Happy Monday--

December 22, 2008

Soon, my Josh will be home from deployment. It’s been a long year since I watched him board that bus to wing his way to Iraq. These last few months of deployment he has been in the part of Iraq where stories of giant whales and Noah were told in Old Testament scripture. The antiquity and history of the place has caused him to pause. But this moment, his mind is on getting his platoon home safe and sound, in mind and body. We wait for him and thank God for Josh and the other soldiers. As the time has started to wind down, emails have come in that he and his fellow troopers would “no longer be crossing the wire”, the worry has eased out of my heart and I have had chance and good reason to ponder this season of my Savior’s birth.

I pray, for each and every one of you that I send this to, that this season of Peace and love will fill your heart and the hearts of the ones you hold dear. I pray that no matter where you are, no matter your circumstances, that as I say this prayer for you, to my Father in Heaven, that this season, you feel love that has no bounds.

Happy Monday. Thank you for spending this year of Happy Monday’s with me…. God willing and you too.. I will be back first Monday of 2009, to start wishing them again for the new year. Count on me!

Love, Janet

Bible verse of the day:
In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to his own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger." Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests." When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let's go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about." So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.
Luke 2: 1-20

Quote of the week: For the spirit of Christmas fulfils the greatest hunger of mankind. ~Loring A. Schuler

December 15, 2008

I think in Howard’s mind and heart, we cemented our friendship the season we played lepers in the church Christmas program. That was more than twenty Decembers ago. Never ones to be considered a-team actors among the choir and drama talented, Howard and I somehow got chosen to be the adult members of the leper colony. Howard and I usually served in capacities behind the scenes and quite frankly I don’t remember why that particular season we were given acting roles. I would have said it was because both Howard and I knew how to talk, in fact, we could flat talk your ears off. Truth is though we really didn’t have any lines to speak of so it wasn’t the loquaciousness of our natures that garnered us the roles. Our script consisted of moaning and groaning in pain until Christ healed us. At that point we would leap for joy, literally. Swathed in brown robes and discolored bandages, he and I hobbled our way on stage, every night in practice, while the crew adjusted the lights to provide the most dramatic effect. Guess it was just God that got us the roles because what actually happened over the course of practice and then production was that Howard and I spent a great deal of time sharing what those lepers must have really felt like when God healed them. There was one night, during a performance, that one of our fellow lepers, a child of God who suffered disabilities in her everyday life, got to Howard and me. I remember Howard put his arm around me and I put my head on his shoulder, he cried as much as me, and we sat there marveling at how our small little part in this reenactment of Christ’s Grace had gotten to us. I know by that time we didn’t have to say much to each other, all we had to do was to let the music and the truth of Scripture and God’s grace wash over us. Howard and I, well we became the kind of friends that only God could make.

Over the next two decades, our lives moved to separate places, at least in part because Howard stayed in choir and I didn’t. He and I both shared a joyous love for music, but what you have to understand about Howard was that singing in choir, in practice and on Sunday, was as necessary and important to Howard as breathing. I mean it. It was a staple of living for him. I got a job and our lives didn’t intersect over music much then, but always when the skill of Howard’s hands and mind were necessary to take care of whatever sick beloved pet I had. When I think back about it, not once did Howard ever fail to help me no matter what I asked. For instance...

Like the time I decided that my beloved dog Red, the alpha of our home pack, the dog that no one ever wanted to see coming around the side of the house should you come to visit, the one who had grown up with my sons and who considered himself their personal body guard, had worried me one too many times when the local bitches went into heat. “Howard, I would like to bring Red in and get him fixed…. Hey! I have a great idea! I bet the boys would love to see you work!? I said in a moment of inspiration. “Do you mind if I bring the boys in to see the operation?” Silence on the phone, then, “You want to bring your sons into watch me neuter their dog?” “Sure”, I said.

Howard got a lot of mileage out of that story over the years.

Then the day came that I knew that Red was sick, too sick. I called Howard. “Howard, its time to let him go. Can I bring him to the clinic? I’ll just bring him home and bury him here in the yard afterwards”. This was a ninety pound dog. Even in my grief, I heard that familiar stunned silence. Howard had already agreed in sincere compassion to give Red the shot. Finally, trying to find the right words he said, “Janet, I have had a lot of sick dogs brought into the clinic, but I don’t think I have ever had anyone carry one out to take him home and bury him. I’ll come to your house.” There in the back yard, Howard crying as much as me, for a dog that had threatened to bite him more often than not, I cradled Red and Howard cradled us both. I might have the potential to be a veterinarians’ worst nightmare, but I bet no one could ever boast of a more tender house call.

And then there was Moses. Not long after Jake went to heaven, Moses, truly Jake’s dog and then mine when God called Jake home, was suffering. Moses had been trying to pee for more days than I care to admit. Howard knew I wasn’t one to spend much money on my animals but this was a different time and place. The place in my heart for loss was too raw, too open to lose this dog, Jake’s dog. Crying so much I could hardly hold Moses, Howard came into the examining room, took a look at both of us, and with his healers hands and the compassion of a friend, knew this was about a mother’s broken heart. He set about his work and with the crisis over a few hours later, Moses quite successfully peeing around a large number and chunks of stony rocks in his bladder, Howard put his arm around me, drew me close, and smoothed my hair. I remember that day. Never bashful to show his heart, he cried with me, in relief and in sorrow, out there in the dog run, Jake's dog crouched at our feet..

Saturday, at 7 in the evening, Howard went home to be with Our father. When I got the news, Bob and I had been waiting, knowing it was going to be soon. We were in the car, and the full moon was hitting her stride and as Bob and I rode together in silence I counted five shooting stars, a result of the extravagance of this December's Geminid meteor shower. I fancied that Heaven must have been shooting off fireworks to have Howard there. I also considered how extravagant God's love was to give me a friend like Howard. I let the memory of Howard and I having Monday choir practice in his living room this last month wash over me, I realized Howard has brought us full circle. It had been his idea, to sit and sing together. I could feel Bob’s eyes turn to search my face in the darkness of the cab. With a knowledge born of standing, witnessing, ushering his own oldest son into Heaven and a man of few but important words, he said, “Howard was singing praise, healed and happy, before the last beats of his heart.”

There is great joy and relief in knowing that to be true.

See you Howard, my Christian brother. Don’t worry, those of us who love you, we will care and love your family, till we see you,.. again.. singing, praising, with you, on higher ground. Rest in peace, my friend.

December 8, 2008

Geese from Above

On Monday’s I’ve taken to visiting with my friend Howard. We sort of spend the day together waiting for the chemo to do its job in his body. He’s a bit battered with the battle; battles for health aren’t clean and simple. We haven’t really settled into any kind of routine; we are feeling out how to have the days go, with the exception that I now recognize the look that means, “could you rub my back?” I really like it that Howard isn’t bashful to ask. When I put my hands to the task I wonder about the times Christ or his disciples put their hands to healing and how the news of those miracles traveled through the cities and towns where they occurred. Don’t you know everyone wanted to feel those touches? I try to concentrate on sharing my health and stamina with Howard through my ministrations, but mostly, I hope that I am not hurting him and that I am providing some ease, because truly I have no idea what I am doing. In between those times, I try to follow whatever lead Howard gives.

This week, when I arrived, I knocked on the door. A tiny bit of panic bubbled in my stomach when the doorbell wasn’t answered. I waited a bit and then knocked. No answer. I peered through the window and tried the other door. No answer. The bubble of anxiety was taking over. You should know that Howard has another companion, his beloved wife’s mother. Howard and Elaine are close; it’s easy to know why, they see the world in the same way, they have similar souls. They are chocked full of kindness. However, now they share another bond, they are both fighting illness. Elaine has Alzheimer’s.

Within an hour, I was safely ensconced in my chair, next to Howard and listening to the morning’s event. On top of everything else, Howard had contracted the stomach flu going around. He and Elaine had handled the little crisis that arose from Howard’s more productive stomach bubbles and now we were sitting sharing the details. (You should know Howard is my vet, his generous hands and heart sharing the health and death of my pets over the years; he is also legendary for regaling dinner companions with unusual-things-dogs-have-swallowed-and-my-personal-retrieval-methods at almost every dinner party he has gone to. That facet of Howard makes it very easy to discuss almost anything) I looked over at Elaine. More times than not on these Mondays, I have noted the confusion in her eyes but today there is the light of something else. Her softly lined face is mirroring the unmistakable mark of joy. In the telling of the story, it’s clear from Howard that Elaine figured large. On the next visit to the bathroom, while Howard was gone, I stood next to Elaine in the kitchen. “Elaine, you really did a great job this morning helping Howard.” “You know”, she said in the very clear and humbling knowledge that she had been of value that morning to someone she loves, “I did take care of my two daughters when they got sick. I knew what to do.”

The day over, I got in my truck to go home, and I stopped for a moment and looked out the window. I smiled at the family who lives across from Howard. Their father was marshalling his four young boys to yard tasks. They were recalcitrant. Down the street the garbage truck was picking up an unusually large pile and I could tell the guys were tired from a long day. Howard, his wife home from work, and mother in law were inside their house, settling down to a night where rest might be difficult to achieve. As I sat there, a very clean memory came to mind. One dusky evening, when I was coming home on a plane, flying low over watery east Houston, I saw a flock of geese below me. They were white, in stark relief against the graying winter landscape. I got to see them long enough to see the liquid movement of the flock, tacking one direction and then another, graceful, led by one and then another goose, flying at the vee. I have never seen geese from above before and I marveled at the landscape that flock of geese had to navigate to find their roost for the night. I remember thinking, where of all those thousands of reedy, fishy, bayous and bays should those geese choose to roost tonight? It was one of those moments that the sheer beauty of nature burned into my heart and soul and thinking about it this evening, clutching the steering wheel, eyes closed, God answered a question I have been asking Him for a long time. “What is the point, my Father, when there are things in this life can be so difficult and trying? What am I supposed to do.” As my mind replayed the beauty I had witnessed high up in that plane, watching those geese flying together, adjusting to wind and weather and changing leads, God put the answer deep into my soul. “When I look down, Janet, I don’t want you worrying so much about where you are going for the night. I will take of that. I want to see the beauty of you my beloved, going there together, and what marvelous things can happen, when you, my creation, love each other. You will never see it if you don’t spend time together. Take one day at a time, just go where I lead. It’s the place where joy and peace and love grow. I love you Janet as I do Howard and Elaine. I am good for my word. Don't worry so much, just live this day.”

Happy Wednesday.

Bible verse of the day:
(Acts 20:28) Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood.

Song for the week:
When I Get Where I Am Going – Brad Paisley
When I get where I'm going
On the far side of the sky
The first thing that I'm gonna do
I spread my wings and fly
I'm gonna land beside a lion
And run my fingers through his mane
Or I might find out what it's like
To ride a drop of rain

CHORUS
Yeah, when I get where I'm going
There'll be only happy tears
I will shed the sins and struggles
I have carried all these years
And I'll leave my heart wide open
I will love and have no fear
Yeah, when I get where I'm going
Don't cry for me down here

I'm gonna walk with my grandaddy
And he'll match me step for step
And I'll tell him how I missed him
Every moment since he left
Then I'll hug his neck

CHORUS

So much pain and so much darkness
In this world we stumble through
All these questions I can't answer
So much work to do
But when I get where I'm going
And I see my Maker's face
I'll stand forever in the light
Of His amazing grace
Yeah when I get where I'm going
There'll be only happy tears
Hallelujah
I will love and have no fear
When I get where I'm going
Yeah, when I get where I'm going

Quote for the day: I have found no greater satisfaction than achieving success through honest dealing and strict adherence to the view that, for you to gain, those you deal with should gain as well.
Alan Greenspan

December 1, 2008

Balance

I sat in the conference center; stiff chairs set in a steep incline, angled so that everyone could view the small stage and see the speaker. A Mexican conference, this speaker from a highly acclaimed New England Ivy League school would be talking to us in English. He had already confessed to the majority of conference goers that his Spanish was non-existent and as he began to lay out his talk, the three topics neatly outlined on his power point, I sat back and wondered how much I would understand. Despite his English, he was going to speak on a different aspect of evolution than what I work on; he was going to talk about the decades of evolution our human bodies have undergone and how understanding our adaptive responses during that time affected the practice of medicine. Hmmm… well, being something of a hypochondriac, my stomach was tightening to the possibility that I might hear something from this PhD doctor indicting I was deathly ill. As he began his lecture, his words were different, his medical vocabulary unfamiliar, but as he picked up speed and settled into his topic, it became easier for me to hear what he was saying. And I was listening...

It turns out that for the thousands of years human beings have been running around on this planet foraging, working, walking, living and dying, we have become accustomed… actually becoming obligated, to the millions of bacteria, parasites, and worms, that inhabit our guts. It’s something we call co-evolution. Over the generations, as allof these various God-made creatures came to live inside us, something really cool happened, or I should say, evolved. In an amazing, delicate dance of adjustment, our immune systems recognized and attacked the ever present microbes, BUT in response back, the microbes produced little molecules that prevented that immune system from getting rid of them. So with hundreds of generations of human stomping around getting parasites and eating things that were perhaps a bit blinky with bacteria, the little arms race to get rid of them that our bodies attempted was counterbalanced by the worms and bugs attempts to stay there, incubating so niclely in our in ninety seven degrees bodies. Well and of course you know, we have figured out lately that our turns out our guts don’t work too well unless we have those millions of good bacteria building little communities and thriving in our bodies. Think yogurt and smoothies. Now what made this speakers lecture so incredible was this: it looks like in the last fifty or so years, something very significant has happened in countries like ours, something that has upset this nicely evolved, finely tuned relationship with bugs in our bodies. We have gotten rid of them. Armed with antibiotics, antifungals, and all kinds of drugs to rid ourselves of worms and parasites, we have cleaned our bodies form the inside out and it looks like in the process, our bodies have responded in a way that no one expected. We have gotten sick, but these illnesses are primarily because our bodies are attacking themselves! Autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis, arthritis, lupus, things that have no names and even more weirdly things like autism, things we don’t think of as having to do with a little arms race inside our bodies with no enemy to attack, have risen in numbers. Given enough time our bodies will evolve and adapt, but right now, like hyper active children without those dampening chemicals from our little microbial neighbors, our bodies, well our immune systems, have literally gone haywire. In one of the most elegant points of the ivy-league doctor’s talk, he explained that new creative ways of using this knowledge was affecting the practice of medicine. He explained. In a landmark study, patients with multiple sclerosis were re-infected with a certain kind of worms and tracked for the progression of their disease. Turns out their immune systems quieted down, the little worms making those necessary chemicals that our bodies have grown used to and like little co-horts everybody settled down into the normal, you-have-worms routine.

Well, I sat there in that stiff chair and I thought about wondrous this was, both to see how elegantly life works here on planet earth and how wonderfully made our minds are to discover it. But also while I sat there, I realized in the most marvelous way, the little truth God had in mind to impress on me that day. The rest of that little story above is that there are germs and bugs and parasites that can kill you and it is good to get rid of some of them. There are lots of examples that demonstrate that fact. So how do we think about good bugs and bad bugs? The real solid truth is about balance. It’s the way God made the world and it the way he wants us to work in it. It doesn’t matter if you are talking about work, fun, food, drink, love, or bugs in your gut, balance is the necessary goal. But what is so extraordinary is that God made sure we would never neglect the need for balance. All over the universe, innate in God’s creation is the ability to change, to adapt. It’s His maintenance plan for balance.

How cool is that?

Happy Monday and have a balanced week. If it turns out you need to change.. your attitude, your heart, or your diet.. don't be afraid, you are doing exactly what God had planned!

Bible Verse of the Day:
“I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. (Jeremiah 29:11)”

Quote for the day: "Life is like riding a bicycle; to keep your balance you must keep moving”. Albert Einstein

November 24, 2008

This was my first time to Merida, a well kept, cleanly swept and colorful town sitting at the northern end of the Yucatan. Through the centuries, it’s seen its fair share of hurricanes and it’s been at the center of a fair amount of our continent’s human history. Mayan and Aztec ruins, some uncovered and reworked with stones hewn from 1500 years ago and some still hidden in jungle vines and rubber trees, lie all around Merida. I rarely sightsee when I travel, but this trip happened to be an exception. A combination of good friends from both sides of the Rio Grande converging on the jungle city and we found ourselves in front of pyramids. I have always found pleasure in reckoning early times around the world, and it surprises me to realize that some of these pyramids were being built when my Christ was born. Packed in the van, Spanish and English swirling in our ears, someone suggested we visit we visit a Franciscan convent, near Izamal, 50 minutes outside of Merida.

Set upon a hill the convent appears fortress-like surrounded by haciendas and businesses painted in vibrant white and yellows. We left the car and in various groups began making our access up the broad steps that led to the courtyard and then into the church. We had already shared a long and happy day in the van expressing our views and opinions; we were a mix of people in culture and faith. We entered the church as a group and then as our different hearts led, meandered or stood or left. I have visited a large number of Catholic churches over the years, I have worshipped in a few, I have burned a candle in more. In all of them I have sought that special peace I know that God can give, but mostly I never left it. It’s not to say that God wasn’t there to minister to my Heart's desire; I never though that. I suspect it has had more to do with my expectations and my overriding worry that I don’t really know much about Catholic worship practice. Most of my group had left and there were few other tourists around, and something about this convent made me want to linger. It was dim in the church. The stone walls and high ceilinged nave were typical of the architecture favored during the 1500’s and as I approached the transept like corridor that joined the convent to the church, I closed my eyes.

I stood there, with the intent to pray and concentrate in this house of worship. I expected to share in the silence. From a distance, rolling gently through the church, came the unmistakable cadence of chanting. It wasn’t loud, or passionate, but lingering as it meandered its way from wherever the nuns were whose voices I was hearing. Something about the moment stopped me. It was beautiful and with my eyes closed I tried to imagine the people behind the lilting voices I heard. These women, that I could not see, did not know, and who spoke a different language than mine, were seeking the same God I was. Just like me, they longed to share in the peace that is beyond understanding. The sound of their voices swirled around me, accompanied by the breeze that came through the jungle below and up this small hill top and into the courtyard and through the hall I now stood in. The echoes reminded that there must have been tens of generations of female voices that lifted their voice in daily prayers and petition to the Father; women who gave their whole life to our Lord. The imprint of their hearts and souls were a part of this convent, their love for God a part of the spirit of the place. I closed my yes and let the breeze that was blowing through the corridor waft over me, tendrils of sound of human voice singing praise surround me. In those moments, for the first time, the differences in worship made no difference for me. My body still, that addictive knowledge that peace is possible in an uncertain world, surrounded me and I marveled a bit in the bond that those Catholic sisters and I share. There is a peace that comes only from the people who enter the City of God, no matter what language we speak. God is universal. That is the simple truth.

As I come back home and ready my house for Thanksgiving, I am grateful for a God who created the beauty and bounty of a world that turns on differences. I am thankful that He is mindful to show me.

Happy Thanksgiving! Happy Monday..errrr.. Tuesday. Have a peaceful week.. and remember, God made the differences.... in cultures, in families and in you.

Quote for the day: "If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together." Richard Nixon

Bible Verse of the Day: Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.
Romans 8:1-2

November 17, 2008

I am on my way to Merida Mexico tonight. I had a lot of things to say, seems to be a lot on my mind, but for some reason, the words aren’t coming.. Maybe it’s because I seem to have more to do than time, and too much is weighing on my mind. It’s such a luxury to me to write. It might be because I am a bit under the weather (these dratted headaches!) But you know what.. somehow today, this day, it just seems right to tell you how much you mean to me. This Monday, I unadorned with words and images, I wish you happy one. Something about this time of year and where our country is: I ask you to remember our country and the challenges we have ahead of us, and ask you, if you are the praying kind, to spend a few minutes with our Creator thanking, worshiping, and feeling close to Him.. I am going to do that .. this evening and let me tell you this.. I am going to thank Him for you, who I get to send this to and know a little bit more about you because you write me back. Those words you send me, they make me feel good, and if you have come to know me a bit better by these Happy Monday wishes, you know I believe that there is nothing we can do better with our time on earth than to get to know each other.. and find ways and reasons to care..

Have a good week.

Love, Janet

November 10, 2008

Hold My Hand

I watched fine sand grains fall away as I took a step onto the bank of Cypress Creek. This suburban, soggy, watershed has been a favorite haunt of mine since we moved into this side of town. I have brought my boys down here when torrential hurricane winds subsided enough; to impress them of how powerful and deceptive fast moving flood water can be. I aimed to teach them about the danger the way my Dad had taught me. I remember one spectacular time, when not waiting for the rain to stop, my boys and me, we ventured down, their grandmother in tow, to see how high the creek had risen. Hair plastered to our heads, laughing and testing, three sons and three generations, skipped along wooded paths and puddles, my mother’s grandsons lovingly taking her hand, each as they saw fit, as they eased her past whatever obstacles lay ahead.

I have come here when all I thought I could stand was a place where I could see the sky, to cry a bit, and ask God for comfort and be certain that few people would ever see the tears or know the thoughts I shed as I prayed my heart to Heaven. But today I have come here, seeking refuge but to welcome fall as well. I recognize the signs of nature hunkering down as the earth tilts just enough on her axis to shorten the days and weaken the sun’s rays for those of us here in the northern hemisphere. The Chinese tallow is showing off a bit, her heart shaped leaves crimson and gold with bright, white berries, three to a stem, each growing fat and round in the waning sun. They will make a million more pesky upstart seedlings, rampant and pervasive in their intrusion on Houston flora, they are beautiful for the moment. We learn, take the good with the bad.

I have gotten old. For as the coming of fall used to seem sad to me, now, there is something peaceful in watching, knowing that the cycle of winter will bring quiet and rest.

When I take a second step and see that creek-river sand fall away from my footstep, the image of another time rests gently on my mind. I remember climbing this bank with Bob. We were exploring, looking for deer and coyotes, spending some time together during the years of teen sons, and moving on ahead of me, he scaled the bank easily. I struggled a bit, my ever present flip-flops a hindrance, and as I sought a toehold in the bank, he turned and offered me a hand. I had leaned closely into the bank, hoping for better traction and better balance, but with the posture and the sun beating down just right, the image that is mine forever, is that of Bob’s hand caught in relief against the bank. I was so close to both I could see the lines of his hand as clearly as I could the grains of sand near my foot. Bob’s hands are strong with square, healthy nails, and as far back as I can remember holding them, they have been warm. It’s his hand, palm open, ready to take mine that I remember; to help me get where I needed to go.

Gathering my dogs in, we head back and for the next few moments I don’t think about the woods where I have come to rest. It’s a lesson that God is teaching me. Just a few days ago, I visited a friend. He is sick, sicker than I want to think and I knew when I visited him in his hospital room he was in no shape to entertain visitors. I fidgeted a bit wondering what to do or say and wishing I could somehow take away the hardship of sickness, for him and his family. I said, “Don’t talk, I am going to just sit here and I will talk to our Father for a bit.” “Okay,” he said, and only a few seconds later, eyes closed in a union of souls that’s a bit beyond hospital beds, he said, “Hold my hand.” I did. I tried to make his forearm comfortable and I thought about this man, the grandchildren he has held and patted, the wife he holds dear and his own children who know the touch of this hand and his tender heart and whose hand I now held. I thought about a strength and power beyond our understanding.

Now, don’t be sad when I tell you this, but this made me think of the last time I held Jake’s hand. I was bound to do that, you know; think about that time and talk about it a little. He was already in Heaven, but that didn’t matter. Because, you see, although I would give almost anything to hold his hand again in this here and now, I can recall a thousand times I held that man’s hand all through his life and times he held mine. The very fine thing is, I don’t remember a single time I wished I had held his hand and didn’t. I could spend a lot of time wishing I had more chances, but the better plan is to make sure I don’t miss any of the times I am to hold hands now. Or to ask someone to hold mine. Or to count on holding Jake’s hand and all those I love, once again and forever, in Heaven.

Happy Monday. I hope the promise of fall, that the season of rest and thanksiving brings you the chance to take hold of a hand this week.

Bible verse of the day: 1 Peter 5:6 "Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time"

November 3, 2008

Meanness

I knew a young woman once. She was beautiful. In some exoitc and unusual marital union of a mother and dad from very different places, the combination of genes produced a young woman of extrodinary beauty. Her hair was reddish brown, full bodied and long, curling in just the right places, to fall gracefully around her shoulders. Tendrils framed her face in that way that way that only really beautiful people's do, never wispy or stringy, but natural-like, the dampness of Houston weather making them that much more attractive. Her eyes weren't green as one might expect with the reddness in her hair, but strikingly blue, irises rimmed blacker, her eyes tilted, slightly, hinting at the exotic gene pool. Quick and lively, the light in her eyes indicated a good mind. Everything was perfect about her face; thick lashes, small, straight, white teeth and skin that was clear and soft with only the hint of a few freckles dusting her cheeks. She was a bit on the chunky side, but you could easily forgive that, so fair was she in face. She naturally garnered attention, pretty people always do, and as humans we have a great deal of respect for beauty, you wanted to be around her...until you had been there for about five minutes. For whatever reason, that beautiful young woman was mean. Hateful and self centered, beyond what her beauty would warrant, venom spewed out of her mouth everytime she opened it. Sometimes loud, sometimes whispery, she never had a kind word to say and she didn’t care that she was mean. Frequently, she was spectacularly mean. However, you should kow this. Any description of this young woman would be faulty unless you included this; with every meanness-spewing breath exhaled between those perfect, white teeth, a most rotten, fetid odor escaped. She had chronic bad breath.

The more I got to know this woman, the more I convinced myself that the meanness she harbored created a telltale sign in her. She might could use that devilish charm and beauty to fool you for a while, you might even given her a second or third chance because of those qualities, but ultimately she couldn’t hide that she was rotten inside. She was ugly where it counted. That foul breath gave her away. The more I was around her, the more I disliked her. A bit more time around her, a few more venomous words from her and you might say I almost grew to hate her. I watched how she attacked those around her, venomous and spiteful. I resented that she seemed comfortable and almost proud of the hatefulness she visited and I wondered what she thought about when she went home at night and considered her day.

Now that’s a really bad thing to say you hate someone but that’s just how powerful meanness is. It can poison the people it touches and before you know it, you’re not acting much better than the poisoner, then you pass it on to the next person, and they get mean and hateful.. and well you get the picture.

There are things that happen in life that are unexplainable. I’ve seen them. Bad things happen to people that don’t deserve it. I’ve witnessed them. There is a lot in the world that doesn’t make sense and a lot that we have no control over. A lot of things never will in this reality. There is however something we can control and make sure never happens. We are never required to traffic in meanness. Meanness is a completely unnecessary activity. When you see it rear its ugly head, wrapped either in beauty or not, in yourself or another, about things you believe in or don't, vain imaginings of warranted or deserved, don’t let it poison you or anyone else. If you believe in the power of the good things, you also have to consider the power of the evil things of this world and meanness is one of them. I don’t know whatever happened to that pretty, mean woman, but I can almost bet it wasn’t something good.

Have a good Monday and the rest of the days of this week.. and if the devil should bring any meanness your way, don't let him have his way with you!

Quote of the day:
There is something in meanness which excites a species of resentment that never subsides, and something in cruelty which stirs up the heart to the highest agony of human hatred. Thomas Paine

Bible verse of the day: Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Ephesians 4:29-32

October 27, 2008

My brother suggested it first, but in the long standing way he and I have come to acknowledge good ideas, I am going to claim it. It just seemed fitting that if you are working on an old 1930’s house and trying to be part of a farm, it’s sensible to have a clothesline. So, as fate would have it, a friend of mine happened to have one, in the back yard of an old house that she was renovating. She didn’t know I wanted one, she just knew I wanted to see what she was doing to the old house as she experimented. But there you go, as I walked into the back yard, a big old oak gracing the back fence, blocking the view of the warehouse that had sprang up behind the house, was a perfectly made, quite usable, old-as-me, clothesline.

Now you know the kind I am talking about. Made of pipe, welded to a T, there are holes bored into the cross pipe so that wire or sturdy line can be strung. A good place is found to set those two poles deep into the ground, as far apart from each other as your yard and the line will allow, buried to the depth that the weight of wet sheets and towels, damp jeans and t-shirts won’t show a strain. But once you have them secured just right, your laundry can bake and sway in any breeze that filters through, secured to the clothesline with spring loaded wooden pins. Line dried clothes have character. Long before there were fabric softeners and fancy soaps, freshly washed clothes dried hanging on lines and in the process developed a stiffness that was surprising. Crisp and rigid, line dried jeans would lightly chafe when you slipped them on, something I didn’t like as a child. But it’s the sheets where the difference really comes. Oh my, how fresh and sweet they smell, when late at night, you lay your head down on pillow cases and sheets that seem to hold sunlight captive in that crinkly state. If the sun has a smell surely it’s those sun dried sheets that carry its essence.

Josh and I took the first trip over to get the poles, armed with a shovel. I had a fleeting moment where I considered we might be underarmed and undermanned but ignored the niggling doubt. We attacked the pole closest to the house which turned out to be closest to the entangling roots of a huge old elm tree. The first spade full of dirt hit hardpacked clay and fibrous root and with each shovel full, the return got less. Hardened from Iraqi sun and soldier toil, Josh began to look at me with that look. The one that said, you might have the heart to do this Mom, but we need more brawn. After an hour and a half, Josh’s lithe body dripping with sweat, I acquiesced, assuring Josh that all we needed was a few more implements and John. We left.

On the second trip over, the recruitment of sons counted two and half of that crew began expressing considerable doubt not only about the chances of digging up the poles but even declaring they might not be worth the effort. As every Mother can, I ignored the son’s logic. We were armed to the teeth with implements, picks and hoes, multiple shovels and even a crowbar or two, but something they didn’t know, I was also armed with critical information I didn’t have the first time. You see, my initial plan, which we all seemed to think best, was to dig all around the pole, increasing the size of the hole equally, eventually digging to the bottom. And then I talked to my brother. “Janet,” he said, “all you need is to dig the hole out to the side of the pole, equal only in width to the concrete surrounding it and down to the bottom. That’s all the dirt you need to move. That, and make up your mind to quit thinking and just do it ‘till it’s done.”

We took turns and between bruised knuckles, accumulating blisters and unabated voiced displeasure at how unreasonable the venture was, we extracted the first pole. I was proud. The sons looked decidedly unconvinced. Eyeing the other one, even Josh’s furtive looks in my direction made me think he was considering joining the chorus of ‘give up”. They both started touting the merits of buying the materials and welding our own. Didn’t matter that we didn’t have a welder, we could buy one. Or better yet they said, cut this second one off at ground level and then weld another piece on the bottom. Oh my, I thought. Braun is good, but wisdom has its place. When they got tired, I took up the pick ax, trying to mimic the rhythmic movement of another son I had seen split wood. My back aching from unfamiliar strain and the going slow, I could feel doubt creeping into my own resolve. About that time, with a few more swings, I pushed the pole towards the sideways hole and it leaned squarely towards it. With a few more brawny pushes it was ready to be pulled up. We had them both. We got in the truck, and as visions of billowing sheets dancing on strung aluminum clothesline filled my head, I heard John mumble, “Well, I’m not going to hang anything on them.”

There are things that we do whose value comes to light only when we have time to think back on them. My sons like to tell some crazy stories on their old mom, from when they were kids and I took them on strange ventures that made no sense. Time has put the right turn on those events as they lovingly tease me about them now. I suspect that in years to come, this story too might be shared around, this story of clothesline poles. Perhaps when they do and perhaps when their heads rest on crisp pillow cases dried on a clothesline and have captured the smell of the sun, I hope they remember. Never give up.

Happy Monday.

Quote for the day: It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer. ~Albert Einstein

Bible verse for the day: I can do everything through him that gives me strength. ~Philippians 4:13

October 20, 2008

Hey my Jake,

Happy Monday up there in Heaven. I am writing you because today is the third anniversary of your getting there. You know your old mother, I have thought a lot and a prayed a lot and missed you a lot. Through some little whisper of God, and an ear turned to Him, and as much for me as anyone, I’ve been sharing my heart with these Happy Mondays since you left. Following your lead as a young Aggie cadet at A&M, you started this, these special weekly and somteimes daily wishes and now I send them out, to people who for one reason or another, have claimed a stake on my human heart. Just like you did. Today as I sit in front of my computer I wonder; why were you compelled to share words and worries and doubts so personal? What were you thinking when searching for poems whose rhyme and meter sang the soul of your heart? While you and I will not sit face to face to share these answers until we meet again in Heaven, my heart already knows the answer; the hunger of the human soul to understand this earthly world and our place in it, finds refuge and ease when the soul is poured out with ink on paper. The power of words, whether they are from the hand of a 19 year old Aggie or those who have left their marks in ancient texts and poems and sonnets, sings a similar song. Of all the things that humans can do that will last, the written word may be one of them. The power of shared words lasts as long as we can read them. Through these Happy Mondays of two years and more, through my soul searching for God’s ease, I thank Him for words; yours, and ones I read from history and Scripture. I thank him for the creative soul and heart He gave man that let us share, across time and space, words that are ageless, and I marvel at words that recount history that matters. While I was rummaging through my computer I came across one of your old Happy Mondays that you sent out almost ten years ago… John Donne put those words to paper almost 400 before that and in the early morning of a day a decade ago you read them and they spoke to you and you sought to share them with people who had a piece of your heart. And, son, today, across time and space they speak to me as well. I love you Jake. The truest thing that lasts forever.... love.

Jake: This what I sometimes think when everything sends to be out of order, and going wrong.

Holy Sonnet I
Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?
Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste;
I run to death, and death meets me as fast,
And all my pleasures are like yesterday.
I dare not move my dim eyes any way,
Despair behind and death before doth cast
Such terror, and my feeble flesh doth waste
By sin in it, which it towards Hell doth weigh.
Only thou art above, and when towards thee
By thy leave I can look, I rise again;
But our old sublte foe so tempteth me
That not one hour myself I can sustain.
Thy grace may wing me to prevent his art,
And thou like adamant draw mine iron heart.

John Donne

October 14, 2008

Today, I don’t have any words. They are locked in my heart and won’t come out. I have some people on my heart that my mind is wrapped around and they are all I can think about. Howard, the kindest, sweetest hearted man God has ever put in my life, well, he and his wife will be dealing with the tumors they found yesterday in his liver and kidney. Chloe, a delicate, beautiful seven year old girl went to heaven last week and with an innocence and wisdom far beyond her years, pointed many to the unselfishness we should all aspire to and I am thinking about her family missing her. Jake’s friend Kent, a man I came to know almost three years ago as we worked together in Jake’s old truck, will get his knee fixed this week, a relief when its over for both he and his wife. And then there you go, my Josh, ready to finish up his service to his country, spending one more blessed Christmas season with his soldiers in a land they are charged to protect.

It’s times like this that I know of only three things to do; have faith on the bigger plan that God promises, ask for the strength to live this day, the one I am in, in a way that honors Him, and in Howard’s words yesterday, “count my blessings”. I’ve found nothing else that makes better sense.

Today, although I have no words, others do... right after Jake died, while thumbing through Jake's little green Bible he carried everywhere, I found the verse below. And then, when driving home from the hospital yesterday, I heard Martina sing some special words...If you need some special words, I am praying that God gives them to you...

Bible quote: In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith--of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire--may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. I Peter 1:6,7

Song for the week:
You CAN spend your whole life buildin'
Something from nothin
One storm can come and blow it all away
Build it anyway

You CAN chase a dream
That seems so out of reach
And you know it might not ever come your way
Dream it anyway

God is great but sometimes life aint good
And when I pray
It doesn't always turn out like I think it should
But I do it anyway
I do it anyway

This worlds gone crazy
And it's hard to believe
That tomorrow will be better than today
Believe it anyway

You can love someone with all YOUR heart
For all the right reasons
And in a moment they can choose to walk away
love em anyway

God is great but sometimes life aint good
And when I pray
It doesn't always turn out like I think it should
But I do it anyway
Yeah I do it anyway, YEAH,

You can pour your soul out singin'
A song you believe in
That tomorrow they'll forget you ever sang
Sing it anyway
Yeah sing it anyway, YEAH, YEAH

I sing
I dream
I love anyway, yeah.

Martini McBride.

October 7, 2008

It’s been a long summer in the desert of Eastern Iraq, as soldiers from the 3rd armored calvary worked to secure the small towns and villages from insurgent domination. In the summer of 2008, insurgent domination in these villages means one thing; target a family among the four or five that inhabit the village and murder them, leaving the bodies for the others to see. Once that village is under control, move to the next, and so on. The American soldiers, with heavy armored vests and pads covering every inch of vital organs sported helmets and guns and camel backs full of water in the 120 degree heat, are there to teach and support these rural people. They are there to teach them how to protect themselves against this insurgency plan. The villages with all the concerns of any rural neighborhood -fretting over sickness and drought, marriage and death, the art of daily living - must contend with foreign soldiers who are there to helpf provide the one vital right all human beings should enjoy, being safe. The long history of the nation of Iraq’s place in the middle East, their struggles, the power and conflicts, the leaders and wanna-be leaders emboldened by religious fervor, are not lost on the soldiers who trudge through streets and waddis, across undulating sand dunes to provide protection to those they have been instructed to protect. It’s a hard job in many ways. The soldiers’ days are filled with heat and sand and odor from their bodies unwashed for weeks and their nights are filled with missions to discover what new havoc might have been planted by the enemy of the soldier and the farmers and sheep herders that would thwart their mission. The insurgents have it easy; they only need travel the 10 or 15 kilometers to the Iranian border and gather up the explosives and mines left over from an earlier war with these neighbors. They plant them, in the Iraqi sand, hoping to scare and maim the heavy mounts and the men in them, that these deployed Fort Hood calvary soldiers use now instead of horses.

As I picked up Josh at the airport, home for a short respite, I thought about not seeing this youngest son of mine for just about a year as he soldiered in that part of Iraq I just described. He looked good, as he came past airport security, the biggest smile on his face that I can remember him ever sporting. I thought of the irony of him coming past this American checkpoint, the people of his nation waiting with shoes off and aerosols and gels in plastic bags for their own screening for safety implemented by our nation since terrorism came home to America. Lots of things have changed and among them I wondered how much my Josh may have. His eyes look wiser, he is quite thin, and surprising to me, there is a peace about him. I see a seriousness in him, something about the way he has shouldered his responsibilities over there has marked him. Sitting on my bed late that night, when a bit of the newness of being back home has settled in, he opens up Google earth and he shares with me the map of where he has lived and what he has done for the last eleven months. There is pride in his voice. There is respect and acceptance there too, for another culture and people as he describes mission after mission. “You want to hear the story of my truck hitting the IED” he says. I listen as he details the route and how that night three vehicles were hit, one after another as he commanded his soldiers on what they should do to protect and secure and ensure their mission and each other. His voice was strong and steady as he described the heat and sand and dust that filled his vehicle once it hit that buried ordinance in the sand.And as my heart lurched in his telling, he continued to describe the scene. “Contact IED, my truck”, he called over the radio, detailing and reporting the level of destruction and the beautiful reality that all personnel were unharmed. "Do you want us to contact family?", TOC replies. "NO, the soldiers say in chorus", and each in his own mind, in mental chorus, "we will tell them in our own time". “These MRAPs can take it,” he tells me and then with a twinkle in his eye relates what happened next. “Sir, we have to wait for recovery, wanna watch a movie?”, one of his soldier’s suggested. “That’s the way a soldier thinks, Mom”, he tells me. I notice that there is a balance in Josh, the way the thinks about his job over there and the people over there, which is what a soldier must have and I am proud of him. I thank God for him and wonder at how mysterious things are because my husband had a hand in our nation’s provision for our soldiers of these mine resistant ambush protected MRAPs that have saved so many soldiers these days.

Josh will go back soon and we will wait and pray for his safety as he returns home once his deployment is over. I ask you to do that too, but not just for Josh. For those who have lost sons and daughters, for those who serve, and for the people of other nations that we seek to honor, by sacrificing for their protection.

Happy Monday, a bit delayed.

Quote for the day: The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war. Douglas MacArthur.

From the Mayor of Tall’Afar, Iraq:
In the Name of God the Compassionate and Merciful
To the Courageous Men and Women of the 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment, who have changed the city of Tall’ Afar from a ghost town, in which terrorists spread death and destruction, to a secure city flourishing with life.
To the lion-hearts who liberated our city from the grasp of terrorists who were beheading men, women and children in the streets for many months.
To those who spread smiles on the faces of our children, and gave us restored hope, through their personal sacrifice and brave fighting, and gave new life to the city after hopelessness darkened our days, and stole our confidence in our ability to reestablish our city.
Our city was the main base of operations for Abu Mousab Al Zarqawi. The city was completely held hostage in the hands of his henchmen. Our schools, governmental services, businesses and offices were closed. Our streets were silent, and no one dared to walk them. Our people were barricaded in their homes out of fear; death awaited them around every corner. Terrorists occupied and controlled the only hospital in the city. Their savagery reached such a level that they stuffed the corpses of children with explosives and tossed them into the streets in order to kill grieving parents attempting to retrieve the bodies of their young. This was the situation of our city until God prepared and delivered unto them the courageous soldiers of the 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment, who liberated this city, ridding it of Zarqawi’s followers after harsh fighting, killing many terrorists, and forcing the remaining butchers to flee the city like rats to the surrounding areas, where the bravery of other 3d ACR soldiers in Sinjar, Rabiah, Zumar and Avgani finally destroyed them.
I have met many soldiers of the 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment; they are not only courageous men and women, but avenging angels sent by The God Himself to fight the evil of terrorism.
The leaders of this Regiment; COL McMaster, COL Armstrong, LTC Hickey, LTC Gibson, and LTC Reilly embody courage, strength, vision and wisdom. Officers and soldiers alike bristle with the confidence and character of knights in a bygone era. The mission they have accomplished, by means of a unique military operation, stands among the finest military feats to date in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and truly deserves to be studied in military science. This military operation was clean, with little collateral damage, despite the ferocity of the enemy. With the skill and precision of surgeons they dealt with the terrorist cancers in the city without causing unnecessary damage.
God bless this brave Regiment; God bless the families who dedicated these brave men and women. From the bottom of our hearts we thank the families. They have given us something we will never forget. To the families of those who have given their holy blood for our land, we all bow to you in reverence and to the souls of your loved ones. Their sacrifice was not in vain. They are not dead, but alive, and their souls hovering around us every second of every minute. They will never be forgotten for giving their precious lives. They have sacrificed that which is most valuable. We see them in the smile of every child, and in every flower growing in this land. Let America, their families, and the world be proud of their sacrifice for humanity and life.
Finally, no matter how much I write or speak about this brave Regiment, I haven’t the words to describe the courage of its officers and soldiers. I pray to God to grant happiness and health to these legendary heroes and their brave families.
NAJIM ABDULLAH ABID AL-JIBOURI
Mayor of Tall ‘Afar, Ninewa, Iraq

September 29, 2008

The Simplest, Sweetest Pleasure

As a young girl, growing up attending a Missionary Baptist church in a little working class neighborhood in Arkansas, I was familiar with the hell, fire and brimstone preaching that accompanied every Sunday morning service. Truth to be told, I never got used to those fiery sermons. At the age of accountability and beyond I sat in the pew, palms sweating, dread and worry churning in the pit of my stomach as I anticipated the last part of every sermon where the theory of damnation would be explained and my conviction of how it particularly pertained to me would begin. The proper response was to get convicted, walk down the aisle and profess your sins and the desire to have Jesus save you. Once I had walked down the aisle of that little church more times than I knew should be necessary, I accepted I was scared to death and had no idea how I could know for sure I was saved. I tried a different strategy. I dared not set foot in that church auditorium. I diligently and reverently and consistently trekked the several blocks, my brother in tow, to Sunday School, eschewing worship altogether, while Dad nursed a headache and Mother cooked Sunday dinner, returning home, glad that that I could set my obvious guilt aside for the next six days. I never told my Dad about this. Probably didn’t need to knowing him and me and my freckled and frowning Sunday morning face, but it was about this time he began his own set of Sunday sermons, covering whatever topics he felt were needed or maybe hammered in, after lunch when the neighborhood was somnolent and quiet. This was no conversation; they were lectures on the difference between men and women, humility and confidence, love and sex and faith and drinkin’ and the difference between believing there was a God, living like there was a God, and hope and living a disciplined and balanced life. These lectures, my Dad’s sobriety by the Grace of God, his desire to show me his faith and doubts, these things slowly and unconventionally began to ease the dread of doubt lodged so squarely in my soul, replacing it with little seeds of understanding about the nature of God and my search for who God wanted to be in me. My dad rarely went to church but in a peacable symmetry saw fit to go to that same little church, just a few blocks away, a few months before he would pass on home. I am not sure how much he listened to the fiery talk; I do know he prayed, balding head bowed and let something special wash over him as he made his own petitions, between him and his Father, past the point of wondering about the meaning of salvation.

I have burned candles in places where believers hold to the vision of Jesus’ mother presence and I have argued theology with atheists and evolutionists. I have felt moved to tears by words from a preacher in a different land who asked God to bless the leaders of his country and mine and realized that the questions I asked and the fears and doubts are not my own, but can be found in people who dwell in the borders of my neighborhood or beyond my continent. I have walked through many doors and across thresholds where multitudes have sought answers in meditation and nature. I have traveled my own road, hilly and rocky, looking for God, finding him mostly.

And so when I walked into church this past Sunday, the first time since Hurricane Ike blew through town. I felt the need to go, that old fear in the gut when I was a teen, now replaced by a hunger, the hunger to be reminded that life makes sense. Because you see, something interesting happened to me along this road of half a century I have traveled; something happened to me when Jake died; I finally learned what it means to surrender to something bigger than me and I know I couldn't be where I am if God hadn't been in control. I learned what salvation really is. I sat in the pew of that church and sang songs and thought about heaven and I took a moment to consider where I am and what I have been given. John, hair wet and eyes shining from baptizing, stands at my right. Josh, with eyes that mirror a wisdom that comes only from protecting and leading those under your charge in a land far away and home for a rest, stands at my left and with my head bowed, I thank God for this simple moment. I thank God for Jake in Heaven and I thank Him that their is a love that resides in the three sons He gave me that passes all understanding. I marvel a little bit, chuckling that Jake understood what worship, true worship was before I did. For that few moments, I don’t worry about anything, but that small precious moment of perfect peace, where love is sure and worship is about thanking the one who gave me the moment and that I am where I am by His Grace. I let something special wash over me as I make my own petitions between me and my Father, past the point of wondering at the meaning of salvation.

Bible verse for the day:
Don't worry about anything, but pray about everything. With thankful hearts offer up your prayers and requests to God. Then, because you belong to Christ Jesus, God will bless you with peace that no one can completely understand. And this peace will control the way you think and feel.

Happy Monday today.

Philippians 4:6-7

Quote for the day;
When you make peace with yourself, you make peace with the world. Maha Ghosananda

September 21, 2008

Men in Trees… Really.

The winds that came through Houston on the night Ike came ashore on the Galveston beaches were faster than I have ever driven a car. Hmmm.. okay, well I am ashamed. Once I did drive home from college and watched the needle of the Pontiac I was driving inch to and past the 100 mph mark. But sitting here looking at the aftermath of Ike, I marvel why someone in their right mind would voluntarily hurdle through space at that speed. This past week nature provided the stark reality of what 100 mph really means.

That ole Ike, so wide he covered a third of the gulf, roared across the city into the early morning and brought a surge of water that once it seaped back out the next day, would flush the ground and water and bayous of Houston. The hurricane winds, that normally would have lost a lot of their power once inland, stayed strong and dangerous right through the heart of Houston, marking territory as it blew through northern suburbs. Ike blew the roofs off of buildings, topped out pines, and uprooted trees that started as seedlings before I was born, all in a swath that covered our big, wide city. And when Ike’s northern winds barreled through and around cars and threaded his way through the houses on our street, he felled a big, leafy oak. The wind tore it right out of the clay and it toppled, its 60 foot tree tips gracefully broaching the house behind, the bulk of the tree body balanced on the power lines that powered our house. In the moment it fell, the weight cracked and swayed the two telephone polls to the east, the strength of their creosoted zylem and phloem compromised and they leaned, frozen like dominoes poised in mid-fall.

Over the next few days I watched as guys in white hard hats zipped up in white, big trucks, and as they furiously noted on clipboards, jumped equally rapidly back into their trucks, heads shaking in obvious recognition of how big a job this repair would be. It was clear; ridding the line of the tree was going to be difficult. Just two days ago, the crew showed up, a group of twenty, robed in long sleeves, more orange hard hatted men than those with white hats, sporting belts that dangled ropes and small saws. They seemed to take a lot of time, talking on phones and laying out cones, the white hats more frantic, the orange ones bored and relaxed, laying on lawns and lunching early. And then the moment came.

The back yard was filled with sounds of Spanish words barked loud enough to be heard and for sure not misunderstood, as the morning long strategy was implemented. I took a seat, sheltered by an overhanging roof and watched amazed. Light ropes, weighted just right on their thrown ends, rocketed repeatedly to the top branches of standing trees that stood a good thirty feet from the felled oak. Over and over the lines sailed upwards, like gravity didn’t matter, and then gracefully looped over a branch, only to be snatched back until finally three were in place. Soon two men were hoisting themselves up, harnessed around the bulk of their bodies, using the heavier rope that had replaced the thin, lithe weighted one, inching up their respective tree. The smallest man, farthest from me, reached his destination first, swinging his legs and arching his body to land on the thinnest top branch of the felled tree that would hold him. He called for a chain saw and with it in one hand he began tackling the oak, sawing it off in pieces as he balanced and navigated the tree top. A rain of sawdust marked how fast his small saw cut through the branches. By this time the man nearest me was within a hand’s length from the top of a giant pine. A bit heavier than the first man, I had watched as he strained with the weight of pulling his body through the height of the tree, resting at times and flexing his back; I was close enough to see him close his eyes and marshal the physical capability and the mental fortitude.. and catch his breath.. I watched in amazement when he reached the top and began working like the ground underneath him wasn’t fifty feet away and I wondered at his part in the plan. He trimmed and cut away branches that seemed irrelevant and once he got them, he positioned the thickest rope they had around the broadest trunk of that tree way up there. When it happened I am nost sure, but one end of it was tied double to the fallen oak and like some crazy, flimsy erector set, the other end was up and over that tall pine and trailed down to be manned by four of the heaviest men on the crew pulling it tight in the middle of the front yard.. It dawned on me then, the elegance of their idea; they had made a rope crane. Within minutes not only one, but two rope cranes extended to the old fallen oak and with it’s tree top trimmed, an assault began on the trunk. Most of the unoccupied men watched, as each chunk of widest oak came away from the uprooted bottom, the lone man manning the saw more careful and watchful with each cut he made. As he worked, the bulk of the tree trunk slid slowly down the power lines and in one moment, slid off them entirely, thudding quietly to the ground, guided by the men on each end of their rope crane.

I must admit, I hadn’t thought about the strain that the men might have felt, they seemed so competent, but it was obvious as the tenseness in their shoulders and voices eased and the barked orders that now sifted through the twenty men were softened by smiles and the certain glow of respect that they for each other. They had done a good job. They had each done their job and all was safe.

Neighbors had gathered and watched in spectator positions, few as good as mine and we did what all neighbors do when it was over, we gathered to talk about what we had just witnessed. The old man down the street, his face kind and gentle, a hard working man who drives a big truck for a living, hadn’t said much. When most of the others had trailed off or left and he and I stood alone, he looked at me and his eyes reflected knowledge that doesn’t come from schooling so much as it does in living. “Those guys sure knew what they were doing, didn’t they? You have to understand a lot about how things work, about tying knots and making angles and such.”

The crew of twenty had gathered all their ropes and their cones and the white hats had come back and checked this tree of their list and were dictating to the men from the trees about the next job they would tackle. I went back to my chair under the porch and I thought about being grateful. I said a prayer for where that crew would go next. And in the way that God has of teaching me, I thanked God that the world is made of a people who are willing to do their best for someone else.

Quote of the day:
“Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives.” William Foster

Bible verse of the Day
But as touching brotherly love ye need not that I write unto you: for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another.

1 Thessalonians 4:9 KJV

September 8, 2008

A day for Birds

Laying on my squeaking air mattress, I am wide awake, and have been for at least an hour. Its THAT hour, that long hour before the sun finally starts to come up over the horizon far enough to turn black night to purple early dawn when you have to make a decision: do I try to get back to sleep or admit that the day has started. As soon as I saw the lightening sky I got up as quietly as I could, padded back to where Mother was asleep and gently snoring, to get a bathrobe. This fall day, an hour away from Houston, was going to be less humid, more autumnal like, a sweet pleasant chill in the morning air as I stepped outside to look at the silhouette the trees were making to the East.

Covering my robe around my ankles and zipping it up to my neck, I slid behind the wheel of the little red electric cart and decided to see who else was up on the farm. Yesterday the sun had warmed the earth, heating the soil and in the night as cooler wind from the north had brought this pleasant chill of night to the gulf coast, a layer of cooler night air lay all over the pasture; in the small little valleys near the lake and on the lake, a fine, misty layer of fog spread ephemeral over little mice that were beginning to stir. It was beautiful. Quietly navigating through the dewed grass, I got to the top of the first hill and stopped, just to listen. A million bird calls filled the air. No other sounds, no cars, no people, no trains or buses, just a cacophony of birds welcoming this cool fall morning.

I don’t know much about birds, but I spent the next few moments with my eyes closed trying to distinguish the creatures that were sharing this early morning with me. There was the loud caucus of big black crows, strident and discordant. I know them. They are constant farm companions, always sounding as if going about their day is about creating racket. If crows had souls, I believe they would be in a constant state of complaint. That’s how they sound. Far back in the woods to the west, near the brush lined fence row, I could hear the Carolina wrens, calling to one another over distance and trees. An old owl, hooting his way home after his long night of hunting, sounded tired. I didn’t hear the pileated wood pecker, but opened my eyes in time to see him, as he swooped across the sky and landed in the spooky old dead tree closest to the pond. I watched as he grasped the trunk of the tree, hanging parallel, angling to begin his rapid drilling into the bark. RATTTATTTATTT. I heard his beak against the bark, drilling for bugs. Nor more than fifty yards from him, his head is big enough that I can the see the jackhammer action. A silly thought as I watch him, do birds get headaches? Much, much less would do it for me, forget if my job in life was to beat my head against a tree. He’s beautiful.

There is the sound, that shrill piercing sound, that always seems to have a sense of aloneness to me, of a bird of prey of some kind. It’s not my fereginous hawk, the one who I have watched lovingly soar on thermals above the farm since February. Bob has told me hesitantly just last night, he had seen the huge bird laying on the side of the road last week, his feathers beautiful still but stilled from flight, always now. I didn’t see him, a scavenger had already claimed the bounty by the time I got here. This was another kind of hawk, searching for food or mate, mastering the air, playing in it, as I would hear him over my left shoulder at one minute and then far to my right the next. Smaller birds, with songs of morning, too many and varied for me to distinguish were filling the air now. It was a sweet symphony, discordant at times but full and beautiful and varied.

The truth of this moment dawns on me. Birds sing morning songs no matter where you are if there are trees and sunrise, but you will never know it, if you don’t make the time and place to hear it. It’s like a lot of things in life or at least the way we live life, sometimes to get the most out of why we are here, means making things simple and still.

The sun is full warm and bright behind the trees now, the dew is leaving and the silky fog is disappearing before my eyes. I bet someone else is up and brewed some coffee in the old farm house. The moment is over. But I got it, Lord. Be still and know who you are.

Happy Monday.

Bible verse of the day: Be still, and know that I am God. Psalms 46:10

Poem for the week:
To The Cuckoo

O BLITHE New-comer! I have heard,
I hear thee and rejoice.
O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird,
Or but a wandering Voice?
While I am lying on the grass
Thy twofold shout I hear,
From hill to hill it seems to pass,
At once far off, and near.
Though babbling only to the Vale,
Of sunshine and of flowers,
Thou bringest unto me a tale
Of visionary hours.
Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring!
Even yet thou art to me
No bird, but an invisible thing,
A voice, a mystery;
The same whom in my school-boy days
I listened to; that Cry
Which made me look a thousand ways
In bush, and tree, and sky.
To seek thee did I often rove
Through woods and on the green;
And thou wert still a hope, a love;
Still longed for, never seen.
And I can listen to thee yet;
Can lie upon the plain
And listen, till I do beget
That golden time again.
O blessed Bird! the earth we pace
Again appears to be
An unsubstantial, faery place;
That is fit home for Thee!

William Wordsworth

August 18, 2008

Walking Home

There was a woman who walked the streets of my neighborhood. I haven’t seen her in a while, but for almost two years, I saw her. She walked the streets, sometimes with her hair in curlers and sometimes fully coifed, her head tilted up a little, not quite like she was looking towards heaven, and never a smile on her face. Her gait was ambling, less than purposeful, and honestly, nomalice in the telling, she didn’t look quite right. In the head, you know. She didn’t seem to be in pain, at least not the physical kind, nor did she look like a stroke sufferer, she was always alone. She wasn’t walking to get in shape, she was already thin, but I can tell you that woman clocked hundreds of miles just walking, all times of the day, heat or cold, rain or shine. I never spoke with her, but in my heart I knew from the first time I saw her, what she was doing. She was pain walking. Sometimes there are things that happen to us that we can’t handle unless we do something. The problem is that finding out what you can do isn’t possible, because your mind and heart and soul are so sore and torn, you can’t think straight. Sometimes you don’t even want to think straight, so the only option, and as crazy as it might sound (mind you the human mind has come to this conclusion more than you might imagine), is to pain walk, or if you are able, pain run.

You know of course, why I knew what the woman was doing. I’ve been there. She and I, unknown to each other, were pain walking together. There is solace in just moving in those dire times of need. I suspect that there is solace in being on the outside, where the sun still shines, trees' still green, and you can see the steady, true hand of the Creator at work. I suspect, that even if you don’t believe in God, the need for the kind of assurance and certainly that God’s nature provides is a balm to the human heart, so no matter our faith state, pain walking happens. I have been thinking about that woman, wondering what happened to her. I haven't seen her for a while. I know that sometimes, when our minds are broke, healing is delicate and difficult and unsure, not quite like the healing of a broken heart. I am a living testament to what God will do with a broken heart. Time, and faith, and grace will work miracles. I hope that the woman has healed. I hope that because I no longer see her bodes well for where pain walking got her.

I woke up this morning, with anxiety strong in me and the small but certain need to get out where the sky and the clouds are bigger than me. Turning to gaze out the window at the early light of day, I waited for the fogginess of sleep to leave. I have come to love those moments, those precious moments when reality and dreams aren’t much different, and prayer comes as natural as breathing. In the knowledge that human souls are meant to care for each other I accepted that my heart strings were tender and aching for some who are doing a different kind of pain walking this Monday. To Chloe and Bobbye and Dot, one child and two women who are walking their way to Heaven these last days of August, accompanied by families, walking with them, finishing the race of this life with Grace, supporting those they love with every ounce of love and faith in them, I will take a walk in the rain for you today and storm the gates of Heaven with prayer.

Quote of the day: That day, for no particular reason, I decided to go for a little run. So I ran to the end of the road. And when I got there, I thought maybe I'd run to the end of town. And when I got there, I thought maybe I'd just run across Greenbow County. And I figured, since I run this far, maybe I'd just run across the great state of Alabama. And that's what I did. I ran clear across Alabama. For no particular reason I just kept on going. I ran clear to the ocean. And when I got there, I figured, since I'd gone this far, I might as well turn around, just keep on going. When I got to another ocean, I figured, since I'd gone this far, I might as well just turn back, keep right on going. Forest Gump

Bible verse of the day: Romans 8:18 "For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time [are] not worthy [to be compared] with the glory which shall be revealed in us."

August 11, 2008 Happy 30th Jake, up there in Heaven.

Dirt Under My Feet

When I was young, one of the sweetest pleasures for me was getting to go barefooted. Soon as I heard the June bugs and lightning bugs beating against the screens of our old house, I knew that spring had turned into summer. Still cool nights but warmer days meant that I could shed my shoes without Dad telling me I was going to catch a cold. Mother would buy me a pair of flip flops and unless I was on my way to Sunday School or my feet toughened up, they were my sole concession towards a summer barefoot existence.

Of course, there was a bit of suffering you had to do with flipflops. I always counted it a good hurt between my big toe and the next one as my winter soft feet got used to that little piece of rubber between them and if that was the right of passage one had to endure, barefooted summer was worth it to me. It wasn’t long before long before my feet toughened to barefooted jumping rope, asphalt hopscotch and building rock-outlined houses in the woods. Soon the flip flops were off more than on. There was one summer long exception. When the little flat sticker burrs on the sticker weeds that covered our yard hardened enough for their spines to go through my feet, I always put the flip flops back on for yard navigation. I never learned another solution, certainly never mastered the agility or developed the sharp eyes to pick a path that led to to successfully avoid them. I swear, there is nothing that hurts quite so sharply as those tiny little spines. Nothing good about that hurt. Once lodged, you have no other options but to stop immediately, try and hold your foot up, stork like, and pick the thing out hoping by the time you get across the yard you don’t have to stop again.

But, as life goes, there are almost always good things at the end of a hard road and for me it was the woods. There was a field behind our house that led to oak dotted woods, the destination for most of the neighborhood children, and almost as soon as summer started, several paths through chin high weeds disappeared into the cooler, shade of the old trees. Underneath them, worms and beetles and sugar ants had worked their magic and turned leaves and forest litter into fine, soft dirt. While we gathered sticks and stones to make houses and secret clubs, soft, bright green shocks of moss fascinated me. I would try my hand at transplanting them to the floor of my woodland home, always a bit disappointed to come the next day and find them turning brown. I was to find out though, after several summers behind me, truly, as soft as moss looked, nothing compared to the soft, brown, fine old dirt, that once you brushed the leaf litter away, was there to cover the floor of make believe homes.

Working at the farm the other day, just me and mother, I had taken off my shoes while painting in the house. Not thinking, I headed out the back door for the barn for a tool I thought I remembered seeing out there. I hopped along the poison ivy trying to side step the oil it was surely spewing about, stubbed my toe on a protruding yaupon root, and limped on both feet to the barn door trying to avoid prickly pinecones. About the time I was thinking, “how did I ever have feet tough enough to go barefooted almost anywhere,” I felt the soft cool barn dirt under my feet. Standing still, I could feel the fine grains giving way to mold around my feet, and still surprised out how cool the ground felt, I stepped out on one foot and looked behind me. There in the dirt, cast in relief and dappled with sun light through pines, was my footprint. Where the fleshy parts of my foot left a deeper impression, the soft silted dirt had filled in the fine lines of my sole and in between where my toes had been. I must have tried to sweep a million of those away in my little dirt houses in the woods. I stood there for a minute. I guess there were little nematodes and screwworms and probably a few billion bacteria in that dirt, and I am sure that these days barefooted behaviour might be frowned upon. But a decade of summers never saw those little creatures matter to me when I was young and God has a way of taking care of issues like that. For surely there was just pure, simple pleasure as I stood in the doorway of that old barn, listening to my ferruginous hawk screech at the cawing crows and me in there, wiggling my toes, enjoying the dirt and the barefootedness of it all. While I searched for the tool, with each step, the ground moved slightly to crunch under my weight and silk-like dirt padded my walk. With the coolness of shaded, old dirt soothing my old feet, I thought about how sweet those memories of child hood were to me. For a minute, I thought about being that young again, where make believe houses and dreams and barefoot summers are the moment you live in. I realized two true things. I don’t want to go back to things of the past, but I am glad I’ve been there and God can deliver and remind us of simple joy in the most imaginative packages.

Quote for the day; We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it. ~George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, 1860

Bible verse of the day: I Cor. 13:11-13 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

August 4, 2008

You Can’t Have Your Cake and Eat It Too

When Jake left for his tour of duty in Iraq, I decided I would give up sweets while he was gone. I guess I did it as a witness, I don’t think I was bargaining with God to bring him home safe, for sure I was doing it to honor Jake’s own service and sacrifice. Strange enough, it wasn’t hard. Now don’t think that’s because I don’t like sweets much. If you know me, you know I am addicted to a small spoon or two of desert after dinner, after every dinner and I crave, absolutely crave, chocolate throughout the day. I have been buying M&M’s since I was four. I guess I just did it to feel close to Jake while he was gone, to have some empathy in his (and others) soldiers in sacrificing creature comforts. And then there was this feeling inside me.. it was the right thing to do. You ever had that? You just know, without thinking or analyzing something, even if it costs you, to do what your heart tells you. (Kinda embarrassing to talk about giving up sweets for a soldier, ‘costing me’, but there you go, it is what it is.)

So when Jake came back, both at his mid term leave and when he redeployed, he brought me fancy chocolates that he bought at the Dublin airport. He bought special ones, fancy with finer chocolate than M&M’s have, ones he thought would make the end of my abstinence and his return that much more sweeter. I kept all those little gold papers the fine chocolates were wrapped in. Funny thing was, I never waivered or was even tempted to dishonor this personal promise. Unlike other promises I have made to myself and God over the years, I was solid in my conviction and temptation never reared her ugly head to dissuade me.

So you know where this story is going.. Of course, when Josh left for his service to our country, in a much quieter way but with equal conviction of purpose, I once again, gave up sweets. The strange thing, it’s been harder this time. Not harder in why I want to do it, not harder in knowing that it honor’s Josh’s service exactly as it did Jake’s, harder in that I worry I won’t accomplish it. I even dream I don’t honor my promise. And then the other night, the thing my dreams have been made of, I almost rationalized why it would be okay to eat a bite of smoothly moist, butter cream frosted birthday cake in celebration of a friend’s birthday. This friend has a big piece of my heart and that was how my mind reasoned, an exception might ought to be made in this case. To be honest, I am embarrassed to tell you this. About now you are either thinking the whole idea is silly or you are embarrassed right along with me and a bit surprised at how weak my resolve might be. But in those few seconds, I learned a truth that could never have happened if life hadn’t brought me to that birthday celebration, sons in deployment, and meaningless sacrifices of chocolate and cake. You realize that’s the way things work when you follow the good, deep down things from your heart. Looking at that piece of cake on that plate, chocolate dripping in decoration down its sides, I knew that sometimes there are no exceptions to be made, sometimes you must just hold out, regardless. I knew that to rationalize taking a bite would open the door to more reasons to not honor my promise. It wasn’t about the cake, it was about staying true to the things you know you ought to. Maybe those good friends sensed that moment of weakness, and in chorus and with words and encouragement, they acknowledged and supported this little attempt of mine to show my pride and honor for Josh, that youngest son that God so graciously has loaned me here on Earth. Josh will come back different, stronger among other things, because he has, under all circumstances, remained resolute to his promise and his service, resolute in the face of circumstances much more serious than denying himself a piece of cake. I pray that for him. Maybe, God willing, I will too.

Follow the things of your heart, the ones that come from the knowledge that God is in them. Surround yourself with friends who will support you in those good things, and above all, be resolute once you know what your heart tells you. Even silly things, like birthday cake, can get you where God wants you.

Bible Verse of the Day: No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it. 1 Corinthians 10:13

Quote of the Day: “Calvin: Do you believe in the devil? You know, a supreme evil being dedicated to the temptation, corruption, and destruction of man? Hobbes: I'm not sure that man needs the help”

July 29, 2008

Yesterday I was driving home to Texas. We spent four days in my beloved Mexico and despite our initial trip going down with Hurricane Dolly, the trip went smooth. I am back today feeling refreshed. I’ve told you before, that desert oasis nourishes me and it did again this time. I want to tell you how.

We worked hard days in the heat, setting up equipment in the pozas, the small pools of water dotting the valley that look like little bits of the Caribbean ocean dropped from the sky. We packed our gear each evening with an eye on the sun as it fell to disappear behind gypsum dunes. As it ceased to heat the caliches covered roads, we headed back to town, to share tacos and paletas. The town comes alive at night in this desert place. While the stars show their finest lights, moms and dads, babies and grandma’s pull their metal worked summer chairs to doorways and patios, to catch the rapidly cooling air. The sky is cloudless and the night air is refreshing in the only way relief from 100 plus degree heat can make you welcome late night breezes. Rather than sleep, it’s what you do in the desert. I think about Josh, he too, and his fellow soldiers take advantage of cooler desert nights. As I walk down the street, I softly acknowledge, “Buenas noches” to those I now know and those I don’t. I’ve come here often enough now to make a few friends, certainly a number of acquaintances, and even if I must rely upon good wishes from my heart mirrored in my eyes more than the proper Spanish words coming from my mouth, a common bond is there. This place nourishes them as well.

The last night of my stay, our Mexican collaborators and friends managed to get the key that would open the gate to the road that can take you to the gypsum dunes themselves. They are protected now, from tourists and the curious. We packed into our cars, about 40 of us, and headed out to watch the sun set, sitting on the dunes rather than watching them from afar. Among desert willow with small purple blossoms, I found a pure white hummock of roots and hardened gypsum, my own personal seat. Others, some in pairs, some in groups and some with the desire to feel the coming night sky with their own thoughts did likewise. The sun seemed to drop from the horizon, speeding towards the other side of the world. You know this if you are inclined to watch sunsets, they are almost over before you can think about them if you aren’t careful. You have to be still and watch. My mind settled around the sunset. I remembered Jake telling me of the beauty of the ones witnessed in the Iraqi deserts. I think about Josh who sees them now. I feel a companionship with my sons that belies the earhtly fact that they are in different places than me right now. As well as I know my own thoughts that this fleeting sunset brings to me, I know heart certain that Jake and now Josh, have shared some of the very thoughts I am thinking this night. Bet those strange and powerful entities called prayers were whispered between their lips, as they are between mine tonight. .Somewhere inside me there is a peace. It’s bigger than words on paper, but I know where it comes from, it is love. Beyond definition, beyond description, and even somehow beyond time and space, it is love I can feel deep inside me.

As the last few rays reach across the Mexican sky, Night begins her reign. There are only a few stars that wink at first and of course Venus makes her showy appearance early, as purple dusk turns to black. Before I know it, the galaxy that my little earth home resides in is showing how grand this existence really is. A billion, billion stars make a haze of light in the night sky, arching over me, I hear from another hummock, “a Via Láctea”. The desert air, so thin and dry and clean, the night feels like something special because I have never seen the Milky Way with the eyes of who I am this day. A meteor falls, fast moving through our atmosphere and while my lids blink, its streak of light is gone. This is a special night. It’s hard to get back into the car, and there is stillness within this mass of forty people as we head back to town, for one more paleta and packing. Each at different places in our lives, this evening show of God’s extravagant creation has touched more than me. We will leave this place in the morning.

So yesterday, across the northern Mexico desert beautiful with greening ocotillo, lechiguilla, and yucca from Dolly, we speed home, pushing north to Texas. The wonder of last night still sits comfortably in my Mother’s heart. The young, fresh eyed, grad student who is learning about experiments and reminds me much of my own sons, is quiet. With little preamble, he turns to me and says, “Sure puts you in your place to see the Milk Way, doesn’t it.” I just nod. One day, in God’s timing I will get to talk to John and Josh and we will speak of sunsets too and then one fine day, I will share them with Jake again. It’s this very road I traveled one short month after October 2005, thinking thoughts and wondering how my heart would manage. I have the time while I drive to consider what I know about love now from then. I know it never ends.

Bible verse for the day: Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 1st John 4:11

Quote of the day: Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love. Albert Einstein

Song of the day: Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For
I have climbed highest mountain
I have run through the fields
Only to be with you
Only to be with you

I have run
I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls, these city walls
Only to be with you

But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for

I have kissed honey lips
Felt the healing in her fingertips
It burned like fire
This burning desire

I have spoke with the tongue of angels
I have held the hand of a devil
It was warm in the night
I was cold as a stone, mmm, hmmm

But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for

I believe in the kingdom come
Then all the colors will bleed into one, bleed into one
Well yes, I'm still running
You broke the bonds and you loosed the chains
Carried the cross of my shame, of my shame
You know I believed it

But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for

July 21, 2008

I thought my dad was handsome. Maybe all daughters think that about their dads. I know that a good part of why I thought he was handsome was because I respected him. Despite his glaring faults and sins (besides drinkin’ Dad was an impressive cusser), Dad had decided early on that his children would know that he loved them, with all his heart. Although we suffered, truly, his temper it was countered with his love. It was seldom an easy life, but it was always a certain life. No matter what, Dad would always love us. He told us that and he showed us that. As Dad got closer to God in his daily task of sobriety, it was clear Dad was determined to do something else. It was important for him to tell us how he was staying sober every day, he told and showed us his faith. There were a thousand deeds and a thousand conversations that I can play in mind, as he offered us his own life as a witness.

Once, late at night, when I guess neither of us could sleep, we sat on the screened in front porch and I waited for him to talk. (It is my memory that I talked very little, I mostly listened. As an emotional prattler now as well as then, I was sensitive enough to know that even in the calm times my chatter and constant questions drove Dad crazy.) Out of the blue, he said, ”Janet, I used to jump out of airplanes and before I would go over I would watch the catholic soldiers crossing themselves. I would tell them, you trust your God to get you on the ground, I am going to trust this parachute.” He paused, very slightly lifted his head to look out into the dark and finished with wonder and humility in his voice, “And You let me get to the ground in one piece, many times.” He was a study in strength and stubbornness that God tempered heavily with an ever increasing humility. It was clear. Every step Dad was taking in his quest for wisdom, humility was the answer he was coming up with.

If I thought Dad was handsome, maybe it wasn’t just me, maybe there was some physical basis to it, right? With Indian blood flowing through his veins, he had wood warm brown eyes and the skin that goes with them. No freckles. He had rough hands, with calluses from laborers work and scars that told of boxing when he was young. To me they testified to his strength and endurance. His hair was dark and fine and straight and as he got older, thinner. He always carried a fine toothed comb and when he didn’t wear a hat, ever thinning hairs seldom went astray. It may have been, just may have been, that Dad was a bit vain about his looks. He kept his self appointed schedule every two weeks at the barber shop, regardless of what was going on in his life or how long his hair had grown during that time. He had his own vision of what a well-dressed man would look like, hairline neatness figuring large, and he was faithful to it.

There was very little that was off limits for me if Dad thought it would teach me something. The one thing that seemed to fall into that category was the barbershop. Sometimes Dad would come home from his bi-weekly appointment and in fleeting words mention that he had gotten a shave there. Another time, he described that the barber washed his hair and massaged the tension from that laborers neck and shoulders and head. I couldn’t quite get my mind around this; Dad sitting in a barber chair and getting a shave and a massage? Dad was particular, and fine straight hair shows every cut of a blade, so of course the years produced a relationship with this one barber who knew every unsightly bump of the small man who sat in his chair. The barber saw him every two weeks of his life for decades and he knew when the slump of his shoulders defined that laborer’s difficult week or sadness or joy filled the brown eyes of his loyal customer. He responded in kind, more than about extra money for service rendered, there was a certain kind of ministry he provided Dad. I wanted to go there. Surely, I thought, there were lessons there I could learn. Dad was adamant and in the rare occasion he mumbled, he said something about their being magazines there unfit for women and it was a place just for men. Dad wasn’t going to share this with me. I resigned myself but thought it was unfair and my imagination went wild with magazines unfit for women.

One fine autumn day, one of the last Dad and I would spend together, he asked me, “Jan, would you take me to the barbershop? It’s been over three weeks since I had my haircut.” I looked over at him, too weak from treatments to drive, his balding head showing suffering signs from cell killing chemicals, my handsome Dad was still there. His profile was strong because the spirit inside was. Despite what his physical body would look like in the months to come, his heart and spirit and soul were still who God was making him to be and I would soon know this. “Okay, Dad, I will wait in the car while you get it.” I said. Wincing a bit in pain, he said, “No, you can come in Janet.” For a moment I didn’t think about Dad being sick. I was going to the barbershop. I was elated and scared. Maybe I should decline. I felt selfish, I wanted to go but my daughter’s heart feared that Dad’s change of heart meant something I didn’t want to know. The wise brown eyes that had seen a lot, looked over at me, his daughter driving him, and with only a smile from the heart mirrored in them, he said, “It’s alright”.

I had to ask him how to get there. Funny, I had no idea where it was. We pulled into the parking lot, the barbershop storefront, old and decaying, and this daughter traced the father’s step’s through a door he had been through many times. The old barber watched as we entered, and with knowledge of seeing a man every two weeks for decades, awareness showed in his eyes and he greeted him. “This is my daughter”, Dad said. My eyes darted around afraid to see magazines I shouldn’t. I watched as the barber covered my Dad with the cape and lovingly trimmed nothing from my Dad’s fine head. Dad closed his eyes in rest and relaxed into his barber’s familiar ministrations. The picture is painted on the walls of my heart as Dad knew it would be.

Life, despite what you might think, is really very simple. It’s about people caring for other people, whether it be daughters, barbers, or fathers, here and in Heaven. Most of the rest of what we worry about can be placed aside if we let humility and then faith take up the space.

Bible verse of the day:
When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom. Proverbs 11:2

Quote of the day: Confidence without humility breeds meanness, self-righteousness, and arrogance. But the wisdom born from humility is lost to the world without the confidence to share it. Walker, 2005

Quote for the week: True Texans will always appreciate the time honored talents and devotion of a trusted barber to show, and allow Texas’ sons the chance to redefine and recharge our existence by sprinkling a little talc on the back of our neck, brushing it away with the coarsest horsehair, then gently massaging in the cool, blue, chill of barbershop aftershave. Jake Siefert in True Texans: Barbershops, 2005

Wiki page of the day: (Who knew!?;) http://www.wikihow.com/Be-Humble

July 14, 2008

Say Hello to Tony

I saw Tony Snow the first time on television when he was announcing that he was leaving his job as press secretary for President Bush. In what has become my marathon and insanely obsessive habit to watch every news program daily, I happened to hear Tony that day. Didn’t know a thing about him but he caught my attention as I heard him speaking about his battle with cancer. Usually I flip to the next news channel, because I don’t want to watch those kinds of stories because they are so depressing, but I couldn’t help myself with Tony (besides it was the only thing on all of them). He was a big man, tall and lanky, and good looking and he smiled a lot, even when he was talking about his cancer. I never really saw him in action as a presidential press secretary; all I did was watch and hear of his graceful, faithful battle to live the life he was given until he went to heaven this past Saturday morning. I know he is in Heaven, because he talked openly and managed in the same way Jake did, to talk about his faith and what it meant to him to all those around him. For Tony, like those who truly love Christ with all their heart, he didn’t have a choice. You have to talk about your faith because you are what you are because of it. I know there is a lot of hypocrasy in people who talk about faith.. but we all know the real thing when we see it.

I never met Tony Snow, but I reckon there couldn’t be a finer man to consider a hero or a role model, if you were needing one. Not because of how much money he made, I have no idea how rich he was. Not because he was in the news a lot because he was a movie star or a tremendous athlete or he took steroids or adopted children from other countries. The only claim to being sensational that he had was that he actually did practice the love of Christ to all those around him, to the end. He stood up for himself mind you and was loyal to God, he wasn’t perfect by any means afterall he was human, but he was kind and loving and caring. He didn’t complain about the sad and hard ending of his life, remarkably he saw it as a blessing. He grew in faith and love to the end.

There are people all around us who do remarkable things because of what can only be called a supernatural love from God. They show remarkable aptitude for growth and grace in the face of danger or loneliness or illness or hardship. They show us how to find joy because of what is in us, not what is around us. Look around today and find you a hero, a really good one… and then be one for someone else. I may never have met Tony Snow in this life, but I will one day, up there in Heaven. In the meantime, I bet my Jake will say hello to Tony for me.

Quote for the day: To have faith is to believe in truth, believe that truth confers special power on those lucky enough to get a little insight, and to know in our hearts that all these things come from God, which is why we should never get too cocky about our successes. Tony Snow

Bible verse for the day: The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever. Psalm 23

For Tony Snow's own words go here.

nother Tree Story

The pine tree stood at the edge of the pasture, once majestic and green with bark of brown and gray, but now ghostly white. Branches that at one time supported long leaf needles and harnessed the energy of the sun had long fallen to the ground and now mostly all that remained was the trunk. That trunk spoke of the age of the tree. It reached fifty or more feet into the air and that height was still supported by wood that at the base was probably two feet straight across the middle. The pine bark beetles had come through a decade ago and felled at least ten of the big pines, or so we have been told, this one among them. The old ghost tree was the only pine left to testify to the raid. I guess there was a reason this one succumbed and others around it hadn’t. I don’t know the reason, I never will. I just know it did.

The problem was that as things go, it was clear that losing needles and turning white was not where the decay would stop. The tree was bound to rot to the point that its fifty foot height would eventually bring it to lie, full length, across the ground. That is unless the south wind that always blows from the gulf would chase the length of it to lie across the old farm house. For all intents and purposes, it seemed to be leaning that way and with each windy day that we watched, there seemed to be more reason to believe it would fall closer to the house than not.

The decision was made this weekend. Neil and Bob brought out the chain saw and Mother and I watched from a distance longer than the tree was tall. The wind blew a little and with a newly sharpened chain, they positioned the saw on the side that that had endured the push of the constant south wind. They created a crescent slice on that south side as sawdust flew and the sound of a blade grinding through the bottom of an old pine tree filled that little valley. From where I stood I reasoned I could smell the odor of new sawn pine. I could also see the tension in both men’s bodies. A man with a saw aimed at making a match of an old, giant pine has to think about what he is doing. If it’s your day to do this sort of job there is only one thing you can do. You pluck up and go after it and tackle it the best way you can and pray that random luck doesn’t fall badly on your side.

Bob swung the axe to dislodge the crescent shaped slice. I remembered times past of axes and my men. I remembered the times Bob swung an axe in rhythmic motion as he chopped wood for our first fireplace and the very clear memory of watching my Jake do the same after a hurricane had felled a tree in our yard. “Jake told me he was scared when he climbed up into that tree that had topped out during the hurricane, but he did it anyway.” Mother said. Proper respect for nature, I thought, and in my mind’s eye, even now I can still see the sinewy muscles, fueled by adrenaline, as Jake faced his fears and did what he thought was necessary.

Neil and Bob moved to the north side of the tree and began the downward cut that was calculated to cause the tree to lean toward the missing crescent. I saw the very moment the great tree began to lean south. As if in slow motion first, the fall gathered speed and was over in seconds, the final sound a great thud and shudder, as it hit the ground. Triumphant, Neil and Bob took a moment to look at that big old pine. The tension eased visibly out of their bodies and the fear of it falling on the farm house or worse on one of them during the job, eased the disappointment that the job had to be performed at all. We all shared a knowing smile. The odor of pine wood for sure filled the air as they cut that giant into smaller lengths.

Happy Monday and don’t be afraid. I pray that should you have any giants in your life that threaten you, you will have courage to tackle them.

Quote of the day: “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” Nelson Mandela

Bible verse for the day: No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:37-39

June 30, 2008
Pears on Branches

There are two pear trees that frame the path to the back door of the old house. When we first walked the property, before we knew that caretaking of it was to be in our future, I noticed their presence. That was February and the sap of those trees had retreated to the heart of oldest wood, waiting for warmer spring weather to send it to the tips of the branches. In February, the tree was barren and I don’t know how much you know of pear trees, but you don’t have a pear tree in your year for its beauty. As they grow older, they become gnarly. To look at them they seem unruly and unkempt. The bark is likely to be cracked and hard looking with new growth branches coming out at all places. The silhouette of a pear tree against the winter sky looks messy and unplanned. I don’t know how old these trees are, but certainly they are old enough to be about as tall as the house, at least those barren branches in February were…

Right before spring, my friend John took inventory with me. He noticed that the pear trees grew beneath the shadows of the stately old and full bodied pine trees and he wondered out loud if there was enough sun for them to bear fruit. I worried for the next two months whether his concern would prove true. All the fruit bearing pear trees I had seen stood out in fields alone, commanding the area around them, sharing sunlight with little else. These were even planted north of the house, the angle of the winter sun required the trees compete for sun from even the old house. By March, fat little round buds covered the trees and within a week they had turned into white petaled flowers. I couldn’t smell them, no sweet odor wafted through the greening branches, but the bees and fruit wasps knew they were there. If gentle south winds, which seem to prevail on this rolling landscape, didn’t jiggle the leaves, the insects sure did. Thousands tasted pear nectar and brushed their pollen dusted legs and bodies into flower upon flower upon flower as they busily harvested from the tree. As is the plan for pear trees, they pollinated those thousands of flowers. I might not have been able to smell what the bees and wasps could, but I could hear them at their work. A thousand tiny little sounds made one sound loud enough for human ears. By April the small white petals floated to the ground and we trampled then as we toiled around and in the house. Roots deep into sandy loam soaked up nutrients natural to the ground and aided by us, and within days, small, hard, tiny pears covered the trees. I watched them swell.

I have watched those two trees change as the fruit they bear matures. With branches that were once upright and reaching for the sky, each now are labored and weighed down with at least a dozen pears, heavier as each day goes by, the branches they are being nourished from, bowing more and more. Some threaten to brush the ground. Yesterday I sat in a chair for a moment of thought about twenty feet from those trees. I wanted to think, to be honest I felt the need to pray. With a mind that has been unsettled and restless of late, my thoughts and life has pointed me to how many plans of mine are too much about the future, and not enough about the day I am living. And those pear trees were making me more restless. I needed to make a decision. When was I supposed to know when to harvest those pears, the precise moment that they were ready to make the preserves for Josh and the mincemeat for John, but not too late that those severely arcing branches would break under my careless attention.

I looked up at the sky in betwen the branches of those pear trees and in that quiet voice that God always uses with me (don’t worry yet, I didn’t actually HEAR Him, He speaks through the voice of my heart), He said this to me.. “Janet, why are you worrying about those old pear trees? I have been taking care of those trees for a lot longer than you’ve been looking at them. I made them so their branches can bend way more than you think possible. I made them just the way they should be. They can do the job. You go ahead and make plans for the fruit they will bear, but today, why don’t you sit there and think about how they might not be the prettiest tree on the place, but they might be one of the most resilent. They are strong. They are doing today just what I created them to do.”

I think I am a little like those pear trees. Today, I am going to do just what God intends for me to do today, what He created for me to do. Like those pears, I am going to grow this day, take advantage of the Son. This Happy Monday, I hope you do too.

Bible verse of the day: Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is life not more important than food and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life.
Matthew 6:25-27 NIV

Quote for the day: It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link of the chain of destiny can be handled at a time. ~ Winston Churchill

June 23, 2008

Coming Home

At the height’s of Dad’s active alcoholism, Brother Pointer took him to Alcoholic’s Anonymous. I don’t know too much about that car ride for Dad, frankly can’t imagine how it came about. Its hard to imagine Dad going, I didn’t know he had that kind of relationship with our neighborhood Missionary Baptist minister, but that trip marked the start of Dad’s sobriety. Living every day without drinking, by the grace of a Higher Power, would last until Dad went to Heaven. In that very beginning of sobriety though, Dad would perform the twelve step program by living in a dormitory, with his sponsor, for a month, away from us. Living away from us. That seemed ominous. I remember the fear and hope in my Mother’s eyes and I remember after Dad had been gone for about two weeks, late one night, we were able to visit him outside the dormitory that he stayed in that month. My dad’s eyes carried the same tender, fragile hope I had seen in my mother’s, that trusting God to do something nothing else had been able to accomplish was going to work this time. I remember him explaining why he was living away from us. “I’’ll be home soon, Janet. They do this in the program because it helps, its essential, to get away from the environment. You need to be able to step back and out, to see where you are., what you have become.”

We returned late last night from vacation. On the plane coming home, as I was mulling over things in my mind, strangely enough the memory of dad coming home from the dormitory kept coming up. On this vacation I got to see a new country. I got to meet people whose lives have been spent in different pursuits than mine, of people who govern themselves differently, and who have a different history than mine. As good as it all was, as lucky as I was to experience that new place, my thoughts on the plane were about sleeping in my own bed. I reveled a bit in the thought of relaxing in my own tub and enjoying food that has benefited from our closeness to Mexico. I thought about home.

I wish for you this happy Monday, that whatever respite you need, whatever change in scenery you are planning, whether for vacation or the need to step out of where you are and see where you need to go, that you trust God to have the strength and grace to protect you while you are gone, teach you what He wants you to know while you are there, and trust that He always, always, brings you back home.

Quote for the day: Home is where the heart is, The soul's bright guiding star. Home is where real love is, Where our own dear ones are. Home means someone waiting To give a welcome smile. Home means peace and joy and rest And everything worthwhile. --Author Unknown

Song for the week:
He Carries Me.
Written by Cory Morrow/Liz Rose/Walt Wilkins

There are smiles on the faces of the people passing by
There are scars on their hearts that they hide
Faithful and fragile doubting their paths
Carry the weight of the world on their backs
I know they've got a long way to go
Yes, I know we've got a long way to go

Chorus:
But I know every day I'm lucky just to breathe the air I breathe
And I hope everyone can feel this love that's bustin' out of me
And sometimes I forget to forgive even me
Sometimes I stumble that's when he carries me
Sometimes I stumble that's when he carries me (oh yeah, yeah)

Morning wakes uncertain what will come
I will question where my happiness comes from
I've lived in castles and out on the streets
I'm still seduced by the demons that make me weak
I know I've got a long way to go
Yes, I know we've got a long way to go

Repeat Chorus:
But I know every day I'm lucky just to breathe the air I breathe
And I hope everyone can feel this love that's bustin' out of me
And sometimes I forget to forgive even me
Sometimes I stumble that's when he carries me
Sometimes I stumble that's when he carries me

We've all suffered on this road we travel on
It is cold, it is lonely and it is dark
Aw, but there is hope and it's hope that carries on

Repeat Chorus:
And I know every day I'm lucky just to breathe the air I breathe
And I hope everyone can feel this love that's bustin' out of me
And sometimes I forget to forgive even me
Sometimes I stumble that's when he carries me
Sometimes I stumble that's when he carries me (oh yeah)

June 9, 2008

I finally got to talk to Josh. The first time in 8 months, since he left, I got to hear his voice Saturday, a little after noon. As you probably know, we almost never answer our home line and there is no way we know who calls, because we leave the fax machine hooked up most of the time. But Saturday, everything worked just right, because I was home, I chose to answer that phone, and it was Josh. He was calling on a satellite phone that his unit had finally gotten. At first I didn’t recognize his voice. Somewhere way up in the sky, his voice was being bounced to me in Houston, and while it sounded scratchy, it was sweet and swelled my heart. In the few seconds it took me to know it was him, it was clear to me, Josh was tired and he sounded different. I have to admit, hearing him made me cry and I didn’t want for him to know, because I think he has enough on his mind, but it did. Josh was in the middle of the desert of Iraq, on a mission, one that he told me is likely to last until he comes home. Oh my, I thought, that means they are in their vehicles with few amenities. Few amenities include no toilets and no way to bathe. Food, he said? Well, we might not be happy because he thought he had lost probably too much weight. Its’ hard to eat MRE’s when its 125 degrees out, he said. They can’t get us rations, the supply units can’t accommodate, when the sand starts blowing. They have him working nights mostly.. who says the army doesn’t know what its doing! They know to take advantage of that man’s insomniac tendencies (that would be the negative trait he inherited from his mother). We talked a little about life here, a little more about life there, and then it was time for him to go.

You hear a lot about sending a mixed up kid to the army. The idea is that it will straighten him out. You hear a lot today about post traumatic syndrome. The news makes a lot of this. There is no doubt that war and soldiering changes you. Being in a combat zone for 15 months really does change you. But, I suspect its like anything, it will change the person in the way that life would have changed him anyway, it just does it faster. I know Josh well enough to know that this is something that will change him into what God wants him to be. And I know him well enough to know that he spends some time out there in the desert sands of the Middle East thinking about the big picture. In the best of worlds, every human deserves freedom and even in the little bit of time he and I spent Saturday, talking, I know that he has hope despite all this tiredness and effort and heat. He hopes that down the road somewhere, that his actions as a soldier and those of all those who serve with him, will prove of value as they seek to protect the concept of freedom. I am not talking about what governments want, but the desire that lies in the soul of humankind.

If our actions can make any difference, given time, surely the actions that lead to the hope that we can live and pursue life with freedom, have to be among the most cherished service one can perform for another.

Happy Monday, Josh and every soldier everywhere! God speed.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men. …And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." Thomas Jefferson

Jesus said "...you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:32

June 2, 2008

Last week was a trial. For about 48 hours in the middle of the week, I had more broken down vehicles to deal with than you can imagine. I was running all over town picking up rentals, arranging tows, and worrying about whether or not anything was going to be dealt with under warranty. About 33 hours into the ordeal, I sat on the floor and cried a bit. For a minute I let myself consider that the world seemed to be falling apart around me and I had no clue how to fix it. Now think about that. I was sitting on the floor crying because of automobiles. I used to say anytime something bad happened, “well, it could be worse.” It was my way to keep a positive attitude. And of course that was true until the night of Jake’s accident. For that night I sort of lost my sense of worseness; even in the shock of it all, I knew there was only one way I would make it through that trial. The thought of how tenuous life is hangs at the back of my mind all the time, and even knowing that and experiencing it, here I was, getting upset over something like poorly made radiators that allowed engines to overheat in a full blown Houston summer. But, its a very human thing to do; to get discouraged when things aren’t going well.

I took me a minute to think. All over Houston there were people who had broken down cars and some with no mean to get them fixed, no hope to get them repaired. I had seen more than a few in the last 33 hours. More than that, probably every person in Houston had something they worried about this week, some things that weighed on them and made them cry, made them feel hopeless, or scared, worried them or made them feel a moment of terror or sadness, caused them to fret, or regret. The real fact? Trials and tribulations are the way this world works. No one should be surprised and most of all, no one should think there is anyone exempt, because no one is. It doesn’t matter how much money or power or who you are, we are all faced with them.

I don’ know if you have ever been on your knees to say a prayer, but I will admit to dropping to them a few times, especially in the last couple of years and it sure was convenient to just roll on to them and bow my head then. I relaxed there for a minute, let myself think about Heaven and something bigger and better than me. I closed my eyes and thought about what God wanted me to hide in my heart and live in my life.

Here it is, here is what God wrote to me in Roman 5:3-4.” We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they are good for us-they help us learn to endure. And endurance develops strength of character in us, and character strengthens our confident expectation of salvation.

Now before you think that is ridiculous, let me ask you something. If you want to play good tennis or be the best baseball player you can be, how much pain and effort do you have to put into that kind of goal? Tiger Woods didn’t get to be Tiger Woods by sitting on the couch watching the game of golf and wishing he would mature into the kind of player he is and Lance didn’t achieve what he did because he gave up when trials came about. In the words of Mike Ditka, ‘You are never a loser until you quit trying.’ Growing and maturing our souls is no different than fine tuning our physical bodies for challenges. You can fuss and say life isn't fair, but when its all said and done, it is what it is here.

Happy Monday. Be strong this week. Whether the trials you are bound to deal with this week are insignificant and do little more than make you pause in thought or should they be so difficult they bring you to your knees, I will be praying for you.

May 26, 2008

Right after I had my third son I set about worrying about the responsibility of raising three men, keeping them out of danger and ensuring they could lead productive, happy lives. Strange enough, in the middle of all that worry, I never thought once about my sons coming to age when our nation would be involved in a war on terror. It’s almost hard to remember now, our world, we Americans lived and thought differently before those towers in New York came down. I certainly didn’t know that while Jake and John watched me nurse their very tow haired brother, the day would come when two of them would go to a foreign land as soldiers. When Jake was there I prayed for his safety and his soul as he made decisions there, when he came home and shared with me his own heart and wiling service. I pray for Josh, his safety and his soul, as he protects and serves and makes decisions that affect the lives of friend and foe. By the grace of God, all three of my men love Him and while the youngest and oldest chose to soldier in this earthly war, my middle son is a soldier as well, just one of a different sort, one that is fighting for those that seek Heaven. As a minister, he too is maturing in ways that only his own path would lead him to, and I pray for him daily. As different as God made those sons of mine, they each see their Father differently and for all my worry, for what paths I might have chosen, for what a different world I had planned for them, God gifted me with three men beyond my imaginings.

There are many mothers who are blessed but worrying over their sons and daughters; sons and daughters who are filled with faith and with the hearts of servants. As this world continues to turn, and wars and rumors of wars continue to be our fate, some of those will soldier as well.

I honor those today who have lost their lives in service to our country. These three listed here I know. I thought about you today; I thought about your families; I pray for you and yours. I honor you and I believe that in a time and space that those of us here on earth don’t understand, you each are in Heaven with Jake, celebrating that in the end, God is in charge. In my heart, the ones not listed here, but who have served and sacrificed, I honor you as well.

Capt David Fraser
1 Lt. Michael Adams
Staff Sgt Brian Craig

Quote of the day: “What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.” Albert Pike

Song of the week:
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword;
His truth is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His truth is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch fires of a hundred circling camps
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps;
His day is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His day is marching on.
I have read a fiery Gospel writ in burnished rows of steel;
“As ye deal with My contemners, so with you My grace shall deal”;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel,
Since God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Since God is marching on.
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat;
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet;
Our God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Our God is marching on.
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us live to make men free;
[originally …let us die to make men free]
While God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! While God is marching on.
He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,
He is wisdom to the mighty, He is honor to the brave;
So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of wrong His slave,
Our God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Our God is marching on.

Julia M Howe, 1861

May 19, 2008

RB Vroom Vroom.

It all started with excess appliances at the farm. It’s easy in this life to accumulate too much, it’s hard too get rid of all the stuff we acquire once we don’t need it, want it or it’s lost its value or gotten old. It’s even harder in a country place where trash pickup is not an option. The initial inventory of that old farm yard revealed it was a veritable junkyard of freezers and washers and other metal manufactured goods. Weeds and rats and slinky things had crawled in and through the rusting junk as rain and winter took their toll on them as they sat in the fields or barn of the old place. They looked like havens for coiled copperheads or black widow spiders, who having done away with mates, were on the lookout for juicy fingers or hands. Once the decision was made to move these heaps of metal to the ever growing junk pile in the drive the only thing that remained was how to get them there. Every weekend a few more were added to the pile, and for lack of attention, I never knew how they got there or who engineered their arrival. I was just relieved it was happening.

By the time I got around to participating in large appliance removal, there were only two items left: a large chest freezer that sat covered in pinestraw and poison ivy, near the barn, vault-like and scary for what its inside might reveal and a large upright freezer that contained a variety of aquarium parts and metal shelving, minus its door. These two items were on the list of to do must do’s for the weekend and because everyone seemed to be legitimately occupied in valuable activities but me, I went around and took a look at the chest freezer. Puzzling, I considered what I might have to do to get it approximately fifty yards from where it had set for years to the new trash heap. I pulled on it. There were no hand holds anywhere and its size made my arm length ineffective in applying much strength to movement. I thought about pushing it. It was mired on the pushing end in long dead leaves where surely rats, snakes and spider dwelt. Fifty yards was looking like a really long way to push or pull a chest freezer by myself.

Then the really good idea hit. I had seen a heavy linked chain that hung from the barn ceiling that sported large, aggressive looking hooks on either end. Visions of past tow truck rescues flashed in my mind. Josh’s Fod pickup sat in the driveway, near the junk pile. It didn’t take long to get the Ford backed up to within two feet of the chest freezer. Remembering my observation that tow truck drivers always secure the hooks of chains around the chain itself, I copied their maneurvers. I carefully secured one end of the chain to the pick up trailer hitch and then considered the best place for attachment on the freezer. It took a while, but lifting the freezer off the ground a bit, a nice secure link could be made to a support bar just underneath its bottom.

Watching in the rear view mirror, I pulled the chain taut with my foot on the accelerator, and inched a bit forward. Then, a bit more and to my amazement, the freezer began smoothly edging away from the barn, old leaves and needles settling into the depression it was leaving. As I picked up speed, the freezer skittered accommodatingly across the ground.. The junk pile was quickly approaching, I had to think fast. How was I going to get this IN the junk pile and not just dragged up by it? Looking back at the chest freezer that was skiing smoothly behind me, I watched over my shoulder until the freezer was a good 10 feet past the least piled up end of the pile and brought the truck to a stop. There seemed to be no need for care, this was junk I was dealing with, I put the Ford into reverse and may have leaned a bit heavy on the accelerator. The truck lurched into action and I made contact with the freezer at about 10 mph. It took very few seconds to pack that freezer intimately into the junk pile. It was an epiphany for me. Looking down at the edge of the house where Bob and Neil had been working, it was obviously one for them too. There they stood, looks of dumbfoundedness on their faces, their mouths shaped to speechless ‘0’s, incredulity the sole sentiment they were sending my way.

“What?!” I got it here didn’t I?”, I shouted. Shrugging at them and itching to try the upright, I jumped into the driver’s seat, the chain dangling as I left a little rubber on the rocks.

The second freezer was a bit more troublesome. A word of caution should any of you try this at home: don’t expect a freezer to run smoothly across the ground if you stupidly put the side with the coils down. Bob and Neil came running around the house this time when the pine roots caught the coils and sent the freezer end over end spilling weird colored aquarium rocks from here to kingdom come. They weren’t speechless that time. Ignoring them, I readjusted and in quicker dispatch than the first trip down had the upright freezer ready for packing into the pile. I may have gotten a bit heady with the power and demolition of backing into appliances. This time I sort of took a running backup start at the whole process. In no time, the freezer was nicely mashed up against the rest of the appliances and I felt… well… spectacularly empowered, almost as if I had found my calling.

If it should turn out that demolition and appliance redistribution is in my future, Neil has suggested a name. I have no intention of telling you what the RB stands for, but RB Vroom Vroom has some cachet to it, don t you think?

There's a whole world of experience and opportunity out there...Happy Monday, I hope you have a little fun today.

Today’s Quote: We are all here for a spell; get all the good laughs you can.” Will Rogers

Today’s Bible verse: "Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is sacred to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the LORD is your strength." NEH 8:10

May 12, 2008

A Switchman’s Daughter

Wiping the fine mist of my breath from the window, I look up into the dark sky. It’s beautiful. The moon is full, bounded by roiling gray-black clouds and I am reminded of a poem Dad read to me once. It was about a highwayman who was in love with a maid named Bess, the poetic imagery so strong that I am certain Noye had such a night as this in mind when he penned the tragedy. I would like to share my father’s love of words, perhaps the man as well, with my boys but they haven’t arrived yet. When they do, this reflective moment most likely will be lost or I will find them unreceptive. Curious that I should think of Dad and what an odd place to reminisce! Along with several other parents in interrupted sleep cycles, I sit waiting for the activity bus in a parking lot on Ella, only a couple miles west of the interstate. Houston is a big city and a long ways away from Dad and my hometown in Arkansas. Longer in ways more than distance.

The sounds of the day, buses, trucks, ambulance sirens, airplanes, are silent and the city is asleep. It’s 2 a.m., the soft green glow from my bug -butt green watch the boys gave me an unobtrusive reminder of time passing. The car is stuffy and quiet and rolling the window down I hear something familiar. More accurately, I feel the sound, like the way you sometimes feel the beat of a drum or the explosive clap of thunder, only more subtle. It is coming across the wind, from a distance, blown in and out by the gusts of air, but I know exactly what I am hearing. The distant rumbling is the sound of power that is distinct to diesel engines, several of them in tandem. The plaintive whistle, as the locomotives come to a crossing, surprises me. In it’s isolation , the sound is poignant, producing a well spring of memories. I was a switchman’s daughter.

The switch yard was about six miles from our house. It was Dad’s place of work and more than its close proximity, our life was dictated to by the demands of a railroader’s life. We lived upside down, Dad working midnights at first because it was all his seniority would allow and later because it was all he knew. Mother made “lunches” to be eaten at 2 a.m. and I religiously watched the 10 o’clock news for the most up to date weather, learning that for an outdoor laborer, a winter wind is almost as important as temperature. We learned to play quietly in the day or in the defiance make my mother’s life miserable. When I look back, she was sorely put upon. It was her duty to get Dad up on time, reluctantly obeying his demands of “just five more minutes”. This was the most active part of the day for us, as she worried over a husband who had drank too much, didn’t eat enough, and children, who searched for a switch lantern and the railroad watch, when they should be in bed. The culmination came as Dad headed out the door, the sudden cessation of activity a little like a party ended too soon. Getting to sleep was difficult. It set the pattern for insomnia for me.

I kept my bed by the window. It was a necessity to catch the sucking, inward breeze generated by the window fan in the living room in the summer; in the winter it was just habit. There was something reassuring about the sounds coming from the train yard. I could hear the switch engines as the crews began the night’s work, the soft rumble of leashed power and the controlled collision that coupled a car. There were rock trains and cars full of mined bauxite, hundreds of thousands of tons being pulled by engines whose only evidence of strain, a slightly different pitched, muffled roar. A “hump” yard was constructed in my teen years. The switch engine would push trains over the 30 degree incline while the humpmaster assigned each car, electronically pulling a switch to the anastomosing tracks below the hill, each filling with cars headed for common destinations. The best crew was the engineer, switchman, and humpmaster who found the right mix of speed up the incline as the uncoupled car left with nothing to power it but Newtonian forces, descending the hill. I knew by the deep throated rumble when the hump was moving too fast. On very still nights, I could hear the large diesel engines at idle, never stopped, steady and hardy like the human heart. Through my window, borne on 21 years of nights, the sounds of the railroad became my unconscious lullaby.

In Arkansas working for the railroad was one of the few ways a laborer could make a decent living. Nepotism was just another form of recommendation then, so Jack, Sr. got Dad the job. I guess it could have been his mother, a highly educated, high school graduate and a railroad clerk, but I doubt it. Ovea was feisty and more than a little mean to everyone but me. I loved to visit the cavernous depot where she worked, she smartly strutting around on high heels, a smoking cigarette in the ashtray, typing away on her big, bulky Underwood. The depot was the only place outside of church that I knew used pews to seat people and I thought their use irreverent and confusing. The place smelled oily, with people carrying hard, square suitcases hurrying, dwarfed by tall ceilings and caressed by the rumble and feel of the diesels.

Long before there were take your daughter to work days, prompted by thoughts Dad had that he never shared, I would go with him to work. His demeanor during these times suggested to me that what we were doing was not sanctioned by the railroad. These opportunities always took advantage of Dad’s midnight schedule and the older I got, the more elaborate my work attire, (read disguise) became. The last time I remember going I was about 17. My hair was stuffed under a workman’s cap and I wore pleated workpants a few sizes too large, a switch lantern at my side. “Try not to carry it like a purse,” he said.

Dad’s job and his attitude towards it were a study in contrasts. He hated being a laborer, doing the foreman’s bidding in heat and cold but he respected railroading, saw wonder in the conception and power of the diesel engine. Railroading was in a sense humbling. He loved trains and what they were capable of doing. They changed the face of our nation. In me this love was distilled into the sounds of the railroad and the spirit of the railroad man’s job well done. I am thinking I should share this with my boys.

Blinking lights, downshifting, the bus pulls up. The parking lot is full of activity and my railroad song is obscured. The opportunity to share poetry or history or revelation has passed. My boys are always the last off. John is the first to come to the door.
“Mom, you sleeping? We’re really late. Sorry.”
“What did you do while you waited for us?”

When the time is right, I will tell them. They will know that railroading has changed. You used to buy an airmail stamp if you didn’t want your mail routed in mailcars, there are no more cabooses, and only only a handful of huge conglomerates remain of the 13 Class I railroads of my time. Yet rail still remains the cheapest way to transport heavy materials. I will tell them how I met their father clerking for the railroad on weekends and that he can look at a railroad car number and without looking at the car tell you whether it’s a gondola, tanker, flatbed, or autorack. They should know that their grandfather would have admired him. I will remind them that their Uncle Neil has not only let them fly planes but when they were young, placed their hands on the throttle of a switch engine, sharing our legacy. I will explain that we hardly ever sit at a railroad crossing because loops and beltways around the city and intersecting freeways bypass the railroads, making it easier to keep the pace of our harried city life but we will take the time to find a country road and wait at a crossing. As the railcars pass by, I will explain that welded rail changed the clacking of steel on steel but not the uneven thud of a wheel with a flat spot. I’ll tell them about the old diner, the metal kind with leather booths and stools sitting amid the kudzu and mustang grapes where Hardy road crosses FM 1960 that I discovered while foraging. Sitting on the main line to Dallas, I’m sure they offered hot coffee and blueplate specials to switchman and brakeman fifty years ago, it will make a nice story. I will tell them that in cities, people are offended by noises and insist that earth berms be erected around the rail yards so the noise will not escape. Then I will sing them a lullaby of how railroads shaped a nation …and me.

May 5, 2008

Labors of Love

The first weekend of work on the floors of our old farmhouse began with out much discussion or thought. We just started massively ripping out the layers of paper and vinyl, plastic, nylon, and wool, all components of wall to wall carpeting and kitchen flooring that had been applied over decades. It seemed the only course of action. We started in the garden bedroom (you have to come see that one, it will be Mother’s), and as layers of carpet and soiled pads were ripped, sending their fastening tacks flying, unpleasant smells filled the air. Evidences of rot, of lives lived where plumbing flooded rooms and secret leaks spilled into crevices, hinted there were opportunities for decay. Room after room we stripped, piling the refuse high in a heap outside on the drive. Each layer spoke of times good and bad, but also were comments on the style and fad for flooring for each era this old house has been through. I recognized them; some were choices my family chose in our old home.

(You know what our hope was of course; that there would be beautiful floors of wood, hidden underneath all those applications.)

We moved through the house, ripping and carting, most of the work dispatched relatively easy. I say relatively, because with sweat dripping and arms aching, we made it the first weekend all the way through the house until we reached the kitchen. Standing in crooked, but straightening doorways, we decided on the large bladed putty knives as the tool of choice to ply up the linoleum. The next weekend we tried rented jack hammers. Whoever had applied this linoleum meant for it to remain. Every square inch of the undersurface had adhesive. Even the thin and worn areas that spoke of eighty odd years of feet shuffling and standing and working at the old kitchen sink were recalcitrant. The stuff wasn’t coming up. We were disheartened. We locked the house and spent the next week trying to figure out what to do. Unbeknownst to us, in our absence of that week of thinking, a new leak would form under the kitchen sink, probably due to our ministrations on the plumbing and when we returned five days later, water flooded the kitchen. The water pooled on the lineoleum, the dank smell more pronounced then when we started, and now a new problem. In the places where we had created cracks and holes in the linoleum, the water had clearly seeped in. I couldn’t imagine how we could dry sodden wood under linoleum, but I got on my knees. Four hours later, we had the linoleum cleared. The glue, resistant to mechanical force was water based; the linoleum had rolled up in sheets, when bucket after bucket of water had been applied.

If the bad luck hadn’t happened, I guess we would still be trying to figure out what to do.

But, yes, once stripped, there it was, the old flooring, pine, from trees that had to have lived at least 100 years ago. Tongue and grooved, dust, dirt, and grime covered now, milled in a pre-war mill into 2 inch slats, most of it showed still dense wood. But, where there was damage, where water had been left to stand from old pipes that couldn’t hold the pressure or the passage of time, the wooden boards were rotted, wood flaking away and soft, down almost to the base flooring. It was to be expected.

We sanded and sanded, with ever finer grit, and as we did, the mold and years of hidden abuse and ancient varnish revealed a fine wood grain. We each took our turn behind the rented sander, and for me, there was great pleasure in the simple, repetitive work. All over the house, floors that had supported 80+ years of life were exposed to the light of days in 2008. The last sanding eventually brought the sweet smell of new wood. In a few places the stains remained, the damage too severe. As much as I would like to have the creaseless face of my twenties, these lines of age in my face say something about who I am and where I have been and it’s my opinion that is the same thing with that floor. There really is no good reason to wipe away all that has happened in that house. It is what it is. There have been Christmases shared where children tripped across that floor to gather present from under a decorated tree. There have been tears shed over doubts or fears or dreams undone. Baths have been taken and mirrors peered into, as fine lines and some deeper ones have etched their way into the faces of other inhabitants of this home. Mothers and Dads have stood at the kitchen sink, and peered out onto even older pine trees, the wind singing through their needles, a backdrop for the racket and song of pileated woodpeckers and Carolina wrens. I hope a few times grace was said in this house, I bet it was. I hope that the fear and joys held in the hearts of at least three generations of families that called this old house home, supported by this old pine floor, will see a reunion in Heaven one day.

But right now, the biggest blessing I can imagine this old house had provided is the labor of love we have expended. For all the chores we have done, the jobs we have set for ourselves here, the goals we have wanted to achieve, the labor that we have given, that floor is a symbol for me. I am glad that God has seen to it that yet one more generation, this old pine floor will support at least one more generation of a family’s hopes, dreams, and joys. A few more meals will be cooked and a few more dishes will be washed, a lot of prayers and grace will be said, and the wind will still be singing in the old pine trees as new caretakers stand at the kitchen sink and take stock of another day.

For we are just passing through on our way to Heaven and just as this old house’s floors will return to dust and I will too, its clear to me that our bodies were made to labor while we are here. We work best when we balance our lives with thought and brawn. Surely the beauty of the human soul is revealed in the labors it endures and accomplishes here on earth. Christ covers our sins here and heavenward, but I bet just like that old pine floor, it's the flaws and dents and injuries that are the beauty that God sees in each of us, the souls He knows and made us to be.

I wish for you this Monday and this week, the gift of labor well done and accomplished, whether it be battling an illness, making a garden, or tucking a child in for rest, whatever race God has you running I pray that you are letting Him go with you.

Quote for the day: Your body needs a healthy mind and your mind needs a healthy body. Take care of them both. Jack Huddle

Bible verse of the day:
Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, 1Thessalonians 4:11

April 22, 2008

If you have read these Happy Monday’s the last two years, you have a sense of how much I love my brother. I asked God for him when I was little and had lost my sister Gloria, and God answered them with my Neil. Like every brother and sister, we have had our ups and downs, but the bottom line is that for the 49 years I have known my brother I have loved him with all my heart and thanked God for the man he is. As I sit here, I send a prayer heavenward for him and his. The small voice in my heart, tells me a truth. My brother is a good example of human grace; the kind of grace that means “unmerited favor”, the earthly kind that can point you to the perfect grace that Christ offers. You see, my brother doesn’t own me anything, but for reasons that have all to do with the kind of man God made him, he gives to me unselfishly. Let me explain.

All this work on the farm, that piece of property God has lent us for a time, well it’s a sure bet that without Neil we would not be as far along as we are to make it habitable. I could go so far as to say that it’s a sure bet we wouldn’t even have known how to do a tenth of what we have accomplished. It’s completely certain that what we have done would have required ten’s of thousands of dollars rather than the several hundred we have spent. Only with Neil’s imagination and grit would we have even considered jacking a house to level. With confidence, we old people have followed his orders and instruction, his working vision, in lockstep, certain that success was ours because Neil knows how to adjust when a first plan doesn’t work.

This weekend when I was struggling with removal of an old hinge on a door facing that no longer bore the weight of a door in that old farm house, Neil gently came up to me and asked me if I wanted some help. My arms ached from trying to turn imbedded screws, cemented into the hinge by decades of paint, and on the verge of tears of frustration, I shook my head yes. With arms and sinewy muscles that bring back memories of my dad and Jake’s arms, Neil took the hammer and flathead screwdriver from my hand. I looked over his shoulder and watched as he delicately placed the screwdriver along the faint line of indention in the screw and with skill but power hammered the fine slot clean of paint. Positioning the screwdriver in the now more visible slot, he hammered until flakes of paint fell away from the head of screw, exposing its outline. Free from years of paint, the screw turned easily, and he handed me the screwdriver. “I have done a lot of these working on old cars, you learn things, Janet.” Yeah, you do Neil, I think to myself and my heart swells with thanks about those answered prayers a long, long time ago, when I asked God for a brother.

I hope you come and see that old farmhouse, because you will do what others have done. You will ask me, “How does your brother know how to do all this?” And I will know what to answer you because although I never even considered how unusual it was to have all this expertise, that inevitable question jogged my unquestioned acceptance of his skills and expertise. He can do it because he is willing to try and he is willing to think. Part of that skill came from our dad and mother, the genes and environment we grew up in it, but some of it just who God made him. The more times he has failed and fallen short, he took those setbacks and learned something from them, growing his confidence and knowledge. But I have seen the signs of humility as well. Humility, because as we have gotten older and life has happened, you have to recognize that as much as you might not want it to be true, we humans are really in control of very little. Included in Neil’s growing wisdom is that reality. There is a lot of value in being with someone whose wisdom provides for failures as lessons learned on the road to success. If you have a brother that can teach you that as well as how to plumb, and electrify, and restore and old house’s floors and soffets, fireplace and double hung sash windows, well that just how blessed can you count yourself? If on top of that, that brother also can tell you that the day he spent with you and your mother and your husband is a precious memory and that the companionship you shared will paint the walls of our collective hearts for another day, if his family has graciously lent him to us for a month of weekends, well then let me say yet again, just how blessed can one person be.

Should you ever find yourself on a plane and over the intercom a voice tells you, “This is your captain, Neil Huddle, welcome to …..”. Count yourself lucky that day. You are in the capable hands of a pilot who at all costs will take care of you, whose hands are capable of understanding the wiring of an old farm house and the complexities of the flying machine you are seated in, and most of all, has the humility to understand that as humans we have our limitations and pride has no place in most decisions we make. Enjoy your ride.

Happy Monday!

Bible verse: All of you, live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble (1 Pet. 3:6).

Quote for the week: That all men should be brothers is the dream of people who have no brothers. Charles Chincholles

April 14, 2008

Chicken Janet

The first few weeks at the farm we realized we had inherited some farm animals. There were two cats skulking around, one huge, multicolored, and soft looking, the other little more than a dark shadow we glimpsed on occasion. Those two cats had been living in that old farm house these last few months, very independently, making entry through a glassless window. My bet was that the huge soft-looking one was a terrific snake and rat killer. He also liked his privacy; he tried his best to ignore that we were intruding. Once he no longer had the house to himself due to our ministrations, that big fat one took refuge under the house. Okay, so that didn’t last too long; the cat vainly turned his back on Neil and Bob every time they climbed under the house to screw a jack a bit tighter. It was weird. I think that cat was willing the weird humans to go away and given failure to accomplish, he eventually lit out for greener pastures. That or the neighbor killed him. The other darker, slimmer cat remained a passing shadow. He too, has left the premises or met the fate our neighbor met out to the other.

Then there was Chicken Janet. I am not one to love chickens. I didn’t grow up thinking they were good animals. My dad hated them because basically, a chicken will eat anything, I mean anything, and Dad thought that meant they had to be nastiest things people decided to cook. He probably wasn’t too far off, because despite the highly politically correct place they now hold in the acceptable food chain fit for human consumption, it’s well known they are virtual reservoirs for the dreaded Salmonella. They singlehandedly have created a cottage industry for antibacterial kitchen wipes. Chicken Janet was different though. With great glee, my brother named her that. It was one of those moments, where you can’t quite decide if someone naming a wild chicken after you, is a good or a really bad thing. Let me explain.

We noticed chicken Janet running across the yard, small and glossy black. I didn’t know chickens came in black. Actually I wasn’t sure she was a chicken or a rooster. We spent the first campfire night, discussing the possibilities of her gender and after rigorous arguments of city logic, we decided. She was a chicken. She was cute in a chicken sort of way. Running very fast, like someone was about to chop her head off, she would zig zag from one corner to the next, ducking in and around bushes. It wasn’t immediately clear where she was trying to get to, but eventually as night would fall, she would manage to flap into the tree next to our Cajun kitchen and begin her evening roost. I began to look forward to seeing Chicken Janet. The whole idea of free range began to take on a different meaning to me. Between the cats and now chicken Janet, I thought, these animals are pretty robust, self sufficient farm types, good attribute in animals for city people like us. They appeared to be wholly self sufficient! Chicken Janet apparently had figured out how to defy the raccoons and coyotes that I know are residents in the woods. Chicken Janet was a survivor. Now if I could just figure out where chicken Janet was laying her eggs, I could gift my mother with something she is always dreaming about, REALLY free range fresh eggs for breakfast.

Husband and brother for some weird reason thought this was really funny. They clearly thought the idea of me finding a free ranging chicken’s eggs was.. well. ludicrous, and constantly made fun of my desire to attempt Chicken Janet egg discovery. But despite their imagined obstacles, I began to look forward to visits from chicken Janet and I sure did want to know more about her.

The world of chickens is big and complicated as it turns out and to know about a chicken means there are a lot of words and descriptions revolving around the following: a chicken’s ability to produce eggs at all costs, the state of her immune system (think Salmonella), and attitude. (Apparently chickens can be nasty in disposition.) After some searching and conversation with anyone I thought might be tuned in to chicken world, it became clear she was a Rock Hen. The description fit my Chicken Janet perfectly, independent, good for free range, with one of the most robust immune systems of chickens known, and pleasant. Armed with this information and a plan to find the eggs she was bound to be laying, I told Mother and the guys. My brother looked at me with that facial expression that means there is some caginess brewing in his head and then he said it. “Well, its just Chicken Janet, isn’t it? Yeah, the big sister Janet who is always telling her younger brother, how healthy she is, moves to a farm and gets a chicken who mirrors her personality.” Of course, swimming around in my head is the thought that Chicken Janet is never seen doing much but running around like a “chicken with her head cut off” and I KNOW, Neil’s moniker for chicken Janet, is a thinly veiled, although good- natured, classis brotherly taunt. And then the games began.

Even my beloved mother, who generally has a soft heart, joined in on their constant teasing that Human Janet was going to formulate a plan to locate free ranging Chicken Janet’s eggs. “Janet, how in the world do you think you are going to find Chicken Janet’s eggs?, Neil asked. “It can’t be that hard.” I responded, “I will use the power of observation.” The next day, Neil had the first task of farm duties and told me to go stand at the back of the house and tell him where the lowest point of the house was that still needed to be jacked up. Looking at the ground, I stood at the low spot. Mother and Bob were looking on. “You sure?” Neil said. “WHAT ABOUT LOW DO YOU NOT GET, NEIL?!, my voice escalated to it’s highest feminine volume. “Yes, this is the lowest spot, jack the dadblasted thing up. I can see it sagging!” “Take another look, Janet, just one more to make sure.” “Geez, Neil, its going to be a long Saturday if you are going to ask me to do something over and over and over.” Bending over in laughter Bob and Mother are looking on as Neil gets closer and closer. “Place this line on the ground right where you think I should put a jack,” Neil said. I bend over, move a bit of pine straw around and glare at Neil. Something registered in my brain. I looked back down at the straw. There sitting in the straw was an extra large, store bought egg, shining white under the morning sun. Looking up, the three of them laughing so hard, their voices and glee filled the old farm grounds. They must have been a dozen eggs all around everywhere I had been that morning. I smiled and secretly I thanked God for that little memory. You know people love you when they take the time to tease you.

If you are wondering, it turned it was mother that found evidence of Chicken Janet’s egg laying propensity. She found them, cracked open not far from where Chicken Janet would roost, the victim of raccoons who thought they were a tasty evening snack. And unfortunately, Chicken Janet either lit out for less populated places or ended up on someone’s dinner plate. We haven’t seen her for a month. That’s the way life is; things change.

A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor's book. ~Irish Proverb

A merry heart doeth good [like] a medicine:
but a broken spirit drieth the bones. Proverbs 17:22

Happy Monday!!

April 7, 2008
I am sitting here in the Denver airport, waiting on a flight to another city, but I can’t help but consider how much Colorado has been a part of my life. It’s where my son Josh went from a twinkle in his dad’s eye to God’s gift, I was here when John had to call and tell me his Dad was having a heart attack, its where I went to say good bye to Jake. Its where Jake spoke to God a lot on that summer he worked as a dude ranch. It’s where Bob and his brother and brother in law go hunting for elk almost every year. My dream of three little sons, all following behind me like ducks, happeneds here, more than one of them took his turn in a backpack on my back, down snowy ski slopes. I remember a lot about lots of time in the airports of this state. I never come here that I don’t think about the confluence of events that have shaped a surprisingly large part of my memories. I guess in some ways I am bound here by heartstrings, some that sing beautiful songs and some that hum more sad notes than I want to admit to sometimes. In reality, Colorado is just another place on the planet and as a thinking person I probably cannot ascribe much to these events than coincidence and fate, some of my own making. But.. I am human, and there is more to me than mind and my heart knows different. Although I have never done more than travel to here or through here, and being here means I am always away from home, I am glad that Colorado was once part of Texas. It makes all these things seem less… homeless. It provides a certain symmentry to things that have happened here when I get too sad. For some reason, one that I don’t care today to examine, that brings some solace and peace to me. This place, this state, these events are all part of who I am now and they and me are where I am supposed to be. So the next time I come here, as I do today as I sit here, I will spend time thinking about my life and my God and my future.

Happy Monday ya’ll.. I hope that if you have a “Colorado” in your life, I hope that you let God do what He wants with you through it.

Bible Verse: Psalm 32:8 "I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
I will counsel you and watch over you."

March 31, 2008

To the best of my recollection, I ate well growing up. What I mean to tell you is that my mother was (and is) a good cook and I can recall that she cooked dinner every night for us, eventually forcing me to learn how to cook dinner too. Every Sunday we had Sunday dinner, mostly a pot roast, always a bit stringy swirling in colorful gravy. (This gravy was colorful because besides being a good cook my Mother also has her own ideas of what food should look like and that usually involved and still does an odd assortment of food dyes, yellow and red being her favorites, and in this case yellow #6 added to the roasty roux.) Despite that one little idiosyncrasy, every meal had yummy, creamy mashed potatoes with flecks of black pepper or maybe corn off the cob, lovingly sliced, the corn milk expressed from the cob with the flat of a knife making creamed corn like you might have never tasted unless your momma cooks country too.

We would have any combination of cole slaw or peas with okra, green beans or fried okra and green tomatoes, or one of my favorites, stewed tomatoes, the lumps of fresh tomatoes, slightly pink from a piece of white bread used to thicken them, the tangy sweetness of homegrown obvious as I took the first bite. Sometimes we had this kind of weird casserole made of porkchops, potatoes, and beans with maple syrup and ketchup, baked over the stove with rolls. It was good.

And there was always dessert. Pies were the specialty and my favorite had to be pecan, or maybe the chocolate, or the fresh dewberry icebox pie, or maybe it was the coconut cream. Watching her make the vanilla pudding over a pot of hot water, a homemade double boiler, little beads of sweat forming around her mouth, when it was nice and thick, she would put a pat of butter into the swirling, sometimes very yellow sweetness, the giant flakes of moist coconut the only lumps in that fine coconut pie. There was always a fight whether or not, I, her reluctant helper and student, would get to lick the beaters before dinner. There is nothing like pudding on beaters when you are standing in a kitchen smelling Sunday dinner. Then there were her fried apple pies. Flaky bisquit dough, rolled out just thin enough to hold the filling, I ate them hot, right from the cast iron kettle, with a big glass of milk. Often I ate three, sitting in the summer evening, astride my bike, watching the fireflies begin their summer evening dance.

Most everything we ate, she cooked from scratch whether it be cakes or fried steak, short ribs or spaghetti, pizza, greens or sweet potatoes. Always adventurous, there was one thing Mother never attempted to make from scratch but bought, already prepared except for the frying; breaded shrimp. We might have been Arkansas and a long way from any salty water, but whoever made those things, they were delicious. Plump, firm shrimp, lightly breaded, I would dip them in just slightly spicy cocktail sauce. I think I ate dozens of them. They were a treat for a blue collar laboring family and I can remember my mouth watering as Mother would slide them out of the freezer bag.

Now being from the Gulf Coast we are a bit spoiled when it comes to shrimp. Its so good down here, that what might be considered excellent fried shrimp in any other part of the country, down here in Texas, the standards are so high, that to pass muster here, they can be nothing short of excellent. Not only that, there are categories of greatness because the wealth of shrimp options can’t really be compared with each other. There are the really wonderful just fried Cajun ones my by-marriage sister makes. Learning from her own mother, she floats them for a while in beer and secrets, then coats each one in flour and spice and makes them golden pink in peanut oil. These things are good enough to eat cold the next day, which I have and do, a lot. There are the New Orleans barbq shrimp, that aren’t barbqed like you might imagine or how they might sound, but through some kind of magic that looks like browned butter, you wear a bib to eat them as you peel, because the most flavor for these is about being cooked in the shell.. But not until this past week did I discover that just a bit off the coast, down Farm to market road 1488, my own beloved multicultural coastal prairie community of Field Store, hides a little seafood house, just off the dusty road, that makes, homemade breaded Gulf shrimp that, well yes, does justice to my childhood memory.

We stepped into the café from working on the farm, dirty and grimy, tired but armed with the rumor that the food here was good. The place was plain but very clean, except for us, tables made from pressure treated fence parts, and a young Asian woman pointed to the menu on the wall. How good could this be, I thought, six shrimp and fries, for 4.99? Oh my. The shrimp arrived in a little green plastic basket, lined with white paper, no oil to spoil its crispness. Three squirt bottles of ketchup and cocktail sauce or tartar arrived at our table, and I listened to the light banter of the locals. A young Taiwanese man poked his head out of the kitchen curtain and smiled. I smiled back. As I bit into the shrimp, I closed my eyes and for a minute I could remember those shrimp dinners at home, on Oak Hill Street. These were every bit as good as my memory of breaded shrimp growing up, a rare occurrence if you think about it.

I took a minute, looking out the window, and saw a young man walk out of the kitchen and wander over to the field next to the café. Concentrating on his task, he picked a posey full of beautiful Texas wildflowers, yellow composites, wine cups, and soft velvety evening primrose. Shyly, he arranged them in his hand and headed for the kitchen. I spent a moment thinking about the moment my Mother had shared earlier in the day, when on the farm she came across our own little patch of evening primrose. She told me that early one morning Dad had walked into the kitchen with a handful of the sweet pink flowers he had picked for her, I guess he too, captivated by their beauty that spring morning.

Rarely is anything as good as you remember it or if you choose to devise a revisit does the attempt to recover the memory fare well. But I must tell you, in the world of unlikely possibilities, there are some memories that will. Hurriedly, I sat down my shrimp tail, remembering that I had forgotten to say Grace, I was so hungry. Sometimes, its just the little things in life, that make you shake your head in disbelief. I thanked God for my mother, truly for the food I am blessed to enjoy, and with a heartfelt prayer that others might enjoy such similar wonders, small beautiful memories, either making or remembering them, in God’s good time.

Quote of the day: “Anyway, like I was sayin', shrimp is the fruit of the sea. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it. Dey's uh, shrimp-kabobs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo. Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. There's pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich. That- that's about it.”
Bubba in Forest Gump

Bible verse: For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape, give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
Song of Soloman, 2:11-12

March 24, 2008
Howdy and Happy Monday!

I am sorry about not writing last week. There are lots of changes going on in the Siefert household and I was a bit overwhelmed. (Nothing scarey… just following God’s lead as He directs us where to go and what to do). Soon I will be telling you about them but for now, in very typical Jake fashion for Happy Mondays, I just want to wish you a very happy spring, hope that there were lots of memories for you with Easter and spring break, which ever or both you might have experienced, and let you know I am thinking and raying the best thoughts as the spring equinox tells us that we are already about ¼ of the way through the year.

Quote for the day:
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. Charles Darwin

Bible verse for the day: The words of a wise man's mouth are gracious; but the lips of a fool will swallow up himself. -- Ecclesiastes 10:12

March 10, 2008

I heard a story about Jake from one of his friends. We were reminiscing and he was sharing. He and Jake were out by his pickup and Jake, out of the blue, grabbed the tailgate, and slowly cantilevered his body up, parallel to the ground. The friend didn’t mention how long Jake held himself that way, but I could tell by the way he was telling me that the mental picture was burned there, it would be the way he would remember him. I know why Jake took that little moment of defying gravity, arms carrying his full body weight; he did it just to see if he could. He did it for the challenge.

On that little piece of Texas near Hempstead, that God has seen fit to let us borrow for a while, sits an old farmhouse. The house is old, probably at least 80 years, with tall ceilings that can collect the summer heat off the gulf coast winds. Somebody moved that old house to where it is now and when they did, they settled the pine beam foundation onto small concrete blocks. I guess they didn’t take into account that the soft, friable earth that is so good for seeds would not do well in holding up a house, even a small one. The house, lopsided but charming, it was my brother, who asked, “How bad is it, Janet?” “Well.. its noticeable, you know.” “Get a level and check it”, Neil said. “In some places, I don’t see the bubble,” I replied, afriad to hear what he would say, I waited, phone to my ear. “I think we can do it, I have an idea” he said.

I bought 100 bags of concrete, Bob got the rebar, and Neil ordered 16 timber jacks. Bob got the shovels and the wheelbarrow and the first weekend, while Mother and I proffered refreshments, Neil and Bob dug deep holes all over the place, under the house, strategically placed. The little red timber jacks, unassuming as they appeared, could each handle 12 tons. Neil and Bob were physically depleted after two days of digging and concreting in a work space that never reached more than 18 inches high. They sat in the poison ivy that had grown thick around the old house and talked and looked. “How long do you think we let the concrete set before we start turning the screws on the jacks?” “At least a week,” Bob replied, scratching. Mother and I sat down too, and I marveled at what we were going to attempt. Over the next month, daily turning of the screws on the jacks would slowly and gently raise the foundation of the house, until if a level were place in almost any place in the house, it would read true, the bubble square in the middle. But the real beauty was the genius of forethought my brother had. “If years go by and she starts to sink a little, all you will have to do is crawl under, turn the screw a bit and level her back up.” “She’ll likely last longer than I will.” I said. We all sat there and smiled.

That was a couple of weeks and considerable scratching ago, and the old house, well her windows are beginning to go square, doors that wouldn’t shut are doing so, and the wall eyed look of door frames is shaping up. The old house, she moans and creaks a bit, with each turn of the screw, but it’s a weird exciting sound, a friendly sound, a sound of success. Friends have come and peered under the house and over our shoulders, and catching their eyes, and the loving smiles, I know they think we might be a bit crazy for trying this. Certainly at our age, it’s not what most people do. But I have to wonder. I thought about Jake. The reality is that life is about challenges, the ones we make and the ones we’re given. Some of them are just about seeing if you can do it and some are about things that make a difference in where your life will go or where someone else will go. We will fail at some and succeed at many, there will be a small few that have the potential to do you in, but all of them, every last one are about finding strength and courage and fortitude. And if you do it right, they will be about humility. Because the best, most perfect truth is that we are made for challenge and the really important challenges will prove we are made for God.

The wise man built his house upon the Rock,
The wise man built his house upon the Rock,
The wise man built his house upon the Rock,
And the rains came tumbling down.
The rains came down and the floods came up,
The rains came down and the floods came up,
The rains came down and the floods came up,
But the house on the Rock stood firm.
The foolish man built his house upon the sand,
The foolish man built his house upon the sand,
The foolish man built his house upon the sand,
And the rains came tumbling down.
The rains came down and the floods came up,
The rains came down and the floods came up,
The rains came down and the floods came up,
And the house on the sand fell flat.
So build your life on the Lord Jesus Christ,
So build your life on the Lord Jesus Christ,
So build your life on the Lord Jesus Christ,
And the blessings will come down.
The blessings come down as your prayers go up,
The blessings come down as your prayers go up,
The blessings come down as your prayers go up,
So build your life on the Lord.
Anonymous, public domain based upon the scripture
Luke 6:46-49
And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say? Whosoever cometh to me, and heareth my sayings, and doeth them, I will shew you to whom he is like: He is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock: and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded upon a rock. But he that heareth, and doeth not, is like a man that without a foundation built an house upon the earth; against which the stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house was great.

March 3, 2008

Before Jake went to heaven, he took me to look at a piece of Texas land. “Mom, I think you and Dad would be happy out here.” I wondered in my mind, “you would be happy here, wouldn’t you Jake?" The land was pure Texas, out in the flat prairie where Jake and a best friend had spent many hours pretending to goose hunt. I think they solved life’s problems on those cold and wet winter mornings, watching the sun come up. “We can’t afford this Jake, but keep looking, we will find something, God willing.” Since those days, I have spent a number of nights, looking at the stars and thinking about heaven. I have spent time thinking about what it would mean to own a piece of land. What I ended up doing every time was just praying to God; “Do you want us old city folk to dream of a sanctuary where the stars are brighter, simply because city lights don’t get in their way? I am grateful, God, for the home you gave us to raise our sons. This is enough, more than sufficient, but you let me know.”

We came upon a piece of land one Sunday, Mother, Bob and I. An odd shape this parcel. The dirt felt good under my foot. It was soft and grainy and smelled like soil that water could percolate through. It was very different from the Houston gumbo. The land rolled a bit, a rise revealing high bush blackberry bushes. Old water and post oaks, some draped in Spanish moss, dotted the open field. Bob looked at the pond and could see the past when a taut fishing line brought up a nice, big bass. A hawk squawked and soared overhead. There had been hands who had tended this place, but not for a while. Gates still worked and fences still stood, but the old barn and the old house were full of things that spoke of memories past and the end of something. I stood on the rise and looked back and then forward to the old farm house, but mostly I looked up. Lord, is this where you want us? Is this a place to feel peaceful? Is this a place to share that peace with whoever might need it? I thought about the neighbors to this little parcel of Texas, a Buddhist retreat, a wildlife refuge to meditate, should you be of that philosophy.

There is no way that I could have predicted where God has taken my life. No way. Most of the things have happened to me weren’t things I planned or hoped for, although there were a few I have feared. (Like any and every mother, I have always feared for my children’s health and safety.) I have prayed and sought God’s face throughout my life, sometimes walking closer to him than at others times, but always coming back to wanting to be beside Him. So we stood on that little piece of Texas, at the “walk through” that is typical of buying and selling real estate and spoke with the woman who had begun her young adulthood there with her dad, she, now the heir to that acreage. I told her, hesitantly that I had been praying for her and her family. I thought about her as she and her children tidied up and closed out their business in Texas. She said back to me, “and I have been praying in this house this week. I have wondered who this would belong to.” She stopped for a minute, tilted her hand down and cast her eyes towards me, “Do you think it would be strange if I ask you if we could pray together?” she said. She and I and my husband, and my mother linked hands and with whatever celestial beings might accompany such an event, looked down as we stood at the edge of an old 60 year old farmhouse, overlooking a meadow, in the bright sunshine, and we prayed for each other. The paper work wasn’t signed for another day, but the handing over happened then. As we drove away that day, all I could think of was how humbling the whole thing was. Who am I for God to pay so much attention to, to be in the detail of me and a woman whose heart mirrored mine in her family and her God, who live in other nations, would stand holding hands after only meeting each other? There was a sense of peace about this from the first day we walked that patch of land.

I don’t know what God will have us do with it. Right now, my heart hope that you come and sit at the old wood stove that will be in the barn, or you come and sit out under the stars with me, or maybe you will come and bring a small child who is special to you, I will teach them how to stick a seed into a patch of sandy, Texas soil. We’ll see. But you can trust this: God will do something beyond my imagination.

"O Lord,
"You have searched me and known me.
You know my sitting down and my rising up;
You understand my thought afar off.
You comprehend my path and my lying down,
And are acquainted with all my ways.

For there is not a word on my tongue,
But behold, O Lord, You know it altogether.
You have hedged me behind and before,
And laid Your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
It is high, I cannot attain it."
Psalm 139:1-6

"Peace and happiness are available in every moment.
Peace is every step. We shall walk hand in hand.
There are no political solutions to spiritual problems.
Remember: If the Creator put it there, it is in the right place. The soul would have no rainbow if the eyes had no tears."
An Indian Chief, 1876

February 25, 2008

Well I am getting to Happy Monday late again. I don’t like to be late, but it seems that a multitude of little fires of all kinds have made me late in wishing you the start of a good week. Ahh, and well, there is one other thing.. yesterday was a bad day. Not as bad a day as I have had in the past, but a bad one never the less. I got up yesterday morning, with a sense of dread in the pit of my stomach, and it never went away. There was no hope for a Happy Monday wish anytime during the day. Even when I sat down last night to write, I couldn’t. My heart and mind and soul were just too .. well, just too achy. When you have a bad day, then all the old demons, doubts, and lightly buried heartaches bubble to the surface. I couldn’t think of anything but to just to finish up the day, let the tears come if they wanted to, think about my sons and wonder about the other people who I knew were having a bad day, a bad week, or bad months. I have mentioned before that God has the most wonderful plan for us humans. I would be talking about that one where we have a new day every 24 hours. So when I got up this morning, I had a whole new day ahead of me, that, I guess if I am honest, carried all the possibilities of another bad day, BUT, more importantly, the chance that it carried all the promise of a good one as well. That is life here on this planet. The only choice we have here is to take each day as it comes and do the best with it we can. So as I relaxed into my bed last night, listening to the wind blow and a late-in-the-season-cold-front-for-us-Houstonians come through, I comforted myself with the knowledge that Christ has a plan for a different world in the hereafter. Despite my heart aching missing of my Jake, there still being several long months before I get to see Josh, and the wonderment that my pastor son is maturing in ways only God can produce, I thought about a song I sang on choir on Sunday. It’s a Brooklyn Tabernacle song, and if I could sing it to you, I would…. Short of me calling you and singing offkey, which I am bound to do, here are the words. I hope no matter where you are, or how you think, about days and faith and love, that somehow you know that these words, the song of my heart, is that this day you have one that is good.

The Light Of That City
In this house we've built of make believe
Loved ones go long before, seems it's time to leave
But we will learn how to grieve, to forgive and receive
'Till we see them there in that city

Span of stars overhead as we walk this road
While this darkness remains, I will bear your load
And together we will tend the seed He's sown
As we walk along the road to that city

CHORUS:
On that day we will sing "Holy, Holy"
On that day we'll bow down in the light
And then we'll rise and turn our eyes
To the Lord, Jesus Christ, on that day

Though my eyes can't see what is waiting there
Though my mind can't conceive all that He's prepared
There the blind will see the sun, what was old will be young
And the lame, they will run all over the streets of that city

CHORUS:
On that day we will sing "Holy, Holy"
On that day we'll bow down in the light
And then we'll rise and turn our eyes
To the Lord, Jesus Christ, on that day

Happy Monday late, but sincerely.

 

February 19, 2008

I did something awful. I didn’t mean to, but just the same, I did something of which I am deeply ashamed. This weekend we were going to take the dogs to the country. I feel bad that 200 lbs of dogs are cooped up into a backyard that isn’t big enough for one big dog let alone two of them. They seemed to know they were going and if dogs could talk, they would have. Ellie, the younger was joyous and exuberant, her lithe girly frame sleek, repeatedly doing what I call fish flips. You know, those jumps in the air that dogs can do that looks like they are mimicking a bass jumping out of the water trying to escape the hook in its mouth. Moses was.. well Moses. He used to do fish jumps. Lumbering and gigantic, he was excited, but too old now to show joy like he used to. The plan, my plan, was to tie them into the back of the trailer. I had flimsy leashes and it seemed like it was all going well. We had to shove Moses hard, over the low trailer side, and he promptly, laid down on the trailer floor, looking like a dog trying to get into flatland. Ellie, not the least bit afraid of heights or obstacles, jumped and bounced and then seemed to dutifully sit while I tied her to the side. We headed out, everyone happy, no inkling that something very bad was about to happen. Less than a mile from the house, with a car behind us madly honking, we stopped and Bob got out. He called me to the side of the trailer. Ellie had jumped out, I don’t know when, and was still attached to the leash I had tied her up with, dripping in blood. It pooled around her bloodied, torn, ravaged feet, all four of her paws and nails mangled. I had done this to my beloved pet. My stupidity had created this mess and although I had the best of intentions, I failed in my responsibility as her owner.

She looked at me with those dog eyes. I held her and tried to take stock and although she seemed scared, she was still bouncing around, nothing seemed to be broken, although I had no idea how that could be. We made different traveling arrangements, and once we got where we were going, she seemed to initially enjoy the day. But within a few hours, she had the stance of hurting. Head down, eyes mirroring how bad she felt, she was suffering silently. No whimpering, she loyally trusted me to care for her, as I held her and tried to comfort her until we got home. Three days later now and she can barely walk, her paws are so tender with sores. Moses nuzzles her nose and licks her wounds for her and she still wags her tail when I come to care for her. She will get better and she will be exuberant again, but I will probably never look at her again and not remember how I hurt her.

Lately, I have pictured the Creator, my Creator, my Father in Heaven, as He watches me go through my day. He must shake his head in sadness sometime. I didn’t mean to hurt Ellie, one of His creatures, but I did. That’s bad enough but what is worse is sometimes I know I hurt God because I go ahead and do something I know I shouldn’t, like cussing. I love to cuss. My mother used to tell me to love my enemies, that God wanted me to pray for people I didn’t like. That’s been really hard lately. (Try to do that sometimes and really mean it). I am not going to admit to my other sins here, there are more than I care to acknowledge and certainly a lot I don't want you to know. What I will admit to is that I find it flat amazing that God, in all His wisdom, in all His power, never gives up on me, but more importantly never stops loving me. Ellie couldn’t know better than to still love me, but certainly God has the option.

Today’s Bible verse: 2 Timothy 1:9 Christ Jesus, who has saved us and called us to a holy life--not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace.

Happy Wednesday

February 12, 2008

I drove Grace this past week. I think she remembered me from two years ago. Let me explain. Grace is Jake’s first work truck, the 2005 Ford SuperDuty, the one he bought when he returned from Iraq, when he was just starting his trucking company, a young man full of dreams, changed from war, lithe and strong, always, always, looking towards heaven. While in Iraq, he had learned about strapping loads and driving trucks, among other things. Jake didn’t call his super duty Grace, I did, after he went to Heaven. It seemed appropriate, since he had named his company, Sola Gratia, which as he had explained and I, only at his loss, recalling that particular conversation, recognized how important the naming of his company was. Sola Gratia is Latin for ‘grace alone’. Jake believed that, yes he did. So Grace she was and she and I, for about 6 weeks, in the waning days of 2005 and a few of the unknown days of 2006, drove the highways of Houston, making Jake’s deliveries.

I look back now, I was crazy with grief. No doubt about it and no way to make that reality different than what it was. I have always hated losing things and losing a son is not survivable unless you have faith. But even with faith, I suspect that first, you always go crazy. Anything Jake had touched, anything that was part of Jake was precious. I spent a whole day looking for the last magnetic sign Jake had made, advertising that Sola Gratia was a veteran owned company. It must have peeled off in the wind on one of my freeway rides. It was my failure to make sure it was well placed on the side of Grace and now, yet another loss. It burned and tore at that heart whole in my chest. A whole day, I mean an entire day of retracing, stopping, and exiting Grace when I spotted something lying along the road that might be his sign. If I could have figured out how to stop traffic on I-45 I would have. Yeah, that’s crazy. But, there it is and there is not much that you can do about it and maybe it’s a crazy kind of normal, and maybe its okay; you suffer through the sorrow and go on and be crazy until you get to a place where you can figure out “now what?.” You don’t worry about how it looks, well maybe a bit you do, but most people around you either understand or have gone there with you. If you are lucky you have a second son who, when he finds you wandering the house late at night, holds you and comforts you as you have cradled him many times when he was just a baby. If you are really lucky, you also have another son who tells you he will be strong, just lean on him, and don’t worry about trying to hold up, and means every word. And then if you’re blessed beyond measure then you know, deep in your heart, those sons are praying every night. Going crazy, this kind, has nothing to do not living in the real world. It’s all about the real world. There is nothing more real than death. I drove Grace, back and forth, that season, face dripping with tears and trying to remember Jake sitting where I was, recalling everything I could the few trips I shared with him. I had to remember all the things Jake did to secure the loads and deliver safely; I had to learn what he did. As it turns out, I learned a lot of things.

This day, two years later, I am back in Grace. I am making a delivery for a customer who is also a friend. This is the kind of friend that no matter what you asked, they would give it to you; the kind of friend that no matter what you need, somehow they know. So despite the fact that our real driving pros were busy, it was my pleasure to put on Jake's hard toed boots, grab my safety goggles, and get behind Grace’s wheel. I sit in her and listen to a little bit older engine, warm up and begin the familiar whine peculiar to a diesel. The canned smell of fresh linen that Jake was a bit obsessed by once he returned from war and sprayed every time he got in her is now only barely perceptible. I step out, off the truck step, and unwind the straps and ready myself to secure my load. I have come a long way. By the grace of God, I am at the place where I know, I mean know, that where Jake is so much better than here. Those aren’t words I haven’t thought about, pondered , prayed over, and debated. Sitting in Grace, watching the same season of fallow fields on I-10 and birds of prey from two years ago, it’s a bit of a shock to realize that I don’t spend nearly as much time thinking about what Jake is missing here, or what I am missing because he isn’t here. The reality is that since he went to Heaven, he hasn’t missed a thing. I also realized that my life has never had more purpose and that is a direct result of dealing with the earthly loss of Jake. I am a much different person than I was two years ago and I know very keenly that most of what we do is like chaff in the wind. Earthly life can end in an instant. The meat of life, the heart of the matter, is how I live my life, with honesty, with generosity, with patience, but most of all by grace. Grace alone.. unmerited favor. Yep, that’s what I got.

Happy Monday (Tuesday)

February 4, 2008

The TV Closet.

My dad was adamant. Television rotted your brain. He never said it exactly like that, it was more like “it’s a boob tube, Janet. The more you sit in front of it, the less you are going to be able to think for yourself.” I hated, absolutely hated, when he said stuff like that. I have no recollection of what our television cost, but what I DO remember is that it was always breaking on not working right. It was also ugly. Televisions back then had tubes (sort of various odd shaped light bulb looking ones) and there was always, I mean ALWAYS an issue with the “horizontal control”. Now for reasons that are somewhat unclear to me, in the middle of our living room was a closet and dad, always ahead of his time, decided to make a built in TV set. He cut a whole in the wall of the closet that faced the living room, framed it with some old lumber, created a platform inside the closet and seated the TV so that it’s grainy, not-nearly-the resolution- you-are accustomed-too picture could be seen if you sat in the living room. I thought this was very progressive of my dad and I was proud of him, it however created some issues. Back then even shade tree mechanics, of which my dad was one, worked on anything around the house and that included television sets. With this innovation, to fix our ever-breaking TV set, you had to get into the closet. Once in the closet you couldn’t see what your adjustments were doing to the picture, which was important, actually critical, for diagnostic purposes. Dad’s innovation had created a two man repair call, or should I say a child and dad repair call. I would sit outside the closet, one eye on the picture and one eye on his ministrations. He would have me hold a mirror, angled just right, so he could see the effects he was having on the picture as he was fiddling in the back of the TV. I loved my Dad with all my heart and I wanted to make him happy but that was HARD. Once I had the right angle, I tried to ignore the imaginary bug bites that were itching, a bladder that needed to pee, or my leg, crossed, that tingled and pinged with pain from falling asleep. My constant questions seemed to be derailing to the process as well if my dad's "hush!" was any indication. Not talking was a real sacrifice in my book.

Diagnosis for repair fell into two cateogries. If it was the horizontal control then Dad had to finesse the knob in the back, delicately balancing between the blasted picture rolling fast one way, then just as rapidly, rolling the other way, the whole time watching the effect in the mirror. I have no idea what the technical complexities of this fix were, but I do know that it was tantamount to a miracle when we a got TV set that didn’t even require a horizontal control button. That had to be a huge step for mankind. The other issue was tubes. If it was the big picture tube, well it was over, but if it was any number of the smaller ones, repair was possible. When Dad removed the back of the television the few times I snuck in there to peek, it looked like a dangerous and confusing mass of glass and wires. Dad, much to my amazement, determined which tubes were the likely culprit for whatever diagnosis he had made and then it was my job to cradle them carefully along with the estimated money the replacements might cost, and make a trip on my bike to the hardware store. There among all the nails and barrels, was the tube checking machine and in the metal housing below it, were the tubes that you could buy as replacements. I would bicycle back, hand Dad the new tubes or give him the news that they weren’t bad. It felt good when he would praise me for not losing the change on the way back or for remembering how much we owed the next time I went back because we had underestimated the tube cost.

I learned an awful lot from Dad as I think about it. I learned about patience and logic, money and time. I learned about two people working together to accomplish a task and I learned about finesse in problem solving. I learned that innovation can have its drawbacks and I learned about confidence in business in a hardware store where everything seemed much bigger than me. I learned that doing for others somtimes mean sacrificing your own desires or needs. I learned that most of what we have in this life isn’t really bad inherently, it’s what we as humans do with it that turns it into something bad. Even a boob tube, in the right hands and with the right mind can work magic of the heart and a stretching of a mind.

If you are doing something that would rot your brain, stop doing it. If you are making something bad that doen'st have to be, don't. Instead find the occasion to make a memory, to make a difference, to make something good, to stretch your mind, with someone today. I am very certain that not much else matters. Happy Monday.

January 28, 2008

When the kids were little, Jake probably just beginning school, we had our first bout with head lice. All of us but Bob seemed to be prone, the four of us itching the back of our heads, that first time I had no idea what was in store to get rid of the momma and her nits. By the time all three sons were in elementary, I was old hat at recognizing the early first signs of an infestation; matty looking hair and fingers roughly scratching an itch that never went away. Of course it wasn’t going away. Untold numbers of lice were busy wandering in and around all those little hair shafts, sucking blood and laying sticky eggs. (Those are the ‘nits’ for you uninitiated and you can’t guarantee your rid of the bugs until every single one of those light brown egg cases has been stripped from every hair on your head. You can’t return to school until then either.) Infestation meant an expensive trip to the drugstore for lice shampoo and numerous products to get rid of the lice burrowing in pillows and sofas and anything else 3 little tow-headed sons had touched. The first time, I cleaned everything, moving furniture outside and stripped and sprayed lice deterrent on mattresses. For two weeks, the lice life cycle, we poisoned our hair, confirmation the shampoo was doing its job by that slightly tinny taste left in our mouths as the chemicals soaked through our skin. From those days on, I never considered any perceived shame on anyone who might know we had lice; at the first sign I just began the annihilation program. The boys got tired of the grooming. While Bob would exclaim, “THOSE tiny little things? You can hardly seem them. Or you sure we have to get rid of them all?” I would make the boys sit and comb through each fine hair, slightly panicked on how many nits I might find. As they got older, head shaving was the better option and often it fit in with other things that were going on their lives.

Twenty years later, I leaned over and hugged a slight young Nicaraguan girl whose family was trying to find a better life in Costa Rica. She had come to the free clinic of which I was a volunteer, her little chest wheezing after each breath. As I took the stethoscope from my friend, a doctor of extrodinary heart and faith, she had me listen to the tell tale signs of asthma. I placed my hand on the child’s back and leaned forward, my head touching her matty hair. Her little fingers inched up to scratch her scalp. That time with my sons of close children and sharing of bugs was too far away, a world of events, between those worries and days of young families and childhoods. I straightened up and as the look of knowledge passed between me and the nurse, she packed lice shampoo in a take home bag for the small patient. On the plane home, my head itched. I could feel the lice roaming around in my scalp looking for the best blood supply. Within two days of arriving home, I borrowed John’s lice shampoo. (Which he didn't need as he had just come back from a head shaving). It was a sunny morning, I had just begun to soap up my hair, leaning over the kitchen sink, when my friend Ana came in the door. She is smart and has a natural intelligence for mechanical things. She also has three children and two grandchildren. She immediately assessed the situation. Although we don’t speak the same language natively, she does a better job with mine than I do with her El Salvadoran Spanish and without much ado, she kindly steered me to a chair and took the nit comb from my hand. She began combing through my wet hair, the right way, the comb sweeping close to my scalp, to make sure its fine teeth ripped any nits from my fine strands of hair. She kept me abreast of the progress, looking in all the right little niches that lice like to hide. The report was good, the repeated strokes from the comb turned up nothing. But Ana, for reasons that have nothing to do with lice, continued to comb my hair. The sun shone through the window, the sunbeams resting on my shoulders and Ana’s hands as she patiently and thoughtfully combined through my hair. I remember thinking for a second, as my eyes were closed, and she continued to comb, how extrodinary a scene this must be for God. Her care for me was nothing short of precious. Ana leaned over and in her best English, she said, “ I have a daughter who will take care of me when I get old. You don’t have a daughter.” She continued her ministrations.

There are some moments, some ordinary ones that are never asked for, hoped for, or considered but turn out to be the finest we experience. I have paid handsomely for people to comb my hair and rub my shoulders, but Ana’s care for me that fine morning last week cannot be measured against those. I sat in that chair and wondered at her gift of friendship that had nothing to with who we are to the world. The world is small and I am reminded once again we are all just people that thrive on human touch. No, God in His wisdom didn’t give me any daughters, but my on my, what friends, and sons, and family God has blessed me with.

Today’s Bible Verse: The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.
1 Samuel 16:7

January 21, 2008

Happy Monday…. er, Tuesday. In case you didn’t know, I have been on a medical mission trip this past week to Costa Rica with my preacher son. It’s quite something to be a helper, part of the team, when your adult son has taken on the responsibility of shepherding 23 people to man a free clinic of medical care in a foreign country. My heart is full of words and thoughts of this past week, but my mind is weighed down with the responsibility of too many tasks waiting for my attention now that we have returned. My mental congestion longs for another writer’s pen to provide a voice. So, as my Jake would have Happy Monday’s, here is a poem that came to mind this week while I watched my John do what he was called to do and think about what God will ask him to do as he travels his life’s journey..

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

--Rudyard Kipling

Today's Bible verse: I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beseech you to walk worthily of the calling wherewith ye were called, with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love; giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Ephesian 4:1-3

January 14, 2008

Howdy and Happy Monday!

I have been thinking about my husband. For 17 years he has left the house at 5:30 every morning to travel west for work. An hour and a half one way, every day, for 17 years, he has put in his 10 hour work day, and then traveled back home, an hour and half, that one way back, everyday. He never arrives home before 6:30 and often, given the state of Houston traffic and it roads, arrives mostly later. There have been car pools and partial van pools and then times when he just drove himself, an hour and half, one way, every day. He has driven the wheels off of cars, literally, and he has sucked the life out of at least 5 vehicles, driving every day, an hour and a half, one way.

Now the reason I am thinking about this is because, my husband invited me to the dinner the company provided for him, and his coworkers, in recognition of those employees who had served the company. Bob is one who has served from the beginning, when the idea of building the next generation deuce and a half’s had no premonition that would mean providing tactical vehicle systems to thwart IED’s.. It was a time before 9/11 and Operation Iraqi Freedom and two sons off to war. We arrived at the dinner, and I watched as Bob, a man who has done his best for the company, interacted with those who have been there as long as he had and those who came to proffer the awards. He whispered in my ear of those he admired and the few who he wondered at their motives and their integrity. I realized something. The job that had consumed the better part of my husband’s daily resources, was accomplished without much aid from me or his sons. Not that we had anything to offer intellectually, Bob more than covered that, but the normal social support for a man and his vocation had been missing for Bob. Yeah, I listened when he came home, but quite honestly, he was too far away for me to feel much involvement. I rarely drove out for a lunch or socialized with those he admired.

Not once, not one single time, cross my heart, do I recall Bob complaining.

Now someone would have to wonder, why? The simplest explanation was that it was easier. Easier on sons who could be stable in their education as they negotiated junior high and high school and kept the friends that supported them. Easier on a wife who was given opportunities most mother’s aren’t offered. Easier to keep life as we knew it, were comfortable with, our church nearby, and a house that was our home. Easier on a mother in law, who had become an integral part of a family who would provide her own special sanctuary for her grandsons.

The complicated reason: the one that defies reasoning? It speaks, testifies to the power of love. You cannot explain it otherwise. It was a purely unselfish, act of love from Bob to his family. If you ever want to know what human love is about, consider this example. My Bob is human, as he finds ever more creative ways to voice his punishment of the red-light running *&@#**&^$@# he encounters every day, one hour and half, each way, these past 17 years. Nevertheless, a mere human example of the extraordinary power, extraordinary gift of love, an imperfect human picture of God’s perfect Son’s, and His perfect sacrifice, and His perfect love. When Bob and I get to Heaven, I just bet our Father will say to Bob, ‘well done, WELL DONE, my good and faithful servant’.

To Bob, I say, thank you. I love you.

January 7, 2008

Howdy, Happy Monday!

Time for a confession; I never made it through Christmas the right way. Too many sons missing this year, despite John’s earnest and most caring efforts to make up for the other two’s absence. If you noticed, I didn’t manage to get to the last Monday of 2007 either. I can't offer a good excuse for why I couldn't let the joy, the hope, the promise of the season, soothe me.. I am human and frail.. it was just one of those times.. It was not God's failing. But.. now... my heart is renewed and much like the promise of each new day or a New Year, I am closer to where I am supposed to be, in part due to the valley of this Christmas season.

I have been writing these Happy Monday’s for a full year now. As many times as I have made plans to perform a long term commitment of time and effort, these Happy Monday’s mark one of the few times I have honored that commitment. It’s been my pleasure and gain to let the words spill from my heart on to the pages of Jake’s webpage. Many of you, many times, have encouraged me in the process. I am grateful and thankful.

So, we begin another year, 2008, and God continues to show me new wonders of His love, continues to teach me what life is about here. What say, let’s go through another year together, Monday by Monday? I’m game if you are.

As I did this time last year, let me start this one, with one from my Jake.

From: Jacob Siefert <siefert@tamu.edu> 1998

hello, it has been a long time since I have been sending any poetry but I
have had a rough week, it was a little unexpected. SO here is todays poem
before something else comes up.

Sculpture
I took a piece of plastic clay
And idly fashioned it one day.
And as my fingers pressed it, still
It moved and yielded to my will.

I came again when days were past:
The bit of clay was hard at last.
The form I gave it still it bore,
But I could change that form no more!

I took a peice of living clay,
And gently pressed it day by day,
And molded with my power and art
A young childs soft and yielding heart.

I came again when years had gone:
It was a man I looked upon.
He still that early impress bore,
And I could fashion it no more.

unknown

 

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