A Blanket of Caring

Today my friend Twila spoke of Christianity as a blanket to be shared.  I love this image.  The immediate picture called to mind for me was last week’s funeral for Bill Puffenbarger.

During the committal at the cemetery, it was cold and windy, so the funeral home folk had blankets for the family seated around the casket.  The blankets are wide and can cover 3-4 people easily.  From my vantage on the other side of the casket, I watched as Brian spread the warming of the blanket on the already-numb family.  It was a moving gesture of kindness in the form of practical care.

Kindness is a practical thing, isn’t it?

So I come back to Twila’s vision of us as believers spreading the blanket of our love and caring around a world numbed with its own woundedness.

And I am warmed.

May you be surrounded by a blanket of love and caring this Advent season and evermore.

Advent Reflection: A Big Batch of Ordinary

“A quart of peanut butter?  Are you kidding me?  Are you making peanut butter balls for the whole county?”

Twila’s words come smiling over the telephone lines (or is it waves now?  Who can keep track of these things?)

This morning my hands are still soft from the butter and peanut butter mixing workout they got yesterday.  That part of my Advent observance is done – check.

The satisfaction of the job done and done well is large; the soft hands a bonus.

But how on earth does this relate to Advent and Christmas?  I try to stretch some meaning out of the making of things, but nothing comes.  I try to link chocolate (a great love of mine) to Jesus’ coming, but come up empty.

All I know is that this is part of tradition for me – so deeply ingrained that it’s almost genetic, this gathering of the ingredients and rendering them into the form of edible art.

So maybe the Advent connection is in the creativity, the making of something delightful out of a batch of the ordinary.  Isn’t that what God does with us?  – making something delightful out of a very big batch of ordinary?

Blessed

Last night we stood out on the curb in front of my friend Twila’s house as her nephew Daniel, a veteran of the Iraq war who now studies to become a nurse, lights the star lanterns (also known as   Thai wish lanterns) as the cap off to a day of food, swimming and festivity dedicated to the memory and in honor of Twi’s husband and my friend, Stu.

At one point, I found myself standing behind the rest of the gathered, at an emotional remove.  With the street lights positioned as they were, Stu’s family and friends stood in tableau and it was – we were – beautiful.

There was Twila, holding her great-niece, 11-week-old Regan in her arms with daughter Jess at her side, the visual of Regan in Jess’s arms before she handed the baby off to her mother still fresh in my mind’s eye  –  a double-exposure of a memory.

Daniel stands, arms uplifted from just having wished the lantern into the air.  Friend Kip stands in the street in the foreground with sweet Kinsley, Regan’s little sister, standing in 2-year-old rapt stillness at his side.

All the rest, sundry sisters and brothers, nieces and nephews and friends, radiate out from the center axis that is Twila.

Light and shadows play over this moment frozen in time like Stu’s imprint does upon all our lives.

And in that moment, we know we are blessed.