Merry Christmas

"Today, we insist that everything has changed, and that it is good. We rejoice that God has come into our world, in human flesh, and we believe that Christ will come again. We give thanks for the Christ we know now, in the poor and oppressed and despairing of this world, and we believe that we will know him also when he comes in glory. today, we are not resigned; we stand up and sing, for God has not given up on us. We are his own, and we are welcomed to the feast."

~Kathleen Norris, God with Us

Today was a beautiful day of seeing how faith has been working, and is working, in lives that have suffered and struggled mightily. It's not my place to share those stories in detail, but each of these pictures connects with the life of someone who could have easily despaired, but instead stands up and sings because of their faith in the Christ who came into the world and has overcome the world, the suffering, and death.

The image above was sent to me this morning by a dear friend who lived through battles of war in Europe years ago, and now battles illness in later years. She is beautiful and brave, and her faith in Christ strengthens me.

This is the shadow of the wreath on our front door and reminds me of my dear friend who said she always loved the pictures I posted of light and shadow images. She is no longer with us, and I will always remember how courageously and lovingly she faced her illness and death. She won't come through our front door again, but when I see surprising shadow images now I always think of her. She was not resigned to the darkness but trusted in the light, believing that Christ will come again and trusting she could await his coming in glory with hope.

And this little tree is a gift from my sister, given because our grandmother had one like it all the years of our celebrating Christmas at her house. My grandmother's life, and the lives of many people in my own family, including my own, have been changed forever because of Christ coming into the world. Lives that could easily have been lived in despair have instead been lived in hope, in perseverance rather than resignation. When I reflect on what could have been, and what instead is, I am amazed.

In a different way, it is as beautiful and amazing as the moon on the water the other night. God's light has shone in our lives, reflecting off people around us and people who came before us, and when the light shines in the darkness, the darkness cannot overcome it. "God has not given up on us," and so we do not give up.

We stand up and sing. We give thanks. And we feast. Merry Christmas!

Pied Beauty and the Comfort of the Resurrection

That's the Bald Knob Bulldog above. In my mind it's the Bald Knob Bulldog Cafe', despite the sign calling it a restaurant. I'm not sure how that discrepancy came about, but I'm willing to bet that I'm older than that sign, so I'm guessing that it used to be called, and perhaps have a sign saying that it was, a cafe'. I just did a quick Google search and learned that other people have also searched the the Bulldog Cafe in Bald Knob, so I think it must have been called that at one time.

Anyway, I was there this evening. My daddy flew home today from a grand adventure that took him to Rome, Zagreb, Cakovec (where he stayed in our home for a couple of nights), and then a town called Cluj in Romania (where he taught English for several weeks), and to Hungary (where he visited friends made many years ago.) He came home today from all this travel in faraway places. His flight from Europe was delayed, causing him to miss his flight home last night. So he spent the night in the airport and arrived here with almost no sleep in 48 hours.

He amazed me by having the presence of mind and energy to want to go to the AT&T shop to be sure his Europe phone service was terminated, and to go by the truck dealer to schedule an oil change. I drove him on those errands, then we came home. He went out to his garden and picked tomatoes and eggplant and squash. Then we ate supper.

And then he brought up the idea of going to get a strawberry shortcake in Bald Knob. So we did it. Except I learned that they also make peach shortcakes, so I got peaches rather than strawberries. Which was a hard decision to make, because strawberries are wonderful and famous in these parts. But peaches are my favorite, so that's what I had.

A trip to the Bulldog was the perfect ending to a lovely day dedicated to coming to Arkansas. As soon as I crossed the Mississippi River, I felt that wonderful sense of freedom that comes when you see the green masses of trees, the wide open fields, the dirt and gravel roads wandering through them.

Today I was listening to lectures (a graduation gift from my thoughtful husband) on Gerard Manley Hopkins and his poetry as I drove, hearing Fr. Joseph Feeney read poems of Hopkins' Wales surroundings, the hills, the birds, the fields, the sky. And all around me were fields, sky, birds--and even lovely hills, once I came to Crowley's Ridge. It made the drive even more beautiful than usual.

And then I made a stop that made me love Arkansas even more. I wanted to get balloons as a little surprise when Daddy would arrive at his house. I was short on time, and I really wanted to avoid the crowds of WalMart if I could. So when I saw a little local florist sign in Bald Knob that said "more than flowers," I thought it was worth a try. You never know just what to expect when you go into a place like that in a small town (fewer than 3,000 people in 2010). It was actually a large-ish building for a florist, obviously a new business in an old building that used to house some other kind of activity, maybe a farm supply store, given the amount of farming in that area. It was large and fairly plain, except that the new owners had painted huge flowers on the outside of the building, giving it a whimsically charming homemade beauty. You can see a picture near the bottom of this website.

Hoping they had balloons, and that I could get some quickly, I walked in the door to see no one behind the counter. No doorbell rang, no voice called out, no one appeared. I had just begun to wonder if I should go back to the car when out of the back came a little brown-haired boy who hurried right over, looked up at me, and threw his arms around my legs to give me a hug, his head reaching a little above my knees!

I think he said something, but I don't remember what. I don't remember what I said, either. I just remember that he was terribly sweet, and even though I couldn't always understand what he said, he responded to my greetings and questions; and once I had learned that he was three years old and that his mom had gone to the store, he went back to where he had come from behind the counter, and out came a woman who I believe was his aunt.

This all took a very short time, less time than it has taken to write about it and probably less than it will take you to read it. I mention that so that no one can get the idea that he was neglected or unsupervised.  He clearly was not. He was just fast!

Happily I did order balloons that they did in fact have, and the whole time carried on a funny conversation with this sweet child, whose mother arrived during my few minutes there. When it was time to pay and go, he was in the back of the shop again. He obviously heard something I said about leaving, because he stopped talking with his mother and said, "Wait! I have to go give a hug!" And he ran out from behind the counter and hugged my legs again as before, this time looking up and blowing kisses at me. His mother and aunt gently "called him off," though of course I said it was absolutely fine with me, and that he was a sweetie pie (I think that's what I said, who knows?), and rather reluctantly, I left.

I feel sure I'll find a reason to stop there again.

Meanwhile I'm left pondering the beauty of a small town and of close circles in which a child is so loved and cared for and has no reason to feel fearful or suspicious of someone he has never seen before. Not only not fearful, but so full of love and generosity. Of course it's a messed up world, and he will learn prudent boundaries as he grows, I have no doubt. It was clear that the big people in his life love him and love life, and so I trust they will protect him appropriately.

Arkansas is a poor state, among the three poorest in the nation, according a study done two years ago. It has problems that come along with poverty. It has problems that come along with other things, too. While my drive home takes me through beautiful fields and crosses flowing rivers, it also means seeing abandoned houses, dying towns, and reminders of racial tension.

I was reading an article the other day about West Virginia, another of the three poorest states, and author John Mark Reynolds' take on some of the problems there. I couldn't help thinking about that article as I drove past some of the dying towns and wondered about the lives of the people there. I know that drugs are a problem in Arkansas, especially meth, from what I've read. Some people are desperate for meaning in their lives, and for love. Without those things, drugs become an easy choice, among the rich and the poor. And once drugs affect one person, they affect families, and then communities, and no one ever knows the full extent of the damage.

But there is beauty in this state. Incredible natural beauty. And today the beauty of a little boy who knows he is loved and cherished. And I imagine it's because of people in his life who also know that they are loved and cherished. And his little heart of love is evidence that they really believe what they have on a sign that was by the front door of the business. They haven't sold their birth right, to reference the West Virginia article. They've accepted it and are passing it on.

It's not the Memphis way of doing business, to put religious posters on the front window. It's not the big city way. It's not cool. It's probably not even allowed in some places. But who knows if having this sign on the window may not open the door to hope for some young teenage girls, leading to conversations and relationships that will save them from turning to drugs or bad relationships in search of love, or failing that, drugging numbness?

I think Hopkins would find poetry in this picture and in my afternoon encounter.  Death, disease, decay, drug addiction, dirt, and depression are as real in Arkansas as anywhere. Hopkins knew darkness and despair very well. But the Christian belief in resurrection, which he so powerfully describes in "That Nature is a Heracletean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection," is paramount in his poetry and in his life. And if I am to believe that I am, ultimately, "immortal diamond," I must have opportunities and the ability to see that hope. "Across my foundering deck shone a beacon, an eternal beam." People need a beacon shining. They need to see that beam.

I hope they keep that poster there. I hope it blesses girls who need to see it. And I hope their little boy becomes a grown man who loves with passion and prudence because he knows that he is cherished, that Christ became what he is, and he will be what Christ is, and that this life is only part of a Life we can't begin to imagine. You can handle a whole lot of what life gives you when you know that.

How Out of It I've Been and Something Funny and Lovely

It seems I have now set a new record in the length of time between blog posts. From May 31 until now would be close to four months.

It's beyond my ability right now to remember whether or not I have said anything definitive on this blog about why I have written so little in recent months and even a couple of years or more.

A rather fascinating story lies behind just about everything in life, and that's true for this as well, but for now suffice it to say that around the same time I decided to return to school to work on a doctoral degree in ministry, my mom began to have significant health problems. The combination of these things has simply (and in quite complicated ways at times) demanded my focus, my time, my energy more than I could ever have anticipated.

In late April, I turned in my last paper for school. And at some point in the summer I turned in the official prospectus for my thesis. And after that all the paperwork for approval from the Institutional Review Board. I'm now officially in the thesis phase of the degree. Since I had "levelling" work to do (extra classes because I didn't go into the degree with a Master of Divinity degree already), this means I am now freer than I have been in three years. Not free, but not continually under the pressure of huge reading lists and deadlines.

So slowly, slowly, life has been shifting to a more liveable pace. I'm returning to the routines and rhythms that were interrupted pretty severely for almost three years.

And so, at some point in the late spring or early summer, I began noticing the straggling green things out in the pots on our deck, and I thought, oh, one of these days I will have time to plant flowers again. Planting flowers has not been completely neglected, but it has not been the regulary activity that it once was, so that something was blooming pretty much all year round. Where we live, it usually means pansies in the winter and impatiens and petunias for the spring and summer.

Of course I had to get that prospectus turned in and all the IRB paperwork. But in the back of my mind I was dreaming of buying and planting petunias, at least a few, to enjoy through the heat of the summer. I also remember noticing with the peripheral vision of my awareness that those plants out in the pots still had blooms, and it seemed awfully late and hot for that. Pansies don't generally make it into the summer heat in full sun.

On July 30, I finally actually walked out there and watered and weeded, thinking there was still time to plant some petunias, if I could find any for sale that late in the summer.

And for the first time, I realized . . . these were petunias!

Which meant they had been planted early LAST summer, and that I had never planted any pansies in the fall. These guys had made it through the winter and come back to life.

So, I did of course water them, and I pulled out the amazing little weeds that find their way through the air into the pots. And I pulled off the dead blooms.

And I laughed at myself and at how crazy life can get, and smiled at how beautiful it is that these flowers made it through with absolutely no help from me or anyone--just the sunshine, the soil and whatever rain fell on them over the course of most of a year. (And this was the coldest winter we've had since we've lived here.)

It felt as if they were saying, "Surprise! Welcome back!"

"We're still alive, and so are you. It's time to stretch and breathe and grow again."

I've been watering them and pulling the occasional weeds and the spent blooms, and they've continued to grow through the heat of the summer, and as the air has begun to turn toward fall's shorter days and cooler temperatures.

The spearmint from last year made it through, too, not surprisingly. Mmmmm.....

Maybe soon I'll even clean these pots so they can be as pretty as what grows in them.

And I even dare to hope that I may manage to get pansies planted for this fall and winter.

It's hard to know how to describe the past three years. A lot has happened, a lot has had to cease for a while. "Upheaval" comes to mind as a one-word description that avoids the extreme emotional content other words would carry with them.

But these flowers bring to mind other words, words that remind me in a comforting way that while my life matters, and each person's life matters in ways we surely cannot fathom, each life is also part of a whole that gives us meaning and hope and comfort beyond what we could ever come up with on our own. These beautiful words--

While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.

After three years of pursuing a "Doctor of Ministry degree in missional and spiritual formation," I may have learned more about spiritual formation from these sweet petunias that came as "missionaries" to assure me of the good news that life is much bigger than my life, and strength and resilience and beauty are everywhere in the midst of it all. Even when I'm exhausted and oblivious.

A Firmanent in the Midst of the Waters

And God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters,

and let it separate the waters from the waters.”

And God made the firmament and separated the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament.

And it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven.

And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.

People who know my story won't be surprised if I say the passage above has fascinated me since I was four or five years old. When you grow up going to church, in a church that believes in teaching while young minds are fresh and can absorb easily, you start thinking about these kinds of things early on.

And when your daddy gives you a Revised Standard Version of the whole Bible when you are six years old, and you have already become a lover of words and reading, you start reading Genesis, because it is, well, the beginning. And the words that appeal to you stick in your mind. And words like "separate the waters from the waters" appealed to me, as did "firmament." It was just fun to say and to think, with the two m's and then the n near the end. To say it was almost to sing it.

And that word "firmament" just always fascinated me. Partly because for many years I never heard it anywhere except in this passage. And I remember conversations at school and church when we would talk about what it could mean to separate the waters from the waters, and how much of that was reflective of scientific thinking and how much was more poetic. (These were later classes, not in first or second grade, I'm sure.)

I suppose the next time I encountered the word "firmament" was in high school chorus, when we literally sang that so-singable word, as in, "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork," in a setting composed by a professor at our local college, Dr. Bill ("Doc") Hollaway. I remember it well.

This past Sunday I drove back to my hometown for the funeral of Marilyn Allen, who was one of my earliest Bible class teachers. We moved to Searcy when I was four; I had to have been four or five when she taught us, because we were in an upstairs classroom where the youngest children went. I remember flannelgraph stories. I remember her husband coming to our class dressed as Abraham or Paul, sharing his story and answering our questions. I remember having memory verses and putting stickers on charts when we recited them aloud. I remember Elsie Huffard coming to visit us all the way from "the holy lands" and telling us what it was like to live where Jesus had lived.

While I know that some people have unpleasant memories and even strong negative feelings about their experiences of growing up in a church, my memories of church are among my most cherished memories. I had wonderful, dedicated teachers like Mrs. Allen who loved us and loved God and taught us from the grounding of both those loves.

One by one, I am saying goodbye to my teachers--school teachers, teachers from church, piano teachers. Mrs. Allen was not only a teacher but also the mother of my friend and classmate. And she was in the same nursing home that my mom is in. Saying goodbye to her was more than honoring a childhood Bible teacher. It brings many thoughts and feelings to the surface.

I took these photos the day she died. As I was looking at the reflection of clouds on the surface of the water, I thought how the waters above and the waters below were coming together to create such beauty. And as painful, terribly painful, as death and separation are, the longer I live the more I sense that it is a temporary separation and that something very real still connects us after death to those we were truly connected to in life. Just as in the Genesis account, the waters above and the waters below were apparently considered to be one before the firmament was created to separate them, the oneness we have in Christ is there before death and continues after death. Some refer to the mystical body of Christ. While that isn't a phrase or concept I learned in my church growing up, the more I've heard it and thought about it, the more I think it should have been.

For now, we wait. For the new heaven and the end of the separation. One thing my church gave me was a love of music. We didn't sing this, but because of growing up where I did, I grew up to sing it later in another church setting:

And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

Easter: Now the green blade riseth

Now the green blade riseth

from the buried gain,


wheat that in dark earth


many days has lain;


love lives again,
 that with the dead has been:


Love is come again like wheat that springs up green.

In the grave they laid him,


Love whom hate had slain,


thinking that never


he would wake again,


laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen:


Love is come again like wheat that springs up green.

Forth he came in quiet,


like the risen grain,


he that for three days


in the grave had lain,


quick from the dead
 the risen Christ is seen:


Love is come again like wheat that springs up green.

When our hearts are wintry,


grieving, or in pain,


Christ's touch can call us


back to life again,


fields of our hearts 
that dead and bare have been:


Love is come again like wheat that springs up green.

(You can listen to this song here in a lovely medieval-ish rendition.)

“It was no accident, no coincidence, that the seasons came round and round year after year. It was the Lord speaking to us all and showing us over and over again the birth, life, death, and resurrection of his only begotten Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ, our Lord. It was like a best-loved story being told day after day with each sunrise and sunset, year after year with the seasons, down through the ages since time began.”

― Francine Rivers, The Last Sin Eater

(I don't think I have any pictures of wheat growing, but this is a field I see regularly that is bare and muddy and ugly during the winter and then suddenly bursts into bloom!)

Poetry in Unexpected Places

We went to the Spring Art Walk on Broad Avenue last night. I used to work on Broad Avenue, and at that time my friends would say on hearing about my new counseling job, "Are you sure you want to work there? Aren't you scared? Are you sure it's safe?"

After a horribly tragic shooting that killed several members of a family not far from our building, my boss forbade my usual habit of walking the two blocks down the street between our place and the clinic we were associated with. If I had to go, I had to drive. Just to be safe.

That was over five years ago. In the meantime, a lot has been happening in that part of town. Good stuff happening. Good people making things happen. Things are changing.

Last night we went with friends to that very same Broad Avenue, a little further down the street. We visited art galleries, a just-opening bakery, a paint-your-own-furniture store. We talked with artists, ministers, a man who helps folks in the city learn how to keep their chickens to have fresh eggs. We heard live music. We saw smiles and heard laughter. Nothing felt unsafe.

A young man was sitting in a chair on the sidewalk with a typewriter in his lap. A sign held up by a friend said, "Personal Poem Written Just for You." It intrigued me, so we stopped and asked. He said, You tell me about yourself, and I write a poem. I asked about the cost. He said, Whatever you decide. After you read it, you can pay me what you want.

So we gave him about two minutes' worth of information (or less) about us, and in a few minutes, here is what he gave us. It fits so well with this that I have to share it:

We stood there and read it in the streetlight. I was impressed. We paid him.

I asked what kind of typerwriter he had. An Underwood! I said, "I'm an Underwood myself!" (It's my maiden name.)

I asked him about himself. You can learn some of what he told us here. I said I might have to write a poem about him.

He asked if we'd be willing to take a picture of the poem later and email it to him. He's working on a book. I said we would.

I said to my man, as we walked down the street as the sun began to set, "I never thought I'd be walking down this street for fun."

And I'm saying to myself right now, "I never thought I'd find poetry on Broad Street."

And then I'm thinking of all the people who sat on the couch in my office, and I said, "Tell me about yourself." And they did. I heard stories I could not hear anywhere else. Hard stories, stories of suffering and pain and courage and endurance. Stories I can never publish but never forget.

They would ask about the cost, and within a certain range I was able to say, "You pay what you can." And we didn't write poetry, though I did take notes. And I heard stories and met people and learned about lives that could make a book. I learned about the battlefields of many lives, and I give thanks for all those days, and all those years. They left a living poetry in my heart.

And I'm happy to see light and joy on Broad Avenue.

Thank you, Adam, for the poetry.

Spring Green

I'm just fascinated by light. These days it's the light coming onto, and through, the new green that has exploded since the beginning of spring.

I remember, in elementary school, having a crayon with the name "spring green." Back then, I thought each name on a crayon was an official name; if I'd known about oil paints, I would have assumed there would be one on every artist's palette called "spring green," different from plain old green or "pine green."

I think of those "spring green" crayons every time winter comes to an end. The green of spring is so alive, so amazing.

I think also of Robert Frost's "Nature's first green is gold, her hardest hue to hold..." I can't help it; it comes to mind each year, and the beauty and newness of "spring green" have that sober note in the background, certainly. But even Robert Frost's poetry with its reflection on Eden's sinking to grief cannot dampen my spirits when green is coming alive all around.

That's partly just because it is so absolutely gorgeous and soul-awakening, and also because I don't believe that Eden sinking to grief is the final story. No, one day there will be no sinking to grief, no leaf subsiding to leaf. Someday all that is gold will stay, whether the gold of the proverbial streets of gold, or the gold of a person being "good as gold."

In the meantime, I'm thankful for glimpses of gold and green that pierce this earthly life with moments of sublime beauty. And while the photos don't do it justice, that's what happens on days when I get home in time to see the sun at just the right point to shine on our front yard. I leave the wooden door open and stand there and marvel at the sheer "spring green" of it all. Something is resurrected in me as that light shines onto the grass and into the darkened doorway.

Fascinating what light can do.

(For those not familiar with the poem....)

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.