Revealed

The bookmark which inspired the poem.

 

The burnished angel

keeping vigil

over these Sacred Pages,

 

pointing toward history,

craftswomanship,

the details that

 

beautify even as 

they obscure

A grander outline

 

peeking from the edges

yet in plain sight

All. This. Time.

The bookmark in ink - looks like an angel.

 

Grant me eyes

to see the divine

standing in physicality

 

bearing the marks 

of human hands

with acceptance – 

 

Arms wide open.

Vulnerable and willing

to give its form

 

to human hands,

and minds,

and souls.

 

Branding them in kind

with the Fire

of immortality.

 

November 2021

 

I Don't Know

 

I don’t know who I am or where I’m going 

or what I’m good at.

I don’t know if this was some crazy dream

that moved into a nightmare.

I don’t know what may happen next, which

thrills me as much as it frightens me.

I just don’t know.

 

I don’t know how words morph into

these weighty scenes that lead us backward

and forward like the ebb and flow of oceans.

I don’t know how the body machines

and sputters along or how it somehow

stops - all at once or bit-by-bit.

I don’t know these mysteries. I don’t

even know what I don’t know – the

hazy mirror reflecting only what I can see.

 

I don’t know how love is born or takes

flight across days, decades, distances.

I don’t know how those we need most 

simply appear silently at our time of despair.

I don’t know how danger is averted

on a darkening road in the half-wilderness.

 

So much – a universe worth – of un-knowing.

So fragile. So naïve.

And in this equation – so innocent.

But innocent how? I don’t know.

 

October 13, 2015

Springs in the Desert

Jacob's Well in Samaria, 1912

John 4:5-42

 

Reruns of Gunsmoke play on our TV nightly. Matt Dillion, Doc Adams, Chester and Kitty share their life in Dodge night after weekday night. Last night, a white man brought his Native American wife to stay at the hotel and Dodge became a hotbed of intolerance – eventually capturing the woman and abusing her to scare her away. 

 

Through circumstances she did not control, this woman became the outcast of Dodge practically overnight. Spite, gossip, preconceived notions of a people group, cultural ideas separating us from them – all this led to her capture.

 

From what many Bible scholars teach, the Samaritans and Jews at the time of Jesus would know this Gunsmoke script by heart. They didn’t get along, they suspected the other one of multiple social, cultural and religious shortcomings, they certainly did not trust each other. 

 

Then within the Samaritan community, the woman at the well becomes a microcosm of the same script. From all we know, spite, gossip, preconceived notions about the value of a woman and cultural ideas of how God “punished” women who sinned made her an outcast – or at the least caused her to seek solitude while performing her daily household tasks. 

 

Then Jesus shows up, breaking into her solitary routine and engaging her around water. While all the talk of husbands has been coupled with various interpretations, one connects with me: the stigma of barrenness (Thank you, Leeanne and Karoline Lewis). Since only men could divorce wives, if she had 5, it is possible the men divorced her because she could not produce an heir (or boys to help with the work), and because no man would have her, she ended up living in her relative’s home – a disgrace to the family.

 

The reason I like the idea of barrenness being the primary driver of this interaction between the woman and Jesus is this:

 

They are in a desert landscape. She is outside of town drawing water in the noon day heat, likely because she, like the desert around her, is “barren.” She encounters Jesus who tells her about living waters, continuously flowing. In my mind’s eye, I see how she pictures the desert come to life with the rains and then God whispers, “I will turn the parched earth of your life into fertile fields ripe with harvest.” 

 

Then she gains new boldness and she enters her town and becomes the first evangelist to the good news of Jesus. To use a later trope: she goes into the field already "ripe," and she harvests  the bounty. She has seen and heard and felt the water pour through her like a fresh cup down her parched throat. She must tell others. 

 

In this progression of the theme, we’ve circled back around to a variation on hunger. We are human, we hunger and we thirst. Jesus is not only about eternal life, but also about the life of the world. He knows the barren places, the dry lands screaming for relief in all of our lives and he is the Living Water, pouring himself out onto the dry land and barren places to bring them to life.

 

May the practice of barrenness, of living in the desert lead you to the Living Water.

Photo by Elmendorf, Dwight Lathrop - camera crusade through the Holy Land C. Scribner's Sons New York 1912, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8537411

 

O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus

Nothing original. . .roses = love, right?

The sermon today was from the pericope referred to as "The Woman at the Well." Jesus talks about living waters, and it caused me to think of this version of this song. The hymn below is shown to give anyone reading this access to the words, but this is not the tune I am playing. Hope you enjoy (and let me know which version you like best!)! 3/12/23

From the Baptist Hymnal

Below: Deep, Deep Love in crescendo

Below: Deep, Deep Love "busy"

 

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/

Alaska 2019

\

Aurora Borealis, March 2019

 

March 2, 2019 – Alaska Railroad

 

Hello, Alaska – I’ve missed you. I forget the beauty you have – the treasures you share. Thank you, Denali, for showing me, and us, your beauty this morning, gleaming in the sun’s new light. The landscape of snow and ice - chill and calm, mingling with a quiet, humming of the tracking, bouncing, shaking rhythm of the wheels. Are the tears, those of love, or memory, or regret, or joy – so glad to be here with my Jeno and my sister and brother-in-law. Is it missing my youth of 27 years ago – somehow, regretting all I didn’t know – couldn’t have known? Or is it being overwhelmed with beauty – the grandeur and magnificence of it all. . .

 

In going through Denali, we could oversee where I worked at the McKinley Chalets. It didn’t look that different, though there were some new buildings across the main roadway. I don’t’ know if many memories returned, but some did, like where we lived on the Nenana or the familiarity of the road out of Denali and toward Healy. 

 

I didn’t see “Moose’s Ass*” as the train goes on the other side of the mountain to follow the Nenana into Healy’s Gorge. I had forgotten about the place where we hiked down a bit and came to a “ledge” and called it “Kara’s Point” or Lookout or something. I believe the ledge overlooked the Nenana, but I could be wrong because I searched for the place and couldn’t quite find it. I had forgotten about that ledge, and in remembering, an emotional importance attached to it welled within me. I really wanted to see it. Funny, the things to which we assign importance or significance. At 19, the idea that I could call something my own enticed me – the romance in a ledge never having a name before I named it my own.

(*a term a climber used for the rock formation in the summer of 1992)

Mt McKinley Chalets

 

March 5, 2019 - Coldfoot, AK

 

The expansiveness of the Alaskan interior is unparalleled to anything else in my experience. The initial jaggedness of the Talkeetna and Alaskan ranges gives way to rolling hills in the surrounding areas of Fairbanks before changing again to granite monoliths in the Brooks Range. Then the trees disappear and it is mountain and stone before flattening out again to the oil fields (at least that’s what I’m told). It’s all beautiful and *seemingly* untouched, but, of course, the pipeline runs alongside the length of the singular paved road leading this far north. The pipeline has only been around since Nixon (?) maybe or a little later. So definitely not untouched, but much of the land is pristine.

Jeno and I at the ubiquitous pipeline

 

March 6, 2019 - Fairbanks, AK

 

As we sat at breakfast this morning, seeing the other travelers we’ve come to know, I became aware again of the magic of Alaska. We all came from disparate places: Texas, Illinois, Ohio, British Columbia, Missouri; but we formed some bonds and community when our cell phones didn’t work and there wasn’t TV and all we had were truck stop meals and bus tours on a gravel highway (sometimes paved, sometimes iced and grated). We also had 24 people with whom we traveled for 12 hours on a train, then 13 hours on a bus, then another seven hours on a tour, and overnight under the stars and in a cabin, watching the northern lights (lest I forget). 

 

Maybe that’s why I love and miss travel – at least one reason – because of the community that can be formed by the mishmash of people and personalities that decide to take a common path to someplace. Of course, this would be different in a place with cell coverage and TV – it would be easy to isolate or simply continue to be caught in the flurry of cyber connections and distractions that only reflect ourselves and our interest and the tiny worlds that we inhabit. For me – as one looking for and longing for connection, this bit of travel has given me a taste of it and reminded me again how it is formed. Maybe that’s one reason I loved Alaska in the first place – in fact I know it is: The almost immediate connection I formed with other people and with people utterly different than me and with so many varied points of view. [Those interactions changed the course of my life.]

 

I’m glad to be back in Alaska – to see it in its snowy dress – to experience it again, but for the first time – with Jeno – in another place, at another season – to recognize all that I felt before, and to understand it better.

 

The neuroscience says that we are driven to experience new things while we are adolescents, that we need more stimulation to give us a jolt while all the neural connections reestablish themselves. I don’t know, but I’m not sure that adolescence is the only time we need/are driven to experience new things. What is midlife crisis, but the realization we need something more or different or new? Maybe we can reflect on it in a new way with our prefrontal cortex (hopefully) fully intact– but we need stimulation, something to keep us vibrant, active, exploring, growing. Maybe we don’t need it during the child rearing years – or maybe the sheer volume of activity stimulates enough – but I’d say even then something still yearns for growth and discovery – at least I haven’t had a period of my life where I did not experience the yearning.

In 2019 only 10% of travelers to AK made it this far north.

 

March 7, 2019 - Chena Hot Springs

 

While I had several new experiences yesterday, the most unique was being outside in the springs, in my bathing suit, with snow covering my head, watching people in parkas and down jackets walk on the grounds around me. I sat for a moment with my eyes closed, feeling the slippery warmth of my body contrasted with the kisses of snowbits (not big enough for flakes!) on my shoulders and face. As I told April – it was quite the yin/yang experience – two opposites starkly opposed. . .

 

We went on an evening walk on the trail tonight. It wasn’t particularly light out, but the trail is snow-covered and meanders beside a stream. We walked for about an hour. . .The snow and mountains, the bubbly stream, the stars peek-a-booing around the clouds and the moments of stillness: I’m reminded of our hiking trip with Jen, crossing the McKinley Bar, and the deep stillness of the night – only the four of us – for miles as far as we knew – and whatever animals were close by… But the quiet was profound – as was the darkness of the sky. I had never been in such an isolated place, and I have not been since.

At Chena Hot Springs

Labyrinth Wisdom

Chartres Labyrinth, 12th century

It is not finished - 

this journey,

the discovery of

my vision, my path, my way

 

It is more labyrinthine:

Twisting one way,

then another

doubling back, crossing over, seeking its way to

 

The Center 

of all things –

the space of reflection,

a primordial beat of life.

 

A circle, yes.

An image, yes.

A metaphor of winding,

turning, resting, returning. 

 

The Path 

holds us all.

My path, where

any direction is 

 

The Right Direction

for it is the way

laid out for me.

I cannot stray.

(10/23/22)

The Change

 

"The Change"
 

I always thought this euphemistic – a code for talking about the reproductive system’s cycle as it nears its end – used because this period (or lack thereof to be more precise) embarrassed those in process of it or associated with it.

 

Everyone said The Change was normal, but spoke in hushed tones. I figured the whispers were more about the inherent embarrassment of being female and talking about something that had anything to do with sex. My conservative Christian upbringing was prudish about sex, women, bodies. . .science. I didn’t understand.

 

Now, going through The Change, I realize it is an apt and grossly encompassing term that expresses entirely, though not precisely or with detail, what is happening.

 

It isn’t just THE CHANGE from CYCLE to NON-CYCLE, but also from even-keeled to never-know-when-the-rage-will-hit as well as from straight through the hips to where-in-the-hell-did-this-ass-come-from.

 

The Change is having to, again, come to terms with a changing body and psyche and pathos which is difficult enough once in a lifetime, but twice? COME ON.

 

My face breaks out. My hair gets brittle and thin and mousy brown. I HAVE TO SHAVE MY FACE. My memory sputters and stops sometimes – words go to ether in my brain.

 

My body surges with some chemical warfare and suddenly my skin is aflame AND soaking wet. When I’m asleep, this wakes me up like a fire alarm. My bedside fan and hairclip are my most prized possessions.

 

New wrinkles appear on the reg, and I finally get why my grandmother wore turtlenecks even in the summer. My boobs have lengthened abnormally, and as Rachel Welch told Oprah, this stage of life is truly Men On Pause – libido has caught the last train along with my menses. . .and the train has pulled out of the station.

 

There is more: The dimply skin, the worsening GERD, the next-day price of indulging in bread or sugar or dairy. . .my body simply does not bounce back as it did. . .

 

And while it is all the rage to say 50 is the new 40 OR to find the positive spin to the curveballs. . .well, it glosses over the grief that simply needs expressing.

 

For changing means that something is being lost as much as gained, and grief must have its due. So this is mine to own and mine to reconcile while figuring the gain (that isn’t just on the scale). . .

 

Because I don’t want to be embarrassed or cowering about this change as I’m not 12 years old anymore. Maybe I’ve never needed to be either embarrassed or cowering, but I bought into the lie. . .another grief for a different day.

 

So I am changing in more ways than I ever expected. I just ask, Lord, that with this change, I grow further into all I am meant to be and I recognize myself as more truly myself with each reincarnation.

 

(8/18/22)

Photo from https://www.travelweek.ca/blog/independent-insights-change-is-good/

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.

Birthing the World Anew

John 3:1-17

 

The passage from the lectionary comes from John’s recorded conversation between Nicodemus, “a leader of the Jews,” and Jesus under cover of night. Nicodemus plays it straight, so Jesus can dish on “being born again. “

 

In the progression of this Lenten season, we begin with our finitude, then we examine our desires and this week, Jesus asks us to consider the possibility of another birth, but with this birth, there is not an end; only eternal life. 

 

If the idea piques our interest, he provides a path to that birth and eternal life. Most importantly, though it arrives at the end of the passage, he says that God sent God’s son into the world of finitude with all its hungers and desires and endings– not to condemn the world – but to save it, i.e., to provide another birth for those who believe in God’s son – a birth that leads to eternal life. 

 

In this passage, nothing hints at Nicodemus’s response to this news. The last recorded words from him are “How can these things be?” I take this as another example of God’s openness to our questions. While the overwhelming answer to this question in John is “believe in Jesus,” John also shows us how Jesus approaches our questions with kindness and will also “show” us that he is God’s Son, sent to birth the world anew (John 20:24-29). 

 

May the practice of questioning find you in Jesus’s presence and may the kindness of God surround you. 

 

May the practice of believing lead you to new birth and eternal life.

My Shepherd Will Supply My Need

 

Charles Wesley's hymn based on Psalm 23

The video below is not perfect (sound, performance, lighting, you name it, somewhere something is "wrong" with it), but the goal this Lenten season is to get it done. :) Happy Listening. . .