Avanelle

There's a lady, short and sturdy-built, limping out the back door of her house which sits perfectly situated on a big hilltop facing a stunning view of the Blue Ridge Mountains.  She's seen the view so many times by now that it is burned into her brain--she knows every curve, every dip and jutting edge of it as though it were a part of her.

Avanelle's eyes are the bluest blue, like the morning sky in early April when the winds of spring have blown back all the clouds and the sun shines bright from that Eastern corner of the heavens.  She smiles with them, showing you the sparkle of light and love that still burns inside her.  Her face is worn with time, her hair, soft and white.  Her hands are stiffened with arthritis, and she often says her fingertips are numb from years of Diabetic Neuropathy.  Sometimes the numbness keeps her from doing things she used to love, like crocheting a new pattern or tying tiny bows on Christmas presents. Mostly though, she stays busy despite her infirmities.

She walks about as best she can on a bad knee, with the help of her cane which she gleefully refers to as her "horse."  Occasionally, she leaves the horse stranded by a table or a chair, forgetting that it depends on her to get about.  "I think you forgot someone." I'll tease her.

"Oh, I better not abandon my horse!" She'll tease back.

On the day I met her I never once imagined how she would change my life for the better.  She was another person at the table, filling a seat at the Senior Center.  Another friend for the members there, another elder for me to look out for.  I was happy to have her, happy to see her become a part of the group and to see them all come to love her, to see her grow to love and depend on them.  I expected nothing more.

We were at the Bay Breeze, a seafood restaurant with gaudily painted walls and models of ships adorning the dividers between rows of tables, when I overheard her say that she was getting a house ready to rent out.  My ears perked up.  I was coming up on the renewal date for my lease at my apartment, facing a rise in my rent and had been commuting uncomfortably far every day.  I had been considering looking for a place closer to work, but hadn't seriously started the search just yet.  On the way home I asked her questions about it.  By the time we were back in Slater I had made an appointment to come look at this place. The next week, I paid the deposit and was getting ready to move.

I have lived here for one year now.  I've had plenty of ups and downs, especially in the last six months.  This year has proven complicated, difficult for me in various ways.

Late May, after our birthday cook out, and Memorial Day.  After fickle Spring had given way to balmy Summer-type days, I got an early morning call from a friend.  It was not a call I ever expected--not so soon anyway.  Our friend James was gone.  He died suddenly, unexpectedly and alone.  He was young, hopeful, sometimes misguided, but always passionate.  He was the friend who called me up at random times just to tease me about my age or tell me he loved me; sometimes he did both.  He made me laugh, made me angry, made my heart break for him often when I witnessed his struggle.  Saying a permanent goodbye to him was not easy.  It opened old wounds that I thought had healed over--calloused even, to the point of being impenetrable.  I was wrong.  Losses have a way of coming back around to haunt you, even years later when you think you've done a proper job of assimilating them.

In early June I was in Charleston at MUSC, waiting for the lab to draw my blood when I got a message from work.  One of my most beloved senior members had passed away.  Back at home, tired from the trip and overwhelmed with decision-making, I dragged myself to work and started the process of getting used to my days without Bea.  It was more difficult than I expected.  I missed her at all the concerts and parties, missed her when we were decorating for Christmas and even today, when I witnessed the blossoming love-affair between two newer members and wondered what she'd say about it, if she were here.

Loss became a theme for me this year as it has in other years gone by.  I suppose with time, with age, I mean, what we have lost starts to take up more space inside us than what we've gained.

Two years ago on October 11, I said the final goodbye to my mother.  That was also a year of loss for me, but those losses were mostly of the material kind.  The material kinds of losses that feel devastating at first, but fade with time and with the gaining of newer things, fulfilling experiences.  I've lost people before.  People with whom I was close, that I loved intensely.  None of those losses affected me in quite the same way as the loss of my mother.  In the last two years I have reflected more on who she was, how she lived and what she experienced than I ever did when she was alive.  I cried at her grave on her birthday--Easter, this year, and cried again at her grave in October, when my dad was laid to rest beside her.

They both died on early October 11th mornings, exactly two years apart.  Their bodies rest side by side on the hillside behind the church where I used to run and play with my friends after Sunday services when I was a girl.  The same hillside where my dad walked beside me, holding my hand when I was 12, as we marched behind the casket of my aunt who lost the war with cancer.  I walked away from that hillside, changed.  I was like a ship without an anchor, a watch with no chain, a traveler who could never go home again.  My parents were home, without them the home I once knew became a mere memory.

Life sets us all adrift from time to time.  A year ago I felt like I was finally coming into shore, the sight of home in the distance, a peaceful haven in the countryside awaiting my presence, waiting for me and my boy to fill it up and make it all that home should be.  I was tired, worn out from a year of healing from deep hurts and big setbacks.  I was ready to leave something of that roughness behind in favor of the soft comfort of home I would create out of this little empty house.

Late on a Summer evening Avanelle and I sat by the flowerbed waiting for the Moonflower to bloom.  She told me about the day her husband died, just a few feet away from where we sat.  I had heard the story before, but I listened again.  We sat on common ground, for even though I never watched Moonflower bloom before I met her and she never was left on her own to look for home again, we shared a deep connection.  The sting of loss crosses generations, it crosses even the widest divides between people--casts its shadow over all of us, like those clouds that block out sunlight over the Blue Ridge, leaving it shaded here and there, every part of it being touched by darkness before the day is done, as the wind blows over the ridges and carries the clouds with it.

On Christmas Eve Charlie and I stopped by to see our friend, our Landlord, I suppose.  She was standing outside, picking greens off turnips, already thinking about the New Year's Day feast.  It was unseasonably warm and the sun burned my back as I stood watching her open the gift we brought, anxious for her response.  It was perfect, she said.

We talked for a while about nothing important, then hugged her tight before we took off to finish our shopping.  There were no words to tell her all she means to me.  I cannot articulate  how powerfully her spirit, her determination, her kindness has influenced me; so all I said was, "I love you."

Life can be cruel.  It can be hard and unfair.  It gives and takes, often in unequal measure--thus the ever growing importance I find in cherishing every morsel of kindness and humanity that comes my way.  They may be few and far between, but they do inhabit my world; they are the light and warmth that keep me going, day after day.  The Good People.


Late at night, if I look out my back window, I can see her kitchen light on.  I know she's probably still up, lost in a book of some kind.  The glow from her window comforts me.  It reminds me that good people are everywhere, but that they often aren't easy to see.  They come to us so often in disguise.  An elderly lady, walking with a cane changed the paths I wear every day.  I would never have expected so much of one so small and unimposing, but here I sit safe and warm on a winter evening because of Avanelle.

The Ghosts of Decembers Past

Back when my dad still drove a lot, my folks would randomly pop up at my door on Sunday afternoons to visit.  They never ever called first.  A few times when I was married, they'd come by and we wouldn't be home from church yet.  We'd pull in our driveway and the kids would get all excited to see Granny and Papa's car sitting in the driveway, waiting for us to get home.  We'd spend the afternoon sitting around the living room.  My mom would fill me in on all the latest church gossip and my dad and Billy would talk football.  The girls would sit on papa's lap and show Granny all their new barbie stuff.  After a while, I developed a sort of sixth-sense about when they were going to show up.  I'd wake up on Sunday morning and think to myself, "Mamma and Daddy are coming over today."  Sure enough, they'd be there about an hour after church.

After the divorce, we moved to our little house in Greer.  The Greer Christmas parade was always on a Sunday afternoon, right around Hannah's birthday, which of course, meant a Sunday visit from Granny and Papa.  The parade route followed Poinsett St. and then cut through Pine street at the end, so most of the floats came zooming by our house right after the parade.  Traffic leading onto Wade Hampton would back up nearly all the way to the end of our street.  Whether or not we walked to the end of the block to watch the parade, it was an exciting day.

One such parade-day afternoon, the girls and I were getting bundled up to walk up the hill and find a spot on Poinsett to watch the parade when I heard a knock on the front door.  My mom was standing on the front stoop, my dad slowly making his way up the steps, his rigid body fighting him all the way.  They came inside and too their places, Dad in the rocking chair as always, and mom on the loveseat.  We had our usual chat while we listened to bands tromping the street outside the house, having already walked the entire parade route, they just stomped and made lots of noise.  We listened to cars full of kids laughing and singing, parade floats zooming by too fast to really be able to appreciate.  I remember feeling as though I were a kid being kept inside for recess because I was missing out on all the fun to sit and talk with my parents about such mundane things as fishing trips or hunting victories, or who was behaving badly in the family that week.

They ended up staying longer than usual because their route home was blocked by parade traffic.  We had a good visit overall, and the kids as usual, collected their dollar bills and distributed plenty of hugs to Granny and Papa before they left.  I remember that day, in particular, because I had been feeling so down, and I remember that moment when I put my arms around my daddy's big middle and squeezed him tight.  He hugged me close and reminded me that he loved me, and I felt like he loved me in spite of all the ways I had let him down.  It was a bittersweet hug that left me teary-eyed as I watched them descend the steps back to their car, watched them drive away, feeling like I should have turned out to be a better person for them.

As time went on and age caught up with them, the Sunday visits ceased.  I began to never wake up with that sense that my folks would be knocking at the door come 1:30 on Sunday afternoons.  The only time they made it to my house in those last few years was when my sister brought them over on Thanksgiving day.  Those are precious memories to me now, the way my dad always got the best seat at the table, how my mom would be almost giddy because I made her favorite side dishes.  I still feel proud that they always bragged on my turkey roasting skills.  I piled them up with leftovers to take home after I sat on the couch and dozed off with my dad watching football for a while.  Then they were off, out the door for another year.  I never treasured that enough when I had it.  Never imagined that the last time they made their way down the steep front steps from my front door to their van, it would be their last time to visit me.

Parades come and go every year, and really, what are we missing out on by not seeing a bunch of strangers in tacky floats throwing candy and singing worn out Christmas tunes?

My parents are both gone now.  I can't go put up Granny's tree for her, can't bring her a poinsettia.  I can't buy my dad his umpteenth flannel shirt for Christmas, or watch the joy on my kids' faces as they crawl up in his lap to show of their new toys.  I won't get to hear his voice crack as he tears up while saying the blessing before we eat.  I won't get to see my mom all happy and joyful over the little trinkets we found to give her for Christmas--her angel collection has all been donated here and there, parts of her scattered over the Earth like so much dust in the wind.

They were the ever-present comforts in my life, the faces and voices that I have known since the dawn of my existence.  I never quite understood how surreal it would be when they were gone and I, a forty-something child, left feeling rather displaced in the world without my anchors.  It really is like being set adrift now, with no "home" to return to for Christmas.  Sure, the house is still there, but they are not in it, and they were what made going home for Christmas feel like going home.

They've each gone to their final home.  They believed so firmly in the power of eternal life--that they'd be reunited with their own parents, their siblings, the people who left them anchorless and adrift here on Earth.  I hope with all my might that they are truly home for Christmas now, in the presence of one another and all their loved ones who have been waiting there for them.  I hope their faith bore true, and I hope that someday, I might find that same kind of strength to believe the improbable--to embrace the seemingly impossible.  I hope that when my time comes, I can find them again somewhere and sit and chat for a while, just like we used to do on Sunday afternoons.

Merry Christmas y'all.  Hold your loved ones close, even when you'd maybe rather be doing more exciting things than listening to their stories you've already heard a million times before.  The day will come when you'll wish you could hear them speak those tales just once more.  Love them, cherish them while you can.

November Haze

Driving home from town, just before I reach the turn to my road from highway 25, I catch the most breathtaking view of the Blue Wall.  Mountains that are often shrouded in summer humidity, giving the horizon a graceful curve of peaks and valleys against a canvas-like light blue sky.  It reminds me of a painting, really, with the perspectives laid out to scale, colors chosen and blended to perfection.  They call those mountains the Blue Ridge for very good reason; despite all the color of fall that usually takes our breath away, for much of the year they are the bluish hills that define the very edges of the sky under which we live, work, worry and play.

November is usually a month of color.  A coolish mix of grey skies and wet leaves, gold and garnet, orange and brown.  This year though, the rain has abandoned us, leaving the ground scattered in brown crunchy leaves, our trees looking sadly barren of their usual Autumnal show.  Far worse though, are the thick clouds of smoke masking the view of our mountains in the distance.  Some days the fog hangs so thick we nearly forget there are mountains out there in the distance.  The edges of our sky have become shapeless, thick with smoke that fills our lungs and burns our eyes.

It seems that somewhere, someone decided that destruction should win over beauty.  That smothering smoke and hazy skies were more important than a breath of fresh air and the complete awe of viewing sunlight through the canopy of a tree covered in yellow leaves.  Someone decided that for us.  They gave us no say in the matter and now we lament our loss, shake our heads in bewilderment wondering who could possibly be so ignorant, so evil, so irresponsible.

We walked outside today, the cool, dry November air nipping at our fingers as we explored our own backyard.  Thirteen acres of meadows and woods, a few trees standing resolutely off to themselves in the middle of a freshly mown field, straw crunching at our feet, we found ourselves right at home in nature.  A few birds scurried from under bushes, probably wondering what we humans might get into while in their territory.  We found a huge old rock and scaled it for the view, took some pictures of the vastness of all the untarnished land.  I looked up at the sky, big and open, no power lines or big tree limbs blocking the view and thought that field would be the perfect place for star-gazing some night soon.  The sun was sinking fast behind some trees, it's welcome warmth leaving us too soon as we tromped our way back up the hill, through the neighbor's back yard and back to ours.

We discovered piles of brush, piles of bamboo all dried out and stacked neatly together, for what purpose, no one knows.  My boy climbed on old tractors and ran up a mountain of crushed asphalt, thrilled that he'd found the perfect boyhood playground for pretending he is fighting wars and hiding from the enemy.

Eventually we came back around the last building and into our own back yard.  I stood for a moment in awe, looking down the hillside, across the huge field that faces the driveway.  I took in the beauty of Autumn's art-work, searched in vain for the mountain tops above the trees.  I could barely make out the silhouette of one rounded mountain top, shrouded in the November haze of a fire burning miles away.

Isn't it just like life?  We go about our business, smelling smoke, noticing something just isn't right, but never really fretting over it because, after all, what's happening is happening far away.  Sure, we might get a whiff of smoke or miss out on a beautiful view for a while, but really what does it have t do with us?

Meanwhile firefighters are spending days and nights away from their families.  Forest animals are scurrying to try to find new homes.  People are being evacuated from their homes for days at a time--likely worried that they might not have a home to go back to.  Kids are banned from going outside because the air quality is so poor.  No one will sit by a campfire this Thanksgiving night.  But we still carry on as though it doesn't matter.  After all, the fire will eventually go out.  It will rain again.  We'll get our fresh air back and our pretty mountain views, though singed and spoiled for a while, will grow back lush and green in a few years' time.

Our willful ignorance and our incontrovertible hopefulness, things we cling to so tightly and want to call virtues, do not allow us to see the real damage being done.

I speak of course, of our forests, our mountains and wildlife.  But I speak also of the many human spirits who suffer at the hands of injustice, prejudice, hate and ignorance.  I speak of our willful blindness to the plights of our fellow man, the ones whose entire lives consist of struggle, a kind of hardship most of us will never know.  And why should we concern ourselves with them?  Sure, we know they are there, we see the signs of their presence, but we like to believe they are miles away from us.

How many times have you driven past the run-down trailer park, and instead of wondering why the landlord runs a slum, you've judged the people who live there as being lazy, drug users, illegal immigrants, loose women, the dregs of humanity?  How  many times have you shaken your head when you saw a dirty child in too-little clothes, too shy to speak to a stranger and assumed his mother must be bad?  How often do you inventory the groceries of the mom ahead of you in line at Ingles using her EBT card to buy food for her family and silently judge her for what she purchases?

You see the smoke, but you cannot acknowledge the fire.  It's too far from you--someone else will handle it.

But what we forget when we refuse to help fight the fire is that when one of us is struggling, when one of us is fighting a fire that is overwhelming, we all eventually lose.  Why must a struggling young family who can only afford to live in a small trailer have to also live with the stigma of the people in their community assuming the worst of them because a landlord chooses not to keep up her property?  Why can't we fight that fire by demanding better for the families who want to grow and thrive and build big beautiful lives for themselves in our midst?  Why do we choose, rather than to reach out and help, to be flame throwers?

This is our hazy November, and in the coming years, the haze will grow thicker all around us, even long after the forests have ceased their burning.

What will you do in your hometown, in your own little corner of the world to find the flames of destruction and put them out before our whole country becomes engulfed?  You and I, we cannot afford to turn our heads or stay inside to avoid seeing the smoke.  We cannot count on someone else to stamp out the embers smoldering in the underbrush.

You and I, we are the firefighters, and this fight is going to be a long one.

Are you ready to suit up and take it on?

November Haze

Driving home from town just before I reach the turn to my road from highway 25, I catch the most breathtaking view of the Blue Wall. The mountain range often shrouded in summer humidity, gives the horizon a graceful curve of peaks and valleys against a canvas-like light blue sky.  It reminds me of a painting, really, with the perspectives exactingly laid out to scale, colors chosen and blended to perfection.  They it the Blue Ridge for very good reason. Despite all the color of fall that usually takes our breath away, on most days the bluish hills define the very edges of the sky under which we live, work, worry and play.

November is usually a month of color.  A coolish mix of grey skies and wet leaves, gold and garnet, orange and brown.  This year though the rain has abandoned us, leaving the ground scattered in brown crunchy leaves, our trees looking sadly barren of their usual Autumnal show.  Far worse  are thick clouds of smoke masking the view of our mountains in the distance.  Some days fog hangs so thick we nearly forget the mountains out there in the distance.  The edges of our sky shapeless, thick with smoke that fills our lungs and burns our eyes.

It seems that somewhere, someone decided that destruction should win over beauty.  That smothering smoke and hazy skies were more important than a breath of fresh air and the complete awe of viewing sunlight through the canopy of a tree covered in yellow leaves.  Someone decided that for us.  They gave us no say in the matter and now we grieve our loss, shake our heads in bewilderment wondering who could possibly be so ignorant, so evil, so irresponsible.

We walked outside today, the cool dry November air nipping at our fingers as we explored our own backyard.  Thirteen acres of meadows and woods, a few trees standing resolutely off to themselves in the middle of a freshly mown field, straw crunching at our feet, we found ourselves right at home in nature.  A few birds scurried from under bushes, probably wondering what we humans might get into while in their territory.  We found a huge old rock and scaled it for the view, took some pictures of the vastness of all the untarnished land.  I looked up at the sky big and open,  no power lines or big tree limbs blocking the view, and thought the span of Earth would make a perfect carpet for star-gazing some night soon. The sun was sinking fast behind some trees, it's welcome warmth leaving us too soon as we tromped our way back up the hill.

We discovered piles of brush, piles of bamboo all dried out and stacked neatly together, for what purpose, no one knows.  My boy climbed on old tractors and ran up a mountain of crushed asphalt, thrilled that he'd found the perfect boyhood playground for pretending he is fighting wars and hiding from the enemy.

Eventually we came back around the last building and into our own back yard.  I stood for a moment in awe, looking down the hillside across the huge field that faces the driveway.  I took in the beauty of Autumn's art-work, searched in vain for the mountain tops above the trees.  I could barely make out the silhouette of one rounded mountain top, shrouded in the November haze of a fire burning miles away.

Isn't it just like life?  We go about our business, smelling smoke, noticing something just isn't right, but never really fretting over it because, after all, what's happening is happening far away.  Sure, we might get a whiff of smoke or miss out on a beautiful view for a while, but really what does it have to do with us?

Meanwhile firefighters spend days and nights away from their families.  Forest animals are scurrying to try to find new homes.  People are being evacuated from their homes for days at a time--likely worried  they might not ever go back home. Kids are banned from going outside because the air-quality is so poor, but we still carry on as though it doesn't matter.  After all, the fire will eventually go out.  It will rain again.  We'll get our fresh air back and our pretty mountain views, though singed and spoiled for a while, will grow back lush and green in a few years' time.

Our willful ignorance and our incontrovertible hopefulness, things we cling to so tightly and want to call virtues, do not allow us to see the real damage being done.

I speak of course, of our forests, our mountains and wildlife but also of the  many human spirits who suffer at the hands of injustice, prejudice, hate and ignorance.  I speak of our willful blindness to the plights of our fellow man, the ones whose entire lives consist of struggle, a kind of hardship most of us will never know.  Why should we concern ourselves with them?  Sure, we know they are there, we see the signs of their presence, but we like to believe they are miles away from us.

How many times have you driven past the run-down trailer park, and instead of wondering why the landlord runs a slum, you've judged the people who live there as being lazy, drug users, illegal immigrants, loose women, the dregs of humanity?  How  many times have you shaken your head when you saw a dirty child in too-little clothes, too shy to speak to a stranger and assumed his mother must be bad?  How often do you inventory the groceries of the mom ahead of you in line at Ingles using her EBT card to buy food for her family and silently judge her for what she purchases?

You see the smoke, but you cannot acknowledge the fire.  It's too far from you--someone else will handle it.

But what we forget when we refuse to help fight the fire is that when one of us is struggling, when one of us is fighting a fire that is overwhelming, we all eventually lose.  Why must a struggling young family who can only afford to live in a small trailer have to also live with the stigma of the people in their community assuming the worst of them because a landlord chooses not to keep up her property?  Why can't we fight that fire by demanding better for the families who want to grow and thrive and build big beautiful lives for themselves in our midst?  Why do we choose, rather than to reach out and help, to be flame throwers?

This is our hazy November, and in the coming years, the haze will grow thicker all around us, even long after the forests have ceased their burning.

What will you do in your hometown, in your own little corner of the world to find the flames of destruction and put them out before our whole country becomes engulfed?  You and I, we cannot afford to turn our heads or stay inside to avoid seeing the smoke.  We cannot count on someone else to stamp out the embers smoldering in the underbrush.

You and I, we are the firefighters, and this fight is going to be a long one.

Are you ready to suit up and take it on?

The Four-Letter Word

I remember being small, maybe 4 or 5 years old, when I first heard my preacher speak about love.  Now, I knew about love before then.  We sang Jesus Loves Me in Sunday School, I knew my parents loved me.  I knew what it was to love something, someone.  But the first time I heard my preacher speak of love, I got the subtle message that love was maybe not a good thing.

I remember his words to the effect of, "These people who are saying God is love are weak and sinful because God is not love, he is wrath and judgment and I will not preach about God's love, I will preach about God's wrath.  If you don't like that, go to church somewhere else."  No, not his exact words, but pretty darned close.  I heard that sermon time and time again as I grew up in a Fundamentalist Baptist church in the South.  I heard it so often that without even consciously knowing it, I began to think of God as the great equalizer.  Sure, we sang Amazing Grace and learned John 3:16, but love was not something we were encouraged to nurture or embrace.  Not our love for others and not God's love for us.

Our duty, I learned, was to get Saved.  It was to separate ourselves from the rest of the world--to set ourselves apart as different, special, BETTER.  Along with that idea of separation came a long list of rules that grew ever-longer.  A defeating scroll of man-created demands that demeaned us as females and exalted the males became our new Bible.

With our effort to "separate" came the ever more urgent need to find things about ourselves that were not like the rest of the world.  We became finger pointers, condemners.  We often said things like, "Well at least I don't do THAT."  Or we'd say, "You know she wears pants....goes to the movies...moved out on her own before she got married...etc..."  It didn't matter that we also sinned.  It didn't matter that we were also imperfect and in dire need of God's grace; we suddenly felt justified in our judgment and condemnation of other people, Christians and non Christians alike.

I grew up immersed up to my neck in a church that espoused thinly veiled hatred for all things different.  Martin Luther King Jr. was referred to as a heretic so often that by the time I reached high school and listened for the first time to the "I Have a Dream" speech, I could hardly reconcile what my parents and my preacher had taught me about him with what I was hearing in his speech; a speech that brought tears to my eyes even back then.  I don't recall anyone ever saying "Don't love black people" but I don't recall anyone ever saying "Love you neighbor" either.

I grew up confused.  Our church collected money and supported about 50 different missionaries all over the world.  My best friend when I was 11, moved with her parents to Papua New Guinea.  I didn't see her for a long time but  I knew that her parents were there to teach black people about Jesus.  I knew they attended church together, ate meals together, cared about each other. But at our church, black people were not welcome.  They weren't welcome because our pastor worried that allowing black people to come to our church would encourage interracial relationships between our young girls and black boys.  I never completely understood any of it, but I went along with it because I was a kid and I did as I was told.

Problem is, as I grew up I actually adopted some of those beliefs.  It was not out of hatred that I embraced those beliefs but out of ignorance and a sincere desire to do right.  These things, I was taught, were right.

In my late teens I started working at a daycare center where I cared for children of every race.  I remember a little Japanese boy who cried for his mom all day, a little Hispanic three year old who knew how to curse in Spanish and get away with it.  I knew a sweet, dark skinned, big smiled boy named Danny who stole my heart.  Danny was adopted by a white woman who was a senior citizen. She brought him to the center every day to get a break and to give him the chance to play with other kids.  He was long and lanky, a fast moving little creature who couldn't nap without a back rub and a blankie.

At the time I was pregnant with my first daughter.  On weekends I sometimes babysat Danny.  One weekend in particular my ex husband and I took him to a carnival near our house.  I was walking around at one point, carrying Danny, his skinny rear perched atop my pregnant belly, looking for my husband, when I noticed sidelong glances being shot my way.  Every white person I passed looked at me in utter disgust.  I heard people make comments behind me as I passed them.  One person even yelled the N word as I walked by.  Perhaps he was referring to me, or to Danny but in that instance I realized I had been wrong all my life.  It took coming face to face with that kind of hatred for me to realize people are people.  Love is love.  Hate is ugly and it always will be.

I grew up attending a church where known sex offenders took up space on pews every Sunday.  They held office, sang in the choir, had continued access to new victims.  I witnessed a leadership in my church that turned a blind eye to sexual assault and abuse.  It seemed so easy for them to do, that I began to think it should have come easier to me too.  I forced myself to be kind and gracious to my own abuser, and to the abusers of other girls and women in our congregation because that's what was modeled for me by my church leadership and even by my family.  I shared Christmas and Thanksgiving dinner with my abuser, year after year feeling it was my duty as a Christian to forgive even though he was not repentant.  Feeling it was my duty to not speak of it, to pretend it never happened.  It was easier for everyone to ignore it, gloss over it or claim their Salvation undid the harm these men caused.

One of them had the gall to come up to me at my dad's funeral a few weeks ago.  He's old now, shaky from Parkinson's Disease, but still as bold as ever.  He stood there trying to hold a conversation with me, wanting to tell me all about his illness.  I walked away.

I know now what I didn't know then.  I do not have to accept anyone into my life, especially someone who is harmful to me or to others. I know that I can deny them access to me without hatred in my own heart, and that it's okay to hold people accountable for their unacceptable and harmful behavior.  I no longer have to look the other way or pretend it never happened.  I no longer want to.

It's easy for me to see how so many people were able to overlook the sexually predatory behavior of our president-elect.  I grew up seeing the same thing in my church. Here is where I get to my point.

My heart is broken, not because a man I don't support won the presidency, but because on a smaller scale, right before our eyes and in front of impressionable young minds, these same attitudes and abilities to gloss over things so atrocious are affecting people in deep, lasting ways.  It brings back the trauma of seeing my abuser sing in the choir.  It makes me remember that my being victimized was not a problem for the adults in my life--but my inability to forget about it was.

It makes me remember the time I wanted my friend Benita to come home with me on a Friday to spend the night, so excited to spend time with my friend, and having my mama say she couldn't come after she found out she was black.  It makes me ashamed of where I came from.

However, there is hope.  If someone like me, someone who was raised in such a bubble or racism and ignorance can find her way out of that mess, other people can too.  For me it took getting away from my hometown, creating distance between myself and those who would have held me back, and it took really getting in the trenches with my fellow man in places of servitude.  I've worked with people of all ages, from infants to old people, people of all races, all sexual orientations, all religions.  I've worked with them as they came into the world and as they took their last breaths.  I have seen what humanity is, and I know that at our core, we are all worthy of the same love, respect and positive regard.  I learned better.

Other people can learn too, but we might just have to take them by the hands and pull them along. We might have to show them that they have nothing to fear from opening their hearts and minds to people who are different from them; to people who believe differently, look different, love differently.  It might still take time for them to learn that another person's way of life doesn't threaten theirs, and that their beliefs can stay their own without becoming a threat to others.

I'm not losing hope because I know where I came from.  I know I haven't arrived at perfection, and I know I have a long way still to go.  I will try to have patience and extend my hand to anyone who is brave enough to come with me to a place of love and acceptance.  I hope we can find mutual understanding of the fears and heartaches we have all endured, and realize that humanity makes none of us immune to hurt.  I hope we can all learn to treat each other as equals, that no one is ever promoted over another as superior or favored by God.

Love is not a dirty word.

Consider The Ravens

The skies are clear this morning, baby-blue, with just a hint of amber sunlight feathered in around the edges as day breaks over the treetops.  On the way home from dropping Charlie off at school I caught myself getting lost in my own head, going over my mental list of urgent things that need my attention.  I rounded the last curve before I came close to my driveway and for some reason, looked up.  Three birds like tiny black specks were flying overhead in the chill of this autumn morning, probably in search of breakfast.  It dawned on me that birds worry about nothing really.  They know with every day and every season what their task is all about. It's surviving, living to see another Spring.  They don't care whether or not their nests are big and fancy, don't care if another bird has a better one than them.  They just live.

I suppose that could be said for all of nature, except of course for mankind.  It's really no one else's fault that we put our own lives under such scrutiny.  Instead of just enjoying what we have, we worry about what we're missing.  I wonder if sometimes, we examine life too closely.  We concern ourselves too much with what someone else might think of us; we have to dress just so, drive a car that says something about us, live in a house that is impressive to others.  And if by chance, we find ourselves among the less fortunate of society, we shame ourselves for not keeping up.  It seems like  a trap we humans set for ourselves so far back in time that no one knows when it all started.

The knot in my own stomach is becoming heavy and tiresome.  I am overwhelmed with all the "must dos" to the point of almost feeling paralyzed.  My time is never my own anymore, it belongs to work, or other people, or to the Social Security Administration.  It belongs to figuring out how to convince a hospital that they made a mistake, so I'm don't end up being penalized for their mistake.  It belongs to figuring out how to pay the bills and get a car that is driveable to wherever I need to go.

All I want to do is live.  Wouldn't it be grand if we could all just take flight in early morning sunrises, in search of food and adventure?  How awesome would it be if we could live like the birds do?

Life just isn't made as easy for us humans as it is for birds.  If we could fly, we wouldn't worry over cars.  I'm most pleased though, that my sustenance consists of more than worms and bugs or kind seeds and biscuit crumbs that little old ladies leave in the yard for me.  I suppose we make a fair trade with the fowls, in exchange for the inability to fly.  I know that worrying is often a choice I make.  I have rarely gone with an unmet need.

We humans, blessed with big ol' brains and hearts that hold a multitude of emotions are blessed in different ways.  For all the tending we must do, all the anxiety we carry with us, a deep well of  inner experience is ours for the living.  We take the joy and sorrow, the victory and defeat as we see fit.  We allow ourselves the freedom, not to fly above the clouds, but to draw from our own souls whatever feeling in which we want to indulge as life throws curveballs at us. Lately I've drawn up some heavy sorrow, deep grief, some frustration and anxiety; but I know that I can always send the bucket down again, draw up something more fulfilling.  I can sit with this bucket-full of dreary-ness today in perfect hope that in time, something better will bubble up.  A refinement of sorts, that can only be created from times of drought and despair will eventually spring up from my soul, giving me just what I need to keep facing another sunrise.

You know, I rarely reference scripture, but those three tiny birds I saw this morning made this portion pop into my head.  I share it with you here, in the spirit of our mutual humanity.  May your worries and mine be set aside, if only for today.

Luke 12:22-26

22 And He said unto His disciples, “Therefore I say unto you, take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat; neither for the body, what ye shall put on.

23 The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment.

24 Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap, they neither have storehouse nor barn, and God feedeth them. How much more are ye better than the fowls?

25 And which of you by taking thought can add to his stature one cubit?

26 If ye then be not able to do that thing which is least, why take ye thought for the rest?

Early October

The rain usually begins to fall in early October.  It plasters bright yellow leaves to dark wet pavement, sticks Tthem to the sides of your car and gets them caught under the windshield wipers.  On breezy days the leaves tumble down like confetti; driving to work feels like a celebration.  We get a few days to enjoy the color of impending winter, a few days before it's time to rake the leaves and let the kids dive into them, when trees simply show off.  Early October heralds a transformation from warmth to coldness, from color to grey; but we embrace it with joy for the short reprieve it gives us.  A respite from the summer heat, and a pause before the chill of winter, it intrigues us somehow.

This year there has been no rain.  Early October has been dry, the colors dulled by a lack of summer storms.  They say the leaves will not make a big show of themselves this time, that we will wake up one morning and find they've blown to the ground in heaps of brown, leaving the blue-grey mountains in the distance looking naked and sad.  The trees in my yard will remain in their standing places, reaching their spindly branches upward, daring winter to do it's best.

A week ago I stood beside my father's bed.  I held his hand as best I could but he couldn't squeeze my hand in his like he used to when I was a girl.  I played a song for him, one we used to sing as a congregation in church, and I watched his face, calm and peaceful as he took it all in.  I turned my head to hide my tears from him; he cried so easily already, and it seemed unkind to let him witness my heart breaking because I knew this was the last time we would share these songs together.  We watched red birds out his window, fighting over deer corn and birdseed, saw a few birds that neither of us recognized.  He watched for deer dropping by. I watched for a sign.

Signs never come the way we expect them to.  I suppose if it happened that way we would say it was no big deal.  The sign I wanted wasn't outside that window, or in that room with my dad's heaving chest.  It never came in all the hours I sat beside him and wished he could stay a little longer--be himself again for just a little while.  I missed him so, already, since years before he took his last breath and his memory began to fade, transforming him into someone I hardly recognized.  Someone who often didn't recognize me anymore.

Two years ago in the tumbling dry leaves of early October I took the same drive through the country to my parents' place where I sat beside my Mama in the big red recliner she was so happy to have.  I held her hand in mine and smiled into her face.  I saw the Mama of my early childhood smiling back at me--the mama that nurtured me and treated me with tenderness.  She wanted to know if I was okay.  Even in her last hours, she was worrying about me.  I told her I was happy.  It was a lie, but at the time, it seemed only right to tell her what she wanted to hear.  Her sigh and smile, her relaxed hand in mine let me know that my words made peace in her heart, and I felt nothing but pure love for her in that beautiful moment.  I became a daughter without a mother, but I didn't know yet, what being motherless would come to mean.

Early October, my dad sat in his recliner looking forlorn.  This man sat pondering the great unraveling of a life carefully built through years of sweat and tears, through poverty and times of abundance.  The cords of life we so tightly twisted together, were finally fraying at the edges, threatening to unfurl and fall in a pile at our feet, everything unwound.  His eyes lost their focus for things in front of him.  When we talked, I saw a far off gaze in them; he was looking past this place and time and I couldn't reach him anymore.  He was there, I was here, and between us a great divide.

Mid October he cried a lot.  He told me the story over and over again, sometimes forgetting I was his girl.

October, a month of transformation, of celebration and yes, even warning that something more dreadful is to come, heralds for me now a reminder of how stuck we become in living here in cycles year after year, expecting all that is beautiful to be eternal.  But nothing lasts forever, does it?  Not even the love of a parent for a child, or a faithful husband for his wife.  Nothing living survives the first frost of Late October.  Houseplants get brought inside, gardens turn brown and even the grass turns sallow, yellow with winter's death.

It is two years now since I became a motherless daughter.  I was just beginning to learn how to feel about missing a parent from my life.  She died on a Sunday morning, October 11.

Last Monday night I drove in the dark to my father's bedside.  I kissed his head and spoke loving words in his ear.  He was barely breathing then, not responding at all though I hoped he heard me say "I love you".  I kissed his forehead once again, squeezed his big hand and left him there.  I knew I would not see him alive again.

It was a Tuesday morning, October 11, when he took his last breath and left us all--adults but orphaned.

Was this the sign I was looking for? Was this day and time,  when my creators took their departure from the cycle of seasons, the symbol of hope I needed?

Mid October, I sit on my couch and cry.  I'm trying to keep my eyes focused on the here and now but the here and now is not very encouraging.  I wonder if I'm meant to be here still.  Am I fighting a battle that should be left for God to decide in my stead?  Why do I keep connecting myself to a machine every night, racking up medical bills I can never pay, and for which I will pay by trapping myself in a cycle of poverty where my needs and those of my child are never fully met.  Is it worth all this--this life of "less than" that I have to live in order to survive?  Who am I helping more than I'm hurting here?

Late October's coming fast.  One windy night and the trees will be starkly bare, the ground scattered with the remains of summer that must be raked away and destroyed--forgotten.  I wonder if all we are and all we do in this life is merely in preparation for October; the beginning of an end, and the end of something we desperately wanted to hang onto.

This year we will dutifully play our roles.  We'll clear away the dregs of summer, pray for rain.  We will search for the bright side of all the transformation and try to find the lessons in our trials.

But my mom and dad, they already lived all their Octobers.  They lived the early weeks and transformative days and the stark, empty skeletons of trees as winter approached.  They lived them all until they couldn't anymore, and in the sunrises of Early October mornings, they closed their eyes to it all.  They left it to us--all the doing and changing and struggling.

And since early October has passed, and mid-October forces itself upon us, I am witnessing how real the struggle is.  I'm acknowledging that for me, it isn't over.  My early October morning hasn't come.

So I will carry on.

Garlic

I'm a clove of garlic.

Encased in a hardish shell, a thin layer of dried up peel on top, lumped together with a bunch of other cloves, smelling up the fridge, making the ice taste weird.

Maybe in a way we are all just cloves of garlic.  Some of us prefer to stay clustered up close together, wrapped tightly in that paper-like covering, hidden beneath layers of other cloves so we can blame the smell on someone else if we have to.

Not me.  I'm the clove that got broken off and set aside.  My nice cozy dried-up peel has been stripped away and there I lay, naked, waiting to be smashed or peeled open or chopped up or heaven forbid, pressed into some kind of sauce.

I know.  We are all supposed to be Salt and Light, adding flavor and illumination to the world around us, but most of us are just garlic.  We cling together as if our lives depend on it, terrified of spending time alone, anxious that somehow we're going to be exposed--that people will figure out we stink on the inside or that we are too weak to withstand the pressure of life.

I am the garlic that stands alone.  Not that I'm complaining.  You see, there are times, when you are at your garlicky worst, that you're doing yourself and the world around you a big favor by staying away from everyone.  Times when you just aren't good company.

This is one of those times for me.  I have not forgotten from whence I came, and I know how to find my way back to my people--my cluster, if you will.  However, this is one time that I feel like keeping to myself is best for me and for them.

Stress sometimes makes us unpleasant to be around, and grief and illness compound that unpleasantness.  I just wish I could get other people to understand this.  I am not lonely, I don't need to be cheered up.  I need to be alone with my thoughts and feelings.  I need some time to iron out all the annoying wrinkles that are making my life complicated.  Things like broken down cars, and issues with the DMV and insurance nightmares and medical decisions and paperwork that the government needs even though they already know the information they're asking me to provide for them.  I need time to stay the heck home and not spend money so I can pay my bills because I missed a week of work last week and a day of work this week.  I need time to learn how to feel about not having parents anymore.

The grief is bigger than me right now and I'm finding it paralyzing.  I'd rather sleep than problem-solve, but when I lie down to rest, sleep doesn't come.  Instead I am flooded with memories and thoughts of what it will be like for my kids when I die.  When I do dream, my dad shows up, doing regular things like fixing the boat and fiddling with fishing poles.  My mama is there sometimes, being the gregarious woman she sometimes could be--pointing out some knick knack she'd like to add to her collection.  My dad shows up to tell me he can't find his guitar, and asks me if I still play piano.  He's like he was 20 years ago--robust and red-faced, his memory intact.  He laughs and teases and I just want to reach out and squeeze him.  But they are just dreams and waking up from them is the absolute worst.

Then the morning sunlight dares to force its way past the curtain by my bed and remind me that it's time to start over again.  Another day to pretend that life is the same, business as usual.  That pile of papers on the kitchen counter that shame me because I still haven't dealt with them make me shake my head at my own inadequacy.  Then there's that blinking battery light in the car that taunts me--"You just thought you solved the car problem."  And my boy, worried about his grades, missing school because he's sick, his teacher likely thinking I'm the best candidate for worst mom of the year.

I feel like I'm in a garlic press.  All these little things putting more and more pressure on me, trying their best to squeeze me out and make me into something more than what I am.

As my father lived his life, I want to live mine; with the wisdom to know that on my own I am just a smelly old clove of garlic, but when I'm pressed and squeezed and chopped--when my tough exterior is stripped away, I can be something more.  He gave flavor to his world; instead of odor, he was an aroma, instead of clinging tightly to his place in the world, he allowed himself to be broken off and transformed.  I want to do that too, but right now, I think I need to be left alone for just a while, so I can marvel at my own stench and figure out who or what is worth being transformed for.

I wonder if my dad ever needed this, and then I know he did.  He had it, early mornings in the woods, sitting in the cold quiet of nature in a tree stand.  He had it on a lake all alone with just a fishing pole and the sound of water lapping the sides of the boat.  He took his time, and he still gave himself away.  So please understand that I am not shunning anyone.  I'm just trying to get my balance.

People keep saying, "If there's anything I can do...."  and I always just answer "Thank you" because really, what can anyone do?

Nobody likes the garlic when it's withered up or too strong; and I am just a clove of garlic.

If you will give me some time, I will spare you my stinkiness and everything will be okay again.  Eventually.

Deal With It

Of course by now everyone realizes that Donald Trump is a woman-hating troll of a man who is so proud of his sense of entitlement that he doesn't realize how evil it is to grope, kiss, or "grab" a woman without her consent.  Even Republicans, after this last episode, are distancing themselves from hm.  There's that pesky rape charge too, you know, the one where he's accused of raping a 13 year old girl, and for which there are several witnesses who have come forward to back up the girl's story.  It's apparently compelling enough, evidence wise, that a federal judge has decided the case needs to move forward against Trump.

All of this seems to have started a new conversation across social media.  Today on Twitter Kelly Oxford opened a dialogue about sexual assault by inviting women to share stories of their own "first time" being assaulted.  The stories are poignant, direct and chilling because they're real--because too many of us have similar stories.  Most of us can give example after example of times we were groped, kissed against our wills, held down, asked too-personal questions by perfect strangers, been ignored when we said no.

There are those who would have us believe that Trump's behavior in that recording that was just released is just par for the course.  They say all men engage in such banter, outside the earshot of women, of course.  I say that's not true.  In my lifetime, I've known far too many men who would be mortified to even hear another guy use such language about women.  They would be angered to hear a man speak so casually of sexual assault, would likely get defensive of the women they love if they heard someone speaking in such a way.  Funny thing is, all those men of whom I speak are likely Republican, conservative Christian men.  Yet, they seem to find a moral loophole that makes it okay for them to support someone like Trump.  Even some women are finding ways around this issue so they can stay true to their party.  Party loyalty these days, seems to be synonymous with the betrayal of our own best interests.

We send a message every time a very public case of sexual assault hits the headlines and we excuse it away or blame the victim for it, we manage to silence girls in elementary school who are groped by high school students or teachers or dad's friends.  We silence the teenage girl who is forced into performing sexual acts on her coach, her youth leader, or her boyfriend.  We silence girls who are molested by step-dads and uncles and older siblings.  We tell them that it won't matter if they do speak up, no one will believe them.  We tell them that "men just do that stuff" and we as women "just have to deal with it."  Sexual assault, degradation, harassment have all become so commonplace for women that we consider it just another fact of life.  We do a poor job of teaching our daughters to guard their bodies, to protect themselves by being prepared to speak up when someone crosses a line with them because we are complacent.  We are complacent because in a way, I believe we feel defeated.

How many times do you get your breasts squeezed, or your ass rubbed, or have some guy try to put his hand up your skirt before you just resign yourself to the idea that this is how life is?

A few years back a guy friend of mine called me up on a Saturday night and asked if I wanted to go get some dinner.  I was bored, at home with no kids, so I said, sure, sounds fun.  I offered to meet him at the restaurant but he said  no, he'd pick me up. We went out and had a nice dinner, good conversation, he insisted on picking up the check.  Now mind you we never had any kind of romantic interaction before this.  We were friends, and my understanding was that we were a couple of friends going out to dinner.  That's it.  When he dropped me off, he insisted on walking me to the door, despite my saying it really wasn't necessary.  By the time I had the door unlocked and stepped inside to put my keys down, he was in my house, closing the door behind him.  I did not invite him in.  My dog was going wild, still a puppy and needed to go out.  I grabbed her leash and headed for the back door.  He followed me, stood over me while I walked her, and then followed me back inside the house.  I put down the leash, patted my dog and stood up.  He was right in front of me, grabbed me and started forcefully kissing me-shoving his tongue in my mouth.  I couldn't get away from him.  When he finally let go, I told him he needed to go.  I wasn't forceful enough, I was actually worried about hurting his feelings!  I told him I had to work the next day and couldn't stay up late.  I repeated that phrase a dozen times and fended off forceful kisses and hands groping me for the next 20 minutes until I finally convinced him to leave.  To this day he does not understand why I will not speak to him or show up at any function where he's likely to be in attendance.  He honestly saw NOTHING wrong with his behavior.

I've been groped at work, by clients and by coworkers.  On my first day of school a sixth grade boy ran his hand up my inner leg, underneath my skirt and other boys laughed about it.  In seventh grade a guy who was supposedly gay grabbed my crotch at the afternoon bus line and hollered to draw attention to what he was doing.  In high school my youth director from church would take me home last after church parties, and start sexually inappropriate conversations with me on the bus ride to my house.  He would make comments about how well I was "developing" and ask me if I had a boyfriend, and if I had kissed him, among other things.  When I was twelve a family member fondled me on a walk home from the store.  I've been cat-called, verbally demeaned (boys in middle school called me dildo lips because I had full lips.  I didn't even know what a dildo was) and forced to have sex against my will within a romantic relationship.  The sad thing?  Too many women in this world have stories just like mine, stories far worse than mine, and they are normalized.

We are made to believe that because men are men, we should expect and learn to live with these behaviors from them.  We shouldn't complain or press charges or even tell our parents when we are assaulted because, men just do that stuff.

My question for those people who are so quickly finding moral loopholes for Trump's behavior is this:  Would you be okay with what he said if he were saying it about your daughter? Your wife? Your mom?  Your sister?

Because there are a million other men just like him out there, and they likely are saying those things about the women and girls you love.  Worse yet, they are the ones groping them, fondling them, degrading them and raping them.  If you okay this behavior for one of them, you condone it for all of them.  Is that the guy you want to be?  Is that who you are?

And to those women who are buying into the idea that this "common" behavior is excusable in "certain instances" ask yourselves, if it were you in any of the above mentioned situations, which one would you find excusable?

There is nothing normal or acceptable in the entitled attitude that allows a man to believe he can behave any way he wants with women.  There is no moral loophole that excuses a man for "grabbing her by the pussy" or even kissing a woman against her will just because he thinks she's beautiful.  If you can find a way to make this okay in your mind, you need professional help.  I know that sounds snarky, but it is not meant to be.  If you are a woman, excusing this kind of behavior means you have a serious deficit in self-esteem.  If you are a man who defends this behavior, you are likely an abusive, narcissistic person. In either case, you need intervention; and as a country, we need to intervene and stand up for women and girls everywhere who are too often on the receiving end of sexual assault in all its various forms.

Heavy Like A Cloud

We woke up to sunny skies this morning.  The Autumn sunrise hung deep on the horizon as I drove my boy to school and I, too short to be helped by the visor, squinted my way around corners and curves, nearly cursing the light but stopping just short of it because something inside me honors it far too reverently to fling expletives carelessly at it.  Even in its harshest glare we treasure it, for darkness cannot exist where it is near and in its illumination, all of life somehow takes on a lightness that defies gravity itself.  It is the lightness of a new day, with the renewed hope and grace--of morning,  that takes the heaviness out of our step.  The same big, clumsy, burdened feet that just last night carried us to our bed of slumber, in the brightness of morning somehow bear the weight of merely our own souls by the time we trudge our way from the bedroom to the front door.  There is nothing lighter than a soul, although we sometimes swear the loads we carry inside us are like anvils, tied to our backs; or better yet, like a  dark ominous thunder cloud, deep inside of us, full to the point of wringing itself out, threatening to drench us with its oppressive  torrential downpour.

I have spent the last few days at the bedside of my father.  He who was the second to greet me into this world, who was there for all the most memorable days of my life, who graced me with his unconditional love and acceptance has lain in peacefully resting while we, the family he created, lingered close by.  We took turns about him, holding his hand, speaking our own peace to him, our lips to his ear, waiting anxiously for his labored responses, for even in his last breaths we want him to remind us of his love for us.  

My dad has lived an amazing life.  He spent many a long hot day bobbing around the lake on his boat, the hot summer sun scorching his ears and neck, making his nose peel from the burn.  In his old age, he suffered the effects of it.  His ears are now deformed from so many surgeries to remove skin cancers.  Part of the nose I used to know is no longer there, and the lips that kissed my infant forehead have also lost substance to the relentless scorching of the sun.  Still, I look at him and see my father, weathered and worn, he remains the defining figure in the epoch of my childhood.  Outwardly so much has changed about both he and I; our bodies in their own ways, have already lost some battles.  But even in these final days when I sit by his side, I long to lay my head on his chest and listen to his heartbeat, just as when I was a small girl marveling at the greatness that lived inside him.  I long to hear that voice coming from deep in his belly, to feel the comfort of his arms around me--to have his assurance, just one more time, that everything in the whole world will be okay.  

Troubles multiply, just like droplets inside a cloud.  They all cluster together inside my mind and overwhelm my thoughts with "what if" and "maybe".  I find myself trying to predict what will happen next so I can be prepared, but life isn't like a weather report, and there are some things for which umbrellas are not made.  You can never expect the grief that falls upon you when you look the very source of your own being in the eye and know that soon, he will be removed from the place he's always occupied in your life.  

Cars break down and children struggle with school work.  Babies are busy forming fingers and toes and little noses, while mommies work too hard and daddies lose track of priorities.  Some kid a few towns over figures life isn't worth the trouble--at least, other people's live aren't, and decides to end them before anyone else gets a say in his plan.  A father lingers close to death, while a Mommy and Daddy follow a tiny casket down the aisle of a church; their little hero ripped from their lives far too soon.  A hurricane teases at the coastline chasing people from their homes, its darkness consuming the day around it.  People stand to lose all they own in this world.  None of it seems fair.

This evening as I was driving home from visiting my father there was a noticeable lack of sunlight. The sun should have been there, hanging low and Westerly, just above the hills peeking through the treetops.  Instead, a singularly dark cloud hung heavy over its light.  It spared me from my squinting and swearing, but it reminded me too, that trouble often awaits over the next hilltop.  Its heaviness made my feet drag as I made my way inside the house.  

I came inside, found my way to this spot on my couch that always welcomes me home, and sank into it with all the weight of grief and uncertainty resting deep in my own belly.  My head, heavy from all the thinking, looked for a soft place to land.  

And then, before my hand could reach for the remote, a tiny sliver of sunlight shot its beam from low in the sky, right through a tiny void where the curtain should meet the wall.  With it shining thus, I could see the color of my own lashes, mascara long washed away from the tears of that cloud inside my head.  Red lashes, just like my dad's.  

I sat without moving, letting the sun slide lower through the crack until finally, it was gone.  Nothing but the orange glow of sunset remains now, giving ambience to my living room.  We all sometimes need a comforting place to land, where the light can find us and where it can linger just long enough to make our hearts glow with hope again.

Even though the darkest cloud you've ever seen might be hanging heavy over your head; I hope you too can find your safe, comfortable place.  I pray the light will reach you, remind you that even what you have lost will never completely be gone as long as you are here to carry on.  Every life that we have cherished perseveres, in the blink of eyelashes or in the lilt of a laugh, that soul you loved lives on in you.  Let that eternal flame of love and remembrance become the light that lifts the darkness from your soul.  Let it make your feet lighter.  Let it glow through you like the sinking evening sunset through a West-facing window.  

Heavy clouds will come and go.  The Light will always remain.

Fundamental Faith

Until recently I never realized there was such a thing as a Christian who wasn't also a Fundamentalist.  When I was being raised in a Christian household, attending a Baptist church 3 times a week and never missing a week of revival, camp meeting or youth group meetings on Saturdays, the word Fundamental was brandished about like a sword, cutting through all the evil and untruth in the big scary world outside our bubble where Satan's minions waited to trip us up on all things worldly.

"We are Independent, Fundamental, Bible Believing Christians!" Our pastor would shout. Our fathers would answer back with perfunctory "Amens!" Our mama's would nod in enthusiastic agreement.

Surely Fundamentalism was a good thing, right?

I admit, as a kid growing up and even as a young adult heavily involved in my church, I never really knew what it mean to be a Fundamentalist.  At some point I came to realize that being Fundamentalist meant we believed in the Bible as the inspired, literal word of God.  Literal, meaning everything in there besides the parables of Jesus, were to be taken as the absolute, infallible truth.

Okay, I could accept that, I thought.  After all, I sat through hundreds of Sunday Schools where my teacher beautifully illustrated stories from both the Old and New Testaments, bringing them to life, making them seem as real as anything.  I spent my entire life listening to pastors read scripture and then tell us in great detail what each passage meant in its literal form, had listened to them as they told us what "those other" denominations believed and why they were wrong.  I memorized long passages, believing that someday my right to consume God's Word (only the 1611 King James Version was the "inspired one") would be forcefully ripped away from me, and then the only connection to God I would have would be what I'd managed to "hide in my heart."

As I matured, my curiosity and thirst for knowledge led me to delve deeper into scripture on my own.  I read the Old Testament in fascination--the history, the violence, the passion and shocking wrath of God was enthralling.  The imperfections of David, the man after God's own heart, spoke to me in ways that no pastor or teacher had ever been able to illuminate, usually because they focused more on the victorious King David, and less on the very human, humbled and flawed man.  If they did speak about his imperfections, it was to admonish us about our own sinful ways and remind us that a wrathful God waited with impudence to exact his swift and terrible punishment upon us for our human failings.

This literal interpretation of every word in the Bible eventually clashed with my very human, very natural God-given ability to think; to reason as it were, that nothing written in scripture was actually penned by God's own hand.  We can't even credit one book of the Bible to Jesus himself, who walked among men and lived as one of us.  It began to nag at me that if God wanted us to have his pure, unadulterated words, he would have written them himself, wouldn't he?  Because he's God after all, and God knows how imperfect humans are.  God knows that our own ideas, biases and life experiences color everything we touch.  Naturally then, a mere sinful man writing letters or journals or historical accounts of Jesus would only be able to write those words from his very human, imperfect perspective.

I first began to question the infallibility of scripture when I studied Paul's letters to the church.  The more I read, the  more I disliked Paul.  Paul, above other writers of the new testament, seemed the expert on wisdom and authority concerning families, marriage,  and a woman's place in the church and in society.  The more I studied, the more I saw him as the author of Christian patriarchy, objectifying  women as nothing more than spiritual hindrances, their sexuality scorching the loins of men with desire that would, in the end render them inadequate servants for God.  Taking a wife was deemed the only way for a man to free himself from the sin of fornication; yet marriage was a weakness that kept a man from engaging himself in the full service of the Lord.  From Paul I learned that I had nothing of value to say, and that even my questions about church or scriptural matters were so inferior I wasn't allowed to ask them of anyone besides my husband.  From Paul I learned that the best I could hope for in life, was to be a submissive wife and mother to my poor husband, who due to my overpowering sexual prowess, was already reduced to a lesser man.    My job was to make my husband's life easier, to support him in whatever endeavor he chose and to always, always stay in the shadows to make up for the way I had interfered in his service to God.  My Fundamentalist church heartily embraced these views and took them a few steps further by imposing rules on women that even the Paul couldn't have dreamed up.

First of all, we were taught that a man's sexual failings were our fault.  Therefore, we were given a strict dress code to be followed at all times.  Women were forbidden from "dressing like a man" because of some scripture in the Old Testament that said women should not wear "that which pertaineth to a man".  Fundamentalist interpretation of that:  Women could not wear any kind of jeans, slacks, shorts or pants.  No sweat pants, no pajamas, nothing in which we would actually put on "one leg at a time".  There were rules about the skirts and dresses too.  Nothing above the knee, and preferably something well below our knees.  We could not wear anything tailored to fit the curves of our bodies, even loosely.  Neck lines could not be low enough to reveal the fact that we had breasts at all, much less low enough to show a millimeter of cleavage.  We were not allowed to wear sleeveless blouses or dresses unless we covered our shoulders with a sweater or shawl, and if your bra showed through the armhole of your sleeveless dress, well, you had better get yourself to the altar post-haste and repent.  Skirts/dresses could not have slits that went above the knee, and we were to eschew all things "modern".  Modern was a word that could take on a different meaning on any given day, so something that was acceptable yesterday might become "Modern" and not acceptable the next.  It was okay for us to wear makeup, but not too much.  We could have shorter hair, but not too short.  In most matters such as makeup and grooming, we were instructed to defer to our husbands or fathers, giving us the notion that as females, we were far too ignorant to discern the proper way to dress and groom ourselves.

There are so many rules and regulations (called "standards" by our church) I could talk about.  However, I don't want to get marred in all the legalistic mumbo jumbo that serves no purpose other than to muddy the waters of faith.

As I matured, experienced real life a bit more, and came to finally understand the shallow, unfulfilling nature of the faith with which I had been raised, I grew disenfranchised with my church and its beliefs.

 It didn't happen overnight.  I once bought a pair of jeans to wear out in the thicket behind our house to pick blackberries.  I remember dropping my denim skirt to the floor, stepping into those well-worn, secondhand blue jeans and feeling a little guilty at being so comfortable in them.  I bought a pair of shorts to wear outside when my girls were splashing in the kiddie pool  and was mortified one day, when some church folks dropped in unannounced and "caught" me wearing them. I went from gleefully chasing my daughters around the yard with buckets of water to feeling deeply ashamed and apologetic. I immediately went inside to change back into a skirt.

In small ways over time, I began to step outside my spiritual comfort zone.  I began to feel comfortable wearing jeans to the grocery store, and eventually didn't feel ashamed if I ran into a fellow church member while dressed in "non approved" attire.  I felt no further or closer to God, but I was beginning to feel more freedom to just be.  I struggled often with the anxiety of having spent so much of my life following the rules, trying to be a Good Christian, trying to be a Godly Woman--a Proverbs 31 Woman yet somehow always falling  short.  I would never be able to please God, it seemed.

I was a young mother of two daughters.  The wife of a deacon, youth leader choir director.  I played the piano sometimes, sang in the choir helped out with the kids at church.  I read my Bible every day. I lived in a state of prayer.

But  I was lonely, unfulfilled and unhappy.  How could that be? I would wonder.  If I am reading my Bible, praying, and NOT breaking the rules, shouldn't I be happy and good enough for something or someone?

It didn't help that I was married to a Fundamentalist man who was raised by a Fundamentalist pastor.  His father, a verbally abusive, angry, volatile man was never fond of me. I came from a poor family.  My sisters were notoriously imperfect, as was I.  My mother, in my father in law's opinion,  was often without style or class.  My husband grew up in a family with a fairly charmed life. After we were married, his life changed very little.   He worked, walked in the door to a home cooked meal every night, then sat on the couch watching TV until midnight.  I cared for our children alone.  He played with6 them, hugged and kissed them. I did all the work.  He insisted I also work, at least part time, but that didn't mean he would take any part in helping me find reliable, safe childcare for our daughters.  Childcare was always MY problem because the kids were MY job...but then, I made no money caring for his children and unless I made money, I was not considered to be earning my keep.  So I worked, I did all the housework (which was never done to his satisfaction) I did all the budgeting, shopping, cooking.  His day would be over at 6:00 when he came home.  I worked until 6:00 and came home, cooked dinner, bathed the kids, put them to bed and then crashed, often after refusing his sexual advances and then feeling shamed for days as he pouted and gave me the silent treatment for having been to tired to have sex with him.

From the outside, our marriage seemed ideal.  I did love him very much, but in retrospect, I had no idea why I loved him.  He was honestly not always very kind to me and was an extremely selfish man.


My true exodus from Fundamentalism began in 1997.  I worked for the department of health at the time.  My job was visiting mothers of newborns at the hospital, teaching them how to care for their infants and giving them information on how to sign up for government assistance once they were discharged.  The mother-baby unit was on the 6th floor of the hospital at that time.  One floor down, cancer patients languished on the Oncology unit.  My pastor and his wife were often sitting in the ICU waiting area, either alone or with other family members, waiting for the next ten minute visitation time with their 37 year old son who was dying from a glioblastoma.  Their son, an evangelist, gifted pianist and father of two boys, was, in my mind at the time, as good a Christian as anyone could hope to be.  Yet there he lay, losing more of the battle with each passing day, his family clinging to every second they could glean before he died.

For me it became an experience of extreme spiritual dissonance.  I was to believe that God was just, that he rewarded the faithful and punished the unfaithful.  Yet what I was witnessing was the opposite of that.  I was witnessing a God that made no sense.  I was taught to believe that God can heal, God answers prayer and that when two people agree about something, in God's name, they will have it.  Thousands of people prayed for this young man who lay in that hospital bed, his brain ravaged by disease, his memory fading more and more, each organ in his body forgetting how to work, shutting down, marking him out from his sons' lives, his parent's lives, the lives of many who had prayed for his healing.

I was told I was bitter.  Angry. Wrong for believing God did not answer these prayers.  I was given long rationalizations for why things happened as they did, despite the united prayers of people all over the world.  I did not accept those rationalizations.

I did not think God mean or unkind either.  I began to understand prayer in a whole different light--a light given to me by the Fundamentalists who taught me since childhood that God is never-changing.  He is the same, yesterday, today and forever.  They taught me that God has a will for every life.   So I reasoned that if God has a plan for every life, and if God is never changing, we could not "change his mind" about when someone could die by praying for it not to happen.  Instead, I began to believe that the purpose of prayer was to help us accept what was to be.

Months after my pastor's son succumbed to his illness, a young lady in our church announced she had a brain tumor.  Already having had many a theological clash with my husband at home, things came to a head when our pastor asked every member to go to his/her knees and pray for Iris's healing.  I did not bow on my knees in unison with them. I did not pray for healing.  Instead, I kept my seat and prayed for Iris and her family.  I prayed that God would give them strength and courage to cope with her struggle.  I prayed that God would give them peace as they learned whatever he had to teach them, and that they would find acceptance in his will.

My husband was livid.  In the weeks and months to follow my marriage devolved until finally, grasping at straws, my husband decided to file for divorce and petition the court for custody of our daughters.  I later learned that this was his attempt at "bringing me back to my senses" at the advice of a pastor/counselor at our church who advised him that threatening to take the children away would put me back in my place.

In reality, it only helped me to realize that I was merely an object of possession and control for my husband and a second rate human to my church.

I fought him for custody and won.

Thus my true journey away from Fundamentalist ideals began in earnest.  It has been nearly 17 years since my divorce.  I now look back on my younger self and marvel at who she was.  I was so convinced in my early adulthood, that I was on THE right path.  I just knew that I was doing all the right things, "Living Right" as I was always taught.

Life brought me some rude awakenings though, through the emptiness of shallow spirituality that was hemmed in by rules and regulations, giving me no guidance for how to live, only severe threat of punishment for the things I shouldn't do.  It was several years after my divorce, in a career of service to others that I began to understand that a Christian life is not made up of things we have to avoid.  Being Christ-like is not about aiming for Christ's perfection.  It is learning to accept the grace to be imperfect.  It is what we DO for others that counts, not what we deprive ourselves of.

I do not worship in a brick and mortar church.  I do not read my Bible every day or try to talk others into believing in God the way I believe in him.  I wear what I want.  I drink what I want.  I sin boldly sometimes, always knowing in my heart when I've done wrong, but also knowing God never called me to be perfect.

In my past life of attending three services a week, reading the Bible, praying and avoiding the very appearance of sin, I felt empty, unfulfilled and so lonely.  I'm sure my Fundamentalist acquaintances likely consider me to be "enjoying sin for a season" when they see that I am joyful and satisfied with my life.  Don't doubt it, I do enjoy my sinfulness at times, but my life is so much more now than a daily battle against being human.  It is a life of acceptance, a life in which I am free to be imperfect and still be a child of God.  It is a life where my own humanity allows me to empathize with, love, and show compassion for my fellow man.

Christ did not come to condemn.  I wonder then, how so many Christians, who claim to follow him have decided it is their job to do just that?  How can we adequately love our fellow man while judging him as inferior and worthless?  Jesus said he came to show the world salvation, not to condemn us all for being the humans we were created to be.  If we truly are following his example, we will loosen the chains that bind us to our spiritually-limiting rules and regulations, and cling instead to his commandment, to love one another.

After all, love is the most fundamental principle of the message Christ came to give.

Before I Go

I was still lying in bed pretending to be sound asleep when he was up putting his pants on, over in the corner by the foot of the bed.  His belt buckle clinked as I listened, imagining him pulling up his trousers, tucking in the legs of his boxer shorts, then searching for his shirt.  I heard his zipper swoosh up, listened as he buckled that belt, felt the bed sink when he sat on the edge to pull on his socks.

They were the sounds of leaving, I thought to myself.  The rattle of belt buckles and zippers, the sighing as he bent over to retrieve an undershirt, the jingle of keys as he headed out the door, and then finally, the ringing silence as the sound of the door closing lingered in the air for a moment.  I listened to the clunk of his work boots stomp down the front steps to his truck.

Then, an engine running, revving,  The sound, fading with distance as he drove away,  filled me with relief--and dread.

Passionate nights don't always end with sentimental mornings.  Sometimes the light of day seems to undo the candlelit ambience of romance.  It shines too bright a light on our flaws and reminds us that reality awaits just outside the window.  It lurks under the rug waiting for our feet to land upon it in the morning when we must come down.  There is no place for heady romance and lofty expectations when your feet are planted firmly on the ground.

After a while I learned to hate the sounds of leaving.  The dangling of keys, jiggle of belts, the scriiip of a zipper, they all gave me that dead in my gut because I never liked coming down.  I never enjoyed goodbyes.  I wanted to live with my head in the clouds,stomp around barefooted in the grass, and keep my eyes closed tight to anything I didn't want to see.

But just as romantic nights fade into brightly lit mornings, I transformed somewhere along the way.

Somewhere between watching a truck pull away with all of his belongings, to watching another one be escorted away in the back of police car, I learned to keep some of me to myself.  I learned to preserve what I could while still allowing myself the freedom to love.  I learned that sometimes, the leaving is mine to do, absent the sound of clinking buckles and pockets full of quarters, I learned to quietly fade away, I learned to make my own change.

My life has been a slideshow of people coming and going.  Some lingered for a while and then set out to find greener pastures, younger lovers, weaker victims to exploit.  Some were taken from this life far too soon, one by his own hand, and many others by nature's design it would seem,  I have always been.  I am my one and only constant, my one and only source of understanding who knows about every path I've traveled, every pain I've suffered and every heartbreak I've had to mend.  And yet, I scarcely know me at times.

My father is ill.  Nearly two years ago I held my mother's hand and smiled at her, told her I was happy and all was well with me.  I lied to her that day, but I gave her peace before she went.  I may soon have to say a final goodbye to the man I have looked up to all of my life.  I listened to him leave too, as a child.  I listened to his belt buckle jingle, heard him grunt as he put on his work boots, watched him walk out the door with a lunch plate and a Mason jar full of sweet tea.  He always returned, sometimes worse for the wear, with shavings of metal in his skin and stuck tot he soles of his boots.  I sat by him as he ate breakfast, too tired to converse, but never too hungry to pause before he took the first bite, just long enough to thank the Lord for all he was given.

Some people aren't meant to be permanent parts of our lives.  They sometimes step in, turn our worlds upside down, and then move on, leaving us to put everything back together again.  We sometimes do the same to others.  It is how life works, and how we are challenged to reach for whatever good there is left in the world for us to possess and share.

I look at my dad, his life so well-lived, and wonder if he has any regrets.  I wonder if there is something more he needs to do before he goes, even at a ripe old age when we assume all the saying and doing has been done.  I don't suppose we ever stop becoming more of who we are, even without trying, we are subject to the transformations of time and place, of people and experiences that tweak us so subtly that by the time we are ready to leave, we may scarcely recognize who we were twenty years ago

I read somewhere that there's something about walking through a doorway that makes you forget why you came into a different room.  I think sometimes, life is just that way; we close a door and leave it behind us, then stand absent mindedly in place, scratching our heads, trying to figure out why we are here.  It's not always so easy to find your purpose, even when it seems like you've been propelled through space and time, eventually landing with a whole life around you.  You find yourself in a  job you never saw yourself doing, with kids you never planned to have, and wounds you never imagined you'd have to nurse.

It's difficult to live a life with no regrets.  We often can't find peace with our choices, can't reconcile what we planned with what we ended up living.  For all the plans I made, my life would be so desolate had the unexpected not sent me off track.  From babies to careers, losses to inexplicable human connections, the serendipitous miracles have left me with a lap-full of joy I can't even begin to explain.  Sad goodbyes aside, fractured feelings be damned, because here I am with a life I never planned or expected, feeling full, loved, grateful.  

No, I have not arrived  at that pinnacle of living, where I know I have done all I came to do.  So far, I've come along for the ride, enjoyed the view, even tried my hand at the wheel a few times.  Maybe, eventually, before I go, I'll accomplish something good.  I sure hope that in all my fumbling around, I've managed to live a life worthy of all the goodness that has been bestowed upon me.  The love of family and friends, the blessing of knowing no need, the joy of a life lived with the freedom to be imperfect.