Transcendence

  In a way, it somehow feels wrong to think that God already has begun to create good out of yesterday's chaos in Newtown, Connecticut. It somehow feels insensitive to even entertain the notion that good can emerge from something so horrific, so unspeakably cruel, as the mass shooting of 20 elementary school children and the six heroic adults who gave their lives in an attempt to protect precious young lives. Yet the efforts and expertise of first responders began to reveal the nobler side of humanity immediately, even as we watched and listened in horror as the outrageous evil unfolded.
  If nothing else, the tragedy has drawn us together. In many cases, it has brought us to our knees in prayer. It has caused us to hug our loved ones more often and to say "I love you" and "thank you".  It has turned our hearts to compassion and our minds to seeking solutions. It has leveled our humanity as we watch our leaders brush away their tears and distraught parents cling to one another in shock.
  Thus I unwittingly have given myself permission today to feel hope. It percolated within me as I listened to my church choir rehearsing the "Gloria" cantatas composed by Antonio Vivaldi and John Rutter. As the choir's rich vocal tones swelled and receded with the music's passion, as kettle drums reverberated throughout the sanctuary, as brass and strings echoed and enhanced the joyful sound, music transcended the despair we all feel. It lifted my spirit to a holy place as praise and prayer expressed in words and notes spanning centuries surrounded me.
  As I observed the individual choir members, I began to reflect on my association with them. Some have been my friends and acquaintances for more than 30 years. Some of us reared our children together. Some of us traveled together to Germany, Switzerland and Austria in 1990 to share the experience of a choral concert tour. Some I know only by name. Some I do not know even that. Some of them are unemployed. At least one is experiencing a heartbreaking marital crisis, while another is glowing with the joy and anticipation of her upcoming wedding. One has recently celebrated the anniversary of more than 60 years of marriage. Some are recovering from serious health issues. Some are caring for ailing family members, and some are struggling with issues associated with aging. Their experiences represent a microcosm of human experience everywhere. Still, in this moment, they have embraced the gift of music together. Their voices blend in hauntingly yet soothingly beautiful chants and then reach in vibrant crescendoes of "gloria" and "amen". They invoke a celebration of creation and beauty even in the midst of our national agony.
  Tonight, as I reach for the words to express my thoughts, I listen to a member of The Tenors, a popular and talented quartet,  sing "Bring Him Home" from the musical version of "Les Miserables," a masterpiece of grace and mercy. And now all four members of the group,  joined by female vocalist Natalie Grant, are losing themselves in their rendition of "Amazing Grace." This is creation. This is hope.
  If we can notice moments of grace, soak it up, infuse ourselves with it, hope will prevail. We can co-create. We can heal.

October clouds

Clouds have inspired poets and song lyricists for generations. I have no desire to compete.
Let Joni Mitchell, looking at clouds from "Both Sides Now," speak for our loss of childhood innocence. Allow William Wordsworth (whose poetry I idolize) to wander lonely as a cloud until he notices the beautiful brightness of daffodils, which dance and wave and beckon him into gratitude and appreciation. Leave it to visionary Percy Bysshe Shelley to explore endless possibilities of clouds as they make their way though various landscapes.  Watch Walt Whitman, while addressing the immortality of stars, contrast them with "ravening clouds, the burial clouds in black masses spreading," clouds that threaten but ultimately cannot devour the luster and radiance of stars. Remember to make room for the Rolling Stones to kick everyone off of their clouds as they rock on about life's frustrations. Hey, you! Get off!
No, I cannot compete nor compare. October skies, however, invite me into sweet reverie of my own.
As giant balloons of cumulus clouds billow across the heavens, forming a rabbit here and a turtle there, I remember the first time I learned to imagine shapes in the sky. As a child living in the Midwest, I had gone with my parents to visit some friends of theirs. The family had a son a few years older than I who had the undoubtedly unwelcome task of entertaining a little kid while the adults chatted and reminisced. Long before the days when parents would balk at sending their young daughter anywhere alone with an older boy, even if a longtime friend, they shuffled us off into the back yard of the Illinois home to find something to do. We lay on our backs in the thick, sweet grass, and he began to show me what he saw . . . a dog, a sword, a snowman. Soon I could recognize shapes, too. This kept us spellbound for what seemed like hours, or at least long enough to allow the parents to finish a pitcher of chilled martinis. To this day, I delight in the poodle shaping up in the sky and then reforming into a teddy bear and then into a Santa hat. Truth be told, I sometimes, now in adult years, see hints of  X-rated arrangements that make me laugh, should anyone read my thoughts.
Fast forward some childhood years to my first airplane trip. My father told me I would be soaring above all the clouds, giving me a whole new perspective, all sunshine despite the dark and gray world below. He said it would look like a marshmallow carpet of sweet goodness. I think he intended this to excite me and comfort me. Because I had a death grip on the arms of my airplane seat, I apparently blocked the blood flow to my imagination. I didn't care about an endless summer of brilliance. I could not comprehend any kind of heavenly platform that looked as if I could jump into it.  All I wanted to do was plant my feet safely on the ground, even under a dark, gray sky.
 Now, this evening, as the setting sun paints clouds and sky with a brilliant palette of colors, my heart skips a beat and then fills with a sense of awe. Such glory cannot be captured completely even in the most detailed paintings or the most precise photographs. This is a sight, an experience, that one must ingest firsthand. With each breathtaking moment, the moveable feast imprints itself on my soul and becomes part of my spirit. I will invite it to create the truest sentence I know.

God Shot: June 18, 2012 Cactus in Bloom

Psalm 98:4
Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth; break forth into joyous song and sing praises!

Even the plain and lowly cactus, full of thorns, spending most of its days in barrenness, cannot contain its inner splendor. Today is our day to blossom.

Gentle purple explosion

As a child, summer began the day I rode a bus home on the last day of a school year. At the end of this day’s ride, I would step off and walk into summer vacation.

Every other day of the school year consisted of routine. Walk from school a few blocks to the bus stop. Wait on the corner, always a bit nervous because creepy hood Whitney Miles stood in front of his house on the opposite corner, smirking at me as he did every day, hair slicked back in a greasy ducktail (D.A., as we called it, a far less polite term than “tail”), a pack of cigarettes rolled into the sleeve of his white t-shirt. Looking back, Whitney probably was harmless and more than likely lonely. We didn’t have many greasers at Smith Elementary School in Oakwood, Ohio, a suburb of Dayton. He simply did not fit in. Neither did I, but that’s another whole story.

When summer began, I knew I would spend more time outdoors, away from the cement and noise of downtown. I would trade the lonely hotel room where I lived because of my father’s occupation for a country club swimming pool or, even better, a week at my grandparents’ house in Toledo, where I eagerly mowed the lawn, ran through the sprinklers on days that water rationing would allow, and sat on the porch swing chatting quietly with my sweet grandmother.

Summer meant I would spend hours playing Clue with my friend Craig Campbell, always accusing him of cheating (because he did). He won every time. I never could prove that the true perpetrator of murder was Professor Plum, who committed the deadly deed with the candlestick in the conservatory. After we tired of Clue, which we enjoyed while our parents played bridge and drank martinis, we ventured into Craig’s backyard and experienced the magic of lightning bugs. We laughed with delight as they flicked their way through the dusky night sky, and we captured as many as we could. Not realizing at our young age that we were being inhumane, we put them in a glass jar with holes in the cap, even adding grass so they would have food. They never lived until morning.

Even earlier in my childhood, summer meant paddling a canoe on Lake Winola, near Scranton, Pennsylvania. It meant riding a bit recklessly in Nancy Smith’s motorboat, frolicking over the wakes of other boats, laughing with glee as we rode high on a crest and then smacked back down on the other side. Summer meant digging up earthworms to save for bait when we fished off the boat dock later in the day. It meant stuffing my mouth with freshly picked blueberries while hiking in the Poconos, and it meant running around with sparklers on the Fourth of July.

Now, many years later, peeking into my twilight years, the first brilliant lavender blossoms of jacaranda trees signal the beginning of summer. They create a symphony of purple beginning in late May and lasting well into July. During my 20-year tenure at a local high school, one I loved and one that made my life feel tethered and tedious at the same time, huge jacarandas in the school quad began to blossom just before graduation. Tedium transformed into delight. The jacarandas changed day by day, eventually laying a soft violet carpet to cover the remnants of each day’s lunch and wads of gum. They made me realize my students and I had survived another year. They meant we would celebrate the culmination of hard work, laughter, tears and sneers. They meant I could take a much-needed break from grading papers, and students could take a break from writing them. They gave hope of a new beginning for everyone. They signaled a bright tomorrow. 

As a gift from God, I live in an area of Southern California where I see jacarandas at every turn. The median on a street I travel every day has blocks of them, each in various stages of bloom. The one in my backyard is teasing me with just a few blossoms. The one in my neighbor’s yard is a delightful palette of greens and lavenders. The ones at the local high school, right on cue, have bloomed completely. Of course they have. Graduation time is here.

I love this annual gentle purple explosion. I love the sense of ongoing creation. I love nature’s artistry. I love the coming of summer. I love jacarandas.

RIP Miss Lindey

 “You should meet Martha Lindey,” someone suggested at church one Sunday nearly 30 years ago. “She’s about to retire as the journalism teacher at Vista High School. Maybe you could do your student teaching with her.” Thus began my career with an unforgettable mentor.

 Thanks to circumstance, opportunity, and, although not recognizing it at the time, God’s intervention and direction, I had left 15 years as a reporter and editor to pursue a teaching credential. Under the loving guidance of Miss Lindey, I learned how to manage a classroom of teen-agers ready to test the mettle of a student teacher, how to raise the standards of the Panther Print, our school newspaper, to earn an award as one of the top 10 in San Diego County, how to survive school politics, how to thicken my skin against occasional barbs of maliciousness, and most of all, how to love and appreciate literature as never before.

 While I pored over our anthology of American literature looking for stories that would educate and appeal to young minds, Martha enlightened me about various selections as she recalled the details of each one in the library of her mind. She described harsh landscapes and closed minds of the early 20^th-century Midwest as seen by the perspective of Willa Cather. She delighted in the creative revenge of the downtrodden as evidenced by Edgar Allen Poe. She swooned over the magical poetry of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. She laughed with delight at the subtle humorous understatement of Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, while at the same time demonstrating in her own life the inherent value of all humankind that this American classic embraces.

 At that time, our curriculum included an entire semester of grammar instruction. (I apologize now to my former students who had to suffer through it; district requirements tied our hands.) Martha helped me remember the difference between a participle and a gerund. She found ways to make a vocabulary lesson seem like a rollicking good time. She knew how to demonstrate the functions of each part of speech. She, as I, demanded that students make their writing sparkle by using active instead of passive voice, or at least learn to distinguish the few occasions when passive voice might better serve the purpose.

 On Martha’s 60^th birthday, her students and I made her “Queen for a Day.” As a humble person who did not enjoy attention directed at herself, Martha nonetheless sat in front of the classroom with a red velvet cape and a rhinestone tiara while all of us blessed our beloved Miss Lindey with well wishes and tales of special memories. She blew out the candles on her cake, and graciously accepted the love showered upon her.

 When Martha, as she relayed it to me, marched into the principal’s office and said, “She’s a natural; you have to hire her,” apparently he believed her. I see it as a grand example of hyperbole, but I deeply appreciate her support in launching my teaching career.

 Throughout the years, I kept in touch with Martha as part of the same church family, the family that introduced us in the first place. With her engaging grin and her dignified manner, she never failed to offer encouragement or to ask about my children and grandchildren. For a woman of letters, Martha focused on only a few words in her lifetime. Give. Love. Laugh. Share. Appreciate. Forgive. And, to all who knew her, White Rabbit! White Rabbit! White Rabbit!

 I am among the many who will miss this extraordinary woman, but also am the many blessed by her remarkable spirit. One of the works she particularly cherished, a poem by William Cullen Bryant, comes to mind now that her life in this realm has come to an end. “Thanatopsis,” a meditation on death, provided Bryant a way of coping with the passing of many of his young classmates who succumbed to the ravages of 19^th-century tuberculosis and plague. Nature soothed him; nature explained to him the endless mysterious cycle of life; nature comforted and caressed him.

 I look now through the trees into the setting sun and watch the full glorious moon appear on the opposite horizon. Rest in peace, Martha. 

Golden bliss

No matter what season, when the sun begins to settle into dusk, my surroundings beg for my attention. It's that golden time of day, when everything in the path of early evening light glows in sweet splendor. Something about it feels magical and serene.
God seems to create this time of day as a special blessing.  Every object in the filtered sunlight softens. The last rays of sunshine glitter through the trees like multi-faceted jewels. It's reassurance that the day has been a gilt-edged gift. If I've bumped against some sharp corners throughout the day, at dusk I see gentleness. If I've had the joy of day already rich in the pleasures of love and connection, at dusk I rest in the comfort of this treasure.
As twilight gives way to night shadows, a crescent moon forms in the sky on this particular evening. My friend says she wants to climb into it and rock herself to sleep amidst the stars. I, on the other hand, hear the voice of The Glass Menagerie's Amanda, who lures her eccentric daughter Laura onto the fire escape of their St. Louis tenement and tells her to make a wish on the "little silver slipper of a moon."
I have yet to make my wish for tonight. Anything I may want already has been granted in dusk's idyllic moments, and dusk will come again.

Prayers in the wind

  As he rode the narrow, steep escalator down from the area at Los Angeles International Airport where travelers from other countries proceed through customs, I first noticed his engaging grin, one of his most admirable features. In less than a heartbeat later, I noticed how thin he looked. I, who had stood in the baggage claim area for anxious minutes that seemed like hours, wanted Gumby arms that could stretch out to hug him the moment I saw him.  My youngest son had arrived safely from Tibet, where he had survived three months in the wilderness eating little more than yak meat and rice. He had lived in a tent with a translator and another researcher from University of California at Los Angeles while they made geological observations about the Tibetan Plateau and conducted experiments as part of their doctoral studies.
  Once the welcoming tears of relief and joy had subsided, we gathered his belongings, all of which he had crammed into a duffel bag of immense proportions, and headed home to Vista. During the two-hour ride, he entertained and amazed me with tales of his adventures. Once home, he began to share gifts he had brought, including artwork by Tibetan monks, silk scarves worn by Tibetan women and yards upon yards of Tibetan prayer flags.
  One can see the flags, he said, throughout Tibet, even in the most remote areas. Strung throughout the mountains, they bless the land and its people. Prayers and sacred mantras written on the flags, the Tibetans believe, will be carried to other people through the wind, thus promoting peach and goodwill. Each of the colors has its own symbolism.
  For several years, I shared my flags with students in my classrooms, but I had one strand of 30 feet or more that had sat in my closet waiting to find a home. At last, they have found one.
 In my current abode, I have created a sacred space for myself. Quiet and serene, it is decorated with artwork and other gifts from special friends, as well as some of my own photographs. A bookcase brimming with novels I want to read beckons me every day.  French doors open onto a small, west-facing deck surrounded by trees. With the doors open, I can feel nearly constant ocean breezes make their way through the valley to refresh the room. And, all right, I admit it, I have a television, mostly for football season and a few shows that have managed to hook me.
 One day, while unpacking the last of some moving boxes, I came across the longest strand of prayer flags. On a whim, I laid them out on the deck floor, thinking they might reach all the way around the rail. As I began to tack them up, I realized they would stretch the perimeter twice, almost an exact fit.
 Now, even as they have begun to fade after a few months, just as they do in the Tibetan wilderness, I imagine prayers in the wind. I send my prayers out into the spirit world and welcome the prayers that pass through this place, now and throughout the day and night.