Brain Surgery, Summer Camp and Fireworks

Just when I thought things were getting too quiet and boring around here I noticed my granddaughter was performing brain surgery in our living room.

I was peacefully getting Essie packed for summer camp. We live so close to the camp that she can spend the night with us and we’ll take her to camp. This means that I’m the last adult to survey her bag before she gets to camp . We still needed to add a flashlight to her bag and a bar of soap. Funny how kids don’t think of soap when packing for camp.

I hadn’t packed a little girl for camp since that golden week almost 30 years ago when I sent both girls off to camp at the same time. You don’t forget an experience like that: a whole week of unbridled and carefree childlessness. I still remember that week. The first thing I did was buy a box of chocolates and set it on the kitchen table in plain sight. The next day I walked into the kitchen and opened the box to find that all the chocolates were still there. Several times a day for that whole week I re-checked the box and bore witness to the glorious fact that I was the only one opening the box. It wasn’t that I wanted to eat the candy so much as I wanted one single thing in my life to be undisturbed for however short a respite I had. And a box of chocolates was clearly the acid test. You remember milestones like that.

Meanwhile, a friend who had sent her own daughter to the same camp with my kid called me in a panic a couple of days later to say Karen had written her that the food was horrible, the counselors were mean and she had hurt herself and please come get her and take her home. “What should I do?” Ann asked me. I told her not to open any more letters until the girls got home then I walked over to the box of candy and helped myself to another piece. I’m one of those warm and fuzzy mothers.

So I was feeling very mellow and nostalgic about packing Essie for camp. Camp is one of those rites of passage, a marker of childhood, one of the constants of summertime life.

But then I walked into the living room and noticed Essie had called up a website called Edheads.org. It’s a site sponsored by Ohio State University and it features an animated, interactive virtual surgery. Written on a elementary school level without talking down to them, it lets the kid do either Deep Brain Stimulation on a Parkinsons’ patient or a Knee Replacement. It shows you in a very simple way what the surgery does then offers the kid a couple of multiple choices of how or why something should be done. Here is just one example: “Why is it critical to protect the sciatic nerve throughout this procedure?” I kid you not. I can’t remember if Essie got the right answer but she was a wiz at using the surgical instruments.

The girls were happily sawing off this guys knee cap and screwing stuff into his joint when they offered to let me try it. But I was so blown away that I had to take a short break to regroup. I’ll go back in a second and check it out. (You should try it, too…www.edheads.org)

Somehow July Fourth fireworks purchased from the local stand that shares a parking lot with Joe Bob’s gas station just doesn’t sound like it can compete this year with the chance to do brain surgery or a hip replacement.

But we’ll try our best to have an exciting weekend. You’ll remember that last year I got blindsided by a law our state geniuses wrote that forbids selling fireworks after midnight on July 4th even though last year this was a Friday night and we still had two whole days to blow stuff up. And, of course, we blew it all up on Friday night and then had two days of not being able to buy fireworks. And this is Texas for God’s sake where our Governor’s Mansion burned to the ground last year. I can’t imagine caution being that high on our priorities list.

July Fourth is about our only holiday where food takes a back seat to other activities like explosives. I’m afraid that we may be the only family who inventories dessert requirements before even considering hot dogs or potato salad. So far we have plans for a couple of cherry pies, banana pudding, chocolate chip cookies and an Italian Cream cake. I’m planning to stock up on three days’ worth of explosives then do a knee replacement or two before I dig into the pie. God is good.

PS: This is the time of year my friend Susan usually sends out a request for summer reading recommendations. I haven't gotten my annual solicitation letter yet and think I should inquire about her health. In the meantime, this is too good an idea to let fall by the wayside. So here's my list and I hope you'll add yours via the comment feature this blog has. Here's a few of the books I've read this last year that I recommend to you:

Resilience by Elizabeth Edwards
An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor
The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland by Jim Defede
In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan (also his other book, The Omnivore's Dilemma)
Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Thomas Friedman (I have yet to finish any of his books but I love the way he writes and know I will eventually finish one of the three I've started. They're all non-fiction; they don't have a plot--it doesn't matter that I don't finish them and I refuse to feel bad about that.)
Now, send me your list. Also, can somebody please tell me if Janet Evanovich will have a new book this summer?

Solid Career Advice

OK, here's something I've never been able to say before and probably will never again so here goes: my picture is in the current issue of People magazine. The June 29th issue with "Summer's Hottest Bachelor" on the cover. Yeah, that one.

This can hardly qualify as my fifteen minutes of fame since you can barely make me out in the photo of the crowd. But if you know that I’m sitting on the second row in the crowd next to Darby Fields and you know what Darby looks like from the back then you can identify me on her left. The photo was taken from about a hundres yards away so I don’t really expect anyone to really know it’s me. But, hey, I know it’s me and I think that counts. I mean,it really is a picture of me. Right there in the People magazine this week. I’m in People magazine.

They told us when we went to Church Under the Bridge last week that the magazine would be taking pictures so we all thought to ourselves with a confident tone, “Yeah, sure, like that’s gonna happen.” And, here we are. I hope you will visit the back two pages and read the photo captions. There’s not really a “story” just the captions but it will still give you a little better picture of this vibrant ministry.

Mission season is here now that school is out. Our church started out with the youth mission week that included our trip to Church Under the Bridge. This week a group that includes my husband is in Mexico building cinder block houses for the poor. In a couple of weeks I’ll be at Synod Youth Workshop in Oklahoma and one entire day will be devoted to mission. Except we call them Service Projects but I’ve come to think of the two as interchangeable in my mind. I’m in charge of the projects this year and we’ll be sending about 400 people out to 25 different places in Tulsa doing everything from cleaning wheelchairs to planting a community garden. If you can believe it, the hardest part of this job is keeping the kids busy. There’s not a non-profit organization in Tulsa we won’t be working with. However, if you know of one, let me know. I’m still looking for a couple more projects.

When I get home from Tulsa I’ll be going to Guatemala to visit old friends and renew our Christ-centered friendships. One of the things we’ll do that week is visit the Nutrition Project that we help support. They provide a healthy lunch for 20 kids in the program and monitor their health. Part of the process (designed by a friend there who is a nurse) is training the community, the mothers especially, in nutrition. At the end of the year the project moves to a new town.

On the flight over to Guatemala I know to expect the plane to be full of Norte Americanos on their way to similar mission weeks. I am not exaggerating. Every gringo on the plane will be on their way to do mission. One year I found myself looking around the plane and thinking with some impatience, “Haven’t we built every widow in the country a new house by now? Doesn’t every village have a water treatment plant by now?”

And that’s only one flight to one country. This process is going on all over the world. Our presbytery just sent a group to India. Other churches I’ve met have active mission teams going to Africa this summer. And when the fall brings cooler weather to the US coastline, possibly after another destructive hurricane or two, we’ll fan out between Texas on the west and South Carolina on the east. We’ll show up to cry with people and pick up a shovel or hammer. There’s always going to be another hurricane on the horizon—at least until we can get the planet calmed down and that’s not likely to happen in my lifetime.

So we can’t really expect to finish this work. As soon as we think we’ve finished, there will be more needs crop up. Jesus knew this. He told us that we would always have the poor. And even if we were by some miracle to establish a Utopia where everyone had everything they needed physically, there would still be the poor in spirit. There is no better way to say it: We will always have the poor.

I talked to my friend Colleen a couple of days ago. I met her when I was working for the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance. She managed the volunteer camp in New Orleans. When she left there, she went back to work with AmeriCorps. Right now she’s stationed in New Orleans again; this time helping Habitat for Humanity. Colleen is the one who first told me about the proposed Public Service Academy. This academy would be similar to West Point or the Naval Academy except training men and women for public service. Instead of learning how to kill people they will learn how to serve people.

We will always have the poor. If any young person is looking for a secure occupation, a guaranteed future, they should consider public service. We may run out of fossil fuel but we will never run out of people in need.

In the meantime watch this website and tell every high school and college kid you know about it. It's getting easier and easier for anyone who is the slightest bit interested in public service to find a career in what ignites their heart.

The website address is http://uspublicserviceacademy.org I tried to link the address here but it didn't work. If anyone can tell me how to do it, please let me know.

The Concrete Cathedral

First, allow me a huzzah because the cat has recovered from this unpronounceable disease that no cat in Winnsboro has ever lived through. We had taken up his food bowl and planned a life without him that would certainly include lots of carefree travel. However, Sarah upon hearing of his grave prognosis commanded all to pray mightily. With all the drama only a ten year old is capable of, we had solemn prayer with hands held together under chins and eyes closed within bowed heads. When the vet called three days later to say Murphy could come home, Sarah’s first words were an awestruck whisper of “It worked!”

Who is to say anything about prayer? I’ve prayed in similar deep ways over good humans with every reason to live and they still died. It’s not a science, for sure. Maybe the prayers of a child go farther than a hardened adult’s.

At any rate, Murphy is back, chasing mice through the house and monitoring the creek waters for frogs and other excitements. Thank you, God.

For today’s topic I’d like to tell you about my Sunday worship. Last week our church hosted the youth for a week’s worth of mission in lieu of driving across the country. Just like if they had gone to Appalachia or Mexico, they slept on the floor of Fellowship Hall and went out every morning to a whole variety of places but this time, right here in Dallas instead of distant spots. I got to go to two of these mini-missions: The Collin County homeless shelter and, on Sunday morning we went to my favorite—Church Under the Bridge in Waco.

Church Under the Bridge is held a couple of hours from Dallas, under the two overpasses, North and South, of Interstate 35, near the Baylor University campus.

If you are providing the breakfast meal you will have either woken up super-early to cook or done it all the night before and cleverly stored the meal overnight in an ice chest. I’m always amazed at how hot an ice chest can keep food for eight hours or more. You can line a five-gallon water cooler with the biggest turkey-roasting bag available and pour in hot beans or soup the night before and it will still give off steam when you open it in the morning.

When you get there around 10:30 on Sunday morning there are people waiting. The people at Mission Waco have already set up a table with lemonade and water. Another two or three tables sit waiting for breakfast. It’s usually something like Sloppy Joes on a bun or breakfast burritos wrapped in foil. Then you’ve got a bag of chips, maybe an apple or a dessert. if it’s a big day there will be sandwiches to take for later in the day. We’re providing all the food these folks will have to eat for the entire day so we try to be generous. There’s a stage waiting with microphones and huge speakers. Because of the traffic overhead this is a noisy spot to worship God and the speakers have to be powerful. There’s a trailer with a couple of porta-potties and a faded and beat up yellow trailer with inside Sunday School classrooms for babies and children. The whole operation is portable and within half an hour of the last song the whole enterprise has driven off and emptied the area. Until then, we worship God sitting in old folding chairs resting on the gravel floored traffic island under a freeway. Church Under the Bridge. I like to call it a concrete cathedral. It’s that easy yet majestic in it’s own way.

Both times I’ve been to CUB I worried that there wouldn’t be enough food but somehow it all works out. Then around 11 they start the music. The band plays a bunch of classic songs and everybody sings along. They have announcements that consist of the weather report (very important information for someone who sleeps outside at night), Happy Birthday to a few folks, congratulations for an anniversary of sobriety, and sometimes a social event. They take up a collection to pay expenses. Jimmy Dorrell, the pastor, delivers a well-thought out sermon. More rousing music and everyone leaves with a song and the love of Jesus in their heart.

This is a church just like mine. But they don’t have to worry about the air-conditioner or the electricity going off. They worship God outdoors under a bridge.

Pastor Jimmy Dorrell has written a book about his church called, “Trolls and Truth; 14 Realities About Today’s Church That We Don’t Want to See.” The Missionpalooza kids studied this book before their visit to the church in Waco. Early in the book, he quotes Jackie Pullinger who has a similar ministry in Hong Kong, “If you want to attract the rich, serve the poor.” It took me a while to realize he’s not necessarily talking about people who are rich in funds as much as rich in relation to God.

I left the bridge last week with the notion of how simple this is and how easy it would be for anyone to do it. All a church has to do is put out a sign that says “Free Food” then sit back and see what happens. Or just start worshipping outside. What holds us back from welcoming the homeless? Is it fear of success? Everything Jesus said and did pointed to this type of ministry and still we’re afraid to try it. Our biggest fear is what will we do if we try it and it works.

Try Again

First day of Grand Camp and there's no kid food in the house so I need to run into town for white bread and assorted frozen things seriously lacking in nutritional value. But I've just come from a vet visit first thing in the day and besides a rip-roaring flea problem (and two dogs who are "allergic" to fleas) I also find I have a cat with Feline Cytotauxzoonosis, which is usually fatal. Failing a miracle, Murphy is probably on a one-way ticket to the big litterbox in the sky. Beaven and I spent Monday and Tuesday in Garland with the church youth on service projects. I'm sore, sleep-deprived and covered up in cat, dog and children problems. Oh, and my computer crashed so I'm writing from Beaven's.

In short, no blog today. Check in next week and I'll tell you my fixation with furniture that squeaks and/or my thoughts on singing "Here I am Lord" three times in one day.

Back to Basics

This may be short and uninspiring today. I’ve been making the final changes on my book. It’s mostly just adding or taking out commas now. It’s a lot of drudge and lots of wondering “is there anyone out there who will actually read this thing?” But I can tell you that I know of one person who will be able to say truthfully that she has read my book: Barbara Tripp. She's read it at least three times by now.

Barbara has sat behind me in church probably 15 years now; whenever we built the new sanctuary. I'm one of the few people who know what a beautiful singing voice she has but she won't take any suggestions about joining the choir. I don’t remember where she sat before but she and Pat have been members about as long as we have. We’ve watched each others’ kids grow up. And learned the parts of each others’ personalities we can depend on. And, if you can depend on Barbara Tripp for anything, it’s her uncontested and unmatched mastery of grammar and punctuation. I went to her birthday party a few months ago and her childhood friend told me she was like this as a child. By this time she had already proof-read the manuscript a couple of times already and I was about to ask her to do it again. Well, Thank God for Barbara because she was quite willing and I know for sure that the book isn’t that interesting. Maybe a second read but definitely not worth a third one. Oh, and did I mention she took this manuscript with her on a recent vacation to Greece? I can only hope that the plane flight was boring enough to make her effort half-way meaningful.

And I know for a fact that she read every single word because she found a mistake on every single page. It was like she was getting paid by the number of typos she caught. And, in truth, she's not getting a dime.

So, if you know Barbara, the next time you see her, especially if you plan to buy the book, you might want to tell her thanks for making it more readable.

In other news, I have been very “Back to Basics” lately. I made Lemonade a couple of weeks ago and had forgotten the incredible taste of the stuff made from real lemons.

When I planted the garden this spring I put a couple of strawberry plants into containers. Then threw about three pounds of seed potatoes into the ground. After I was finished I realized I couldn’t remember the last time I had cooked potatoes here at home and didn't have a clue what I was going to do with a whole crop of them.I wasn’t expecting much from the strawberries but thought it would be fun to try. Imagine my surprise when the perfect strawberry appeared this morning. OK, not a crop by any stretch but tasty nonetheless.
I took a cooking class in sauces a couple of weeks ago and learned to make about six different sauces, one being mayonnaise. That’s one of those recipes that sounds frightening. There’s a lot of beating involved and having to do it all just right. But by taking the class I got over my fear and came home to make a biggo batch of mayo here at home. Then realized I couldn’t think of anything to put it on. I tried to brag about it on facebook but all I got was comments from folks who think mayonnaise is poisonous.

I remembered making butter back in third grade. So I thought about that one a bit and mixed up a batch of butter in my Kitchenaid. Voila! I was on a roll.

So the next step was bread. The last time I pulled out the bread maker I had lost the instructions and couldn’t remember which button to push and when. So I gave the machine away and got out the trusty old Kitchenaid with it’s dough hook and made bread the new old fashioned way.

So now I’m trying to figure out what you can make out of bread, butter, mayonnaise and strawberries. And potatoes. Maybe not all in the same dish. Lemonade to drink, for sure. Bread and butter can be combined. Or even a chicken sandwich with the mayo. And strawberries for dessert. We’ll have to split the one berry. Hope you don’t have a big appetite.
Oops. Too slow.

Now I'm all fired up to learn how to slaughter a hog and smoke bacon.Then I could use the bread and mayo for a BLT sandwich. But a small gentle voice intercedes with a whisper:“too much, Jane, let it go.”

It’s back to the book and hopefully I can turn it into the publisher and spend more time thinking of pithy things for this blog.