Wrapped in Color

Thanks, Laura LaPrade!

A house sits 

nestled

nurtured

surrounded

wrapped

by a symphony

of color

Master Artist

is showing off – 

again –

it is fall 

in the Highlands

and hearts

rejoice

at the hope

promise

found

in dying

things

and all

is well

Unexpected Beauty

It is 2001 and I am about to enter seminary.  For a last blast, my son and I travel to Italy, Greece and France.  In Pisa, we do the usual photo-op grab of the Leaning Tower and then wander around the square.  I notice the Baptistry nearby and decide to go in while Ben shops for tourist trinkets and obscure music suited to his tastes.

As I approach, I hear a choir singing and it is breath-taking, even outside.  I open the door only to have an Italian gentleman in a uniform (the sort national park folks back home wear) smilingly signal me to wait and so I do.

A few minutes pass, the door opens and several folks come streaming out.  I am the only one at the time, so I enter alone and look around the spartan circular space for the choir.  They are nowhere to be seen.

The gentleman who gave me entrance smilingly beckoned me to be seated and he began to sing.  Just him.  No choir.  And it was . . . well, it was beyond words – what his voice and that space did was magic and I simply sat on the concrete bench that hugged the wall and listened and noticed only later the tears streaming down my face.

“Moved to tears” is more than a phrase: beauty in its many forms can and does move us to tears as it did that day in the Baptistry for me with a man whose name I will never know brought beauty to me I wasn’t looking for and did not expect.

For all the musicians in the world . . . opening grace for us in ways expected and unexpected . . . thank you.

For Every Teenager: It’s About Sex

[Who am I to give you advice?  Nobody special, that's for sure.  But I have been a teenager.  And I survived it.  And when I read folks giving you advice that is so bad it makes me cringe, especially in the name of God, I just have to offer my own voice as a reminder that the hard road you travel has others along the way to offer you some guidance.  I hope it helps.]

This is for every teenager I have known or will ever know and even for those I’ll never meet.  If you (even accidentally) come across a web site with dating advice, please, please, please, let someone with a little age on them that you trust read it first – especially when they bring God into it.

Why do I say that?

Because I just read one.  Please don’t read it (it was so foolish and wrong that while I’ll mention some of the things they said, I will NOT include the site in this post – it’s poison).  Please.  Or if you must, read this first.

*** 

You are more than your body parts.

You are wonderful.

God adores you.

God wants the best for you.

The best may not be what you’ve gotten.

That sucks.

If that’s true for you, somewhere in your life is someone with some age on them who can help.

Choose that person wisely.

They won’t lie.

They won’t tell you it’s easy.

They won’t feed you a line of crap.

They won’t tell you it’s your fault or make you feel like it is.

If they do, run from them as fast as you can.

Because those are lies and they are liars.

So . . . what do I have to say to the folks who pretend to be giving you good advice about dating?

***

Dear Hayley & Justin:

Words matter.

Given what you both do for a living, I know you get that.

They matter.

Always.

And especially with the young.

They may not know better.

But you do.

Here’s another simple rule: you can’t get a right result the wrong way.

Dr. King put it something like this: ends and means must cohere.

What’s my point?

Simply this: you can’t give sound advice to the young about their sexuality and its expression with crap advice about what it means to be male or female.

Crap advice about what it means to be male or female leads to crap decisions about interactions between male and female.

Get it?

So on to the specifics:

1. Your 1st rule for girls is to accept being a girl.  Okay so far.  But then you go on to define being a girl as being ‘soft’ and ‘gentle’.  According to whom?  Really – I’d like to know.  According to whom are girls, by definition, soft and gentle?  What about the girls who just aren’t?  Aren’t we girls too?  And since you’ve brought God into the conversation, just where in the Bible are girls or women defined as soft and gentle?  In actual fact, St. Paul calls all believers to a way that is soft and gentle.  He even uses the word gentle: Galatians 5.23 (fruits of the spirit); Galatians 6.1; Ephesians 4.2; Philippians 4.5; 1 Timothy 6.11 (speaking to a man); 2 Timothy 2.25 (how to deal with an opponent); 2 Corinthians 10.1 (describing himself and Christ as gentle); and 1 Corinthians 4.21.  And that’s just Paul.

2. Dateable girls aren’t downers.  It’s a fair point to speak about our inner beauty.  And to encourage inner peace.  But “dateable girls aren’t downers”?  Did you really just say that?  How about happiness for its or our own sake?  How about – just this once – not making our happiness, even as a goal, something to be striven for in order to attract a man?  How about it – just this once – being for our own sake?  How about pointing out that dating, sometimes fun, sometimes not, is not the be-all and end-all of our existence?  How about stressing our fundamental identity as child of God for its own sake?  Or even a little footnote about what to do if you find that you are unhappy all the time, instead of implying that unhappiness is somehow the ‘fault’ of the one experiencing it?

3. Believe in your beauty – doesn’t sound so bad – if you leave it there.  But you don’t.  “Dateable girls learn how to overcome the sins of the past that have been perpetrated on them.”  Are you kidding me?  Did you just advise a girl who may have been raped or sexually abused to get over it?  Did you really just tell her that it ain’t pretty to be affected by what’s happened to her?  Did you really make her experience trite by relating it to dating advice?  Really?  And it doesn’t end there, does it?  Because in comparing this to the advice for the guys, it’s clear that guys are actors and girls are the acted upon.  Neither is true.  We are all one or the other at different times.  The reason stereotypes are bad is because they’re not universal truths (which is what they claim to be); thus, for those for whom your stereotypes do not ring true, especially for teenagers, the result is often self-blame.  So the girl or guy who has been wounded and who can’t just get over it is left feeling as if it is their fault.  And it isn’t.  And then you tell the guys to believe in themselves while telling the girls to believe in their beauty.  You can say all you want that it’s about inner beauty, but we all know better, don’t we?  You’ve just told girls to believe in their looks or appearance, while telling guys to believe in their abilities.  Same old shit, different day.  Shame on you!

***

Ladies and gentlemen of the teenage variety, please, please, please, know some things:

1. Physical attraction is just that.  It has its place, but it is not defining of the whole you.

2. Nothing lasts forever – not this feeling, not this moment in time, not this stage in life, nothing.

3. It will get better.  Life is pretty hard for everyone, but these feelings of worthelessness, of not fitting into your own body, of feeling different from everybody else – these feelings largely pass away and it does get better.  Some days you know that.  But some days you just have to hang on and trust that we old fogies really have walked in your shoes and know a few things – like, it will get better.

4. God adores you.  You.  Just as you are you.  Even when you mess up.  Even when no one else does.  Even when you don’t.  God does.  Always and all the time.  Really.

5. We don’t tell you to wait because it’s bad not to.  We tell you to wait because it’s better – in every way (and yes, I mean that too) better – to wait.  It’s not about punishment.  It’s about gift.  Your body is an amazing gift.  Treat it like it is your very best friend.

6. Yes, we – your parents, teachers, adult friends, are all about being up in your business.  You don’t have to like it.  But it is our job.  If we’re not up in your business, we’re not doing our job.  That simple.  Be mad at us.  That’s okay.  But we’re going to keep doing our job because it is our job.  Some day it’ll be your job.  In the meantime, try to remember that it is our job because we know some things – really.  You’re smart.  You know that.  Even if you don’t like it, you know it.

7. If someone hurts you sexually, it is NOT – NOT, NOT, NOT – your fault.  And you deserve to be helped.  And there is help to be had.  There are hotlines.  And there are wise adults out there.  If you don’t find a wise one the first time, keep looking.

8. Trust is something earned, not demanded.  When someone demands that you trust them, that’s usually the time to run.  Trustworthy people do not have to even say the word trust, let alone demand that you give it.  If someone does something untrustworthy, they are not to be trusted.

9. Sex is not love.  Sex is sex.  Sex can become a part of the expression of love, but it is not love.  Love is caring for another enough to not have sex, not to insist on it.  When someone insists on having sex, they are thinking about themselves and not about you.  That is not love.

10. “I don’t want to” may not be a good enough reason not to clean your room, but it is ALWAYS a good enough reason not to have sex.  Married folk (in a good marriage anyway) know this – both partners are ALWAYS allowed to say no.  When it comes to sex, you do not EVER have to explain yourself.  No is no.  End of conversation.

11. You are beautiful simply because God made you and God does not make junk.  Sex does not prove you are beautiful.  Sex just proves you’re human.  But you already knew that, right?  So why bother proving it?

In the Frame

Local librarian and FB friend Tomi posted two pictures of sunset (or was it sunrise?  sometimes it’s hard to tell), one zoomed out, the other closer in, of the same scene – the Highlands in the quietude of day’s end (or beginning), mists clinging even as they dance and shift.

Tomi’s own take on the contrast between the two pictures is that the wider perspective includes more color and less drama.

My own response is to think that perspective makes all the difference in life as well as in the photographic images we create.

It’s the same scene, but our focus changes everything, so that the fallen tree trunk in the foreground of Tomi’s photographs takes on mystery or sorrow or loss or ominous threat or curiosity in close-up, but disappears into a morass of other details blurred from a distance.

Both vantages are in the frame.

Both are true . . . simultaneously.

A tree fell in the field one day and for some time and some time yet to come, there it lay, and will, always in the frame, but seldom remarked upon.  Does it need noticing in order to be?  No.  But in the noticing, something changes in me.


___________________
Photos by Tomi Herold

9 of My Favorite Color Moments

I don't have a (as in one) favorite color.  Color is my favorite color -- all color.  Here's my list of some favorite color moments.  I wonder what your favorites are?

1. Green as in the greening of my world when the spring and summer rains come and the grass and leaves and flowers and bushes burst with green.  I live in a bowl of green

2. The orange of fall leaves and pumpkins and curry spice in the market and the scarf Anna gave me

3. The blue bookends of sky and ocean from an airplane

4. The yellows and golds of the pine boards of my bedroom floor reflecting the shades I choose to be surrounded by

5. The brown of fresh-baked bread and crunchy dead leaves underfoot

6. The red of fireworks and tomatoes and that favorite dress and my too-fast car

7. The dark almost-black brown of the rain-soaked earth

8. The white of a wedding cake and sheets hanging on the line and cloud kangaroos and unicorns on a clear day

9. The kaleidoscope of color that is love – the grey of my Grandma’s hair, the brown of my son’s eyes, the same brown as my own, the black and tan Guinness and my dog Scruffy (may he rest in peace), the peaceful blues my mother is surrounded by (they match her eyes so well), the white stripe on a skunk’s back, the clever and amusing design of a God more creative than my imagination can embrace, as peaceful alternative to confrontation, warning all comers that there’s a cost to getting too close, for that, too, is love.

Wowowowowowowowow

Driving home yesterday on US Rt. 250 (the Parkersburg-Staunton Turnpike), running along the ridge of Cheat Mountain, I entered the tunnel of trees speckled with sunshine and overflowing with the colors of fall.

Knowing this drive so well, I anticipated the turn that would bring me into the magic.  Even so, it was such a splendid perfection that all I could do was keep saying “wow” – a mantra of wonder at these mountains, this day, this gift that makes a spirit sing with the sheer joy of being alive.

wowowowowowowowowow

"My" Sacristy

Clergy robes are useful things, I think, but I wear mine in a perpetual state of hotness.  Thus when I begin my ‘duties’ as a minister on Sunday mornings in Headwaters, I delay putting on my robe until I get out of the car.

There, on the side of the road, most times I throw on the robe and scurry across Rt. 250 and head into the chapel.

This Sunday, I took a pause.  As Joe and Cynthia exited their cars at the same time, Joe observed, “nice sacristy”, as we all took in the beauty and wonder surrounding us in these highland mountains.

I’m with Joe: it is indeed a very nice sacristy.

Mirrors on Quiet Waters

A friend sends some pictures via e-mail: mirrors on quiet waters.  Don’t you love that effect when the water is so still that it perfectly mirrors the scene above creating a double beauty?

My own favorite is at Christmas time coming home on Rt. 250 into Fairmont – just around the curve and down the short straight stretch in the nighttime at Wood’s Boat Docks, there, out in the water, sits the metal Christmas-tree shape all lit up and when it’s really dark, all you see is it above and reflected down into the waters of the river where we used to swim when we were kids.

In the daytime, it looks like just what it is – a metal frame with lights on it.  But in the nighttime – oh, in the nighttime, it’s magic – that moment when the best bits of your past twine into your present and all is well with the world – twice.

Today may your mirrors be many and the beauty they reflect bring you joy.

When Peonies Attack

My first spring here in the Highlands, I was delighted one beautiful day to notice that there were asparagus shoots coming up alongside the garage.  Asparagus can be, I am told, difficult to grow and I had been discovering the largesse of those who came before me daily with various flowers and plants arriving in all their splendor unbidden (by me, at least).

I watched the asparagus grow for days until one day I noticed a bud on the top and when I inspected closer, realized that this was not asparagus, but shoots of peonies.

I know peonies – my grandma had a plethora of pinies, as she called them.  And from her, my mother had planted some in her yard garden.

Imagine my laughter as I realized my faux pas – who mistakes peonies for asparagus?  Well, apparently I do.

More springs and summers have passed and ever faithful, the peonies return.

A couple of springs ago, I cut a bunch for an arrangement.  In a hurry, I merely shook them off without doing a good spray with the hose.  For my lack of effort, I was rewarded with an infestation of ants the likes of which would put Sherman marching through Georgia to shame.

Turns out ants are pretty good at telling other ants there’s food here!  Come on in!  And come on in they did.  And here’s another thing: they seem to get bigger in a Darwinian way when in a safe haven.  With a little effort, these ants could have carried me away to their nest and had a life-long feast.  Thankfully, their queen decided to spare me.

Sigh.

Flash forward to now.  The ants are gone.  I will not confess to you how that happened.  But they are gone.  And I have just realized that ever since their taking up residence with me, I have not cut any peonies.

This year the whites are more spectacularly beautiful than usual, which is saying something.  To behold them
is to fall into a Georgia O’Keefe painting, it is to become lost in beauty.

And I am again yearning to have some in the house.

Dare I?

A Moment Between

The snow rests
on pine branches
startling in their
greenness amongst
the white

A single crow
caws his morning
news to all who
will hear

There will be a
moment when
a wind, a breeze,
a breath in time,
will unseat the snow
to its earthbound
destination
bidding its own
farewell to the
tree it graced

There was a moment
was it but yesterday?
when crows gathered
in the thousands
singing their settle-in-
for-the-night-on-a-
path-to-who-knows-
where -- there, at
the confluence of
the rivers

In between such moments
I stand and watch and listen
and am glad to be here
to see, to hear

Blessed

Morning Fancies

I.

There!
There he is
visible only from
the corner of my eye
Tiger, Tiger, burning bright
striding across the morning sky
hunched shoulders in pounce mode
sunlight and clouds creating the pattern
the menace of meaning whenever there is
a tiger stalking the sky – I am no Pi (pie?), sir,
and this is not my life – why are tigers always so . . . hungry?

II.

the crackle and creak
and wrangle and break
that is the sound of my body
in the morning
awakens the birds
I’ll be quieter tomorrow,
I whisper them as I arise

III.
I enjoy a warm cup of morning fog
with the start of my day
here in mountain retreat
where mist settles into
mountain’s belly
and offers itself up
with each new-day mantra –
drink me –

You're Beautiful Just the Way You Are

Zed Nelson/Institute

I read with horror in this month's Smithsonian magazine about women in Manhattan (and presumably elsewhere) having their toes surgically shortened so that their feet will better fit into their stilettos.  And this is happening today.  Not centuries ago -- today.

I hardly have words for my visceral response to this carving up of self.  And like lots of women, I have crammed my own feet into a fair number of very silly shoes.  So maybe toe surgery is actually more reasonable than the old stuff and cram approach.

But aren't we missing some very basic fundamentals here?  Not for nothing did God proclaim in the Genesis narrative of creation that humanity was (1) created in the very image of the divine and (2) that image was not just good, but very good.

What are we doing to ourselves that a mirror is an enemy?

What are we saying to our young, and particularly our girls, that beauty is more likely found in the operating room than in the skin God gave us?

It's an old argument, this tension between self acceptance and self loathing, writ large on the walls of society.  Why did I see the wrinkles on my Grandmothers' faces as beautiful and yet stand before a mirror and pull back my own wrinkles?

What if I heard One Direction's "You're Beautiful" not as a love song from a boy to a girl, but as an epic pronouncement from the very lips of God?

Maybe that's the problem with mirrors:  when you spend too much time in front of them, worship of self (which is just the flip side of self loathing) is inevitable.  Maybe.

Seeing Slower

Slow down!

You’re going too fast!

The bywords of the old to the young resonate in my ears of late.

I am driving slower these days, not because I want to, but because I’ve got way too many speeding tickets for anyone who wants to keep driving these beautiful country roads.  You’d think I’d see more, notice more, but I don’t.

I tend to live way too much in my head to notice the beauty around me unless I first slow down my thoughts and force myself to pay attention.

It’s a gift of the really young and the really old, this paying attention to the world around us business.

Young friends run head long into life.  Yet even at their warp speed, they manage to see everything – really see it all.  So the running child comes to full stop in a nanosecond to investigate the worm or leaf or ant or clump of oddly shaped dirt that has captured their attention, before running off to the next moment.

And my really old friends simply stop and look, taking it all in, savoring each sight as if it might be their last – because it might really be.

The first look and the last – each the richer for their uniqueness.

Why does everything in the middle get so easily taken for granted?

Because I don’t know, I slow down a bit today and stand with my old friend and simply gaze at the rain laden fog hanging suspended in the crease of one mountain folding into another.  We marvel together, arm in arm, and then move on, richer for the moment.

I think I like this seeing slower.

The Moon Last Night

The moon last night
hung low in the sky
peeking through the
white pine in Cynthia’s
yard . . . and we women –
four walking, working,
weaving, women –
stood in quiet awe –
the admixture of one
part joy, one part
silence and one part
nameless within each –
side by side – lined up
for the firing squad of
earth and all her friends’
display – the beauty
we walk in like the night*


_____________
Hat tip to George Gordon, aka Lord Byron.

Things Are Not Always as They Seem

Yesterday’s visit to Culzean Castle was a feast for the senses.  It was a beautiful west-of-Scotland spring day: sun shining, wind blowing, clouds quickly scattered.  And the grounds of Culzean Castle are lovely.  The well-tended gardens, the swan pond, the nicely-kept walks through the woods all reveal treasures.  The smell of wild garlic wafted on the air; flowers in bloom, known and unknown, were a feast for the eyes.  Birdsong filled the air.  You could walk and walk in the darkness of the woods and forget that you were right on the sea, only to come across another opening and have it there before you.

At one point, we came onto some grounds well into our walkabout that opened to the sea and as we approached, I noticed a series of regular humps of ground, like the scalloped edges of an Irish-lace tablecloth.  Eagerly I walked forward to see what they could possibly be, only to discover a small canon set in each of the scallops.  I literally cried aloud in dismay and disappointment.

But what did I expect?  The main function of a castle from any age, after all, is that of the fortress.  It is truly terrible how often and how well the form and function of violence meld into an aesthetic of beauty.

Some of the early Reformers so eschewed beauty because of this very concern – that beauty can be such a seductress, tempting the beholder to believe that the beautiful is, by its very nature, the good – so often not the case.

Perhaps we are the problem, in that we ascribe to beauty both more and less than it actually has to offer.  A beautiful landscape is a beautiful landscape – or is it?  Knowing its history, its context, can change our very perception of its beauty (or lack thereof).

In Baghdad, there is an almost beatific sculpture of a woman pouring from a large pitcher into the urns surrounding her at her feet.  Such a serene, pastoral vision – until you know that she is Ali Baba’s handmaiden and that what she is doing is pouring boiling oil into the jars, which contain hidden men who planned to attack from their hiding places in the night.

I never know quite what to do with all of this.  My ancestors in the faith seem too extreme to me, repudiating, as some did, all forms of physical beauty; beauty seems as much a divine gift to me as is the air we breathe and the food we eat.  It nourishes us somehow.

But mistaking beauty for moral good won’t do either; there’s simply too much evidence to the contrary.

Living in the tension – that, I suspect, is the premier challenge of being human: accepting that very few, if any, of the things of this world are absolutely good or absolutely evil; taking it all in with provisional judgment – judgment willing to be changed with new or different information; seeing the beautiful in the ugly and the ugly in the beautiful – now that’s the job of a lifetime!

Made for Beauty

We weren't just made beautiful.  We were made to appreciate beauty when we find it in others.  

My cousin Daniel is a pastry chef and an amazing chocolatier.  I recently posted one of his creations on FB and the feedback has been quick and appreciative.  "Wow", "Amazing", "Beautiful presentation", "Impressive", "Form AND function, what a deal!" and perhaps my favorite, from the Scotland friends, "We want Daniel on our next visit!"

We can all only imagine what the images might actually taste like, but the beauty of form, color, and composition are breathtaking.  Literally, it stopped my eyes.

I am remembering my mother's trip to NYC some years ago.  She went to the Met.  At the end of the day, dog-tired from all the walking, she almost missed it.  Then she turned and saw one of van Gogh's sunflower studies.  "Beth, I've never seen anything like it.  It literally took my breath away.  All I could do was stare at it.  Now I understand what people mean . . ."  My mother's voice trailed off as the words to describe the effect of such beauty on her spirit simply evaporated into the ether.

We are creatures made for beauty.  


May you be blessed by beauty within and without now and evermore.