I was eight years old, freckled faced, gap toothed, Buster Brown haircut, wearing rolled up jeans and a plaid shirt, sitting on top of a western saddle much too large for me, holding the reins fearfully and wonderfully, atop the old quarterhorse Brownie, in hog heaven. The picture is faded now but the memory glows with a fierce light in my heart. It is a memory of pure joy and glee. Our family lived in a rented farmhouse on a farm owned by Bascomb Coody. At the stock sales one day Bascomb got caught up in the moment and bought Brownie (my name for her). She was a retired working cow horse. After much pleading and begging and asking Bascomb’s permission, Daddy saddled Brownie and set me in the saddle. His hands are shown holding the bridle in the old picture but he let go and I was off for my first horseback ride. Brownie was patient with my heavy hands and walked calmly out into the pasture, down to the gully at the far end of the field. I was Dale Evans in training... galloping on my way to meet Roy Rogers at the ranch.
Brownie turned around at the gully fence line, spied the cows in the distance and suddenly I was galloping with reins flopping loose and stirrups bouncing and my hands in a white knuckle grip on the saddle horn. The old cow horse was on her way to do what she did best... herd cows.
As she ran full steam ahead towards the cows, my short life flashed before my eyes. The fence was straight ahead and I had no way to stop Brownie. Just before we hit the fence, she sat on her heels and slid to a stop as she had done countless times in her working career. None of the adults noticed my joyful terror. They adjusted the stirrups and reins and I was off riding again. I was in love with horses. Other horses have come and gone in my life, none of them owned by me. Daddy promised to get me one when we moved to the new farm but it never happened. My horse riding experiences were few and far between but so much joy. I was thrown twice... once when my galloping horse hit a hole in the sandy road, once when a horse stumbled and fell ... my feet stepped on... nibbled and bitten... nothing could tarnish my heart connection with horses.
How do you explain the instant connection that comes sometimes... a gift... the recognition of another one who is different and yet the same... person or animal... soul to soul and heart to heart? Today I am giving thanks for all those creatures in my life who have been the reflection of Joy for me. There are so many and I am overwhelmed by the rush of tears as I name them. I am blessed, then and now, with the memory and presence of these angels in my life. What else is an angel but a messenger from God? If Balaam’s ass could see an angel, so can I. When I pay attention, really see, I am surrounded by saints and angels... two legged, four legged, winged, crawling messengers of Love and Joy from the One who takes delight in the living of my days. Thanks be to God for all my loved ones who have shown up for my life party.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
monkey chases the weasel
We are all racists and bigots. There... I said it. All of us, regardless of race, color, ethnic identification, socio-economic background, religious affiliation, geographic location, educational level live with an instinctive them versus us track playing in our head. Religious liberals think fundamentalists live in the Stone Age and religious fundamentalists think liberals are on the slippery slope to damnation (all faith systems are equal opportunity offenders here). Old people think young people are going to the dogs and young people think old people know nothing of value. Poor people think rich people have it made and rich people think poor people have to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Southerners think Yankees talk too fast and Yankees think Southerners talk too slow. All French women are stylish and all farm women are dowdy. The Amish can’t understand the Englisher and the Englisher can’t fathom living without electricity.
Some racist language is no longer socially acceptable in polite society. Dirty Indians, shiftless black folks, dumb women, Kike, faggot, slant eyes, Polack are a few of the terms we don’t hear much anymore. Thank God for that small mercy. But the larger issue, the melting of the ice walls that divide our hearts and souls remains. How can we find our way to not just accepting our differences but affirming them? How can we find the place where the crazy quilt of human experience can be held together with the feather stitch of loving respect without requiring us all to be the same?
Church watching is one way to observe the comedy of the human condition. In the sixties we were convinced that the only thing that stood in the way of a truly integrated church were our segregated policies. So with much effort and suffering on the part of our prophetic leadership at that time, our churches became open and affirming of racial equality in our faith communities. Forty five years later, we are still mostly segregated on Sunday mornings with one exception. Churches that are "pentecostal, evangelical and spirit filled" often have a broad spectrum of races. Now they may not have many openly gay or lesbian members but something in that style of worship provides a place where racially mixed congregations are happy with each other. None of us have a corner on the market when it comes to the gospel.
To really be the gospel good news, we have to know the hearts, lives and songs of the ones we are living and singing with. I can’t truly appreciate what it means to be a Cherokee until I hear the stories, feel the pain of a history I do not share, sing the songs, learn what it felt like to be dirt poor and now have Harrah’s money, break bread together... bread of the heart and soul. I can’t know the pain of being cast out from my family because of my sexual orientation until I hear the stories of those I love who have suffered this great loss. Those who have ditched their religious past because of their struggles with exclusive language can hear the need for the language of their youth that gives comfort to those of us who are in a different place. Because we know each others’ stories, we can love and respect our differences and know we are more alike than we want to admit. Somewhere, somehow, sometime the monkey has to stop chasing the weasel, sit down and listen to the weasel or else we will all go "pop".
Paul said it in Ephesians 2 (pardon my French, the Revised Standard Version of the Bible).
"For Christ is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances...and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end....So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Christ Jesus being the cornerstone in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit." I am going to memorize that passage, write it on my heart and see if I can live it daily as I move into the lives of all those souls who surround me.
Some racist language is no longer socially acceptable in polite society. Dirty Indians, shiftless black folks, dumb women, Kike, faggot, slant eyes, Polack are a few of the terms we don’t hear much anymore. Thank God for that small mercy. But the larger issue, the melting of the ice walls that divide our hearts and souls remains. How can we find our way to not just accepting our differences but affirming them? How can we find the place where the crazy quilt of human experience can be held together with the feather stitch of loving respect without requiring us all to be the same?
Church watching is one way to observe the comedy of the human condition. In the sixties we were convinced that the only thing that stood in the way of a truly integrated church were our segregated policies. So with much effort and suffering on the part of our prophetic leadership at that time, our churches became open and affirming of racial equality in our faith communities. Forty five years later, we are still mostly segregated on Sunday mornings with one exception. Churches that are "pentecostal, evangelical and spirit filled" often have a broad spectrum of races. Now they may not have many openly gay or lesbian members but something in that style of worship provides a place where racially mixed congregations are happy with each other. None of us have a corner on the market when it comes to the gospel.
To really be the gospel good news, we have to know the hearts, lives and songs of the ones we are living and singing with. I can’t truly appreciate what it means to be a Cherokee until I hear the stories, feel the pain of a history I do not share, sing the songs, learn what it felt like to be dirt poor and now have Harrah’s money, break bread together... bread of the heart and soul. I can’t know the pain of being cast out from my family because of my sexual orientation until I hear the stories of those I love who have suffered this great loss. Those who have ditched their religious past because of their struggles with exclusive language can hear the need for the language of their youth that gives comfort to those of us who are in a different place. Because we know each others’ stories, we can love and respect our differences and know we are more alike than we want to admit. Somewhere, somehow, sometime the monkey has to stop chasing the weasel, sit down and listen to the weasel or else we will all go "pop".
Paul said it in Ephesians 2 (pardon my French, the Revised Standard Version of the Bible).
"For Christ is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances...and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end....So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Christ Jesus being the cornerstone in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit." I am going to memorize that passage, write it on my heart and see if I can live it daily as I move into the lives of all those souls who surround me.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Sweet Harmony
We sat around the supper table last night listening to a tape of old time gospel sung by Amble Wolf and his children Deweese, Stacy and Jasper, our Cherokee friends. They would sing one verse in English and one verse in Cherokee. Old time gospel music reminds me of Bach Inventions. The melody begins simply in the verse but cuts loose on the chorus. The voice parts weave in and out with variations on the melody, playing bass against tenor and alto and soprano. Amble has been gone for 13 years now but his deep bass lead lives on in the hearts of his children and now in my heart, too.
At Deweese’s home Saturday night, we gathered around the piano (just tuned for our visit) and sang those old gospel songs again. There were songs I knew and songs I had never heard. When we began to sing we were feeling our way on the parts but we began to get the Spirit and sing from our hearts. We came to one song and I asked Stacey what tempo to use. She said "Right lively". And so we were.
All God’s chillun...At my table sat Tina who believes in God and Ernest Ainslee in that order, Vince who believes in God and hard work, mama who was raised Virginia Baptist and now worships in a Presbyterian church, Michael, Dianne and I who are UCC, all of us white but with such different paths. Tina was raised by her grandparents in Avery County, left by her mother and never reclaimed. Vince grew up in Ohio, one of 13 children who were farmed out to relatives when their parents died. Mama grew up on a farm in Virginia, a part of a close extended family. Dianne grew up in north Florida with a painful childhood. Michael was the youngest son of a Baptist preacher in Birmingham, Alabama. I grew up on the farm, a part of a family with love and anger. And there we sat...friends, heart companions and differences are a source of amusement not judgement.
Saturday night we sang and our differences made music. Deweese who was kicked out of school in the ninth grade... Stacy who works in a program that is doing immersion teaching of the Cherokee language to the children and makes wonderful potato salad... Jasper who sings tenor and wore a wild lime green outfit... Walt, our fearless leader with the southern accent and soft heart concealed by no nonsense exterior... Mary Lynn, our mama, best cook in the world and non-stop teacher...Catherine, creative soul, full of laughter... Andy, kind hearted and gentle spirit. The others opened the door and listened as they watched football and the children. Our differences of color, background, lives, religious experience, education melted away as we sang.
That is harmony of the best kind. I hope God heard and smiled at us as we sang and missed notes and laughed and loved each other. The memory that lives in my heart now of that evening will sustain me as I live through relationships with other differences. The basics are the same regardless of the variations in our souls. Jesus said it best when he was asked what the greatest commandment was... to love God with all your heart and to love your neighbor as yourself. Amen.
At Deweese’s home Saturday night, we gathered around the piano (just tuned for our visit) and sang those old gospel songs again. There were songs I knew and songs I had never heard. When we began to sing we were feeling our way on the parts but we began to get the Spirit and sing from our hearts. We came to one song and I asked Stacey what tempo to use. She said "Right lively". And so we were.
All God’s chillun...At my table sat Tina who believes in God and Ernest Ainslee in that order, Vince who believes in God and hard work, mama who was raised Virginia Baptist and now worships in a Presbyterian church, Michael, Dianne and I who are UCC, all of us white but with such different paths. Tina was raised by her grandparents in Avery County, left by her mother and never reclaimed. Vince grew up in Ohio, one of 13 children who were farmed out to relatives when their parents died. Mama grew up on a farm in Virginia, a part of a close extended family. Dianne grew up in north Florida with a painful childhood. Michael was the youngest son of a Baptist preacher in Birmingham, Alabama. I grew up on the farm, a part of a family with love and anger. And there we sat...friends, heart companions and differences are a source of amusement not judgement.
Saturday night we sang and our differences made music. Deweese who was kicked out of school in the ninth grade... Stacy who works in a program that is doing immersion teaching of the Cherokee language to the children and makes wonderful potato salad... Jasper who sings tenor and wore a wild lime green outfit... Walt, our fearless leader with the southern accent and soft heart concealed by no nonsense exterior... Mary Lynn, our mama, best cook in the world and non-stop teacher...Catherine, creative soul, full of laughter... Andy, kind hearted and gentle spirit. The others opened the door and listened as they watched football and the children. Our differences of color, background, lives, religious experience, education melted away as we sang.
That is harmony of the best kind. I hope God heard and smiled at us as we sang and missed notes and laughed and loved each other. The memory that lives in my heart now of that evening will sustain me as I live through relationships with other differences. The basics are the same regardless of the variations in our souls. Jesus said it best when he was asked what the greatest commandment was... to love God with all your heart and to love your neighbor as yourself. Amen.
Monday, September 10, 2007
the deserving poor... and other labels
I have poison ivy on my ankle, a small inconvenient oozy souvenir of the weekend spent in Cherokee. Michael and I went to meet my work camp family. Forty one years ago we met for ten weeks to build a church in Cherokee. This year we met for three days. Our friend, Deweese Wolf, found two women in his extended family who needed help. As always, the helpers became the "helpees" as we shared our lives with these women and they let us in to their lives at their most inconvenient oozy places.
Lisa was the mother in the first home, a brick home overlooking a spectacular view of the mountains. She lives there with her oldest son, 20, her youngest son, 16, and a granddaughter. She is divorced from her alcoholic husband. Every morning, six days a week, she gets up at three a.m. to be at work at the dialysis center by 4 a.m. for her twelve hour shift. Her 16 year old son has a tumor on his knee and they are in the middle of a diagnostic process for him. Her request was to paint her trim work on her home. We couldn’t see the trim work for the piles of garbage in her yard... 29 large construction grade trash bags later, we had made a dent but not much. Our ecologically correct list said to recycle the cans and glass but that list did not last when confronted by the task of separating year old baby diapers from three year old cans. We didn’t have the time, or the stomach, for the job.
The values of our raising were spilling out like the garbage itself as we worked. How could some one live like this? How can you just throw carpet and diapers and storm doors and cans and half filled bottles of liquid and empty canning jars out in the yard and leave them to rot... or not? How can you live in a house that mirrors the outside with piles of trash? Are we doing anything that will be a true help or will it be the same mess in six weeks? Does she deserve help? Is this a waste of our time?
Campfire conversation was lively that night. We are a group of social workers, a chemist, ministers, Sunday school teachers, educators, communication specialists. Our first judging instinct that found Lisa wanting came under the microscope or as Claudie says, "Let me give you a new perspective". Why were we there in Cherokee..what was it in our Christian faith that pushes us to be the ones who help pull oxen from the ditch? And, do we have the right to be the judge of the stupid ox who got stuck in the ditch? Or, is our need to help, regardless of the proper designation of "deservingness", a mirror of the Grace that found us when we didn’t deserve it either? I have been "graced" so I am called to grace others without judgement.
The truth of the matter is none of us are deserving of what comes to us, be it good or bad. No one deserves twenty million dollars and no one deserves to die at sixteen with a cancerous tumor. My Bible says in old fashioned language none of us are worthy. Now I want to be clear...I don’t believe we are pond scum, worms waiting for the heel to grind us into oblivion. We are unique wonderful creations who give our Creator great pleasure. But, the Divine Comedian also made us imperfect. We are not mirror images of the One who gave us life. So, we all have garbage piled high in the yards and homes for our souls. Jesus said that the first stone thrower must be without sin. Ooooops! That puts me in a different place... a new perspective, Claudie. Now I can live in a place of compassionate reality. My questions are still there... how could someone live in the midst of garbage... but they are tempered with the memory of her face and her voice as she came home from a twelve hour shift to pick up her son and go to pick up her granddaughter at daycare.
My garbage looks different but it is still garbage. There is grace enough to go around for all of us who wear labels. Shiftless, white trash, dirty Indian, ADD, OCD, rich, poor, Christian, Hindu, New Ager, lazy, hard worker, whore, drug addict, mother, father, murderer or saint... we are all God’s chillun and none of us, no, not one, deserves the grace we are given. Thanks be to the God who sent us Jesus, the model for compassionate realism, a judge with mercy who tried to teach us the balancing act between grace and judgement. Name your garbage, claim it, go forward and try to sin no more. Selah.
Lisa was the mother in the first home, a brick home overlooking a spectacular view of the mountains. She lives there with her oldest son, 20, her youngest son, 16, and a granddaughter. She is divorced from her alcoholic husband. Every morning, six days a week, she gets up at three a.m. to be at work at the dialysis center by 4 a.m. for her twelve hour shift. Her 16 year old son has a tumor on his knee and they are in the middle of a diagnostic process for him. Her request was to paint her trim work on her home. We couldn’t see the trim work for the piles of garbage in her yard... 29 large construction grade trash bags later, we had made a dent but not much. Our ecologically correct list said to recycle the cans and glass but that list did not last when confronted by the task of separating year old baby diapers from three year old cans. We didn’t have the time, or the stomach, for the job.
The values of our raising were spilling out like the garbage itself as we worked. How could some one live like this? How can you just throw carpet and diapers and storm doors and cans and half filled bottles of liquid and empty canning jars out in the yard and leave them to rot... or not? How can you live in a house that mirrors the outside with piles of trash? Are we doing anything that will be a true help or will it be the same mess in six weeks? Does she deserve help? Is this a waste of our time?
Campfire conversation was lively that night. We are a group of social workers, a chemist, ministers, Sunday school teachers, educators, communication specialists. Our first judging instinct that found Lisa wanting came under the microscope or as Claudie says, "Let me give you a new perspective". Why were we there in Cherokee..what was it in our Christian faith that pushes us to be the ones who help pull oxen from the ditch? And, do we have the right to be the judge of the stupid ox who got stuck in the ditch? Or, is our need to help, regardless of the proper designation of "deservingness", a mirror of the Grace that found us when we didn’t deserve it either? I have been "graced" so I am called to grace others without judgement.
The truth of the matter is none of us are deserving of what comes to us, be it good or bad. No one deserves twenty million dollars and no one deserves to die at sixteen with a cancerous tumor. My Bible says in old fashioned language none of us are worthy. Now I want to be clear...I don’t believe we are pond scum, worms waiting for the heel to grind us into oblivion. We are unique wonderful creations who give our Creator great pleasure. But, the Divine Comedian also made us imperfect. We are not mirror images of the One who gave us life. So, we all have garbage piled high in the yards and homes for our souls. Jesus said that the first stone thrower must be without sin. Ooooops! That puts me in a different place... a new perspective, Claudie. Now I can live in a place of compassionate reality. My questions are still there... how could someone live in the midst of garbage... but they are tempered with the memory of her face and her voice as she came home from a twelve hour shift to pick up her son and go to pick up her granddaughter at daycare.
My garbage looks different but it is still garbage. There is grace enough to go around for all of us who wear labels. Shiftless, white trash, dirty Indian, ADD, OCD, rich, poor, Christian, Hindu, New Ager, lazy, hard worker, whore, drug addict, mother, father, murderer or saint... we are all God’s chillun and none of us, no, not one, deserves the grace we are given. Thanks be to the God who sent us Jesus, the model for compassionate realism, a judge with mercy who tried to teach us the balancing act between grace and judgement. Name your garbage, claim it, go forward and try to sin no more. Selah.
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