Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Praying for our friends in Moore, Oklahoma today...
Monday, May 20, 2013
Playdates with God: Theater of Life
We were dressed all wrong in our best blue jeans and Sunday
tops—two people clothed in love amidst crisp dinner jackets and sequined gowns
that glittered in the dim light of the theater. I slunk down in my seat next to
a younger woman in a blue pin-striped dress—we did not come to be seen, only to
see.
But as I sunk into my seat she looked up. She saw me. And
she smiled.
Just then, a little girl—maybe seven or eight—sat down in
the seat on the other side of her, followed by two or three generations of
women. The woman in the blue pin-stripes exclaimed over the girl’s
pink-ribboned dress.
“Oh, you look so beautiful,” she said. And to the girl’s
mother: “Has she seen the show before?”
“No,” the other woman smiled. “This is her first time.”
The woman next to me leaned down closer to the little girl.
“Oh, you are going to love it! This is the very first
musical I saw when I was little and you know what? It’s still my favorite.”
The conversation quieted as the lights dimmed and I leaned
into my husband as song soared. Soon we were caught up in story—lifted with
each lilting note of music. When time for intermission came, my husband made a
beeline for the restroom, but I stayed put under the twinkling lights. When I
stood to stretch my legs, the woman in blue pin-stripes caught my eye.
“I can’t believe it’s only nine-thirty,” she said, smiling. “It
feels like midnight!”
I smiled back and sat back down beside her.
“I know, I know. They say this is a sign of my rapidly
advancing age—the way the night comes so quickly.”
She dimpled again.
“No, not at all! They don’t
know what they’re talking about.”
“I think you’re right. There’s just something about the
dimming of the lights and good story that just relaxes the soul.”
“A good story,” she mused. “Only Victor Hugo.”
“I heard you tell that little girl that this was the first
musical you ever saw…that it’s still your favorite.”
She nodded.
“This is my Mother’s Day present to myself,” she said. “I’m
a single mom. So on Mother’s Day I didn’t get to do anything special. So when I
heard Les Mis was in town, I thought, I’m going! My favorite dress,” she
gestured to the pin-stripes. “And my favorite musical. It doesn’t get much
better.”
I told her that we were celebrating our twentieth wedding
anniversary, that Jeff wasn’t wild about coming but I was—and he wanted to be
together. We talked about the different versions of the show we had seen. Jeff
returned and she leaned across me to touch his arm.
“You are a good husband,” she said. Then she settled back
into her seat. “My favorite song is next.”
“What’s your favorite?” I asked.
She looked at me as if I should already know the answer.
“On My Own,” she
whispered. And the lights dimmed again for the second act.
The rest of the show went quickly and I was aware of the joy
sitting next to me. Before we left the theater I squeezed her hand.
“Enjoy the rest of your night out,” I said.
“I will,” she replied. “And happy anniversary.”
I’m still thinking about how a song can name us; how art
makes us feel not so alone in this world. How an open eye for beauty can open
the hearts around you.
And it makes me want to bring more beauty into life—to spill
it out all over everyone I touch. And I can’t help thinking how love does this—clothes
everything in beauty.
And I promise to love better. To see better.
Because, as Jean Valjean says, “…to love another person is
to see the face of God.”
Over at the High Calling we are on week three of a book discussion on The Life of the Body: Physical Well-being and Spiritual Formation
by Valerie E. Hess and Lane M. Arnold. Will you join us? Today we're giving away two copies of the book. It's a great
book about how the choices we make for our bodies impact our spiritual
life.
the Playdates button:
Labels:
art,
Beauty,
Les Miserables,
playdates with God
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Dear Husband,
On the way to school this morning, our youngest says to me, Tell me about your wedding day. The
world shifts and I grow lighter and my heart leaps inside of me. Because
thinking of you and the way our love was planted still does that to me.
Twenty years ago
today, I tell him. The sky was as
blue as your eyes. But it was windy.
Somewhere there is a picture of Dad holding the skirt of my wedding dress out
as it flapped in the wind like a sheet on the clothesline, just waiting for it
to settle down so we could take pictures…
And I tell him about that day when we stood before our
family and friends and God and made a promise to love each other forever. And
when I return back home I get out our wedding album.
Oh, love, how could we have known on this day twenty years
ago all God had planned for us?
We got married
outside, at the farm, I told Jeffrey. Because
Dad and I weren’t going to church at the time. I was still confused about my
past. And Dad…Dad did not believe the God-story then.
As I look at our shining faces—twenty years younger—I think
about that.
Dad did not believe
the God-story then.
But he does now,
Jeffrey had responded.
Yes, I said. In June it will be seven years.
Seven out of twenty years. Thirteen years of prayer.
What I didn’t tell Jeffrey was how we almost gave up. How
you told me you didn’t think you could be the man I wanted you to be. How,
because the differences in the way we believed, you thought maybe it was best
to divorce.
Remember that, love?
And isn’t the way love endures nothing short of a miracle? A
miracle that takes hard work. And not giving up. And a whole lotta faith.
I look at our shining faces—twenty years younger—and I see
how our love story is really the story of God’s love. The way a marriage shapes
a person is the way His hands mold—making us more beautiful with the lovely patina of
time; conforming us to His image. And I could say a lot about the bride of
Christ and the way marriage emulates His love for us and how a man should love
his wife the way Christ loves the church…
I could say all those true and beautiful things about our
love. After twenty years and in the looking back I can see how this story tells
the Bigger Story. But I sit here in humble gratitude as I consider the way the
pages have unfolded and I feel too tiny to set down words like that.
You have been God’s gift to me. He has etched his Love into
ours.
Later, I will go to the jewelers and pick up my wedding
band. I finally had it resized this week. Those few extra pounds and the
stretching of this body from carrying our babies made that round gold circle
squeeze a little too tight on my finger. Kind of the way it does around my
heart. And to me it seems—this adding on to the golden promise you gave me—a
sign of the way love grows too. It can be costly, but in the end—it results in
more gold.
I wanted to write you a poem, but you said you would come
home from work early so we could be together and I have a million things to do while I wait. Besides, Wendell
Berry says it best. He wrote this poem to his wife on his sixtieth birthday.
Pretend it says twenty? It captures my love.
To Tanya on My Sixtieth Birthday
What wonder have you
done to me?
In binding love you
set me free.
These sixty years the
wonder prove:
I bring you aged a
young man’s love.
Happy anniversary, love. I would marry you a thousand times
more.
Labels:
Marriage,
Wedding Anniversary
Monday, May 13, 2013
Playdates with God: Sunday
On Mother’s Day I get up early and drive to the outskirts of
town. I find the little white church where I will worship and I pull up to that
ancient dogwood. I am ushered inside by an elderly lady who hugs my neck in the
parking lot. In the sanctuary, I find my helper and she puts a glass of water
on the pulpit for me. There is a shimmering stained glass window behind the
choir loft—Jesus in reds and golds.
I tell my helper about the Phoebe I saw earlier in the week
and we move to the window. We lean into the glass and there she is—mama Phoebe—sitting
on a leafed out branch to welcome me. It feels like I am home and she flits
away, job well-done. But there is a mother robin feeding her spotted-breasted
baby on the walkway and my helper tells me about the time they saw a bald eagle
fly over their steeple. We sigh into the window and I know that this is the
real worship of the day—this standing together and sharing stories. We wait for
the others to arrive and the numbers are small enough to greet each person
one-by-one and I am embraced by smiles and stories and I feel God’s heart beat
with each hand I clasp.
“I’ve just moved back here,” one dear woman says. “I grew up
in this church.”
“I have five children,” another tells me. And she ticks off
each on one hand. “My phone will be busy later.”
She glows and sits alone in the front pew.
Another tells the story of the stained glass window and
speaks of a time when these pews were filled and children ran its center aisle.
But things are different now and though the numbers have dwindled, there are no
ghosts that haunt this place. Love is still alive and well here.
After worship they want me to stay for a cup of coffee so we
sit around a table and they ask about my children, invite me into their story.
I cannot stay long, I have to cross over the river to give another sermon. They
hug me out the door, tell me to come back soon and I sit behind the wheel for a
moment and thank Jesus for the gift of the morning.
And as I back out of the parking lot I see her—mama Phoebe
come to say goodbye.
the Playdates button:
Sunday, May 12, 2013
For the Love of Mothers...
Saturday, May 11, 2013
For Mother's Day: How to Be A Grown-up
| A mama Phoebe keeps watch |
I drive parallel to the railroad tracks alongside the muddy
river—tucked down inside the embrace of undulating hills. There is wild-growing
wisteria weaving light violet in and out of green budding trees along the
roadside. I am mindful of the speed
limit—having been warned. Clusters of tiny box-like houses give way to frocking
trees and grasses as I pass through these towns that time has forgotten.
It’s a beautiful day for a drive and I am scouting two
country churches, these small bodies of worship where I will preach come Sunday—Mother’s
Day. I don’t know much about these small valley towns, so I figure I better
have a dry run before the Lord’s Day. Wouldn’t do if the preacher gets lost.
I drive in quiet along this winding road that follows the
river and it feels like time travel. The trees all unfolding and the bush
bursting with fire and my cheek round and rosy as the years drop away.
Lately, I have been remembering the warm-cool of my mother’s
hands.
Warm on a bruised knee, cool on a sunburned shoulder; wrinkled
from washing potatoes or dishes or babies…scent of onion clinging to skin as
she tucks covers up around my chin and the way her wedding band shone gold on a
white finger.
I drive past mountains made of coal dust, an old alloy
plant—remnants of once-thriving river towns. Now they nestle deep into these
hillsides, rocked to sleep by the slow steady currents of the Kanawha.
These memories have been sleeping too. The waking up brings
a tightness in my chest and I recognize it well. Regret.
When I was a young mother, I chose to put the good memories
to sleep. In love with my new babies, too many questions haunted my mothering…how?
Why? I couldn’t understand. I needed to live in this wrinkled skin of
motherhood a little longer to understand how the passing waters of time
baptize it all. How life is about choices and sometimes…sometimes we just do
the best we can with what is given.
And grace.
Grace is the lavish giving of love despite barbed words and
actions of the past.
A sibling’s stony judgment puts my love on trial and words
can bruise and cast long shadows but love is bigger than the darkness. And I
have the chance to live this thing I preach—this thing about love and grace and
forgiveness; the end of pride and the shedding of the old self.
This is how we grow.
And I feel the sharp pains of the outside stretching against this inner
expansion—how the heart presses against bone and flesh and tries to make more
room. The flesh resists—stubbornly refusing to give way.
But this waking up yields other memories too—how we would
nap together in the early days and the way he cried when he was angry. A
freckled nose and quivering lip. The smooth surface of a newly opened jar of
peanut-butter; the way I jumped on his bed to wake him up in the morning. Tough
talk and the tucking away of feelings…the pretending not to care.
All the passing scenery writes my story in the sky and love
swells bigger than any rift can overtake.
It may change nothing. Nothing except my heart. But
suddenly, I know: the best gift a mother can receive is when her children love each other well. This is the hard work of loving; this is growing into His
image.
When I find the first church, I park out front. There is a
large cherry tree giving shade to the walk and I notice a mama Phoebe keeping
watch in its branches. She flits nervously from branch to branch as I approach,
but she never leaves. I poke around—try to find her nest—but she has hidden it
well.
And as I watch her keeping watch, I give thanks for my
mother and for all mothers who tend in love.
Labels:
family,
forgiveness,
love,
Mother's Day
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Good Prose: Being Edited and Editing
They saved the best for last.
This final chapter in Good Prose: the Art of Nonfiction, entitled Being Edited and Editing, is a long
one—and it’s more a celebration of their history than anything else—but
Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd still manage to convey practical wisdom about how
to maintain such an effective partnership.
Still, their affection for each other shines through the
complexities of the dynamic and one who has read their work over the years
might even get a little choked up during the reading.
There is Kidder’s description of their beginnings and his
puzzled question to Todd’s wife as to why the editor hung in there with him (“Months
of reading the same old material from an all but unpublished writer, for an
unimportant story.”) He’s willing to work as hard as the writer is, was the
response he received.
The description of their work practice—from start to finish—is
a good one. And Kidder shares some of their unique language that’s evolved over
the years.
“Exteriors” refers to
anything that lies outside the story, anything that isn’t direct observation of
the characters and events.
Some parts of a story
have to be “floated.” This is short for “floated in time.”
A timepasser is one
possible means of “making some things big and other things little.”
Things out of place or
proportion give rise to a “bump.”
And my favorite: “We
need a brilliance here.” Todd will tell Kidder when more is required.
Anyone who has ever been an insider in any group understands
the bonding that occurs when the group’s very own language is established. Kidder’s
respect for Todd is evident in the way he relates their shared story.
And when Todd’s turn comes, we get the other side of the
story—which is both the same and different—and the differences sharpen the uniqueness
of these two men whose voices we have come to know through Good Prose.
…Kidder had an
interest quite unusual for a writer, and interest in virtue. It’s an immeasurably
harder subject than vice. A bright thread of goodness runs through his
subsequent books.
The friendship these two men have formed has served their
work well and Todd describes one reason why.
An editor can serve a
writer by being alert to his natural boundaries, his inner territory, his true
interests.
I cannot capture the beauty of Kidder and Todd’s relationship that shines through in this
chapter. The gratitude each feels for the presence of the other in work
and life is palpable. There is much good to say about this beautiful book, but
perhaps the nature of the two men who wrote it is the best gift it gives. I’ve
enjoyed gleaning from the wisdom of their shared years of working together.
We all should have such a partnership. At least once.
This finishes up our discussion of Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction. I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have. I highly recommend this book for writers of any genre. Thanks for joining me through this journey.
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