God’s Heart Beats in the Silence
‘Sat all You got?
I pushed back, thinking those two words were, well, lame. They were obvious, and though “strength” and “healing” seemed fitting, they also felt too small in that moment. I could have pulled them out of the air all by myself.
Surely He had something bigger, more imaginative He’d have me pray for a friend.
I know You have something more. Give it up. I want it.
Almost like a pitcher shaking off the catcher’s signs, sometimes my morning practice with God goes back and forth until I’m convinced He’s given me His best word.
That cold February morning in the shadows of my office, I shook off the words until I got the one I wanted, the one I was certain I did not make up on my own: wherewithal.
where·with·al
–noun
1.
that with which to do something; means or supplies for the purpose or need1
Even that day, I had to look it up to be sure I knew the meaning. But once I held it in my hands, I whispered back to Him, on a friend’s behalf, Now do it!
Hanging Towels on Hooks
Language is often abstract, but life is not abstract.1
Reflecting on the staying power of Aesop’s ideas, shared through short, pointed stories that have had universal application for a couple and a half millennia, authors Chip Heath and Dan Heath observe that “what the world needs is a lot more fables.” (Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, p. 99)
Aesop’s secret to success was “encoding” his message with concrete images that would be widely understood and grasped. Except in Sweden, where they refer to the “rowanberries,” the meaning of “sour grapes” is known the world over because of the concrete images of a fox unable to jump quite high enough to reach ripening grapes.
But not to worry. The grapes were no good anyway.
Crumbs of Wasted Time
I sit at my kitchen table, where no one has eaten for days. My printer hoards one chair while game jerseys and tattered hoodies drape the others. My briefcase gapes open, stopped midway through vomiting up claim files and correspondence, a diagram caught in its throat.
I lift my eyes to the coffee machine, thinking I should brew again, and see crumbs huddled together on the counter, throwing furtive glances back my way and wondering in their raspy whispers if they’ll be safe for another day.
I don’t see to the dishes much. Or sweep the floors. Or pay the bills or balance the checkbook or fold the clothes.
:: (more…)
Uncommon Sense
Though not at all a morning person, life necessitates that I’m an early riser. Often before the sun these days. But because the shrill of an alarm clock threatens to stop my heart and leaves me cranky and jittery all day long, I don’t use one.
I wake naturally, at the time I told myself I must before fading the night before.
I have a friend who also does not wake to the sound of an alarm, though two separate clocks shriek for her to notice them each morning. Sometimes for an hour. Much like folks who live next to the tracks, she doesn’t hear the train roaring through her bedroom every morning.
The King is Coming
Guest post by Paul Willingham, just in time for the Vikings season opener . . .
Who’s the king, really?
I read recently of the passing of gospel singer Doug Oldham. Oldham was a regular on Jerry Falwell’s Old Time Gospel Hour, back in the day before the televangelist scandals dimmed the Klieg lights of many religious broadcasters. Oldham died July 19 at the age of 79.
Like Roy and Happy Trails, Elvis and Heartbreak Hotel, Kate Smith and God Bless America, and George Beverly Shea and How Great Thou Art, I have always associated Oldham with the song The King is Coming. (more…)
Enough
I travel light.
It’s a point of personal pride, really.
And yes, it was before the days of hauling my laptop wherever I go, but on a two-week trip to Korea I traveled with a single carry-on bag. No checked luggage.
If I couldn’t carry it in one hand, I didn’t need it.
Preparing for a mission project in Buenos Aires several years ago, I forced my rules for packing for international travel onto a group of high school and college students. The instructions were clear enough:
Pack only what you absolutely cannot live without.
Knowing what most of them would consider absolutely essential, I asked them to go a little further.
Then take out half and leave it behind.
Now, close up your suitcase and carry it around the block.
When you catch your breath, take out half again.
What remained in their bags, after taking out, carrying weight and taking out again, was all they would truly need.
It was, to their surprise, enough. (more…)
Living With the Questions
I’m not a good question-asker.
An answer-finder, yes. And an answer-giver. I’ll easily spend days and hours to ferret out an answer from somewhere, or better yet, just have one at the ready to give and resolve the thing.
But to ask questions, this is a dangerous enterprise.
Asking questions means not knowing.
And admitting as much.
Forget the Big Thing
Mary was a slacker.
There. I said it.
Mary was a slacker and an underachiever and lacked ambition.
Oh, I know — don’t I know — that in side-by-side comparisons, it would be Martha who was found wanting. Martha, who planned and prepared and executed with perfection — He would peer straight through Martha’s heart and say, Your sister has chosen the better thing.
But Martha was the one who truly understood the importance of the Lord’s visit that day. She knew the social mores. She was deeply aware of the need to honor this guest with a proper meal, in a properly prepared home. This was a really big thing.
And she was the one that got that. The only one.
Mary, she was the flighty one. The one you’d find lying on her belly in the grass, picking daisies when there was the wash to do. Always talking about light and color and the moment.
Mary was all about the wonder.
And she never got a thing done.
The Point of a Chocolate Cake
Never mind how I got here.
We’ve long established that the road can be a little twisted and winding. What matters is that I ended up here, with the most delicious slice of chocolate cake between my tongue and palate.
Share a bite with me:
1 Contend, O LORD, with those who contend with me;
fight against those who fight against me.2 Take up shield and buckler;
arise and come to my aid.3 Brandish spear and javelin
against those who pursue me.
Say to my soul,
“I am your salvation.” (Psalm 35:1-3, emphasis added)
I had no interest in reading David’s complaint in 35. Not that day, anyway. But I wouldn’t get as far as the complaint. I’d stop at just the third verse.
And stay there.
(more…)
Redeem This
An extra hand never hurts, so when she offered to hold the tape, I slid the one-inch end over to her behind the bushes. Besides, she needed something to keep her mind busy while we prowled around.
I wondered, as I watched her scale a small pile of debris, if I could come to dread the smell of campfire — that scent that most often means I’m outdoors, with folks I love, and at least for the moment, without a care.
In college, I always resisted washing a campfire-steeped sweatshirt for days, just to hang onto the time a little longer, if only in my head and my nostrils.
She wonders when she’ll stop waking to that smell and remembering it wasn’t a dream.
Yesterday I saw the end of the rainbow (updated)
Seventy-some miles to the south of me, a farmer is looking out the window over his fields and wondering if I’m going to treat him fairly. He’s already told me he doesn’t expect I will.
He knows how we are, being insurance people and all.
Seems a few motherly cattle went looking for their little ones and trampled his corn and beans. We’re rained out here this morning, his dirt road just a little too soft with the overnight storms to let us get close enough to see how much damage these anxious mamas did. So I can’t yet put his mind at ease.
We’re not all bad, I tell him. He’s not convinced.
We Can’t Handle This Much Jesus
One of the creepier pieces of the puzzle beneath the headaches I don’t really have is a eyelid that doesn’t really close.
At least not all the way.
Well, at least that’s what my eye doctor says.
It’s handy at mealtime, where only a fool would pray with both eyes closed at my dinner table. When we say table grace, I keep that one creepy eye fixed on the spread. Because if I don’t watch the bowl to my right, I’m going to wind up on the short end of the mashed potato stick.
Meaning: I’m not so attentive during that prayer as I’d like to think.
In fact, I might be known to say Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest, with more than a little indifference.
I don’t always expect Him to show.
A Rock is Just a Rock — Or is It?
Guest post by my dad, Paul Willingham
:: : ::
What comes to mind when you hear the word rock?
A noun? A verb or some other part of speech? No, this is not a grammar test.
A Rolling Stones Concert?
A boxer named Balboa or Grazziano?
Elvis, the King?
Alcatraz?
Gibraltar?
Prudential Insurance?
Or if you are a hoops fan, a basketball?
The entrance to Jesus’ tomb?
The grand old hymns Rock of Ages or
My Hope is Built on Nothing Less?
Sandy Patti’s Upon This Rock?
Jesus’ promise to Peter in Matthew 16?
Psalm 18:2?
The wise builder’s foundation?
Jesus himself?
Front Line Worship
When David, as messed up in his sin as the day is long, sought to make his own way to redemption, he dug his hole deeper instead of digging his way out. To cover himself, he sent the husband of his newly manipulated mistress back to to war, with orders for the commander to put this man at the front of the battle where surely he would find the fighting to be most fierce.
It was David’s intent that Uriah be killed.
And so he was.
Curious then, it strikes me, how King Jehoshaphat formed the front line when he assembled his troops to defend a nation against an onslaught of vicious — and superior — armies.
Moving at the Speed of God
He’s going.
She texted just those two words. I didn’t need more.
I knew.
Those two words ushered me into a most mysterious place, holy, where one could almost feel the outer edge of the wind that must have roared through a hospital room 500 miles away when the curtain between heaven and earth tore open just briefly.
In the 15-odd minutes that passed between that message and the next, the one that said he’d gone home, I hung suspended in time, between the mighty roar and the holy hush. Without further thought, I prayed.
When the edge of eternity sits so close as to feel the breeze, what else would we do?
Living and Hyperactive
I don’t know how I got here exactly.
Well, I do. I heard a guy on the radio right before I turned off the car, and he made reference to 2 Chronicles 20. The tiny bit I heard intrigued me. I thought I should go and check it out.
I’m supposed to be in 1 Samuel. But I’m distracted there with how a guy who loves his wife from his toes would see her, grieved to the point where she cannot eat, and give her double portions of food to console her. So I can’t get past the first chapter.
Already I digress.
So, 2 Chronicles. I went to read the story. And then I started reading backwards, because when I airlift into a passage I always have to trek back through the trees and see what happened before that.
And I got lost in the forest.
Prayer as Argument
My gangly bird legs stretched out in front of me and I watched my tennies rock back and forth, scraping over sandy dirt like windshield wipers. I alternated between note-taking and doodling, then shifted again, trying my best not to roll right off the log into a dead sleep.
As my mind began to wander toward the lake and a free afternoon, the Charlie-Brown-teacher-drone voice broke into clear syllables and I froze.
Did she just say Willingham? What on earth is she talking about?
Remain calm. Look casual. No sudden moves.
“The Willinghams are a perfect example,” she told my group. “I like to think of them as the ‘Yelling Family.’”
The umm, what?
Under a Shared Umbrella (guest post by Jennifer Dukes Lee)
A few weeks ago I slid into the back pew of a little church in northwest Iowa and chuckled watching a crazy Jesus-loving pirate sing and shout in worship with the kids as the night’s VBS program came to a close. A leader came over to introduce herself and wondered what brought me there and how I knew Jennifer Lee.
I swallowed chalk, opened my mouth to answer, and closed it again when nothing came out.
Finally, I stammered, “She’s a blogging friend.”
The Chicken Story (Part III)
Grandpa and his watermelons, circa. 1915
The Chicken Part of the Chicken Story
When I asked my granddad to record The Chicken Story so I could post it here, I expected he’d be able to get me just a short anecdote, on paper. Better than that, my dad set him up with a digital recorder, and instead of just my favorite story about chickens, I got a wonderful narrative history of his twelfth birthday, his first paying job (50 cents a day), and a slice of life in the early quarter of the twentieth century.
In the process of transcribing the story, I discovered Grandpa recorded the story for me not just once, but twice, each version just a little different and told as fresh as though the events happened yesterday. These posts have attempted to blend the best of the two.
Today we get to the punch line, and the chickens. Or, rather, the chicken. Singular.
The Chicken Story (Part II)
A doorknob makes a good hammer, if you can’t find a screwdriver
Yesterday, I introduced you to the Willingham clan’s patriarch, R. A. Willingham, Sr., or as we know him, Grandpa. Or Grandpa Al. Or Grandpa George. Even though the R. in R. A. doesn’t stand for George.
My dad emailed last night with a few more details to fill out Grandpa’s CV:
Your grandpa had one of the top Boy Scout troops in the city of Chicago. The troop was in danger being disbanded before he took over. My cousin Norman was a member of that troop and said that he was the best scoutleader he had ever had.
He once told me that his dad told him, “a door knob makes a good hammer, if you can’t find a screwdriver.”
He probably has held every office that churches require, including Sunday School teacher, deacon, elder, and Sunday School superintendent. He took the office of elder seriously and willingly would fill the pulpit in the absence of the pastor.
He played the inn keeper in the Christmas pageant at Maplewood Baptist (Chicago) when I was about eight years old. He grew a big dark black beard just for the show.
He and grandma Edna were also instrumental in starting a church in Oregon, IL.
With that, I’ll give you Part II of The Chicken Story. If you didn’t read yesterday’s “guest post from a 102-year-old guy,” click back to do so and learn that a fella can never have too many hankies. And stop back tomorrow, when we’ll get to talking about chickens and the punchline of the story.
That’s why they call ‘em hamburgers
by Al Willingham
Grandpa and Grandma outside the dorm at Minnesota Bible College, Minneapolis MN, circa. 1950s
A grocery store in those days was a far cry from what we think of with a grocery store today. In many respects a grocery store today has many of the same features. Most grocery stores sell everything. You buy stationery, you buy stuff for your kitchen, there’s a pharmacy and so on and so forth.
‘Course they didn’t have pharmacies in that time. The doctor was his own pharmacist. He fixed his own medicine. And incidentally, the medicines that they gave me to take were liquid. And I’m telling you, after about two doses of their liquid medicine you got well in a hurry so you didn’t have to take any more. You might have needed it but you didn’t want any more.
Anyhow, [my uncle's] store was sort of a general store. There was a certain amount of clothing and dishes and odds and ends. But instead of you taking a basket and going around the store and picking up what you wanted, you went to a place called a counter and he or one of his two clerks would stand with a little sales tab in his hand. If you wanted some rice he’d write that down, and after four or five items he’d go and get them and lay them on the counter. Then he’d go get whatever else it was you wanted and take care of you.
A little money exchanged in that store. People would say “Well I do my tradin’ over at Val’s.” My uncle had a peculiar name, his name was Valentiny. He was born on Valentine’s Day. As soon as he grew up a little he changed his name to Val.
He bought everything he could in bulk. Sugar came in a barrel. Flour came in sacks. He’d buy a car load of flour at a time and half a car load of sugar. One of my jobs in the store was to sack up the sugar and keep it on the shelf ahead of time. He’d put it up in one and five pound bags, stiff brown bags that they sacked it up in. And he showed me how to sack it up to get just exactly one pound and twist the end and tie it with a string that came off a ball that hung on the ceiling. My job was to see that the sugar counter was always well filled because that was one of the popular things.
Grandpa and Lil with Isaac, circa. 1998
The automobile was just coming into town and I mean probably one in 20 residents had a car. But he had a gas pump out there and it was my duty to fill up a tank of gas. The tank had marks on the side of it so you’d fill it up full and then drain it down into the car that you were servicing. And I think at that time gas was probably maybe ten or eleven cents a gallon.
My other duty was just to see to it that the papers and things were picked up off of the floor and keep the place as neat as possible. Next door was a butcher shop that was part of the store but had a separate entrance from inside and outside. One of Val’s brothers operated the butcher shop. I was also to keep that place tidy. I’d be responsible for checking into the meat market, and if there was any droppings on the floor I was supposed to pick them up. They kept sawdust on the floor and once a week they’d change it. Otherwise they just kept adding sawdust during the week.
They made deliveries to people in town all week. People would call in and they’d want pork chops for dinner. He had a route that would get delivered by 11:00 so the lady of the house could have dinner ready when most everyone went home for lunch.
Val was very popular in town. His store was located at a place called Five Points. If you asked where some part of town was, being a stranger, they’d say, “Do you know where Five Points is?”
“Oh yeah, I know where Five Points is.”
“Oh well, you go six blocks east from there and four blocks south and you’ll find the place that you’re looking for.”
Val owned all five corners. There was a blacksmith shop and sort of a general storage place, and then he had what they called this stand. It was the beginning of McDonalds. They would fry up sandwiches — called ‘em hamburgers because they would mix beef and pork together. That’s how hamburgers got their name.
Grandpa and Grandma (left) with friends
And this little store sold chewing gum and candy and perhaps other sandwiches I don’t remember. Coca Cola was just getting into the business and they had Coca Cola and cream soda and it seems like there was three or four others. You had a little container and you dropped a dime in there and you could slide the bottle over to a certain place. If the dime went through and released a lock and you could get the bottle out.
- to be continued -
The Chicken Story (Part I)
Grandpa and Grandma, circa. 1950-ish
A Guest Post by Grandpa Al Willingham
Two years ago family scooted down church pews while my granddad sidled up to a microphone. He’d been preparing his birthday speech for a long time. Years, I think. He rustled a few note cards between his fingers, but it seemed they were there just to put something in his hands. I noticed after the first two or three he never looked at them again.
We sat riveted, hardly breathing unless it was to fuel the next belly laugh. Partly because it was Grandpa, and he always captivates. But partly, I think, it was never having heard a 100-year-old guy deliver a monologue. For nearly an hour, he cracked jokes, told stories and passed out sage advice to a room full of friends, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. That year in his Christmas letter he observed that he’d been told the first 100 years were the toughest. He was looking forward to the next 100. He’s now two years into that second century.
My grandpa raised a family in wartime. He worked through the Great Depression, never out of a job more than two weeks at a time I’m told. He’s buried two beautiful wives and more friends than a guy should have to. He’s seen things I can only imagine.
Grandpa Al is Rock solid, passing down a heritage of loving and serving Jesus that could cause the best Baptists I know to covet. He served as chairman of his church’s elder board into his 90s and can still fix anything with a little prayer, duct tape and baling twine.
I asked Grandpa if he’d help me complete four generations in this place. (My dad posts regularly, and Isaac guested here once last year.) Remembering a favorite story from the birthday party, I wondered if he and Dad could get it onto paper for me.
They did me one better. They puttered around with a digital recorder and for the next couple of days, we have the results of that here. I edited very little so you can get the feel for Grandpa’s conversation. In Part I, Grandpa sets the stage for the times with the sure sign of coming of age: he wore long pants at age twelve. In Part II, he describes his uncle’s grocery store where he held his first job off the farm. And in Part III, he tells a story of chickens, customers, and lessons learned about honesty.
All About Chickens and Chicken Soup and So Forth
Grandpa in 1912, not quite old enough to work
In order for you to understand the situation at the time, I was in my early youth. Upon reaching twelve, you lost your childhood one day and the next day you were supposed to be a man, a tradition handed down for many years from the Jewish people.
On my twelfth birthday — I had never had a birthday party before — I came home from school and nobody was home. I started doing the normal chores assigned to me. I got mine all done and started in on the ones that my dad would be doing.
Mother and Dad showed up along with a couple of cousins of mine from town and Dad and I continued with the chores. We got back to the house and it was supper time but I didn’t see any evidence of supper. I had noticed my dad had been carrying some wood into the front part of the house and I wondered what that was all about.
We had a peculiar house that had two huge living rooms. One was called the parlor and that’s where you put your best furniture. And when you had company you used the other sittin’ room. That was the showplace. You also had a parlor bedroom where the fancy bedclothes were on the bed and the bed never got used.
She’d made several trips in there and I wondered what that was all about. Finally she sent me in there to get a book of some kind out of the small library that we had. Lo and behold, the house was full of people from my school. I think all of my school chums or associates were there. I was attending a one-room school and we had about 20 students first through eighth grade. They immediately started singing happy birthday to me, something that was a total surprise to me.
Birthday parties had never been celebrated as far as I knew in my family. And of course they all brought gifts, not a very wide variety but I got about ten or twelve red bandana handkerchiefs and some more delicate ones presumably from the girls. After the presents were all open, my mother brought me in my present.
Mother and dad served them ice cream and cake – and ice cream was a real treat back in those days. You had an old freezer you made it with and you turned a crank until you couldn’t turn it anymore. You packed it with ice, and ice was also pretty much of a new thing they had learned how to make ice in the big city of Charleston. We lived about six miles from there. Anyhow we had that fun, and after everyone left then my Mother brought out a big package for me and it turned out it was my long pants suit true to tradition.
The dress code in those days for boys was knee pants or knickers, long black socks, a blouse and either a homemade knit sweater or jacket. I’m talking about Sunday-Go-to-Meetin’ clothes now. After you were twelve years old the dress code changed. Boys wore long pants, regular type suit, shirt and tie, white shirt and tie, and then that was designated as your Sunday-Go-to-Meetin’ clothes.
Maybe the oldest NBA fan out there, Grandpa saw the Heat and T-Wolves play for his 100th birthday
My mother was ill most of my life. Well, she lived anyhow. She thought since I was growing up now I should have a little business training. She had a brother that had a little grocery store in town. She conned him into allowing me to work on Saturdays for six weeks. The reason for the six weeks was that during that six weeks spring was coming along and there wasn’t much to do on the farm. By the end of the six weeks they would be starting to prepare the soil for planting and they would require me to be one of the helpers.
So I rode horse back into town. The store opened at 6:30 in the morning. My uncle was just coming across the street when I arrived on horseback. He showed me where I could put my horse where she’d be in the shade, and gave me a bucket of water to sit beside her. I could change the bucket at noon. I thought it was very thoughtful of him.
-to be continued-
Inside Out
I forget how many months ago a friend sent me an email, brief and to the point:
Been reading your stuff. What’s up?
This friend, she’s one of those rare finds who gets my heart. Back in another time, we often met over tea with lemon (once, I drank tea) at a restaurant I can’t remember or a dripping chocolate malt at Snuffy’s Malt Shop in St. Paul where we plunged the depths of Ezekiel and Hebrews and really, what’s the deal with Melchizedek?
She still gets my heart, even though we live across the country and I’m weeks behind on our email study of The Trivialization of God.
So when she notices things, I know enough to pay attention.
I asked her then what she meant. Her response was nearly as brief as her first observation:
I don’t know writing, I’m a scientist. But your heart’s not in it.
True enough.
She’d nailed it.
::
Sleeves, frankly, are too perilous a place to wear one’s heart, and I keep mine nicely guarded inside a warm fleece hoody. I like to think I posture and pose pretty well. And what better place but writing to do that? We measure our words, reveal only what we want to, hold tight what we want to keep.
And readers? They see the words. Not the heart.
They see what we want them to see.
As long as I’m careful, there’s no way to tell whether I’m laughing or crying when I put words to the page.
Right?
No, wrong.
My friend the scientist says wrong.
Julia Cameron says wrong.
Readers know these things.
::
As we wrap up the discussion of Julia Cameron’s Right to Write over at High Calling Blogs this week, I find her stretching me, pushing at me to raise the stakes. Keep my heart in the writing.
When people wonder what makes some writing readable and other writing less so, they are centering on the issues of stakes. Stakes are the answer to the question, “Why should I care?” The best answer to “Why should I care” is always “Because it matters very very much. (p. 215)
What the scientist noticed about my writing is that I had stepped out of it. I was trying some things, stupid things, things designed to run a little more traffic in the direction of my blog, but things that ultimately took my heart right off the page. (Which, if I stopped to think about it, would have the very opposite effect.)
Cameron observes that to expect you to be invested in what you’re reading, I had to invest in writing it.
“When a writer writes from the heart of what matters to him personally, the writing is often both personal and powerful. When a writer writes what he thinks the market needs — writes, in other words, without a personal investment — the standard of writing is often lowered along with the stakes.
Part of our duty as writers is to do the work of honestly determining what matters to us and to try to write about that. This may take a certain amount of courage. This may mean that we do not meet with immediate support from those who make decisions with an eye to the market. (p. 219)
Here in my smallish corner of the world, the market means little to me anymore. It did, briefly. And while it did, writing was work and got reactions like “What’s up?”
I’d be dishonest to say I don’t ever look at the numbers underneath. But the numbers don’t drive the writing; they’re just one way to help tell me if I’m getting the job done or not.
I’m afraid I still keep my heart safely tucked away most of the time, at least the larger part of it. Now and again if you’re paying attention you’ll see it slip out around a frayed cuff. But most of the time what I’m writing is at least coming from that part of me. It’s training my writing around what Cameron would call writing “from the inside out rather than the outside in.” (p. 220)
::
Perhaps a delight to many of you, we conclude the book discussion over at HCB this week. But you can still read up if you’d like. See Laura’s new post on Monday with links to the other participants.
As a reward for your patient indulgence throughout this diversion, I’ll be quiet most of the rest of this week. I’m putting the last touches on a three-part guest post from my granddad. At 102 years old, he nearly has a foot in three centuries. And he was telling stories long before Al Gore invented the Internet. I’m hoping to get one up for you shortly, so be sure to stop back for (until I’m proven otherwise) the only place on the web where you can read a guest post from a centenarian.
Photo: Inside Old House by Piotr Rudziewicz via Stock.xchng
Why It’s Okay if My Church Isn’t Hip
It’s a Sunday morning moment I’ve come to expect like the certainty of the rising sun.
I look forward to it, really.
She charges through the double doors from the foyer into the the sanctuary thrashing her walker. Though it’s designed to aid her steps, it seems no more than a pesky obstruction to the day’s Mission: Critical.
“Helllooo,” she calls once she’s barely past the threshold.
“Good morning to you,” I shout back, though we’re nearly arm’s length away. I made the mistake one morning of not responding, lost as I was in my work in the media booth. I thought she’d spoken to someone else.
She hadn’t.
She let me know.
I haven’t missed a Sunday morning greeting since.
Now, when she comes in before the rest of the Sunday School crowd and makes her way to the library to reload her books for the week, I always stop dropping images and text into their boxes and turn to visit. And I make sure I have my poker face firmly in place. Because I never know what’s coming next.
A few weeks ago, it went something like this:
“Who are you?” she demanded.
“It’s me, Lyla. Just like always,” I smiled.
“Oh. Well. It’s just that you look so . . . strange.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll get a haircut this week.”
And then the next week:
“Who are you?”
“It’s me, Lyla, just like always.”
“Always? Are you always here? What time do you come here?”
“Usually around 7:30 or so.”
“Why? What do you do in that little space so early in the morning?”
“I’m getting the slides ready for the music and Pastor’s sermon this morning.”
“Oh. Well. It’s just that you look so . . . strange.”
“I know. I’m working on that haircut.”
By last week, I’d worked out the haircut thing and didn’t have to introduce myself. She stopped her march to the library abruptly, pausing to look at the screen where I still had a slide hanging to remind parents to pick up a devotional booklet for their young kids.
“Oh dear. I’m afraid I haven’t read mine lately,” she said, shaking her head. “You know, I can’t seem to do it.”
“Well,” I said, “it seems to me that you have it all right where you need it.” And I tapped my chest.
She leaned her frailty hard into the walker and hung her head. “Oh, I just don’t know anymore.”
::
I watched her shoulders slump, and remembered this sweet but feisty character. Once when I was on the church’s staff she recruited me as her co-conspirator to break into the pastor’s office to retrieve a telephone number she was sure he had. She pressed me when I reported back after my covert operation that I’d glanced at his desk and didn’t see it.
“Well, did you look in his desk drawers then?”
“No, I didn’t think I should,” I said.
“Good. I wouldn’t have either. But I wanted to know if you would.”
And I thought back to the time we brought her apples from our tree because I didn’t know what to do with them and baking brought her so much joy.
We had no idea she’d be calling hours later insisting that we come to her apartment right now to pick up those nine pies because she needed her cooling racks for the next nine, and how soon could we pick up that next batch because she had things to do you know?
She’s preached me Jesus more times than I can count.
And I’m pretty sure I’ve felt the earth tremble under my feet when she’s asked God to move.
She’s a rock. The last standing of a generation of her family that piled stones together as the foundation of my church.
::
To hear her exhale resignation there at the library door, held up by an apparatus she despises, my heart may have paused for a beat.
“Hey,” I said, “You listen to me. It’s here. Right here.” I made a fist and rapped my chest hard this time. “You know that.”
She looked back up, met me with weary eyes and said, “Yes, well, maybe it is still in my heart.”
And with that, she rolled the walker into the library.
I turned back to the keyboard and continued typing where I’d left off.
Be still, my soul:
thy God doth undertake
To guide the future,
as He has the past.
Thy hope, thy confidence
let nothing shake;
All now mysterious
shall be bright at last.
I looked out at the congregation that morning, my perch giving me a rare view of the lot of them from the back. I saw silver hair and no hair, pony tails and buzz cuts, blue jeans and t-shirts, dresses and suits, walkers, canes and sippy cups.
And I remembered how much I love my church, a family with whom I’ve walked through fire and flood. We’re small, and we’re regular folks, a mix of farmer and doctor, educator and businessman, stay-at-home and work-away.
We still have pews, though they’re padded. Our praise team is fledgling, staffed with teenagers and retirees and amateur musicians who just love to worship their King. We have one service, and it’s still on Sunday morning. My pastor wears a tie instead of ripped jeans and a v-neck. And we start every service from the hymnal.
We’re not hip.
And that’s okay.
Because if my church were hip, I know one humble servant I’d never see on a Sunday morning.
::
Photo: Lonely Soul by Wendy Swallis via Stock.xchng Be Still My Soul, Katharina Von Schlegel, Public Domain
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