellow in response to cloud and temperature, but feeling more like a declaration from God that He’d done it again, kept the world rolling another day. Magnificent, out of any human control.

Even Florence’s stone streets were softer than the farm’s eventual demands. Its welcomes evaporated, its embrace withdrew. I am too big for you, it told me every day. I shrank from its stern declaration, tried unsuccessfully to soften its edges with dahlias, asparagus, and willows in flowerbeds appropriated from random underbrush, to temper its warnings with cats and grazing goats, to test its threats with housefuls of guests who could still see welcome where I no longer could.

The farm shut its doors to me, crowded me out with overgrown fields and a silting well, too much lawn, too much house, and echoes. Too many echoes.

The deed said the farm belonged to me, house and land, but the deed lied. It belonged to Dave still and dismissed my supposed authority with a perfunctory wave. No, it said. You hold no sway here. You can’t sign enough documents or plant enough flowers, or hire enough contractors to change that.

It was good practice, though, because this place is different. Green and willing, with rounded edges and birds that sing on garden chairs and front lawns, with neighbors that laugh and invite, with children and grandchildren within arm’s reach, lacking facile criticism and second guesses.

God reigns here, too, but He shares His sovereignty with me, gives me liberty to spread out and imagine. He commanded me here, mechanically propped up a failing body to possess it, said Go, and made me to live against my will. God is pulling out pieces of my past like Jenga blocks and I can’t help Him because He knows which ones will make the pile fall and I don’t. He’s driving and I’m along for the ride. I didn’t decide to live. I didn’t decide to move. I didn’t choose this place or these people. It’s not my life. It’s His.

Across the street, two squirrels chase each other around tree trunks. Not finding food, not building a nest, not caring for babies. Just running for the joy of it. God expects no more from them but to love their life. Like sparrows and lilies. Maybe even like me.

Unfolded

 A real estate agent will tell you that they can sell you a house, but it's not true. You don't choose a house. The house chooses you, being older and having had the persistence to stay put, whereas you found it necessary to abandon one place for another.

Then, once having chosen, the house reveals its secrets one by one, uncovering a stubborn drain here or a squeaky door there. In those first weeks, bricks, plumbing, concrete, and roof all announced their immediate need and I tried to prove my faithfulness in meeting them. 

A house saves its  best surprises, though, for its living parts. Within weeks of signing the papers, my house buried its life, shrinking beneath frost and snow, sleeping for five frigid months, taunting, hiding behind lowered lashes. Spring has come, though, and now that it has, the house yawns, stretches out its arms, and lets it fingers unfold in greeting, almost before I can see. 

 Crocuses first, purple and striped. Then the lush, but niggardly, green of a daffodil clump that saw fit to yield only one flower. The clematis sprouted only halfway up. The tree next to the arbor that won't tell yet whether leaf or flower will come first. Tulips, roses, raspberries, strawberries, all unwinding green from some inner storehouse of life, all according to their own predetermined recipe. 

This is the welcome that didn't come in the first week or month, that waited until I'd tested worthy. This is God's first breath saying, Yes. You are welcome here. Look what I've saved for you. This is only the beginning.

Hello, me. Nice to Meet You

 

Today is the last day of Indian Summer. Tomorrow, the cold will blow in and stay for four or five months. So I went for a walk. The sky is blue, the sun warm, and the colors of the autumn trees glowing. And I find myself in the most unexpected place: home. 

I shouldn't be surprised. During my entire 50-year adulthood, I have never chosen my own place to live. Not once. Until now. For a long time, I called no place home. There were places I lived happily, some very good places, and people I loved there, and things I learned. But here, this place, this house--it feels like a prolonged hug. Warm, familiar, like I'm tucking myself into the last void in the puzzle. A perfect fit. 

So I walked by the river today and along the way found a store. For the first time since I was  child, I find myself in a real neighborhood rather than a distant suburb or on a country lane framed by punishing hills. But there it was, a real store well within the reach of a comfortable stroll. So I tested it and bought an egg salad sandwich. That's always the test, after all. It passed. The bread was fresh and made with unbleached flour, mayo-ey eggs squeezed out the sides, and the lettuce still had a satisfying crunch at 2 in the afternoon. 

 I sat by the riverside to eat, then, on the way home, reveled in manageable, gravel-less sidewalks, and actual blocks with crosswalks and street signs that announce your arrival.

That's my car in the driveway. Yes, I have a driveway, too, and rather than a metal shed, an actual garage with an opener. I have garbage pickup and, finally, finally, a window on the second floor. I'm there now, looking out and watching a world that's at last the right size. The pine tree in the front yard is swaying in the wind and down below, right under where I'm sitting, October roses resolutely bloom.

It's said that living is like walking a road. If it is, then I've come full circle only to find myself at the end. Who would have imagined? Oh yes. Of course. Thank you, God.

My Elijah

 

 

I never thought of you as a priest before today. My priest. My Elijah.

There are others, of course, several of them. Two Davids and a Norwegian. But never you.

The living with you was clouded by passion, I think. Love and living every day hid that part of you just enough to recede into the background until you were gone. The man of high blood and towering mind was all I could see until, well, until it wasn’t and only the supernatural remained—that, and the sudden understanding today that the priest had been there all along.

Elijah made me see. The prophet, the leader, the seer, the sublimely wise beloved. And the parting.

Come with me here and there, he said. To Jericho, to Bethel, to the Jordan. I am leaving. What do you want of me?

A double portion of your spirit.

Elisha didn’t ask for Elijah’s body to remain, but his spirit, and twice what he once had, enough to last a long time, enough for the rest of his life.

This is what you’ve given me. You and the God who put it in you in the first place. By His grace and by your love, your spirit remains in me, and a double portion made available through freedom from life’s repetition, necessity, and error. Your going away made you more available, more wise, more kind.

So you stand by the Jordan, raise your arms, and the waters part. I watch you walk across and vanish from sight by flaming chariot. There is nothing else now to do but pick up the cloak that lies empty on the bank of the river.

Old Soul, Young Soul

It's said that some children have old souls. Quiet, understated, and probing, they ask unexpectedly deep questions and have a rare thousand-yard stare. They just don't quite fit in with their carefree peers. Like my granddaughter, Ella. She moves differently than her friends, talks differently, thinks that some of the things they do are silly when they are actually quite normal for ten-year-olds. She would rather go hiking in a park than to a carnival, cook rather than play a video game. She actually likes playing with her sister. Her mother says she has an old soul and I can see why. Some of the pictures taken of me as a child have that look.

But the thought made me wonder....do souls have an age?

Souls, after all, are a reflection of our prime of life--the best of us. They're what God made in Eden. They're us as if we were Adam and Eve--strong, capable, and agile. It's hard to spot the difference between body and soul in mid-life, because your body and soul are near the same age. Seriously. 

I always thought I was one thing. Yes, I knew that I was made of a natural and a supernatural part, a part that would die and one that would live forever. But it was hard to tell which was which. Everything worked pretty much in unison. Now I'm starting to understand more easily that, yes, body and soul really are two distinct parts of what makes us. The body is a big skin sack filled with blood and bone. The soul, well now, the soul is different.

And my soul is seventeen years old.

I've always know this. As I matured, it was like I was stuck there. Like part of me got that old and no older. As the years passed, the contrast between how I looked and how I thought I should look got wider. As did the difference between how I feel now and how I used to feel. I've never stopped being startled at my reflection in the mirror. Somewhere in there, my hair is still brown and my face unlined. Somewhere, I can still do an hour of aerobics and bench press 200 pounds. I know that because when the radio plays just the right song, I'm back there on a summer day, driving down Lakeshore Drive, wind in my hair, singing. Nothing's changed, really it hasn't. But actually, it has. That's obvious.

So, it's just memories, I thought for a long time. And then Dave died.

That's when I understood that there are times when we break, when parts of us are torn away. We can feel it, like when someone tugs at old fabric and it comes apart strand by strand. Afterward, we know we've lost something that was once part of us, part of flesh and blood, part of what made us.

Well, it's happening again, but this time I recognize the process.

There's the 69-year-old me, with heart issues, and weird blood pressure, and a neck that hurts every morning and muscles that need to be coaxed into cooperation, and yada, yada, yada. Then there's the 17 year old me who can do absolutely anything without effort or pain or looking over her shoulder. And that's how I finally spotted who she really was. The absence of regret.

It was easy to imagine my entire self transcendent when body and soul felt like one thing, when they both soared strong and together. But now that we don't anymore, I'm reaching out to her. She had to be 17, before betrayal, before defilement and brokenness, before disillusionment and settling, before desertion and ambition, before regret and grief.

I'm getting old, and my flesh ages just like everyone else's, but the space between body and soul is getting wide enough now to see the difference. I feel the separation and am far enough away that I can actually stand back and look at that 17-year-old soul and admire her. The tearing, the dividing of body and soul that ends in death, began long ago and I missed a lot of it, not knowing what to look for but now that it's getting closer to complete, well, it's a lot harder to miss. It's a good thing. It's a putting in order, a getting ready. After all, some day I'll have to leave the old body behind, but now I know that when that day comes, I can be 17 again. Not perfect, but prime. Young. Clean.

I like that girl, after all. We live companionably together these days, separate, but like friends who understand one another completely without explanation. I am content with her. It's OK that the body doesn't match. This is life and what the living of it inevitably takes, given enough years. I'm happy to be able to carry a young soul in me as I walk. She makes me smile.

I Won't Be There

I’m tired of writing about missing you. It’s like an old song losing its charm because it’s played on the radio too often and no longer brings productive emotion, just the wretched, wrenching kind that leaves one breathless, but no better off. I want to know the worth of these days, not those—to hold the gentleness of early breezes moving curtains and the mourning doves calling in the first sun and the rain dropping easily from grumbling skies. I want to plan a trip or even a day without looking over my shoulder for you. I want to look ahead and find something worthwhile waiting there.

I wonder whether it’s good that you’re not here. What would you have done in this plague, this virus? Would you hide silent in lockdown or disregard it as irrelevant and cast yourself into the hands of God? You often surprised me with your reaction to situations like these—cautious sometimes and rash others. Now, though, you left me to make my own fate in it, trying to sort out what is the loving thing to do not only for my own sake but for the well being of the people around me.

But I’m still writing about you. I don’t even really want to, but nothing else comes out with any degree of passion. Almost everything falls flat in pale comparison. Almost.

There is Florence, though. Florence has never paled. It’s been two years since I last rounded the corner of the Via de Neri and strode into Duomo square, gasping,

 two years since days began with cornetti and blood orange juice, two years since I watched the sculptors through the alley window, two years since the bookshop and the street violinists, two years since eating al dente spaghetti beside the medallion recording the death of Savanarola in the Piazza de la Signoria, two years since the poodle on the train, two years since the Arno at sunrise,

 two years since holding the head of Christ in my hands at the Opera Museum.

Maybe that’s how I exorcise you. Maybe that’s the way I regain my freedom, to allow today to step in front of yesterday. You are, after all, part of yesterday. I woke up this morning and you didn’t. You are either always awake or not at all, but I still cycle through days in repeating rhythms of work, rest, and sleep.

I have to decide. I have to intentionally move from this place to that. I’ve been lying in bed waiting for you to come back for more than four years. I can’t do it anymore. I have to swing my foot out, put my weight on it, and take a step. See—I’m doing it. And I’m not looking back. I can’t imagine where you’ve gone, but I say this to you, wherever you are: Don’t reach for me. I won’t be here.

What Jesus Never Said Out Loud

Jesus is man. Jesus is God. Never more one than the other. Always both fully and in equal measure. And yet....sometimes, in certain situations, more of one than the other seems to come forth. When He changed water into wine, or when He foretold His death, or when he proclaimed I AM, He was so God. But today....today Jesus seems so man.

A lot of the time when we think about Good Friday, we remember the legality of it all--the exchange of Christ's life for ours, the redemption not only of mankind as a whole, worthy and unworthy, but of us--the personal negotiation by which we have the hope of heaven. That is very God, too. No one else could have done this, but it is also very distant. It requires effort to summon up an understanding of the transaction that resulted in our opportunity to engage in a life of sin and still end up in eternal reward with the very God we offended. Mind-blowing. Not human at all.

But give Jesus real live hands and feet, mind and emotions, and He becomes something else entirely. He becomes someone we know, echoing  the pain of hurt.

For me, it is very real. I did something once that made my husband cry. Not the gentle tears of sympathy or compassion, but the wrenching, groaning, excavation of deep betrayal, of untenable destruction. It was the visible and audible manifestation of a relationship tearing asunder under pressure that even the strongest man I knew could not withstand, a hurt that struck at the very heart of him.

And then there's Jesus. Jesus the forgiver. Jesus the ultimate sacrifice. Jesus the gentle, patient healer. Jesus the betrayed man. I met Him in a new way this morning, reading the Roman Catholic Good Friday Liturgy. In the midst of all the worship, and all the thanks, and all the reverence, come the reproaches of the man that resounded with Dave's misery. Did you ever think of Jesus saying this?:

My people, what have I done to you? Or how have I grieved you? Answer me!
What should I have done for you and not done?
Indeed, I planted you as my most beautiful and chosen vine and you have turned very bitter for me, for in my thirst you gave me vinegar to drink and with a lance you pierced your Savior's side.
I scourged Egypt for your sake with its firstborn sons, and you scourged me and handed me over.
I led you out from Egypt as Pharaoh lay sunk in the Red Sea and you handed me over to the chief priests. 
I opened up the sea before you and you opened my side with a lance.
I went before you in a pillar of cloud and you led me into Pilate's palace.
I fed you with manna in the desert and on me you rained blows and lashes.
I gave you saving water from the rock to drink and for drink you gave me gall and vinegar.
I struck down for you the kings of the Canaanites, and you struck down my head with a reed.
I put in your hands a royal scepter, and you put on my head a crown of thorns. 
I exalted you with great power, and you hung me on the scaffold of the Cross.

Think you haven't done these things? Think again. Every time we do something we know is wrong, we press in the thorns, we pound in the dreadful spike.

He never said this out loud, but did He feel it? He cries for us, mourns for what was lost and the way He has to buy it back. He knows what we could have been, what He created us to be, and what we chose instead. He knows what He has to do, but it still hurts. He trades His life for restoration. For the joy set before Him, He suffers.

This is the essence of how humanity fixes what is so very wrong. With our world, with our relationships. And it works. Sorrow retreats in repentance. Wounds heal with forgiveness. It worked for Him. It worked for me.


Image: Video Hive

Thanks are not Enough

She started out telling me all the things that could go wrong.

"I might make you crazy."
"You're probably going to have to tell me to stop talking."
"I won't let you boss me around. I have to be in charge. Remember, I'm taking care of you, not the other way around."

And all of this coming from one of the gentlest people I know, and the one who volunteered to care for me at home post-open heart surgery, the one who stepped up without ever being asked so that I wouldn't have to go from the hospital to a nursing home to recover. And now she was giving me second thoughts. Well, I'd been warned. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all.

As it turned out, though, we'd both underestimated pretty much everything. We could never have guessed how sick I'd be, how long it would last, or how much help I'd need but more than anything else, how beautiful it would all be.

Carol had already moved in by the time I got home from the hospital. Her pillows sat puffed and waiting, her bedtime fan sat on a table, the oversized cosmetic bag she took everywhere had found a place to land in the bathroom, and her clothes hung in the guest room closet as though they'd always been there.  Cupboard and refrigerator already held her own food supplies. She'd brought in her blue fleece blanket and her coffee pot. Almost everything but her cat. She hadn't brought her cat.

I didn't care. I didn't even notice most of it for days. I was thinking about something else.  After all, I'd been filleted like a fish, then sewed, glued, and wired back together, and sent home with pages of instructions specific to what I couldn't do for the next twelve weeks. And what I was forbidden fell entirely to Carol. She had to do them all.

I took awhile to digest. Like so many other changes, these new patterns emerged gradually and by accumulation in one venue at a time. I needed her in far more ways than I ever anticipated. I needed her in the shower--to guide me into the chair, soaping what I could not, leaning me into the flow of the water she'd already tested and proved just hot enough, rubbing so carefully with only soft finger pads into a grateful scalp, maneuvering the towel over and around, ignoring self-consciousness. I needed her to help me dress--to guide feet that couldn't find the leg of pajama bottoms and arms unable to reach the appropriate holes of a shirt. I needed her to prepare every meal, to run every errand, to entertain every well-wisher, to track and compile every medication, to absorb every phone call, to monitor every nurse's visit, to hover nearby when I tried to walk, just in case.

But those were just things--just things people do in situations like that. Like any healthcare worker. Like any well meaning friend.  Days went by before I knew that what Carol was doing was different--not like a nurse, not even like a friend.  It started with the singing, I think.

She didn't have to sing, but she did. Every morning, I heard her before I saw her, unfailingly cheerful, greeting not only me but a world she was happy to meet. Nothing seemed to ruffle her--not groans or confusion, not weakness or surly impatience, not even my stubborn insistence that I could do something she knew I couldn't. No, I could not have Bible study here yet. No, I could not go to line dancing. No I could not yet go safely to church. She mother-henned, but didn't insist on any of it, giving just enough space for me to discover the wisdom to agree.

Even after these, though, it was the smallest things she did that, when I think of them now, still astonish. The blanket she relocated from place to place as I moved through the house because it was softer and warmer than any other. The day she made tater tots for meal after meal because it was all I had a taste for. The towels she warmed in the dryer before showers. The milkshakes she made when absolutely nothing else tasted good. The day she made a special trip to the grocery for fragrance free laundry detergent and rewashed clothes and bedding because the smell of my old detergent made me sick. The bird feeders she hung on the back deck to bring in Spring's first robins. The beds she made up all over the house every single night because she knew I could rarely sleep in the same place two nights in a row. The daily laundry, trash, and dishes she dealt with so that the house would always be clean and smelling fresh. The hugs and encouraging words, and laughter that never seemed to stop. The true delight she brought into my own awkward pain and failed patience.

And she never made me crazy. Not once. Instead, she astonished me. Not only for what she did, but that she did it so easily. After all, both she and I have already lived most of our days. We don't have all that many left, so the giving away of these dwindling days has become a huge gift. Well, Carol gave me a whole month of hers, and I grabbed them up with eager, greedy hands like a lifeline. I had no idea I would need them, or her, so much, and she never once made me feel selfish for it.

If the measure of our life's witness is the degree to which we can turn ordinary days into holy moments, and through them, become living beacons of faith, well, this experience showed me what that looks like. If true faith means behaving like Christ when we think no one is looking, I got to see that great faith in action. Thanks is not enough. Learning how to do the same for someone else, though, might be a good start.

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but they will always remember how you made them feel.--Maya Angelou

Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love. --Mother Teresa

Whatever you do for one of the least of these, you do for me.--Matt 25:40

Unclenching

Growing up is a creeping thing. It doesn’t happen all at once—it comes instead in small, hesitant steps urged on by inexperience, grabbed up greedily, desired and hoarded until it crams itself into every available empty corner, filling places with responsibility where dreams once wandered.

Age easily takes up sovereignty once it’s admitted. Experience, confidence, knowledge, accomplishment, systematic management of hours and years—they take over, stable and ascendant. Age builds a fortress, a throne room, from which life is managed, data sorted, plans made and executed. We yield this ground more than willingly, expecting it to open a way for achievement, for explosion from bud to blossom.

But this ordering, this considered management also exacts a price. It imposes the tyranny of the useful. From these heights, play becomes wasted time, spontaneity is assigned to fools, and dreaming disintegrates and floats away, shouldered out by schedules and appointments.

This is when childhood becomes clearer and I, with both hands up, cling to the bars of my handcrafted prison. I peer out between them, whose names I now know to be Misunderstood Serving and Unnecessary Sacrifice, into an almost untouched world of effortless surprise.

The pendulum has swung too far, and I have pushed it into motion with my own two hands. But I can push it back again. Childlike joy, after all, has not vanished. It’s only hiding and to find it requires no effort at all.

Life is not a job, living not an assignment that will be graded according to its results. Even as I am given work to do, gifts to use, a talent to invest, so does God give me Time—long, open expanses of clear air and the freedom to fill them or to simply walk into them, feeling the brush of tall reeds through my fingers or the sun on my hair.

I’ve lost too much time already, I think. The towering, perfectly round maple in my west field has made and lost twenty undocumented crowns of leaves. I don’t know which birds nest in the old henhouse. My children have gotten old enough to produce their own new humans. The sun has risen and set too often unremarked.

There is a point where planning becomes superfluous. Opening eyes and unclenching fists is the easiest thing in the world to do. Perhaps it would have been better to have seen this earlier, but this bit of horizon is now, at least, coming into better focus. Now, like an infant, all I need to do is look out and reach.

Hauntings

These are the ones that get you. The ones you don't expect. The ones that come out of seeming nowhere.They are the shirt you thought you'd given away. They are the oil reminder in the back of the glove box. They are the random handwritten notations he had to have made years ago and left in his little note box, the same one I hung on the refrigerator and use now to remind me to buy toothpaste.

 They lay there in wait all this time, the first one showing itself when I reached in yesterday to begin a new shopping list. And they came out of that box one right after the other, unashamed of the terror that came out with them, scalding my hands. I tried to catch them as they dropped, scrambling to pick them out without having to touch them. Foreign objects. Not familiar enough to be memories. Not strange enough to ignore.

I can't decipher most of them--electronic gibberish that undoubtedly meant something in the context of a design, calculations he made and wanted to remember but have no meaning now that he's gone. Secrets--the complex meanderings of an often indecipherable mind.

They don't belong here. Not without him. But they are here and I can't throw them away. He touched them and his touch hasn't graced this place for a long time. I want to sleep with them. I want to smell them. I want to tuck them into my clothes like sachets, hoping they leach that well-remembered warmth. Instead, I cry, holding them in outstretched hands so the writing doesn't smear.

Every time I think that maybe he doesn't live here anymore, he shows up again. A scrap, a color, a tool, an ash. A glimpse that vanishes around the corner just as I look in that direction. It hurts, but it is a hurt that also consoles. No, I don't see him anymore, but it's nice to know he will sometimes still show up. They are welcome hauntings. They make him real again.

Happy Birthday to Me

Grow old with me.

The best is yet to be.

An old saying and a lovely one. It comes with a picture of a couple joining hands at the beginning of a long road and walking it together, gathering experiences and wisdom along the way, enjoying the satisfaction and perspective of what they’ve learned. Once they’ve arrived, their shared memories gather daily around them like chicks that nestle reliably into their palms—warm, pale yellow, and chirping. They take them up together, exchange knowing glances, and smile.

Grow old with me.

The best is yet to be.

Growing old together, done well, is a privilege. Common reflection brings joy. Even shared distress deepens and strengthens life’s fabric when looked at in the perspective of its survival. The promise of growing old together is so compelling that it can sometimes be the lifeline that makes youth survivable, but noble plans don’t always bloom into reality.

Sometimes people stop growing old.

Today is my birthday. Happy birthday to me. I have not stopped growing old.

But you have.

I’m 68 today and this is the first day that I’ve been older than you. You never got to be 68. You died at 67. You let go of my hand and stopped growing old with me.

The walk looks different now, and the country I walk through not cushioned any longer by companionship. Separation doesn’t steal accomplishment or memory, but it does bring a harshness, as though stepping off a soft, yielding garden path onto one of unreliable stone. Every step rings with reminders of what was and lost opportunities of what might have been.

Grow old with me.

The best is yet to be.

That won’t happen now. Not ever. There will be no side by side rockers on the front porch, no pair of deck chairs in the sun, no great grandchildren scattered at common feet.

But something does remain. The promise, I believe, is not broken. It will simply be fulfilled in a way we didn’t ask for or expect. We may not grow old together hand in hand, but as I grow older alone, I bring something of you with me.

More than memory, less than flesh, the mystery that made your heart beat, your courage endure, and imagination soar still surrounds me. That remains. No hand reaches out to take mine any more, but I hold you nevertheless.

A happy end still waits. The second part of the promise stands.

After my own days are fulfilled, I will walk into that same open country you now wander, a place of perfect intimacy, of unending companionship.

Remind me, please. On lonely days, or on hollow ones, when my arms feel hard the emptiness.

Tell me again.

The best is yet to be.

My Insistent Moon

These are the days of the Perseids meteor shower, when the earth moves through a regular band of small interstellar rocks that rush past and, in the process of entering and burning up in  our atmosphere, light up and look like falling stars. It's a magical time, when a casual ten or twenty minutes of watching can yield enough sightings to light up a soul.

But this year, we can't see it.

It  turns out that this year's Perseids coincides with the full moon and the light of the moon obscures whatever 'falling stars' we might otherwise see. They're still there, of course, the meteors, but lost in the light of the moon.

The sun does the same. The Perseid rocks are falling into our atmosphere during the day, too, but we can't seen them then either. It has to be dark. So dark that their less immediate, less insistent, light can shine through.

At 2:30 this morning, when I was looking for the shooting stars I knew were out there, I was, of course, disappointed. The sky was clear enough, and my vantage point just right, and I could see a few constellations, but only one or two flashes of what I knew was a much more beautiful display. The moon---the moon was in the way.

That was when I saw another light, so to speak.

I realized that I have a moon, too.

And the light of my moon is bright, more now, I think, than ever before. So bright that I'm ignoring the fleeting, the spectacular, even the cosmic. My moon, my Dave, outshines anything else in view.

It may be that this is a natural, normal thing for a widow, but there is a danger here, and the danger is that Dave's light shines so bright that it outshines Christ.

Christ, who lights up every place into which He is admitted. Christ, who surrounds but does not insist. Christ, whose light can go out so easily in us through error or neglect.

I get it. I really do.
Last night, after realizing there would be no Perseids display, I shrugged my shoulders and went back to bed, knowing there would be another opportunity next August 12.

The other issue, not so much. Christ wants me. I need Him. But I keep grabbing for Dave, not knowing, not wanting to know, what will happen if I let go.

There's danger in this place. Christ does not share His preeminence with anyone. I have to yield, and willingly. If I do not, I assign a back seat where none is permitted. I do not get to have both at the same time--the shooting star and the full moon.

Heaven on Earth

This is the view from my sunroom window today. Stargazers--open to the sun in spite of their name and sharing their over-the-top extravagant fragrance. They are the glory of summer and the glory of God. They are. And this is how I know:

I am confident of this: I will see the glory of God in the land of the living.--Psalm 27:13

It has to be here somewhere and, well, this is where I found it today.

Of course, not everyone sees it in the same place, but when Jesus tried to explain God's glory, He didn't tell His listeners to look up into the sky or to imagine somewhere far away. He told us to look at whatever is in front of us--a field, a pearl, a fish, a loaf of bread.

It's kind of like those puzzles that seem to be one thing and then, when you shift your gaze in just the right way, become something else. Like this one, called the Healing Grid--only the section you stare at for 30 seconds or so seems straight and regular, but shift your gaze to one of the irregular parts, and that one then becomes straight in turn. The thing itself doesn't change, but your concentrated view of it reveals something you weren't able to see before.



So, how do we know when we're looking at God?.Well, let's see--

When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant.  --Exodus 34:29

Moses looked at God uncovered and God left His mark on the man. He face shown with glory so brightly that the it scared the crowd and Moses had to cover it.

It's the glory. Right here. Every day.
If we aren't astonished, we haven't found it.

It's the rhinestone among the diamonds, the silver among the stainless. Easy to miss unless we're looking. Looking and not stopping at the beauty of the thing itself (ie: golden calf), but seeing beyond it.

Let the smell, or the sound, or the feel of the God-infested thing sink in far enough and every step through this world will evoke a step into heaven.
  
This is the Catholic feast day of St. Ignatius, a warrior before he was a man of God--a warrior that one day laid his sword on the altar and eventually developed the Ignatian discipline by which even today monks and many who live even a modicum of the contemplative life are trained. And it's called a discipline for a reason. That's what it takes. 

To look for God everywhere. To bend every action to His service. 
To do this is to make our own face shine with His glory. 
You will not see this looking in the mirror, but turn your God-focused face to the world and He will shine.