Graffiti

With the cooler weather, I have been getting up and walking each morning before work. I always walk south on our street, then two blocks east, then a half block north, to a certain point where I can see the traffic coming from both directions before I cross the four-lane street. We are blessed with a walking trail in Audubon Park, just two blocks away.

I love the morning air. I love the sun coming up misty over the green dewy grass of the golf course, and peeking around the trunks of the circa two hundred old oak trees. I love saying "good morning" to the other people out walking the trail in the park.

It's almost an enchanted time, that morning walk.

So imagine my horror several days ago when I saw foul language in red paint. On the east-west street. And a bit further, even more foul languge on the same street.

And then when I was walking back from the park, I saw the same nasty word spray-painted on the trunk of a big oak tree. And an equally disgusting symbol painted on the roof of the house next to the tree.

Our neighborhood just doesn't have graffiti. Given the number of college students in the area, it's no surprise that occasionally somebody will write on a stopsign. But that's it. This house, however, has been empty, for sale, for several months now, and I suppose that just made it an easy target.

Part of me was outraged. It's just so ugly, and so rotten to think that someone out there cares so little about anything that they'd do this.

The tree is the worst part. How to remove paint from a tree without hurting the tree?

And somehow I can more easily imagine some kid being mad at some person, or people, or "the authorities," and taking it out on a street or building....the words would indicate pent-up anger....but a tree? What did a tree ever do to hurt anyone?

Over time, walking by this most days, I have come to feel saddest for whoever did it. My guess is it's one of the teenagers I've seen hanging around that area before. What would cause a kid to be so angry, to have so little respect for others, to have no better way to deal with the anger....

I can't know for sure, but I would imagine it's a boy with no father, with a lack of both love and discipline at home, with no one keeping him involved in healthy activities, with no other entity (school, church...) teaching him better ways to live. Most people don't just wake up one day and hate the world. There's generally a reason, or a host of reasons, for those feelings.

So, I have started praying for this unknown vandal. What else is there to do?

I did call the realtor whose name was on the sign. And yesterday noticed that someone had painted over the bits on the street.

Sigh. Our neighborhood is called "Normal Station Neighborhood." I sure don't want this to become normal.

(I guess you know why I didn't put a picture up for this one. Ugh.)

Sunrise

Then shall your light break forth like the dawn,

and your healing shall spring up speedily;

your righteousness shall go before you,

the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.

Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer;

you shall cry, and he will say, Here I am.

The photos are from my time at Little Portion. The text is from Isaiah 58, and seems especially appropriate, since in context it is a call to true religion, not ritual divorced from moral choices. In this passage, the call is to "share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house." The Little Portion community is very focused on serving the poor, and on living out their own commitment to non-materialistic values.

Both the sunset and the Isaiah text are humbling...and beautiful.

Rain

When the poor and needy seek water,
and there is none,
and their tongue is parched with thirst,
I the LORD will answer them,
I the God of Israel will not forsake them.
I will open rivers on the bare heights,
and fountains in the midst of the valleys;
I will make the wilderness a pool of water,
and the dry land springs of water.

from Isaiah 41

I went for a retreat in the mountains of Arkansas.

The retreat was on the theme "The Fire of God."

I saw the bare area in the wilderness of the woods where the monastery chapel and common building burned to the ground.

And it rained for twenty hours straight. I walked without distress and slept without air conditioning.

Some of the rain made its way to Memphis, and at least for a while it is cooler.

Below are more pictures from my long weekend away.

The prayer walk, still in its green glory.

The edge of the prayer walk, saved just in time from the fire.

What remains of the remains.

My umbrella from Venice had an American adventure.

The cross outside the retreat center chapel at night.

John Michael, Brother Andrew, Sister Mary Catherine.

Mist in the mountains on the way home.

Beautiful Arkansas scenery....This is near where I grew up.

Uncivilized

A while back, I was writing to a professor friend who travels an awful lot, speaking all over the world. Because he travels so much, I knew he would understand when I said, "It's that time of day when in any civilized country things would be shut down and a person could take a nap if they wanted to." Or something like that. And he understood completely as he was soon to go to a mediterranean country where that would be just the case.

Just in case you don't know what I'm talking about, in most countries around the Mediterranean, places of business shut down during the middle part of the day and open again in the evening. This is "siesta" time, go home for a real lunch time, get in out of the heat time, give yourself a break time.

Especially as research is showing more and more the value of a nap and the reality that our brains and bodies need that rest in the middle of the day--that productivity actually increases when workplaces incorporate a napping (or at least resting) policy--I think it really is very uncivilized of us not to recognize this and do something about it.

I'm using the definition of "civil" as "of, relating to, or befitting a citizen or citizens." Working through the day without a real stop is not related to citizens as much as it's related to greed and inflexibility. And it certainly doesn't befit us (or benefit us) to force ourselves to continue working when the brain is crying out for a break. It's no different from skipping a meal in order to keep working longer, in my opinion.

Lately I'm feeling that it is rather uncivilized of us in America, at least here in the South, not to shut down for a longer while during these awful hot days.

I figure the earliest settlers in Memphis must have arrived in early October, and by the time June came, they had already invested so much in living here that it was too late to change their mind. Otherwise no one would ever decide to build a city here where it gets over 100 AND the humidity reaches into the 90+ percent range.

I may be part Cherokee and part Choctaw, but my heat tolerance genes seem to have all come down from the English and Scottish ancestors. These days I can hardly stand to walk from the front door to the car. I am taking my lunch to work every day--I who so dearly value my lunch time away from the office--just to avoid having to walk out, get in the hot car, and then get out again to go somewhere to eat.

I find it hard to focus after 10am. I feel drained when I get home after work. I feel starved for sunlight and the energy it usually provides. The heat drains more energy than the light gives, I think.

Someone told me at church tonight that it's supposed to get down into the 70's tonight. I had this vision of waking up at 4am just to go out and walk around a bit. I'm not going to set an alarm to do it, but if I do wake during the night, I just might step out to feel cooler air for a change.

I feel sorry for my surprise lilies that have popped up and are already starting to turn brown because the watering we do is not enough.

I feel sorry for the dogs when I leave in the morning and know they will spend the day outside. And little Paolo comes in and after a drink often plops down right over the a.c. vent in the living room.

I think of people living without air conditioning. I pray for them. I wonder what on earth can be done for them. No one should have to live here without it, and people die most summers from the heat (weakened by old age, usually.)

So, I don't know why those early people decided to settle here. But since they did, I wish we could be like the Mediterranean people and just close up the house and disappear for a few weeks to a house by the sea, with breezes and water to jump into. And no work to do, because who can do any decent work feeling like this, anyway?

That's my summer lament for this year. I don't know when I'll get back to blog. I'm going out of town again soon (to another hot place with poor cooling systems...I'm going to take a fan with me!), and all my creative juices are hiding out until it cools off a bit and they can risk flowing without fear of being fried, I guess.

I read this recently, from another blog: "Someone once said that the misery of a heat wave is something that can't really be quantified, it's only endured."

So if I don't write for a while, know that I'm working hard enduring the heat. For sure I'll be back after the heat wave known as summer in Memphis passes.

A Second Look

I've written before that instead of a curtain, I have tissue paper on the window where my prayer desk sits. It's a really nice effect, plenty of light comes through with complete privacy. But seven years have taken their toll.

Which meant one day I noticed this:

And then sat up and looked from a different angle and saw this:


My neighbor's coneflowers, which I would never have noticed, except for the rip in the paper. It's so much fun looking through the hole now that I can't convince myself to replace the paper....

Look Hard

We drove through a powerful storm today. All before us was thick and dark, and rain began falling in torrents.

I had been taking pictures earlier, and almost put the camera away, thinking it was so dark there was no longer any point in having it out.

Then I looked south. And if you enlarge the photo and look hard enough, almost right in the center and down toward the right, you should be able to see a rainbow.

A rainbow. Not after the storm, but right in the thick of it. It was amazing. Drazen saw it, too, so I know I didn't imagine it, even though it was very hard to see.

So many times we have to really peer through the darkness to see the beauty. But it's there for those who look hard enough. And even for those who are about to give up.

Look up. Look into the storm. Look hard. It's worth it.

Tuscany Talk

Recently I was talking with someone about my recent trip to Europe. He asked for the highlights, and I told him about the day spent visiting Strove.

This friend has not been to Italy, but he did see the movie Under the Tuscan Sun. He said, "From what I've seen of that area, it seems like it's a very soothing sort of landscape, a soothing place to be."

Soothing. I had never thought of Tuscany that way. But I think he's right, and told him so. The gentleness of the hills, the orderliness of nature after so many centuries of people and nature sharing life together. The way the curves of hills and lines of trees balance each other. There is a balance, a harmony.

Soothing. Maybe that's part of why I love it so much, because I need soothing. I don't know for sure, but it makes sense.

(It's July 4, I have a three days in a row off work. I'll try to post some more pictures and get this trip documented at last!)

Strove photos

Here is what I wrote at the time, posted earlier and repeated here in case you didn't read it:

Afterward, Julie took me to Le Bagnese, the neighborhood where I used to live, to the home of our friends Tosca and Paolo. It was wonderful to see them after more than five years of being away. We had a delicious dinner and stayed up till almost midnight talking!

On Sunday afternoon, they took me out to their house in the country, in the little village where Paolo grew up, Strove (pronounced STRO-VEH--just in case you're thinking of the English past tense of strive.) It was captivating, and I was captivated. We went for a walk into the fields, and I wondered how I manage to survive living in Memphis! Tuscany is just hill after hill after hill, gentle and beautiful and unending. The green is that achingly vivid green of spring that makes me feel as if my heart might burst if I look at it for too long. It's just so very alive. The sun and clouds were doing their best to overwhelm us with their beauty, too, with each ray shining down clear and separate, so that it hardly seemed real. I wish I could post my photos and will have to later.

We saw two little animals that are something between a goat and a deer, I'm not sure what they are, feeding in a meadow not far from us.

Farther away in the hills was Monteriggioni, with towers all around. It's a bit like San Gimignano in that it has survived into this day and age and still looks like it did in the medioeval period.. I can't remember how to spell that in English. We're probably going to visit there on Monday.

We drove home through the Chianti region, with hill after hill covered in grapevines. Tosca told me that each row has a rosebush planted at the end, which I did not know. It's a Chianti tradition, perhaps adding something to the taste of the wine. Or perhaps not, but a lovely tradition, i think.

The sun was a perfect ball of pink as we drove, and I probably damaged my eyes turning to look at it. It set just as we pulled over to a "belvedere," a scenic point from which you could see for miles and miles. Had it not been so foggy, we could have seen the lights of Florence from there, even.

I cannot imagine a more perfect day. I cannot imagine that they get to see the beauty every weekend! I'm having a hard time imagining going back to flat Memphis and my windowless office, though there is beauty even there of a different sort.

And here are the photos, with comments below each:

Taken as we walked around their little house, just after arriving.

The view in another direction, and not looking directly into the sun.

Paolo and son Riccardo and the rosebush they just planted. (Riccardo lives in the area and has a landscaping business, so he was just the one to help out.)

My wonderful friend Tosca and me on their little balcony.

The lovely couple agreed to pause for a photo during our rambling walk into the countryside. (This was not long before we saw the deer.)

A beautiful end to a beautiful day.

Artificial

Today I heard most of a report on NPR about how cows in India have been mysteriously dying in unexpectedly large numbers.

These are cows living in the big cities, and because they are considered sacred, they are allowed to roam wherever they wish, apparently. Which means they eat what they wish as they roam.

It's very sad. It has been discovered, via autopsies, that these cows have plastic bags inside them. One had between 50 and 60 plastic bags in its digestive system. And this, understandably, kills a creature whose system was never designed to eat plastic.

Of course the cows don't set out to eat plastic. They find food, but too often it is wrapped in plastic, and it all goes in. They don't know that the plastic will kill them.

Bear with me while I make a leap. As I was listening to this odd report, I thought of John Michael Talbot talking about knowing Janice Joplin. And how, to him, she seemed like a kind woman who was desperately hungry for love. So she looked for love everywhere, and she would sleep with anyone for whatever love she might get (or think she was getting) from the person.

And she wound up dying from all the artificial "love" she got, and the lifestyle and the despair it led her to.

And I think how all of us are hungry--for love, for respect, for friendship, for meaning, I would say ultimately we are hungry for God, whether we know that or not--and we so often wind up swallowing things we were never meant to eat. And they kill us, or make us very sick.

It isn't just cows in India that get plastic poisoning. We all have a tendency to take in a lot of artificial "food" in our attempt to find real sustenance. Or maybe we even settle for the fake stuff and give up trying to find the real stuff. I know I have. I hesitate to even write about this, because I don't know if I have the authenticity to talk about it.

But I have the desire to not be artificial, and to not settle for artificial. And that's at least a starting place.

(And I would encourage everyone to stop using plastic bags! They have great reusable bags available now. Let's use them, and see if we might eventually stop this craziness of plastic bags floating all over the place!)

Fire at Little Portion Hermitage

I am in shock. Before going to bed, I thought I'd just check a blog I read, that I hadn't checked in a while, and there was a link to a Joni Mitchell video on YouTube. I listened to a couple of her beautiful songs. Something (her music? her name? I don't know) made me think of John Michael Talbot, and I thought I'd see if he had anything on YouTube.

And I looked, and found a video of him describing a fire that burned down the chapel and common building of his community. This was not what I was expecting! It happened while I was away, and I had no idea. Of all things, I just put a check to them in my mailbox today. (I'm going to take it out and rewrite the note and send a bigger check....)

This chapel--well, what happened in this chapel--changed my life. One of the dearest mental images I have is of the interior of this chapel, because of what happened to my heart there.

And in August I'm going there for a retreat with John Michael, called "The Fire of God."

It's so strange.

This community blesses so many people. They have helped many people rebuild their lives. If you want to join in helping them rebuild, you can see how at www.johnmichaeltalbot.com

And even in this, they are sharing faith and trust. Please copy and paste the following and watch the video. I think you will find it inspiring, in a sad way. I'm sorry I can't do links, but this is worth the extra five seconds it will take you. And once you get to the webpage, there is another video of John Michael talking about the fire and how things have been going, what they plan to do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnnHDQ9uBuA

Below are some photos from our visit there about three years ago. Every structure you see in these photos is now ashes. They lost their kitchen, dining room, library, recordings, photo albums, archives....and the beautiful chapel.

All the people and animals, and even the gardens, are okay. It was all the wood that burned before the fire fighters could get there....

Please pray for them.