Benediction

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

We all survived Christmas. Even Beaven, who fell prey to a nasty stomach virus and spent most of Christmas Day either in the bathroom or asleep. I came close to excommunication when the scented candles I took to worship spilled red wax all over the sanctuary carpet. After all the feathers settled I just went in Christmas Day and did the ironing on paper towels trick and nobody will ever know. But for sure I'll recommend to my committee charged with new ideas for worship that we switch to incense when searching for a scented worship experience.

Elizabeth took charge of our meal on Christmas Day and achieved the Close-to-Perfect meal in that it was all carbs except for the gravy which had some nice healthy broth in it and the bird, who I figure is a good protein so it evens out.

It’s New Years Eve and I'm right where I want to be. I’ve thought lately that in the transition from one year to another, a person might be better off if they placed themselves as close to the Kingdom of God as they could get. For me, this kingdom is found among people in need surrounded by people helping them. When I am there I feel as though I am working shoulder to shoulder with the King Himself. So, I’m on a mission trip with three of our high school kids. We’re on the Texas Gulf Coast helping with the Ike recovery. I’ve stayed in the same work, just changed names of hurricanes.

But in this transition from one year to the next, a benediction seems in order. Goodbye to 2008 should include Wise Words for 2009. For this I would like to share the benediction my friend Mona Bailey gave on the last day she served as pastor of the Corinth Presbyterian Church in Parker, Texas. I was actually there that day and Mona even passed out copies of this benediction. But I didn’t have enough sense to realize what a gem it is. It wasn’t until my pastor, who also knows Mona, started using it to close our worship in Garland that it settled on my brain. It has now passed into the realm of classics. I can’t think of better words to accompany us as we leave 2008 and take tentative steps into 2009:

Remain in awe of mystery.
If you come to your senses and notice that you are in a far country hanging out with swine, Get up and go home.
If your cupped hands are full of blame,
Drop the blame and hold out your empty hands to receive a blessing.
Live life fully, trusting God to weave wonders from whatever mistakes you make.
Don’t squander your life being too cautious.
If you think you’ve got it made, you don’t,
If you think it’s hopeless, it isn’t
Jesus welcomed and ate with sinners.

- Rev. Mona Bailey

Merry Christmas

Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Christmas Eve

As my Christmas gift to you I thought I'd print an essay, first published on Christmas morning 1967 in the Dallas Morning News. It was written by Paul Crume, one of Dallas' finest columnists. It's considered a classic in Dallas and they always have it on the front page Christmas morning. It was a joy to get the paper off the doorstep every frosty Christmas morning knowing there would be words of poetry and calm waiting for me. I gained a new appreciation of it when we moved out to the country and couldn't get the paper delivered to our door every morning. It just wouldn't be Christmas for any Dallasite without it. I know I'm not the only one who feels this way so here it is for old friends relocated to new places and new friends who've never seen it.

On this Day, Angels Linger Close at Hand

By Paul Crume

A man wrote me not long ago and asked me what I thought of the theory of angels. I immediately told him that I am highly in favor of angels. As a matter of fact, I am scared to death of them.

Any adult human being with half sense, and some with more, knows that there are angels. If he has ever spent any period in loneliness, when the senses are forced in upon themselves, he has felt the wind from their beating wings and been overwhelmed with the sudden realization of the endless and gigantic dark that exists outside the little candle flame of human knowledge. He has prayed, not in the sense that he asked for something, but that he yielded himself.

Angels live daily at our very elbows, and so do demons, and most men at one time or another in their lives have yielded themselves to both and have lived to rejoice and rue their impulses. But the man who has once felt the beat of an angel's wing finds it easy to rejoice at the universe and at his fellow man.

It does not happen to any man often, and too many of us dismiss it when it happens. I remember a time in my final days in college when the chinaberry trees were abloom and the air was sweet with spring blossoms and I stood still on the street, suddenly struck with the feeling of something that was an enormous promise and yet was no tangible promise at all.

And there was another night in a small boat when the moon was full and the distant headlands were dark but beautiful and we were lonely. The pull of a nameless emotion was so strong that it filled the atmosphere. The small boy within me cried. Psychiatrists will say that the angel in all this was really within me, not outside, but it makes no difference.

There are angels inside us and angels outside, and the one inside is usually the quickest choked. Francis Thompson said it better. He was a late 19th-century English poet who would put the current crop of hippies to shame. He was on pot all his life. His pad was always mean and was sometimes a park bench. He was a mental case and tubercular besides. He carried a fishing creel into which he dropped the poetry that was later to become immortal. He was lonely enough to be the constant associate of angels.

"The angels keep their ancient places," wrote Francis Thompson in protest. "Turn but a stone, and start a wing."

There is an angel close to you this day. Merry Christmas, and I wish you well

Time to Laugh

We had one of those times in church Sunday that will go down in family lore. Our great-grandchildren will recount the tale around dinner tables for generations to come. OK, that may be an exaggeration but it was an interesting moment. Our nine-year-old granddaughter, Sarah, has been coming to church with me to the first service at 8:30 because it’s contemporary and I suspect because she enjoys time alone with her Granny. I have ended up going to both of our services each week because I’m on a committee charged with changing our worship at the early service but I’m not ready to give up the more traditional worship at 11. I’m just a worship junkie and I love the chance to do both. So Sarah comes along with me then joins her parents later. She’s in the process of becoming independent; feeling and acting very grown up.

I’m not sure exactly what constitutes “grown up” in Sarah’s mind but clearly attendance in church is on the list because our laughter came during the 11:00 worship—Sarah’s second worship of the day. This “church attendance as a sign of maturity” has clearly missed her Aunt Elizabeth, our oldest daughter, who seldom joins us in worship even though she probably lives closest to the church building than any of us. Elizabeth falls into the category of Christians who wouldn’t think of missing Easter or Christmas but who also don’t feel the need to call upon the Lord at other times and then comment that the church always sings the same songs.

We had three generations sitting in a row. Beaven and myself on the left with Sarah to my right, then our daughter Emily on Sarah’s right. Like most churches we have cards in the pews for prayer requests. We have a place to notify the church staff of any pastoral needs of the congregation in the form of “Does the church know that “___” and there’s a long blank for you to insert a name followed by a series of boxes that you can check like [] is in the hospital or [] is sick. There’s a box for just about every conceivable thing you could have wrong or right, including that your friend has been released from the hospital and is home now.

So we’re all sitting here in a row and Sarah takes one of the pew cards and a pencil. She carefully fills the card out and I see that she’s written her aunt’s name in the blank and checked one of the boxes so that it reads “Is the church aware that Elizabeth Thomas is [x] at home?”




When I saw this I passed it to Sarah’s mother who started laughing and anticipating the gloating she’ll be doing at the next family gathering that she was in church and Elizabeth wasn’t and, best of all, Sarah caught her AWOL. When Emily started laughing it made me laugh. I passed the card to Beaven who started laughing. And, of course, as usual, these things ALWAYS begin right as we enter the Prayers of the People, the longest prayer of the service and to make it even worse, this day the preacher inserted a looooong silent prayer time. By this time we were shaking and heaving with short gasps of air coming in and out. Fortunately, we were the only people on the pew and nobody was sitting in front of us. My own prayers at that moment were that nobody knew we were all laughing like heathens but then Beaven made a short little snorting noise and it got even worse.

I’ve had this happen to me enough times that I know there’s no way out of one of these spells. You just have to try to keep your mouth shut and not to move your lips and hope you don’t have a stuffy nose that day. If you can prevent any kind of air passing over your vocal cords you can usually get away with just silent, shaking shoulders.

One time several decades ago when I was much younger and less mature we had a laughing spell in the middle of this same prayer at church and it ended up spreading to the pew behind us when they saw our pew shaking and our shoulders heaving.

But the worst time of all was the year a whole bunch of us arrived at Christmas Eve worship slightly influenced by the spirits of the season after a party I must admit we hosted at our house. Thanks be to God, the sanctuary was full that night and we ended sitting not only in the back of the church but in a glassed off section they called the “Cry Room” because it was sound-proof. Because that year there was no way we could stifle our spasms of laughter and whispered shush-ings.

I also need to insert a disclaimer here that I’m talking about a group of adults. For once, Elizabeth was not only present in worship but was serving in a leadership role as an acolyte. She was as innocent as a babe that year.

The choir had elected to not wear their robes that night and one of the stuffiest, most dignified men in our congregation had worn a beige turtle-neck sweater. I’m sure he thought he looked very festive but from our view he appeared to be sitting there on the back row of the choir stark naked. We started laughing the minute the choir sat down and were laughing until the end when they rang the church bells welcoming Christmas. I’m sure we all were due lumps of coal in our stockings that year. But it sure felt good,

It’s time to laugh. Even if you don’t feel like it, if your checkbook is thin or empty or if your job is iffy or gone. Find something to laugh about. Laughter is one of the sounds of Christmas like the bells or zimbalstern. Christmas is a time of magic in the air and laughter is one of those magical sounds that announce your confidence in God’s Amazing, Irrational Love.

If you can’t find something to laugh about come sit behind my family next week.

On another note: Ever vigilant for new trends, especially in the food category. I was so taken by the newest food sold at the Texas State Fair this fall I decided to try it myself. The tasty tidbit is Chicken Fried Bacon. Remember, dear-hearts, this is Texas. We fry just about anything that will sit still long enough to grab it and throw it in the pan. I didn’t waste my time with the breading. I just filled up a pot with vegetable oil, heated it to 350 and dropped in a slice of bacon. It fried in about two minutes flat and was delicious. I’m telling you this, friend: Yes- Do try this at home.

Black Christmas Cards

It's time to send out our Christmas cards so I got out the box I stored the ones left over from last year.

What in the hell was I thinking when I bought black Christmas cards last year? They weren’t on clearance, I remember that. No--I paid full price for the most depressing looking cards I’ve ever seen. I think I even sent some of them out and the ones in the Christmas storage box I opened today are what were left over. So, now I would not only be sending BLACK Christmas cards but Left-over Black Christmas cards. Whatever possessed me?

What kind of person sends black Christmas cards? I certainly don’t feel black this year. The only theory to emerge is that last Christmas had a very depressing War/Bush-y feeling. Very dark and somber. The cards even say “Peace on Earth.” So I'm pretty sure it was the war I was thinking of and not the color of the cards. But this year has a totally different feel to it. This Christmas is a whole kaleidoscope of happy colors with a new president who hasn’t worn his welcome out yet and hope is in the air. We might even get stem cell research approved and a couple of new Supreme Court justices. And O J’s in the slammer. Who could ask for anything more?

For once the world is arranged pretty much like I think it should be. It's kind of like my friend Virginia told me after the election--she's been on the losing side for so long she's not sure how to act when her candidate wins. But I think happy looking Christmas cards are a good start.

Except that now, of course, it’s not the war on our minds; it’s the economy. We're all on the verge of starving to death. At our house we’re approaching the dreaded scenario Beaven often warns me about: the Having to Eat Cat Food financial picture. As a matter of fact, I may not even send even the left-over black cards since a hundred friends will cost me 42 bucks in postage. I’m not sure I can afford that many friends.

Times are hard and everyone will have to cut a lot of things. Besides cutting down on friends, the relatives will be hit. For sure, the cousins aren’t getting the Harry and David fruit assortment this year. I packed up some homemade snacks and will mail them myself when I MAYBE buy stamps for only the most important friends I have.

This bare bones “economy in the toilet” lifestyle change is almost a fun challenge for now. This is something I can embrace for the time being. We’ve cut out any spending that we don’t absolutely need. I’m sure it will wear on my nerves soon enough. I told my oldest daughter that it will be a lot easier for the Baby Boomers than Gen X to adapt and she agreed. The Boomers grew up with parents who lived through the Big Depression, whose food was rationed during the war. We were raised by spartan people. I distinctly remember watching my mother unwrap a stick of butter and painstakingly scrape the quarter of a teaspoon of butter left on the wrapper to add it back to the stick.

Not so the generation they call X. (Whatever does that mean, anyway? Is it like a racy movie?) They don’t have the same grasp for doing without or making do. I watched one of my kids throw away a penny she found on the floor while cleaning house and I could swear I heard my mother roll over in her grave.

After my mother-in-law died a few years ago I sorted through the kitchen things and gave my daughters some of her most beloved kitchenware. First, I admonished them to take care of this or that pot. “Your grandmother took very good care of this and it’s over 40 years old.” Emily couldn’t grasp why Blanche never bought new cookware but made do with the old. “I know Ma Ma had a lot of money when she died. Why did she still have this old stuff?” She never figured out that that’s precisely WHY her grandparents had money; because they didn’t waste it on buying new stuff when the old worked just fine.

I have reached the stage in my life where I really don’t need anything. Unless I gain weight and go to bigger clothes I have all I need for the next 40 years or so. Certainly we won’t need to replace Blanche’s cookware. Maybe our car or washing machine will eventually crap out and have to be replaced. But our material needs are really simple now. One of our biggest challenges right now is that we both could stand to lose a few pounds but that’s a blessing in disguise- we don’t need to spend money on food. We could probably live for a couple of weeks just on stored fat.

But you know what? When times get really hard and we have to drop the cable TV and stop buying books and magazines and resort to sitting around the house staring at each other it could get really boring. Maybe a few friends would come in handy to warm our hearts on a cold night. I guess I’d better get the stamps, after all.

If you don’t get a card from me in a couple of weeks and really want one, send me your address. There are a lot of people out there I communicate with by e-mail and I don't have your postal address. I would really love to send you a card. It would help to enclose 42 cents but it’s not really necessary. I’m sure you’re worth it. Anyone who reads this blog is a 42 cent friend.

Thanksgiving Damage Report 2008

So, I was sitting here Tuesday morning enjoying a cheese omelet and the Newsweek magazine, listening to some music and looking forward to a real quiet day. Beaven had gone to Dallas for his weekly lunch with his old friends from work. I heard the cat door swing open and in walks Murphy with a mouse. He looked around for a good place and dropped the mouse on the floor in the middle of the room and started playing with it.

We didn’t anticipate this risk when we put in a cat door. We’ve had mice in the house before but today was the first time I nailed Murphy with the evidence in his mouth. And contrary to popular myth he wasn’t bringing it to me as a present. I could tell philanthropy was the last thing on his mind. He just wanted a nice warm spot to enjoy his toy. Thank God it was just a small field mouse, not a big old rat. This made the situation totally different to me for some reason. And this mouse was quiet unlike the one two days ago that squeaked until it’s dying breath. I just hate it when they do that because then I feel obligated to save them from the cat and I just really don’t want to get involved.

I got a broom to shoo it out of corners once it escaped as I knew it would. I knew if it made it to the area behind the TV there is such a jungle of wires we’d never find it. The idea of dead mice littering my house was not a peaceful thought and I was trying to keep my morning peaceful.

I tried to close doors so I could limit the part of the house the mouse could hide. Murphy kept pretty close tabs on it and when he chased it into the guest room I shut the door with both of them inside. I’m not sure what my next move should be but I certainly don’t intend to crawl around my house looking for it or picking it up to take outside. I may be a sturdy chick but even I have my limits. Maybe Beaven will find the carcass under a bed and get it out of the house. In the meantime, I went back to my omelet and found our sneakiest dog, Friday, guarding the now empty plate with a well-rehearsed angelic look on his face.

I really deserve a better Tuesday morning. The entire family- all seven of us--gathered at our house for a very long weekend. That’s three days and three nights. On the positive side, we didn’t kill anyone and nobody got hurt. That’s got to be one for the “win” column. There have been some iffy times in the past what with the sugar highs and all.

I guess Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. There are no presents to buy and all that food to eat. Who could not love Thanksgiving? The weather is usually pretty good. A parade to watch on TV. And ever since we moved out here permanently we’ve got that whole “Over the river and through the woods” thing going for us.

If we have any Thanksgiving traditions besides food it would be cutting down trees. One year it was trees around the pond that an over-achieving beaver killed. Another year, Beaven and Steve cut a huge tree down that immediately fell on our roof. The tree had interfered with our satellite reception. Beaven wanted a “clear view of the southern sky” and we got it. But there were a few a heart-stopping seconds when I thought the view might be through my laundry room ceiling.

Thankfully, the tree didn’t score a direct hit. At the last instant it veered off to the side and only bent the edge of our metal roof. We ended up spending most of Thanksgiving cutting up the tree and hauling it off. When we were cutting it up we realized it had veered off course because there was a huge vine growing up its side that served as an anchor to pull it off course. Steve declared this “De Vine Intervention” and we all went inside to eat some more pie.

So this year when the guys got out the chain saws, oiling them and filling them with gas, I went and got my camera. I always do this so I can have a recent photograph of Beaven for his obituary.

I hate to disappoint, but they cut only the one tree down. It fell right where it was supposed to. We cut it up and had a great fire. End of story. Maybe next year.

But you might be interested to hear the story of Nancy2, my friend who asked me to research any volunteer work she and her family could do on the Texas Gulf coast over the Thanksgiving holiday. This was a challenging assignment. Nancy’s family are observant Jews and not only do they eat only kosher but I’ll bet her husband didn’t want to drive on Saturday. I sent her a couple of websites to contact but all my sources are Christian-based. And I never noticed the fine print like “How do you plan to make this trip a ministry in the name of Jesus Christ?” Questions like that blow right past me but you can bet it made Nancy uneasy. I remember the first time she saw my church sanctuary she told me she was glad we didn’t have “a bloody Jesus” hanging up on the wall. I explained that Presbyterians don’t do that; it’s a Catholic thing. But it reminded me how uncomfortable they are about the whole Jesus thing, especially when some Christians hang up statues of a dead guy on a cross in their sanctuary. About the only decorations the Jews have at the front of their worship area is a scroll of the Torah behind a tastefully appointed cabinet.

Nancy and her family eventually found a non-denominational group to work through and ended up serving meals all day at a homeless shelter in Houston. She emailed me a nice thank you card and I can’t wait to hear more.