A Convoluted Prayer of Thanksgiving

For all the people in my life who remind me

(who gently admonish me?)

to "Breathe!"

I must really need the reminder because it is a common thing for me to hear.

Or maybe it's just a good thing to say 

when there is nothing else to do.

Still, I am grateful 

for friends who can be present

with me

and breathe with me

when there truly is not much else

that can be done.

To sit in that rather helpless place

with another

is not an easy thing to do. 

Those who can do it well

are a balm to the soul.

The Scar (Wake Up, Wake Up)

Sometimes I write poetry. This past Saturday morning I woke up at 4:30 a.m. and couldn't go back to sleep (this rarely happens). I got up and went to sit in silence for a little while. When I got done, I intended to go back to sleep but something in me noticed my scar and I pondered it a little while in the mirror. It ain't pretty. I laid back down but the first few lines of this poem kept trying to write itself in my head so I got up and went to work on finishing it.

There are so many things that happen when you receive a life-threatening diagnosis. I'm still wrestling with all the repercussions and evidence of the struggle appears at the oddest times. Sometimes I fear I am not yet fully awake...

The Scar (Wake Up, Wake Up)

The scar is so ugly I can only bear to look at it

In the half light between dark night

and dawn of a new day

where it becomes a metaphor:

I have been opened and rendered able

to receive. Somewhere in the distance

a siren wails and now my scar is evidence of life’s brevity

while a bird sings sweetly outside the window

reminding me to wake up and live.

How quickly, how slowly, we move from life to death;

from death to life; from mourning to morning.

It is the scar that calls me to life; to morning.

A Story! Pictures! A Poem!

I used to belong to a group where we would be given a quote and we were supposed to write about the first memory that came to mind after we read the quote. We not supposed to write as though we were looking back at the memory, but rather as though we were present in the story at that moment. I sometimes struggled with that task. The group often told me it was as if I were holding myself back, like I was an observer of my own story. I was probably in fourth or fifth grade at the time this happened.

We are walking in the woods after lunch. My grandfather always seems particularly pleased when we do this. Sometimes, just the men get to go on these walks. When we ask where they are going, they always say they are going to see a man about a dog. But today, all of us are going--Mom and Dad, Paw-Paw and Granny, Linda and Timmy. Granny is finishing up in the kitchen and then we can leave.

Sometimes we go and check the hog pens to see if there are hogs in the trap. Most every time we check the fox feeder to put corn out or to see if they have eaten the corn that was left for them. Paw-Paw always has something going on in the woods. He loves the woods. He will usually point out tracks in the sand for us to see. Fox tracks, rabbit tracks, dog tracks, deer tracks, hog tracks, all kinds of tracks. He can't see that well, but he can see those tracks.

Once he cut a branch off a dogwood tree and told me if I would scrape the bark away, the branch would turn pure white, just like if it had been bleached. I saved it and took it home and scraped the bark away and sure enough, it is pure white, pure white.

Today the grownups are talking about the corner lines and about the old spring that used to be back by the creek. Paw-Paw keeps that cleared away so the water will continue to flow. I can't quite understand their fascination with the spring. It's just an old hole with water constantly coming out of the ground, like a house that never gets clean, it is always muddy around there.

I don't understand the fascination with corner markers either. We are walking through briars now, getting all scratched up. Mama and Granny, who are in their dresses, are stepping high to avoid getting their legs all scratched up. When we finally get to the corner marker, all it is is a concrete stick pocking up out of the ground. But the adults all know where these markers are, and they stand around talking about who owns the property that meets up at this marker.

There are also stories being told about how you can follow the road and cross the creek "back there" and end up at Aunt Ella's house. Thankfully, we are not going that way today. We are turning around and heading back to the house. As usually happens on these walks, they are all telling stories now.

 Daddy starts talking about how they used to bend a young sapling down and get on it like a horse and then let it go and they would "ride" the sapling. That sounds like so much fun! I'm asking if I can do that now and the grown-ups are all acting like they are not sure I can. I am wondering now if Daddy made this story up or what. Finally, after my persistent begging (I can be very persuasive, this I already know about myself), Daddy and Paw-Paw are looking for a suitable tree for me to ride.

They have found one now and both of them bend the tree over so I can get on it. I am so excited about getting to do this. I straddle across the tree and receive my last-minute instructions to hold on tight, no matter what. I can't wait for them to let go of this tree so that I can go flying through the air. I wonder what it is going to feel like. . .

Well, that was not what I expected to happen. I am on the ground with the wind knocked out of me. That has only happened to me one other time. I hate when that happens. The grown-ups are looking at me with concern and are trying to help me up. Someone is dusting off my backside. What a stir I have caused!

After a few moments, my wits are recollected and I can now breathe normally again. We are heading back to the house now, and analyzing my failure to launch. It seems my biggest problem was that I forgot to hold on tight. When the tree went up, I went down and hit the ground, hard. I probably should have bent over closer to the trunk of the tree and hugged it harder than I did. I don't much care what went wrong. I don't think I'll ever want to try that again.

And here is a poem I wrote about the day the surveyors came to survey part of the land that we were selling (after both my grandparents had died) with another look at the corner markers and the Artesian spring.

Surveying the Land

Sitting on a stump by the rippling stream,
barely a foot wider than my stride.
Just wide enough to keep me from following the procession
led by the machete wielding land surveyor, who whacks
his way through briar and thicket,
seeking the corner marker to our wood.

Were it not for the steady whack, whack, whack
of the machete and the warning caw of the crow,
I would be at peace, wooded by the shimmer of water
and the rustle of leaves, meditating on a quiet winter day.
Thoreau on his pond, Emerson in his woods. The surveyor works,
carving away a piece of my I still hold tightly in my heart.

When I was a child, my grandfather led the way on this land,
past the Artesian spring that bubbled from the ground,
stopping at each land marker as though they were sacred monuments,
testimony to places where God touched the earth,
setting boundaries on our own slice of Eden.

The sound of tree limbs being severed by a man
snatches me back to the present. Birds squawk
mournfully above my head, while the briar branch tears
flesh as I pull it idly through my hands. Looking down, I am surprised
to see blood marking the place where I released grandfather's
memory and walked away empty handed, stripped
of land that meant so much to us both.

My Maternal Grandmother

She embodied contentment.

Day 8: I am grateful for my grandmother.

Grandmother's House

The old house, emptied
of Grandmother's presence,
sinks slowly into a spirit

of disrepair,
welcoming comfort
from the scurry of field mice
and the coo of doves,

whose eerie song spooks
nerves of the living,
who are alone
in this darkened house,

searching.

Searching for essence
of Grandmother. With tender
longing, we breathe her scent
on dresses left hanging,
shoes left below.

Waiting for her return,
for her to slip into them
and walk away,

longing to be useful
once more.

In the kitchen, pots and pans
also wait, barren,
wanting biscuits to rise and swell
again like pregnant tummies full
of hope, affirming life.

Only stillborn memories survive
as the old house
slips quietly into disrepair.

I Got Nothin'

Day seven of this project and I have no funny stories to tell, no insights to share, nothin', nada, zip!

Well, here is this little thing I did in Photoshop. I don't much like it as it is, so I might redo it on canvas some time. I kind of like the words and the man in the photo is my maternal grandfather. He really was not much of a fisherman. I am not even sure how this photo came about. I wonder who had the camera?

Day 7: I am grateful for my grandfather.

Still Life

Grandmother cooked on a wood stove:
peas, butterbeans, cornbread, biscuits.
For desert, we ate canned peaches.
When everyone left the table,

Grandfather winked and smiled at me
as we divided what was left
of the peach juice into our bowls
and drank life's syrupy sweetness.

Tender

Tender

Time will heal, that’s what they say.
And yet the scar remains to this very day,
a thin white line and still tender to the touch.

It was no help to have an allergic reaction
to the Mercurochrome so that my skin scabbed over
and I had to do my presentation in class
with crustiness exposed because the bandage
would not allow air to reach the wound
so it could heal.

I was in the third grade
when I survived the head-on collision
with one of my classmates. The scar remains
to this very day, underneath my chin,
a thin white line and still tender to the touch.
Time will heal, that’s what they say.
But didn’t Jacob walk with a limp after wrestling with the angel?

Do not say to the crying mother:
Time will heal.

Do not say to the neglected child:
Time will heal.

Do not say it at all:
Time will heal.

Time will not heal. Time surges forward.
It may wash away much of the detritus,
but always there will remain
a thin white line, still tender to the touch.



Thankfully, I have never had anyone offer me this useless piece of rhetoric. I overheard this a couple of weeks ago, spoken by a grandfather in reference to his grandsons who had been put into his custody after being removed from a home with an abusive step parent and parent. I knw he meant well, it just makes me think, that's all.

I believe time will make it easier, but there will always be the tender places. I liken it to grief. My brother has been dead for eleven years and I am used to it now. This week I met another person who has his name, and is about the age he was when he died. And the grief comes whispering back to me. It is not as intense as it was, and it does not linger as long as it used to, but it is still there and a part of me.

So many times, when we see someone who is hurting, we want to do what we can to help them, we want to take their pain away. Often, the most healing thing we can do for them is to listen quietly.

(There is another silly short poem in the comments to the post before this one if anyone is interested.)

Sentence Prayers

Last summer was the first time in over ten years that I did not go to camp. I was not able to go this year to work, but I went up last night to visit. They had finished remodeling the tabernacle and I wanted to see that, but I also just wanted a taste of what I was missing.

It's hard for me to explain my pull toward camp, especially this all girls missions themed camp. Part of it is that these girls are so precious and they have their whole lives ahead of them. Or at least we assume they do; I noticed one small bald-headed and pale girl in the crowd. We know what battle she is facing, she wears evidence of it on her head. But the others? Who knows which girl will be an unwed mother? Who knows which girl will follow a call to mission fields far away? Who knows which girl returns to a home devoid of loving care and attention? Who knows which girl will marry well and raise her 2.5 children in a comfortable suburban setting? And which one will fall to drugs or alcohol?

I took photos but none of them are that compelling. I managed to get a few blurry images of a group of girls practicing their song before "camper spotlight" starts.

Take a look at the girl in the longish white skirt and striped shirt at the outer fringe of the activity onstage. You can tell she's tired. This is the last night before they all go back home.

Now she has gotten her second wind and has moved center stage.

She even manages a timid smile for her adoring audience, or maybe she spotted me, way in the back, with the camera pointed toward the stage! (Click on the picture and make it bigger, you can better see her smile.) Blurry images, that's all we have. We just can't know what impact these few days at camp will have on their lives, can't know what things they will face.

It is an awesome responsibility and privilege to spend time with these girls, to be a leader, to be a listener, to be a see-er, to hear them pray...

Sentence Prayers

Sweet and full of innocence,
with tender hearts they pray:

God, help my cousin,
she’s fifteen, she had a baby.
God, I pray for everything
we prayed for already
and anything else we need
to pray for.
God, I hope I do good
on my math test tomorrow.
God, keep my sister safe,
she lives in a bad place
and my mama wants
her to come back home.
God, help my neighbor’s
autistic son get better...

God, I feel like a hardened
skeptic, an intruder.
I know that rocky path
out of a little girl’s world
into womanhood.

Many voices will cry out,
saying to their soul:
i am your salvation,
come with me.
Their faith will be shaken,
sifted like flour,
and unbelieving feet
will trample fragile hearts.

Doubts will swarm
like flies, demons will taunt,
bringing condemnation
in darkness,
leaving these precious
girls crouching,
panting in their fear.

Oh God, in the madness,
the devastation of frigid
solitude,
will they remember you?
Oh God,
May they hear your voice
saying
to their weary soul:

I AM
your salvation.

Outside the Taberacle

(It's another poem, folks, since Little David was foolish enough to ask and I am foolish enough to oblige!)

Jim got me to thinking today with this Thomas Merton quote from his post:

“Life is this simple: we are living in a world that is absolutely
transparent and the Divine is shining through it all the time”.

I mentioned to him that sometimes we miss the Divine shining through until we are past the event and looking back. Such was the case outside the tabernacle with a little girl named Sinclair...

Sinclair came alone to camp that year, having just finished kindergarten. Technically she was not supposed to be there until she finished first grade, but we never were much on minding that technicality. She arrived with a lot of baggage for such a young child. Mom gave us our first clues-- make sure she drinks her water, make sure she goes to the bathroom, make sure you get her to the nurse's station to take her meds, and oh yeah, sometimes she sees things...well, she did not tell us that last part, but it would have been helpful if she had. When I took her down to the nurse's station, the nurse filled me in a bit (bipolar disorder) and reiterated that I did not want to miss any of her med times (sheesh, I have been coming to camp for ten years, don't they think I know that?) It would not have made any difference to me how many times we had to traipse down to the nurse's cabin, I was already hopelessly in love with this little brown-eyed girl who landed in our cabin alone and with baggage.

Sinclair made friends among the girls in spite of her sometimes strange ways. I made sure she drank her water and we had "tinkle races" to make sure she was tinkling. (We raced to the bathrooms and listened to see who was going to make the first "splash". Sometimes you have to get a little creative. That's all I'm saying.) I took her out to sit on the porch when the crowd in the cabin got to be too much for her, or when she "saw something".

Sometimes, in the tabernacle for worship service, the noise of 400 girls clapping and singing and squealing (that was all before the preacher began to speak) got too intense for her and she I would go out to a pavilion behind the tabernacle and sit quietly. It was during one of these times that she started counting the "lightening bugs" and then became fascinated when she heard a bird singing in the darkness.

Watching the Brown-eyed Girl Count Fireflies
(for Sinclair, sometimes she sees things)

She has seen spiders in her breakfast bowl
where mother saw only grits,
and terror in her daughter’s eyes.

Snakes slithered forward,
threatened to swallow her whole
as mother moved to offer comfort.

Moments later, the child
asks for red jelly.
To make a smiley face on my grits.

Tonight she counts fireflies, their stochastic blinks
dancing in unsteady rhythm
with the neurons in her brain.

Music breaks the quiet, and her attention shifts.
She searches to see what kind of bird
sings in darkness, why

her notes tremble and swell.

Evidence of Things Unseen

(everybody knows you can click on the picture to make it bigger, right?)

04/22/06 ADDENDUM:

Maybe a picture is not worth a thousand words. I really wanted the picture and the few words to speak for themselves. Maybe I need to explain my convoluted thought process...

This house was dropped on the side of the highway by the winds of Rita. I am not sure where it was originally located, not sure how far it was carried. If you look, you can see where the house is splitting, from having been unceremoniously dumped on unlevel ground, I suppose.

The words are part of poem I wrote, which never really got finished to my satisfaction. Several years ago, a preacher said something in a sermon about how the wind, though unseen, has never had to prove its existence.

Back when I was still in middle school, we were visiting an aunt and uncle who had a beach house on Dauphin Island. While we out there walking the beach a storm came up and the rain was one of those hard pelting rains. I don't think I will ever forget how the weather turned so dark so quickly and how menacing the waves of the Gulf looked as we all ran for cover. It almost felt traumatic to me at that time, hence the vivid imagery in the poem of panthers and gun shots and being held captive.

Disparate thoughts, but still, how come the existence of the unseen wind is widely known and accepted and yet the existence of the creator of the wind is so widely doubted?


Caught In The Storm, I Stand

Waves crouch behind me and spring,
a panther closing in and threatening.

Raindrops hit and burn, bullets falling
from a gun shot into a New Year’s sky.

The sand holds my feet, captive
of rain and wind and fire. I breathe fear.

I am a sister of Elijah, seeking the face
of Jehovah-Shammah, the Lord who is with me.

In the unseen breeze, I hear Him whisper
my name. He calls me His beloved.

The wind moves as it wishes,
has never had to prove its existence.

The Cross

An innocent man, beaten,
offers no resistance.
They lead him through the streets,
taunting and snapping whips,
he is their beast to be tamed,
a self-proclaimed servant.

It is a painful and slow way to die,
crucified on a Roman cross.
I want to close my ears
to the agony of those words,
Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani,
my God, my God, why
have you forsaken me?

How alone he must have felt,
And yet one who will listen hears,
Father forgive them,
they know not what they do.

I come to Easter, satisfied to celebrate
the victory of resurrection,
and dare to turn my head
from the ugliness of the cross, wanting
only to see the empty tomb,
to hear the shouts,
He has risen. He has risen.

Yet there is a disturbing image:
My Saviour, the risen Lord, hangs
bruised and bleeding, rejected.
Alone, the sinless one bears my sin.
Facing the cross, I wonder,
How could they nail Him to that tree?

Turning away,
I see the hammer in my hand.

Grief

On Thanksgiving evening, ten years ago, my brother went into the hospital and he never came home. Today marks the tenth anniversary of his death from non-Hodgkins lymphoma. In the week before he died, his doctor left town to go deer hunting in Colorado. My brother asked him to bring a picture back for him to see, and the doctor promised he would bring one. Before he left, the doctor met my mother in the hall and told her he wanted to be sure we understood that my brother probably would not make it through the week.

But three days before he died, he had a good day, with very little discomfort. He recognized his friends from work, and laughed with them about Christmas gifts. It was a pleasant visit, the kind that belies the ugly truth. I had not yet heard what the doctor had said and was filled with hope that my brother was coming back around.

The next morning, I was there when the nurses brought in the mushed up gunk they feed to patients who can’t eat real food. I spooned it into his reluctant mouth. He did not want it, but I fed it to him, because I was his big sister, and I knew he needed to eat. He was getting better, wasn’t he? I loved my brother. And feeding him, or trying to, at the time, seemed like the most hopeful thing I could do.

It was a year or two after his death before I realized I had behaved in the pragmatic way of the biblical Martha, in feeding my brother, in trying to prepare him for a return to health. That morning, I missed the opportunity to be like the intuitive Mary, to sit quietly with my brother, to gently touch him. By the evening, he was gone. I miss him still.


Trilogy: The Empty Chair

I. Passing

My brother’s passing
left an empty chair
at family gatherings.

He was boisterous
and funny,
the baby, who could not whisper,
and had no sense of discretion,
a big teddy bear of a man.

One day at Animal Control,
surrounded by the smell of death,
while I listened as his buddy
told me what a good friend
my brother was,
his memory slipped up
like a playful toddler,
and tapped me on the shoulder.
I turned,
wishing he were there,
knowing he was not.
I cried all the way home.

II. Firsts

It’s Thanksgiving now
and I think of all the people
who face empty chairs
at their dinner tables.

After the dead are gone,
there are so many firsts:
Birthday. Easter. Christmas.
First time you reach
for the phone, only to realize
the lines don’t stretch
all the way to eternity.

III. Traditions

There were these cookies
we used to make.
My brother loved them dearly.
For a long while after his passing,
it seemed a sacrilege
to make those cookies.
How could we enjoy the cookies
and ignore his empty chair?
But now I savor the cookies
and celebrate his life,
grateful for pleasant memories.

And the chair
no longer seems
so empty.


Grief

grief is a strange emotion:
it slips up unannounced
and swells inside,
catching you off-guard
and unprepared.
it has been nearly four years
since the departure
of my baby brother
(at the ripe young age
of thirty-four).
yet, at times
there is something that brings
him back to me.
the hunger to touch him,
to hug and be hugged by him,
it consumes me for awhile.
i miss him terribly,
the grief is fresh and raw,
like a new wound.
these are the times
when i long to hear him laugh again
and to tell him i love him,
that he was the best baby brother
we could have,
that he was a good-hearted man.
and i wonder,
if i had known that year
was the last we would have with him in this life,
what would i have done differently?

i would have said
i love you
more.

Experimenting

I took the picture, moved it from Photoshop to Illustrator where I added the text, then saved it for the web, and downloaded it to my blog. I am shocked that I have managed to do it. Maybe I am learning something in school, after all. (and proving once again, that you can too teach an old dog new tricks!) Go ahead, click on the picture for the larger view.

GRANDPARENT'S PORCH

My grandparent's porch
at twilight,
three generations,
comfortable, loving.
Children playing,
paying scant attention
to the precious stories
falling like jewels
around their feet.
Tales now only remembered
laboriously,
in tiny portions,
vague and pleasant,
not complete, leaving me
yearning to go back,
to be a child again,
to hear their voices
one more time,
this time more carefully.