Men go away. Women, stay.

I think men should go away for a minute while I post this. Women. Stay.

It doesn’t seem right that I celebrated turning 65 the day after so many young lives were over. So violently done. I should have been the one to leave and not come back. I want to apologize for my life.

But here it is Monday morning and the most incomprehensible thing about life is that it goes on right up until the moment when God says, Come Home. I’d like to say the deaths of those children will make me live more carefully, more intentionally. I know. Sometimes we’re full of crap and we quickly forget, but I’m going to try not to.

Here is reality: we celebrated my birthday. Denis made supper. He doesn’t cook often so that was cause for rejoicing and a bit of mirth. He opened a bottle of red wine, made marinated pork chops, steamed cauliflower and baked sweet potatoes without help. Anita made chocolate cupcakes with coffee ganache icing. You should never buy a woman a handbag, the chances of it being something she likes are almost zero, but Denis did and I love it. 

Gluten-free Chocolate Cupcakes with Ganache Icing

   The first leg of my celebrating actually began a few days earlier – let this be a lesson to all you out there with aging intestines and more diet restrictions than you care to make public. We were on our way back from visiting family in Chattanooga and me doing a reading and signing for The Exact Place at Camp House Coffee. No sooner had we left the Smoky Mountains and I was tricked out with Lattes and Poppy Cock. How can I be 65 and so stupid? By the northern Kentucky border I was screaming for an exit and scanning the roadside for shelter. There was nothing for miles. Denis yelled, “Download the RoadAhead app for your iPhone. It will tell us the location of the next Rest Stop!!” So I did. And when it politely requested if it could locate me on the map and I said YES! AND HURRY UP, it ran and ran and ran and finally said it could not FIND me, and we were ON AN INTERSTATE FOR PITY SAKE!  There was a happy ending when we finally found a MacDonald’s 30 miles down the highway, but it was close. A small thing, really, isn’t it?

Bad Margie

 Maybe this could be a small gift of being honest? I plan to keep telling you over the next few years. I don’t think I was ever at the “top of my game,” anyway. My face, my body, unfortunately my good sense and brains will fail me more and more over the next years. I don’t plan to hide my little face cancers and droopy eye-lids from you. Perhaps, in turn, this will give you hope and perspective – something I surely need –  to have the composure, the grace and the inner beauty to grow old in front of you and in spite of our culture’s quest for eternal youth and beauty.

Thank you for stopping by here and know that I wish I could bring you into the real place where I live and share a moment of joy and kindness. I’d like to bless you as you return to whatever it is you are called to do this week, this month. The office, your business, your families, relationships, the babies and the elderly you care for, your students – whatever it is you do to love and serve others, may you also find moments to celebrate and care for yourself. Merry Christmas. Love, Margie.

The givenness of everything

Denis and I think, speak, try to live with the understanding that all we do is whole. We are not Christians here and over there we are an athlete, here we practice our faith, here, for the moment, I am buying spices or reconciling my bank account. Same with writing.

Posted on the Kalos Press blog:

Richard Doster helps me think about what this means for my own writing and faith as he points to so many writers of great literature whose faith was integral to their life and living:

“In speaking about life and faith, Marilyn Robinson declares, ‘I’ve never found them to be incompatible …. Frankly, historically speaking, a great deal of English language literature is generated directly out of religious thought and religious erudition.’ Then, with words that bring O’Connor and Percy to mind, she said, ‘For me, a religious mindset creates a habit of scrupulous inquiry relative to virtually everything ….’ She explained to Lanpher [Katherine Lanpher was interviewing] that, ‘… everything has religious significance. It’s not as if I go from one area of interest to another,’ she said, ‘they’re simultaneous for me.'

“From Robinson, throughout the whole of the conversation, there’s not a syllable of defensiveness; there’s no awkwardness, no need to shy away from anything she believes. And from Lanpher, there’s only respect for a great writer.

“The conversation later veers down this charming path, as the Pulitzer Prize winning Christian so casually explains to the secular interviewer on a nationally distributed podcast that John Calvin is 'cool in a lot of ways. If you read his sermons on the 10 Commandments,’ Robinson explains, ‘they’re absolutely beautiful, profoundly humane interpretations of things that many people find forbidding.’ She continues, talking about how Calvin situated sacred and human experience in the mind and in perception, and about how she feels indebted to the 16th century reformer for his understanding of, 'the givenness of everything.'  ”

Kalos Press reprinted this article with permission from byFaith magazine.

Corn for our seeds

     In today’s Common Prayer – February 22 – we read this prayer:

“Lord God, extend our faith so that even when we fail to see the fruit of our planted seeds, we may have the assurance that every inch of soil overturned will lead to a harvest some day.”

     Last summer our organic farmer friends gave Anita bag of seed corn that was a year old. Joe and Becca said plant however much you want, we can’t risk low germination from old sweet corn seeds. They also generously gave her space for six 100 foot rows. It has always been her dream to grow enough sweet corn for eating delicious golden kernels all winter. The thing is, you might have a good harvest off the ten to twelve corn plants you put in your small urban garden, but that’s still only three ears per corn plant? Three dozen ears altogether? Unless you have room for a lot, it’s a waste of time and space. So the possibilities of corn through the roof had her hungry-eyed.

     This is what happened. We had so much corn we could have begun a factory farm of feeder hogs. We raved over the sweet, tender ears, we ate them like chainsaws – sawdust flying, protective goggles over our eyes.

     It had reproduced itself five hundred fold with wild energy. We ended up freezing 46 quarts and giving away at least 20 dozen ears. For the first harvest we picked three or four wheel barrels full and pushed it up to the yard where we set up a little canning factory. Anita picked, Denis shucked, I cut the kernels off the cob, and together we heated it to boiling point on a camping stove and then put it all in zip lock bags. Tato, the dog ate cobs as he could and all the leftover greens and cobs were dumped over the fence to the chickens and pigs. And that was just the first picking. It’s almost March and we still have plenty of corn to eat.

     thought a lot about that harvest and everything that had to coalesce under sunny days and warm nights to make it so darn good. This rarely happens in life. Sometimes. But rarely. You invest and invest and once in a blue moon you get to see where that seed went and what it did. The prayer above is mostly how it is. Maybe years later you get a facebook message thanking you for all the pizza you served the youth group and how they’ll never forget listening to Purple Rain and thinking about Ferris Buellers Day Off in your living room. We need to keep stumbling down the row year after year because you never know when the corn will come home. But even if it doesn’t, we are assured by God that he grows a great harvest that will overflow all our wheel barrels and burst our freezers. 

Anita and I picked the first load.

 

Denis did the shucking while I began cutting it off the cobs.

Anita took a turn with the knife while I began blanching the corn.

The Chickens feasted on all the leftovers.

   

We made a huge pot of corn chowder on the camp stove in the yard and ate it with Joe & Becca and all the interns. All fresh - even the milk came out of the Jersey cow that morning.

Stop that

Yesterday we came through JFK on our way home from a few days with friends in Connecticut. Wonderful days of doing mostly nothing. After we landed in Mpls, we sped through the airport to luggage, until I asked, Excuse me, WHAT’s our bleeping HURRY? Well, we were merely extending the dash from Cos Cob to JFK, darting through traffic, dodging insane drivers gesturing, cursing (we don’t curse, being perfectly midwesternly polite, as always, we keep it in and get autoimmune diseases) narrowly missing death, arriving at the terminal with a panting dog and a pulse of 145. We had been advised to arrive very early and expect long delays through security because the terror color is red these days. Imagine the shock of NO ONE ahead of us! Through the rat maze! Straight to the cheese! Never any where, any time has this happened in life. (We suppressed the urge to run for cover.) But no matter. We still rushed to our gate, gulping coffee, snarfing a sandwich, finding a seat so we could absorb others’ hurry vibes. We kept one eye on the CNN reporter squeezing juice out of children playing outside bin Laden’s compound and the other eye on the sparrows building a nest above the agent’s desk. Sparrows. More spiritual, prophetic, don’t you think? It was lost on us since we needed to remain hyper-vigilant, tuning ears to roaring announcements and making strategic use of the restroom before our Zone was called. Whatever.

You feel pathetic – wanting to preserve the good of slowing down, being aware of inner speed. You say you’re going to be intentional about not getting back on the track to blood pressure hell, but you still jab the “Walk” button twenty times to make the signal reappear faster.

Today Wes H. wrote: “…thank you for "The Scent of Slow" post today. What a good and true reminder to be patient, to wait, to live without closure, to release the relentless need to control and rush and speed...”

I told self to not give up. I believe, as he wrote, “It's good to remember that, like a slow-cooked meat, God's redemption works itself out gradually, seemingly at a snail's pace... but the taste at the end makes it all worth it.”   

Complete redemption will get here, but, dang, I wish it’d hurry up.

Proximate Justice

Steven Garber responded to my last post and placed his comment on my facebook page. I felt his response would make sense here, too. Steve often uses the word "proximate" in helping us reach a place where we acknowledge that justice or love or even the coffee I make is not going to be perfect even though we strive for it. So the question then is: how do we live in this precarious place desiring the Kingdom of God to be fully present and when it is not, how do we live faithfully? Answering that question has shaped much of his own life and ministry.

Steven wrote: "I don't know Steve Schaper, at all. But I wonder what on earth in Margie's post could possibly be seen as a universal statement about police brutality? It fails in even the most pedestrian logic. Most of the world lives by tit-for-tat, an eye for an eye. You gore my ox, and I will gore yours. It is a dead-end. I have many commitments, one being the Middle East, and especially the generational struggle between the Israelis and the Palestinians. It is a short-term fiction to think that one can be "for the Israelis" as over against the Palestinians-- and the reverse is just as much a problem. The harder work is being "for" both histories, and both futures. Sort of like being "for" public justice in Houston, huh? Or maybe even Madison? Unless we are content with justice being just "just us," that is. The real "killer" here-- excuse the term --is that Margie's much-loved brother is a county sheriff in Minnesota, and I know for my years of listening that he embodies a just mercy, a merciful justice. And that was what is missing from the arrest on the streets of Houston."

Pilgrim Food 2011

Going slow the last two weeks. Not a convenient time to be sick or diminished. You know, at Christmas when you want to take care of everyone? Feed them, love them, give them brilliant gifts.

I have a lot of scraps stuck in my Bible; yesterday one I hadn’t read in a long time fell out.

Pensees from a NYC church bulletin:

I am a poor wayfaring stranger,

While traveling through this world of woe.

Yet there’s no sickness, toil nor danger

In that bright world to which I go.

I’m going there to see my Father;

I’m going there no more to roam.

   I’m only going over Jordan,

   I’m only going over home.

                  - folk spiritual

  

Everyone is on one sort of journey or another: failure to recognize this is to fail to be human and to suffer great deprivation. Walker Percy, the late novelist and metaphysician, once said in conversation, “I have learned that the most important difference between people is between those for whom life is a quest and those for whom it is not.” The vision of a quest confers meaning on our lives. It enables us to see all that happens as moving us closer to or further from our goal, and to make distinctions between what helps and hinders us in our journey.

                 -  Diogenes Allen Spiritual Theology

Christ has planted his Table like an oasis along our pathway, in order that when we become weary with travel, weak and hungry in our souls, discouraged and wounded because of our false steps, stumbling and failing, we may then enter there and be refreshed with the living Bread of Life.

                  -  Carl Olof Rosenius (1816-1868). A Lutheran lay preacher on the Eucharist as the viaticum, the pilgrim’s food

In joy, in adversity, in this new year may you be nourished and blessed by God's good hand. Thinking of many of you I know who stop here for a minute or two. 

Please go here

I’m often thankless and miserly in faith forgetting where Christ dwells – with the poorest and most afflicted among us. I am pierced by this child, Asher. Reminded of God’s great love and presence with “the least of these, my brothers and sisters.” And by inference, his dwelling with each child who wants him, even me.

Falling Down

                                            Denis and our youngest granddaughter, Ava.

Two nights ago Denis fell down. I don’t remember the last time he fell down. The problem with being married to me is that it’s now public. When it happened he says he lay there a minute calling, but I didn’t hear because I was running the kitchen faucet. When he stumbled in with blood running down his face, scrapes on his palms and knees, he looked deathly. If I had ran out seen him pitched face down on the sidewalk, his computer sliding to the steps, there might have been two casualties.

My first cry, WHAT HAPPENED, followed by WHAT were you doing outside in the dark with your computer? Silence. (My first clue that he was going to stonewall, but I niggled it out.) He’d forgotten to send an email and internet was down, (Again!) but if we walk to the end of our driveway we can pick up a signal from a hotel a block away. That’s what he was doing, even tho it coulda waited until morning. On the way back to the porch he twisted his ankle when he accidentally stepped off  the sidewalk and rather than save himself he tried to protect his computer. It was mostly painful scrapes and a very bruised hand. (Didn’t prevent awesome scratches to his computer which now makes mine look nearly invisible.) But HUGE scare. Good grief. Our first thoughts were what if he couldn’t get to St. Louis where he is defending his capstone project this afternoon.

It’s happening in a few minutes because we’re here and he’s mostly okay, tho a little nervous. His computer survived the fall so powerpoint still works. His eye is swollen and his right hand is twice normal size and hurts, so he can’t shake hands. If he did he’d fall to his knees, which for some profs somewhere, might misinterpret, but not here, they're a humble bunch. So they’ll probably hug him.

His topic is ordinary Christians being faithful in an alien and increasingly pluralistic society. Grossly oversimplified, but very much his calling and emphasis since I’ve first known him. So he's here, today, being faithful himself, even though a lot of life is about falling down. I fall down enough (literally and otherwise) and why does that make me feel stupid and old? It shouldn't, but it’s kind of nice to have my spouse down here with me. I look forward to celebrating this event tonight when it’s all over.

Bread for Work

Friday, May 21. We’re in St. Louis today. Denis has picked up his cap and gown. We’re making bread deliveries: Cranberry & Wild Rice. Seven Grain. Cheesy Chives & Potato. Fresh from a bakery in Rochester. There are people in the Admin department who make this place happen and they deserve a lot more than a loaf of bread as a thank you. Their patience, kindness and diligence has been part of what has made his seminary experience outstanding. What they do is a great work of being faithful in the ordinary and everyday. It was a pleasure to meet some of them and say thanks for all you do.

Denis has slowly been working on a seminary degree for the past number of years. Covenant has an excellent distance program so he could take courses at home in addition to getting down here for special weekend classes each year. Sometimes I came with him ostensibly to find space away from Toad Hall to find uninterrupted writing time. Not that it happened. I often ended up with friends. Or driving clear across town to that special coffee shop for what I can’t get in Rochester. Once we were snowed in at a hotel. Crazy. Really humbling because I’m such a braggart about how much snow we get in Minnesota.

Denis has been equally blessed by both his professors’ wisdom and their humility. Their mentoring and example has challenged him to think outside his normal interests. Christian/Muslim relations. Abuse. History of the church. He wouldn’t have traded all the travel, the mountains of books, the billion papers written late at night, or the sacrificed brain cells for anything in the world. Except for me. He’d trade for me. Tonight he graduates.  I’m proud of his accomplishments. We also have a lot of friends who’ve been awfully tolerant of us through this journey. We're really grateful.

In Denis’ words:

My studies have provided me with three rich graces. The chance to study under godly, wise scholars whose love of Christ and knowledge of Scripture is remarkable. The chance to reflect on what I believe in an organized way. And the chance to have my walk with God deepened as I have been challenged anew to see all of life and culture under Christ's Lordship.

Use Protection

Often I am to blame for trouble in marriage, friendships, failures of measuring up, the practice of patience or any you-name-it virtue, I know this. But I forget that Satan also has a sniffing devouring interest in tearing us away from security in our Brother and Protector.

We cannot claim with certainty that every one of our sufferings and hardships is the devil’s work, for there are many sources of troubles in this world: our own sins, the sins of others, the hostility of the world, the brokenness of our universe because of the curse, the Lord’s discipline. But even though we cannot with confidence accuse the devil of being the source of all our troubles, we can be sure no matter what the source that Satan will be actively using our sorrows to discourage us and to undermine our faith. He is always going around like a lion to devour us. He is always lying, accusing, and murdering. This is his nature, and his purpose is to seek to tear us away from our security in Christ. Therefore, we must always pray against him, no matter what the source of our particular sorrows.
- The Heart of Prayer by Jerram Barrs

The God who stays

For those of us who are apt to conduct our lives and relationships, especially our relationship with God, based on how we feel, this is a good word:

Reality is what we notice on the surface – what we feel or see, what superficial perspectives we might gain, for example, from television’s evening news. Truth is much larger. It encompasses everything that genuinely is going on.
The reality might be that our world looks totally messed up, that war and economic chaos seem to control the globe. [I would add environmental breakdown.] But the truth is much deeper – that Jesus Christ is still (since His ascension) Lord of the cosmos, and the Holy Spirit is empowering many people to work for peacemaking and justice building as part of the Trinity’s purpose to bring the universe to its ultimate wholeness.
The reality might be that you do not feel God, but the truth is that God is always present with you, perpetually forgiving you, and unceasingly caring for you with extravagant grace and abundant mercy. Not only that, but the very process of dealing with our lack of feelings and our resultant doubts about God is one of the ways by which our trust in the Trinity is deepened. – Being Well When We’re Ill by Marva Dawn. P. 30

Eat me

Life is full of surprises, some of them unwelcome, revealing, unintended consequences. Today I made a salad for lunch, and when it was all prepared with the right amount of dribbled dressing it was pretty perfect. I thought I would sprinkle a little pepper on top, make it special, you know, as if. Without thinking or checking, and must I check the lid every time? I gave a shake and dumped, oh maybe three tablespoons on top. The lid was unlatched and the ring in the pic is what was left after I removed the bowl, although I didn’t think to take a shot of it just then. You can imagine how much fell in the center.

This is too much like life. (You know how I love metaphor.) Some little surprises. Some forgetting to close the lid and some needing to do a bit of cleanup if things are going to be spared the dump.

I’m beginning to read Jerram Barrs’ The Heart of Prayer and earlier came upon this as he reflects on the simplicity and effectiveness of the Lord’s Prayer.

“Because we can come to the Lord without fear we should also come to him honestly, acknowledging the particular areas of sin, of coldness of heart, and of lack of faithfulness that make up our lives. Where am I failing to love God with my whole being and failing to love my neighbor today? Just considering our shortcomings with regard to those two great commandments would make for a long list! We should remember that the Lord wants us to be specific, for it is only as we face up to the practical reality of our failing to love God and to love our neighbor that we begin to see the seriousness of our sins. Sin is a nasty and ugly business – the truth is that every day we grieve the Lord and we hurt the people around us.”

All true. And what’s good about this process of confession is we get rinsed. Like the salad. I thought of rinsing it in a strainer. Holding it under the faucet as streams of black pepper washed down the drain, and with another bit of dressing I ate the whole thing and it wasn’t bad. I’m in need of rinsing and it’s not as easy as we’d like to think, that getting ourselves to the faucet.

Receiving the Offer

Snow is steadily sifting down, inches piling and piling on every branch, auto, and ledge. Now the wind is picking up and the temperature will drop to minus fifteen tonight. Two of our neighbors are already trying to shovel and snow-blow. Yesterday there was a break in storms, a window of cold sunshine allowed roads to be cleared from here to Waterloo, Iowa where the prairie winds drifted snow two feet deep. That window allowed our son and his family to leave around noon as they headed south to Micah’s family in Herman, MO. Having them arrive at 2:30 A.M. and to awaken the next morning to the creak of footsteps sneaking up the stairs, and to make buckwheat pancakes, to have Anson and Paige (no time wasted sleeping) rolling up the rugs, dragging boxes of toys, and redesigning the first floor was chaos and celebration. They left by noon. Later in the day my brother-in-law and youngest sister hurried through Rochester from Cedar Rapids back home to Biwabik, MN in a race to beat the next storm. We gulped a cup of coffee and snarfed a cookie together, talking as fast as we could eating time. The window for travel has now closed again for another day or so.

And now Denis is out snow-blowing, trying to beat the pile-up and the dropping temps.

Today, first thing, I was off to the post office to mail the eBay Bible to girlonajourney who “won.” Getting out before the roads close. This is good. My guilt is half assuaged to think someone will be making good use of this journal Bible. The reading schedule in my old raggedy copy, which I’m now fine with, has taken me to Isaiah where the prophet records the words of “the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel” saying: “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength..” Trying to think what that means and get it into every day real nights and days, and trying to take myself (get back, Satan) far away from the final phrase of that verse: “but you would have none of it.” I’d like to accept this offer for what most of us need most of the time. Or is it just me?

The base ridge

Five-year-old Anson showed me his thumb as soon as we arrived last Thursday. “Grandma, look at this!” At first I thought it had been painted purple. But he’s too boy to let anyone near him with nail polish. Gender roles are very distinctly defined in his mind. It had been slammed in the bathroom door at preschool and was healed enough so he could lift the nail all the way up like a hinged flap. I shuddered and almost gagged. He smiled and yanked it all the way off. “It’s pokin’ me,” he declared, meaning it was getting hung up in his hockey gloves when he tried to pull them on. He showed the dead nail to his dad hoping for some kind of reward like maybe a thumbnail fairy would show up if he put it under his pillow.

Turning sixty-one is something like getting slammed in the bathroom door. It surprises you, and sometimes it hurts a little. People feel sorry for you. They send sympathy and love. And friends make you supper of easily chewed foods. Thankfully I have no body parts to put under my pillow, but sometimes my brain flaps around, unhinged, searching for right words more often than it used to. I can swing certain body…okay, arm parts that were once taut and hard, especially those triceps. I remember watching my sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Griggs, write on the blackboard, her underarms flapping, and I swore mine would never look like that. The young are just that, young. Unknowing. Unable to think past their stomachs hoping to make it to lunch in twenty minutes if the history lesson would only end.

Anson’s thumb is now tender and vulnerable, but from the root a new one is already growing. It’s awfully small, just a ridge at the base. But it’s coming. It’ll be okay. In a few months he’ll have a new one altogether.

As I scope out the years to come, I see I’ve got a ridge at the base, too. I have to cup it in my hands sometimes and blow on it, in order to see it, in order to keep it going. But it’s there. Waiting to spring up. It won’t be going away even if the surface turns a little discolored. I read some of David’s words this morning. “…consider well her ramparts, go through her citadels, that you may tell the next generation that this is God, our God forever and ever. He will guide us forever.”

I love the superlatives here: FOEVER AND EVER. Denis and I have an ongoing discussion about the use of superlatives, which I’m not allowed when complaining. Like: They ALWAYS. You NEVER, EVER. Etc. But God gets to make exceptions to the rule. Yes. Against all odds, heaven awaits along with new bodies. My base ridges belong to God forever and ever.

Do you believe what you say?

Sorry, I haven’t been around for awhile. It’s been easy to sit and stare, not thinking about anything at all, as though that were possible. It’s another autoimmune issue and not that serious. Some parts of it are funny. Especially when I get dead man’s fingers. (Great. Just in time for Halloween.) Looking at the yellow cadaver-like ends, (it’s always temporary, muchas gracious) Denis and I wondered if it could be a warning to people who use certain fingers in aggressive, rude gestures. (That wouldn’t be me.) Just like when your mother used to say, don’t stick out your lip like that or it’ll stay that way.

I’ve recalled parts of the Heidleburg Confession -- I’ve always liked that piece of work. It has a beauty to it that other confessions sort of lack.

Q & A 26
Q. What do you believe when you say,
"I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth"?

A. That the eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who out of nothing created heaven and earth
and everything in them,
who still upholds and rules them
by his eternal counsel and providence,
is my God and Father
because of Christ his Son.

I trust him so much that I do not doubt
he will provide
whatever I need
for body and soul,
and he will turn to my good
whatever adversity he sends me
in this sad world.

He is able to do this because he is almighty God;
he desires to do this because he is a faithful Father.

So, do I really believe this?
When I take a long view of life, one that extends past death, there’s no doubt; I believe he will provide all I need. It’s more difficult living with what daily life dishes up. You know you’re a little imbalanced when you drop your peanut butter toast face down on the floor and feel like crying. I grab the scruff of my neck and ask: Oh, yes! And what about your brothers and sisters living in Zimbabwe who have no toast at all? That should make you weep.

When I look at tragedy -- large or small, I would rather say God allows adversity. But I can’t argue that’s always the case. I know he does send adversity. It’s the modifier “whatever” that I find comforting. “he will turn to my good whatever adversity he sends me in this sad world.” Whatever.

The last two lines are sort of a kicker. There is the paradox that gives hope and healing! That someone of such power is both – almighty and tender. Mighty on my behalf. Tender to me. I count on that every day, in every circumstance. Not just for myself, (how self-absorbed!) but for all who groan.

Today, is an achingly, beautiful fall day. The air is cold and still, but the sun warms. The last of the cabbage butterflies and bumble bees loaded with pollen strain the asters with their clumsy weight. Friend, Anita, lovely and unexpectedly strong for someone so small, has a staging ground in our side yard, where pots of grass, bearded iris, and lady’s mantle wait to be set into the front beds. For a while we stood under the fir tree watching the chickadees and gold finches spar and swear at one another for a place the thistle feeder, and we decided we wanted to go back to the Garden and work there. We could help Adam & Eve rearrange the dogwood shrubs and lay stone borders.

Yes I do believe.

The things we carry

Yesterday Denis and I were on our way to Birmingham. He’s doing a weekend conference at Faith Presbyterian. I’m along to set up our…nevermind.

I got my favorite Swiss army knife confiscated by airport security. The TSA guy nodded, almost apologetic, (disarming me for the kill) telling me he’d need to look in my purse. First he pulled out my hand cream and said it was way over the ounce limit.

I did point out, “It’s not li-quid. It’s practically sol-id.” I could see that was stupid.

“Liquid, gels, aerosols, three ounces or less,” was all he said.

“So, just pitch it.”I should have made everyone wait until I applied all of it. But it was that oatmeal stuff with no fragrance, no additives, very boring.

I did have my favorite water bottle from a Bloomberg friend, which I pointed out with some hostility, was EMPTY. (I planned to fill it at a fountain.)

He then asked, like they ask criminals on the Cops program, was there anything else in my purse that he should be aware of and suddenly I recognized this very, very unfair question by which he would condemn me. So, I don’t know if he believed my “Oops, I think I forgot I have a knife.”

He raised one eyebrow, reached in my purse and from some secret inner compartment instantly pulled out my Swiss Army Knife, and said, “I thought I saw something."

I’ve owned this for years. It is green and not only has blades and scissors, it has a pick for your teeth. I was about to cry, and he softened a little. He offered to let me take it back to our car, but we were dropped off… then he suggested I could go back to the ticket counter and see if they would let me put it in my checked luggage, but I saw out the window behind him, and the luggage cart was already loaded and the attendant was there getting ready to grand slam our suitcases onto the conveyor belt. (Rochester airport is small.) He then offered I could leave it at the business office and pick it up when I came back, but I knew about that. You think that service is free? Unfortunately, I’d already redeemed it once this summer – in Minneapolis when I was escorting my granddaughter to her gate and remembered just in time and took it to their business office window, signed papers in triplicate, and when I came back a short while later to claim it, they charged me $15.00!

I just was so sad. I stood there until someone nudged me, and then I said to the TSA guy, “Why don’t you keep it? It’s a sweet knife. Feel how nice it sits in your palm?”
I think in his heart he was tempted, but I know my knife is now rusting in some dumpster along with my hand cream and dozens of plastic water bottles.

So this morning we prayed, together, Denis and I. Not about the knife. That’s so little, I know. No, we prayed to see if we could leave behind some of the things we carry, to see if we could be here in Birmingham, and to see if God could use us by his grace, and could we bring some gift of loving God and finding glory in all he’s made for us to be.

God's ill timing

Every so often I find encouragement in this man’s writings. There has been a rash of strange events and unexpected blows in the lives of friends, in our lives. Sometimes we feel bewildered, other times under siege, or even just plain tired. We need wisdom in such times. One of my favorite quotes:

O how ravishing and delectable a sight will it be to behold at one view the whole design of Providence, and the proper place and use of every single act, which we could not understand in this world! What Christ said to Peter is as applicable to some providences in which we are now concerned as it was to that particular action: ‘What I do, thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter’ (John 13. 7).

All the dark, intricate, puzzling providences at which we were sometimes amazed, which we could neither reconcile with the promise nor with each other, nay, which we so unjustly censured and bitterly bewailed, as if they had fallen out quite against our happiness, we shall then see to be to us, as the difficult passage through the wilderness was to Israel, ‘the right way to a city of habitation’ (Ps. 107.7).
- John Flavel, The Mystery of Providence

What was June 15?

So Sunday, our first day back from a cabin in Wisconsin, we’re in church, our granddaughter, Manessah between us, and Denis passes me a note: “I need to go home now.” I thought it was some kind of joke, then I looked at him. We left in middle of David’s sermon. I drove us home, and he staggered up to bed. Later I found him with unmistakable flu symptoms and possibly some other complication. Who knows. I take his temperature, bring him ice water, and continue playing Monopoly with Manessah. She has an attitude when I refuse to give her $200 after she forgot to pick it up when rounding Go. (I never let a child win because they’re a child. I know some consider this mean.) But her delighted giggle when she bankrupts me after the third time I land on her bristling Pacific Garden sort of justifies my attitude. Monopoly passed the time and made her last day with us not so disappointing with Grandpa sick and all.

It was Father’s Day and I had forgotten. It was also our Fortieth Wedding Anniversary, which we had forgotten. I finally mentioned it to Denis, who sort of moaned, though I don’t know if that was due to regret or delirium. I guess we’re not a family into big parties. Sometimes for a second, I wish we were. Just saying “forty” smacks me. How can that be?! Back in January I said let’s wait until our vacation in September – that will be our big celebration – we’ll go to our friends’ condo in Colorado and we’ll drink red wine and look at each other for a long time and try to fathom the meaning of forty years of wedded-lock. I don’t really know what it means. I used to think of couples married forty years as wizened in body and mind, the undertaker on-call, and living in apartments that smelled of boiled cabbage, but that isn’t exactly our life. Marriage is less and more than I’d imagined.

My first difficult disappointment way back was that he did not make me happy every moment of every day, in fact, I couldn’t believe he called to the worst in me and I gave it. I spent a lot of time, still do, actually, in confession and prayer, confession and prayer, repeat, repeat. I was also shocked that I should feel lonely. Ever. Of course, I was only twenty then and hadn’t read the books. Blame it on that. Over the years after we went to bed, I learned not to mention getting rid of the carpenter ants, which are attacking the back of our house as we lie here. And he’s learned to tolerate my allergic coughing and wheezing with just the slightest rattle of his magazine.

Marriage is more than I imagined. We share a purpose and calling that has made the years both intense and lovely. We’re friends and lovers, but we’re not the same. I’m still learning how healthy it is to be differentiated (he will never like gardening and I will never enjoy list checking) and how good not to be responsible for the mate’s ultimate happiness. In learning a little more of what it means that Jesus is the lover of my soul I find it easier to rest in darkness. He is steadier and more comforting than a man, or a woman. We just aren’t equipped to do what only God can do – love us to redemption. We actually love each other better knowing this.

The thing that caught me on Sunday was that this little illness, this fever, and headache put a constriction in my throat – the what if. What if this is it and he dies. What will I do about our ministry if? Where will I live if? What will I do with myself without him? This is something I don’t want to imagine. The thought of your spouse’s death can be very self-absorbing.

I’ve always believed that in this fallen world marriage is not a given – not for any of us at any time. Statistically, I will likely join my single friends at some point, since women live longer. (I hope they’re around to help teach me to live alone if that should happen.) I’ve been blessed with forty years of God sustaining us through enough to write a book. Who knows, maybe I will.

So to Denis – who is in Baltimore today, having mostly recovered from whatever it was, and is now addressing the General Assembly of the EPC along with our dear friend, Steve Garber – Happy Fortieth Anniversary and may we continue, by God’s grace, with passion for one another for many more years.

There Will Be Blood etc.

“My current project is writing a talk I am to give to the Macon Parish Catholic Women’s Council on the dizzying subject – 'What Is a Wholesome Novel?' I intend to tell them that the reason they find nothing but obscenity in modern fiction is because that is all they know how to recognize.” - Flannery O’Connor.

Watching Last Week

There was a robin huddled near my back doorstep. I think it was sick or depressed cuz I got this close to it.
In Zimbabwe, Mugabee continues to off his own people. Now it includes children and babies.
We’ve been getting updates on little Jace, just a month old, going from hospital to hospice at home, the only home he’ll know in this life because he has Trisomy 18 and isn’t expected to live long.

We live in tension, knowing these exist while we eat broccoli cheese soup with friends (thanks, Kelly) and sleep under polartec while the cold wind howls out there. (And it really did blow this week. Only yesterday another foot of snow fell in northern Minnesota.) There are comforts I love and celebrations that are so fine. But, I often grip the sides of life, asking what it means to be faithful wherever we turn up in life. How to be here or there, and do it well. One thing is sure, some of us need to remember what this little song by Katy Bowser is about -- The Weight of the World. Only Jesus can carry it -- it’s unbearable for us. Thanks to tech, the burden of knowing is heavier than ever. But think of it, while peoples in some other parts of the world had to have been killing one another and sacrificing their children to whatever gods, Jesus went to a wedding and made wine. I need to remember he did this on his way to the cross.