Normal

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Yesterday I was talking with a sort of mentor who has listened to me over the past couple of years, and I asked what advice he would have for me going forward, since I'm not sure how much more our lives will intersect.

His response: "I think you will regret it someday if you don't start writing. Writing something. Your blog, a book, whatever. I think you'll be sorry if you don't do more of that, get yourself back into it."

So, because I respect his thinking, nearly half a year after I wrote about the possibility and the power of always beginning anew, here I am on my blog, beginning anew.

I had started a post sometime in the time between January and now, to share the poem below as a way of expressing what this year so far has been like. After the January New Year's post, a good chunk of my free time was spent helping a special person in my life by proofing and editing their master's thesis. Once that was done, the free time was spent traveling to visit friends out of town as well as hosting a friend from out of town. Oh, and both a personal retreat and a group retreat. A pretty full month.

By the end of February it was becoming clear that life was about to be hit by the novel coronavirus, and March ushered in the reality of that with all its unsettling dynamics. I was closely watching the news coming from Italy, with daily death counts and pictures of coffins the stuff of surreality. We had beloved people in Bergamo, the hot spot, who became ill with flu symptoms.

Normal life here began closing down. I stocked up on groceries. Started seeing my clients through a screen. Learned that someone I had had lunch with the first week of March, had been exposed to people who had tested positive, so I stayed in for over two weeks straight just to be careful.

Photo by Andrew Buchanan on Unsplash

Then one Sunday morning I woke and found a text message, "Croatia had an earthquake." It was March 22, and until I could get more details later that morning, I had no idea if people we knew were okay or not. We were so thankful to learn that as bad as it was, it could have been much worse. Then that same week two different friends in Croatia were hospitalized with serious problems.

March was an apocalyptic sort of time for everyone. Writers have been using that word to refer to the pandemic, not so much as an "end of time" word, but in the literal sense that an apocalypse is an unveiling of reality, pulling away the props and curtains we have in place in what we think of as normal life. We've been able to see serious cracks and crevices and crooked places as the veil has been pulled away. It's been a painful time in many ways.

In early April a very dear friend died. I'm sure I'll write more about that later.

Then near the end of May began the events that led up to the ongoing protests and all the difficult and painful realities and the accompanying emotions intertwined with that part of our country's story.

All to say that even though I had thought I'd be writing more in 2020, it was as if my mind went into survival mode. All my energy was needed to just keep taking the hits, as it were, and keep up the necessary functioning, working with clients and occasionally teaching for our class at church (via Zoom), learning to teach piano through a screen, helping a group tasked with making decisions about when and how our church might return to some kind of meeting in person. (We have not yet.)

The early days of the pandemic often took me back to Croatia, to the early days of the war in 1991. It was uncanny how many emotional memories I had during March. Of course a virus spreading around the world was very different from a war starting, but I repeatedly had intuitive flashes, my body and mind making connections back almost 30 years to those feelings of uncertainty, fear of the unknown, the hope that maybe it wouldn't be as bad as some predicted, the hard realization of how bad it could really be. The way time slowed down. The sense of isolation. Small things like the grocery store shelves emptying. Much bigger things like the wondering who would survive and who would be lost. Weeping at scenes of death coming through the media.

One night I sat at the piano and wept as I realized that it could be many months, possibly a couple of years, before I would sing in a chorus again. Certainly not the greatest suffering of the situation, but it represented so much more than what might seem to some a simple hobby.

Since the third grade, I have kept some kind of journal. It started in a little green diary with a lock and key and has gone on to fill bound books of various sizes and shapes, with rarely a week between writings, and sometimes daily writing for significant periods of time.

But for the years that I lived in Croatia, I have nothing in writing beyond letters and occasional notes in a planner that I've found in my desk there. I did no journaling for three full years.

I think the past few months have been something like those three years. The mind can only do so much, and my mind hasn't had the energy or ability to put things in writing.

"Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity," said William Wordsworth. My dear English teacher used to emphasize the importance of the "recollected in tranquillity" part of that process; one's best writing doesn't tend to come completely spontaneously, but requires some distance for reflection and a sort of absorption and assimilation. And sometimes writing at all seems to require some distance.

Perhaps I'll share one day a poem I did actually compose in those early days, before the virus had clearly arrived in our area. But for now I will share a poem by someone else. I've shared this poem with many of my clients over the years, people struggling when life events have taken them so far from what they had called normal before. I don't recall where I came across it, but since then I've learned more about its author and just love it all the more for the life behind the words.

We've all lost some of our Normal since I last wrote on this blog. I hope that anyone reading this has been able to hold on to enough Normal to keep you anchored in the midst of all the change. And I hope you'll find some courage and strength in this poem, especially when you consider the writer, whose life you can learn more about via the link at the end.

About Normal

Right now,
I don’t know what Normal is
Anymore.
That’s because Normal has been changing
So much,
So often,
Lately.
For a long while of lately.
I’d like Normal to be
Okayness.
Good health…
Emotional health,
Medical health,
Spiritual health.
I’d like Normal to be
Like that.
For now though,
I know that Normal won’t be normal
For a little while…
But somehow,
Sometime,
Even if things are not Normal,
They’ll be okay.
That’s because I believe
In the great scheme of things,
And Life.

May 2001

From the book Hope through Heartsongs, written by Mattie J.T. Stepanek, a 10-year-old “poet and peacemaker” who died from a rare form of muscular dystrophy. He started writing poems when he was five to allow his mom to “see what was inside of him” and he continued to write up until his death at age 13.

https://www.daily-journal.com/opinion/the-faith-of-mattie-stepanek/article_cbb29c1d-4af3-5ee1-89b6-5dc782705ccd.html

Height and Depth and Length and Letters and Love

Today I remember Mr. Wright, Ray A. Wright, my high school English teacher and friend for many years, who died on this day in 2002.

I've shared some of his poetry here before. Tonight I got out the stack of letters from him, most written when I was in college and he was at Ole Miss working on a doctorate. I hadn't looked at them in years but knew where they were and just decided to read a couple.

What a beautiful thing, that he took the time to sit and write these words to me. And took the time to read the words I wrote to him. These letters, because of their very words and because of the connection they represented, helped me through some hard times, and I imagine they will in years ahead, too.

I remember thinking how neat--that's probably the word I would have used then, even though I remember chiding myself for using that word too much!--how neat it was that his address had a 26 in it. 26 was my favorite number, the one I got on my club jersey, connecting back to high school stories, happy memories. So it was a happy coincidence that I enjoyed each time a letter came.

(And he would have gently chided me for writing that awkward sentence up there with the dashes. And then might have said, "Well, you've proven you know the rules, so you're allowed to break them. But that really is rather awkward!")

I wish I had copies of what I had written to him, what he was responding to. I wonder what music had recently brought me to tears. It happened a lot. Still does. But it would be sweet to know what he was referring to.

When I was blessed with the opportunity to sing the Prayers of Kierkegaard many years later, I know that brought tears to my eyes, for sure.

I am so thankful for the length of time this friendship stretched throughout my life, from ninth grade for a little over twenty years. And I would say it definitely made up in depth what it lacked in length. And with the memories and the letters accompanying me through the rest of my life, and with the faith we share and the goodness of the Father in heaven who "didst save us," the height and depth and length of this relationship become part of the eternal goodness of God.

During the time of his final battle with cancer, pain, and a coma, my chorus was preparing to perform Lauridsen's Lux Aeterna. I sang it with Mr. Wright in mind, and it always comes to mind this time of year, just as he always comes to mind when I hear or sing that music.

His life's light shined into my little life. May light perpetual shine upon him.

Abide with Me

We sang this hymn quite often in the church where I grew up. We also sang it in a small women's ensemble during my college years. I've always thought it was beautiful, and it has been coming to mind the past few days since my mother's death on Monday, June 27.

We did not sing it at her funeral, but the reason it keeps coming to my mind is because of its references to the sky and the sense of connection between the human creature contemplating death to the creation that is fallen in change and decay, but also responsive in a sympathetic way to the event of life moving through death to life again.

The photos below were taken on the day of her death and then this morning (Friday).

Abide with me, fast falls the eventide.
The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide.
When other helpers fail, and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.

Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day,
Earth's joys grow dim, its sorrows pass away.
Change and decay in all around I see.
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.

I need thy presence every passing hour.
What but thy grace can foil the tempter's power?
Who like thyself my guide and stay can be?
Through cloud and sunshine, O abide with me.

I fear no foe with thee at hand to bless--
Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness.
Where is death's sting? Where, grave, thy victory?
I triumph still, if thou abide with me.

Hold thou thy cross before my closing eyes,
Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies.
Heaven's morning breaks, and earth's vain shadows flee;
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.

About 5:45 Monday morning. I had not slept much all night and was very hungry. I left my younger brother in the hospital room and went to get something to eat and try to sleep a little before coming back. On the way I saw the sun starting to rise and stopped to take a picture. My mom died at 6:15, shortly after sunrise.

This is from inside the hospital, while I was making phone calls after her death.

We had lunch later at my sister's house, and as my dad, older brother, and I were driving back to my dad's house, we exited the tree-ey neighborhood to this unexpectedly beautiful sight. That is the hospital at the end of the rainbow.

I was driving the car, and my brother was taking pictures. We kept trying to slow down, or stop, or back up, to get good shots of it. And then it turned out he was able to capture the whole rainbow from my dad's own driveway.

Sunset on the evening of her death, from Daddy's back porch.

This morning.

"Heaven's morning breaks...." I could hardly believe I got to see this in the ten minutes or so I was out there today. The rest of the day has just been blue, blue sky with almost no clouds, but this morning it was a cloudscape perfect for the morning sun breaking through to shine on her grave.

Mama always loved nature. When she was older she had to stay in more because of skin cancer concerns and general health issues, but in earlier years she went to Camp Wyldewood thirteen years as both camper and counselor. She spent a summer at Yellowstone Park. She planted all kinds of flowers, digging them up from the side of the road or transplanting shoots given her by friends or her mother. She used to take us fishing (though my sister and I used it as reading time.) She loved to go for rides in the country. We had dogs and cats and chickens and rabbits and goats and I don't know what all when we were growing up.

So it just seems fitting that nature would give us these beautiful moments in the days around her death. Through cloud and sunshine, she is abiding with the the One who changeth not in the mystery of this time, and in the weightlessness of finally resting in peace.

Breath and Heart

Even though our playing it so much used to drive Mama crazy, I'm pretty sure she was the one who taught me to play "Heart and Soul" on the piano. She and I used to play it as a duet, and later my sister and I would play it. What child learns to play piano without learning to play "Heart and Soul"?

Tonight I am thinking more about heart and breath, however, as my mom's heart rate gets slower and her breathing more slow and difficult. It is hard to witness, and yet I would not want to not be here for this time.

Tonight my aunt and I were marveling at the heart, how it works so well most of the time, and how it does everything it does without any of our own power or control. Not one of us creates our own heart or starts it beating.

I heard an author say recently that we are a gift given to ourselves. The idea that we are all about independence and choice and creating our own meaning is an illusion, or perhaps a delusion. We do not bring ourselves into existence, we do not give ourselves the amazing ability to be alive and to experience all the many parts of life that we experience.

Tonight reminded me of something I've been reading from Becoming a Healing Presence, by Albert Rossi, a psychologist. In one part he writes,

Awareness of our breathing opens a door to awareness of the presence of God, the giver of breath, and it is the very voice of God, guiding and encouraging us.

Not everyone believes that. And yet there is something very powerful about simply paying attention to our own breath and the wonder of it, and contemplating ourselves as receivers, as wholly dependent on a force beyond ourselves, outside ourselves, that brought us into existence.

No one, I hope, can witness their mother dying and continue to think of themselves as independent, as self-made, as autonomous, the way Western thinking would have us think. Not one of us would be here without a mother and a father. And our mothers and fathers had mothers and fathers, and on and on and on. Our very breath can remind us of how connected we are to all those who went before us, and for many of us, that means realizing our connection to "the giver of breath."

Other excerpts from the book that strike me as my mother is losing her breath, as her heart moves closer to the end of its physical work, are below. They strike at the heart of neo-gnostic thinking that would divide the physical and spiritual.

Tonight a group of us sang around Mama's hospice bed for 30-45 minutes, hymns from the hymnbook used in the church where we grew up. More than one song spoke of resurrection, that strange Christian belief that has been so much a part of my thinking for so long that to me it seems strange not to believe that breath and heart, spirit and body, will be reunited one day, that we will be alive again together in some new but also very familiar way.

It was hard to leave tonight, wondering if I will hear her breathing again in the morning. But no matter what people may say and think about orthodox Christians these days (or whatever they've said and thought for 2,000 years), I've seen over and over again, and have experienced over and over again, that the words written to the Thessalonians close to 2,000 years ago, are true--that "we do not grieve as others do who have no hope." We have great and beautiful hope.

"Within the heart is the antenna for the voice of God."

We grieve, of course, and we have great and beautiful hope.

All Creatures of Our God and King

It snowed here last night. Because I'm recovering from foot surgery, I won't be going out in it, and there really isn't enough to make me want to take pictures through the windows. But it brought me to my blog, nonetheless.

While I don't intend for my blog to be primarily a record of deaths, it seems that in this period of limited time and energy for writing, deaths and anniversaries of deaths are what have brought me here to write more than anything.

Of course that is because the lives of those who have died are so beautiful and are so much a part of my life that it doesn't seem right not to remember and celebrate them.

I haven't written about it yet here, but our sweet dog Paolo died on December 4. We never knew his exact age, but based on what we knew, we think he was nearly 17 years old. He had been with us since October, 2000.

I hope to write more later about him, his life and his death. Especially after thinking so much about St. Francis in order to write the previous post, he who is known for his love of all God's creatures, it would not seem right not to write about the little doggie who has been my companion and friend since before I had even considered having a blog.

For now I share simply that he is buried under the tree in the photo, at the home of some dear friends, where the concrete planters are standing guard over him until spring.

And that Wednesday I received this photo along with the following message:  "Thinking of you. Beautiful blanket of snow over Paolo's resting place. Kids keeping him company today as they sled in this teeny snow."

Everything about this says "Alleluia!" The sweetness of this dog, the loving kindness of these friends, the peaceful beauty of this hillside and its trees, the quiet beauty of snow, the joy of children sledding.

Be praised, my Lord, through all your creatures.

Death Be Not Proud

Death, be not proud though the whole world fear you:

Mighty and dreadful you may seem.

But, death, be not proud, for your pride has failed you.

You will not kill me.

Though you may dwell in plague and poison,

You're a slave to fate and desperate men.

So, death, if your sleep be the gates to Heaven,

Why your confidence,

When you will be no more?

You will be no more.

Even death will die,

Even death will die.

Death, be not proud.

Death, be not proud.

Death, be not proud.

'Cause even death will die.

It's a beautiful rendition of John Donne's poem by Audrey Assad, and as I listened to it today while driving, I thought of the beloved one who died today three years ago.

Since her death, I've written about her on this blog, here and here.

Oh, and here.

And then one more here. 

She was my piano teacher, and she was so much more.

I wrote about her before her death, too, this post about autumn leaves and resurrection.

I had no idea then how much more those ideas of hers would come to mean,

more than they did my freshman year of college,

more than they did when I wrote about them years later.

Because she--who loved autumn so much and saw in it not only the ends of things

but also the beginnings of things,

an encounter with life at a new perspective,

at a new level of  meaning, of intensity--

she died in autumn.

So this morning I took a walk in the park and thought about her,

and this afternoon I took some pictures with the sun shining through the autumn leaves.

I remembered her (I'll never forget her; she's in my music, in my mind, in my heart,

in the way I hold my hands, in the Bible verses I read, in the words I give to my own students)

and I listened to this song.

Even death will die.

Even death will die.

Death's sleep is the gate to Heaven.

And there, or then, however we should speak of that existence--

"I like to think," my teacher said, "that in heaven we will be like the autumn leaves. Our true colors,

our real selves, will finally be revealed. All the things of earth that had to be a part of this season of lie won't be part of us anymore. Only the truest part of us will remain."

I think everyone who knew her knew they were seeing her truest parts.

Her kindness, her graciousness, her honesty, her compassion.

Her sense of humor, her hearty laugh.

Her love for God and love for others.

And remembering her,

we are helped to let go of unneeded parts of ourselves

so that our truest parts can be revealed,

little by little, day by day.

I know it's true for myself, and I see the things people are writing

on Facebook today.

Her light shone in many lives.

And for her life, and for her love, today I give thanks.

And this wasn't a planned-out decision--it just happened this way--

but it just hit me that her degree was in organ, not piano,

and tonight we had an organist over for dinner.

The first time we've ever had this friend over.

What a lovely gift, a way of connectiong with her

without even intending to.

Life is a funny and wonderful bunch of connections.

So in a minute, I'll go play her music,

the music she told me I just had to get and learn to play,

those last couple of years when she was delving into jazz. . .

because she never, never, never gave up.

When you believe that even death will die,

you never give up.

Good night.

Two Years

Wow, it has been long enough since I posted anything here that for a moment I couldn't remember how to start a new post.

Work, school, travel, and other life events have kept me from coming here for several months. But today I have to break the silence to remember my beloved piano teacher who was so much more than a piano teacher. I've written about her before, here and here.

Today marks the two-year anniversary of her death. Interestingly, at the time of her death, I was taking a class on the book of Revelation. And now I'm taking a class on the Gospel of John. Both books that talk a lot about life and death, and eternal life. And light and dark, too, especially in John. And day and night, especially in Revelation.

The last couple of years off her life, she was working on the Nocturnes of Francis Poulenc. She said I simply must get them and learn to play them. She would play them for me, commenting on the jazz touches that Poulenc added to his impressionistic sound.

So, sometime in the past year, I ordered the music. Making sure it came from the publisher she had recommended, the Parisian edition, not some take-off arrangement. (Some things are worth splurging on.)

A couple of months ago, I was out of town to visit a friend in Colorado and take some time off. I called a nearby college and asked if they might be able to let me use a practice room while I was in town. They said yes. I expected a small room with an old piano in it. But they gave me a huge room with a Steinway in it. A beautiful, nicely kept Steinway. Not old and out of tune, but actually wonderful.

And another time when I was out of town, at the Scarritt-Bennett Center in Nashville for a group retreat, I had access to a wonderful piano, though to be honest, I don't remember what kind it was.

Both times, just hoping I might have a chance to play, I had my music with me. The Nocturnes of Poulenc. The music that will always remind me of her and those last visits we had.

So both times I played my heart out. Not wonderful playing, because I don't have time to practice as is required to play this music wonderfully. But it was a wonderful way to connect with her and remember the many hours we spent at her wonderful piano, and all the wonderful pianos I played on for competitions she coached me through (though I never felt wonderful while doing those!)

And I wept at those wonderful pianos. Wonderful cleansing tears that I so needed to cry, because life has been so full these past two years, I have hardly had proper time to do that, to remember her well and to grieve her loss, though I feel it so often in the midst of various activities. Especially when I wish I could pick up the phone and call her.

The dark and light of a piano keyboard will always be a way of connecting with her. The "night" of the nocturnes will always bring a certain kind of "day" as I connect with her love through them.

And unlike the Steinway in Colorado Springs, which I said goodbye to and then looked at through a locked door, doubting that I'd ever see it again, because of the Gospel of John and the Book of Revelation, I do look forward to seeing her again.

And I am thankful. Thankful for her life. Thankful for eternal life. Sad right now, but thankful.

(This was one of the first pieces I ever played as her student. Nice bookends.)

Good Friday: The Cross

I thought I would just see how many cross pictures I have since getting this computer in October . . .

The cross from Father Stevens, made from Jerusalem olive tree wood.

Visitation Monastery gateway, Mobile, Alabama.

On the spine of one of my Bibles.

Spring Hill College, Mobile.

Chapel at Spring Hill College.

Spring Hill College.

My window at home.

First little one I saw this year.

Dogwood blossom, with its own cross legend.

We sang this last night.

Beautiful.

Love can make beauty possible from the most terrible things.

Like the cross.

Lent, Day Seven: The Relinquished Life

No one is ever united with Jesus Christ until he is willing to relinquish not sin only,

but his whole way of looking at things.

To be born from above of the Spirit of God means that we must let go before we lay hold,

and in the first stages it is the relinquishing of all pretense.

What our Lord wants us to present to him is not goodness,

not honesty,

not endeavor,

but real, solid sin;

that is all he can take from us.

And what does he give in exchange for our sin?

Real, solid righteousness.

But we must relinquish all pretense of being anything,

all claim of being worthy of God's consideration.

Then the Spirit of God will show us what further there is to relinquish.

There will have to be the relinquishing of my claim to my right to myself in every phase.

Am I willing to relinquish my hold on all I possess,

my hold on my affections,

and on everything,

and to be identified with the death of Jesus Christ?

There is always a sharp, painful disillusionment to go through before we do relinquish.

When one really sees himself as the Lord sees him,

it is not the abominable sins of the flesh that shock him,

but the awful nature of the pride of his own heart against Jesus Christ.

When he sees himself in the light of the Lord,

the shame and the horror and the desperate conviction come home.

If you are up against the question of relinquishing,

go through the crisis,

relinquish all,

and God will make you fit for all He requires of you. . . . 

These words (Galatians 2:20) mean the breaking of my own independence with my own hand

and surrendering to the supremacy of the Lord Jesus.

No on can do this for me, I must do it myself.

God may bring me up to the point three hundred and sixty-five times a year,

but he cannot put me through it.

It means breaking the husk of my individual independence of God,

and the emancipating of my personality into oneness with himself,

not for my own sake,

but for absolute loyalty to Jesus.

There is no possibility of dispute when once I am there.

Very few of us know anything about loyalty to Christ--"For my sake."

It is that which makes the iron saint.

~ excerpted from Oswald Chambers,

in Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter

~photo from Spring Hill College Jesuit Cemetery, Mobile, Alabama

Letters of Love (though not exactly Love Letters)

 

Eleven years ago today the writer of these letters, and I assume the licker of these stamps, left this life for the next phase of his life's experience of Love.

I don't know what he would think or say if he knew I would be writing about him on my blog, but I think he might say that as long as I chose my words carefully, included no dangling participles, and allowed my emotion to cool before writing so that my words were recollected in tranquility, then I would have his blessing.

 

 

 

 

He was my high school English teacher, but most of the letters I have from him were written while I was in college and he was in the student role, working on a doctorate after many years of teaching high school, getting ready to move on to teaching college. (I thought it was neat that my favorite number, 26, was part of his address at Ole Miss. He would likely tease me for using the word "neat.")

 

 

 

My asking about something from a Frost poem about how difficult life could be winds up with his response, "All in all, I would say, there is a pretty good balance of agony and ecstasy. It takes both to make us wonderful people, you know." He was right.

 

 

 

 

He did "moan" in his letters about both his workload and the worldviews of some of his professors and how he felt their impoverished ideas did little justice to the literature he was studying. At some point in a later letter, however, he gave me permission to stop feeling sorry for him, that he was adjusting and would make it.

 

 

He writes in response to my comment that music can be so moving (referring to Barber's "Adagio for Strings"), that music often brings him to tears. Able to sing with one of the choirs at Ole Miss, he participated in a concert in Avery Fisher Hall that he wrote about more than once. Here he writes out some of the text of the "Prayers of Kierkegaard" set to music by Samuel Barber. Many years later, after his death, my own chorus sang the piece, so it will always remind me of him. I appreciated it much more as an adult than I could as a college freshman reading his letter.

 

In response to my suggestion of a Trivial Pursuit party, which he okayed if it were a small enough group, he writes, "I like my friendships deep, not wide." I have a perfect dozen of his letters, all at least two handwritten pages, often more, some typed and therefore even longer. At the time I was receiving these letters, I treasured them because they were from him, and they brought hope and wisdom into my life, but I didn't find it unusual that he spent time writing to me.

 

These days, working on a doctorate myself, I look at these letters with a sense of awe, knowing the sacrifice of time he took to sit and read letters from a former student and respond to them. It's clear he enjoyed writing about things, but it's also clearer to me now how much he meant the "Love" in "Love, Ray A. Wright." And I appreciate being someone he included in his not wide, but deep, circle of friends. One of the many blessings-beyond-measure in my little life.

 

(And we did have that Trivial Pursuit party, about fifteen years after the letter--just him, his wife, and me. I think we kept it small enough.)

 

 

 

 

 

Impressions of Beauty

When it was too late, I realized that I had only once in my life had a picture made with this woman I love so much. And that picture was across the ocean, where it had been since I framed it and set it out in our living room in our house across the ocean.

 

So, when the man I married made a trip across the ocean earlier this year, I asked him to bring the picture back so I could have it over here.

 

And he did. And here it is.

 

 

 

As you can see, the frame is too big for it, but it is what I had twenty-something years ago. What I didn't have back then was any normal kind of matting for it. This was wartime Yugoslavia/Croatia we were living in, and there wasn't a lot of choice about a lot of things. And decorating wasn't my top priority at the time, in any case.

 

So, odd as it seems to me now, I found some crinkledy paper that at the time matched the color of the flowers on Mama Neva's dress. And for twenty-something years, that is what was in the frame behind the photo. Over time, it had changed color and faded around the edge, and at any rate it just didn't look so great, so I took it out.

 

Being sentimental to a degree some might find pathological, I couldn't bring myself to throw the pink paper away, and it sat on my prayer desk for a couple of weeks until I decided I had to do something with it. (Meaning, it was time to throw it away.)

 

But when I actually looked at it, rather than simply looking over it or beyond it, I had a surprise:

 

 

 

The twenty-something years of light shining onto the photo had created a second image behind it!

 

So now I feel as if I have a sort of shroud of Turin, or something like that, and I don't know how I will bring myself to throw the paper away....or what I will do with it. This may be how hoarders get started, who knows?

 

On a more serious note, discovering this unexpected image gave me hope and resolution. The secondary image is not the same as the original photo, but it is recognizable as an impression of the original. And I know that I am not like Mrs. White in many ways. No one could ever mistake me for her. I certainly don't play piano like her, and I don't live my life as well as she did. But I hope that with the years of Light shining through her onto me, maybe there is something about me that can be recognized as a faint image of her. I would love to bear the image of her compassion, her grace, her gentleness, her joy.

I would like to be beautiful like her.
Because she was beautiful.
She was the best kind of beautiful.

Stone and Stained Glass

 

 

So, following up on the Birthday Birthplace, here comes another phenomenon of light.

 

This site, now a part of Montgomery Bell State Park, is the birthplace of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. A log house is just down the way, a replica of the one where one of the first preachers and founding fathers lived. This chapel is not as old as the house, though it took me a while to track down information on when it was built, which turns out to have been in 1960. Not what I had thought! But still it's older than me.

 

It's a simple stone building, sweet and solid. If I were just passing by, I probably would not have even gone in, having been inside several simple stone church buildings over the years. But I had seen photos on the website that made me want to see the interior, and I did want a quite place for prayer.

 

But I had no idea what to expect. The photo I had seen intrigued me but did not do justice to what I found inside.

 

This is similar to the photo I'd seen on the website, except without so much of the side shots. So it seemed like a nice country church, a good place to pray, not likely to draw big crowds.

What I didn't expect was the windows all around and what light would do coming in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From the looks of it, the Bible may have been original to the church.

(This photo hints at what's coming in the next post.....tune in next time....)

I love the way the light casts reflections on every surface possible, smooth or rough, near or far.

I think it's the first time I've been able to see through stained glass to the surroundings outside (the trees out the window, in case you can't tell).

When I was reading about the place, I learned that the man who lived in the house down the road, Rev. Samuel McAdow, died at age 84, in 1839, after losing three wives to death. According to the website, his last words were, in answer to a friend, 'All is peace, my work is done, every thing is ready; I have nothing to do, but to die; there is no doubt, no fear.'"

Makes me think that despite his being "rather inclined to despondency" throughout his life--or perhaps because of that--he must have searched out light and found it.