Calling Mom on my birthday

I called my mom on my birthday, asked her if she remembered just what she was doing 60 years ago today.  Oh we shared some good laughs, and that question opened a door of memory to her own youth.  You see, my mom was very young when she had me, a new teenage bride.  I was born early and very small.  It was a difficult time.  As she recounted the memory, her voice grew soft.  She was so green, she said, so young.  She had no idea.  She told me that when she finally held me she thought I was the most beautiful baby she'd ever seen. 
Of course, I was warmed by her words, savoring the moment, when she rolled on with this..."Once you had grown a bit and we knew everything was okay, that is when folks started telling me you had been the ugliest baby!"  Oh, it was hilarious - we were laughing so hard we both had tears running down our cheeks (I know this even though we are thousands of miles apart).  Ours is a special bond. 

'Three Little Birds' is Back

and it feels like a homecoming...it feels like this...

When my nineteen-year-old son turns on the kitchen tap
and leans down over the sink and tilts his head sideways
to drink directly from the stream of cool water,
I think of my older brother, now almost ten years gone,
who used to do the same thing at that age;
and when he lifts his head back up and, satisfied,
wipes the water dripping from his cheek
with his shirtsleeve, it’s the same casual gesture
my brother used to make; and I don’t tell him
to use a glass, the way our father told my brother,
because I like remembering my brother
when he was young, decades before anything
went wrong, and I like the way my son
becomes a little more my brother for a moment
through this small habit born of a simple need,
which, natural and unprompted, ties them together
across the bounds of death, and across time …
as if the clear stream flowed between two worlds
and entered this one through the kitchen faucet,
my son and brother drinking the same water.

"A Drink of Water" by Jeffrey Harrison

Happy Father's Day!

Pope Francis: “I ask for you (dads) the grace to be ever closer to your children, allow them to grow, but be close, close! They need you, your presence, your closeness, your love.”

Happy Father's Day to our sweet son, aka Pa-a, as his son calls him; my Dad and super fun grandpa, and my hubby - the best there is! May God our Father bless you in His love! And thank you each and all for blessing us with your fatherly care and loving ways!  

Sacred Memory

The other day Kyla and I were working together to organize her room. We rediscovered a bag of stuffed animals etc. we'd put away and among the items was a baby doll she carried everywhere when she was toddling around. It was fun to share with her this happy reminder of precious days passed.

Later we moved her little shrine to her bedside table.

 





















A holy card fell out, St. Kateri Tekawitha.

It has a relic, (a bit of red cloth) and Kyla commented that it was strange to think a piece of someone's clothing was sacred. I was surprised by my emotion as I shared with her that this bit of cloth was like her doll, which is 'just a doll' but also more, simply because it was hers, and is full of meaning and memory for us. She teared up too, 'getting it'. Happy grateful tears, a really good hug and yes, a sacred moment.

God-is-with-us

It's been quiet here online,

though raucous enough in my life through advent’s waiting

the loss of my husband’s sister, my friend, who was also mother and daughter-loss

the rough road of one of our own who is trying with all she’s got to change her life

preparing for my moms visit (a rare and difficult thing for her to do, given her health, but she is vigorous in spirit)

family

hope and ache, loss and gain all tossed into December’s mulled offerings

and then comes the feast

Incarnation...God with skin, love enfleshed

I feel it in the happy chaos of child-Angels plucking feathers from their wings and robe-clad Shepherds making haste to greet the Christ child in the manger at Christmas Mass

Feel it as Lucas wraps his arms around my neck and I can still feel him so

As Conor kisses my forehead and I am so small beside him with his arm wrapped around me, Merry Christmas mom

And Leslie speaks her thanks and I feel her breath carry tenderness to my ear, her smile, delight to my eyes

When Kate calls, anxious about many things while I hear her own babies in the background, and though apart, a grown child’s need and a mother’s reassurance bridge the gap

And Jessica catches me in the pantry, after taking the girls on 'the best day ever!', confiding her renewed perspective; later we linger while the house sleeps and I am grateful for this closeness

Watching Henry laughing at the glad welcome he receives, the family embrace is everywhere

With my Mom close by, watching me in the kitchen, later bragging about her girl, we sit and I hold her crooked hand

Catching Roger’s eyes across the room, conspiracy of grace, again and again he sees, every petal reads ‘he loves me’

With Kyla and her scooting close, childhoods joys

The door swings wide, again and again as family arrives.

We join hands to pray, feast on food and wine

there are quiet chats in corners, the grandmothers commiserate

while games & laughter drift in on the air

We gather crowded close to open our gifts

All advent I heard the whisper and as I sit back and watch, I hear it again under the playful exchange...

I am not coming...I am here

Without Intention

I wake in the night.  Cricket song fills the air, so expansive I can barely hear the hum of the fan at the foot of the bed as I lay beneath the thin summer sheet.  I listen awhile and then realize I am thanking God for such a moment, and all the graces this has stirred within me.  Thus occupied, thoughts flow easily in gratitude until I am overcome.  And then I hear it...silence.  The crickets have quit their song.  I hear the hum of the fan at the foot of the bed as I lay beneath the thin summer sheet.  I hear my husbands steady breathing.  I roll over, settle in, and sleep.

Helen Masacz - Empty Bed / How Can You Sleep At Night. Oil on Board

A girl and her papa

Daily

  by Naomi Shihab Nye

These shriveled seeds we plant,
corn kernel, dried bean,
poke into loosened soil,
cover over with measured fingertips
 
These T-shirts we fold into
perfect white squares
 
These tortillas we slice and fry to crisp strips
This rich egg scrambled in a gray clay bowl
 
This bed whose covers I straighten
smoothing edges till blue quilt fits brown blanket
and nothing hangs out
 
This envelope I address
so the name balances like a cloud
in the center of sky
 
This page I type and retype
This table I dust till the scarred wood shines
This bundle of clothes I wash and hang and wash again
like flags we share, a country so close
no one needs to name it
 
The days are nouns: touch them
The hands are churches that worship the world

Unarmed Truth & Unconditional Love

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.  
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I love this image of 'unarmed truth'.  We hear that phrase 'to speak the truth in love' but his words move it from a pious phrase to such a visual image of true humility. 

unarmed: without weaponry ( anything to injure, defeat or destroy) to have empty arms, to not hold something that provides security, strength, or efficacy to defend oneself...

This is how my husband speaks to me; with unarmed truth and with my closest human experience of unconditional love.  He speaks the truth to me; and even if it stings I see it is because the truth wants to live in me more fully and I have, in that moment at least, resisted.  He disarms me.

When I think of my human experience of unconditional love I think of my own children (and for that, all children) in that wonderful baby to child phase of wide open arms.  How they would rush into me with joyous abandon whether in affection or need.  How they could speak to me, even without words, and how I long for that truth to live in me more completely...to believe I am loved unconditionally, and to be that same love.  This is my image of God.  And from that place, as james taylor sang, to shower the people you love with love. 

My failings are close to home.  Those moments when unarmed truth is not chosen and I pick up the weaponry (I am right, or the one in control here, or just too tired of this)

Thankfully, I don't have the final word.  Dr. King was right.  Unarmed truth and unconditional love do have the final word, not in some last day when the world reaches it's conclusion, but each day, and having received, I offer my deep felt amen to God's grace.  May unarmed truth and unconditional love have the final word in me and you.

FAITH

This photo of our grandson always prompts gratitude and a smile...
to remember how securely love holds us...
and to savor the many blessings of life with wild abandon and confident joy

THIS MESS IS A PLACE

This came in the mail from our oldest - Jessica.  Part of her Mother's Day package to me.  Included in her note so full of love and thanks was this line, "to allow that 'place' to develop, to grow, to bloom". 

This mess is a place -  This place a mess that we tidy a thousand times over, pick up the tossed jacket, the dirty dish, the Band-Aid that fell off, the damp towel off the floor, the moments glory lost in embarrassment, the laundry stacks to put away, the baby crying in the night, pick up the papers with stick figures smiling- sunshine tucked in the corner, pick up the blanket and cover them again, the shoes under the sofa, pick up the dirty socks and turn them a thousand times, pick up after practice, after the skinned knee; the fall from the tree, pick up the tab, pick up the hair in the sink when she cut her first bangs; he cut his curls, pick up the rag and wash behind the ears, pick up the pieces and start again, pick up the toys, the popcorn in the cushions, pick up a boy by his feet, pick up a girl and put her in the swing, pick up the room while they play, pick up the prayer that began in a dream, pick up the Christmas gift, the birthday card, the medicine, pick up the note, the one I can hardly lift anymore but still needs my full embrace, pick up the pillow and talk, pick them up and over the waves, pick up the pieces after the fight, the paint and crayons and threads,  pick up after the dance, the game, the moments of shame, pick up the pizza, the dog poop, the broken heart you want to mend, pick up the keys and hand them over, the one thing they had to have, the trash overflowing, the homework they forgot, pick up the things left behind as they grow and go, let go.

I have spent the biggest part of my life bending down in this mess of a place we call home.  I have bent crooked, imperfectly, begrudgingly and gloriously.  I still am asking to tidy up - to make room for another beautiful mess.  My walls have strange markings left from crayons and growth lines charted through the years, (so do I, come to think of it).  I woke this morning, picked up the stuffed animal in the hall on my way out to the kitchen, picked up my glasses, my heart full to overflowing, I pick up that prayer again and again.  Tonight we will gather round the table, pick up the conversation, the mess of dishes and food on the floor, pick up a child, a husband, a bride.  Every bending down, every picking up to offer thanks to the God who has blessed me beyond belief through this ordinary grace. 

Sunrise from our porch

God ...heart on his sleeve at rising

On the 5th Day of Christmas...

This morning I read about Simeon...
A good man
One who lived in prayerful expectancy
And the Holy Spirit was on him
Simeon took him [Jesus] into his arms and blessed God

So I am sitting here...in the imaginative prayer of St. Ignatius,
feeling the weight of the Christ child in my arms, close and warm.
I am dumbfounded...
no words form...
just that weight and warmth
and the lump in my throat.
I am deeply sunk in the moment
when she pads out
"I was calling you"
and crawls into my lap,
heavy and warm
and I hold on
in silence
as long as I possibly can...

feeling the weight of the Christ child in my arms, close and warm.
I am dumbfounded...

Some Children see Him lily white,
the Baby Jesus born this night.
Some Children see Him lily white,
with tresses soft and fair.
Some Children see Him bronzed and brown,
the Lord of heav’n to earth some down;
Some Children see Him bronzed and brown,
with dark and heavy hair.
Some Children see Him almond eyed,
this Saviour whom we kneel beside,
Some Children see him almond eyed,
with skin of yellow hue.
Some Children see him dark as they,
sweet Mary’s Son to whom we pray;
Some Children see Him dark as they,
and ah! They love Him too!
The Children in each different place
will see the Baby Jesus’ face
Like theirs, but bright with heav’nly grace,
and filled with holy light.
O lay aside each earthly thing,
and with thy heart as offering,
Come worship now the Infant King,
’tis love that’s born tonight!

FAITH

This photo of our grandson always prompts gratitude and a smile...to remember how securely love holds us...and to savor the many blessings of life with wild abandon and confident joy