In the beginning...

As it was in the beginning...

The call came Thursday morning. “Mom? Michelle’s water broke and we are on the way to the doctor’s office.” Mama and I were in Weaverville running errands, getting ready for three of our grandsons who were spending Labor Day weekend with us. As we drove home after visiting with Margaret, a friend of ours who is under the weather, another call came. “Mom? We are on our way to the hospital.” And so this beginning began.
I called Michael and left word. I called the girls and gave them the news that another baby boy was on the way into the world to join our family. Many calls later, a plan was in place and that afternoon I drove to Charlotte to be with Adam and Michelle. Michael came after work and we laughed and labored with Michelle as she did the body work necessary for birth. As transition approached, we all left the labor room so Adam and Michelle could finish the task at hand. At 2:01 Adam called us caught between tears and laughter to tell us Rowan Reilly Hester had arrived. With Michelle’s cheeks and Adam’s nose, dark hair and rosebud mouth, another doxology of creation was sung in Presbyterian Hospital early Friday morning.
No matter how many times I see a newborn baby, I am always swept away by the sheer magnitude of the miracles that are required for the creation of new life. Even in this age of scientific understanding, there is such a joyous happenstance in the bodies of new babies. How did Rowan get Adam’s nose... the Hester nose... and his mother’s cheeks, the Reilly cheeks? Where did that mouth come from and how did the child of two blonde parents end up with such dark hair? In that tiny little bundle resting in his mother’s arms is a whole person who will unfold and grow with his parent’s help. As I look at pictures of our son holding his baby son, my eyes and heart shed tears of joy for his happiness, for the family he and Michelle have created.
I watch the family trio and see echoes of a long ago family, a new child born in a barn with loving parents and a future neither of them could fully imagine. As it was for Mary and Joseph, so it is for Adam and Michelle. All we can do is love our children, give them the best of what was given to us and hand them over to the safekeeping of the God who gave them to us. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end, amen, amen.

Masterpieces large and small...

The past four days have been a study in contrasts for me. Thursday night we flew to New York City for a wedding in Central Park. We had never visited New York City so we stayed a few days extra and took in some sights. I have always wanted to visit The Cloisters, a museum of medieval art. Remnants of medieval cloisters and chapels reconstructed in lovely gardens on the far northern end of Manhattan island was an experience of the sacred in the midst of the secular.
I couldn’t help but contrast my two museum experiences in my reflections this morning.
Visitors to The Cloisters spoke in hushed tones. Quiet and decorum, perhaps influenced by the sanctity of the stones that surrounded us, were a welcome break from the noise and perpetual rush of the city. All around me were the art and faith survivors from the middle ages. The illuminated manuscripts were beautiful and I studied them carefully, recognizing the skill it took to produce work that could last through the ages. And who knew that communion wine used to be sipped through a straw? For those long ago believers, the wine truly became Christ’s blood and they did not want to spill it.
As so often happens, there was one work of art that spoke to my soul. I went back to it several times, standing in quiet meditation, time traveling and remembering. The two pieces were painted on wood in a gothic arch shape. One was of Jesus on the cross with Mary and others gathered around. The second companion piece was of Jesus, down from the cross stretched out, with Mary lying down beside him. The faces pulled me in... called to me... rendered with great feeling and detail, so lifelike and filled with grief and confusion. The prone figures of mother and son, the awful grief and loss, the gathering of loved ones around the mother and son, echoed in my heart and reminded me we never are truly alone even in our darkest hours.
Our second museum was the Museum of Modern Art in downtown Manhattan. It was just a few blocks from our hotel so we walked to it and entered an open soaring space filled with people and noise. Languages from around the world, children, lines, bubbling activity wherever you looked... We began with the Matisse exhibit on the sixth floor exploring and learning about the artist and his methods.
It was crowded and we were caught up in the museum fever... see as much as you can because time is flying by... when we saw her. A little girl, maybe four or five, sitting cross legged on the floor in front of a painting with her drawing pad. She would look a little and draw a little, look and draw. Her composition was taking shape and she was not only seeing but drawing what she saw. Around her was a little still island of space as the busy noisy adults gave her the room she needed.
I will remember the beautiful paintings I saw on Monday. There were so many I have only seen in pictures or prints and they came to life for me in the midst of that crowded busy museum. But most of all I will carry in my heart the image of a little girl taking time to look, see and draw what was in front of her. She was a masterpiece in her own right. She will help me to remember to live in the present, mindful of what is right in front of me. She calls me to draw what I see and in the drawing to make a new creation that reflects the Old Master who created me.
Thanks be to God for the work of our hands that brings beauty and order to our world. I want my life to be a work of art, Lord, that is a still point of creation and connection. Give me eyes to see and a heart that is open to both noise and quiet, chaos and order so that I might find you in New York City and Alexander, North Carolina. Amen.

My whippoorwill song... with grasshopper grace notes and butterfly benediction

In the twilight, I miss the sound of the whippoorwill’s song as the faint taste of loss and leaving lingers in my soul. This season, the crossing over from summer into fall, always brings a melancholy that is echoed in that shy bird’s song. As a child we would sit on the porch listening to whippoorwills sing from the woods that edged the pasture. Plaintive, sweet, floating over the heavy summer evening air, he called us home as darkness settled over the land. Gone now from the fields around us, I hope the whippoorwill has found refuge from the mad rush of development in the hills and hollows farther up the mountains. A world without the whippoorwill’s song would be sadly lacking. I sit on my soul’s porch listening to the whippoorwill song in my heart remembering my seasons of good by saying.
School’s beginning was always bittersweet for me as our children crossed another hurdle in the race to grow up. Kindergarten, first grade, first bus ride, middle school, high school, first car, driving off to college, first child to leave home, last child to leave home (the middle child gets a free pass)... all in the fall when the tangy smell of approaching autumn floated through the early morning air. I celebrated their coming of age, their growing into accountability, the sight of their individual personhood, the faint outlines of the grownups they would become emerging from their childhood. And as I celebrated, I mourned the loss of my babies... makes no sense does it?
In the luminous light of summer not yet autumn, I see the ones I have loved who have left this world, loved ones who no longer can come when I call. As I cut grass today on the farm, their faces rested in my heart’s memory and I called them by name. Grandparents, father, sister, husband, friends... their presence in my life was a gift and I honor them by remembering. The day is crisp and clear like my memories and I rest between laughter and tears.
I look down and see my shirt covered with grasshoppers of all sizes and colors, refugees from the mower who have found safety on me. Brown long legged ones, small bright green ones, brown and orange ones... crunchy legs climbing up my shirt towards my face, jumping away when I lift my hand to touch them. As a child I caught and raised grasshoppers in gallon jar terrariums, feeding them until their skins split like a snake as they outgrew their body covering. They fascinated me, and in them I caught my first glimpse of the transformation that comes with growth.
A cloud of butterflies suddenly surround me on the mower up by the high barn. I turn the mower off and sit, soul singing at this beautiful symbol of resurrection. Black and blue butterflies, sitting on the mower, lighting on my arms, resting in the clover... I think God just reached down and tapped my soul on the shoulder. Words come to mind and heart... “Remember to whom you belong. Remember there is more to life than death. Rest in the beauty that surrounds you and give thanks for all that has been and all that is yet to be.”
Tonight Michael and I drove the tractor and the mower down to the barn under the light of a full moon. The last few stragglers of fireflies glowed here and there as I meandered down the hill. Light enough for the journey...beautiful light... beginnings and endings illuminated, glowing with memories and possibilities. It is more than enough. Thanks be to God.

Oh to grace how great a debtor...

All of my life I have prayed the Lord’s Prayer using different words as times have changed... Our Father and Mother instead of just Our Father... but one phrase has remained the same in meaning. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive others their trespasses against us... The interpretation of this phrase has remained constant. The quality of forgiveness for ourselves depends upon the forgiveness we extend to others. The gospel story of the man imprisoned for failure to pay his debts who is forgiven by the ruler only to imprison those who owe him is the foundational text for this reading of the prayer.
I am coming to a new hearing of these old words in this most important prayer. Sitting in a new congregation so different from all those I have known before, the Presbyterian version of this prayer startles me every Sunday with the words “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” I almost always stumble through the first part of this phrase catching up on “our debtors”. One Sunday a retired minister stood and said this particular phrase had meaning for Presbyterians because they were in their history shopkeepers and owners who often were called to forgive the debts owed them by those who could not or would not pay.
I sit sometimes in worship after the Prayer contemplating my debts, what I owe, what promissory notes I have signed in my life. I owe my parents for their loving care even when I was unlovely. I owe my children who taught me the dance steps for the circle of life. I owe my grandchildren for the pure unbridled joy they bring to my life. I owe my pastors who have each given me words every Sunday that often caught my God imagination and pushed me closer to my Creator. I owe my husband Michael who has worked to support us financially and keeps me from floating off into the ether of introversion. I owe my friends who continue to gather round for fun and frolic and come when I holler for help. I owe my God for life and sustaining love that will not let me go even when the way is shrouded in darkness.
“Oh to Grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be. Let thy goodness like a fetter bind my wandering heart to thee. Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. Here’s my heart, oh take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.” Please Lord, bind me and remind me of my debts. Seal me in your heart so that my wanderings will always lead back to you. Amen.