A candle, in defiance of sadness

December 16, 2012...the third Advent candle lit today, the last Hanukkah candle lit tonight.
A year ago tomorrow, my long-lost father was laid to rest in Israel. 

Two days ago, my heart was broken for families that I will never know.

Today, I'm going to hear  a choir perform Handel's "Messiah", in a church sanctuary that slightly resembles a synagogue, HA, which I did on this Sunday last year. My dad loved that glorious work and I grew up hearing it every Christmas. 

I take great comfort in the lyric, taken from Scripture, "Behold, I tell you a mystery; We shall not all sleep; but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet." 

We shall. We shall be changed...

In the meantime, we mourn for the lost ones in Connecticut, for the lost ones in Hurricane Sandy, for the lost ones in this Crazy Year That Nearly Was. My dad numbers among those.

Today, I pray for the parents of the kindergartners lost to evil, the children and spouses of staff lost to evil,  for the first-responders that encountered the aftermath of evil, as I get the house ready for the man who shares my life.

As I pray for those lost, as I pray for us left behind, as I move on into my bright future with Jonathan, I'm putting away some of Daddy's things. His daughter Kfirah, my sister, told me that in Judaism one is taught to mourn for a year and then forget that person. I don't know about that. You can't simply forget someone, especially someone who gave you half your DNA.

I've officially mourned for a year, after unofficially mourning for most of my life. I used to feel bad about that, and be made to feel bad about that.

I recently read a musing from one of my aunts, who lost her first baby, long ago before I was born. "... as this is the 52nd anniversary of our first son's birthday... in defiance of the sadness that still can overwhelm me on this day, if I let it,  I wrote to my three kids this morning to tell them how grateful I was for their lives..." If I let it. In defiance of sadness. 

"If I let it". We don't want to be permanently paralyzed by grief...yet we don't want to be cold as stone and forget that we loved someone once. She's a good model for that -- remembering the great love she had for her first-born and still pressing forward.

"In defiance of sadness." We can combat grief with said-aloud gratitude for joys in our lives, indeed, while we recognize and embrace our humanity and our tender hearts. My aunt has a tender heart, and I know that her faith in life after death gives her the strength and spunk to use the phrase "in defiance of sadness'.

I could spend this day mourning my father. In a way I am, obviously, and I don't feel bad about it at all. He loved me once, and I him. That's something to celebrate.

I miss him. I always have, and I always will.

However, 'in defiance of sadness', I'm putting away some of his books that I've kept in sight for years. I've kept them about me, like comfortable old shoes. I certainly don't ascribe to the Jewish hardness of forgetting all about the dead, but I think I can let go my grip on my grieving at last.


I don't know when that will happen for the families in Sandy Hook village.It may be 52 years, it may be 34 years, it may be never, that they will be able to feel defiance against sadness. Along with the Hanukkah candles, and the Advent candles, I'm lighting another one -- just for them.  This light is for them, in the sudden darkness that has engulfed them.

May they somehow know the arms of God around their shaking shoulders.

Oooh... shiny!!

       I recently went back to work (after a two-year hiatus due to StupidCancer and StupidCancer complications) and took on a squirrelly class of two-year-olds that'd had previously had little or no discipline. I came home exhausted for the few two weeks. This is why we have kids when we are YOUNG. HA!
       Part of the previous problem lay in the fact that they had been given worksheets to color and alphabet letters to trace -- and no other opportunities to be creative. Yep. In a two-year-old classroom.
     On one of the first days holding the reins I discovered a pack of glitter glue bottles in a jumbled-up cupboard in the classroom, and let my little ones decorate tiny tambourines I'd made with them.
One generally does not use glitter with two year-olds, but in the form of Elmer's glue it becomes fairly innocuous and quite captivating. One little sprite spent 40 minutes carefully squeezing out teensy-tiny squiggles of shiny strands, and the rest followed suit. To be honest, I snagged that box of glitter glue out of the cupboard two more times when plans had to be abandoned, before I'd developed a stronger schedule and curriculum.

Last Friday, I made sense out of the Big Supply Closet, finding yet more glitter glue and glitter and sparkly colorful beads and sequins and crayons and paints and other required elements of early childhood education Art Experiences. Color, sparkle, glittering...for some of us, it's the modern-day equivalent of finding buried treasure. Ooooh, shiny!!

Ooooh shiny! I laughed to myself in the supply closet. ( I could hear Jonathan teasing me with that phrase, when I abruptly change subjects in a nanosecond, distracted by something I want to share with him in the moment. LOL )

Pretty, ooh-shiny glitter-glue provided a back-up for me these past few weeks, when I needed to get those wee ones settled down and focused and teach about taking turns.

Seems like modern-day humans tend to sometimes use God as a glitter-glue entity. We know where to find Him, we know He'll come through in a tight spot, and He makes everything beautiful and sparkly. All of that true...to a point.

I stood with twenty other sojourners yesterday during Mass, listening to the litany as we were presented to the congregation and the priests. I stood silently, after giving my commitment to further my journey, with my fellow travelers, as my sponsor made the sign of the cross on my head, to help me think on God, my eyes to see God, my ears to hear God -- and so on with heart, hands and feet.
We returned to our pews and to the kneeling benches to pray. It's been a lifelong journey for me to find a house of worship where I didn't have, or need, connections to fit in, and my prayers on the kneeling bench oozed out in tears of humble gratitude.

Last night, a visiting priest 'happened' to touch upon on the disappointing election, and asked this of us -- if we trust in God, not just believe in His love and power, why can't we trust that God is up to something good in all the chaos? "Isn't He always?"

As I listened, knowing he had a good hold on the truth, I thought about half of the population of the U.S.,  who'd waited for God to flood the streets with 'glitter-glue' during the recent election, saving us from what we perceive as a truly tight spot. (I, for one, will have a hard time finding a full-time job with benefits, since the new 'HealthCare' Plan won't get repealed. I'm not alone -- and the millions of us who categorically reject the Plan have reason to worry.) We had our hopes dashed as we prayed for our nation to be restored under different leadership.

Somehow, God had not heard the prayers of over 100,000,000 people. How could that be?

'Glitter-glue' got flung. Sometimes still in the bottle, sometimes splashed angrily on blogs and e-mails and Facebook, and sometimes it just pooled out of abandoned containers and dribbled down the drain with our hopes.  Anger always covers fear...always. Adding to the passion, it's hard not to feel as though we need to constantly fight evil. It's the American way! " Bomb the enemy! Save democracy!" "Hi-ho Silver! Away!" " Use that slingshot! We are in the army of God!"

God, the ultimate Commander-in-Chief,  isn't a God of glitter-glue. We can't just apply Him to situations on demand.

Nor is He only a back-up plan, nor just for special occasions, nor to be used as a pretty Scripture-projectile missiles to prove our points. Even if there's a battle to be fought.

He is the Creator of the trees with which to make paper, and of the minds who create upon the blank pages. He's the Light that makes color appear...so since we're made in God's image, no wonder we love glitter! It catches the light and makes the world sparkle. Ooh shiny! isn't necessarily a bad habit...as long as we remember the source and purpose of the light.

He's always up to something good. Always.

He. is. God.

As the priest said last night, "we must open the door of faith", and I shall add, to let the Light in.

Be blessed.

Shenandoah, revisited...

My sister Karen and I used to go to the PTA sponsored Summer Film Series at the Fox Theater in downtown Riverside back in the early 70's. Our mother would drop us off every Tuesday afternoon, and afterward we'd wait for her to pick us up. While protected from the hot California sun underneath the awning of Shook's Shade Shop, around the corner from the grand old theater, we'd go over the movie we'd just seen again and again, as we wondered if the roller shade in the shop window had possibly been there since the Spanish-American War. HA . Those were the days... 

One 70's summer week, we saw Jimmy Stewart, and Doug McClure, and Katharine Ross, and a (pre-Dukes of Hazzard "Uncle Jessie") Denver Pyle in the gloriously filmed and wonderfully heartfelt "Shenandoah", a Civil war-era film. This screen shot shows the featured Virginia family seated around the table. Not but a few frames later in the film a bitter argument breaks out amongst the family members. Stewart, as the patriarch, insists that none of his sons will fight in this war unless it affects the family. 

Events unfold, family members die as casualties, and in the final frames of the film, most of the chairs remain unfilled.

We girls were so sad to see that empty table. Tears welled up in our pre-teen eyes, in the dark rows of the Fox Theater, and we told our mom all about it on the way home from Shook's Shade Shop. 

A similar occurrence has developed amongst the "family of Americans" during this long and ridiculously hateful political season. The left paints the right as hysterical conspiracy theorists and the right paints the left as commie-pinkos, to coin a phrase from the past. The family divides in the film as in the actual Civil War, brother against brother, and so has our country. 

Friends ditch friends over ideological differences. And not just ditch, but stab through the heart.

Family members stop talking to each other, even on common ground, because one can't stand a certain candidate whom the other respects, and so all other conversation becomes stilted and obligatory, if any ensues.

People try and play the race card, even when people of the same race as a candidate oppose him politically. 

Religion comes into play -- " which is worse, Muslim or Mormon?" -- when neither are inherently bad to begin with. 

This family, this nation, this America is divided. I offered up a 40 Days of Prayer posting on Facebook during the last few weeks, focusing on finding truth, dignity, integrity, civility. All things which  I myself certainly need to work on, and which I see a deplorable lack of across the nation. Campaign signs are destroyed, vehicles keyed and damaged, candidates openly mocked -- DURING DEBATES. 

Perhaps this all began during the Kennedy campaign, when whispers that 'that Catholic will take over the country with the Pope' circulated viciously. 

Perhaps this all began with Nixon and his botched attempt to lie under oath. At least he had the dignity to resign and go away...

Perhaps this all began with Reagan and the Nuclear Arms Race, scaring the bejeebies out of all of us on a daily basis. 

Perhaps the deplorable lack of civility began with Clinton, whose quite admirable successes as President are forever tarnished by his degradation of the Oval Office to a publicly discussed den of sex, deceit, and lawsuits, along with the dubious and dire distinction of a trail of bodies who could have been witnesses in the lawsuits, to boot. 

Regardless of where or how it started, this election season split this country asunder, like lightning through a hundred-year-old oak that no one ever expected to fall. 

There are empty seats at the table. 

No matter who garners the votes on Tuesday, those seats will remain unfilled. Our nation is divided. 

One nation, under God, no longer indivisible, due to the current political climate. we are no longer "under God". IF we believe in Him, we tell Him how it should go, or we dismiss the thought of a God, or worse, we claim to be Christians but instead choose politics as our god, shunning family and friends who do not share our political thoughts. 

 No matter who garners the votes next Tuesday, we have become a nation at war -- the war of hostility and incivility and hatred. Over politics... we claim, but truly it's the lack of decency and morality that has led us to this place. We are at war, not only with terror, but with each other, in the pews, in the workplace, on the news, in social media. Brother against brother. 

As the Anderson family does in the above photograph, before they are forever disbanded, let us pray.

'Vitamin Deficiency'...

♪ We are Flintstone kids, ten million strong, and grow-ing ♪
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHRKHNZLebY

That decades old advertising jingle for children's vitamins popped into my head yesterday, as is my wont. Random phrases of music flit about in there like quarter-note moths nearly all the time.

This particular jingle came out in '88. ( thank you, You Tube LOL ) Expecting my first baby, anticipating his arrival as my twin nephews were born, I lived in a constant state of baby-wonder.

24 years later, we await an election that has been fodder for vehemence, vitriol, and caused lost family relationships and friendships over ideological disparities. The kids in the target audience for that commercial, aged 3-10,  now have mortgages and babies and kids in elementary school.

Seems to me that we might be suffering from some sort of ideological 'vitamin deficiency'.

One can consume more than enough calories from the vast offerings available every day at the supermarket and eating establishments -- but how many of us hit the target for the vitamins and minerals we need without taking a supplement? A small percentage, perhaps.

The land of plenty hath produced a collective population of 'overfed malnutrition-ed patriots'. We've become consumers of our leaders as much as they have become consumers of their constituents, instead of leaders and supporters.

We vote for the 'brand' we prefer, the packaging, the promised results advertised, instead of sticking to healthier choices. Just as fast food clogs our arteries and raises our blood pressure, staunchly defending a candidate along party lines clogs our thinking and raises our collective ignorance.

Madison Avenue has lulled us into a marketer's dream state, where we are swayed by slick phrases and    glossy images...

... perhaps it's time for a more steady 'diet' where we get the political nutrition we need to keep this nation at full strength, and not simply what seems appealing.

Stormy Weather ♪

"Don't know why there's no sun up in the sky
Stormy weather..." We set out across the prairie yesterday as storms clouds gained strength. I braced myself for another rainy route to Lubbock... and halfway there, we drove beyond the storm. Hooray!!

Three hours later, under sunny skies and a fresh breeze, we got texts from home. "floods everywhere big rain tornado warning in Henrietta" YIKES. I almost felt guilty...and worried about my puppy-girl home alone with her skittish self on a thunderous day. 

Then my son and his fellow Matador Singers walked out to the 50-yard line and sang the National Anthem, and we cheered and hollered, and then the game went on cheerfully under sunny skies. Thousands of people whooped and hollered as Texas Tech University trounced their West Virginia U opponents, 49-14. What a glorious day! Sunny skies, happy people, unity, celebration. 

We drove home in the dark several hours later across the caprock, watching a "popcorn" lightning show for three and half hours. Not a second! between lightning strikes, all the way home. Somewhere, out there, a storm still raged.

This morning, while the birds sang and the breeze ruffled the freshly washed fall leaves,  two trees with huge limbs fallen partially blocked a street not far from our home. The sun shone on the fallen limbs, and the gaping gashes where they ripped from the trunks, dry streets bearing no other evidence of severe weather. 

Someone will have surgery this Thursday, a mastectomy of yet-undetermined severity. The sun will shine that day and the next day, but when she wakes up, she will be as the trees. Bits missing, gashes where smooth skin once lived, clean-up yet to be done. Her husband will do the delicate dance between helping her keep her chin up, while at once  journeying with her through a grieving process that all cancer survivors do. The days will be stormy. The sun will keep shining. 

Another person, much closer to me, will celebrate his 83rd birthday that same day. He'll be praying for her, that morning on his walk, since we share our prayer concerns as a father and daughter would, even though we are third cousins. HA Birthday cake and family phone calls with birthday greetings and blessings will fill the rest of the day, and the sun will keep shining. 

The yin and yan of this life on earth. Surgery and birthday cake, storms and sun, all at once. 

This precious life.  I believe in a God who created us in His own image, and I believe that He is an emotional God, else we would not have the feelings we do. Joy, sorrow, fear, courage...reflections of a Creator's own heart. We can mark all the days as good, surgery, celebrations, storms, sunshine, even if we don't smile -- or if we don't cry. 

All days, from the heart of a Father who loves and looks after us, in the dark on a road through the caprock, in an operating room ( and the aftermath), on a day celebrating the joy that beloved ones bring to their beloved. 

Someone recently mentioned to me that they'd rather read the happy things I write, it's their favorite style of mine. 

I admit, I love to report happy news. I wish I could always report happy news. I suppose I could, and eschew the unpleasantries of Life that makes us cry. Like cancer. Losing loved ones. Misfortunes. That person would probably prefer that I did. 

There are days to take stock of joy and days to pray over worries. I take the words of Christ to heart. " You will have trouble on this earth..but take heart. I have overcome the world." Remembering that gives me the ability to experience the emotions that God bestows, in response to circumstance. Even Jesus cried when Lazarus was dead, though He knew He would bring him out of the tomb, and Jesus celebrated at weddings. 

While we have trouble on this earth, we live from cake to cake, football game to football game, storm to storm. No matter how you look at it, win or lose, broken tree limbs or sunshine, we live. We live. What happens along the way is where we have time to choose how to live. :-) 

The sun will keep shining. He has overcome the world...

Daughters...

The Listening Post arrives accompanied with a John Mayer soundtrack today. Tune in, comment anonymously if desired, and thanks for reading my musings. :-) 

Last evening, after finishing the second helping of a dinner which my 20-something half-sister efficiently shopped for, whipped up, and served, all with with great grace and style (two nights in a row) -- she dozed on the sofa while her 20-something nephew ( my son ) and his girlfriend followed suit on the other couch and the living room carpet. Not long after that, I got on the phone to my oldest 20-something "daughter-by-osmosis" in the midst of a family crisis, and connected with her. In addition to the girlfriend, I have four half-sisters and a sister-in-law ( to their brother ), a quintet of "daughters-by-osmosis", and a daughter-in-law-to-be all in their 20's. I am surrounded by young women waiting to experience life. (I mostly live vicariously through them and make sure they don't turn out anything like me. ;-P )

While we were apart for roughly three decades, my childhood-crush-turned-Life-Love Jonathan became the proud father of five tow-headed girls -- and a equally adorable junior edition of himself. Over the years, as I read his mother's Christmas letters, I pictured his world of Barbies, My Little Pony, and and a endless collection of hair bows in contrast to my existence -- living amongst a plethora of Legos (which seemed to reproduce) and little boys constantly leaping couches like Power Rangers. It's good he had the girls, and not me. He's a very practical, calm, thoughtful, light-hearted person -- exactly what silly girls need in a daddy, and also what the one boy in the sea of Barbies needs in a dad. HA!

I was/am/will always be grateful that I never had daughters. My own existence as one was fraught with emotional peril and battles for survival...and the in-your-face-affection-and-activity of little boys and young men contained far fewer hormonal land mines than the ones I managed to detonate ( or get thrown onto) during my years as a young girl. Odd girl out in a trio of sisters, I never wanted a daughter to undergo the odd-girl-out experience, or suffer under my mostly-hysterical young adult female viewpoint. 

For, although I was a daddy's girl and very secure in that realm, just as I was emerging into the tenuous world of young womanhood (the years when you want your daddy around to measure your latest heartthrob against) the professor/leader/wonderful Daddy I knew regressed into the teenager he'd never allowed himself to be -- and switched gears and families. As a young bride-to-be, I watched as he then literally ran off to another country to begin anew. 

It turns out it was the best for all of us first-edition kids, because he degenerated into something that had no resemblance to the man we knew as the head of our household. The infrequent worst days with us became the norm for the second-edition. Fortunately for them, they spent their childhood in Israel, where there isn't time for nonsense (with the gas masks in the living room and the automatic weapons next to the bed) and so they all survived with the (residual formerly British-occupied Palestine) tradition of oh-well-on-we-go resolve. At least on the surface. 

I personally think we humans, especially daughters, tend to project how we perceive our parents onto the image of God that we have. A loving, caring, involved dad gives the mother security in raising the young ones as well, and that fosters thoughts of a loving, caring, involved Creator in our lives. An emotionally or physically unavailable set of parents fosters the adverse.

A popular song came out a few years back, by the artist John Mayer. The opening lines sum this thought up, quite poetically:

I know a girl • She puts the color inside of my world • But she's just like a maze

Where all of the walls all continually change

And I've done all I can • To stand on her steps with my heart in my hands • Now I'm starting to see

Maybe it's got nothing to do with me

Fathers, be good to your daughters • Daughters will love like you do • 

Girls become lovers who turn into mothers   •    So mothers, be good to your daughters too

On the whole, my father was NOT good to his daughters (or his sons ) -- or either of his wives. The early years were the best... and as it turns out, I was as much of a mess as he, for a very long time. 

"...just like a maze, where all of the walls all continually change..." Still am, occasionally, except the walls only change color now, not shape, with the seasons. God's love for me has built sturdy walls that hold in Jonathan's love and light and laughter -- and mostly block anything unwanted, while we continue the journey we started all those years ago, with all these wonderful 20-somethings in our hearts and lives. 

Here you go, kids. Sage advice, from a pop artist. Sage advice. 

Fathers, be good to your daughters • Daughters will love like you do • 

Girls become lovers who turn into mothers   •    So mothers, be good to your daughters too

 

♪Try to remember the kind of September...♪

"♪Try to remember the kind of September When life was slow and oh, so mellow.
Try to remember the kind of September♪ When grass was green and grain was yellow.
♪Try to remember the kind of September When you were a tender and callow fellow.
Try to remember, and if you remember...Then follow.♪ Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow,
Follow, follow, ♪ follow, follow."

Darla Eichmann. I think that's how you spelled her name. HA She was the bubbly blonde female lead in Poly High's performance of "The Fantasticks", and for the life of me I can't remember who the male lead was... but this tune has stayed in my heart since middle school. A lovely, lilting, echoing air...a musical version of the breeze currently ruffling the leaves of the trees today.

Try to remember a different September than the one we remember today... a day where my friends Ann and Eva's husbands and my own personal Hurricane (then-spouse )  got locked down at Sheppard Air Force Base... a day when my brother Kirk's son sat on a military aircraft for hours on a tarmac, delayed for deployment because of the Towers' tragedy... a day when my little sister Alyson went into labor... a day when my three young sons, shown here, were on home school while we 'visited' Wichita Falls.

It's hard to remember "when life was so tender that no one wept except the willow..." as Tom Jones wrote in those lilting lyrics. Of course we wept, but not as a nation in mourning...this day in 2001 we wept collectively.

On a lighter note, remember that September has always had the power to make children cry, with the return to school. HA Just trying to lighten the mood. Every September has it's glories and it's sorrows. September 2001? Forever tinged with smoke and flames and loss and disbelief and horror, much like December 1941. 

Today try to balance those memories with the days 'when grass was green and grain was yellow...'. Most of us are grateful for a nation that rises from smoke and flames and loss with a renewed spirit. 

No matter what you remember about this date, remember that we are but passers-by in the annals of time, and that we cannot perpetually live in fear, lest we let the enemies of the past and present retain their power over us. We must live simply, and simply live, regardless of circumstance -- tragedy or victory. 

"♪Try to remember when life was so tender ♪That dreams were kept beside your pillow.
Try to remember when life was so tender That love was an ember about to billow.

Try to remember, and if you remember...Then follow.♪ Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow,
Follow, follow, ♪ follow, follow."

Ain't No Valley Low Enough..♪

 Head and shoulders stuck in a hallway cupboard, paint roller in hand, the opening strains of Diana Ross and the Supremes "aaaaah ah ahhhh ah aaaaahh ah ahhhh ah" drifted through the living room of the new house my then-husband and I had bought, with the help of my mother for a down payment. All of my family had paint rollers in hand, too, so we could cover up the ghastly remnants of 80's color schemes in a 1954-era tract house. It was a paint party.

I started singing in the cupboard, with Diana. "Ain't no mountain high enough, ain't no valley low enough, ain't no river wide enough, nothin' can keep me, keep me from yoooou!! aaaaah ah ahhhh ah aaaaahh ah ahhhh ah aaaaah ah ahhhh ah aaaaahh ah ahhhh ah ooohhh oooo oo mm mm"

A mountain-top experience that day, back in 1987. Still a newlywed,  surrounded and supported by my family, proud of ourselves that we could qualify to buy a home at 23 and 21. Those were the days. 

Been mostly valleys since then. HA Of course raising the boys included many mountain-top moments -- end-of-the-year awards assemblies, watching them grow into good men who could pick a tune or a baseball out of the air effortlessly, watching them graduate high school, get promoted at work, go to college. Until Jonathan came back into my life, after 35 years, the mountain-tops consisted mostly of the boys' successes, with the occasional spiritual breakthrough and a few church concerts when I could sing my heart out, like that day in the hall cupboard. 

Lately my two best girl-friends, both of who have known me for more than 25 years and still want to be my friend ( who knew??) have been popping in and out of my life long-distance and I in theirs. 

We don't have big fantastic experiences together like you see in the TV commercials, all glam and flash...just heart-to-hearts punctuated with more than a few explosive laughs at ourselves and others. Same with many my childhood friends, now on Facebook but close in heart after years of Life, Love, Divorces, Deaths, and Other Fortunes and Misfortunes. We check in on each other and keep each other's chins up in ways that only lifetime friends can do.

I've noticed a similarity in the way Protestantism and Catholicism function. ( Certainly at the time of the Reformation a new order deemed necessary, but in the 500 years since Luther nailed his theses to the doors, the Protestant church has become all about the mountain-top.) Deep, meaningful services, lively music, ongoing programs, and "worship opportunities" designed to entice the masses and save souls for Christ, at least, all those not Catholic...while the Mass is the same, for everyone, every day, every where. One can be in Arizona or Ecuador, and the readings and the litany remains constant. Boring, maybe for those seeking that youth rally/mountain-top/campfire experience that makes you cry  -- or comforting, familiar, restoring, like taking a walk or drinking water. The meaningful nature of the Mass comes from within, not on a video screen...

Faith isn't only dancing on the mountain tops, singing and twirling in the breeze like Julie Andrews. 

Faith mostly grows in the valleys, where the shadows gather and the winds blow colder and the floods rush through, and you survive being pummeled by the elements. You can't stay on the summit very long. All the water runs downhill...

Faith isn't a noun. It's not about the Presbyterian faith, or the Catholic faith, or the Jewish faith. 

Faith is a verb, a response to knowing that you are the same to God whether in the Alpine meadow or in the valley of the shadow of death, no matter what you've done or where you've been. 

Faith sings "Ain't no mountain high enough, ain't no valley low enough, ain't no river wide enough, nothin' can keep me keep me from You!" when you are huddled against a rock at the bottom of a gorge or surveying a majestic vista. 

Faith sings.  

Listing, Gently, On a Mother Sea

Brett posted a photo of his dorm room at Texas Tech last night with the caption, 'All moved in'. He has always settled into a new place with lightning speed. 
     In January, when we moved here to "The Manor", he had his room put together before the second load of lamps, furniture, and paraphernalia had even arrived from across town. 
     Three years ago, while Randall and I were lugging Craig's belongings to his freshman dorm (which smelled strongly of boy-socks), Brett called from The Cottage, where we lived at that time. " Mom, uh, can I have Craig's room?"  Balancing a laundry basket filled with tip-able non-laundry items in one arm, and cradling the phone to my neck while the other toted a zippered bag with new bedding in it, I said, "Sure. Craig can sleep in your old room when he comes home for the weekend." ( It's not as hard-hearted as you'd think. Craig stripped his room bare three days before HE GRADUATED from high school...so...) But before Rand and I got back from OKC, that day, Brett had moved into the new room and moved all of the Remnants of Craig to the new Spare Oom. Holy cow. 
     Today I am listing. Not making lists. Listing, like a ship on the water. One side to the other. 
      Nostalgic, a little wistful for my youngest's childhood discarded for new adventures. 
      Re-arranging furniture ( Randall did that part before he went to work), shifting books around, mixing Jonathan's large collection of sci-fi, military, childhood classics - Edgar Rice Burroughs and Ian Fleming -- and political diatribes with my own mix of mostly-chick-lit, Christian, political diatribes, and childhood classics -- Carolyn Keene, C.S. Lewis, and E.B. White -- helps keep my mind off of the empty room at the end of the hall and the new life unfurling eleven stories above Texas Tech University. 
     Even though I'm listing today, I'm oh-so-ready for a new phase of life.
     One where I am no longer a cancer patient or a surgery patient in interminable recovery, but one like Brett's where some stuff gets left behind and the important stuff gets taken on ahead.
     One where Jon and I pick up the reins of couples that have been together all this time and now can just be themselves without the concerns of parents concerned about their children making it to adulthood. Not that we have anything to be concerned about. 
     All nine of our kids are awesome. Courtney and Craig and Brett and Hope have left their respective nests. Carianne would have long ago (for somewhere quiet and full of books) but she has one more school year of hanging out with her twin siblings, Laura and Jack, until they graduate. Randall will get his own place when I get on my feet again -- and Samantha will, too, now that she has finished Phase 1 of her education. Plus, we'll have ten official kids when Craig and Emily get hitched the week before the twins' graduation! 
     So, today -- as I dust shelves and remember the Ian Fleming collection from a long-ago summer where Jonathan and I, two tow-headed kids had our noses in books while everyone else was outside eating watermelon -- I'm listing. 
     No storms. Just trying to get my sea legs steady while I wait to see what course I take next. 

If you've ever felt like you were adrift, or if you feel like it now, you can leave an anonymous comment at the bottom of my blog page. The Listening Post is open...
   
     
      
    
   

To beast or not to beast... that is the question.

The Listening Post is open… sorry I’ve been away for a bit.

                                    To beast or not to beast... that is the question. :-P

Ever get caught multi-tasking when you're supposed to be focused? 

While studying the hundreds of hues in the stained glass window depicting Saint Peter, right there next to my pew, I got caught up in the curves and colors and the creation of the art and the life and times of the saint himself. Good grief. Time to tune in. Through the echoes of “Taste and see, taste and see, the goodness of the Lord”, which I had just finished singing with the congregation, I hear the priest musing during his homily, “What if tomorrow no numbers existed? We wouldn't be able to survive. We couldn't measure time, we’d not be able to see what was in our bank account, how much to pay at the grocery store, etc.

Numbers seem to exist – but have you ever seen the number one? The actual number one? You’ve seen  written versions of it, pennies which representation one sent, etc., but you can’t truly see one, nor can you taste it, hear it, smell it. Feel it. It just is." 

Numbers are elusive. We experience them, but their abstract, intangible selves are not in our realm.

So it is with love. You can see it in someone’s eyes, feel it in their touch, hear it in their voice, but it is not to be defined either, only represented by human gestures. It’s elusive, but we know it.

So it is with God, who is love. God cannot be defined or quantified or explained. He just is.  People spend a lot of time trying to discredit the existence of God and use logic to dispel Christianity. They are somewhat correct. Logic has no place in love. I’ve said it before. Logic has no place in the night when a newborn is crying and you cuddle and comfort them through bleary eyes. Logic has no place in a marriage, where two completely different individuals share one life. Logic has no place in forgiveness, which is the expression of love. It makes no sense to continue to actively love someone who makes spikes in the seismograph of your life, and it’s easier to say, “I can’t deal with you” than to seek different ways to be in relationship.

Love makes us human. The priest this morning reminded us that we are animals with a soul. He even  admitted that he has often been a dirtbag, brushing people off, logically 'focusing on the task at hand" -- or conversely, aiming for the jugular to prove a point. ( D'Oh! When did start tailing me? Guilty as charged.) If we do not love, and hurt others in our own pain -- or worse, turn away from others who have hurt us or caused turmoil for us, we are merely beasts. 

We can taste and see the goodness of the Lord, which smells like, tastes like, feels like, sounds like, and looks like forgiveness and compassion – or we can live within our self-imposed boundaries, eliminating anything we can’t explain or control. Tidy up a bit to make ourselves feel like a better person. Seems like it might get a little stuffy in there… I can testify to that. Sigh.

Do you need to forgive someone? Be forgiven?? Forgive yourself? All comments are private and anonymous, when you click on the comment box at the bottom of the link.

. 

hobos...listening for the train whistle

For some odd reason, as a child I wanted to be a hobo.
The Union Pacific train track wound lazily around Pachappa Hill, and down the street at the Riverside Avenue crossing, I'd often see hobos hitching rides on open train cars while my mother waited for the train to pass.
Back in those days we didn't call them homeless people. They were just drifters, going from place to place looking for work. They WERE homeless, but by choice. I personally think they were the last of the pioneer line, always restless, not fitting in with mainstream society,  needing to see what else was out there instead of staking a claim.
One of my favorite make-believes was pretending I was a hobo. I'd get the yardstick from the laundry room, snag a bandanna from an older sibling, put my little treasures in it, and tie it to the end of the yardstick. After an adventurous hike, twenty-five feet across the patio past the calla lilies, LOL, I forayed out to the playhouse we had in a private part of the backyard.The windowless living room wall, a short section of front-yard fence, and the retaining wall to the neighbors' allowed for total freedom in play. A Catalina cherry tree grew next to the two-story playhouse. I would 'build' a fire with twigs in the middle of the floor, lie on my back, watching the leaves rustle in that tree, and listen for the train whistle. Where were those hobos going? I wondered. Did they have mothers who wondered where they were? Where did they take a bath or go to the toilet? My mind raced from imaginative to practical and back again.
More often, lately, I'd like to tie up my belongings, tie them to a stick, and disappear on a boxcar, just to avoid confrontation anytime I have a conversation with anyone about the state of the Union. Unfortunately, I like showering daily, having a refrigerator, and sitting on the patio with a cup of coffee. Also I do not have a concealed weapon permit, so I might wanna hold out for that. In the meantime, I'll pray about how to slightly withdraw from society and yet still be a help to those in need, a friend to those who want one, and a loving wife and mother to my own little tribe.
It could happen. I'll need more coffee.

Are you fed up with the rancor in everyday exchanges? How can we reverse this awful trend???
The Listening Post is open...

listening on the Mt. Rubidoux road...

Jonathan and I grew up in Riverside, California, he at the foot of Mt. Rubidoux, and me at the foot of Pachappa Hill. (I've often wondered how hilarious it would have been if we had been together in our youth and sent Morse code love notes to each other from 'an undisclosed location' on our respective hillsides.  Nerd daydreams.)

Mt. Rubidoux is a public park/landmark, with two roads encircling the hillsides for a total of 3.5 miles. The Up Road, and the Down Road, where back in the day dignitaries were driven to the summit to see the mammoth concrete cross at the peak. ( Historical note: the longest continuous Easter Sunrise service is held each year at the summit.) BTW That road happened to be designed by a distant relative of mine on my mother's side. Small world...

...ANYWAY - when Brett was four I decided to go backpacking with a group of friends in the coming summer. At 32, in much better shape than the present, I needed to endurance-train for the week. Teaching HeadStart half-days in the afternoons gave little Brett and me time to head to the base of the hill in the morning after the brothers got off to school. Brett would get on my back, like a monkey boy, :-) and we would hike to the top, play on the stone steps by the cross, and head back down to go off to school. What wonderful mornings to remember as the curly-haired one gets ready to go to college.

This summer has been difficult for me on a lot of levels. After sharing a fraction of my tribulations yesterday, my dear friend asked me to outstretch my arm and hold a paperback book. I told him I couldn't maintain that very long, and he said no one could. "Are you gonna hang onto your troubles?" 


I said, "No"... but was uncertain how I could simply set them down. They are quite real, and some need pain pills -- but I got his point. Don't dwell on them. And yet...


...I think a different analogy for someone struggling with internal and external issues might be something akin to hiking Mt. Rubidoux with a curly-haired four-year-old on your back. You can't set him down and walk away -- he has to go with you. You can't leave him by the side of the road for a while and then come back! Who knows what will happen while you are away?! Troubles and trials are not as sweet and wonderful as a loving four year-old monkey-boy -- but they are just as real, and demand just as much attention so you can get to those precious moments of freedom, like hiking in the morning and reveling in the beauty around you. Jesus walked a lot of dusty roads in His time on earth, and faced a lot of troubles...


I think I choose to put them in a "backpack", and use their weight to help me regain my lost strength and endurance. They will work themselves out, with God's grace, while I press with my journey on the Up and Down Roads. 

How do you handle crises? What works for you? Do you need to get a backpack and start walking?? If you feel like •need to • want to share, leave a comment. All replies are anonymous and private.

The Listening Post is open...

back to the listening post

This set of chimes swings on my patio. Corinthian chimes.  Glorious to behold and healing and soothing and in perfect harmony with the flock of doves who are, at this moment, cooing their way through the hot Texas afternoon.

The same Person who suddenly declared me Satan's Minion last week gave them to me in April, after Randall had recovered from his Hospital Adventures, and they have brought me much joy.
I'm ashamed to say that a series of junior-high responses to the naming as Minion, and Root of All Evil, flitted through my lonely brain last week in the wake of the Rejection, including giving back the chimes in a self-righteous manner with the disclaimer, "Give them to someone who matters to you this time."

I'm relieved to say that I am keeping them, because they did give them to someone that matters. Me. Flawed, headstrong, loving, wonderful Me.
Whether or not I remain in that Person's estimation has no bearing on the wonder that has always been Me. (I'm still bewildered and dismayed at the rejection, and wish I could fix it. I always will, I suppose.) Nonetheless, at one time our paths crossed, we shared joys, and those are the memories I'm keeping. In my heart -- and in my ears, out on the patio.
I have survived the calamities in my life with a steadfast resolve to keep Listening, to God, to my inner self where the Truth is. Those chimes, forged and perfectly tuned in the key of A, will forever remind me of the perfection of Real Love. Not social connections and tenuous inter-personal relationships, but Real Love, forged at once in adversity and joy, and sounding forth peals of harmony. Shaped and trimmed and tuned.

What do you hear? What are you listening to in your heart? Hope and happiness, even in daunting times? Do you replay the negative tapes that others try to indoctrinate you with -- if only you had.., if only you could..., if only you were...? I've lost a lot of sleep trying to reach unattainable standards over my lifetime... as I'm sure others have, as well. Click on the link below if you want to vent share muse.

The Listening Post is always open, and the chimes are gently clanging, in perfect pitch, in the breeze.

7.20.12 ... in search of milkshakes.

Two years ago today I got the approval from Scripps' long-term disability to go on leave. I had started radiation, had another complication with my temporary implant, and was about ready to plot something heinous against the passive-aggressive frantic narcissist manager who made my life unbearable -- even though she was a breast cancer survivor and should have been kinder. As I left the building I had the urge to run back in and smack her upside her fat little head...but since she has no nerve endings, nor any heart, I refrained. I still dream about it. LOL

I could have been kinder, too.  She's an irregular person. I could have been kinder.

A week ago today I was in recovery from a clean-up surgery for tissue that didn't survive the BigDeal.

Spent the weekend in an empty hospital, wandering around usually busy places on the 2nd floor, feeling as though Rod Serling had thrown me into a Twilight Zone, for real. Third time to go through surgery by myself. Never get used to it...

A month ago today my care team fought against all odds to get my blood pressure up, from 84/32, and get my kidneys back online after a twelve hour-renovation of the front side of my torso. I drifted in and out of a few days where I looked green, and felt it. 14 days in hospital trying to deal with pain beyond pain, and getting through it, by the grace of God. 

I've spent 33 days up here at the Cancer Center this summer, getting the reconstruction procedures completed that radiation, infection, and infection have precluded all this time. Not complaining. NOT.

If you have to have cancer, CTCA is the place to do it. Limo transportation, three full meals everyday, a care team that goes above and beyond to help you heal. One shuttle driver calls it the Magic Kingdom. :-) You are Loved here, cancer, recovering from, or dealing with after-effects. Absolutely Loved. 

I've spent time keeping myself from sinking into a depression, time pulling myself out, time with Jonathan via Skype with him holding the rope for me, his mom vigilantly praying for me, as my own. 

Valiant efforts included taking myself out to the shores of Lake Michigan, going to a Farmers market, pushing myself on walks when I wanted to lie down and cry, lying down and crying when I needed to.

It's hard for me to be alone, hard for me to continue to keep my strength up and my chin up and my spirits up these days, even though my cancer is at bay. Like my nurse said this morning, " You've been through hell." 

I remember a Spirit Day back in 1979, freshman year at Poly High school. I was a geekling-groupie to the lofty famed Seniors of the Theater Group, feeling lucky to sit near them at lunch and gaze on their glorious beings. This was Hippie Day, and true to their intellectual and artistic nature, the group of gorgeous actors came to school as The Establishment, setting up a conference table and wearing suits and ties while the rest of us ran around like rejects from an audition for "Hair". I got increasingly uncomfortable at their refusal to break character. Somewhere deep in the depths of me a panic arose that I'd lost my new tribe. I had some sort of a meltdown, and it was weeks before the Beautiful Ones made contact with me on the steps again. 

My life, since high school: same pattern, with brief successful events and the ultimate victory : raising three boys on my own who turned out exceptionally well. I suppose I could have been medicated and lived a quieter life, but i love the bumper sticker that says, ' Well-behaved women seldom make history'.  HA 

Quiet lives don't help other people struggling with the same issues, though, and I know that the suffering has helped more than a few know they are not alone. 

Being peeled and resealed has been an excruciating process. Perhaps more painful than the physical renovation was the abrupt rejection from a person I had known and respected for many years. Given a laundry list of all of my faults, a request to not communicate anymore, and a recommendation for mental health services was staggering to say the least.

It hit on all the triggers that have been just under the surface, for years, from family members doing the same thing. " You have been weighed, measured, and found wanting..." Daniel 5:27. Still I doggedly tried to keep up connections with people who really wanted nothing to do with me, in clumsy and ineffective ways... like that Spirit day back at Poly High, 33 years ago...except with a modicum of maturity. A very slight modicum, and not so much maturity as weariness.

 It's time to give all that up. Who are they to measure me??? Mere mortals who haven't got anymore sense than I. 

I like the approach one of my high school pals is taking. Live Life. Drink Milkshakes. Eat Crackers on Saturday. Plan to do Nothing, and Like It. To a small small group of us, he's encouraging us to Simply Live. 

God weighs, measures me, and finds me wanting in substance every single second. Yet He loves me anyway. Love survives all. 

Love survives all. Love causes one to laugh, to live, to giggle, in spite of excruciating pain. 

Off to find a strawberry milkshake, and consume it with gusto. Cheers.

Sounds of today 7.18.12

'Glimpses' of today...
•I'm pretty sure Santa might spend the summer up here because I saw him cross Sheridan Road ( shirtless) in shorts and sandals, electric-white hair and beard glowing in the summer sun. But I digress.
•A little girl eating ice cream with her mom. " I got a big chunk on this one" " Madison <sister> where's Cissy? At the doctor. Why. She needs a check-up. Why?" " I like to have this ice cream.." and an endless monologue of all her immediate experiences. Such joyful innocence and pure pleasure.
•When you stay up here a while, you start to see the same people in the halls and you stop, like ants touching antennae, to see how the other is doing. A few good reports: A lady started eating again after three days. I myself got out to the store, and to Culver's for frozen custard. A woman not using her walker for the first time in a month.
A few bad reports: Daughter-in-law not going to make it. Husband taking turn for the worse.
Reality, in all forms. People connecting. Lives sustaining. Lives fading. Lives recovering.
•A storm has blown in this evening, blustery and brazen, bringing much needed water to the parched earth. Howling around the hotel, slamming drops into windows and walls and windshields.
What's your inner monologue today? Was it an Ice Cream day or a Bad Report day?
Click on the link below and add a comment if you need• want• feel like sharing, . It will stay anonymous unless you identify yourself.
Someone is ready to listen to you tonight. Just listen to. you.

No teach, no preach. Listening...

So blogs are a wonderful thing, aren't they? They allow you express yourself, have a bully pulpit, subtly tout your own great qualities, coping skills, all-around superiority BECAUSE you can express yourself, and give you license to tell everybody what you think and WHY it matters. Yeah, whatever. This summer's Great Isolation hath caused me to confront myself and it's not been so great, but not so awful either. I'm just a reg-a-ler person with issues. ;-D
    Sorry for the preaching series. :-P 
    From now on my blog is taking a turn for the better. I might be gifted or what-evah in my writing, but I want to hear from peeps. Recent events on this silly FB, over silly politics, have made me want to run away and live on an island so I don't bother anyone anymore -- but that's just as selfish as having my say, because then I can't hear you. So... I invite you to respond ... all comments go to my e-mail and are anonymous unless you identify yourselves. I think people generally feel like no one is listening to them anymore, and so the shouting escalates until all we hear is raucous chatter and then we turn away from one another. Forget politics for a minute. 
Here's your chance to be heard, without comment. Just.listened to. 


Tell me, if you will or if you want,  how you feel about solitude, loneliness, independence, being alone. 


For true: I'm listening. :-) Hope to hear from you...be blessed.

Reality Check, with Rodgers and Hammerstein

This morning I couldn't get to church. I'd made it a personal goal, and couldn't meet it. :-P Post-surgery issue made that impossible, and I sniffled to Jonathan over the Internet about my frustration.


A few minutes later I restated my situation, ending a med-induced pity-party. 


" I did StupidCancer in a 3-BR cottage with one bathroom. Whenever I had surgeries, I had to dress all my wounds in my room, share a bathroom with two or three boys, and had nowhere to really rest. The front yard had a view of the underwear of the redneck rebels next door, and the back yard had a great view of the airport -- which was cool when the Jenny was flying but no so much on quiet days. I now have a dining room where we made many birthday memories together, a backyard where doves gather and chimes soothe, and a beautiful place to rest.This might hurt, but it's not cancer and it's not permanent..." and sniffling, I mustered up resolve and a smile and courage. 


My stalwart soldier-contractor, who survived living in a train-car and tents and other minimal surroundings in the war zones of Afghanistan for four years, nodded in agreement, and encouraged me to persevere. 


After we signed off, I watched The Sound of Music. A million memories flooded me as those opening scenes of the Alps lead to Maria twirling on a hilltop. My sisters and I tuning in every year to it on CBS; my dad getting irritated at the romanticization of Nazism; a youth telling me in recent months that her parents never let them watch the end of it because they didn't want them to be scared.

Really? Have we gotten to a point where we make things so soft for our kids that they can't handle history without a happy ending? In two generations we've gone from kids who went without butter during WWII during rationing, to kids who are coddled and cradled from Anything Bad. Oye.

Sometimes there are no happy endings on this earth. Often, there are no happy endings.

A year ago, my friend Mark did his best to look after me, getting my decrepit minivan fixed by his body-shop owning neighbor -- and also trying to fix me up with the neighbor. Having fallen in love with Jon some months earlier, I declined the fix-up with the guy HA but promised Mark I would see about getting the van to him.

Mark had routine surgery the next day, and with a huge abscess in his abdomen, succumbed to sepsis. We will always mourn his sudden departure from us. Always. We don't get over loss, just move along with it in the background.

My cousin Mitch, who rivals Mark as the Nicest Guy Ever, lost his home to flames in Colorado two weeks ago. They'll move to another home, but not without dealing with his wife's breast cancer, and without most of their worldly possessions, which are now swirling around as an ash heap where people once lived and loved.

My elder cousin, Howard, had tears in his eyes upon learning of the Colorado fire. His home burned to the ground during his freshman year of high school, and at 84 years old, it still made him remember the loss. We never forget.

Loss scares us, jolts us from our comfy lives, makes us wonder what we did to deserve this, makes us strong and weaker all at once.

At some point, we need to build a bridge over loss and GET OVER IT, the bridge, not the loss, as best we can.

Loss is part of the human experience.

Think globally about loss. In Howard's lifetime, 6 million Jews were exterminated, 1600 Catholic priests, and countless others who opposed the Third Reich; there have been three major wars, 30 years of threat of nuclear war, and now an invisible war which mostly takes the lives of women, children, and American soldiers while a terse group of ideologists press their own extreme agenda.

Over history, life has been often been brutal.

In the book of Genesis, just after the Creation  murder occurs. Cain bludgeoned Abel over a matter of wheat. ( Incredibly! The first brothers ever in history, created by God through the First couple in Eden,whose parents walked with God. How could that happen???)

In the 1500's, the Catholics murdered the Calvinists by the thousands for seeking a different path. By the thousands. For thinking differently.

Black people were bought and sold as slaves not but 170 years ago, and lynched regularly down here in the South -- until just a few years ago. A neighboring community has an active chapter of the KKK. Want their website? It's full of Bible verses backing their ideology.

Women still suffer at the hands of extreme religious men, private parts mutilated to preclude any pleasure during marital relations, not to mention a host of other horrific indignities. Today. Not in history. Today.

Can we turn off that movie at that point? I bet those mutilated women wish they could, but they can't.

We are spoiled comfy children here in America, even with all the nonsense going on in our national arena.Yes, we have blessings in our lives, and good days and wonderful people are to be cherished and loved. 


Awful things still happen. We cannot change that or avoid it or turn off the movie.

This life is not about us, our opinions, our feelings, our needs and wants -- and yet it is. God created this world for us because He loves us, but we are only on a temporary pass. Home is yet to come.

Jesus spelled it out.

" You will have trouble on this earth. But take heart, for I have overcome the world." John 16:33

Mortal life is going to have the balance of human experience. Bliss, sorrow, gain, loss, plenty, and need. When the time comes we will leave this place and go on to where no tears are shed. Until then, we need to know, embrace, accept suffering. It's what makes us more like Christ. maybe not Christ-like, since we have not one iota of His grace or mercy, and we hang on to our hurts wishing we could have a re-do. Suffering is a chance to offer your WHOLE life up to heaven. Not just praise songs and happy worship and fervent prayers that all will be okay, even turning off movies so our comfy lives have no prickly moments.

Jesus suffered. Suffering is part of the birth experience. Suffering is part of the death experience. Balance.

The end of  "the movie about Jesus", was the Crucifixion and then the Resurrection. If we skip the Crucifixion and go straight to Easter Sunday, we reduce the Messiah to a rabbi, a teacher, an evocative poet. The Crucifixion was the ultimate Suffering. Christ took it on for us, so we could get through the sufferings of this life and onward to heaven. It's gonna hurt. No question.

Pain is part of our human experience. Pain was part of Christ's human death. He chose to go through it to save all of us after we leave this life... and if we turn off the movie to skip the Bad parts, we miss out on His purpose for us.


Know that you are Loved no matter what happens to you on this beautiful planet, because more glory awaits. 


Be brave. Watch the end, and wait for the sequel.

Honorable Heritage

Happy Fourth of July! One might think that I'm stuck in the house today, unable to fully participate in the Independence day festivities. True, I have no potato salad, HA, and I'm ashamed to say I could not put out our American Flag by myself, but this is the best 4th of July I've had, patriotically speaking.

These are shots of Jonathan in the service, one from the 80's as a young airman, and one from last year, in Afghanistan, working at Camp Phoenix.

I miss him terribly, especially today, but so proud of this humble hard-working man. He might not have heroic medals or an action-filled service record, but there are many letters of commendation and accolades among his trappings.

He's my hero. He could be working a desk job somewhere, running IT stateside, but he spends ten months out of the years away from us, the people he loves, to keep his band of brothers connected.  In this age of digital and wireless technology, their communications rely on Jon and his peers. That's my boy.

He comes from a long line of patriots, as do many of us. We recently were blessed with his great-grandmother's cedar chest, and two days before he returned to Kuwait we spent an entire evening reading news clippings from WW1, draft registration cards, letters to home, and checking out button-up shoes and a year-book from 1911. G'grandmother waited for G'grandfather to come home from the Great War not long after she graduated from high school, and while she waited, she filled page after page of huge scrapbook pages with precisely-clipped articles from the local newspaper of battles and losses and war events. These pages are 2x3 and the fixative she used thinly along the top of each, still remains intact. I envision her at a kitchen table, carefully ordering each clipping chronologically. Several pages have articles side by side, instead of stacked one beneath the other to save space. These are the ones regarding the fall of the Kaiser and the end of the war. The ones she waited for.

I do the same thing G'grandmother does, wait for my boy to come home from this great global war. I don't know how they'll ever take down the enemy, but we watch and wait anyway.

My clippings are gleaned digitally and stored digitally on Facebook and in my blogs. I suppose I should download my Facebook page one of these days, but by the time our grandkids are the same age we are now, I doubt they'll be able to retrieve my stuff. It's not in a trunk. :-P But my heart carries the same sense of waiting and prayer and devotion that hers did.

Also in the trunk are three flags, two of which contain only 46 stars. What the heck? The family held on to these flags since before Arizona and New Mexico gained statehood. Whoa... talk about American history.

I also decided today since I couldn't get out, that I would steep myself in recent Gilbert family history, and so have pored over photo albums of Jonathan and his brother Jerod on a series of vacations with their grandparents in the late 70's. Replete in seriously short shorts and tight 70's t-shirts (which should have never been manufactured LOL), there's my blue-eyed boy on a horse, his sleepy-eyed brother wearing overalls; traipsing through Colorado; at Mt. Rushmore; on a train with their grandparents; exploring Montana; letters from home from a momma missing her tow-headed pair. What a treat for me to see the love their grandparents had for them to take them on long vacations, to hear their mom's words, to recognize with a great grin those rascally boys who pitched kumquats at me and my sister in our pool during those very same years.

Today I applaud my soldier, the blond-haired blue-eyed kid in the vacation shots, who has spent every year of his life ( give or take one or two) in service to his country since 1984.  I am beyond grateful to be part of such a loving family who loved this country, and to join their long line of "memoirists", like me, who preserve our tender memories in word and thought and sentiment.

What a blessedly quiet, blessed Independence Day.
"Long may our land be bright with freedom's holy light, protect us by Thy might Great God our King!!"

Cacophony of Coos...

Around five-thirty each morning three planets can be seen over the Sigler's roof next door. I doubt that the Siglers know this and am acutely aware that they have nothing to do with the alignment of the planets, HA, but I digress.

Hanging like jewels against a purple sky, one just above the other on a silver strand, I am reminded of the Trinity, and I sit and pray without words.

Framed by the silvery-green branches of the big mulberry tree, they twinkle and shimmer right up unto the dawn when their sparkly ancient lights are overtaken by the tilting of the planet  towards the sun.

Some sort of bubbling banter builds while the dawn comes up, as those planets fade from view.

I wish I was a better ornithologist so I'd know what species burbles animatedly, like soprano bubbles, breaking forth intermittently into streams of soprano bubbles. I observed two bubblers exiting their lofty mulberry porch, chittering as they relocated to the big oak when Shiloh and I ventured out into the soft dark.

Pitted against the bubbly-squeaks of the treetop inhabitants came a series of brayings.

Yep.

To my tea-sipping ears, it's either a bear cub in captivity down the street, a small donkey wishing he were elsewhere, or an old hound whose larynx has given up the ghost -- yet still wanting to howl at will.

I'm hoping it's the hound. HA

Four feet from the patio door, with my little taffy Shiloh on dawn patrol, I felt fairly safe from whatever brayed down the street.

Out on the prairie, while settlers crossed the land, there may have been a dog on patrol, horses who could sense danger, but no patio door. I can't imagine sleeping out in a bedroll ( that hadn't been washed since last year), hoping my children weren't eaten in the night by anything slithering through the grasses, padding by on silent feet, or lying in wait until the campfire dwindled to embers.

Mixing up a batch of muffins whilst musing on these things, I marveled at all the women, pioneers, settlers, peasants through the ages who put together breakfast after those tenuous nights, mixing biscuit dough and baking it over the revived fire, while the dawn came up.

The back door to the kitchen let in a loud burst of dove-ishness as I slid the muffin pan into the oven. Every dove in a two-mile radius burst forth into a lively cacophony of coos and chortles, building and spilling over into the new morning. They'd survived the night, and exuberantly proclaimed their joy together.

I know the settlers heard a similar birdsong every morning as they crossed this nation, bringing it forth from revolution to destiny. I know it gave them courage, as it does me, that we have survived another night, saved from phantom brayings and other imaginings. I know that when birds sing that all is well with their environment, and I take a cue from them that the day will be, has already been, blessed.

Be blessed, my fellow Americans. Be blessed.

Strong arms

June 26, 2012


After a terrifying day post-op with complications threatening my recovery, I managed to stay awake long enough after my ten'o'clock meds to glance through the days' news, and suddenly realized that while I had awakened early that morning to a series of nightmarish situations,  fluid build-up, the inability to breathe, and so on -- people I knew and loved were in the face of danger. 


My grandparents, aunt and family have lived in Colorado Springs since I was a toddler. While Grandpa, Grandma and our beloved Uncle Kenny have been gone from us, for years now, memories of days in the 'Springs are as much of part of my life as birthdays and Christmas. One cousin's home lay directly in the path of the inferno, and my aunt and uncle's 45+ home had to be evacuated.


What a nightmare. A real live no waking and rubbing the eyes nightmare.


My little boys, back in the day, had recurring nightmares.


Two-year-old Randall used to sleepwalk, out into the living room, big chocolate-brown eyes glazed over, terrified of SillyDay ( that's all he could get out).


A tiny Craig had regular horrific visions of the Mesei Cats ( which turned out to be the nasty Siamese cats from Lady and the Tramp, torturing him -- and would coming running in the night, electric blond hair flying, to wedge himself into my sleepy embrace until he could fall asleep again. 


Baby Brett somehow retained the seemingly peaceful image of orangutans at the San Diego Zoo, strolling in front of his perch in the viewing enclosure, in a nightmare file that would cause him to cry out in terror every other night or so.


Those nightmares ended for my little boys as they grew older, but as we grow older we face equally terrifying situations where it seems there are no open arms to jump into. Spouses die, cancer strikes, relationships end,  businesses fail, homes are lost, catastrophes happen.


Whilst I recovered from my own medical nightmares, my cousin and his wife faced the loss of the their home and pending breast cancer battle with the strength and grace of the Garden of the Gods,  just up the road. Blessedly they had ample time to retrieve things from their home, making hurried trips back and forth between his older sister's house and the one with the flames rushing towards it. Their children gathered favorite possessions, and my cousin drove off with the last load as 'the bomb' of flames leaped the mountain ridge, seen exploding in his rearview mirror.

On Thursday he took his wife in for a lumpectomy, in the part of the 'Springs where life had gone on fairly regularly, picked her up, and headed out for a family weekend with one thought in mind -- be together and face the future as it comes.

I'm headed home today from an arduous, excruciating two weeks, preceded by a spring of highly dramatic events including the life and death struggles of my own son.

It's only been three weeks since Jon left for this stretch in Kuwait, ten days since I woke up from surgery and had to absolutely rely on the inner strength I have from God to be able to sit here, early this morning listening to the birds. The nightmares of Tuesday have abated, for the most part, but this will be a long recovery in which there will be many moments of wanting Jon's arms around me -- and the secure peace that they are there, if only in spirit. The nightmares in Colorado have abated, with much work to be done as well, and one young lady in particular has already decided that she wants a double window in the new house. They grow 'em good up there in the Rockies.

I made Jonathan laugh last night and the sound of his rumbly tones seemed to clear all the nightmarish strings away from my own scenario. It's been so hard on him to be so far away from me when I hurt and seemingly do nothing -- but his twice daily 'hugs' from Kuwait bolstered my lagging spirit and gave me courage. My cousin's practical, tender approach to his own situation has and will certainly do the same for his family.

These two guys depend on strength from a source beyond understanding. It's been a long time since I heard my cousin pray, but I'm guessing it's close to the same tones that I hear in Jonathan, across the globe, "Dear heavenly Father, hold on to Amy, let her know it will be all right, give her rest and strength and healing..."

Run into the same arms that they do, whenever you need to.

God never sleeps, and nightmares are banished within His embrace. There still may be ashes to clear, but you are safe within His arms.