Death, Taxes, and Ubuntu.??

The train whistle wails, along the tracks beyond Barnett Road, as I sit down to tap this out on April 15, usually known as Tax Day. ( I can’t remember a time when I lived in Wichita Falls that I even remember hearing the train whistle, although I’m sure I have.  It reminds me of growing up on Pachappa Hill, where the train tracks curved around the hill, and we crossed them over a short bridge - which seemed the height of the Grand Canyon to 4^th graders - every day on the way to school. )

     Last night a storm raged across hundreds of miles spawning 113 tornadoes through Oklahoma,  Nebraska, and Kansas. This morning it’s so quiet I hear the train from four miles away. Nothing even makes sense this morning, although it’s fitting to remember today that two certainties in life are death and taxes.

      Even though Benjamin Franklin never ventured to Texas ( it hadn't been settled yet or he most certainly would have), where weather is ALWAYS uncertain, he wrote in The Works of Benjamin Franklin, 1817:"'In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."

      That’s for sure. In the last five months topsy-turvy-uncertainty adequately describes my life. Tuesday marks five months since my ailing father passed, although I’d mourned him for thirty years, sometimes visibly, sometimes unconsciously. A month after Daddy died, I finally got move to a Real House in a Real Neighborhood after five years of struggling-single-motherhood Cottage Existence. Just after we moved, my oldest son succumbed to his Nefarious Blood Disorder of fourteen years, and the last six weeks have been an active battle to keep him on this planet. Recovering from cancer and healthier than ever, I feel a strange emptiness within me.

    I have carried way too many worries for one person, and within a matter of weeks, they have all been lifted.

     No longer do I deeply miss, nor feel guilty about not calling, Daddy, even though he had dementia and couldn’t converse. He has been freed from his earthly form, and I can’t call him. I can talk to him anytime now, and he hears me. God has supplanted the fractured family he left behind with a huge extended family, to include two wonderful men to call Dad. More on that, in a minute.

   Struggling single-motherhood has been altered to last-kid-in-school-graduating, releasing me from any and all dealings with a recalcitrant/physically abusive former spouse who sees his children as obligation/ holiday depression triggers, and it also releases me from a former in-law who still, to this very day, uses me as an excuse for over a dozen years of non-communication with HER grandchildren, even when they are deathly ill -- not to mention never having to write another note for anyone ever again. Ever.

   Struggling-single-hood has been supplanted with a joyful partnership with my Gemini-Jedi Jonathan, who is the calm to dry my tears, the laugh to ease my fears, the glass-clink to my Cheers. I am no longer alone.

    A week ago, two-hour surgery ended a fourteen-year odyssey with a Nefarious Blood Disorder plaguing my oldest son. I no longer have to worry about Randall bleeding to death from a simple bruising or bumping his head. So many people have said, “Why didn’t they ever do that before? Didn’t anybody think about that before??” Yes, it was considered before. Yes, we thought about it before. It happened when it was supposed to. Case closed – except for the enormous amount of energy I will have when I recover, without that ever-present worry.

   I no longer have to worry about being embraced by family. Without rancor, our immediate family has never been close. We are good people, but just not close-knit. We think too much, over-advise, and adore too little. It’s how we roll. And that’s okay, because I now have six half-siblings, six younglings ( Jonathan’s ), his parents, his brothers and their families, my CousinDadHoward ( my mother’s second cousin) and Craig’s Emily to flesh out my family unit.

    All of this is grace, grace to an undeserving outspoken rebellious un-lady-like me. The Baptists would say Satan has handed me the troubles I’ve had, because I haven’t been holy enough. The Methodists will tell you there is no hell, only absence from grace, but let me tell you that even in the grace of God, I have lived through some hell. The Bible speaks of principalities and powers that roam the earth that are not of God, and they have tried over and over again to drag this tired momma down into the depths – and on a few occasions, have briefly succeeded. I chose to cling to Love, even kicking and screaming at times.

   Knowing you are Loved, no matter what happens to you, keeps those powers and principalities at bay. Knowing you are Loved changes everything. Knowing you are Loved makes you grateful for the two boxes of macaroni-and-cheese in the cupboard instead of seeing the rest of the empty shelves. Knowing you are Loved, you feel prayers and petitions wrapping themselves around you in a storm.

    Knowing you are Loved gives you the ability to reach beyond your own desires and needs and seek the happiness of others. Across African cultures, this philosophy has many names, one being ‘ubuntu.’Archbishop Desmond Tutu offered a definition in a 1999 book: "A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good - based from a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed."

   That Love, for me, comes from Jesus, who personified Ubuntu. Our salvation and redemption were of the utmost importance to Him. “Greater love hath no man than He who lays down His life for a friend.” John 15:13 While death and taxes remain constant on earth, the Gift of Jesus remains timeless. The gift of ubuntu, the gift of Love beyond measure.

  In the past weeks, I’ve come to understand that in a way more deeply than I ever imagined. I have begun to practice Ubuntu as real Christian love that goes beyond surface good deeds. Real Christian love is welcoming those who despise you into your life and loving them. Not faking it either, but just letting God love them for you. In the days to come, I know I will experience it further. I pray that we all will, and bring about the Kingdom.

Be blessed.