No Place Like Home

 

Photo credit here.

J and I have now purchased my childhood home. We took over 2 of the 3 bedrooms, the hall bath, and the dining room-turned laundry room/pantry. The rest of our goods landed at the storage facility 2 miles away. Too much stuff crammed into unaesthetic monotony on the 3^rd floor, down the hallway to the left as you get off the elevator.

 

Dad and I share coffee in the mornings while Mom drinks her Boost. J and I go for walks along the creek behind the property, then up along the ridge line of the
Hills. Our rescue, the Maltese named Riley, has grown in to a veritable therapy dog – his love for love softening everyone he meets. Work remains fulfilling, as the people in front of me find space and freedom to air deep concerns or hidden secrets – leaving them lighter and more hopeful.

 

Thanks to Richard Rohr’s book, Falling Upward, I’m looking at my return home to Rocky Ridge through the lens of the Odyssey with its wandering and return, attempting to see how all the pieces of my life are grace. My vision’s not so great, but if God shows up in anything, it is this beam of truth: everything is grace.

 

Going on 16 years ago, my wanderings took me to a Catholic retreat center in North Carolina. St. Therese, the Little Flower, was its patroness. A labyrinth lay just beyond the dorm, scattered trees encircling it. I walked the labyrinth with urgency since I wrestled with returning back South, and particularly to Memphis, TN. I had left the South 3 years earlier and, in that time, faced some of my own demons from childhood. I felt broken and utterly confused about why now was the right time to come back. I had not wanted to return and tried my best to stay in Berkeley, but all the doors closed.

 

I poured my heart out as I walked in one orbit then in retrograde, in-toward-the-center-and-away-again, on the serpentine path to the middle of the labyrinth. As I stepped into the quiet center of that particular system, I saw it: a singular stepping stone imprinted with the shape of a butterfly, its wings filled with the shattered glass from some imperfect past.  Then imperceptibly the thought came, “Nothing is wasted. What has been your wounding will be your path to flight.” Then the tears and gratitude of hope. 

 

I met J in Memphis – a conduit of love and grace that I could never have dreamed or imagined, but God could and did. And here we are, in Birmingham, back at ground zero. I’m trying to envision how all the pieces are being formed into wings – the pleasant, the difficult, the indifferent. Some days the evidence shines, some days not so much, but I believe the hope discovered on the path and I trust the Love with all the unbelief that remains. As a prayer to St. Therese says, 

 

“Little Flower, give me your childlike faith,
to see the Face of God
in the people and experiences of my life,
and to love God with full confidence.”

 

May it be so, God. May it be so.

- Written as an Advent devotional, 11/2020

A New Song

                                     

A human from the beginning. Photo credit here.

In watching Aspens leaves blown by the wind, skyward green and earthbound white twisting wildly, I hear (and see!) the trees singing for joy – enlivened by the Spirit filling this ancient world.

 

Then an Appalachian spring covers the forest floor in dazzling flowery jewels, dismissing the drab mud of winter, the brown crush of leaves – exultant in the caresses of the Sun – 

 

Or maybe the creeping light of day alerts cardinals, blue birds, house finches and Carolina wrens to the latest gossip and the air fills with tales and triumphs I cannot understand – but still my heart stirs.

 

Of course, the ocean, they say, holds the power of God – the mystery of depth incessantly rushing into conscious thought and then away – the creatures within too marvelous for the light of day.

 

I look at this body, each year changing, and consider the beginning: two microscopic cells – nothing more, nothing less – uniting, dividing (but holding together), differentiating, migrating and forming 

 

All the parts of me: the moving parts, the breathing parts

The sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell parts

The thinking and feeling

Reflecting and dreaming

Creating

 

A body like mine held God,

Knitted him together in darkness,

To be birthed in all of us

This Christmas Day – so

Sing to the Lord a new song.

-Written for an Advent Devotional, 12/24/23 with Psalm 96 as the inspiration

No Place Like Home

St. Therese, the Little Flower

Jeno and I have now purchased my childhood home. We took over 2 of the 3 bedrooms, the hall bath, and the dining room-turned laundry room/pantry. The rest of our goods landed at the storage facility 2 miles away. Too much stuff crammed into unaesthetic monotony on the 3^rd floor, down the hallway to the left as you get off the elevator.

 

Dad and I share coffee in the mornings while Mom drinks her Boost. Jeno and I go for walks along Little Shades Creek behind the property, then up along the ridge line of Vestavia Hills. Our rescue, the Maltese named Riley, has grown in to a veritable therapy dog – his love for love softening everyone he meets. Work remains fulfilling, as the people in front of me find space and freedom to air deep concerns or hidden secrets – leaving them lighter and more hopeful.

 

Thanks to Richard Rohr’s book, Falling Upward, I’m looking at my return home to Rocky Ridge through the lens of the Odyssey with its wandering and return, attempting to see how all the pieces of my life are grace. My vision’s not so great, but if God shows up in anything, it is this beam of truth: everything is grace.

 

Going on 16 years ago, my wanderings took me to a Catholic retreat center in North Carolina. St. Therese, the Little Flower, was its patroness. A labyrinth lay just beyond the dorm, scattered trees encircling it. I walked the labyrinth with urgency since I wrestled with returning back South, and particularly to Memphis, TN. I had left the South 3 years earlier and, in that time, faced some of my own demons from childhood. I felt broken and utterly confused about why now was the right time to come back. I had not wanted to return and tried my best to stay in Berkeley, but all the doors closed.

 

I poured my heart out as I walked in one orbit then in retrograde, in-toward-the-center-and-away-again, on the serpentine path to the middle of the labyrinth. As I stepped into the quiet center of that particular system, I saw it: a singular stepping stone imprinted with the shape of a butterfly, its wings filled with the shattered glass from some imperfect past.  Then imperceptibly the thought came, “Nothing is wasted. What has been your wounding will be your path to flight.” Then the tears and gratitude of hope. 

 

I met Jeno in Memphis – a conduit of love and grace that I could never have dreamed or imagined, but God could and did. And here we are, in Birmingham, back at ground zero. I’m trying to envision how all the pieces are being formed into wings – the pleasant, the difficult, the indifferent. Some days the evidence shines, some days not so much, but I believe the hope discovered on the path and I trust the Love with all the unbelief that remains. As a prayer to St. Therese says, 

 

“Little Flower, give me your childlike faith,
to see the Face of God
in the people and experiences of my life,
and to love God with full confidence.”

 

May it be so, God. May it be so.

(11.2020)

Picture from https://www.littleflower.org/st-therese/who-is-st-therese/

With Us

Trillium, March 2021

Isaiah 64:1-9

 

I’m sitting in a donut shop called “Hero.” The weather has changed from humid summer heat to crisp fall air with the concomitant crystal blue sky, which stays for about 3 weeks this time of year. The sun peeks above the pin oak across Oxmoor Road and spills onto my page while

early 90’s rock plays overhead and a classic Porky Pig cartoon flashes on the singular TV in the dining area. The buzz of conversation around me covers everything from marketing strategies to college courses. 

 

If it weren’t for the ubiquitous hand sanitizer by the door, the space between the tables, or the masked employees, I might never suspect COVID was a “thing.” Still, my friend of 20 years travels down to Sylacauga today for the funeral of her aunt who died from COVID last week – the new normal, I guess.

 

When COVID became the “pandemic-we-were-waiting-for” and the world closed, fear struck me as I wondered if whatever is Not God could do “exceedingly abundantly more than all we ask and imagine,” just as God could. I believed then, had to believe then, that God could guide us through collectively, though grief would remain in these living generations as the world was re-made or even re-born – another evolution towards a new future. Still, I shuddered in considering what that future might be – the undulating history of humanity at once fragile and unflinching – crashing into chaos and rising with victory throughout a multitude of obstacles along the way.

 

In Isaiah, I sense a desperation the pandemic engendered – a fear that maybe we have brought our own disaster upon ourselves – and worse, that God stands distanced letting us feel the full weight of heartbreak and pain. In the season of Advent, Isaiah paints the picture of our understanding of reality: our actions separate us from God and bring down God’s judgment upon us, and we are left alone to fight the battle or pick up the pieces or pay the price; and we must beg and plead and remind God to be merciful. 

 

Yet this is the season of “God With Us” not “God against us” and what is absolutely, positively amazing is that God is with ALL of us – the victim AND the perpetrator, the transgressor AND the transgressed. In the person of Emmanuel, we come to understand that God is With Us in Love – regardless of our views on masks and vaccines, regardless of our fears and trepidations, regardless of how we stand against ourselves and others – even when we convince ourselves that God is not ____ (with us, for us, concerned about us, loving, just, kind, etc.) because of some fact of our life. These items have no bearing on where and how God responds to us – they are the shriveled fall leaves blown down to feed spring growth. God is simply, unimaginably, unapologetically With Us, loving us every season of our lives, beside us each step of the way. 

 

From St. Patrick’s Breastplate: Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise, Christ in the heart of every [hu]man who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me, Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.