Was It Today? Remembering Grandma Mary

Was it today?*  I can’t remember.  If not, it was close to today, the day my Grandma Mary died back in 2000.  I was in the process of winding down my part in the law practice, off to seminary and the grand adventure of becoming a pastor.

I never had to solve the conundrum of what to tell Grandma (staunch Church of Christ, women cannot, cannot, cannot, be pastors) I was up to.

She was 87 when she died, but it feels like we got caught in mid-conversation – an abrupt end it seems still.  Her hip, ailing her for years, finally gave way and she was to have surgery – the thing she had delayed and denied and angrily forged past for a very long time until there was no more time.  We talked on the phone and I was on my way there after work, but Grandma tricked us all – she was like that – and died before she could get to the operating table.  Mary had her way to the very end – no surgery for her.

If I told you that she was buried in a body bag – by prearrangement – you might intuit quite a bit about this bestower of genetic materials and cultural, moral and familial ways I lay claim to.  You’d know a lot, but you wouldn’t know it all.

You wouldn’t know that her life-long dream of singing at the Grand Ole’ Opry was never to be but still brought her great pleasure to think about.  You wouldn’t know that she loved to travel and flew like a bird any time someone, anyone, suggested a trip.  You wouldn’t know that this West Virginia gal from the back woods talked with her husband about joining the Peace Corps in their middle age.  She was a big dreamer, my Grandma.  I like that about her.  If you got to meet her, you would have too.

I miss her, but I don’t worry about her – she’s in some pretty good hands.

Happy birthday, Grandma.

Love, Beth


_________
Actually, it was November 30, 2000 when Grandma died.  Her 87th birthday would have been December 2 of that same year (or was it December 3?  My Grandma actually had two different birth certificates, so I’m sticking with the 2nd.  My mother will set me straight if I got it wrong).

The Wanderers Among Us

Jim Webb’s opus to the Scots-Irish is, I fear, a book I will not finish.  Given me recently by a friend, I sit down in anticipation to read not just of his people, but of mine too.  But his history is not mine.  He speaks of red-necks and trailer trash.  My people, my Scots-Irish people, were farmers by and large and country people.  But they were not and are not red necks or trailer trash.  The South is not my culture.  Slavery is not my defining react-against event.  The Civil War is not something my family speak of in the present tense.  And labor unions are not anathema to us – we will always join with others when it makes sense.  And we’re not afraid of education.  Some of us just haven’t had the same chances as others and others of us understand that education comes in many forms.

We are West Virginians.  He gives us some nods in the book, does Mr. Webb, but I realize anew as I read how vastly different our experiences are.  And he can claim the vote in favor of George W. Bush in West Virginia in the first election to be about guns all he wants.  We all know it wasn’t about guns; it was about steel.  And Mr. Bush promised to bring it back.  He lied.  We should have known that.  It’s a been done thing with us.  But that’s another story.

But there is one thing in the few pages I read before I put it down in frustration that does resonate: the wanderer gene.  It may sound funny to describe a family, a tribe, that has inhabited the same few square miles of ground for centuries as wanderers, but it’s true.  Substitute the word restless for wanderer and you may have a better idea what I’m getting at.

I come from generations of restless people.  In our time, you’ll know them as the ones who cannot sit still for very long, the ones who don’t stay long at a party before looking at their watches, the ones who know a little about a lot, the ones who, if they have land, walk it often and know it well.

My grandmother, Mary, was a wanderer at heart.  She never got too far off the farm for very long, but she wanted to.  Every chance of a trip, she sprang to it.  Every ride down the road, she was there.  And when she was at home, she walked.  Constantly.  When a chore didn’t tie her down to place, she was a woman on the move.  All the time.  If she’d been a man, she’d have fought in every war just for the chance to go somewhere, anywhere.  The night I sat with her in the hospital after she broke her arm and she got mad at me for refusing to take her home, she walked around the circle of the nurses’ station all night without stopping.  All night.  Her hip would barely hold her.  But she walked.  Her sight without her glasses would barely lead her.  But she walked.  Even with no destination, she walked, sure, somehow, that the next step would bring her to something better than the last one.  Or maybe she just needed to walk.

That’s the thing of we Scots-Irish in my family – we’re home bodies who are restless.  So we want to be here and not here at the same time.  Some of us walk our desire.  Some of us spend our lives out-of-doors.  Some of us travel for work or for pleasure.  Some of us run ten errands a day.

Some looking from the outside in think we were made to work; that we’re not content to just sit still.  But that’s not it – we can do nothing like nobody’s business.  What we’re not content to be is in one place for very long.  Variety is the spice of our life, even the variety found in sameness.  So some of us who seldom leave the house where we live can tell you every kind of flower and weed and bug you might want to know.

My own restless wandering gene is harder to catch as it tends to arcs of time rather than moment to moment.  Maybe that’s the luxury of living in a healthier time, being assured in probabilities of a longer life span.  I don’t know.

I do know that after a month or two in the mountains, my feet literally itch to go somewhere – anywhere, whether with purpose or without, I have to just get out of here and go somewhere.  It can just be for the day, but go I must.  And every seven years or so, it’s time for change – life change.  Sometimes that involves moving.  Sometimes it involves changing jobs or careers.  Sometimes it involves schooling.  Sometimes it involves nothing more than a new hobby.  But every seven years or so, the orientation of my life must change.  I must look in a different direction, navigate a different vista.  I may not move an inch in life space to do it.  But move I must.

It’s been seven years here.  And I’m getting restless.  Wonder what the next change will be?  And I wonder whether the dreaming/visioning process I’m dragging the church I serve through is necessary to our shared future (what I want to believe) or just another symptom of my own wandering gene.

The others will tell me.  Of that, I am sure.  For if a vision isn’t shared, I suspect it isn’t a vision at all, but a dream.  Dreams are had one by one, but visions – those are community things.  And so, for now, I wonder if anyone wants to wander along with me.

If It's Positive You Want

If it’s positive you want,

I am not your gal

I get it – I really do –

I’m as tired as you

are of all the kvetching,

whining, complaining

good-old-days yearning

downright bitchiness

of it all – very tired

and yes I know there is

a time for everything 

under the sun – even 

Solomon wasn’t original

to Solomon, you know –

so yes, there it a time for

putting on our happy hats

as we dream our big dreams

but life is no longer Eden

and I stand where I stand

right up to my kneecaps

in the shit of it all – and

I dare not pretend otherwise

for that lie won’t hunt,

that dog won’t dance

that girl won’t do

everything is not possible

but some things are

everything is not desirable

but some things are

everything is not good

but some things are

so when you tell me to

“be positive”

what I hear is

“be someone else”

for the someone that I am

is not an atom

but an ion

with cations and anions

mixing it up freely

sometimes one

sometimes the other

holding the fore

for are not positive

and negative

negative and positive

simply aspects of Truth?

how do we leave out one

in favor of the other

while standing in the land

of the True?

and is not the land of the True,

rather than the home of the 

free and land of the brave

the better place for standing?

And what is true is this:

I am neither brave nor free

Constrained by fears – my

own and others – fettered

by the bondage of past and

present, realities and perceptions 

does the myth of freedom (whatever

that may mean) crumble as dust

at my feet and it is there – in the

dust – that the ions have their

dance – positive . . . negative . . . 

negative . . . positive . . . 

So you want me to tell you of

a future where all will be well?

Here’s the thing – we have to

get there from where we are –

and where we are is the place

where plowshares have not yet

been yielded up from swords

where lions still eat lambs

for supper and call it

lip-smacking, freedom-

loving good

where Jew and Greek,

male and female,

slave and free

still walk the land

differences intact

and yes, we will get to that

promised land

but we must get there

from here

so what is my vision?

a time when and a place where

the people – us – are moved

to get busy and do the work

picking up our hammers

to strike a different chord 

in the heart of the sword

a time when and a place where

the prophets will rip the duct tape

from their mouths and stand and

speak and stand and speak and stand

and speak until – at long last – their

Truth begins an ionic shift into

the change we wish to be 

a time when and a place where

we stop yearning for yesterday

as if it were Eden – it wasn’t

[please, not another fb post about

the great 1950's – do we not notice

that all the faces were white?  I know

some do – for their faces are not there

and as my Grandma used to say – 

there wasn’t that much good in the

good old days]

and start yearning for the reality that

we are to be the enough it was 

created and dreamed to be

back when God stood on

that mountain top and 

looking out, bespoke,

I have a dream . . . 

and she and he is you and me

but you want positive

and I am an ion

and in positive world

I just won’t do

***

Read How the US Turned Three Pacifists Into Violent Terrorists and consider the language usage and how it shaped a reality -- for the three and for us.  Consider the trespasses that need forgiving -- 

The misuse of language is frighteningly effective when people acting non-violently against instruments of violence and the indifference that allows their continuation are labeled by government prosecutors and agencies as guilty of acts tantamount to terrorism and the courts support it.

To my gun-toting friends who insist on open carry laws, etc., I would point out that your rights to carry remain intact while my and others rights to speak and act against bigger weapons are not. This, friends, is the genuine constitutional threat of our time and it is not limited to Democrat or Republican, as all presidents in recent memory claim ever more power under the aegis of our fear of attack.

Why are we not collectively screaming against this overkill of ‘justice’ in the conviction of three peace

activists acting against the nuclear arming of a nation?  Why are we not outraged that what was an act, at most, of ‘trespass’, has been elevated to the crime of sabotage?

The real 'sabotage' was to reveal the weakness of our own mythic self-protections for the lie it is.

If the story of the Emperor who wore no clothes were re-written for our time, the little boy would have been sentenced to prison for the danger he presented of revealing the self-evident truth.

Shame on a government of, by and for a people who can no longer bear such things as truth.

But as a Christian and follower of The One, I have to agree with my government: symbolically hammering a huge piece of equipment is indeed an act of 'sabotage' and it is intended to be: it is sabotaging our lies to ourselves that our safety, our security, our future, reside on the backs of weapons of mass destruction, for they do not. The lie has been revealed for the cruel hoax it has always been. And indeed, if power is to remain power, such revealing must be quashed at all costs.

Well done, good and faithful servants. Sleep well tonight knowing you have stopped the danger presented by three people armed with nothing save Truth and the will to face you head on. Except that you haven't.

SermonCliffNote: Pray, Love, Eat

On the text from Acts 16.9-15

Eat, Pray, Love is about one woman’s journey.  She travels around the world, from Italy to India to Bali.

The woman, Elizabeth Gilbert, says at the end of her journey, "...I've come to believe that there exists in the universe . . . "The Physics of The Quest" . . . the rule of Quest Physics maybe goes like this: "If you are brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting . . . and set out on a truth-seeking journey . . . and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue, and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher, and if you are prepared - most of all - to face (and forgive) some very difficult realities about yourself....then truth will not be withheld from you." Or so I've come to believe."

Consider in this light the account of Paul’s journey in Acts.  All he and his companions had were vague instructions to go to Macedonia and find a man.  But where in Macedonia?  What man?  Help him how?

The vision did not say.

And isn’t it interesting that the vision was of a man asking for help and what they found were women who didn’t need a thing from them?

That variation didn’t bother Paul and his buddies at all.  And maybe there we find one of Ms. Gilbert’s clues to the truth of the journey: the journey may begin with a vision, but the vision is not the journey; nor is it a road map.

For Paul and his companions, the details didn’t matter, for they knew the real truth about visions from God: when you have one and you honor it and respond, things happen – good things – God things.

We can learn some things from this intersection of dreams and faith:

1. What God wants from us always begins as a dream, a vision, an idea –  born in the heart of God.  And when God dreams, it’s a big deal.  World big . . . universe big . . . Garden of Eden big . . . I might dream of a new car or a new house, while God dreams of a new me.

2. Where we end up will not be where we thought we would be when we started.  We have to be open to change along the way.  Paul started out looking for a man but found instead a group of women.  Anyone who has ever had a child or built a house understands this: you start out with one vision in mind, but you end up with something or someone entirely different.  Do you love them any less because the house or the child is not a carbon copy of your dream?  Of course not.  So it is with God – we are in partnership with God and in enacting our dreams, something beyond what we imagined will emerge.

3. There is a sequence to these things and it must be followed: first the dream, then the journey and only then the destination.  We cannot put destination first as if we were planning a vacation trip when we venture into God country.  No – in God country, we must first allow for the dream.  Then we must set out on our journey.  And only then will we arrive at our destination, and as poet T. S. Eliot says, “We shall not cease from exploration. . . And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.”  The journey is a circle rather than a straight line.  It is a circle that takes us from dream to dream, from God to God, with people to be met and lessons to be learned along the way.

4. Finally, we must remember that we have something to offer.  Paul’s dream vision saw a man pleading for help.  What help?  The truth is we can’t know.  What Lydia’s own purpose was, we do not know. How that help was used, how it changed Lydia and the people of her household, we do not know.  But we do know that she had a purpose and that they were changed and that the help was used, for that is how it always works in the Bible.  Joseph wasn’t made head of Egypt just to be the head of Egypt: he was put in that position in order to be able to help his people when they needed it.  Moses wasn’t made a leader just so he could enjoy the benefits of leading: he was made a leader because the people needed a leader.  So with David and Mary and Paul himself.  They were gifted by God and thus had something to offer the world.  So too are we.  The tricky part is to recognize what it is exactly that we’ve got that the world needs and then to offer it – freely.

And so we pray – and praying, we enter God’s dreams.  We love – we act to help.  And then we eat – we sit down at table with others, invited into their lives, sharing their dreams.  And the cycle continues, the circle is complete and complete again.  And God says that it is good.

Amen.

Most Days It's Just Amazing

In semi-sleep, I dream of Jesus and me.

We’re sitting on a bank.  There’s water (isn’t there always?).

I look at Jesus and sigh.

He, an adult man with a hunter’s beard (short and shaggy), looks back quizzically.

I answer the unspoken question: “I’m sorry.  It must suck to be you.”

He gives a half smile and answers, “Some days.  But most days it’s just amazing.”

Somehow I get that.

But then he goes on, “Must be the same for you.”

Surprise moves into the solidarity of our shared human-ness as I realize he’s right.

Some days it sucks to be me.  But most days, it’s just amazing.

May you be blessed with the amazing-ness of you.