Counting My Blessings

So I am once again inspired by my daughter. Here is a very partial (of course,) list of what I am thankful for:

My sure and solid future, that no one can touch or take away from me.

My fellow followers of Jesus, traveling the road with me. We don’t necessarily share the same views on everything, but love the same Lord, and therefore love each other.

A husband who loves me and would do anything for me.

The most beautiful son and daughter a mother could ever have.

A family that gets along, and seems to be involved with each other just the right amount.

The spiritual growth I see in certain relatives.

My freedoms, my civil rights in this life, and even a sense of hope, for the first time in a long time, about this country’s future.

House and home, neighbors and neighborhood.

My friends at Redford Geriatric Village, faithful, appreciative and loving.

Being able to expand my boundaries, feel part of the globe, thanks to my daughter and friends who befriend foreigners.

A comfortable, so far affordable, pleasant American-made car to drive.

The challenges and trials I have been allowed to go through.

The pretty, allergy-free snow.

A pleasant job, work equipment that works, and time to do other things on the computer, too. Work partners who could not be better colleagues.

Clothes and cosmetics!

A way to approach getting in better physical shape, practical, possible, and even enjoyable.

Cilantro, curry, and coffee.

A 90-year-old mother who is relatively pain-free and still able to live on her own, with some assistance.

Good examples (in people) and the lessons gleaned from them.

Bad examples (in people) and the lessons gleaned from them.

Automatic garage door openers and heated car seats

Colors with balls  (not pastel colors)

Caller I.D.

The ability to look back and see how I have been taken care of, rescued, forgiven, given another chance, comforted, and taught.

For mom’s 90th

 

Mother, 

You are such a child, still.    The photograph – 1920?

Not even two years old.    A cherub on a chair

With a wispy bob and starched gown.

A fringe of bangs to frame

       Those eyes, eyes

shooting out light

like impish stars. 

 Those are the same eyes,

now at 90.

       They laugh

before you do.

They always have.

 

We will never see contrails at sunset,

or clouds, or trees, or flowers and sky

without seeing Your Eyes seeing them, Your Eyes

artfully wondering how to capture them,

how to bring them out of your eyes

           and into everyone else’s.

 

Your eyes

are two cherubs, delighting in the world

and taking it in

and giving it back again,

a world now noticed

now loved

now even more beautiful

from having earned their gaze.

 

Always be this cherub, this child,

Mother.

    What your eyes have seen,

we have loved.

For you taught us never to grow old,

                   never to stop

                   delighting

and wondering,

never to close our eyes and miss

     earth’s heavenly light.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The fiery furnace

At the meeting we are reading about Daniel’s three old friends who end up in the fiery furnace, because they won’t bow down to the image that King Nebuchadnezzar set up.  It seems interesting to me – it was at the sound of music, made with all sorts of musical instruments, that all the people in the empire were to fall down and worship the graven image. I guess that was so that no one needed to know Babylonian – just hear music, and hit the deck.

And Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego have the best answer of all, when they are challenged about their refusal to bow down – Our God can deliver us from the furnace if He so chooses – but even if He doesn’t,  we will still not worship the graven image.

Many parallels have been drawn about the furnace, and many references are made all the time about ‘trial by fire,’ being refined like metal in a furnace, things like that. I think it is a good analogy. When one is going through a trial, it is much like fire – hot, suffocating, enveloping sometimes. It’s hard to focus on much else, which I suppose would be the same if one was surrounded by an inferno. (May I never find out first-hand) And then in a trial you must sometimes sweat it out…ah the imagery just doesn’t stop. John the Baptist said he baptized with water, but one was coming who would baptize with fire. And the Holy Spirit is sometimes depicted as a flame… “our God is a consuming fire.”

Fire can consume, and fire can refine. In some way then, if we belong to the Lord Jesus, perhaps we are never consumed – only refined – if we stick with Him. Refining can sure seem like consumption at times. But the end result is how we know the goodness of God – we end up better for having gone through the fire, and behold, we can walk about in the midst of the fire, without harm, our hair not singed, our trousers not damaged, nor even the smell of fire upon us.

 

 

 

my little bird 

is not mine  but  

say    MY little 

and there is affection, connection

 a harmless illusion

 

 O she sang such warbly notes, my little bird 

they flew up 

clear and high, taut and strong, sailing 

kite strings in sunshine

 

hardly a second when she did not 

chirp, hop, bounce and sing, tipping her head for a better look, 

flitter, flutter, all in a flurry 

tying together this and that, 

weaving invisible strings 

to connect 

the various parts of  earth

 

  

then one day, I didn’t dare expect 

she flit and 

fled away. More parts far away 

to connect 

musical strings, strings of 

songs of 

notes of light

 somewhere else.

 

The song was gone. The air just 

air.  The space,

 the absence, the 

no strings here.

  

This morning with the rising sun 

before my eyes could open 

I heard a note on the wind, the laying down 

of strings.

 

she is coming back to me 

my little bird. 

And even better now 

more parts of earth connected 

more strings to tie to weave into one 

happy song.

 

 

 

As I left the meeting this week, “Winnie” was sitting by the door, alone. She smiled at me, shook my hand, and said she enjoyed it.

armchair traveler

must I

justify?

 

I have imagination

splinter-crystal-hard-vibrant

if vivid is not enough.

 

and whenever I have been a witness in the flesh

eyes, ears, nose and throat sucking in like soil

it never ceases to be just as I imagined it.

whether seeds from book or screen or mouth.

 

Besides,

I have been places.  In Denver and Baltimore.

I have been to the aquariums there.

Is human suffering always alone? Part Two

One of these three women, whom I will call “Blossom,” has behavior that I suspect reflects a lifelong mental retardation – she is friendly, she actually has a pretty good memory for names, she has a sort of childlike, wide-eyed demeanor, and she has an almost startling tendency to switch from one emotional extreme to another with lightening speed; literally, one moment she is laughing, cackling very loudly, usually over seeing or hearing something that she deems as hilarious (sometimes one can guess what is so funny, sometimes not), and the next moment she is shedding huge tears – I get the impression she has been this way all her life, that she is a little ’slow’, to use a vernacular. She is very friendly, smiles easily, is very talkative and very easy to visit with, and if she does plunge abruptly into her deep sad state, it is relatively easy to distract her and change her mood, simply by making a joke or something like that, kind of like how one can sometimes do with young children.

The second lady is a contrast to “Blossom”.  I will call her “Edith.”  She is rather on the quiet side, at least in my presence. Smiles from her are nonexistent. When I say something friendly to her, I find she has this kind of delayed reaction, and she will say something in response, politely, but, if I go just by her wooden facial expression, she appears reluctant to say something back to me. Of course I can’t be sure if this is just her personality or if she honestly doesn’t like me, but I wondered why she would bother to attend every week if the latter were the case. Unlike with Blossom, I never know where I stand with Edith, and sometimes I am surprised at how, deep inside, it hurts a bit, if I am too sensitive about it, to receive even such a minor slight from someone with whom I mean no harm. It was her relative coldness towards me that got me  pondering the subject of human suffering and suffering unjustly, meditating about it on an even bigger scale, thinking about people who suffer injustice that is more real than my pseudo-experience, whose stories can be so heartwrenching to hear about, like the story of Jesus here on earth.

The third lady, whom I will call “Winnie,” is a sort of class clown. I am pretty sure she has some dementia, but she does not use a wheelchair and she appears pretty healthy. The first few times I met her, she was cheerful and very nice to me, and said she was really glad she came to the meeting. Then, since she has been in this threesome, she has changed. The chemistry of the three has been made complete, it seems.  She walks into the room muttering something that only Blossom and Edith can hear – and suddenly Blossom is cackling very loudly at whatever Winnie has said. Then Winnie will sit with what can only be described as a look of mischief in her eyes, and continue her comments, being fed by Blossom’s laughter and by Edith’s smiles and quiet laughter - yes, Edith can smile, after all.  I am not sure I really want to know what the joke is, but some more openly spoken comments from Winnie point to a possible mocking of our meeting itself, how it is not to her liking, not her style. The curious result of all this has been that all three women have a different side of them that seems to have come out, when they have sat together, and the way they are with me has been altered a bit, too. It’s like their inhibitions melt away when they are with each other, and a harsher side comes into play.

I am coming to realize that where this little gang of three is coming from doesn’t really matter, as far as how I should be towards them. And besides, I am sure a reader will keep thinking (and I agree), ‘for crying out loud, these are elderly people with dementia!’  You should take everything with a grain of salt here, give them the benefit of the doubt, get over it! - and I do, really. But it has been a good lesson, nonetheless.  In the end, I think I see that, regardless of the real story here, I am called to love those around me, not based on how or if they love me back, not based on how they treat me, not based on whether or not they can be accountable for their behavior – but based on how our Lord Jesus has loved me and given His life for me. I guess these are pretty elementary things for me to be learning, despite being a follower of Jesus for a long time, but when one is surrounded by mostly loving people most of the time, the lesson can be delayed or not have much meaning, until it is really tested in such a way – and I do feel this is a very mild and gentle way of learning something.

I find that being around these three ladies stretches me in a challenging but good way, reminds me to be kind, and to humble myself. It is a very mild form of suffering, perhaps, or not real suffering at all, but I must confess that for brief moments at a time I don’t feel welcome in their presence, I feel misunderstood in some way, and it hurts – just a little; that’s what I mean about it being sort of a window into another world. This is surely a far cry from real suffering at the hands of someone who has all their faculties and knows full well what they do, and I agree-  so far, I have not had to really suffer outright - but I think I am being allowed to see into that world a little bit more, where one is pegged wrongly, one is misunderstood or judged wrongly, where no matter what you do, it’s not right or it’s not good enough; now I can picture and imagine that there are people in this world whom we can never, ever please, and we can aim to be loving, and still be treated like we are guilty of something - the way people have prejudice against others based on ridiculous things, like skin color. And I know there are people who can cause much more hurt than these harmless little old ladies can. But the lesson can still be the same.

As far as the title of this meandering – is human suffering always alone?  Well, I think in a way, it is. We are alone in suffering in the sense that no other mortal may really appreciate what we are feeling, especially if we who suffer at the hands of someone else also strive to love them in return. [The meaning of "Love" here being best defined as wanting good for someone, not disregarding them and not wishing evil on them.] And  I wonder if people who suffer in a group also may feel isolated and alone in their own personal part in the suffering.

And then, of course, one can say, no –  human suffering is not experienced alone – we have the Suffering Servant, and some of us know Him, as alive and well, as our Lord. He knows all about being supremely misunderstood, about being tragically unappreciated, about being made fun of, about being wrongfully judged, and ultimately about being hated to the point of everyone wanting you dead, and you have done nothing to deserve that. And He always loves back, He always wants good for His enemies. No, we, as His followers, never suffer alone.

Is human suffering always ‘alone’? Part One

Lately I have been pondering the human experience of one person who is misunderstood by another, along with the experience of feeling that one is being “ganged up on” by others, and the difficulties or even suffering that this presents for the misunderstood. …Well, maybe it is more accurate to say that one sometimes feels that one is misunderstood – the jury is probably always out on the reality of it.

I do volunteer work at a nursing home every week, where about 20 or so residents and me and two other non-resident women meet in a dining room setting; we sing hymns together, and then we read passages from the Bible together. It is strictly voluntary for the residents to come, as it is volunteer for us who visit.  I would call it a “hymn sing and bible study”, but to my (for some reason) amusement, the residents refer to it as “church.”  It lasts a mere 60 minutes each week. For the last several years that I have done this, I must admit that I have never felt that the residents there have anything other than warm regard for me; they appear to welcome the visits, and indeed there has nearly always been at least one person every week who thanks me for coming when I am saying good-bye. My visits have been overwhelmingly more ‘positive’ than ’negative.’ This is perhaps even more notable given the fact that we 3 visitors differ from the residents in ethnicity, or subculturally, which, if the reader has had any experiences with intercultural interaction, knows this is probably (unfortunately, I think) a rare occurrence in American society as a whole - it would seem that segregation occurs more naturally than integration, at least on some levels, and I would argue that “natural” in this instance, although common, is not necessarily “better”. Perhaps the only things we share in common, to put it more bluntly, are 1) we are human beings living on planet Earth, 2) we live in the United States, and 3) we all, one way or another, have come to have a love for Jesus.  I can only hope that our visits make at least some small positive difference in these people’s lives, but it is just a hope, not a certainty. I don’t do it for pats on the back from them, exactly, even though I have been patted on the back a few times, and it’s a nice if not humbling experience. On the other hand, I can’t say enough about how much I  have gained from these visits – the residents, most of whom are old enough to be at least my parents, if not grandparents or great-grandparents, are treasure troves of wisdom and good examples of Virtue to me. 

But in the past 2 weeks there has been an interesting development…and I really do mean interesting. I could say it has been disheartening, but that is a little too harsh a word, and doesn’t match how I feel inside. It is interesting, partly because it is new for me (thankfully, it is new), and also because I sense that this new experience I am having is sort of a ‘window’ into another world that before now I have (fortunately, I think,) not been exposed to much. 

There are these 3 really lovely elderly women, all of whom I have individually met before in the weeks up to this point. Then in the past couple of weeks, it appears that they have sort of found each other, and it is perhaps precisely their combination, I am thinking, that has led to my new, rather negative experience;  when I interacted one-on-one with them before, they were very nice to me, polite, even kind. But in the past 2 weeks they have seemingly banded together – and the resultant behavior is, well, interesting. There is some vague reminiscence of certain grade school/classroom behavior from long ago hovering in the back of my mind.

I ponder the ramifications of the mixing of personalities in certain settings, mixing that seems random, not planned, and how perhaps one personality can feed off another, and certain traits of one can find its voice when paired (or tripled, or even more exponentialized – think mob behavior)  with another. These three women are very different from each other in almost every way, except for perhaps their general ethnic background - but their demeanor, their actual age, their appearance, their level of dementia, their personal histories, and many other things differ greatly, one from another.