Surrender to Kindness

Lake Moran, Banff

Tauren Wells, “Known”

 

In this song by Tauren Wells, one short phrase “I surrender to Your kindness” struck me as I travelled on R3 to get to UAB this morning.

 

I kept repeating the phrase. . .”I surrender to Your kindness”. . .very Presbyterian from what I can tell, but also difficult to do. How often do we feel we surrender to kindness?

 

My thought was that we fight for the stigma and blame of our shortcomings. Somehow the fight equates to worth. Maybe the fight indicates we know the worth of the honor which we have lost, and so, we fight to regain honor by our own means? Seems focused on our accomplishment and pride, not on God’s grace.

 

Wallowing is another option, I guess, to keep putting the shortcoming out there, so God knows we are damn well sorry for said shortcoming. Yet the undercurrent of wallowing is being stuck. We’ll just keep hitting that rock over and over again while God’s grace rushes all around us. I guess the repetition has a certain beauty, a sound of repentance, if you will, but the deep pool of calm just downstream or the exhilaration of diving downward, via surrender, to the depths of grace is missed – or never even found.

 

(9/22/22)

Ebenezer

Pawley's Island, SC

We woke up this morning and stumbled to the beach together. The sky glowed light pink to the East. Rough, cold sand taunted our feet with each step – a million tiny insults wearing away our armor of skin. I remembered our wedding day, on the East Coast, at the beach, at sunrise – dolphins frolicking, surfers running, volleyballers lobbing. All of our guests stood in the surf and tossed small polished stones into the Atlantic– a dozen plus wishes, prayers and hopes – tossed into the great mystery with an expectation of rippling returns from them all – toward us and away from us – in all directions – a hum of blessings reverberating throughout our married life. 

This beach and our times here have been a part of that blessing – hearing the waves, walking the seashore, discovering tossed aside treasure from either the ocean or the people who come to enjoy it – a driftwood whale, coral, clamshell bedecked with “barnacles,” ½ of a large shell perfectly intact and a broken tent that provided 1 hour of covered bliss by the ocean before snapping in two, again, with a gust of ocean breeze. I will miss this place, the morning sun on the waves, how the surf breaks and then recedes – second-guessing if it is too bold or if cloyingly taking what it wants bit-by-bit fits its purposes more. 

 

Yet the ending must come and a return to an earthen horizon – a beach replaced with clay and grass – the echo of generations swaying in the tall pines, cedars and oaks - a different reverberation of our lives and our blessings in the rocky ridge.  

(4/12,14/21, 3/3/23)

Messengers of God

 

The fireflies are dancing – 

lights on and off, up and down – 

breathing in, breathing out

beating wings until they become invisible – 

the spirits that uphold them in mid-air. 

 

Is it mating? Is it survival? 

Is it sheer joy for shining in the darkness – 

causing children to squeal in glee and to go charging into the evening 

toward the pale green glow? 

 

This is one miracle of summer nights: 

The floating, iridescent – 

now-you-see-them, now-you-don’t – 

beacons 

that beckon us to wonder afresh how the gathering dark is also God’s creation – 

filled with possibility, with life, with beauty 

that cannot be seen or even imagined in the daylight.

 

And maybe, too, the Holy Spirit

is not just fire - 

but microwaves. . .atomic waves?. . .

pulsing in the darkness, connecting me to you 

to the world. 

A force usually unseen, but more powerful in invisibility than in sight. 

Cloaked in mystery, 

moving among us, 

maintaining the hum of life.

(6.4.19)

Image courtesy Radim Schreiber/ fireflyexperience.org and National Park Service

Rounding

 

The seconds tick

tiny bombs

desecrating images of me

I worshipped.

 

Strong, fit, invincible

 

Yet here I am

in this chair-again

another hour

another round done

 

They say

I’ve rounded a corner.

I feel

I’ve been rounded up.

 

My tiny cells

exploding

with “therapy.”

 

A confabulation of a recent trip to a chemotherapy infusion center and hearing a man and his son saying that they were “doing the rounds” with the man’s doctors on a particular day.

(Image by Jon Tyson via https://unsplash.com/images/things/clock)

Reflecting (a Bourbon Chase story)

Ragnar Relay’s Bourbon Chase “A 200-ish mile running relay across the Bluegrass State that winds its way through the historic Kentucky Bourbon Trail.”

Ragnar Relay’s Bourbon Chase, Wild Turkey Distillery, Kentucky, mid-October 2018. 

 

Throngs waited in misty coldness, large spotlights providing reprieve from the dark. The hillside below Wild Turkey peppered with teams moving up and down the dirt path welcoming one teammate and sending the next away. Music filling the night from parking area to porta potty to the relay path.

 

Our team took our place on the hillside and waited. Each runner materialized on the path, phantoms suddenly made human, with a “baton” in outstretched hand as s/he entered the exchange and finished the leg. The next in line grabbed the “baton” and slapped it across a wrist, dematerializing into the dark.

 

We knew the mile/minute pace for each of our teammates, but technology confirmed our calculations as we texted our ETA whenever a signal allowed. We had a few minutes before our teammate would arrive. A few of the team bought hot drinks. As I was up next, I found the port toilet, then did what I could to stay warm.

Meeting up with both teams at Maker's Mark, Day One.

I had a fractured patella 7 months prior, giving me only 4 months to prepare for my multiple 5-6 mile runs. Beginning my walk-to-run program, again, I eventually made my way to “2-a-days” to get my body prepared for the short number of hours between my segments. Realizing a few weeks out my time wasn’t quite fast enough, I did tempo-type runs, improving my pace as much as possible. . .

 

So, I stood at the hillcrest, waiting to start my last leg of the journey. I had slept in the hotel with the team, but could have slept more. The temperature, weather and atmosphere at Wild Turkey was antithetical to my preferences of warm, still and quiet places. Yet two years prior, when Jeno and I happened upon The Bourbon Chase while exploring the Kentucky countryside, I whispered a prayer to run this race. Two years later, cold, tired and soon to run my last segment, well, it was a gift. 

Ducking in shops to keep warm, this one had snacks, too!

My turn arrived. Eschewing the dirt path to the exchange area, I went down the hillside through the grass. Standing just outside of the barriers separating the crowd from the runners, I looked down the path for my phantom. He appeared, and I took my spot in the box, arm extended and hand opened wide.

 

Receiving the baton, I slapped it around my wrist and started jogging – away from the noise and lights and crowd – down to the bridge and the wonders of starlight above and river below and me – suspended between the two – the wind whipping my eyes to tears as Orion beamed above.

 

In those few moments, all the recovery and training, the cold and tired, the pushing of my body melted into a river of gratitude – gratitude for stars and water and engineering – for strength and heart and lungs – for having the joy of running in the middle of the night in cold Kentucky wind. 

 

At the end of that leg, Jeno picked me up and we drove - as the dawn was breaking - back into Lexington. I performed my friend’s wedding that evening after a few hours of napping. People told me I was glowing that night, but maybe it was the wonder of the world bathed in twilight received and reflected – my body, the moon, to the universe’s glorious light. 

At the wedding venue that night.

 

Growling Souls

This Sunday’s lectionary reading was Jesus’s temptation in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1-11). So you have Jesus, baptized and announced as God’s son led by the Spirit to be tempted. While temptations and acts of sin come in as many colors as the spectrum holds, hunger seems to be the ground of them all. In Jesus’s case the temptations are hunger for food, hunger for recognition and hunger for power. For the devil, it is hunger to be worshipped. For Eve it was hunger for knowledge; for Adam, hunger to please. 

Lent’s initial premise reminds us of our beginnings and endings and offers us the opportunity to consider how we fill the space in between. In its first Sunday, Lent asks what constitutes our hunger and how do we fill that hunger.

 

I think of this passage as God’s tacit reminder to us that 1) Jesus was human and 2) to live is to hunger. In Christ, God experiences all the hunger of humanity and sympathizes with the weakness those hungers bring. 

 

“Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let’s hold firmly to our confession. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things just as we are, yet without sin. Therefore, let’s approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace for help at the time of our need.” (Hebrews 4:14-16, NASB)

 

May we know our hunger, may we know the One who can sympathize with our hunger and may we find the mercy and grace of God in our time of need.

Midwinter Reflection (hammered dulcimer original)

 

Daffodils began blooming in late January this year. :) This is a link to a short hammered dulcimer piece composed in mid-January several years ago. There is no video, in case you wonder. LOL. Hope you enjoy the music on this feast day of Lent!

Midwinter Reflection

Where I’m From

I am from clotheslines and tomato vines,

from Bisquick and Coca-cola.

I am from the front porch swing and pump organ thing.

I am from the freezers full of harvest,

the cornstalks planted in manure.

I am from Christmas punch and 

Christian chins

From Kirk and Wanda, Berniece and Buster.

I am from stubbornness and laughter,

From Jesus loves me and you better 

not wear those jeans to church.

I am from an ex-Baptist and a Bootlegger,

From a year in the Pen and Precious, Lord Take My Hand

I am from Rocky Ridge and the Great Flood of 1937

and from Cherry Almond Pie and Dumplings. 

From the big shoulders and tiny little waist,

the clickety-clack of 6-inch heels and the 

prayers of a barren woman

promising to give her child

to the LORD.

I am from the filing cabinets

full of too many memories,

bursting with joy and lament

too much for one heart

to hold.

George Ella Lyon originally wrote a poem by the same name and later joined with Julie Landsman to create the “I Am From” Project using Ms. Lyon’s poem with prompts so others could write their own. This is my version. For more information: http://www.georgeellalyon.com/where.html

If you would like to write your own, here is the template: 

https://www.wsuu.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/I_Am_From_Poem(2).pdf 

(Photo Courtesy of Shutterstock)

A Lot

In Biloxi, on Highway 90, a.k.a. the Beach Boulevard, historical markers stand on corners of large empty lots with lovely branched oaks. The markers speak of grand houses destroyed in a night by Camille and Katrina. Behind the markers, barren lots where the houses once stood, large and meandering, to nearby homes, attractions, restaurants with narcissus and daffodils making their yearly bloom unaware that the eyes once enjoying them and the hands that planted them have blown and floated away in violent heaves and spins – or at least the housing for their bodies did: The absent space burdened and burgeoning with some 400 souls who one day were and the next were not – their final moments known only to them and the storms. 

Those lots also hold hostage the living who kept them; the cost to rebuild higher than the flood waters and equally suffocating and unfathomable. The vestiges of driveways and parking lots and fine brick work in the sand – mocking those sent to dominate and multiply – mocking the living – exposing their insignificance; reminding them they are truly no more than the piles of sand gathered atop the poured concrete that now leads to nothing but seagrass and open air.

 

How indifferent nature and time are to human loss and suffering. 

 

My foundation has crumbled and still the sneeze weed blooms. The piles of sand find openings into my shoes, irritating my feet. The oaks have some sympathy – broken appendages scattered like tears, bark-barren trunks exposed to whatever insult wishes to come next. Yet still they stand tall and towering, their arms spread long and wide.

 

Not me – I stand because I must, but I am forced to embrace – too much – that weakens my knees and sets my heart on edge.

 

It is a lot.

Unspoken

“There isn’t much air

left for her

on this earth.”

 

The dust will soon

be dust

again

 

Awaiting reanimation

like my heart,

my life

 

A reincarnation

that is never

what it was

 

And while her

metamorphosis

sends her to flight

 

Mine is the seed -

dirt poured

on my head

 

A baptism

of grief

and darkness.

A husband said the opening words during a Palliative Care consultation. Much was left unsaid, but it seemed the rest might have been implied.

Image from  http://www.scienceimage.csiro.au/image/2767

Endings to Begin With

 Today marks the first day of Lent. As I walked to the front of the sanctuary to receive the imposition of ashes, the pastor marked my head with the standard "from dust you came, to dust you will return" and ended by saying, "God bless you." 

Facebook friends who note the liturgical year have various ideas about Lent and how to observe it. Even some of my coworkers discussed some planned (and some makeshift) Lenten vows today. As I sat in church and received the ashes, I realized the spirit of Lent has guided the biggest decisions of my life. 

At the heart of Lent lies the basic understanding that we begin and we end. In that beginning and until that ending, we are human with all the joy and heartache living entails - and imperfection marks each day of it. Lent invites us to sit with our humanity and then decide what we wish to do next.

Most people wonder how I moved from chaplain to physician or why I might "give up" a perfectly good career to spend 12 years preparing for another one.  The Lenten spirit made me do it. 

The short version is I had a breast cancer scare with concomitant breast oncology visits to monitor the area in question for 2 years and a family history placing me in a high risk category. I happened to have worked in hospice chaplaincy close to 4 years when I initially received the ominous "you need a biopsy" call. I faced my ending, and because hospice chaplaincy filled my days, I asked the question, "What haven't I done? What goal waits for completion? What will I regret not doing if this is my end?" The answer? Being a physician - or a least trying to be a physician.

And this is Lent's spirit, its mission - if it has such a thing: To remind us we all have an end and to ask us what it is we want to do before we meet that end. 

Whether you observe Lent or not, the practice of endings may help you decide your next steps or re-route your life.