When my sister Gayle and I would get mad at each other, we would call each other names. After a time of yelling classic epithets like, "You doo-doo head", we would retire from the field of battle in the war of words, each convinced victory was ours. No muss, a great deal of fuss and the satisfaction of righteousness were the spoils of those long ago wars. I still play those word wars as an adult even though I should know better by now. I find it easier to label people, categorize them, put them in neat containers and dismiss them. Here are some of the names I use now... liberal, fundamentalist, moderate, mountain native, outlander, Floridiot, new ager, knot head (oops... left over word from my childhood battles), city boy or girl, Democrat, Republican, INFP or ESTJ, a four (Enneagram numerology), Christian, pagan. And I have been labeled myself... drawling southerner, conservative, unchristian, naive, farm girl, snappy dresser, liberal, lazy, ADD. All of these are true and untrue at the same time. That is the problem for me with labels and naming.
In the picture framing class I teach at our local community college, there will often be a mix of newcomers to our area, natives and those of us who have lived here for some time. I get to watch as people choose to transcend the word definitions of who they are as they connect heart to heart. In my morning class this rotation, three people have become very good friends even though their labels would make this seem unlikely. One woman, a stylish, educated career African American woman who has just moved here from California... another woman, a mountain native, difficult personal life, business owner, well dressed and high school graduate... her cousin and best friend, a man (bet you thought it was going to be a woman), mountain native, shy and careful in his interpersonal relationships... have just taught me once again to appreciate the power of friendship. Yesterday they were laughing about visiting each others’ homes... telling stories of their time together, joking, hugging, admiring each others’ work, making suggestions about mat colors, checking their math figures. As they walked out to the parking lot together lugging their load of pictures and mat board, the sound of laughter trailed in their wake.
Their friendship, like the relationship between David and Jonathon in the Old Testament, reminds me that God often works in the relationships of opposites. David, a shepherd boy, and Jonathon, the son of a king, would appear to have little in common but the story of their friendship has survived the passage of time. Ruth, the daughter-in-law, from a different country and younger, begged her mother-in-law, Naomi, to let her stay with her after the death of her husband. Her words, "Entreat me not to leave thee", have been sung and spoken at weddings for generations. Paul and Barnabas, Jesus, Mary and Martha, Aurelia and me, Mickey and Johnny... all were friendships that transcended the barriers of names and culture and religion.
I find a sense of God’s presence in the friendships of the unlikely in my life and I am blessed with a wealth of them. So today I give thanks for all my friends and their labels that both define and separate them from me. I give thanks for the power of friendship that makes these labels transparent, lets us see into each others hearts and for the steadfast love that flows between us as we live our lives, separately and together, children of a God whose name for us is "Beloved".
Friday, October 19, 2007
Thursday, October 18, 2007
faith faces
I saw myself in the mirror yesterday and didn’t know the face looking back at me. As a teenager, I spent hours mapping my face and certain truths settled in my mind about my outward appearance. My nose had a funny wide spot on the bridge that looked like I broke it. If freckles are indeed angel kisses, somebody up there really loved me a lot. My eyes were too small and my face was too round. My hair was too straight and didn’t flip on the ends. On the plus side, my hair was a pretty color and I didn’t get zits. It is time to update my image memory.
Now my face is no longer the smooth, unbroken, polished face of youth with life stretching out in front of my too small eyes. It is a face that bears the marks of a life filled with love, laughter, grief, disappointments, celebration, hope, joy, despair and depression. Tear tracks and laugh lines have carved a face that is a map showing the roads I have traveled. My eyes are settling down, just like my grandma and my mother. My funny nose is taking on the shape of my father’s nose and my pretty dark hair stays that way thanks to good dye jobs. When I finally turn all over grey, the dye will go but I cannot abide the four natural and different colors... dark brown, yellow brown, grey and red ... that have shown up to replace my ash brown/black hair. A new creation is at work in my soul and mirrored in my face.
I am grateful for all the love that has been given to me in this life. My parents, grandparents, sister, sisters and brothers of choice, friends, husbands and children have loved me for no rational reason... just because. God loved me first and loves me still, imperfect and perfect child that I am. Love created many of the lines and softened the edges of my face.
I am grateful for all the laughter in my life. The sense of the absurd that keeps me snickering under my breath and laughing out loud at myself and others... the jokes told (not sent via e-mail) by Mabel Calder (at church and always risque’), Hardy Clemmons ( slowly and with a Texas accent), Thad Timmon’s perfectly awful puns, Nina Pollard and Judy who always had at least one good one to tell every Sunday at Crescent Hill Baptist Church, Grady Nutt whose sly, raucous humor helped keep a generation of Southern Baptists laughing at themselves... the merry hearts of children whom I have loved and been loved by... animals who tickle my funnybone... all these have made laugh lines at the corners of my mouth and eyes.
I am grateful for all the grief in my life. Death of a husband before I was twenty one taught me to value life. My sister’s suicide and the grief of that sharp death taught me the value of family. My friends Judy and Kerry taught me how to face a slowly approaching death unseasonably young and still live. My daddy’s death and dying set us both free as we held each other that long last week of his life. The lines in my face reflect the grace of life lived with a certain end coming.
I am grateful for the depression that has been a cello accompaniment to my piano playing life. It has kept me grounded, taught me how to weep with others and not be ashamed, how to keep on keeping on, kept me humble (now there’s a word you don’t hear much anymore) by forcing me to rely on God and Prozac instead of my own self. The sad shadows in my eyes balance the sharp edge of my tongue and help me see my own limits more clearly.
My faith face lines are invisible and cannot be seen in any mirror but they are there nonetheless. I have gratitude lines around the mouth, lines around eyes that have strained to see the Unseen, forehead lines from amazement and hope and joy, a soft edged chin that can snuggle up next to you, and skin that is still covered with angel kisses.
I look at the pictures of myself when I was young and see how beautiful I was and did not know it. Now I see my wrinkled, funny face and I know it is beautiful, full of a life lived with love, joy, faith and hope. Thanks be to God for faces. I wonder how God’s face has changed through the years? I hope there are laugh lines and love lines from me.
Now my face is no longer the smooth, unbroken, polished face of youth with life stretching out in front of my too small eyes. It is a face that bears the marks of a life filled with love, laughter, grief, disappointments, celebration, hope, joy, despair and depression. Tear tracks and laugh lines have carved a face that is a map showing the roads I have traveled. My eyes are settling down, just like my grandma and my mother. My funny nose is taking on the shape of my father’s nose and my pretty dark hair stays that way thanks to good dye jobs. When I finally turn all over grey, the dye will go but I cannot abide the four natural and different colors... dark brown, yellow brown, grey and red ... that have shown up to replace my ash brown/black hair. A new creation is at work in my soul and mirrored in my face.
I am grateful for all the love that has been given to me in this life. My parents, grandparents, sister, sisters and brothers of choice, friends, husbands and children have loved me for no rational reason... just because. God loved me first and loves me still, imperfect and perfect child that I am. Love created many of the lines and softened the edges of my face.
I am grateful for all the laughter in my life. The sense of the absurd that keeps me snickering under my breath and laughing out loud at myself and others... the jokes told (not sent via e-mail) by Mabel Calder (at church and always risque’), Hardy Clemmons ( slowly and with a Texas accent), Thad Timmon’s perfectly awful puns, Nina Pollard and Judy who always had at least one good one to tell every Sunday at Crescent Hill Baptist Church, Grady Nutt whose sly, raucous humor helped keep a generation of Southern Baptists laughing at themselves... the merry hearts of children whom I have loved and been loved by... animals who tickle my funnybone... all these have made laugh lines at the corners of my mouth and eyes.
I am grateful for all the grief in my life. Death of a husband before I was twenty one taught me to value life. My sister’s suicide and the grief of that sharp death taught me the value of family. My friends Judy and Kerry taught me how to face a slowly approaching death unseasonably young and still live. My daddy’s death and dying set us both free as we held each other that long last week of his life. The lines in my face reflect the grace of life lived with a certain end coming.
I am grateful for the depression that has been a cello accompaniment to my piano playing life. It has kept me grounded, taught me how to weep with others and not be ashamed, how to keep on keeping on, kept me humble (now there’s a word you don’t hear much anymore) by forcing me to rely on God and Prozac instead of my own self. The sad shadows in my eyes balance the sharp edge of my tongue and help me see my own limits more clearly.
My faith face lines are invisible and cannot be seen in any mirror but they are there nonetheless. I have gratitude lines around the mouth, lines around eyes that have strained to see the Unseen, forehead lines from amazement and hope and joy, a soft edged chin that can snuggle up next to you, and skin that is still covered with angel kisses.
I look at the pictures of myself when I was young and see how beautiful I was and did not know it. Now I see my wrinkled, funny face and I know it is beautiful, full of a life lived with love, joy, faith and hope. Thanks be to God for faces. I wonder how God’s face has changed through the years? I hope there are laugh lines and love lines from me.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Don't Fence Me In....
Junie B. Jones came home last night. I wept and laughed and giggled and sniffled all night long. She jumped off the horse trailer, stood and surveyed the barking basset hounds, Barney, Susan, Dianne and her mother, my mama, Vince and Tina with a calm interest and then began grazing on the clover. She is a small Morgan horse, black with a white blaze on her face and three white socks. Susan found her poorly tended in a field and bought her for her children. They have grown up and have other interests now so Junie B. needed a new home. Daddy is laughing in heaven. His sixty one year old daughter finally has her horse.
As Michael and I lay in bed this morning, remembering and savoring Junie B.’s coming home to us, we each had memories of childhood freedom and power experienced with horses. As a little boy, Michael visited a friend’s uncle who had horses... big horses. The boys saddled up and played cowboys and Indians in the pasture, racing and running the horses with no helmets and no adult supervision, just their imaginations and the wild, wonderful freedom that comes with childhood. My "a-ha" moment was the realization that my dad, overprotective to a fault, lifted my nine year old self up into the western saddle on Brownie, a big quarter horse, handed me the reins and let me go. He didn’t walk the horse holding the bridle, gave no anxious instruction, just showed me how to use the reins and sent me off into the pasture on my own where I fell in love with Brownie and horseback riding. For Michael and me, those memories are still clear and strong fifty some odd years later. I pondered the strength of my life long longing for a horse of my own and am beginning to understand what this dream has meant to me.
When I first sat in that clunky western saddle on top of the world, Brownie’s back, it was an exhilarating exercise in freedom with power. I was in charge ( more or less). I was alone on top of that big old horse in the middle of the pasture where no one could see us. For a child, especially my father’s daughters, this was a moment frozen in time. I was trusted, set free, given the reins and let go. All too soon I was back in my father’s house, that brief experience of self determination a memory that formed an important part of my being. Now I am beginning to appreciate and understand how this relationship with Brownie has informed not only my life but my soul.
As a child I learned the lessons of pleasing adults all too well. I truly wanted to make everyone around me happy and did not often let my inside self scream or yell or weep or laugh much less my outside self. It was too scary. Keeping daily life calm and peaceful, however I could, became a value for me. But somewhere in my soul, the feeling of flying on Brownie’s galloping feet, nurtured the wildness in me.
Contrary to popular opinion, all Baptists were not fundamentalists. For most of my life there was a wild streak in our denomination... room for a liberal Christian Life Commission, women deacons and preachers, theologically astute seminaries, people of faith who marched to a syncopated beat that provided a descant to the denominational norm. Baptists were all about the priesthood of the believers and there was room at the table for us all. So I could go to conventions and find not only others who shared my particular wildness but programs that had a little wiggle room. I learned to value the soul freedom that was a shared denominational value during that brief time. We had Carlyle Marney and Clarence Jordan, powerful preachers and powerful prophets who led the way to new freedom and justice. Henley Barnett, a seminary professor whom I was priviliged to call friend, worked in the Haymarket, a troubled, poor part of Louisville, Kentucky long before "peace and justice" were a part of our religious language . His wife contracted tuberculosis there and died. He was riding a bicycle to work, his elbows hanging out of the holes in his sweater, years before any concerns about the environment surfaced in the popular culture. Pitts Hughes and other women like her, denied full participation in the male dominated seminary, attended a training school next door to the seminary and refused to be ignored. They made their way into full expression of their call from God and were beacons of hospitality and courage for generations of us who needed foremothers and forefathers. So I learned some lessons in wildness and wild-erness early in my life.
My life experience growing up and as a Baptist gave me an appreciation, a need for room to run. Don’t tell me what I ought to believe, what language to use, which hymns are theologically sound, who to love, or judge me because I am not marching to your drum beat. Give me some room to run. Talk to me, listen to me, share your story with me, hear my story, love me and let me love you. Be my sister or brother in God’s family and cut me some slack. I’ll return the favor. Like Junie B.and Brownie, we all need the loving touch that comes from God through the skin face people of God who surround us.
"Write the vision; make it plain upon the tablets, so he/she may run who reads it. For still the vision awaits its time; it hastens to the end- it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay". Habakkuk 2:2-3 My vision... room for us all to run, differences known and celebrated because we are all still horses... Morgans, Arabians, Quarterhorses, Belgians, Paso Finas, stallions, mares and geldings, thoroughbreds and nags, UCC, Baptists, Catholics, Buddhists, Church of God, Lutherans, Muslims, liberals, moderates and fundamentalists alike, all God’s children loved equally because of our differences not in spite of them. I’ll run along side you and we will run the race together as we head towards the finish line. If you stumble, I’ll wait for you. If I fall, you will help me up. We run with different gaits but we are all running to God.
Thanks be to God for the wonderful world that has so many variations in color and size and kind and language. How much fun it can be to live in harmony with trots and gallops and walks and canters. Help me learn to run and ride in rythmn as I race home to you, O God. Thank you for not fencing me in. Peggy
As Michael and I lay in bed this morning, remembering and savoring Junie B.’s coming home to us, we each had memories of childhood freedom and power experienced with horses. As a little boy, Michael visited a friend’s uncle who had horses... big horses. The boys saddled up and played cowboys and Indians in the pasture, racing and running the horses with no helmets and no adult supervision, just their imaginations and the wild, wonderful freedom that comes with childhood. My "a-ha" moment was the realization that my dad, overprotective to a fault, lifted my nine year old self up into the western saddle on Brownie, a big quarter horse, handed me the reins and let me go. He didn’t walk the horse holding the bridle, gave no anxious instruction, just showed me how to use the reins and sent me off into the pasture on my own where I fell in love with Brownie and horseback riding. For Michael and me, those memories are still clear and strong fifty some odd years later. I pondered the strength of my life long longing for a horse of my own and am beginning to understand what this dream has meant to me.
When I first sat in that clunky western saddle on top of the world, Brownie’s back, it was an exhilarating exercise in freedom with power. I was in charge ( more or less). I was alone on top of that big old horse in the middle of the pasture where no one could see us. For a child, especially my father’s daughters, this was a moment frozen in time. I was trusted, set free, given the reins and let go. All too soon I was back in my father’s house, that brief experience of self determination a memory that formed an important part of my being. Now I am beginning to appreciate and understand how this relationship with Brownie has informed not only my life but my soul.
As a child I learned the lessons of pleasing adults all too well. I truly wanted to make everyone around me happy and did not often let my inside self scream or yell or weep or laugh much less my outside self. It was too scary. Keeping daily life calm and peaceful, however I could, became a value for me. But somewhere in my soul, the feeling of flying on Brownie’s galloping feet, nurtured the wildness in me.
Contrary to popular opinion, all Baptists were not fundamentalists. For most of my life there was a wild streak in our denomination... room for a liberal Christian Life Commission, women deacons and preachers, theologically astute seminaries, people of faith who marched to a syncopated beat that provided a descant to the denominational norm. Baptists were all about the priesthood of the believers and there was room at the table for us all. So I could go to conventions and find not only others who shared my particular wildness but programs that had a little wiggle room. I learned to value the soul freedom that was a shared denominational value during that brief time. We had Carlyle Marney and Clarence Jordan, powerful preachers and powerful prophets who led the way to new freedom and justice. Henley Barnett, a seminary professor whom I was priviliged to call friend, worked in the Haymarket, a troubled, poor part of Louisville, Kentucky long before "peace and justice" were a part of our religious language . His wife contracted tuberculosis there and died. He was riding a bicycle to work, his elbows hanging out of the holes in his sweater, years before any concerns about the environment surfaced in the popular culture. Pitts Hughes and other women like her, denied full participation in the male dominated seminary, attended a training school next door to the seminary and refused to be ignored. They made their way into full expression of their call from God and were beacons of hospitality and courage for generations of us who needed foremothers and forefathers. So I learned some lessons in wildness and wild-erness early in my life.
My life experience growing up and as a Baptist gave me an appreciation, a need for room to run. Don’t tell me what I ought to believe, what language to use, which hymns are theologically sound, who to love, or judge me because I am not marching to your drum beat. Give me some room to run. Talk to me, listen to me, share your story with me, hear my story, love me and let me love you. Be my sister or brother in God’s family and cut me some slack. I’ll return the favor. Like Junie B.and Brownie, we all need the loving touch that comes from God through the skin face people of God who surround us.
"Write the vision; make it plain upon the tablets, so he/she may run who reads it. For still the vision awaits its time; it hastens to the end- it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay". Habakkuk 2:2-3 My vision... room for us all to run, differences known and celebrated because we are all still horses... Morgans, Arabians, Quarterhorses, Belgians, Paso Finas, stallions, mares and geldings, thoroughbreds and nags, UCC, Baptists, Catholics, Buddhists, Church of God, Lutherans, Muslims, liberals, moderates and fundamentalists alike, all God’s children loved equally because of our differences not in spite of them. I’ll run along side you and we will run the race together as we head towards the finish line. If you stumble, I’ll wait for you. If I fall, you will help me up. We run with different gaits but we are all running to God.
Thanks be to God for the wonderful world that has so many variations in color and size and kind and language. How much fun it can be to live in harmony with trots and gallops and walks and canters. Help me learn to run and ride in rythmn as I race home to you, O God. Thank you for not fencing me in. Peggy
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