Palm Sunday Reflection

The Path of Waiting
 

An excerpt from Henri Nouwen's

Finding My Way Home

Passion is a kind of waiting - waiting for what other people are going to do. Jesus went to Jerusalem to announce the good news to the people of that city. And Jesus knew that he was going to put a choice before them: Will you be my disciple, or will you be my executioner? There is no middle ground here. Jesus went to Jerusalem to put people in a situation where they had to say "Yes" or "No". That is the great drama of Jesus' passion: he had to wait for their response. What would they do? Betray him or follow him?

In a way, his agony is not simply the agony of approaching death. It is also the agony of being out of control and of having to wait. It is the agony of a God who depends on us to decide how to live out the divine presence among us. It is the agony of the God who, in a very mysterious way, allows us to decide how God will be God. Here we glimpse the mystery of God's incarnation. God became human not only to act among us but also to be the recipient of our responses.
 

. . . And that is the mystery of Jesus' love. Jesus in his passion is the one who waits for our response. Precisely in that waiting the intensity of his love and God's is revealed to us.     ...Henri Nouwen

Telling Secrets

Telling Secrets

(Exercise in Dialogue from Prior Post)

Olivia had almost an hour before she needed to meet her next client.  A perfect time to pull out her phone to read, have a coffee and a bit of time to herself. Selling real estate in these days was dog eat dog, but she treated herself to a little time alone now and then. This was the time, a lovely spring morning.

Settling into a corner table at Starbucks so she could be somewhat isolated from others, she noticed a woman sitting alone.  The woman looked vaguely familiar.  Oh, yes, she remembered, she had seen her coming out of another apartment a few doors down from her own the prior week.  It had been in the early afternoon and the woman, red haired, had been with a man as they exited an apartment.  The two had been just a few minutes ahead of her as she rushed to try and catch an elevator ride down to the car park. But that day she was running late for a closing, almost frantic as she fumbled with her door lock when she rushed back inside to retrieve her notebook.  Then, closing papers, phone and notebook in hand, she finally locked up and saw the elevator, fifty feet from her door. had already descended, taking away the couple and her opportunity to exit quickly.  She recalled having to wait for yet another elevator, feeling even more rushed and frustrated because she had missed that first ride down. When Olivia finally arrived in the basement car park, she noticed the couple exiting through the underground gate, the arm open to let through the man's blue Civic with "LUVLAW" on its back license plate.  

Coming back to the present, Olivia straightened the wadded paper napkin in her lap and turned on her Kindle app, resuming the process of trying to enjoy this time alone, ready to drink coffee and get back to her novel.  But two pages in, just a few moments after she found her place, she looked up to sip on her sweet, steaming latte and saw that same woman with the pretty auburn hair was joined by another female friend, a brunette, with coffee in hand. Olivia hoped they would not be too loud as they talked, because Olivia needed quiet in order to concentrate as she read. But sure enough, she could hear them talking about their workouts in the gym.  "Ah, perfect little butt girls proving their cross-fitness," Olivia thought to herself.

Red Head leaned closer to Brunette to talk.  Olivia kept her eyes on her phone, concentrating on the words as she clicked to the next page in her novel.  She tried not to listen, but heard "I know we don't know each other very well, but I need to talk.  Thanks for meeting me."  More hushed talking.  Red Hair: " ...it's not right, but I feel so powerless.  He has such charisma, and even though he is not that good looking, he seems to really care about what I say. He listens. I really think I am in love with him."

Brunette murmurs.  More words between them, and Olivia thinks maybe now she can comprehend the words on the book as the women are speaking more quietly.  Quick sip, coffee is getting lukewarm, she needs to finish it before it gets too cold.  Olivia looks back down and then hears Brunette say "...but if he is married, you know it won't end well."  

"He says he is not happy and he has been thinking of leaving his wife, and since there are no kids involved, that now is the time he should do it, before it is too late and his wife gets pregnant," says Red Head.  Olivia keeps her head averted, but glances upward to looks at that earnest female face, "a pretty face but certainly not a knock-out," Olivia thinks to herself.  

"I'll bet he won't leave his wife; they never do.  Just enjoy being with him for what it's worth.  You are getting attention and good sex, can't you just take it for that?"  Brunette says, as if she has been in that same situation herself.  Oh, boy, Olivia thinks, "do they know how loud they are talking?" Starbucks has filled up more, but being in the corner, their two voices seem amplified, especially since they are talking up against the window.  Olivia gets back to her reading.

Then she overhears Brunette saying "My husband would never think of having an affair. We have a really tight relationship and share everything.  We are talking about having a baby in the next year or so, and he is so sweet about telling me how he will cherish being a father and having our own little family."  She goes on, "We could stay in our place where we have been for a few years, and have even thought of asking his parents for a loan to buy a house if we decide to have a family.  Apartments are just too small to raise kids in. We could pay off a loan before too many years, even if I quit work, because he is on target with his career toward partnership."  More hushed chatter between the two tight butts.

Olivia notices Brunette gets up to leave, air kisses Red Head, saying "Talk soon.  Just enjoy your time with him, he sounds like a keeper.  Who knows, maybe he will leave that wife.  Hubby is here to pick me up for lunch, gotta go," and she rushes out of Starbucks. 

Olivia sees Brunette get into the passenger side door of the waiting car. As the blue late model car pulls away from the curb, she is astonished to see the back of the trunk with its license plate clearly visible, spelling out "LUVLAW".

Class Notes from March 24: Dialogue

Last night was writing class and teacher/coach Sandy Dorr told us we were to concentrate, for the next two weeks, on reading and writing dialogue.

Dialogue is just like talking with someone, but, uh, I guess not exactly.  As I ponder on talking with others, my dialogue stinks.  "Yeah, uh huh," are some of my retorts to say "I am listening," but that is not effective in making someone understood, or listened to.  I'll try to work on that.

Reading assignment: "Sister Imelda," by Edna O'Brien (Irish author)

Here is what Sandy said in her handout last night:

Dialogue is our characters in their own words, the closest we get to them  When dialogue flows like poetry, it sounds as if people are speaking in our ears, in their incomplete, jumbled break.  If it's working, you can excerpt even a little piece of it and get the characters, the landscape, and the flavor of the moment.

Dialogue is never purely informational.  At its best, it will help advance the plot, but it must do more than one thing at a time.  It helps set the scene, develop the character, develop the conflict, stir our senses.  The words spoken by characters color the air between them and tell us who they are rather than exactly what they're going to do or have done.  Think of dialogue as the shorthand between people who know each other well, a vernacular that's surprising, intimate, new and often contrapuntal. 

Dialogue can cover space and time in a story  

Dialogue can give us a place and the people living there, particularly when they share an assumed body of knowledge. 

You don't have to write both voices to create a dialogue: 

     Felice? It's me, Graciela.  

     No, I can't talk louder, I'm at work.

      Look, I need kind of a favor. (Sandra Cisneros "Woman Hollering Creek")

Exercises:

1. Write dialogue without quotes.  See what's necessary.  Keep returning the carriage or hitting "Enter."
2. Since paragraphs are emotional (Gertrude Stein), write two people who know each other well, talking.  Each is keeping a secret.
3. Two people talking in a closed space - a car, a room - for a defined length of time.  Each has to reveal something in order to exit.  Use few speech tags.
4. Two people who haven't seen each other for quite a while meet (at the p.o., laundromat, or more intimate place).  What do they do and say"
5. Write a dialogue between radically different voices. Aim for the marked differences (age, ethnicity, English as a second language) or simpler, subtle shifts in syntax.

 Assignment:
   
          Write a short tale, a fictionalized account of either something that happened to you or someone you know -- which steps out beyond the actual fact, into the fictional world -- or a memoir, if you prefer.  I'd urge you to try fiction.  You might start with a fictional idea that may have nothing to do with you, and may be told from the point of view of someone quite unlike you.  It's free and enlightening.  If you don't know where to start, try with a character getting up out of bed in the morning.  What happens next?  Who does s/he encounter?  What comes to a head and must be answered by the story?
          Use dialogue within the scenes, and the scenes themselves between at least two people, to advance the story.  Try to proceed from a place where the ending is unclear; put down everything you know, and then see what happens.  Use all five senses.  Allow a mixture of emotions, a tumult, if you will.  Enjoy yourselves.
          Note to self: send to Sandy by April 7, 2015, 5-8 pages in length .. remember that

• people need to meet or get together somehow
• something has to happen
• that something has to end

Two Weeks From Easter

While in church yesterday, Pastor Barbara said something that made me reach for a pencil and my folded up piece of paper so that I could scratch out a few words for this Pause in Lent, sharing with Angela and others here,  Just follow the links on the right upper column of her blog for more posts.

The gist of what was said is this: death precedes life

.
As I was thinking of death preceding life, my garden came to mind.  All those leaves, at least six inches in depth of fallen cottonwood leaves, are covering the soil of my wildflower garden.  As I was removing the rich layer of decay, of the dead leaves, I marveled at the fat earthworms that were uncovered.  Those earthworms thrived over the winter because of the dead leaves giving them cover and warmth through the harsh time of winter, when the ground was frozen and dead.  But it was necessary that the leaves fell from those old cottonwoods, giving shelter and mulch for the forthcoming wildflower garden that will bloom in the months following.  The worms thrived and will help sustain new flower growth through their organisms.

Through Death Comes Life

As we approach Good Friday, pondering on God giving His Son to death brings mankind to a realization of New Life through this sacrifice.  For Christ did overcome death to live on in eternal life.  He did it for you.  Do you accept his death and resurrection for yourself, for a new life?

A Pause in Lent for Blessings

"Blessings" by Laura Story

We pray for blessings, we pray for peace
Comfort for family, protection while we sleep
We pray for healing, for prosperity
We pray for Your mighty hand to ease our suffering
And all the while, You hear each spoken need
Yet love us way too much to give us lesser things

'Cause what if your blessings come through rain drops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You're near
What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

We pray for wisdom, Your voice to hear
We cry in anger when we cannot feel You near
We doubt your goodness, we doubt your love
As if every promise from Your word is not enough
And all the while, You hear each desperate plea
And long that we'd have faith to believe

'Cause what if your blessings come through rain drops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You're near
What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

When friends betray us
When darkness seems to win
We know that pain reminds this heart
That this is not,
This is not our home
It's not our home

'Cause what if your blessings come through rain drops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You're near

What if my greatest disappointments or the aching of this life
Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can't satisfy
What if trials of this life
The rain, the storms, the hardest nights
Are your mercies in disguise



Psalms 27:13
Yet I am confident I will see the LORD's goodness while I am here in the land of the living.
This post is part of A Pause in Lent hosted by Angie.

The Third Thing Assignment

write poem or prose using imagery, consider how to tell a story through one thing in your life, the third thing, the tiger in the grass, out of the corner of your eye (up to three pages) ... (begun 3/14/15)

A Musing 

    One goes through a lifetime very sure about one's parentage, or at least I did. You were either born to a mom and dad, or to a single mom, or you were adopted by a family who very much wanted a child because your parent or parents could not adequately care for you. And if you were not adopted, you grew up in an institution called an “orphanage,” not a preferred method of living for a child since Charles Dickens' writings and the story of Oliver often comes to mind. As a kid, I must have become aware of how children came to be in families or other various iterations of children being cared for. It is likely a prevailing world view of how children begin their lives. 

     I was born in the south in the early '50's to a stay-at-home mother and a father who was farming a family dry land ranch plot outside San Angelo, Texas. My two older brothers, six and three years old at the time when I came into being, may or may not have been aware that their world would change when a new baby was brought into the house. There must have been infant crying and other demands on their mother's time which they would likely have felt as intrusive. But then again, most of the families I knew as a young girl had many siblings at home, so new babies were just a fact of life.  

     Cousins, childhood friends, kids at school, in fact anyone born to a parent were all compared to their mother or dad in these terms: she/he has his mother's/father's nose, or hair color, or body structure, or temperament. My older brother was said to have my mother's artistic talents and more sensitive temperament. Our male cousins so strongly resembled their father that it was always commented on. And my mother lamented the fact that she did not inherit her mother's musical abilities for playing piano and organ. My father did not inherit his mother's musical abilities either, and could hardly carry a tune. I must say that choral singing was one of my childhood favorite past times, and I spent years singing in choirs. 

     Both my brothers, as they came into maturity, had idiosyncratic ways of speaking or moving their hands in a certain way when talking that it often brought on comments, especially by mother. As in, “you look just like Charlie when you do that.” They were of similar height, too. But I was always taller than they, and I was blonde whereas they were deeply brunette with skin that easily took the sun. I always burned when outside for more than a few minutes, whereas they sported nice sun tans during the summer. 

    Fifteen years ago, as my mother was dying and when the cancer had reached deep inside her brain, she became less inhibited. Once she looked at me and said “Are you really my daughter?” I assured her I was, patting her hand and giving her consolation. But then just a few weeks before she died, she asked me if there were anything I wanted to ask her about before she was gone, while I still “had time.” I assured her that I thought we had talked everything out, and that I could think of nothing else to ask her. I prompted her and said “Is there anything you want to tell me?” but she shook her head “no.” Pushing her a little further in this direction, she again responded negatively. The moment passed. 

    It was a year or two after she died that my brother and I had a conversation about this odd, amusing event of mother asking me to ask her a question. It was then that the light bulb flashed on in my subconscious. Was my father of 94 years my biological father?

    I don't know. I will never know now. Funny thing, at this point, in the grand scheme of the universe, does it really matter?

The Shunt

Shunt 

1: to turn off to one side:to switch (as a train) from one track to another; 2: to provide with or divert by means of an electrical shunt 3: to divert (blood) from one part to another by a surgical shunt 4: move (someone or something) to a different and usually less important or noticeable place or position

  
   My first child, Julie, was born with a birth defect: spina bifida. At less than a week old while in Kentucky, she had her first brain surgery to alleviate pressure on her brain from cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) build up. Without that surgery, she would have experienced excruciating headaches and severe mental retardation.  A new and different neurosurgeon operated on her brain in Texas when she was six months old. Thus began the rounds of medical interventions that have lasted her lifetime. 
     Julie grew and prospered and I learned to divert my attentions toward pursuits outside that of a care giver. I learned to paint, went back to school, began observing nature and even planted a garden while living in Montana. The aurora borealis could be seen at night, a glorious sight with its green and white lights dancing in the evening sky, creating fire in the sky. Long days up north lasted until almost 10 PM, and that extended growing season allowed foods to burgeon from the rich soil. 
     During those summer sunlight hours, I energetically prepared soil, planted seeds, and then directed my physical efforts in hoeing between the rows of vegetables, cucumbers and tomatoes, fat and juicy. Irrigation water from the Yellowstone River was shunted off through where it originated in Laural, Montana, and was directed to our valley via the Billings Bench Canal. That river water was then siphoned down to my garden through plastic tunnels where it was further channeled toward to the ditches between raised rows of vegetable impregnated soil where our seedlings were planted. A generous harvest resulted.
     The numerous jars of cucumbers I pickled that summer lasted for two years, and were foisted off on family as Christmas gifts. The older daughter, Julie, at six, wore a wig for a few months because her head was shaved for another brain surgery that Christmas. She and I spent Christmas in the Billings hospital that year while her body became accustomed to a new plastic disk implanted in her skull to siphon off CSF from around her brain. I felt like tearing my hair out from worry over her.
     In Denver, seven years after that first Montana pickle and tomato yield, I planted another garden. These vegetables were planted without the zeal I had for that first garden farther north, as I had time then to garden only on weekends. My time and efforts went toward my career and growing family, not toward that second garden. I turned off those initial physical efforts that were effectively used to grow produce in a prior summer. I did not devote as much care toward the second garden; my efforts were diverted into other emotional and mental avenues, so produce from this soil was sparse. But the cucumbers thrived and I again made pickles. That year I used larger quart Mason jars for preservation and made bread and butter pickles. Hot, sweet syrup water was poured over the cucumbers packed tightly into jars, using a big red plastic funnel to shunt the boiling syrup over those thick, round cucumber disks. They reminded me of Julie's shunt, being about the same size both in diameter and thickness. 
     The cold winter following after that second gardening effort, Denver recorded the largest snowfall in twenty years. My mother came up from Texas for Christmas, and stayed through January. It was a good thing she had time off from work, because she cared for Julie as she recuperated from another emergency brain surgery. 
     I saved out a few jars of pickles and gave them to Julie's grandmother that Christmas, and lots of scarves for Julie. Julie did not like her shaved head that winter, complaining of being cold in her upstairs bedroom. She learned from her grandmother how to wrap scarves around her forehead for warmth, redirecting body heat to her head where the wool layers of yarn retained warmth.  Julie's grandmother had enough pickles to take some back home with her in mid January.
     A few winters later, while still in Denver, home health nurses changed out intravenous bags of antibiotics after a systemic shunt infection almost took Julie's life. These nurses briefly visited our home three times every 24 hours for several months. Each nurse had a key to our front door for access while I was at work, and to come in at midnight without awakening the household while they undertook the IV changes. The home health personnel were like caring mice, quietly coming in and out, and I hardly ever even saw one of them. Like Julie's shunt, the nurses did their job efficiently, diverting attention away from the enormity of her illness. 
     Now Julie is in her 40's and that shunt, or its 100th iteration, is keeping Julie free from CSF building up around her brain. Those AV shunts have been a part of Julie's world all her life. It is her sword of Damocles, and soon again it will kink up or become infected. And each time her headaches last more than a few hours, the shunt lurking in her skull becomes the first target of worry.
     I plan on planting cucumbers this spring and I will recall my diversionary tactic of replacing shunt concerns with the pickling of cucumbers. I expect a big crop.

Notes from March 10, 2015 Class

Readings for the weeks of March 11-24, 2015:

The Mindful Writer, Noble Truths of the Writing Life, Dinty Moore

Ephedra, A Collection of Poems, Karen Chamberlain

Desert of the Heart, Karen Chamberlain

“Dinty W. Moore has collected some very telling nudges from a range of fine writers, and tilted them in a lightly Buddhist angle of reflection to catch the light of your own desire to write.”

—Susan Murphy, author of Upside-Down Zen

Going a step beyond typical “how to write” books, The Mindful Writer: Noble Truths of the Writing Life illuminates the creative process: where writing and creativity originate, how mindfulness plays into work, how to cultivate good writing habits, how to grow as a writer — and a person! — and what it means to have a life dedicated to the craft of writing. There’s not a writer alive, novice or master, who will not benefit from this book and fall in love with it. Cover to cover, this wise little book is riveting and delightful. Readers will turn to The Mindful Writer again and again as a source inspiration, guidance, and support. from Dinty Moore: The Mindful Writer

Assignments for 3/24/15:
read the assignments as background; observe how images are used in the excerpts from Chamberlain; write poem or prose using imagery, consider how to tell a story through one thing in your life, the third thing, the tiger in the grass, out of the corner of your eye (up to three pages)

"Blessings" by Laura Story

We pray for blessings, we pray for peace
Comfort for family, protection while we sleep
We pray for healing, for prosperity
We pray for Your mighty hand to ease our suffering
And all the while, You hear each spoken need
Yet love us way too much to give us lesser things

'Cause what if your blessings come through rain drops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You're near
What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

We pray for wisdom, Your voice to hear
We cry in anger when we cannot feel You near
We doubt your goodness, we doubt your love
As if every promise from Your word is not enough
And all the while, You hear each desperate plea
And long that we'd have faith to believe

'Cause what if your blessings come through rain drops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You're near
What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

When friends betray us
When darkness seems to win
We know that pain reminds this heart
That this is not,
This is not our home
It's not our home

'Cause what if your blessings come through rain drops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You're near

What if my greatest disappointments or the aching of this life
Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can't satisfy
What if trials of this life
The rain, the storms, the hardest nights
Are your mercies in disguise



Psalms 27:13

Yet I am confident I will see the LORD's goodness while I am here in the land of the living.

The Son Who Stayed Behind, The Good Son

Again, for this third Sunday in Lent, I join in with both Angela and the Henri Nouwen Society's virtual community  to answer the question posed here about the elder son:

The Prodigal Son, by Rembrandt van Rijn, c1669, courtesy Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

 Henri writes that both the younger son and the elder son needed healing and forgiveness and to return home to the father’s love.  “…it is clear that the hardest conversion to go through is the conversion of the one who stayed home.” (p 66) 

a) Have you ever been lost while at still home? b) Now that we have read about both the Younger and the Elder son, do you agree with Henri that the the hardest conversion to go through is the conversion of the one who stayed home? Have you experienced this in your life?

When I first read the question and tried to formulate an answer in my mind about how I felt about being lost while still at home, I thought perhaps every person feels this at one time or place in their lives.  It is especially poignant that as Christians, we who are in the arms of a loving God often feel this.  

And I especially question how our own children who are so loved by imperfect parents can become estranged from us, setting themselves apart with no communication from those who love them.  I can only claim the scripture in 2 Timothy 1:12:

Still I am not ashamed, for I know (perceive, have knowledge of, and am acquainted with) Him Whom I have believed (adhered to and trusted in and relied on), and I am [positively] persuaded that He is able to guard and keep that which has been entrusted to me and which I have committed [to Him] until that day.

For I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I've committed unto Him against that Day. I do know that my daughter is entrusted to God, and I have committed her to Him. That is my confidence, that scripture, and I hold onto it this Lenten season.  Go in peace.

Second Sunday in Lent

The Henri Nouwen discussion group is looking at pages 21-53 of The Prodigal Son this second week of Lent. Several questions were asked; here is one.

Henri distinguishes between “a self-serving repentance that offers the possibility of survival” (p 47) and a repentance that involves a breaking “away from my deep-rooted rebellion against God and surrendering myself so absolutely to God’s love that a new person can emerge…Receiving forgiveness requires a total willingness to let God be God and do all the healing, restoring, and renewing” (p 48). Explain differences.

This post also connects with Angela in her “Pause for Lent” series

We are all in that state of disgrace at almost any point in time when as members of the human race, we have offended others by thought, word or deed.

My disgrace, or need for apology, can be as simple an offense as speaking at the wrong time or place, or speaking thoughtlessly to another. Or it can be grievous, so grievous that words cannot brought forth to ask for forgiveness from another.

A self-serving repentance of saying “I'm sorry” is sometimes said when one is not at all ashamed or repentant of an act or deed. As in “I am sorry if (insert action) offended you.” Perhaps I have said “I am sorry that I do not care to watch that violent television show,” which is in no way an apology, merely a fact stated. Or if I say “I am sorry to bring this up, but...” and then I state my self-righteous opinion.

Neither instance shows that I am sorry for what I said, but “sorry” that you might offended by it. One could hardly term that an apology, just an acknowledgement of the others' misinterpretation of my words. And how many times have I done that? Too many, the answer. That type “apology,” if it can be termed as such, merely allows me to go one with social convention, continuing with a conversation.

But when I am truly sorry, certainly asking forgiveness, is much more difficult a task. It is so onerous a task that to even dredge up an instance brings me embarrassment, perhaps shame. This type of asking for forgiveness is often only asked of God, in the dark secretiveness of the prayer closet. A sincere prayer, breaking away from rebellion against God, is heart wrenching in its truthfulness, and brings forth a new person, forgiven and free to live a different life. This type of honesty with God and seeking of forgiveness and a new life brought me to a new relationship with Him after a painful marital divorce.

My prayer during this Lenten season is that my talks with my God are ones that bring me further toward His grace, being renewed with restoration, healing and strength.