Frankincense. Who knew?

This morning I put away some of the Christmas Décor. Since we don’t take down our tree until January 6,  just the stockings and a few other things have been boxed up ready for storage. 

Snippets of Christmas music danced in my mind as I packed them away. I love to sing. I love to sing Christmas songs, as they are generally so happy and sentimentally touching. Humming a strain of Karen Carpenter’s “ there He lies, there with the lambkin, only swaddle for His garment,” I picked up the Santa with the wobbly ( and now after 22 years) detachable head that Randall played with as a baby, the train set of ornaments from Craig’s first Christmas, but left the cards received on the shelf where they had been nestled among pine branches. A sympathy card for my late father’s passing sits among them. I paused.

Celebration and sorrow on the same shelf.  “ Prince of Peace o’er all the universe ♪ alleluia al - le - lu - ia,” swelled in my mind.

We sang a Latin piece from the 1500's, Personent Hodie, for Christmas Eve, as we processed. Walking slowly down the aisle of our glorious stone cathedral, in half-light, banners on every pillar, I felt transported to another time, where somber music gave glory and honor to the Christ Child. 

My son Brett and other tenors and their bass counterparts intoned, "Magi tres venerunt, parvulum inquirunt, Bethlehem adeunt, stellulam sequendo, ipsum adorando, aurum, thus, et myrrham ei offerendo," while I and my soprano section echoed 'aurum, thus, thus, thus, aurum, thus, thus, thus' 

"The three Magi came, in search of a little child, They go to Bethlehem, following the little stars, worshiping him, gold, frankincense, and myrrh to him offering."

Frankincense favored heavily in the soprano descant in the measures listing the Gifts of the Magi, more than gold.  Gold, for a King. Myrrh, to foretell of His death, 33 years hence. (Celebration and sorrow, at the manger.) 

Frankincense, used in the Temple for centuries, and in the manger ostensibly to ward off the smells of the animals huddling nearby. Through the magic of the Internet I discovered this fact of the tree which produces the fragrant resin:

<Frankincense trees are also considered unusual for their ability to grow in environments so unforgiving that they sometimes grow directly out of solid rock. The means of initial attachment to the stone is not known but is accomplished by a bulbous disk-like swelling of the trunk. This disk-like growth at the base of the tree prevents it from being torn away from the rock during the violent storms that frequent the region they grow in. This feature is slight or absent in trees grown in rocky soil or gravel. The tears from these hardy survivors are considered superior for their more fragrant aroma.>  Who knew that the source that kids have quipped as Frankenstein had such resilience?

The source goes to say that frankincense trees are on the decline due to over-exploitation and beetle infestation, and includes a reference to Herodotus, who documented the trees being dangerous to harvest due to venomous snakes inhabiting them. 

Huh.

A tree that can grow out of a rock which produces ‘tears’ used to create fragrance, which is being attacked by outside forces and at one time, habitually surrounded by snakes.

Huh.

The Church grew from Peter, the Rock anointed to carry forth the Good News. (Peter was a mess. Over emotional, doubtful, outspoken, passionate, impetuous. Not at all a candidate for ministry.) There were tears shed over the death of Christ, not only for His suffering, but for the loss of the overthrow of the government oppressing the weeping populace. 

People of faith still stand on the Rock, the foundation for the Cross, but are buffeted by the winds of  denominationalism, greed, scandal, the rise of secular ‘civil rights’ which afford all other belief systems to flourish but quell public Christianity. Snakes of all types slither into churches -- tradition, pride, ego, past hurts, failures, over-emphasis on budgets, business- instead of ministry-principles at play. 

Over the centuries, the fragrance of the Church, inviting and warm and laced with notes of hope, has evolved into knock-off denominational scents that pass for Christianity because of similar labeling. These knock-offs turn away agnostics and atheists and those who have been hurt by the "Christians" who bathe in self-righteousness and religious practices, not faith. 

There are many true Christians in mainline denominations, to be sure, but they seem to be outnumbered by Churchgoers who believe in grace-by-works and social standing.

Nonetheless, the fragrance of Christianity, the true fragrance, is not at all offensive, and it has no denominational overtones, no political undertones. It has lingered for over 2000 years. As the cliché says, Wise men still seek it. 

It is pure. 

May you breathe of it, the scent of peace, the soft smell of comfort, the aroma of hope; the lavish lingering of Love that has no boundaries, in this coming New Year.  

♪Strange as it seems there's been a run of crazy dreams...

For a few years now, I have made it a practice to say a little prayer before I get up in the morning.

Nothing astute, as I have but a few incoherent mumbles before my coffee just a Thank You and please keep my family ( and I list them from oldest to youngest ) in Your care to-day. I have always started with my mom and my dad, of course over the last year adding Jonathan's parents and children and siblings along with mine, in descending order.
     Mom, Dad, Mom & Dad, my older sibs ( and nieces and nephews), Jonathan, my younger sibs
( which include my Israeli family) and all of nine of our combined kids. I have to admit, it is a mental challenge to keep everybody in age order as the total number of immediate family is 43. (Pretty prolific for a Protestant-based clan. LOL.  To be sure, I'm not touting my own prayer ritual as righteous holiness, as it is the one attempt at holiness I have on any given day.)

   Now the List is down to 42. 

   For the last ten days I have struggled with leaving my dad off the prayer list. I know he's in heaven, and no longer in need of prayer, but it's hard to break the habit. After a long lonely week of mourning, I have relative peace about his passing and about our past, but he's been in my dreams just to spite me, LOL, even if my conscious self has calmed. 

   In a recent production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, we sang the line, " Strange as it seems there's been a run of crazy dreams..." Last night I dreamed of a puzzle piece type image, a Facebook photo-post of all things ( yes I know I have no life ) that I couldn't get in the right place, and I kept waking up and falling asleep right back into the dream thread. Even in my dream state I knew that piece was Daddy. The other day I shared with friends that I had a dream... where I was on the highway. No big deal... except I saw in front of me and then in passing, a baby elephant, a hippo with glass stuck to him (like sprinkles on a cookie), a penguin playing with a puppy, and a wild boar.  Since I have no Joseph to interpret, I went to a dream dictionary just to see if any of it made sense. Interestingly enough, 

it did!

     Hippos in dreams are said to represent hidden strength, aggressive nature and possible territorial tendencies. Check. Broken glass, disappointments and a relationship that has come to an end – check.  
     Elephants indicate a need for more patience, letting go of a memory -- and represent power, strength, faithfulness, and intellect. Check.
     Penguins symbolize the fact that problems are not as serious as they appear, and wild boars indicate a need to delve within one's self to seek answers. Check.
     The highway is pretty self-explanatory, on a journey. ha!

    On a conscious level, I’ve found myself flitting between the three of the stages of grief, anger, denial, depression, glossing over bargaining because really, there was no hope for recovery. The forecast is mostly acceptance, with lingering showers of sorrow at unexpected moments.

    In my sub-conscious, I’m still searching for an answer. My intellect won’t let this one go… and at least one of the many siblings on my morning litany is having the same problem, except on a very painful, conscious level. I told her this morning in a message that true love is defined in the Bible…patient, kind, doesn’t bear a grudge… and that’s how she loved our dad. I did too, for the last fifteen years, after I got through the first two times of losing him to his intellect and his alcoholism ( a deadly combination). She lived the Commandment of 'honor thy father and mother' far better than I ever have, in my own nearsightedness. Perhaps that's where the zoo animals showed up on my 'highway', as funky road signs.  Either that or I need Breathe-right strips to get more sound sleep. LOL Probably both.  

     I can no longer ask for prayers for my dad, and there's a touch of sadness in that. Then I remember the hippo in my dream, and how I need to step back from trying to save everyone I love, even from themselves. So... now in the daily pause between my mom and Jon's folks, there's a little sigh of thanks for a daddy I loved, and after I have my coffee and get going every day, my mind is filled with prayers and plans for finding where to put the puzzle pieces. Given my track record, it may take another thirty years to figure things out... oye.  As a dear one pointed out recently, some folks are late bloomers, so... it's all good. "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." Romans 8:28 Sometimes He even works for the good of those who aren't called, because that's the kind of Dad He is. The Best Dad, Ever. 

    

     

Sitting Shivah, Singing Gospel... Good Grief.

♪Amen! Amen!♪ A aaaa men ♪ a-men a-men!

We’ve all heard that Negro Spiritual at least once in our lifetime. (Yes, it is called  a Negro Spiritual. History is not always PC.) :-P 

Amen means “So be it.”  “So be it” does not consistently translate to “Hallelujah everything is wonderful”.It’s an agreement, an acceptance to the prayer offered, whether in jubilation or despair. Ancient counterpart to today's ad nauseum, "It is what it is." 

My half-siblings are half way through their required week of Jewish grief in Northern Israel. Sitting shivah in an Orthodox home means covering the mirrors, lighting a single candle, sitting on the floor, no shoes, no showers,  reciting the Kaddish - the mourner's prayer, for a seven-day period of mourning. (No doubt the grieving is exacerbated by the grieving, guilt, and mild gall of my former ‘stepmother’, who may be coming to terms with the journey she shared with a man twenty years her senior, her contribution to his alcoholism, and missed opportunities. She shouldn’t be so hard on herself… we all make Big Mistakes.) 

As utterly miserable as they may be, at least they are together, and there is finality to the passing, and some sort of closure.

I lost a dear friend this summer to something similar… infection, surgery, infection, body succumbing. He was 34 years younger than my dad, and we held his hand at the hospital and told him we loved him…and a week later, sat in church and cried and laughed and cried together. I'll not soon forget the anguished face of his youngest son turning back to look at the casket one last time before recessing out.

There are moments of my day when I have that anguished look, only it’s a dull ache in my chest. I get misty every couple of hours, and at night, I cry for all the stupidity of years lost, stubbornness, stoicisim, and persons who do not allow themselves to publicly mourn, for their own reasons. Ironically, if my dad were here, he’d tell me to “save my tears for something important.” Hmmh.

I wish I had a funeral to go to. 

I wish I could force myself to get dressed formally and drag myself to a church or a synagogue and be put through the torture of facing the loss of a loved one.

Instead I am here, alone in my grief, unable to mourn him with any one whom I have a shared history, since his departure from my family basically perforated it all those years ago and it has never been quite the same.

I used to have dreams of seeing my dad in a random place and just hugging him, and finally after a twenty year absence, I got to do just that, in sort of a random place, an airport terminal. Same place I hugged him good-bye a week later, knowing it would be the only time that would transpire. What a wonder it is that the dream even ever came true at all.

I wish I could have an end date to our mourning...and wish there was someone to mourn his loss with me. My Jonathan told me it tore him up to not be able to rush home, to be here with me. I wept, and then told him 'soldiers have to stay at their posts,' even though I wish he were here, too. 

On Sunday morning, I shared with my fellow choir members that the music we sang would have been cherished by the Daddy I knew back in the 60's...jazzy gospel and classical praise. We grew up listening to the Robert Shaw Chorale, Mahalia Jackson, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and Glenn Miller. He would have been tapping his toes at the "Jazz Gloria", and teared up at the Saint-Saens "Oratorio". Through the same stifled anguished ‘look’ I trilled "Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord our God who cometh" on the day my father was buried.  I mentioned tearfully to some that the service we had this was the funeral service I always would have imagined for my father, Christ-centered and full of glorious sound. 

I sat stock-still as the Christmas Toccata was masterfully offered by our Juilliard-trained organist, Kiyo Watanabe. Filled with familiar strains of ancient hymns, it also has a melancholy and dark air woven to the last few measures, and then a resulting gentle finale.

The dynamic of the Toccata IS the dynamic of Christmas. It’s joy and strain and darkness and hope and sorrow and frenzy and peace and beauty, in rapid succession and intermingled with each other.

Sounds a little Hebraic? That’s because it is… but the end of the Story is not mourning at the death of the grown Christ. He came to live among us that we might have hope beyond sitting shivah, beyond no funerals, beyond this finite world.

The ache comes and goes. The hope remains that I will hug my dad again, because I believe what he believed, that the end of the Story is not mourning and gnashing of teeth, but glory in the presence of the Father.

So be it.

♪ fa la la la la, and Kalamazoo

So last night we decorated our tree, with my Jonathan Gilbert on Skype on my laptop, having gone to dinner to raise a glass in the memory of my boy's other grandfather, whose first name happened to be: Gilbert. Life is funny sometimes.

   I went to bed happy as a lark, tree lights twinkling in my spirit. 

   Jonathan called me this morning, around 8:30 a.m. and via Skype I got to see him drape golden tinsel on a tiny tree, in his apartment in Kuwait. :-) He was pretty happy with himself! I was sleepily overjoyed to see my boy celebrating the Season in a tangible way!  We signed off, both needing coffee and food, at different ends of the same day, and I checked my e-mail and Facebook before having a shower and calling him back before he went to bed. Then I learned that today was The Day.

   My younger half-sister, Daniella, had apparently left a message for me at 7 a.m. which I did not get, having been asleep and then awakened to the sight of a tiny Kuwaiti "tannenbaum".

    " Just got a call from the hospital to come right away"... Oh no. This is it.  My long estranged and now suffering from dementia father had a leg removed two weeks ago today, and had been battling blood poisoning since. 

    I had to recharge my cell phone twice in the course of the day, in between calls to Daniella and my half-sister Kfirah, having to talk to my dad's second wife for only the second time in 14 years ( the last being when my Aunt Yvonne died, and my illustrious father had been placed in an Israeli detention/detox for a drunken rampage,  unable to receive the news until he finally sobered up), breaking the sad news to my father's only surviving sister, and then calling my cousins, and the rest of my family who are in varying stages of grief, and then calling Jonathan's mom after sniffling through an end of the day call with him, to debrief. 

   See, when after your parents get divorced and your dad moves to Israel with his second wife and then disowns you and your siblings for ten years while in the meantime he has a whole other family, it gets a little convoluted. Even after 30 years, after you have you made peace and move forward as adults and allow grace to enter in and heal over tender scar tissue, it gets a little twinge-y... simply due to lost years, lost life, lost love. 

  As I write this, it is morning in Israel, and the second set of Bailor kids, minus one or two, are making preparations to attend the burial of their sometimes manic, once-upon- a-time marvelous father. Daddy plowed hard through life, whether in a mad rush to score a basketball goal, deliver an exam that gave people migraines but never let them forget the subject matter, disciplining a recalcitrant child with a knuckle thump on the head or taking one to lunch or for ice cream-- with a drink in his hand, and either a joke on his lips or an angry scowl on his brow. Nothing in between.

   On this day that we have all been dreading for years, The Day We Get The Call About Dad, I'm wistfully sad. 

    Tonight is not any different in my life than any other day... Daddy has been absent from my life for the better part of 27 years, 10 of them being disowned by him and his family. (I broke the ice on my 30th birthday, calling to talk to him as if Nothing Bad had ever happened, and didn't lose track of him for very long at a time in the fifteen years hence.)

    My heart is not sad because he died, as I am relieved that he is with my grandparents and aunt and uncles and reunited with his best friend, Uncle Jerry, Aunt Donna's husband who has been gone for 40 years. 'Bout time those two caught up. 

   My heart is not sad for me, or my kids that didn't know my dad save for one Christmas vacation five years ago, when we were all together for four days. 

   My heart is full. Full of relief that he can be with Uncle Jerry and the rest of our loved ones that have gone ahead, full of wistfulness that he missed so many years wandering the streets in a drunken stupor, full of questions of why he jumped the track of a successful youth leader and college professor to lead the life of an Israeli emigré at age 43, full of happy memories of me and my dad, my dad and us kids, especially at Christmas when he would get fairly silly and make us giggle a lot when he was not knuckle thumping us, in church, to get us to stop giggling. HA. 

   How he loved Christmas! Loved the seasonal sweets, and the holiday spirits, the faculty parties, the church parties, and the lights on the houses and the celebration of the Christ Child being born in a messy manger. He loved the beginning of the Story, because back then he ascribed to the End of it, where the Christ Child returned in full glory to redeem those who knelt at the cross where He ended his human tenure. Daddy loved the Candlelight service, and the Christmas hymns and silly Christmas songs of his childhood, equally. Just as my brother and sister would sing, 'to save us all from Santa Claus when he was on his sleigh' instead of  'to save us all from Satan's power when we were gone astray', LOL, Daddy would putter through the house, singing "Deck us all with Boston Charlie fa la la la la and Kalamazoo..." He loved to put the Christmas lights up on the house, not primly along the roof line like everyone else, but in a Star of David to celebrate Jesus' Hebrew lineage. We should have known... :-)

   My heart is full. It’s two hours into the day that my dad will be buried, in Israel. We cannot be there, and yet we are there. There are traces of us American-borns in the faces of the Israeli-born, and on their children, too.  (My son Craig has strong personality tendencies of his grandpa's, and they spent all of four days together.)   

  There are traces of him in each of us, strong-willed, bright-minded, resolute, passionate.

  My heart is full of the wonder of God, for allowing grace and time to put together the pieces of broken lives and make something new out of them.

   Like my brother eloquently stated this morning, Dad is Home for Christmas. My heart is full.

  

   

♪ Daddy's Little Girl...yeah...♪

When you are three, this is how your daddy sees you, and you feel like a princess...


"You’re the end of the rainbow, my pot of gold.
You're daddy's little girl, to have and hold.
A precious gem is what you are;
You're mommy's bright and shining star.

You’re the spirit of Christmas, the star on our tree.
You’re the Easter Bunny to Mommy and me.
You’re sugar, you're spice, and you're everything nice
And You’re Daddy’s Little Girl

You’re a treasure I cherish, all sparkling and bright.
You were touched by Holy and beautiful light;
Like the angels who sing, a heavenly thing;
And you’re Daddy’s Little Girl"


...and sometimes as a bride you danced to this in your daddy's arms. Some girls feel this way their whole lives. Lucky lucky lucky ducks... Sometimes Life doesn't let the fairy tale turn out just like that... and we carry on. Just like my dad always told us to. Hmmmph.


My big strong daddy could speak and read seven languages, play basketball and football, got tenure at a college at a  young age, and was the toast of the town. When I was three. 


Alcohol literally consumed him during my childhood. We didn't dance at my wedding...


I talked to my sister, Daniella, today, for the first time in our lives. She has a beautiful, soft, Israeli-accented voice which matches her beautiful face, and we both wept and sniffled the whole time we were on the phone, and I got to tell her thank you for being there for Daddy, and that I loved her.


See, after my parent's divorce when my sisters and I ranged in age from senior in high school to second grader, my dad went on to have six more kids, a total of three sons and seven daughters in all. ( My mom was pretty funny after she found out that he'd had a passel more children " Boy am I glad he left!", as she jolly well should,  but deep in her heart she still mourns his leaving.)


Through a Series of Unfortunate Events that would make a Lifetime movie instead of a comical jaunt with Jim Carrey and Meryl Streep, we were disowned and estranged from my dad for ten long years. During that time I had my three sons; my brother and sister-in-law their fourth child, my dad as well. Both girls, one named Danielle, and one named Daniella. Through a Second Series of Unfortunate Events my dad's second marriage ended, and he spent a lot of years living a sad lonely life -- except for Daniella. She would visit, and she had pictures of us, her American family, up in the room she stayed in. She would write me notes and I wrote back, glad to know that my alcoholic father had something to focus on besides his past turbulent vodka consumption.

He got sober finally, but not until every one of his kids except for three -- me, Daniella, and my big brother  -- wanted to have anything to do with him.  The last fifteen years have been an exercise in perseverance, as my dad has  slowly declined into an advanced elderly state and into dementia. The once brilliant athlete-scholar wore himself out with his self-destruction.

I think he felt his dementia coming on, and five years ago he called and said he wanted to come home for Christmas. He spent time with my brother and family up north, and then my mother offered to have him stay with her so we could all be home together. It is the only time we have been  with my parents,both together, since 1978, and the only time I have seen my dad in person since 1986, and the one and only time my sons, nieces and nephews will ever know their grandpa.

Daniella wrote today and said that Daddy had surgery, and that the outcome wasn't clear.  He's 79 years old, with a 40 year alcohol abuse history. We cried together when we later spoke on the phone. See, she hasn't had the extra thirty years to distance herself from being 'Daddy's little girl'... and even though I have, I still cried.

None of us sister-siblings has felt much like Daddy's little girl... but the memory of those long-ago princess moments with him might carry us through what comes next, and allow some grace to soften the not-so-princess ones.

Peace and comfort to you, Dad. Peace and comfort.