"Massive uncertainties"

Today, out in New Hampshire where The Great Aunt has been living, a few family members sit vigil by her side as she seems to be slipping away. I cannot be there to say good-by to a woman I have loved.

The Great Aunt and Paddington

Seems we have entered a time of sadness and are feeling the grief of people passing away, of diagnosis of illnesses, of struggles against depression, of broken plans and dashed promises and other less noteworthy things like sinus infections and Japanese beetles eating your grapevine.

Our friend, Ed Hague who has fought a three-year battle against stage IV prostate cancer has thought a lot about despair and posted some brutally honest thoughts to his blog. See “The Benefits of Despair” on www.wedonotloseheart.com.

It seems to me that we Christians are often guilty of trying hard not to be in that dark place.  Or perhaps what I mean to say is that we try to find ways of mitigating suffering and evil, even to the point where we worry that acknowledging despair is somehow heretical. Instead we pass on little sayings meant to tell us: “Get along little dogie” Can’t stay here, you know. Everything happens for a reason. When God closes the door he always opens a window.

Steve Froehlich writes with more realistic passion in the latest issue of Critique in the "Letters to the Editor" Dialogue section.

As John writes: we know how the story ends [see the book of Revelation] But these certainties, the ground of hope in Christ, do not resolve the massive uncertainties that cloud our lives right now. Nor do they provide us with explanations about how God is accomplishing that purpose in our lives or in our moment of history. But we are people who believe in the Resurrection, and we choose to be content living with hints and foretastes (none more important than the Eucharist) of the shalom of the world made new.

Yes. The crucible of human suffering seems somehow more relieved when we admit that life is often filled with “massive uncertainties.” To be together with others in the midst of shit is oddly, the very place where my hope and love in Christ grows.

A loving vine-dresser

Today we read together the Common Prayer for June 27 and were awed by words so appropriate to our present circumstances.

“Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We would like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet, it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability – and that it may take a very long time. Above all, trust in the slow work of God, our loving vine-dresser.”  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

Today is a  last-day-before-your-life-changes day. Tomorrow our teenage granddaughter arrives to make her home with us until whatever time she is ready to launch into the world. She has one year of high school left. Her life is full of change and unknowns. So is ours.

We are excited and a little nervous. So is she. We have talked a lot about what this could look like, but do we really know? No. What we do know is that she wants to be with us. We love her and she loves us even if I can’t listen to her music that vibrates my ribs and stuns my ears. Yeah. I used to, but those days are gone along with some of my hearing. Give me a little Mozart adagio and I’m happy. There are a lot of details to look forward to. Like Dr. Who episodes and driver’s education and a part-time job and new paint for her room. My only stipulation was – sorry, not black. It’s too hard to cover if you want to change it some day.

This isn’t what we imagined for this stage of life. But isn’t that often how things turn out or don’t turn out? And don’t we wonder if only we could skip the hard parts and fast forward to the place where outcomes are certain and wouldn’t that be just be so sweet? We believe there will be sweetness in ways we don’t know. That in adding to our family – we are doing exactly what God has in mind for us. And for her. And that his work in our lives is a long, slow process. At least that’s how it’s been for me.

New Normal

Today is packing-the-car day. Tomorrow we head to Tennessee to see our children and grandchildren. More than ever we want to be with them. There is a story unfolding. Here is a piece of it.

Costco Delivery!

Last December the LaRose family all came down with a stomach virus and were sick as dogs right around Christmas. Everyone recovered in about four days. Except for our daughter, Sember, hers hung on for days. A month passed and she was still unable to get out of bed for a full day at a time. More weeks passed until finally she went to the doctor to see if they could find figure out what was going on.

It’s a long story, but she ended up at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale where she was seen by a friend of ours who is pretty much a medical genius at sleuthing and he diagnosed her with Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS disease). POTS sometimes occurs after a virus attack or some other trauma to the body. Here is a link that gives some idea of what life is like for a patient. With one caveat. Young people have a much better chance of recovery. For older adults there is no cure. Dr. Bergstrom compared the quality of life as that of a person having congestive heart failure or kidney failure with dialysis.

The prospect of having another life-long, chronic illness (along with CFS) has precipitated a time of grieving for everyone, but especially for Sember. She feels like she’s on the steepest learning curve of her life as she figures out how to live with her new normal. There are days when she can’t get out of bed because of overwhelming body pain and wicked exhaustion. (In the midst of it she somehow maintains a spirit of kindness and humor.) Parenting, keeping a home, feeding the family and so many other things are now difficult if not impossible.

Their community and church has rallied around them in wonderful and unusual ways. One way was figuring out how to help with meals. It is one thing to deliver a meal or two to someone who has had a baby or has been in the hospital, but to help someone who has an on-going chronic illness? Finding ways to help without burning out is definitely a need? A friend devised a solution by inviting people to contribute to a fund that would hire a person who cooks:

Anne wrote to friends and family: “I have a friend who is a private chef. She cooked for us for a while when we were uber busy, and she is amazing! I would shop for proteins, starches, and vegetables, and then in four hours, she would put it all together and make enough food for several days. She likes to make healthy food and is very knowledgeable when it comes to cooking for people with food issues such as gluten or dairy allergies. Better yet, her food is yummy.”

After figuring what it would cost to hire Cassie for four hours a week, there was enough money donated to make it happen through the next three months! (If there is anyone out there who would still like to contribute – let me know.)

This was such an amazing gift. Who would have thought? I am deeply moved because if it were possible, we would personally remove this thorn from their lives. Impossible, of course. So this solution is a great comfort to everyone who loves them.

All this has meant that parenting five children will be a big challenge for both Sember and Shaun. Our own lives will be changing along with theirs because we have invited our 17-year-old granddaughter to live with us and she will be coming at the end of June. We love her and I think it is safe to say she loves us and is looking forward to life here in Minnesota. 

We didn’t know we’d be joining the ranks of grandparents who have grandchildren living with them. But this could be a very good thing for all of us. In a way it will mean that we, too, will be finding our new “normal.” We look forward to seeing what God will do as we step into the unknown.

If you are the praying sort, we would definitely appreciate prayer. What this will mean for me, I’m not certain. For some reason, as you could perhaps tell by my long absence from this blog, I haven’t been able to write for awhile. But today, I felt compelled to at least put this out there before we leave tomorrow morning.  Thank you for stopping by.

"One only lives to make blunders"

Today I came across a piece of correspondence written by Charles Darwin in 1861.  Many of us enjoy making a devil out of him. But, he was, after all, human. A man made in God's image whether or not we ever acknowledge it. This letter makes me think we could have been friends. I realize that may reveal a streak of depression and a fondness for bombast in myself, even so ....
             
                   ...But I am Very Poorly today and very stupid & Hate Everybody and 
                   Everything. One Lives Only to Make Blunders. - 
                   I am going to write a Little Book for Murray on Orchids 
                   & today I HATE them worse than EVERYthing.
                  So Farewell & in a Sweet FRAME of mind
                  I am
                         Ever yours
                                   C. Darwin

HOWEVER, my orchid after refusing to bloom despite being babied for several years, has at last glutted itself with flowers. That is something to love about life. Or at least note.

Creamy Orchid

Robin Williams & William Cowper - happy endings not for sale

 Most emphatically happy endings are not guaranteed in this life. Robin Williams has been haunting the shadows since I heard of his death. It seems so wrong wrong wrong.

Our grieving responses for him are so strange in a way. We did not know him, we only think we did because his life was public. But it wasn't really his life we knew - his private life,  we only knew his work with its staggering gift for making us laugh and yet the sadness in his eyes showed through. His gift was so enormous, it must have been been a burden to him and even to those who loved him. I wonder if he could he carry on a normal conversation or relationship without making it a stage for performing? It might have been difficult to be with him if he could never turn it off.

A friend, Steve Froehlich, sent this last week and I am passing the whole thing on because Robin Williams' death has made me think again about those who suffer from depression, and those who take their lives in desperation and silence and the few who note their passing because their lives were largely unknown. As Christians we take comfort. For God knows his children. He carries them Home. Perhaps for them we can see it as a beginning. A good beginning. One of healing and renewed energies and unexpected joy. Yes, I do believe.


Steve writes the following:

This is an excerpt from a blogger whom I read occasionally -- he's Anglican, like Cowper.  His remarks were prompted by the confluence of having sung Cowper's poetry last Sunday and Robin Williams' death.  I've made one addition to the closing paragraph, a change the author approves.

Steve F.

William Cowper. Did the artist pick up the sadness in his eyes?

"Sometimes a Light Surprises" by William Cowper

    Sometimes a light surprises the Christian while he sings;
    It is the Lord, who rises with healing in His wings:
    When comforts are declining,He grants the soul again
    A season of clear shining, to cheer it after rain.

    In holy contemplation we sweetly then pursue
    The theme of God’s salvation, and find it ever new.
    Set free from present sorrow,we cheerfully can say,
    Let the unknown tomorrow bring with it what it may.

William Cowper was converted (in the crisis experience sense) while in an asylum after a suicide attempt. After that he was an evangelical. Not only an evangelical but a Calvinist. Not just a Calvinist but an experimentalist. He lived for awhile with John Newton. They wrote poetry together (though some think Newton was a drag on Cowper's poetry and that Cowper wrote best when separated from Newton). Though their friendship became somewhat strained, they remained friends.

[the blogger points to evidence of the oppression of legalism in Cowper's "A Living and a Dead Faith"]

    Easy indeed it were to reach
    A mansion in the courts above,
    If swelling words and fluent speech
    Might serve instead of faith and love.

    But none shall gain the blissful place,
    Or God's unclouded glory see,
    Who talks of free and sovereign grace,
    Unless that grace has made him free!

But there's more to Cowper's life...and death....  His last, and, some think, his best poem was written in 1799 (he died in 1800). It is based on an account he had read of a sailor who was swept overboard in a storm. According to a witness the man swam and stayed afloat for awhile, could not be rescued, watched as the ship moved further away, and finally drowned. Cowper describes the feelings the poor sailor may have had, but in the last two stanzas turns to his own situation, first identifying with and then separating himself from the sailor:

    I therefore purpose not, or dream,
    Descanting on his fate,
    To give the melancholy theme
    A more enduring date:
    But misery still delights to trace
    Its semblance in another's case.

    No voice divine the storm allay'd,
    No light propitious shone;
    When, snatch'd from all effectual aid,
    We perish'd, each alone:
    But I beneath a rougher sea,
    And whelm'd in deeper gulfs than he.

The last two lines reflect a statement Cowper had made in 1793: "My sin and judgment are alike peculiar.  I am a castaway, deserted and condemned."

Cowper's pre-evangelical-conversion suicide attempt was the first of several. There came a point at which the despair finally descended not to lift the rest of his life. So far as we know, Cowper died believing himself doomed. That's not the way Christian biography is supposed to end.

Though Cowper died thinking himself damned Newton did not think so.  He believed Cowper woke, no doubt to his own surprise, in glory.

One of Cowper's poems, addressed to Newton the former seafarer, describes the difference between himself and Newton. It also describes two poles of Christian experience:

        That ocean you of late survey'd,
        Those rocks I too have seen,
        But I, afflicted and dismay'd,
        You, tranquil and serene.

        You from the flood-controlling steep
        Saw stretch'd before your view,
        With conscious joy, the threat'ning deep,
        No longer such to you.

        To me, the waves that ceaseless broke
        Upon the dang'rous coast
        Hoarsely and ominously spoke
        Of all my treasure lost.

        Your sea of troubles you have past,
        And found the peaceful shore;
        I, tempest-toss'd, and wreck'd at last,
        Come home to port no more.
 
I don't know the how or the why of Cowper's life and despair. Nor do you. Here is a comment that makes sense from the perspective of Christian faith and points to the real difference between the depression of Robin Williams and William Cowper is to be found essentially in Christ now and experientially only in eternity:

"All men are tragic figures. Artists have a deeper sense of their own failings and helped us to sense our own. Robin Williams was funny because we saw the conflict in him - funny, joyful, silly, simple conflicted with a dour drug user, with a broken family whose wrinkly eyes made you either want to melt with mirth or explode with sorrow. He was a tragic figure, and we sensed it, because he showed us the tragedy of who we are. In Christ we have already been freed from this tragedy, just not yet."

My favorite Cowper hymn is "God Moves in a Mysterious Way." I will continue to sing these verses:

    Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;
    The clouds ye so much dread
    Are big with mercy and shall break
    In blessings on your head.

    Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
    But trust Him for His grace;
    Behind a frowning providence
    He hides a smiling face.

    His purposes will ripen fast
    Unfolding every hour;
    The bud may have a bitter taste,
    But sweet will be the flower.

[For some a light will surprise "the Christian while he sings." For some the rain does fall with refreshment and relief.  But,] for some those big clouds of mercy will break in the age to come. Some will behold that smiling face in heaven. For some the bitter bud will yield to the sweet flower in the world to come. Not till then.  [The blogger would have done well to end where he started by affirming that for some, "Sometimes a light surprises the Christian while he sings"]

So I hope.

Steve.

You aren't the first to get there

Listening is not always something I do well. This past year I've been forced to learn about what I do that prevents me from listening. In some ways I have welcomed these revelations and have hoped they would help deepen some important relationships. In other ways I really didn't want to know the disturbing truth about myself. It left a bad taste in my mouth.

Perhaps everyone else is aware of the symbolism embedded in the Chinese character that is translated "to listen." Not me. I only recently learned about "ting."  It is very interesting. Okay, more than that. It is fascinating and attractive.

On the left, the ears are prominent. The eyes are on the right looking out at you. The straight line beneath them signifies intense focus. And beneath that is the heart with the tear-like drops. Together, they express an action that requires more senses than just the ears, and becomes more powerful and more meaningful than just "listen" as we would say in English.

Often I listen more with my mouth than any other body part. When I happen on a person in need - it could be a friend, a relative or even a stranger - my first impulse is to give words. To let them know I understand their difficulties and to offer hand-me-down thoughts from wherever I have gathered them. It is partly a lunge to let them know I "get them." The motivation for this flows from a polluted spring - I feel a guilty responsibility to fix what I see. If I don't or can't, it may indicate my own deep failure to be someone who heals and helps. This is not exactly empathetic.
   

I've been learning a good deal about listing from Zack Eswine, author of Sensing Jesus.  He writes:

"In Jesus we learn that we are never the first to arrive on the scene. We enter the moment quieted to learn what has transpired there before we arrived. What has God been doing prior to our arrival? Once there, what is his intention for our presence? Our nervousness, our desire to do well, our past wisdoms and successes, our longing to have nice things said of us, or our leftover feelings from how we just handled our spouses or were handled by our deacons - these ought not guide our words and actions once we are on the scene." p. 201.

Never the first to arrive on the scene. Not quite how I pictured it. There's something very freeing about that.

Ice Jam

It’s been more than a month since I’ve posted and I’m sorry about that. I'm going to try to ease back in here. I’ve been dammed up like the Zumbro river I mentioned in the last issue of Notes From Toad Hall. We captured a little video of the muddy waters and chunks of ice moving under the bridge. The gradual building of pressure finally broke an ice jam and we happened to be there at the moment it happened. Something I’d never seen before. It was both frightening and fascinating at the same time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Y-kW3_ztzI&feature=youtu.be

Ice jam on the Zumbro River

Everything has had to come together from prepping, selling, looking for and purchasing another house and it has, in amazing ways. But I am excruciatingly aware that people do this all the time, and some do it over and over again, and I am that anemic American that thinks moving is tough. During the first six years of our marriage we moved thirteen times; somehow I’ve either forgotten what it took or just don’t have the stamina anymore. Plus, it has been thirty-three years since we last moved; that's a lot of time to forget how to pack boxes. You’d think I’d be more mature about the unknowns and the stress, but no, it seems not.
It’s not just the upheaval of moving or entering a new stage of life, it’s a combination of other things that add to being somewhat depressed and emotionally jerked around. Like earlier this week I learned that my recent up-tic in hearing loss qualifies me for hearing aids and that this isn’t going to go away, like I hoped it would. And I may need to wait awhile before we can afford them. (So I might be saying WHAaaa? a lot.)  One moment I’m so thankful we sold Toad Hall in three days and the next I’m quite certain we will never find another house that works for us and we’ll end up living in a yurt in my mother’s back yard. This has made it hard to think or write in a fundamentally coherent way. On lots of days going to bed with Almond Joy bars and People magazine seems like a good option, but honestly, I only succumbed yesterday when I couldn’t resist George Clooney on the cover. But even more shameful, is being tempted to buy the nasty National Enquirer. Fortunately I said, Satan, get behind me, and really? I mean, really? People, I don’t think dressing in a kilt qualifies as cross-dressing.

Camilla's World Falls Apart

 I have a friend whose family has been with the State Department and they have relocated across the world many times. She says that each time they moved she wished she were a nun and only needed to pack an extra habit, prayer beads and a cot, but the feeling passed once they got to their new home. I count on that feeling to return. The good news is that we haven’t needed to down-size as much as we initially thought, and in the new house we get to look out the back to a wooded ravine and park full of birds, predators, wild ginger and ramps. A bedroom and laundry on the main floor, and a wonderful and convoluted journey through the wilderness of real estate negotiations brought us to this house. I didn’t think we would make it, but my husband did. In all, we have much to thank God for.
Thank you for stopping by and, again, I apologize for being so spotty with postings, but don’t know how much better I will do in the next few weeks as we continue to pack and plan to move at the end of the month.

Another reason not to write

Ready to show

We continue to clear surfaces, sort drawers, pitch expired canned goods like crazy people. We are almost ready for the 360 Video Tour. By Saturday Toad Hall will be listed. I’ve heard that when people look at a house for sale, they open drawers and cabinet doors. Would that be the case? I mean do you have to be interested  in buying before you open the dressers drawers? Or are we just a snoopy species and look anyway? I shuddered when I looked under the bathroom sink with snoopy eyes wondering what whoever might think when they saw ... well, when they saw what they saw? Like a gallon of periodontal mouth rinse, a dried up box of soft wet wipes, and much else. This stuff is going straight to the trash, no thinking about who might be able to use this.
The big triumph today is that my office is ready to show and it looks magnificent. Never better. Better than Denis’. His desk tops are always organized and clear. I admire this, but one just shouldn’t do that much clean living. It makes me slightly bitter. But right now? Clean. Clean. Clean. I WIN! You’d think anyone would be able to write a book and more here, it’s that inviting. For the time being But not one word will get out because as soon as I start, books and papers gather from nowhere and start breeding like rabbits and this in the digital age! When everything could be done online? But now, at least I’ll have the memory of this tidy place where I’ve brooded and wasted so many years staring out the window. Eventually when I look back at these pics, I may try to rewrite history to say it looked like this all the time. But now that you know, you can hold me accountable. I’m asking you.

(Yeah.  And speaking of the Happy Bunny "let's focus on me" could the video I took be any more out of  focus?)

Anita just came up to show a spring-time wreath she made for the front porch. It is so so so whimsical and sweet with that little crocheted hen sitting one her nest surrounded by pussy willows and baby’s breathe I could eat it! If I came to our front door, I’d want to buy this house just because of that. Wouldn’t you?

Spring is here. Maybe.

Saturday is it, then. The house goes up for sale. We are in the chute and I don’t know where or when we will come out.

We do not lose heart

Last year at this time when our board was together for the annual meeting, we skyped with Ed Hague who lives in Tallahassee, FL. He has been on our ministry’s (RansomFellowship) Board of Directors for … I can’t remember how many years. Early 2,000s? We were saying good-bye to him, amid tears and laughter, as he was dying from stage IV prostate cancer. It had invaded his bones with a vengeance and he was too sick to join us. He had tendered his resignation. We felt heartbroken.

The amazing, the unpredicted, the strange thing is that after treatment with a powerful new drug he regained enough energy and health to join us this year (2014) in Chicago. He was only the 11^th person world-wide to receive this treatment and because of his spectacular recovery he has become their poster-boy. No one knows how much longer he'll live, but we'll rejoice for whatever time he has left. So we thank God every day that he is still here and as impudent as ever. He continued to pastor us, even through his failing health, but with a new mantra, "I'm dying and can say whatever I want to you." He will attend this year as an honorary member and the request that all his power be reinstated minus the responsibilities. (We'll see about THAT, old man.) Today, he and his wife, Betsy will join us in Chicago for our board meeting!

I’d like to recommend his blog where he recounts his remarkable medical journey, the terrifying disappointments, the unexpected mercy of facing death and the amazing provisions of God for his family and business. I suggest you begin at the beginning and read through the whole thing. You won’t be sorry.

We do not lose heart: http://wedonotloseheart.com/ .

Ed Hague, 2007,  Rosemary Beach, Florida. That is not a coke.

Our Weakest Moments

 It has been weeks now since we have seen the sun. Among other things I have blamed the weather on my attitude. Which is one of scratchiness and resentment. My community (Denis and Anita) have been tiptoeing around me. I am at least slightly, if not clinically, depressed and a little confused. Constantly questioning what should I be doing? What have I done besides beat the pants off ten strangers who think I’m a guy in games of “Hangman” on my iPhone? (Someone should block me.) And seeming to end days having done nothing. That isn’t really the case when I give an actual account.

This morning I left the house intending to go to Dunn Bros Coffee to work, drove there, changed my mind, came back home, parked the car in the garage, left my computer bag on the trunk of the car because I didn’t want to carry it into the house or take it a block up to Caribou where I bought an Americano and returned home. Get it? For all of about six minutes, I risked leaving it right there in broad daylight. When I walked up the drive, OF COURSE, it was gone. I was almost 95% certain it was Denis who found it and took it in. (WHY is it that whenever you choose to do a foolish little thing like back out of the garage – even though you’ve done this easily one billion times- the day your husband stands watching, you smash the side-view mirror against the garage door???)

In my office, I sat down to collect myself and read the next chapter in the book O Love That Will Not Let Me Go: Facing Death with Courageous Confidence in God.  You are laughing. Don’t. I have a friend who is dying of stage four prostate cancer and also my mother is 83 years old – though in good health right now. I want to learn some things.

Chapter 10. “A Witness in the Way We Die” by John Eaves.  (Each of the 22 chapters are essays written by a different person.) John Eaves died in 2004 of metastatic colon cancer. This is from the last sermon he preached. It begins:

Life is not about us. Life is about Jesus and our witness for him in this world. It has taken me a lifetime to embrace this fundamental truth in all of its implications. It has also taken the same amount of time to recognize that our witness for Jesus is frequently manifested in our absolute weakest moments rather than when we are at full strength..”

It ends with:

In our weakest moments, God moves toward us and asks us to extend ourselves to others…

I was overwhelmed as I understood this is not just about end-of-life issues. There are universal implications that address ME where I am at today. So I am confessing. I don’t know how it can be that my weaknesses which are so petty and disgusting in the midst of things like dying of cancer or getting your legs blown off at the Boston Marathon can be of use to anyone?  But I’m here saying that, today, this is who I am. Selfish. One eye on the weather, the other on my coffee cup. I desire to be the person who sees and allows God to move in me and use me in the midst of my imperfections. I move toward you in this small way. I would be so very awe-struck and happy if this extends, somehow, to you who might read this.