I woke to the hammer song of the pileated woodpecker this morning. He visits regularly in springtime, choosing to dine at the dead locust tree at the edge of the woods below our bedroom windows. The rat a tat tat melody reminded me of the time a woodpecker used the metal roof of my uncle’s trailer as a drum.
My daddy was the designated care giver in his family. If some one was sick or needed to be bailed out of jail, Daddy came. When his father was old and sick, Daddy took him to Atlanta and stayed with him while he was in the hospital, no small gift of time and money for a working man. When Uncle D.O.’s alcoholism landed him in jail, kicked out by his wife and fired from his job, Daddy went to Jacksonville to pick him up and brought him home. He lived with us all my growing up years. A small, quiet, red haired man, Uncle D.O. was a mystery to me. Grown ups did not speak freely in our family of grown up troubles in front of the children. Eventually I figured out his love of liquor and his mysterious comings and goings became a part of our family routine.
A caring pastor and my father’s stern house rules helped my uncle stay sober for some years. But when we moved to another county and another church, Uncle D.O. fell off the wagon and stayed mostly drunk until he was placed in a nursing home. For awhile, he lived in a small trailer in our back yard, driving to work sober and coming home Friday evenings soused, weaving gently down the road on the shoulder and the pavement. In our backyard, his trailer sat next to the trailer my grandmother lived in so she always kept her eye out for him, worrying about her broken son.
Daddy would get calls from the liquor store telling him D.O. was asleep in the car in front of the store or calls from D.O.’s patient employer telling Daddy where he was. My one memory of my uncle during these years is seeing him sitting on the swing under the pecan tree in the backyard, a slight form hunched over, smoking a cigarette down to a nub. As the years passed, he began to suffer from alcohol induced dementia. One day he came home, packed up and moved to live somewhere else. A woman in the neighboring community had convinced him to turn his Social Security check over to her and she promised to take care of him, manage his money, pay his bills and feed him. At that point, Daddy was worn out and angry so he let D.O. go knowing he had no choice. It was a bad decision but D.O. was a grown man and Daddy was getting out of the Savior business. Being and doing family is a messy business sometimes.
Deaths and resurrections come and go along with crucifixions in life. Some we choose and some come to us. Like Daddy’s care for my uncle, we do the best we can and pray for forgiveness and grace when we can’t save ourselves or the ones we love. The every year-ness of Holy Week and Easter reminds me that we are a part of a journey, a journey that holds the mystery and promise of death and new life. Whether we are an alcoholic struggling to stay sober or an upright (what a peculiarly descriptive adjective) law abiding tax paying church going man... a mother and wife trying to juggle work, home, marriage and parenting or a disabled veteran living with the left over trauma of war... an old woman who remembers how things used to be or a teenager who sees the future rushing towards her... We all will be crucified, die and with grace and connection to the Source of our life, experience resurrection again and again.
This Eastertide, I wait. I wait for signs of new life in the midst of dying. Our friend Vince and Michael’s father are walking through the end of their time here with us. We will celebrate a renewal of vows for Vince and his wife here at our home next week. Vince helped us build this house and it is right that it should be the place for one last party for him. Michael’s dad lives surrounded by loving hearts and hands that tenderly care for him even when he cannot be himself. New life, like the tightly closed iris buds, is unfolding and with the sound of the woodpecker’s song echoing in my heart, I give thanks that God keeps on pecking away at us until we head home... reshaping, remolding, renewing us into resurrected creatures whether we deserve it or not.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Eastertide in Prattville, Alabama
It was a long gray weekend punctuated by bright flashes of color. Michael’s dad, ninety six years old, had a stroke and we drove to Alabama to see him. There was some paralysis and his speech was affected. It was another loss of independence and selfhood for this man who is slipping away, dying by inches. He lives in a sixteen resident home in Prattville, Alabama, Autumn Place. It is called an assisted living home, though once you become a resident, they will try to keep you even when you are no longer able to keep yourself.
We walked in to the great room to the smell of barbequed chicken and potato salad. Lunch was being cooked and the smell was wonderful. The African American women who care for the residents have big hearts and tender hands. There is laughter and love served up in the midst of tears and sadness. When we last visited, I got a hankering for a pedicure. B.J. showed me her painted decorated nails and sent me to her nail technician. I didn’t get the bling that B.J. had on her nails but I did talk Michael into a pedicure. We laugh a lot, hug a lot, eat together and help clean up the kitchen after meals. It is holy ground where the People of God care for one another.
B.J. was helping H.O. drink some water as he sat in the recliner. He spends his days now out in the great room so they can keep an eye on him. He needs help to stand and can no longer use his walker. A wheelchair moves him back and forth. B.J. leaned over and whispered, “I know we aren’t supposed to get too attached but I love this old man. He never complains and he always calls me by my name.” During lunch I played the piano... old hymns and popular songs from the forties and fifties. Mr. Hudson, ninety eight years old, sat at his table while I played, long after he had finished eating. Michael met with the Hospice nurses and social worker arranging care for this last part of the journey. We sat with H.O. and told “remember when” stories until he dropped off to sleep.
Then we went to the Prattville funeral home to begin preparation for H.O.’s final church service. The two women there, one the owner, called us into the office where they had their shoes off recuperating from a funeral and burial that afternoon. We sat and talked, establishing our “Who are your people” and “Where did you come from’s” as we settled in. No surprise to us... H.O. had performed the wedding ceremony for the daughter of one of those women and met the other one at an AARP meeting. She still had his business card. No longer strangers in a strange land... we were known and cared for.
Ann and H.O. loved to eat out. One of our traditions in Prattville has been to eat at the Catfish House on Saturday night then drive around town and country. The Catfish House has a large plain wooden exterior, a graveled parking lot and is next to a lake on the road between Prattville and Millbrook. Inside, the walls are hung with concrete memories of life lived long ago. Farm tools, jars of marbles, cans of baking soda, baby buggies and old pictures provide a visual trip down memory lane. Fish camps like this are all over the south and serve as gathering places for the community. Folks come in and see other folks they know or kin. Along with wonderful seafood, they serve up relationship and connection. Saturday night we found the waitress who served H.O. when he was still mobile and independent, who has served us when we have come with him, and told her of his stroke. She will pass the word along to others. We ordered some catfish, hush puppies, white beans and slaw to take to H.O. so he could have a taste of home.
The regular visitors came. One man comes everyday to visit his daughter’s grandfather-in-law. He also visits and prays with H.O. Another man comes every Saturday to do Bible study and lead singing. Occasionally he brings his horn and plays. He, too, always comes to speak to H.O. Two surprise visitors came this weekend. One, a man who used to work at the Baptist Building in Montgomery, still has the letter H.O. wrote encouraging him to go to college and seminary. I suspect H.O. did for him what he did for many such young people, men and women alike, found some money to go along with the words. Another visitor, a former parishioner and friend, Willadean, was driven down from Birmingham by a friend, as her eighty third birthday present. She and Michael sat and told stories, laughed while H.O. listened in-between naps.
A long gray weekend spent walking through the valley of shadows was lightened by the presence of God in the people of God at Autumn Place and Prattville, Alabama. Jesus’s words in the Gospel of John came true for me this weekend. “Truly I say unto to you... you will be sorrowful but your sorrow will turn to joy.” Joy and sorrow were all wrapped around each other this weekend, flowing into the river of life surrounded by gratitude for all that has been and all that is yet to come. Even in our loneliness and sorrows, we are never alone. God With Us in the hearts and hands of strangers who are unknown kin people, waits to turn our griefs to gladness and our hearts towards home. Selah.
We walked in to the great room to the smell of barbequed chicken and potato salad. Lunch was being cooked and the smell was wonderful. The African American women who care for the residents have big hearts and tender hands. There is laughter and love served up in the midst of tears and sadness. When we last visited, I got a hankering for a pedicure. B.J. showed me her painted decorated nails and sent me to her nail technician. I didn’t get the bling that B.J. had on her nails but I did talk Michael into a pedicure. We laugh a lot, hug a lot, eat together and help clean up the kitchen after meals. It is holy ground where the People of God care for one another.
B.J. was helping H.O. drink some water as he sat in the recliner. He spends his days now out in the great room so they can keep an eye on him. He needs help to stand and can no longer use his walker. A wheelchair moves him back and forth. B.J. leaned over and whispered, “I know we aren’t supposed to get too attached but I love this old man. He never complains and he always calls me by my name.” During lunch I played the piano... old hymns and popular songs from the forties and fifties. Mr. Hudson, ninety eight years old, sat at his table while I played, long after he had finished eating. Michael met with the Hospice nurses and social worker arranging care for this last part of the journey. We sat with H.O. and told “remember when” stories until he dropped off to sleep.
Then we went to the Prattville funeral home to begin preparation for H.O.’s final church service. The two women there, one the owner, called us into the office where they had their shoes off recuperating from a funeral and burial that afternoon. We sat and talked, establishing our “Who are your people” and “Where did you come from’s” as we settled in. No surprise to us... H.O. had performed the wedding ceremony for the daughter of one of those women and met the other one at an AARP meeting. She still had his business card. No longer strangers in a strange land... we were known and cared for.
Ann and H.O. loved to eat out. One of our traditions in Prattville has been to eat at the Catfish House on Saturday night then drive around town and country. The Catfish House has a large plain wooden exterior, a graveled parking lot and is next to a lake on the road between Prattville and Millbrook. Inside, the walls are hung with concrete memories of life lived long ago. Farm tools, jars of marbles, cans of baking soda, baby buggies and old pictures provide a visual trip down memory lane. Fish camps like this are all over the south and serve as gathering places for the community. Folks come in and see other folks they know or kin. Along with wonderful seafood, they serve up relationship and connection. Saturday night we found the waitress who served H.O. when he was still mobile and independent, who has served us when we have come with him, and told her of his stroke. She will pass the word along to others. We ordered some catfish, hush puppies, white beans and slaw to take to H.O. so he could have a taste of home.
The regular visitors came. One man comes everyday to visit his daughter’s grandfather-in-law. He also visits and prays with H.O. Another man comes every Saturday to do Bible study and lead singing. Occasionally he brings his horn and plays. He, too, always comes to speak to H.O. Two surprise visitors came this weekend. One, a man who used to work at the Baptist Building in Montgomery, still has the letter H.O. wrote encouraging him to go to college and seminary. I suspect H.O. did for him what he did for many such young people, men and women alike, found some money to go along with the words. Another visitor, a former parishioner and friend, Willadean, was driven down from Birmingham by a friend, as her eighty third birthday present. She and Michael sat and told stories, laughed while H.O. listened in-between naps.
A long gray weekend spent walking through the valley of shadows was lightened by the presence of God in the people of God at Autumn Place and Prattville, Alabama. Jesus’s words in the Gospel of John came true for me this weekend. “Truly I say unto to you... you will be sorrowful but your sorrow will turn to joy.” Joy and sorrow were all wrapped around each other this weekend, flowing into the river of life surrounded by gratitude for all that has been and all that is yet to come. Even in our loneliness and sorrows, we are never alone. God With Us in the hearts and hands of strangers who are unknown kin people, waits to turn our griefs to gladness and our hearts towards home. Selah.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Resurrection 101
For Jill who chose life everlasting Saturday afternoon...
Our friend, who is pastor of a downtown church wrote of standing in front of his congregation Easter morning, preaching to a congregation struggling with death in the present and life to come. His words are powerful for me. "I don't need a bodily resurrection to believe" has become the watchword of the almost always rational believer (I say "almost always" because I find my skeptical, rational friends always have a very irrational place in their bones about something, whether it is football or the joys of their children) and having spent a good bit of time with both Marcus Borg and Dom Crossan (and I like Dom MUCH more than Borg), I find their work very helpful but in the end, unsatisfying. As Guiterrez (bad speller) the liberation theologian told Borg, "in South America, I need a God who has the power to raise Jesus from the ____ing dead and not one that can be argued about in a god-damned seminar room") (this story was related to me by a Borg friend who thought Guiterrez was a "fundamentalist" (because he believed in resurrection, he's a fundie...oh please!)....I'm with Guiterrez....I preached before four church members yesterday ranging in age from 23 to 57, all dying of cancer and THREE families, two of whose sons committed suicide this year and a third who tried and screwed up his brain forever), and "metaphor" just doesn't get it...Now, what kind of body is a resurrected body is a great question, but I'm with Buechner.....I don't know what happened that day...who the hell does?....but I bet my life that something did...that Jesus got up and somehow things are never the same again.... I always say at FBC we have only ONE doctrine and that it's the only one the New Testament ever states, "Jesus is Lord"....and if that one won't keep you busy for the rest of your life, you aren't paying attention....but I don't know how one gets there without Jesus being the Risen Lord...otherwise we are back to George Burns and "Jesus was my Son, Buddha was my son, Mohammad was my son" which, of course, is true...but somehow, not enough... Just some thoughts....
His pain as pastor for those who have lived and are now living the crucifixion, his being the voice and face of God for those in his care, requires, demands a Risen Lord. Most of us have the luxury of having to face death and destruction in a limited way. We are not asked the hard questions by parents whose son chose death over life. We do not hear a father cry as he imagines his children growing up without his presence in their life. We do not sit in the company of the old whose lives are limited by minds that have unraveled or bodies that have failed. Our crucifixion quota is limited to ourselves, our immediate family and friends. If we are active in peace and social justice issues, our circle expands somewhat but most of us never feel the immediate intense anguish of those who are struggling with life in death as a part of our daily lives.
The decision to follow Jesus is at its heart an irrational decision. There is no scientific proof or rational basis for ordering one’s life and committing the care of your soul (again an unseen entity) to a man who lived over 2000 years ago. We launch our faith boats out into seas covered with fog, unable to see shores in either direction. Our destination is a mystery that comes clear only after we die. Nothing about this make sense to the head and yet the heart cries out for the Peace that passes all understanding. In our need for order and knowledge, we seek to apply rules and processes we understand to something that is beyond our comprehension. To paraphrase author J.B. Phillips, our God is too small, limited by our need to explain and understand.
All theologians, (and that includes those of us without seminary degrees who speak freely of our beliefs rational and otherwise) would find ourselves speaking and believing differently, I suspect, if we had to be pastor for a year or so. There is nothing like hard core pain and suffering to strip away the nonessentials and as my old revival preacher used to say, force you down on your knees. On my knees I can own up to my doubts and pain, weep and lean on those who are kneeling beside me in the valley of the shadow, and hear the words “The Lord is risen indeed!” I can say with Thomas the Doubter “My Lord and my God!” I can stand up and walk and run to the Risen Lord like Mary and Simon and Thomas. Something extraordinary did happen and I can live with the Resurrection mystery, live with the certainty that death is not the final answer. Love and Life walked out of that tomb long ago and into my life as a Christian. I am grateful.
Our friend, who is pastor of a downtown church wrote of standing in front of his congregation Easter morning, preaching to a congregation struggling with death in the present and life to come. His words are powerful for me. "I don't need a bodily resurrection to believe" has become the watchword of the almost always rational believer (I say "almost always" because I find my skeptical, rational friends always have a very irrational place in their bones about something, whether it is football or the joys of their children) and having spent a good bit of time with both Marcus Borg and Dom Crossan (and I like Dom MUCH more than Borg), I find their work very helpful but in the end, unsatisfying. As Guiterrez (bad speller) the liberation theologian told Borg, "in South America, I need a God who has the power to raise Jesus from the ____ing dead and not one that can be argued about in a god-damned seminar room") (this story was related to me by a Borg friend who thought Guiterrez was a "fundamentalist" (because he believed in resurrection, he's a fundie...oh please!)....I'm with Guiterrez....I preached before four church members yesterday ranging in age from 23 to 57, all dying of cancer and THREE families, two of whose sons committed suicide this year and a third who tried and screwed up his brain forever), and "metaphor" just doesn't get it...Now, what kind of body is a resurrected body is a great question, but I'm with Buechner.....I don't know what happened that day...who the hell does?....but I bet my life that something did...that Jesus got up and somehow things are never the same again.... I always say at FBC we have only ONE doctrine and that it's the only one the New Testament ever states, "Jesus is Lord"....and if that one won't keep you busy for the rest of your life, you aren't paying attention....but I don't know how one gets there without Jesus being the Risen Lord...otherwise we are back to George Burns and "Jesus was my Son, Buddha was my son, Mohammad was my son" which, of course, is true...but somehow, not enough... Just some thoughts....
His pain as pastor for those who have lived and are now living the crucifixion, his being the voice and face of God for those in his care, requires, demands a Risen Lord. Most of us have the luxury of having to face death and destruction in a limited way. We are not asked the hard questions by parents whose son chose death over life. We do not hear a father cry as he imagines his children growing up without his presence in their life. We do not sit in the company of the old whose lives are limited by minds that have unraveled or bodies that have failed. Our crucifixion quota is limited to ourselves, our immediate family and friends. If we are active in peace and social justice issues, our circle expands somewhat but most of us never feel the immediate intense anguish of those who are struggling with life in death as a part of our daily lives.
The decision to follow Jesus is at its heart an irrational decision. There is no scientific proof or rational basis for ordering one’s life and committing the care of your soul (again an unseen entity) to a man who lived over 2000 years ago. We launch our faith boats out into seas covered with fog, unable to see shores in either direction. Our destination is a mystery that comes clear only after we die. Nothing about this make sense to the head and yet the heart cries out for the Peace that passes all understanding. In our need for order and knowledge, we seek to apply rules and processes we understand to something that is beyond our comprehension. To paraphrase author J.B. Phillips, our God is too small, limited by our need to explain and understand.
All theologians, (and that includes those of us without seminary degrees who speak freely of our beliefs rational and otherwise) would find ourselves speaking and believing differently, I suspect, if we had to be pastor for a year or so. There is nothing like hard core pain and suffering to strip away the nonessentials and as my old revival preacher used to say, force you down on your knees. On my knees I can own up to my doubts and pain, weep and lean on those who are kneeling beside me in the valley of the shadow, and hear the words “The Lord is risen indeed!” I can say with Thomas the Doubter “My Lord and my God!” I can stand up and walk and run to the Risen Lord like Mary and Simon and Thomas. Something extraordinary did happen and I can live with the Resurrection mystery, live with the certainty that death is not the final answer. Love and Life walked out of that tomb long ago and into my life as a Christian. I am grateful.
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