pickup truck ride with God...

Saturdays were busy days in my growing up town of Valdosta, Georgia. It was the day working people came to town to do their business. Banks stayed open until one o’clock. Doctor’s offices were open and the grocery stores were packed with farm families. In the summer time, little boys in overalls stood on the corners and sold small brown bags of boiled green peanuts for a dime. They did a brisk business. The parking spaces downtown were filled with more pickup trucks than cars. The trucks often would have chairs in the back for the overflow crowd to sit in and it was not uncommon to see children riding in the bed of the truck, hair flying in the wind.
In those long ago days, business was transacted and bills paid face to face. The first tasks when you came to town always involved waiting outside for the children while the grown-ups paid bills. If it was very hot, you might be allowed to wait inside if the building was air-conditioned but you had to be on your best behavior. Any transgression would cause you to be sent immediately back outside.
After the business was tended to, the fun began. Wandering through Woolworth’s and McCrory’s Five and dime, checking out the Evening in Paris perfume and Tangee lipstick, buying whatever items your quarter allowance could pay for. If clothes shopping was on the schedule, you would walk to the Lazerus’ Store and look around. There were two Lazerus’ stores, each owned by a different brother. Belk’s was usually too expensive unless they were having a sale. A stop at Miller Hardware was always on the agenda before the final shopping at Harvey’s for groceries. We walked our whole downtown... two movie houses, three department stores, two five and dimes, banks, telephone and power companies, courthouse, post office, Southern Stationery, insurance offices, doctors and dentists offices, drugstores and jewelry stores, the King Grill and Don’s Hamburger Palace, Country Cobbler Shoe Store, the Daniel Ashley Hotel and many other small businesses... seeing folks we knew in our community of Clyattville and in the county. There was always time for the adults to pause and chatcatchup while children amused themselves while they waited. Saturdays were a welcome break from the routine for children and adults alike.
Now a trip to town is routine for me, something I do several times each week, to work or shop or go to church. It no longer feels so special. I do not pay my bills in person, cannot in most cases. My downtown Asheville is no longer populated with the main department stores. The stores are small, specialty places with stock mostly geared for the tourist trade. Good restaurants are everywhere but parking can be a problem. One movie house remains and art galleries are everywhere. Morrison’s Hardware with its ancient wooden seed bins and assortment of tools was transformed into a gift store and even that has closed now. I no longer see farm families downtown shopping. They drive to the Wal-Mart store or the mall on the edge of town. No more does the traveling evangelist preach on Saturday in Pritchard Park, standing in one place, limp Bible folded back, punching the air in rhythm to his fortissimo volume. I remember the small boy from Marion who visited the park regularly to exhort and exclaim for God’s sake. Wonder if he is still preaching? In some ways downtown is more interesting now but it is also in a strange way, sterile. Most of the poorer people you see are homeless, not living next door to you in the country. You don’t know their names and they are faceless members of your community.
When we saw the Terrell family in town, we always exchanged pleasantries. Sally and James were in my class at school. They were the poorest family I knew growing up, with a tar paper covered house and more children than their money could support. Mr. Terrell was widely acknowledged to be shiftless but Mrs. Terrell was seen as a woman of energy and spunk. Sally was bright and excelled in class. Even though her clothes were often dirty and torn, she had her mama’s nature and nothing kept her spirit from shining through. James on the other hand was like his daddy and teachers never found the key to unlock a love for learning. The community did not confine their help to Thanksgiving turkeys and Christmas boxes but helped out year round. The Terrells were a part of us and regardless of the father’s behavior, it was not right for the family to stand alone.
I know small town communities can be cruel, confining, prejudiced, narrow and unyielding. It was often true in Valdosta. Catholics (we had a large Greek population) and Jews ( also a large part of our town) were seen as different and sometimes less than. But we all knew not only each others names, but each others families and reputations. For good or for ill, you were known. And in that knowing came assurance and freedom. What a strange paradox... the community’s knowledge of ones self that might or might not be accurate, the knowledge of others that might or might not be accurate... this kind of knowing provided a safety net for everyone. If you needed to change your status in the community, you could but you would still be known as Tommy Calhoun’s daughter or Mr. Terrell’s daughter with the freely translated rendition of the family history. The bottom line... you were known... correctly or incorrectly, you were known.
I know, as I am known, and the One who is my Creator, knows me better then I know myself. What a blessed assurance and marvelous grace and terrifying possibility... to be known and possibly sent to the truck to wait or perhaps to be known and loved not in spite of but because of. All my failures and quirkiness and family history are a valued part of my creation, an asset not a liability. If I can truly accept this kind of knowing love, I can be transformed into the kind of person who loves others in the same way. Salvation and redemption for us all, one person at a time. That little preacher boy in Pritchard Park was right to proclaim God’s love for this world, for me, and I am still trying to believe in the Good Shepherd God who comes looking for me when I am on far away hillsides, lonely and lost. Some days I believe through and through and other days I have to hold on to keep this belief from slipping away. "I am the good shepherd; I know my own and my own know me."
Please God, when I forget who you are, remember me. Come find me and hold me close until my memory of you returns. And in my going out to town and coming home again, let me always find my way to you and to the others whom you love.

the after Christmas miseries

"Come to me, all of you who are frustrated and have had a bellyful, and I will give you zest. Get in the harness with me and let me teach you, for I am trained and have a cooperative spirit, and you will find zest for your lives. For my harness is practical and my assignment is joyful." Clarence Jordan’s Cotton Patch Gospel of Matthew Chapter 7, verse 28
Life after the Christmas extravaganza always deflates quickly like a balloon full of air set loose to spin around the room. Anticipation gives way to fear and trembling. Joy leaves and resignation sets in. Waiting for becomes plain waiting. The light of the Epiphany Star seems distant and drained in comparison to the angel light over the shepherd’s heads. We get what the old timers in my part of the world call the "miseries". We are spent and nothing tastes or feels or sounds or looks good enough to fill up the hole left by Christmas Past.
So when I read this passage in Clarence Jordan’s interpretation of the Matthew gospel, I laughed out loud. Jesus’ words in the southern vernacular help me hear them again for the first time. This version of the Sacred Text in the language of my region gives me new room to roam as I savor the words and their meaning.
"Come to me, all of you who are frustrated and have had a bellyful, and I will give you zest." This January I have had a belly full... a belly full of greedy developers next door, a belly full of taxes looming, a belly full of illness and death and confusion, a belly full of drought and hard scrabble times for those who love and live on the land. I am weary of sitting in four hour meetings with the Board of Adjustment listening to an attorney argue that his clients should be allowed to place 160 "park model" small trailers on a steep fifty acre plot of ground for weekend vacationers without having to play by the rules. I am weary of watching my daughter struggle to find the care her son needs in our educational system, a system that does not tend to the least but honors those who achieve. Those who have financial resources can pay the big bucks to provide private quality care but those who can’t have to push and shove and complain to get a toehold. I am weary of seeing those I love in hospital rooms and nursing home rooms. I am in need of some zest.
"Get in the harness with me and let me teach you..." When Daddy Vance had a green mule to train, he would harness it with Big Pet. She was a gentle soul who knew what to do and how to do it. It was always amazing to me to watch this process. Big Pet would stand quietly, dipping her head to receive the collar and be harnessed. Her calmness encouraged the other mule to be calm also. As Big Pet moved out pulling the tobacco sled behind, Blue would settle down and match his gait to hers as she responded to the verbal cues... gee, haw, up, up, up or whoa. Man and mules would move easily to the tobacco field to begin working as a team. The job was too large for just man alone but the cooperation between Big Pet, Blue and the driver was fun even when the work was hard. I need the Big Pets in my life to learn from, to be harnessed with, to help me find zest in my bellyful days. I have them. I just need to call them and get in harness.
"For my harness is practical and my assignment is joyful." The assignment is joyful, not ponderous or solemn or a call to action. Joyful, joy full... to work with the son of man is a joy and the load is lightened by the zest of cooperative spirits. The beloved community, a gathering of zesty joyful folks on a mission to be salt and light in a world that is in desperate need of both challenge and vision.
One of my favorite zesty old hymns always brings out the joy in my soul. It is sweet to sing the old words, hear Cara in the first soprano section singing a descant as I sing the chorus. "What a fellowship, what a joy divine, leaning on the everlasting arms. What a blessedness, what a peace is mine, leaning on the everlasting arms. Oh, how sweet to walk in this pilgrim way, leaning on the everlasting arms. Oh, how bright the path grows from day to day, leaning on the everlasting arms. What have I to dread, what have I to fear, leaning on the everlasting arms, I have blessed peace with my Lord so near, leaning on the everlasting arms."
Today I choose to be harnessed with Jesus, learning, laughing and singing as I move through the work that awaits me, leaning on the everlasting arms of the One who gets a kick out of my creation. Bellyful blessed bright beautiful beloved becoming soul work to be done with zest and joy. Thanks be to the God who I believe laughs out loud with us when we enjoy the gift of life in its fullness.

dirt roads home...

The dirt road that led to the old farm house where we lived seemed long, especially when I was carrying my school books in those long ago days before the invention of the backpack for children. It was sandy with high ditch banks covered in poke weed, dog hobble, blackberry briars with pine trees for exclamation points. Twice a day during the school year Gayle and I would walk the dirt road to the main paved road to meet the bus, driven by Mr. Woods, and go to school where the education came packaged in books and people, then come home driving on more dirt roads. Walking this little dirt road gave me another education. In the winter mornings the sandy dirt would crunch underfoot making a satisfying sound. My mama would be calling after me to put my coat on but I wasn’t cold. I was full of fire and warm from the inside out. We didn’t usually have time to dally in the mornings so our walk would be quick and with purpose. But oh those afternoons when nothing urgent waited at the end of the road... I would walk slowly, surveying the kingdom laid out before me... pokeberries to make ink (or dye), doodlebugs, snake tracks and once a rattlesnake coiled and rattling, neighbors friendly dogs, wild weed flowers for the picking and at the end of the road, just past the curve, home waited. An old high roofed, front porched, tin roofed, creaky old house with an enclosed dog trot hall where those who loved me most waited for me. I still walk that road in my memory.
My grandparents home, Cloverly, was at the end of a long, straight dirt road that turned off the narrow paved road between St. Stephens, Bruington and Walkerton in King and Queen County in Virginia. Gayle and I would be sitting in the back seat of the car so full of anticipation and joy we quivered. As we turned up the dirt road, corn or soybeans planted in the fields on each side, we could see Grandma and Grandaddy standing in front of the day lilly bank waiting. Sis Sue up the road must have called them to tell them we were near. Grandma in her house dress, hair pulled back in a knot on her neck, Grandaddy in his work khakis and white hair combed just so, waiting and watching as the car moved slowly up the lane to park under the tall trees. Gayle and I would fly out of the car running to meet our starchy German funny Grandma and tender smiling Grandaddy. The old moss covered bumpy brick walk to the house under the shade of tall trees stopped at the porch step. The two story, flat roofed, gray with green shutters, pre-Civil War house was waiting for us, full of ghosts and stories and laughter and cousins, a stair bannister with a curve for sliding, iron beds for sleeping, an old wooden Chinese Checker board in the downstairs hall tree and a bookcase full of turn of the century novels. It was my first glimpse of the joy of heaven.
The dirt road that leads to Sabbath Rest Farm is rocky and bumpy, covered in gravel, dappled with sunlight and shade.. It winds up through a cut that is high on one side covered in ferns, mosses and wild flowers and drops off to a picture perfect mountain stream on the other. As the road levels out, I pass the Dedrick Cutshall Memorial Shed , named for a dear neighbor who died. He and his wife Pat lived at the entrance to the farm and worked the farm when the Roberts owned it. From Pat and Dedrick we heard the stories of tobacco growing, hay baling, the tornado that took half of a barn away, roller skating in the chicken house and falling through the rickety floor and the Texas bought bull that broke his leg on a mountain rock.
The old barn door sign crafted in barbed wire names the place. At the gate to the farm, animal mailboxes stand guard, a pig, cat, rooster and cow. The road runs under a tall, beautiful pine tree past the original farmhouse, past the turn off to mama’s home, past the log barn chapel and pond, past the leaning barn (so named because it does lean a little) and begins climbing once again. We are in the wide open now with gentle hills on either side, bathed in light. The road forks with the right fork leading to Tim and Jeannie’s home. Bearing to the left, I top the hill and see rolling hills, mountains and the homes of neighbors in the distance on my right. To the left is an old fence, a pasture, an old barn and a beautiful old tree with branches spread in welcome. Our new/old white farmhouse with porches and an althea bush from Cloverly, waits in welcome.
Seasons and weather matter on this road. Winter snows and frost make the passage slippery in the shady stretches. One must drive and walk carefully to avoid going where you do not intend. Rain washes ruts and tracks in the gravel and dirt. Tim takes the tractor and uses the blade to level it again. Summer heat and drought are marked by clouds of dust rising in rooster tail plumes as we drive up the hill. Spring and summer and fall bring flowers... bloodroot, asters, chicory, black eyed Susans, wild phlox, naturalized iris and daffodils, hillsides covered in Queen Anne’s Lace, wild geraniums, witch hazel, blackberry and wild rose and honeysuckle. And winter shows us the true shape of the land when the green has fallen away.
For all of the inconvenience of living on a road that you must maintain, a road that spits dust at you, a road that slips and slides in the winter, a road that rises up to meet you on one side and falls away on the other, there is a soul connection to this road. It is not an anonymous black ribbon maintained by strangers. It is my road, a road that leads home. A road, that like my life, has sunlight and shadow, slick dangerous passages and firm footing, smooth stretches and bumpy spots, narrow blind curves and broad spacious spaces.
Blind Bartimaeus sitting by the dirt roadside, called out as he heard Jesus passing by. "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" As I drive the dirt roads of my life in memory and in the present, I, like Bartimaeus, call out, "Have mercy on me, Son of David. Remember me in my times of trouble and my times of ease. Take pity on my human condition. Like the blind man, let my faith make me whole. Do not leave me untouched, unhealed, unheard. I do not ask for a straight and level road, only for the light and love and grace necessary for this day’s journey. Hear me, Lord and answer me this day."

Transcendence Training

Mama came into the living room carrying a small glass filled with water, a comb, mirror and bobby pins. She sat in daddy’s recliner and placed the water on the end table. I watched, as I have watched many times before, as she carefully parted her silver hair into small strands with a wet comb, wound them around her finger, placed the curls flat against her head and fastened them with a criss cross of bobby pins. We sat and talked, drank a little tea and in a few minutes her hair was up and we were ready to go to bed. Mama’s hair would be curly in the morning when she took the pins out. It is a ritual I have seen and participated in all my life, comforting and normal.
Last night our covenant group met. We have been exploring the "verticality" of God (thanks, Russell for the word) and searching for ways to experience that in our meetings. We have passed through a desert drought and are experimenting with new old ways to water our souls. Horizontal relationships and rituals are important... community, service, peace marches, petitions, visiting the sick, providing room at the table for all of God’s children in church. But without the experience of the Transcendent that lifts us up outside of our confined selves, we have no Star to follow.
As we sat around the table at our Epiphany Feast, we shared our need and expectations for ritual. Ritual, at its best, turns off the head thinking and shifts us to a deeper place. We cannot think our way to God. Thinking can pave the way but only a leap of irrational faith can connect us to our Creator. Ritual provides a structure, a pattern that can often, not always, but often lift us up to higher ground.
When I participate in Communion, hear the ancient words, stand in line or pass the cup and bread, I know the rules and what is expected. I settle down, settle in and shift my gears. I wait for God to show up. Sometimes I get a whomp upside the head and sometimes it is only a whisper and sometimes I get nothing but silence. But the ritual prepares the way for God to enter my world.
The Episcopalian worship provides body language that signifies the Presence of the Holy. When you enter the sanctuary, you make your body response to the cross and all through worship, kneeling is a visual ritual that reminds you of your connection to a Power that is beyond your comprehension. Kneelers are not a just decorative accessory but a reminder that kneeling is a body prayer that recognizes God’s vast mysterious powerful nature.
In my country Baptist tradition, it was common for people to make their way to the front of the church during the invitation hymn, kneel and pray alone or with the pastor, then make their way back to their pews. Sometimes Brother Kannon, our pastor, would kneel on the podium as he prayed for our congregation. My Cherokee church has a call to prayer and nearly the whole congregation moves to the front and kneels to pray. In my current faith family, we have educated ourselves out of kneeling in our need to leave old, restrictive theology behind and it is our loss.
The ritual of baptism offers another open window to Transcendence. I carry a memory of our children’s baptism in my heart. This ritual, baptism by immersion, one I experienced as a child, was a powerful beginning for my public practice of my faith. Watching this same ritual as my children were baptized, hearing the same words, "Buried in the waters of Baptism, raised to walk in newness of life... In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, I baptize you my sister (or brother)"... caught me up in the practice of a ritual that began with John the Baptizer and Jesus, connected me with the past and propelled me into a future of faith. Someday, God willing, our children will stand and hear those words as their children begin their public faith journey. I hope they will remember and give thanks for this ritual that marks a coming of age for our children as Christians.
Other rituals... the practice of silence in worship, prayers of confession and forgiveness of sins, rituals of remembrance on All Saints Sunday, reading the Psalms with a musical response, sounding the bell or chime to signify the entrance of the Holy, the Lord’s Prayer...offer us an opportunity to touch God or be touched by God. But the ritual alone is not enough. We are required to make ourselves ready for God to come.
Too often I find our worship communities full of energy and conversation and back and forthing at the beginning of worship. The sense of holy ground is missing. We enter our worship spaces as if they were our living rooms or dens, not the testing grounds for the nuclear explosive possibilities of God. Unlike Moses who took his shoes off to approach the burning bush, we come into our sanctuaries insulated from the Power, wearing boots and sandals to keep our souls safe from any irrational experience of God. No wonder our young find our worships bland and dull. I wonder how we would change if one Sunday a month we had the greeters ask people to enter through closed doors in silence, be seated in silence, sit and meditate, wait for God to show up before worship begins.
Our covenant group is experimenting with the power of silence. Last night a poem, read twice by two different members of our group, was followed by long periods of silence and balanced by verbal responses to one line of the poem that caught your soul’s attention. Simple ritual, deep running water sharing, connection to the One who holds us all close, tears, laughter, singing the presence of a Sweet Spirit, and we were for a moment, in a bright and shining starlit space that lifted us up.
"Star of wonder, star of night, Star with royal beauty bright, Westward leading, still proceeding, Guide us to thy perfect light". In this Epiphany season, I pray for rituals that will lead me to the Perfect Light, rituals that will help me leave my constraints behind as I rise, bathed in star light to meet the One who first loved me.

a magnificient ruin....

I was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, not really paying attention to much besides waking up gently, when I caught sight of my face. Lordy, Lordy, Lordy! I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Like my grandchildren’s faces at Christmas, my face had shape shifted and I hadn’t even noticed. I have JOWLS... those deep lines with a little fat on each side that begin at the corner of your mouth and travel downwards. I stood there making faces at myself trying to make them go away. Perhaps if I smile all the time, or if I lose the extra ten pounds I am carrying around, or use some high powered face cream, they will go away. I haven’t minded crow’s feet or freckles that have metamorphosed into age spots or the wrinkles between my eyebrows, but having jowls is too, too much. I called my mama for sympathy and got none. She has jowls too and more as she reminded me. "Growing old is not for the faint of heart", she says. "Get used to it", she says. "It won’t go away", she says.
Growing old...what a complicated concept. I don’t mind growing old, I really don’t, partly because I feel alive and somewhat young still inside with the added bonus of having been there and done that and bought the tee shirt. Growing old, like growing up, is inevitable if you live. And like growing up, you have some choices you can make. I can choose to take care of my body... or not. I can choose to continue to learn and love and laugh and live... or not. I can make a difference in this world or in the lives of others... or not. I can grow up spiritually as I grow old physically and therein, for me, lies the gift of aging. Jowls might be a reminder to me that it is time to shift my focus from exterior to interior changes. How has my spiritual face changed?
My spiritual face is not as sharp edged as it used to be. In my younger days, my realm of certainty was much larger. I knew a great deal for sure and did not wonder much at all. That has reversed itself. Just as my physical face has softened and slid a little, my spiritual face now reflects more wonder at the Mystery of It All and less absolute assurance in the" my way or the highway approach" to faith. Now I know what I do not know, as well as what I do know and that is a gift that has come with age. I look in the heavens at night and am overcome with awe and fear and the realization that the God who created our universe is as vast and beautiful as the night sky canopy above me. How presumptuous of me to imagine that I could fathom the height and depth and breath of God. And yet...
Just as my face came with my daddy’s freckles and my mother’s blue eyes, my spiritual face bears the imprint of my Creator. Mother God’s loving, nurturing nature marks my inward face with laugh lines of love. Father God’s steadfast presence in times of trouble gave me a solid foundation of spiritual skin and bone on which I might build. The Spirit, showing up at the most unexpected times, left wrinkles that move up on my face with surprise and wonder from grace. My spiritual wrinkles, like my physical wrinkles, have a beauty that comes from experience and practice.
I once said that when I got old I wanted all the wrinkles on my face to run up, not down. Gravity has some control over that as does heredity and time. My outward face may have some lines that turn down but my soul face is full of upward running wrinkles left by love, joy, grace and peace found in the living of my soul’s days. I am hardwired to seek God, to love God, to know God. So even though I know I can never fully fathom the true nature of God until I die, I find evidences of God’s presence in my life daily.
The Son of God, the man named Jesus, the one the Kings sought under the light of the Star, is one way I can see and hear and feel God. The words and stories and history of his presence on earth are one way I can know God. My brother, Jesus, ate and laughed and grew and cried and loved his parents just as I do. His life and death are my model for living and dying. His special relationship with his Daddy God challenges me not to get lost in the vastness of God, reminds me that God can be as close to me as my mama or daddy, as available and present as my friends in time of trouble.
What a paradox, what a mystery, vast and contained, mysterious and known, close and far away, one in three, heart of my heart and heart of the world, source of all creation and my creator, destination and journey, my God I love thee. Let the wrinkles on my soul face, created in star light and love, be pleasing unto thee, Dear One. And could you please help me learn to love my wrinkles, all of them, as my face and body and soul, like fine wine, age and ripen in the passage of time? Thank you for this body and face and soul of mine. It has been a gift beyond measure, this life of mine, and I am grateful for all of it. Peggy Hester