Advent/Christmas

 In this holy season, I'd like to share a couple of things I've written about Mary and Joseph and Jesus:

“Away in a manger, no crib for a bed.  The little Lord Jesus lay down his sweet head.”  I guess I’ve been singing that Carol since I could talk.  The music is so soft and soothing, isn’t it?  Yet Jesus’ birth is often described as the ultimate in poverty, humiliation, filth, degradation.  I’d like to put forth a different point of view.

I grew up “in a barn”, so to speak.  The youngest child on a family dairy farm, I had many hours of freedom to explore.  And what I remember about managers is very positive.  Mangers were where we put hay in box stalls.  To explain: box stalls were used for cows who were giving birth, for young calves not yet old enough to go outdoors, or for other unusual needs.  Normally, all the cows lived in the barnyard. The animal in the box stall wasn’t tied, just confined to that area. We kept the manure cleaned up from the straw-strewn floor so the animal could lie comfortably and not become wet or soiled.  The manger was like a trough at one end of the stall and it was always clean and fragrant.  

I remember sitting in one sometimes, when a stall wasn’t in use, playing with tiny kittens or talking to a young calf to whom I’d just given milk in a pail.

I like the idea that Jesus first saw kind animals, first smelled the earthy naturalness of a stable, first heard the contented lowing of a cow or the gentle clucking of hens, first touched the firm, soft hay.  And probably his first taste was of his mother’s sweet life-giving milk.  What a natural connection with the planet earth!  What a way to begin new life—safe and secure amongst all that God created and loves, safe and secure in a manger.  What a way to remind us that life is not just about us.  God chose to be born in a place that blessed all life.  We are called to do nothing less.

CAN YOU HEAR ME?

 Do you value your ability to hear?  What do you most enjoy hearing?  A robin's song? A baby's laugh? Beethoven? The voice of your love?

I have learned to value my hearing more and more as I am able to hear less and less.  We speak about hearing but not really listening and this is often true.  But I've learned it's very hard to listen to you if I can't clearly hear you.  My seven year old hearing aides need to be replaced.  I know that.  Even with the aides, however, it is often hard work to understand what I'm hearing.  Music, for instance, often sounds to me like a radio station that isn't quite tuned in.  There is static, an interference which distorts the sound so much I often can't identify music which I've known well for years.  Masks, of course, have added to the frustration, since most of us lip read more than we realize.  It isn't just that the sound is muffled, but being unable to see your mouth limits my ability to understand you also.

All of this is to say how frustrated I was the other day when I attended a memorial service at the funeral home across the road from here.  I've been to several in that beautiful facility.  And every time I had trouble hearing.  The kind of mic they have is mounted on the podium, but is the type one almost has to swallow to make themselves heard.  Very few people are brave enough, or physically able to get that close to it.  So the other day, I heard almost nothing of the lovely service.   Others around us couldn't hear either, so it wasn't just my hearing loss.  How can they offer this facility to people in their most vulnerable state and not be sensitive to the inadequacy of their sound system?

And to add my social justice two cents worth, how can many people afford hearing aides?  Why can't they, as well as dental and visual care, be part of Medicare?  Costs too much, you say? What cost is it to countless Americans who go without that significant care--care that affects their lives physically, emotionally, relationally, spiritually--because it is simply too expensive.  I know how isolated I often feel when I'm in a group of people and can't follow what's being said; can't join in when others laugh, don't "get it" when things are being discussed.  It's lonely and depressing.  So that's my sermon for this time.  And I think I'll call the funeral home and complain!

I'M TRYING AGAIN

 It appears I haven't written a blog for three years.  Did I run out of things to say?  Me?  Never.  Instead, my spirit ran out of motivation to share my thoughts.  Here I am, a 78 year old woman, unable to walk alone, spending much of my life in a lounge chair.  I felt useless, used up, with little to offer to anyone.  

 I am blessed with a beloved partner who watches over and encourages me; a very special daughter who does the same.  Though their love and concern is deeply appreciated, being waited on and worried about, also results in feelings of being an invalid. Does that mean I'm now in-valid? I had been used to being capable, independent, a spiritual leader.  Now I don't drive, I can't walk, I sit and sit and sit.  I don't pursue hobbies.  I read; write emails and post on Facebook.  The political, social, and environmental issues swirling around feel overwhelming and despair is frequently close to the surface.  Well, as with my frequent falls, though I'm full of fear, I get up and keep on trying.  And so I will try to write, fearful though I am.

Recently I've been increasingly aware of white privilege, my privilege. Living in Santa Fe the past few years, where at least 3 classes and cultures co-exist--Native American, Spanish, and Anglo, I have felt it often. Each time we need something repaired at our house, the workers are Mexican or from further South. Spanish is spoken perhaps more than English in this community.   The workers speak little English and I know almost no Spanish.  I sit in my lovely home watching, as they work and sweat.  I feel guilty.  Can they afford to hire help?  Do "anglos" come to fix their refrigerator? 

 I attend a church which proclaims its inclusivity, which is sincere.  Almost no non-white people attend.  We use Spanish in some of the rituals anyway.  There is a small number of Native Americans, no black people.  Actually, there is a very small black population in Santa Fe.  Of course, people from other cultures have their own ways of worship.  Why should they want to attend a white protestant liberal church, anyway?  Do we attend their churches or houses of faith?  So no matter how well-meaning our efforts, white people remain at the top, intending to be "helpful", instead of examining within ourselves how we have participated in creating and perpetuating our own superiority.  Racism is not a black or brown problem, it is a white problem and only we, if we humbly examine our assumptions and attitudes, can make things better.  I'm sure I'll be writing more on this topic.

Thank you for listening!

Carol, Song of Joy

GOD IN THE DARKNESS

“Out of the depths have I cried unto you, O Lord!” Psalm 130:1

“Life is difficult”is the first line of Scott Peck’s classic book “The Road Less Traveled”. The acceptance of this reality is one of the great challenges of western culture.  The pervasive assault of advertising and marketing add to this challenge.  From birth to death it is nearly impossible to avoid messages persuading us of just the opposite.  Of course you can have “the good life”.  All you need do is: buy our product,  pay for the right school, drive a late model car, buy a large house in an upper class part of town, join clubs (including church) for maximum social exposure, dress for success, shop till you drop.  The messages that life is fun, sexy, beautiful, and easy seem ubiquitous.

Yet, life is difficult.  We slip-slide into this world from the safe and cozy womb, crashing smack dab into garish lights, irritating noise, cold air, and the first of countless stuffy noses.  And it doesn’t get a whole lot easier, in spite of the awesome wonder and joy of it all.  We bump our heads, we get nose bleeds, we cry in fear, want, loneliness, pain.  And even when life seems to be going pretty well, there are no guarantees.  Something will happen—a death, an illness, a fight, a misunderstanding, a job loss, a betrayal.  I was about  50 when I finally realized: this is the way life is.  Period.  There is no magic wand, though I have desperately wished for one countless times. No amount of wishing will change it. Perhaps my most significant experience of that occurred some years ago.

It was the fall of 1993.  My husband, Norris and I had gone to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula for a few days. We were reveling in the exquisite fall colors.  Then one evening our daughter called to say doctors had discovered cancer throughout most of my sister Ann’s body.  We were stunned.  I visited her in the hospital as soon as we got home.  Her face looked haggard and colorless.  She hugged me tight.  It seemed she would never let go.   She said she loved me.  She was afraid and so was I.  And our mother was afraid.  When we talked, she didn’t say much, but I could hear the strain in her voice.  I called our other sister Sandra, Ann’s twin, in Wisconsin and suggested she come.  She did.

A few nights later, at 4 a.m., our phone rang. It was my mother’s neighbor.  She had found Mother on the bathroom floor.  She’d had a stroke and was being taken to the hospital, the one where I worked as a chaplain.  

I staggered around trying to put on my clothes, but was soon lying on the bed, shaking and hyperventilating.  I couldn’t move.  I can not do this, I heard in my mind.  Norris asked how he could help.  I didn’t know.  Suddenly a voice within told me to eat a banana.  He brought it, I ate it, and soon  was revived enough to finish dressing.  Where did that knowing, that voice, come from?  Somehow I was not alone in the dark.

We drove to the hospital and found her in the ER, an unfamiliar image of her usual self.  Her voice was weak and wobbly, bloody abrasions covering one side of her face.  How could this shriveled up old woman  be my mother?  I remember asking Norris, quite sincerely, “Are you sure this is Mom?”

She had suffered a stroke affecting the left side of her body.  Mother was 84, had been a well adjusted widow for several years.  Again we were stunned.  Sandra, still in town,  arrived. Over the next few days we took turns visiting Mother in one hospital and Ann in another.  Mother couldn’t swallow at first and an NG tube through her nose and throat was threatened, followed ultimately by a feeding tube if the swallow didn’t return.  She adamantly refused both and within days began swallowing.  Her speech was clear, though she had difficulty expressing herself.  She could read only from the middle of a line to the right edge of the page.  Still, it looked like she would survive and perhaps have some quality of life ahead. 

The stroke was on Sunday.  Early Friday morning the phone rang again.  This time is was my brother-in-law.  He simply said, “Ann just died.”  WHAT!!!  They had already decided the cancer was too advanced to treat and she would go home with Hospice.  Again Norris and I drove in stunned disbelief to the hospital.  I looked at her body. It didn’t seem real.  She was only 56 years old.  I haltingly gave her a blessing, something I had done countless times before as a hospital chaplain.  But this was different.  This was *my* sister.  How could she be dead?  After a time of weeping with her family, we headed for the other hospital, stopping to phone a friend, an Episcopal priest, who agreed to meet us there.

How was I going to tell my mother that her precious daughter was dead?  Where would I find the strength, the words, to give her news that would break her heart?  I participated in this sort of experience with others frequently as a chaplain.  It was never easy.  But this was different.  This was *my* mother and a debilitated mother, at that.   As I sat beside the bed, my friend behind me, her hands on my shoulders, Norris beside me.  Somehow the words came out and then I laid my head on her body and sobbed.  Mother patted my head with her one useable hand.  Typical of her, she presented little overt emotion.  She, too of course, was in shock.  Later in my office we called others,  first reaching my remaining sister who had just returned home to Wisconsin.  Again, I had to give the news that would change her life forever.

Sandra returned immediately and somehow the words were said; somehow we lived through the days; somehow we had Ann’s funeral, a funeral our mother could not attend; and somehow the day after the funeral we sorrowfully admitted Mother to a nursing home—a place where she would be “incarcerated” for the next five and a half  years.  We’d had the presence of mind to add my name to Ann’s as Mother’s Durable Power days before Ann’s death.  And so in less than a month I lost a dear sister and was given full responsibility for my mother.

Where did I find the wherewithal to go through this?  Where do any of us find it when the dark times of life come?  And they do come!  Some of us don’t make it, can’t find that inner strength, and through no fault of our own, are broken by life’s tragedies.  

Still others, somehow find what is necessary to go on.  Such is the story of our friends, Joyce and John.  Joyce  was heavy with her first pregnancy when tests showed the baby had Down Syndrome.  She and her husband, John,  struggled with this awareness, but came to some measure of peace and acceptance prior to his birth.  When Bud was born, however, he had three heart deficiencies too serious for him to survive any corrective measures.  His parents brought him home with Hospice, aware that he could die at any moment.  Their hearts were broken.  How could they bear this agony?  What could they do other than sit and hold their precious son until he took his last breath? Months passed and Buddy still lived.  Finally, Joyce and John began to realize they could make a life with this child and they plunged into it full force.  Buddy couldn’t have been more cared for, more doted upon, given more access to resources to help him grow, more encouraged, more enjoyed.  He spread joy everywhere he went with his clear blue eyes and sweet smile.  All of us who knew him were thrilled at each new breakthrough in his development.  Buddy took a lot of work and effort.  Joyce and John made tough decisions.  Joyce would not return to work.  They would make do with John’s income.  Somehow they found the strength and courage to do it.  They also found a whole new community of friends, people who had children with DS.  They became involved in fund-raising for DS research and gave of themselves for the cause they passionately believed in.

Just before his 2^nd birthday, Buddy became ill with respiratory problems.  His parents decided against treatment measures that might not work and would be torture for their little boy.  On Valentine’s Day, Buddy breathed his last.  Joyce and John were devastated even as they gave thanks for the two years they had been privileged to be Buddy’s parents.  How did they go on?  Where was God in all this?  Why! The unanswerable and perennial question, why?  

God doesn’t use a magic wand, though we would probably all wish for that.  Yet somehow God seems present and offers guidance and caring even when we aren’t aware of it. God offers a Home in the darkness.