Tuesday, November 08, 2011

Comfort

The tickets had been intended for others. Others with schedules so full that they were obliged to reject the gift of a free night at the concert hall from the business where my father worked. Others, I speculated, with inviolate veins and scalps full of keratin-rich hair.

I was in the living room when Dad called over his lunch break with the news that he’d come into possession of some tickets and would Mom and I like to join him that evening. I had curled up on the couch hours earlier with a book that I hadn’t opened. All morning, snow-roofed homes and weighted branches had steeped in the weak sunlight. Cars, leprous with winter salt, drove down our slushy suburban street. A little snow had fallen, halfhearted flakes that rather accentuated the dinginess of the day than purified it.

“We’d love for you to come, but don’t feel like you have to,” Mom had said, cupping her palm over the phone receiver and studying my reaction. 

I hadn’t been anywhere but the house and the chemo ward for weeks. I decided to go.

----

Hours later, I stood in my bedroom, gazing at my reflection in the mirror. I struggled to extinguish the self-pity that kept swelling in my chest at the sight of my wasted frame swallowed up in the tailored black dress, my head so obviously naked beneath the hug of the small knit hat.

Already, before it had begun, my evening was being spoiled by my vanity. It was not so much that I felt ugly, although that was part of it. Even more, I felt conspicuous. I imagined the world pulling away from me, watching with mingled pity and curiosity to see how I conducted myself.

Of course I recognized the narcissism of this feeling, and would try to talk myself out of it. I didn’t really look so very ill. I was at the high point of my treatment cycle, which consisted of one week of daily hours-long stints in the chemo ward with a needle in my vein and then two weeks of recovery. Tonight was the tail end of my second week of rest, and so I found it relatively easy to feign a state of normality. As for the hairlessness—well, it was winter in Michigan, and unlikely that anyone would look twice at a hatted head, certainly not long enough to pick up on the traces of affliction that I imagined to be so emblazoned on my person. And even if someone were to infer my disease, their flicker of interest would soon expire. Perversely enough, this bothered me as well: that my trial, so crushingly significant to me, was of such negligible weight to the rest of the world.

I was ready as I would ever be, attended by the mental and physical dis-ease that I was beginning to assume an inescapable aspect of my illness. I left that room hoping only for distraction from it.

---

My parents were dressed up and conjuring a Sunday aroma of peppermint and leather in the kitchen. The large un-curtained window held our reflection tenderly as we huddled for a moment, ascertaining the whereabouts of the tickets and car keys, slipping gloves over fingers and shrugging on coats and purse straps. Dad had started the car early, and it was a smoldering cloud of vapor in the gloaming as we hurried through the frosty air and ducked inside.

After I’d settled into the back seat, I pressed my forehead against the cold glass of the window.

The sight of the sky kindled inside me a flame that fed off the air in my lungs, leaving me breathless. It evoked the idea of the deep sea. Inhospitable realms, both: lungbreaking, immense; dark, yet strangely lit; replete with matter, yet insinuating a fearsome emptiness. I looked at the waxing moon, the glinting stars, the tattered pennants of the clouds. And while my mind buckled beneath the vastnesses shoving their way in, while the seeming absence of heart within them froze mine, yet there was something in me that also felt a kinship. The phrase shaped itself in my mind: Deep calls to deep. I heard Modest Mouse singing about my blood being just like the Atlantic, about the oceans in our bodies. I believed what the Preacher said when he declared that God put eternity into man’s heart, and my spine tingled at that idea from Job: These are but the outskirts of His ways, and how small a whisper do we hear of Him. As my mind started to whirl with associations, Dad pulled the car into reverse and I reeled myself in.

Everyone feels like you do about the sky, about the sea, I thought to myself, grimly rebuffing the mystery, allowing it to curdle in my brain. Everyone feels their affliction is exceptional.

---

We arrived early, managing to secure a parking space within reasonable distance of the building downtown. I had to focus on keeping my footing on the crusted sidewalks, and so was not afflicted further by the beauty of the night and what it taught me of my own vanity. Nor did I have much occasion to dwell on my illness as I made my way through the crush of humanity in the yellow foyer, absorbed as I was by the twinkling chandeliers and opulent wall hangings. And the people: milling and laughing and exclaiming, dazzlingly appareled and perfumed, and consolingly human with their Midwest-flavored speech and finger-greased tickets. I had not been in a crowd like this for months, and the sound and energy of it enfolded me in an almost tangible embrace, melting the chill of my moment in the driveway and filling me with a sense of partaking. The happy echoing hall, generating a warmth that transcended the physical, lifted my heart to almost giddy heights, so that I looked with loving wonder at the faces around me. For the first time it occurred to me that perhaps my suffering might be, in a way heretofore unseen, self-inflicted. I had kept so much alone lately.

My parents and I scouted our seats, and I trained my gaze on the stage, its gleaming surface graced with a concert grand and a cello. Leafing through the program, I studied the biographies of the featured musicians until the lights dimmed and a hush descended. 

A woman stepped onstage and seated herself on the piano bench. After her, a man sat behind his cello and took up his bow. The audience waited as the artists matched their instruments.

A final set of lights dimmed, and a fresh beam, the spotlight, flooded the center stage. The concert began.

At first, I was carried away by the technical expertise this couple displayed. I tried to imagine what it would feel like, to be in their bodies devotedly obeying the music even as they masterfully created it. But as the night wore on, I ceased to notice the artists or their instruments at all. The music lifted me right out of my cancer-ridden body, out of that roomful of shimmering ambience and warm humanity. My body became all ear, and that ear became all heart, and that heart filled and flooded with music that was, in Rilke’s words, “the transformation of feelings into audible landscape.” The music was speaking to me in a twofold language: the universal tongue of humanity, and the special dialect of my own soul.

The concert is linked in my mind with the sight of the cold dark sky from the car window. Here, too, I felt piercingly alone, yet not in a way I would describe as lonely. I was keenly aware of the pulsing current of my own buried life. The Atlantic in my blood. The eternity in my heart. The imago dei stamped on my very DNA.

I had a sense that my presence there, complexly enthralled at that specific moment of layered experience, was itself an active part of what was happening. That idea led to another: that the concert might be, similarly, an active participant in an even greater occurrence. And so forth, widening ever outward, the universe all happening and creating and being created into something at this time inscrutable, yet already poignant and crackling with import.

---

I pressed my face to the car window the whole ride home, watching city lights and shadows blur beneath the clear raised eyebrow of the moon, feeling deliciously lightheaded. The comfort this world had to offer me was no anesthetic, nor was it the placebo I had begun to suspect. Quite simply, it was the Self taking its rightful place in the universe: exquisitely affirmed, and happily forgotten.

The ridged pink scar setting permanently into the skin above my umbilicus, the bandage in the crook of my arm, my naked scalp, the knowledge of approaching weeks of nausea and fatigue—all of that was still there. But the spell of preoccupation it had cast over my life was broken. 

I returned home, a healthy invalid.

Saturday, November 05, 2011

November run

First runner's high since cancer.  That euphoric feeling that on this night is full lungs and pearly moonlight and crisp air and houses soft in the gloaming.  My elongated silhouette rounding the corner of little Elmwood Lake while the waves toss their moonlit hats. 

 I am running before the Lord in the land of the living. 

And yes, I am feeling God's pleasure.

Wednesday, November 02, 2011

meetingplace

I had just seated myself at the corner table in Barnes & Noble, the only table that isn't overshadowed by the lamps that dangle just at forehead level and are easily forgotten until one stands suddenly and remembers, too late to prevent the pain and humiliation of knocking one's forehead against their mellow light.  My sister sat across from me with a stack of magazines, and we had divided a slice of red velvet cheesecake equally between us to enjoy while we perused our reading material in a shared, delicious silence.  I pulled a chair from the table adjacent and placed my stack of books there in order to clear some table space for my coffee, cake, and Joan Didion's Blue Nights

I was just reading her fragmented discussion of "the apparent inadequacy of the precipitating event" (for example, the young woman who becomes depressed and kills herself after cutting her hair) when an elderly gentleman commandeers the table beside ours.  He has carefully parted white hair and a tanned face, round and wrinkled.  I notice him immediately because, in stooping to place his coffee and rice crispy bar on the table, he forgets the lamp that hangs above him and whacks his head on it as he straightens up. 

Having been in his shoes often enough myself, I grin at him as he ruefully heaves himself onto the bench on the other side of the table.  "Do you want your chair back?" I then ask, remembering that I've stolen it. 

"Oh no,  no thank you.  You just keep it for your books," he assures me kindly, and rises to his feet--again knocking his head against the lamp and wincing, making some remark as to the inconvenience of their placement to which I agree, both of us laughing politely. 

He begins to stride away, and then turns and asks, "Will you girls guard my coffee for a moment?"  

"With our lives," we solemnly promise, and he nods cheerfully and leaves the cafe. 

Olivia and I exchange endeared smiles in his absence, and take small bites of our cheesecake.  He returns with a James Patterson novel.

"Ah, thank you!  Still here!"  This time as he sits he is cautious to avoid the light fixture.  We banter briefly about the food and coffee, and he asks us if we are college students.  Our conversation turns to our work, where it is revealed that he lives near the place we are employed.

"Have you always lived here, in Michigan?" I ask, hungry as always for glimpses into the stories of the strangers I encounter. 

"Nope.  I'm from Colorado. I moved here years ago."  He grinned.  "For a girl, of course.  My wife and I got married here, and I've taught high school for years over at Covenant Christian."

"Oh, our mom went there!" Olivia chimes in.  "Did you know her?  Tammie Pols."

He leans back and blinks, a smile slowly creeping over his face.  "Tammie Pols!  Why sure, I knew Tammie!  I lived right across the street from her folks, on Curtis.  She was friends with my girls--Laura and Beth.  She was quite a character.  Used to come right up into our kitchen and open the fridge door and ask what we had for her.  So!  You are Tammie's girls!  Huh!"

We all beam at each other, shaking our heads in delight, exclaiming the usual things one exclaims in such situations about the smallness of the world and what a coincidence and really how very neat. 

Of course, after such a connection had been established, we could hardly just go back to our books.  We tried for a moment.  I read another sentence, but my thoughts kept settling delightedly on the serendipity of the moment before, and when I glanced back over at the man he was looking at me. 

"You know," he said, "Your mom's sister--Julie, right?--she is the one that went to cosmetology school, didn't she?"

I nod, and he laughs.  "I remember one time sending my son, Evan, over there to get a haircut--you know, so she could have some practice, maybe earn some money.  Well, he comes back and he's got this baseball hat pulled over his forehead."

Olivia and I start to laugh.  "Oh no!"

Our friend's eyes are twinkling.  "His mother wasn't there yet, and I ask him, I says, 'So Evan, how'd it turn out?'  Your mom will remember Evan.  He was always very dramatic as a boy; still is, actually.  He took that hat and swept it off his head like this and says, 'Not very good!'  Well, he had really straight hair, and Julie had cut it so that it stuck straight out.  It might have looked good on someone with different hair, but it looked awful on him.  But I had to be his dad, so I told him, 'Son, it looks fine.'  And he says, 'No it don't!  I'm not going to school!  I'm wearing my hat!'  Well, of course he couldn't do that, and the kids probably made fun of him, you know how kids are.  But I had to act like it was all right, of course."

We chuckle with him and promise to remind Aunt Julie of the incident.  "How old was your son at the time?" I ask.

"Oh, he was about yay high--probably seven or eight.  He was a funny kid.  Yep, he's had a lot of trouble lately.  He had a real good job down in Indiana, but got a staph infection in his leg and he didn't treat it.  It turned into MRSA.  He didn't want to go to the hospital, but they told him that if he didn't he would die, his son would not see him again."

"Oh dear!  Is he okay?"

"Yes. Yes, they had to cut out a big chunk from his bottom, but he is okay.  Lost his job, though. They got rid of his department.  He's been good to me.  I see him pretty often, give him a little sermon every few months--can't do it too often, or he'll think every time he sees me I'm going to preach at him."  The man laughs the same way he had when he bumped his head a second time on those lights.  "You know, a few of my kids gave us some trouble, but most of them are living good lives now.  My wife, she died when she was fourty-four.  And I remarried--years later--and got three more kids.  Went through that whole teenager phase twice!  But they are good to me, and I never think of them like they're not mine.  I live in a condo now, my wife and I, and they'll come over and help us move the furniture in and out.  They are good kids."

The stories keep coming, and Olivia and I listen eagerly, amazed at how much he remembers of our own family.  One time he was installing some insulation up in the attic of our Opa's house.  He cut a hole in the wall, and discovered an old metal bed up there in the attic.  "Somehow your grandpa got it out of there--not sure how.  I wonder what they did with that thing.  It was pretty neat."  He paused, then asked, "So, how are your grandparents these days?" 

We flounder a moment, then explain that Opa had passed away six years ago of congestive heart failure. "Oma's doing really well, though," we tell him. "Walking every day, still in that house."

"Really?  Oh."  He is quiet a moment.  "That's what my first wife had.  She was diagnosed six years before she died, and they told us she wouldn't live long.  Good for your grandma, though!" He nods.  "My wife now, she works at a candy shop.  Boy is that good candy!"

Olivia and I exchange a look, saying over each other, "We should go there!" "We'd better not go there!" and then laughing in agreement with both sentiments.  He laughs, too.

"I know.  I work out, and it's so hard, and then I go and eat all these sweet things.  And I wonder why on earth I did that for, when I just worked out so hard!"

"You look like you're in good shape to me," I assure him, and he does: robust, healthy color in his cheeks, that distinguished white hair and those bright blue eyes.  I am quickly growing very fond of him.

"I feel good," he says, shrugging.  "Probably am a bit overweight.  Used to be I was really tall.  And thin, as thin as you girls.  But I'm 75 now, and I get tired quickly.  I just retired this year.  My wife convinced me to."

"How are you liking retired life?" I ask him.

He smiles.  "Well, I like sleeping in, and I couldn't keep doing all those late nights anymore.  But I do get to thinking when I go to bed, you know, what am I doing with my life now?  I miss the kids, too.  So I've started applying around for part-time teaching jobs to do, to fill my time with.  Hopefully I'll find something eventually." 

We express our agreement in these hopes.  After a moment, he begins to stack his napkins on his plate.  I notice that his hands are trembling quite distractingly, and he seems a bit flustered.  He smiles at us, though, and says, "Well, you give my best to your mom and grandma and Julie!"

"It was such a delight to meet you!" I say, beaming at him, and feeling as I do so a strong tenderness welling in my heart, a gush of goodwill towards this stranger who knew the strangers that my childhood mother and aunt are to me.

 I anxiously wonder if I ought to remind him about those lamps as he stands, but he manages to avoid them again, and I feel relieved.  Somehow it would have bothered me to have watched him hit his head again, as it bothered me to see how his fingers were shaking as he gathered his things from the table. 

"It was nice to meet you both," he is saying as he prepares to leave.  "Have a good evening!"

"Thanks--you too!" my sister and I chime.  He walks off the scene, and Olivia and I look at each other as the loud silence of the bustling cafe replaces his garrulous presence.  We both exchange cheerful observations on what an unexpectedly charming afternoon it had been, and then return to our books. 

As I pick up reading about inadequate precipitating events, I feel a keen sense of time and place, of having arrived at a significant meeting between the two, stumbled into some providential appointment.

Thanksgiving approaches, and family is on my mind.  You might call it an inadequate event to have precipitated the glowing intimation of God's providence and faithfulness that I felt as I gulped the last of my coffee, but its influence on my heart was nevertheless undeniable, and a cause for gratitude. 

Sunday, October 30, 2011

This is my story, this is my song:

I love the LORD, because he has heard
my voice and my pleas for mercy.
Because he inclined his ear to me,
therefore I will call on him as long as I live.
The snares of death encompassed me;
the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me;
I suffered distress and anguish.
Then I called on the name of the LORD:
"O LORD, I pray, deliver my soul!"

Gracious is the LORD, and righteous;
our God is merciful.
The LORD preserves the simple;
when I was brought low, he saved me.

Return, O my soul, to your rest;
for the LORD has dealt bountifully with you.
For you have delivered my soul from death,
my eyes from tears,
my feet from stumbling;
I will walk before the LORD
in the land of the living.
What shall I render to the LORD
for all his benefits to me?
I will lift up the cup of salvation
and call on the name of the LORD,
I will pay my vows to the LORD
in the presence of all his people.

O LORD I am your servant;
You have loosed my bonds.
I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving
and call on the name of the LORD.

Praise the LORD!

Thursday, October 27, 2011

"Hast thou ever pictured thyself the one remaining creature in the earth, the one remaining creature in all the starry worlds?  In such a universe thine every thought would be 'God and I!  God and I!'  And yet He is as near to thee as that--as near as if in the boundless spaces there throbbed no heart but His and thine.  Practice that solitude, O my soul!  Practice the stillness of thine own heart!  Practice the solemn refrain 'God and I!  God and I!'" 

[George Matheson]

Monday, October 24, 2011

"We give back to you, O God, those whom you gave to us.  You did not lose them when you gave them to us, and we do not lose them by their return to you.  Your dear Son has taught us that life is eternal and love cannot die.  So death is only an horizon and an horizon is only the limit of our sight.  Open our eyes to see more clearly, and draw us closer to you that we may know that we are nearer to our loved ones who are with you.  You have told us that you are preparing a place for us, prepare us also for that happy place, that where you are we may also be always, O dear Lord of life and death."

[William Penn]

Friday, October 21, 2011

Alchemy

This morning I went for a jog under a dark sky textured like fleece, over trails mosaic with fallen leaves.  The pond to my right exhaled a mist that brooded upon reflected moonlight and translated it into a luminous weave.  Janie's paws clicked fast and light in comparison to my thudding footfalls, and I could feel her muscled neck straining against the leash and its imposition of my own lagging rhythm. 

Not so lagging as it might be, I want to admonish her: Be grateful.  And, remembering how, months ago, the slow journey from driveway to living room couch would utterly sap my strength--how my heart rate would grow frantic from the act of brushing my teeth--I find myself welling with a joy that, even more than my steady heartbeat and deep breathing, feels like life. 

I am learning that each moment is an opportunity for alchemy: taking the stuff of present sensations and blending in the bittersweet flavors of the past, adding the inexhaustable oil of God's annointing presence, and the  assurance of the good future before you.  Suddenly your heart is turning everything to gold.  Suddenly your life is worship.  The mustard seed in your soul is translated: it is an eternity of fruitful bounty planted by Love Himself. 

You realize, with Richard Wilbur, that this is no outer dark / but a small province haunted by the good, / where some things may be understood / and where, beneath the sun's coronal arc, / we keep our proper range, / aspiring, with this lesser globe of sight, / to gather tokens of the light / not in the bullion, but in the loose change. 

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

In Memoriam: TJ Baker

(Composed for TJ's Memorial Service this Saturday.)

When I think of TJ, it is her voice that I remember most vividly.  Her voice entirely suited her.  Even now, a year since I’ve heard it, I can summon the modulation of it, how it was a perfect embodiment of her Southern birthright and ladylike self-assurance with its elongated vowels and ringing clarity.  The way she’d lay a stress on certain words, like pointing a finger: “Dear”; “If you know what I mean…” 

And of course I remember her face.  Like her voice, like her personality, her face was a delightful balance of softness and precision: her bright eyes and sharp chin strikingly set against her smooth skin and soft hair.  She always carried herself with such dignity, chin lifted and shoulders straight, like a queen. 

In both health and sickness, TJ was frankly herself.  While confined to her walker, she taught me to make sweet tea.  She prayed that I would get a job even while she was in the midst of confronting her own suffering.  She and Mike always welcomed me into their home, and gave me the precious privilege of sharing in their season of pain and grief.  In so doing, they taught me more about faith than my upbringing in a Christian community managed to do.  When I was diagnosed with cancer later that year, it was TJ’s face that came first to my mind, and the memory of her resounding conviction in the face of death gave me deep consolation.  TJ taught me how to grieve with grace, how to suffer with steadfastness.  She taught me so beautifully about the Body of Christ, how worthy and vital and good it is to be a member of Christ, to share in the fellowship of His suffering. 

TJ was wonderful.  I only knew her for a brief span of time, and look how indelibly her presence has been carved in my memory!  By living out her faith, TJ revealed to me the incalculable treasure we both have been given by the grace of God.  She shouted to me, through her graceful submission to His will, that to live is Christ, and to die is gain. 

I miss TJ, but I rejoice that she is perfectly happy and whole.  Her affliction prepared her for the eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison that she now experiences.  And her example continues to instruct me as I stumble towards heaven myself, carrying the glorious treasure of the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the humble earthen vessel of my mortal body.  Like TJ, like the Apostle Paul, “I believe and therefore I speak, knowing that He who raised the Lord Jesus will also raise me with Jesus and bring me into His presence…that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving to the glory of God.”

And I’m sure her encouragement to us today as we miss her precious presence on earth would echo Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 4: “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”

I pray that my life, like TJ’s, will be a rich affirmation of God’s goodness and grace. 

Monday, October 03, 2011

playing with woodchips

Were I playing this game with anyone else, nephew of mine, I would have begun rolling my eyes and fishing for reasons to leave long ago.  Instead, I find myself hoping that you will not tire. 

The yellow hood of your winter coat bobs charmingly as you dart between the grated drain and the nearby heap of barn red woodchips.  You stoop to grasp a handful of red.  The next moment you are purposefully marching to the grate, where you hunker over it and extend your clenched fist. 

The timing is always perfect: a moment's pause to savor the anticipation of what's to come, and then--ha!--the fingers burst apart.  Like the reckless young invincible that you are, you let those chips fall where they may.  Some catch on the bars of the grate, but most freefall and then splash satisfyingly in the inky water pooled below. 

I'm watching you watch them, although you are hard to keep track of from moment to moment.  As great as your pleasure is in watching what gravity and ground water do to woodchips, mine is infinitely greater in watching what imagination and curiosity do to you: seeing your eyes sparkle and hearing the glee in your voice and realizing that your mind is so absorbed in this that you've forgotten I'm even here. 

It's only after I've written this experience out, after I've taken these woodchips of experience and flung them into the drain of my own mind and reveled in the sensations of memory and love that they produced, that I find the detachment to wonder: who might have been watching me watch you all that precious while? 

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

While the earth remains

Autumn in Michigan: has it truly been five years since I last experienced this?  Trudging the familiar shortcut to the library across the Freshman Campus and hearing tennis shoes squeak and scuffle from behind the heavy gym doors, my heart is simmering with a nostalgia as piquant as the chili I lunched on before I left.  My decision to leave my iPod at home is validated by the sounds that brighten the cold air: traffic whooshing along Chicago Drive, acorns crunching beneath my boots, and especially the rowdy voices of happy children shrieking from nearby yards. 

The journey is the span of a city block, but my stride has a noticeable spring in it by the time I'm pulling open the heavy glass doors to immerse myself in the heated fragrance of the library.  Running through my mind as I unshoulder my knapsack and dump my books into the return bin are those words of Emily Dickinson: "How much can come, and much can go, and yet remain the world." 

The theology of that phrase strikes me, caught as I am in life's pattern of births and deaths, beginnings and endings, advents and leave-takings.  How much can come and much can go.  Yet "while the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease." (Gen. 8:22)  Whatever else happens, the world yet remains, hinged on a promise as beautiful and otherworldly as a rainbow. 

Implicit in this verse, however, is the truth that this world will not always remainUltimately, even this world of coming and going will go.  Oneday it will be swept up into a state of completion: the state for which it groans, awaiting deliverance from the One who was from the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.    

How much can come and much can go--even this world itself, and certainly my own small life which it encompasses--and yet remains that world.  What consolation for my pilgrim soul.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

whiffs

"I think religion has a chance of a look-in whenever the mind craves solace in music or poetry--in any form of art at all.  Personally, I think it is an art, the greatest one; an extension of the communion all the other arts attempt."

"I suppose you mean communion with God."

He gave such a snort of laughter that his madeira went the wrong way.

"What on earth did I say that was funny?" I asked, while he was mopping his eyes.

"It was the utter blankness of your tone.  God might have been a long, wet week--which He's certainly treating us to."  He glanced at the window.  The rain had started again, so heavily that the garden beyond the streaming panes was just a blur of green.  "How the intelligent young do fight shy of the mention of God!  It makes them feel both bored and superior."

I tried to explain: "Well, once you stop believing in an old gentleman with a beard...It's only the word God, you know--it makes such a conventional noise."

"It's merely shorthand for where we come from, where we're going, and what it's all about."

"And do religious people find out what it's all about?  Do they really get the answer to the riddle?"

"They get just a whiff of an answer sometimes. ...  If one ever has any luck, one will know with all one's senses--and none of them."

"But haven't you already?"

He sighed and said the whiffs were few and far between.  "But the memory of them everlasting," he added softly."

excerpts, I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith

Saturday, September 10, 2011

When I can make my thoughts come forth
To walk like ladies up and down,
Each one puts on before the glass
Her most becoming hat and gown.

But oh, the shy and eager thoughts
That hide and will not get them dressed,
Why is it that they always seem
So much more lovely than the rest?

Sara Teasdale, "Thoughts"

Monday, May 16, 2011

On the threshhold of my final week of chemotherapy, I am rejoicing.

Outside my window the new maple leaves glow and the fresh wind bobbles the heads of a million dandelions. Perched at my computer chair indoors, I'm savoring a last mug of coffee before my dose of cisplatin makes it detestable to my tastebuds, and Janie is sniffing my slippers. It feels as though every cell in my body is chanting the refrain that has intertwined with my routines since I woke: One week more! One week more of a needle-plugged arm vein, of kidney flushing saline, of black fatigue and the threat of nausea. One more period of wasting away, and gradual recovery. Only one week more.

A friend recently described the past few months of tumor, operation, recovery, and chemotherapy by using Sheldon Van Auken's beautiful phrase: "a severe mercy." As I reflect on my experience, however, I begin to think that severe is too severe a word. Indeed, much as I have lamented my bald head and frail body, I cannot but compare my own lot to the lot of others I encountered in the chemo ward, or even to my own expectations as I entered into this valley. My time of disease has been comparatively brief, my ordeal quite mild. I am blessed that, in this particular scuffle, it was the cancer that proved to be short-lived. And I gained more than I lost.

Emerging from the valley, I feel myself undeservedly enriched. My weakness has shown God's strength to be perfect, his grace all-sufficient--indeed, overabundant! My dependance has been an ideal stage to showcase the surprising and steadfast love of my loved ones. I have faced my own physical and spiritual helplessness, and known that even so, God has delighted to save me to the uttermost.

I find myself turning toward the future with a hope sweetened by proof of my Savior's kindness, and hands eager to demonstrate my gratitude.

Friday, May 13, 2011

My Etherial Gain

My first well Day - since many ill -
I asked to go abroad,
And take the Sunshine in my hands,
And see the things in Pod -

A'blossom just when I went in
To take my Chance with pain -
Uncertain if myself, or He,
Should prove the strongest One.

---

My loss, by sickness - Was it Loss?
Or that Etherial Gain
One earns by measuring the Grave -
Then - measuring the Sun -

[Emily Dickinson]

Friday, April 22, 2011

Monday, April 18, 2011

Abby Considers April Snowfall

Some child in the sky must be dumping it out, shaking powder white
from the open canister, coating the meadow in a confectioner's glaze.

Where it sets: pastures, gardens, sugar & starch.
Where it candies: trellises, windchimes, treebuds.
After a month's spring thaw, I stick out my tongue,
taste the flakes as they fall.
Frost me, sweeten me up,
with winter's bright knife; crystalize me, beguile me
in your audacious play.

(Composed upon waking to an April snowfall, and having Barbara Crooker's Tu Wi's Considers April Sunlight come ironically to mind. Her version reads thus:

Some cook in the sky must be ladling it out, pouring liquid gold
from her copper saucepan, basting the meadows in hollandaise.

Where it drips: buttercups, dandelions, butter & eggs.
Where it splashes: forsythia, daffodils, tulips.
After a long hard winter, I reach out my arms,
lift my face to the sky.
Fry me, sunnyside up,
on springtime's hot griddle; clarify me, anoint me
in your lavish lemon light.)

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Act III, Scene ii

Someone has altered the script.
My lines have been changed.
The other actors are shifting roles.
They don't come on when they're expected to,
and they don't say the lines I've written
and I'm being upstaged.
I thought I was writing this play
with a rather nice role for myself,
small, but juicy
and some excellent lines.
But nobody gives me my cues
and the scenery has been replaced.
I don't recognize the new sets.
This isn't the script I was writing.
I don't understand this plot at all.

To grow up
is to find
the small part you are playing
in this extraordinary drama
written by
somebody else.

-Madeleine L'Engle-

To Mom

Who would have thought, when years had passed,  and you had left this world for good, I'd find such comfort remembering the way it felt ...