Beach notes 2010...

Beach notes 2010...

I walk the beach early every morning. I wake, have my first cup of tea and go to the beach, sometimes alone and sometimes accompanied by my oldest grandson, Matthew. Sunrise and sunset are for me the most precious times of the day at the beach. Quiet, empty spaces of endless sand and water move me towards the boundless God who set this wonderful creation in the midst of an unimaginably vast system of planets, stars, suns and moons.
My first drawing for the week is of my foot on the beach seen from above. I walk the beach with my feet passing through a universe of small shells. As I examine the remnants of the little lives once lived in these tiny hard houses, I feel like a god. Then I lift my eyes to the flat horizon, the ocean waves that never cease their dance of praise, the dolphins with graceful leaps of joy, the pelican squadrons flying low and in perfect formation, ghost crabs lifting cautious eyes above their sand hole homes scouting out the territory, and I remember it is God who has made us all.

Ours was the last generation to worship the sun. Doctors prescribed walks in strollers outdoors for babies because the sun was good for us. We worked in the fields until we were old copper penny brown pausing in the middle of the day for respite from the heat. Ladies of leisure (and teenagers) laid out in their backyards coated in a mixture of iodine and baby oil in search of the perfect tan. We rode on the ocean stretched out on reflective floats with our feet and hands dangling in the water, riding the waves, feeling the rhythm of the earth dance in the waves that flowed beneath us. The sun was our friend.
Now like so many other body parts of Mother Nature, the sun has been transformed into our enemy. We slather on concoctions of chemicals designed to hold the sun at bay, to protect us from its harmful rays only to discover some of the cures may be as dangerous as the UV rays.

We beach walkers come in at least three models. There are the straight up walkers who walk (or run) standing tall with arms pumping, looking to the right and left occasionally but focused on the goal that seems to lie straight ahead. They speak but rarely linger for conversation.
Others saunter, relaxed, dipping in and out of the waves as they walk. Sometimes they bend over to inspect a shell or stop and survey the horizon line. If someone passes by, a conversation may ensue. They take time to pet the dogs, smile at children and speak to those strangers who might be new friends.
And then there are the shell seekers who walk bent over, scuttling like crabs amidst the treasures cast up on the beach by the shell god. They pick up shells, inspect them, choose to keep or cast away, and return to the search looking up only to avoid collision with other shell seekers. Occasionally they stand straight to walk to the next patch of shells.
I confess I am a member in good standing with the saunterers and shell seekers. I have no goal or purpose when I walk the beach other than the discovery of beauty in whatever form I find it... moon shells with their iridescent spiral towards center, Duchess the English bulldog who loved me, little children building sand castles, dolphin bodies glistening grey, the turtle nest protected by a web of orange plastic, the moonlight path on the calm evening sea...a labyrinth of beauty with God at its center.

I am fascinated with shell fragments, the left overs when sun, sea and sand have carved the original shapes into new forms. My drawings are of pieces of sand dollars, old clam shells that are pitted and worn, small whelk shells that are shaved off on two sides, beach glass worn smooth, jagged edged scallop shells. I am a shell fragment, my soul worn down over the years to its core shape, open on all sides, jagged scars where wounds have healed imperfectly, pitted and scarred by my passage through life. And I am beautiful in my own time, a creation of God that is perfect in my own imperfection.
“God has made everything beautiful in its own time and has put eternity into our mind yet we cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” Thanks be to God for the beaches in this world that remind us of endless love and boundless grace, perfection in imperfection.

Of morning songs and evening prayers

Dan, Wendy and their three daughters, Lily, Chloe and Em are back in the states looking for a home and jobs. For the past four years Dan has been pastor of an English speaking church in Beijing, China. It has been a grand adventure and an opportunity for the whole family to become a part of another culture. Dan loves being a pastor and hopes to find a church where he can exercise his gifts. Wendy, fluent in Japanese, with experience in the corporate world, would love to find work, too. Dan has been our friend since his days as a student at the seminary where Michael was a professor. Now he and his family are here at Montreat doing camp for the girls and themselves as they seek to find their new home.
Sitting on the deck last night, we were watching the sunset and the moonrise. Venus shone brightly as the stars began to appear. The moon was wreathed in a mist and the air was cool and damp. As we sat, my heart settled down and my soft evening prayers began to fly upwards toward the brilliant gilt edged clouds. It had been a hectic day full of work and traffic jams of many kinds. I felt frayed and tattered but the evening sounds and sights worked their magic and I began to see and hear the world around me uncluttered by a need to do anything or go anywhere. Swifts were flying through the air gathering their evening meal and they were soon joined by the bats dining on mosquitoes.
I gave the girls wide mouthed Mason jars so they could catch fireflies. Dan and Wendy spoke of the pollution, the brown hazy air that surrounds Beijing and the ambient light that blocks out the starlight. The saddest thing to me, however, was not pollution (we have our share) or the lack of starlight (go to any large city here) but the loss of songbirds. Mao ordered all the songbirds in the city killed during his tenure as ruler of China. There are no songbirds in Beijing.
Every morning during spring, summer and fall, we wake to the sound of birdsong. The rooster is not the only one with a morning composition to sing. Cardinals, bluebirds, indigo buntings, wrens, finches, even the brash caw of crows give us a sweet transition from sleep to waking. I cannot imagine a world without songbirds... morning sounds that do not include songs that are sung for pure joy by creatures other than us.
From our beginning times, when God said, “...let birds fly above the earth... and let birds multiply upon the earth...” we have had winged song slip sliding through the air that surrounds us, often unheard and unnoticed, but there nonetheless. I am reminded that the voice of God can be heard singing in these multicolored creations that exist as pure pleasure in a world of utility and multi-tasking. Give me ears to hear today, Lord, the songs you send me. Let me lift my voice in song to join birds in praise to the One who gave me life and breath and joy in living. Grant me a heartsong that is as pure and joyful as the morning hymns sung by the birds, Lord. The old hymn is right, Abba...How can I keep from singing?

Of rifles and romance...

Daddy gave me my first lesson in shooting the rifle when I was nine or so. I learned how to load the gun, clean it, hit a target and basic safety rules. The Sunday afternoon practice sessions were utilitarian as well as fun. A gun on the farm was a tool just like other tools in many ways. The tractor and pick up truck I learned to drive were also tools that helped with farm work. The rifle was a necessity sometimes, not pleasant but required. A rabid raccoon, a dying cow, a rattlesnake, butchering animals for meat... the rifle was used to end life and we knew it. There was no romance attached to the firing of the rifle.
Daddy kept the rifle in the back corner of his bedroom closet, unloaded. The bullets were in the top drawer of the chest. If he needed to shoot coyotes threatening the baby calves, he had to load the single shot rifle on the run. I don’t know that he ever hit a one of them but he surely scared them off.
As our agrarian roots have disappeared from the life experience of the majority of us, the fascination and unreal romance with guns seems to be exploding (pun intended). Television shows, movies, and video games show a no muss-no fuss approach to the life and death power of real guns. Albert Schweitzer’s reverence for life has been replaced with a reverence for firepower. Everyone has the constitutional right to own an AK47, it seems, even if it defies common sense. The bigger the gun, the faster it fires, the safer we are. I beg to differ.
Guns have never ensured one’s personal safety. Occasionally they protect from personal attack or home invasion or robbery. But, more often than not children die from accidental shootings because Daddy has guns and the children are playing with them. Or an “unloaded” gun goes off and a friend dies. No one living in a three bedroom suburban home with children “needs” an assault rifle. And if you are not a hunter or a farmer or in law enforcement, the gun is not a tool but an indulgence, a dangerous toy that needs supervision and training.
How is it, I wonder, that we need to take a driving test and get a license to drive a car but any fool can buy a gun as long as he passes the background check? A gun safety and training course should be required of anyone who wishes to purchase this instrument of death for that is what a gun does. It kills. If you skeet shoot or if you hunt... if you belong to a gun club and target practice at a safe location... if you collect guns like others collect china dolls...you use a gun that can kill. There is no inherent sin in owning a gun or in using a gun, but there is cowardice in ignoring the truth about guns.
Pretend guns, pretend violence, pretend blood, pretend death, pretend life... there is no safety in gun numbers. My help comes from God who made heaven and earth, my shade by day and the one who keeps me all the days of my life. Naive? Perhaps. But then I serve the one who urged his followers to turn the other cheek and forgive seventy times seven. No mention of guns or spears in Jesus’s plan of salvation. We’ll keep Daddy’s old single shot rifle for the true life and death crises on the farm. We will not depend on the illusion of safety to be found in gun ownership but we will depend instead on the One who in life and in death is never separated from us. Thanks be to God for life beyond life and death that is not the final answer.

Of hawk moths and heart's a-bustin'...

I stand on my front porch watching the butterfly hawk moths. Shaped like little hummingbirds, their relentless activity creates a whirling dervish flowerbed. The sound of all those wings, the to-ing and fro-ing from blossom to blossom, hold me in place as I let my mind free fall into remembrance of the past weekend.
My work camp family...and I do mean family... came for a visit this past weekend. Officially we were celebrating Walt and Mary Lynn’s fiftieth wedding anniversary. Unofficially we were once again taking time to remember how we came to be a family and give thanks for all that has been as well as all that is yet to be.
It is rare these days in our well traveled lives to live where we grew up surrounded by those who knew us when we were young. That kind of continuous relationship can be a touchstone, a gift of “remember when” and “look how well you have turned out”. For a little while this weekend we were once again “the chillun” with Walt and Mary Lynn as our fearless leader friends.
Our family, like most families, runs the gamut of every measure you might have. From the theologically conservative to the way out there liberal to the non-Christian, our faiths remain central to our lives. And yet these major differences in the context of loving family, are cause for conversation and self-revelation not judgement and scorn. We are very different in how and what and who we are and yet we are more alike than different in our desire to love one another.
Our family meeting Saturday afternoon was full of raucous laughter and good humored repartee. You get as good as you give in these free for all family meetings. We spent time thanking Walt and Mary Lynn for the friendship that started us off in our lives as adults, their steadfastness and continued connection to us for forty four years. We named the gifts they had given us and with them, named some ways we could honor who they are and have been all their lives. As a fiftieth anniversary present, we are investigating translating classic children’s books into Cherokee for the language immersion program on the reservation. This is a way to honor Mary Lynn’s life long work with and for children. One of the Woolf clan leads this program and has told us of the difficulty in locating books for children in their mother tongue. Walt and Mary Lynn have also been strong supporters of the Southern Poverty and Law Center, a non-profit organization that fights hate and discrimination through education and litigation. We will also be looking for a way to contribute to this group who are near to their hearts.
Discussion of our next gathering, the forty fifth anniversary of our building Bethabara Baptist Church in Cherokee, led to the decision to gather there next year and work on a project to help that congregation. Claudie asked for a less strenuous project than in the past and we agreed. We have more B team members now than A team... B team members are limited by body strength, knowledge and skill. Our A team members are wearing out so we will limit ourselves to a one day project. As usual, we muddle through the discussion process and much to our surprise are able to come up with a workable plan. Walt sits and watches, making occasional comments, just as he did long years ago while Mary Lynn leans in to the conversation.
Gathered around the table for our celebration meal, I listen to the rise and fall of the sounds of family. Pop (Walt) had prayed our grace for us and now our table was full not only with wonderful food but cups full and overflowing with love and gratitude. Like the hawk moths, the whirring of the wings of the Spirit can be heard above the laughter and conversation. We have re-read the old letters and articles saved from our past. We have given thanks for all we were given and all we have been. In anticipation of life and work yet to come, we have planned and assigned tasks to our doers and our be-ers knowing that the God who loves us all is present in each of us. Our bodies are temples for the Spirit and communion happens with ham and potato salad and sweet tea. Thanks be to God for my family where I am known and loved just because. My heart's a-bustin' with love and joy. I am blessed.