Vacation Envy

Sunday. Today after church, a friend, a mother of five kids, a five-month-old in her arms, the rest racing around the lawn, told us she has vacation envy. They didn’t get one this summer and it seems like everyone else we know is texting, Face Booking, and talking about where they’ve been. It was a great rant one I understood too well. I stood there thinking – from Nantucket to Provence everyone in the world is hiking sensational mountain ranges, biking through fields of leaping lambs, eating Gruyere, and sleeping within the sound of whippoorwills. Except for us.

She went on to say she’d just finished reading Ecclesiastes “and that’s where I am, ‘everything is vanity.’” She roller her eyes and grimaced. Then she concluded God must be at work because her attitude shifted when she thought of a “stupid old 70s song* – ‘if you can’t be with the one you love, then love the one you’re with’ I’m trying to do that she said, if I can’t take a vacation then I’m trying to be where we are and somehow love it.

I wrote something similar to a friend. “I’m doing okay. A bit tired. Okay, maybe a lot tired. Am looking for some sweet spots in the Lord in the midst of these weeks. I know they are there. Hoping not to miss them because I’m feeling sorry for myself.”

One sweet spot had to be our youngest granddaughter sitting next to me reading her favorite book: Max & Ruby. We’ve read it so many times she has it memorized or “rememberized” as she puts it. Her ways delight my soul. After hearing it so many times she understands “Grocer” – a word not commonly used anymore, but the context has taught her without me explaining. The ways of children both delight and instruct. Her honesty. Can I have this book, she asks? No. I want it to be here so when you come back we can look forward to reading it together. When I die you can have it. I will leave it to you in my will. What’s a will?… and on we go.

Another sweet spot. I made two jars of naturally fermented pickles. It’s the way they used to make them long ago. You don’t need vinegar. You just put the cucumbers in a jar water and salt, garlic and dill, leave it on the counter and in three to five days a wonderful, crisp tart pickle. It worked! Love them.

 

Garlic Dills naturally fermented.

Please don’t stop telling me what wonderful times you’ve had. You need times away from the crush of stress. You need times of pure refreshment and joy. God will get us (me) to where we need to be. Eventually.

Our next week will bring its stresses. Some of them we know. Some we anticipate. Others are still unknown. When Denis and I talk about our days, we have a tendency to stew about the future. The words of Jesus echo in my head. Words I heard growing up about not worrying about tomorrow because tomorrow will worry about itself. The Message translation gives it a different punch:  “Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.” (Mt. 6:34) 

*Stephen Stills “Love the One You’re With” 1970.

Sail me

The most recent issue of Image magazine had an image (hey, hey) on the cover that made me quit multi-tasking – which for me would be 1)  walking and, 2) carrying - a handful of mail to the kitchen counter where I sort it. I thought what is that?! It looked like a sail rising from a glassy sea. 

It was a surprise to learn it was a parish church specially commissioned and built by the Vatican in the year 2000 - a year of jubilee. They put out a contest, and an American architect, Richard Meier, won it. I’m attracted to this church and can hardly say why and wish like anything that I could see it in real life as it stands or sails past the edge of Rome. The author of the article in Image, takes us there attempting to give us the scale and setting of the building itself and its relationship to the surrounding community.

I was fascinated that the architect, about whom I know nothing, said he envisioned a fishing boat, something familiar to Christ’s early disciples. Not icebergs, as some have thought, but “the triune God, in the form of three nested sails of white concrete, which billow above the congregation, guiding, protecting Peter and the people of the church on their voyage of faith as they sail on into the twenty-first century.”

The author writes: “Much of the church form has this quality of inviting understanding while resisting thorough explanation, of presenting rigorous order but only taking it so far.”  That makes sense to me. Or not sense exactly? But the way it is? I find that on Sundays as I participate in our church services and as I take communion, prayerfully inviting Christ to be one with all that I am – to belong fully, to be thankful in adoration of his body and blood, I also want to anchor somewhere visually, really. It eludes me. Partially because for all our efforts to anchor our thoughts and to know God in our places of worship – there will always remain mystery in God’s presence with us.

Representing Trinity with these three sails opens a vast sea of joyful longing and possibility - for me. Although we believe God can be worshipped anywhere, anytime I think here, I would be viscerally reminded of how much I want, no, make that need him to sail me through each day to the end of life.

If you Google images of Jubilee church Rome, many more will come up that give a better context of its place and size. They also give a better idea of its organic human dimensions and placement within the neighborhood.

It was Mother's Day

The Great Aunt never had children, though we assure her, she’s been like a mother to us and we love her for it. I don’t think this is enough to heal ancient feelings of bereavement – anyway, she rather despises the notion of being “in touch with one’s self.” She just knows it’s Mother’s Day, we’re getting ready for church, and she’s in a bad mood. She looks beautiful in her pink turtle-neck and gray wool jacket. She adds the finishing touch – dangly earrings. She manages to hang the left one. Then she hands me the other and commands, put it in. It’s a crap shoot. Sometimes I can get it through, today I can’t, no matter how I try. She’s giving me orders as she leans her head this way and that and we move toward the light so I get a better view. I push aside her hair and grasp her lobe between my thumb and forefinger for the umpteenth time. She says, just push it through the front hole. Have you? Have you? Now push down, angle it down. DOWN! PUSH! I get it in the front hole, but it refuses to come out the back. I’m wiggling the post, watching it pooch out against the transparent pink flesh, groping for the back hole. The tissue is so tight I’m afraid I’m going to pop another hole in her ear. I think I’m hurting her. You’re NOT! she says. She sighs deeply when I give up.

At church I notice the one earring still swinging from the side of her head – we forgot to remove it, but I won’t embarrass her by taking it out during prayers. She’s still in a temper about Mother’s Day, and has already anticipated that the pastor will make a big to-do over it. He tells us the church is blessed by women, that all of them are our mothers in Christ whether they have children or not and we honor them. But she’s not buying it, even though she is to us. Even when the kids pass out carnations to every human remotely resembling adult female.

We rush out after the service into driving wind and rain, knowing she’ll quickly forget this was a “special” Sunday. We take her to Elly’s Pancake house because, she informs us, she hasn’t had pancakes in years and years. Comforted by coffee and bacon fried crisp, her face softens and she smiles broadly as she watches the bobbing two-year-old at the next table - whose father is forking bits of pancake into her mouth, syrup dribbling down her front, and she, clapping sticky hands. I reach across and briefly hold The Aunt’s hand, thank you. Not for anything in particular, just thank you.