Category: Family

Come and See: The Father Who is True

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So he said to them again, “I am going away, and you will seek me, and you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come.” 

So the Jews said, “Will he kill himself, since he says, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come’?”  

He said to them, “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins.”  

So they said to him, “Who are you?”

Jesus said to them, “Just what I have been telling you from the beginning.  I have much to say about you and much to judge, but he who sent me is true, and I declare to the world what I have heard from him.” 

 They did not understand that he had been speaking to them about the Father. 

So Jesus said to them, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me. And he who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to him.” 

 As he was saying these things, many believed in him.
John 8:21-30

My Father God, in Heaven great,
We remembrance keep
Of fathers You have given us;
Today, though, many weep.

Countless tears right now are shed
For fathers in the grave.
Some the dirt atop still fresh
When life this week upgave.

Others in mind of fathers whom
Abandoned years ago.
Children who are missing them;
Their longing won’t let go.

Some have fathers who have failed
And brought unmeasured pain.
But their children love them still,
And love is ne’er in vain.

Then I think of men whose child
Left the fold of sheep.
These fathers’ hearts afflicted yet;
With prayer, they vigil keep.

What about the man who wants
To loving father be,
And share his overflowing heart
With one upon his knee?

Fatherhood has broken been
And touched on earth by curse;
But God His work continues still;
All will in time reverse.

On this day of joy and pain,
Hope is not all lost.
God in heaven holds the tears
Of those in suffering tossed.

Saints who ache for father love
Have One who fills their cup;
A Father faithful, kind and wise,
With love that won’t give up.

My Father God, in Heaven great,
Who His children keep
Hold tightly those today who mourn,
For Lord, so many weep.
~Gigi Ryan from “Many Weep”

There is no controlling life.
Try corralling a lightning bolt,
containing a tornado. Dam a
stream and it will create a new
channel. Resist, and the tide
will sweep you off your feet.
Allow, and grace will carry
you to higher ground. The only
safety lies in letting it all in—
the wild with the weak; fear,
fantasies, failures and success.
When loss rips off the doors of
the heart, or sadness veils your
vision with despair, practice
becomes simply bearing the truth.
In the choice to let go of your
known way of being, the whole
world is revealed to your new eyes.
~Danna Faulds “Allow” From Go In and In

On this Sunday solstice, on this day to honor Fathers:
we hear the Son tell the truth about our heavenly Father,
who made us in His image, to know and love us.

We have struggled to trust our belief
as the Son indeed rose up,
our doubts and sin taken upon Him,
so we would never be alone.

This is our Father who loves us from the beginning.
This is His Son who bears our darkness into the Light.
This is the Spirit embedded within us.

They are true, so we can believe.

I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year alongside my church family. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.

Balancing Between Earth and Sky

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Every child should know a hill,
And the clean joy of running down its long slope
With the wind in his hair.
He should know a tree—
The comfort of its cool lap of shade,
And the supple strength of its arms
Balancing him between earth and sky
So he is a creature of both.
He should know bits of singing water—
The strange mysteries of its depths,
And the long sweet grasses that border it.
Every child should know some scrap
Of uninterrupted sky, to shout against;
And have one star, dependable and bright,
For wishing on.
~Edna Casler Joll “Every Child Should Know a Hill”

photo of a windy day at Manna Farm by Danyale Tamminga

When I was younger
the world was full of wonder.
Forests were kingdoms.
Following the wind was freedom.
Children wielded branches
like sharpened swords

There was no separation
between dream and reality
no border to defend,
Blanket forts were impenetrable.
The monsters in the closets
could not reach us there.

We ruled from treetop towers.
We danced in the rain.
We needed no permission
to believe in the sacred.
It was simply everywhere.
It was simply
everything.

In those days
we were of the living.
~Logan Holder “Of the Living”

How brief are our childhood days,
when we can touch both earth and sky
without knowing any limits,
how we can fly downhill
and climb impossible obstacles,
how the ocean stretches to infinity
as our imagination sails away.

I now watch these treasured young friends I’ve watched grow,
held as babies, taught new songs and games,
helped their faith grow,
now getting married,
ready to grow up children of their own.

This, the unending turn of the years,
a stretching tether connecting
one generation to another.

Everything sacred, held so close
until one day it is time to let go –
and once again run, climb, fly,
touching the earth and sky at once.

Lyrics by Keane:
I walked across an empty land
I knew the pathway like the back of my hand
I felt the earth beneath my feet
Sat by the river and it made me complete

Chorus: Oh, simple thing, where have you gone?
I’m getting old, and I need something to rely on
So, tell me when you’re gonna let me in
I’m getting tired, and I need somewhere to begin

I came across a fallen tree
I felt the branches of it looking at me
Is this the place we used to love?
Is this the place that I’ve been dreaming of?

And if you have a minute, why don’t we go
Talk about it somewhere only we know?
This could be the end of everything
So, why don’t we go somewhere only we know?
Somewhere only we know

And if you have a minute, why don’t we go
Talk about it somewhere only we know?
This could be the end of everything
So, why don’t we go?
So, why don’t we go?

This could be the end of everything
So, why don’t we go somewhere only we know?
Somewhere only we know
Somewhere only we know

Lord of the Pots and Pans and Things

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Lord of the pots and pans and things,
since I’ve no time to be
a saint by doing lovely things,
or watching late with thee,
or dreaming in the dawnlight,
or storming heaven’s gates…
make me a saint by getting meals
and washing up the plates.
Thou who didst love to give men food
in room or by the sea,
accept this service that I do—
I do it unto thee.
~ Brother Lawrence from Practicing the Presence of God

Wash the plate not because it is dirty nor because you are told to wash it, but because you love the person who will use it next. 
~St. Teresa of Calcutta

Even the mundane task of washing dishes by hand is an example of the small tasks and personal activities that once filled people’s daily lives with a sense of achievement.
~B.F. Skinner, behavioral psychologist

She rarely made us do it—
we’d clear the table instead—so my sister and I teased
that some day we’d train our children right
and not end up like her, after every meal stuck
with red knuckles, a bleached rag to wipe and wring.

The one chore she spared us: gummy plates
in water greasy and swirling with sloughed peas,
globs of egg and gravy.
Or did she guard her place
at the window? Not wanting to give up the gloss
of the magnolia, the school traffic humming.
Sunset, finches at the feeder. First sightings
of the mail truck at the curb, just after noon,
delivering a note, a card, the least bit of news.
~Susan Meyers “Mother, Washing Dishes”

My thoughts went round and round and it occurred to me that if I ever wrote a novel it would be of the ‘stream of consciousness’ type and deal with an hour in the life of a woman at the sink.

….I had to admit that nobody had compelled me to wash these dishes or to tidy this kitchen. It was the fussy spinster in me, the Martha who could not comfortably sit and make conversation when she knew that yesterday’s unwashed dishes were still in the sink.
~Barbara Pym from Excellent Women

I trace the struggling relationships and estrangements in the American family to the invention of the automatic dishwasher.

I have proof…

What happened to the necessary cooperation of a human dishwasher with two hands full of wash cloth and scrubber, having to get along with a dish dryer armed with a towel?

Where is the list on the refrigerator of whose turn is next, and the accountability if a family member somehow shirks their washing/drying responsibility and leaves the dishes to the next day?

No longer do family members have to cooperate in real time to scrub clean glasses, dishes and utensils, put them in the dish rack, dry them one by one and place them in the cupboard where they belong.

If the human dishwasher isn’t doing a proper job, the human dryer immediately takes note and recycles the dirty dish right back to the sink.

Instant accountability.

I always preferred to be the dryer. If I washed, and my sister dried, we’d never get done. She would keep recycling the dishes back for another going-over.

And so my messy nature was exposed.

Family conversations started over a meal often continue over the clean-up process while concentrating on whether a smudge is permanent or not. I learned some important facts of life while washing and drying dishes that I might not have learned otherwise. Sensitive topics tend to be easier to discuss when elbow deep in soap suds. Spelling and vocabulary and math fact drills are more effective when the penalty for a missed word or equation is a snap on the butt with a dish towel.

Our church hosts weekly Sunday evening potluck meals for 50-60 people after our evening worship service; we are committed to using real dishes, glasses and utensils rather than add to landfills with throwaways. There is no automatic dishwasher in our fellowship hall other than whoever stands up and heads to the sink first. There is no assigned duty list. Sometimes it takes a teetering stack of dishes to motivate the initiation of the wash/dry process. Sometimes there is an eager-beaver volunteer ready to wash as soon as the dirty dishes start to appear. Once the washing starts, there is always someone ready to dry, another someone ready to put things away and another someone to wipe down the tables, all having the best of conversations in the process.

It is cooperation in action, yet another example of how we all “pitch in” for the benefit and love of others.

So modern society is missing this best opportunity for daily family-together cooperation time. Forget family “game” night, or parental “date” night, or even vacations. Dish washing and drying at the sink takes care of all those times when families need to be communicating, all while coordinating efforts to clean, sort and organize.

It is time to treat the automatic dishwasher as simply another storage cupboard; instead pull out the brillo pads, the white cotton dishtowels and the plastic drainage dish rack.

Let’s start tonight.

And I think it is your turn first…

Holy as a day is spent
Holy is the dish and drain
The soap and sink, and the cup and plate
And the warm wool socks, and the cold white tile
Shower heads and good dry towels
And frying eggs sound like psalms
With bits of salt measured in my palm
It’s all a part of a sacrament
As holy as a day is spent

Holy is the familiar room
And quiet moments in the afternoon
And folding sheets like folding hands
To pray as only laundry can
I’m letting go of all my fear
Like autumn leaves made of earth and air
For the summer came and the summer went
As holy as a day is spent

Holy is the place I stand
To give whatever small good I can
And the empty page, and the open book
Redemption everywhere I look
Unknowingly we slow our pace
In the shade of unexpected grace
And with grateful smiles and sad lament
As holy as a day is spent
And morning light sings ‘providence’
As holy as a day is spent
~Carrie Newcomer “Holy as a Day Is Spent “

What I’m Still Learning…

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I’ve learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.

I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.

I’ve learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you’ll miss them when they’re gone from your life.

I’ve learned that making a ‘living’ is not the same thing as making a ‘life.’

I’ve learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance.

I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.

I’ve learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision.

I’ve learned that even when I have pains, I don’t have to be one.

I’ve learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back.

I’ve learned that I still have a lot to learn.

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
~Maya Angelou

…think of all the things you’ve learned over the years—
the hard and the holy,
the mysteries that will always remain mysterious,
the clean edges of truth,
the soft edges of every kindness given or received,
the way trouble and wonder will continue to show up, sometimes leaving us beached and breathless with uncontainable joy or unutterable sorrow.
I think of all the times I was knocked to my knees by a beautiful and brilliant flash of the completely obvious.
~Carrie Newcomer from A Gathering of Spirits

I learned from my mother how to love
the living, to have plenty of vases on hand
in case you have to rush to the hospital
with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants
still stuck to the buds. I learned to save jars
large enough to hold fruit salad for a whole
grieving household, to cube home-canned pears
and peaches, to slice through maroon grape skins
and flick out the sexual seeds with a knife point.
I learned to attend viewings even if I didn’t know
the deceased, to press the moist hands
of the living, to look in their eyes and offer
sympathy, as though I understood loss even then.
I learned that whatever we say means nothing,
what anyone will remember is that we came.
I learned to believe I had the power to ease
awful pains materially like an angel.
Like a doctor, I learned to create
from another’s suffering my own usefulness, and once
you know how to do this, you can never refuse.
To every house you enter, you must offer
healing: a chocolate cake you baked yourself,
the blessing of your voice, your chaste touch.
~Julie Kasdorf– “What I Learned from my Mother”

Five years ago today, I wrapped up 45 years of uninterrupted medical training and doctoring.

Even while bearing three children and going through a few surgeries myself, I was not away from patient care for more than twenty consecutive days at any one time. This was primarily out of my concern that, even after a few weeks, I would forget all that I’d ever known.

Indeed, half of what I learned in medical school and residency nearly fifty years ago has evolved, thanks to new discoveries and clarifying research. I worried if I actually stepped away from doctoring for an extended time, then return to see patients again, I would be masquerading as a physician rather than be the real thing.

I couldn’t fathom a day when I could actually investigate a medical dilemma by typing a few words in a search engine on a computer screen. Instead, I researched through opening my encyclopedic collection of reference textbooks along with huge notebooks of “Scientific American Updates,” a monthly process of throwing out old articles to be replaced by newly discovered data. That is how I kept learning before the computer replaced books and pen and paper…

If being truly honest, even now, those who spend their professional lives providing medical care to others always share this concern: if a patient only knew how much we don’t know and will never know, despite everything we DO know, there would really be no trust left for us at all.

With so much rapidly changing medical information at everyone’s fingertips and computer screens, who needs a trained physician when there are so many other resources – many sketchy and opportunistic – for seeking health care advice?

Yet, I am convinced most patients really do want doctors to share the best information they have available at any point in time rather than rely on the latest internet algorithm and so-called “experts.”

I know over forty years of clinical experience gave me an eye and an ear for the subtle signs and symptoms that no googled website or AI app or virtual doc-in-the-box can discern: the avoidance of eye contact, the tremble of the lip as they spoke, the barely palpable rash, the hardly discernible extra heart sound, the fullness over an ovary, the slight squeak in a lung base. These are things I was privileged to see and hear, about which I made decisions together with my patients. 

The work I did over four decades was a reflection of a continual learning process; out of my natural caution, I was honest when I didn’t know what the diagnosis was, nor the best treatment, but committed to doing my best to find out.

Continual learning – what I was trained to do for thousands of days and many more thousands of patients during my professional life, while passing a comprehensive certification examination every few years to prove my study and changing fund of knowledge.

Since retiring, the help I offer no longer means writing a prescription for a medication, or performing a minor surgery. I have to simply offer up me for what it’s worth, without a stethoscope.

Now I aim to be the best mom and grandma and friend I can be.
I can press my hand into another’s, hug when needed, smile and listen and nod and sometimes weep when someone has something they need to say. No advanced degree or certification required.

Someday, hopefully not too soon, I will die happy knowing I chose this with my life: still learning and still caring.

The Sweet Ache of Memories

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All day the stars watch from long ago
my mother said I am going now
when you are alone you will be all right
whether or not you know you will know
look at the old house in the dawn rain
all the flowers are forms of water
the sun reminds them through a white cloud
touches the patchwork spread on the hill
the washed colors of the afterlife
that lived there long before you were born
see how they wake without a question
even though the whole world is burning
~W.S. Merwin “Rain Light”

Well-away and be it so,
To the stranger let them go.
Even cheerfully I yield
Pasture, orchard, mowing-field,
Yea and wish him all the gain
I required of them in vain.
Yea and I can yield him house,
Barn, and shed, with rat and mouse
To dispute possession of.
These I can unlearn to love.
Since I cannot help it? Good!
Only be it understood,
It shall be no trespassing
If I come again some spring
In the grey disguise of years,
Seeking ache of memory here.
~Robert Frost from “On the Sale of My Farm”

the farm where I grew up in east Stanwood
the Stanwood farm from the road

From the road, each of the two small farms where I grew up in western Washington state (Stanwood and Olympia) look nothing like they did in my childhood.  When I drive past now, whether on Google Earth virtually or for real, the outbuildings have changed and are unfamiliar, fences pulled down, the trees exponentially taller or gone altogether, the fields no longer well-tended. Instead the familiarity is in the road to get there, the lean into the curves, the acceleration in and out of dips, the landscape which triggers a simultaneous comfort and disquiet deep in my DNA.

Though my brother once stopped and got permission to look around our long-ago childhood home, and sent me pictures that looked barely recognizable, I myself have never stopped to knock; instead I have driven slowly past to sense if I feel what I used to feel in these places.  My memories are indeed triggered but feel a bit as if they must have happened to someone else.

I have the same feeling when driving past my parents’ childhood farms on Similk Bay on Fidalgo Island and in the Palouse wheat fields. Part of me belongs to these places even though they have never been truly “mine” – only part of sweet memories from my own childhood.

barn on Olympia farm
Olympia house
the driveway to my mother’s Palouse farm where she grew up
my mother’s childhood home in Spring Valley, the Palouse

One clinic day years ago, I glanced at the home address of a young man I was about to see for a medical issue and I realized he now lived in my childhood home located over 100 miles away.  When I greeted him I told him we had something in common: we had grown up under the same roof, inside the same walls, though children of two different generations. 

He was curious but seemed skeptical — how could this gray-haired middle aged woman know anything about his home?  He told me a bit about the house, the barn, the fields, the garden and how he experienced it felt altogether strange to me.  He and I had shared nothing but a patch of real estate — our recollections were so completely disparate.

The two daughters of the family who sold our current farm to us over thirty years ago have been back to visit a time or two, and have driven by whenever they are in the area. Many things remain familiar to them but also too much has changed – it is not quite the same farm they remember from their childhood. I know it aches to visit here but they do let me know when a photo I post has a particular sweet memory for them.

I worry for the fearsome ache if someday, due to age or finances, we must sell this farm we cherish ~ this beloved place our children were raised, animals bred and cared for, fruit picked from an ancient orchard, plants tended and soil turned over. It will remain on the map surely as the other two farms of my past, visible as we pass by slowly on the road, but primarily preserved in the words and photos I harvest here.

Only be it understood,
It shall be no trespassing
If I come again some spring
In the grey disguise of years,
Seeking ache of memory here.

There will always be hoping something will still remain familiar on the map of my memory. After all, there is no such beauty as the place where I belonged – now and forever ago.

eveningporch51218

Tell me, where is the road
I can call my own
That I left, that I lost
So long ago?
All these years I have wandered
Oh, when will I know
There’s a way, there’s a road
That will lead me home

After wind, after rain
When the dark is done
As I wake from a dream
In the gold of day
Through the air there’s a calling
From far away
There’s a voice I can hear
That will lead me home

Rise up, follow me
Come away, is the call
With the love in your heart
As the only song
There is no such beauty
As where you belong
Rise up, follow me
I will lead you home
~Michael Dennis Browne

Cut and Tumble, Sickness and Weeping

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God keep my jewel this day from danger;
From tinker and pooka and bad-hearted stranger.
From harm of the water, from hurt of the fire.
From the horns of the cows going home to the byre.
From the sight of the fairies that maybe might change her.
From teasing the ass when he’s tied to the manger.
From stones that would bruise her, from thorns of the briar.
From evil red berries that wake her desire.
From hunting the gander and vexing the goat.
From the depths o’ sea water by Danny’s old boat.
From cut and from tumble, from sickness and weeping;
May God have my jewel this day in his keeping.
~Winifred Lett (1882-1973) “Prayer for a Child“

photo by Nate Gibson

I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God. It changes me.
~C.S. Lewis

I want to make a case for the Lighthouse Parent, a term that the pediatrician Kenneth Ginsburg and others have used. A Lighthouse Parent stands as a steady, reliable guide, providing safety and clarity without controlling every aspect of their child’s journey. 

Like a lighthouse that helps sailors avoid crashing into rocks, Lighthouse Parents provide firm boundaries and emotional support while allowing their children the freedom to navigate their own challenges. They demonstrate that they trust their kids to handle difficult situations independently. The key is learning when to step back and let them find their own way.
~Russell Shaw from “Lighthouse Parents Have More Confident Kids”

celebrating a long-awaited pregnancy – 1985

This “prayer for a child” has hung on the wall in our home for four decades, purchased when I was pregnant with our first of three children.

The drawing of the praying mother watching her toddler leave the safety of the home to explore the wide world addressed my worries as a new mama. I would glance at it daily, knowing the world is full of peril; it would remind me of God’s care for our family through every scary thing, real or imagined.

It helped me smile at a few of my irrational fears. Tinkers and pookas and fairies were unlikely to find our children in our rural landscape but at times the world seems full of “black-hearted strangers” and other threats, known and unknown.

Decades later, I continue to pray for our grown children and their God-given spouses, and for six adventuresome grandchildren.

I pray because I can’t not pray, and because I’m helpless without the care and compassion of our sovereign God for each of us, especially when we are brand new, completely dependent and helpless. He is a true “lighthouse” in our lives,

May I be changed by my prayers, molded into a “grand” mother and a light for our half dozen cherished grandchildren, each a jewel in His keeping.

Staring at Empty Air

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On the green hill with the river beyond it
long ago and my father there
and my grandmother standing in her faded clothes
wrinkled high-laced black shoes in the spring grass
among the few gravestones inside their low fence
by the small white wooden church
the clear panes of its windows
letting the scene through from the windows
on the other side of the empty room
and a view of the trees over there
my grandmother hardly turned her head
staring like a cloud at the empty air
not looking at the green glass gravestone
with the name on it of the man to whom
she had been married and who had been
my father’s father she went on saying nothing
her eyes wandering above the trees
that hid the river from where we were
a place where she had stood with him one time
when they were young and the bell kept ringing
~W.S. Merwin “Widnoon” from The Moon Before Morning

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I remember my grandfather as a somber man who slowly rocked in a wooden chair, staying warm by the wood stove.

That chair now sits empty in our home.

For most of his life, Grandpa drank heavily, but he wasn’t just any drunk. He was a mean drunk. Surly, cursing, prone to throwing things and people, especially at home.

Grandma used to say he learned to drink in the logging camps and I suspect that is true. He started working as a logger before he was fully grown, dropping out of school, leaving home around age sixteen and heading up to the hills where real money could be made. 

He learned how to cut down huge old growth Douglas Fir trees, skid them down the hills using a team of horses, and then roll them onto waiting wagons to be hauled to the mills.

He lived with a group of men who surfaced once or twice a month from the hills to take a bath, bootleg booze during prohibition then try to avoid being arrested and thrown in the local pokey. Once in awhile, they maybe went to church with their womenfolk.

Mostly, being a logger taught him how to curse and drink.

He headed home to his father’s homestead farm with muscles and attitude a few years later, and started the process of felling trees, creating a “stump farm” that was a challenge to work because huge “old growth” stumps dotted the fields and hills next to muddy Similk Bay. He slowly worked at blasting them out of the ground so the land could be tilled.

It proved more than he had strength and motivation to do, so his fields were never very fruitful on that rocky hillside. He mostly grew hay for his own animals. He went to work in the local saw mill to make ends meet.

He cleaned up some when he met my grandmother, who at eighteen was seven years younger, and eager to escape her role as chief cook and bottle washer for her widowed father and younger brother.  She was devout, lively and full of energy and talked constantly while he, especially when sober, preferred to let others do the talking. It was an unusual match but he liked her cooking and she was ready to be wooed to escape the drudgery of her father’s household.

They settled on the stump farm and began raising a family, trying to eke out what living they could from the land, from the sporadic work he found at the saw mill, and every Sunday, took the wagon a mile down the road to the Bible Church where they both sang with gusto.

He still drank when he had the money, blowing his pay in the local tavern, and stumbling in the back door roaring and burping, falling into bed with his shoes on. Grandma was a teetotaler and yelled into his ruddy face about the wrath of God anytime he drank, their four children hiding when the dishes started to fly, and when he would whip off his belt to hit anyone who looked sideways at him.

When their eldest daughter took sick and died of lymphoma at age eight despite the little doctoring that was available, Grandpa got sober for awhile. He saw it as punishment from God, or at least that is what Grandma told him through her sobs as she struggled to cope with her loss.

Over the years, he relapsed many times, losing fingers in his work at the mill, and losing the respect of his wife, his children and the people in the community. Grandma took the kids for several months to cook in a boarding house in a neighboring town, simply to be able to feed her family while Grandpa squandered what he had on drink.

Reconciled over and over again, Grandma would come back to him, sending their only son to fetch him from the tavern for the night. My Dad would bicycle to that dark and smoky place, stand Grandpa up and guide him staggering out to their truck for the weaving drive home on country roads. On more than one occasion, Grandpa, belligerent as ever, would resist leaving and throw a punch at his boy, usually missing by a mile.

But once the boy grew taller and strong enough to fight back, managing to knock Grandpa to the ground in self-defense, the punching and resistance stopped. The boozing didn’t.

Grandpa sobered up for good while his boy fought in the war overseas in the forties, striking a bargain with God that his boy would come home safe to work the farm as long as Grandpa left alcohol alone.  It stuck and he stayed sober. His boy came home. Grandpa saw it as a promise kept and became an elder in his Bible Church, taught Sunday School and gave his extra cash to the church rather than the tavern. He and Grandma donated a house on their property to the church for a parsonage.

Some twelve years later, sitting in a Christmas Sunday School program one Christmas Eve, Grandpa leaned toward Grandma; she saw his face broken out in sweat, his face ashen.

“It’s hot in here, I need air, “ he said and collapsed in her lap. 

He was gone, just like that. He left the rest of his family behind while he sat in church, sober as can be, on the day before Christmas.

There is no question in my mind he knew he was forgiven. He headed home one more time, not weaving or swerving but traveling straight and narrow.

marshmallowmay3

Imagining Glory Beyond Measure

barnstormingblog2 Comments

The night of the Perseid shower,
thick fog descended
but I would not be denied.
I had put the children to bed,
knelt with them,
and later
in the quiet kitchen
as tall red candles
burned on the table between us,
I’d listened to my wife’s sweet imprecations,
her entreaties to see a physician.
But at the peak hour—
after she had gone to bed,
and neighboring houses
stood solemn and dark—
I felt no human obligation
and went without hope into the yard.
In the white mist
beneath the soaked and dripping trees,
I lifted my eyes
into a blind nothingness of sky
and shivered in a white robe.
I couldn’t see the outline
of the neighbor’s willows,
much less the host of streaking meteorites
no bigger than grains of sand
blazing across the sky.
I questioned the mind, my troubled thinking,
and chided myself to go in,
but looking up,
I thought of the earth
on which I stood,
my own
scanty plot of ground,
and as the lights passed unseen
I imagined glory beyond all measure.
Then I turned to the lights in the windows—
the children’s nightlights,
and my wife’s reading lamp, still burning.
~Richard Jones “The Manifestation”

Perhaps as a child you had the chicken pox
and your mother, to soothe you in your fever
or to help you fall asleep, came into your room
and read to you from some favorite book,
Charlotte’s Web or Little House on the Prairie,
a long story that she quietly took you through
until your eyes became magnets for your shuttering
lids and she saw your breathing go slow. And then
she read on, this time silently and to herself,
not because she didn’t know the story,
it seemed to her that there had never been a time
when she didn’t know this story—the young girl
and her benevolence, the young girl in her sod house—
but because she did not yet want to leave your side
though she knew there was nothing more
she could do for you. And you, not asleep but simply weak,
listened to her turn the pages, still feeling
the lamp warm against one cheek, knowing the shape
of the rocking chair’s shadow as it slid across
your chest. So that now, these many years later,
when you are clenched in the damp fist of a hospital bed,
or signing the papers that say you won’t love him anymore,
when you are bent at your son’s gravesite or haunted
by a war that makes you wake with the gun
cocked in your hand, you would like to believe
that such generosity comes from God, too,
who now, when you have the strength to ask, might begin
the story again, just as your mother would,
from the place where you have both left off.
~Keetje Kuipers “Prayer”

photo by Josh Scholten

Flung is too harsh a word for the rush of the world.
Blown is more like it, but blown by a generous, unending breath.
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

How could it be possible? 

The five year old me had a sudden terrifying revelation that I would some day cease to walk this earth.

The much older me is more afraid of the faster and faster rush of the days than of their end. 

The world hurtles through space and time at a pace that leaves me breathless. Throughout my seventy-plus years, I have felt flung all too frequently, bruised and weary from hurry and hubbub.

I have need of Someone to stop me for a moment, sit down and begin the Story again with me, starting right where we left off.

Now, with retirement from daily work obligations: breathing space. 
I’m lifted lighter, drifting where I’m blown, less weighted down
by the next thing to do and the next place to be.

Instead I can just be…
part of the story to be told,
part of the wonder. 
Blown by breath that loves,
fills and nurtures,
a generous promise hopeful and fulfilled.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to see, even in the dark,
a manifestation of glory and love just beyond my vision,
praying that one day I will see and know it clearly.

The old me ~ 
Blown upon.

If only the five year old me could have known.

A Farmgirl from the Palouse

barnstormingblog4 Comments

…I saw a mom take her raincoat off
and give it to her young daughter when
a storm took over the afternoon. My god,
I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her
raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel
that I never got wet.
~Ada Limón from “The Raincoat”

My mother, Elna Schmitz Polis, was born 106 years ago today in the lonely isolation of a Palouse wheat and lentil farm in eastern Washington. She drew her first breath in a two story white house located down a long poplar-lined lane and nestled in a draw between the undulating hills.

She attended a one room school house until 8th grade, located a mile away in the rural countryside, then moved in with her grandmother “in town” in Rosalia to attend high school, seeing her parents only a couple times a month.

It was a childhood which accustomed her to solitude and creative play inside her mind and heart – her only sibling, an older brother, was busy helping their father on the farm. All her life and especially in her later years, she would prefer the quiet of her own thoughts over the bustle of a room full of activities and conversation.

Her childhood was filled with exploration of the rolling hills, the barns and buildings where her father built and repaired farm equipment, and the chilly cellar where the fresh eggs were stored after she reached under cranky hens to gather them. She sat in the cool breeze of the picketed yard, watching the huge windmill turn and creak next to the house. She helped her weary mother feed farm crews who came for harvest time and then settled in the screened porch listening to the adults talk about lentil prices and bushel production. She woke to the mourning dove call in the mornings and heard the coyote yips and howls at night.

She nearly died at the age of 13 from a ruptured appendix, before antibiotics were an option. That near-miss haunted her life-long, filling her with worry that it was a mistake that she survived that episode at all. Yet she thrived despite the anxiety, and ended up, much to her surprise, living a long life full of family and faith, letting go at age 88 after fracturing a femur, which also broke her will to live.

As a young woman, she was ready to leave the wheat farm behind for college, devoting herself to the skills of speech, and the creativity of acting and directing in drama, later teaching rural high school students, including a future Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Carolyn Kizer. She loved words and the power and beauty they wielded.

Marrying my father was a brave and impulsive act, traveling by train to the east coast only a week before he shipped out for almost 3 years to the South Pacific to fight as a Marine in WWII. She must have wondered about the man who returned from war changed and undoubtedly scarred in ways she could not see or touch. They worked it out mostly in silence, as rocky as it must have been at times.

Her episode of Graves’ disease, before I was born, must have been agonizing for both of them and my older sister, as her storm of thyroid overactivity resulted in months of sleepless full time panic. Only thyroid removal saved her, but radical surgeries take their toll.
Their marriage never fully recovered.

In their reconciliation after a painful divorce decades later, I finally could see the devotion and mutual respect between life companions who had finally found shared purpose and love.

As a wife and mother, she rediscovered her calling as a steward of the land and a tireless steward of her family, gardening and harvesting fruits, vegetables and us children. When I think of my mother, I most often think of her tending us children in the middle of the night whenever we were ill; her over-vigilance was undoubtedly due to her worry we might die in childhood, as she almost did.

She never did stop worrying until the last few months. As she became more dependent on others in her physical decline, she gave up the control she thought she had to maintain through her “worry energy” and became much more accepting about the control the Lord maintains over all we are and will become.

I know from where my shyness comes, my preference for birdsongs rather than radio music, my love of naps, and my tendency to be serious and straight-laced with a twinkle in my eye. This is my German-Palouse side–immersing in the quietness of solitude, thrilling to the sight of the spring wheat flowing like a green ocean wave in the breeze and appreciating the warmth of rich soil held in my hands.

My mother came from that heritage and it is the legacy she left with me. I am forever grateful for her unconditional love to the end of her life; her willingness to share the sunshine and warmth of her nest whenever we felt the need to fly back home and shelter, overprotected but safe nonetheless, under her wings.

Gone to Feed the Roses

barnstormingblog1 Comment

Done are the toils and the wearisome marches,
Done is the summons of bugle and drum.
Softly and sweetly the sky overarches,
Shelt’ring a land where Rebellion is dumb.
Dark were the days of the country’s derangement,
Sad were the hours when the conflict was on,
But through the gloom of fraternal estrangement
God sent his light, and we welcome the dawn.
O’er the expanse of our mighty dominions,
Sweeping away to the uttermost parts,
Peace, the wide-flying, on untiring pinions,
Bringeth her message of joy to our hearts.

Ah, but this joy which our minds cannot measure,
What did it cost for our fathers to gain!
Bought at the price of the heart’s dearest treasure,
Born out of travail and sorrow and pain;
Born in the battle where fleet Death was flying,
Slaying with sabre-stroke bloody and fell;
Born where the heroes and martyrs were dying,
Torn by the fury of bullet and shell.
Ah, but the day is past; silent the rattle,
And the confusion that followed the fight.
Peace to the heroes who died in the battle,
Martyrs to truth and the crowning of Right!

Out of the blood of a conflict fraternal,
Out of the dust and dimness of death,
Burst into blossoms of glory eternal
Flowers that sweeten the world with the breath.
Flowers of charity, peace, and devotion
Bloom in the hearts that are empty of strife;
Love that is boundless and broad as the ocean
Leaps into beauty and fullness of life.
So, with the singing of paeans and chorals,
And with the flag flashing high in the sun,
Place on the graves of our heroes the laurels
Which their unfaltering valor has won!
~Paul Dunbar “Ode for Memorial Day”

homepristinerose

I am not resigned to the shutting away
of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be,
for so it has been, time out of mind:

Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.  Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.

A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.
The answers quick and keen, the honest look,
the laughter, the love,—
They are gone.  They are gone to feed the roses.  Elegant and curled
Is the blossom.  Fragrant is the blossom.  I know. 
But I do not approve.

More precious was the light in your eyes
than all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;

Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know.  But I do not approve.  And I am not resigned.
~Edna St. Vincent Millay “Dirge Without Music”

weepingrose

Each Memorial Day weekend without fail ~

we gather with family, have lunch, reminisce,
and trek to a cemetery high above the Sound
to catch up with our relatives who lie there, still.
Some for nearly 120 years, some more recent,
some we knew and loved and miss every day,
others not so much, unknown to us
except on genealogy charts,
their long-ago names and dates and these stones
all that is left of them.

Seven generations together briefly,
above and below the ground,
age 6 through 200 years.

Yet we know each
(as we know for ourselves and others)
was tender and kind, even though flawed and broken,
was beautiful and strong, even though wrinkled and frail,
was hopeful and faithful, even though too soon in the ground.

We know this about them
as we know it about ourselves:
someday we too will feed roses,
the light in our eyes transformed into elegant swirls
emitting the fragrant scent of heaven.

No one asks if we approve.
Nor am I resigned to this but only know:
So it is, so it has been, so it will be.

roseonblack

Goin’ home, goin’ home,
I’m a goin’ home;
Quiet like, some still day,
I’m jes’ goin’ home.
It’s not far, jes’ close by,
Through an open door;
Work all done, care laid by,
gwine to fear no more.

Mother’s there ‘spectin’ me,
Father’s waitin’ too;
Lots o’folk gather’d there,
All the friends I knew.

Home, home,
I’m goin’ home!
Nothin’ lost, all’s gain,
No more fret nor pain,
No more stumblin’ on the way,
No more longin’ for the day,
Gwine to roam no more!

Mornin’ star lights the way,
Res’less dreams all done;
Shadows gone, break o’day,
Real life jes’ begun.

Dere’s no break, ain’t no end,
Jes’ a livin’ on;
Wide awake, with a smile.
Goin’ on and on.

Goin’ home, goin’ home,
I’m jes’ goin’ home.
It’s not far, jes’ close by,
Through an open door;
I’m jes’ goin’ home.
Goin’ home.